Archive for the Category » holidays «

February 27th, 2010 | Author: gabriel

It was Cameron Highlands Day! With the super warm and humid whether in the low-lands of Ipoh (actually, it’s the whole of Peninsular Malaysia), my family decided to head to Cameron’s for a dose of fresh air, tea/coffee in a cold environment! We were lucky, as it wasn’t very sunny at Cameron’s. Felt like it was going to rain, the weather was cool and nice..

We went up in 2 cars where the 2nd car consists of me and my bro. My brother drove up the hill while I slept. And I drove the rest of the Cameron’s trip. Our first stop was to buy ‘real pearl corns’. The corns there are really sweet and the corns itself has a mixture of white and yellow corn bits. We also went to Rose Gardens to look at beautiful roses and other flowers.

pink rose

Some flowers are very nice.. May varieties of rose in different colours. There’s the pink rose at the top, there’s yellow rose, red rose..

yellow rose  red rose

There’s even the black rose!

black-rose-sign

The black rose is actually from a red rose where it turns black when it grows older.

red-black-rose

Like from the picture above, the back of the red rose begins to turn black.. Or at least, that’s what my father told me..

There are also many nice flowers, like the giant hibiscus..

giant hibiscus The white rose (aka milk girl)

IMG_1220

Even the bees are enjoying themselves collecting nectar from the flowers. The flowers are really sweet smelling, by the way..

 bee flower Okay.. Enough with the flowers… We took some pictures around – my dad wanted to take a picture with this mermaid statue. The story is that the mermaid is a being longing for her lost love, awaiting for his return..

mermaid

We went to the “ye olde smokehouse” for some scones, tea and coffee.. My brother took me posing at the grand piano.. haha

gab-piano

The ‘adults’ are drinking tea while the kids were also having their own fun time..

children-tea We then ate lunch at Cafe Downtown at Tanah Rata. It was a 4pm lunch… Imagine.. haha.. The food there is very nice. Their chicken chop and char koay teow is very nice!

cafe downtown Right after that, we headed to the tea plantation for a cup of tea and cheese cake!

 

alice 

We came here before 2 years ago… And look how the kids have grown!

nieces Did I mention that my nieces are posers??

Marielle actually posed for the pictures! And she’s only like 2 yrs old.

marielle-1 marielle-2 Oh well.. maybe it runs in the family. My brother and my dad also same case…

 

brother  dad

Me? I only take with my niece…

gab-marielle

After that, we went to the Laban Rata Waterfall! It’s on the way down from Cameron’s towards Tapah.

waterfall The waterfall there is quite nice. Very refreshing… Had quite a long pit stop here for the kids to play… Too bad I didn’t bring any change of clothes… Otherwise, I’ll just dip right into the pool. What I did was just take a good walk around the waterfall.. hahah

 gab-with-nieces

For the Cameron Trip, had to thank my sis’s bf.. She wanted to bring him around and end up going to a lot of places. He paid for all our meals at Cameron’s.. How nice of him… =)

alice-gu

When we reached Ipoh, it’s already almost 9pm. We went straight for dinner at old town.

Then at 10pm, I met up with Jason Ling, Yee Weng and Kean Fatt at the Ramly Burger Stall. They had seats there and it’s not crowded at all over there. I was supposed to meet euwen also but in the end, he was out with his sam tet friends… Anyway, the 4 of us just sat there, and just chatted… Good to meet up with old school mates… =)

February 27th, 2010 | Author: gabriel

Finally, I had some time to continue blogging bout my Chinese New Year days back in Ipoh.. Was pretty busy with training, work and other stuffs…
Let’s see… The 3rd day of CNY. Oh, right!

It was the 3rd day of CNY and my eldest sister is to return to Penang. My brother also had to fetch his gf and the in-laws back to Penang. Which leads to a very impromptu decision by my family.. “Let’s all go to Penang for a day trip!!”

At the time when they made the decision, I just woke up and was kind of shocked and flabbergasted with the news. haha.. but too bad, I couldn’t join them for the trip as I made a full-day plan with my friends already… They left for penang after lunch but before that, we took a ‘full’ family picture first.

family-portrait

Look at the number of nephews and nieces I have already…. Makes me feel old..

 

nephews-nieces

So.. they all left to Penang, with me in the house and Rosemary to take care of her new born son. Chee Lim came over right after my parents left.. She was supposed to come pai lin but too bad, no one was around. So, she just dropped by to see Elijah and Rosemary. Then, I went to her place to take something I left behind at her house the night before. And we headed for Choon May’s house shortly after.

Later after that, I went to Pinkie’s place, to meet her, joanna, jill and yee hui there. And guess what? We just watched TV.. hahah… Probably cause there isn’t much things to do at her place and only entertainment was the TV.. haha.
After waiting for yee hui to reach, we went to Jo’s house to play Pictionary!

pictionary

It was actually my first time playing Pictionary. I played something similar before, like Yahoo’s Graffiti, Win Lose or Draw.. or something to that category. It wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. But it was good play.. Need to think in the same frequency in order to guess what the other player is drawing.

Some classic examples

  • Pinkie drew a rat with a thousand legs…
  • Yee Hui’s version of Venus is “Gillette and Venus”, not the planet Venus…
  • A liver with a swimming pool is called “liverswim” and not liverpool..
  • Russia and a cow becomes “ruscow” and not “moscow”.. Lol

It was a fun game but too bad was a bit short.

jo-pink-jill

Right before we left, we played this game called “Killer Bunnies”. A very fun game but we didn’t really had enough time to fully enjoy to fun of it.. I guess there’s always still next time. =)

killer-bunnies

And night time, there was Susan’s CNY house party! It’s something like Chee Lim’s version but the people there were more of a mixture between RPP, Sam Tet, SMI, MC and MGS people. So, being a very ‘shy’ person.. I just stick back to the people that I know.. hahah.. Saw some old friends that I haven’t seen for a while, like Nikhil Roy, Rui Yang…

susan-house

facebook_017

It was great and Susan prepared lots of food to eat. Lots of fried chicken, cocktail, bak kwa… I guess that’s the end of the major big gatherings for me… But within that few days, have already met up with lots of people.

February 21st, 2010 | Author: gabriel

On the 2nd day of Chinese New Year, I woke up just in time for lunch where my eldest sister would then return to Ipoh from Penang.

lisa

And my brother also returned from Penang after picking up her girlfriend from Penang. I stayed at home during the daytime to spend time with my family and also to just laze around in my room…

The main ‘event’ for Chor 2 is the family dinner where we booked two tables at Sun Lee How Fook Restaurant. Too bad this year, grace and rosemary couldn’t join us. Grace is not around while Rosemary is still in ‘confinement’ mode.

family-lou-sang

There were also some new faces. Like my brother’s soon-to-be (hopefully) in laws.

brother-with-inlaws And some hopeful in-laws.. =)

IMG_1063

It wasn’t as ‘fun’ as previous years though.. but at least the food is quite good.. haha

Right after dinner, I headed towards Chee Lim’s house party. She normally organizes one whenever she’s in Ipoh for CNY. It has been there since form 4/5 already… I think she invited the whole Ipoh village there. The house eventually packs up with people, mainly her schoolmates and some of her non-schoolmates.

girls1 There are only the above people when I first arrived at around 10 smtg… Then it slowly growed and growed…

group-pic I think it’s the picture have most of her guests inside. Apart from some that left early..

There’s the smaller group of people outside

outside-group

Versus the many people inside… It’s quite fun actually to see so many people at once. Like meeting alot of people at one spot at the same time. No need to have so many separate sessions to meet up.. Hahah

inside-group Nah.. Just kidding. Meeting up is fun. Knowing what’s happening about the people that we used to know.. Like those who didn’t used to study well end up to be very successful people. Some that were very notorious in school has one of the better professions. Like some becoming pastors and lecturers.. Amazing how people change, especially those for the better.

Category: CNY, family, fun, holidays, ipoh gang  | Tags: , ,  | 2 Comments
December 31st, 2009 | Author: gabriel

My mum makes the most delicious pineapple tarts… I’ve tried that first batch in KL on Xmas Eve and I’m yearning for more… Upon request, she decided to make another batch, but this time, she has help from many little helpers…

helpers

Grace and Annie helped by squeezing out the batter from the shaper,

pastry

My mom have already prepared the pineapple stuffing. They look like worms

pineapple-filling

Yin Sin rolled the pineapple fillings onto the pastry,

 pineapple-tart-filling

 

And arrange them nicely before putting them into the oven…

pre-baked-pineapple-tarts

And finally, the final product!

IMG_0662

 

r

Category: food, holidays, house  | Tags: , ,  | Leave a Comment
December 13th, 2009 | Author: gabriel

Think the last time I’ve been to the SIngapore Zoo was 2 years ago with my family. This time round is my 3rd time to the zoo. Didn’t mind going there again as the zoo’s really interesting. At least, compared to the Taiping Zoo near my hometown. I managed to get 4 complimentary passes thanks to my company’s Corporate Pass. Managed to ballot the pass after trying twice! Yin Sin hasn’t been there before and so decided to bring her there. I invited Yi Wang and Yen Ping also as not to ‘waste’ the 2 more free entries.

yw-yp-zoo

I reached there at 845am. It’s about an hour’s away journey from my place at Hougang. At that time of day, there’s very little crowd and the animal’s have just awaken.

First, it’s the proboscis monkey, found in the land of Sabah. It has a very long nose, like an ‘ang moh’ monkey

proboscis-monkey

There’s the white tiger taking it’s morning walk…

white-tiger

Ducks going for their morning swim

ducks

And the elephants are having breakfast…

elephants

The birds only flew and joined in at 930am

parrots

white-parrot

The otters woke up late cause when I went to their habitat at 8 something, there’s nothing to be seen. Only at around 930 that they come running out playing around.

otters

Even the birds are looking for food..

bird-on-rhino

Next to their rhino counterparts, that is…

rhino

The flamingos with their long slender necks dipping into the water… looking for food at the very bottom on the ground

flamingo

While some animals have to reach high up for food…

giraffe

Some have their food properly laid out for them…

zebras

Some like to be fed.

elephant-feeding

While the cheetahs are lying around on the grass, lazing under the shed..

cheetah

Can you tell the difference between these cats? The below is a jaguar

IMG_9863

There’s also the ostrich, having their morning bowel movements. It’s quite gross actually…

ostrich-1

There’s this tongue-like thing jutting out from it’s anus.

ostrich-2

Then it sucks back in after it’s done

ostrich-3

Then it’s the animals at play! There’s this sea lion that’s very active; jumping around, splashing water…

sea-lion-jump

IMG_9908-1

Critters playing in the sand

critters

Monkeys showing off to get some attention..

monkey-hanging

monkey-drink-coconut

Performing stunts to get food

somersault

IMG_0008

Some just make cute faces

IMG_9959-1

want-attention

giraffe-face

Or showing off their ass

IMG_9991

Some animals are quite loving… We have baboons hugging their young ones

baboons

Monkeys sharing food

monkey-tail

And some close up pictures..

IMG_0068

IMG_0037 IMG_9912

We left at approximately 300pm… After about 6 hours of non-stop walking. And the afternoon sun’s blazing hot. But at least, we covered most of all the activities. Went to all of the shows, and most of the feeding sessions. Was a fun but tiring outing… Think I’m getting old….