Meal before leaving HK - Yakitori

This is a place Ah Bee recommended. Its within walking distance from his apt. Food was great. Managed to take some pictures of a few dishes. The lambchop was really good, so good that I have forgotten to take a picture before I ate it all.

Note that I took a bite out of the Yaki-onigiri also before I snapped... haha!

Victoria Park

Took a walk in the park since weather was super nice.

Hang out @ HK

Meet up with ah bee after work on Friday after a long long week. Times Sq @ HK

Sunday @ East Coast Park

Ge ge & mei mei are having fun @ SG East Coast Park on a sunny breezy Sunday. =)

Meals...

We had a yummy dessert after dinner at home on Monday evening. Fresh coconut and raspberry cream cheese croissant! mmm.... very satisfying!

On Tuesday evevning, we decided to have our dinner at Udupi Palace, Sunnyvale. It serves Southern Indian vegetarian food. We haven't been to this place for ages! Seems like the business is not as good as before. Maybe it's just a regular weekday. Food was still very good... just as we remembered. We enjoyed it!
... but the 'after dinner effect' was not good at all! About an hour or two later, Choon Ping started complaining about his stomach being quite bloated. Right before he went to bed, his quite 'tune' (bloated) status has already up to an uncomfortable level 'tune'. Luckily we managed to find a bottle of "ru yi you" (some sort of oil) and had it rubbed on his stomach... hehe... just like a little baby! :P Glad that he felt much better after that. :) As for me... I was ok until in the middle of the night! Stomach was soooo bloated that it woke me up in the middle of the night. In addition to that, the baby was kicking a lot especially if I laid on my left side. I ended up half awake/sleeping in a seated position for an hour, then in a recumbent position leaning to the right until early in the morning! During this period of time, I kept hearing Choon Ping letting go gasses!! ... about 4-5 times within an hour! It was my most restless night so far since pregnancy. Conclusion: no more Udupi Palace when I'm pregnant!

Cuisine close to home

Hi!

Well, it's been ages since we wrote anything on this blog more than a wee thingy under the photos. I don't really remember when last I did the writing for pleasure... hmm... not my thing really. They do say picture is worth a thousand words. But hey, here I am!

Maybe it's just me, but it seems as though the pace of events has picked up significantly over the last two weeks after our baby-moon at Puerto Vallarta. My belly has becoming more obvious and now people can really tell. Lately, I've been keeping myself busy with all the unfinished mini home projects as I do have a 'deadline'. :( So many stuff to do on my 'to-do-list'! It is amazing how productive we can be if there's a non-negotiable time line coming up! So far:

• We finally hung up the huge mirror onto the wall after laying it against the wall for ~2 years!
• Finally 'debugged' the annoying banging sound coming from the air return every time the heater kicks in. (Thanks to the darn air filter. We taped it onto the duct! And now... no noise! yay!)
• Done sawing the curtain rods to my desired length and installed them in the living room.
• Just finished modifying/sewing 2 sets of curtains in the dining area, it's now up!
• Done modifying/sewing the roman blinds that we got from Malaysia. Should be up by this weekend.

Had an OB visit yesterday. Nothing much to report. Baby has been kicking a lot everyday... especially at night around 11. I guess the second trimester's OB visits are indeed quite boring. Baby's heartbeat is normal: ~140bpm. After the OB visit, Choon Ping suggested to have lunch at some other Google cafeteria that he hasn't been. It's a bit far out from his office building. The parking lot was full! ... but we had an excellent spot. How nice of Google! :)

Lunch was yummy indeed! mmm... I had tons of Gouda cheese! The sushi line was long but worth the wait. The poor amigo was making the handroll non-stop! Loves the vegetable handroll, and the seafood/crab meat handroll! Guess you can tell which one was Choon Ping's dish... he said the seared Tuna was very good! *envy* :(

Planeto Vegetariano

Hotel Garza Blanca Puerto Vallarta

Nice hotel , big rooms, and great service.

sunset @ Puerto Vallarta

Suzhou

Had a great impression of Suzhou. Beautiful gardens and canal. Love the old town feel.

spider infestation

Happy Halloween!

Delicacies 美味, 佳餚

牛肉火鍋
Rojak 豆腐
Curry chicken + puff
炒冬粉

Garden at home

Ya, this beautiful nest shown is the empty one, left by the bulbuls, after the babies grew up last week.

So nicely built. Wonder why they don't use it any more....

However, I noticed a bulbul flying out from the bamboo leaves again yesterday.

Looking closing, I noticed that the male bird is building a new nest, just about 1.5 feet away from the old one. However, it is so close to our main door, and we may frighten them whenever we go in/out to our house.

This morning, again I saw him working so hard.

Perhaps the female bird is asked to take a rest as she is pregnant ;)

This second photo shows the semi-completed nest.

Some more effort needed.....

Just see how many nests are there within such a small angle of the jambu air tree.

The Dragon fruit flowers withered, but the young fruits are beginning to form at the base.

I have wrapped them up this morning to prevent fruit flies from attacking them.

Unfortunately, the recent heavy downpours have destroyed the 2 new buds :~(

Meanwhile, our chili plants are yielding some good hot staffs....

Have you seen this 'rounded loofah'? 絲瓜

I trust they are available in US too.

These are the baby loofahs, and the yellow flowers are bright and beautiful.

This one is approaching maturity.

The longest we harvested is around 15".

Too much for our own consumption, so we have been giving away....

If ripen fully, it is used for washing.

Cheers....

Dragon Fruits flowering again

2 months ago, we chopped off some sugar cane and jambu air branches to allow more sunshine onto our dragon fruit ( pitaya, 火龍果/火龙果 ) plant.
So far, we harvested 3 fruits just before ChinPing's wedding in June last year. John and Diane had the honour of savouring our first harvest.
With the long drought and recent rain, our effort seems to be yielding some good results.

These are the 2 flowers which I shot this morning. They are huge, measuring about 15" each!















Tonight, as expected, these 2 flowers have a full bloom.
BTW, they only bloom for just for 1 night.
The flowers measure around 11" in diameter!














Using a different mode I catch these flowers for a better view....














Focusing on one of the flowers, you can see that the long stigmas are very nicely arranged in a vertical ring at the center.
Mummy was so excited to see them.














However, their beauty will not last.
This withered flower was blooming last night too :)













So we will be having 3 fruits in some 3 weeks time.
I also noticed another 2 small buds sprouting out. They are just about 1/4 inch in size..... ;)
Soon they will stand 15" high, like the brothers.....

Home sweet home!!