Adeline

My husband birthday falls on 28 February 2007 which just past few days ago. This year, he turn 30 years old and he is a bit sad about it because he is no longer 20 years old youngster. But for me, guy which reach 30 is not yet consider old, is just a begining of their journey. This special day, is fall on Wednesday which is the day we have care group. I requested that I cook for this special day for him since I never do anything special for him on this special day before. Previously, for his birthday, I just buy present and we go out to eat together.

This special day, I cook our hokkien birthday mee, which is call Lam Mee as the main dish and the small bite will be belacan chicken. I plan to cook other stuff but I am afraid that we cannot finish it, so I just make this two things. How I cook it? hehehe…. Is my secret. But I can tell you, is delicious and the taste very similiar to my mum cooking. I miss my mum cooking a lot. On that day, we have another site dishes which is bak kut teh which is cook by Grace on that day. She cook the bak kut teh on that day because of some incident happen. I am happy that she cook the bak kut teh because we at least can have another choices. Even though, Lam Mee and Bak Kut Teh does not seem to be sound right, but it turn out to be nice and delicious.  We enjoy the food a lot and this include baby chloe too.

After the dinner, we have our care group meeting which is Praise and worship leader is Alex and teaching which is lead by me. We have a interesting sharing in our care group.

After the care group, we have birthday cake cutting time. Again, we brought the birthday cake from baskin 31 robin. This time, we brought the flavor caramel ice cream cake. It was superb cake. If I am not wrong the ice cream flavor is vanilla and chocolate and the cake flavor is devil's food. While enjoying the cake and chatting, we have some black berry wine to go together with our cake. 

The care group cum birthday party end at 12am. It was a fun, delicious and interesting birthday for Alex.

  Alex blowing candle of the cake

  Group photo

 The birthday cake

This is the day that we are waiting for… snow at hillsboro. I still remember that morning, TC come and wake me up and tell me, hey, is snowing heavily outside. wake up and take a look. I still remember that day, i'm a bit not feeling well. I think i has sore throat that day. but to see the snow and go out to play it, i still wake up. It is really beautiful and nice. everywhere is cover with snow and all white color. We never have chance to see this in Malaysia, so we decided to gear up and go outside to play the snow. With all our jacket ready, glove, camera and tripot, we went out and enjoy the snowing. The snow was so soft and some is even melt in your hand. It is really true to explain snow as soft and white. We walk around the apartment complex that we stay and start to snap some photo. I even ask TC to do angel (if you know what i'm rtalking about). I also using our camcorder and recorded down some nice movie.

 While we walking around the complex, we see a lot of kids also come out and play snow. Some of them do snow man and also snow fight as well. They are so happy because no need to go to schopl. :-d We did not walk long because it is really cold and i still a bit sick. So, we went back to our house and enjoy the view from inside the house while drinking coffee. what an experince. Here i will show you some of the photo that we took.

I started doing cooking when I followed my husband to US. At first, I was afraid of cooking because I am scare the meal that I cook was not that nice. Most of the time, I use some instant sauce to help me in my cooking. I also use recipe book to guide me in my cooking. Everyday, I make different dishes and I felt that the dishes I make was always not good enough. When starting to cook, I only cook chinese dishes like dishes and rice.

As time past by, I felt bore with just dishes and rice. So I start doing different type of food. I was craving for Penang hawker food, which I can hardly find it in US. So in order to taste the Penang hawker food, I start to find my resources from the internet, or call my mum in Penang. My mum was my best mentor in cooking because in our family, she is known to be the best cook. During I am in US, I make Sar Hor Fan, Jawa Mee, Penang style Lam Mee, Kong Asam, Siew Bak(taken from lilyng2000.blogspot.com), chicken rice(malaysianfood.net), belacan chicken, fried poh piah, Nasi Lemak, Curry Chicken, and etc. Besides hawker food and baba and nyonya food, I also try out some italian food cum western. I make  blueberry chesscake, spaghetti with tomato sauce, pasta with alfredo sauce, roast chicken drumstick and others.

In Penang, eat outside is much more cheaper than you cook yourself and I always work till dinner time, so most of the time, we just go out to eat or once in a while, we eat at home where my mum will do all the cooking. SInce I come to US, I found myself love to cook and like to try new things. Sometimes, I just came out with my own design of food. I guess my new hobby includes cooking…

Here is some of the picture of my cooking.

Today (16 Feb 2007) is the day that we will travel to San Francisco from Hillsboro, OR. Together with another 4 people, we travel in two cars to San Francisco. I was very existing on the day and start to prepare some food to eat on the way to San Frans. It is a very long journey as we need to travel about 11 hours. We start our journey at around 8pm but before that, we stop by at my friend house to drop my flower there so that they can take care of it for me. Along the way, we make a few gas and pee stop. I was able to stay awake and talk to my hubby all the way from 8pm and until 11pm. After that I start to watch movie inside the car using my hubby labtop. Due to the noise from the car, I can hardly listen to the sound but then I still able to finish the show. By the time, it is already almost 1am in the morning. We are at the bolder of Oregon and California at that time. We continue our journey after the gas stop and I think I fall asleep at around 3am. I wake up at around 5am and I help my hubby to drive the car while he went to nap. At around 6.30am, I wake him up as it is now very near to San Francisco already and the traffic are getting busier. Imagine the highway is 5 lanes and all cars are average 15 mph over the limit. I can consider to be the slowest car at the highway although I already about 5 mph over the limit. I switch with my hubby and he drive the car pass the famous Golden Gate and into San Francisco.  The bridge is fantastic and very beautiful. San Francisco, here I come.

Famous Golden Gate at San francisco

As we arrive at San Francisco, we go to a place called Fort Point which is directly beside the bridge. We can have a fantastic view of the bridge from there and we took some very nice photo. I took out our video cam as well and start filming some of the nice view of the Golden Gate. We start walking down to the water front and continue some of the photo shooting there. The weather is nice and not as cool as Oregon. But when the wind come, it is quite cold though. After that, we decide to walk on to the bridge and start taking some beautiful picture of san Francisco town. The wind at the bridge is quite strong and quite cold up there. So, we decided to go off the bridge and didn’t finish up walking over the bridge. We can also clearly see the Alcatraz from the bridge. Alcatraz also known as the rock, is a very famous jail in san Francisco town. After that, we travel to a place called Palace of Fine Arts, a place that features in the movie name “The Rock” by sean colleney. The palace is so nice and sometime, people will use it as wedding ceremony here. It must be very romantic with all the old building and history. I like this place. Very nice. The housing surrounded are fantastic as well. Very relaxing place listening to the fountain and enjoying nice breezing air.

Feb 9 is my birthday and I today I was so happy as hubby bring me to eat at Todai at downtown portland. It is a sushi buffet and they have promotion for birthday people where they get to eat FREE. We arrive there at around 6pm, parked our car and go straight for the food. Once we settled down, we head straight to the food. So many foods available for us to choose. They have sushi (lots of sushi), shasimi, dungeness crab, king crab, oyster and etc. After few round of eating, we are almost full already. After taken some dissert, we leave the place with full stomach. The food is ok though but maybe we already used to the food from saburro, so, we think with the same price that we paid here; we rather go back to Saburro and eat. However, there is one thing I like about Todai restaurant is the desert. There are various type of dessert like, strawberry shortcake, various cheess cake, Creme Brulee, Tiramisu and creme puff and the list go on. It is so delicious…. .  After the dinner, we went to ride around Portland downtown, stop by the waterfront and take some photo. Too bad my hubby didn’t bring his tripod, so, cannot take nice night view picture. After that we come back to our apartment as we already invited some friend to come to our house to have a small celebration. We stop by buskin robin and get an ais cream cake. At around 9.30pm, the guest arrived and too my surprise, they bring me some present. Totally unexpected but want to take Pei San and Grace for their present. We have some chat and then we cut the cake. This is the first time I celebrate my birthday outside Malaysia and I feel so happy about it. Thanks everyone.

After we check in to hotels and wash our face, we start second round of the trip and travel back to San Francisco town. We stay at the place called Larkspur Landing at South San Francisco, about 15 mins drive from the downtown. Our first stop, Chinatown. Since that day is Chinese new year eve, we expected a lot of people and deco there. We were lucky enough to get a car park at the road side at Chinatown. The parking fee is expensive though but since we all are hungry already, we just jump of the car, pump in some coins to the machine, and head straight to the shop. We are going to have some dim sum. Yummy. The food is nice, maybe due to we are too hungry already. Hehe. After that, we walked around the Chinatown, looking for some souvenir and T-shirt. My husband and I walk a lot of places and take a lot of picture. We brought a few souvenir and T-shirt as well and after that meet up with the rest of the people and continue for our next stop, which is Lombard Street, also known as the crookest street. Going through the busy traffic in San Francisco is not easy, especially if you try the steep road there. It will be hard to explain to you here unless you try it out yourself. Imagine some of them are like 45 degree steepness. When we reach there, as usual, full of tourist and we manage to snap some nice picture. They place is not as nice as last time when my husband was here due to it is still winter. No flower and the road is just green color. We walked down the street and snap some photo from the bottom and walked up the street again. It is very steep and car just drives down the crookest road slowly. Some people will shout when they drive down. I manage to get myself taking photo with the cable car. Yes, the San Francisco most famous cable car line. After all this, we drive our car down the famous road and proceed to coit tower, which is the telegraph tower and from there, we can have a very clear view of San Francisco town.

We then proceed to Alamo Square where the famous Fullhouse movie filmed there. The square is just a piece of land in front of the famous house with San Francisco town as background. It is kind of crazy to see people just picnic there and some people just sleep there on top of the grass. Yes, it is grass. We take some nice photo there and then we meet up with some friend before we travel to Pier 39. Another famous tourist place. It was so jam along the way from Alamo Square to Pier 39, by the way we park our car, it is already around 5.20pm. We managed to walk around the place for a while before we all release that we are hungry again.  We decided want to have some nice food for New Year eve and hence we headed to this crab house, hoping to have some nice crab. The food is just ok, but it is quite expensive though. We spend like $52 for two persons. We travel back to our hotel after a wonderful but tiring day.

  Pier 39                                           Chinatown

  Alamo Square                            Cable Car

During this Winter season,my hubby and I went to skiing. We brought three day pass which come together three lesson. 

For this moment, I only went to ski twice. I find skiing is a sport which you need to have a strong legs and hands and also need a lot of courage to go down the hills.  My first skiing lesson was relaxing and fun because the tutor does not force us to doing too much base on our capabilites. The first lesson, I spent my time on a small slope which we only use the rope pull ourself up the hill.  I do try out on the higher slope(buttercup) which we use the ski lift to go up the hill for a few times and the experience is I fall a few times. I remember when on the way back, my both hand was in pain and my left knee bruises due to knock on the snowblade during the lesson.

 The second ski lesson is the most unforgetable moment. Actually, before we start our classes, I plan to go to the buttercup slope to have a try before attending the class but due to some unavoidable scenario, we manage to reach there one hour before the classes start. Due to the time constraint, I only manage to have a few round of skiing lesson on the small slope. The weather was so bad that day. It is so windy that the wind blow the snow toward us and you can feel that your face and hand is freezing. When I attend the class, our instructor request everyone of us go to up the hill using the buttercup lift. When my hubby and I sit on the lift, we cannot stand the coldness because the wind was keep on blowing toward us, my eye having trouble to see in front and my face was so freezing until it become pain. When we reach there, our instructor request us to ski down so that he can see how we ski. When going down the hill, it was fun and everybody past the test.

Then he told us whether we would like to try the second slope which is higher and well… more dangerous of course… .Everyone in my class agreed to go up and have a try. But for me, I am scare of the snow blowing on my face and the freezing wind. All my friend who attended the class got goggle but I don't have any of those protection. I told myself, if this time when I go up, I felt it is too cold, I am going to tell the instructor that I am going to quit.

Guess what… . when I sit on the ski lift, it was super cold compare to the first time and my whole face and hand was in pain like needle poking your skin. The pain was not only on the skin surface but the pain was felt on your bone. I tell my husband that I cannot stand it anymore!!! Half way of my journey, I told him that I want to quit. I want to jump down from the lift.  Luckily, I have good husband who encourage me to go on and we survive the journey on the lift.

We was then ask to ski down the lane call "Zoo" which is full of trees both sites of the lane. It was fun going down the hills. However, due to that day too windy, it is very hard to control my speed or the direction that I am going. I believe it only happen to those still learning to ski. I fell down a few times but I still haven't give up in learning. The instructor ask us whether we want to go up again and I refuse to go up again because I am scare of the wind and the journey up the hill was quite long. Fortunately, my instructor was an encouraging person he offered me his mask which helps to protect my face from being blown by the wind. So my husband and I agreed to go up again. This time we use another steeper lane to come down and I fall down really bad. In order for me to get down the hill, I hit a pile of snow, fall upside down, doing split when standing and continuous fall a few times. When I reach at the bottom of the hill, I was so happy that I make it and I am still in one piece.

After the second skiing, my injury is worst than the first time I ski. I injure my knee and knee cap which takes me like few weeks to be fully recover and it also makes me realise that when we go skiing, it is better to be fully equip. If possible get a goggle and a mask(cover ears) to protect your face from the windy day or snowing day.