Hari ni Kakak tambah satu lagi digit kepada umurnya, that would turn her into a 10-year-old teenager. Wow.. dah jadi anak dara dah dia..

Rasa macam baru semalam Mak Lijah masuk bilik bersalin di Kedah Medical Centre untuk melahirkan dia. She was only 2.83 kg when she made her grand entrance into the world.

Dari kecil lagi Kakak dah menonjolkan kemanjaan dia. Maklumlah, girl... And now, dia diapit oleh two boys, an abang and an adik lelaki and still thinks and acts like she's the youngest. Alahai anak daraku...

Selamat Hari Jadi Kakak

Semoga menjadi anak yang solehah, rajin, menghormati orang tua, sopan-santun, bijak dan sihat senantiasa...

Hot Hanoi

..................

Yeay... dah balik... Seronoknya dapat balik Mesia. 12 hari di Hanoi, aduss... letih sungguh... Tak healthy langsung. Sempat pergi gym sekali jer.. Swimming pool langsung tak dan. Lepas makan, duduk balik di meja rundingan and talk, and listen, and sigh, and sleep at 2 a.m.

Balik jer Malaysia, belasah nasi lemak daun pisang duluuuu......




Masa mula-mula landing kat airport Hanoi tu dah terasa gigitan suhunya yang tinggi. Selepas mengutip beg, terkejut badak sekejap dengan panggilan-panggilan untuk menaiki teksi mereka. USD16... Hmm...
Maka cepat-cepatlah Mak Lijah melompat masuk ke dalam MPV yang terpilih sebab tak tahan rasa bahang yang mengejutkan kulit Mak Lijah ni.

As usual, Mak Lijah cuba berbual dengan pemandu teksi untuk find out about the city, the people, Ha Long Bay... bla..bla..bla.. but I ended up frustrated sebab dia tak reti cakap omputih. Hampeh..

About 15 minutes in the taxi, tiba-tiba tak rasa dah dingin air-cond tu. Rasa angin panas jer.. Eh, apa dah jadi ni? Rupa-rupanya air-cond dah tak berfungsi. Kebetulan ke apa ni? So Mak Lijahpun dengan susah payahnya minta dia turunkan cermin kereta sebab dah rasa meruap yang melampau. Malangnya samada dia tak faham atau cikgu dia pesan, cermin tingkap tidak mahu dia turunkan. Lama-kelamaan Mak Lijah dah tak tahan sebab berpeluh-peluh yang amat dan kerana melihat kegelisahan Mak Lijah yang sengaja dibuat-buat, akhirnya pemandu teksi itupun menurunkan cerminnya. Which did not make much difference sebab udara di luar ibarat wap yang keluar dari cerek yang airnya sedang mendidih.

Sampai saja di Sofitel Plaza Hotel dan apabila pintu dibuka oleh pekerja hotel, Mak Lijah melompat keluar sebab nak bergegas masuk dalam hotel dengan harapan dapat menikmati kedinginan hotel. Dalam masa menanti beg itu pun, sempat lagi suhu menggigit-gigit kulit ini.

Tak sangka Hanoi sepanas ini...

Dek kerana suhu yang panas ni, Mak Lijah decided to only go out to survey Hanoi after 6 pm, hoping that it would have cooled down by then. Tapi hampa sebab suhu tak turun-turun dan berjalanlah Mak Lijah di Hang Gai dalam kepanasan 37 darjah celcius.

Dinner di sebuah restoran Melayu tak jauh dari situ.

Baru first day dan Mak Lijah tak akan sambung cerita Hanoi sebab tiada yang terlampau menarik untuk dinotakan. Pun begitu, Mak Lijah kagumi jugalah creativity orang-orang Viet Nam meng'interesting'kan the look of helmetnya...

Selain daripada itu, keindahan landscape Hanoi hanya dapat Mak Lijah nikmati sejam setengah yang terakhir di kota Hanoi apabila sempat melihat bangunan-bangunan lamanya hasil peninggalan penjajah yang hanya mengaut keuntungan tanpa meninggalkan kesan-kesan kemajuan dan kemodenan di negara itu.



Hai..hai.. Bye..bye.. Hanoi...

Pics in Hanoi

Creative, aren't they?





Got to try it on...

En route to Hanoi

Yes, I am flying (again) and this time is to complete my odyssey of ASEAN 10. Going to Hanoi means I would finally complete my visit to all ten of them.

Tapi sebelum fly tu, makan nasi kerabu puas-puas dulu kat Golden Lounge ni. Sampai sana takut susah nak cari makanan halal pula walaupun masa surf kat ZABIHAH tadi, dah jumpa dua Malaysian halal restaurant, Nisa and Warung Sri Belango.

Tadi naik satu train dengan angkasawan kita from KL Sentral. Hensem lah. Tapi Mak Lijah control macho... maintain cool... Buat-buat malu konon...

OK lah. Got to go. Lagi setengah jam nak berlepas, nak jalan slow-slow to Gate 02.

See u in Hanoi...

Sophie

Molly

Kat rumah Cathie with her adorable girls.

This is my super-extended Australian family. Photo taken after dinner at a lovely seafood restaurant.

Hello, Sydney...

Visiting Sydney again after two decades was yet the best thing for me this year. Not only did I get to meet my foster-exchange-student-sister, Cathie, and her family, I also got to honeymoon with Pak Lijah (wish it would be an annual event ;) ).

And so I booked my Qantas ticket from Sydney to Brisbane online in order for me to arrive at about the same time as Pak Lijah would arrive from KL on that Sunday morning. I was impressed with Qantas's online services (bagi Mak Lijah yang perak ni, lah). Booking online was normal, but what surprises me was the fact that you can request your meal preference, choose or change your seat as you wish depending on the availability, and the best part... produce the boarding pass well in advance, ALL ONLINE. Senang, kan? So why didn't we think of that back here? Oh.. terlupa, nanti orang tak ada kerja pulak.

.
.

Mak Lijah landed in Sydney and met Pak Lijah kat international terminal. Tunggu punya tunggu, telefon punya telefon, akhirnya kamipun naiklah kereta menuju ke hotel di The Rocks tu. Nak dijadikan cerita, drebar kereta tu was an Indonesian who migrated some 20 years ago.

We got to the beautiful hotel about half an hour later just to find out that we could not check-in yet walaupun nama kat reservation dah ada and that we didnt get the room we asked for. That's a bit weird sebab masa buat booking dulu, diorang responded that as member of the group of hotels, we got the priveleges of early check-in, late check-out, free internet access, breakfast at the club, bla..bla...bla... Dipendekkan cerita, we were referred to at another floor. Di situ, tengah dok sibuk-sibuk explain sana-sini and Mak Lijah already had this in mind that it was not a good start for me at that moment, the Manager on Duty, Baron, asked if we were from Singapore [WHY MUST IT BE SINGAPORE?]. Half disappointed, I guess, he responded that he's from Singapore.

"Ayah saya Chinese Singaporean, mak saya orang putih."
(Erkk... Yikes...! Nasib baik tak ngutuk lebih-lebih. Patutlah rambut dia hitam tapi still look like mat salleh)

"Laa... Ye ke? Lama dah kerja sini?
(Kononnya nak cover kutuk tadi)

"Lama dah. Dah migrate pun"

"So Baron, I tell you what, we let you settle this confusion about our room first, while we go and kill the time at Darling Harbour. OK tak?"

...dan dipendekkan cerita juga... we just walked down to the quay to look for the ferry to Darling Harbour. It was a warm, sunny day and we were happy to make that decision. The ferry ride cost only about AUS$5 each and worth every single moment of the time. We managed to capture a photo (pictured here) of our hotel while on the ferry. Sampai jer kat Darling Habour, Mak Lijah pun called rumah Cathie and spoke to Andrew, Cathie's husband, to confirm our dinner that night.

We strolled along the harbour taking our own sweet time, took lots of pictures, had Indian lunch, took a ride on the 'train' to go around Darling Harbour and ended the tour at Paddy's Market at nearly 3 pm.

Bila sampai hotel, Baron told us that the room for us was not booked as what we had requested for but he was kind enough to give us free internet access. Now.. is not that nice? Brotherly ASEAN...(walaupun half mat sal, kan?).

That night we met Cathie and the extended family at a lovely seafood restaurant. We had a great time going down memory lane. And that moment was one 'accomplishment' that I have always wanted to do for the past two decades.

Yes, it was 4 degrees celcius as we were driving up Blue Mountain on a Cherokee, Monday, 28 April 2008.

Bye bye Brisbane

And so my days in Brisbane were over. Tak dapat nak snap banyak foto while we were here sebab masa sangatlah mampat. Letih betul this time around, melebihi keletihan di Jakarta dulu.

At one of the sessions, we finished at 0015. Yes, it was past midnite. Kalau Mak Lijah ni Cinderella, harus kasut kaca tu dari Nine West. Tapi it's not just about past midnite..it's about Mak Lijah being LOCKED-OUT OF THE HOTEL (de-ja-vu pulak). It was all because the meeting habis after 12 lah..and one of the hotel's rule is that the side entrance will be locked at midnite.

Habislah... And so Mak Lijah yang jahil ni terpaksalah mencari jalan lain untuk masuk ke hotel sampai terpaksa pergi dekat train station. By then it was nearly 0030 and I still could not get into the hotel. Pintu kaca banyak, but they were all locked.

Berjalanlah lagi Mak Lijah di kedinginan seawal pagi dan kesunyian tu.. Rasa suspens tak payah nak ceritalah. Manalah kita nak tahu apa nak jadi kat kita di negeri orang... Akhirnya Mak Lijah sampai jugalah ke pintu utama hotel pada pukul 0100 dan terus ke bilik dengan fikiran yang kosong.

Kalau dah macam tu punya meeting, bila masa nak amik gambar? Anyway, gambar kiri tu, was taken at the pancake restaurant which was actually a church dulu. Interesting, eh? Gambar kanan, obviously was where we had the meeting. It was a very big place, rasanya macam kena jalan dua batu baru sampai hujung... Dan pengalaman Mak Lijah di Brisbane pun dah sampai ke penghujungnya....

G'day, mate...!

It was nearly 23 years ago since I last step my foot here. Tapi masa tu Mak Lijah pergi Sydney saja dengan status masih student lagi. This time around Mak Lijah berada di Brisbane pulak, since 18 April 2008, for another series of negotiations.

Sepanjang tujuh hari lepas Mak Lijah berada di sini, saban hari Mak Lijah hanya melihat bilik hotel, bilik mesyuarat, fish and chips dan lauk kambeng di restoran Ahmet. Semalam sempat juga pergi makan nasi ayam di Litttle Malaysia kat Boundary Street. Pergi berjalan kaki saja, sebab it was not that far away from our hotel. About 15 minutes of really, slow walk.

Dengan angin sepoi-sepoi bahasa, jalan yang tak sibuk dan udara yang nyaman, it was quite a nice evening. It would have been a completely boring trip here if we had not tried to walk beyond the boundaries of our meeting venue.

Two nights ago, we went a little bit further to Charlotte Street untuk makan pancake, reason being, that's the only restaurant yang buka 24 jam. We had no choice sebab meeting habis pukul 9 malam and all the 'normal' restaurants would close at 9 or 9.30 pm. Not a bad place, tapi kami bertembung pula dengan Aussies dan NZs yang kami 'perangi' saban hari.

Mak Lijah peratikan di kawasan South Bank dan West End ini, terdapat banyak sekali restoran Asia dan dikunjungi pula oleh Mat Salleh. Restoran Vietnamlah yang paling banyak, diikuti oleh restoran makanan India. Restoran Cina, tak yah cakaplah, manakala restoran yang serves makanan berasaskan Arab seperti kebab memang banyak sekali. The nicest part is the fact that ada jugalah 3-4 restoran Malaysia di Brisbane ni.

Tomorrow would be our last day of meeting and Mak Lijah would be flying to Sydney on Sunday morning. Di sana Mak Lijah akan bertemu dengan adik angkat omputih Mak Lijah yang pernah tinggal dengan kami di Pulau Pinang selama setahun kira-kira 20 tahun lalu. Looking forward to see her and her extended family.

Nanti Mak Lijah update lagi, ok?