Solstice

In Iceland it is also possible to find three-legged ginger cats hanging out by seaside football fields at midnight on the Summer Solstice. And young men dreaming of lands far, far away...

Father's Day 2012

Father's day always falls on the third Sunday of June. The kids know it. But, fathers (or maybe only my father) probably don't know it. So, on the SECOND Sunday of June, one of my dad''s friend wished him Happy Father's Day..... OBVIOUSLY my dad felt disappointed that 'his friend' wished him but NONE of his kids did! I was in Langkawi at that time and I received a text from my mum about dad's displeasure. This kind of thing pisses me off!

Anyway, OBVIOUSLY my siblings and I WILL do something for OUR father on Father's Day. My brother returned from Penang. I bought a shirt for dad in Langkawi as a present. My younger sister was in charge of making the Father's Day card.

We planned a dinner at home instead of going out for one. We celebrated on a Saturday since my brother had to leave to Penang again on Sunday evening. I invited my grandfather and aunty for the celebration. That night, I found out from my aunt that my grandma's birthday was on 12th April, my older sister's birthday was on 12th May, and my grandpa's birthday was on 12th June! I didn't know my grandparent's birthday for the past 20 years or so.

This post is longer than usual because I am using my laptop to blog instead of the iphone. Since coming back to KL, my laptop refuses to work with Unifi connections. Hence, the lack of my existence in Skype, msn, replying emails...etc. Using the Iphone to blog can be a pain at times because the photos uploaded are not allowed to be in between paragraphs. Only at the bottom of the post. Furthermore, the chances of a typo is higher.

Anyway, back to the Father's Day celebration, the menu were as below:

APPETIZER:

Two types of spring rolls and my brother's special sauce.

For appetizers, we had samosa spring rolls and crabstick cream cheese spring rolls. The sauce was a last minute concoction by my brother, which was brilliantly delicious :)

MAIN COURSE:

Tom Yam seafood - crab, prawns, fishball

Mummy's beef rendang

DESSERT:

Dessert was two types of cheesecake. Daddy gets the heart shaped cotton cheese cake, while grandpa gets the rich cream cheese filled cake.

The food looked little but it was actually very filling and satisfying. Nothing beats homecooked meals :)

Grandpa had a cake too because we decided to have a belated birthday celebration for him.

Grandpa is 75 years old now!!

Grandpa with his son and daughter

The family

In the kitchen preparing the dessert and washing dishes

Daddy and us!

3 generations of Che

It was my first try writing words with melted chocolate onto the cheesecakes.

At the end of the night, dad, gx, ty and hazel played ginrummy. Grandpa left early because he wanted to go home to watch football, while my aunty had another function to go to. I was pretty tired.

Bff...

..because we are sisters!

Puffin

GUEST PHOTOGRAPHER: Birgir Gilbertsson

Happy 17th of June Independence Day, Iceland! Today we have a guest photographer, Birgir Gilbertsson, an optometrist at Optical Studio in Smáralind who has an excellent eye for Icelandic nature!

Here's what he writes about this very pretty puffin photo:

This picture was taken out at Dyrhólaey and it was the first time I ever went there. There was a lot of Lundi there and they were so used to have people close to them, that they didn't even bother. This one bird was a little bit closer than the others and I crawled slowly towards him. I managed to get very close and was very exited about that, started taking pictures and got that great shot :)

I love the moments when you have your camera with you and you get "lucky"! 

I've never met Birgir, who is also a triathlete and an Ironman finisher in his spare time, but through a twist of fate where I mistakenly thought that he had taken a certain gorgeous photo* and contacted him to see if I could use it, we began a light correspondance. Since he is also into amateur photography, I thought it would be fun to have him share his work here. He sent me a few shots to consider, and when I saw this little lundi I knew it would fit right in here on Iceland Eyes : )

*The photographer who took this shot admits to having added Photoshopped in the water and the reflection in it of our Harpa concert hall. It's a stunning shot and well conceptualized, but not reality.

Fatter as years go by

I just looked back at my photos in USA and I can't believe I used to think I was fat that time. Now, I look at my recent photo, I am definitely fatter now. Dear me, what has Malaysia done to me.. Time to head back to USA *hint hint*

Langkawi trip

I just came back from my four days trip to Langkawi. I love the island so much that I visit it every year. Will blog more on it soon!

Blómadagur

Someone told me that it's Blómadagur, or Flower Day, again on Skólavörðurstígur, though I'll have to
go wandering about myself to find out how reputable my source is since I can't find anything on the interwebs to confirm it.

In the meantime, here's a reposting of a classic Iceland Eyes photo from June 2006. The original text read:

The Saturday before last was Flower Day in Reykjavik. I went for a stroll with Óðinn in his belly pack and noticed that just about every woman I passed on Skólavörðurstígur (the street leading up to the big church) held a rose in her hand. Valentína, who was holding a tombóla with Marsibil at the top of Skólavörðurstígur told me when I went to visit their enterprise (they made over $25 each that day!) that someone was handing out flowers to women downtown, though she didn't know who. I didn't make it far enough on my walk to find out, but I did see this charming group of people with their watering cans. It must have been an acting troupe....they were very cute and kind of pranced about watering things like parking meters and garbage cans. We definitely more of this type of urban attraction here in our little city!

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 : )