Happy Deepavali.....

            To all my Hindu readers, I would like to wish you a Happy Deepavali! Hope you had a  joyous celebration today.  It sure was a beautiful Deepavali morning. I was at East Coast Park with my husband & the boys. The weather was beautiful.......sunny & breezy,  just perfect for an outdoor activity. 

              We were there at about nine, so there was no problem finding a good spot to park our stuff. While the boys swam & played for almost 2 hours, I just relaxed on the mat..... I read, played with my phone, snapped some pictures & most of the time, just did people watching....  The crowd became thicker as the clock past 10. One thing I noticed was, there was visibly more very young kids with their parents. They were noisy but, strangely, pleasant. It's not the kind of noise often made by rowdy youngsters..... The beach was colourful too as there were many brightly coloured beach toys!

           We had lunch at home. Rested for a while & then I was up & about again...... went to the market to get some ingredients for dinner, came back & started preparing dinner.

           It's Deepavali, so dinner was naan, chicken tandoori & vegetarian korma! Recipes coming soon..... not tonight.... I'm dead tired. Have a good night.

A Weekend of Two Weddings..........

            I started writing this post more than a week ago but didn't manage to complete it. I was just too tired.... So today, come what may, I'm  going to post it!

          Three weekends ago was a busy one for my family, including my  extended paternal family, as we attended two weddings in Malaysia. We left on Friday morning, hoping to avoid any traffic jam at the Tuas Checkpoint. Alhamdullillah, the  drive through the checkpoint and on the  NS highway on Friday  was a breeze. We stopped at the Ayer Keroh  overhead bridge rest stop (I've never seen the place so peaceful...) for lunch and reached Seremban just in time for my husband and father to go  to  the Seremban State Mosque for the Friday prayers.

     
           In Seremban, we attended  Fairuzzabadi and Ros Aida's wedding dinner on Saturday night. The groom's parents are my cousins. It was quite a grand wedding. Not sure how many guests were there, but all the tables in the big hall were filled up.

                    The good thing about having a wedding dinner is  all the guests came at about the same time. So I was able to meet  many relatives, both Singaporeans and Malaysians. We exchanged greetings and caught up on the latest gossips...... My father was quite busy mingling with our relatives!

          As usual, for any wedding, besides the groom and bride, the wedding cake was also the center of attraction. What a beautiful cake! It was made by the super talented Nahdzah, the groom's cousin. She wasn't at the wedding as she was in Sydney to up her skills in cake decorating at the Planet Cake Decorating School. You go girl! See more of her amazing creations on her blog  CUPCAKES.COM.MY.

          Right after breakfast on Sunday morning, we headed for Kuala Lumpur for my cousin, Husni, and his bride, Maiza's wedding. Theirs was held at the groom's residence in Lembah Keramat.

           We were there early, so it was pretty quiet at first. But as the day goes by,  more guests turned up. But my boys were already restless after we were there for about 4 hours.  So we left after the photo-taking session.

          Like all Singaporeans, one important agenda  we have whenever we are in Malaysia is to eat. Eat we did to our heart's content!! (Oh.... now I remember why I was so tired after our return. Besides the usual errands and more as school was reopening, I also went to the gym 4 times that week! That was more than my usual 2 to 3.) When we were in Seremban,  my brother, the explorer, brought us to the famous Haji Shariff's Cendul  outlet.

          The shop was super clean, the service was fast and friendly and the food was really, really good! It makes many versions of  cendul. The ones I can remember are cendul jagung, cendul pulut and cendul campur. It also sells rojak and mee rojak. We each had a bowl of the regular cendul. My brother and husband also had the cendul campur. The mee rojak ( or was it rojak mee....) is actually  yellow noodle mixed with the usual fritters, served with the rojak gravy. Yummy........

Cendul and Mee Rojak

Hakuna Matata... It's now at our doorstep.....

           The first time we tried to watch the Lion King Musical was 13 or 14 years ago when we were in NewYork. We were walking around and exploring the city when we found ourselves outside a theatre which, I  recently discovered, was the  Amsterdam Theatre. The new theatre was showing the Lion King Musical. My husband and I were quite excited, not because we were keen on theatrical performances but because it was showing a musical show based on the Lion King movie. Our family, especially our two girls (there were only the two of them then), was always watching the movie on  the VCR. So we thought it would be a great thing to watch! But, it was not meant to be..... The lady at the ticket booth apologized and told us that tickets for the show until the following year were all sold out!

  So when the musical arrived in Singapore at the MBS theatre, my eldest daughter, Amira, got so excited that she and her best friends went to watch it. Since then, she had not stopped telling me how good it was and that we must watch it. All the more since we did try to watch it, though it's more than a decade ago and 50 million people have already done so! So since it's the school holidays and before we miss it again, my family, my sis and brother-in-law went for the show last Sunday afternoon. 

        

 

          What a spectacular musical performance!!! Everything about it - the performers,  props, music, lighting, visual effects - was just amazing! Words just cannot capture its extravagance. You just have to watch it! I'm thinking of watching it again. Not with the whole family (it's costly for a big family like mine)....just me and my husband. My birthday is around the corner, so maybe that's a good excuse! 

          We were early for the show, so my husband suggested we go up the Sands SkyPark on the 56th floor of the Marina Bay Sands Hotel. The view was breathtaking. It's better than the view from the Flyer. I'll go up the SkyPark again when the Gardens by the Bay is completed.

          

 The weather was scotching hot so we stopped for a drink at the cafe  on the observation deck.

           On the 57th floor was the Infinity Pool........nice....

          All in all, it was a good day. I know the children, especially the boys, were very happy as  the whole family went out and did things other than shopping and eating out!