Flowers!

Some of my favorite pictures from Auntie Muna's Garden:

The Beach and Food

Two days ago Ayu, Grace, Abigail, John, and I all went to the beach. Below are our pictures.From left: Abagail, Grace, and JohnHere's me acting like a sea monster.Group Photo!A lightbulb on the beach!Ayu and GraceA jellyfish that floated to the shore. We all got some very minor stings (probably from ones like this), but nothing serious. I buried the jellyfish .This is a jackfruit - and its enormous! About the size of a watermellon.And banana leaf curry - eaten on a banana leaf with your fingers. You haven't eaten real Indian food until you have eaten with your fingers. Going...Going...Gone!A little cat at the food market todayAnd the fine cuisineThis was actually Ayu's, but I had to take a picture.

Chicken Feet and a Wedding

The last two days have been jam-packed with activity, and I haven't updated because of this.

As many of you probably know, Malaysia (and specifically Penang) is known for amazing food. Some things I have tried with no concern for how my stomach (and subsequent organs) will react, but there are things that I will not eat. And that line was further defined two days ago when the following dishes were put in front of me. The one on the left contains (amongst other things) fungus, kidney beans, ice, and fruit. This one I ate - it was pretty good. The one on the right is chicken feet - and I vehemently refused (as did Ayu). In addition to chicken feet, there was also chicken gizzard and chicken butt in the bowl. None of these I tried. On the list of things that I won't eat is anything containing testicles or penis. But I try to keep an open mind.

Yesterday, we attended Ayu's best friends' brother's wedding. It was on the beach and super casual - which was very fun. The pictures below tell the story better than I ever could, but I'll make comments here and there. This entire lamb was eaten in about an hour I'd say. Everyone came hungry and went home full and happy.

Ayu on the beach.The bride and the groom on the beach at sunset - really amazing picturesA traditional fishing boat at sunset.And here's me (I told you it was casual)!And the guests leaving full and happy.

For Sale: Yamaha YCL 34-II Clarinet

All us girls (there are four of us in the family) played the violin and the piano at some point in our lives. We were made to take lessons and there were times I was literally dragged kicking and screaming to my piano lessons. The only sister who had any real interest in music was my third sister, who not only played the piano beautifully, but sang and loved musicals. She also joined the school band and tried her hand at clarinet for a while. So by the time I got to secondary school, there was an available clarinet lying around the house and I figured I wanted to have a go at it too.

I think I had two months worth of lessons before I moved onto some other fancy (I think it was ping pong). Nobody has touched the clarinet since.

I found it in my sister's closet the other day and I think it's time someone made some music with it again. Between the two of us we probably didn't even use it for a whole year even, so it's in pretty good condition.

I'm selling it for US$300 or RM900. PayPal is our preferred method of payment, but we'll also take bank checks. We're in Penang, Malaysia so if you're within 300km of our location, we'll think about delivering it to you. Otherwise, I'll happily ship it to you as long as you cover the shipping costs. There are a few options for shipping, the most inexpensive method would be the Malaysian postal service. There's also the usual UPS, DHL, FedEx, etc shipping companies. Feel free to be resourceful and look around for a shipping service that suits your needs better.

Interested parties, please contact us at info@nzwow.com.

We were serious about branching out

So one of the best things about having all this time on our hands is that we come up with the most creative things. Well, you really have to. Otherwise, you're literally doing nothing. Then you become a human potato (we pause today's program to bring you a friendly community message: the world's currently facing a global rice shortage, say no to rice, eat more potatoes!).

Vegetables aside, we spend quite a bit of our time brainstorming ideas on how to make a little extra cash. We've got a whole excel sheet of online business ideas we'd like to work on at some point in our lives. Yesterday afternoon was spent researching websites, and catchy URLs we could use. On a whim, we typed in addresses we thought sounded interesting, and surprisingly enough, some where available. We couldn't resist. We had to get them.

So we now have a link on our sidebar (scroll down) for those who want to buy domains from us.

Pretty fun way to make money if you ask me.

The site takes on new directions

As you might have noticed, we're trying to sell a bus ticket from KL-SIN.

A note of warning, I don't think this will be the last item we try to sell on this website.

See, I'm trying to sell a great deal of things. In fact, I'm literally trying to sell the house.

We've lived in this house for as long as I can remember and we rarely truly spring cleaned it. Sure, the floors are mopped every week and we try to keep the dust off the shelves, but none of us ever really threw anything out. As a result, there is a lot of stuff in the house.

I'm guessing that the most valuable items will come from the old bookshelf in the TV room. Lots of treasures to discover. Good thing we've got a lot of time on our hands :o).

P.S. To make things easier for you and me, I've added a search option, and labels to the blog. So if you wanted to read only entries and not the For Sale posts, click on the label of your choice and voila! :o)

Cupcake Factory Workers

5 days ago (which doesn't exactly make it new news) Ayu and I helped her friend Ween with her cupcake designs in preparation for Mother's Day. For those who don't know Ween and her cupcake/cake company and want to check it out for themselves, here's the link to her site.

I think I speak for both of us when I say that we have a new appreciation for all the work involved in making custom desserts. We worked for most of the day and in the end had 8 designs (Ayu and I did much less work than Ween because we were unfamiliar with the process and the medium). All of the things you see here are made out of special sugar-dough that is edible, but not very tasty. It's not the easiest medium to work with because it dries out quickly and tears - this happened quite often to me with my clumsy monkey fingers. Anyways, Ween decided to test our skills - the results of which are below:Test #1: Make roses. The one at the right is Ween's example. Ayu showed considerable skill when it came to doing this and made the three roses in the foreground. In the same amount of time I only managed one - but it came out pretty good (at the back is mine).
Test #2: Make a Bear. Once again Ween's is the nice one (at the back). But this time the monkey fingers didn't fail me! Mine is on the left and Ayu's is the one that looks like a monkey (although in all fairness I used up all the dough so she had a very limited amount to work with). Since we didn't quite prove our competence, we left the figures to Ween and we made simple flowers the rest of the day.

Once all was said and done it was time to take pictures and put them on Ween's website so people could see what they would be ordering. Below is Ween framing the perfect shot.
Appearance is everything, so a piece of paper with a nice pattern was used as the backdrop. The finished projects can be seen on her website, but I think the figures are the highlight; Enjoy!