Matt & Kat

Happy Easter everyone. I hope your long weekend was well-stocked with chocolate goodies, plenty of relax time and some quiet moments to reflect on the reason behind the holiday.

Matt and I spent this Easter visiting Donegal, in the north-west of Ireland. It was great to get out of the city, see some beautiful natural landscapes and breath in the fresh country air. We stayed at Coxtown Manor near Donegal town, a charming place nestled in the country amid spring daffodils and frolicking lambs. It felt very much like spring in Donegal except for the bone-chilling wind and the tell-tale frosting that remains on the tops of the hills. Like the rest of Ireland, the warmer weather has yet to hit Donegal. Nevertheless, we had a great time driving around the area and were impressed with the landscapes – white sand beaches, mountains and valleys, lakes and cliffs.

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Ever since we booked our cruise holiday in January I’ve been eagerly awaiting May 29th, excited to flee the grey cold weather of Dublin and cruise the Caribbean in style with our fabulous friends Kieron, Lucy, Joey and Robbie.

There was so much packed into our holiday last week that I don’t know where to begin in describing it. Lets just say it was 9 days of fabulousness! Memories of our tropical sunny holiday will keep me warm through the Irish ‘summer’ 😛

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4 short days until Easter starts. We’re staying in Ireland with Daniel and Susanna coming over from London for the weekend. We’re looking forward to catching up and spending some time showing them around our adopted home city.

To get into the spirit of things I whipped up a batch of hot cross buns this afternoon.

They looked pretty good and tasted nice too.

Comment from Wendy (Mum) on 2009-04-17

Well Matt. You have been very well trained indeed. Don’t forget to whip up a batch of these next time you stay here. They look very impressive and I bet they tasted it too.

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It’s been a tough Monday getting back into the swing of things after our weekend away. Truthfully I’d much prefer to have spent my Monday relaxing in a piazza in Florence, sipping wine and eating antipasto.

We flew into Pisa airport late on Friday and on Saturday we spent the day in Pisa. In the morning we went looking for some geo-caches, before most of the town had woken up. We wandered through the old town and eventually ended up where all tourists in Pisa end up – at the Leaning Tower. Yes it does lean, quite a lot actually. We laughed at all the funny contortions of tourists as they took cheesy photos pretending to hold up / kick down the tower, and then we took some cheesy pics of our own 😛

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I’ve been in New York for work for the last two weeks as you should already know from Kat’s last post and happily she was able to join me for the second week. We had a great time visiting many of the typical tourist attractions together.

See her previous post for the details of the first two full days we had sightseeing. For the rest of the week, I worked all day while Kat worked mornings and acted like a tourist in the afternoons. That left the evenings free for us to pick off a few more sights. In order:

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Several weeks ago Craig shared his omlette making skills.

Kat came home after doing the shopping today with all the ingredients needed for an omelette so I decided that it was time to see if my omelette making skills are up to scratch.

It tasted pretty good to me, and I performed the flip while the egg was still quite liquid which helped to bind the ingredients together.

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Hi all, I hope you have all had a good Christmas and are looking forward to 2008! We’ve both been off work since Christmas day and relaxing at home. After our various travels in November and December it’s been nice to just have some time at home. We’ve been sleeping in lots, playing board games and working on hobbies.

We went out to dinner tonight to ‘Kudos’ – the restaurant at the Clarion hotel near our apartment. They had a nice ‘asian fusion’ menu. The food was tasty but they were on a ‘Christmas menu’ which I think actually means a ‘we have restricted staff and food supplies till the new year’ menu.

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Phew! It’s the weekend at last. After getting back from Paris at midnight on Tuesday we were straight back into work on Wednesday and playing catch-up for the time we were away. Now that it’s Saturday – the chores all done and cosy inside looking out at the drizzly grey Dublin day – I have time to sit back and think over our trip to Paris and finish writing about it. So, here we are….

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On Sunday I found myself basking in a sunny afternoon, watching a game of croquet being played on the lawn by men in top hats and tails. As you might guess, we were not in Dublin anymore. We were in Cambridge, England for the wedding of Sam and Zoe Jansen (Sam is a friend of Matt’s from Waikato Uni). It was a fun weekend, really great to be able to attend the wedding and to catch up with some Kiwis over here.

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One of the things I enjoy when coming back to Malaysia is the food. There are lots of things that I only eat on a trip back to Malaysia and many that you just don’t get in New Zealand or most other places in the world. I enjoy things like tropical fruit, satay, red bean desserts, little layer cakes and bbq pork buns… mmmm yum.

There are more tropical fruits here in Malaysia than I can count. Some are fairly well known like pineapple or papaya but others are completely foreign to the average Kiwi. Dragon fruit, lycees, jack fruit, innumerable other wild fruits straight from the forest. I love them all except for the Durian which smells of rotten eggs and tastes just as bad (in my opinion).

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