Week 18: April 16 to 22

In the start of this week most of my time was spent putting together a photobook for Steve of photos from his week in Sarawak. It took a lot longer than I had anticipated but it was worth it and I got it finished on Wednesday. Tuesday night we went out for dinner at Chillis and got a few groceries afterwards. We saw a friend of Lachlan's from school, Wesley and met his dad. They were keen to get together and have the kids play together. So we went out for dinner with them Wednesday night at the resturant here at Dua, and organised for Wesley to come over Friday afternoon to play and swim. Wesley's dad, Rod is Australian but has been living here for 21 years and his wife, Grace is Chinese Malaysian. Wednesday I ran out of ink as I was printing the photobook and the plan was to take the towels down to the pool, walk to the nearest mall to get printer ink, (its about 700 metres away) then come back, have a swim and come back upstairs. On the way home we got stuck in a flash storm and got back totally soaked! So we didn't go for a swim but the towels we had left downstairs came in handy!
Thursday we spent the day at Kidzania. It is a great concept where the space is set out like a mini town and kids get to try different jobs and get paid in 'kidzos'. Some of the jobs cost kidzos and some they get to be customers. We spent most of the day there and they got to be Pilots, Couriers, Travel Agents, Doctors, CSI Agents, Spies, Computer Builders, Checkout Chicks, Dentists, Security Guards, Lachlan also got to be a Judge while Danae was a witness and Danae was a cutomer at the beauty salon and got her nails done and was a sushi chef where she got to eat the sushi afterwards. It was a great day and we saw some people we knew there as well. We left there at about 5:30 after a really quick walk through IKEA (I bought a vase, so we could get free parking for the whole day) and on the way home I took a wrong turn which wasn't too bad at the time because that way would still bring us home...but at that time of day and the fact that I didn't have the GPS so had to stick with the signs back and the fact that it started to rain it took us 2 hours to get home (it is usually about 25 minutes)...oh the joys of KL traffic.

Friday the kids and I went to the High Comm to pick up some mail and grabbed some lunch at Suria on the way back. Then Wesley came over and we spent most of the afternoon down by the pool until about 5 when the rain came and the boys wanted to play X-box. We ordered pizza and Wesley got picked up shortly afterward.
The weekend was fairly quiet as Steve has a lot of assignments due Friday and then exams the following week.
Saturday morning Steve and the kids went with the NZers for breakfast at Antipodean just a few hundred metres down the road and I met them there a bit later after my Zumba class. Antipodean is becoming very popular with expats around here, they advertise themselves as having Australia/New Zealand breakfasts and they have real bacon. Bacon is easily available to buy here, but it is in a little non-halal corner of the supermarkets and you have to pay for it there because most of the checkout opperators are Malay and wont handle any pork products. But at most restaurants you wont find ham or bacon (except Chinese restaurants) so instead they have turkey bacon or beef bacon, which doesn't really taste like bacon.
The rest of the weekend we spent at home, kids watching movies or on the computer and Steve studying. I went shopping/browsing on Sunday because I hadn't had the opportunity with the kids on holidays.

Here are some photos from Steve's trip to Sarawak a few weeks ago:

Week 17: April 9 to 15

Sorry this is so late, I have been helping Steve put together a photo book from his trip to Sarawak as part of his assesment. He was given over 2400 photos and it took longer than we expected.

The start of the week was fairly uneventful, even though the kids are on holidays. Monday was not a day off here. The kids were happy to mostly chill out at home. Monday we went to KLCC to get a few groceries and got some lunch. Danae got a kids manicure there and they stamped nail polish on her fingers, so cute!

Wednesday was a public holiday for the coronation of the king. There are 13 states and 3 federal territories (KL is a federal territory and is surrounded by the state of Selangor, so some of the suburban areas of KL are actually in Selangor like the school the kids go to. Of the 13 states, nine have sultans. Every 5 years one of the sultans is crowned king, they rotate through.
On Wednesday we all went to Chinatown. We had a wonder through the markets, went to my favorite home wares store, had a foot fish spa, had lunch, bought flowers and came back home for a swim.

Thursday the kids went to Petrodains with Miyo and Hanson, the Chinese Australian children who live here and go to the Australian school. It is a bit like Questacon in Canberra and is at the top of Suria KLCC shopping centre, so quite close to here.

Friday we had Michael and Toni over to watch the Carlton Collingwood game. It was on live here so started at 5:30. Then we went out for a few drinks afterward.

Saturday we went to Melaka. Steve is starting to get to the end of his first semester (he has 3) and will be quite busy over the next few weeks with assignments and study for exams. so we wanted to go away this weekend before that all starts. I really love Melaka! It is my favourite place in Malaysia we have been to so far. We stayed at a hotel about a 15 minute walk along the river from the touristy centre of town. The shopping is great along Jonker Street and although we didn't do much shopping we all got something. Saturday was a bit cooler (Melaka is generally hotter than KL because there is not as much cloud) and we did as much as we could. We did the river cruise and walked around the ruins of an old church up on a hill. At about 5 we went back to the hotel to check in, have a swim and we got a free hour in a karaoke room as part of our family stay package ( the catch was that we had to get a drink each and soft drinks were $3.50 -that is expensive here). It was a lot of fun though! We then went back to Jonker Street to have dinner and look at the night markets.
Sunday was a lot warmer. We had breakfast, checked out and left the car there while we headed back to the centre of town. We went on a trishaw ride, did a little more looking around and went and had a cool drink at our favourite spot by the river, they make the best lemon iced tea. We had been there the day before and had a drink and tried cendol (a Malaysian dessert with red beans in the bottom, a big mound of shaved ice, some green pandan flovoured little sqiggly things, kind of like rice noodles, then poured over the top is condensed milk and gula Melaka, whis is a liquid palm sugar). Sounds bizarre but we all liked it, until we got to the red beans at the bottom. We headed home and stopped at a shopping centre on the way out of Melaka for lunch. It took us about 2 hours to get home.

Week 16: April 2 to 8

Happy Easter!!

It's been a long week with Steve away in Sarawak. Both the kids had major assignments due this week, Danae had to do a model of a park (she chose a water park) and Lachlan did a PowerPoint presentation of a timeline of the things that have made an impact on his life.

Tuesday night we had toasted sandwiches for dinner and then went to Delicious, the restaurant out the front of our apartment building, for dessert.On Wednesday I went to have a look at Kidzania with some other mums from the High Comm. It looked like a lot of fun for the kids and we will probably do it sometime during the school holidays.

Thursday was the last day of school and Danae got her progress report, it was really good! There is a photo of it in the photos, but it's probably too small to read, she got 'commendable' in all areas of the personal profile and has a spelling age of 12 years 8 months, a reading age of 10 years, and her maths test result was 74%. We went to the New Zealander's apartment for dinner Thursday night.

Steve came home at lunchtime on Friday. We had lunch then went grocery shopping, came back for a swim then went out for dinner.
Saturday we went to a shopping centre we hadn't been to before. We went to try 'the worlds best sandwich' but when we got there we found out that it wasn't on the menu until next week.. We had a look around though. When we got home I did some baking for Easter.

Danae's assignment (almost finished, we stuck in some bushes from downstairs on the way to the bus); report; dessert from Delicious; some balloons I saw outside a restaurant as I was walking along Bukit Bintang; a heart shaped leaf given to Lachlan by Miyo; Steve reading Danae's report.

 Easter Sunday was a great day! One of the American ladies here at Dua organized a whole heap of stuff for the morning. There was a huge egg hunt, egg decorating, games, face painting, tattoos, cookie decorating, a piñata and everyone bought food and drinks to share. I went down early to help set up and did most of the egg hunt. Everyone had a great time. At midday most of the people moved to the pool, but we came upstairs to cool down and relax. The kids and I watched We Bought A Zoo on DVD while Steve did some work. Later in the afternoon we went back downstairs and had drinks, swimming and pizza with the NZers.

Week 15: Mar 26 to Apr 1

It's been a week of comings and goings this week. Lachlan left for camp on Tuesday and Danae on Thursday. They both arrived home Friday and Steve and I went to the school to pick them up. Then on Sunday Steve left for Sarawak on sunday morning as part of his course.
Monday night we went to Suzi's Corner for dinner with Doug, the American, his family and some other Americans who are based in Beijing. Suzi's is a popular hang out with expats because they have really good steak!
Wednesday I went to Chinatown to get some flowers, I got a big bunch of lilies (5 stems), 4 stems of white orchids and 20 roses all for $12!!
Thusday we had the afternoon and evening all to ourselves! Steve usually finishes around lunchtime on Thursdays because the afternoon is suposed to be study time, but of course this week he wasn't home till about 4:30. We went to La Bodega for a drink, then had reflexology together for an hour (poor Steve got a woman who was quite rough, mine was lovely- mostly!). After that we went to a Japanese restaurant where you pay (around $25) and you can order what you like from the menu. They didn't have much sushi, but they had salmon sashimi that was very good and the eel was great too (it's one of our favourite dishes). We had a walk around some of the touristy areas, then came home.

Friday was pretty much the same as usual, we picked up the kids from school and spent the afternoon by the pool. On Saturday there was a chocolate, beer and wine thing near our house, so we took the kids in the morning (when it was just chocolate) and we went back in the afternoon to taste the beer and wine while the babysitter stayed with the kids.
Sunday Steve left for Sarawak later in the morning and we spent most of the day doing assignments that are due next week. For dinner I took the kids out for sushi.

I don't have any pictures of camp because the children weren't allowed to take cameras, but I think the teachers took some and will give out discs to the kids, probably not till after the holidays though.