More of the little things of life

I 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 details off my blog.

1.      An interesting challenge – no tap in the kitchen! Hope the plumber manages to find a new one and the time to fit it tomorrow.  (NB He didn’t, but he did the following day.)

2.      Hock Choon, our local supermarket.  The aisles are ridiculously narrow, but the food choice is excellent and the staff are very helpful.

3.      Caitie and Ella made candy floss!

4.      My new 70’s tv bag –images include Camberwick Green!

5.      KLCC mosque.  We can hear the five daily calls to prayer from our apartment.

6.      Parents’ evening. Caitie got excellent reports, and showed me a much faster way home! Smart girl!

7.      Wendy, looking very pleased with her new rice basher and idli pan that we found in Little India!

8.       Our new, very ethnic sideboard, delivered today.

9.      Alex was very chuffed to have found this horseshoe crab shell on the beach by the Golden Palms resort!

10.   Caitie on our balcony at Golden Palms, as the sun was setting.

11.   Alex chilling out before we hit the road back to Kuala Lumpur.  That evening, he flew to Delhi for a few days.

12.   My first photography club outing included Chow Kit market and Tatt Khalsa gurdwara. The Sikhs’ Holy Book, treated with great reverence, is under the cloth.

13.   My usual view of the school bus! We’re so lucky to have this service – without it I’d be spending around 3 hours on the school run each day!

14.   My bumper pack of scrapping goodies from Jennifer McGuire came today! A huge pile of papers, stamps, inks and embellishments – I think these stamps are my favourites.

15.   I had to wear this blood pressure monitor for 24 hours. Results were fine, BP a bit high, but nothing that a very low dose of meds won’t help J

16.   It was international day at school. Caitie painted the cross of St George on her nails!

17.   Alex made me a HUGE Pina Colada, served in a pineapple.

18.   Happy Henry, a cute little sock monster made for me by Caitie for Mother’s Day J

19.   I started volunteering at the girls’ home today.  Nice to be able to do something worthwhile.  I’ll be going every Monday.

20.   My small IKEA craft storage drawers are gradually being decorated. This is my favourite so far – Totoro, done by Caitie.

21.    Vegetarian Indian food for lunch, in Little India with Wendy and Noopur.

22.   The Formula 1 exhibit and sales points at the Suria mall were very popular.

23.   Alex just loved wearing this classy T-shirt to work today – not!

24.   Alex and I spent a pleasant, if hot, couple of hours at the Lake Gardens.

25.   I made more cards to sell at the school Spring Fair, to raise funds for the Kenya trip.

26.   Making cup cakes with the girls at the home – they loved it!

27.   Roast chicken for dinner last night.  Unfortunately, I had to get rid of these gross (and attached!) feet first.  Ewww!

28.   My collection of Opi nail varnishes!  Not quite as bad as it looks, as most of them are miniatures.

29.   One of the five rings I wear all the time.  This was my Nana’s, bought when she was little and the perfect fit for my little finger.  It has her initials on it – EB for Elsie Bottomley.

30.   A lovely (apart from the baby octopus!) Taiwanese lunch with Alex at the Suria mall.

31.   Alex’s huge new Lego Star Wars model, bought today at the Tropicana City Mall.  It will be about 4 feet long when complete.

Dried 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 can also be hosed clean.)

 The usual and somewhat more unusual fruit and veg were there in abundance.  

As were dried fish.  Whole dried fish, tiny and much larger; bits of dried fish, huge slit-vertically-head-to-toe-from-the-belly-then-flattened-out fish.  There were a few very lively fish too, splashing about in pitifully shallow water, trying to ensure they got some cover.

Chickens were plentiful too.  Some with heads on, some without.  Virtually all with feet - after all, chicken's feet are quite the delicacy here. The most grim sights were those of the cow meat though - big chucks of anonymous looking beef, next to hairy hooves in buckets or on hooks.  And on one particularly aromatic stall, a row of cow heads. 

But in many ways, the market was also surprisingly similar to that in my home town of Leicester.  Cheery stall-holders presenting their wares as best they could (an interesting challenge in some cases!), and bantering with customers.  People hunting for fresh, cheap food to feed their families.  And, on the whole, an overall feeling of bon homie.  Of course, Leicester market might not be like that any more, but it's how I like to remember it! 

As for how I'd like to remember Chow Kit market, while the sight of the cows' heads will undoubtedly stay with me for a good while, I hope I remember the people there for much longer.  They were so friendly, asking where we were from, welcoming us to Malaysia, and volunteering either themselves or their workmates for photos.  The photo below, despite being out of focus, is my favourite for the sheer character and humour of the stall holder.

Documenting 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 photo each day and handily composes them into one big round-up of the month, I decided to give it a go.  At first, I was still somewhat taken up with the idea that the little things were boring, but then realised that no, actually, they were just as important as the big things.  Looking back at the layouts I produce with this app will probably produce far more memories, conversation and laughter, than those showing a gorgeous beach somewhere.

And as I typed up the journaling notes from each day - for the stories behind the photos are just as important as the pictures themselves - it occured to me that the month's events would be worth sharing on here.  So here you are - the often small and insignificant things that have happened to us this month.  If you don't want to read about the excitement of our new kettle (!) or why I was so chuffed after going to the dentist, skip this post - maybe the next one will be about something bigger.  But if you'd like a snapshot into life in KL, read on.....

Oh, and although I am still enthusiastic about this project, and fully intending to keep it going all year, it might not happen that way.  I might be getting on with life and just enjoying the big and the little things without stopping to document them ;-)

1.      Alex with one of the 147 United Buddy Bears – the UK one of course! – outside the Pavilion mall.

2.      I’m trying to walk and/or run 5k five or six times a week as I need to shed a few pounds.  Listening to audio books helps to relieve the boredom – a little.

3.      A new kettle.  The old one was threatening to burst into flames this morning, the plug was smoking and melting!

4.      Dish upon dish of cooked meats – curries? – on sale in the market near Masjid Jamek today.  We thought it best not to indulge...

5.      Even on a holiday weekend Sunday, there is still – always! – masses of laundry to wash, dry, sort and put away.  Thank goodness I don’t have to iron it as well!

6.      A trip to KL Tower, including lunch in the revolving restaurant and a close encounter with a hair-eating parrot!

7.      Raffles Hotel, Singapore.  Lots of colonial types hanging out in the bar, and very good – and very expensive – Singapore Slings.  Hic!

8.       View from the riverside cafe in Singapore where we had our dinner.

9.      At the end of a day in Singapore packed with exhibitions, shopping and the night safari, some yummy milkshakes.

10.   Our plane, immediately after landing in KL from Singapore.

11.   Spending far too much time playing Jewel Quest at the moment!

12.   A scrappy day!  Two nostalgic, summery layouts :-)

13.   Will struggles to wake up without an early fix of Red Bull – his equivalent of a strong coffee!  Not easy to find in KL though, so if I ever spot a tray full I’ll snap it up!

14.   A long drive to Alice Smith School and back, with a dull parents’ meeting in between, turned a slight headache into a migraine :-(

15.   Searching for somewhere to go on holiday in the summer! (Note – we ended up deciding to wait till November.)

16.   “Super duper clean.  I am quite jealous lah!”  That was the dental nurse’s verdict on my teeth today, the dentist was also very complimentary.  That is the first time I have ever had someone say they were jealous of my teeth!

17.   Trying to get used to Will’s new haircut!

18.   The Maxis Annual Dinner, theme Fairy Tales.  Alex went as a knight and won second prize!  I went as an Indian princess.

19.   I’m cheating and using another photo from yesterday!  Alex on stage last night.

20.   My Fit Flops rarely leave my feet!  They are soooo comfy!

21.    A clean craft desk – a rare sight!  Only because Beth & Dave were coming to stay, and the craft room had to become the guest room!

22.   This tiny Batman (about 2” tall) gets hidden in all sorts of places by me and Will!  We take it in turns, the only rule is that he always has to be visible.  This new tradition started last year shortly before moving to KL, but I can’t remember why!

23.   Clearly the tube of superglue wasn’t entirely glue-free!

24.   Storms this afternoon.  It was really windy just before they hit!

25.   Eating in China Town with Alex, Beth and Dave.

26.   That third green light, for the internet, is very important in this household.  Unfortunately it was missing for most of the day.

27.   Beth and Dave at Batu Caves.

28.   Took Beth & Dave to Kuala Gandah elephant sanctuary – they declared it the highlight of their trip!

29.   The first loaf from the new bread machine!  It was OK, but I need to tweak the recipe a bit.

Ghost 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 (Chinese New Year), and we expected it to be quiet - although not quite as quiet as it was!

The city is the administrative centre for Malaysia, established to try to ease some of the overcrowding and congestion in KL, and has been operating as such since 1999.  As you drive around, it looks as if there are probably homes there - certainly there are buildings that look like they are apartments.  And according to Wikipedia, some 30,000 people lived there in 1997, and no doubt more have moved there since. But it certainly doesn't seem like it - it is deathly quiet, just the odd car on the wide, multi-laned roads, and a few tourists here and there.  Very strange.

However, the peace and quiet did make a refreshing change from the hustle and bustle of KL, and the architecture, combined with some lovely landscaping, was lovely, and provided some good photo opportunities.  Here are a few of those photos:

This is Putra Mosque, which sits, very grandly, on a man made lake.   No touching up on this photo, the colours really are this vivid.

 

This is a view down the city's main boulevard towards Perdana Putra, the Prime Minister's office.  As you can see, the road is very quiet, bar a few tourist buses at the end.

And this is one of the main bridges, Seri Wawasan bridge.

And a close-up.

By the way, I love my new camera!

Gong 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 here, is great, because we can drive around and park without any jams or long waits!

Today, we went to a city centre hotel, the Concorde, to see a Chinese Lion Dance display.  Despite living in Hong Kong for three years, I have never seen such an acrobatic display before.  These lions were jumping up and down poles, and stretching skywards as the loud drums and cymbals crashed out a rhythm.  Pretty impressive, given that there were two men in each lion, sometimes one standing on the other's shoulders as they danced.  My ears are still ringing a bit - standing next to the cymbalists was not the best idea!  Here are just a few of the dozens of photos I took.

 

Phuket - then and now

I 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 looked virtually the same online, albeit bigger, sowe decided to spend five days there, just before Christmas.

Last time we were in Phuket, the airport was tiny, virtually a hut.  The scenery en route to the hotel was pretty much like this:

Now, the airport has been re-built and is much bigger.  And the roads most emphatically do not look anything like these photos.  They are built up, full of shops and eateries, bars and garages, and every other sort of outlet that virtually every modern conurbation has these days.  And yes, that includes Starbucks and Tescos.  No photos to show you of these modern day roadsides, they were just too commonplace to bother taking pictures of.

Our favourite restaurant, Gusto (with the great tagline "No view, but taste") had inevitably disappeared, but we did find another great place to eat, just a few doors further down the road, and still within very easy staggering, erm, walking distance from the hotel.  The drinks have changed a little in their presentation though.  This is a Mai Tai cocktail 20 years ago, beautifully presented in a hollowed out pineapple:

This is how they serve the cocktails today:

Yes, Phuket has definitely changed.  It is noisier, far more tourist oriented, and in places somewhat tacky.  But it still has plenty to recommend it - beautiful beaches, friendly people, fantastic food, and a lovely laid-back atmosphere.   We all had a great time - and when you have to meet the needs of two older-than-they-used-to-be adults and two teenagers, that is no mean feat.  That - together with gorgeous scenery and fun times (see below) - is why we're going back again at Easter.  Can't wait!

Follow 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.