Look Ma, I'm Flying!

My flight to Ireland and back to Malaysia from London has been a tremendously tedious one. I took a 6 hours flight to Dubai for transit 6 hours and took another 7 hour flight from Dubai to London. From London I took an hour's flight to Ireland. After that, I went to London from Ireland for 5 days and the flight back was an 11 hours direct flight back to Malaysia! O_o

Total plane hours: 25 hours

Tiny seat + Distraught face

Oh, the tv set that saved my life. The best thing ever invented!

Taken on my flight from Dubai to London. I watched a touching movie on the way to Dubai so my eyes were swollen after extreme sobbing.

Dubai airport

What do you do when you're dead tired, you still have 6 hours to wait and there's no place to rest?

Baskin Robbins and Dunkin Donuts best combination!

They have Cinnabon in Dubai!?

Has anyone tasted Mint Chocolate Bailey's before? Sounds delicious! I was so tempted to buy a bottle but it's USD22!

Walking around the airport with terribly swollen eyes. All worth the horrendous look for P.S. I Love You.

Oh oh oh, I must tell you the story of this bottle of mineral water!

I was very very thirsty so I went to Dubai tax free shop to buy a bottle of water (-____- everybody was buying gadgets, chocolates and liquer). But I didn't have small denominations and the cashier lady gave it to me for FREE!!!!! :DDDDDD I love Dubai!

Getting ready to fly!

Have you seen a city in the desert? I present you: DUBAI (sky view)!

Ladies and gentlemen, Dubai the desert city!

Agriculture in a desert!

Dubai highways from sky view

Below are some photos I took throughout my journey to London. Don't blame me, it's quite boring in the plane. Behold!

Cloud Kingdom

Snow Mountain

Shadow of a cloud near the Lake

The mountains I flew by somewhere in the Middle East

I love this.

Conclusion: The sights were great, but I'm dreading the next flight back.

Gratuitous Cake from Arya

Due to foreseen circumstances, I had to let go some students whom I've been teaching for about a year. What do I teach? I teach them to play the piano.

I've never thought of teaching kids to play the piano when I picked up that instrument since I was about 5 years old. I wouldn't say I was a good piano player either. I think what brought me so far was the fact that I did spend a lot of money and time to get through my exams and suddenly one day I just found myself achieving my LCM diploma. That was two years ago.

Not long after I've received the news that I've passed my diploma, I decided to give teaching a try. I was not sure how I could actually start teaching but I tried my luck at a Yamaha school and the principle (Peony) offered me a position as a part-time piano teacher.

Teaching has been quite a different experience for me. Kids are not easy to teach, it requires patience and creativity. Really. But it is very satisfying when my students acquire good results for their exams and they always give me pretty gifts (one of my students baked me a ginger bread man during christmas, another gave me chocolates, mandarin oranges etc, some of them give me cards and say thank you). It's not the gift that matters, it's the appreciation. And I loved it.

So, here I am, receiving a cake from this little girl whom I've taught for about a year or so. Her mom bakes really nice cakes and she even has a website for those interested to order them from her. Our last class was in May 2008 and one fine day, right before an exam paper, my little student came over and gave me a newly baked cake and a hand drawn card. Boy, it was a pleasant surprise!

Thank you Arya and Sumi for the cake!

The card: isn't it lovely?

I am going to miss you too.

Pretty leh~

Cake from all angles

I'm so excited and so touched I can't stop taking pictures to keep this in my memory forever.

Cutting the cake

Besides eating the cake, I also took "thousands" of pictures of the cake. Be patient with my photography skills... it's just a humble consumer camera (my first birthday present from Bf 2 years ago) and I'm no professional...

The icing flowers

Oh, I like these pearls...

More pearls! (I took one of them and munched...wee!)

It's a chocolate cake!

Check out Sumi's website for more cakes!

Soho @ One Utama (half price)

This is the place I've always wanted to introduce to everybody out there. If you love dim sum. You have to come here. If you love half price delicious dim sum, you have to come here on weekdays 2.30-5.30pm (not quite sure it's 5 or 5.30pm actually).

"Sun G Yi" - Soho

Soho is situated in One Utama (old wing) near the entrance to One World Hotel. It's very near Jusco. It's actually quite pricy if you come during normal hours. The restaurant has a unique design. Each chair has a face drawn on it and the entire place is mainly white in colour.

You'll find some of these hung decorations have signatures of celebrities

The menu: read from the yellow list. Some of the price in the menu book is not correct.

Soho has very nice chinese green tea. Highly recommended is the "Bi Luo Chun". I like their little glass cups. It's quite tiny! The waitresses are very attentive too. Once you're comfortably seated, they bring you some light tit bits (but it's charged to the bill) of carrots, cucumbers and some crispy-thingy-that-I'm-not-sure-what-it-is-till-now.

Tea pot and glass cups. A picture to prove that Bf has lousy tea pouring skills :p

I like the crispy thingy and the cucumbers :q

So, while chewing and munching your tit bits, go through the menu carefully. Just pick anything you like from the menu. Don't order too much. I know because it happens to me everytime I'm there. I just kept ordering because everything looks damn nice! And at the end of the day, bloated tummy and skinny purse again :(

I will recommend some of my favourite dishes below and you MUST try it! *get ready to drool*

"Liu Sha Bao" (sorry I don't remember the exact name for this)

This is orgasmic! Highly extremely recommended! Oh you just have to taste it! We even "da bao" some home after that... :D (but no half price for take aways)

Okay, I don't know what this is called. I know it's fried prawns with mayonnaise in it.

And it's yummilicious! :q

Crispy Pineapple Custard Bun (this is quite nice but not my favourite though)

"Xiu Mai" - my all time favourite (but the ones here are so so)

Prawn Chee Cheong Fun

Oh this is very smooth and nice but a bit too oily... *fat fat fat*

Aha! Everybody should know what this is: "Siu Long Bao"!

From my experience in eating Siu Long Bao, I've picked up some skills as to how to devour this tricky "Siu Long Bao" without wasting any bit of the soup and not spilling it all over the place. This skill is taught by my "sifu" - Lyssa :D And today, I'm going to share this useful skill with you! Remember to put it into good use. Practice makes perfect mah (good excuse to visit Soho again).

1. Pick up a "Siu Long Bao" as light as possible and place it on your spoon. Be careful not to hold it too tight or it might burst. Be gentle and firm.
2. Now, bite of the top part of the dumpling. Don't bite the hole too big or the soup will drip out. Just a little hole and use the chopsticks to hold up the skin in case it breaks.
3. Suck the soup out like a pro! :q (this is my favourite part)
4. Now that it's dry, you can eat the dumpling safely :D
   

Wrong way to eat the dumpling. Fail.

Honey Dew Melon Sago Cream

I like sago. But I don't quite like the milky taste...

Doesn't this seat reminds you of nuffnang's live animal party?

Mind you, this bill is not the total price for all the food I recommended above. It's just part of it but you can roughly gauge how much it will cost you.

My Cowardly Dog

What do you call a dog that's very afraid of thunder and lighting?

I call it the Chicken Dog.

It sneaked into the house when dad accidentally left the door open because it was raining.

The rain got heavier and the lightning was striking furiously outside. It got even more afraid and decided that this place beside my piano seemed like a safer place.

Shifted from the shoe cabinet to my piano place

It was still frightened and wanted to find another hiding place. I didn't want it to dirty the house and thought of a great idea:

I covered it with an old cloth so it can hide "safely" under it. Yup, it was quite complacent after that :D

Ironman Sequel Confirmation

Finally, I've watched the highly recommended, long awaited Ironman.

It's was a good movie. Very much my kind of movie. Very cool, very macho, lots of awesome techonology and funny scenes without the usual boring superhero storyline. It's a good thing that everybody told me to wait till the credits end for a sneak peak, confirming that a sequel is to be expected.

So, while waiting 10 long minutes for all that bla bla bla to end, what do I do?

*narcissism alert again*

Yea, I took pictures with my faithful w800i

Most of it is just as blur because I was using night vision and my hands were shaky due to excitement

Besides cam whoring, I also began talking out loud with Bf and a few guys nearby also waited as I did. I think I talked to loud and they also heard that there's a special ending... :D

"So you think you're the only superhero?" -Nick Fury, Leader of SHEILDS.