Evening stroll

Welcome to the evening stroll at The CurveI will be off from today. Will not be back to work for a week. Taking time off for the coming Raya and all. It was the school holidays. Right after work, we went out for dinner outside. Nothing fancy, steamboat at IKANO. Since we got there early, we went to browse at IKEA. Anita needed a new whiteboard to teach the boys maths and stuff. We couldn't believe that it was sold out! Yes, it's school holidays. But I don't think all parents are teaching their kids during the break ... Or at least I don't think.

Yes! I made Idlan carry some stuff in IKEA!

We quickly shuffled for steamboat right after that. Done with dinner, we just strolled along. There is an offer going on at England Optical upstairs. You can get more discount using UOB Card, so I started thinking ..... That Oakley looks nice. The glasses I'm wearing now is almost 10 years-old anyhow. Tried a few. Anita insisted that I get one. Yes it was an Oakley. It will be ready in the next couple of days. Just in time for our trip to Fraser's Hill. The only problem I think I will have with it will be the shape of the lens. It will be a curved one due to the frame and since I have astigmatism, I reckon that the glass will be thick at the edge. Hopefully it will still be OK!

The decor being set upNext, we brought the boys to the playground. They need to burn off some energy, plus leaving Anita to do some shopping of her own. The Xmas lights and trees are being installed at the Curve at the moment. I am sure by the time they are ready they will look nice. I can still remember the decor from a couple of years back. That was really stunning. They will have to do something special to beat that, and also the current one that is up at Pavilion. Before we leave, we also stopped by at Marche. During the school holidays, they have activities for kids. There is a pizza-making lesson 3 times a week and we signed Idlan up for this Thursday. I will write about it after Idlan is done with that. It cost RM20 for the lesson but they provide all the material and gears. That should be fun!

As for tomorrow, I have a lot of errands to do. Need to pay the bills. Maybe heading to Sungai Wang to browse as well.

Disclaimer - This blog was written while listening to Brett Dennen - cool stuff!

Stuff I'm doing now - Meeting about Audit

Some deep stuff going on here. It concerns the health of our academic performance and how to improve it. We are expectig an suit as a Faculty by the Malaysia Qualifications Agency as a quality assurance for our teaching programme. Submitted mine a few months back. Hopefully I will
Not be called for review.

Posted via email from Stamp up those photos!

MaTIC. Have you heard about it?

The Tuanku Abdul Rahman Hall - the main building for the centerAnita was really eager to fill up the boys time during this school holidays. She was determine to start early. Therefore we went out yesterday afternoon to inject some 'culture' into the boys. Idlan was not interested. He has been grumpy all morning. Therefore, we left him at home and brought Irfan along. First stop, MaTIC - the Malaysian Tourism Information Center - for the KL Sunday 1 Malaysia Family Fair ......

The colourful rows of stals greeting usEntrance to the Cocoa BoutiqueHmm! Sounded a mouthful? It was either that or having a look at the Dukethon. Unfortunately, we woke up rather late. Apparently there are hot air balloon and stuffs over there. But it was scheduled to finish by midday. That's done then.

MaTIC is a renovated colonial building built in 1975. It was converted in 1988 and the main building was renamed the Tuanku Abdul Rahman Hall. It was beautifully maintained, and the Saloma Restaurant was right next door. The building is along Jalan Ampang, opposite the Renaissance Hotel, right next door to Zouk. We heard about it from surfing the net. Thought that it was intriguing since we planned to go on holiday at some point and we prefer to spend money at home rather than abroad. We wanted to see if there were informations and good holiday packages on offer. The Fair itself was held at the Center's car park. There were ample space. There were activities for children mainly, karaoke, facepainting, bouncy castles and clowns. I counted there were about 20 families and around 40 stalls.

The stores mainly sells local wares and food. There were also sections on local holiday offers which we went to have a look at. There were mainly homestays. The offer were pretty nice and reasonable. We were eyeing for a few in Kedah, but with the flooding at the moment, maybe we will look at it for some time next year. Since it was past midday when we arrived there, there were more retailers than visitors. We found out about the place through the Net. I am not sure if there were other publicity about the Fair. Maybe it was more crowded in the morning.

We then visited a chocolate shop next to the main hall called the Cocoa Boutique. It was a shop selling locally produced chocolate. There is a small exhibition center in it with chocolate-making demonstration. There were about 4 buses with tourists from India arriving at the place when we entered. We ended up not buying anything since the queue was so long. If only there is a nice cafe around there for us to grab a quick lunch. It started to drizzle by then. So we had to split. We headed to KLCC for lunch.

Lunch at KLCCLate afternoon tea at Tapper's Cafe, CapsquareQuick stroll before heading homeThe next destination was Capital Square, or Capsquare. Been there a couple of times before but it was only the first for Anita. It was surprisingly quite for a Sunday. Most of the shops were closed while the rest were unoccupied. A sorry sight really. There were a few bars which looked to be opened at night. As for yesterday, a few restaurants were opened and we had some tea at Tapper's Cafe at the ground floor. It was a typical kopitiam but the food were reasonable. The main attraction seemed to be the cinema on the top floor.

Trip to Kuala Selangor

Nope! He's not reading the map. It was a Toys'r'Us magazine.Irfan's Pingu class today was cancelled. One of the kindergarten that his teacher is teaching at had their school concert today. The whole family plus my in-laws went to Kuala Selangor for a spot of proper seafood. We planned to leave early, but knowing the boys, things got delayed. We only managed to leave Gombak by 11.

Stopping over near Ijok for some rambutanWe took the MRR II via Sungai Buloh, driving on route 54 passing Ijok on the way to Kuala Selangor town. It was only around 65km away. I can imagine, if the weather is right, minus the screaming kids in the CRV, it could have been a cool drive. We had to stop a couple of times for toilet and rambutan break. A small stretch of the road was still narrow and windy. I can see parallel to the route that there are new, wider roads being built Not sure it that was part of the coastal highway being constructed, from Kelang, via the coast up to Lumut.

The weather was cloudy. It was drizzling a wee bit when we join the Kelang-Tanjung Karang main trunk road. The road widened a fair bit by then. To our surprise, there was a big Tesco already open just before the Kuala Selangor town. The last time I went there was early last year mind. We drove past the town towards Tanjung Karang, over a small bridge, then took the first left off a traffic light after the bridge into a small kampung. This is where the good restaurants are.

Sweet and sour crab ... Yums!And the aftermath!We quickly settled to order our food. We had steamed fish and sweet and sour crab among other things. It was gorgeous. The boys were rather cranky since they had had plenty of junk food on the way in. I made it worst by splashing some sauce onto Idlan's face while cracking the crab claws with my hammer. He was livid. We finally left for home by 2. It was always surprising that the journey home felt much faster than going out. Both of the boys, plus their mum were asleep as soon as we left the town. The drive back was much more pleasant.

Update on Wednesday, November 25, 2009 at 9:09AM by Haris Abdul Rahman

Since there were many queries, I have attached a Google map of the restaurant;

Arrow indicates the location of the restaurant

View Larger Map

4photos for today

Irfan tenderly pouring the soysauce for me .... Bless!

Managed to arrive home early after sorting out all the formal stuff. Decided to take the boys out. Craving for some sushi. The boys like the miso with all the MSG goodness of course. We headed out to Pavilion since we had to pick some other stuffs out from there. After lingering around for a bit, we had to rush back to meet Idlan's music teacher. Unfortunately due to the rain and bad traffic, we missed it.

Gone hyper after the miso!We were hence left with the conundrum since Idlan is not keen to go back and join the crowded class after what happened the last few sessions. So far, he missed 3 lessons and that was quite a lot to catch up on. We have to meet the teacher next week and see if she is willing to take up personal lessons.

Today was also the last day of school. Earlier in the day, Idlan had his class concert. It was a rather slow key affair. After the concert was done, Anita went on to register Irfan. He will be joining Seri Utama as well from January. The problem is getting the school uniform for him. He is rather small for his age and he started the kindergarten effectively a couple of years early. When Idlan started last year, we had to order his uniform up front as it was smaller the the smallest standard size.

After the concert, Anita went out to get some school shoes for the boys. She was worried that there will be a rush once the holiday started. While there, she spotted a couple of these cuties - Upin and Ipin! I'm really proud of these guys. It was a real local production. The stories were really good and relatable. Animation could be better, and I am sure will improve. The characters were very well developed. It is something that Malaysians should be proud of. I hear that they are now being featured in the Disney Channel! Good for them!