One Year Three Months.

I think if I continue to post photos or blog about this baby, people might just start thinking that she's mine.

But I cannot tahan. Such precious ball of cuteness.

Actually, she's mine. 

My sister says we share share. Hahaha.

She haven't reach two years old and sometimes it felt like she's already pass that age. 

She walks really fast now and she doesn't really cry easily when she hits the wall or something. Back when I was at her age, I cried at everything. I kid you not. I don't remember it but so I've been told about my childhood times.

Anyways, I love that at this age she is beginning to understand what we talk about around her. 

She knows:

that we're going out when we come out of the room wearing nice clothes. Her own interpretation of nice clothes I guess. Once I walked out wearing a dress and she came to me immediately and said, "Kai kai" and pointed at the door.

when she is full and do not want anymore food. This may be surprising to many of you but yes, there are times she will say, "No" when you offer her mam mam. Next time, observe her lips when she says "No" cutest I tell you.



where her belly button is. She is obsessed with it. The photo above shows that her hand is searching for it. 

how to smile with her head tilted to the side when you hold a phone in front of her as though you taking her picture. TRY IT!

where grandma is when she couldn't find her in the living room. In the kitchen. 

where the food is. Everytime when she's hungry, she would walk to the front part of the kitchen and slowly try her best to get things from the shelf. That or she will keep repeating "mam mam" and calling us at the same time.

how to ask for the iPad, but that happens once in a blue moon thank God. That also she watches max 10 minutes of cartoons singing and that's it. She herself has no interest using this electronic. So good.



and understands most of the things we say to her or ask her. At least that's what we think lah. 

where her shoes are kept because "kai kai" is like her favorite thing to do now.

how to wait when we ask her to wait while we settle some things.

how to differentiate hot things and cold things. 

how to take selfie with our handphones. No kidding. Give her your handphone and then ask her, "How to take picture?" and "How you smile?". She will immediately turn the phone back and look into the camera and say "Smile!" 



how to listen to you when you speak to her. I love this attitude of hers. She will look at you and listen until finish saying d only make her noise or walk away. Haha. 

 my name when you say "ee ee". 

that Kelly is the only one in the family that she can bully. Haha. This one you have to witness in person. It's probably more kids out there that she bullies. Such a big bully.

that she is loved by many. My grandma didn't want to come to our house because she found out that Sha Lynn was at Cameron Highlands earlier last week. What is this.

Love you, Sha Lynn.

My Onsen Experience.

So, I have finally blogged about my trip to Japan and you can read more about it here, here, here, here and here. Total of five wonderful days :)

People: "You go all the way to Japan and if you don't do onsen, it's a waste"

People: "No one will look at you. They all have the same thing as you do"

Then, other people say, "You must force yourself to go for it"

Thank you, people, for saying all that. Thank you also for "forcing" myself to go for it. It was one of the best things I have ever experienced in my 26 years of life. Serious. No kidding.

Since it's quite a thing that I love so much, I shall share on how it goes and stuff.

Most hotels that are not in the city will usually have onsen facility. They are mostly separated, men and women. I have yet to see any onsen that has both genders combined. That is one thing I definitely do not want to experience, thank you.

So, in your room, you will have this Japanese cotton robe called Yukata. 

Okay, I think I shall say from how I experience it, with advise from people whom I went with, of course.

After dinner, I went back to my room, did some unpacking to pack again properly the addition flyers that I got, sat on the bed and rested a while. Must let my food be settled down first.

Then, I put on the yukata with nothing else underneath. Nothing. I made sure I tied it correctly and tightly. I wouldn't want any "accident" to happen on the way to the onsen place. 

Once I was at the onsen place, I chose a locker. It's at that place where I need to keep everything. Room key, handphone, watch and yukata. YUKATA. The distance from the locker place to the onsen area is far. More than 20 steps. Far.

We were given one normal-sized towel and a small hand towel. No one is allowed to bring in the normal towel. Only the small one can.

So, want to cover what? Cover top then bottom how? Cover bottom then top how? SO, COVER YOUR FACE! Hahaha. Straight malu betul.

So, yukata are gone and towel gone. What I have is just my whole self and a mini towel and 6 ladies in the place. At that time, I was still feeling very not myself. I just want to run to a corner and hide. 

Anyways, I took photos of how onsen place looks like. This is not the one I went at Hotel Rosa Blanca (Day I), which is by far the best. In these photos, the onsen is at another hotel where there were no guests using it so I just took some shots.

The first thing to do before going into onsen pool is to clean yourself. Another word is shower. Open shower. Hah.

This is how it looks like. A small cubicle. There are about 10-15 of these cubicles. That's why no need to bring the big towels in. After the shower, straight go inside the pool. How convenient.

My first time trying it felt a bit awkward. My second time onwards, I felt like I own those place okay. No more shy whatsoever. Mini towel also holding like a boss. No need to cover anything. It was such a nice feeling. Such empowerment kind. Not really but kind of. 

Then, after that, I made my way into the hot water. Feet in first test water. Really hot. Then go knee-deep. Then waist deep and then slowly full body in till neck. The first 20 seconds, it will feel like as though you going to faint because it is super hot. Like boiling water hot, but surprisingly it becomes very bearable after that 20 seconds. 

One of the onsen that I went to had a cold breeze blowing at the mini garden kind and it was just a perfect combination. Cold on the outside and hot inside. It was perfect.

When you realized that your heartbeat is beating faster and faster and feeling a bit light-headed, that's your body telling you to come out and enough onsen for the day. 

Once, I refused to listen to my body and wanted to dip inside longer, I almost had a blackout when I came up. Lesson learnt: listen to your body. They never lie. Hah.

Then, as you enter into the room, you wrap yourself with a normal towel and proceed to make-me-beautiful corner. This is the place where most of the beauty stuffs are provided. You can blow your hair, put on your make-up or just sit all day long looking at yourself in the mirror. 

I remembered the last onsen I went, there were so many things on the counter that we ended up trying. All the Shiseido products. 

Then, you put on your yukata again before leaving to your room. My room in this case.

Oh one more thing about onsen. The moment you go into the water, your skin immediately feels smoother. It must be the minerals that's in there. Locals recommended us not to wash our body after onsen. Just wipe dry and go sleep in the yukata.

That's what I did exactly. 

Best sleeps ever after onsen.

More onsen experience to come. 

Day One of Selamat Hari Raya.

Date: 28th July 2014.

Before I start babbling on what we did and how fun it was, let me first say to all my friends who are celebrating SELAMAT HARI RAYA AIDILFITRI! 

Okay, back to this. 

I think I've said this too many times but then so what right?

PUBLIC HOLIDAYS THAT FALLS ON WEEKDAYS ARE THE BEST! Especially when it's on a Monday. Such feeling is so indescribable.

Anyways, dad has planned this trip months ago for a camping trip at Gertak Sanggul but since most couldn't make it, we decided to change it to picnic instead. 10am to 6pm. 

It was a family gathering but my family invited a few close friends too to celebrate this awesome public-holiday-on-a-Monday together. 

I think there were close to 30 of us. We rented the hut and the whole corner lot of the beach were ours for the day. 

It was best of both worlds. We have the salty sea water meeting the clear cold freshwater from the hill. It was so ideal. Hot and cold. So nice okay.

The cousins shared money to get an inflatable boat that's big enough to carry three adults at one go. That was the boat that brought us all the way into the scary cove where snakes would love to live. Probably crocodiles too. Hah. And crabs. For sure big yummy juicy crabs. 

One of dad's favorite thing to do is catch crabs here. All you need are just chicken heads tied to the crab-trapper-thing and tie the trap with a long rafia string and a bottle. Then, drop them into the inside of the cove and let the bottle float so you will know where the traps are. 

Very easy. Then, you can go check after every 30 minutes or something, depending on how impatient you are. Heh. During that waiting time, we just sat around chillax a while and look at people taking turns on the boat to explore the cove. 

All the judges giving directions to people on the boat on how to paddle and grab those traps, while enjoying kuaci under the tree.

The first round that we checked, we caught the biggest catch of the day. It was super huge! 

Look at that! I know it doesn't look as big as how I'm trying to describe it but it's super huge. It's half of the bucket base. The size I mean.

Bigger than my feet this one.

Total catch: 8 crabs. All very fresh and yummy.

That's what we did at first. That and eating. Whole day we ate nonstop. Nasi lemak with sambal udang, homemade hot dogs, mom's tortillas, char bee hoon, chicken rice, bee ko, char koay teow, a gallon of lemon water, free flow of icy soft drinks and a lot of sand to feast our feet. 

Oh, the night before, Kelly stayed home and helped mom to prepare all the food. Good girl Kelly. Mom was making a statement while she was tearing those chicken breast, "You koyak two times, makan one time, in the end my chicken all in your stomach." It was funny because of how mom said it. Heh. Good laugh in the kitchen.

After makan, we soaked in the sea and swam out to the middle of the sea. MIDDLE. Hahaha. That's middle for me alright. Surprisingly no one seemed to be bothered with the fact that there might be plenty of jelly fish around us when we swam out. I was the only paranoid one. 

"I got no shades, so might as well close my eyes"

The little longkang that allows the hot and cold water to mix.

Soaking in the cold water. 

Shaun: Guys, I need to pee. Where's the toilet?

Me: *seated down with my back facing the sea* *points behind me* Nah, there.

Shaun: Har? Serious ah?

Us: Yeahhh.

While he was at it, Nikki shouted, "Shaun, what you doing there? Peeing ah?"

Immediately after that, all the kids who were playing at the shore area ran up, feeling disgusted. Hahaha. It was such a funny moment. I think 30 minutes later, everyone went in again. 

Oh ya, thanks Naomi for the photos taken with your Go Pro. It's so fun and easy to use that I'm actually considering to get one. Can go underwater sumore leh. Hmm..

The three sisters. We love the beach. Anything to do with the sea, we like! 

Middle of the sea. It's actually very far from the shore, but quite safe lah cos on the left side (can't see in this photo) is like covered with land. It's like covered jungle kind. I don't know how to say lah. Okay, you just see the photo below correct d. 

The three girls had their first onsen experience in a small cement cubicle. Ahh fun times :)

All the fun watery things we did :))

Oh, we also played captain ball with my dad and cousins in the water. IN THE WATER WITH SAND! Most tiring run ever, but the most fun because can dive into the water and not get hurt. And there is no 'out' line. Nobody cares about the 'out' line guys. Nobody. Hah.

So, I randomly mentioned that those who did not find any siput will have to belanja dinner. We spent a good 30 minutes in the evening by the beach korek siput. I don't know how to describe that feeling of finding one siput after digging don't know for how long. It's the same feeling as scoring a goal when you're playing against the state team or something. Something like that lah.

That explains my 'obsession' of korek siput. Obsession, how Koay puts it. 

Koay emo in the middle of the sea. Probably thinking if he should have change his job from the finance industry to the fishing industry, since he's at his favorite element right now. The salty sea water.

Looking at us still in our comfort zone looking for our little buddies.

We ended up with quite a lot of siput. The biggest one was found by Andrew. His proudest moment in life. 

You'll be surprised on how simple things like korek siput can make you happy. It's always the simple thing sin life that makes the most memories. We didn't even have to spend money on this. It was absolutely a beautiful day spent.

We left the place about 7:30pm and headed to Green House for dinner. Let's not forget the part where we were stuck in a standstill (at one point!) jam for about an hour plus at Gertak Sanggul area. Lousy traffic light. 

Also, got souvenir for myself. Andrew Chan so confidently said, "Here no rocks! Can start swimming. Can kick your leg! SWIM!"

And I did. Kicked my leg and swim while holding onto the boat. Straight hentam-ed and scratched my left feel top part onto the super sharp rocks underneath. A good part of the skin and flesh came out. Yes, I'm limping a bit to work this morning. Just a little bit. No biggie.

After that, we were like, "Swim faster! Sharks probably can smell my blood or Sharon's!" HAHAHA!

Ahhh we need to do more of this kind of bonding time. Super fun. 

:)

Feel What?

I don't know what to feel now.

Sad because it's working day in less than 12 hours?

Happy because it's only 3 working days and then weekends again?

Excited because I'm googling and reading up on 'What to do in Krabi?'

Confused because my left feet would hurt so bad if I put on my flats tomorrow?

Okay time for bed.

Family Day Out.

Public holiday on a Monday! Come on it's the besttttt thing ever!

Too bad most corporate in Penang doesn't even declare it as a public holiday. COME ON!

Learn to treasure this island please. Heh.

I just realized that I typed wrongly on two separate dates. Oh well. This was on a Saturday, not on Georgetown World Heritage City Day!

Anyways, we all slept till the sun came up and then we decided to drive to the other side of the island. Queensbay Mall yo!

Lunch was at BBQ Plaza. Mom's all time favorite place. She prefers the one in Gurney plaza though. Nicer environment and friendlier service. 

The baby girl is only about 1 year and 3 months plus. She already know how to eat by herself. Messy for sure but oh so cute wei. Such a smarty girl. 

Give her a hp and she knows exactly where to look into. 

SHE KNOWS WHERE THE CAMERA IS OKAY! 

She's only one year old plus! What is this.

Then, if you hold a phone in front of her, immediately she will do this *points below*

This baby is vainest of all. No kidding.

Ahhhhh why you so chooobeeeee shanin!

Anyways, we did some window shopping after lunch and dad decided to take us on a spontaneous trip to Gertak Sanggul. Another sneak peak to the place. Haha. 

The beach will always be my happy place. 

 Sand. Sea. Sun. Sha Lynn. Sarah.

Oh my. I think I'm balding. Time to do something new to the hair.

Hello you there. See you in few days' time :)

We all zonked out on the way back home.

Great Saturday spent with the Khoos, a Phor and a Sha.