Mooncake Celebration

This year our celebration of mid-autumn festival in the office was of much larger scale compared to previous years. For the past years, we only had mooncake together with some chinese tea during tea-break. This year alone, in view of farewell celebration of our interns, we called for pizza delivery for lunch together with mooncakes as well. One of our colleague even brought along lanterns and candle for the celebration, but no one had matches or cigaratte lighter to light the candle. We ended up having celebration of lantern of no lights :)

The rows of pizza ordered

Raspberry Cheese Mooncake

Tiramisu Mooncake

Chocolate Pecan Mooncake

Green Tea Mooncake

The "fancy" packaging. Note the lantern by the side.

Change of HairStyle

I had kept my hair long for many years already. I think the last hair-cut i got was more than 1/2 year ago, where i just snipped a few inches off. For the past few weeks, my hair had been bugging me cos it was too long. Whenever i sit or sleep, my hair surely caught into something (usually is the gap between the chair's joint section), causing me unable to get up properly as it was pulling my head instead. When i tied my hair into a bun, it felt so heavy and my stupid hair-band cannot even hold it for too long. I even had to separate my hair into 3 parts each time i washed it.




Before

While working at office last Wednesday, I made a sudden decision to change my hairstyle. I told everyone at my office that I will be taking leave in the afternoon, and asked one of my colleague to take a snapshot of my hair as a momento. After lunch, I walked to hair saloon at Queensbay mall to "treat" my hair. Even the hairstylist complaint i had too much hair. Perhaps that's why they were charging me quite a sum for the total change. Till now, i have not got used to the "new" look yet (about 4 inches shorter, and from straight to curl). My hubby kept saying "No comment" whenever i asked him about it. Perhaps I'll wait for few more weeks to see whether this is really suitable for my look.


After

Trick - 1,2,3

Just completed the whole 3 seasons of japanese series called Trick plus 2 movies of the said show. It's a very funny series full of magical tricks and mysteries You can also learn some of the common magic tricks used by magician to impress your friends :P. It's really a recommended show. Here's the extract of the show's story at the back of the cover of season 1:

"Although 23-year-old Naoko Yamada (Yukie Namaka) considers herself a beautiful and talented magician, she is continously fired and constantly hounded by her landlady for the rent being late.

One day as she is searching though the newspaper for the new job, she comes across an ad os a physics professor, Jiro Ueda (Hiroshi Abe), a non-believer of all things magical, offering money to anyone who can prove to him that magic is real.

Desperately needing the money, Naoko accepts the challenge, which is how she comes to meet Professor Ueda. Falling prey to her simple magic tricks, Ueda is impressed, and enlists the reluctant Naoko to help him uncover the tricks behind a local cult. Soon, they are debunking spiritualists. Eventually Ueda develops a reputation for solving supernatural cases, but his secret weapon is Yamada, who hates the work but needs the money."

Yukie Namada's acting was abit stiff during the first few episodes for first season, and was improving as the shows move on. It is always funny where all the characters throughout the whole 3 series always giving her character a nickname "flat-chest". In fact, she also got the same nickname for her character that she acted in another Japanese series called Gokusen. But let's save Gokusen for another time...

Singapore Trip - Day 4

Today is the last day we'll be in Singapore. We started the day by having breakfast at Chinatown. I suspect Singaporean likes sweet stuff, cos even their 1/2 boiled eggs are served with pepper and dark soy sauce (sweet). My husband had very hard time accomodating with the change of flavour, as we usually takes it with light soy sauce instead (salty). After the "weird-tasting" breakfast, we head down to some stores to buy souvenirs.

We tried to go to DHL hot-air balloon ride but it was raining the whole day. So we ended up shopping at Bugis Junction instead. It was really disappointing for both of us not having to go on the ride. Hopefully the ride will still be available few years down the road, should we plan to go to Singapore again. We left Singapore at around 3pm to catch our flights back to Penang.

In all, it was quite an fun trip. Too bad the trip was abit too short and we did not manage to go to all places that we had planned earlier.

Singapore Trip - Day 3

We went to Jurong Bird Park in the morning. I'm not sure why, but few of my friends laughed at me when they learned I went to the Bird park. We reached there around 11am and managed to catch the morning show. It was drizzling earlier on, causing the environment to be very hot and humid after the show, thus making us feel very unpleasant to walk around the park. We stopped by air-conditioned places to catch some breather any chance we got.

Super hungry birds

There's a place where visitors can feed the birds and snap some nice photos while feeding the birds. Infact, the birds just followed you everywhere you go with the feeding on your hand. In other area, it was difficult to see any bird at all, as there were too many bushes/trees around, and the birds like to hide in these places.

Next we went the Zoo, and reached there around 4pm by taking a long journey in a bus from the MRT station. The white tigers there was magnificent. There's a polar bear as well, but the bear seemed abit "cuckoo" in the head as it keep walking the same path, round and round the whole time. Perhaps it is lonely as there's no other mate at all.

Mr "famous" guy in candy and toothpaste ad

We did not go for the night safari as was planning to meet my friend that is currently staying in Singapore for dinner. She brought us to Bukit Timah for indian food, which i feel is quite nice. I guess we must have been to the wrong places to eat all these while.

After dinner, we went for some sight-seeing in areas around City Hall. Singapore National Library was super huge, more than 10 stories if not mistaken, and the land area stretches the whole road. Even our camera cannot fit the whole front area of the library. From there, we stopped by the parliment, clarke quay and merlion for more photo shooting. Here, we saw 2 beggers in Singapore for the first time. It seems that the rate of encounter in Singapore tourist area was relatively low :)

The huge National Library

Night scene of Clarke Quay

Singapore Trip - Day 2

We started the day at about 10am. After getting ready, we head down to Harbourfront Centre MRT in order to get to Sentosa Island. After asking around for where the cable car station is located, we continued on to purchase the necessary admission tickets and proceed with our destination. There are some nice views of the sea and harbour during the ride. Some development works were being done in Sentosa Island as well, probably to cater for new resorts and attractions.

Our first stop at Sentosa was the Butterfly Farm. Though it is big, it was abit disappointing as there were very little butterflies. The Butterfly Farm in Penang was definately better, and cheaper as well :P There is a live scorpion where we can hold with our hands for photo shooting. Alot of people was scared to touch it.

I braved myself by letting it stayed at the back of my palm for photo shooting :)

It started to rain then in Sentosa when we proceeded to Underwater World. There were lots of marine life and the dugong was very memorable. We were conned into purchasing some photos for SG$15 a piece. Next we proceeded to pink dolphine show (yes, the dolphines are really pink in color naturally, not dyed). The show was too short, only lasted for 30 minutes, perhaps due to the rain. We did not carry any umbrella with us, and uses plastic bags to temporarily shield our head instead. After a few stops at other attractions in Sentosa, we went back to the main island and stopped by at Vivo city for some window-shopping. Again, my hubby was sad as cannot found any toys that he wanted and complaining KL shopping was better.

We continued on to Suntec City at night for more toys hunting. We managed to find 2 shops there selling toys and collectibles, and my hubby was very excited to see some of the rare toys and bought two of them back. He was smiling all the way back to the hotel, and played all night long with his new treasures. For me, i was relieved as he no longer bugged me to bring him places to buy toys.

Singapore Trip - Day 1

This is my first time going to Singapore. As for my hubby, this was his 2nd trip. His first trip was when he was about 6-7 yrs old. So you can say that both of us are quite blur about the whole trip. We prepared 1 week ahead deciding which places to go, how to get there, checking out the maps, deciding on the routes etc.

We reached JB Senai airport at around 1.30pm, and took the Causeway Link bus (RM8) to go to Kotaraya station. From there, we took SBS bus no 170 (RM1.10), stopped at JB customs to scan our passport, board the same bus again which drove us to Singapore customs. There we stopped again to stamp our passports and scanned our luggage. There was someone behind us trying to smuggle some lobster, and was stopped by the immigration officer. We quickly came out (worry the officer may associate us with the smuggler) to board the same bus again and head to Kranji MRT station.

We managed to borrow 2 EzLink cards from our friends that frequents Singapore alot. Singapore had a neat way of interconnecting their public transport. You can use the same card for MRT and bus transportation for cashless transactions. The rate is cheaper when using the card as well. Our local public transport should learn from this. From the Kranji station, we stopped at Tanjung Pagar station and walked to Duxton hotel, the place where we're going to stay for 3 nights. It took us about 10 minutes walk to reach the hotel by following the map. Along the way, we admire some of the nice building structures. Surprisingly, Singapore is not as hot as Penang, and it was actually pleasant to walk. There were little cars on the road and no rubbish at sight. We also notice there are alot of Latio on the road as well. Malaysia had just launched the model few months back, and we hardly see it on the road. By the time we reached the hotel, it was almost 4pm. After resting for awhile, we went out and took some photos along the walkway. Then we notice that the MRT station is just right in front of us. Stupid map! Should have not follow it exactly. In all, it was just 3 minutes walk from the hotel to the MRT station.

The hotel that we stayed

The view of the lobby

Our destination for today was Bugis Junction (had very late lunch there), Bugis Street, Sim Lim Square and few shopping malls at Orchard Road. We notice that Singaporean eat their ice-creams clamped between 2 wafer biscuits. We used to have that in Penang when we were small, but now is replaced in cone instead. Our legs were aching from all the walking due to lack of exercise. I even had blisters :( My husband was hoping to get some nice toys at Forum Shopping Centre but was disappointed instead, though i manage to get some nice souvenirs from Takashimaya. We had dinner back at Tanjung Pagar foodcourt, but the food was terrible. Should have ordered the sandwich instead.