Mid Autumn Festival 中秋节

We celebrated Mid Autumn Festival in a very small way, usually mum will call us over for dinner, but she didn't this year because she thought that we have gone to my hub's side for the celebration.  

 Since mum did not call, we went home straight from work.  While I was searching for something to cook in the kitchen, Clet asked me whether I feel like cooking or prefer to eat out.  My answer to him was "I never feel like cooking", I would call it lazy, tired and no idea what to cook, a mixture of reasons..:D  We decided to tapau some dishes and hop over to brother's home to serve ourselves dinner...Festival like this is best to spent time with family members.  We had different types of moon cake this time.   

I like this moon cake very much, smaller in size and the skin is very soft unlike the traditional ones, RM3.00 per piece

Jelly moon cakes in assorted flavours, home made by SIL.

A traditional Lotus moon cake, cut into eight portions

A box of assorted flavours moon cake

I picked the green tea flavour to go with a cup of hot Chinese tea.  

The kids were not into playing the lanterns reason being that they scared the lantern will catch fire by the candle flame inside the lantern...:D

At the end, all the lanterns were hang at the car porch. Can you see the full moon on the sky?? Very glad that it was not raining or else we wouldn't be able to see any moon.

Malaysian First Day Cover - Malaysian Festival Siri II

The post office issued a First Day Cover on 27 September 2012.  The theme is "Malaysian Festivals Siri II".  There are a series of 5 stamps with a denominations of 0.60 cents each.  

This issue is not as popular as the one issued on 13 September 2012 for the Diamond Jubilee for Queen's Elizabeth II and the Royal visit of Prince William and his wife, Catherine to Malaysia.  For this issue, I still managed to buy the stamps, the inserts and envelopes today, one day after it was issued, unlike the earlier, I still have not got the First Day Cover envelopes for the stamps and a stamp chop on them.

The stamps for the "Malaysian Festival Siri II" are pretty cute.  Malaysia is a country rich with a mix of races, religion  and culture, therefore, there are festivals celebrated by each races.  The festivals on the stamps are Hari Raya Aidiladha, Moon Cake Festival, Thaipusam, Pesta Kaul, Regatta Lepa.  

I bought 3 sets, 1 for my colleague whom also a collector of First Day Covers.  She managed to get 2 more sets later in the afternoon too..

getting ready to stick and paste the stamps on the envelopes.  At the same time trying to figure out how is the best way to arrange the stamps so that they look nice..*;*

I got the rubber stamp now and ready to stamp chop on the stamps to make them into the official First Day Covers :)

done with the rubber stamping 

I particularly like the Christmas Tree on the envelope, it further enhances the meaning of this issue of First Day Covers "Perayaan Di Malaysia Siri II".  It is a beautiful piece of First Day Cover with the colourful Christmas tree image.

A closer look 

The Christmas Tree image

On my way out, I noticed this bunting.  A special series of setemku collection  on the adventure of Upin Ipin has been released on 15 September 2012.  If you are a fan of the Malaysian most popular animated children series, visit Pos Malaysia to collect the limited edition of Kembara of Upin & Ipin Setemku Collection.    

Next to it is the Perayaan Di Malaysian Siri II bunting.

Moon Cake / Mid Autumn Festival 2012

It's the time of the year we celebrate Moon Cake / Mid-Autumn festival.  The Chinese Lunar calendar of 15th August falls on 30 September  this year, that's this coming Sunday.

Moon cakes has becoming more and more expensive. My better half received 2 boxes of moon cakes from his company's service provider that day, single egg yolk in lotus paste and double egg yolks in lotus paste, 1 box each.  We do not have to buy any more moon cakes this year.

Our girls like to eat moon cakes especially the egg yolks, they really know how to pick the most expensive one.  They serve themselves moon cakes whenever they feel like, I have to keep reminding them to control the consumption.  Moon cakes are not only sweet, too much of that will cause heatiness thus sore throat to some people.  I guess that's why moon cakes are best served with Chinese Tea.

Double yolks moon cake is so tempting.

Happy Moon Cake / Mid Autumn Festival

The moon shining so bright & round tonite, on a Mid-Autumn day

We only bought 3 moon cakes this year. I brought one for the gathering at Angie's new home on 31.08.2010 (a once in year gathering with my Innosabah's ex-colleauges). One for Pearl's school. Each of the students has to bring a moon cake to school for mid-autumn celebration. Crystal insisted to buy one more because she likes to eat. Which she did, she ate almost half of the moon cake these two days.

Previous years, we used to buy a box of moon cakes for my parents. However, we stopped doing that this year, because just 2-3 weeks ago my father admitted to the hospital the day after he ate about one whole moon cake by himself, his blood pressure shot up to 230+ and sugar level undoubted went up as well. He can't afford to have another stroke. So we have to control on buying moon cakes for health reasons, furthermore, the price of the moon cake is not cheap.

Crystal enjoying the moon cake, she likes the one with yolk

Crystal asked me why we celebrate Moon cake festival, I told her that I need to find out how the story goes, I can only remember there was a beautiful lady called Chang-er based on an ancient story. So I searched on internet this evening, there I found several versions of the story, I got myself confused which one is accurate, at the end I told her that she will learn about it in school in the future. I never remember Chinese history or stories that's one of my weak point being a Chinese (a Malaysian Chinese, can be excused ba...haha!).

We had a simple dinner at brother's house, we are all working today so only my mum did the cooking herself. A bit stressful on her.