CNY preparation



It's that time of the year again! CNY is in 3 weeks time!! yaye~~ And the China Town is already nicely decorated with red lanterns.. How i love to look at the street especially at night!

The fun thing about preparing for CNY is all the cakes and cookies tasting. What's more, it's the only time we can buy lots of new clothes without feeling guilty! Love it! How i wish it was CNY EVERYDAY! hehe... And we get to buy lots of unhealthy junk food and fizzy drinks! Love that there is no need to feel bad! Although i will sure feel bad when i receive my credit card bills at the end of the month but let's worry about that later~~ don't spoil the CNY mood hey?

It's Chinese custom to also do house cleaning to welcome Money God and good luck in the new year... Duh, cleaning is the thing i absolute don't enjoy but  can't escape from T___T Yesterday, it was gloomy and raining the whole day. I decided that it was a good day to wash the balcony. As soon as i came back from work, still in my work attire, I pulled out the buckets and broom from the store room and started to sweep, wet, brush the tiles ... To make cleaning fun, i decided to make lots of bubbles... oo la la, how fun was it to be standing in a pool of bubble water! in just 30 mins, I cleaned the windows and the balcony. The place is sparkling clean now! Love how efficient I am! haha... 

Jenn in action

What's my next task? I think for now, i deserve to sit back, relax and eat my newly bought pickles (acar) with prawn crackers :P

Dare to try?

Visiting a new country has never been easier these days... Just a few clicks, u could read almost anything about the place.... CooL!

When Jane i first visited Taipei in 2000 for a 1.5 months study course,  all we knew about Taipei is that they have many funny TV shows, famous celebrities, which we learned from the TV programs rented from the video shop in China Town.... now you know which dinosaur age i came from haha...

We were very lucky to live near to the infamous Shilin Night Market. Everyday after our class, we would visit the night market with our course mates. To me, Shilin is a totally new world... i had never seen sooOoo many people and so many stalls selling things beyond my imagination in my life! And the colourful signboards sticking out and overlapping each other made my head spun... Gosh! this is so vibrant! I love this place! 

Everytime we went to Shilin, we discovered something new! AMAZING! I remember our first night there, we discovered smelly tofu. The smell (fragrant?) was new to my nose... When the smell hit me, I thought one of us had accidentally stepped on wet dog poo! All of us stopped in the middle of the street and started checking our shoes... to find nothing... so we concluded that, the smell must be from the blocked and dirty drain or rubbish bins nearby and we cursed the inconsiderate people for polluting the world.... 

Then suddenly, we saw a yellow sign with 3 red Chinese characters - 臭豆腐(Smelly Tofu)…. People were actually queuing up for what smells like rotten food to me... Being curious and adventurous, we decided to try it... just to find out why people actually like it.. Why people are willing to handover their hard-earned money for something that smells awful! When we received the fried tofu in our hands, we took turns to smell it.. OMG, it smelled just like SHIT. What's more, we actually paid NT30 to eat shit! No way we were letting our money go down the drain! so we ate it! 

Hehe, i must say, smelly tofu is just like durian  ~ smells awful but tasty!

Fried Smelly Tofu

~ Look ordinary, smell awful but yummo!

So the moral of the story? Never judge a book by its cover.. Sometimes you will be surprised when u look "inside"... 

However, I absolutely cannot swallow Steamed smelly Tofu... it's 753904820495 times smellier and it tastes  53904820495 worse than the fried one... I couldn't even let it sit in my mouth for 1 second more. Yup, i spitted it out in disgust... Sorry to those who love steam smelly tofu... I tried my best.... And for that effort, it's OK for me to judge :P

Jungle durians

Not everyone's favourite but it's OK coz that means

We can have them all to ourselves! Yaye~  

Fruits we love

Bought a few local avocados from kakak. Mum loves avocados! When I went to the pantry to choose, i was amazed at how big there were!! The skin was dark purple in colour and from far, they kinda look like eggplant!

I want avocado milk.....

When I brought them home to show mum, mum was surprised at their size too! So how did we eat these babies? We made avocado milk every morning. It's fatty i know but in a good way, so never mind :P I remember, when i was in Hanoi in 2008 (has it been that long??), we found this place that serves many variety of fruit drinks. And one of our favourites is ice-blended avocado milk of course! We went there everyday for it!  It was pretty cheap too.. $4 for a big cup I think. 

Mum loves avocados so much that we even have an avocado tree in Aust home. When mum made sushi for us, she always put a lot of avocado slices... Do you know that avocado goes very very very well with Japanese mayo? Double the fat but it was yummmm... :P  Recently, mum managed to grow an avocado tree here.... from scratch. She brought many avocados back from Aust and decided that she wanted a tree here  so she could just pick her favourite fruit from the garden next time... so she planted the avocado seed and  it's growing fast! Hope I don't have to wait long to pick my own avocados!! hehe... 

I must say, mum has a green thumb. She can grow anything she wants. Of course she showers them with lots of love too... Just look at the fruit trees in our garden! 

Pameloes danggling on the tree!

Assorted tropical fruits in the garden!

We also have mango tree, passion fruits, coconut trees and just not long ago, mum planted durian tree! ha! this, i will have to wait a very long time before i can enjoy its fruits. I wonder if I would still be around by then... :S

Celebrations

Psk... It's my FIRST post for the Snake year! 

First of all, I would like to welcome LJ back... She was gone for 3 months and how i missed her dearly! Am grateful that she hasn't abandoned me even though she now has a little princess to feed.. errr i mean look after.... BIG flying kiss from me to u, LJ! Hope it didn't got hijacked half way :P

My cousin finally tied the knot with her British bf, well, now husband on the 2nd last day of 2012.... Many of my relatives came from all over the globe to attend the wedding and oo la la.. Did I have a lot of fun.... it was nice to have a big family reunion, but it would be much better if there were transportation arrangements made for them... Can you imagine that we managed to squeeze 14 adults + 4 big luggage bags in our 2 cars @_@ We almost had to send some people to sit on the top of the cars just like how it is done in Bangladesh liao.... 

A few times, my relatives drove me nuts... because all of them wanted to do different things and be driven to different places  I would if i could  T___T The problem is, there was only one Jenn~ My mum got a bit upset at my aunt because she left us to do all the hard work for her while she and her family partied at home with the in-laws T__T I was supposed to be somewhere partying too instead of slaving away maaannn....  T____________T

On a happier note, the wedding itself was an interesting one ~ there was Muslim prayer, traditional Chinese tea ceremony and an European-style wedding reception. We called it a 3-in-1 wedding haha... It is good that the far-away guests got to experience all 3 different cultures in one go! My cousin's British in-laws adapted pretty well and especially loved the tea drinking and ang pow giving session haha... BTW, my cousin looked gorgeous on her big day! 

Here are some of the funny pictures taken on the wedding night... 

Immature boys :P

When will they grow up?

Finally, a proper one...