Japanese friends

Some visitors turned up today courtesy of Sam. Married to a Japanese more than a decade ago, Michiko (as she's known on her blog) was visiting Malaysia again after a spate of two years, this time with her two sons and a daughter.

After prayers at her mum's grave at Nirvana, the whole gang turned up at 7pm and we all went for a nice set dinner at a Chinese restaurant.

After dinner, it was tong yuen all over again at my house as I think my guests were craving for it and thus made advance request, ha ha. KK, my mum-in-law and the maid made them. KK's versions, as expected, were of the flat, mixed-colours and others in various shapes. Ha, ha.

The Japanese kids hardly spoke as they only knew a smattering of English words and no Chinese at all but they were polite and well brought up. They were big-sized though, with the 12-year-old daughter almost as tall as me. I thought she was at least 16!

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Phew, I am exhausted. Earlier today, I went out to pay my Great Eastern premiums and ended up at Low Yat plaza where I managed to lepak for close to four hours!

I was itching to treat myself to a gadget but did not know what to get. But I was tempted to buy:

* a hailer (RM69). Why, I don't know. To shout at my kids without exerting myself?
Maybe...

* a short-wave radio (RM400). This is like so last century that only a couple of shops stock them and in limited choices too.

* a Sony MP3 player (RM499). But I do hate wires dangling from my ears.

* a monocular. Why? Because I can look at the stars but I am quite fearful of seeing a UFO (as I think I did during my teens and the experience scared me stiff).

In the end, I went home empty-handed. Maybe another day...

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Tomorrow's the last day of 2006. Got two invitations to meet up for dinner -- from Ooi and Lian Peng -- but had to decline both as my family will be at KK's godmum's place for a BBQ. Sounds like fun!