CS, Pearly & Ian visiting from Houston

Meredith is still jetlagged from our trip overseas and fell asleep when we were eating out.

This the living room of our new house in New Orleans. No, I'm just kidding. I wished our living room looks like that. I took Isaac to the W Hotel in downtown New Orleans to change his diaper. This hotel lobby looks incredibly nice and I just have to take a picture.

Chee Seang, Pearly and Ian came to visit us last weekend. Ian and Meredith had a lot of fun playing together. We enjoyed their company here and wished they had stay till Thanksgiving day because we ended spending Thanksgiving day just like any other day, without much special celebration. Credits to Chee Seang for supplying a lot of the nicer photos in this posting.

Brussels

Brussels is a beautiful city, even more so than cities in Netherland. Actually, it resembles Paris to a certain extent. Half the people speak French and the other half speak some dialect that resembles dutch. There are a lot of chinese too in Brussels, a lot of the Belgium chocolate shop are run by chinese, I just have to wonder if those chocolates and truffles are really made in Belgium as they claimed or is it made in China.

Belgium school children on their school outing. It is quite cold in Belgium during our visit and the temperature is about 7-8celsius. Quite a few of the Belgium school kids are wearing shorts.

The statue in the background of this photo is called the "Manneken Pis". It is a tiny statue of a little boy urinating into a fountain. This little statue is the national symbol of Belgium and I don't understand it. I think it is more of a scam to attract the tourist. We walked a few blocks away from the statue and the chocolate shops are selling much bigger version of the "little boy urinating" statue made out of chocolate or various candy. See photos below

Belgium waffles, this stuff is good and almost every street corner has a waffle stall. This stuff is served piping hot and it is really good. Much better than waffle or pancake in IHOP or Dennys.

Eating Indian kari in Brussels.

masala chicken in the Indian restaurant

Taking the train to Brussels, Belgium

We took the train to Brussels one weekend just for a day trip. Brussels is the biggest city in Belgium and it is only two hours away from Den Haag. Europe is so well connected by train compare to US, it is quite feasible to just hop on a train and be in a different country for the weekend.

Waiting at the train station

There is no reserved seat on the train, so sometimes it is hard to find a seat. The good thing is kids ride for free, so we only have to pay Euro 68 for two adults return ticket to Brussels.

Isaac and Meredith

Isaac and Meredith started out smiling and playing happily..... but not for long....

Big sister wins! Meredith owned the bed now after parents removed crying little brother.

Daily life

Since we were in Netherland for two weeks, we took a lot of photos of just everyday life. Meredith is tired of posing as model quietly when we want to take her photos. She will run around in order to avoid having her photos taken. I need to play some silly tricks with her in order to make her stand still for photos. So the latest trick is for her to cover her eyes with a key chain before we can take her photos.

We stocked up on the refrigerator very quickly when we got to Netherland so it feels like home.

The dutch people eat a lot of Indonesian food. This is great for us because we can find all the regular Malaysian food that we miss in their supermarket. Keropok udang is a staple on every supermarket shelf and we even find a lot of Kuih Lapis (they spelled it as spekoek lapis pandan) in most supermarket.

Boon Hong tried her best to take Meredith and Isaac out since I am working most of the time.

We moved to another apartment unit (owned by the same chinese lady) on ground floor during our second week in Netherland. It is easier for us because the staircase in Netherland is very steep like those you see in a ship.

The townsquare near the apartment where we were staying at.

Apartment

Meredith fell asleep on the stroller as we were out and about
Isaac crawling around in the apartment. At first, he had trouble moving around because the floor is very licin but then he got used to it.

During the weekday, we only went out a few times and only to the places closeby because it is quite difficult to lug around a baby and a toddler on the tram. I am glad we are staying in an apartment with kitchen, living room, bedroom rather than a regular hotel room. The apartment is owned by a chinese lady who also owned a hotel across the street. There is so many chinese in Netherland and they speak dutch, which is quite amazing to hear Dutch words coming out from fellow chinese.

The apartment has enough room for the kids to roam around and it is very nicely appointed. I think apartment is the way to go for people with kids because it costs the same with hotel room but there is a lot more room and comfort.