This Hols...

Right. So, in my frenetic demeanor I forgot all about my 4 days of holidays away from the bustle of Singapore & into the vast highways of Malaysia. More specifically, Kuala Lumpur. I had more than once voiced my complaints to Mom where I claimed that it was like holidays from hell the way we were stuck at home with almost nothing to do.

Mom's rebuttal however, proved to be the more logical. Have you been to hell??

We were supposedly planning to fly to Phuket with another family but that was cancelled due to Fartz's MUIS examinations at the mosque.

Joykiller.

In the end though, we managed to make full use of the remaining of Dad's off days to have a quick getaway across the causeway.

We left on Tuesday, at about 4pm after a very last-minute decision made by my Dad & Uncle Ahmad. We drove for about 3 hours straight before resting at one of the pitstops located along the highway for our midday prayers & some food.

The two cars arrived in KL at about8pm, just in time for a quick dinner of Hainanese Chicken Rice recommended by Uncle Ahmad. Our hotel, Radius International, was located at the heart of the busy KL district, Jalan Bukit Bintang. It's kinda equivolent to our Orchard Road where the Metro -as in MRT- is naught but two minutes by foot.

Planet Hollywood was also at an arm's reach. I wanted to go in but well, underaged kids weren't allowed. So instead, I took a couple of pics from the sidewalk that featured the handprints & signatures of the various Hollywood stars that had been here that were casted in plaster then mounted on slabs of marble with gold-plated name placements. Kinda like your usual Hollywood walk of fame. I didn't take each & every one of them, I only took Whoopi Goldberg's plaque but there were a few others I didn't manage to get.

We walked around Bukit Bintang for awhile to let our stomachs digest & on the way home, bought a variety of cheesecakes from Secret Recipe. Mine was an Apple Crumble cheesecake -died & went to heaven in a total of two bites- while the rest of my family members made their choices. I think my sisters had like, Chocolate Cheese or Capuccino Cheese while Auntie Rosie had the Durian Cheese, something different. For RM6, it was absolutely worth it because the slices were cut oh-so generously thick, even my big mouth wasn't wide enought to take a whole mouthful.

Of course, during our one night at KL, Addles, myself & Fartz conquered the carpetted floor of the hotel with our sleeping bags while the little two slept comfortably with Mom & Dad on the queen-sized bed. It wasn't a problem for the three of us because we were so used to roughing it up, what's a little roughing up in a hotel room?? It wasn't as if we were made to camp out on the damp floors of the Taman Negara in Pahang while trying in vain to fend off fat mosquitos.

Although in the morning, my father did find a squashed cockroach behind the curtain behind me. Of course, an inside joke went around that I had smashed it in my sleep while it was roaming around the floors.

Breakfast the next morning was for two, so since there were two rooms, only four of us could go & it was quickly decided that we -the big four- help ourselves to the meagre buffet. Though we tried to smuggle food, it was almost impossible to escape the hawk-eyes of the waiters & waitresses bustling around even though the hotel wasn't what you'd call a five-star hotel.

Nonetheless, we did manage to scavage some to bring up to my three sisters stuck in the room. Now that, ladies & gentlemen, is what you call a buffet.

The remainder of the day was set aside for a little woman shopping is Masjid India, a place well-known for fabrics, scarves & the like. Although in a place like that, I gleefully managed to find myself something very unorthodox to buy. A Ruud van Nistelrooy T-shirt.

*squeals*

A good catchy find, I'd like to add. You'd never see that anywhere here in Singapore, trust me.

The afternoon sun rose to great heights as we finally had enough of KL & zoomed off to the cooler highlands of Genting. Nini was invited to sit in Uncle Ahmad's Toyota Corolla Altis, which was fine considering that our own Trajet would find it slightly difficult to balance all that weight. Luggage was one thing. Heavyweights like me, were a different story altogether.

Now, I've been to Genting several times in the past years but one thing was for sure. I have never felt Genting to be as cold as it was when we arrived. 17 degrees celsius, baby!! And that, was during the day. Although despite the biting cold, it's all in the mind whether or not you want yourself to feel as if you're freezing to death.

For example, my sister Adlyn didn't even need a jacket when we went out at night. Heck, she was wearing three-quarts & flip-flops even as we ventured out of the hotel & into the outdoors where the winds were just zipping at us. Fartz claimed it was due to her fats underneath her skin. I said it was because of her stone-cold heart. Mom just brushed it off as a psychological thing. I mean sure, we all knew Adlyn could be as stubborn as a mule but hell, we sure were surprised when she unvealed her almost superhuman strengths of braving the cold.

Dinner, though, was more miserable than I could ever imagined. How were we supposed to know that in Genting, a piece of chicken -and almost everything else- cost RM6 per serving?? And since the place we were eating at was a self-serve one, we thought okay, it must be moderately costly. I even gleefully added to my plate a gigantic fried king prawn that almost looked lobster-like. But when Fartz & I rang up the bill, both our plates cost a whopping RM64. I was so shellshocked I asked the cashier to repeat herself three times.

Of course, Mom nearly haad a heart attack as well. So did the others. Dad had gone off to Mary Brown to buy my two little sisters fried chicken so he didn't hear the news until he arrived at our eating place. Before he did, Fartz & I had rechecked our receipt & I was close to choking on my own plate of food.

Fried Rice - RM6
Fried Squid - RM6
Sweet & Sour Fish - RM 6

That gigantic prawn I had?? A pocket-burning RM16!!

Fartz had almost the same things I had except she had a chicken which we were going to share, but still, hers was slightly cheaper than mine.

Of course, Dad was silently fuming & quietly condemned us in our choice of food. Like, hello?? We didn't know the food was going to cost us an arm & a leg. The worst thing about Dad is that he never knows when to quit talking. As in, he keeps reminding us of our faults & failures & repeats them like a broken record, like this very example. He kept reprimanding us for spending so much on our food that I didn't have the appetite to consume my gargantuan prawn anymore & Fartz & I didn't even want to touch that hugely expensive chicken.

Like, okay, we know already. We won't do it again the next time. It's like, how were we supposed to know what the prices were?? If we did, we wouldn't have eaten the food, would we?? Sure, there was a signboard partially blocked by the whole counter that everyone just brushes past, but how were we to know that those were for the food items we took & not for maybe say, an ala carte menu??

It's like, the way Dad chided us was like he wanted to get us down in the dumps & heck, I don't even know what what the hell he was trying to prove. Like as if we were some prima donnas who wanted to eat good food but nearly couldn't afford it while he was like the street-savvy guy who stuck to simple fried chicken.

Please, even Uncle Ahmad didn't say a word about it & Dad went around clucking like an old fart bag. It didn't stop even when we were ready to get into bed while Mom was doing her prayers. And she heard every word Dad was saying. Of course, on my part, I defended both myself and Fartz over & over again & turned the tables on him for being such a nag. He got a slap on the wrist -not literally, of course- from Mom after she was done with his prayers for that. Seriously, it was he was being such a party-pooper.

This wasn't the first time Dad behaved that way. Before we went up to Genting, Fartz already had a taste of Dad's incessant nagging in the hotel for not taking off the plug from our room's iron. He had already lectured her in the car on the way to KL, but apparently he thought it wasn't enough so he lectured her some more when we arrived.

In the midst of his monologue, I interrupted -feeling very annoyed- him with a rebuttal. What, did he want my sister to run all the way back to Singapore just so she could unplug the damn thing?? She switched the iron off, for God's sake; okay, she made a mistake. We all do. Next time she'll learn her lesson. End of story. Why did he have to keep bringing up our mistakes & rain on our parade like a black thundercloud?? Wasn't this a holiday?? Weren't holidays meant to be funfilled??

After those two episodes, zip was his mouth. Hell, even Mom got fed-up with him. She was beginning to be stressed because of Dad's unnecessary antics. But both me & Fartz didn't let him be the wet blanket of our holiday. Nope, we were here to enjoy all the thrill rides & enjoy them we did.

I finally got my guts together to get onto that Space Shot ride thing -I don't really know what's the name for it- where you sit around a rectangular pillar & it brings you all the way up, slowly, then suspends you in the air for a few seconds before hurtling you back down to earth in like, 5 seconds or something silly like that.

Uncle Ahmad, Farhan & Fadhillah had all refused to take the ride. Uncle Ahmad claimed he had to go to the loo while the other two were just plain terrified. Who wouldn't be??

I was scared shitless, but when Fartz & Dad had to be separated from me I knew I couldn't be terrified anymore. There was no room for it. After all, I was my parents's daughter with an explorer's blood pumping my veins & a lust for an adrenaline rush. I didn't even scream when we plunged down after being slowly lifeted into the clouds with our feet dangling.

It was exhilarating. It was like having a shot of heroin or some other silly drug rush through. I could even hear my own heart beating double. I wanted to do it again.

The drawback of Genting's theme park -like almost every other theme park in the world- was the long queues that were virtually everywhere. It was because of the clash between Singapore's & Malaysia's school breaks. But at least it was a cooler wait than we have at Escape. There, you could practically broil yourself. It wasn't The Happiest Place On Earth, like Disneyworld in Orlando, but it was second best to none.

So, try out all the thrill rides we did, including some that weren't enough to make our blood stir. But, the whole point was, we had fun. Good, clean fun.

To cut the superhappyfuntime short, the day after our theme park escapade, we headed back down to KL for some last minute shopping at the megamall just outside of KL, One Utama, in Damansara.

I made Mom promise to help me pick out girly clothes for you know, whatever, so she we went around the ladies department looking for ladies' clothes that could actually fit me & at the same time, not make me look like an overstuffed ketupat. That was of course, after I picked out two really cool maroon T-shirts from Forest Authentic & some synthetic pants.

I coun't resist myself!! T-shirts are like, the best thing ever!!

Coincidentally, Scarlett had plus-sized clothes for plus-sized people like me that were slashed 50%. Whoopee!! I didn't get much, just two skirts in black & army green, a red three-quarter sleave shirt-blouse & a pair of funky green pants. Yeah, green as in LIME green. I mean, they weren't leather pants or anything, just plain cotton pants but in lime. Fuuuuuunnnnnkeh!!

The last meal I had in KL was in One Utama. I had laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamb!! Like, all to myself. And polished it off with a superduperfat Chendol. It wasn't as good as the one we had when we were here previously, but it was definitely much better than most Chendols in Singapore.

Now now, DON'T point a finger at me & tell me to watch my weight. I figured, since Malaysia was like a cheap halal-food heaven, why not go all out for a gastronomical binge??

Laterz...
Lenny