Start a new year with…

Hello 2012!

I started my year working 1 day earlier than other people as the state of Kedah does not observe New Year Public Holiday. Working when everyone else is still on holiday is tough! Thank God the new year day itself fell on a Sunday, so it was not that bad.

The not so OK part was that we had to work late last Monday (and the following days too) and it’s only the beginning of the year!!!! Can you believe that? A super urgent PDK is scheduled to be released by tomorrow, hence why my colleague (who is responsible for the project) had been burning the midnight oil including sacrificing her New Year weekend for that project. I pitied her!!

I tried to help as much as I could…

…finished up the bipolar devices updates, physical verification on the upated devices, mapping files as well as the PDK configuration script updates…

Thought that we would be working late again tonite, but earlier this morning we were disturbed with this image/message taken from a friend’s Facebook.

New Year Resolution perhaps

So I tried to leave on time on Tuesday and went back early for a special new year threat dinner by my housemate.

Yummy!!!!

Who would resist to that….Nasi Ketam Pak Su, Juru!

After living up here in the North for 4 years, I could finally satisfy my taste buds with this. All this while, I’ve been hearing words of praise over this Nasi Ketam from my housemate as she goes to this place quite often. Mungkin sebab kesian asyik dengar cerita je, she decided to threat me.

We ordered 2 nasi ketam (which came with 4 crabs), 1 set of kerang bakar and a coconut drink each. That cost us about RM66. Found it a bit pricey though but most probably it was because of the big crabs we had. Tapi sedap punya pasal, RM66 pun kira OK lah!

So if you happen to be in Penang, Bukit Mertajam/Seberang Perai area to be exact, just go to Auto-City Juru then go look for Juru, that will lead you to the village area, and try to find a restaurant named Warung Pak Su.

Bon Appetit!

How was my 2011?

Without realising it, 2011 has come to its end. What a year…I should say.

At the beginning of 2011, I had my downside story when my dad was diagnosed with colon tumor. He had a surgery to remove 1/3 of his colon and Alhamdulillah he’s doing fine now. Only God know how worried I was (all of us in fact) at that time, what with the scheduled wedding coming in July, we were praying for his fast recovery. Our prayers were answered as by May, my dad has recovered and managed to go on a trip to KL with mom for business/mother’s day.

Apart from that, the 1st half of 2011 was filled with my wedding preparation. From wedding dresses, dias, colour theme, cards to door gifts and MUA, all were decided by us (our parents decided on the menus, and also groom side reception deco). Wedding is indeed a tough job. Now I understand why brides throw their bouquet after that….because she’s relieved that everything is OVER!

After our wedding, 2nd half of 2011 was occupied with some travelling around. Starting from honeymoon in Khao Lak Beach, Phuket…..then we went back to Kuching again for Hari Raya….then 2nd honeymoon to Beijing in November and finished with a short trip to Miri earlier this month for a cousin’s wedding. And not forgetting the every weekend travel from Kulim to KL or sometime Kulim to Melaka when hubby is working on Saturday. SUPER TIRED OK!

Now you know why I’ve been missing a lot from my blog. Kinda miss it though!

Overall it was a fantastic and unforgettable 2011! Hoping that 2012 will be a better one!

To end the year, I’ll leave you with a few pictures that have summed up my fabulous 2011!

Right after akad

Wedding Reception

Outdoor after groom reception

Our honeymoon villa in Le Meridien Khao Lak

We conquered Great Wall of China

Happy New Year 2012!

Induction Cooker

Have you used an induction cooker before?

You know, the stove you saw most of the time at any HOMEDEC Expo with flat, glassy often black in colour surface.

Yup that one!

I have no experience using it before. Neither do any of our close families. So when we got one for our wedding present, we’re so thrilled and decided to bring it back to hubby’s rental house since he has no stove yet. Thinking that it’s just a simple stove like others, we didn’t even bother to try it on. He just brought it back to Malacca with him, and a few pans together.

One of the weekends, I went down to his house in Malacca. He was so excited that I could finally cook for him, so he bought few stuffs to be cooked. Motivated, I opened the box and read the manual. I switched on the stove and pressed the on/off button, put a pan on it with some water and pressed the cooking button. It emitted a continuous beep beep sound but stopped after 1 minute. Tried it again, but still no sign of boiling water and seemed that it has stop working again after 1 minute.

Not working

What went wrong?????

Decided to read the manual again, and found some info on the suitable cookware to be used. It says that it has to be iron-base since it’s using the induction concept and the magnetic field so on. Read further on the Internet and finally found out on how to test if your pan is suitable or not with an induction cooker.

Test the pan with magnet

If the magnet stick to the bottom of your pan, then it can be used with induction cooker. Unfortunately the one I had that time was not!

The following weekend, habis periuk di rumah mak-in-law (MIL) di try dengan magnet and guess what……

This one works!

Yeayy!!!

Lucky MIL also has an induction cooker that has never been used before (looks like gas stove still win over induction stove) and we can try the pan on just to make sure it really WORK! If it can’t, we can sue BACCARAT for putting the induction label on it.

Labeled!

And so now I can finally cook for hubby with the induction cooker and suitable, working cookware. So next time you want to buy an induction cooker, do the magnet test to see whether you have any suitable induction cookware at home first.

It works now!

Stay-at-home Weekend

It felt good to just stay at home last weekend. Going out on every weekend plus the travelling Kulim-KL-Melaka-KL-Kulim a few weekends in a row can be tiring too. Nak belajar masak dengan ibu mertuaku pun kadang-kadang tak sempat tau! But of course, we did not stay at home 100% lah. The Friday night  after hubby picked me up, we went to Rasta TTDI to have this, as I’ve been telling him many times that I’m craving for it like crazy (note : NO ‘ARE-U-PREGNANT’ QUESTION PLEASE!).

Rasta's Tauhu Bakar

TAUHU BAKAR!

Crunchy-licious. Just the way I like it.

Saturday afternoon, we went to pick this up.

KL Wedding Album by DanialHaikal

Our KL Wedding Album!

Would like to share it here but need to wait for a lil bit more as I’m still waiting for Kuching Wedding album to be finished printed first and to have the softcopy pictures in my hand, so that I can tell the story in order. After all, it’s more fun when we have pictures together with the wedding post(s). But before I share my wedding pictures here, just catch a glimpse of how the DanialHaikal’s office wall of fame looks like.

Wall of Fame!

Yerp, these were all shot by them. Nice, pretty, big wedding pictures on frame….(I want mine too!!!) And last but not least, we spent the rest of our weekend, watching Survivors, Desperate Housewives, the Rugby World Cup Semi-Finals while playing with this creature here.

Sis-in-law's cat, Maya

Maya the bee cat! Ain’t she gorgeous!

It was indeed a simple weekend, but such a relaxing one. Looking  forward for more weekends like this one.

Big Bad Wolf Book Sale 2011

Hubby is an expo lover. When there’s any exposition, fair or warehouse sale of his interest, he’ll definitely drag me to go with him. Lucky him to have a wife that loves going out on the weekends.

So last Saturday we went to the Big Bad Wolf Sale in Serdang and the KL Photography Fair in Midvalley.

In ONE day!

Well, the original plan for that Saturday was to buy a new camera for our upcoming 2nd honeymoon trip next month. But when he found out on ShoppingNSales, that the Big Bad Wolf Book Sale is on, as a comic collector, there’s no way hubby would miss that, just incase they’re selling any Batman comics or anything that he likes.

Though Serdang is a bit far away from house, for books and comics, we didn’t mind that at all (even though we just spent a few hundreds during the recent MPH Warehouse Sale).

It was our first experience to BBWS. And it was a huge one!! Even before we entered the hall, the number of cars parked was A LOT! Car park was so big that they provided us with shuttles like this (that we didn’t take as we prefered walking AT NOON to sweat faster).

Please take this from the car park next time

Upon reaching the entrance (and puffing to catch my breath), please look at the queue.

The Q!!!

Food trucks

Big Bad Wolf Sale poster

Thank GOD they’re efficient and the loooonnnng queue got shorter and shorter in no time. Kalau tak mau mengamuk menunggu queue. And when we entered, one more time I was flabbergasted at this view.

Books everywhere

MashaAllah! It was like an ocean of books (exaggerate a little).

Genres of books

Books were classified by genres. Look where my hubby headed straight as soon as he entered the hall.

Comic section, of course!

Just because his phone’s battery was low, I had no choice but to tag along with him first, before I can go to look for my type of books.

If only that we already have our own house, with our own study room/library, gerenti dah borong habis dah. But when I think of the box of books in our bedroom at MIL’s place, I had to limit myself. Tu pun dah beli more than 10. I was so jealous looking at other people paying for boxes of books (recipes, hobbies, kids, thriller, romance books and etc). So worth it coz most of them were at +/- RM8 (fictions lah) and hobbies/recipes book were so cheap like RM20+ like that.

Don’t worry Big Bad Wolf! I will return with bigger boxes  and bigger budget next year.

Queue-ing at the cashier