Quick visit/dinner with Friends

My Malaysian friends came by to visit this past weekend.  I have known them since my Freshman year in college at Arizona State!  We actually stayed with them during the summer of 2018 (almost 4 years ago) when we were making our way up to San Francisco.  They were actually a good halfway point being in San Jose.

They brought their high school daughter along as well as their new puppy.  I know, the dog doesn't look much like a puppy when it's that big!  Graham and Charlie had so much fun playing with it.  And best part of this is the dog is a Golden Doodle so it did not shed - which is perfect for someone with allergies like Graham:

So cute!!!

The boys took turns walking the dog while the adults sat down outside the restaurant catching up and enjoying dinner:

I'm not sure who is training who... maybe the dog is training the boys to be patient :-)

So nice to see old friends again!

Graham and Charlie kept asking for a dog aaaaaall the way home that night.  As soon as they both can agree on who is scooping up dog poop, then perhaps we can agree to a dog.  Plus, I guess it can't be any dog either.  From what I've read, these Golden Doodles can cost up to $4,000!  Yikes!!

Oh, just found the photo from June 2018... look how small Charlie was! He was only 6 years old there: 

So the guy and girl closest to me are the one that came by to visit.  The gal with the hat is her sister and she still lives near the Oakland area (with her husband in the red shirt).  All ASU graduates :-D

I wonder where Graham was.  I think he was too busy learning how to get on the Rip-Stick.  There he is! Ha ha!

Funny to think that Graham now actually knows how to Rip-Stick as of last year.  Fun times!

Day at the Beach

I don't remember what we were doing now but somehow we had some extra time and so we let Graham go fly his kite on the beach. He was such a happy clam!

Charlie keeps saying he doesn't know/want to fly the kite so he is helping Graham launch it instead:

It's so funny how Charlie basically runs the minute the kite is launched so it doesn't knock him on his head.  Ha ha!

I still don't know how people can afford these homes directly by the beach front:

Almost time to go. Do you spot Graham?

There he is!

At one point, he was also laying down while flying the kite.  Ha ha!

We decided to look for an early dinner.  We actually went to the Cheesecake Factory nearby (didn't even know there's one nearby!) and the valet told us it was an hour wait. On a Monday at 430pm??! No way!  So, nope... time for Plan B.  We did see this other restaurant earlier in Hermosa Beach, so we're going to try it tonight.  

Am I seeing things but is that an owl in the oil and balsamic?  

I must be seeing things but I'm pretty sure this is the look of a happy Bobby!

Charlie being silly:

Now it's Graham being silly:

Never a dull moment with these two boys:

I'm so glad we decided to try the new restaurant tonight.  It did not disappoint.  And by the time we get home, the speedometer is at 19,999!  

And looks like we just missed our 1-year anniversary of having our Audi (as of Feb 1, 2021).  And we've put in just about 15k miles.  Yikes! That's a lot of miles in one year! We still love this car although Graham and Charlie are starting to look a little cramped in the backseat especially when they have their school bag and binder.  The good news is - being a Hybrid car, it only takes about $20 to fill up the half tank of gas. Compare this to the minivan that gulps around $50+ for just a half tank of gas. YIKES!!  Not a good thing especially when gas prices are approaching $5/gal.  Sheesh!!

Old camera

We went to a photo store to take passport photos recently.  Of course, I get distracted and see these old timey cameras for sale.  Majority of them were box cameras but I came across this little cute one.  Isn't it so adorable??!

This camera is called "Brownie Baby".  Awwww...!

"Special" model - used during the years of 1939 to 1954.  That's a long time ago!

It pops open like this:

It only uses Kodak 127 Film, which the boys did find online.  But when I tried to find it again, the same listing wasn't available anymore.  Although, I did find another listing for a roll of film - $45 bucks for just one roll.  Yikes! And we don't even know if the camera will still work.  Hmmm...

We may wait and see but in the meantime, Graham and Charlie are having a fun time looking at this little Brownie Baby:

Bobby always says I should have been born in an earlier era.  I listen to 50s music and I love antiques :-D

Monarch caterpillars!

They are back!  I'm so excited:

I couldn't decide whether to put them into the butterfly cage or not, but after purchasing a 5 gal bucket of milkweed, figured it was probably best to protect these precious caterpillars.  By the way, that milkweed was not cheap either!

So far I think the count is either 7 or 8 in the butterfly cage.  I stepped on one too and totally killed it.  Nooo...!! Sometimes I really wonder if I should just leave it to nature!

Looking forward to hopefully seeing some chrysalis form in a few weeks and possibly some butterflies. Fingers crossed!

Leaky faucet

I started my morning last Saturday by breaking off the plastic faucet for our sprinkler water line.  Urgh!! Always something with this house!

I tried to glue the top back just so I could try and turn it off to stop the leak.  But of course, every time I kept twisting and pushing down, more water kept leaking.  So I put some foil at the bottom just to direct the water away from the outside wall:

It would have been easy if I could shut off the water, but this line is connected to the main water line off the street.  What??! Why?!!!  

Okay, I think a garbage bag might work better:

Hmm... maybe a pair of Bobby's old/torn pair of shorts to soak up the water while we wait until the plumber shows up on Monday??!

In the meantime, while we wait - I try and clean up some of the mess by my workstation.  Does putting everything in a corner count??! 

 I was able to move the printer to another side of the dining room (yes, my workstation is on the dining table!) and boys are able to put all their breakfast cereal in a more accessible spot.

I guess I better fix up this broken sprinkler in the backyard while I'm thinking about it as well:

After that was done and after $200 plumbing bill on Monday, we are back in business watering the yard again.  But then I come to find another leaky faucet in the backyard.  What...??!  At least it's something that can be stopped as long as the water valve is shut off.

Here it is... all fixed! And we are using a metal faucet this time around.  Hopefully that will last a lot longer since this is already the 2nd time fixing this same faucet:

By the way, the first plumber that showed up was going to charge us $795.  I couldn't believe it?!?  I wonder if he was profiling me or if his rates are really that high.  That is just price gauging!  Fair enough that it's a weekend but even so, having him come back on Monday would have cost $595.  Unbelievable!!  I'm so glad the other plumber that showed up on Monday was so much more reasonable. 

It would be so nice to have an automated sprinkler timer (*hint *hint).  Some day perhaps!

Registration of marriage

Who knew we actually had to register our marriage with the Malaysian government!  And it seems that it's going to cost us quite a bit in fines as well.  We're talking penalty of $35 for the first 6 months and then $18 for each subsequent year.  Yikes!!  It's almost like they are punishing us for being married for the last 15 years. Yup, you do the math :-P

But first, we have to get to the Consulate General of Malaysia.  LA traffic never disappoints.  Ha ha!

After parking, Bobby and I actually had a tough time finding the building.  It didn't help that there was construction going on near the parking structure and then, there were no signage either for any business, let alone the Consulate. Not even a flag outside the building!  We did eventually find it:

Now we just wait...

And wait... but hey, I found the Malaysian flag!

So okay, the entire process didn't take too long at all.  The guy helping us out was very friendly (of course - fellow Malaysian so why not!).  We should get a call in the next few days to pick it up. I'm not spending another $15 on a Cashiers check for FedEx to mail it back to us.  And actually, it would probably be more like $30 because of the $15 fee.  Anyway,... all done!  If we need to return back to my home-state later this summer, there should be less of a hassle.  Fingers crossed!

We drive around to our favorite Italian restaurant but it's too early.  So we just drive around like tourist and taking photos along the way.  I wonder if this old advertisement on the wall of the building is really old or made to look old:

Here's the LA Times building and it seems that it's actually vacant since 2018.  Who knew!  It's suppose to be an iconic building for its art deco design by Gordon B. Kaufmann.  After some more reading, Kaufmann was one of the architects for the Hoover Dam.  How about that! Hopefully they will do this building justice when it comes time to reopen it:

I can't remember the name of this building now. I believe it's LA City Hall.  I'm just noticing this bus of the LA Sheriff's Department.  I wonder if they were transporting inmates??!

I'm not exactly sure what this theatre is, called either but I love the carvings on the façade:

Yummy lunch!!  Nothing like fresh made pasta :-)

And olive cake and tiramisu to finish up the meal.  Double yum!!!

Well, as if the penalty/fine wasn't enough (over $300 which also includes the processing fee!!), I made Bobby take me out for a date lunch too.  He he!  And we get to do it again when we pick up the marriage certificate.  Whheeee...!!! :-D

Last day of CNY

The last day of Chinese New Year was this past 15th of February.  Normally, we're suppose to celebrate it by eating a dessert called "Tang Yuan" which literally translates to "round ball in soup".  And that's pretty much what it is - round glutinous rice balls that also looks like a full moon, which also signifies the last day of CNY. The inside of the Tang Yuan is filled with some sort of ground nuts.  I remember it being pretty yummy as we used to have it growing up in Malaysia.  I've not introduced them to the boys yet.  Perhaps next year!

The boys did have their Chinese class today so I decided to get some Chinese take-out while waiting for their 1-hr class to finish.  Oh boy, quite a bad looking storm ahead!

The storm doesn't help with traffic for sure!  And it did take the restaurant forever to cook up our order too.  I suppose everyone is celebrating the last day of CNY with Chinese take-out.  Ha ha!  

I ordered some sweet and sour pork.  YUMMMM....

And supposedly, this restaurant has some good duck too.  Obviously with bones, so Bobby and Graham were not interested at all in touching this dish.  Charlie did try it although he wasn't too keen on it, but at least he tried it:

So needless to say, there was a lot of leftover duck!  Fortunately, duck leftovers make very yummy porridge so I got as much meat off those bones and threw the bones to make a broth.  And eventually used the duck broth to make the porridge and then dumped whatever leftover meat into it as well.  A little bit of soy sauce and salt and top it off with some fried onions.. Voila! Boys love this stuff.  Isn't that funny??! 

And oh, Graham and Charlie really loved the sweet and sour pork too.  I grew up eating so much of this when I was in Malaysia. Every time we went to a Chinese restaurant (which wasn't very often), this dish would be the first one to be called out for the order.  Definitely one of my favorite dishes, except no one likes the red and green peppers or the pineapple chunks.  Ha!

Bobby and I had a chance to go to a Japanese market too in between the boys' class. We did managed to find this Pocari drink.  Graham loves this stuff!  It's sort of like the Asian version of Gatorade.  I remembered drinking a lot of this when I was golfing in Japan.  It's funny how now my kids love the same stuff.  I suppose with 30g of sugar per serving, who doesn't!

I also did find some Chinese pancake stuffed with red bean paste.  And Charlie LOVES this... LOL!!

Yup, another one of my favorites!  So I guess eventually I will have to introduce them to Tang Yuan. Although Graham doesn't like nuts.  Maybe he might change his mind by next year :-D

Recent happenings

I was finally able to put this sleeping bag back into it's bag.  I still don't know how they can squeeze this huge bag into its tiny little bag!

I put Charlie to the task as well... too funny!

Well, 2 weeks later... the sleeping bag is finally shoved back into its bag.  But not before ripping one of its seams and also getting some really sore fingers from all that "shoving" process!  So I've made an executive decision... no one is ever going to use this sleeping bag again unless it is really really necessary.  Ha ha!  :-P

I did decide, however that the boys needed some new bedsheets.  They have had the same ones since we've lived in Abu Dhabi!  So off to IKEA it is and of course, what is a trip to IKEA if we don't eat the meatballs:

Unfortunately, there weren't many fancy sheets with prints on them.  We bought a plain blue-ish one for Charlie and that's it.  But then of course we spent money on everything else!  I figured we will still donate their old sheets - one is of the Disney Cars animation and the other is a Superman one.  And then I realized that the futon covers are part of the set, so technically the boys could have picked out some new futon covers.  Guess that means another trip to IKEA again, which I bet no one really minds - except for Bobby perhaps because that just means spending even more money.  LOL!!

And speaking of spending more money, Charlie needed a pair of boots for dress-up day. The class was celebrating a fiesta after reading the book "Esperanza Rising".  We did manage to find some used ones:

The boots are actually girl/women ones but Charlie didn't mind it one bit.  

Momma spotted a little table that she really liked! Isn't this the cutest thing?! It even has little drawers on each of its sides:

The top opens up into a little desk on the inside and more little drawers on the inside!

I must gravitate towards little drawers.  Ha ha!  Although, there were some missing nails and parts of the bottom side of the table had also broken off.  I decided not to get it, but maybe if it's discounted it might be worth salvaging.  I did decide to salvage this pink guitar ;-P

It does have one broken string but hopefully not something too difficult to fix:

And since getting a microscope for Christmas, Graham has really been interested with looking at more stuff under a microscope.  He totally gravitated toward this one that can be connected to the computer where you can take photos and save it on the computer:

As Bobby always says, "As long as everyone is happy" and yes, everyone is happy today! :-D

And looks like my cowboy is all ready for his dress-up day at school.  Charlie is such a character!

Those trip to the local Goodwill stores are almost as bad as going to IKEA.  Almost everything is quite a good deal.  Ha ha!