My Little cupcakes

Look at what I can do? I made these for Hazel who ordered them for her gathering of friends and the cupcakes below I did for Intan to share with her family who seem to love these little beauties. A box of 49 mini suspcakes cost $13 but the slightly bigger ones with chococlate ganache or M nMs cost $18 (36 pieces in a box) After a while they are quite fun to do although at first it was hard to conjur up nice designs.

The children ofcourse prefer the chocolate covered cupcakes and my little Zahra would ony pick the M n M's and lick off the icing!! E-mail me at jasminetaib@hotmail.com if you guys are interested. I also do Birthday cakes of different sizes and variety of styles with prices starting from $35 upwards. Another favourite are these mini pavlovas. They are available for $1.50 each. Really light and yummy. The large pavlova which is about 16 inches will cost $45.

The New GIANT Hypermarket

The easter holidays are almost over, as usual the kids are eating their way through whatever is in the fridge, cupboards and the pantry! So much so that my normal once a week shopping routine has had to be broken and today we finally made it to the new hypermarket Giant at Tasek Rimba. After going past it for several days and waiting for all the long Queues of cars going in to die down, we finally made it and even found parking quite easily.

So what's the big deal? It's a new concept of shopping in Brunei everything on sale under one roof, although their range of shops could have been greater rather than just the normal selling hairstuff for girls, tudongs and kains. For kids there is one play area in the middle which is quite full right now because of the school holidays. The seating area for the foodcourt which hosts around 6 or 7 stalls seems quite limited. But there are other eateries such as KFC and Jollibee and another Malaysian Food Outlet selling roast chicken for $14 per chicken!!

Yes so the place is huge and some items are cheap and the range of goods on offer especially Malaysian made products is quite tremendous, but.. I don't think it will beat Supasave in any way for Australian or UK products. Even their vegetables and range of fruits at 2.30pm today were looking a quite sad and very layu! So Hua Ho and Pasar Burong will still be a necessity. From time to time their offers might be worth a visit, Their beef products did not impress me at all, Supasave still a winner in that area nor did their bakery were on par with that at Suapsave, obviously it caters for the masses being a hypermarket but I have seen better Hypermarkets overseas. For now it will be a novelty to most and parking will be scarce for the next week or so, but most of their prices are at the same range as those offered by the other supermarkets. Obviously for us the consumers it will be good as there is now more competition and better prices all round.

Air of Change?

I have been mulling over how to change my blog as to whether I should commercialise it more to get proper (?- meaning other than family members) customers for my cakes or whether I should create 2 different blogs ie one for family news and general thoughts etc and another one for recipes and photos of cakes etc. But... at the end of the day my laziness has won over me and you know what, I think I should just improve this blog site instead so as not to confuse firends and create unnecassary waste of time for me also in updating 2 blogs ..eski banar jua kali tu ah kan ada 2 blog satu sudah payah-payah!!.

So I am in the midst of compiling my Blog Phlet as Ka Whiz calls them or a slide show of the cakes I have done and I will attach prices to the pictures. It's taking a while because I am not terribly good at downloading photos and arranging them if anybody is using a simpler method please do share your trick of the trade.

As for family news- the family all trouped down to the Empire Theatre last Saturday night to see Amin take part in the 10th Anniversary musical Gala. The show was very well put together and performed brilliantly with not just orchestra performances, but superb singing and entertaining dancers! It was nice to see familiar faces of friends of the children showing off their talents! Amin was part of the drum line and percussion team for the Orchestra and Jazz Band. He practiced real hard for the show and was so happy to be involved after all he is one of the original students of JIS having been there since the school was set up in 1997. It was particularly a proud moment Amin especially as his Grandpa was guest of Honour last Saturday. I could not get up close to take photos of Amin as we were quite high up and he was way at the back with the other percussionists. There have been some photos posted in http://www.ranoadidas.com/ though for those who missed the show though sadly there none of the drumline or percussionists!

I have also been following avidly the political developments in Malaysia considering my first thesis was on the disunity within BN and UMNO in the late 80's. It has taken 20 odd years for that disunity amongst party leaders and racial discontent to finally reach the grass roots level and cause such an upset in the elections. What an election! Despite what we see or hear on the general media, where everthing is ofcourse very pro BN,there were indeed rumblings of discontent on the internet via blogs etc for the last couple of years already, so you could say the oppostion had a head start in their campaigning!!..some views were indeed very radical and I myself did not really believe that the bloggers could have caused such an upset but maybe Malaysians were fed up and not contented with what was going on around them and their daily lives. It will be interesting to see now how things will develop in the opposition led states and how BN will reshape itself after this. Whatever it is I hope all goes well!!