Celebrating mum-in-law's birthday at Chyniis!

Chyniis.... where all the chinese go to eat (pardon the pun).

Anyway, we celebrated dear mum-in-law's birthday here back in August. Chyniis is in SStwo mall, this relatively new mall which hubby was involved in designing, and for which his company won an award, might I add! So proud of my hubby, heh :)

Back to the food. The food was good, as expected, but also rather pricey (again, as expected).

I like their Crispy Pork Belly with Rolled Chargrilled Cuttlefish. The textures of both main ingredients are quite similar though, i.e. both are crispy and sticky, so it might get too much for the palate after a while. Better in smaller portions, I would think.

We also tried their Baked Giant River Prawns with 'Dang Gui' and Butter; a rather interesting dish, but I'm not a big fan of anything 'herbal-ly' so I guess I'll stick to their 'sang har meen' if I dine there again. Now that, is REALLY good.

Overall, a great night out with good food, and good company.

Happy birthday mum-in-law! We love you! :)

Visit to the KL Zoo

Believe it or not, but I've actually never been to the KL Zoo before. The Singapore Zoo yes, but not the KL one.

We thought it was a good idea to continue the experience with animals, so we decided to take the children to the zoo. The reviews I came across were generally not that good, so I reminded the hubby to go with lower expectations.

First up were the giraffes; we were walking round the bend and there they were- such beautiful, elegant creatures. Think No.1 was quite stunned to see them! Haha.

Free range birds? ;)

Some of the 'majestic' animals like the lions and tigers really did look rather sad. One lion looked like it was malnourished, poor thing.

Camel- aptly sponsored by AmBank Group

I think the orang utan enclosure was the most well-maintained one in the entire zoo. At least they looked fairly happy. We spent a lot of time there, since there was a small rest area where we could take a break and feed the children.

Call me weird, but my favourite section in zoos are the reptiles. There's just something about them- scary yet fascinating as the same time. And you can see them up close behind the safety of a glass window. Heh.

Overall, I really would not have that many good things to say about this zoo. Some of the enclosures were dark and dirty- as they were for the bears. I felt so sorry for them. Even I felt depressed walking through the area; can't imagine what it is like for those poor animals.

Then again, if I recall correctly, apparently this zoo is not really funded by the government, and they source for funding on their own. If that is true, I guess they're already trying their best, to manage with what they have.

Groupon craze!

I've recently discovered the wonders of shopping online for discounted deals. It's highly highly addictive and it's come to the stage where I check all my favourite websites every day. Yikes.

And there are so many of them- Groupon, MyDeal, Everyday, Milkadeal, Streetdeal, ILoveDiscounts, etc!

I've made some purchases as well, and I've used some of the vouchers, including some for a Japanese meal, a big tub of Lecka-Lecka gelato at 50% off, hairdressing services and a massage. Not too bad, although one must be careful with the food-related discounts. I really didn't think that the Japanese meal deal was 'worth it'- so to speak- as it didn't feel like a genuine discount. Perhaps the portions were scaled down, or the original price of the meal on the discount website was inflated. Hmmm.

Overall, I think this new hobby of mine has resulted in me spending more $$$! Sigh.

Sing-Along!

Our little boy loves to sing. When he was younger, he loved to do what I call 'fill-in-the-blanks' singing, which goes something like this:

Us: Twinkle twinkle little..

Him: *STAR*

Us: How I wonder what you

Him: *ARE*

....

You get the idea. Hehe.

Now that he's older, he's can sing entire songs, complete with a pretty decent tune, and it's just so cute to watch.

Some of the things that he can sing (either whole or in part):

- Twinkle twinkle little star

- This old man

- London Bridge

- BINGO

- Yankee Doodle

- ABC song

- Head & shoulders

- One, two, three, four, five

- Sing a song of sixpence

I'm sure I've missed some; but this is all I can recall off-hand...

His favourite? I would say 'Yankee Doodle', since he wants that to be sung to him at night when we pat him to sleep!

Sigh. He can be so cute sometimes! :)

Visiting the KL Bird Park

We made a trip to the KL Bird Park during the fasting month, with the hope that there wouldn't be too many people there. And we were quite right!

We got there nice and early, and it was nice walking around before it got too hot. The park was shadier than I expected, which was a nice surprise.

The first area we stepped into was the Love Aviary. There were some birds flying freely, so that got everyone excited! Some of them were just gorgeous-Sun Conures, if I recall correctly.

Such a funny photo!

We had a really great time at the Bird Park. We had loads of fun feeding the parrots, and there was even an area where we could get up close and personal with little chicks and ducklings! I think it's a really great idea for kids to see and touch the little birds, especially for city kids who have rather limited exposure to nature. Needless to say, our little boy spent a lot of time watching them.

We managed to get some great photos as well, thanks to hubby, even though the zoom on our DSLR sucks. (We would really like to upgrade our lens, but it's sooo expensive! Sigh.) He made the effort to get close enough, and position the shot so that the cage wires don't look too obvious, which certainly takes some skill.

What a great day! :)

Going over to the dark side...

On my journey back home to KL, the immigration line was again quite long; thank God I made it to the airport with enough time to spare.

I still had not bought any gifts for my kids yet, so I was really happy to see a Disney store there! I rushed to the baby nursery to express for a bit, and then ran over to the Disney store to pick up some bits and pieces. Gosh, everything there is so expensive! :p

After that I popped over to another store to buy some local delicacies, such as the famous 'wife cake' (loh por peng) and then started to make my way to my boarding gate.

And guess what I saw? Another Coach outlet!

With only 10 minutes to spare before boarding time, I decided to walk into the store. And then, I saw a bag which was very similar to the one I almost bought at Citygate, but this was in a colour I really liked, AND it was RM200 cheaper than the one in Citygate!

Was it an impulse buy? Oh dear, I certainly hope not (nevermind the fact that I decided to buy the bag in under 10 minutes, and then ran to the boarding gate like a madwoman :p).

And so, I went over to the dark side. Drat.