Chiang's Wedding

This entire month has been a busy one for us. We've been occupied with our house reno matters, shopping for furnitures & electrical appliances, preparing for our own wedding photoshoot and also attending wedding dinners! It's been the busiest of our busy period. My brother's wedding was held in KL in mid Jan. Qi's wedding was two days later. Marcus and Jamaica's wedding was on the immediate weekend. Like the whole world is suddenly getting married! :D Wah, happy for all the newly weds!

I'm going to talk abit about my brother's wedding here because I've got some photos to share and leave the rest for later.

Sally and I flew in to KL two days prior to my brother's wedding on a Friday morning. We took our usual Jetstar and the flight was ... alright, not too bad :P Though we did come across a lady sitting beside me whom we assume was on her first flying experience. She was looking out the window excitedly and told me to help her take a picture even when the plane was still on the ground.. Well, I thought people usually prefer some nice little clouds as background? LOL and she was also anxiously hugging onto her handbag though a stewardess politely and repeatedly told her to put it under the front seat during take off :P aiseh. relax la. Then half way during our journey, she ordered coffee but couldn't finish it because the plane was going to land soon! hahaha :P she thought she could enjoy a nice cup of coffee but the journey was too short, she had to keep the tray and hold on to the cup until the plane landed :D LOL! Anyway...

Sally enjoying her breakfast at Crystal Jade
So we reached about 230pm due to some delay and Fuon picked us up at the airport. It was like a 45mins drive before we reached Chiang's home. My parents were already there a week earlier. My elder bro, erm.. well, a whole month earlier. LOL. Chiang was running in and out buying and preparing stuffs for his gate crash the next day.

The groom's car
Two bears stuck at the front :D
Just married!
We rested for a while before helping to set up tables for food catering.

All lined up nicely!
Food, food, food!
Tireeeeeeed :P
Here, have a drink
Wahaha! Wash it! Wash it!
The next morning when we woke up, Chiang's 'xiong di' for the gatecrash session already arrived. Two of them happened to be my college classmates, Joo and Eugene.

Chiang with the 'xiong di's (some not in the picture)
Uhh.. Here we go!
While they went out to fetch the bride, the rest of us stayed back to do a second round of table setup for food catering and to hang the firecrackers :D Damn, we don't get to play firecrackers in Singapore :( Damn loud and powerful stuffs. Ok so, about two hours later, the gatecrash team came back all 1 piece. My elder bro lighted the firecrackers with a lighter because for some reasons, the joss stick didn't work. Whoops :P

Firecrackers! Red, loud and fun!
Sally and I helped with the tea ceremony for Chiang and Irene to serve our many relatives, oh and I got served too :P Haven't got the picture from him yet! Hehe!

Sally and I preparing
to help with the tea ceremony
The tea set :D
Everyone's doing this :D
Aiya, my elder bro didn't rotate the photos!
We had lunch after that and cleaned up the place. By the time we're done, it was almost around 4pm. So we rested for an hour or so before quickly jumping onto the couch for a few rounds of Need for Speed. That game is quite addictive and Sally tried it out too. She managed to finish the races so it's quite an achievement. I was half expecting her to quit abruptly :P Jia you, Sally! :D Haha! But I believe using a racing steering wheel would be a better controller for her. I guess non-gamers need some time to get used to ps3 controllers.

For dinner, I insisted we have KFC on top of the leftovers from lunch :P Everyone was like Huh? What? Really? .. You know lah, wanna eat but pretend to be health conscious :P We went ahead with KFC and everyone enjoyed it. Ohh, and those little KFC egg tarts are surprisingly quite good!

Some of our dishes :D
KFC egg tarts. Surprisingly good!
Really sinful stuffs..
But who cares? :P
Everyone's enjoying their meal
Eating all these food didn't stop us from going out for more. There was a night market nearby so Chiang, Irene, Big Bro (hm, how to address him in this blog huh), Fuon, Sally and I went out to explore. So when it comes to night market there's always the urge to try some food there :P

I can see the night market!
Bought a cold drink :D
And some little pancakes
with different flavour
Random people on the streets
Sally trying out some asam laksa
On Sunday morning, it was pretty relaxing. While Chiang and Irene were preparing some guest list stuffs, we were practically only playing ps3 games waiting for the wedding dinner :P We soon got bored and decided to go have tea break at PappaRich. Niceeee..

Steamed bread with peanut butter
PappaRich's white coffee is good
It's official. We're always hungry
Slurp!
freaker and Sally
About 530pm, we got ready to go to the dinner but not without taking some photos first :D We seldom dress up so everyone's excited and wanna have a picture taken :P

Mom and dad
It's us again :D
Everyone together now!
Overall the dinner was not too bad and I must say I'd give credit to the MC. He acts and talks like a lady, wears bling bling outfit and a pair of funky glasses, but he's a real funny guy. Very entertaining indeed. Even my parents and grandma were so amused by his jokes. He even speaks and sings fluently in multiple dialects. At times I felt like I'm attending one of those Taiwanese variety shows like Power Sunday or something. Haha.

Chiang and Irene
Chiang and Irene
in their second outfit
First dish came! I always forgot
to take photo of the rest :P
Waiting for more food!
Anyway, the following morning, it's time to say goodbye. Everyone woke up earlier to send us off. Kinda miss them because family gatherings like this are so hard to come by :( Sally and I took a cab to KLIA for our flight back to Singapore. So I'll be seeing my parents and Chiang again during Chinese New Year (yey! nice long break) and my elder bro during my wedding in May. Yep! My turn will be soon!

From left to right: Fuon, big bro, mom,
Irene, Chiang, dad, freaker and Sally
Ok that's all gotta rest. Will find time to blog again soon. Too many things to do and so little time. And I have so many things to talk about. Our wedding photoshoot, our house, etc. And yes, I'll find time!

Seremban Trip

It's been awhile! :D

This round I'm gonna talk a little bit about our Seremban adventure! It was kind of a special trip because of the great company and yes, the food we had there. But let's talk about the entire journey rather than always quickly jumping into the yummy stuffs!

So, the purpose of this trip is to attend my colleague's wedding. We were invited and Vincent (oh the groom) helped arranged for transportation and accommodation. Now I guessed this whole trip wasn't just about attending his dinner. It was our first trip to his hometown and we get to hang out together with some other colleagues and his friends. And EAT.

The journey started on a lazy Saturday morning on December 18th, 2010. Sally and I met Alex and his wife, Janice, at Kranji MRT around 730am before we headed across the causeway on 170. There was a crowd but wasn't as bad as how we imagined. You know, pushing and shoving and screaming and biting. The crowd was all calm and quiet. Everything went smoothly and we exited Malaysian Customs at 830am. Too early. Our bus to Seremban was at 1030am! So we over-estimated the time but simply blamed Poh for it :P

Anyway, we decided to go to City Square for breakfast. Went to Old Town for a quick bite before we hopped on a cab to Larkin bus station at around 930am. Again, we reached at 10am which is still too early for us. Since the place stunk like crap, we decided to go to the nearest air conditioned area which happens to be KFC :D My favourite.

Ok, KFC is beside Pizza Hut
Waiting eagerly for our bus to arrive!
The bus came exactly at 1030am and we left 10 mins later. Nice. I like it when buses or trains leave on time. Ever waited for a bus for more than an hour? :P I bet all Malaysians do, at some point of time in their life. Ho Ho Ho.


Our Plusliner bus tickets :D
It's here! Double decker bus :D
Took a break from the 3-hour bus journey.
Here's the view from the resting area
We reached Seremban's Terminator Terminal 2 at around 230pm. This place is definitely bigger than my hometown :P We took a cab from the bus station to our One Heritage Hotel. Yes, the One and only Heritage Hotel. It was a new hotel, opened around Feb 2010. Room size was alright. Shower heater, check. Toilet bowl, check. Water, check. TV, check. Air-con controller, err they didn't have an air-con controller. I gotta climb on a side table to reach the air con to adjust the temperature, which by default was set at 20 degrees celsius. Brrrrrrr. Cold.

Seremban's Terminal 2!
Taken from the cab on our way to the hotel.
The driver told us alot of Vietnamese stay in this building?
One Heritage Hotel. Our destination!
The toilet. Ok, clean!
Not sure why they put this picture in our room
Brought two small packets of Cheezels (just in case)
It was only 3pm then, so we decided to look for food nearby. The neighborhood was relatively new and most shops were closed. We just wanted to fill our tummy so we decided on a simple coffee shop for late lunch.

Eat abit before dinner :P
By 4pm we were back at the hotel. Time to take a short nap, which is the best thing to do after a meal :D Yes, my tummy has grown. At around 540pm, I went down to the front desk to arrange for cab to bring us to the restaurant. What I thought would be a quick task ended up with me spending about 20mins sitting at the hotel lobby. There was this customer, a lady, hogging the front desk apparently upset over an issue. I sat on a sofa nearby and from her conversation with the receptionist, I finally figured she was upset because she wanted to book NINE (9) rooms and wanted SPECIFIC room numbers, which the receptionist was unable to provide. Some of the rooms were taken and some rooms don't have those numbers. Duh. Get over it. Loser.

Hmm. Then I wondered, why would anyone choose their room numbers? Feng shui meh? Cannot be lar. You stay in a hotel for 3 nights only. The Sha-Qi won't have enough time to turn your life upside down. Stupid. What else? Did she belong to some devil's cult? Maybe she needed the necessary room numbers to perform a ritual. Sure bo? Strike TOTO not so easy le. She didn't look like a witch. A bitch more like it.

Dropped by 7-eleven and guess what we saw!
Getting ready to go for dinner!
Small Christmas tree at the hotel lobby
Ok, so fast forward to 7pm, we reached the restaurant and er, couldn't recognize the groom. He looked very different without wearing his glasses. So now we totally understand what the director of Superman had in mind. He sure ain't kiddin us.

Took a picture with the groom
And of course, not forgetting the bride!
Waiting for dinner. Hungree!
First dish came! And I forgot to take
pictures of the other dishes :P
After the dinner, we took a cab back to our hotel. Instead of heading STRAIGHT back to our hotel, we were taken for a short joyride because the driver didn't know where our hotel was, despite insisting that he knew before we hopped on his cab. Fortunately, we did it the Malaysia-Boleh style and paid only the agreed RM8 for the ride instead of following the meter. What meter? No idea.

The next morning, Sally and I woke up earlier and went out for a morning walk. We explored the nearby rows of shop houses and dropped by a shop selling toilet accessories and sanitary wares. You know lah, now renovating house, suddenly got interests in all these stuffs. Ah, everything in RM :P Too bad they don't send these stuffs to Singapore.

Quiet morning around our hotel
Anyway, by 1015am, Vincent and the gang arrived at our hotel in a schoolbus. Woo hoo! School bus for us! Our goal of the day was to eat as much as we could. Try as much food as we can before we head back to Singapore :P Yes. Now this is interesting. Vincent promised Seremban would have nice food and fortunately his hometown didn't disappoint :D

So we hopped on the school bus, traveled from one location to another, trying out food from various coffee shops. It was pretty interesting because we don't get to do this very often :P And the old school bus seem to travel abit slower after each stop. Haha :P

First stop! Yi Poh 'Rat Tail Noodles'
Our noodles. Chewy to the core!
Preparing to eat!
Mixed pork organ soup :P
Special chilli! Fresh and potent but we didn't buy :P
Next stop! Another coffee shop.
Some kinda fishball soup dish. Very nice!
Ewww, what's that?
There! Our yellow school bus!
Ok, third stop! Bak kut teh!
One big pot for us to try
No, just kidding. Two pots!
After the bak kut teh,
Vincent insist we continue eating!
Ohh, and while waiting for food,
we noticed this public phone :P
Here comes the dish. It looks simple but no, it's not just simple.
It's evil! No words to describe. Must eat to try. Seriously!
Ok, time for Seremban Siew Pow!
Got website one. Dun play play.
Heee.. Let's go in and buy some Siew Pow!
People buying Siew Pows
Gigantic Siew Pows. There's a whole chicken
inside each of these buns.
Candies for us, courtesy of Vincent/Shirley
Finally after stuffing all we could into our tummy, we headed to Vincent's new house to rest. His house has very high ceilings, which I like, and which is something HDB flats don't have :P Ok, ok, let's not make comparisons or else this would go on forever! :) We spent about 2 hours at his place talking the usual nonsense until 5pm before we got ready to go back to Singapore.

Awww.. Time to go home!
Snacks, anyone?
Taking a break from the bus journey :D
Like all good things, this trip must come to an end. Hopefully we'll be able to do this another day, hanging out at a new place and just devouring as much food as we can! Or I don't mind if we could go hiking or something. Don't always eat lah, ho? :P