CNY 2018

Every year when it comes to CNY, there's nothing that stands out more than food! We have all been having waaayy too much food, and it hasn't ended yet.

So as usual, we had our reunion dinner at my in-law's place on the eve of CNY. It was steamboat, no surprises there, but this year we had two different hot-pots, one with normal soup and another one with tom yam soup.

Helene eagerly wanted to help, but she ended up putting raw stuff in her mouth so it was a no-no from then on.

Look at this cheeky face :)

Here's the family gathered around the table:

The next day, it was the first day of CNY - even our furkids had a red cloth hung up on their home :)

The girls wore matching dresses, so after receiving ang pows from Daddy and Mummy, we all posed for some pictures at home before leaving the house.

On the 2nd day of CNY, I attended a developer's open house with my boss and colleague. And we got to see this Hong Kong actor Ruco Chan up close.

Our theme was red for the 2nd day, so here are Hubby and I, as well as the girls in matchy-matchy outfits :)

On the 3rd day of CNY, we attended Hubby's nephews' 17th birthday party. These two are twins and I look like a midget standing next to them haha.

As usual, we took lots of photos, you can view the rest of them on Facebook.

I particularly like this one of the 3 sisters :)

Do-Re-Mi cuties in a row:

On the 4th day of CNY, it was Hubby's office opening day. They had a lion dance troop but Helene refused to get out of the car so there we were watching from inside the car. She had told us very firmly even before we left the house that morning that she does not want to see the "bu lang sai" (lion dance".

But the other two had no qualms and watched happily as the lion made its way through the office.

Helene did concede to get out of the car after it was over and take a photo with the lion heads.

On the 5th day of CNY, we attended Hubby's sisters' shop opening lunch at Zheng Xian Ge Restaurant 蒸鲜阁 at Vantage Tanjung Tokong. It was quite special as the food (mostly seafood) was steamed plate by plate and in the course of steaming, all the essence would drip down to a pot of porridge cooking below. So eaten as the last dish, the porridge would be sweet and tasty from all the seafood essence. These are just some of the dishes which we had.

Enjoying the last day of the CNY break before it was back to work the next day!

 Even after we were back to work, the festivities didn't end yet :) We had yee sang and abalone fried rice at Din Tai Fung on the first day back to work :)

And the following day, we had yee sang again! We had lunch at Cafe Lagenda with some ex-colleagues and since they didn't have yee sang, we ta-paoed one from Rakuzen :)

Wishing everyone a very happy year of the dog! Woof woof! :)

My 37th birthday

Am I already 37?? Sometimes I can't believe it myself (self-denial lol). So anyway, as usual, I celebrated with my nearest and dearest this year, missing my parents and my sister who are in Australia. But we had a chat and video call, and my mum sent me a birthday card as usual.

So I had several birthday celebrations, with different groups of friends. The first one was actually a surprise as my office manager arranged it during a department lunch which we had at Cafe Lagenda at Campbell Street. So after we finished lunch, I was definitely surprised when the waiter brought this out and placed it in front of me :)

The next birthday lunch was with another group of friends - Szu Fu, Jenny and Stephen. Ai Nee and Karen couldn't make it that day so it was just the 4 of us and we went to a familiar hangout - Macallum Connoisseurs.

On the day before my birthday, the lovely Yu Yu surprised me in the office with my favourite Starbucks cake - passionfruit oreo - yum yum.

Then I had lunch with these lovely ladies at TWG in Gurney Paragon - Patricia, Ai Li, Suit Wai, Phaik Yueong and Liz. Our lunch ended at almost tea time!

On my actual birthday the next day, Hubby and the girls took me to Sugar on Top at Nagore Street.

And then we ended up at Baskin Robbins for ice-cream! :)

In the evening, we had dinner with the usual gang - Steven, Max, Chia Yin & Kok Hsiang. A few weeks earlier, we had decided to go to Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion or the Blue Mansion as it is also known. It houses a heritage hotel and also has a fine dining establishment called Indigo housed within the building. No guesses for seeing why it's called the Blue Mansion, and coincidentally, we were dressed to match the building!

It's really a nice place for taking photos, and again we blended quite nicely with the furniture as can be seen in the photo below!

The food at Indigo was good, but some dishes were better than others. The food is a blend of western and fusion flavours. It is a fine dining restaurant, so be prepared to pay slightly steeper prices that your usual restaurant. I had the cod fish (RM128 +) and that was really good.

Last cake for my birthday this year  - happy birthday to me!