Oh...Canada..Eh!

Left for Buffalo, NY bright and early last Saturday morning at 5am in the morning for a weekend in NY State and Ontario. Got to Buffalo by lunch to hang out with our High School Buddies. Yes, both our buddies, Chee Ming is from Penang, and William is from Klang! How cool/weird is that, to have high school buddies in the same area 10,000 miles from Malaysia!

Spent that evening at the American side of the Niagara Falls waiting for Fireworks. Alas, no fireworks, and the mist around the around combined with the 40 degree weather didn't help either... At least we had great company to keep us warm though! Did get some nice night shots of the Falls, which were "spotlighted" from over the Canadian side.



Next morning, our first conversation we had with the Canadian Border Patrol was err.. weird.

Me: (Happy/Chipper, holding out our travel documents)... Hi!
Canadian BP : (Monotone) Country of Citizenship....
Me: Malaysian
CBP : (Monotone) Status in the United States...
Me: Permanent Resident
CDP: Where are you going in Canada?
Me: (Rambling cheerfully) Oh, the first day, we are going to Ontario-By-the Lake to see wineries, then we are going to stay overnight at a B&B, then the second night we are (*Suddenly cut off by CBP.*)
CBP : (Not impressed, abit pissed & impatient) . How many days?
Me : Err... 2 nights, we are driving back through here 2 days from now, then leaving (*cut off again*)
CBP: (Still pissed & tired) GO...

Felt a little cheated actually, to have almost no hassle going over to Canada, especially after being used to the process coming into America... I guess the Canadians do it slightly differently!

When we got to the B&B, we were informed that we were the only people that booked it for the night, we had the whole 4 bedroom cottage to ourselves! (Really handy for the me, the ah-pek to walk down in my underwear to microwave leftovers in the wee-hours of the morning!) Also a great reason to be messy BTW. :) Anyway, moving along... Our Wine tour guide picked us up from the B&B at about 1pm that day, and off we went! 1/2 hour later, we were bundled into the SUV with 2 other Canadian couples, off to the wineries.


Its interesting how people get friendlier the more alchohol we consume! We rode in silence to the 1st winery, but by the 2nd one, we were sharing crackers, by the 3rd one we were stealing crackers! By the last one, we were engaged in deep political conversations about Canadian healthcare without any prior knowledge! Here's a shot of Yeesin playing around with the Oak barrels in one of the wine cellars! Did we have fun? Yep. Well, when we were dropped off about 5 hrs later at the B&B, with about 7 bottles of wine boxed up! Didn't have any concerns of how to bring them up to the plane until much later!

Break out the Cycles

Saturday morning was pretty chilly, but with Elaine's Beau being out of town in Houston this weekend, we though that we'd do something together in town with her. Don't know how cycling came up, but we woke up early (10ish - REALLY EARLY for us) to find a local jogging/riding trail near Elaine's place, and just go biking... I loaded up the MDX with both our bikes at 11am, and off we went!

Fast forward about 1/2 later... We are deep into the trail, about 5 miles in, and I'm trying to take a picture of us with my camera phone while cycling at the same time! I defintely have lost my cycling license (Defined by the ability to cycle hands-free) since my high-school days! So the best I could do was to hang back and take a shot from a slighly "different" angle... 5 more miles later, we are tired and hungry, and slightly cold from the chilly wind.

Cycling is really fun until you get tired, your crotch hurts, and you are hungry for lunch. Then after that you wonder why you didn't slap an a motor on the bicyle and just cruise around the trail, asking those slowpokes who stand in between our lunch to get out of the way!!... But maybe then again, it defeats the purpose of the exercise... EVERYONE knows that exercise is so that we can EAT MORE!!! :)

Happy Cinco De Mayo!

Happy Cinco De Mayo! For CDM, we hung out with Elaine and Kyle in Downtown KC! It just happened to be First Friday's in KC (First Fridays is where the Art Galleries in the downtown Arts District open up to the public and some of them have complementary drinks too!). It takes a lot of motivation to drive from Suburbia 30 minutes to Downtown so what we learnt is that liquor art is it! 15 more minutes spent parking, and reminding me why I don't like driving in downtown later, we were stolling along the streets looking for galleries...
In 2nd Gallery we struck paydirt! The ladies got themselves Chardonnay & Shiraz while Kyle and myself got Coronas in cememoration of CDM! Apparently they felt wronged that we got entire Corona bottles worth of drinks, while they had trendy half-filled styrofoam cups with wine... So much for quality over quantity... Oh yeah, the gallery had very nice art too. Actually, the more we drank, the better the pieces looked! Klye even took the time to bid on a painting, a very cool looking crayola piece.
There were also lots of nice looking lofts overlooking the galleries, and a very artsy atmosphere with tons of people strolling around on the streets below... Ahh..how nice to be able to afford a place like this to stay in on the weekends! BTW, how much does urban bohemian living cost? To find out we explored a couple of loft units in downtown as well...They run from the 100's to the upper 700's. Yep, thats in thousands, and not counting home owners association dues that may cost up to $600-$800 more a month. Now, that's a chuck of change!!!
At about 9'ish the galleries were closed, and we were dry. We capped off the night at our favorite Spanish restaurant downtown - La Bodega! Its in the Spanish section of downtown, with some nice tables on the sidewalk overlooking the street. 2 pitchers of White and Red Sangrias + about 9 orders of tapas later...Here's a couple of pictures of us at that place. The weather was a bit nippy, but overall it was dry, so we sat outside and hung out till about midnight... Who would have thought Art would be so much fun!

The Olathe Chilli Crab Night!

Woohoo! Crabs are back at the Neighborhood Loatian grocery store in the "hood" of Olathe! Actually, John (the owner) has been selling crabs for a while already, its just that its been awhile since we made the 10 minute drive to his store to pick them up. So yesterday we picked up about six of some angry fighting crabs to "invite" for a nice dinner. 15 minutes after coming home, I was in the backyard introducing them to my Chinese Cleaver & chopping board. There's no better way of guaranteeing freshness than that!

In no time, our "little buddies" were settled comfortably on our dining table with spiced with Yeesin's special homemade Chilli Crab recipe! Cholestorol levels aside, we had a blast! Here's a quick before/after shot. It sure makes weekdays easier to go through when you have GREAT food to look forward to!

I'll make you banana pancakes

Taking inspiration from Jack Johnson's Banana Pancake song, I decided that a rainy Saturday morning was the best occasion to play cook for the morning, and *drumroll*... make Banana Pancakes! It was a serene but wet morning, with the pitter-patter of raindrops on my lawn. Benji kept me company in the kitchen, happily licking up my Banana mix splatters off the floor.

For the people that know me, I'm not the best cook in the world. Knowing that, I'm taking baby steps via using Target's Banana Pancake mix instead of trying to make pancakes from scratch. Perhaps as a sign that things to come, our 3 year old hand blender died a smoky death moments after I added all the mix into the mixing bowl. So needless to say, my first attempt at pancakes didn't turn out..*um* too spectacular... as the picture to the right will attest to.

Halfway through making the first batch, Yeesin decides to wake up and come down in her robes and see whats going on. So the bleary eyed master cook takes over the situation and does some damage control. 10 minutes later, 5 nice Banana Pancake medallions emerge from baking mix. Mmmmmm... They were as good as we imagined them. What happened to the first batch? I ate some of it, and Benj helped us finish the rest!