I bought a chinese food/cooking book a while ago and tonight we tried a recipe called 'Ants climing trees'. It's a Sichuan recipe with Rice Vermicelli (the very thin rice noodles), sliced marinated beef (of course from Australia!), black bean paste, a little bit of greens and some red chillies. As all the ingredients, other than the noodles, have to be cut very small, when all is mixed up, the red and green bits look like ants...

Tasted good, but someone took TOO MANY CHILLIES and it was so hot...

Over the last 2 weeks, we went out quite a bit with people from work. Celebrations are fun here and a bit different than home. One agrees on a time to meet and one generally comes some time later than that, orders some food (no-one waits for the others here with eating) and always offers some to others. After that, it's basically pure fun. People make jokes, talk cynically about each other, pull each other's leg and so on. And normally with no alcohol. Well, at once occasion one girl was bought a lot of drinks for her birthday, and it didn't end that well for her. ;-)

Yesterday, we went to a farewell party of a german friend of mine. She lives within walking distance and had a get-together around her pool. Was a very nice evening, and we met some interesting people - a Macedonian guy, a Taiwanese Girl, a Czech girl, etc. All of them had interesting stories and good advise for traveling in the region.

By the way - the internet speed is sooo slow here, that I can't upload any pics. I need to find a time when others are not using the the net, I guess early morning would be good.

It's Sunday evening and we are sitting at home trying to watch a DVD, but the sound is playing up. We had a nice weekend. On Saturday, I went to Spanish class and in the evening we checked out the local indian Deepavali festival tent, where they sell lots of incense, cloths and also some food. We ended up going for Indian Vegetarian at Woodlands, across from where we live.
Today, we had our first ballroom (waltz) dancing class and it was a great experience. I understood the price wrongly before and thought it would be Euro 36 per hour per person. Well, it turned out that it is Euro 4,5 per hour. What a nice surprise!
Our teacher, Mrs Jovy, is a chinese lady in her 50s, who has been dancing for 20+ years. Her last name should be Stickler, as she is so precise with the foodwork, the head position, where we look, where the hands lie, etc. But no complaints - she is great, a real character.
In the evening we met with a Alex and Alina for Chinese food at Fong Lye. We like that place, but it's a bit more expensive these days. Still, for european prices it's ok, as we had high quality chinese food (steamed red snapper in soy sauce, beef and green veggie, spicy mussles, mixed veg and rice) for Euro 10 each.
Our evening ended with a little way through KL, past some DVD stalls, chinese medicine stores and of course many people!

Always wanted to do it, but never did it. Until today! You can see from the picture who was the brave one to try 'ear-candeling'. They stick a hollow candle inside your ear, lit it and let it burn down. This somehow gets all the stuff out of your ears and the sinuses are also clearer then. T didn't like it that much though, as it did nothing for him... oh well... I however, had a foot reflexology massage in the meantime, which was so nice, tender and relaxing that I just got up from an afternoon nap. :-)

Hao! Yes, it's true - I am doing 'good' with my newly started Mandarin classes. My private teacher, Joe, comes to our place once a week and teaches me mainly speaking Mandarin. We will also work on chinese character recognition and some writing. The main motivation behind my efforts is that we want to travel to the Yunnan province in China next year, but WITHOUT the typical tour-bus. So, I 'had to bite the bullet' and start learning the language. Well, I love doing it, actually... :-)

It can't be compared with anything I have learnt before, as every (!) character, every pronounced word has nothing in common with anything in any other language that I know. This is train-the-brain, plus train-your-tongue hardcore. but enjoyable!

Duibuqi, ni hui shuo yingwen? - Excuse me, do you speak english?

Guess I will be using this sentence a lot...

Hello friends!
Most of you will know that I just spent two weeks in Austria, as my sister had a cute little baby boy and I had to practice my auntie-skills. Guess I was doing alright, as he only complained every now and then... ;-)
Being back here, we were rather busy during our days, but also spent the weekend playing our first round of golf at Bukit Jalil Golf Course. I tell you, it's different playing in the tropics! The cold drink afterwards tastes even nicer.
I try keep this site more updated, but let me tell you, we are having a kind of 'normal' life here at the moment...