Evening walk

Oliver and I (unfortunately daddy was away working...) went to the Empire hotel this afternoon to celebrate one of our friends birthday. We were invited to join high tea which was just lovely, yummy cakes and live piano music in a luxurious hotel...

There were lots of kids there too. Oliver had a great time running around the roomy hotel lobby with his friends.

Afterwards we all went for a walk outside. It was such a perfect evening for it!





Kids gathered nicely for a photo shoot;



Nice sea breeze and a beautiful sunset, we are so lucky - we can have this without traveling to a beach resort.

Amazing...

Yesterday Oliver's little friend Jasmine had a special 2nd birthday party.
I took my camera with me but having a very clingy little boy with me I could not take many photos to show you.
I only manage to get this one - the Gruffalo cake which Jasmine's mum Pippa made for the birthday girl!



Everyone was so impressed with how talented she was to bake such a gorgeous cake and of course it tasted very nice!
Oliver recognised it was The Gruffalo from the book and kept going back to see - wish I could get the expressions on his face on camera.

The kids had a ball playing on the bouncy castle, trampolines and just running around. Oliver was holding onto my leg half the time but when it got less crowded he started to wander around by himself - phew...

Another great birthday party - the pressure is on!

Two dogs

We have been working hard teaching Oliver WORDS, of course both English and Japanese. He knows lots of words now but has trouble putting them together.

But today he finally said TWO DOGS, two and dogs together! Yeah!

Oliver and I will be away in Japan for two weeks from next Friday. I am sure he will pick up lots more Japanese words once we get there. So exciting!

On-board reception

Matthew and I had a special date tonight - The Japan Maritime Self Defense Force (JMSDF) training ships held a reception. We dressed up nicely and went out.

The venue was great - they attached two ships and you could walk over from one ship to the other. One of them had a helicopter on board.







There were so many officers trainees on board. Their aim for the night was to make the guests feel very welcome. Everyone was very keen to talk to us and I learned new things about the Navy and Army in general.

The food was fab - all specially brought over from Japan. At some point I found them a bit overeager and felt embarrassed. When we said, "oh there is some fresh sashimi on that table" - then an officer went to get the whole plate for us, and same thing when we said, "oh desserts" - then the whole selection came to our table. But they were all yummy so I am not complaining!

At the end of the reception we were given a souvenir each ( It's a Japanese custom to give a gift to the guests), a very cool Sake Masu - the traditional cup to drink Sake (A bit ironic to give away in a dry country?) with the Japan Navy logo and the name of the ship.



It was certainly a great night, proud to be a Japanese : )

Sushi Guru

A while ago my friend Boel asked me if I wanted to show people how to make sushi. I have done it once in the past here in Brunei (you can see it from her previous blog post) so accepted the invitation and tried to do my best last night at JIS.

It was organised by the Parent-Liason-Group at JIS (where Oliver goes to his toddler group Geckos). They advertised for 20 slots and to my surprise it was full and they were all excited and enthusiastic!!

The school kitchen was fantastic (flash food technology class room - fully equipped), I felt like I was doing a cooking show on TV! People were taking photos and movies. I even had a great assistant - Boel with me.





First I showed how to make tamagoyaki, the Japanese egg rolls. The bench was quite high and I felt like nobody can see what I was doing until they told me they can see through the mirror!



Then everyone had a go with their own sushi mat and made a sushi roll each.





Then we made some Gyoza, I loved the atmosphere, everyone was happy to be involved and asking lots of questions - made me feel less nervous : )



To be honest I wasn't sure how this class would turn out but I am pleased I did it and hopefully I can do it again!
Anybody interested?

Special visit

We received a very special invitation from the Embassy of Japan the other day to come and welcome the Japan Maritime Self Defense Force (JMSDF) training ships that arrived in Muara Port yesterday morning.

The defense ships, JS Hatakaze, JS Isoyuki and JS Setoyuki, sailed straight from Japan and are staying in Brunei for a couple of days.

This was our 2nd time to participate in such a special event. The last time was when Oliver was only 3 months old so I was hoping he would be excited to see great big ships in front of him. But guess what ? Instead he was very clingy and cried a lot to start off with. (I suspected maybe the brass band music was what upset him - after Chinese New Year he is not keen on loud music...)

Group of us waiting for the ships to arrive:



Yes, they are here!!!



It was such a hot morning, we were all sweating but waited very patiently until the ships parked properly on the dock. I was amazed how well they parallel park!

Girls proudly gave flowers to the captain:



Then they invited us onto JS Hatakaze to give us a tour of the ship (It was a relief we were back in the aircon!!).
After being served some nice cold Japanese tea on board Oliver was in a much much better mood. He even went on the tour with one of the officers! Yeah!



We were shown the bridge, the deck with huge guns/cannons, and the control room:





Oliver failed to pay attention to all the details...he just loved walking and running around on the deck.



When he found two more great big ships in front of him (I guess he couldn't comprehend that he was on one of those), he got excited and start to whistle loud!!



It was a great day out and I hope he will remember it somehow...
Matthew and I are invited to a special on-board dinner tonight, it should be a great date night for us : )

4 years completed

Matthew has completed 4 years of employment with RBA. We cannot believe how fast the last 4 years has gone.



To celebrate it we went out for a nice dinner last night - just the two of us.

We are not sure how many more years we will be here in Brunei but we will make the most of it : )

5 little ducks... ♬ ♪

A month or so ago I was singing to Oliver the "Five little ducks" song. I wanted to see if Oliver gets my joke. So I sang this way;

♪ Five little ducks went swimming one day.... Mummy duck said "MOOOOO" - Noooo just kidding she said "quack quack quack" ♫

But since then whenever I sing the song he says "MOOOOO" instead of "Quack Quack Quack".

Oops! How can I undo this?!

Closer look

Yesterday I took my big camera to Pantai Muara (this is our 3rd visit in a week!) to get a closer look at our new friends - Hornbills.

We now know where to find them so it was matter of how close I can get to them using the zoom.

Here are the photos.







I googled Hornbills and found out there are several different types of Hornbills. The ones we see are called Northern Pied Hornbills.

I hope we can keep up this routine of spending some family time at Pantai Muara.

High-tech haircut

It was time for Oliver to have a haircut again (well...he needed it a long time ago).
This is how you give your child a haircut these days.
In a hair salon, with an Ipad playing Mickey Mouse Clubhouse!!



He stayed still for so long, it is amazing what technology can do to the kids!

And this is how much he got rid of - he sure is my child he's got lots of hair...



Here is Oliver after the haircut - I think he looks more Western now (Looks more like Matthew?)



The side is nice and clean too : )

Devastated...

We were there only a year ago, today it is destroyed completely.





A 6.3 magnitude earthquake hit Christchurch today. This time much shallower and it hit the city at midday which made the damage so much worse than the last one.

Christchurch is where I spent my 7 years of NZ life, and where I met Matthew. It is our second home and now it is destroyed...

Our family members are ok but still havn't heard from some friends. We hope you are all ok and our thoughts are with you all.

Babies mummy!

Oliver had a great time pushing the baby dolls in the stroller at Geckos today.



Nothing is wrong with this picture, just a few too many !?

National day craft

This coming Wednesday is National Day here in Brunei. I thought it would be nice to run a craft session with the kids at Geckos so I cut out some paper and took it to Geckos this morning.

The little ones loved sticking the pieces together with some glue and sticky tape to make their own Brunei flags!





Here is Oliver with his flag.



He looked very cute in his gumboots, carrying his suit case with his Brunei flag!!



When I was cutting the pieces for the flag I wondered what the Brunei flag means so I quickly Googled it. According to world flags 101 this is what it represents.

The coat of arms on the Brunei flag is a crescent (symbol of Islam) joined with a parasol (symbol of monarchy), with two gloves on both sides. Below the crescent is a ribbon. The crescent and ribbon have Arabic inscriptions which translate to "State of Brunei, Abode of peace" and "There is no deity but God, Muhammad is the messenger of God".

I learned something new.

Hornbills

We had a lovely walk at Pantai Muara. The sky looked quite stormy but the rain didn't come while we were walking so it was very cool and breezy. As usual we took Oliver's little push car and walked along the paths.

Suddenly Oliver pointed at the tree and took off in that direction, we weren't sure what he saw at first but these guys were in the tree!!



Unfortunately I didn't have my big camera with me so this was taken with the iphone, I hope you can zoom in enough to see the great beaks they've got.

I have never seen them in the wild so I was very excited! We believe they live in the park - now we have another exercise we can do when we walk down Pantai Muara : )

Mochi tsuki

On Saturday night we were invited to participate in mochi-tsuki, the traditional mochi-pounding (rice cake making) ceremony. It was organised by the Japanese Association here in Bandar.

It was great to see so many Japanese families gathered together, especially the kids. They were all very excited.

Some ladies had been working hard in the kitchen and had steamed the glutinous rice. Then it was time for pounding, starting off with pushing the pile of rice between the two wooden hammers to make them stickier.



Then they had to pound for quite a while until it was very very sticky...Halfway through they already looked very exhausted. Somehow Oliver was very scared of the process, maybe the noise or the big hammer going up and down? Matthew had to take him outside as he was getting very hysterical : (



And time for the little ones to have a go!





Finally done! The kids did a great job making them into round shapes.





We had them in soup with soy, red bean paste, and soya bean powder. They were so fresh and yummy!!

The last time I saw this was maybe when I was at kindy or at primary school. My parents and grandparents all had mochi making machines so we never did this ourselves at home. I love the fact that being here in Brunei, away from home, we get to see and appreciate more of Japanese traditions.