A Happy 7th Anniversary with Durian and Crabs!

Nope! We did not celebrate our anniversary with a romantic getaway or even a quiet dinner. On the contrary, we celebrated it with the craziest and loudest bunch of people you could ever place together on the same table.

In a nutshell, we consumed a total of 8.5 kati Fatty Crabs, two large orders of fried rice, five sets of roti bakar, two kilograms of musang king and a buffet of durians. The people we celebrated with? My sister and my brother, my (only) eldest brother who had just arrived from San Francisco and Abang Ramli.

The last time my eldest brother was here, we had dinner at the same place and then retired to Abang Ramli's room post dinner. This time around, we did the same thing but decided to add a durian buffet in the itinerary.

Posing with a crab leg and my sister Awien, who claims she's the #1 fan of this blog of mine!

My sister, my brother and I arrived first and thus had devoured the first order of 3 kati pedas crabs and 1.5 kati kurang pedas crabs. My eldest brother and Abang Ramli were running late as there was a bit of a hiccup back at Abang Ramli's house. As soon as they confirmed that they were on the way, we ordered a new order of 4 kati and that too was devoured by them as soon as they arrived and sat down. Aiden enjoyed the food too - he had 4 helpings of his favourite Fatty Crab fried rice!

My eldest brother on the far left. Too absorbed with cracking the crabs open.

 

I wonder, what was Abang Ramli so happy about??!!

The massacre afterwards.

We wanted a group photo but instead of focusing on the camera, the boys really only wanted to focus on eating.

Excuse my outfit, I came straight from the engagement event in Kuantan.

Really, I was wearing the most unpractical outfit ever for a crab and durian eating affair. I wore a kaftan top with a slightly longer piece in the front. And did I mention that it rained while we were having durians? By the end of the dinner, my kaftan ends had swiped clean the toilet floor of Fatty Crab and dipped into a small drain by the roadside near the durian buffet place.

After crabs, we had durians next! We went to one of the durian buffet stalls in SS2, and started with Musang King. I have to admit, I didn't really enjoy the Musang King. Not worth the money we paid for. Then we decided to have the buffet, it was either RM15 each (for D24 durians) or RM9 (probably for crappy durian). In the end, we all settled for the RM9 buffet. Throughout the buffet, the stallkeeper just couldn't keep up with the amount we were consuming. We had to call him a couple of times to remind him to replenish the durians on our table. Some of the durians were good, some were bad. The bad ones we immediately binned, dah nama buffet! Poor Hubby who chose a seat at the end of the table, was constantly forgotten as most of the durian action was happening close to where my sister and I were sitting. He had to constantly remind us to pass the durian down the table... sorry Hubby!!!



Musang King! Abang Ramli was lamenting about the quality of the durians and how we should have gone to some dusun durian near Dengkil for better quality durians.

Model buffet durian RM9.

Brothers bonding over durian.

Even Aiden joined in the fun! That's Aiden sipping coconut juice.

So that was how we celebrated our 7th anniversary. It was certainly a memorable one. And it certainly makes me appreciate Hubby even more because only he can put up with my crazy food antics and durian cravings, despite just driving KL-Kuantan-KL and book shopping just that morning. I love you, Sayang!

Aiden's present all the way from Silicon Valley, courtesy of my eldest brother who works with Yahoo!

Big Bad Wolf 2012

So, has anyone headed to the Big Bad Wolf yet? This is my second time at the Big Bad Wolf and after all the experience from last year (I actually went every single day last year, and of course spent a bomb), obviously I went prepared! Left Aiden at home (check!), one cabin size luggage bag (check!), a wristlet to carry my phone and cash to keep my hands free (check!) and a sweater in case I get cold (check!)...

Since this year is the first time that BBW is experimenting with being open for the first 63hours straight (Friday morning until Sunday night), my crazy book-holic friends and I decided that the best time to get our books, escaping the crowd and peak hours, was to shop during the Friday night/Saturday period. Unfortunately, come Friday night I was feeling under the weather - but no way was the shopaholic in me going to give in to a slight case of fever, so after popping some paracetamol and resting, at 930pm I left for BBW with two other neighbours, and two other pregnant friends.

Boy oh boy, we soooo got our timing wrong. Apparently everyone decided to shop during the same time frame! By 2am, the queue was so long until people had to line up in the aisle between books. Thankfully a neighbour of mine was already in queue so while she queued, I went through my stack, filtered what I wanted and rejected, then I pooled my books with her and paid together. It took us nearly 2hours to pay. By the time we got home it was close to 430am, Saturday morning.

So what did I get? I concentrated mainly on novels, especially writers which I was familiar with such as Sheila O'Flanigan and Tasmina Perry. I was so excited that I found the sequel to the Carrie Diaries; Summer in the City by Candace Bushnell which is also the prequel to her Sex and the City novel. Another one which I immediately grabbed was The Help - I enjoyed the DVD immensely so am definitely looking forward to reading the book. I had previously read The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory during a transit in Amsterdam, so this time I grabbed another historical novel - The Constant Princess. I don't know whether I will enjoy it though, as I prefer chick lits rather than heavy historical writings. Jennifer Weiner and Mellissa Hill are new writers to me, so we'll see if I grab their books again next year. 

Novel loot from Day #1

Last year I bought tons of recipe books. However, I have come to realise that those books are collecting dust in a corner of my dry kitchen. I actually prefer trying out tried and tested recipes on the internet. So this year, I looked for books on decorating cakes. Hello, Cupcake! and What's New Cupcake? both provides step by step instructions on making fondant decorations so I am extremely excited over the books!

Baking books and other titles from Day #1

For Aiden, I found Maths and English workbooks for his age. I will  need to allocate sometime during my year end holiday to help him with the exercises.

Aiden's loot!

So, did the crowd deter me from heading there again? Heck no! Come Saturday morning, with barely 5 hours of sleep, Hubby pitched the idea of a last minute trip to Kuantan for a relative's engagement, and conniving me immediately agreed with the condition that we head to the BBW early morning before leaving for Kuantan! Hubby reluctantly agreed... I think he was secrely hoping that I would oversleep and thus the BBW plans would be thrown out the window.

Evidently, he doesn't know how much I like to read (and shop). Come 330am Sunday morning, I shook him awake. Learning from the first trip, I wanted to catch the 430am - 630am time frame to shop. After putting our Kuantan luggage bags into the boot and getting Aiden into the car seat, off we went for trip #2 of BBW! Arrived at 430am, and I was overjoyed to find the hall with just a handful of people and extremely short queues. Browsed through every single table which had novels on it, and as I was halfway, Hubby carried Aiden in. Apparently, Aiden woke up in the car and said "Daddy, I want blanket!"... the aircon in the car must have made him cold. Then when Hubby asked him whether he wanted to go see books, his eyes widened and asked "Where?" so Hubby decided to let him join in the fun!

Second day's grab was not as great as the first day, but I enjoyed being able to browse at my own pace and my own time without having to worry about the queue. Happy that I found another Candace Bushnell novel, The Fifth Avenue (which I read on Wikipedia, will be turned into a mini series like Sex and The City). I've heard of Jackie Collines, but really, I only bought the book because of the title. I had read Sophie Hannah and Adele Parks before so I grabbed the novels as soon as I saw their names.

Novel loot from Day #2

Aiden handpicked his own books! And The Ultimate History of BMW and Japanese Garden for my car-holic and garden-crazy Hubby.

Below is a picture of all my unread books. The three piles on the right are new, while the sole pile on the left is my unread books leftover from last year's BBW! Aaaccckkk need to start reading them all! And probably a new Ikea bookshelf too!

Unread books...

My entire loot from BBW 2012.

Of course, in my excitement of buying, I didn't realise that I bought two of the same books. Apparently the title enticed me last year as it did this year!

Left was bought in 2011, right was bought this year.

Fine, forgiven because I haven't read the book thus may not have recognized the plot when I grabbed the same book this year. But this one below cannot be forgiven. Cecilia Ahern is my absolute favourite writer! How did I manage to forget that I have read the book before??? I even blogged about buying the book three years ago, here!

The hardcover on the left from BBW 2012, and the paperback I bought full price three years ago.

Which has made me realise, I really can't remember all plots and twists and turns from books i've read before. Especially since I don't re-read the same books once i'm done with them. Heck, I can't even remember the ending of the Twilight series that I read about three years ago. How many of you can remember all the books you have read?