BelangZ

This is a 5-month old story. Or what kids these days call: #throwback (yup, with the hatch tag). To continue our anniversary-getaway tradition, we flew to Mackay on Jetstar, but this time, literally seconds away from being denied to board the plane. I am still clueless on how we managed to let this happen. I was huffing and puffing, begging the gate-lady to wait just a liiiittle longer for Hasben to pass the security area. So obviously we were the last ones to be seated but was immediately doubtful of the condition of the plane. The sound coming from the engine/propellers/wheels (not sure which) was sooo loud that I thought to myself, "Did God intended us to miss this flight to save us from a disaster?!" Very 'Final Destination' type of feeling. In the end, nothing dramatic happened and we arrived safely, but with a not so promising weather - cloudy... After picking up our rental car, we checked-in at Pioneer Villa Motel and slept until noon... (-_-)" Look...

The memory of crunchy chocolate spread waffles at Spectrum, Bandar Baru Ampang was haunting me for the past couple of weeks. Couldn't find any road side sellers selling waffles here... In fact, I don't think there is any road side seller... Anyway, I remembered Harvey Norman used to have this clearance sale on novelty dessert makers, usually at half price. Two years back, I bought a mini doughnut maker by Kambrook there and dreamt of making the best doughnuts and wrote about it in this blog. However, as a reasonable person would expect, such sale might no longer be available... And I was quite disappointed... But... Browsing hopefully at The Good Guys, I found a similar appliance by Sunbeam for $24.90. YES! So today I thought I would give it a go and made chocolate waffles. I think it works well (on the first try). The waffles were just nice, a bit fluffy + a bit crunchy, and did not stick to the pan. The only thing was, the rectangular shape did not appeal to Kimi ...

Thesis writing is a very stressful thing. Of course, one would expect that, unless you are a super nerd who loves the thrill of sharing knowledge, which I am obviously not. While staring at my laptop screen of mostly Microsoft Word, I had this sudden thought... I missed sewing! Must... Resist... Urge... To... Touch... Sewing... Machine...! Hmm, that mantra obviously failed because by the end of the day, I had 2 pairs of matching batik pants - one for me and a mini one for Kimi! He was excited to see that he had the same pants as me. Hasben was a bit disappointed that I didn't make him one. Probably feeling a bit left out on how cool we look! Here is Kimi, eating pancakes and working his traditional pants: Anyway, as for me, one confinement pants - ready! But I'm not!

I have realised something... I may need some counselling! Apart from shopping the traditional way (actually being present at the shops, which I still do), or bidding through e-bay, I have expand my online shopping to the likes of Catch.com and OZSale, where they actually have special apps for you to browse the ever changing catalogues. These apps are now becoming my bedtime story, a must read before bedtime... Which turns deadly when you have the sudden urge to buy something at 1am! This week, the parcel keeps coming and due to lack of social friends, being a SAHM, I had to WhatsApp the pictures of my purchase to JulieZac and WinZie, just to share my enjoyment! Pathetic, I know... These are just some of the things I bought this past month, hopefully that's it... Must be pregnancy cravings, but inedible... Interestingly, even my groceries shopping are done online as both Woolworth's and Coles have this Click&Collect thingy. This isn't a bad thing as I can manag...

A tranquilizing place just north of Toowoomba, popular with fishing enthusiasts. Me? Nope... Neither Hasben for that matter. But I do have this tiny obsession with dams. Hasben could not understand it, to him, dams are all the same. But what's not to like about high concrete walls, separating land and man-made lakes?! Ecologists might not have the same view on this but too me, they are scenic and photo-worthy. Plus, as a part-time Hydraulics tutor, I can relate in a tiny manner, how the dam works - pressure prism (that's all I got really)... The view from from the dam wall. Anyways, after a tremendous effort to influence Hasben on this trip, we finally arrived at Cooby Dam on the eve's of Mothers Day for a picnic lunch. Made nasi goreng belacan, which was AWESOME! Haha! The concrete wall. There were no one else at Cooby Dam wall so we had the place all to ourselves. Daddy's little helper. At Loveday Cove, that is where all the action is. There wer...

Another long weekend for Australia residents! Last week was the 4-day Easter break and this week, the patriotic ANZAC day falls on a Friday. Dr. Fairus' 3-month attachment at USQ has come to an end and his flight back to Malaysia is this evening. To send him off, we decided to spend 2 days in the Gold Coast. On arrival, we were welcomed by a series of detours and traffic jams. Some roads were blocked for the ANZAC day parade. After shopping at Hard Rock Cafe, Hasben and most of the guys went for a splash at the beach while the ladies just lazed around under a tree. Kimi with his little buddies! He did not want to play anywhere near the sea nor sand, "no play water...!" So we ended up just taking a few pics with half naked men photo-bombing, ahaks! At about 8PM, after relaxing for a while at Kak Rose's Homestay, we went back to Surfers Paradise to check out the nightlife. This would be our second experience, the first was with JuliZac and Zayra 3...

The grand opening of Toowoomba Mosque was held on 30th March 2014, on a rainy Sunday morning. One of the main events was a food festival, where stalls from Bangladesh, Sudan, Indonesia, Bosnia, Malaysia etc were setup to sell traditional food - all profit goes to charity. We decided to sell nasi lemak on that day so all preparations were made at HanaJai's house, which basically took us the whole of Saturday and a bit of Sunday morning to complete. I was thinking of the Malay saying, "Senang macam kacang goreng" when I decided to volunteer to fry the peanuts... But it wasn't really 'senang'! It took forever to fully cook, and might be because I was using the electric pan. After hours of waiting for the nuts to be crunchy, Kak Ramiza brought in the little camping stove, and to everyone's great amusement, the peanuts was cooked in a relatively shorter time! *Must note this lesson for future use* I have also prepared bandung flavoured aiskirm ...