I say a lil' prayer for you

I'm sure anyone with a heart has prolly already said at least a prayer for Japan and the people of Japan (the great ones are doing more than just saying a prayer) after hearing the news of the recent earthquake and tsunami. Mi Amor and I are on holiday at the moment (we first heard the news upon arriving in Madrid) and we have been tuning into CNN everyday from our hotel room TV (it's the first thing that's on in the morning and the last thing we watch before going to bed) for updates on the situation and just pray for at least some good news/news that give a glimmer of hope. I also can't help but have nothing but admiration for the people of Japan and how they are facing the situation, especially after reading this site. I don't know about other countries but I highly doubt that Malaysians can carry themselves/face this kind of devastating situation as well as the Japanese (no offense to my country, which I love btw, but if you've seen how we react during a traffic jam, you'd understand).


I don't know anyone in/from Japan but there seem to be a lot of Japanese tourists around where we are holidaying at the moment and every time I see one, I always feel like asking whether everything is all right with his/her family back home (though I'm assuming it must be or else he/she would be catching the first flight back home, no?).


Anyway, better catch some ZzZzz's now coz I'll be going out later tonight. Keeping my fingers crossed that when I wake up there might be some form of good news (like finding more survivors perhaps).


*UPDATE : Oh Oh, just as I was about to shut down the PC and doze off, CNN said they found a 60 year old man alive clinging onto the roof of his house which was swept away about 50 km or so. 

Just because....

Since Mi Amor is watching footie on TV at the moment and I'm freaking bored, I've decided to blog (about what exactly I have no idea!). Oh, I made Mi Amor something to snack on while watching the game :

Homemade potato wedges and dip (was having a sudden Martha  Stewart moment)

The good thing (for me that is, not for Mi Amor), is that he doesn't want dinner (even though I insist on cooking dinner for him) coz he wants to go on a diet :P
However, he substitutes dinner with snacks (chips and chocs.....yes, that is his idea of dieting!)

Dessert pot : Caramel, chocolate, vanilla and creme caramel

God I love that dessert pot! We bought it at the Nestle shop this evening (yeah, we haven't done our grocery shopping for this week but we've already stocked up on desserts....go figure!).

Part of the Nestle office building (It's freaking huge and goes all the way around!)

The Nestle shop outside the office building

Yes indeed! (see Mi Amor, I help promote your company...extra treats for me please!)

Rows and rows of Nestle products.....I wanted to get ice cream but Mi Amor says I''m crazy to eat ice-cream in this weather....BOO for him! :P

This is the chocolate aisle...since easter is coming soon, there was a special section on special edition easter chocs 

Anyway, for these past few days I've been watching videos of this really cute girl called Nina (yes, since I've got so much time on my hands, I often go through random videos on youtube) and got hooked on her cuteness. Her dad is American and her mum is Japanese (they live in Japan) and what is interesting is that her dad is trying to teach her to be bilingual so he speaks to her in English and her mum speaks to her in Japanese. According to her dad, he started making the videos of her to show his family back home in the States and he didn't expect her to have a lot of fans on youtube. She even has an fb fan page! I showed Mi Amor some videos of her and Mi Amor also finds her adorable (believe it or not at one point we even watched her videos over lunch!). We find her so cute that at one point Mi Amor actually suprised me when I told him I was having my period and he replied, "So no Nina of our own yet?" 

Nina should be around 4 yrs + now but my fav video of her is this one taken when she was about 2ish :




Mi Amor's fav video of her is more recent though. He says he likes it coz you can see her range of emotion....from happy to apprehensive to sad, etc.



Seriously there are so many freaking cute videos of her (if I could I'd put more here!) but that would just be video overload for a blog (that's what you tube is for anyway). Ok Mi Amor's footie game is over and he is whining that I'm not paying attention to him :P (guess I don't need a Nina when I have a big baby of my own to take care of anyway :P)

It's all fun and games until someone gets hurt

Ok, so I know I've been slacking in blogging (why do you think I decided on The Lazy Blogger? heh) but I wasn't feeling well last week. Came down with a really bad sore throat and cold and almost came down with a fever. Mi Amor felt bad for me so last week he mostly had lunch at the cafeteria instead. Yupp, for the first time since I've been here, I did not hafta cook lunch !! (I only made pasta on Wednesday and we had the leftovers for lunch on Thursday). I mostly stayed on the couch resting while watching movies on TV as the internet connection was down most of the time (perhaps it wasn't feeling well, just like me :P). 

Nearing the weekend I was feeling much better and since I felt bad about Mi Amor not have home cooked lunch  (i.e rice and side dishes) during the week, I decided to go all out to make him a nice lunch on Saturday and Sunday

Saturday lunch menu : Nasi lemak, ayam goreng, kacang goreng, ikan bilis, sambal udang and telur goreng

Here you go Mujer, a close up pic of my ayam goreng

Seriously, the best sambal udang that I've made so far (and I'm quoting Mi Amor!)

Sunday lunch menu: White rice, sambal sotong, sayur campur  goreng, telur goreng and roast chicken with roast potatoes

My first attempt at making roast chicken....success!

Anyway, we didn't do much last weekend. We went along with Mi Amor's colleague to a few outlet places (can't remember the names) as she wanted to buy furniture for her new place. Not many choices  if you ask me though I did manage to get something..heh

Yupp, that is a new coat and handbag! :D

The weekend before last was way more eventful though. On Saturday we took the train to Lausanne and walked around the city centre (which is much more happening than Vevey) and even did our grocery shopping there. My highlight of Lausanne though was when we stopped by Laduree and bought some macarons (YES, FINALLY!!! :D) . All I can say is it was definitely worth the wait….I am no longer a macaron virgin (perhaps now a macaron addict?!?) and it's true what they say, that you will always remember your first (Ah, caramel with salted butter….Je t'aime!) 

Lausanne train station

Lausanne Cathedral

The main attraction in Lausanne in my opinion! :)

I'm so happy!!

Dare I say, " Screw the lil' blue box and gimme the lil pink box anyday! " :D

Happiness in a box. The flavours I chose : caramel with salted butter, pistachio, lemon, spice and soft fruits, chestnut, vanilla, raspberry, strawberry, chocolate, blackcurrent violet, praline and madagascar chocolate

Later that night we went out for dinner with Mi Amor's friends at a cosy restaurant in Bulle, Fribourg (about half an hour's drive from Vevey). There was some kind of party/celebration going on in Bulle because there were tents set up and people dressed in medieval costumes walking around while a marching band was playing. At one point it started raining heavily so the marching band moved indoors (i.e they came into the restaurant that we were in). Though it made the restaurant crowded, I don't think any of the patrons minded coz it just meant free entertainment for all of us! (albeit a bit hard for us to talk above the music).

We had reservations at 11pm for Go Karting at some entertainment centre in Fribourg so after dinner we made our way there. Since there were 9 of us, we had to split into 2 groups of 5 and 4. I was the only one who had never go karted before and Mi Amor kept asking me if I was sure I wanted to go kart coz everyone else will be going so fast and I'll just be getting in their way (not to mention I'll prolly crash a lot) :P  He though I should just watch from the side first before deciding whether I would like to give it a try. After giving Mi Amor that I don't care, I'm still doing this look he finally gave up trying to talk me out of it.

I can't hear you with this helmet on! Is it suppose to be this tight?!

On your marks, get set.....GO!!!

Since we had split into 2 groups, each group were given 3 rounds (10 minutes per round). All I can say is, go karting is much harder than it looks! The moment I got into the go kart, they had to adjust my seat because my short legs couldn't reach em' pedals ( Mi Amor laughed when he saw this). Then I had trouble going around corners because I couldn't turn my steering wheel properly (dammit, it's not power steering!). At first I thought perhaps I had a faulty steering wheel but it turns out it is suppose to be like that! (damn my weak upper body strength!!!). At one point, after getting knocked into so many times, my seat accidentally went back a lil' and my legs couldn't reach the pedal properly so I had to stretch my legs in order to reach the pedals. By the end of the first round, my arms, legs and ass were aching so bad I couldn't wait for the whole thing to be over (and I was dreading the fact that we had another 2 more rounds....ARGHHHhhh!!!). The fact that Mi Amor said everyone watching by the side was laughing at me didn't make me feel any better :P

Mi Amor in action

Part of the go kart track

You know how they say be careful what you wish for? Well, when it came to the other group's turn, halfway through their round, suddenly one of the girls crashed into the divider (nothing new there, I lost count how many times that happened to me) and started screaming!! Everyone else stopped their karts and rushed to her. One of Mi Amor's friend lifted her from her kart, carried her in his arms and brought her to the side. She was crying almost hysterically and that's when I saw the blood streaming down her hand.

Apparently what happened was that her finger somehow made contact with the divider during the crash and a chunk from the tip of her finger got sliced off (at first we thought her whole finger got sliced off, with the amount of blood that we saw...yupp, that much blood!). One friend picked up the part of the finger that was sliced off and put it in a glass of ice. We called the ambulance and followed them to the hospital. Thank God out of the 9 of us, one could speak French (well, he's Swiss anyway) because the hospital people couldn't speak a word of English. After waiting for about slightly more than an hour, someone came out to update us on what was going on and informed us that they could not sew the sliced part back onto the finger but overtime it should heal. However there might be a possibility that she may or may not fully regain her senses in that part of the finger as the cut was quite deep. They gave her some pain killers for the time being and told her to go to a specialist hospital first thing on Monday. It was around 2ish in the morning by the time all of us left the hospital and we arrived home around 3am. Mi Amor couldn't sleep coz he felt so bad for his friend (not to mention he was still traumatized by the sight of all that blood!). 

Come Sunday, Mi Amor was still dwelling on what happened the night before so I decided to cheer him up by making pizza with loads of cheese! (well, it's my comfort food..heh). After lunch Mi Amor gave his friend a ring to check up on her and we were glad to hear that she was feeling much better (the fact that her family was coming down from Venezuela in a few days to visit her also helped).

Guess the gang won't be go karting for a while (though the go kart place called a few days later and said that we can come back for a free round of go karting). Here's hoping that Mi Amor's friend recovers soon!