Indonesian Coconut Shell Carving

When R and I were in Bali we saw some carved coconut shell lights in the markets, most of the designs were fairly simple. But when we went on a sightseeing trip to a temple outside of Ubud, we found this old man who had been carving coconut shells for his whole life. His designs (in the photo above) are quite elaborate and magical. We zeroed in on one that was really cool with monkeys carved in it, he said we picked his favorite work and wouldn't sell it, but showed us another that was similar. ...

The design also has monkeys, if you look hard you can see their bodies and arms and tails. It sits on another carved shell base.

Sometimes these lights are lit by candle, but we put a electric bulb in ours when we got back to Malaysia. It looks pretty cool at night as our master bedroom is dark brown so the light makes the room very moody. I tried to search more on Indonesian coconut shell carving, not much out there on the web.

POS Malaysia

Here's a shot of the main Seremban Post Office I snapped while waiting for R to pick up a package. In Malaysia the postal system is known simply as POS.

Lobster Claw Plants

It's been awhile since I've posted. This year has been a busy one already! I recently found some HUGE Lobster Claw plants (Heliconia family) that were blooming. I've never seen the plants so large, in fact, I've only seen small plants available once in Seremban. So I bought these three plants and planted them at the side of the house between our property and our neighbors. The Lobster Claw plants are quite popular in my neighborhood and around Seremban. I love them and have wanted a few for our yard. They have been doing well. There's not too much sun in the area as it is below a giant mango tree, but still these plants seem fine when watered once a day.

As I added the photo to Blogger, I remembered I had seen a number of Lobster Claw and Lobster Claw-like plants on my trip last year to Ubud in Bali (see the post here).

So I pulled up some photos I took in the gardens of the Rudana Fine Art Gallery. I guess I only took one of a Heliconia, where the claws go up instead of hang down like the ones I aquired. The garden was so pretty. . .

Kitchen

A Malaysia resident wrote and asked me for some current photos of the kitchen because he and his wife are embarking on a kitchen remodel at their home in Penang. So here are some photos.

A search of 'kitchen' on the right sidebar will provide you with links of all the posts of when ours was being designed and installed. We do love cooking in it and working together to prepare meals, there's enough space for us to move around and it's designed functionally. Our favorite part is perhaps the wood shelves where we put dishes out. I like to pull various dishes right from the ledge while cooking.

We are also very happy about the real Corian we spent the extra money on. It was a much better choice then marble because we didn't have to deal with seams.

The one thing we aren't thrilled about is the Stainless Steel table. While it looks fantastic and fills the space, it gets rusty if you don't wipe off the water. Actually all the stainless steel items (except the refrigerator which isn't really stainless steel but some kind of stainless looking material) get rusty if you don't keep them up. I never had this problem with my stainless steel appliances in New York.