Octopus sushi n thai restuarant, Festival City mall

Sitting at the sushi bar in Octopus while drooling at the amazing sushi. No more sushi zanmai and sakae sushi for me. I highly recommend Octopus sushi....

Dragon year

Ushering the year of the dragon at klcc

Brenna

In lieu of a nice shot of New Year's Eve fireworks, and to warm you up after yesterday's chilly post, I bring you a picture of dancing flames instead!


Here Óðinn adds fuel to the fire at last night's annual Þrettándinn, or Thirteenth Day of Christmas, celebration. For more photos of last night's bonfire, go ahead and visit this post on Google+ ( and you can add me to your circles too, if you'd like : ) This photo by my sister and/or her husband is pretty sweet too.


Have you tried Dynamic Viewing yet? Five new views in all. Use the blue tab at the top of the view page to check them all out : )

Freeze

Let's not talk about the weather! But it has been exceptionally snowy so far this winter, with records set in late December and up until this morning a nice dry below zero (Celsius) windless cold that made the white stuff crackle, crunch and snap under foot. Not very good snowball weather (it would be like lobbing rocks studded with shards of glass) but supernice for long walks around town.

Anyone who has been here in late fall through to late spring knows how often the weather fluctuates in this region's ongoing power struggle between the north wind Boreas, or Kári as he's known to Icelanders, and the great Gulf Stream [video], how surprisingly warm it can be for a nordic island, and how moist the air generally is. That's a recipe for bone-chilling. These past few days I finally really appreciated what dry cold means!

Unfortunately what always happens way too soon happened this morning: the temperature rose above zero and rain is on it's way, equalling nothing less than tons of heavy, dirty slush for the foreseeable future (unless, of course it snap freezes again, creating a dangerous icy shellac over everything.) I'm glad Óðinn and I walked over the town lake yesterday in case it never freezes over again this winter.

It was pretty funny: turned out a bunch of visitors were unsure if they should go out onto the lake, and were just waiting for a local to step out on to the ice, so we had a trail of tourists in our wake. I slowed down and stopped before reaching the bridge because I wasn't sure if it was frozen there, and two British guys stopped too. "We're following you," they chuckled. "Well, I'm following him, and he's only five, so I don't know how good an idea that is!" I replied with a wink.

Regardless, we'll just don our woolens and wet gear and make the best of the season this weekend, whatever comes our way.

2012

It's nearly as hard starting again as it was saying goodbye to this site (which I did in late October as per the post below) but not because I don't want to! I've definitely been itching to snap pictures and share them for the past two months, but after such a dramatic exit, isn't it a little disingenuous to just slip back in the door as if nothing really happened?

I'm glad I stepped away, though, if just for some perspective. Without getting too deep, why we do the things we do really is as important as what we are doing, and ultimately this baby-of-mine makes me happy, especially because I'm able to share it with all of you.

So Happy New Year to you all from beautiful, frozen Reykjavik! Let's make this year, so loaded with mythological (and for some cultural) significance, one of humanitarian significance as well. Take best care of yourselves and glow with health and love...the rest will easily follow.

P.s. I didn't have a super fantastic photo to post tonight, so chose a picture I took in our backyard just to post something! It's colorful anyway, and has that ubiquitous corrugated iron Reykjavik is so renowned for. More better stuff soon, camera gods willing!

Have you tried Dynamic Viewing yet? Five new views in all. Use the blue tab at the top of the view page to check them all out : )

Fish sperm

I had fish sperms for dinner at a japanese restaurant in kl. Its not something everyone gets to eat lol

One bite of the chunk of sperms causes milky juice to squirt out and it has this gooey, slimey texture on the inside but a bit rubbery on the outside...

I know sup turpedo made of bull's penis are good for men, but i have no idea about fish sperms.

The Malaysian loo

Malaysian loos are famous for being wet.... Very very wet till sometimes it floods.. Last time it happens in every loo, but now times have changed, probably due to plenty of complaints over the years.. So, now in most malls, there will be a cleaning lady holding a mop, waiting, watching eaching cubicle to make sure the loo floor is always dry. There are also some malls that dont put hose in their cubicles. I also love the malls which have queuing system in the loos...

There's a new toilet trend now in malls. They put up signs on each cubicle door to indicate what kind of toilet seat it is aka squatting or sitting... That saves us ladies at least a few seconds in the toilet so we dont have to keep on opening every cubicle door to find our preferred toilet seat. Also, ang mohs who have never seen squatting toilet before will not be so shocked when seeing one in this country anymore. My american cousins once entered a squatting cubicle and ended up rushing out while laughing, asking me how to use it!

Hooray for toilet improvements in this country...at least in sooomee places~~