Pictures in the Making

A place for me to share with my family and friends what I've experienced in life.

o_O What little time left!

1st August 2009

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

We're back! (Yes, I know, its yesterday's news)

It has now been three weeks since we came home to Kuala Lumpur...

Would like to apologize for the lack of updates. This is because life has (and still is!) hectic since March 2009. Below are a short summary of what has been hapenning for the past weeks:

March 09
- Resign and left our last job in London
- Matta, Lou Tau and 25 cents' arrival to London for 2 week trip (London, Paris, Oxford, Stonehenge & Bath)

April 09 (London)
- Ex-colleague & husband's arrival to London for 5 day stay with us
- Went to Liverpool, Venice and Rome for (7 days) honeymoon trip
- House cleaning (actually, more of house scrubbing!)

April 09 - May 09 (KL)
- Commence renovation work in apartment
- Purchase of furnitures and fittings for apartment
- Kick off wedding plans (gowns, photographers, guest list, etc)
- Apply for jobs and attend interviews

As I was typing the above summary, it irks me to think that there seems to be very little done when in fact we were really flat out since March 09.

Some of you might has seen pictures in Facebook so you would probably have a better update on whats going on our lives at the moment. And obviously it doesnt help with the fact that internet is crap here and blogspot isnt the best place to put up pictures.

Pokoknya, life has been very hectic since we arrived. We've only been back three weeks and already we've done enough to make me feel as if we've been back for three months. I guess the fact that both of us are not working at the moment really helped because that gave us the change to go do stuff togethe such as surveying furnitures, arranging for renovation, and the wedding preparation too.

Who would have guess that the sink needs three trips to buy, the aircon fixtures has hidden cost, the sofa cost a bomb, the fridge cant be taller than Des and I have developed a love-hate relationship with my wedding dress!

And nope, neither of us are working yet, and I'm pretty sure I'll go crazy soon enough. You would too if you are getting married and moving into a new place in three months time without jobs!
God help us!



Thursday, February 5, 2009

Bristol - Videos

We went to Bristol last weekend, on the day London experienced the worst snowfall in many years. It was snowing throughout, hence very little chance to take pictures. Nevertheless, we have videos to share with you... Enjoy!

Part 1 - We picked a day to go Bristol where London was snowed in, no bus service and most London tubes shuts down.



Part 2 - Managed to make our way to the train station relatively easy (the tubes on our route works!). This is the start of our journey, and luckily it wasnt stuck anywhere due to the snow.



Part 3 - Arrived at Bristol! It was just beginning to snow! Found our way to the hotel (about 30 minutes walk from the train station) and after wrapping ourselves up (me using Des's oversized jacket to keep my butt warm) we slowly made our way to the city centre.



Part 4 - Bristol City Centre! Gosh, I feel like we're giving out weather forecast! It has begin to snow quite heavily, and at times, instead of soft little drops of snow, it was big chucks of snow! Was very pleased that we both came with the right attire (all wrapped up nice and warm, not not very fashionable!).



Part 5 - Just after dinner, outside the hotel. One last chance of the snow before retiring back to the hotel.



Part 6 - Next day Bristol, making our way back to the train station.



Part 7 - Bristol or Bath???

We got too excited and worried about the prospect of getting home in time that we hopped into a earlier train! Was very malu-fying and we apologied to the family who we mistakenly thought to have taken our seat! :P

So we get off the next stop at Bath and waited for 15 minutes later to take the correct train.



Part 8 - Home!

And lucky for us. the ride back home was smooth with (again) the tubes working on our selected journey. But the walk back home was a bit slippery with the snow melting but not quite.

And dont know why, my head was bobbing up and down like a stupid idiot!



Videos are all unedited and please excuse the strange accent! Will post more pictures for Bristol and Brighton soon! Also, hope that we will get our 2nd day photoshot pictures soon! :)

Sunday, February 1, 2009

Gong XI Gong Xi!

Never thought I'll see anything remotely CNY that will reminds me of new year in London. And guess what I found in the newspaper last week!


A quick update on our CNY activities. We've had reunion dinner at Des's sister in law's place with a couple of their friends. We then head up to Brighton for a day trip. And tomorrow we'll be having our 2nd day photography session (fingers crossed that the weather will be good) and heading up to Chinatown as they are having some CNY-related carnival or something. And then, we'll be heading up Bristol for an overnight trip!

Lots of things happened and was busy thats why havent found time to tell you guys. Hopefully after the trip things will settle and the pictures will be up!

Happy New Year everyone!
Desmond & Agnes

Saturday, December 27, 2008

Christmas 2008

Christmas 2008 was our first Christmas as a married couple. For a few weeks now we've been feeling kinda sad because Christmas is a very much celebrated event over here, something like our CNY back home. A time where most company closed down for a week and the entire transportation shuts down.

In the mist of being depressed, Des managed to lift our spirits up by decoration our house with some lights and a small christmas tree. And with both of us not working during Christmas, it allows us to spend some much needed time together (contary to the belief, we rarely had the time to see each other for long).

A week to Christmas the TV was showing show after show of celebrity chefs showing the viewers how to whip up a Christmas dinner effortlessly. And that gave us the motivation to do something on our own too, given the fact that most of the restaurant is closed anyway. Following the unfortunate event last week, Des cheered me up and gave me a selection of Christmas menu to choose from.

And so with the ingredients ready (I think Christmas dinner cost about a week's worth of groceries), Des put on his Chef's hat and set on preparing a gruelling four hour long Christmas dinner...

First course was the soup. Mind you, a GORDAN RAMSAY recipe no less. It was quite easy, kinda like our chinese soup but takes about 20 minutes instead of the usual 2 hours.

So chopped everything up and melt the butter,



Pour everything in and bring to boil,

And the LIQUIDIFY! They seems to like their soup thick and creamy, hence they tend to blend their soup.

And so, with the soup bubling away, its time to work on the main course.

Ok, so we started working on the main first cause this took blardy 3 hours (recipe says 4 but we kinda get bored of waiting). So chopped vegetable for flavouring and season the pork (have I mentioned how much I love meat!?!). This is about 50% done...

And tadah! Roast Pork Belly done! Excuse the vegetable, as it WAS meant to be burnt! You'll see later that the roast vegetable is being prepared separately. So, nothing is failing yet :)

The second part of the main is of course the Lobster! Lobster for 5 pounds, can you believe it!?!

It was sold cooked and frozen in water, so we just need to defrost it and dump it into boiling water again.

Des has never cooked lobster before, so it was quite interesting, considering I craved seafood so much I literally floated in loveliness whenever I pass the seafood section of the supermarket.

The lobster head too sayang to throw away that we dump it into the soup. Doesnt really make a difference in the taste but its nice to know that we put the lobster in good use instead of throwing it away.

As for the remaining badan, sprinkle some cheese and let grill
Remember the burnt vege? Told you its supposed to be burnt! Cause we're preparing roast vege separately of onions, parsnip, potatoes and carrots. Chopped them together and roast them in the secret ingredient: GOOSE FAT.

For a meat lover, these were very good :)

Lobster - Grilled. Pork - Roasted. Main Course - DONE!

Next in line, Dessert!

Apples with cinammon and wine. Enough said!

The tedious part where Des gotta roll the filling in rice paper (something like spring roll apple pie).

End result - 4 biji apple pie (I've got a portion-ing problem, luckily Des did four cause we were quite full by the end).

And so, after 4 hours of cooking (hey, I helped!), presenting our first Christmas dinner:

Starter: Apple, Parsnip and Chestnut soup

Main - Surf and Turf (Grilled Lobsters and Roast Pork Belly. Roasted vegetables on side)

Dessert - Spring Roll Apple Pie

And so that was our Christmas dinner. I was quite suprised that I didnt drop dead being full and drunk considering we polished 2 bottles of wine during dinner and had non stop whiskey throughout the day.

So that was Christmas day. One Boxing day, we went out to the superbly packed Oxford Street and bought ourselves presents! Des bought not one, not two but THREE pairs of shoes! Hahaha I on the other hand, managed to grab myself an ALDO heels. I've always wanted to own a pair of Also heels but was put off by the bad service in its One Utama's outlet that I just couldnt bring myself to spend that kinda money just to be treated like dirt.

Oh, and did I mentioned that it only cost about 35 pounds??? Meaning, I only need to give up 3 movie tickets to buy one pair of Aldo shoes compared to back home, in which I'll probably have to give up like what, 30 times worth of movie tickets??? Ridiculous!

Having said that, I must set the record straight that we both RARELY spend that much on clothing items. It is Christmas afterall...
And so that is from us from London for Christmas. We've posted our pictures for our 'pre wedding' pixs taken around London a couple of weeks ago (just got them today on Boxing Day!). We hope to have our second day of pictures soon but it wont be any sooner than in January, i supposed. Please do let us know what you think of the pictures! We're trying to cut cost and hopefully the second day's pictures will be just as nice (if not better) so that we can make do without the compulsory 'studio-like' shot back home and just arrange for the pictures to be printed off straight away.

New Year's Day is going to be a quiet affair as Des will be working but we had a great Christmas and I wont be working for a few days next week so hopefully that will gives us time to catch up again.

And the thought of flying home suddenly feels so near, almost as if we we cannot believe our time here is almost done. 2008 has been so eventful and hopefully 2009 will continue to be so.

Thanks again for those of you who voted on our wedding survey and it has been a great help (wedding is now on a Saturday, church ceremony is being discussed but we still havent decided on our wedding march yet!). And hence, I take this opportunity to announce that we've set our wedding date to be next year 1st Aug 2009. We will continue to post pictures up along our journey together and we hope you have enjoyed our pictures so far in our year in London and hope that there will be many more to come.

We wish you all a great Christmas and a fantastic year ahead!

Love, Desmond and Agnes

Wedding Pictures - Day 1

We've waited for as long as we can and finally here are the pictures of first day of our pre wedding shots!