what do grown up men do when they are hungry and have lots of free time on their hand?
they drive up all the way north for makan!

with just a trusty gps and an empty stomach, we began our journey…..

the plan was to travel all the way up to melaka and take the road less travel. forget about the northsouth expressway, just sticking to the road that passes the sleepy towns and kampungs.

it was revisiting the small towns like ayer hitam and muar that made the drive to melaka enjoyable where we got to experience local food fare first hand while enjoying the scenery.

our first stop was ayer hitam. the town was a huge hit way back in the 90s with singaporeans going to melaka or KL, stopping at the town as a rest stop before the opening of the northsouth expressway which took most of the travellers straight up, bypassing the town totally.

we noticed that there were many food stalls selling putu bambu by the roadside. we tried the delicacy and thoroughly enjoyed the sweet and rich taste with the generous amount of gula melaka in it. all of that for just RM$2 for 6 pieces!

we had our breakfast there and tried the soto since we saw many of the customers there eating it. and boy, were we really surprised at how good the soto was. the soup was not so thick and the taste didn’t have the overpowering spice taste, just nice.

next we checked out the market there, with shops selling an assortment of foodstuff, we bought a couple of kerepoks before proceeding to our next destination, muar.

along the way to muar, we stopped at a nice family-owned snack stall. with their piping hot pisang goreng and crispy kerepok lekor, we could not resist taking a bite before continuing our drive to muar.

lunch at muar was at a little foodstall selling asam pedas. with a side dish of rendang chicken plus the killer sambal belachan, the stingray version of the asam pedas with tehO ice just cost us a princely sum of RM$8 for 2.

we were supposed to check out the famous mee bandung muar stall but because it started to rain suddenly, didn’t really have the chance to venture further. we managed to do a bit of sightseeing around town before moving on.

from muar, we drove on the sultan ismail bridge, crossing over the muar river, from there we took the lebuh AMJ which stands for alor gajah-melaka tengah-jasin expressway and onward towards our destination – melaka!

check the flickr set for more pics

continue in part 2

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the last we had a baby shower was almost two years ago, and we predicted back then that the next in the group to have a baby would be lydia, and the theme would be ‘Lady Gaga’.

both came true….

the DELICIOUS treats and FABULOUS details on the dessert isle were lovingly planned and executed by Ola Lola! dayyym, we have such talented friends.

we wish our Lady, lydia, all the best for the last leg of her pregnancy, and we know baby LH will be showered with as much joy and love as her mummy is. here’s to a wonderful start to being a mum, indeed… (and thank you for the awesome party, at st. regis no less. best!)

and i’m afraid the rest of the pictures are a liiiittle too risque, as you would imagine a theme centred around a woman who’s perpetually half-naked would turn out.

but i’ll leave you with this visual:

the talented esah who did the gaga makeup for some of the girls, AND came up with her very own gaga get-up, which won her Best Dressed. wanna see?
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EH EH, TAK BOLEH! wait batal puasa.

i give you our cute baby gaga mascot instead. :p

you and me could write a bad romaaaance…

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Untitled, originally uploaded by izadd.

Untitled, originally uploaded by izadd.

executed a surprise birthday party at MBS for one of the guys, with much success.

heading to port dickson tomorrow for two nights, then KL for another night. will be missing out another May party in the meantime. have a good one, adam naufal and adil rayyan!

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had a last-minute inspiration about oh… five days to her birthday.

cookies and cake by NCakes.

owls often symbolise intelligence, wisdom, knowledge – plus, they’re REALLY cute. (and ok yeah, there’s a literary reference too: Owl Babies is one of my favourite children’s book makes me teary every time, sniff.)

pink (her favourite) and black (my favourite) hoot loot. well, i had to compromise.

treated the kids to a stay at royal plaza on scotts over the weekend, and had close family members over for high tea at carousel.

just a commoner… ;p

cake compliments of Carousel.

the brother who still refers to his sister as “my baby”.

the coincidentally colour-coordinated grandparents, hmm…

many eligible princes.

the maids-in-waiting.

yes, even he likes to squeeeeeze her. a lot.

the royal plaza people were so kind as to help set up some chairs and a table at the pool side for a small party in the evening.

night owls.

sleeping beauty was forced to wake up from her slumber power nap to blow out the candles…

and pose for insufferably many pictures.

the mommies.

the chewren.

kate middleton she may not be, but marry a prince… who knows??

happy turning terrible terrific three, my owl baby.

ps: thank you guys for celebrating with us!

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Untitled, originally uploaded by izadd.

… and i still won’t blow my candles out!

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so the eldest in our clan reached 34… yeah, we’re not ashamed to claim our age. we’ve said it before and we’ll say it again – we’re loving our 30s! we were saying how we’d occasionally look through old photos of us together.. how fun it is to see how we’ve evolved over the years…

(77clan, est. Dec 03)

so what do we possess now, more… confidence? maturity? wisdom? grace?
(well, i guess you qualify for all that when you go around with a koyok plastered on yourself and *still* have someone ask if you’re a model, and have a tube of tiger balm handy in your gucci bag for random moments of muscle aches… )

“all u need is effort to keep the friendship going… best is to have friends who are easy going.. and no feelings of trying to outdo one another” – wise words from back-then 30-yr-old esah, dec 2007 (from an old blog post)

ps: happy birthday to the two Arians in the clan!

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Our many chewren!, originally uploaded by izadd.

the gang’s brood just keeps growing.

i think we need more girls, yes? if anything, so we’ll have more girly-themed parties…

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BFFs slumber party, originally uploaded by izadd.

do NOT be fooled by the appearance of these girly girls.

they’re little cili padis, is what they are.

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Nasi Ambeng, originally uploaded by izadd.

four more days to the end of Ramadhan.

blessed to be surrounded by loved ones.

… and blessed with an abundance of food.

thankful for everything good in our lives.

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the kids had been singing snatches of what sounded like ‘we are singapore’ days before national day. the little one would putter about going “seeeng-a-poh… seeeng-a-poh…”, and the older one would ask the title of the song where “got lion roar, that one”, so we knew they’d been brainwashed – i mean, taught in school about national day. “singapore’s birthday?”, he asked. well, sorta, i guess. that’s much simpler than having to explain the history of independence to a 4-year-old.

i’d never been to a national day parade when i was young, my parents preferring to stay put at home and restrict our national merriment through live telecasts of the parade on tv. izad on the other hand, has only fond nostalgia of the NDPs he’d been to as a kid, now lamenting how difficult it has been to obtain tickets since the advent of the balloting system. i guess i’m not “patriotic” enough to reallllyyy want to participate en masse in flashing flags and singing in unison to sappy songs about being home, truly, but there’s enough of it to go along with the crowd to soak in the holiday atmosphere and enjoy the roaring jet displays and spectacular fireworks, the latter admittedly being my only favourite part of the celebrations.

actually, my seemingly lackadaisical attitude towards the concept of patriotism extends to having few complaints of being born here and subjected to the system that is singapore. (sometimes i even find myself defending the system, despite myself – well, as they say, don’t bite the hand that feeds you, heh.)

comfortable and complacent, how’s that for being a model singaporean?

and now, enough of that perennial (and truthfully tiring) grumblings of “wasting taxpayers money” rubbish, you cynics. (there’s plenty in the coffers, take this is small change.) i love fireworks, my kids love fireworks, and i’m ‘technically’ paying for it too, so suck it up and enjoy lah! :p

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maybe i should send the kids for proper music lessons… (coz i don’t have a musical bone in my body, couldn’t even carry a tune on the recorder in school! and would take at least ten minutes to figure out the entire ‘twinkle twinkle little star’ on a toy piano/xylophone.)

oh well, i’ll just stick to being a groupie.

and happy birthday to the rockstar-to-be…

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remind me to make a dental appointment, been having so much cake lately…

rayhan’s 4th:

damdils’ 4th:

fina’s xth:

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… and sistas.

<3 them, and their mommies, many many.

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remembering aniq’s 2nd birthday where we somehow managed to get almost all the guests to dress up their kids as superheroes, i had a sudden flash of inspiration for auni’s 2nd and thought, maaaybe they’d humour me again this time round.

i’d developed a ‘fascination‘ with the fairy tale classics in the recent months, having realised what a treasure trove of rather twisted, backdated values, ideals and morals they represented, as i re-read (and over-analyse) them as an adult. it made me question how relevant these stories are in our modern times, and whether they are worth being retold, being so far removed from that world – where characters lived in woods amongst preying creatures; where occupations were predominantly menial; where the females were mostly depicted as being vapid, preoccupied with beauty, and matrimony was the ultimate goal; and where the males were the overall archetypal saviour. there was so much going on in those stories that the more i read them, the more i baulked at the logic, but LOL-ed at them anyway because come on hana, THEY’RE JUST STORIES FOR CHILDREN, right? who cares if Father Bear and Mother Bear slept on separate beds, or whether Rapunzel’s hair could actually withstand the weight of a grown man, or why anyone would want to kiss a dead woman in a glass coffin unless he’s a serial necrophiliac?

but the moralist nazi in me says, all stories MUST have a moral, dammit! so i wrangle them out as best as i can after every “The End”. i mean, surely there’s value to these classics for them to be so time-honoured, however preposterous they may appear to such a sceptic reader. and i do get that the universality of the themes of these western tales serve the purpose of creating a kind of collective consciousness. plus, anything that promotes literacy and the love of literature wins points in my books any time.

so anyway, for me, the one story that stands out the most with its richness in symbols is the tale of Little Red Riding Hood. from the colour red, to the chasteness of the cloak, to the naivety of the girl, to the wolf’s nature and true intention…

man, i could go on, but i won’t! coz for now, let’s just focus on HOW CUTE the children at the fairytale party were, shall we?

let me introduce to you the characters who appeared:

here’s Peter Pan, who flew in specially from Never Never Land for the party.

Snow White, who took time-off from the slavedriving dwarves. (btw, she won Best Dressed for her mummy’s excellent effort in creating and sewing her costume from scratch. kudos! the non-domestic goddess me is still in total awe.)

I think Alice’s Queen of Hearts’ husband, the King of Hearts, came in his mommy’s best shawl and brooch.

Aye aye, Captain Hook! where’s ye eye-patch, matey?

The Wild Thing put on his best brandon flowers’-inspired guyliner for the occasion. “let the wild rumpus begin!”

The Three Blind Mice. See where they, err, hide.

2 out of the 7 Dwarves came with their chaperone. (along with 4 Giants.)

a little fairy who was supposed to be Puss in Boots (notty pussycat!) but i guess her footwear was sent for mending at the Elves and the Shoemaker’s.

the activities kept them busy…

attempt at group photo. call in the trolls!

Gingerbread Boys and Girls, thanks to Kak Chomel, esah’s sister. off you go, into the baskets, before the greedy foxes eat you up.

special thanks to Keatar, my SIL’s BIL, for making these masks with his own bare hands. (ok, i’m sure there were scissors and glue involved, heh.)

special thanks to Ayu aka Simply Cupcakes @justjetaime, for presenting us with the cake.

“and i’ll HUFF, and i’ll PUFF, and i’ll BLOW THE CANDLE OUT!”

to family and friends who came to share the fun, on behalf of auni – THANK YOU! we’ll make darned sure auni remembers this birthday for the rest of her life. she’s already said “i LIKE!” when we asked if she liked her birthday party. (we also just reminded aniq of *his* 2nd superhero party by showing him the photos as evidence of our equal effort – he kinda forgot but now he’s really pleased with his parents, so.. yey us? ha ha.)

ps: special mention to the Daddy for his kickass side dish of homemade mexican chilli beans in taco shells and wraps. (trivia: his original plan was to cook kachang pool and nasi lemak, but i convinced him otherwise – lol.)

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