Ting Family Gathering – Kota Kinabalu, 2011

This post is long overdue!

I took a ONE month holiday in the month of February. Everybody say… WAHHH~!!!

All I did was eat, take photo, play, sleep, eat, take photo, play, sleep….

I didn’t even bother organizing my photos actually. I just took everything and dumped the photos in Mat’s laptop, and continued eating, taking photo, play, sleep.

The photos that you see in Mat’s facebook was forced upon me to put it up by my dearest. If it wasn’t because of his daily nags, the photos wouldn’t be up on his facebook either.

So happen today is my off day, so I shall start writing my blog again

Day ONE

Mat’s family (mum’s side), has a family reunion once every 2 years. And this year, is in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah. We stayed in Yaho Hotel.

We arrived there on the eve of Chinese New Year. So of course, there’s the CNY eve dinner.

CNY eve dinner buffet style

After dinner, we had a time of Praise and Worship. We even had a theme song for the family reunion 2011. So here, we are learning the actions to the song from our next generation of Tings.

Praising and Worshiping God together

One of the photographer (Mat’s cousin), with his canggih camera… in comparison to mine, I think I better go hide it.

We also had a session of playing games together. One of the games was rock paper scissors.

Kids can’t have all the fun, so it’s the adults turn.

After a time of fun and games… comes the BEST part for the kids. And the WORST part for those who are married!!!!!!

ANG POW GIVING TIME!!!

The ones who have to give ang pow had to line up on one side, and the ones receiving, lined up on the other.

I wish I was one of the receiving ones lah….

Look at all those happy faces on the receiving line…

Look at all those happy faces!

Day TWO

After a time of devotion and some breakfast and some sharing, we went to Harbour Sutera hotels.

And took some photos there.

While the little kids were swimming in the pool, the “older” kids played with UNO.

Who is this Ta Yi Long?

One of my favourite photos

We went to places in a van. If the van can squeeze somemore, we squeeze in somemore. Baby pram also squeeze in.

Bursting out of the van

Advertising for Bleu

No matter where in Malaysia, no matter how much water people around you tell you to drink, somehow or rather, someone is going to get a heat “stroke”. And one of the victim is Uncle Bruce. I think throughout the reunion, at least 5 of them kena heat “stroke”.

If you’re complaining of signs of wanting to vomit, headache, poor appetite… beware…. Mat’s mum is ever ready to pinch the heat our of your body!

Day THREE

Today, we’re going somewhere quite far from the city. So Mary (another cousin, the organizer, and the one doing the peace sign in the picture below), hired a bus so all of us can fit in. So ya… as you can see, there are around 40 of us altogether.

We went to the hot springs on Mt Kinabalu. We didn’t get a chance to soak in the hot springs, but we did go up the canopy walk.

Another favourite photo!

On the canopy walk

On the way back down… too tired already.

Day FOUR

We sat in the bus again, and this time, we’re on our way to see monkeys and fireflies. Before seeing the monkeys, we had a fish spa session.

What you do is, you clean your feet, then put them into this “pool” with all these fishes and the fishes will start eating off the dead skin on your feet.

Somebody’s feet has a lot of dead skin!

My feet only had 1 or 2 fishes

Your feet has to stay quite still so the fishes can do their work. If you start moving them, the fishes will swim away. And while the fishes are feasting on your feet, it’s actually a very ticklish experience.

Mary here is trying to make herself keep still because it is very ticklish.

After the fish spa session, we geared up and sat in a boat, and went off to see the monkeys.

And at this point… my camera batteries went flat

I couldn’t take pictures of the monkeys anyway because they are so high up in the trees.

Devotion time – studying the word of God. Scripture today is 1John 5:13

And of course…. no family reunion will be complete without a group photo.

And a funny one for keepers!

Had a great time getting to know all Mat’s uncles, aunties, cousins, nieces and nephews. Thoroughly enjoyed it.

See you all again in 2013!

 

Random Updates

Just some short bursts of updates about what I’ve been up to:

Attended a wedding.

The venue of this wedding is held at a Uniting Church. The inside of the church of course… as you can see… who doesn’t want to get married in this church? But the big curtain on the wall behind the altar raises a question mark from me…. anyways… I shall not dwell into that.

This is my first ever wedding that I attended in Australia. I thought the whole service was very solemn to tell you the truth. When the bride marched in, of course we all very excited to take pictures of the bride right? So quite a few of us was snapping like crazy.

Then, when the bride reached her groom, and the reverend stood in front of them, she announced “There are a lot of photography fanatics here. Please be reminded that this is a religious ceremony”.

@_@

I thought weddings are suppose to be a joyous occasion.

Anyways….  I shall not dwell into that any further as well.

Below, is a picture of all the best men surrounding the groom. No, they are not praying for him. There seem to be a wardrobe malfunction somewhere on the groom’s suit, and the best men are frantically trying to fix it. Got fixed in the end fortunately!

The groom is our friend. He used to be in our cell group, but ever since he met his girlfriend (now wife), he dissappeared from our cell group (cause his wife is from another church). Nevertheless, we’re happy for him! Congratulations!

On a different occassion, another cellgroup friend invited us for Christmas lunch 1 week early, because they had holiday plans.

Awesome lunch! I cooked roast potatoes cooked in duck fat! YUMS! And also roasted veges (pumpkin, onions, carrot, eggplant). And we also had roast pork, and roast turkey, and mango salad… yummy!

And for dessert, Jit Jing baked us the best bread and butter pudding I’ve ever tasted! Absolutely divine!

On a different occassion before the year 2010 ended… Mat and I had a romantic, quiet, relaxing, Christmas picnic at the Royal Botanic Gardens.

It was such a beautiful day. It was cloudy, but yet not cold, not hot. We had sandwiches, cake, chips, drinks, chocolates…

… and a spectator…

A group of chinese tourists:

A lady with 2 mini gray hounds:

Played 2 games of scrabble…

and then had a lazy rest of the day!

Till then, hope you had a great start to the New Year!

End of Year Greetings!

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to everybody!

Wishing you all and myself a very blessed and eventful 2011!

Lots of Love,
Flo

Cupcake Party

First time I attended a cupcake party. It was actually a friend’s birthday party and I really enjoyed the afternoon. We were made to decorate our own cupcakes, and then get to eat other friend’s creation

The undecorated cupcakes:

Selina decorating her cupcake:

Marie decorating hers:

And look at all the beautiful decorated cupcakes.

Pwetty kan? Especially when it’s all put together like this.

The Birthday Girl: Jit Jing!

Jit Jing opening one of the presents:

The expression on her face, priceless!

Have to assemble her own birthday present somemore… hehehe.

She was very amused with this next present.

It’s a stuffed toy with holes for nostrils and a belly button. Jit Jing loves poking her fingers into the various holes… looking for gold I suppose.

Lovely ladies at the cupcake party.

This was such a great idea. Thanks again Jit Jing for the lovely afternoon!

Breakfast of the Week

Remember the 40 mangoes I got last week?

Nope… not jelak yet! Still loving it! Finishing the last of it today.

This is what we have for breakfast everyday for the last whole week till today:

Looks more like fruit platter with milk ya… hahaha!