Port Dickson, Avillon

XP sent this picture over but I completely missed it until now...
Alex was 6 months old...

we heart taipei

eric and i had never planned it. we never said, "we should travel". it just happens. we both think it's important to get out. we both like it, regardless of its inconvenience. and even with kids, we don't really think too much about it. in fact, i don't think we thought of travelling with kids as a "hassle" - we just change our expectations a little. we were never one of those who have to see all the sights in one visit. lasseiz-faire describes our attitude and approach aptly. we like to just "live" in the city we are visiting. so when our friends asked us what we did in our trips, our answers, almost always, sounded mundane.

i think it's becoming a ritual - at the end of the year, we crave cold weather. what we can't get, we travel by plane to. so, we bundled our brood and off we went to taipei, taiwan. we stayed at this fantabulous hotel - far eastern hotel - and received 5-star treatment. all this, despite the fact that guests came and went in haute fashion, while eric and i were pushing the stroller laden with takeouts from a nearby foodcourt, clad in our H&M/Forever21/Gap/no-brand outfits.

the kids were like celebrities in taipei. people stopped to say "hi" to them. Once, someone even asked to take a picture and posed next to Alex. “好可爱哦!" (so cute!) we hear this a lot and my heart will swell up like a helium balloon with no strings unattached. yeah, we got a lot of love from the very pleasant taiwanese. civility rules the day and we just love the city.

as for the cold weather - it was superb. but heck, we forgot what a hassle it is to dress up to go out. just dressing the kids in layers took us one hour to get ready. yep, i've said it. hassle.












she loved her mini-spa. because....


there was a tv next to her bathtub!




"don't mess with me" at eslite bookshop near taipei 101




at ximending... street food= potato croquettes


thrilled to be so near a whatisthis?digger?crane?


all bundled up with mommy = excited bebe


a rare family shot


someone's obsessed with mommy






to eric, Harlem Yu is probably the most famous taiwanese.



loving his mcqueen sweater

thanksgiving

we celebrated thanksgiving last weekend. a week plus 3 days late.
whatever. as in whatever it takes to keep our stress level low. work had been crazy so we postponed it.

and it was good dinner.
i managed to make dinner in under 3 hours. i surprised myself.
given that i decided to try out new recipes.

we ate
(a) rosemary-lemon turkey (b) muffin-cups potato gratin (c) lemony roasted brussel sprouts and parsnips (d)sage, mushroom and sausage stuffing.

it feels good to be able to walk out to the balcony and snip off my own herbs to make dinner. must. grow. more. herbs. next. year.

wine's a little too sweet for our liking. then in the evening, christian and i headed out to get 3 slices of velvety pumpkin pie and ben and jerry's vanilla ice-cream. so yummy.

i noticed that christian has a very sophisticated palate.

it's nice that it's been rainy all weekend. feels very much like fall.

holiday season: christmas! chinese new year! lots of exclamation points. but this is the best: vacation in taiwan *exclamation point*

port dickson

we had a long weekend here and we decided to take a roadtrip to malaysia. we drove up to port dickson and stayed at the Avillion and before heading back, stopped at Melaka (and we daydreamed of buying a condo as our pied-à-terre - no, we are not rich, and yes, we were only daydreaming...) the weather was perfect and the kids were well-behaved (only in the car). we drove up with our friends... christian would not eat with them (wassup kid?) and threw a temper-tantrum at every.single.meal... i honestly feel bad for our travel companions and we are solely responsible for any and all heartburns in the restaurants. nonetheless, if you can believe it, we did have a good time.

(Re. the first picture, Alex refused to sit and watch me pack for the trip in her crib, so I moved her to the box seat and she was happy and contented.)

a debt, the zoo, candy floss tragedy and a turtle

washington d.c. that's where eric and i met. i was living in the district then. once, he asked me out to the zoo (i still had not caught on the excitement/significance of the pandas in the national zoo) and i sorta blew him off . fast forward 8 years, it's still a chip on his shoulder (okaaay, i'm telling the story here, so it's totally my side of the story. he'll most likely have a different version).

we are sorta at the cusp of late-morning-showers-season (actually, we are in the midst of a monsoon season but i can never tell when the monsoon season starts... without googling...) and that means that we should take advantage of the cloudy days to do some outdoorsy stuff. cloudy days are the best times to go outdoors in our humble opinion, other days, we just wither and get scorched. instant combustion not entirely impossible.

anyway, we finally made it to the zoo on saturday (the debt from 8 years ago finally paid off). i have no idea why i thought the animals will be in cages. they are not! and christian's best memory of the day? sitting on an alligator (statue) and we didn't even have to pay admission for him to do that.



"i sit sit on an alligator?"


"snoozing for a cruzing"


Gorgeous white tigers


puffer fish!


elephant 大象！




“i sit sit on the elephant?"


Alex finally woke up from her nap in time to see the rhinos


Zebras - eh!

When the day was done - it was threatening to rain. we passed by a candy floss stand and i decided it was time for christian's first candy floss. But eric was stressed about getting to the car before we got rained on. So, can you imagine what followed? me holding onto a ridiculous candy floss that looked like a marie antoinette wig and pushing the stroller and ran-walked behind eric and christian. By the time we got to the car, the candy floss looked miserable, the humidity in the air caused that "wig" to disappear right before my eyes. Christian did get a bite - at this point, it actually tasted like cough syrup and he was happy i tossed it out - so much for first experience.

For eric and me, the highlight of the day was this... christian chasing after the turtle and asking "hey turtle, where are you going?"

we love papa

a few months ago, eric turned 40. for his birthday, i made him a special birthday card. well, it was a pack of little cards, depicting the activities we'll do on his special day. Alex was a month old, and she hadn't really established any schedule yet. So we brought Alex along but had to leave Christian at my mom's. We went for burgers and coffee at 313 and then went to shop for an iPad. We only managed to get 2 shots of the cards. After strolling around, we were missing Christian, so we went to get him and since it was still pretty early in the day and by some crazy chance, Christian had an early morning nap (rare! he naps at around 3 pm), we decided to go to the Bird Park with the kids. The original plan was to get pizza for dinner at de paolo's, so says one of the cards. But we ended up getting take-out pizza the next day at Tomato's. that's life with 2 kids, you can never plan your day. but i think eric enjoyed himself.


p.s. alex wants to thank her papa for putting up the lovely mobile above her changing station. she enjoys it every day.

giving

this is a shameful post...eric and i decided, perhaps 3 years ago, that we will skip giving each other christmas presents and make a gift to charity instead. we get to pick the charity we wanted in turn. he picked the smile train the first year and then, me, i took my own sweet time and procrastinated... what's happening in japan jolted me to act... we love japan, the country and its culture... it's so surreal seeing all these news footage...

the organizations we picked:
doctors without borders
the smile train

flower baby

christmas eve, the best i've ever had. i cooked while christian had fun with the flowers eric bought. he wanted flowers in his hair, and so we obliged.

it was a memorable christmas. we have our first tree, and we celebrated it first time alone as a family. the evening ended peacefully, we made it to family mass and then slept in really late and woke up to the aroma of pine needles. the babe in my belly was obviously delighted, she was vigourous both on christmas eve and christmas day. hope you had fun too.

caught up

my mom, my aunt, my husband and my son have boarded the plane to macau. me? i'm stuck here in my office because i had forgotten i had a meeting to attend, and i had to stay behind for a day before i could join them.

we sent the dog to the pet hotel... it's amazing how we seem to outsource everything nowadays. we didn't even drop the dog off - there's a shuttle "white glove" service, they pick up the dog and they drop off the dog. cinnamon gets a tick-bath & front line. being lousy parents, we forgot to take her to the vet for a kennel-cough shot - i hope she doesn't catch it. of course, there's no guarantee for that borderella shot, she got the kennel cough once in charlottesville even after the shot. still, it would have been nice to remember our first child's welfare :(

the maid's room is all set-up, new swanky bed, new fluffy towels, new lampshade. we spent quite a bit notwithstanding some blood, sweat and tears. but when you read up on the bio of these maids, you feel that there's always more that you could do. so eric and i decided to go out a little more for her. i've been cleaning like mad - and eric naturally thinks i'm mental. part of it has to do with the trip - i don't know when i acquired this habit of wanting everything spotlessly clean before i leave for a vacation. but part of it is because i still see the maid as a houseguest and frankly, i can't stand the thought that my home looks like a tornado has passed through it to an expected guest...

i'm now feeling quite zen about the holidays now that most of the packing and organizing is done. we are left with bedroom black-out curtains (for the baby), and roman blinds for the maid's room. and at some point, we'll think about redoing the tiles and doors in the balcony. but the packing has done a great deal of good, i finally got off my ass and sent a couple of art prints to the framers and has committed to accent colors of the home (finally! sheesh)... our walk-in closet is done and eric even bought two sheepskin rugs to adorn the floor. it's so luxurious: being able to shower and then walk into an air-conditioned closet - haha, eric's paradise in such a clammy climate. eric says he can simply eat, live and work in that closet.

how is it that december can be really stressful?

when i was young, december was a peaceful month. i loved hearing christmas carols on the radio and in the shops, i'd buy little ornaments after my weekly trip to the library (Queenstown Library still holds so many memories for me that I don't dare to step into the current one, which I believe has been renovated over the years, I don't want to risk blowing my precious memories of that place to pieces...), i curled up on my favorite cushy chair to catch up on the novels i'd reluctantly set aside during the school term, i'd hand paint and handmake all my christmas cards, sent them on time and received a lot from friends too. and when i was even younger, i fantasized about having snow for christmas - just once (i believe i prayed for it too).

i can't remember when december becomes a stressful month. i'm now up since 5.35 am (thanks to Christian wanting his daybreak milk) and i've been crossing out to-do items, checking my old list, and backing up picture files on my computer. i have a moleskine filled with to-do lists, and when i'm done crossing them out, i realize i have another moleskine filled with to-do lists (i live with two, if you can believe it). i feel myself morphing into a scrooge (and empathizing with him - he's probably quite a misunderstood character) when i drive into Orchard Road, when the stores ads and merchandise are always in my face, when i feel pressured to just get the christmas shopping done. i sorely want to reclaim that peace back - at least, get that magical feeling of snuggling in a comfy bed, with rain pelting on my window that's covered with paper snowflakes.