Lost And Found!

I had to send the boy to school this afternoon and only realised my car key wasn't with me when we were at the car park.  Gosh!  Went back up to the condo and searched through all possible places where I would have left it. Tarak.. Left me no choice but to call Supercab center for their taxi service but there was no available taxi at that moment.  We had to walk out to the roadside and were lucky to spot an empty taxi,  flagged down and jumped into it.  The boy arrived at his school just in time before class started. Phew!   While in the taxi, he was so worried that he would get punished by the discipline teacher. *poor boy*

I rushed back home and continued with my key search, rummaging through the whole house, walking back to the lift down to the car park trying to recollect.  Even the staircase wasn't spared as I have the habit of walking the staircase.  Hello, Mr CK (car key), I am not in the mood to play hide-n-seek with you, ok!  To make things worse, my spare key is kept at our Puchong house! Damn..

The management office was closed for lunch break.  I went down again at 2pm and the moment I asked the girl if by any chance she knew the whereabout of my key, she gave me a big and wide grin.. Yes, the cleaner found it in the lift. *so embarrased*  Guess it's time to go for a check-up for any possible symptoms of Alzheimer or Parkinson diseases. *ahem* 

Peking Duck @ Ming Restaurant, Sabah Hotel, Sandakan

I had dinner with a bunch of my old buddies, some I have known since the kindergarten days.  For a table of 5 adults and 2 kids, we ordered peking duck set, yes, all duck dishes. Hahaha...

Peking Duck, or Peking Roast Duck is a famous duck dish from Beijing that has been prepared since the imperial era, and is now considered one of China's national foods.

The dish is prized for the thin, crispy skin, with authentic versions of the dish serving mostly the skin and little meat, sliced in front of the diners by the cook. Ducks bred specially for the dish are slaughtered after 65 days and seasoned before being roasted in a closed or hung oven. The meat is eaten with pancakes, spring onions, and hoisin sauce or sweet bean sauce. Source

The pancakes as wrappers

The crispy duck skin

cucumber

Roll everything together with a spread of hoisin sauce.  Yummilicious.. but why no lettuce geh?

What was to be done with the rest of the duck?

The roasted duck dish

Duck porridge

Salted vege duck soup - the duck bones went into boiling the soup.. no wastage!

And taugeh stir fried with deboned duck meat 

I did not take my boy along as he had other plans with his cousins.  My brother and sister in-law took them for a KFC treat after the cousin's tuition class was over.  I had a swell time chatting and catching up with fellow buddies all night long without the boy. LOL.. 

The "Once A Year" Friends

Playing with Jian's toys

Every year when we "balik kampung", Ian will get to meet up with his "once a year" friend, Jian, only child of my girlfriend of more than 20 years.  We would have pizzas at Pizza Hut for lunch and thereafter headed to her house to catch up on each others' updates while the kids had fun playing.  Being a fulltime homemaker like me, she appears more busy having to juggle church activities, transport her son to tuition classes, different subjects at different places on weekdays, not to mention music classes and church activities over the weekends.  What a busy and hectic life..

A Lovely Sunday!

I promised my boy that I would take him to the nearby park the next morning before we called it a day last night.  Life has been hectic ever since I came back from my Balik Kampung trip.  The tenant from hell who refused to move out initially had finally moved out.  We would do some wall repainting and fixing of parquet flooring before putting the apartment unit up for sale.  No more tenants! 

Back to our lovely Sunday, I woke up, feeling cheerful, to a bright and sunny sky.  I quickly woke the boy up and off we went to the neighbourhood park.  After a relaxing stroll at the park, we headed to our favourite mamak restaurant.  The boy had his usual roti telur with dhal and a glass of limau ais while I had my nasi lemak and teh halia.  Hubby is away due to work commitment so there's only two of us and so I decided to cook.  As my boy has been complaining of his bad sore throat, I boiled a big pot of five flowers herbal tea, ABC soup and sweet and sour pork for lunch and dinner.  Gao dim.. the rest of the day will be spent doing revision with the boy, with a session or two of TV and reading time thrown in to relax our mind, body and soul!

It's a usual practice the teachers will rush through the chapters trying to cover everything when exam is near. The boy will be having his 2nd term exam early next month.  We have been on this homework race since two weeks ago, damn tiring, I tell ya..  The boy will come back with at least 3-10 pages for each homework with 4-7 books everyday, I kid you not!  Being his dilly-dallying self, we don't even get the time to do a bit of revision as all of his time are occupied doing homework, from 8.30pm-11pm and then to continue the unfinished homework the next morning from 9.30 am - 11am. Gosh!!

After our breakfast, we headed back home, cooked our lunch and dinner then started first round of revision at 10.30am.  Just had our lunch and now my boy is watching TV before the next session of revision starts at 2.30pm.

Some of the photos taken at the park this morning:

The joggers sweating out and dancing to the music

Some of them were seen picniking by the stream..

How did you spend yours?

Coil Spring Noodles @Sim Sim Seafood Restaurant, Kg. Buli Sim Sim, Sandakan

Kampung Buli Sim Sim - I spent first 8 years of my life here since birth  in this place I called home.  We moved out after my father got the family a landed house.  I can still recall those days when my father was a fisherman and due to the nature of his work, he was only home after a week out at the sea, back home for 2 days and back to the sea again.  We were lucky to have been blessed with good neighbours who would lend their helping hands whenever my mom and her young family were in dire need of help.

We bumped into an old neighbour while on our way to the restaurant.  She was all excited and invited us in and even showed us her family photos with some of our childhood playmates, now all grown up with their own families.  Those were the days.  Most of our good ol' neighbours had moved out and settled themselves on landed properties. The once Chinese populated water village is now left with only a handful of them, mostly dominated by Malays and foreign (Indonesian/Filipino, etc) immigrants.

"Dan Kung Meen" literally means Coil Spring Noodles in English.  Taste wise, it was good but you really need to have a set of steel teeth and a good digestive system to savour it.  Hahaha.. just kidding.

The lobster supplier with his young family in the sampan.  Can you spot a baby in the arm of the mother? Life is hard!

Live Lobsters!

The cousins

Sandakan Central Market

When I was in my hometown, I suggested that we had a BBQ dinner at our parents' house.  My siblings had been playing hosts by turn and there was no way I could be one.  Organizing a BBQ dinner would do me just fine as I did not have to worry about fighting to pay for the bills.  I just had to pay a visit to the market and supermarket and grab whatever needed.

What fish is this??  Anyone cares to enlighten?

This Malay fishmonger was kind enough to pose and explained that this fish tastes more like chicken meat.

We bought some of this cut stingray.

My Honeymoon

I got a deal from milkadeal.com a while ago that I only had to pay RM5 for RM20 worth of purchases from My Honeymoon dessert and forgot about it until the voucher was near expiry.

One fine Sunday before expiry of the voucher, we made a visit to their Kota Damansara outlet after picking up the boy from his school's excursion trip.

The place was quiet, only us with another table was occupied.

The boy ordered this - Mango Snowflake

Tai Chi black sesame and taufoo fah to be shared between hubby and myself.

Glutinous Rice Balls

We spent RM10 in total for the above desserts, not a bad deal huh?