It is the Mid-Autumn Mooncake Festival time! And during this occasion, there is an abundance of mooncake choices to savor. I love ’em all! This sinful indulgence is so bad for my health, unfortunately.
In the past, I used to enjoy those mooncakes with double salted egg yolk inside. These days, I’m more into the Mixed Nuts flavor. Then there are the Snow Skin options, which are so good. Recently, I bought the Durian-flavored mooncake to try as well. Regardless of which flavor, I find my waistline expanding just looking at the mooncakes!
Two days ago, I ate a piece of the double-salted egg yolk mooncake, and I felt so gorged. Although it was one-eighth of the whole mooncake, it was enough to make me feel stuffed. Too oily, perhaps?
As for the Mixed Nuts, it borders on being too sweet, and many times I cannot resist! Sigh, a no-win situation. Mix and match, it is a double whammy situation where my waistline expands and the bathroom scale frowns when I step on it. Hahaha.
September is a month of public holidays! We had another four-day weekend to chill and relax. So, we decided to do a KL city staycation to avoid driving along the Plus highway outstation with the two million travelers. However, the plan did not pan out.
A little past midnight on the night before our staycation, I received a WhatsApp notification informing us that our host had canceled our booking. Unfortunately, I did not see the message until the next morning. It was unbelievable, as it was the first time I had encountered such an issue on booking.com!
The poorly written message stated that the air conditioning in the apartment was not functioning. Upon testing, the electricity sparked and caused the main switch to shut down. Although the caretaker tried to fix it, the service provider decided to replace the air conditioning unit. However, they are unable to do so because it was a public holiday. Hrmph! What an elaborate reasoning! Or should I say, excuse?
By the way, I feel I need to write a bad review for this experience on the Booking app to highlight the incredulous last-minute reason and cancellation by the host. I need to navigate my way through the app or website to do this. What if I came from another state? All my plans would have been up in smoke!
We decided to still stick to our plans for all the activities and brush aside the disappointment. After all, there was a full refund for the cancellation. It was them who initiated the cancellation, not me after all.
In the end, the weekend turned out pretty relaxing. We ate, we walked, we braved the crowds, and we saw interesting things. The difference is that we came back home to sleep in our rooms, not in an apartment overlooking KLCC with faulty air conditioning.
Sunday’s eats and sightsMonday’s sights. Wait was too long Ho Kow, so we went somewhere else.
Towards the end of last month, during the Merdeka celebrations and a series of public holiday breaks, we celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary.
It’s hard to believe that 30 years have passed—where did the time go? Reaching this milestone feels incredible and almost unfathomable.
So, happy anniversary and a toast to the two of us! Here’s to good health and good times ahead, more golfing escapades or travels, and facing the years ahead together, hand in hand.
Time has flown by so fast, suddenly. September has arrived with several public holidays for the month. Over the weekend, Malaysia celebrated its 68th National Day. Since the auspicious day fell on a Sunday, Monday was a replacement holiday. The coming Friday is also another public holiday, making the work week the shortest with only three days in between.
I could get used to this short work week/long weekend schedule, because it is so relaxing and I have ample time to do things at a leisurely pace. But I chose to immerse myself in a new game on my iPad Mini. Silly, as it takes so much of my time, and I could have done more productive things instead!
The game I normally play, Homescapes, has become so routine that there is not much challenge any longer. Yet I’m still at it, I don’t know why. And I wait patiently for new levels to open every single week. For the record, as of today, I am at Level 18292.
So, a few days ago, I downloaded Tasty Travels innocently, thinking to just try it for variation, but I found myself hooked on it, playing it into the wee hours of the past few nights! Terrible, isn’t it?
Will I continue to be hooked by it with the back-to-back breaks? We will find out.
The Interclub trip down South over the weekend came and went by in a blink. Waking up at 4:30 in the morning is not something I wish to do often, but it was necessary, as everyone had to meet at the club to depart by six o’clock in two buses.
Although there were 60 players, some chose to drive instead. The journey was comfortable with fewer people on board, and traffic was manageable along the highway. Despite taking a couple of wrong exits, our group arrived on time.
Our first Interclub match was against Ponderosa Golf and Country Club. After the welcome lunch, the shotgun start matches began. It was a good fight, but our club lost out with a score of 13.5 points versus 16.5 points. However, Ponderosa, being a gracious host, declared everyone a winner! The losing team players received silver medals, while the champion host team members collected their gold medals. What a friendly way to build friendship in a golf tournament.
The next day, the entourage traveled to Singapore via Woodlands to visit the Keppel Club for our second Interclub game. The format of play was a bit different, which initially left everyone confused. It turned out to be a team event; our players were paired with the opponents, meaning we were playing with them rather than against them. The team with the best ball score for Stableford points will be declared the winner.
Keppel Club is not an easy course to play. It may look short, but the distances to the pins were deceiving, especially with the undulating terrain. I felt so drained after the game despite the cool and cloudy weather. The early confusion on the game format aside, I would say everyone left Keppel feeling satisfied and happy.
On the final day, we had a casual game amongst ourselves at Palm Resort Golf & Country Club (Cempaka course), which was not an Interclub match. I played with my regular group, and it was quite an enjoyable round of dueling to see who would end up contributing less money for lunch! Hahahaha.
I’m just glad to be home after the hectic and tight schedule for three rounds of golf.
Keppel Club with a glaring OB spelled out guarding the Par 3; approaching Woodlands on the Causeway, and sights of the other golf courses.
Writing can be enjoyable, but maintaining a weekly blog can be a monumental challenge. Keeping the interest of an audience is not easy. I feel fortunate that I have been writing and improving my blog for many years now, and I still have an audience. It’s a very fulfilling feeling.
What started in an amateurish manner has blossomed over the years. Recently, I renewed my blog site and realized that it has been 12 years since I started it! Twelve years is a long time. Arriving at this milestone is an achievement, and I’m proud of myself.
A big shout-out to everyone who has been supporting my blog. Happy reading to all my, and happy anniversary milestone to me!
Hubby was not keen to play golf on Sunday morning after a gruesome pickleball session the day before, but he went. And I’m so glad he did because he achieved a hole-in-one!!! Wheeeeeee.
After dinosaur years at the sports, the elusive glory is finally his, along with all the bragging rights. No further words are necessary as the celebration and drinks were non-stop after that.
Have I aced a hole before? No, and I am still waiting for mine, although I can proudly say I had an eagle achievement two years ago on a Par 4. Congratulations, hubby dearest. I hope my turn to achieve this and have the same bragging rights will arrive sooner.
Mother’s Day is always a family affair, celebrating the three mothers in the family on Sunday – Mom, myself, and my sister-in-law. A sumptuous lunch and fun jabber to catch up with everyone.
This year, I received a lovely gift. It’s been almost two years since I last worked on building miniatures, and this gift is the perfect one to kickstart this activity again.
Project number 32 was the last miniature I worked on from October 2023, but sadly, I never completed it. I had golf, travel, and games on the iPad Mini, keeping me busy. At this point, I’m not sure if I can complete the set because it’s too tiny.
Anyway, maybe it’s long overdue to spend time building miniatures again. And of late, my golf sucks, and I find no joy in playing, so the timing is just nice to go back to doing things that gave me so much joy.
On the fifth day of our trip, we visited Wulingyuan, a different historical and scenic site of Zhangjiajie National Park. We see so many rock formations that I have lost track of what is what and where. My knowledge of this place is terrible, as I didn’t do any research before coming.
There was another queue for a cable car to the peak to see more rocks! Hahaha. Another long trek day. I was hitting all sorts of records on the Fitness app in my AppleWatch. Yay!
Wulingyuan
That evening, we decided to attend the large-scale musical, the Fox Fairy Show. The live musical performance was very entertaining and colorful. I was most impressed by the outdoor theater setup at the foot of Tianmen Mountain. Costume and character changes were instantaneous without glitches with AI technology. Very impressive!
The Fox Fairy Show
The next day, we queued again (what else is new?) for the Bailong Elevator. Although we paid for VIP tickets to cut down our time waiting in line, it was still an hour before we could go up to the top. The Avatar Mountains were the highlight of this trip, but again, for me, the crowds marred the experience of seeing the floating mountains. I think the depth of the terrain was hardly visible, with so much greenery below. It was hard for me to grasp the sheer beauty of the place.
The floating Avatar Hallelujah Mountains
At all the attractions we visited, it felt like the whole world was there to see what we wanted to see. And if I thought it was the last of the long queues at Bailong, the next day’s attraction at the Zhangjiajie Grand Canyon Glass Bridge was another one for the record!
At the Glass Bridge
We gave up the last tour to visit Orange Isle when we saw the queues again. Hahaha. After so many days of long queue experience, we could not handle another long queue to see the statue of Mao Zedong. Everyone agreed we should go shopping instead.
Mass crowds from every attraction we went to!
All in all, this trip was all about nature, crowds, and queues. I have never been so overwhelmed surrounded by people. The trip culminated in the final two days at Changsha with a colorful cityscape skyline, more people, interesting food, and shopping.
So colorful!Array of street food. Bottom right: bowl of cut chili is called a dipping sauce
Nine days were rather long, and although there were more downsides of crowds, queues, and packing the wrong clothes as far as the weather was concerned, I am taking the positives from this trip, checking off my bucket list, and cherish the time I had with the friends I grew up with.
It was supposed to be an epic trip, postponed from last November until this April. But I’m still trying to find the appropriate words to describe the Zhangjiajie and Changsha trip, which has been overwhelming.
What better way to kick off a trip than a beer and char kueh teow past midnight at the Premier Lounge before boarding! We departed from KLIA on Saturday at 3.00 a.m. Unfortunately, our seats were not the best, being a row in front of the emergency exits, which meant they couldn’t recline. Sigh. Luckily, the five-hour flight was still bearable.
Upon arrival, everything went smoothly, and we boarded our private bus for just the six of us, along with our English-speaking guide. The bus ride was scary as the weather was quite extreme, with wind gusts up to 42km/h. I could feel the bus swaying on the highway! We stopped once to allow the driver to rest, and we had our first meal in China: a simple spread of rice, mui choy with pork, stir-fried potatoes, and some fried donuts.
Gusty wind made the bus sway on the highway!
The first attraction was Liuye Lake in Changde City, northwest of Hunan Province; it was strange. It was supposed to be a tourist resort, but hardly anybody in sight— it felt like a ghost town! We wondered whether we were in China, a country known for its crowds. Here we were, at an attraction without visitors. We then proceeded to another attraction, which I can’t recall the name of, but there were plenty of people, shops, and street vendors.
Liuye LakeCute little cooking stations to test your cooking skills!
We spent our first night at the Zeyun Hotel in Changde City and checked out the next day to head to the next attraction and hotel.
Angieneering 
Remarks