0 Been there, not done that! 3rd Putrajaya International Hot Air Balloon Fiesta

The sun just broke through the clouds. It was only 8-ish and tickets for the tethered rides were already sold out.

I had hoped to be amongst the foolish excited few who would fork out money just to sit in a hot air balloon, which goes not very high up by the way and, comes down in minutes. It seemed like an acivity which could only amuse the older, responsibilities-tamed set. 

Boy, was I wrong. There were eager beavers of all ages and some had camped there since 3am. How was I to compete... I was still in La-La land at 6am, and barely lifted my eyelids when the alarm rang.

It was nonetheless a fun outing. I truly enjoyed the walkabout because of the many hot air balloons that graced the morning sky. A sight to behold, it is.

Firing up the Hot Air Balloons

Weee...! Doraemon

It's the cutest

Most unique

Eco message

Elephants roam the Earth

Don't be sad

Be happy!

Darth Vader's searching for his missing body

Look ma, no basket!

Tethered rides

Ok...what is this..

Zorbing

Carnival-like

Meals on wheels

And that's that - 1Malaysia, we're all here

0 Sungai Buloh Nurseries - A Gardener's Haven

A green thumb I have not. That's why the only green adorning my home is the very common house plant 'Pothos'. You laugh at my feeble attempt to contribute something back against the many trees we have cut down?

I've a mini garden in the balcony stemmed from a belief that if we were to all do our part no matter how small, when done in sizeable support, it counts towards helping Mother Earth. I'm naive that way. How many apartment dwellers take this seriously, right?

Anyway, I paid a visit to the renowned Sungai Buloh Nurseries (Located not far from Hospital Sungai Buloh) in a bid to ignite the green talent I know that's hidden inside me.

Plants are sold at a good bargain here. That's why this place is packed with avid gardeners on weekends.

Here we are

Pots, pots, pots

A patriot

Gorgeous plants on display

Walk the stretch, don't be too quick to commit

In the Garden of Eden

Everyone has green fingers here

I went behind the stalls

A treasure trove

Pitcher plants for an exotic feel

If you have a large compound

Colours to brighten your day

Chilli padi for that sambal

You can depend on him to cool you down!

 
Seeing the many beautiful plant varieties I had never seen before, I was motivated to make it happen. I knew I could do it! 
 
So when a weed started growing in my garden, I took it that it was an exotic plant, meant to be nurtured.  I was pretty oblivious to the fact that perhaps I still had not mastered the art of gardening.
 
This weed was an exciting shade of green and growing fast. All I had to do was water it. I felt talented. It was a success story in the making until my best friend saw it and lambasted me for keeping a weed.
 
"I don't believe it! Can you not see it's a WEED?!", she blasted.
 
"Why are you planting a WEED?!", she asked with an incredulous look on her face.
 
The bubble burst and it dawned on me that "some people just have it in them".
 
I pulled the weed out after that, of course. What was I thinking.

0 Baked eggs are in, the lazy cook says

It's true, at least, in my kitchen.

So many of my meals are born out of the oven that I often fancy myself a baking enthusiast. The reality is I'm just a lazy cook.

I'm not into pastries, cakes or anything of the sort. Oh, that would be too taxing and complicated. Meat and vegetables, that's a different story.

I love throwing everything together and leaving it in the oven. Recipes, be gone!

Then, off I go to do whatever I want. 

Here, I've mushrooms,  cuttlefish, tomatoes, onions and green vegetables. A good balance, no? Add salt, pepper, some tomato sauce and a bit of that rosemary herb. Cover with foil and bake until ready. 

Much later..

"Psst, how about some eggs?", I thought to myself.

"I don't know about that. It sounds like more work. All that frying or boiling", I discouraged the thought.

"But you could just bake them, could you not?", I replied proudly.

So I cracked a couple of eggs into the same baking tray (with cooked meat, vegetables and all) and put it back into the oven until the eggs were done to my preference.

Voila! Garnish with greens. Eat however you like. I had mine with plain instant noodles. 

Bake in a covered foil

A close-up

Scoop onto noodles 

0 National Science Centre, Bukit Kiara

One of the things I love about having my own home, is having the occasional visitors stay over. It's an adrenaline rush preparing a list of places to visit, even if it turns out to be a head banging affair. Things weren't always this way. An old habit of mine was to drop into one shopping mall per day and be done with it. You know..Midvalley, 1Utama, Sungei Wang.

Living in the city for a good decade has made me lackadaisical in the spirit of exploration and poor in appreciating the little things around me. Work, home, work, home, anywhere else would labeled 'too far'.

Often, I would know the place you're talking about but I'd never really been there, unless you consider passing by as good as 'been there'. Have I wronged the place I was born and bred in?

I picture the majestic sights and sounds of China in my head, a great week-long getaway. I take for granted the beautiful places around me which I have shamefully driven by without a second thought.

"Ohh..that place arh. Can eat with Hornbills one", Typically how I answer people who tell me they've been someplace (eg the KL Bird Park) I haven't and leave the sentence hanging, hoping they don't ask the next question ie "You've been there?"

It's uncanny why I should feel inadequate but I do. Mayhaps I am imbued with feelings of guilt..if I can travel overseas and be wowed by the little things there, how is it that I've never ventured our own land with the same passion. 

So, these days, whenever anyone pays me a visit, I make it a habit to go out of the norm. While I've made some progress over the years, there are days I wonder whether I risk ruining someone's holiday.

Like this trip to the National Science Centre. I'd been dying to enter this great green dome for ages. That building, which promotes enquiring minds, beckoned my conscience everytime I drove past the hill it stood on. The opportunity finally presented itself when a friend from Penang stayed over.

She said, "No more shopping malls. Let's explore."

I gleefully agreed.

At the National Science Centre

December school holidays - kiddy chaos 

Does this work?

Cloning box..*pinch nose* ..cough..cough

What the..?

Again? It's everywhere!

We walked out and saw a bit of history

My friend lamented on the poor state it was in...yadda yadda yadda.....was I hearing a loud echo? Whoaa..! Her voice reverberated around us. There goes any chance we had of "putting it nicely". I'm pretty sure all the employees heard THAT.

Caught by surprise, we retreated into a softer voice, and soon found the culprit. It was a whispering dish located just outside the entrance. 

Thank you so much for letting us air it all out in the open, Mr Dish!

Sound waves..sounds like how a rumour travels

A good laugh we had.

From the putrid smell of human sweat in the cloning box to the unvacuumed floor and the many contraptions that are out of order, I worry about the state of our scientific prowess for real. 

While I understand that repairs are being carried out, I cannot fathom how it had gotten this far in the first place, unless regular maintenance was never a practice.

Well, that's one place off my list....for now.

0 YES..they reward their fans

YES, YTL's 4G mobile internet provider, has a website with up-to-date news, an online radio (Yes FM) and occasionally, freebies.

 Yes FM proves to be a breath of fresh air. As I write this, I've heard five great non-mainstream songs back-to-back, no ads  (well, maybe a couple of seconds) and no blabbering DJ (that's important, no?). Their selection of easy listening music has put me in a state of contentment and relaxed shoulders. Easy listening, not sleep inducing, I add.

A reward from joining a photo caption contest they held some weeks ago:

Black Swan Tickets, Notebook and YES, THE paperbag
to encourage you to support the "No Plastic Bag" campaign

0 My First Home Scheme - A scheme to scam the average Joe?

If you want to help the young people of today, then you really have to look at the old people of tomorrow.

And there's really nothing to look forward to if you're the average person because years from now, you won't be sitting on that rocking chair, tending your garden and smelling the roses. Equally gone are dreams of a cruise to the Caribbean islands. Your days will be spent counting dollars and cents, earned from a low paying part time job you took out of desperation.

In days of yore, you could own a two-storey bungalow at RM20k, with a measly household income of RM600 per month. My parents are living proof of a bank loan repaid in ten years. They were free to save for rainy days, our education and their retirement, with a solid fifteen years of full employment life to go. 

If you're planning to jump onto the "My First Home Scheme" bandwagon, then you should know what you're getting into - possibly a lifelong struggle to make ends meet.

A thirty year loan eats into your ability to build a comfortable nest egg for yourself and part of your retirement savings effectively becomes a debt repayment fund. To top it off, not even the amount in your EPF can carry you through the many years you have left in you, a fact in the now. 

Tomorrow, you'll be fretting over the monthly fees you have to fork out for security and maintenance, because you live in a community where theft boasts a higher performance rating against the men in blue and you fancied the private landscaped park, tended by a professional gardener over DBKL's maniacal tree cutters.

Rising costs are a thing of permanence, but rising salaries are not. Sudah retirelar, mana ada salary. That nasi lemak will never cost RM0.50 again, just as petrol prices continue to climb.

You're the Starbucks generation with an eye for good food, who's now laden with the "in" in health problems - diabetes, hypertension, obesity which your medical insurance does not cover or because you did not have the financial means to take up a good policy.

I'm not asking that the recently launched "My First Home Scheme" be scrapped completely, but let it be improved towards something markedly better and let it be tweaked to a point where there are concrete plans that a certain percentage of homes will be priced realistically to meet the average person's salary scale.

It's a great scheme assuming nothing in the negative befalls the borrower, or if you live and work in a place where time stood still. Naive assumptions that you will never be unemployed for any period of time during the thirty years or that you're guaranteed a high-paying job in the workplace can cost you.

A scheme that does not benefit the average person for real, is a scam by scheming people who come out with superficial solutions to appease negative public sentiments on the current affairs of home ownership. 

0 Baked Prawn with Mayo topping ...

Just something I whipped up the other day for dinner. The recipe? I don't have anything with exact measurements (except for the length of the prawn, if you think that counts). I'm not a stickler.

There are days I totally mess up and days my dish turns out astonishingly well. This is one of those moments when I'm ecstatic over the outcome and bowled over by the flavour.  

While I don't follow any recipe to the dot, I do spend some time thinking about the how-to and the what-goes-in bit. That's how this yummy dish came about...an hour of pondering. ..wooOo

Spirals, Pea Sprouts and the 7-inch Prawn!

Love this combi - Think I'll make it again

The how-to:
- Stuff prawn with a mixture of mayo (couple of tablespoons), butter (a small dollop), cheese (sprinkle to liking) and corn (from the can, non-creamy).

- Bake 20 mins or so in oven at 180 C

- Garnish with fried chopped garlic ..voila!

4 Eastpark 72, Bandar Mahkota Cheras

Aye...here I am again, still searching for that all elusive dream home...

It's always good to check out other neighbourhoods and widen my scope, I tell myself positively. Most times, I'd end up moaning over the high price and the distance it is from my favourite haunts. Eastpark 72 is no different.

You never know what may come your way. They say once your heart is smitten, no imperfection will discourage you from signing that piece of paper. That, sadly..and happily, is exactly what happened to me years ago. It is with this faith that I am motivated to view as many properties as I can, for I know that there'll be one that'll make my heart thunder with excitement and my head numb enough to ink on the dotted line.

I was at EastPark 72 just Sunday, a new development located not too far out of the city. Low density, 2 1/2 storey Semi-D priced from RM1.6mil onwards. Maintenance fee is an eye-bulging RM600 per month. Not a G&G community but a perimeter wall will be built around the neighbourhood, with security provided (guards and cameras) and a garden. A project developed by the Lion Group.

The strange thing is, for the life of me, I couldn't find the website though the salesperson informed us there was one, nor were there any printed brochures for us to take home. It was however brought to our attention that an official launch will be held coming weekend.

I really love the design though, from the facade to the interior. Interior is a masterpiece by Art Et Domain, easily one of the best showhouses we have seen.

Back portion

Side view

The front

No highrises here which is fantastic and the land is higher than that of surrounding areas which means some privacy and a better view. 

The entrance

On to the show unit..





Perfect for kopi-o and chit-chat

Pond, love this idea. Good for fish?

Rooftop

Stairway

Neat

Master bedroom

Classy bathroom

I'd still attend the launch if I were you, fellow house hunter, because while this is not for me, it could be IT for you. Maybe you can afford it, maybe you like living away from the congested grey city walls, maybe you prefer a green landscape to accompany your early morning strolls..