The Long-Delayed Entry on Malaysia Trip Summer 2009 - Pt. 1

So Boy and I have gone to Malaysia and came back. And there was a lot of working, which makes days blend into each other somehow. Eh. So the Malaysia adventure wasn't too bad, all in all, since it is only a short stint and I didn't get into any massive arguments with the family in the meantime (probably because I didn't spend that much time with the family).

We ate so much in Malaysia! I came back, weighed myself and I'm 3kg heavier just from spending 10 days in Malaysia. :s Talk about non-stop eating... I had so much fun though, and I love the food! Despite looking forward to it for so long, I never did get my murtabak. *sniffles* Ah, well, there's always November. And it also means I have to hit the gym more often now that I'm back in Lincoln because Mum says she wants me to lose some weight for my brother's wedding. *sigh*

We went to Heathrow the night before the flight departs because we had to be there at 9am for check-in and there was no way we could've gotten a train down to London by 9am on a Sunday. Got a room booked with St Giles Hotel for approximately £75 (for all three of us!) and it was pretty nice. It sort of have two rooms, one with a couch-bed-converted thingy and another single bed next to it, and another room off to the side with a double bed. Both "rooms" have its own TV. All very clean and nice, and comes with toiletries that are usually absent from Travelodge and Premier Inn. Not bad for 3 people staying! They have a really nice bar downstairs too, and that was where we went for a drink and sandwiches to refresh from the long journey (a lot longer than we expected due to works being done on the Underground that meant we had to run for the replacement bus). And nice night sleeping too, so no complaint on comfort either... nothing too luxurious, but definitely value for money.

Headed off to Heathrow Airport in the morning by taxi, checked in, got breakfast and did lots of duty-free shopping for the family. I got my two older brothers a wallet each (bloody expensive wallets they are too!) and my parents and godparents Johnny Walkers, red wine and chocolates.

We endured a long 11+ hours flight to KLIA and got there at 7am and got some breakfast. Brother #2 came to pick us up at around 10am and carted us off to Midvalley Megamall for a bit of jalan-jalan. At first, he was a bit perplexed by my "British" accent, but it had no chance of surviving in Malaysia. Within 15 minutes, it was Manglish all the way.

We went home later on the same day in time for dinner, and then had a good long sleep.

Tuesday, we basically just hung around at home busy being jetlagged. And ate a lot, of course.

Wednesday, Brother #2 brought us to Kuantan for a bit of shopping because Brother #3 needed some new clothes "for work". Before actually going shopping, we went to get ourselves some air batu kacang (iced beans/nuts, literal translation), which was a bunch of mixed stuff like jelly and red beans and sweet corn and whatever with shaved ice all over the top and then drenched with condensed milk and gula melaka (coconut palm sugar) syrup. Yum.

Boy picking through his shaved his dessert.

And mine's already mixed up.

I don't think Boy was too keen on that because of the red beans because he's not used to having beans in desserts. But then I kinda understand that - I used to be very picky with what goes into my ABC too, and it's only lately that I learnt to cope with it. Preferably I would still rather not have red beans and sweetcorn in my ABC though because I think the texture is all wrong, so I can understand his tastebuds from that sense.

Afterwards, we ended up at Kamdar, and all the boys were attracted to this rack of suit jackets outside Kamdar that was selling for RM25.90, which is pretty darn cheap for a jacket! They then proceeded to spend more time indoors shopping for clothes and jackets and trousers...

We spent almost 2 hours in there!

And men said that women spend too much time shopping!

Boy came out with a fairly decent collection of a suit jacket (posher than the RM25.90 because this one costs RM180, I think!), three batik shirts for himself, his stepdad and his brother, and a shawl for his mum. Final bill was around RM280.

After the boys were done buying clothes, we went to East Coast Mall to meet up with PC for a drink and banter, and then wandered around doing some food shopping for tomorrow's trip to Genting Highlands.

Was getting a little late, but since both my parents have their own agenda for the evening's meal, Brother #2 said that it's up to us what we do for dinner. The decision was to have satay at Satay Zul, but since we weren't very hungry yet, we went to the beach for a walk instead.

Teluk Cempedak at night.

Not a lot of pictures of the beach, unfortunately, since we got there when it was so dark! And I know for a fact that Teluk Cempedak is a very pretty beach in daylight. It was nice and cool though at night, and there were a lot of small crabs about!

Thunder and lightning soon followed, so we scuttled off to Satay Zul before we were trapped in the torrential downpour. Not soon enough though! We had to run into the restaurant and find a seating for all of us, and Brother #1 was joining us as well as he works in Kuantan and would've finished work by then.

Boy had chicken satay before whilst in university sampling the Malaysian food fair (that I had to miss due to classes!), but we introduced him to beef satay this time around, which I personally prefer over chicken satay.

Beef satay with nasi himpit.

It was gorgeous! As expected, of course. Hehe.

New stuff.

Yep, so I have been super lazy with updates. It's almost a month! Where did the time go?

I've got a raise! It's starting on the 1st of August. I damned well should've gotten it ages ago, but life happened not to want to work my way sometimes. Annoying. Anyway, seeing that half the country doesn't even have a job, I suppose I should be glad that I not only retained my job, I even managed to secure a £4k/annum raise (works out to be around +£2/hour). And I am likely to get another raise in Q4 (that's January-March).

I've grown yet again so my clothes don't fit now. My red shirt that I wear for work tend to unbutton itself to reveal my bra, so that needs replacing. And I have a lot of winter jumpers which is not at all suitable for this temperature. And that leaves me with one black shirt to wear to work. Ugh. I dropped by Next and their sale was not that great. Tesco seems to have swapped all of their workwear to beachwear. So I gave up and decided to do online shopping instead. And for once I wanted to get something from Bravissimo and they seem to have not come up with any new smartwear since everything that is work-friendly that is on there seems to have at least half the sizes sold out.

So this is my stash of new clothes (if I don't decide to return them):

Think I spent around £80 altogether. But they're the cheapest smart(ish)wear I can find that is not ugly or only come in disgusting moldy green colour or comes in size 8 only. :| On another note, damn M&S models (first three) look so pale and skinny I'm almost scared for them.

Designer bracelet... huh.

Someone please tell me why would anyone wear this?

• 6 real life bugs inside
• Colour: multi
• Fabric: perspex

Surely that's not something anyone would want on their arm? Some designer things are just so fucked up...

Speaking of designer things, I've just watched Supersize vs Superskinny which is a fantastic way to make me feel absolutely normal. :P But in the same show, a woman goes to LA to investigate into the culture of size-zeros and apparently you can get designer abs surgically sculpted for you if you're willing to pay for it and suffer 8 weeks of pain! *winces*

Birthday treats

H advised me to treat myself to a pair of sexy heels. Unfortunately, I don't have many places to wear heels to. So I spent the money on buying lingerie. :P

In 25 years, I've never had matching undergarments before. :P Or pretty ones, even... I've always bought sensible, plain T-shirt bras for everyday use. Mainly due to cost as well, because pretty bras tend to cost more, and matching shorts or thongs are usually around £9-£15 a pair. And I always have to either go to specialty stores or online because department stores, La Senza, Ann Summers, Agent Provocateur all don't do my size. :( Neither does Victoria Secrets, but that's pointless anyway since there doesn't seem to be any VS stores here. Hehe.

So I treated myself this time with some of the pretty bras on "up to 50%" sale at Figleaves. Ordered it less than 48 hours ago and they arrived today morning, w00t!

The pink one is from Vanity Fair range, black one is from Midnight Grace range, and the chocolate one is from Pour Moi? range. The nicest one, I think, is the Vanity Fair set. It's so cute and girlie and very comfortable on as well. All in all, good buys, methinks. All of them fit really well too, so no complaints (was a bit nervous about the VF set because VF is an American company, cup sizing can differ with UK sizing quite dramatically). If I have the money, I'd get another VF set. Hehe.

If you're wondering why I did not order it from my usual favourite online store Bravissimo, their estimated delivery at the moment (peak summer season) is 10-14 days for a lot of their catalogue! I won't be here in 10-14 days, I'll be in Malaysia! It's a pity though, because I had my eye on a couple of those pretty dresses they have...

So how did the rest of the day went? I opened my birthday cards yesterday and it was awesome. Got £40 from Boy's parents, which was very nice of them since I wasn't expecting anything. Boy got me a card and a teddy. Say hello to the latest addition to the menagerie:

Went to the post office to collect the overdue post (eBay seller got on my nerves, took 6 weeks to dispatch an item to me!), then to the bank to cash in a cheque from Cex (where I sold my old phones and some DVDs), and then to Co-op to buy ingredients to make myself a birthday cake.

I know, why am I making my own birthday cake? Shouldn't someone else do it for me? Well, I like baking, and I haven't had the chance or the excuse to do so for a long time. So I'm seizing this opportunity to brush up on my skills and use Brother #3 and Boy as guinea pigs. Plus, homemade means you can add stuff like alcohol and extra chocolate chips that bakery tend not to do!

Had a lot of fun mixing the batter, knowing that it will turn out to be some chocolatey goodness after spending some time in the oven. Here's the result of my "fun":

Double Chocolate Brownie Cake

I didn't get chocolate fudge to ice the cake because I thought we a) don't need all those extra calories and b) it will be too sickly, especially since I added extra cocoa and chocolate chunks in the cake (as well as almond slices and 1/2 cup Mint Bailey's). I dusted the whole cake with crushed hazelnut and icing sugar to hide the massive cracks in the cake. XD This is the first cake I've baked in years! It didn't turn out too badly, very rich and moist even without fudge icing. It's just the cracks, really, that is the problem that ruined the presentation. I know what I did wrong - I was lazy to cook it in two batches so I decided to use all the cake batter in one 9" pan and overfilled it. Tasted great though! The whipped cream was a bit weird as well - I really should've chilled the can and the cake before I started decorating it, but oh well. Lesson learnt!

Brother #3 and Boy seemed to like the cake, which is good, because Boy is usually not a cake person and I don't think he ate any of his own birthday cake (was there one?). I know he wasn't keen on his brother's birthday cake either when we went and bought the cake from M&S last time. We still have 5/8 of the cake in the fridge though, and Boy said, "I feel fatter just opening the fridge and looking at it."

Roffle.

Birthday photo with Boy!

Went to Ask for food tonight again like last time, am a bit disappointed with it, but oh well. Service was good as usual, but my calzone was burnt at the bottom! :( But pics of food that we had tonight:

Half-eaten starter to share...

Boy's food, at my recommendation. Pollo de la Casa or something like that.

Brother #3's food, spaghetti with tomato and black pepper and basil or something like that.

And my calzone, as before, but worse this time around. :(

Ah well, nevermind. Life eh? The waitress was kind enough to tell us that they do have 2-for-1 vouchers online, but I don't actually remember the name of the site she mentioned. Oops.

Anyway, last bit of camwhoring as I tend to do:

Why am I not rich? :(

Jonathan Kelsey Decoy Peep Toe Shoe

So pretty. I want. :( Unfortunately, it's £195 (down from original RRP of £429).

Spaghetti Carbonara

I love spaghetti carbonara. ^^ It's bacon and egg spaghetti, what's not to like? It's certainly not fat-free though, or particularly low in calories. But since we usually already have most of the ingredients, it tends to be quite convenient to make.

Here's one version that I quite like making, that adds chicken into the mix.

NB: I did not make this today - it was Boy's turn to cook. He made barbecue chicken melt, which was gorgeous. This is just something I made a few days ago and just didn't get around posting about it.

INGREDIENTS
150g spaghetti
2 eggs
1 square inch block of parmesan cheese, grated or chopped
1/2 a small onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, peeled and minced
4 slices of back bacon
1 chicken breast fillet
white wine
olive oil
ground black pepper


METHOD

Chop the onions finely and slice the bacon into "chunks". Dice the chicken breast into small chunks too if wanted (tastes nicer, but I didn't have it on me at the time of taking the photos).

Cook spaghetti according to instructions until al-dente.

Whilst the spaghetti is cooking, beat the eggs in bowl and mix in grated parmesan cheese. Put egg and cheese mixture aside.

Drain spaghetti, then drizzle with olive oil and toss to coat. Put aside.

Put some olive oil into a pot on medium heat. Add chopped onion (and minced garlic, unfortunately not pictured) and stirfry until onion is translucent.

Add chopped bacon and stirfry until bacon is cooked and simmering in bacon fat (if using, also add diced chicken breast and stirfry until cooked). Add a dash of white wine and cook for another minute.

Season generously with ground black pepper.

Add cooked spaghetti into the pot and toss to mix and heat through, adding olive oil if it seems too dry or sticky.

Once it is heat through and steaming hot, remove from heat completely and add egg-cheese mixture into the pot, tossing to coat thoroughly. The heat from the spaghetti will cook the egg mixture and melt the cheese into a smooth, creamy sauce.

Serve immediately.

A Malaysian's attempt at Lancashire Hot Pot

For those who had been reading my Facebook messages, you probably know that I was talking about trying to make Lancashire hot pot, despite never been to Lancashire and never having it before. Well, here's the result:

Lancashire hot pot... not in a pot!

Served with steamed buttered veggies.

It was pretty good, but still doesn't beat the deliciousness that is the honey and mustard slow-cooked leg of lamb!

But speaking of Facebook, you can also now finally view the photos from the Tunisia trip on my Facebook page. I know it's ages late, but give this girl a break! :P We did have a whole lot of fun on quad bikes whilst we were there, and Boy did get a free lapdance from a belly dancer on his 21st birthday. Hehe.