Christmas is Here!

This week, Christmas arrived in the form of a UPS box.  My in-laws sent us a little Christmas package since   we're missing the annual Christmas festivities back home.

Like excited kids, we opened up our box


and found it filled with wonderful presents!


Me and some of my Christmas goodies

The next day, I started my morning off with a cup of my new Peach Momotaro tea (one of the presents my mother-in-law sent me).  It's a hand-tied bouquet of tea leaves and flowers that are dried into a little ball.  When you put the ball in hot water, it opens up like a flower.

 

Of course I had to enjoy it in my awesome snowman cup

I spent the quiet morning sipping my tea and browsing some blogs and came across this post from iheartfaces.com.  It's a really neat tutorial on how to create shaped Christmas light bokeh.  Bokeh is basically that blurry, dreamy, out-of-focus look - like what you see behind the snowman in the picture above.

Following the tutorial, I cut out a circle a little bigger than my lens diameter and then cut a little star out in the middle.  I was too lazy to create the cylinder part to fit around my lens so I just held up my little circle to the lens and centered the star in the middle.  Here's what I got:

Pretty neat huh?


I tried one with a heart too, but it came out a bit distorted, not quite sure why...

A few other pics I took around the house of what I love about Christmas:


This will be the second year that we're spending Christmas abroad, and though it's not quite as hard as it was last year, it's still hard not to miss being home with family for the holidays.  But to take our minds off all we are missing, we're taking a trip instead.  We'll be having Christmas dinner in Hanoi and ringing in the new year in Ho Chi Minh City!

And one more thing - Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Makan Session

Wow, I was uploading pics from my camera today and realized that I totally forgot to post about a very unique Singaporean experience Andy and I had a couple of weeks ago.

SMRT, the MRT (subway) company in Singapore, was running a drawing, or "lucky draw" as they call it here, to promote the grand opening of the new Circle Line MRT line.  The prize: Makan Sessions with famous local food bloggers at eateries nearby various stations on the Circle Line.  Makan means "to eat" in Malay and is used regularly in Singlish vocabulary.  You know I'm interested in all things regarding food so I entered and won a spot at the Makan Session near Buona Vista station (which is only two stops away from our station) with Dr. Leslie Tay from ieatishootipost.  It's a great blog that reviews Hawker food and other local cuisine establishments.  I was so excited because I had actually heard of Dr. Tay before - I'd seen a TV segment about him and his blog when I first got to Singapore.  And, what's even more awesome is that I was able to get a spot for Andy as well!

The location of the Makan Session was kept secret until we arrived at the MRT station.  Dr. Tay brought us to Spice Peranakan, which specialized in....you guessed it, Peranakan food.  Peranakans were the native Singaporeans and were the elite of Singapore back in colonial times.

Chatting with Dr. Tay before we line up for some food

The spread

The line, or as they say here, the "queue"

While eating, we got to listen to a little info session on the origin of Peranakan food

Here's what we feasted on:

Papaya Titek - green papaya and dried shrimp soup

Ikan Tamban - fried sardines

Chap Chye - mixed vegetables

Ayam Goreng - fried chicken

Satay Ayam - chicken curry

Fish curry

Kueh Salat - coconut glutinous rice cake (my favorite item in this meal!)

My delicious plate

Afterwards, Dr. Tay held a little photo shoot session where he gave us tips on food photography.

Dr. Tay giving away free codes for his iPhone app - too bad Andy and I have Android phones

SMRT also hosted a little contest to win some prizes.  We were each passed a quiz with about 10 trivia questions about the Circle Line.  A combination of speed and accuracy determined the winners.  Among the prizes were a few copies of Dr. Tay's book, The End of Char Kway Teoy and Other Hawker Mysteries.  Andy won first place!  I was so excited because I expected he would win a copy of the book for us.  Here he is with Dr. Tay and his prize....

which turned out to be Churp Churp the mascot of the company that was sponsoring the event with SMRT.  As you can see, Andy was thrilled.  Every grown man needs a stuffed animal called Churp Churp.

But, the excitement wasn't over yet.  Coming into 5th place was....yours truly!  The 5th place prize was...

The book! I'm actually excited, unlike Andy who was probably thinking what you are thinking....1st place gets a stuffed animal and 5th place gets an autographed book?  Well the great thing about being married is that when one wins, both win.  So we got our book, and one of Andy's coworkers got a cute stuffed animal for his baby.

Another great Singaporean experience for us.  We'll definitely be back to Spice Peranakan in the future to try out the rest of their menu.  Bonus that it's so close by too!

Siblings in KL

My brother and I also took a side trip to Kuala Lumpur for 3 days.  We got to travel in style on a luxury bus with the seats that were like recliners.  Plus, each seat had it's own TV and controls, and they served food and drinks on board.

I booked us a room at a little boutique hotel called Anggun Boutique Hotel.  It was a really nice hotel, but our room faced the street and was really noisy all night.  However, the service was great and when I complained about the noise, they transferred us to a quieter room for the second night.

Our nicely decorated room - of course I got the king bed....and Jimmy got the little cot.

Jimmy checking out the scenes from our balcony

The room also came with a computer/TV so we could surf the web on the big screen.

Once we unpacked, we headed out for some sightseeing.  Unfortunately the main attraction of KL, the Petronas Towers, was closed to visitors for maintenance work.  Instead we visited the KL Tower.

From the top, we got a pretty good view of the city as well as the Petronas Towers.  Unfortunately it was a rainy/smoggy day so it was difficult to see very far.

    

Of course we took a self portrait with the towers.

Afterwards, we walked over to the mall beneath the Petronas Towers and had dinner.

After dinner, Jimmy had his first (and probably only) experience with the dreaded, stinky Durian.  For those of you who don't know what it is, it looks like dead chickens (according to my sister) and it smells like a gas leak.

The Durian Experience:

This is the progression of faces my brother made as he had his first taste of the mighty Durian...I made him take a second bite so I could take some pictures of his reaction.  Concentrating so hard on making a good face for the camera, coupled with the nasty taste of Durian, resulted in my brother gagging and nearly throwing up right in the mall.  Needless to say, I don't think he'll be trying it again.

On the second day, we enjoyed a relaxing breakfast upstairs at the hotel's rooftop restaurant called Bubu restaurant.  It was like a garden oasis in the city.  

Rooftop Restaurant


Coffee, fresh juice, and fruits


Healthy porridge - it may sound like nothing special, but it was DELICIOUS!

Then we took the train out to Batu Caves just outside of KL.

242 steps to the entrance of the caves

A woman/cow/bird/peackock statue....slightly disturbing

We also did a guided tour of the Dark Caves

Jimmy and me in the great chamber

   

Outside, we saw some people carrying interesting things on their heads....the man had three boxes of water and was climbing 242 steps.  That's dedication.

After all that climbing, we headed back to the Petronas to do some photography.  Jimmy's main goal for the trip was to duplicate a jump picture in front of the Petronas towers that he'd seen online.  So I got down on my elbows and knees and started snapping.

It takes many tries before you can get the perfect pic....

Here are two keepers:

     

Our picture turned out pretty well, but Jimmy was hoping to make himself smaller in comparison to the towers and to cut the street and cars out of the frame.  However, it was just impossible from our angle.  Finally tired out, me from kneeling on the ground to take the pictures and my brother, from jumping so many times, we decided to call it quits and take one more final picture with the towers:

At this point we're both hot, sticky, and sweaty.

But, as we crossed the street to go home, I noticed a plaza right in front of the towers along with a bunch of steps.  So, I dragged my brother over and there we found the money shot!

Finally, THE perfect pic!

So, my brother went home satisfied with a fun and exciting trip to Southeast Asia.  You can check out the rest of my brother's visit in my flickr album.  This marks the end of my month of visitors.  Now Andy and I are gearing up to do a little traveling ourselves during the holidays.  We'll be touring Vietnam for a week and a half....looking forward to it!