A few months back, our garden looked like this…

Mini jungle!

As you know, a few weeks back, we started work on our garden. Well, we didn’t actually do it ourselves… Instead, we outsourced it to two contractors — one for the wall and one for the grass. Here are some photos showing the work done over the past few weeks…

Piling works for the wall… Bakau piles were used.

No more chain-link fence!

Work in progress…

The front part of the garden…

More work in progress, this time at the car porch

Almost completed…

Want to know how it all turned out — the wall and the grass? Well…
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I have to apologise for not updating my blog (though I prefer to call it my website). I’ve been tied up with a few things and a lot has happened over the past two weeks or so…

On a sad note, a classmate passed away last week. Ya… Someone my age passed away. I would think that many people my age would think of themselves as being invincible — nothing can harm us. This classmate just fainted and then passed away — I don’t have any additional details besides what was told to us by his girlfriend, Yenny.

I suggested to Yenny to write to Facebook so we could have Lawrence’s page memorialised. I think she’s done that already because I noticed the link has changed.

Anyway, his death just jolts a few of us into thinking… Are we ‘prepared’?

At the home front, my garden wall is now complete and work has started on the grass… Photos will come (hopefully) over the weekend.

Gabriel… He is now starting to ‘talk’… OK, not really talk but vocalise (I think that’s the word, if there is such a word). He would happily go about making sounds as though he’s talking. One can tell the mood he’s in by ‘listening’ to him. When he’s happy, it sounds very soft and pleasant. But when he’s upset, it’s curt and loud as though he’s scolding someone! But he absolutely loves to smile! When he sees me walking over to his bed early in the morning (he wakes up before me), he would smile at me. When Mrs Tai picks him up from the babysitter’s place, first thing he would do is smile at Mrs Tai. Even the babysitter’s relatives nicknamed him ‘the baby who just loves to smile”. Mrs Tai and I tease Gabriel by saying he’s very good at sucking up… But seriously, we tell him that it’s a good thing to have — a smile on the face all the time.

Together with a few residents, we also met the developer to discuss some security concerns that we have… That was like yesterday and I’m very pleasantly surprised that changes were already made today itself!

Speaking of today, Gabriel had his 3rd month jab today — he’s a few days shy of being three months old!

Over at the office… We will be going office expansion — yeah, just less than 3 months since moving to the new location and we’re now going to expand and take up the empty office next door.

What else? Chinese New Year is just around the corner! So many things to do — wash curtains, tidy up the house, do up my Ikea cabinets (hmmm… Why does that line sound so familiar… heh heh…)

We had what is possibly our first outing without Gabriel. It’s been a while since both Mrs Tai and I chilled out together for a movie. During pregnancy, so many complications cropped up that Mrs Tai spent most of her pregnancy at home (we did manage to watch Transformers 2 though). My aunt was nice enough to help us look after Gabriel while Mrs Tai and I went out to catch James Cameroon’s Avatar 3D!

The 3D movie experience is definitely a first for both of us… I mean if we don’t count the ones we watched at Hong Kong Disneyland. It’s a fun movie that’s worth watching at least once (this was my second time — first was with a few colleagues a few days earlier but on 2D). But I guess it was not really about the movie. It’s about just chilling out…

We decided to watch the movie only last night… With that decision made, the frantic search for movie tickets started… It was about more than 1 hour later before we found a good time slot (had to also co-ordinate with my aunt, etc). It was not cheap though — we could only find tickets at GSC Signature @ The Gardens. Here’s a bit about GSC Signature from the GSC website:

The Premiere Halls provide plush twin seats with individual tables for your snacks. Generous legroom between the seats not only allows easy access to your seats but offers space and comfort beyond the ordinary cinema experience.

At rm27 per ticket. it is one heck of an experience… But I guess its something we should try at least once! Maybe we might even try the Gold Class next time. There was a family in front of us when we were collecting our tickets. They bought 5 tickets and guess how much they paid — rm300 for the five ticket! Wow…

I’m suddenly craving for the vegetarian steamboat we had just last weekend.

Can you guess what soup base we had?

Though the restaurant provided very little green (only one small plate) and a lot of mock meat stuffs instead, it was still quite good. The mock meat were’s really shaped that much like meat, so its ok. Anyway, I recall being told by someone that the restaurant make most of their own ‘mock meat’.

So, what soup base did we order?

Porridge and herbal soup base

This is also the restaurant that served this…

The place is called Great Nature Enterprise and is located at 194D & E, Jalan Sungai Putus, Off Jln Batu Belah, 41050 Klang. Phone number is +60 3 33446107. Yes, its the same place serving the very tasty curry noodles.

This arrived today…

It’s a Lerun Solaris mountain bike (MTB). It comes with:
FRAME : Alloy
FRONT FORK : Zoom Suspension fork
HANDLEBAR : Steel Rise bar
HANDLE STEM : Ritchey Aheadset
HEADSET : Oversized Ahead set
DRIVETRAIN : Shimano Altus mix 21-SP
TYRES & TUBE : Deli 26×2.00
RIMS : Alloy Single wall
COLOURS : Silver, Red
HUBS : Formula Alloy w/QR

Honestly… If you ask me, I don’t know what the above specs mean. I got them off the LeRun website. All I know is… I like it! I’ve been wanting to buy a bicycle for quite a while now… Ever since we moved into Setia Alam. But I had always put off the plan as there was just not enough money to spend…

Recently SP Setia added new redemption items and the MTB was one of the items available for redemption. Yup, I got it free though SP Setia’s privilege points redemption program. If you buy a house with them, you get some points. If you refer family and friends (who become purchasers), then you also get points.

Now I can cycle to the shops, absorb the fresh air in Setia Alam, etc…

Oh ya, in case you wanna buy a SP Setia house, do put me as referrer!

Malaysia starts the new year by going back to the stone age…

Even the judiciary website is not spared!

So much for 1Malaysia…

The past two weeks when I was on leave, I would normally get up only at about close to 9am. Mrs Tai gets up much earlier to feed Gabriel. After feeding him, she would actually put him on our bed. It was then that I started to notice ‘weird sounds’ that happens around 8am in the morning — the sounds of someone huffing, groaning and panting.

I got curious and started to investigate… That is when I discovered a ‘health freak’ on my bed doing workout!

Gabriel showing a step-by-step guide on how to do the reverse crunch

The left photos shows the ‘wrong’ way. The right photos shows the correct way — both legs are up!

It is Gabriel’s first day with the babysitter as both Mrs Tai and I went back to work again today…

It was difficult for the two of us as we’ve grown very attached to Gabriel, especially Mrs Tai. She’s been with Gabriel all the time for the past two months.

As for me, my company’s holiday shutdown (for almost two weeks) allowed me to play catch up since I was not able to spend time with Gabriel during his first few weeks due to the office relocation and also my red eyes… So everyday for the past two weeks, I woke up with Gabriel lying next to me, helped change diapers, fed him, played with him, talked to him, etc… But today, there was very little of above. I hardly got the chance to hold him… Don’t think I even got to talk to him (either he was asleep or I was cooking).

I wish I can just work from home and be able to spend more time with Gabriel…

The baffled and the excited expression…

In ecstasy and in boredom…

Getting ready to smile and then smiling…

The cheeky look and the laugh…

And this one is his favourite expression…
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When I have some ‘free’ time, I like to cook. I find cooking to be a way to relax and it actually stimulates creativity… For me anyway. I guess this is because I like to cook up dishes based on what we can find in our house. I know Dean also shares this same way of cooking. When we cook, there isn’t an ingredient list. We also like to experiment with different styles, etc…

This can be fun because you never really know what you’re going to eat… Actually, this is quite true since I don’t really know what vegetable is going to get delivered to me. I’m also lucky that Mrs Tai is not very fussy about food… But she loves my cooking.

Anyway, just to share some of the ingredients used for my dishes (taken over two separate occasions)…

Mrs Tai and I felt quite bad about eating these very cute baby carrots

The two photos are the ‘before’ and ‘in between’ shots of a dish I was preparing…

Can you guess how the two (vegetables and the pot of something) turned out…?
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