Mar 2015: Another Ordinary Day

Time flies, she is 5 now. Love every moment with her, except when she bombs me.

Credits :Sahlin Studio's Digital Scrapbooking Template - May2015; Feifei's Stuff; Amanda Yi Designs; KPertiet@Designer Digitals; etc.

Penang: Apam Balik

Everyone, please meet Malaysian traditional pancake, Apam Balik- literally means turnover pancake.

(source)

I was thrilled when I saw this during our last visit to Penang. This was my childhood favorite! I could easily had it every week in the pasar malam (night market) near my house. But it is getting so hard to find it these days, especially in KL. The Malaysian Department of National Heritage has listed this as one of the heritage food.

A good year ahead

Clean house. Good year.

- Ancient Chinese Belief

As the Lunar New Year arriving soon, the focus for most of us begin with cleaning and decorating, from each's threshold into drawers and cupboards. Jolly, the house would be de-cluttered determinedly, cleaned sparkly and decorated with all sort of lucky symbols to usher the family in a prosperous Chinese New Year. Dirt, residue, negative attitudes, unpleasant words and disrespect are to be swept before or after the celebration.

Along with the clean house, I suppose one's mind must also be refresh and optimistic. Only honeyed thoughts should come out of one's mouth, and the little minds are not reprimanded or scolded during the celebration period. 

Cleaned shelter, honeyed thoughts inject positivity from one to another. And so we all prosperously embarking into a good year. 

Here, I am not going to tell you how my physical house being cleaned up significantly. What is more meaningful, in my opinion is, cleaning up the house of my soul from last year. I started of jotting down things in a year I plan to do since last year. I felt that it solidified the year for me to live on: purposefully, happily. So, here I am again, wrapping up 2014, which I believe it would help to led me to another meaningful year of 2015. Planning for the year is all over the place. 

1. I had been cooking a lot more than before. Sometimes, I can even handle a meal for 6! The routine kicks in so naturally now that, I hardly hear my girls mention about dining out.
2. I jogged regularly, kept sickness at bay.
3. I've saved up the money according to the plan. The question is, what's next!
4. Together with sc and little bomber, we cafe-hopping whenever we had time and had fun throughout the year.
5. I had a great trip with my good old friends in Bangkok.

Penang: Misty Penang Hill

I have fond childhood memory of visiting Penang Hill. With luxuriant green, cold refreshing weather, tranquil, some part remained colonized too. I recalled, there was a green corner for kids to run wild while the parents get to sit down and relaxing close-by. About 830km above sea level, generally five degrees cooler than Georgetown, you will get to experience the change of temperature from the foot of the Hill to the Hill itself, with less than 30 minutes, excluding the waiting time at the queue to take the funicular. Penang Hill is one place that offering a spectacular panoramic view of Georgetown, sometime, Penang Bridge and beyond. 

Dec 2014: Pulau Pinang

Before the year (2014) ended, we managed to make a trip to Penang. The trip was unexpectedly awesome. Even the girls said so and asked for a return. Well, maybe we hardly a tourist in our own homeland, time was always allocated for family gathering, friends meeting, running errands and shopping(it's cheaper there). This time round, despite we made the effort to meet uni-mates and bonding with family members, we did what tourists do: sight-seeing to Penang Hill, water and sand playing at the beach, wandering and hunting down those famous street arts, finding those food stalls that we used to patronised... Penang is really fun, apparently.

This scrapbook captured one fun moment of the girls. SC drove through Jalan Tanjung Bungah to reminisce what we knew of Teluk Bahang, Batu Ferringhi, stopped by one of the smaller and quieter beach at Tanjung Bunga for the girls to have some sand play time. The girls were thrilled. They jumped, cart-wheeled, shell and rock throwing, soaked into the sea water, etc. They didn't have enough of it. Beach, one great place to be for the kids to release their energy. Zero cost, infinite joy. 

Oh, throughout our visit in Penang, it was raining everyday. This was the only bright, cooling day for us to enjoy the beach.

I Didn't Throw it Away

I used to draw a lot when I was young, before the world was cyberised. 

Growing up in a big city, we didn't spend our childhood outdoor freely. Most of the time, besides playing with my siblings at home, I spent most of my free time seating down on my desk and holding the pencil to draw, to sketch, and brushes to paint. There must the innocent soul of mine in believing myself of having some sort of magical power to visualise and decode 3D into 2D. I was not afraid of wrong doing onto the drawing pad.

Transforming Grape Stem Into a Tree

One day, after disconnected a bunch of grapes from the stem and passed the fruits to the girls to eat...

I saw a naked tree in my palm.
So, a wild attempt to let the girls have some fun began-

Paint a Tree
First | bend some parts of the stem a little outwards, just to make it like a tree branches.
Second | washi tape to stick the stem on the drawing paper, randomly.
Third | get ready with brushes, colouring palette, water, some water colours,
           mainly green, blue and yellow, just to get different shapes of green
Fourth | Fun dipping begins!
            Various of green- light green, dark green, lime, teal, mint, etc dip onto paper.
       

Lastly | Complete the background as you like.

Visually, it gives an impact to the little minds on the transformation possibility of an object. Technically, it allows the little hands to experience the dipping technique and how blue and yellow can form variety of green. Again, the infinite possibility of forming own's green.

Of course, you can try other shapes of colour.

A Bit (More) from the Daily Fix

While writing and receiving loves on my earlier post of the Daily Fix, I got the opportunity to chat a little with Julian, the Founder. More on, feedback on his food and coffee we had. I approached him further if he would like to share about his story on the café business, those vintage collections, his effort, his vision and what not. I mean, how clever is he to hunt and keep those antiques and oldies? Making them as part of his life beautifully is another great success. He must have some secret!

Here’s his reply:

Malacca: The Daily Fix, Jonker Street

We travel back to Kuala Lumpur from Singapore to visit my family, at least thrice a year. Hence, SC and I would bring the girls pop by Malacca whenever we could, just to be a day or two of wondering wanderers. Malacca maybe now a very tourist hotspot, it is still a new adventure place to the girls, many to see, many to think about and learn. We also think that it is a living book for us to read and get to walk our history physically. 

[Ok, the true is adult us love the food there, cheap and authentic].

Usually, we would pick off-peak season to visit the centre of Malacca city. It is always jam-packed during weekends and public holidays, on the road especially. Traffic congestion gets worst after listed as UNESCO heritage site. Good and bad I guess. I don't like crowd, and frankly we can't afford to spend more on the accommodation. Y'know, they charge more during peak seasons. (And they charge almost half the price when it is off-peak.)

..............................................

So, after we had enough of wandering (and books), we went to The Daily Fix.

Malacca: Jonker Street and its Very Own Library

As I was saying, I have fond memories of Malacca. My dad brought little us to visit Malacca to makan angin (to travel for leisure), mostly during school holiday. Vaguely, I saw the red shophouses a lot, and the Christ Church, and the Fort A Famosa. And Trishaw! We didn't have it in the big city of KL nor small hometown of my dad's, you see. Malacca provided us a glimpse of the past and slower pace of living (few days though) from the Kuala Lumpur city. Over the years, I learnt a lot more about its history of Sultanate, Laksamana and Temenggung, as well as the unique Baba and Nyonya culture from our textbooks. It was one of the proud eras prior to Colonialism of Malaya. 

Profoundly, Malacca set the modern nation of Malaysia. If I may conclude so. 

Like many other cities in Malaysia, Malacca grows and develops rapidly too, vertically and horizontally while I was reading it from the textbooks. Some parts of the city stay physically intact as much as it could, some parts try to integrate the past and redevelop. Conservation and Preservation are not easy when socia-economic consideration is the primary aspect for a city. In 2008, together with George Town of Penang, Malacca became one of UNESCO World Heritage Site. More effort of redevelopment ever since, but I think that listing gives some of us some sort of relief that many of the past get to stay permanently.

Speaking of which, we love visiting Jonker Street, being the core of the Malacca UNESCO World Heritage Site. During our last visit to Malacca, we had great fun.