tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-58785292649783916412024-03-13T04:37:12.710+00:001096 days of summer.... or thereaboutsSightseeing, crafting, making new friends and keeping old ones.... all part of our three years (1096 days) in hot and often sunny Kuala Lumpur.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger42125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5878529264978391641.post-47482400719771608552013-06-07T07:19:00.004+01:002013-06-07T07:19:57.849+01:00Road rules of Malaysia<!--[if gte mso 9]>
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5878529264978391641.post-61312286948965538942013-05-20T09:18:00.003+01:002013-05-20T09:18:50.137+01:00Falling victim to progress?Most of the time, I'm
all for progress. We have to move forward, or else we stagnate. But
sometimes progress is not a good thing.
You may remember me writing about the Coliseum Cafe about 18 months ago - the original post is here.
It's
a KL institution, and used to have a real old-fashioned feel about it.
Now, sadly, not so much - progress has stepped in and is stripping it of
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5878529264978391641.post-35351445161762352552013-03-04T04:26:00.001+00:002013-03-04T04:26:27.524+00:00Apologies, royals and orangutans I've had two complaints about my blog - or rather lack of it - in the last week,
so I suppose I had better put fingers to keyboard and create another post!
Sorry for the lack of them recently - it was much easier when I had just arrived
and everything was new and exciting! Chinese New Year has been and gone
now. Last year we spent it in a spookily quiet KL, this year we decided to go
away, Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5878529264978391641.post-34744438188748922402012-12-22T07:54:00.000+00:002012-12-22T07:54:00.397+00:00A time to ponderThis time of year is a time to celebrate - but also a time to step back, look over the past year and those beyond it, and reflect on where we are now.
Just this afternoon, two of my friends have blogged within just minutes of each other. One celebrating her year, so full of fun and friendship, travel and tantalising tastes, that she says she has been too busy to blog about them. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5878529264978391641.post-21647833117210175652012-11-03T10:03:00.000+00:002012-11-03T10:03:11.422+00:00"The Best Thing I've Ever Done!"... that was Caitie's verdict on parasailing, shortly after she took to the skies under a rainbow-coloured sail for the first time.
We had gone to Penang - an island just off the north west coast of Malaysia, connected to the mainland by an impressively long bridge - and were staying at a fantastic beach resort at Batu Ferrenghi. Which I can't help think sounds like a place from Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5878529264978391641.post-21688912885917423382012-10-21T08:31:00.002+01:002012-10-21T08:31:53.586+01:00Monkeys, octopus attacks and a disturbing lack of bars....Our decision to go to Ipoh was a last-minute one, spurred on by a public holiday weekend and a total lack of availability for accommodation in any of the more appealing places nearby. In hindsight, perhaps we should have been warned by the various comments of "Ipoh? What do you want to go there for?", and "There's nothing there!". But we thought that as one of Malaysia's state Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5878529264978391641.post-16113466820157639792012-10-08T12:45:00.000+01:002012-10-21T07:51:46.563+01:00Out of Africa........and into Manchester!
Before I regale you with Will's adventures, a profuse apology for going AWOL. Life just got in the way, as it so often does. I'll try harder, if only for the benefit of my Mum who said somewhat plaintively last week that she keeps checking my blog for new posts but there aren't any.
So - bearing in mind that the information we receive has been somewhat thin Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5878529264978391641.post-90775583169121986822012-07-11T07:56:00.003+01:002012-07-11T08:48:49.151+01:00Kampung LifeA couple of weeks ago, Caitie, Alex and I (sans Will, as he had gone on his month-long trip to Kenya) decided to check out the East coast of Malaysia, and so spent a couple of days at Tanjong Jara resort near Terengganu.
We had been planning to look around the nearest town while there, but Alex wasn't well and we were all tired after a couple of very busy weeks, so we just stayed put, lounged byUnknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5878529264978391641.post-73707215059980326902012-07-04T07:49:00.002+01:002012-07-04T07:49:37.426+01:00One year on....On July 4 last year, Caitie, Will and I left the UK and flew to Malaysia to join Alex in Kuala Lumpur. We stumbled, bleary-eyed after a long flight, into our new apartment and started the long process of settling in.
Everything seemed so new and so different, especially for the kids.
It was hot, humid, the traffic was scary, the food was weird, the malls were huge, the poorer areas Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5878529264978391641.post-54720225667959633132012-06-08T10:23:00.000+01:002012-06-08T10:23:02.334+01:00A gorgeous sunset
It strikes me that, other than telling you all about our tsunami scare, I haven't shared much else about our holiday in Phuket in April - and it's June already!
So, just a quick post today, to share with you one of the photos I took of the absolutely glorious sunsets. This was taken from the hotel's beachside bar during happy hour (hic!). It was wonderful to sit there Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5878529264978391641.post-7775188105569394752012-05-29T08:03:00.000+01:002012-05-29T08:03:46.214+01:00The best £25 I've ever spent
It's amazing just how much joy a relatively small amount of money can give to a small group of children. A simple trip to a bird park, with lunch and an ice-cream thrown in, produced so many smiles, so much fun, joy and laughter - and lots of memories for us all to treasure.
As some of you know, I volunteer once a week at a local girls' home. The girls there all have troubled Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5878529264978391641.post-56048979148280974272012-04-29T11:27:00.000+01:002012-04-29T11:27:21.393+01:00Interesting times
There is a phrase, often said to be a Chinese curse: "May you live in interesting times." And April has certainly been interesting in many respects, including some that you really wouldn't want to experience.
The month appeared to start well, with a trip to Phuket in the second week. And while we did, on the whole, have a good holiday, it is fair to say that the tsunami Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5878529264978391641.post-90197284786027744382012-04-01T04:05:00.001+01:002012-04-01T04:49:48.054+01:00More of the little things of lifeI did it - I managed to keep going with my photos for another month! So, as promised, here they are - all those little day to day things that made up March 2012 for the Ford family.
Please note that you won't be able to see two of the images properly - I have started volunteering once a week at a children's home, and while I want to document this in my scrapbooks, I need to keep the detailsUnknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5878529264978391641.post-41503554854229944542012-03-13T08:16:00.001+00:002012-03-13T08:18:53.231+00:00Dried fish and cow head for dinner, dear?Food markets in Asia, it has to be said, are somewhat different from those in the UK. Louder, messier and with a much higher yuck factor - a real assault on the senses. Yesterday, as part of an outing with a photography club, I was at Chow Kit market, a traditional "wet" market. (Wet as in the floor is wet, though you wouldn't want to know with what, and hopefully because it canUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5878529264978391641.post-90039762035606859692012-03-01T05:01:00.000+00:002012-03-01T05:01:06.445+00:00Documenting the little things in life"Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realise they were the big things." Robert Brault.
Wise advice that is well worth following. Sometimes, however, even us scrapbookers forget and focus instead of layouts about the big things - holidays, birthdays, Christmas, etc. So when I found out about an iPhone app called Project 365, which reminds you to take a Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5878529264978391641.post-70641736669930397602012-02-05T10:56:00.000+00:002012-02-05T10:56:36.015+00:00Ghost town!A couple of weeks ago, Alex attended a big team building event in Putrajaya, a relatively new, planned city about 25km south of Kuala Lumpur. He reported back that, although the place seemd to be deserted, it was worth a visit if only to look at the amazing architecture.
So a few days later, cameras in hand, Alex, Caitie and myself took a trip out there. It was a holiday weekend (Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5878529264978391641.post-56631909377807502602012-01-24T07:48:00.000+00:002012-01-24T07:48:50.712+00:00Gong Xi Fa Cai!Happy Chinese New Year! Technically I'm a day late, I believe, but it is still Chinese New Year holidays here, so I'm sure it still counts.
KL has been, on the whole, very quiet the past four days. Most people have gone home to be with their families for this festive season, or they have taken advantage of the extra days off work to go on holiday. Which, for those of us still Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5878529264978391641.post-48747121385357706002012-01-16T07:40:00.000+00:002012-01-16T07:40:53.740+00:00Phuket - then and nowI promised a few posts ago that I would tell you more about our trip to Phuket. We had visited this island to the South West of Thailand about 20 years ago when we lived in Hong Kong, It was so nice, we went twice, and loved every minute of it. So it was on our list of "must-dos" for Malaysia. I knew the resort where we had previously stayed still existed, and it still Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5878529264978391641.post-29516051842850427402012-01-07T04:57:00.000+00:002012-01-07T04:57:40.741+00:00Follow the yellow brick road!We've always loved The Wizard of Oz in our family, so I thought it was high time I documented this family favourite in my scrapbooks.
A fiarly simple layout - didn't need much doing given the paper I used (from PaperArts in Stroud). I created the photo montage using images from the internet, and a Jessica Sprague photoshop template.
Thanks for looking.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5878529264978391641.post-51797815642116346182012-01-01T04:44:00.000+00:002012-01-01T04:44:57.482+00:00Happy New Year!
The view from our balcony at midnight last night, taken with my new camera :)
Happy New Year - may it bring you everything you wish for.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5878529264978391641.post-67346095863079973472011-12-30T07:16:00.000+00:002011-12-30T07:16:19.289+00:00More elephants!While in Phuket before Christmas, we decided to visit Phuket Fantasea, somewhat ambitiously hailed in their marketing as the ultimate cultural theme park. The focus of it was a 1 1/4 hour show - absolutely fantastic in its theatrics, with acrobats, pyrotechnics and elephants! I must admit I spent half of it wondering what on earth the storyline was supposed to be, but the sight of 16 Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5878529264978391641.post-23260103783108221672011-12-27T01:30:00.000+00:002011-12-27T01:30:44.023+00:00Bad blogger!Oh dear - over a month and a half since I last blogged - that wasn't the plan! I guess life got in the way! Quite how I have managed to be so busy I'm not quite sure - it's not as if I'm working any more. But what with going out and about (I know, it's a hard life!), preparing for Christmas, doing domestic goddess-type things and keeping in touch with everyone (more Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5878529264978391641.post-78938315767808414602011-11-06T10:59:00.000+00:002011-11-06T10:59:29.180+00:00Photographic proof!Last weekend's birds' nest soup experience definitely needed to be captured for posterity - and of course I had to do something with the photographic evidence that we really had eaten bird spit!
So here's the double page layout I have done, with a tongue in cheek Chinese-style title. The design is based on a Becky Fleck sketch, and the papers used are Kaisercraft Secret Bird Society (very Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5878529264978391641.post-58286671608293661442011-11-03T08:44:00.001+00:002011-11-03T08:47:30.489+00:00Birds' nest soup - yummy! (not)I dug an enormous hole for myself on the way to Melaka on Saturday when I said to the kids: "Your challenge for this weekend is to eat something that you've not tried before". Little did I know that, just a couple of doors down from the hotel where we spent the night, was a newly opened building, dedicated to the history, making and selling of birds' nests. Not just any old Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5878529264978391641.post-68296053968246407602011-10-16T09:15:00.000+01:002011-10-16T09:15:38.079+01:00A KL institutionIt's fair to say that under normal circumstances, I wouldn't have looked twice at this cafe, much less have gone in. You can see why - from the outside it looks like it wouldn't be out of place in an old black and white Western - well, with the possible exception of the very Arabic-style script above the door!
As for inside - well, let's just say that it hasn't seen even a single lick of Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0