Merry Christmas 2007!

Merry Christmas everyone! Spent Christmas eve actually shopping for nursery paint in Lowes, it was a wonderful feeling to not bump into everyone and their brothers trying to panic shop at the very last minute! Lowes was actually a ghost town, compared to the other big name retailers like W-Mart across the street, where cars were lining up to find a parking spot!
Interesting thing about paint these days, is that they have a special no "VOC" version, which apparently baby-safe. I guess those years of licking paint off my wall in Klang didn't do much for my intelligence then.... ;)

Christmas Day lunch, we hung out in another ghost town. This time at the Plaza. Other than M&S Grill, which we had reservations for, I don't think any other place had their front doors unlocked. Just like Thanksgiving dinner, it was nice for Christmas luncheon to not have to worry about cooking and cleaning up. Food at M&S wasn't too bad, but the waiter dude really seemed like he partied a little too hard on Christmas Eve, and he seemed a little snippy too cos we ordered some large portions to share... Looks like someone might have got some coal in their socks this year! Here's a picture of yours truly after sneaking in some sriRacha sauce on my fish and chips! BTW, the Sriracha sauce was really for our main event later....

After food, we adjourned to Clarice's place for her annual popiah party (REAL FOOD). It was really really good. As usual, I put too much filling in my Malaysian-Burrito, so had to double-bag the popiah most of the time. Too bad we didn't get any pictures, too busy eating to worry about that!

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Studying for a test

"Should I have cheesecake tonight?", she asked. "Probably not a good idea leh, with your test coming up. Gotta study for it right?", i replied smugly... It was balmy and cold Thursday night, a far cry from her special extra day in warm and sunny San Francisco, and more importantly the eve of the dreaded pregnancy diabetes drink test.
For the uninitiated, the next day, we were due for Yeesin's first pregnancy diabetes test. It was a very simple sugar drink that she had to consume 1 hr before her OB appointment where they would draw some blood to test her sugar level. If you "fail" that one, they you get the pleasure of having to go to a 5 hour long test, which from what Terri and Clarice tell us, is NOT FUN at all.
So, on the eve of the test, we have had 2+ days of eating with austerity, no KFC, no Mickey D's, and most definitely no cheesecake! Frankly, studying for this test was no fun at all! At least in school, we could chomp on oily and sweet stuff while cramming for exams!
Results come out next week, so crossing our fingers!

* UPDATE - 12/27 and counting... No call yet from the doctor... I think we passed!

Ice Ice Baby + Bach'ing It

Its that time of year in KC again, where instead nice flurry snowflakes, we get honking loads of ice!!! As usual, the all the local TV stations have sold this as the storm of the century, as everyone clamors to come up with an adjective even more fear inspiring than the other guy in front of the weatherman/woman blue screens. This is Jermain to this blog because Yeesin had another quick business trip to Sunny San Francisco, and as a result of this huge Midwestern Ice Storm was stranded over there today when her flight was cancelled!




So, while the rest of KC is enjoying the picture on the left, she gets to stay another day in Sunny SF, to enjoy this other picture on the right! So when the weather handed her a flight cancellation lemon, she made some shopping lemonade strolling the stores around Union Square today. Our little trooper was lucky enough to meet with another fellow peapod buddy [pregnant lady] and they spent the day shopping at GAP, and hanging out in general... :)


So, again i'm hanging out with Benji tonight, or as my co-workers call it - Bach'ing it. Tired of Mickey D's and KFC already, so I'm going to try something dangerous, and cook some curry chicken. Now for those of you that know me from college will probably remember my famous (or rather infamous) baked curry ala barbecue sauce chicken! One of my most prized recipes both for is rich flavor and more importantly for its ease of cooking, I was tempted to recreate this masterpiece tonight. Actually, i decided against it. (I can some people sighing in relief when they read this). Instead, I'm going to try Curry Chicken the normal way, with an instant packet..... If I make it through to post next week, you'll know that my stomach survived the trauma of cooking for myself. Until then... I'll be missing my BOO who is stuck in San Francisco!


* UPDATE - Weds. Yeesin's back safely in KC, and my stomach survived! YA!!!!!!

Birthday Weekend @ Las Vegas

Happy Birthday Yeesin! Actually, this past weekend had me posting bits and pieces of this Blog from our Las Vegas Caesar's Palace room while waiting for Yeesin to gets out on break from her week long class over here. Basically, I played tag along this weekend since she had a class here and it was also her birthday weekend.

Flying in took longer than expected, rain storms hitting Las Vegas. Raining in the desert is kinda like Snow in Texas.... it screwed up traffic, on the ground AND in the air. So, we had to sit in Denver for a 4 hr delay while Las Vegas airport was shut down to just one runway for the rains.... Still, the delays were long enough to make the rest of the night more exciting! We had tickets to Zumanity at 10.30pm, but we landed at 9pm. Yeesin was chatting with a guy in the next aisle and managed to score us a limousine ride to the hotel to save us some time....


9.45pm, arrived at the hotel, standing in line to check in. Funny how you never seem to get a short line when you're going to be late for something? 10.00pm, finally get our room key, but discover that the room is like 10 minutes walk away from the reception desk. BTW, we forgot how huge these Vegas hotels are. 10.21pm, finally at the Taxi stand, got a cab and off to New York New York hotel. 10.28pm, at the WILL CALL line got our Tickets! PHEW!!! 10.30pm sharp! in our seats, in the 2nd row in front of the stage. SWEET! Guess if we missed the show we would be so kicking ourselves.... 11pm halfway through the show, we notice people still coming in late, and taking their time to get to their seats... So much for the drama earlier. Note to self, next time we can take it easy to get to any Vegas shows, apparently they don't take their mandatory attendance 1 hr BEFORE the show very seriously!



Its been 4 years since we've been to Vegas, so I forgot how good the casinos are at taking your money. With the flashy blinking lights, and the happy sounding "ding ding ding", the siren call of the machines just lull you into playing them. $5 basically lasts about 5 minutes if you're not careful. We watched while YS's co-worker started with $20 in a penny machine, and after a couple of wins, got sucked to into betting higher, and was up $100 after only 10 minutes! After that peak though, @ $3.00s per bet, she was in danger of losing it all. Luckily she had a system where she took out her winnings and put a portion back into the machine... if not that $100 and the original $20 would have been gone in a flash! Gotta hand it to the Casinos, they are really good at what they do... :)


Penny slots are good for something though, a good way to get comp'ed drinks...While I personnaly didn't have a lucky gene in my entire body, i figured out how to work the system. So, my best business plan was to play $1-2 worth of 1 cent slots, and order any mixed drink that I want, after a $1 tip... VOILA! a $3 drink. AWESOME!



The rest of the weekend, we spent just walking around the rest of the Strip. Not much has changed on the Strip since our last visit here immediately after our wedding, so didn't do much major sightseeing. Did get a chance to stroll by Paris Paris, the Venetian, and the sights around Caesar's Palace, so got to relive some of our Euro vacations from a few years ago. Check out this side by side shot of Venice vs the Venetian! [Hint, the one in Vegas has a casino in the background - The Mirage!]

Sitting @ McClaren, waiting for my plane now. I get back to KC first, while Yeesin gets to hang out in Vegas for a couple more days in Vegas for her class... Happy LV Weekend Yeesin!