Halfway spring

Temperature was changing from sunny into harshly cold, cloudy and raining has been pouring down since Thursday last week. I think everybody was expecting the end of  nasty, cruelty of coldness but no one knows.This weather really got me glum, moody and I can't wait to feel the warm and sunny soon. 

Dear Sun, 

I wish you would appear tomorrow! Warm place just caught in my thought. "Yeah, my home,". My memory had recalled out of  the blue about my  Australians colleagues, Alan and Steve. They were in love with Malaysia and wish never went back to Adelaide, OZ after accomplishment of work. Robert also always getting excited about warm weather and spending hours under the sun never bothering him. Generally the sun really affecting people and making them happier than cold weather.That's some of the reason majority of westeners moving to warm country or different hot places.

***********End of weather issue***************

Last Sunday afternoon, my baby had been doing something in the kitchen for few hours. I noticed that he boiled some eggs  and I thought he cooked it for making salad. He called me to the kitchen after a while, I came and saw 6 red plastic cups in a row and the eggs that he boiled were laying on the table. Each cup has filled up with different water colored,  they were blue, red, green, yellow, purple and orange. Oh! He spent his time preparing and setting up the table to make Easter eggs.  So I thought him wrong!

We had a creative and fun activity on that day. I  started it with dipping each egg in a different color but the color wasn't turn out brightly. They were pastel color. But he did in other way,  he soaked two eggs and let them stayed in that cup almost half an hour. Definitely I followed his method, soaking all those eggs after I saw his egg absorbed the liquid and turned out nicely in solid color. 
We dried them out on the box which already  poked  to make them stand still. I glued some of it with colored sand  as a final touch up. This sand was really messed my work, I accidentally dropped the egg and hit the sand bowl so the sand scattered all over the table, my t-shirt, poor me! I stopped in the halfway of doing it. The final result was in the picture below, tadaaa....

They looked pale when they dried. Maybe water-based color or the old product were part of the reason. Actually that egg dye coloring kit had been staying in a kitchen cabinet about a year ago, nobody use it and we planned to use it instead of throwing it away. 
We thought that would be cute to place them in the basket, but I can't find the basket. Finally we stored in the refrigerator. We ate some of them.

The picture below showing the easter eggs that I made a couple years ago. We boiled so many eggs that time and using vinegar was part of the  color ingredient. The result was so terrific and I love the colors. All those eggs looked amazing when I put them in the basket filled with fake grass.

Another colored eggs

Would you imagine if a hen lays egg like those color?  Huhu...that would be strange, I bet the price of chicken will go up.

Have a good week!!

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Hello Spring, Goodbye Winter

Spring or vernal equinox begin officially in March 20. The winter blues is over. Now it's arrival time for sunny weather, cool breeze. Time for land awakening,  rebirth and regrowth. Everything is changing from the green grass popping to trees blooming. Watching the surrounding yard,  nearby park, along the road in spring time made me thinking the time goes so fast. I love spring. Love to see the beauty of  colourful wild flowers, love to see  bugs and bees flying around, love to see the blossoming of trees.

Most obviously I can see yellow spot growing recklessly on the lawn. That is wild plant called "Dandelion", bright yellow flowers and eventually turning into white, fluffy balls that are actually the seeds of the plant. 

Personally the color of the dandelion brighten the yard and I disagree when some people get rid of  the dandelion with the weed killer. More pictures of Dandelion:

Another wild flower is "Daffodil".  Generally they come in yellow color and white-yellow color which  is symbolize friendship. They often bloom in clusters and look wonderful in the garden.

"Baby's Breath" or "Gypsophila" is a dazzling popcorn like flower. You can cut them and add as a filler to flower bouquets.

They are growing in the bushes and I love the combination of pink and white.

In the early spring, the pear trees start producing buds that progressively burst, cluster and blossom as white flowers. Pear tree blossom, huhu!

The flowers drop their petals after full blooming

I found some large bees working busily around the bulbs and flowers. Busy Bees! Panic?!  Please Don't! Generally Bumble bees are much less aggressive than honey bees and they are not attack human at all unless their life under threat. 

What's this guy doing? He is searching for nectar and pollen and helps pollinating flowers and flourishing the trees. 

Fruit grows by pollination. Pollination happens when the insects land on the flowers looking for nectar, a bit of the pollen from the anthers gets caught on the insect's body. Pollen? Pollen is powdery substance produced by flower that content male reproductive cells. May I called sperm? hehe!

As the insect fly from flower to flower, this pollen gets caught on the stigma(flower's female organ). Once the pollen land on the stigma they travel down to the ovary and the ovules are fertilized. These will become seeds.

Once a pear blossom is fertilized the white petals drop off. The ovary, located at the base of the flower, grows into the pear fruit that contains the seeds.

A color of Ladybug really attracting me especially the  red one. Here they called lady bug in the US but it also known as ladybird (UK, Aus, NZ), I used to call them ladybird. This pretty small creatures is part of beneficial to the garden when they eat the aphids and harmful insects on the pear tree blossom.

How do I welcome spring?

Many  people planning a lot of activities during spring season. Some of them going somewhere for spring breaks or they plan for wardrobe cleaning which they called "spring cleaning", some of them might think about gardening and plant the flowers, vegetables and herbs in their yard. I haven't planned anything yet.  Just packed all my winter clothing and I might be trying to grow some herbs.

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Weekend breakfast

Almost every weekend Robert cooked the breakfast and set the table
for two of us.

So today menu is pancake, scrambled eggs, some chicken hotdog 
and milk, fresh orange juice

Thanks dear..You made my day today!

Hope you all have a good weekend!!!

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March Madness

First thing  say a little prayer for all those victims of Japan earthquake and tsunami waves on March 11th.
There were 3 things happened today! 
1) St Patrick Day, 
2) the beginning of NCAA Basketball tournament and 
3) I got a package of NBA Adidas team t-shirt in the mail.

St Patrick's Day or also called St Patty's Day or St Paddy's Day is celebrated on March 17. The religious holiday began in Ireland and St Patrick is one of Ireland's patron saints. It is believed that as the Irish spread out around the world and it is widely celebrated by Irish in many places such as the Great Britain, Canada, United States, Australia, New Zealand and Argentina. St Patrick's Day is not a federal holiday in the United States. Schools, businesses and organizations are open as usual. 

Some large cities with large Irish-American population like New York, New Orlean,Chicago and Seattle celebrating it with large street parade to mark St Patty's Day. People who celebrate it concentrate on Irish theme parties, often dress in green clothing and eat food which is either naturally or dyed green.

Traditionally for those people who not do not wear green are pinched as a reminder to wear green to honor the day. 
This morning I got few pinches from hubby today as a joke. 

Me :Ouch! That's hurt! Why you pinch me?

R : You suppose to wear green today

Me: What? why?oh St patrict day? I am not Irish and I'm not celebrating it.

R: I don't care, haha!

He was trying to pinch me several times and he stopped when I put a green dress on before going out to the store. Anyway I love green and this is me in the green dress.

                           # End of the story about patrick#

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One of my favourite sport is basketball and I've been watching this games almost every night. I love the part when the player strives to shoot 3 pointer. Some of favourite teams are UNC and BYU.
NCAA basketball tournament just started today and majority of large companies like ESPN, Fox sport, Yahoo sport, Coca Cola and other sports company which sponsored the basketball events launching the NCAA Tournament bracket free contests for sport fans. 

Each contest has different prizes and money prizes which cost thousands and million dollars. Anyone who entered the contest could win the prizes if they filled out a perfect bracket. How much chances to get a perfect one?! I know it is very hard to do that.

This games is unpredictable when they are playing in a tournament. There are  64 teams and each basketball team players has its own strength, weaknesses, achievement history and good coaches. So try our luck then! We are part of the thousands fans who entered the contest. 

Yesterday was the last day to enter the contest and we stayed up late at night to pick the teams for several contests and filled out the bracket. It  was so interesting when selecting the best team. I didn't study the teams like my hubby did..hehe! The final games will be sometime in early April. No hope to win, but we did  it for fun and it would be very grateful if we could win one of them.

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I won a gift card prize when I played the online games of NBA (national baskeball association) website last week. It was just a simple and fun games that I finished for just a few seconds. Winning that prize really unexpecting  and making me so excited. So I ordered a Detroit Piston Adidas t-shirt from the gift card via online in NBA store website and here is the t-shirt I am wearing...

 I love this red color and the softness of the fabric.

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Daylight saving time start...

Daylight saving time or DST has been starting since Sunday (March 12). I had to adjusted the clock one hour ahead. Now it's back to 12 hours different between US and Malaysia.  This shifting time is really messing me up. Obviously it's confusing my sleeping time, wake up, lunch and dinner schedules. I still hard to accept and I know it's taking me sometime to adapt this transitioning time.

The phrase "spring forward, fall back" helps people to remember to advance one hour clock ahead during late winter and  move one hour back during fall. It's switching from Standard time to Daylight saving time. If you notice, I had written the blog about "Switching to standard time?"in Nov 2010.

Generally daylight saving time is reportedly saves energy. During daylight saving time the sun appears to rise one hour later and therefore reduces the period between sunset and bedtime by one hour. This means it allows us to use less energy in lighting our homes by taking advantage of the longer days of spring and summer. We may use a bit more electricity in the morning because it is darker when we get up, but that is usually offset by the energy savings in the evening.

 
However it saves energy, this daylight saving time really affecting my sleep schedule. Now I am still thinking it is 11 pm even it's actually 12 am when I see the clock. I hope it will be over soon in a couple of days.

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Visit Kelantan and Malaysia-Thai border

This trip happened in May 2010 when I had work attachment in Kelantan Malaysia. I hope it wasn't too late to share.  It was one day trip at the weekend and I think it was so interesting and fun.

This weekend trip just involved my sister, her boyfriend (now already husband)  and me. They visited me at the hotel I stayed and we planned to visit few places in Kelantan. We heard a lot about Rantau Panjang so our first destination was to that town. The traffic jam in down town Kota Bharu cause us much time to reach there. So we took about 1 hour and half time drive to that place.

Rantau Panjang is a town which has duty-free shopping area. We saw a lot of shop lots and many people busy with shopping. It was interesting when seeing the shops selling a lot of fake brand like Levi's Jeans, handbags and clothing. I noticed some people came to buy the big mattress which they called "toto". The mattress was packed in a really nice case. I like the idea of the case.

I am not really fan of buying fake stuff but the food was attracting me a lot. They selling a variety of snacks, nuts, dried food and fruits. We bought a few packs of sweet tamarind candy, fish snacks, pistachio nuts and some other snacks, I can't remember all of it. The pistachio nut was really really good. Oh yeah, her boyfriend bought some Batik fabric for gifts.

It was cloudy and the temperature was  little bit high humidity in that area. We got sweat when we walked around the place about an hour. Since we knew that town is the major border crossing Malaysia-Thailand. He had an idea to take us to Thailand border. Few friends of him advised us not to go there because of the Thai riot recently but we took a chance to have a good lunch there. Anyway there has a Malaysian immigration office in the middle of the town and we can drive to Thailand legally. The idea of crossing the Golok river was awesome!!. I have been to Bangkok in 2004 by flight but this kind of trip was much more fun.

The pictures below was a view from Malaysia border. I did not have any idea how much depth the water was and it looked like that we can walk about 20 steps to cross the border. We need to cross by boat so the cost of the boat was about RM 3 (approx USD 1) for each person or you can get cheaper as low as RM1. It depends on people who were taking you there. That bald head guy who was charged us and took us there.

We were in the boat crossing to Thai,

Yeay! I stepped on the border. The sun ray was hitting straightly on my face that's why I looked like moody

When we reached the Thai borders, one of us  required to leave the ID card, register the name and state the purpose of travelling at the guard house. The guard house was built  under the small roof, a table and a  Dell laptop!!. That was funny! It just located beside the signboard where I was standing in the picture above.

There were few men waiting with motor bikes to transport us to the town. We told them that we want to have lunch at good thai restaurant. The thais know where the good restaurant was so each one of us had to ride with the men. I snapped some picture while on the motor bike. If you notice, you will see me in the  side mirror taking pictures with my camera phone.

The town was so quiet, no traffic and there was no people walking along the street. I guess because of the riot just happened and the people just stay home for precaution. I saw a lot of them ride the motorbike on the street  and only just one or two cars on the road. I have little bit scary. I found there were many entertainment places like bars and karaoke along the street. Finally we reached the restaurant - "Hj Hussin King" restaurant. Sound like middle eastern. haha!

 

Thai tom yam, som tam (papaya salad) were my favourite so we ordered it with rice and some other food. The thai cuisine was great and the price wasn't so bad. Around RM20 for 3 people. 

We planned to explore more about the area but I couldn't have much time so we decided to go back to the border. After having lunch, we waited for the motorbike man to bring us back to the border. All those guy were nice, they rode us around to see the town  area, train station, schools before we returned to the border.

 The picture below was a Golok river which a view from Thai border

We were heading back to the Malaysia border...

We drove back to Kota bharu around 6 pm and we had no idea  what  was the next destination. Wakaf Che Yeh was on the list, but I  wasn't really excited about the shopping things. We met his old friend (local people) and he suggested  us to see the longest sleeping Buddha in Southeast Asia. What?! The longest  in Southeast Asia?!! I never knew this... I was excited to see it.

His friend guided us to the place. It  almost getting dark when we reached  there. The temple was quiet and very clean. No monk, or people. I got few shots of the sleeping buddha. It was 40 ft long and sooo huge! Actually that statue was not closing his eyes but he was laying on the bed.You can see clear picture at this site, somebody took better pic in daytime. but mine was below;

We entered inside the building and there were lot of buddha statue standing behind it when we were walking around the sleeping statue. I can't take the photos since there was so dark in the temple. This was great experience and I still hardly believe it that Malaysia has something to proud in Southeast Asia.

The last destination was Wakaf Che yeh, nothing interesting, maybe it was about people selling almost same stuff I found in Rantau Panjang.  After few minutes round the shop lots, we stopped at the restaurant to have some dinner. 

I really enjoyed this  one day trip.

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Steaks

Silent of the lambs?Yeah.. That horror movie... No no no...

I feel better with this nursery rhyme title "Mary had a little lamb". The song is a popular kid song and I used to play this song with a piano when I was a kid. Some of the lyrics are

"Mary had a little lamb,
Little lamb, little lamb,
Mary had a little lamb,
Its fleece was white as snow....

Both of the movie and song had to do with a gift package we got from Hearst Company last week. One of the package he ordered was lamb. Since I was excited to have a lamb steak for Sunday dinner, he called it a Silent of the Lamb but I preferred Mary had a little lamb.

We planned to have a medium cook for temperature degree of cooking.  The medium temperature means the middle of the steak is hot and red with pink surrounding the center while the outside is grey-brown. So we bought a big pack of King's Ford charcoal and grilled them in the cute charcoal grill on Sunday evening (Feb 27).  We just grilled 2 steaks, one lamb shoulder for me and one rib eye beef for him and we stored the other meats in the freezer for other special days.

We  arranged the charcoals into pyramid form and burned them until they all turned into grey. Then we placed the meat  when the charcoal was ready. The hated part was grilling time because I got smoky perfume on my clothes. But the important was the best taste of meat so I  have to forget about it.

We cooked them for few minutes and flipped them over for the other side. That charcoal grill really portable with the wheels. We can locate it everywhere we want. Last time we cooked under the shade, and this time we cooked in front of the garage. 

What was he doing over there?He was arranging things on the shelf. The picture below showed the grill was on grilling time...

Finally my little lamb steak almost done cooking,

Our dinner was great and we were happy that both of the steaks were so tender and perfect temperature degree for medium. We felt like flying in the air when we were chewing the piece of steak. It was so goood!
We will cook the other steaks in another days. FYI, grill with charcoal is the best than the oven.

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