After 5 days in Bali – Indonesia and 3 days in Kuala Lumpur – Malaysia, Celine and Jessica brought home with them photos and stories of their travel. It still amazes me seeing these 2 fine ladies grab hold of life and enjoy being sisters. This is their third trip together, with no one to rely on – but each other. On this trip Jessica celebrated her birthday in Bali, snorkelling, jet skiing and para-sailing.
As I learn more of the intricacies of video blogs or blogs in general, it is now enjoyable to go through some of my earlier works in multimedia and publish it as an ante-dated blogs and preserve them for posterity. Here are some 3-minute videos originally published in DVD from our World Trip.
On September 2007, Celine played Tuptim in a production by The Holroyd Musical and Dramatic Society. It caused a pleasant stir in the family circle, with some just realising how involved Celine is into performing arts. Celine continues her learning with a private tutor at the Joan Sutherland Performing Arts School and has taken workshops at NIDA. She is also a full-time student at the Sydney University, pursuing a degree in Speech Pathology.
It started with an early morning call from work, I’m the escalation DBA and the main on-call DBA was not picking up. Instead of passing the call, I decided to get up and check the alert. After which, it was quite difficult to go back to bed although it was chilly 8 degree morning. I’ve been very lazy about going to the gym all week – so I decided to pump-up my bike and cycled to the gym for an hour of work-out.
Then I rushed home to have a quick shower, breakfast and to take Jeanne to her dental appointment. While waiting for Jeanne at the dentist, I called Chong in New York to have a bit of a chat. I was on the street, so I also showed him a bit of Parramatta via Skype. We were talking for awhile and we continued to talk on skype while we drived to Blacktown. Jeanne was holding up my laptop showing Chong and Gay the streets. We were laughing because it was like a scene from the Big Bang Theory where Sheldon decided to virtually ride a car with Leonard. When we arrived at Westpoint, Blacktown – I switched to an iPad and like an idiot started showing Chong where we shop for fish and fruits. We continued to chat whilst Jeanne got some take-away food for lunch.
Cheers!
When we got home, Tom surprised Jeanne with a Mother’s Day bouquet of flowers. Jeremy was also at home and we’re also expecting Angie and Ryan. This is the afternoon we all decided to taste the Kopi Luwak. We’re all excited to try it – none more than me. I broke open the new coffee grinder and ground 3/4 cup of beans to make 8 small shots. This is perhaps the most expensive home brewed coffee we made. The beans cost $100 for 100 grams and the grinder is $65. After we all had a sip – I fast forwarded the movie Bucket Lists to the part where Morgan Freeman tells Jack Nicholson about the fact that the Kopi Luwak comes from the faeces of a cat who ate the coffee bean. We all laughed as hard but continue to drink the coffee anyway. Some decided to put our usual hazelnut creamer but most stayed true and finished their cup as black. I had 2 cups – after all the beans were given to me as a gift. When Jessica and Celine saw it in Indonesia – they resolved that they should buy it for me. They enjoyment and laughter in this afternoon proved they made the right choice (once again) for a gift.
On the background – I played a feature film called Samsara – a movie without dialogue and filmed entirely using high quality Panavision 65mm film. It was from the same makers of the film Baraka. It was meant to be just playing in the background but everyone took interest on it. Between all of us – we must have seen most of the countries/places featured on the film.
Come dinner time, the four of us went to Cara & Co – a fine dining restaurant at the Centerpoint Tower in Sydney. This is Jeanne’s shout for Jessica’s birthday. Since they were in Bali on her birthday, the booking was moved to this date. A very lovely evening with my 3 lovely ladies on a regular Saturday of May.
12-May-2013 Mother’s Day : Celine prepared a chocolate pan cake breakfast for everyone. Jessica surprised her mum with front row seats to the upcoming Disney’s production of the Lion King at the Capitol Theatre in Sydney. She gave her four tickets and so we’re all hoping that she takes us to watch it with her
Vanessa also came to visit and baked with Jessica. She looked petrified when I asked if she would want to taste the Kopi Luwak. We ended up brewing the rest of the beans (2/3 cup of beans to make 6 cups of coffee). Vanessa had 2 servings and has taken it black – Well Done!
When I asked Chong if he would join me trekking the Himalayas – his response was : “Are we doing the Bucket List?”. I knew he was referring to the movie – I’ve seen the trailers but have not watched it yet.
Kopi Luwak
Then I told a friend that the girls brought home “Kopi Luwak” for me from Bali from their recent trip. He asked if I have seen the movie and laughed. Of course I knew what Kopi Luwak and so did my daughters, perfectly understand why it’s a laughing matter – but that got me interested to watch the movie.
The other night, I got myself a BluRay copy and sat to watched. When the part where Morgan Freeman told Jack Nicholson what Kopi Luwak is – their laugh was so infectious – I also did laugh ’til I cried.
Still, I’m getting a small coffee grinder (so as not to mix the beans from my regular morning beans) and we will be inviting Ryan and Angie for a cuppa. They too know what it is and game to give it a taste.
It started as an idea to get the cycling group back into riding once again. That is to join a community organised ride called Ride to See the Lilies. Designed to ease in the others into riding once again. But Ivor though it might be too tamed for everyone, so he volunteered to map out a route for everyone which he called Not So Lilies Ride. I’m not sure if the route is not as tamed as the original route but at least we had the time to ourselves.
You’ll know that I haven’t been riding my bike often when I blog about the ride. I can’t take photos during the ride – so I left my camera at home. Instead, I installed an action camera on my handle bar. The problem with that is that, one must actually sit and edit the video , make it a bit interesting before uploading it. Hopefully – one day I’ll get to do that. For now, showing the Garmin Map should suffice to show the route and some graphs.
In the ride was Ivor, Drew and myself. As the route is a bit fluid, we decided to break it whilst at Newington to visit a Year 12 art exhibit. Then we continued heading into Meadowbank and back to Bicentennial park where we started. There we met up with Trish and Little Tom. We had lunch there before heading back home.
After 5 days in Bali – Indonesia and 3 days in Kuala Lumpur – Malaysia, Celine and Jessica brought home with them photos and stories of their travel. It still amazes me seeing these 2 fine ladies grab hold of life and enjoy being sisters. This is their third trip together, with no one to rely on – but each other.
On this trip Jessica celebrated her birthday in Bali. They went snorkelling, jet skiing and para-sailing. They also rented a villa each in Bali with a common private pool between them. They treated themselves to fine dining and lots of time in the beach.
Then they went to Kuala Lumpur to do a bit of shopping, photo shoot and dine at the Grand Hyatt – 38. They said I would have loved the music at this club. I wanted a shirt from East India but they said the shop is no longer in KL – after all, it was 20 years ago since I was last in that city. Instead – they bought me the most expensive and rare coffee beans – called the Kopi Luwak. Here are some of their choice photos.
Bali, Indonesia
Luxury
Tourist Shot
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Twin Towers
Grand Hyatt 38
Photo Point
This is how Celine and Jessica celebrated Jessica’s birthday in Bali, Indonesia
Similar to what they did in Kyoto, Japan a few years ago. Celine and Jessica spent some time at a Dior make-up studio in Kuala Lumpur and had some glamour photos taken. But they wouldn’t want me to post it in my blog except for this one.
