Road Trip to Penang

We went for a one-week road trip to the North and Eastern part of Peninsular Malaysia. The trip was well organized with activities that suited different age ranges. Everyone had a blast.

The first stop was Penang, famous for its food and beaches.

It was quite a long trip for Aelig, luckily the car built-in DVD player kept her busy. Everyone in the car had to watch "Tinker Bell" over and over again though.


After some food hunting we went for durian hunting in "Balik Pulau". I had been there more than 10 years ago, the price had skyrocketed and durian has become an expensive fruit. Aelig was more intrigued to the shape than the taste.


We went for swimming in Batu Ferringhi. The public beaches are filthy and polluted, I would rather enjoy the swimming pool in the hotel.


I missed being with my family. My nephews and nieces have grown up so fast. I'm glad Aelig got to blend in with them.


I'm not sure if this was Aelig's first encounter with monkey, but she surely was not afraid and wanted to feed them as close as possible. She didn't realize she could get hurt.


After savoring the infamous "Asam Laksa", we visited the Kek Lok Si Temple. Around the Buddha status there were the 12 Chinese zodiac animals. It was a popular spot for photo taking.


During the evening the Gurney Drive was packed with people. Some come for food and some just to enjoy the sea-watch. Lots of kids were playing with their bubble gun. The market price is RM10 each. Aelig was crazy with it.


The stop at Penang had greatly satisfied my craving for local food. During the two-day's trip I had taken in different kind of noodles, seafood and hawker food. I could stay longer just to feed my stomach. I love hawker center, you can get so many choices in just one location. I hope we can get this in France. Imagine everyone goes to a restaurant and we get to eat crêpe, couscous, mussels with fries, pad thai, confit de canard...all at the same location.

We have arrived

Despite several hurdles before departing, we are finally home.
Well, the photobooks I made for my family didn't arrive on time. Their website said they would be delivered under 7 business days but it didn't happen. One production line broke down was what they told me when I called. Then, I was eyeing for one Groupon hotel deal for our trip to Thailand, but the hotel didn't want to confirm their availability before I buy it.

Anyway, the whole trip was quite smooth, both train and plane departed and arrived as scheduled.


A little problem when passing through the French immigration. Aelig was tired and she wanted to follow me to the "Non EU" line. She yelled and yelled "maman" seeing me going through another line. Well, this time the "Non EU" was a lot faster.


I passed the immigration and still heard Aelig calling for me. Once she saw me on the other side she calmed down.


Thanks to the onboard entertainment, we had a better flight this time. Aelig was watching "Ice Age 2" over and over again. I also prepared several DVDs and played it on my laptop. I pampered myself to three different Asian movies.
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We were traveling light this time. No wine nor cider, just bought the Eiffel Tower Brandy in the tax free shop. It was so much better, packing bottles was simply painful. My mother ordered several packs of local biscuits. And lastly, a suitcase dedicated to 13 Long Champ bags. Well, that would be a story for another post if I have a chance.

Another encounter with Louis Vuitton

With Euro depreciating against RM, some of my family members were eyeing at the relatively deflated French luxury bags.
One asked for a LV bag. And since the closest shops are in Paris, I tried to check out the online option.

The elite webste did not appeal to me. As a customer I prefer wesbite that is intuitive and user friendly. I hope to just enter the product code and find the item immediately instead of going through categories of products and have to look at the photos one by one. Well, it was not the worst and the fact that they only have 20 items per category reduced the searching time.

The website says that it could delivery within 4 business days. And I was leaving in 5 business days. A bit risky I thought. So I called the customer service. Surprisingly, I got a pleasant male voice with perfect French (not those call center in North Africa) and every willingness to help me. He said it would be delivered next week before I leave France but there is no guarantee. Plus, Saturday is not considered as business day. From my experience, when a website says 4 business days it could be delivered before or after what was promised. So I considered it too risky so we just called the whole thing off.

So, no LV bag this trip home.

All these bags buying adventures leads me to think about the marketing strategies for the luxury brands. LV is certainly one of the most successful one. Some of the strategies:

1. Limited distribution channel: only available in touristic cities (Paris, Strasbourg, Bordeaux, cities in South of France)
2. Restricted purchase item: maximum 3 items per person, one item per model
3. Conditioned online purchase: do not delivery to hotel or professional addresses
4. Elegant (or cocky?) customer service: they could refuse to sell you item

Well, the cockier they are, the better their business goes.
It has been an interesting encountered, now I'm in their customer list. They send me their seasonal collection catalog every year (see photo).

PS: Do you think people really bring their LV suitcases to desert?

He tried his best

So Datuk Lee lost the game and Malaysia got a silver for badminton men singles, which was really not that bad.

I didn't watch the direct games so when I got home I went straight to check the result. Then I watched the replay, and from his performance I had doubt that he could lose. He played so well!!! Actually, both of them demonstrated nearly perfect skills so to gain one point they had to force the opponent to make an error. It was simply impossible to tell who would win until the very last moment.

It was so cruel to see their extremely opposite emotions when the games ended. The dishearted and gloomy Lee vs excited and triumph Lin. All these just because Lin had a better luck that day.

Luckily, there is always hope.
Let's hope for a gold in Rio 2016.

Eager to hear Negaraku in London 2012

The French are thrilling in the Olympics games so we hear their national anthem over and over again. Hubby jokingly said that we might never hear the Malaysian national anthem since Malaysians are generally not strong in sports.

True, but we have one hope tomorrow.

Chong Wai Lee has advanced into final to face his invincible opponent Dan Lin from China. With a little bit of luck we may hear Negaraku tomorrow.

Malaysia boleh!!!

2 years 7 months

Focus on the month:

1. Potty training
We have big resistance from Aelig regarding potty training. Now she cries literally when we mention the potty. She had succeeded several times, but we are back to the starting point. During the evenings and weekends we remove her diaper, but she refused to go on potty and preferred to hold. Sometimes she begs and begs to go back to the diaper, crying each time she wants to poo, saying that she has pain in her stomach but refused to sit down on the potty. She would keep saying " s'il te plaît, s'il te plaît, couche, bobo..." (please, please, diaper, pain...).

2. Sleeping late
She has been going to bed quite late these days. Sometimes I fell asleep before her. She likes to lay beside me, singing, chatting, playing, tickling, then I fall asleep. Anyway, she was not tired in the morning, and took an one hour nap in the sitter's place.

I hope these wouldn't last too long...

French birth certificate in English for free (Extrait plurilingue)

Thanks to internet, I managed to get Aelig's birth certificate with explanation in several languages including English. I'm very glad as this has saved us 62€, the price per page if ask to be translated by a certified translator. We paid for it for Hubby the last time we applied for a marriage certificate in Malaysia.

Anyway, it seems that most Town Halls should have the service but for some of them you have to call them instead of requesting through internet. For detail see here. The languages available are: German, English, Bosnian, Croatian, Spanish, Greek, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, Serbian and Turkish.


It consists of a piece of paper (front and back) with 11 lines of information. At the end of the front page there are footnotes in several languages regarding abbreviations used.


The back page explains line by line in different languages of what was written in the front page in French.

This is definitely a great service, I just hope that they could improve the applying workflow. When I requested through the Town Hall website, I received no email notification but simply a PDF file stating that I asked for the service. Then no news from nobody. I didn't know if they have gotten my request, or it was processed. Two weeks later I call them and was informed that it should have been sent to the Town Hall in my area. I then called my Town Hall, the staff said they have received it and I could pick it up anytime. Well, someone could have at least sent me an email no?

Note: For non French readers, French citizens can ask for their birth certificate for free in the Town Hall where they are born as frequent as they want. The certificate is updated according to your marital status and in the case of death.

Note 2: The Embassy of Malaysia does not provide this kind of translation service.

Note 3: I got an email from JPN Malaysia asking for birth certificate in Malay or English so I hope this would serve.

Good morning

I'm a night owl so I usually sleep late.
Yesterday, my attempt to put Aelig to sleep failed.
Instead she put me to sleep at 10pm and sneaked out of the room after.
Woke up at 6am and managed to enjoy these views.

A Cannabis leave at the entrance

I discovered this at the office entrance one morning. I thought it was just an ordinary leave.

Later on my coworker was joking and he ended his sentence by mentioning that someone has drawn a Cannabis (marijuana)leave at the entrance. I asked him what action would be taken against this person as we kind of know who did it. There had been a group of young kids gathered at the entrance during several evenings. He said what could we do, we are not going to alert the police for a small issue like this.

Indeed graffiti is quite common in certain areas and it is hard to arrest the culprit. Let see how much time it takes before the company decides to repaint the wall.

5.40€ a meal in the school canteen??

We received the enrollment package from the nursery school and I was surprised at the price for the lunch meal.

5.40€ a meal for a kid of three years old? That's insane! If we subscribe annually the price will drop to around 4.40€ a meal but still it is expensive. A Big Mac here cost around 3.50€ if you want to calculate the Big Mac Index to have an idea of the purchasing power.

And, you can not bring your own lunch box and eat in the canteen. Kids have to either go home for their lunch or eat at the school canteen.

To take the kid home, one parent has to pick her up the latest 11.45am and the school only resume at 1.30pm. So for a working parent, he or she has to take at least 1 hour and 45 minutes lunch break. That's impossible in our case.

I heard that public schools charge cheaper rate as they are subsidized by the government. That's why a lot of parents choose to send their kids to public schools.

There were some reports about foods in school canteen in the recent years as the government required the school authorities to provide balance meals. For example they should reduce the serving of French fries and encourage the students to consume more vegetables and fruits. I heard that a meal consists of entry, main course, cheese, salade and dessert just like what the adults are having. Since Aelig is not a big eater, I'm not sure she could finish everything.

One thing I don't understand is that the government does subsidize students at higher education (universities & private schools). I was paying 2.70€ a meal when I studied in the local university. It just doesn't make sense that my three year old is going to pay higher price a meal than her mama and daddy when they were students.

Ah, all these made me think of my RM1 economy rice & RM0.50 fried kuey teoy at my middle school canteen. Cheap and delicious!

What are they trying to say?

We went to a garden this morning an saw this car "parked" inside the pond. My first reaction was that there was no way this car can drive inside this garden as there was only a tiny little path leading towards the pond.


Then we saw this sign board. The whole thing was an exhibition from a group of artists. What are they trying to say? I have no idea and there was no further explanation on the sign board. Aelig's playdate insisted to go save the car, we had a hard time preventing him from approaching the pond so we had to lie. We told him the car was home to the ducks. What else could we explain to a kid while us adult didn't know what was going on?

Prague: Gastronomy tours

Gastronomy tours is one of the most important activities for us when traveling. My housemate back during my stay in Austin was from Czech Republic and he had cooked me scrumptious Czech foods. We managed to meet up during the trip after 10 long years and he had brought us to several restaurants during our short stay.


We arrived on a Saturday afternoon and only had one hour for lunch before meeting up with our tour guide. Hubby chose a restaurant in his travel guide and up we went to this restaurant situated close to Wenceslas Square. First encounter with Czech food in Prague: they love meat and surely know how to cook them. My serving was juicy and tender, the side dish tasted similar to the Chinese bun at home, it went well with the tasty sauce.


For dinner we wanted to dine in a restaurant recommended in the guide book but it was fully booked. It was quite late by then so we just settled in this one. The kitchen was already closed so we ordered some appetizers. It seemed that stripe soup was quite famous here and the waiter suggested us to give it a try. I did and was happy with that choice. Not only it tasted good but it reminded me of my hometown. It was not unusual to find tripe in Chinese cuisine and we especially loved it in soup. What an odd chance to find similarity between Chinese and Czech cuisine!


There were quite some restaurants offering "pork knee" on their menu. It looked yummy but the portion was too much in my opinion. I ordered one on our last day here and could only finished half of it.


Restaurants here offered variety of soups. This one looked special: soup in bread.


I wanted to take a break from meat so I tried out their soup. The verdict: worth a try.


Fried turkey with potatoes.

My friends took us to two restaurants but I forgot to take photos. Too excited and busy catching with him and his lovely girlfriend. He told us that since Czech food was quite meaty, Italian restaurants were well accepted here as they could usually get a more balance meal that included vegetables.


Absinthe. This strong alcohol is banned in France. We found it in Prague and I got a sip of it and couldn't stand the taste. Too strong and too bitter I can't even smell the herbs in it.


Czech is a very difficult language to me. It is hard to pronounce and I couldn't remember even one word after this trip. Well, not exactly. There was one word that I recalled but just because each time I heard it my ears irked. "Děkuji" means "Thank you" in Czech but it sounds like "de couille" in French which means "testicle". Now you can understand why I did not say thank you to anyone there. Anyway, try to pronounce this word in French and see if you can guess what it means.


Our tour guide told us that beers in Prague cost as much as a bottle of water. Indeed. Pivo prosím (a beer please)!

No school on Wednesday

In many regions of France, nursery and primary schools follow a four day week system in which Wednesday is a no school day. When students move on to middle school (collège), they study half day on Wednesday then full day when they go to high school (lysée). This system requires a different way of organization in terms of family life.

If both parents are working, they need to find a way to take care of the kids on Wednesday. There are several options:

1. Baby sitter
Hire a baby sitter to come to your house or send your kid to her place.
In our case, our current sitter will apply for a certificate in order to take care of a preschool kid. She will have three kids under 3 years old + one preschool kid on Wednesday.

2. Local childcare center
Find a spot in local childcare center who organizes activities for kids on Wednesday.
The structure that Aelig went to every Friday afternoon is closed on Wednesday to welcome kids over 3 years old.

3. Local leisure center
Some parents enroll their kids to different kind of extra-curricular activities organized by the Town hall.

4. Grand-parents or relative
Helps from grand-parents are quite common if they are living in the same town or same area.

5. Working four days a week (4/5ème)
Parent can negotiate to work only four days a week and take off on Wednesday. Traditionally most of the people working at 80% are women but there are more and more dads join in. It seems that employers here are quite comprehensive to their employees family situation as it is not uncommon to see people working on different kind of contract conditions: 90% (4.5 days a week), 80% (4 days a week), 50% (2,5 days a week). The drawback is that it becomes more complicated in terms of planning in the working environment. For example when schedule meetings or trainings we have to try to avoid Wednesday, decisions or information requests are pending as the person in charge do not work on Wednesday...

No school on Wednesday has also created some inconveniences for parents. Many baby sitters choose not to work on Wednesday as they want to be with their own children who are off school. Some childcare centers are closed. Parents have to think of other solutions and sometimes it is not easy to find one.

2.5 years old

Summer is officially here and the day starts with sunrise around 5:30 am and sunset occurs around 10:30 pm. This has somehow influenced Aelig's sleeping habit: she lingers pass 11pm and refuses to go to bed earlier. And when she is awake, she wants to do things with me. When I turn on my computer, she would insist that I play her some YouTube songs or movies. Conclusion: no time to blog!!!


This photo shows her falling asleep on the floor after refusing n times to go to bed.

I have been showing her some 10 minutes short movies such as "The Little Red Cap", "The Ugly Duckling", "The Little Match Girl", "The Monkey and Crabs", "The Wolf and Goats", "Three Little Pigs". Since then she started to form some phrases in Mandarin like "The wolf wants to eat the little red cap", "The wolf wants to eat the goats, the goats are scared", or "The wolf wants to eat Aelig" with her sad face. In French she sometimes threw us words that surprised us: "C'est pas grave" (no big deal), t'inquiètes pas (don't worry)...and she is very eager to go to school.


In early Jun we brought her to her school's open day. She quickly dressed and put on her school bag.


She got attracted to the toys available there.


The little library in the classroom.


The dashboard area.


Sleeping area.


A little kitchen for kids.

She is going to have so much fun at school.

Some snapshots of the daily life:

She wants to help me wash dishes.


The little helper with her red chair.


My dear friend sent her a bag from Australia. She is finally at age to use it. When I showed it to her, she loved it immediately and has been bringing it around since.

Kids activities

Last Friday, several childcare centers in our area had jointly organized an event with several kids activities. I was very impressed and amazed by the efforts and Aelig had spent a great afternoon with other kids.


There were about 10 staffs setting up several stands. Some stands offered classic activities like drawing, painting, art works but some were quite creative. Among them I liked this stand the most: jungle trekking in forest.


Aelig got to jump, climb, jungle trek, run, something she enjoyed very much.


This stand was called "Who are they?". The staff showed a portion of a carton poster and the kids had to guess who were the characters.


Aelig knew nothing about them but she observed how other kids answered and screamed.


This was the first time she tried oil painting. She was intrigued and once the paint was gone, she asked to put more on her hands.


The staff then put her name on top of her hand painting.


A little movie theater showing "Tchoupi" slide show, presented by the staff.


A cinema in a trailer showing short movies.


This was the first time Aelig watched a short film in a cinema. She was very concentrated and asked to watch it again.

The kids had a break on 4pm snack time. They were pampered with ice cream, cake and some candies. Aelig managed to eat the whole ice cream without dirtying her cloth, very impressive.


I have always found this childcare center well located with nice environment. It was located inside a park so three sides were surrounded by trees and one by a parking lot.


When the weather is nice, the kids get to play outside in a safe environment.


With indoor and outdoor activities Aelig could never get bored here.
.

This is one of the moments that I feel the government has well spent my hard earned money. :-)