Of Excercise And All

We've talked alot about it but rarely acted on it as we thought the continuous walking to lab, supermarkets, parks, and wherever we went (plus using bus as well but you still have to walk to bus stops, eh!?) would be exercise enough for us.

But finally, we were invited by one of our faculty mate who is part of a group of oriental students that gather to play badminton with each other every Friday evening. Although squash would be our preferred choice, but I guess the company was undeniably better with a larger crowd.

We met a few familiar faces that we saw when we attended the orientation for Fall intake last year. So wifey took the opportunity to play catch up with some chit chat. For me, it was pure fun, playing my hearts out - almost until I forgot that I haven't been playing for quite a while. Hardly a day after its over and all my body parts are aching. Sigh... - is this the sign of old age? Wifey also complain as such... Anyhow, guess we still have a little fire left in us - will be going for dance class tonight at a community church and later a drink with a friend.

What a weekend this is going to be!

Ushering 2010 With A Big S-M-I-L-E

This year, we're welcoming 2010 with a big SMILE

Yes. We are.

We're committed to having a more positive outlook in life.
We're committed to loving each other more, day after day.
We want to grow in strength, both with wisdom and compassion.
We want to be more focus in our responsibilities - that includes our research work as well as anything else we set our minds to.
We will persevere in our life's challenges miles and miles away from home, no matter what the odds are (for the past 8 mths we thought the odds were against us, but we survive through it all)

To start of, we're done some interesting things. We got ourselves a sleigh and rode mad rides down the hill behind our apartments. Take a look at some of the blurred shots we took.





Here's the field covered with fresh snow.




And here's what it looks like when there's just too many people there. Lucky for us, we woke up about 7 to play in the snow.



We also been baking a lot... Yes we have... Here's some of our master pieces, of which we love baking bread the most. We're also (mostly, wifey) kinda obsess with our new blog on our baking rendezvous - but we're waiting for a couple of recipes first before making the link available  here.















Well, I know I've not been contributing to this blog as often as I have - probably that's because we've been very busy and focused with work of late too. If its not reading in the lab, we're off to acquire some stuff for the home. For example, I've bought some soil as I've taken up another interest which is to build our indoor herb garden. Problem is, its winter and there's not much places where you can find them selling seeds. So the easiest to plant for now would be garlic and next in line, onions.






We've also changed the position of the furnitures in the unit. As we got another futon which was given to us by our new acquaintances we've made in the building. We also got ourselves some extra lights for the the kitchen and the study area.





All that being said, we're looking forward for good week ahead. So just sit and relax. Enjoy your coffee and biscuit as we bring you more news of things over here. Hope to hear from you all too.


picture taken from wife's recent baking wonders - biscotti

Goodbye 2009

Here's saying goodbye to 2009. You've been a good teacher and we're going to miss you dearly. But the lessons you've taught, we'll cherish much as we move a step forward into 2010. With the knowledge and experience we've gained in 2009, we hope to make huge strides in 2010 with more umppphhh and ommpphhh. Cheers and good night everybody.

Planet Organic

This past few days have been crazy - not because we are rushing for some kind of deadline or what, but because we've been occupying ourselves with going out every so often. On one of those crazy days, we drop by Quinpool Rd and decided for once to walk right to the very end of where any proper retail shop may exist. Before that, we checked it out on Google Maps and found that there were a couple of shops that may interest us. So off we went out on the Metro Transit bus, with our winter boots on and our thick and overweight winter coats. When reached Quinpool, we walked from one end to the other, passing by many of the stores that we regularly go to like Canadian Tire, Atlantic Superstore, NSLC and even KFC. And apart from the Asian grocery, we found this little store which at didn't really intrigue us much (at first), called Planet Organic (for many reasons but for me, mainly because of the O word in its name).



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But having roam this tiny store, we stumbled upon a very interesting aisle that sold spices, flour and beans which allowed customers to buy how much they wanted. This is unlike other stores that usually sells in certain quantity. We haven't really compare the price as this store only displayed the cost by a smaller unit of weight, but plan to do so soon. Although we are very please to know that they allow customers to buy how much they want as this will prevent us from the need to buy too much of something which we would only want to use it once in your cooking or baking.

Here are just of the many array of flour/beans that were sold

Year End (Window) Shopping

No we didn't buy anything. But we did open our eyes to lots of stuff out there. Some interesting things were the Foosball table which was on bargain in Walmart. You can't find such things sold back in Malaysian, even if you were to convert it in RM.




Then of course there was kitchen stuff. One thing that caught our eye was the bread making machine. Yes we are currently very much into baking and our all time favourite apart from muffins - is none other than our all time most consumed food - bread...

Which is why the following kitchen equipment caught our attention when we went for some window shopping in Zellers




It wasn't really that cheap as Zellers tend to hike up their actual prices.


Here's another brand - Sunbeam. From what I read, it is a better one than Black and Decker

HRM Metro Transit Ferry Ride

Just some old photos we took when during the end of summer and beginning of fall. This one was taken when we decided to use HRM Metro Transit from Halifax to Dartmouth to get to Mic Mac Mall. Its a 5 - 10 minutes ferry ride from Water St terminal in Halifax and landed at Alderney Gate terminal.


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Parcel From Malaysia

We got our parcel that my parents mailed over from Malaysia. It was delivered by sea, so it took a while though (roughly 2 months).
Shucks, opening the package and going through some of the old clothes we left behind back home kinda brought some nostalgic feeling.





On the other hand, we got more things now that we're collecting over here. 4-5 years, boy I can't begin to imagine how things would be when we want to leave.