Virtuoso At My Piano

"There are two kinds of talents, man-made talent and God-given talent. With man-made talent you have to work very hard. With God-given talent, you just touch it up once in a while." - Pearl Bailey

A very talented young friend of ours played Jay Chou's "The Secret" on our piano and got it 80% correct after only 2 tries (he had never played or heard this song before)...amazing! Watch his fingers fly on the second song!

Signs That Caught My Eye

I saw this restaurant in Singapore called No Signboard Seafood....maybe to save money on putting up the signboard and lighting it up?


Speaking of unusual signboards, here are some that I came across:


A play on words...taken at the Insect world exhibition at Sentosa Island


Go figure!


Shows that we may grow older but not necessarily wiser.


One of the young men in our church has this very interesting T-shirt that takes a while to read.

Carolling Fa La La La La....

About 40 of us from our church went carolling (all dressed in red!) on 23rd December to spread some Christmas cheer. This year we had the biggest turn out for carolling and we went about in a convoy of 8 cars to 4 homes around Cheras area and Petaling Jaya. Was tiring but lots of fun as we sang and snacked at every stop.


We have 2 guitarists this year :)


Singing in the dark...should have brought along some torches!


Young and old alike...all sang at the top of our voices


Our very own special reindeer...with 2 sets of antlers! XD

My Garden Revived

Hubby went to Cameron Highlands and brought home new plants to replace my pitiful shrivelled ones on my kitchen window sill.

Notice the pretty white holders for the little pots

He even bought a bottle of fertiliser. Now the challenge is to keep them alive...at least until the next trip to Camerons!

Last Minute C'mas Shopping

Christmas decorations at Berjaya Times Square

Christmas is just round the corner and I have been on a shopping marathon for the past few days getting presents for family and friends. Went to Sungei Wang and Berjaya Times Square yesterday, braving the horrible traffic snarl in KL. Went to Mid Valley Megamall twice this week and everyone else seems to be doing last minute shopping like me...the queues at the payment counter seem to stretch for miles!



Have finally bought all that I need to buy...except Mr CoolTeen's present. He's gone to Cameron Highlands for a few days for the Youth Camp and I need to get his pressie and wrap it (and hide it!) before he comes back :)



The number of levels at TS is enough to make my head spin


Cages at The Gardens...??

The stage performances at Mid Valley Megamall are always colourful and fun

Sunrise

I am not an early bird but last week we had special morning prayer in church at 6.15 am from Monday to Thursday. It was difficult dragging myself out of bed but once I reached church I was glad that I went...we are blessed when we make the effort to seek God early in the morning (amen!)

I don't remember when I last saw a sunrise so I took a photo for remembrance...because now that the morning prayers are over I don't think I'll be seeing one for a long, long time...well, at least until school reopens (next year both my kids will be in morning session school)!

Snail Mail Greeting Card

Close To Home by John McPherson

Saw this comic strip in The Star newspaper the other day and I thought it was so true...how it has become a trend to upload our photos to a photo-sharing website and just send a link to our friends via email for them to view our photos. Even my pre teen daughter has become quite an expert at sending e-cards whenever a family member's birthday comes round.

I received a lovely Christmas card through snail mail and in it is a handwritten greeting from a friend in Austria. I think nothing beats a hardcopy greeting card even though the virtual ones are a whole lot more interesting and interactive. I have already written a Christmas card for this friend in Austria...now to make the trip to the post office to buy stamps...

Black Thumb...How Sad!

We all know the meaning of green thumb, right? Well, I have just the opposite...People always tell me how easy it is to take care of cactus but I have not been successful in keeping my cactus alive for more than a few months. When we renovated our kitchen I asked hubby to design my kitchen window with a little space to grow small plants. What I envisioned would be a pretty little garden on my window sill has now become a graveyard for plants! (big sigh)


What used to be a thriving bean plant...


These were my favourite...now the one on the left has shriveled.


At least this money plant is still alive! (not sure for how long...)

Putting Up The Christmas Tree

Christmas is coming, and every year my hubby would put up the Christmas tree and all the decorations as I am quite clueless when it comes to decorating trees. This year he felt that Mr CoolTeen was old enough to take up the challenge.





So Mr CoolTeen turned up the volume on his mobile phone...it's always better to work with a bit of music, I suppose...and about 10 minutes later the tree was all decorated.





This is a pic of the tree after some minor adjustments by hubby. Not too bad, eh?

And 5,6,7,8...

I teach a beginner's line dance class on Tuesday nights at our church and my class is mainly made up of ladies who don't speak English. As I speak English a whole lot more than Chinese, I have the challenge of now teaching in Cantonese (the only Chinese dialect that I can converse in). My mother tongue is actually Hokkien but I only know important basic words like eat, sleep, bathe...

My Mandarin sucks big time and the reason I enrolled my kids in Chinese school is for them to pick up the Chinese language. My grandparents' generation believed very strongly that we Chinese must be able to speak Chinese...but my parents had other ideas...they sent me to national school where I only learned English and Bahasa Malaysia. And they didn't even teach me any Hokkien but spoke to me in Cantonese!! Confusing?


I usually print and hand out step sheets for every dance I teach, but I realised that my students couldn't practice their steps at home because they couldn't read the English instructions. So I came up with a pictorial step sheet instead, using the MS Word document and a lot of cut-n-paste. Hope this works...will know how effective it is next Tuesday when the ladies come for class again...

Creative Advertising

A friend of mine sent me these photos through email (not sure where they're from). My favourites are the drinking cups...