On a road to Shimla

Tour date: 17th December 2011

On 17th December 2011, we left quite early in the morning after a tasty home made breakfast by Arun, the onion Dosai. All 3 of them enjoys Arun cooking so much, it was their first time tasting Arun's food and their first time in Delhi. The rented car and the driver was already arrived at the IJM's guest house when we get down for breakfast. Before we started the journey, I took a memorable photo with all the right and left hand man of the house.

From left, Ram, Arun, hubby, Nasrul, Naim, the driver, Baphu and my brother, Vikas

Guided with an India map that I possessed and recommended places of interest, we made numerous stops at Haryana State (in Panipat and Kurukshetra), Punjab State (Chandigarh) and a breath taking scenery of hill stations in Himachal Pradesh. Delhi is seated in Union Territories. There are 7 union territories in India and 28 states within the country with a population of over 1.2 billion people.

It takes few hundred miles to see the mountanous valley

Before we stop for lunch, I wish to record the journey by sharing few photos that I took on the street from a distance, which I treasured very much. It's my view of India and it is up to you to form your opinion.

In a small town of Panipat, this are common transportation 

To give and to take, you need to compromise in a small narrow 2 lane road

A place of worship who attracts millions of people in Kurukshetra. It's every one's duty to show good example for picking up the rubbish rather, throwing every where 

In winter season, you will tend to get hungry easily. We stop by the road side to buy foods and snacks.

By the time we passed Haryana State and Punjab State, we stop at a restaurant nearby the petrol station for lunch. Kindly take note that every time another state bearing different territory plate number is crossing within India state, a toll (at certain charges rate) must be paid, else the vehicle and the driver will get to pay the fine. There's no such thing in Malaysia, no toll is chargeable while crossing from 1 state to another.

The journey after lunch was smooth and pleasant. We travelled along National Highways, NH-1 from Delhi up to Ambala, in Haryana State and we took a NH-22 all the way to Himachal Pradesh passing Chandigarh in Punjab State. NH-22 is a straight highways to Tibet/China border by road. We took a state road on a hilly slopes to Bilaspur for our next destination to Kullu and Manali.

After passing so many hill station, it was quite dark when we reached Shimla town. The driver did not noticed that he made a left turn instead of a right turn after a heavy traffic in Shimla. It was very far behind when we realised the mistake and we were too tiring to complaint and turned back. Thus, we proceeded and looked for a night to stay, instead. 

A view of 1 of the Hill Station

At a heavy traffic of Shimla's junction, where we missed a turning to Shimla.

To be continued....

Pune to Delhi, 16th December 2011

Today 6th April 2013, when I look back I have successfully completed more than 130 entries so far, something that I thought was very difficult to achieve. It is my hope that by June 2013 I will manage to clear all my travelogue entries. For today onwards, I wish to write about my family visit to India during a school vacation in December 2011. At that time, I was attached with the Pune-Solapur Expressway project.

At the Pune Airport to catch a Spice Jet flight to Delhi

Nazhif was having his SPM examination and Syahirah was on her 2nd semester final exam at the time of visit, thus, both couldn't make. Only hubby, Naim and Nasrul came via Air Asia from Kuala Lumpur to Mumbai. I went to Mumbai to fetched them and had to cancel few days vacation in Mumbai as the driver from Pune doesn't really know the Mumbai Road. We had to cancelled the trip and travelled straight to Daund, vide Mumbai-Pune Expressway. It was about 4 hours journey on the road. We made a stop at the rest area where the kids started to enjoy cheese pizza in India. To their surprise, the toilet facilities is quite decent.

Having Marathi's food on 14th December 2011

At the shopping mall on 14th December 2011

Hubby always wishes to travel up to Kashmir (from India side) as Malaysian were told not to go via Pakistan. In fact, my family never travelled to North Pakistan though we were there for 3 years. After much discussion, we finally agreed that we should travel to Delhi-Jaipur-Agra, hence, we need to take domestic flight from Pune to Delhi and get our Delhi friends to arrange a van for the travel on earth ground.

Stop for a view that we wont be able to see in Malaysia, on 16th December 2011

Upon arrival, my Delhi friends convinced hubby to change plan to Himachal Pradesh as playing snow at Kulu and Manali are much better choices than Agra or Jaipur. It was  a perfect decision where the boys, especially still having a bless and bliss feeling for the opportunity. We travelled altogether about 1,310km up and down.

Lunch with our Delhi friend on 20th December 2011

The next entries will be our travel as far as to Manali during a cold December winter.

Thank you for visiting!

Karachi Sea View - Schamil & the boys meeting place

Event date: 28th July 2009

It was lucky that the photos that I'm sharing in this entry are safely stored in the MacBook, not in the damaged hard disk to enable me recording herewith the date and the place Schamil was introduced and met the boys for the first time. It was on Tuesday afternoon of 28th July 2009, after work and after school time, we met at Karachi Sea View park.

Maznah, Schamil's mother and Ainnie are my best friends back there in Karachi. We became inseparable after meeting few times. Schamil's mother already warned the boys to ignore Schamil, that way, Schamil would be curious for them to greet him. Hence, that's what the boys did. Totally ignored and did not even looked into his direction.

After having enough time at the park which is facing an Arabian Sea, we went to our favourite restaurant, BBQ Tonight one of the most famous restaurant in Karachi. It is located in Clifton with a view of the ocean and now the magnificent Benazir Bhutto's huge park, recently open in 2012. For the record, 3 of them yet to speak and play with each other.

While waiting for the food to arrived, we, mothers, take pictures of ourselves first. We, 3 loves posing for the camera.

Out of sudden, while we were busy posing for the camera, Schamil had shifted sitting next to Nasrul. He's offering the boys his toys to play with.

This is part of the story of Nasrul & Naim with Schamil and my story with the girls, Maznah and Ainie. May our friendship lasted for a lifetime. 

Office Function (Chinese New Year 2013)

Event date: 28th February 2013

In IJM, we shall gather for all yearly function and celebration, i.e. Chinese Year Year, Eidhul Fitri, Deepavali and Christmas as we are a multi races international company. The functions are organised by the IJM Staff Association appointed committee.

Normally, functions shall start right after office hour ended at 1730 hour where the staff will hang around, catching up with each other. Staffs on project site sometimes attended too whenever they have time to travel back to our head quarters in Wisma IJM, Petaling Jaya.

The food was catered from management and staff's favourite choice. For example, this year we mostly have Eden (Famous franchise Malaysians restaurant) to serve their delicious various choice of meal including the BBQ lambs (seen in below photo).

This is our Chris, the chief (Staff Committee President, 2012-2013) who was given a task to satisfy our needs. Any complaints (we used to raise in our IJM blogs - now removed by our boss as we complaint too much) shall be on his shoulder. But Chris can take it, always a strong, cheerful, most motivated and brave man indeed :)

Since I've been working abroad most of the times, I did not have many opportunity to participate but this year, I even had my photo taken with the most important man who brought IJM as we are now, an international player in construction industry, Tan Sri Krishnan Tan. Tan Sri is a brilliant and humble man and rest assured that we ALL adore him.

A must celebrated dishes for us was having a Yee Sang where everybody in a table will stand and mix it using a chopstick as high as possible while saying loudly "YEE SANG", competing with other tables.

Food is only serve after the speeches by our bosses, Yee Sang and in between a show by invited groups performing special drum beats and Lion Dance. Foods are normally enough for all.

Not to forget various desserts that are available of the table, including an ice-cream and a special Malaysian ice kacang.

Ice kacang in the making

Guest performer going table to table offering sweets.

Below is the video that I was unable to convert to You Tube. I really wish that you be able to see the Lion Dance show that I am sharing using a Google conversion video using my IPhone 5 application.

Hong Kong - Disneyland, Part 2

Tour date: 11th December 2006

My girl with the sleeping beauty castle at the back in below photo. I couldn't upload another photo of her with Snow White due to blurry image. Pity her as the boys voted her out for exploration inside the castle as they were more keen to take adventurous ride.

They compromise for a small ride at Cinderella Carousel. Again, there was a long ques for the entry.

Passionately waited for the ride to go through.

All four of them inside the swirling cup at the Mad Hatter.

More shopping at Disney outlets for family and friends back home.

Nasrul used to be a huge fan of Buzz Light year. Though the Toy Story land was recently fully completed, there was already a small section for us to see the advertisement of the Toy Story land. The kids enjoyed the Toy Story movie till they all turn into teenage years.

This is the Future Land section. We had an amazing roller coaster ride inside without any photos of us.

A highlight of the night was a beautiful show, Disney in the Stars, a nightly fireworks show based on Fantasy in the Sky at other Disney parks. Fireworks and pyrotechnics are coordinated to orchestrated classic Disney musics such as "A whole new World" (where everybody singing together). The same show was first premiered on 12 September 2005 at the park's inaugural ceremony. I'm sharing some of the photos taken during the awesome show.

We needed to rush back to catch the bus that took us back to the hotel. The tour agent had specifically reminded again and again the time of bus pick-up so that we wont miss our bus. A way out was packed and too crowded with other people dashing out at the same time.

I hope one day, my children will bring my grandchildren to Hong Kong Disneyland and pray that I would be able to witness the event. Maybe, someday :)