Juan Or at the Norwegian Food Fair

Yesterday, Papa decided to go and see one Norwegian Food Fair after reading one food blog about it. Guess where is the fair? It's at Empire Shopping Gallery, roughly neighbouring Subang Parade!

We parked at Carrefour Subang (otherwise where else has free parking!?), took a walk in front of Subang Parade and crossed some major corssroads before reaching Empire. Still it was pretty early when we reached there because most of the tenants were not opened yet - still another 10 to 15 minutes' wait before 10am, so we loitered at a bench first while Juan Or played hide-and-seek of sorts with Mommy at one F&B tenant's chairs and table.

Along the way, Mommy caught sight of this interesting tube structure - turned out to the longest indoor slide. But of course to slide in it, you need to reach a certain minimum height, plus pay for the ticket. One notice indicated that the ticket fee is half-price on the 1st of every month, however there's no indication at the ground floor on how much is the ticket price.

When the clock striked 10, we walked over to the Norwegian Food Fair's booth. First and foremost, we were greeted by the hole-in-the-face life-sized picture of a Norwegian couple in traditional costume. So Juan Or and Mommy tried it. Looks funny and odd, huh!

We also posed in front of the Norwegian flag and 'house'.

Then along the way, Juan Or seemed keen to run away to other neighbouring tenants, so Mommy had to chase and bring him back again. Unbeknown to Mommy, Papa had taken a shot of us coming back to the 'true path'.  This shot really made Juan Or and Mommy look like shopping kakis (hats)! ^_^

At the food fair section, the main attraction was the selling of Norwegian frozen seafood such as salmon, cod, blue mackeral, shrimp and crab. Some of these seafood were sold in vacuum-packed marinated form. Mommy remember reading about this Norwegian food fair at The Star Metro section on Saturday (19th March 2011) and the article did mention about the frozen seafood sold at bargain prices. So are they really a bargain? In Mommy's opinion, they are definitely not! For example, a 200g vacuum-packed frozen salmon fillet (non-marinated) costs RM12, i.e., RM60 per kg - that's exorbitant! In comparison, a salmon slice in Tesco costs RM24.90 per kg during promotion and in one TC Boy Warehouse Sale last year, a 700g to 800g piece of imported salmon fillet (frozen, vacuum-packed) costs RM27 only. Other than frozen seafood on sale, there were Norwegian breads and bread premixes for sale too but Mommy didn't take a close look. In one section of the booth, you can see one staff cutting the bread into small pieces. You think they are preparing free samples of the bread for people to try? Nah, you have to buy them to try! Cheh!


Putting aside the food fair, there was also a section in the booth where photos of places, people, scenes and scenaries of Norway are displayed - something like a "To know Norway is to Love Norway" expo kind of thing.

These are some of Juan Or's favourite things....

.....the waterfall     and.....

.....the  choo-choo train!


Before leaving the Norwegian food fair booth, Mommy managed to take some free recipe booklets and leaflets for cooking salmon fish. Yippy, even if Mommy had nothing to buy from the booth, at least there's still something to take and keep for future reference!

Since we still had a lot of time left before lunch time, Papa and Mommy took Juan Or to his favourite place - Toys R'Us! Mommy then took the opportunity to enquire from the customer service counter how much points were collected thus far and to Mommy's delight, it was 814 points and that entitled Mommy to have RM30 worth of vouchers to redeem (RM10 voucher for 250 points)! Woo-hoo!  You may then be thinking that Mommy had spent RM814 previously to buy toys, right? Wrong, Mommy had only spent RM254.50 so far buying toys from Toys R'Us. So how did Mommy do it? Actually Mommy made use of windows of opportunities. One was when Mommy made use of Standard Chartered's credit card cash rebate promotion that gives RM188 rebate upon first swipe of any amount transaction. Second was when Mommy got 3X points when purchasing something from a new Toys R'Us outlet in IOI Mall. The best part was that Mommy made use of those windows of opportunities simultaneously to reap the maximum benefit possible! ^_^

Juan Or had a jolly good time at Toys R'Us. Mommy asked him to pose next to this life-sized Ben10 hero (his current favourite cartoon character), but don't know why, he refused. *Shake head*

Then there's also this Lego corner for children to play.

When we came out from the toy store, Juan Or did not fret to want to stay on unlike in other toy departments in Jusco previously. What does this mean? It simply means he had seen and played to his heart's content already! ^_^


You may then be wondering what Mommy bought using the RM30 voucher? Here it is - the 65th Anniversary celebration edition Thomas train set selling for retail price of RM89.90. Mommy knows this set is pretty expensive and no discounts are given even during Jusco sales. Also, Mommy has never seen this set on sale before in Litt Tak's Warehouse Sale all these years. So this is good opportunity to make use of the vouchers to get it for a cheaper price! Anyway, it's to add to Mommy's collection as well! ^_^

Once back home, this was how Juan Or played with it.....crash, boom, bang.....fall down! If you have watched Thomas and Friends in Mistry Island Rescue before, Juan Or actually wanted to simulate one scene where Diesel unintentionally pushed the jovi logs to the edge of an unfinished track and they all fell into the river.

If you are a train model enthusiast, this 65th Anniversary edition features an interesting passenger coach.....

.....that can be opened up to fit in Sir Topham Hat!

Hehehehe.....another addition to Juan Or and Mommy's choo-choo train collection! ^_^