Its February ???

Hello hello....wait a min...i just wished happy new year to all...and where did January go ?? hahaha...ohhh wait...yes...it went this way....

JANUARY

This time on new year i was back hometown with my parents....no big scale celebrations...but the usual...chat....cook ....eat.....chat ....laugh...cook, eat...watch the rain...have tea...chat again...dinner...chat again till pass midnight...and wake up to a new year...chatting and cooking again! ...hehehe...isnt that the BEST moments with moms and dads.....and to make it even interesting...it was raining everyday...so we were sitting at the porch...having a cup of tea....munching away some indian snacks my father "NEVER" fails to buy wen i am there...and screaming out to hear each other as the rain keeps drowning our voices....my brother was away...coaching his hockey team.....Nantha was away...to have a new year with his old friends as he had not celebrated new year with his friends since we got married.... !! so it was just me , mom and dad at home....simple but lovely !

Then i came to KL and started preparing for the PONGGAL ( Indian harvest celebrations) on 15 january...this time it fell on a saturday ! Great ! So called bout 10 friends over to share my sweet earthen pot cooked rice in fresh milk with lentils ( Picture above is the milk boiling and moments before i put in the rice !)...yeah everyone enjoyed (I hope :) the banana leaf vegetarian dinner ..and was around chatting till bout 11 something...lots of laughters as always.....then Nantha n i cleared up the pots and pans ...and slept off by 12 midnight...

Only special thing this year was....i had to have a PART 2 Ponggal....hehe yeah coz some of my friends were not around on the actual ponggal day.....so invited 3 of them on 18th Jan...for a mini ponggal dinner....this time i couldnt cook as much as the other day coz...it was a working day...and i had only about 2 hours to prepare everything....so made some capati , potato gravy with yogurt and some salad....but one of my friend Viji loved the potato in yogurt so much that she even requested me to make her the same dish again another day ! But as always...I DONT follow recipes ...its just a pinch of this ..and dash of that....whatever that works for the moment for me...! SO.....hmmm....do it again !?? erm ok i shall try to get as close as possible to it :) I hope i dont dissappoint her... :)

Then it was time for Thaipusam...it had been 2 years since i went back to Ipoh for Thaipusam so this year i just HAD to....missed it so much....so decided to take wed and friday off...took a bus home....and as always my cousins and i left at 3.30 am to walk with the milk offerings to the Gunung Cheroh Murugan temple...it was a beautiful dawn...with clear sky and magnificent full moon !.....as there were ( Amazingly !) NO queue at all to make the offerings we were done by 4.30 am, then had a lovely veg breakfast with coffee at the temple and came home by 5.30.!!.the earliest ever ! so..went back to bed...slept off till about 8 am....and later in the evening went to the temple again with mom, uncle, aunty and cousin Nithya ...watched some nice kavadis , bumped into some friends...did some shopping at the stalls around the temple..bought some Indian Sweets and devotional song CDs.....then decided to go home by 11 pm....so Thaipusam was satisfying ! :) came back to KL the next day as i had some urgent office matters to settle...

Hmmm...so i guess thats about it for January...simple ...sweet and fun !

And ohh....I read an awesome book in January ...an African story...and the most inspiring one...but i shall not give details here...i will post my review about this book soon ! :)