Bits and pieces

This morning we headed straight out to Ikano Power Center to do some things. We put in some things to be repaired (a suitcase with a broken wheel, a backpack with loose stitching, my leather handbag that the cat peed on and my white thongs with the insoles worn out) at the bag and shoe fix-it place. Seems like they will be able to fix everything (we'll see about the cat pee!).

From there we had some brunch at Dome before braving the IKEA madness to find a curtain rod and some more pots for my herb garden on the patio. We also walked over to the Curve to try and find some more cat grass seeds with no luck.

Some time ago, we had dropped in our PlayStation controller to be fixed so we went to pick it up. They told us it couldn't be repaired so we bought a copy controller (not a genuine Sony) for 35 ringgit as well as some copy games for 5 ringgit each - bargain! We stopped in at the pet store to ask about Blue getting his teeth cleaned - not looking forward to that! Downstairs and on our way out, I spied some herb plants out the front of ACE Hardware. I picked up some pretty big plants - sweet basil, flat leafed parsley and mint - to add to the growing garden.

It was a pretty successful trip in all. Back at home we relaxed for a few hours before walking over to the Pavilion to meet Brian at La Bodega for some food before we headed to watch the latest Harry Potter movie. After some great tapas and with the boys having a couple of pints of Hoegarden under their belt, we headed to the Gold Class cinemas for the movie.

Wrapped in our doonas and on our leather recliners, we enjoyed the movie. It was a bit dark and long winded but a good movie. I couldn't remember anything about the story line until almost at the end, then a few things came back to me. After the movie we walked home together and headed our separate ways.

Another great day and a great weekend.

Health and Fitness Check:

Weight: 70.4 kg

Surprisingly, this week is my lowest weight to date. I also reached my 5kg goal. I was amazed when I stepped on the scales last Wednesday, after two weeks of not really worry too much about diet and exercise on holiday, that my weight was 71.6kg. So I was really amazed today when I had lost 1.2kg in a couple of days. However, I think a lot of that is loss of muscle :-(

Exercise:

- 2 x walking around KLCC park for 2 laps (around 60 minutes)
- Walking around KL to monorail and wet market (30 minutes)

Not too much this week but at least it's something!

A busy Saturday

This morning started by Ross and I going to the gym. I got down there and started on the elliptical trainer and I could tell my body wouldn't cope with that today so I headed out to KLCC park to walk instead. I walked for 45 minutes and completed 3 and a half laps before walking home. I was knackered afterwards!

Ross and I drove out to Ikano Power Mall for breakfast and to run a few errands. I wasn't in a great mood this morning and when my two poached eggs came out and were more like rubber hard boiled eggs, I wasn't impressed. DOME was not doing well this morning! I sent them back and waited for new eggs which came back a bit better but not great. After throwing down my eggs, I walked over to Strip for some maintenance and met up with at Starbucks Ross afterwards.

From there we did a quick hit and run at IKEA to buy some pots that hang on the balcony so I could grow some herbs. After IKEA, we drove to Plaza Mont Kiara where I had a dentist appointment to look at my tooth that they fixed 3 weeks ago. I have been taking the pain killers that the dermatologist gave me for my foot because the tooth ache was so bad! We had lunch at Marmalade first while we waited for my appointment. At 1, I went up to the dentist and explained what was was going on. She made me bite on these little sticks about 6 times to see where the pain was coming from. I was ready to jump through the roof by the end of it! She decided that I had "cracked tooth syndrome" and most likely needed a root canal to take away the pain although this might not save the tooth in the long run. Great! Just what I need, more dental work! She rang the root canal specialist to see if I could get an appointment before I travel and they said they would call me back on Monday.

After a pretty crappy dentist appointment, we decided to drive out to the POS Malaysia depot near the LCCT airport terminal. We had ordered the KittyWalk Town and Country - basically a mesh play pen for the cats that can go outside on the balcony - from the US and we got a note in the mail that it was ready to collect. So we drove for an hour to get to the post office before it closed at 4pm.

We got out there about 3 and we prepared ourselves for the experience of clearing our stuff through customs. It started at the gate to the carpark. They needed Ross to give them two pieces of ID and then we each received a visitor's pass. Inside the office, we were directed to counter number 2- the customs broker. We gave them our forms and then we sat to wait to get more forms. Once we were called up and they gave us the forms, we were directed to counter 1.

At counter 1 we gave the guy our paper work. I filled out more forms, he took my visitor's pass and we waited for the box to come through on the conveyor belt - so far so good! Once we had the box, we were told to take it to counter 5. Here, the customs officials made us open the box and we tried to explain what it was (not easy!). They had a discussion amongst themselves and then decided that we needed to go back to counter 2 to get form number 1.

So back to counter 2 we ask for form number 1 and are told to wait for about 20 minutes while they decide how much import tax to charge us. Again, we had to try and explain what the item was and what it was made out of. Eventually they call me over and tell us that we need to pay 288 ringgit to clear the item and that we need to take this new form back to counter 5.

Back at counter 5, they look at the forms, stamp them a couple of times and tell us to go to counter 4. At counter 4, we try again to explain to the customs official what the item is. In the end we just tell him its a cat cage. Next, he asks us where the cat is. We thought he was joking but apparently not! I think he thought we were importing a cat as well. He told us that it was a lot of money to buy a cat cage - in my head I told him to "go away" but not quite in those words. Outwardly, I nodded and smiled. He did some more stamping and signing before he sent us to counter 6.

At counter 6 we paid the tax. More stamping and we were told to go back to counter 1. At counter one, they took one of the forms and gave me my visitor's pass back. Then we were told to go back to counter 5. At counter 5 there was a hell of a lot of stamping, they took some of the forms and finally we were allowed to take our stuff!

What an ordeal! So just to recap we went to counters:

2 -> 1 -> 5 -> 2 -> 5 -> 4 -> 6 -> 1 -> 5

Not bad huh? The whole process took over an hour but at least we walked out with the cat cage!!

By the time we got home we were pretty exhausted but we put up the cat play pen and let Blue play in it out on the balcony for a while (see photo).

We were too tired to think about cooking so we drove up to Changkat Bukit Bintang for fish and chips - they were awesome! From there we walked down one of the side streets to our Thai massage place and had a full body massage for an hour. We walked out feeling much more relaxed!

Once we got home, I walked in the door and straight into bed! I was completely shattered!

Relaxing

This morning we woke up late and enjoyed lazing around the room for a few hours before having to check out. We went up to the club lounge to check out and had a little snack while waiting for our bill. I took today's photo from our room looking down on the pool.

From the hotel we drove out to IKEA to look at a rotisserie for the BBQ that I had seen when I was last there. We had some lunch at Dome and went to the pet store to see what puppies were there before going back to the BBQ store to pick up the rotisserie. While we were there, the lady asked us if we wanted to go to a workshop and dinner by Robert Rainford, a TV chef who does 'License to Grill' - a show that I love because he cooks EVERYTHING on the BBQ. So we put our names down for some tickets.

We drove home, dropped our stuff and headed to the pool to relax and cool off for an hour or so. Once upstairs again, we pretty much did nothing for the rest of the afternoon and night. It was a great anniversary weekend!

Health and fitness check:

Weight: 71.9 kg

Exercise:

- Elliptical trainer: 90 mins
- Strengthening workout (light weights): 30 mins
- FRIM (walking uphill and flat): 70 mins
- Weight machines: 50 mins

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Strip!

I woke up pretty early this morning with Ross and as he walked to work I drove to Pavillion and headed to the gym. I worked hard on the elliptical trainer and felt my legs turn to jelly when I got off 45 minutes later. I spent some time stretching in an attempt to make sure that my body wasn't sore later, we'll see how that goes!

At home, I showered, did a few quick chores and even did the shopping downstairs at the grocery van. I then drove out to Ikano Power Mall to pick up something I had framed (a secret I can't talk about just yet :-)) and also to go to my waxing appointment.

I had booked in to get some waxing done at a place called 'Strip!'. Before then, I went up to the pet store to see what puppies they had in (very cute little girl beagle pup that I would have adopted if I could) and then went to Dome to have lunch, a coffee, and to catch up on some emails.

I headed to Strip! a little early and they let me in for my appointment. The shop itself is pretty groovy; they do waxing for women and men and I was surprised to see two or three blokes in there waiting for their appointments. The inside of the store was decorated with cardboard boxes - sounds weird but looked pretty cool.

My therapist led me to the room and without going into too many details, let's just say that I got what I came for and it was the best waxing experience I have had here in KL for the whole year that I have been here. As I lay there gritting my teeth, I took a bit of time to read the posters on the wall. There were lots of funny quotes and sayings about waxing. My favourite was 'If you want to sell the house, you've got to mow the lawn". Another promising one - 'From muff to buff in 15 minutes'. Love it!

Today's photo is of one of the posters on the wall in the treatment room.

By this time, I was pretty ready to go home. Ross came home and we ate the leftover potato, corn and ham soup from last night and I also made a little shepherd's pie to use up the leftover mince. Ross needed a haircut so we walked over to KLCC. I browsed through the Kinokiniya bookstore while Ross was in the salon and walked out with a couple of guide books on Hanoi, the new Malaysia GPS road map book and a book on sociology.

After a coffee at Starbucks we headed home.

Last day of the first long weekend

After catching up on a bit of sleep from the night before, we spent the morning relaxing before deciding to go out to 1 Utama again to pick up my dress.

At the shop, I tried it on and they had definitely let it out enough so that it could easily do up but they had also let out the seems all the way down to torso so now it was not fitted on the waist. The lady measured me up again and sent it back to fix - we'll see how it comes back this time. I was a bit annoyed that I will have to go back again but as long as it is fixed.

After 1 Utama, we headed to IKEA and the Curve to have a look around and pick up some drawers that fit into our bookshelves in the study. We had been dumping stuff in the bookshelf and it had become quite a mess so we bought the drawers to see it we could organize it a bit better.

The afternoon was spent watching TV and tidying the bookshelves (which turned out OK as you can see from the photo). I spent the evening still trying to sort out the harddrives and in particular my iTunes library which is a complete shambles. By the time I went to bed, it was starting to take shape but still a lot more work needs to be done particulaly to fix the song names etc and get rid of the thousands (not exaggerating!) duplicates.

Health and fitness summary:

• Exercise - walking (but not much)
• Weight 72.1 kg

Field trip to IKEA

This morning I headed out to Damansara to wander around IKEA. I actually wanted to get some lavender scented candles but as you can see from the photo (for which I used the "sketch" feature on my camera), I came back with everything but. A 5L casserole dish, small fry pan, numerous other scented candles, some hooks, some cushions for the sun loungers by the pool and a roasting pan. So although I did not get what I wanted, I still came away happy.

I arrived early, before the store opened, and was pleased to find the IKEA cafe open. They also offered free coffee from 9 to 9.30 - bonus!

After IKEA, I wandered around Ikano Power Center and stopped in at the pet store. The had three Siberian Husky puppies for sale as well as some retrievers and Rottweilers. I also did some looking around for an armchair and found one at IKEA with sheepskin covers - just like sitting inside a pair of uggboots! - and another one at Harvey Norman - a Lazyboy leather rocking recliner that was heavily reduced. Think I will have to work on Ross!

I hit the Borders and stocked up on magazines for Ross and I and also did a little bit of grocery shopping before heading home. It was a nice day so I was happy to drive out of the city for a while.

In the afternoon, I spent a while on iTunes downloading some new music to listen to (gave your credit card a work out Dad :-)). Sonja also popped round for a cup of tea.

I spent the night with Ross on the couch reading the mags and listening to the new music - a nice way to end the day.