Jayden Year 4 Part 1: The Transformation

Happy Diwali People! Happy Deepavali!


Jayden, Diwali 2017 – Our home, International City, Dubai

October’s come and gone, November’s in full swing, and I haven’t friggin finished going thru Jayden’s photos of the past year. At the rate I’m going, I gonna finish this at the end of November, so I’m putting a stop and posting the first half of his fourth year photos. (By the way, I’m so busy at work, I’ve resorted to doing this only during my early morning toilet time. Sigh, work sucks, life sucks.)


Grrrrrr…. Happy Halloween! – That’s how mom & the kids celebrate Halloween, dress up in scary costumes and make-up. No trick or treat. What? Our neighbourhood kids are all Muslims…


Jayden, as Maui, the Polynesian demi-god (from the cartoon Moana), minus the tattoos – Nov 2017


Jayden takes a swim (He’s terrified of water) – With Mommy at Legoland Water Park, Dubai


Jayden paints a car, Dubai Festival City, Dec 2017 – So that’s where he picked up his bad habit of drawing on walls, table, chair, floor, bed sheet, you name it, …


Jayden meets a girl – With little Thai girl at Ancient City, Samut Prakan, Thailand


Jayden visits his dad’s hometown, with his Koko and Jikor Hazel, Ipoh House, Malaysia


Jayden goes to school – First day of school, Newlands School, Jan 2018


Jayden has a picnic, with Koko – Somewhere along the new route to Hatta (you need an Omani visa now to go thru the old route), in the middle of nowhere (but probably in an area controlled by Ras-Al Khaimah), UAE


Now you see hair


Now you don’t – Jayden has a haircut


The new Jayden at school


Jayden, in Malay traditional clothes, for International Day


Jayden, in Indian traditional clothes, for a wedding in New Delhi

That’s all for now. Here’s an update on his vocabulary: - Shiwish (finish), Dial (die), Stroyal (destroy), Dikiful (difficult), Bitifuel (beautiful), Titember (September), Speckital (spectacles), Serficket (certificate) Pretening (pretending), Jingle bell, jingle bell, jingle on the way (all the way), oh what fun is to ride, water on the sleigh (oh what fun it is to ride, in a one horse open sleigh)

By the Mighty Hooghly

Dakshineswar Kali Temple, Kolkata, India


The Hooghly River, view from the Dakshineswar Ganga Ghat on the east bank of the Hooghly

Happy Durga Puja!!! Anu’s biggest festival is upon us (although there’s really not much of a celebration here in Dubai), and I’ve saved some pictures just for this occasion, haha! So it’s gonna be another picture post. (And that’ll be the case till the shit at work clears up, sigh).

Welcome to Kolkata, the capital of Durga Puja celebrations!




Sri Ramakrishna Belur Math Temple, Kolkata


Ramakrishna Mission, Belur Math, Kolkata


The Belur Math Ghat on the west bank of the Hooghly River


Jayden with Papa at Dakshineswar Temple, Kolkata, Apr 2017




Howrah Bridge, at the centre of Kolkata


Mullick Ghat Flower Market near the busy Howrah Bridge


Kolkata International Airport


Salt Lake, Kolkata – Salt Lake is where we usually stay on our stopovers in Kolkata. Kolkata is where we do our banking stuff (coz HSBC and StanChart are too high and mighty to set up base on our humble home city of Silchar). This picture was taken from the roof of the Columbia Asia Hospital. (Kolkata is incidentally also the place I stop to do medical check-ups!)

By the way, we just celebrated Jayden’s 4th birthday. But the pictures will have to wait. As usual. See ya!

Making Coffee from Animal Poop

Continuing with Bali, and considering the amount of shit I am getting from the new ‘bosses’ assigned to me in this bloody project, I’m putting a blog post on some animal poop coffee.

Kopi Luwak (or Civet Coffee) is a famous coffee found in Indonesia. I’ve heard of Kopi Luwak for a long time but have never tried it. Heck, I thought it was some kind of a myth, or an urban legend, because who’d believe that you can make coffee out of some cat shit?!?! But Kopi Luwak is exactly that! It is made from partly fermented coffee beans collected from the faeces / poop of the Asian palm civet who eats coffee cherries for breakfast, lunch and dinner. So, it ain't a cat after all (whew, ...know how bad cat shit smells?) Now who was it that told me it was from a friggin jungle cat???

The civet's poop are collected to retrieve the undigested coffee beans (which are actually the seeds of the coffee cherries). They then clean it, fry it and heck, do whatever they do, to make coffee beans drinkable. Then they sell it as the most expensive coffee in the friggin world! That’s the story of Kopi Luwak, and here’re the photos of yours truly finally trying a cup o’ cat shit coffee. Enjoy!


Kopi Luwak, fancy a cup?


Enjoying a cuppa


Coffee, no TEA flavours of all varieties (what's tea doing in a coffee shop?)


Preparing some coffee tea


No, these are not coffee cherries, they're cocoa beans, for making chocolate. Why is it here? Beats me. But they look nice, and green, ain't it?




Tegal Sari Luwak Coffee, on the road between Mengwi and Bedugul, Bali, Indonesia


Frying some coffee beans


The source of all that fuss, the Asian palm civet.

Rain on a Holy Lake

Pura Ulun Danu Bratan, Bedugul, Bali

Since we’re on the topic of gloomy lakes, I might as well post this.

Once upon a time (2016), we visited hot and humid Bali. Then we went up the mountains and it was raining dogs and cats! This was the day it rained dogs and cats. Was it nice? It was. For a cool break. But not for the photos.

This Pura (temple) is a water temple. In Bali, there are sea temples, mountain temples, water temples, etc. Water temples are located on the shores of lakes or canals (obviously). Besides being places of worship, water temples also play an important part in the local irrigation system where the priests typically have authority to allocate water to the paddy fields around the area. That makes one helluva powerful priest, yeah?




Pura Ulun Danu Bratan, Bali, Indonesia

Danu (Lake) Bratan, by the way, is a volcano crater lake, i.e. it’s on the crater of a friggin volcano! But don’t worry, it’s extinct.








Temple grounds, Pura Ulun Danu Bratan


Whoa, what’s that?


Look at the rain!


“This rain is fun, for eating my hands!” – 17 month old Jayden in Bali


This was the place we stopped for lunch on the way to the temple from Taman Ayun – Warung Soto Ayam Cak Mitirr


The Balinese countryside, from the Soto Ayam warung (stall / restaurant)

And there, another quick picture post done!

Lake Bled

Lake Bled, Slovenia

Bled. What a name! From Hallstatt we went south across the border into Slovenia. (I had to visit a new country, from the list of countries I visited in 1994! And what better place than Slovenia!)

Yes, here’s another picture post, from our Euro Trip 2015. (Picture posts will have to do till this bloody mess of a work arrangement ends. I am now friggin in charge of 2 Projects, one formally and one informally, and it’s bloody hell to cope. Wish me luck. Or better still, PRAY FOR ME).

Our one day in Slovenia, and the weather had to suck. Our apartment manager told us that Bled is usually nice and sunny in summer, heck, it was actually good on the morning of the day we arrived (we arrived at night). But as luck had it, we had to put up with grey overcast skies the next day. And so, we decided to skip our (my) ever-ambitious plan and just have a relaxing day, whiling the time away in the little town of Bled. We did things which we’d never considered doing, like sitting down and ordering a Slovenian lunch (meals were never scheduled on our trips, we considered them a waste of time, we eat on the go man). We went into the shops looking for a phone memory card (Anu’s phone ran out of memory when we were in Neuschwanstein, Germany, which was about umm… 4 days back!)

Wanna know what my crazy plans were in the beginning? Here goes: Lake Bled, then Lake Bohinj, back to Bled, then drive a convoluted route thru the middle of Slovenia’s Triglav National Park, enter Italy, stop at Tarviso town, cross into Austria and make our way to Lienz, ALL IN ONE FRICKIN DAY! Luckily, we didn’t go along with that, or we’d probably arrive in Lienz at noon the next day!!!

Anyway, here’s Bled in all its gloomy glory. Enjoy.










We, at Lake Bled


Bled, Slovenia


Our Slovenian lunch


Fancy some grapes?


Our apartment for the day - not the easiest place to find, especially when there's no signboard, you arrive at night, you don't have GPS (our car actually had GPS, ...but no map of Slovenia), and you don't have friggin internet connection!