This lazy blogger has just noticed that this year she's written so few posts compared to previous years. Work has been busier this year and I've also taken a lot of time off from using the computer to rest my mouse hand. Anyway, we went to Malta for our summer holiday this year and my throat is sore now. Hopefully it's only a sore throat and nothing much.
Malta is such a beautiful place to visit. The temperature was around 24-32'C. We were lucky enough not to have caught any rain. When we stopped by at a bar to have some drinks (we stopped a lot of times as it was hot and we got thirsty easily), the UK owner told us that the previous week had seen some rain as well as tornado. It actually got hotter and hotter the longer we stayed there as the first two days there was some cooler/stronger wind blowing. What I love about Malta is the local buses with air-con that come on schedule and there are plenty of signs everywhere. The people speak English very well and there are lots of public toilets, too. Lots of places to see, eat, drink, shop that are still cheaper than those in Finland. Oh, and let's not forget the many Japanese/Asian restaurants and massage places here and there too! LOL!!!
As we were travelling with MIL who has problems with her knees and a cousin, we took it easy and didn't visit too many places, though we did take plenty of photos. Here are the first batch of photos from Malta. Some of them were taken by mobile phone and some were taken by R2. R2 and his cousin went on a free boat ride along the coast. I didn't go because I have really bad sea sickness. They got the boat ride for free as we had taken a hop on and hop off bus tour the previous day.
The first photo was taken in a posh marina area. Lots of shiny yachts and boats there. The building on the far left side of the background is Hilton Hotel.
The second photo is St. Julian's Bay.
Below is a photo of St. George's Bay, the beach we went to twice. Malta has plenty more rocky beaches compared to sandy ones. We paid €20 for a full-day use of the sun loungers with parasols, the toilet, the shower and the price included a towel, too. Very handy! Plus there's a bar and restaurant on the left side. The right side (that has no sun loungers) is free to use, but there's no parasol there so you have to bring your own if you want to.
Below is a photo of a 5-star hotel somewhere.
Beautiful views from around the coast. Lots of historical and old buildings still in many places.
The dusk. :-)
I don't know what this is for, but this HUGE banner was seen as we were roaming around in Sliema area he he...
The vertical white figures on the mast were people graduating from some kind of marine school or something.
OK, I shall end this here and I'll share some more photos in another post. Let's just hope I don't get sick. Otherwise when you lose a momentum to write, sometimes it's hard to go back to the swing of things.
1. Hubby found himself in an old video (he only appeared for a few seconds), but it was great fun for me to watch his younger self (thinner with more hair LOL!) in the video he he... 2. My period finally arrived before my summer holiday officially started, so that means I'll be period-free on my summer holiday. YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYY!!!! 3. I didn't have to cook today as hubby had promised to buy some pizza. :-D 4. Went to a bookstore on a (rare) sunny day, found an acquaintance from Indo visiting this place, had a nice chit-chat with him, then I found a very interesting book on a discount (only €2). 5. I was looking for some dance songs to do some exercise at home and then I found this. And yes, I did follow the movements and had a blast HA HA HA HA HA HA...
6. And yes, you've guessed correctly! I did try out the other videos as well (some can be pretty tough for me, but still I had fun trying them out and I got really sweaty LOL!!!). These videos are great for a change compared to other exercise videos he he... 7. Watching funniest moments in Family Feud show in youtube. Some of the answers are hilarious!
A few weeks ago our nephews (and eldest nephew's fiancee) came over and they brought a cat with them and the cat reminds me of my one and only cat when I still lived at home in Indo as they're both ginger cats. You see, my mom never allowed us to have any pets (with the exception of fish) because she sold food for a living and she was afraid that the food would be contaminated/stolen/ruined. One day, though, an old female cat (our neighbour's cat) came to our doormat with a baby ginger cat and she was breastfeeding him. My mom allowed them to stay outside as long as they didn't get inside. I actually don't think she was the baby cat's mother, as it was rare for a cat mother to have only one baby (I know this because she had had some babies beforehand and I'd seen her try to move them around). This tiny little ball of ginger cat was so cute that I just had to try to pet him. He was pretty unique because his tail was a short swirl, so he could only move it a little bit (tick-tock movement) instead of swishing it about the way other cats could. He was so full of love and trust that I just fell in love with him just like that. However, knowing that my mom didn't like pets, I usually just pet him near the doormat and then let him go. One time, though, I picked him up and started petting him on my lap on the sofa and then he fell asleep! That was the moment that did it for me. :-D So since then we started feeding him (as he got bigger already) outside the house, though we wouldn't let him stay inside until we finally got my mom's approval. Yep, the ginger furball melted my mom's heart, so we took him in and he became our cat. He picked the corner sofa as his sleeping place. He could do his business already as the surrogate mom had taught him how to do it and he never jumped to our dining table, either. As he was an outdoor cat, he'd go out and play a lot, but whenever he was home and we were eating something, he'd beg us to give him some (very politely and gently, never clawing or stealing). I think, though, he was deformed or something because he never grew big. He did grow to perhaps 2/3 of a size of an adult cat, so he always looked so cute because of his smaller size. One time he went out to play and didn't come back for weeks and when he finally came back, he had probably gotten stuck somewhere because he was so dirty and my mom had to bathe him (yep, the mom that usually didn't want anything to do with a cat!). I have plenty of fond memories feeding him and scratching and petting him. He'd even let me pet him in his sleep. He never really liked it if his tail was touched, though. I suspected that he knew his tail was different, so he was self-conscious about it, but whenever he was purring happily as he was being petted, his swirly tail would go tick-tock tick-tock tick-tock. So cute! :-D Our only regret was that we never took pictures of him. At the end of his days, though, he got really sick and despite the fact that we took him to a vet and gave him medication, he kept on becoming more and more frail. He couldn't even jump to the sofa anymore, so I picked him up and set him on the sofa (thinking he wanted to rest), but he looked at me and meowed, begging me to put him back to the floor. I put him back gently to the floor and he left. That was the last time we had ever seen him. I think he didn't want us to see his last breath. We all shed some tears that day. Anyway, I took some photos of my nephew's cat, so here goes...unfortunately she didn't really like being petted, so my consolation was to take her photos ha ha ha...So imagine a smaller version of this cat with a swirly tail. That was our cat!
