A little princess!

Even though I'm not a huge royalist, I do enjoy following the life of our young Swedish Royals; and lately I've been waiting, as many others, to hear the news about the first Royal baby of our Crown Princess and her Prince Daniel.
So, early this morning a little Princess was born!

I can't help but wonder if being who they are, they will manage to get the peace and quiet to enjoy those first very special days as a new family?

That time in the hospital when you slowly start to understand that life will never be the same. When the big love starts flowing over you and you all of a sudden realize how vulnerable you've now become, forever.
That time when you can't stop touching the soft cheeks, can't stop looking at that sweet little face and into those eyes that already seem so wise and full of knowledge.
That smell of... baby body, that smell that is so special and can't be described.

I hope they are enjoying all this right now!
And maybe also some 'Prinsesstårta'! :)

Those were the days my friend...

I feel like I'm living in a snow globe right now, which has been shaken around vividly the past few weeks. I know that things will fall into place, eventually. Probably not the same place, but it will calm down and become something else, eventually.
Right now, it just feels like chaos.

Lots of people have left Brunei for good recently, and this is not really the normal time to be going - usually people try to go at the end of the school year.
I've lost my hair dresser, I've lost my favourite squash partner, I've lost my Zumba sister and tonight at the Hash we bid goodbye to two very seasoned hashers who are leaving this week too.
Even though it's not people I've had in my daily life, it's still friends that have all played their role in my life here in Brunei. A life that suddenly has changed a lot in a very short period of time.
Lot's of "lasts" at the moment, it's all very sad.

It was Mizusu's last 'Creative Crew' morning today, although she only made it for lunch since she was busy packing. Beenal had made a gorgeous cake especially for her:



It was also Matt & Mizusu's last day in their house today, all their things left on the moving truck this afternoon:





So now it's all empty and dark next door. :(
We are going to miss them so much.

Playhouse no more

Seeing our neighbours clear out and selling off most of their stuff the past few weeks (since they are leaving), inspired me to get rid of a few things here and there that we never use any longer.

For example, I realized there was a demand for 2nd hand playhouses - so sold ours fairly quickly to another family with smaller children.
Today the people they'd hired to transport it came to grab it. Well, maybe grabis not quite the right word... it turned into a rather big mission!

The came with a big truck, and lifted the playhouse in one piece onto it:





They were also moving Matt & Misuzu's playhouse from next door at the same time...









Huge entertainment for the kids who were watching from Lucas' window!
Finally both playhouses ended up at the back of the truck and off they went to their new homes..!

Holes in the jungle

It's my turn again to lay the hash in a couple of weeks. Another hasher, who lives just a few simpangs down from me, and I wanted to do a repeat on a hash we did a couple of years ago, just across the road.
It was a good one with a long, big hill to start, a bit of nice jungle and then a long stretch through an orchard that used to be the runners favourite part.

But when we went to rekkie it the other day, we were met by this in the middle of the planned route, a big "hole":





It's so sad! They're demolishing the jungle everywhere, all just to build more and more housing areas. We hardly have any hashing sites left. Certainly not this one...

Needless to say, there wasn't enough jungle anymore to lay the trail through so we will have to rethink and probably do a "runners hash" on the roads behind our simpangs instead. It'll be good too, just not as pretty as this one used to be...

Happy Valentine's Day

It's been a busy Tuesday here in Brunei, with all the normal Tuesday stuff going on. Exercise, scrapping, school for some, work for some, errands, school run, hash etc. We haven't been together today much as a family unfortunately, to celebrate Valentine's Day. Mind you, it's not really a big thing here in Brunei, or for us, really.

Although... I did get a lovely gift from my darling husband - and both Lucas and Linnea received Valentine's Day cards at school, and I had a heart-shaped cake as dessert at lunch at Creative Crew... so, I guess our Valentine's Day wasn't too bad..! :)
Sharing some blog love with you, blog friends - Happy Valentine's Day!

Special delivery

The other day one of the pilots who came back from London/Dubai had a special delivery for us, from our Danish friends the Dehlis: a birthday present to Lucas from Malthe (a cool football shirt!) and some yummy bread!! Mmm!



It tastes "Dubai" to us, since it's some of the bread we ate while we were there in December! So good, proper bread!
We've had open sandwiches morning, lunch and dinner so that we could enjoy this very special delivery. Yum! Thank you!

Family time

As I have previously mentioned, Nathan missed the fabulous boat trip last weekend, since he went to Singapore instead to meet up with his brother-in-law.



Kieran (who's normally based in Aberdeen, Scotland) had been traveling around Asia on business for a few weeks. He ended up in Singapore for the last few days of his trip and luckily it was perfectly timed with Nathan's off days, so he could go and see him.



I've been told they had a great time, what a treat to be able to catch up with family only a few hours away, somewhere where you can get both beer and ribs..! :)

Bugs & Bubbles

Saturday was my friend Anna's birthday and she had invited for a "Grown-up boozy lunch at Labuan"! Nathan unfortunately wasn't here (he was living it up with brother-in-law Kieran in Singapore!), but I really wanted to go because believe it or not, I hadn't yet been to Labuan so it was about time!

Labuan is a Malaysian island about 45 minutes away with boat away from Brunei (Muara):



It's actually a federal territory and best known for being an offshore support hub for deep-water oil and gas activities in the region. It's also a destination for people traveling through Sabah, scuba divers - and people from Brunei needing to stock up. The boys regularly take the boat over there for a day out, but as I said, so far I hadn't been.

We had smooth sailing on the way over, luckily. I tend to get sea sick if it rolls too much but there was no problems at all.







Arriving in Labuan:



The view from the restaurant:





The party crew:











We had such a fantastic lunch at this seafood place, yum, yum!
Food was amazing, fresh and tasty, and dirt cheap too! For the 10 of us, numerous beers included, it only came to 550 MYR (= 1200SEK, 140EUR, 225BDN)!!!



We had two whole, steamed fish...



... a huge plate of garlic kai lan, another huge plate of some other vegetable I didn't catch the name of, rice, a huge plate of "bugs" (some kind of small land lobster?)..:



... and also two plates of chili-garlic squid and a plate of chili-garlic chicken. Plus finally, and the best thing if you ask me, two huge plates of tiger prawns that them too were humungous! Mmm! They went so fast I didn't even get time to take a photo of them! :)

Anna and Pippa also enjoyed another... delicacy? They both ate a fish EYE! Why? I'm not quite sure...









After lunch, it was time to go shopping! What made me really happy in the shop was the selection of chocolates! It was huge!
I couldn't help but get some of the Marabou and Dumle chocolate they had, for the kids, of course... ;)

On the way back from Labuan, we anchored at the island of Koruman most of the afternoon, to do some swimming and enjoy some more "bubbles" - it was a birthday celebration after all!
What a hard life!

Choccie heaven

If Swedish visitors normally bring Daim, Marabou and Ahlgrens Bilar - NZ visitors are always asked to bring us Whittaker Chocolate, particularly Peanut Slabs.
Now there's no more need for that because check out what they have in SupaSave now, almost the whole range of Whittaker choccies!!



Nathan is in heaven!

Move over Rocky!

Yesterday it was time for a special Super Saturday Session. One of the girls had organized a friend of hers, an ex-boxer called Omar, to take us through two hours of boxercise training.



It was so much fun, really good exercise but man, my arms are hurting today!





I thoroughly enjoyed this session though, and I choose to believe I did extra well with the punching exercises because I had done it before... ha ha!





I really enjoy these Super Saturday Sessions! It's nice training together in a group, yesterday there was 10 of us. It's nice training outside early in the morning and believe it or not - it's nice getting up and getting going even on a "day off", starting my day with exercise makes me feel so good for the rest of the day.

The pizza king

Our pizza nights are currently reaching new heights. As the pizza maker himself is flying tonight we decided to do pizza on Friday this week instead and all I can say is yum, yum, YUM!



Jeremy really rocks the pizza making, now having purchased all the necessary proper equipment to make the best pizzas (because it's all about the gear and the gadgets of course, even in a kitchen!) - and the pizzas came out perfection. Mmm!

A 1948 Memento

We are getting closer and closer to the 2012 London Olympics, something that is causing a buzz even way out here in South-East Asia!

The other day both my boys had a near encounter with a very special memento from the last time London hosted the Olympic Games - a 1948 Olympic Torch!
The relay back then was called a "Relay of Peace" and started from Greece, and went through Italy, Switzerland, France, Luxembourg and Belgium on it's way to England - quite a wide scope through Europe.

This time around, the 2012 Olympic Torch will cover only the UK in a 70-day extravaganza, with over 8,000 torchbearers carrying the Olympic flame around the country.

I'm not sure how or why this important memorabilia was at JIS on Wednesday, I just got this photo sent to me by a friend (thank you Maria!):



I'm even less sure about why it also later that day came made an appearance at the Men's Hash..! By hey, quite cool that Nathan got to hold it too on the same day!



I found this interesting article though on the BBC webpage, where you can read more about the Olympic Torch and it's history.

Cultural school excursion

Linnea and her class mates went on yet another school excursion this week. (Unfortunately they always seem to be scheduled on Mondays, so I can't come along since I take my Zumba class then.)
This time they went to the Chinese Temple in Bandar because of the Chinese New Year, and also to the "Big Mosque" - Jame´`Asr Hassanil Bolkiah Mosque in Kiulap.

I heard from the accompanying parents and teachers it had been a really nice and educational visit; such a shame I missed it.
They had been treated to a Lion Dance at the temple, with fireworks and everything! They also got to do some Chinese drawings - and even received Ang Paos!
At the mosque they had gone on a guided tour to see the libraries, the book collections and the impressive prayer rooms.

Here's the newspaper clipping: