And this is how I spent my Hari Raya in a country that has never heard of Ketupat .

Rented a beautiful beach house at east of downtown Toronto the whole week we were there..

Went boating..

Inukshuk-making and squirrel watching..

And managed to catch Cirque Du Soleil’s TOTEM! Boy, I thought I was flexible..

I also managed to sneak in h-o-t Dubai
(it was boiling 40 degree Celcius at night! Count your blessings, Malaysia..)
to visit my long lost soulmate who lives in Dubai right now with her husband.

and of course, to stand upside down for a while.

I swear I tried to challenge gravity with the tallest building in the world behind me, ahhhh.. but the Burj is too tall for full-blown inversion or else I could have repeated this seemingly signature pose in front of fancy cities’ landmarks.

Been home and back teaching again at Upward for a couple of day nows but sadly, haven’t had my share of my favourite vegetarian Hari Raya staples (ketupat & burasak, lodeh, lontong, sambal kacang) just yet.

Anybody’s throwing out Hari Raya open house today as we speak?

I know I have always been the smallest girl in my class since I was in primary school, boarding school, uni and even in the yoga classes I was teaching . And that is, in Malaysia – where the most girls ARE small anyway.

So can you imagine how small I am in Canada where the water is fresh and fromage is cheap?

Tiny mini Ninie.

Since I am only 5 feet tall (OK, 4 feet eleven three quarters and a half inches, LOL) and 40kg (88 lbs) – most of the time US size 0 and  UK size 6 is still big for me. So we had to settle into buying puffy screaming pink winter jackets and boots, KIDS SIZE obviously (and God knows I have been avoiding wearing pink like a plague).

This visit around, I realized something else.

Not only I’m tiny Ninie – but apparently I can look 12 too.

Get this:

• While spending a couple of days in a ski resort in Southern Ontario, P managed to sneak me in with Unlimited KID PASS! Ha haaa..

• After filling up a form manually for some rentals, the person-in-charge had to question me “I’m sorry but your birthyear is 1982 or 1992..” to validate my application. They think I’m 18 – HA HA HA HAA!

• And the best and most retold story this winter has got to be this:

Before we drove up to Blue Mountain where the ski resort is, we dropped by P’s old friend’s house near Georgian Bay.

P’s friend – Greg and his wife has two really adorable little girls, Alyssa aged 8 and Julia aged 3.

Alyssa is the one of smartest eight year-olds you will ever meet (if you’ve seen the movie Mammoth, she is just like Gael Garcia Bernal & Michelle Williams’ daughter, she even looks like her!). She talks like an adult, speaks perfect French, painfully funny and cute like a button!

She reminds me so much of my baby sister (whom I miss dearly at that time) so when P and Greg were catching up, Alyssa and I ended up spending time together doing what (tiny ) girls do – watch Cinderella DVD and colour Snow White books, ha haaa.. Seriously we did!

Her sister Julia on the other hand, was pretty grumpy the whole evening I arrived. She must have been thinking – who is this girl stealing my best friend / big sister!

Errrr, I made her dad pull me on her snowslider sled too,
no wonder she wasn’t friendly! LOL

But the next morning, as I braided Alyssa’s hair, Julia finally warmed up to me and offered me a rubber band (they call it ‘elastic’ there). I was greatly touched!

As I was about to take it from her hand, she pulled it back, ran to P that was sitting on a couch and put it on his head (as if I won’t be able to reach it if he stands up lah).

And then from across the living room she screamed “YOUR ELASTIC IS ON YOUR DADDY‘S HEAD!”

* LOLROTF until I fell in the snow! *

She thought P was my DADDY as Greg is hers all along!

.   .   .   .   .   .  .

I think I told this story like, a good hundred times to P’s family all over Ontario and to my friends when I got back and I still LMAO.

Petrovsky doesn’t really appreciate it, of course so his rebuttal story has been, “Yeah, and people look at me at the airport like I smuggled a young Asian BOY into Canada.”

Not that funny, you know ..

..with a country so beautiful,

.

so green

.

so cool (and cold!)

.

filled with world’s wonders

.

and lovely healthy food (and people) everywhere,

Happy National Day, Canada!

Thank you for simply asking!

Yes, I am alive and am counting my blessing for having survived magnitude 5.0 earthquake, tornado

and the scariest (and standing!) rollercoster in the world – here.

Love and live life.

Speaking of the other side of the world, I am now at

the home of Lululemon, M.A.C, Alanis Morissette, errr.. Justin Bieber and the one who’s got my heart