And then there were seven

(Today's blogpost by our special guest, Nazma)

My parents are both turning 60 this year. Dad's birthday fell on February 26, so Farah came up with the idea of treating both of them to a trip. As relatively well-travelled as the Shivjis are, Southeast Asia remained largely unexplored, and so Kuala Lumpur became the meeting point for everyone. Only the Shivjis would come from three disparate continents to gather on a fourth!
And so it was that Mom, Dad, Farah, Arzoo and Aliya arrived at the hotel at 3am on the morning of Feb 21, the flight from Bangkok having been delayed (we thought they'd been quarantined, or that Dad had been caught with dried fruit in his pockets, since he seems to carry it wherever he goes).

By then we were quite familiar with KL, and the best places to eat and shop, so a considerable amount of time in KL was spent - what else? - shopping and eating. On their first day, Dad made a beeline for the first coconut stall he saw. And one 10-story shopping mecca boasted the craziest roller coaster any of us had ever seen.

After a few days in KL, the two "in-laws" (Arzoo and Lloyd) headed up to Taman Negara to explore what's been billed as the world's oldest rainforest (130million years - never touched by an ice age -- Lloyd will write more about this). As the core-Shivjis are not "roughing-it" types, we appropriately took a VIP bus to Singapore. While they fought off bees and leeches, we avoided all jay-walking and consumption of bubble gum for fear of canings.

We then all reunited in the historic city of Malacca (or Melaka), allowing Lloyd and I to make a return trip to what has probably been the best eating experience of our two months: satay celup. Picture this: a bowling vat of satay sauce in the middle of your table, constantly replenished, in which you dip your choice of sticks from a huge fridge. We devoured, in total, 108 sticks and three plates of chicken, periwinkle meat, clams, shrimp, the biggest prawns we've ever seen, squid, tofu, bean curd skin, spinach, beef, fish balls etc. (Apparently the record for a single man is 169, and 70 for a woman set by a normal-set girl from - where else? - the US.) What enhanced the experience was the outgoing and proud owner of Capitol Satay, Mr. Low. It's been the family business for three generations. On our first visit, upon learning we were Canadian, he immediately pulled out pictures and a business card for "Spicy Steve". Turns out Spicy Steve is from N. Van and has a show on Shaw cable, of all things, and will be featuring our man some time in March, so watch out.

To his dismay, though, neither of us came close to beating the record. But Lloyd did plan out how he would, if he were to ever try! (Stick to the small clam/shrimp sticks, and of course avoid the bread cubes they give you for dipping--surely a rookie mistake if there ever was one.) Overall a great evening.

The next evening, and our last together as the Seven, was Dad's 60th birthday. Arzoo's family (ever-generous) treated us to a fine dinner at a nice hotel, which was then topped off by karaoke where even Dad participated with his own rendition of "My Way" by Sinatra.

Sadly we all had to part ways the next day after a week that just flew by too quickly. But we were so glad to have had the opportunity to be together.