Oh my god, it's almost one and a half year now !!!

Tristan is approaching 16 months now ... He just had his 9th teeth, which is taking its own sweet time to grow.




Tristan doesn't like reading or listen to story I read to him from the book (I guess I'm a real bad story teller), he would just point and read the animals that he could recognized and then lost interest to the book real quick.




He can now call everyone in the house, nai(3) nai(1) - means grandma, ye(2) ye(3) - grandpa, auntie, kakak (elder sister - our maid), daddy and "me" (mommy). He can even called the man who delivered grocery to our house "uncle" without instructed by us, which gave us a surprise.




He loves reading cards, he can identify most of the shapes in the cards - star, moon, heart, circle, square, triangle etc, he can even say "pentagon" which I just taught him a few times as I never thought that he would have picked it up. I'm learning a lot from him, on how a little person grow and learn to know this world day by day.

(These photos were taken back in Nov 11th. Didn't have time to write about them last month).

The Crucial Conversation training trip

Went to Singapore for a 2-day training last week, it was called Crucial Conversation, highly recommended by my boss. It's a very useful tool for both work and personal life, it teaches us how to get ourselves prepared for or handle a high stake situation, avoid getting emotional and forgot about what we wanted to achieve, which may have lead to sour relationship, or felt sorry later at what we have done or said to the other party.




Our training was organized in the Swissotel Merchant. On the first evening after the training, me and 2 other colleages went to the opposite mall called Central to have dinner, the restaurant is called Pasta de Waraku, this is the first time I tried out the Japanese Pasta, to my surprise, it was very tasty. We also ordered pizza there, a super thin pizza with egg plant and sausage, so tasty that I'm still thinking of it right now :-)


After training, one of my colleage need to get a birthday present for a friend, so we went to Orchard Road, it is so well decorated this year, with the theme of "Ocean", the lights chosen are in blue and purple, very elegant and romantic, the thing is, I forgot to bring my camera with me in this trip .... too bad, can't share with you all here, but, you can always pay Singapore a visit, you will never regret the trip, but the only problem is to get a taxi out of Orchard Road during the peak hour.




This time I stayed in Swissotel The Stamford, next to City Hall, a place with lots of shopping to do and plenty of food to eat. It is so crowded even during a work night, we had to queue up in one of the restaurant to get food. The hotel has a drinking place called City Space at level 70, where there's a life singer and a glass view of the city. It was a great trip and I would like to do it again in future.

Approaching 17 Months

I was extremely busy lately, accompanied by Tristan not feeling very well these few days, and am still on call from 8am - 4pm until this Sunday, didn't realize that it's been 16 days since my last post ...


Lucky thing is that I still have my time with Tristan, which I don't miss each step of his development, and almost always able to stay by his side. Here's a very short video clip that I would like to share with you, hope you enjoy it, and have a great weekend :-)

Hearst Castle

Hearst Castle was built by newspaper tychoon Willian Randolph Hearst.





It is located near San Simeon, California, on a hill overlooking the Pacific Ocean, about 250 miles (400 km) from both Los Angeles and San Francisco.




It's built on a 40,000 acre (160 km²) ranch that he inherited from his mother, which was purchased by his father in 1865.




This is the Neptune Pool :




The young Hearst wanted to built his own castle after his long Europe trip with his mother when he was at 12 years old (if I remember the age correctly). So he started the plan on the same year his mother died, in 1919.




The castle has 56 bedrooms, 61 bathrooms, 19 sitting rooms, 127 acres of gardens, indoor and outdoor swimming pools, tennis courts, a movie theater, an airfield, and the world's largest private zoo.




The castle itself is five miles (eight kilometers) inland. Access is only allowed by a scheduled tour bus.




The tour guide brought us around the castle. I was quite surprised when he mentioned that the main architect is a lady - Julia Morgan from San Francisco. They faced many difficulties such as moving materials up the hill etc.




The Gothic style study :




The indoor swimming pool :




The pool uses the gold mosaic tiles :




The main house :




I forgot how much we paid for the ticket, but according to Wiki, as of 2007 it's USD$20-$30 depending on the season and time of day. Reservations are recommended during busy periods such as summer, weekends and holidays.

Port Dickson

Brought Tristan to Port Dickson during the Hari Raya Aidilfitri holiday, I was hoping that he would have a great time playing with the sand there.



The beach was dirty and I didn't really want him to get down there, but it was too late, he just rush himself down and start walking towards the water :(



Next thing I know, he already started digging the sand using his hand ... So I had to provide him with the tools we brought along.



He really enjoyed himself playing with the sand, but the sun is getting too strong that we had to bring him away, which ended up with a cry ...



At one stage he used to pull the sunglass away, luckily he's accepting it now, at least his eyes are protected against the sun.



He loves playing in the water, normally it's not easy to get him out of the pool.



Took a few photos before we left the Legend's chalet.





Tristan is almost 16 months now, he loves to imitate adults languages and actions, I like to hear him talk continuously in his own language, sometimes sounds like Vietnamese, and other times like Hokkien.

Sedona

Sedona resides in the northern region of U.S. state of Arizona. It's not far from Grand Canyon, so we went there on our way back from Grand Canyon. Sedona is famous for its amazing red sandstone formations, which is refered to as the Red Rocks of Sedona.




Some red rocks there resembles things like Snoopy (when he lies on his back on top of his dog house), another Peanut comic character Lucy, courthouse, coffeepot, devil's kitchen etc. But we didn't manage to see all of them.




We did see something like Snoopy but the front leg were missing :( See the bottom left of the picture below :

You can see a drawing of the Snoopy red rock that's published by the Sedona City's Website here.






We stayed over for a night, and went ahead to the the Red Rock State Park the next morning.







We didn't follow the guided nature walk, instead we just did a free and easy nature walk.


















It was all quiet, we were the only 2 human being in the wild.




















Some people go to Sedona for spiritual pursuits and others are there for hiking and mountain biking. For me, I think it will be more fun to go hiking there with a group of friends.

David

David, a copy that stands in front of Palazzo Vecchio.




He's my favourite statue, I think you can tell from these pictures I took.



The original is in The Accademia Gallery. I insisted to go there, just to take a look at David.



It was sculpted from 1501 to 1504, by Michelangelo.



Hope you like David too, have a great weekend :-)

Jerry's Tags

Owed Jerry 2 tags :

1) If I have a million dollar (should be RM kua since I live in Malaysia)
2) 38 Q&A


The million dollar tag was received quite some time ago, but before being tagged I have never seriously think about this and after I draft out what I wanted, it sounds so boring that I thought I'll probably get it done "some day" when I have a way to make it interesting, but that has been left untouched until today, when I received a second tag from Jerry, so I thought I would just do both tags in 1 post now - Jerry, here's the 2 in 1 :)


For the first tag, these are my wishes (3C) :

1. Continue to work but only 4 hours or less a day, 4 days or less a week.


2. Create a fund for children who needs help, eg. those who's in hunger, who has lost their parent, abused, who needs education and shelter etc.


3. Create a "travel fund" for myself where I would be able to travel at least once every quarter.


It's that simple.



And the second tag :
(did most of the Q&A on Sunday but before it was completed Tristan woke up)

1. Name one person who made you laugh last night?
Tristan, my son - who's constantly learning languages these days, said things like "habis" in a very funny way. ("habis" is a Malay word for those of you from China, Australia & other parts of world)

2. What were you doing at 0800?
Sleeping, Tristan slept at 12am last night, and kept crying during the 5-6am period.

3. What were you doing 30 minutes ago?
Reading Jerry's post.

4. What happened to you in 2006?
Gave birth to Tristan.

5. What was the last thing you said out loud?
"NOOOOOOO !!!!!!!!!!!!!!", when Tristan fell from the bed 3 nights ago.

6. How many beverages did you have today?
Just one.

7. What color is your hairbrush?
Don't use one anymore nowadays.

8. What was the last thing you paid for?
1 car loan, 2 house loan, online.

9. Where were you last night?
Home.

10. What color is your front door?
Brown. The common front door color.

11. Where do you keep your change?
Toss into my handbag, sometimes my jeans' pocket.

12. What’s the weather like today?
Extremely HOT.

13. What’s the best ice-cream flavor?
Bitter sweet chocolate.

14. What excites you?
Many things.

15. Do you want to cut your hair?
Why ?

16. Are you over the age of 25?
Way too much ;o)

17. Do you talk a lot?
Depends.

18. Do you watch the O.C.?
No idea what this is.

19. Do you know anyone named Steven?
Why Steven ?

20. Do you make up your own words?
I think I may have done it before.

21. Are you a jealous person?
sometimes.

22. Name a friend whose name starts with the letter ‘A’.
Agnes. An old colleage.

23. Name a friend whose name starts with the letter ‘K’.
Too many, don't know who to start with.

24. Who’s the first person on your received call list?
Should be my husband.

25. What does the last text message you received say?
“Want to go to kara-forever-ok ?”

26. Do you chew on your straw?
Not anymore.

27. Do you have curly hair?
A little bit.

28. Where’s the next place you’re going to?
Swimming pool, if it's not too hot for Tristan later on.

29. Who’s the rudest person in your life?
Don't remember. Doesn't matter to me.

30. What was the last thing you ate?
Instant noodle, no cooking today.

31. Will you get married in the future?
Invalid question.

32. What’s the best movie you’ve seen in the past 2 weeks?
Haven't seen any movie in a long time.

33. Is there anyone you like right now?
Of course, my parent, siblings, and my son.

34. When was the last time you did the dishes?
More than a year ago, before Tristan was born.

35. Are you currently depressed?
No, but I was 2 nights ago.

36. Did you cry today?
No, but I was 2 nights ago.

37. Why did you answer and post this?
Because I didn't complete the million dollar tag after Jerry tagged me for so long, I thought it would be nice to do both at this time.

38. Tag 5 people who would do this survey.
Everyone has been tagged, so I'm going to give this a pass.

Flowers

Some flowers around our house in September, hope you enjoy them :)