More New Orleans photos

Cafe Du Monde

Meredith enjoying the powdery sugar in the beignet. We pulled the plate away from her but when we were not looking, she was digging into the powdery sugar again.

We've been to French Quarter in New Orleans three weeks in a row. We don't know anyone in New Orleans yet so our weekends suddenly seem so empty. In Houston, there's always a baby shower, bridal shower, bachelor party, wedding, bbq, party at someone's house on weekend so the weekends agenda are usually packed. Actually, all three of us (Boon Hong, Meredith and myself) miss Houston a lot. Now, we don't know where to go and who to talk to. So we ended up taking Boon Hong's mum to French Quarter several times. She happened to like French Quarter too especially the area around Jackson Square. We went Cafe Du Monde in French Quarter. This coffee house is a very well known in New Orleans and has been in operation more or less since 1860. Cafe Du Monde is famous for their beignet which is fried donut dipped in powdery sugar. Meredith is a big fan of beignet. She finished the entire beignet and then she devoured the powdery sugar on the plate bit by bit.

New Orleans

Despite being devastated by hurricane two years ago and having the highest crime rate in the entire America, New Orleans is still a beautiful and charming city. This is especially true if you look at French Quarter. Tourists are back swarming this crown jewel of New Orleans. We took Boon Hong's mum to French Quarter in downtown New Orleans for sightseeing and we chanced upon this beautiful wedding party in Jackson Square.

Settling into our apartment in New Orleans

We moved into a two bedrooms apartment in New Orleans. It is smaller than our house in Houston. After unpacking for 3-4days, we still have about 20-30 boxes that we stacked up in every space we can find including the closet.

Moving to New Orleans

We moved to New Orleans several weeks ago. This is a very big change for our family. We left our home in Sugar Land and Houston where we lived for past seven years for a completely new and unknown city.

My parents left to go back to Malaysia after spending several months with us in Houston. Boon Hong's mum came to Houston a few days before my parents departure in a last minute trip.

Moving is not an easy task.

My parents left on Sunday. The packers from moving company came on Monday. The two packers are extremely efficient and they worked like robotic vacuum cleaner. They packed everything that they saw into boxes without much discretion. We didn't have time to throw away some paper thrash and these were packed into the boxes as well in nice wrapping paper. Moving company was very concern about having to compensate for breaking any of our items. So they packed only a few items in each box and each item was wrapped in multiple layers of packing paper. It is funny when we unpack a big box in New Orleans and only find a small plastic thrash can and a few small photo frames occupying the entire box. When the packers are done, we ended up with 90+ boxes being stacked up in our house.

On Tuesday, the movers came. The movers started about 9am and by lunch time, our entire house and everything that we accumulated in the past 7 years of our lives are gone and tightly stashed in a big eighteen wheeler truck. They took our car too. Tuesday was the hardest time during the entire moving process. All the chairs were gone. Boon Hong had to breastfeed the Isaac by sitting on the toilet seat. Meredith was running around the whole time while the movers were hauling heavy furnitures. One mover was taking away her "tan pui" (potty toilet for small kid), Meredith screamed at the mover in Chinese asking why her "tan pui" was taken away. Of course, the mover did not undersand her and her "tan pui" was stashed away along with everything else.

Boon Hong, her mum, Isaac and Meredith finally had to go to mall for a few hours because there are nothing left in our house and it was too chaotic. I stayed back to clean up for a few hours. We went to a church friend house to spend the night on Tuesday.

On Wednesday, we waved goodbye to Houston and flew to New Orleans

Goodbye, Sugar Land and Houston!

Why am I different?

I was bathing Isaac yesterday morning with Meredith's help. She was my helper holding the towel while I was bathing Isaac. When I clean up Isaac's private part, Meredith asked me what is that and why didn't she has it. I paused for a few minutes and quickly told her that Isaac is a Didi and Didi is a boy, and she is a girl. God made us all different and unique.

She just passed her 2 years old birthday in February. How am I supposed to handle her future questions!

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Malaysia election tomorrow

Malaysian will vote in the general election tomorrow. There's not much I can do as a Malaysian residing oversea. I do hope for a voice of dissent to be heard in the government. The government has taken the people for granted for too long.

Colorado in January

I had to go up to Colorado one last time in mid-January for work related trip. It was very cold, at least for someone who is used to warm weather. We commissioned some equipment and as usual the equipment failed in the middle of the night. We went outside with the contractor to fix the equipment and the temperature was -15 F ( -29 celsius). My face was hurting from the cold after just five minutes.

I went to some pretty remote part of Colorado. I can feel a sense of solitude enveloping my whole being just like bone-freezing air in the surrounding. Sometimes I had to drive for miles before I see another fresh track in the snow. Contrasted with the seemingly unchanging and eternal landscape, our life, joy, pain and sufferings are just fleeting shadows on the face of this earth.

Isaac is going home tomorrow

Isaac has been in our world for two days now. If everything goes as planned, we will be discharged from the hospital tomorrow. Boon Hong is also getting better. She can finally urinate after after two days. A lot of friends came by last two days. Their prayer, support, and continuos concern for us really touched our heart throughout this pregnancy. This hospital, Sugarland Methodist Hospital, is also pretty good. The staff, doctor, and nurses have been very friendly and helpful the last few days.

Isaac has been labelled a "high touch" baby by the nurses here, meaning that he likes to be held all the time. In fact, I am holding him in one arm and typing this blog one handed right now.

Chinese New Year in Houston

We have celebrated the past seven chinese new year in Houston. Most of the time, Chinese New Year falls on working day, so there is not much going on the actual day. This year my parents are here. We went to Elder Ho's house for chinese new year eve's dinner and then there are several more gatherings over the weekend. We also went to Tanh Tanh restaurant in Bellaire chinatown to see lion dance. As in past year, Tanh Tanh spent big bucks on their lion dance and it was quite a nice show with tonnes of firecrackers and almost 2-3 hours of lion dance. We got there after the firecracker display but managed to catch a good bit of the lion dance.