Love Makes A Family

[Backdated entry from last year]

After marriage two years back, I visit my family about once or twice a week. Each time I head home, I may not get to see everyone as not every member would be around. We have this unspoken rule of eating together or simply meeting up as a family during birthdays so that would be the time I get to see everyone.


~*Mummy's Birthday*~

My eldest sister bought a fruit cake for my mum's birthday and we all rushed home to cut the cake before 12 midnight.




My pretty mummy looked so happy!




My dad always looks very sleepy when taking photos so I would remind him to open his eyes bigger before I snap.




One-year-old mummy happily blowing out the candle after making a wish. After she blew, she turned and asked my dad why didn't he blow the candle with her. lol




Obligatory family portrait




My mummy says, "Come, let me take photo with my 'son'."
Hence, I backed off and she went, "Eh, what are you doing? I want to take photo with my daughter too."
Hence, I crawled back into the scene and squeezed myself in between.




My dad had a new interest at that time -- playing Angry Birds.

He got to know of that game from my eldest sister and played it very well on her iPad despite not having his far-sighted glasses on. This time, he spied kh's iPad and played it with his glasses on. The end result was that he did not play it as well as without his glasses on. I took a few cute videos of my dad playing Angry Birds which I would not share it here on my blog. They are up on Facebook though so my friends could view them there.



My mum joined in too even though both of them quipped that the game was very 无聊 (wu liao) which translates to "lame".

Me thinks they are really cute!


Outfit of the day:
Polka dot blouse from fleurfaerie


~~~


~*Daddy and Jie Jie's Birthday*~

A month later, we celebrated my dad and my eldest sis' birthday at Soup Restaurant. Their birthdays fall two days apart and hence we always hold the celebration together.






Yummy yummy Chinese food!




Another obligatory family portrait sans hubby who was out at seas then.




Before the family dinner, my eldest sister met up with her friends for her advanced birthday celebration and they got her Angry Birds soft toys. She felt that the soft toys suited my dad more since he was crazy over Angry Birds at that time.





Outfit of the day:
Cap sleeve lace top from fleurfaerie


~~~


~*Jie Jie's Birthday*~




Nope, the answer isn't the annoying green pig but the cake among the plushies.




On my sister's actual birthday, her good friend bought her an Angry Bird cake and so  I was summoned home to partake in the cake cutting ceremony as a family.




My dad is really cute. He clucked his tongue at me when I was snapping the cake with the plushies. Deeming them too untidy, he hurriedly arranged the plushies.
Hmm... I hope the anigif below is showing on your screen.




When my mummy joined in the following shots, I shooed her away saying, "Mummy... not your birthday leh!"

She obviously didn't care and even blew the candle with my daddy and my sister. lol




And the final family portrait of this post.




"We cannot destroy kindred: our chains stretch a little sometimes, but they never break." -- Marquise de Sévigné
I often get people telling me how envious they are of me having such a great family. Well, all families have their ups and downs, and of course most normal human beings would not choose to air their dirty laundry out in the open. Likewise like many other families, my family is like all the best families, having their fair share of eccentricities, of impetuous and wayward youngsters and of family disagreements. However, I always believe that “other things may change us, but we start and end with family”.

August Babies Birthday at Shashlik Restaurant

Yup, you've read correctly. It is "August" as I'm perpetually updating backdated entries.

For HS and WY's birthday last August, the F4 gang met up at Shashlik Restaurant after work. The restaurant which is located at Far East Shopping Centre, serves traditional Russian and continental cuisine.

As per every meet up, Em as usual was the one who suggested eateries we could check out. Most of the time we would not have heard of those places she suggested, only to be immersed in good food/good ambience once we were there. This time round, we were all familiar with Shashlik for we heard and read good reviews about this place.




Shashlik is famous for their borsch soup and we ordered 2 bowls to share. The thick soup came with a generous helping of chunks of beef, carrot and potato as well as shreds of cabbage and onions. A dollop of sour cream was added on top of the soup for extra creaminess.

We could not help taking pictures of us with the warm, soft and fluffy bread that went with the soup.




Em was telling us that she read about how the restaurant was set up in 1986 by 9 Hainanse migrants in 1986 after being laid off at Russian restaurant Troika and that the menu had remained the same for the past twenty years. [text information taken from a HGW review by stargirl]


Here are all of us with our mains.



My Beef Shashlik looked kind of bare and naked right? That is because the photo was snapped before the sides were added onto the hotplate. If you don't already know, Shashlik is a form of shish kebab aka skewered meat. In this case, the meat was removed from the skewer onto the hotplate by the server upon serving.


We also ordered appetizers (which I could not remember their names) to share.




Even though the restaurant is famous for their Shashlik, we were not too pleased with the meat served that evening. The beef was a little overcooked or maybe because I did not eat it quick enough as it sizzled on the hotplate. Another possible explanation could be my love for medium rare steaks. The chicken smelled really funky; it was as if the meat had been stored in the freezer for too long. Em thought she was being fussy but the 4 of us tasted the meat and agreed. When we politely gave our feedback to one of the older female staff, she seemed annoyed and insisted that the meat smelled fine. Other than the meat, we weren't too pleased with the service.


Everyone asserts that Shashlik has got the best Baked Alaskan ever and of course we just had to try it out. It was really interesting to watch the waiter preparing the dessert in front of us. I'm sure the boy sitting diagonally across our table found it interesting too.




We also ordered Banana Flambé to share.




After eating, it was time for presents and cards presentation! The pre-presentation phase for this group of gal pals is always the most hilarious. The 4 of us usually would not have time to meet prior to the actual meet up. Hence, we had to write our well wishes on the birthday card(s) on the meeting day itself while the birthday girl(s) sit around and try not to peek. This time round, Em bought the gifts while I settled the cards.


HS and WY were obviously delighted at having received 3 cards each.




Of course, Em had a great sense of humour when writing on the gift card tag.




I love you gals!




Even the "non-birthday" gals got to take home something-- interesting egg tart flavoured Collon and shark's fin flavoured Pretz from HS.

Draw Something Part 2 -- The Hubby Series

After sharing a video of the various types of players in the popular mobile app Draw Something in my earlier post, I said I would come up with a list of my own too. That would come later for I will be sharing my hubby's drawings in this post.

Before I showcase his drawings, I have to say that my hubby is someone who can't draw for nuts. Similar to his very neat and slow manner in writing, he takes a long time to draw too. In fact, he looks just like he is practising his penmanship skills on worksheets when he draws on his iPad. It is really cute to see how serious he looks when drawing.

Another thing to note is that he draws on his iPad 2 with matt screen protector and 90% of Draw Something players would be able to draw faster than him with such sophisticated equipment with a big screen to boot. I, on the other hand, draw on iPhone 4s glossy screen protector. We both draw using our index finger (no stylus). There was once I helped him to draw and I was amazed by the speed and beauty of the picture drawn using index finger on the huge and matt surface. After that, I kept teasing him for taking such a long time to draw with my pet phrase: "I could have drawn that in a few seconds if I had your iPad."

After many rounds of stick figures, kh's drawing improved tremendously. I can't say the same for his speed. I often fall asleep watching his payback while guessing.


He no longer drew stick figures after hitting Round 30 something.


This is an excellent piece of drawing from him, only that he didn't have enough coins to buy more colours at that time.




Stick figure no more!




I noticed that he tends to draw all males to look like him. Don't you think this Glee boy looks like him?






Even his "dracula" reminded me of him. I suspect he was really drawing himself here as this looks like his 2009 Halloween get up sans fangs.




To the hubs, his ideal car wash is having bikini-clad babes wash his car. *rolls eyes*




Due to the fact that Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader are difficult characters to draw, he resorted to his old stick figure manner of drawing.




I must say this is creative and I started using his method of drawing "yield" too.




Playing with sound again, this got me cracking.




He really believes he is very funny.



He took 10mins to draw this and I almost fell asleep but this time I almost fell asleep without knowing the answer.




The trouble he took to draw this word!




You know, you could still be bad at drawing and play Draw Something for all you need is to capture the salient feature of the word. The pipe here did the trick. It was easy to guess the answer though I waited to see his final masterpiece.






I've seen many people drawing "wedding" but none who drew the wedding cake.




Kh decided to be funny here.



Kh: You would be able to guess the next one very quickly but I insist you watch till the end.
Jo: *rolls eyes*



Yawn...



This part got me laughing like crazy.








Conan could never be represented by a stick figure with all the muscles and bulk.




This is drawn by me. I had to snap this to show our telepathy. Just with those few strokes, he guessed "Lady Gaga". Telepathic (有默契) or plain figuring out from available letters? I'm not so sure.



Yeah yeah. I know we should avoid writing words in Draw Something but I was afraid he did not know this hairstyle of Lady Gaga as he is rather ill-informed about the entertainment scene.




I feel so ashamed that I often frequent Tumblr sites for inspirational photos and yet I thought this logo was Twitter. I was surprised kh knew. "Oh, I googled it" was his reply.




Kh attempted to be hilarious and creative.



First it was red dots, then came the blue dots.



M&Ms?





EMINEM!



This reminded me of a joke.

Brain: I love eminem
Pinky: The candy?
Brain: No, the rapper
Pinky: What's so cool about M&M wrappers?


The next three drawings depict how capturing the salient points is important in Draw Something when you can't actually draw.








Emergence of bad drawing: This is a sea lion or seal snorting mucus out.




Telepathy (有默契) yet again? No actually it is plain figuring.




When you draw with an iPad, you could draw those little sun rays in Taiwan's flag. I had to resort to dots and lines on my iPhone.




And finally for the 99th streak, he did this.



~~~

After we hit the 99th streak (before the upgrade and hence remained at 99 back then), we started choosing words to draw and we spent a lot more effort drawing for each other.

You could definitely tell how much effort he put into this "spinach" as compared to the one before.






Remember his "Conan"? He loves to read the Chinese version of Detective Conan Japanese manga comic so I drew him Conan the detective instead of Conan the Barbarian. Just do a Google search, click on "image" and you would see a lot more Conan the detective as opposed to Conan the Barbarian.


Disclaimer: The "Conan" you see here was drawn using my friend's drawing as a reference. Using a reference drawing as a reference, it may not look 100% like the actual character in the comic. 


He definitely put in more effort in his animals.




And his food too...
His pancakes look delicious.




I put in more effort in my animals too! And even included messages for him.







I was trying to do a rendition of Puss in Boots here but failed.




Me trying to be funny.



He took some time colouring the whole screen black and claimed that Macbook has to be white.



Please ensure that you are 18 years and above before scrolling down for the next drawing.

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I almost could not guess this! wtf






In his very last drawing after more than a month of stopping, he tried very hard to be funny. I didn't find it funny though. He was tired of drawing the New York basketball jersey bearing the number 17.