Nice, France 16th till the 19th July 2008

The next leg of my trip to France brought me to Nice. We were fortunate enough to be able to stay with friends in Valbonne in their beautiful homes for a couple of days and it was just beautiful. I was really enjoying the Nice, "nice" weather very much like malaysia BUT not quite the same as it gets cold sometimes dropping down to 20°C at times and the true indication of the tempreture there is the cricket, they only make noise when the temp goes up from...ermmm..cant remember but its either 21°C or 27°C cant remember really hehehe :)

And besides that....its all beautiful sunshine and smiles and great seafood and great place to visit indeed. we were lucky enough for Raymond and i rented a car and so when can go and visit places in a jiffy ;)

When you see this signage means you are on the right track! Here is Nice welcoming us :)

This the view all the way from Nice to Valbonne with the beautiful rock montain formation...beautiful indeed

Then when you reach to this small roundabout and saw the this signage with Valbonne on the top means that you are on the right track again :) One thing for sure, Nice have a lot of roundabouts small ones that reminds me very much of KK where we have a lot of this tiny-tiny roundabouts instead of trafficlights :)

Finally....here is the home of Raymond's friend Callo and Michelle, in Valbonee.
those yellow flower and them tiny and cute escargot snails are everywhere in their property i like them :) not to eat but their shells are really nice :) hehehe

The day when we arrived in Valbonne, it was actually Michelle's birthday so we went out for dinner to this seafood outlet where you can eat just about anything coming out from the sea heheheh
Two things i remember about that place is that our waiter was super nice and the live entertainment was ok too :)

The entertainers for the night were the brazilian dancer which was very energetic and funky ;)


The next morning Michelle took me to a nearby village market...You can get anything there just that this village is really small and its just bautiful and the history behind it. So we walk accross a small stream , goind down the hill and up some stairs pass by the beautiful church and finally found ourselves at the market where michele and i both managed to get a blouse each which is pretty cheap! :)

While we were out shopping for food to prepare for lunch @ the market the guys was doing some major DIY job at the home front with Callo and Raymond. I know Raymond loves doing work fixing home stuffs so he was enjoying his summer with his good friend out in the yard working and talking and laughing just what a summer vacation is all about :)

In the afternoon since we have some time to do some driving Raymond took me to Grasse, where they famously do all the perfumeries and it was a great experience for me to visit their factory. And to that we had chosen Fragonard for our visit :) IBetween myself and raymonwe took tones of pictures on this place and so i will make sure to blog about this place in a seperate entry later :)

And we end the evening with dinner in the city and finally i get to meet with Philippe another one of Raymond's good friend


Callo sudgested to Raymond to take the 30 minute or so ride to Monaco with me as he said its another different country alltogether, and so off we go that afternoon.

I was really amased by the beauty of this place and with just one train ride you will be able to cover all the interesting places in Monaco. we took a lot of pictures on this trip to Monaco and so am going to blog about it seperately later. So stay tuned for this bit!


Then on our last day in Nice, Raymond took me to Biot which is a place where they make glassware the traditional way its pretty intresting place to visit indeed...a must go and visit place!

With that i leave you guys with these wide angle view of Nice airport , as well as places around Nice that we took from the plane going to Nantes.

The view of Nice Aiport Runnaways

The Bay

The stadium


This marks the end of the road for my trip to Nice and be sure to stay tune in to my next post which is my trip to Nantes, France.

Enjoy viewing the pics peeps :) and special thanks to our host in Nice, Callo and Michelle :) Merci Beacoup!

C & R

14th of July, Paris France

I was thinking i can never be finished with my blogging over my trip to France and particularly on the 14th of July when we did so much and cover so many places in Paris for just one day... and then i thought maybe Picasa can help me with this and voilà! A collage of everything from Bastille, through Jardines, and monuments, historical statues and finally we end our sparkling 14th July celebration at the courtyard watching a concert close by to where the eiffel tower is to wait for the moment where the fireworks are lit up to mark the finale of the celebration for independence in France! Also, liberalism makes me thought of my mom as 14th of July also happens to be my mom's birthday this year i was unable to spend it with her but its the thought that counts :) And now i know where my mom's liberalism comes from hehehe she's quite a french person in this manner im afraid hehehe :) and btw, she LOVES cheese too :))

It was a moment to remember and will always be close in my heart as i felt like a teenager again and surely going on a date with someone very special and in this case i went with mon chérie, Raymond and it was an evening to remember indeed! The finale was a wonderful arrays from the fireworks along side the Eiffel Tower that was illuminated with thousands of bright coloured sparkles from the fireworks and was back with the sound of opera singers and it was truely magestic! I love every second of it and i must say i couldnt stop thanking mon coeur for insisting and timing it for us to experience the 14th of july together to the max!! des gross bisous pour toi mon coeur!! :))


click the picture for a Large view of the picture.

I leave you guys to thrill your eyes with this video i took of the grand finale of fireworks overlooking the eiffel tower, and the opera singing the back is the original sound from the recording i made of the scene and the sound system that night was also superb including the concert :)

Hope you guys enjoy watching the video!
Lots of love,
C&R

Joyeux Anniversaire mon coeur!! :)

This is the first time for both of us celebrating mon coeur's birthday together and it so happens that we were back in KK for the occasion. There were three parts of the celebration and surely the picture will speak for me when all i can say is..we had a great time together and also with family and friends and one that will always be cherished by both of us particularly when we both prepared our favourite dish together @ my mom's kitchen heheheh :)

Anyhow, Joyeux anniversaire pour toi mon coeur!!


Joyeux anniversaire Part 1 @ BB Cafe , KK City Centre with Milly & John

Joyeux anniversaire Part 2 @ home in Lok Kawi
with the lovely Mango Delight from Secret Recipe especially when birthday boy requested it for it is his favourite cake :)

Joyeux anniversaire Part 3

Then finally we end the day celebrating mon coeur's birthday @ Novatel which was a french chain hotel so we were hoping to get some french cuisine and wine and in the end we had a marvelous buffet dinner which we had fun picking our own food from the buffet display of french cuisine and finally after a long wait we finallly got our wine treat although its a chilian wine...

Anyhow just looking at mon coeur's face is enough to know he had great time spending his birthday and particularly its our first time spending it together and so hope for the many more to come :)

wish you good health , wish you loved and most of all wish you happy birthday mon coeur!!

Love always,
clarity!

My latest Obsession....

The arrival of my brother's and his wife's bundle of joy was definately a bundle of joy indeed! We managed to snuggled up a few moments with him during our brief stay there in KK and here is the slide show of baby Ferdinand at his best...sleeping of course :))

here is the star... Baby Ferdinand :)

Love always
Aunty Clarity!

Jalan-Jalan cari makan :)

In November i have not been doing much travelling BUT i certainly did a lot of cathing up with friends visiting to KL and took advantage of the moment when we can just chit-chat while doing some christmas shopping. I did a few shopping trips with them and i must say makes shopping much more fun and full of suprises hehehe :)

Am not going to elaborate more on these pics...coz i must say the picture says it all all we did was chat and shopping hehehe :)


2nd trip outing with my best Buddy Diana :)

Then had a wonderful get-together with "mummy Via" and daugter Florie :)

Then finally with, with my two other mates, Aggy and Alice! i was sooo happy to see them both especially when i havent seen both of them in ages!

i guess catching up with mates is a good thing as you can only count so many times in a year you can do this kind of thing and im just happy i can at least meet with some of them. Never the less, theres always next year and there are plenty more people that i want to visit particularly my dearest cousins and their beloved family in Canada. Yes this is my wish and i hope newt year will definately be the year to do so :)


Cherish the moment!
Clarity!

Baby Ferdinand, Welcome to the world!! :)

Yesssss!!! Finally after the long wait, finally i'm an aunt!! My sister in-law gave birth to baby ferdinand today and i was soooo happy that both baby and mom went through labour without a glitch and that both of them are in good health! Phew!!

myself and Ray been waiting for the good news ever since she was in and out of hospital the past few days for only to find out its a false alarm; Then today finally baby Ferdinand finally made his debut into this world and here is Baby Ferdinand! Got this pic off my sis from smsing thru my brother's phone :) thanks guys for the pics! Now we can hardly wait to get back to KK and meet with our latest addition to the family baby Ferdinand. :)

last but not the least, Congrats to my brother, Reno and wife Clare! You guys did a great job indeed! take care and see you guys soon back in KK very very soon!

Love always,
Cilla & Raymond

got my free dress!! :)

thanks to Irenelim fashion, i got my free dress delivered to me today and yes its a cute one:) thank irene for a lovely gift!

Happy me,
Clarity!

Picture says a thousand words :)

On this post i will let the picture tell the story!



C&R

Diana's visit to KL :)

Today i was ecstatically feeling very happy coz finally i get to meet up with my long time best buddy from UiTM which is the one and only DianaDominic :) Miss her very much so this meeting was really good as dont know when we will have the opportunity to meet up with each other again . But this time it was much more fun then always as she had her sister Felisa with her which made this meeting twice ads great as im pretty close with Felisa as well :)

we met up at Mega Mall, in Mid Valley and right after that we went to yum cha at a Thai Restaurant which happens to be Felisa's and Diana's favourite place to hang out because they love Thai food and i love Thai food also :)we talk and chat and "ketawa" until my cheeks and mouth just numb from all that healthy laughing...then suddenly..."Black-out-time" then everything changes and only Flisa would be able to explain this Black out moment and as for me and Diane, we just continue with our conversation and laughing our heads off ah, well...whenever "we" meet up theres always something funny or just out of this world happening and no different from today coz we have a very "Rainy-black-out-moment" and only Felisa know how to explain it :)

anyhow back to our jovial and happy mood we went shopping for goodies :) It seems that "doing shopping" have a calming effect on Felisa and so we all also "tumpang gumbira" alongside her hehehe...so we went from one floor to one floor until we exhausted our feets and bought some stuffs for ourselves and family then finally calling it a day when Raymond came and meet up with us :) We managed to snap a group photo of us with the help from a chinese sales girl who insisted to speak chinese with us eventhough we converse in malay to her ha ha ha. Anyhow, she did a wonderful job. voilà! our picture together :)
and hope to be able to catch up with diana again before she goes back to KK soon :((

Diana @ the Thai Restaurant

Our yummy spread :)

somewhere around here the "Rainy-black-out moment" happened.

tried to take a picture of us three but the camera was not cooporating much pfff!!
L-R : me, Diana, Felisa

We have a similar picture taken like this when we were in australia :)

Diana in her tulak pinggang mode hahahah :)

my camera also on strike that day dunno why :(

here is the group photo :)

Good friends dont come by that often but when they do, its for keeps! Thanks Diane and Felisa for a lovely afternoon spent with laughter, teasr and hugs! will always remember this moment and hope to do it again soon!

happy me!
Clarity!

Irenelim Fashion - Malaysia Online boutique

I was doing my usual browsing and finally stumble upon something that most women are doing these days beacsue of the easy-peasy way of shopping and thats through the internet. These days you can get anything you want especially clothings and stuffs for less amount of time and just by a click of a button from your home and minus the hassle of going to malls and everything.

So finally i saw what i like in Irenefashion coz its easy and the dresses are resonably priced and the quality is good. What more can a girl ask for hehehe...

so fine tune yourself to this website and see for yourself if you can find what you like as i already got what i want from Irenelim Fashion!

So go on ahead! click and click again until you see urself at Irenelim Fashion!! :) See you guys there and you'll thank me for introducing you to this site, i'm sure of it!

here is the website just click on the red button below :-





fashion craze me!
Clarity!


My 1st Croissant! :)

I have always love to eat croissant its one of my old time favourite. The problem with me is that, i love to eat my croissant with butter and thats sinfully rich in everything particularly fats. So i have been toying with the idea of making my own "guilt-free croissant" for i have done a few recipes of my own through trial and error for my butter free bread or organic wholemeal bread as well as guilt-free Brioches as well. So i was thinking why not make my croissant less oilly and less butter and make it as healthy as possible so i came up with my own recipe for this and so this is my first procuce. Raymond was my tester person for he is french and so he should know better on how a croissant should taste and he is very particular with breads and pastries and particularly croissant. So this morning i suprised him with my mini croissant as well as mini croissant breads and he loved it! Especially when its not oilly at all and its very crispy and crunchy he said to me you must have put in tonnes of burre but i told him just the normal then less amount of butter and unsalted and just play around with the texture for the mixture for the dough so voilà! a healthy croissant!


The process of making the croissant

And the final product...voilà! Clarity's mini croissant :)


clarity me!

Attention Philippe!

Today me and raymond went to shop for presents and finally we stopped by at a place that was once a familliar place for Philippe and raymond as they lived in this place before and its calle "La Chateau". We purposely drop by this place to take pics for remembrance sake for our dear friend in Paris, Philippe :) Enjoy the pics Philippe and dont cry ok i know you miss Malaysia and the malaysian weather! hehehe


le chateau! qui n'est plus vraiment un chateau.... enfin il ne l'a vraiment jamais été

Prince Philippeee!! You need to drop down some of your millions down to this chateau and help them with maintenance up keep i think hehehe :)

Anyhow, i present to you "La Chateau"

And of course the famous Prince Phippe's favourite Mall which he terms as "HIS MALL" Mid Valley, Megamall :)


just us!
C & R

Food for thought :)

I have been writing much about my travellings that i hardly write anything about cooking or food. So this time am going to do one post one what i ate for the past few days and how i made this simple easy to do dishes in less then 30 mins ;)



I think everyone knows Maggie mee and i know rich or poor just about anywhere people still prefer maggie mee to any brands. As for me i like the Maggie Kari version and for normal original recipe i go for Maggie Cintan and as for Mee Goreng i would go for Indomee. I dont know about you guys but my hey-day during college years in U-ITM was built on maggie mee sessions at night where we cant have anything more then maggie mee for some extra food besides what was given at the canteen. At that time its just as simple as Maggie mee and telur and pour hot water into a container and wait 7 minutes and you ahve urself a intant noodle treat. It was teh greatest pleasure then hehehe...Anyhow, those days are gone but doesnt mean i dont have my maggie mee thingy anymore...in fact i do have them but improvised to be more healtier and added with some other wholsesome goodness for an extra flavour.

I usually add some cabbages and chicken sausages thrown in then some prawns/chicken and an egg and voilà you have yourself a healthy simple food, good to go :)

My 2nd food is something that i picked up during when i was in Vietnam recently, i had this Conggee Rice porridge one morning and then i was hooked on it and ate it everyday for breakfast during my stay there. The conggee rice poridge actually comes with some salted fried peanuts and Century eggs which means preserved eggs probably a century old hahah kidding! but heck the eggs were black in colour looked kinda scarry BUT taste really good just like salted egg. But this one no smell at all. Anyhow, with what i have i improvised a little and used normal hard boiled eggs and add in anchovies and mushrooms in it just to get more flavours. The onions, mushrooms and anchovies are sauteed for a couple of minutes and then arranged on the top of the porridge and springkled with some onions springs to go with it. I find it a very filling but light food for dinner or breakfast whichever suits you best. for me i had it for dinner as i wanted to have a light dinner for my diet and so this is the just the right choice for it :)



Finally, my third and final food to talk about is this nasi lemak ala clarity! hehehe i was chating with my aunt before i decided to attempt this dish because she said have you ever tried making a nasi lemak before i said hmnnn..maybe but cant remember and i told her was going to try and do one differently coz i wanted to cut down on the calories as much as possible so i decided to just use normal white steamed rice, then as for the sambal, i used tomato paste and some diced tomatoes and + tomato sauce to make it look like its spicy which is not hehehe :) then thrown in the sauteed anchovies + unsalted tuna and you have yourself a sambal. well sambal look a like anyways as i dont like my sambal to be hot or too spicy so this is how i did it and then arranged my halved hard boilled eggs on top of my salad and pour in the sambal on top of the eggs and get ur steamy white rice on the dish and a Voilà you have urself a nasi lemak ala Clarity style :)

hope you guys enjoyed my simple food treat!
la di da di da..
Clarity!

A night of Mayhem :)

Last Thursday was the night where we had a small celebration of our own between myself, Hannie and Alys. Its kinda like a belated celebration of our birthdays together so we decided to have all the food that we longed to eat but not available. So Alys was put to work immediately to cook my favourite "Ayam Kicap Pecat + manis" Just like how my grandmother which is also Alys's mom way of cooking so its was going to be a blast and to top that off we also thought of "Ikan Tausi" the famous canne dfood from the olden days when we were living in Kampung Perinting this was our common food back then and not forgetting the green bean tumis with bawang. Goshhh! just as the food shows below the evening was a blast! we reminisce about our days back in the kampung we talked till midnight and finally we retire to our beds, its kinda like a slumber party because my other half was out stationed so it was a great joy to have some company and plus great food! Oh yes not forgetting also, our killer dessert! The Durian, Durian Delight! it was a tremendous delight indeed as i havent eaten durian in like for ages so it was a treat indeed! all in all, thank you hannie and aunty alys for bringing such joy to me with those yummylicious food! and happy birthday to both of us indeed!

Ayam kicap pecat + manis

ikan tausi

green beans

The durian durian delight from secret recipe yummmm :)

great food = great night!
Clarity!