Father's 73th birthday

Received mum's call in the office informing me that for everyone conveniences we will be celebrating father's birthday on Sunday, 25th April 2010 instead of on his actual birthday on Wednesday, 28th April 2010 (the 15th day of March in the Chinese Lunar Calendar).

To gather everyone is something not easy to do especially each and everyone of us have got our own ideas on how to make the occasion different as compare to the previous years.

We were planning to bring father to try German cuisine but mum did not like the idea rather she prefer to have spicy barbecue fish at one of the shop they have been for two times before, both father and herself really like the dishes there, the dinner was set on Wednesday which I intended to join them.

However, the next day, big sister suggested that it's better to have a potluck dinner at her home since both of our parents have not been there for quite a while. After a few phone calls to other siblings, we all agreed to her idea and there we were birthday dinner at big sister's home.

I baked a cake, suppose to be a green tea cake but I have to control on the amount of green tea powder for the cake for the sack of the kids.

Crystal came to the kitchen while I was almost done with the cake, like usual she always wants to help out.

The cake is done

Sis and sis in law coincidentally prepared french fried, ended up we got lots of french fries to munch before dinner.

Chicken with potatoes and tomatoes prepared by Albert & Shirly. They boiled a pot of nice soup too but I forgot to take a photo of it.

Clet's idea to bring mee as a it's symbolizes longevity. I am not good at cooking delicious mee so we tapau from the shop near sis's house.

Mixed vegetable by big sister

Meat balls and nuggets brought in by Catherine

Sweet and sour pork leg prepared by big sister, it is a special recipe from my mum.

getting ready for dinner

Big brother & family not in the picture. They brought parents to an exotic dinner the next day, they had crocodile meat. Crocodile meat is believed to be good for people who suffer from asthma, just nice for father.

Anneliese and Ensond both wanted to blow the candles

Piece of the cake left

Experiencing spring time

Though we are not in the four seasons country, I do experience the season of spring with flowers blooming at our front yard. The long waited rain really had made the weather a whole lot better and bringing more green and flowers to the earth.

one of Clet's favourite orchid

Trade Show Exhibits

Everyone of us who have been to trade shows, exhibitions and events would have noticed that there are many varieties of trade show exhibits, displays and booths as compared to previous years.

Nowadays, the presenters do not mind investing on high quality custom made trade show display and booths because these items can be considered as assets to the company as they are usually printed with their companies' name and can Velcro graphic on them too. The best thing is these items can be utilized many times again and they are highly portable for transporting locally as well as overseas, therefore, it is beneficial for companies who often participate in promotions or trade fairs both local and overseas.

Exhibit furniture like table covers, table top display, directors chairs are the necessities for every events. These items are extremely versatile. Logos can be added to them. Event table covers and table top displays are ideal for displaying the company's products, there are many rich colours and shapes to choose from. Directors chairs are commonly used in the film industry and it is also used for seating at any trade fairs.

Visit your local trade fairs, you will find many other trade show exhibits used by the presenters with different designs, colours, shapes with their very own logos printed on them.

La Jolla banquet rooms

One of my colleagues, Tiara, is getting married this coming June. She and her husband to be have been planning for their wedding since they got engaged last May.

Since they do not intend to have a very huge wedding reception they can afford to make the occasion extravagant just for their close family members and friends. To get more ideas and information of having a wonderful and memorable wedding banquet, they started to search through the internet and inquired many hotels wedding packages with the hope that they can find one that best suit their needs, however, after numerous inquiries and site visits, they are very disappointed that none can actually fit in what they are looking for, they even thinking of hire a wedding planner to do the job for them which will cost them dearly.

As the date draws nearer, they started to search the internet again, they are very pleased to come across the La Jolla banquet room at Trattoria-Acqua where they can offer a wedding banquet that suit them perfectly. The banquet dinner menu pricing is very reasonable and they love the restaurant buyout idea that allows exclusivity for their special occasion.

I am very honor to have received their wedding invitation card yesterday and very much looking forward to this exclusive banquet of a taste of the Mediterranean in the village of La Jolla.

Fresh, Soft and Spongy Wholemeal Bread

Been trying to bake soft and spongy bread like those selling at the shops using my new bread maker, but the results were very disappointing. My parents are always the evaluators to my baking, their comments were "very dry, can't even swallow", goodness! :( so I search the net for other bread recipes and noticed that many of them are using the bread improver.

Got myself some bread improver with the help from my colleague who did some purchasing from a local cake & bread ingredients supplier on Thursday, I was very eager to see what difference can the bread improver made, I added a very small amount of it to my ingredients, set the timer and went to sleep.

My wholemeal bread in the morning, I woke up before it is baked so that I can take it out immediately to avoid letting it to collapse by leaving it in the bread maker for too long.

The crust is a bit hard, I cut them away. Some adjustments need to be made on the setting.

Softer and spongier wholemeal bread hidden in the hard crust.

Heart shape and star shape sandwiched with cheese and coconut butter spread as breakfast for my girls.

A good start to eating wholemeal bread. Of course the shapes of the bread caught their attention.

Palm Sunday Mass

This was taken on last Saturday during sunset mass. This view was captured at the entrance of the cathedral.

Benefits of sea salt

Do you know that there are differences between iodized salt, refined salt and sea salt? To me all the salt were the same not until I noticed the ingredient contained in one of the health cereal that I bought recently, it uses sea salt as flavoring, why use sea salt? I was wondering.... It therefore triggered my curiosity to search the web to find out more about the benefits of sea salt.

Surprisingly the natural sea salt are found to be up to 70% lower in sodium than other standard table salt. It is produced under tight patent restrictions to maintain its healthy minerals for our body needs, though it is low in sodium the taste is equally great.

Most of us are trying very hard to reduce our salt intake by having little or omitting salt in our food altogether, as a result we do not enjoy our food at all because our meals have lose their tastiness without the sufficient amount of salt.

Since we know what sea salt health benefits can do to our health, especially to those with high blood pressure, it would be wise to do something good for ourselves by consuming quality sea salt from now on and enjoy our meals without worries.

Feng Shui book I am reading

I have been trying to finish reading a book that Clet bought for me a month ago, the "Monkey 2010 Fortune & Feng Shui" by Lilian & Jennifer Too. Clet bought one on his animal sign earlier and I requested him to bought one for me too. We have been buying these books for our reading pleasure and references for the last 2 years. Interestingly it tells the recommended feng shui cures, remedies & enhancer for the year in general as well as on each individual animal sign, depending on which book you buy.

The book tells that it is not going to be an easy year for everyone and for Monkey, it is in direct conflict with the Tai Sui and the affliction of the wu wang causes some obstacles to manifest! Oppss..

There are some recommended remedies in this book..but it is quite hard to follow exactly what the book says but it is good to know what is going on "around" us, to me feng shui is about the environment and surrounding at where we are, both our home and our work place.

Feng shui is a very interesting living science, there are so much to learn about.

Another day leave

I took a day leave today. The alarm clock was set to ring at 7.45am meant for Clet to get up for his clinic appointment. It was not easy to drag myself out of the bed this morning but it's time to get up any how.

I stayed up late last night trying to figure out how to use the accounting package that I got from my SIL recently. It is an accounting package I am not familiar with, there are so much data that I need to update into the system as I have not been updating it since the first day I started my little business 3 years ago. I also need to help Clet to update his businesses records as well. Small businesses can't afford to hire manpower to do the job yet, that's why!

I had my breakfast while our girls still asleep and Clet has gone to the clinic. A set of "healthy" breakfast, home baked wholemeal bread with cranberry and raspberry jam, and a hot cup of Greenmax Yam Multi Grains Cereal. I finally bought the savoury one from Merdeka supermarket, it uses sea salt as one of its ingredients. Is sea salt healthier than the rest of the salt? I am still wondering???

At about noon time, we brought our girls to the bank to bank in their angpow money and their coins. At first we wanted to find a bank which offers piggy bank for kid's account, it seems that not many banks do so nowadays, ended up we chose a bank which is convenient for us. As this is the first time we bring them along, Pearl was worried when their hard saving coins were taking away by the bank staff, she kept asking for her coins back..hahaha..

at the bank waiting for the junior accounts to be opened

1st day of school holiday

On the first day of school holiday I have to bring Pearl along to my office. Crystal has gone for tuition and Clet was busy finalizing his work to meet the date line by noon.

She only ate the sausages leaving the mee right to the bin

I brought her colour pencils and work books for her to do in my office. She had her breakfast on my desk and after that I get her to do her work books, not long after that she started to nag me to bring her out from the office, wanna go home. I have to find other stuff to keep her occupied for the rest of the morning, my colleague gave her little bouncing balls to play with, getting her to pass documents to my other colleagues, I let he play with my coins which she made so much noise playing with them. Finally I have to take the afternoon off as Clet still has got many other things to settle in order for him to be able to babysit our girls for the rest of the week.

It was an experience having Pearl around in my office but she kept me busy with her that I got little done for the morning. Need to take another day leave so that Clet can have time to do his work. That's our school holiday, taking turns to spend time with our girls :D

wholemeal bread by bread maker

It is not that I like to eat wholemeal bread, but due to the fact that it is healthier than white bread, obviously it is a better choice when comes to eating bread *.*

I made a small loaf of wholemeal bread with my brand new bread maker yesterday just nice for Clet to have it as his dinner cum supper when he came home late from work last night. Our girls still do not like to eat wholemeal bread, they prefer the soft white bread, we like it too...but I am yet to find a nice white bread recipe...

The recipe for this wholemeal bread was taken from the internet and I used half of the actual ingredients to make a smaller loaf. The yeast is a bit strong, 2 teaspoons of instant yeast for 250gm of wholemeal bread flour, seriously I do not like the smell of the yeast when I eat the bread. Do you have any good bread recipe to share with me?

a loaf of wholemeal bread just out from the bread maker

the texture is heavier than the one from the bakery

A New Bread Maker

I have been telling Clet that I am buying a new bread maker after I have finished paying the Juicer which I bought 7 months ago. He looked at me kind of asking me do you really need it? Hmmm..yes..since there is an easy payment scheme available. Another kitchen helper why not??

I took back this new bread maker last week (no payment made but deduct gaji for the next 3 months *~*). I have tried to bake a whole meal bread which was easy just follow the recipe. Last Saturday, I attempted to make a cake (followed the recipe that came with the bread maker), the end product was a disaster, Clet said dropping into the dustbin with a strange sound too...that's how bad it was...Pearl trying to help (playing more like it) me to sieve the flour for the cake.

Off they go to eat their Maggi mee...leaving flour every way, got to clean up a bit before continuing with the cake making, hmm...

This Bread Maker has a feature which allows us to put all the ingredient in and set the timer to when we need to start baking the bread. It would be a good idea to have a freshly bake bread awaits us early in the morning or whenever we want it to be. (But I have yet to find out the function, will do that this weekend :D busy bah!!).

Tuesday Toot on Chinese New Year Cake

It's been quite a while since the last post that I wrote on Tuesday Toot.

Though Chinese New Year is over but I just wanna post a Toot for myself for a Chinese New Year cake that I made on the 13th day of Chinese New Year.


I made this cake especially for a pot luck gathering with my ex-colleagues (Innosabah). I did not make any fortune by trying my luck in the stock market then (in fact I lose money) but I have gained friendships from the company that I spent almost 10 of my youthful years. Most of us no longer working there, we have parted to our own avenues separately, only got to contact each other through face book and msn, I am glad Vivien made an afford to invite us to her house for this pot luck gathering where we got to catch up with each other, eat and drink no stop for the whole afternoon, of course with some gossips..:D;

One of our friend, Jenny, couldn't join us instead she made a long distance call (using skype) from England just to "join in" the fun...*v*

Hope I could house the gathering at my house next time..:D

Direct TV offers!

My youngest daughter will turn on the television first thing in the morning whenever she can. She will pick through her VCDs folders to look for her favorite VCDs that she wants to watch for the day. She watches her favorite VCDs again and again, and worst still she refuses to let us change her program and telling us that there isn't any nice programmes to choose from the television channesl, can't blame her, she is right.

For that reason, I search through the web for a suitable and affordable TV programme provider and surprise to find DIRECT TV. DIRECTTV is very new to me. It offer 50% off for one year subscription and there are over 285 + channels to choose from, free professional installation, no need to buy any equipment and local channels are included, as well signal reception is very reliable. There are also choices to upgrade to high definition features too.

Honestly, there is no other television programme packages that I know of offers such a comprehensive packages that cater for all in the family. Just check on DIRECTV for more information!

Time to resign?

It is always the time of the year where staff are having the resigning spree after the Chinese New Year shopping spree :D.

The turnover of staff seems to be high after the Chinese New Year season because most of them are waiting for their bonus payout before resigning from their jobs. Most of us were very hopeful that the companies that we work for will distribute bonuses, one of them is me. However with much disappointment that I did not get any bonus but instead receiving a small sum of Angpow as appreciation. Well, it's still better than none, right?

Due to heavy workloads and others reasons, 2 of my colleagues resigned at the same time on the 1st of March, leaving me alone in the department soon. 1 of them has found another job while the other couldn't stand the work pressure anymore, hence decided to resign.

Hopefully our new colleagues will be able to start work as soon as possible to take over the workloads. If not me too will hand in the brown envelope to my boss as well!