The Space Bridge (Inspired from Transformers 3:Dark of the Moon)

A few weeks ago, Mommy took leave from work to 'rest' and spend a good time with Juan Or. Mommy took Juan Or to Sunway Pyramid to visit a newly-opened Toys R'Us outlet because the outlet offers members 3X points and free RM10 voucher for every RM150 purchase.

At the middle area of the new wing section where you can gaze several floors down from the top floor, if you look up, you can see this dome-like thing at the ceiling.

Juan Or's immediate reaction on seeing it was like this....

...and this!

Juan Or was actually acting out the Space Bridge from Transformers 3! For readers who are not familiar with Transformers 3, the Space Bridge is something like a 'wormhole' that acts as a short-cut pathway between two worlds or planets whereby the pathway is used for transporting anything including weapons and Transformer robots.

Here's our visit at the Toys R'Us store with Juan Or fiddling with a demo video game and wearing a toy fireman hat.

He even had a photo with Optimus Prime's head!

Had a 'car ride' with Garfield too!

And finally we had a sort of 'picnic' at the shopping mall.Well, that's our lunch - Mommy had spiral pasta cooked with pasta sauce, canned tuna flakes, cabbage and Shitake mushrooms while Juan Or prefers to have his spiral pasta just plain, no sauce, nothing. ^_^

Mommy managed to capture these cute series of photos that showed Juan Or's sequence of eating his pasta. ^_^

Solution for Slow Eaters

Juan Or is a slow eater - more so for food that are not to his fancy such as rice mixed with main course dishes. For every one tea spoonful of soggy rice mixed with vege soup plus finely mashed/chewed meat and stir-fried vege, it takes him ages to finally swallow the tea spoonful of food in his mouth! Somehow the food stays in his mouth for long - don't know whether he chews the food or not or only chews occasionally, but it sure is annoying for Mommy to have wait for him to finally swallow his food and be ready for the next tea spoonful of food!

Mommy finds it really annoying because Mommy has got loads of housework waiting to be finished - clearing the mess on the dining table, storing leftover food if any, scrap and throw away solid food wastes, washing the dirty plates and utensils, washing the wok, washing the soup pot which usually has hard stains, pack away wet rubbish for Papa to dispose off the next morning, wiping oily stains on the stove if the stains are too obvious, take bath of Juan Or because he's usually very sweaty after having dinner and finally Mommy gets to take bath! Because of this, if the day is getting late, Mommy resorts to juggle both housework and feeding Juan Or at the same time.

Recently, Mommy discovered a solution to get Juan Or to eat fast! Be reminded, however, that what works for Juan Or may not work for your kid. This is the solution......

........use ladies' fingers!! ^_^

Yes, that's right! Mommy would steam three or four pieces of ladies' finger together while cooking rice. Mommy would then chew the ladies' fingers till fine (hey, sounds yucky but it's true - Mommy's mouth is the 'food blender' for Juan Or!), spit them out to mix together with his rice that has already been soaked up with vege soup, mixed with mashed/chewed meat and stir-fried vege. The chewed ladies' fingers will have sticky mucousy texture, so when mixed with his rice, the whole concoction becomes sticky and mucousy as well! For that, Juan Or eats very quickly! ^_^ Well, whether it's because Juan Or likes the sticky and mucousy texture or because the texture makes it easy for him to swallow his food, Mommy is not exactly sure but hey, ladies' fingers sure work very well to counter his slow-eating habit!

By the way, when eating his favourite French fries and Dahfa fish fillet strips, Juan Or doesn't need any 'additive' to make him eat faster! ^_^

A Working Sunday and Steamboat Buffet at MaChiano's

Just last week Sunday (or first Sunday of July to be exact), Mommy was required to report for duty because it was UCSI University's Convocation Day. So Juan Or and Papa tagged along with Mommy in the office. Papa was busy playing with Internet while Juan Or was busy watching Transformers' DVD cartoon series on Mommy's old laptop. Not to mention too, Juan Or did some 'fooling around' in Mommy's office like this....

 Anyway, we were there as early as 7am due to potential parking problems and left the uni at 12.15pm when the event ended. We headed off to Plaza OUG to have MacDonald's for lunch. At MacDonalds, Papa ordered only one McValue set (Big Mac) just so that our stomachs don't go empty prior to the 'big walloping' session at MaChiano's steamboat buffet later for dinner. After the lunch, we window-shopped at the mall itself and also at Central Supermarket before heading off to Juan Or's paternal grandparents' place for a stopover. Over there, Mommy took the opportunity to have a thorough nap (*Well, Mommy woke up at 3.30am to wash clothes first before going to work!*), Juan Or had his nap as well in his favourite spring cot while Papa chatted all the way with his parents and younger brother.

Finally the time has come for Papa, Juan Or and Mommy to head off to MaChiano's for our steamboat buffet dinner. MaChiano's is situated along Old Klang Road, somewhere opposite an international school and is at the same vicinity as Old Town Kopitiam.

The steamboat buffet fee  is RM28 per person. However, Papa bought online coupons from www.everyday.com.my website that offers RM28 for 2 diners (drinks included), i.e., RM14 only per person! Now that's a deal! The plus thing about this also is it's free for children under 4 years of age and Juan Or fits that condition! ^_^


There we were at MaChiano's  - a table already reserved under Papa's name and with a baby chair prepared.

And here was Juan Or waiting eagerly for Papa to take the foodies for steamboat while Mommy stayed on to take care of Juan Or.

The waiter came to pour two kinds of soup into the steamboat pot - chicken stock soup and tom yam soup.

Now, here's comes the steamboat foodies ready to be thrown into the soup.

Here's the steamboat-ing process!

How's the taste like? Well, both Papa and Mommy found the tom yam soup to be delicious and Papa found the chicken soup to be not as good as the tom yam. Mommy enjoyed it the most because there were the clams seafood that Mommy loves - big lala, bamboo lala and green-shelled mussels! Another of Mommy's favourite are the mushrooms - shitake and grey oyster. Only thing is that the staff did not snip away the bottom end of the shitake's stalk that sometimes still has the woody remnants. There was a barbeque section also, but because it took quite long for your turn to be served, so Papa only managed to get some beef strips and lamb chop barbequed. Papa particularly loved the barbequed lamb chops because the marinate recipe was good! By the way, Mommy ate and ate and ate to get money's worth (*yes, Mommy was eating Papa's share as well!*) while Papa ate just enough to satisfy his taste bud because of his gouty condition. What about Juan Or? Well as expected, he ate only a little because he is not adventurous about trying new food. He only ate the yee mee noodles - that also he played with the yee mee by stringing the noodles all along the wall of the bowl so much so the bowl appeared to have grown hair at one glance! (Sorry, no photos of the 'hairy bowl' because Mommy's hands were too oily and dirty to hold the handphone camera!)

Overall, this steamboat restaurant is a good place to dine in and cheap since we used the special deal online coupon and the ambience is nice too. Parking? It was RM2 since the parking area around the blocks of shops there are managed by one private company.

Bloggers' Sports Carnival at CityGolf, Bangsar Shopping Centre

Recently Mommy participated in a Nuffnang contest and won a pair of invites to the Bloggers' Sports Carnival at CityGolf, Bangsar Shopping Centre. What does CityGolf has to offer? According to Nuffnang, CityGolf is actually an indoor golf park and the F&B section is managed by La Bodega. Nuffnang also mentioned in their blogsite that La Bodega's tapas (or snacks) are 'to die for'. So let's see how far is this true! ^_^

The day of the sports carnival was on 2nd July 2011, i.e., a Saturday whereby Mommy had to teach piano. So for that day, Mommy only taught for 3-and-a-half hours and left the music school at 3.30pm sharp. The sports carnival was supposed to start from 4pm and end at 7pm. However, Papa, Mommy and Juan Or only arrived there at about 4.20pm after going through some mad Saturday afternoon traffic-jam.

After asking the shopping centre's guard for some directions to CityGolf, we headed to the 4th floor with a "My Play Room" board and CityGolf tag (far left) directing us to an escalator that will lead you directly there.

After reporting attendance with Nuffnang representatives, we were ushered inside to have some food and drinks (2 complimentary drink coupons were also given) first before the indoor sports programme began. There was a long table spread for the food but Mommy was taken aback to see the serving plates empty or almost empty! The foodies served were mostly refreshment-type food  - cute and square-shaped cakes, tuna sandwiches, cube-shaped omelette-like thingy and hard bread with chopped tomato and onion toppings.

The only dish that can be made into 'dinner' is deep-fried chicken drummet in tomato sauce.

But sad to say, the chicken drummets especially (and the other food items) are almost finished or totally wiped out everytime the staff come to top up the food. But then this is no excuse for La Bodega to be under-prepared with the required amount of food since the Nuffnang-CityGolf arrangement has 50 pairs of invites coming in, i.e., you can expect 100 people! Perhaps you may be wondering if the food is outstandingly delicious such that most of them get snapped up within a short period of time? No, wrong - the taste is just so-so only. Nothing to shout about, yet is not a failure either.


After taking the food, we headed for the outdoor seats because there were no more empty seats left on the inside.

Juan Or only ate the cube-shaped cakes, probably because they looked cute to a kid's eye.

Other than that, Juan Or didn't eat at all (Mommy expected that!), instead merely played with the chicken drummets and sandwiches, to which Momy walloped everything that he didn't eat.

Then, here came Mommy's complimentary drink - orange cordial drink.

Then finally came the announcement of the starting of the indoor sports programme. There were 4 types of indoor games arranged for the bloggers - dart, snooker (or was it billiard! Don't know! ^_^) and the other two being indoor golf type of games. Almost all the bloggers congregate around the games stations except for you-know-who (Answer: Papa, Mommy and Juan Or!) simply because Mommy was still not done with eating! ^_^

Anyway, by then, many of the indoor eating tables were vacant already, so we moved to eating inside. By then also, many were no longer eating already, so the newly topped up food supply did not quickly get snapped up. By the way, Papa and Juan Or sat and waited while Mommy ate and ate and ate because we didn't feel like going for or cooking dinner anymore. Here's Juan Or making agony faces to pressure Mommy to hurry up eating! ^_^

Here are some random shots of the insides of CityGolf before we headed out (Yes,  Mommy did not join the games at all!).

 

CityGolf even provides a computer terminal for patrons to surf the Net. 

Here's an overview of the benefits if patrons sign up for membership.

Finally, we were out. "Bye-bye, CityGolf!" 

Where were we headed to next? To take Juan Or to see his favourite - toy shop tenants, particularly to see Transformers and/or Thomas and Friends toys! Mommy noticed there is one toy shop by the name "York Home" that seems to be owned by one old Chinese man and the Transformers Dark of the Moon range of toys are sold at about 3% to 5% cheaper than in Toys R'Us! Mommy personally finds it hard to believe that a posh area like Bangsar can have Transformers toys sold slightly cheaper than what Toys R'Us has to offer, but it's true!

All in all, we only spent about one-and-a-half hours in Bangsar Shopping Centre (including at CityGolf) and by 6pm, we headed home already. The parking fee at Bangsar Shopping Centre? Expensive - RM4 for almost 2 hours of parking! Overall, this is not a very worthwhile trip to make. 

Back home, Mommy decided to cook Chinese cabbage soup to supplement what we ate at CityGolf just so that we can have a more balanced diet since the food there lacks vege. 

And for Juan Or's sake, because what he ate there was negligable, Mommy threw in a handful of macaroni to cook together with the Chinese cabbage. That would be his dinner for the night (besides milk).