the only times we go to USS are if we get free/discounted tickets, and the organisation’s Family Day this year afforded the opportunity to do so.

Shrek & Fiona with their offspring

finally got to ride the battlestar galactica human & cyclon, and while going on the two rides consecutively left us a little jelly-legged, we thought the rides at gold coast’s movie world were more thrilling in comparison. BUT! the Transformers Ultimate 3D ride definitely beat the rest, hands down – it was AWESOME, and this coming from a rides-junkie. it was a very realistic, in-your-face experience, all that swiveling, smashing, shuddering, sucked-into-a-vortex, and free-falling effects keeping you gasping and shrieking throughout. it was so good, aniq and i sneaked away from the rest to queue up 30mins for it again. the boy is turning out to be a rides-junkie like me. unlike my brother, who could never stomach a ride, even the kiddy Dragon one at Far, Far Away, which left him looking quite pale, teehehee.

anda mudah berasa mual?

after each ride, aniq and his cousin adam would check with each other: “are you all right?” so cute.

and as for these two – *facepalm*.

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happy birthday auni!, originally uploaded by izadd.

a big thank you to our wonderful family for celebrating with us. :)

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a few april birthdays in the family. (thanks for the treat, big bro. err, it WAS a treat, right…? :p never mind, next month’s universal studios trip is on me.)

guess who else has been counting down the months (yes, she does know the names of the months after all) and going “I CAN’T WAIT FOR APRIL!”?

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sigh sigh. end of the VERY SHORT term break, little people…

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no one is happier than me now that the school holiday week has arrived. well, ok, aniq is also happy, of course. we’ve survived the first three months of the school year, unscathed.

one whole week of not having to be woken by our respective alarm clocks beeping at 5.30am, and going through the motions of getting ready and out of the door by 6am. one whole week of not having to breathe down his neck on those damned spelling lists. one whole week of not having to shoo and nag and bark at him to be in bed before 9pm.

but oh. one whole week of thinking up of exciting things to do to keep them occupied. them, because it’s only fair that the sister too gets the week off. besides, what else is a second child for if not to keep the first child company… right??! -_-

*********

we’d started off the week with my idea of fun – dragging everyone on a bookstore trail. (sorry kids, this is mummy’s version of retail therapy.)

first stop: Woods in the Books.

a tasteful little shop with picture books and quirky knick-knacks. i wish it were more reading-friendly, though. but i guess it’s not really meant for children to sit comfortably to browse the pristine copies on the sparsely-displayed shelves…

next stop: Centrepoint. i’d totally forgotten there was a children’s fairytale event thingy going on there, and we met a friendly face from, by far my favourite children’s bookstore, Bookaburra. :)

last stop: Harris Planerds, where i could finally use my Popular card to good use ha ha. rows of tempting fiction and droolsome graphic novels and beautiful classics and even graphic novels OF classics (i saw comic book versions of ‘Emma’ and ‘Sense & Sensibility’). i also went wild and treated aniq to yet another issue of Geronimo Stilton which he’s been attempting to collect (roll eyes). we went in Times the Bookshoop earlier (not counted in my bookstore trail, just because) and i’d refused to buy it for him there because “we can get discount at Popular!”. (i hate that Geronimo rodent.)

speaking of rodents, found the classic Maus for almost half-price…. i’d also only recently discovered graphic novels at the public library. it was like striking a goldmine.

the kids are having a sleepover with their cousins at their grandma’s tonight, and we were supposed to spend this no-children time wisely by going for a movie, like Hugo or something, but…. maybe I should read the book first…

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sorry for the late second installation of the food trip, i was momentarily distracted by a certain new shiny object, hehe….

anyway, after the asam pedas lunch at muar, we drove all the way straight to our destination.

the last time when i was here, was way back 4 years ago and boy, am i amazed by the recent developments, many new buildings seem to have sprung up overnight!

as we drove into the bustling melaka town, the familiar dryness of our throats signaled the need for some cool icy treat and so the first stop was jonker street for, chendol!

we were told that the jonker88 stall sells one of the meanest chendol in town. just a sip of the rich concoction explained why it’s one of the famous chendol in melaka. super thick gula melaka just oozing from the shaved ice, not like the syrupy diluted gula melaka normally found back home. it’s superbly rich and sweet indeed!

after our sweet delights, we explored around jonker street like tourists from err… singapore. well, most of the tourists here looked like they come from singapore anyway. :p

by now our tummy had started rumbling again and what else to do other than to find food! we wanted to try the famed asam pedas but since we had ‘em back in muar, decided to try something else. so we drove to their central shopping mall, the dataran pahlawan melaka megamall. this is a new addition to the usual mahkota parade that i used to visit 5 years back. looks like so much has changed since i last visited the area!

found a halal chicken rice shop at the basement of dataran pahlawan. we were attracted to the signage that they sold chicken rice balls here, a melaka delicacy but alas, were disappointed that the balls had sold out. so we bought the next best thing, chicken rice. quite authentic tasting chicken rice, nice! and to wash it all down with a nice bowl of chendol.

there’s a heritage gallery at the basement where you can get all types of local handcraft and foodstuff under one roof.

a trip to melaka is never complete without stopping over at umbai for the seafood. so after getting our local foodstuff like keropok at the heritage gallery, we traveled south for dinner. the place is really popular among the locals and singaporeans alike. with super fresh seafood and super reasonable price, this place is a must visit!

you just have to choose the raw seafood displayed at the many stalls there and informed the hawker on how you want it cooked. we had our fish cooked half bbq and half sambal. our squid was deep fried and it tasted soft and crunchy. here you can eat your seafood with nasi lemak, piping ones wrapped in a mini newspaper bundle, comes with either sambal or without and tasted so so good with your bbq seafood!

although it was time to go back, a road trip is not complete without a visit to a local night market. coincidentally, we past by a night market on the way back, so without any second invitation, we raided the place. since our stomach were still digesting our seafood dinner, we just took a tour around the area. not surprisingly, some of these food looked too good to miss, fortunately there’s still space in my stomach for some crispy pancake, heh!

so with that last piece of crispy pancake in my mouth, we sped back to woodlands, two super contented stuffed married men :)

it had been an enjoyable makan adventure for us and we look forward to the coming holidays to indulge again in our favourite pastime. well, this time we are thinking of going further, hmm…

click here to check out the complete food trip pictures!

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we thought the bar was set pretty high when we brought them to gold coast last year.
then club med surpassed it earlier this year.
but now, my friends, it looks like Disneyland has topped the list.

of course, you can blame it on the recency effect.
or, it really could have been that all the hype leading up to the trip matched their actual experience of it…

i’d wished i could have brought them to the disneyland in anaheim where i first went when i was 7 (out of sentimental reasons, obviously), and even considered bringing them to the one in orlando… but having weighed the cost and travel time, especially with two very young, very active kids, hong kong disneyland was simply the most rational choice at this point. AND, seriously, the kids wouldn’t/didn’t even know the difference.

so yeah, there were mostly asians roaming around, and all the performances were translated to cantonese, but hey, mickey is still mickey. the only question the boy raised was, “how come got so many old people here?”, referring to the hordes of senior citizen tour groups from mainland china, practically taking up entire queues in front of us each time. “i thought disneyland is for children?” i too asked the husband. apparently, disneyland is also for old people with a lot of retirement money and a desire for some heart-pumping excitement. “they should come up with a theme park for old people only, and no children allowed in,” the age-ist me brainstormed, after being elbowed by silver-haired elderly women in a 30-minute queue.

speaking of age, the kids (3+ and 6) were truly in the perfect age range to thoroughly enjoy and appreciate all the (mild) rides and shows and wonderment that disneyland offers.

there’s a new Toy Story land that just opened up, and it successfully fired up the kids’ (consumerist) obsession with all things Toy Story. and that’s the thing about disneyland – you know it’s a mega huge consumerist ‘mouse’ trap, so to speak, and yet you can’t help but be sucked into the world when you’re in it – the irresistible lovableness of the stories, the songs, the characters, right down to the merchandise OMG SO SO CUTE I WANT THAT AND THAT AND…. yeah, you see? sigh.

here’s another example how you can unwittingly get sucked into this… world. i mean, it could have been stirred by a deep, unconscious nostalgia, or PMS, but i involuntarily teared up every time a rendition of ‘A Whole New World’ by Aladdin and Princess Jasmine came up. I JUST DON’T UNDERSTAND, DAMMIT.

and of course, there had to be fireworks at the end of the evening, to punctuate my already-overwhelmed senses. spectacular, dramatic, grand. finally, a guilt-free fireworks display we can enjoy without people grumbling about taxpayers’ money! ha ha!

and what’s a trip to disneyland without a pair of mouse ears, ey?

oh wait. there’s Day 2. it was sunny.

the disneyland MTR trains even adheres to the theme. SO cute. (i’m sorry, i told you i can’t help it. i mean, look at those mouse-ear handles!)

ok, last thoughts. see, there are 2 hotels within shuttling distance to disneyland – Hollywood Hotel, and Disneyland Hotel. since we went through an agency at the travel fair, they picked the Hollywood Hotel by proxy, and we didn’t really bother checking on it. only when the shuttle bus dropped off passengers at the two hotels did we realise there was a difference. the former, where we stayed in, is more ‘cost-effective’/value-for-money than the latter, which admittedly looks more posh and expensive (which it is). which made me question (to who else, but the husband), “why should there be two hotels with a difference in price, why can’t there just be ONE very nice hotel and everyone gets the same disney experience? this is discrimination!”

but it was fine anyway, because we did spend the whole two days at disneyland park itself and only came back to the hotel to wash up and sleep, and didn’t even bother with the restaurants (we had cup noodles one night and went out to HK island the next night). :)

the kids are still pleading with us to go to disneyland again.
cannn. but mummy has to work and earn more money first, ok?

unless….

you can find a magic carpet…

and a big blue genie in a lamp who can grant you wishes!

*cue song* A WHOLE NEW WORRRRRRRLLLLLDDDD…

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i happened to catch these trailers earlier today at Funan mall while waiting for the husband to do some shopping i had no womanly interest in whatsoever…

Snow White and The Huntsman

(it’s Thor! it’s Bella! whee!)

vs.

Mirror, Mirror

(it’s, erm, Julia Roberts.)

incidentally, i’d just read to the kids the whole set of classic Disney stories (with a pink book cover, no less), that included Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Beauty & The Beast, The Little Mermaid, and yes, Snow White (call it post-Disneyland syndrome, gah!), so it’s a refreshing change to see less conventional female protagonists after the deluge of frilly, demure, perfectly-poised, saccharine-sweet feminine characters that the Disney machine has so successfully typified.

introducing (yes, i am well-versed in identifying them all now, post-Disneyland):

Cinderella

Belle and Aurora (aka Briar Rose, aka Sleeping Beauty)

Snow White (actual name)

and since it was SO HARD to hunt down these live characters around Disneyland to take pictures with (they made special celebrity-like appearances at designated times and places and if you’re a second late to join the queue, there’s no negotiating/pleading/begging their ‘minders’), here’s the full line-up (‘pirated’ figurines courtesy from a hong kong night market stall). (YES I BOUGHT THIS SET FOR AUNI HA HA.)

from left to right:
Cinderella (in blue, for the ball); Cinderella (in white, for the wedding); Belle (that’s french for Beauty, you know); Aurora (aka Briar Rose, aka Sleeping Beauty – she was under a kind of CIA witness protection programme, thus the many aliases); Aurora again (different dress colour because her godmothers Flora, Fauna & Merryweather couldn’t make up their minds); Snow White; Ariel (as mermaid, with tail); Ariel (as human, with legs); and Pocahontas.

and since we were on the topic of Snow White, it seems that she has travelled through time looking exactly the same, while i… err…

(Disneyland, LA – 1984)
(Disneyland, LA – 1997)

(no wonder the Queen wants her dead.)

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notes from our recent trip:

1) hong kong is almost like singapore. except, the weather’s much nicer there. it’s the beginning of winter, so it’s not too cold; exactly like the air-con temperature we’re so used to in malls and my infamous Greyville office. no humid sweating, although some days were very sunny.

2) our MRT is an almost exact replica of their MTR, right down to the clock at the platforms, it’s almost like being in a parallel dimension. we don’t take the MRT much back home, but from the incessant complaints we’ve heard about the waiting time, the frequent breakdowns, the crowd, the smells, our MTR experience was a pleasant one – efficient, clean, convenient, civil. no complaints here.

3) a lot has been said about how tiny hotel rooms generally are in hong kong that you hardly have space to navigate in, but at L’Hotel Nina where we stayed for two nights, we had two queen-sized beds, a bathtub, and a coffee table for eating, so it was as comfortable as you can get. the only thing was, it’s about 25mins away from hong kong island and kowloon area by MTR, but the station’s a nice 5-minute walk away, slightly longer if we meandered through the well-kept park in between. (see, there were even cleaners scrubbing the signposts with soapy water.)

4) their pasar malam or night markets may not have greasy ramly burgers or japanese balls, but they have a variety of counterfeit toys, bags, tees, knick knacks, kinda like hmm, petaling street in KL?

5) the Big Bus was convenient since we only had 2 days to do a sweeping ‘tour’, and alighted at popular stops, like The Peak Tram. unfortunately, it started raining when we went to The Peak so we decided not to spend money going up the sky terrace since the view would be foggy. but we did have some silly fun at Madame Tussauds wax museum and lunch at Bubba Gump.

AND I MET RPATTZ OMG. (ok fine, a wax rpattz.)

HYUUUK!

no, these are not wax figures. they’re blond, cute and norwegian. i almost asked the daddy if he knew Morten Harket of A-ha, my favourite 80s band (and the only famous norwegian i know ha ha).

6) the husband asked me to write about the hong kong-ers’ fashion sense but i told him i’m no sartorialist. he found it fascinating to see nyonyas wearing knee-high boots and leather jackets going to the wet market. ok lah, quite fashionable what. we also didn’t manage to go to any branded outlets, so we settled for the normal retail fares of H&M, etc, where price-wise, things were more or less the same as in singapore.. ;)

7) food. the one thing we were quite worried about, initially. because pork is in almost everything, apparently.

we weren’t very adventurous in hunting for halal dimsums and other local foods, because the kids simply weren’t interested in eating. and frankly, err, neither was i. (i’m not really a fan of chinese food. sorry!) so we subsisted on snacks, bread, cup noodles (which the kids considered a tasty treat, since they don’t get much of it at home), and then while we were walking around Queen’s Road at Central, aniq paused to snap some pictures of a halal sign (he’s perpetually asking if the food is halal). turned out to be a halal kebab and pizza chain, Ebeneezer’s. kids were pretty happy with the food, so we stuck to it.

ouh, xmas lights… wait, are we at Orchard Road…?

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… was what they proclaimed at the end of the first day in The Happiest Place On Earth (at least in this part of Asia).

well, that’s mummy’s birthday treat to you accomplished, then.

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1) everyone wears them here. (well, almost everyone.)
2) there are a lot of elderly people. (they too wear boots.)
3) i’ve clocked in more time on the public train system here than i have the entire year in sg.

blogging from hk, to be continued…

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gtfts, originally uploaded by izadd.

Harris Planerds @ 313 Somerset!

OMG where have I been all these while…!! I was practically salivating at the selection of books here, and had a hard time tearing myself away.

I pretend-whined to auni, my eyes roving at the beautiful covers of fiction and classics and parodies and graphic books galore: “soooo many booksssss, mummy wants to buy them alllllll…. *whine whine*”

To which she replied, “you can’t buy EEEEVERYTHING nowww!” which is EXACTLY what I always tell her whenever we’re in a toy shop, in the EXACT no-nonsense mummy tone and inflection, so.. touche. well-played. right through the heart.

I’ll be back. (sans the 3yo nag.)

(found the ‘Go The F* To Sleep‘ picture book which I don’t think can be found elsewhere in sg, and which will go straight onto mummy’s off-limits book cabinet.)

And remember, boys and girls: always mind your language. tsk tsk.

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i like love zebras. only because they’re black & white.

of course, auni has to like love unicorns. because, as she will tell you, with all the wisdom and solemnity of a 3.5-yr-old, “unicorns can MAGIC, you know.”

aniq likes likes rhinos. they have horns too, he says, but they’re REAL. i guess he’s more of a pragmatic, being all of almost-6-yrs-old.

(update on auni’s progress on spelling the word ‘zoo’: she no longer spells it as “o-z-z”. she has since been rehabilitated and now spells it as the socially-accepted “z-o-o”. i kinda liked it better as ozz, really…)

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