The girls had a great time bonding with their youngest cousin, Raelyne when we were in Ipoh last weekend to celebrate my dad’s 70th birthday. Raelyne is my eldest brother’s only daughter. They live in Singapore.
Cass used to be the youngest and most pampered member in the family but this ‘baby position’ has since been filled by Raelyne. Everyone is now focusing their attention on Raelyne but Cass is not the wee bit jealous. In fact, Cass is smitten with Raelyne!
During a girls’ play that turned a tad rowdy last week, the baby safety gate at the stairs gave way and it collapsed! It landed on Sherilyn and Raelyne and all hell broke lose. Baby Raelyne was wailing on top of her lungs, both from pain and shock. There was a bump on her forehead. I quickly wrapped some ice cubes in a hanky and asked my brother to rub it on Raelyne’s bump but she was wailing, struggling and pushing the ice wrap away from her daddy. Having had handled 3 very difficult blubbers myself, I took the ice-wrapped hanky away from my brother and asked Cass to rub it on Raelyn’s forehead and voila, she immediately stopped wailing and calmed down! I then brought the 2 girls to the sofa and asked Raelyn to lie down on Cass’ lap so that Cass could massage her forehead with the ice-wrapped hanky. Raelyne obediently listened to me and even posed for me to take a pot shot of them haha! Thankfully, the swell on the forehead soon eased off 🙂
On the day of my dad’s birthday dinner, we made an impromptu decision to have a family portrait taken at a nearby studio. After the shot, the photographer managed to sweet talk us into taking individual family portraits and then sweet talked us into taking a picture of just the 4 girls! He was such a smooth talker and all of us ‘succumbed’ to this dude with a smooth tongue.
This is one of the studio photos of the 4 princesses, copied from my mum’s Facebook album. It is a tad blur here as she scanned the original picture on her printer before reposting it to her Facebook page. My mum is getting more and more IT savvy these days. She even has a Blackberry mobile phone now to Whatsapp us as well as to take pictures and posting them to Facebook!
Dad’s dinner was held at one of the oldest and most popular restaurants in Ipoh – Mun Choong. If you are in Ipoh and want to dine at Mun Choong on a walk-in basis, you will be rest assured to be either in a long waiting list or be turned down of a table. Even if you do get a table, be prepared to wait till you snooze off before the food arrives!
Here’s what we had….
The first dish was everyone’s favorite – a Four Seasons Platter that cost RM350 and this platter of starters was enough to fill my small tummy 50%!
Suckling baby oink oink, which pleased all corners except moi. For the umpteenth time, I had refrained from eating those poor fellas.
A combo of stir-fried and deep fried kailan with brocolli and mushrooms.
My dad had intended to order the restaurant’s signature pan-fried prawns with soy sauce (which is the best dish at the restaurant, bar none) but all the prawns had been fully booked even weeks before the other customers’ dinner at the restaurant! So we had to settle for a lobster dish, which was just as lip-smacking. It was so delish that even every single strand of Chinese cabbage on the plate was polished off. We will definitely order this dish again and the next time we dine there, we have to get the perennial prawn dish!
Steamed Soon Hock fish. The texture of the meat was absolutely perfect and tender and not overly steamed, like some restaurants would normally flaw at. An overly steamed Soon Hock would result in the flesh being too tough and rubbery.
Longevity Noodles..
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There were also a peach ‘pau’ birthday auspicious platter (with baby ‘paus’ inside the big ‘pau) that arrived first and a ‘tong yuen’ ginger sweet soup but they were not photographed.
My dad’s fresh and delish cempedak birthday cake from the famous JJ Cakes & Swissrolls. Though everyone was already burping and probably letting out gas from the other tract from over eating the sumptuous food, we were still seduced by our all-time favorite cempedak sponge cake with thick layers of fresh cempedak pulp between the sponge cakes. For me, I have always had a very delightful affair with JJ’s cempedak swiss rolls. I can always indulge in JJ’s fruity swiss rolls and sponge cakes with less guilt as compared to other calorie laden butter cakes and chocolate cakes.
Though the bill was slightly over a thousand bucks, it was a bang for our bucks as we all enjoyed the food very much. With good food and good company, it was the reunion of the year. Everyone was happy.
I would like to wish my dad a very, very happy and blessed 70th birthday and may God bless this very kind and generous man with many, many more happy birthdays. His actual birthday falls on the 19th of August.
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