Loving Life

An unforgettable family day

2011-11-26T23:11:00.000+08:00

My only Zinnia Pompon plant died after too much exposure to the sun.

The cat pooped into the 2 pots of new plants I sowed and destroyed everything. The damn cat also buried my one and only Arctic Fire seedling which I just saved and praying hard that it could survive this catastrophe!

But amidst all these gardening mishaps, today is a perfect day to celebrate!

Because we won a 46" Samsung LED TV from my company's family day event.

We won the grand prize in the lucky draw!

Unbelievable!

Now -- 8 hours later, it still feels rather surreal... for we never had such luck in lucky draws. The only 2 times I won something from a lucky draw was during my secondary school day where I got a new reference book on geography. And another was during one of my first job's annual dinner where I won a water filter worth about RM100+. Hubby's record was even worse.

But this time, it's a TV!

A flat screen TV!

And a 46" too!

Wow!

Initially we only decided to attend the family day event because it took place at the zoo and we had wanted to bring the kids to the zoo. And it so happened that this event cropped up and we thought why not, since it's FOC and we get to save on the ticket fees! :P

Knowing that there would be a lucky draw event, we did not harbour much hope because during last year's family day event, we did not even get any gifts from the lucky draw.

Today, while they were picking winners for the smaller prizes I was envying the lucky lot. When they came to the top three prizes I had partially given up hope. When the third prize was announced, hubby even joked about throwing away our tickets!

QianHui wanted to go to the washroom to poop when they were about to announce the grand prize winner. I got up and was about to leave, when I heard them announce the first 2 digits '05' which matched ours!

I was feeling blank inside as they announced the third digit '8' which matched ours too! Hubby who was already super excited, stood up and shouted to the Country HR Manager, K, who was announcing the result, asking loudly "7, 8 or 9?!". K showed a blank expression, probably partially surprised that hubby shouted the correct number... then he softly said "8".

I was holding my breath, did he just announced the fourth digit or did he just repeat the third digit???... Then, he announced the full number "0588" and I did not know what happened next...

Somewhere in between, hubby dashed down to claim our lucky prize. And amidst chaos, hubby was back at my side with the TV. Friends came over to congratulate us and I suddenly remembered that QianHui wanted to poop! So I rushed to the washroom with her in tow! :P

On the way back, hubby and I kept telling each other how surreal this is. For the 2 of us who never had much luck in lucky draws, this is like a super breakthrough!

Hope this will be the first of many to come! ^_^

Arctic Fire Dianthus has finally sprouted!

2011-11-04T15:33:00.000+08:00

It sprouted 13 days after sowing. But it is one damn lonely plant. This is the only survivor from the 10 seeds that I sowed.

A lonely Arctic Fire Dianthus (16 days old)

Oh well, better than none I guess. But it's very risky now that all my eggs are in this one tiny little "basket"...

Even the batch of Canterbury Bells which I've given the "stratification" treatment (3 days in the fridge -- not sure if it's the correct way though) have sprouted.

Canterbury Bells seedlings from direct sowing at normal temperature (16 days old)

Canterbury Bells seedlings after 3 days of cold treatment then moved to room temperature (16 days old). But this one sprouted later than the batch above...

Another lonely plant: the Zinnia Pompon (14 days old). But I still have more seeds for second attempt at germination...

The Balsam Camellia (14 days old)... looks like this is the healthiest of the lot! Time to transplant to other pots though... only if I can find the time.

New hobby: Gardening

2011-10-26T15:44:00.002+08:00

Yupe, I now officially declare gardening as my latest hobby! :P

It all started after my mom gave me 2 pots of moss roses. Seeing all those colourful blooms daily really made my day. Both QianNing and QianHui were ecstatic everytime I brought them out to look at the flowers. I can't believe that we've been staying in this home for 4 years now and never ever thought of planting some flowers!

A few weeks back, as we were shopping at a hypermarket I bought myself a packet of aster seeds. The seeds sprouted just a few days after I planted them. The sense of satisfaction was huge. And I thought why not plant more of these stuffs, and I'll have a colourful front porch all year round!

17 days old aster (not sure which species though)
So I googled to see if I can get my hands on some other flower seeds online and guess what, I stumbled onto this wonderful site: http://iris33.blogspot.com/

I ordered 6 packets of seeds and received them in 4 days.

Canterbury Bell, Dianthus deltoides Arctic Fire, Five Spot, Zinnia Pompon, Balsam Camellia and Cosmos Bipinnatus "White Psycho" seeds. The packaging came with short instructions on how to plant the seeds. The detailed planting instructions can be found on her website.
It's been almost a week now since I planted some of the seeds and I'm truly excited because most of them have sprouted! ^_^

5 days old Zinnia Pompom (not sure why only 1 sprout as I planted quite a number of seeds... keeping my fingers crossed that the rest will show up soon)

5 days old Balsam Camellia
And the greatest excitement is this tiny little sprout from the Canterbury Bell seeds! This plant is not for beginners like me but I really like the flowers and so I decided to give it a try. I was supposed to treat the seeds with stratification but I wasn't too sure how to do it correctly. I decided to germinate half of the seeds the normal way ie. just water and soil with normal temperature. And the remaining half, I stored with damp paper towel + soil in my fridge. The funny thing is that, the ones I planted without stratification sprouted first! Well probably I did the stratification the wrong way... anyway, it's still great to see the Canterbury Bell sprouts. The next challenge is to wait for 1 year for the first blooms (that's what the online articles say anyway)...

7 days old Canterbury Bell (see the sprout on the right of the pink dot)

Of blue skies and a rainy day

2011-10-15T21:10:00.000+08:00

I've been messing a lot with my new camera, trying out the settings and getting used to it.

So far it has been doing nothing but amaze me!

Take the blue sky below for example, taken with one of the default settings (which I can't remember... duh!) on vivid colour and without a polarizer. It really blew me off. I know this is really nothing compared to those taken by professionals, but still... I really love the effect... well, minus the distracting buildings and the power cable of course! :P

Today it was raining the whole afternoon, and it gave me the perfect opportunity to try out the shutter priority mode -- to capture the rain drops! :)

Fei Fei Crab Restaurant

2011-10-08T22:21:00.001+08:00

Had dinner at Fei Fei Crab Restaurant after seeing the review on foodpoi.

As there were only 2 of us with the kids, we did not manage to order too much food. We had a plate of Fried Sin Chew Bee Hoon (RM12 for 2), Stir-fried Sweet Potato Shoots, Sizzling Seafood Platter (RM20) and their Milky Salted Egg Crab With Buns (XXL crabs were priced at RM52 per kg while the buns costed RM4).

Milky Salted Egg Crabs
Overall, we liked the crab best. The gravy was so yummy, with just the right degree of rich buttery flavour and a hint of heat from the dried chillies. The buns were probably cousins of the Gardenia Bread because they're so good that you can even eat it on its own! (OK stupid joke I know... :P)

The rest of the dishes were OK. The Seafood Platter was a little too sourish to my liking. We'll probably go back again for the crab dishes. They have a decent variety of dishes on their menu which look interesting and probably worth a try.

Sizzling Seafood Platter

Be-earlied birthday present!

2011-10-08T13:20:00.000+08:00

Hubby bought me the Canon EOS 600D, my first ever DSLR! ^_^

Which is also a dream come true! For I had always wanted to take photos like these:

And these:

Although our Canon Ixus has always been a trustworthy camera, but there are times that we'd wished that we can capture those special moments with better effect/quality.

Am still trying to get used to the endless possibilities that we can create with the DSLR. Having been using point-and-shoot all my life, this new toy really overwhelms me a little. But I'm excited nevertheless, to discover new things about it each time I use it.

Apart from being obsessed with the new "baby", I'm now also obsessed with Photoshop.

Oh yes, I'm vain like that! :P

It's all in the mind

2011-08-29T15:04:00.000+08:00

It's all in the mind. I saw a classic example of this today.

QianHui and QianNing have always wanted a pair of earrings (being the vain kids they are).

This morning, QianHui told me that she wanted a pair of earrings too.

I told her in order to wear earrings, we must pierce our ear lobes and it will bleed and will be painful. She was put off a little but seeing how she longed for it, I decided to give her a substitute.

I searched for my box of nail beads and took out four pieces, a pair for QianHui and a pair for QianNing.

I took some paper glue which can be easily removed, to stick the beads onto their earlobes.

When I stick the first bead onto QianHui's earlobe, she went "Ouch!".

I was so amused. She must be thinking that I was piercing her earlobe.

I told her I wasn't piercing her earlobe, just sticking on a bead. Then, I proceeded to stick on the second bead on the other earlobe and she went "Ouch!" again. LOL! :P

They were so happy with the "earrings" and kept dancing as if they had hit the jackpot!

QianHui and her butterfly shaped "earrings"

Facebook vs Blogger and Ariel vs Oreo

2011-08-17T16:33:00.000+08:00

I find that the existence of Facebook partially contributes to my MIA episodes here.

I wanted to jot some of my feelings down just now and I automatically turned to FB. Then, I realized I wanted to have this feeling preserved for my children to see. So I came here instead. But in the past year or so, I bet FB won the battle many many times when such situation arose.

Anyway, I just wanted to write down the below:

Qian Hui was watching The Little Mermaid with me and half-way through, she said "I don't want Ariel. I want to watch Oreo".

I launched a browser and went to Google Search > Images and loaded a full page of Oreo cookies, "You wanna watch these?"

QianHui nodded and said yes.

And so we sat there and stared at the Oreo cookie images.

Kids... they don't need logics nor reasons.

Made a bad decision and living the consequences

2011-07-16T13:26:00.002+08:00

I made a big decision this week.

I don't know if it is the right or wrong decision. But I guess it's a bad decision.

Screwed up big time, and my conscience was haunting me.

Then, decided to come clean about it. Thought maybe it'll end up like George Washington and the cherry tree story.

But not all stories end up like fairy tales.

Got scolded head to toe for it. Can't even remember when was the last time I got scolded like that.

Anyway, at least it made me feel better than hiding the truth and pretend nothing happened.

Sorry doesn't change a thing.

But it does make me feel better.

Unleashing the J.K. Rowling in me

2011-07-09T17:06:00.000+08:00

I wish.

One of my childhood ambitions was to be a fiction author. Obviously I did not end up as one... which must be a good thing.

But having 2 kids, has made room for me to express my creativity in this area (...or maybe the lack of it).

I'm an impatient person. Telling bedtime stories that starts with "Once upon a time" and ends with "And they lived happily ever after" does take up a lot of time.

So, I started to cook up shorter bedtime stories for Qian Ning and Qian Hui.

My typical bedtime stories revolve around a kid named Xiao Bing Bing.

And the story line usually goes like this:

1. Xiao Bing Bing does something bad (normally I pick some bad behaviour that Qian Hui or Qian Ning is prone to show)
2. A policeman shows up at the doorstep and warns Xiao Bing Bing never to repeat that behaviour again
3. Xiao Bing Bing turns over a new leaf

Yeah, I know. These kind of stories will bore anyone to death. Hubby for one is so sick of them.

But the thing is, when you're a kid, everything your parents do are the best and the coolest.

So night after night, Qian Ning and Qian Hui will request for another Xiao Bing Bing story, as if this is the next big hit after Harry Potter.

And poor hubby has to relive the torture day after day...

Aaah... the privilege of being a mother...

LOL! ^_^

A day I will never forget...

2011-06-23T22:19:00.000+08:00

Today, someone shared a sad experience of losing his son through a car accident 2 years ago.

He paused a while after he broke the first sentence.

I could almost feel his pain... Before I knew, tears started rolling down my face.

My mind was clouded after that, I was partially crying for his pain... and partially crying for mine. For the pain I felt after that accident at MIL's home last year was slowly creeping back.

If I had been a little bit unluckier, I would have suffered similar loss.

It was the noon of first day of CNY. Hubby and I decided to cook the lunch for that day and requested MIL to look after QianHui. We put her into the baby walker. We've always been very careful when we do so by ensuring that the doors to the stairs were always closed, because MIL's house is a 3-storey shop house where the ground floor is rented out to a coffee shop and we stay at the 1st and 2nd floor.

Cooking takes place at the 1st floor and that day, the adults were sitting around and kids were playing at the 1st floor while we did cooking at the back.

Around noon, some relatives arrived to have lunch and as everyone was busy chatting and catching up, someone left the doors opened.

QianHui who was in the baby walker took no time to move to the door and before anyone could realize, went out the doors towards the staircase.

SIL saw it after that and quickly rushed out to pull QianHui back.

But she was too late.

QianHui practically rolled down the flight of stairs in her baby walker. We were lucky that the base of the baby walker was heavy and she did not topple while going down. She fell when she reached the end of the stairs and hit the shoe rack, bumping a large bruise on her forehead.

When SIL rushed out to pull QianHui, I was at the kitchen. Upon hearing her shouting, I almost knew it must be an accident involving one of my daughters. I dashed out so quickly and when I did not see QianHui among the crowd gathering at the top of the stairs, my heart almost stopped beating. I ran down only to see SIL carrying QianHui up and she almost lost her voice crying.

I wanted to cry so much but I was tearless. I tried to comfort her but to no avail. She cried herself to sleep while we were rushing to Sunway Medical Centre's A&E. I felt so helpless. I was so scared seeing her fell asleep, as if I would lose her by just letting her do that.

After the doctor confirmed that QianHui was okay and only suffered minor bruises on her forehead and her knees, she then sent us home.

Tears only kicked in later in the evening when we were having dinner and reality slowly sank in... of how bad things could've turned out...

Nowadays, whenever QianHui learned a new thing or does something worth remembering. The back of my mind can't help but to remind myself that I almost never had the chance to see that.

Almost...

Confidence booster for self

2011-06-21T15:00:00.019+08:00

Dear Sook Fan,

Remember this day and come back to read this when you doubt yourself.

An important day when someone sincerely looked you in the eyes and told you that he knows talent when he sees it and that you have got huge potentials to go far.

And you trust that he meant it.

Remember this day and these words.

From,
Sook Fan

Teeth that never queue up

2011-06-06T12:46:00.001+08:00

Chinese have a famous saying frequently used for threatening little kids to always be honest.

They say, if you lied, you'll lose your teeth (or molars to be specific).

The other day, I was telling the same thing to Qian Ning. And I showed her my lost tooth as evidence.

You see, I lost one of my permanent premolar teeth. And it sort of caused my lateral incisor and canine teeth to grow slightly out-of-place.

Bottom line is, I have misaligned teeth and a visible gap (where the premolar used to sit).

Upon seeing my teeth and hearing my ~~lie~~ advice on the consequences of lying, Qian Ning kept quiet.

After a while, she said: "Mommy's teeth never queue up".

I was speechless...

Give her a fish or teach her to fish?

2011-06-03T09:24:00.000+08:00

Daddy bought Qian Ning and Qian Hui a set of magnetic fishing toy the other day.

I opened up the package and thought of wanting to teach Qian Ning how to fish. After showing her a few times how to "catch" the fishes using the fishing rod with a magnetic bait, Qian Ning was all excited to try it on her own.

At first she did not get the gist of keeping her hands steady so that the bait would land accurately near the fish's mouth. She was using just one hand to hold the fishing rod and the bait was swaying left and right non-stop.

So, I insisted that she used both her hands to balance the fishing rod.

Still it did not work. And she reverted back to using one hand.

I kept on reminding her to use both hands whenever she did that. The cycle continued until a point that both her and myself started to get frustrated.

Qian Hui who was at the side was starting to meddle and splashing water here and there. I switched my attention to Qian Hui in an attempt to keep her still.

Then, I noticed Qian Ning managed to catch a fish. Then two, then three... up until all the fishes were removed from the pail of water.

And you know what?

She was using just one hand to hold the fishing rod. And it worked like a charm for her.

It suddenly struck me. Why was I so insistent of her doing it "my" way when obviously her way worked better for her?

And I realized, sometimes you don't need to teach your child how to fish, because they can fish just fine.

So, give her a fish or teach her to fish?

Obviously it's neither for me.

Just let her fish...

Silly doctor vs stupid patient

2011-05-31T13:24:00.000+08:00

Doctor: What's your problem?

Me: (in raspy voice) I have sore throat and runny nose.

Doctor: Do you have fever?

Me: No

Doctor: Do you have problem swallowing?

Me: No

Doctor: Is it painful?

Me: No

Doctor: (looks at me with this expression partially accusing me of trying to cheat for a medical leave then points to his throat) Sore throat? Painful?

Me: (Pause because I was stupefied by my own answer and then I flashed him the "No, I'm not cheating for a medical leave!" look) Sore throat pain lar...

Doctor: OK

I was wondering...

Why the heck did he ask "Is it painful?", if the answer he expected was "Yes" (plus I was already voiceless)?

And why the heck did I reply "No" to that question?

*slaps self*

T____T

Thomas The Train vs Transformers?

2011-05-27T09:35:00.000+08:00

Qian Hui's daily task is to bug whomever at home to play DVDs after DVDs of movies and songs.

Today, after playing the Chinese New Year songs for the gazillionth time, she requested for another movie.

She kept saying, "I want Ton-mas, I want Ton-mas..."

I was confused because she would normally only request for movies that we own. We don't have any DVDs for Thomas The Train at home.

I flipped through our collection of DVDs aimlessly.

Then she excitedly stopped me and pointed to our Transformers DVD, and repeated "I want Ton-mas".

LOL!... turns out "Ton-mas" is actually "Transformers".

:P

I lied and I was busted...

2011-05-27T09:00:00.000+08:00

Qian Ning and Qian Hui are scared of the barking sound from our neighbour's dog (which just loves to bark like mad during bedtime). To allay their fear, I put the Elmo doll beside their pillows and pretended to talk to him.

Me: Elmo, sit here and if the dog barks again, beat him up! (yes, I'm a violent mother sometimes)

Elmo: OK... (of course, that's just me pretending to talk like Elmo in a squeaky voice to acknowledge myself)

Then I started to pat Qian Hui in the dark and waited for them to fall asleep.

All of a sudden, Qian Ning said, "You lied."

Caught by surprise, I asked, "Huh?..."

She continued, "Elmo cannot talk. He has no teeth. He ate too much candy."

Me:... *speechless*...

I don't want what's yours

2011-05-19T19:32:00.000+08:00

And I don't care what's mine.

I just want us to be nice to each other.

Today started pretty well... until something happened at work. I may be taking things a little personal. Heck, I don't even know why I feel this way.

Have you ever feel bad for no apparent reason?

Or maybe there is one.

Perhaps I should ask: Have you ever feel bad, by just sensing the defensive vibes that another person sends you? And that person probably doesn't mean it, but still you just feel bad about it?

I don't know how to explain this.

I tend to get this feeling a lot lately. That I'm getting the cold treatment for something I've never done.

At some point, I really feel like telling them: Whatever thing that you think I'm trying to do, I'm not really doing it? And I don't even give a damn about it, so please stop behaving defensive all over it.

*sigh*

I think I'm just being over-sensitive...

Damn.

This feeling is crappy.

My email to SGIVC after a sleepless night

2011-05-14T04:48:00.000+08:00

To whom it may concern (although I suspect no one gives a damn!)

Can I please be updated if my reservation cancellation has been done?

Oh but wait! My email must have been received at 3:01pm thus the extension of another working day for reply.

OK whatever!...

We're at your mercy now anyhow.

Plus, I'm writing this at 4am+ in the morning because I'm losing sleep over how to tell my mom that I most probably won't be able to bring her to the promised vacation to Kuantan because I can now only book 1 room for any holidays with SGIVC. Some "terms & condition" your sales agent never told us when we bought this stupid membership. But I understand... probably not trained well enough to sell us the full details? Or could they been trained too well in that matter?!...

Oh but then again, I can always use additional money to book some other hotel rooms. Or book at Swiss Garden itself! How's that? Sounds great right?! SGIVC member paying to book at their home-based hotel. Funny indeed!

You laugh on my behalf please.

Ever since we signed up with SGIVC, it has been a downhill experience ever since. We now know fully-well that we've signed up for something very much below par from what we're promised with.

But can you please have a heart and don't let us feel *this* bad?

All we ask for is just let us use up the yearly allocation.

I'm OK with getting stuck on just your home-based hotels that amount to just the fingers on one hand (and 3 on the same location mind you!)...

I'm OK with having to pay for the not-so-high-quality surcharge local hotels (which I have to make complaints here and there during each stay!)...

BUT I'm absolutely NOT OK with being allowed to only book 1 room for each stay!

You guys sold the advantage of FAMILY vacation. You REALLY should have told us that it does NOT include extended family! And that it does not include grown-up children. Imagine when my 2 kids grow up... Do you expect husband and wife plus 2 adult (kids) to cram in 1 room for FAMILY VACATION?! Thank you so much!

People who receive this email, you really should forward this on to your management. I was so pissed off when I did not manage to book the 2 units I want on Tuesday, but I know it's no point scolding the lady at the other end. In fact, I always think it must be so painful to be an operator at SGIVC. You must be talking to pissed off customers all year round!

I'm going off back to sleep now... but I suspect it'll be impossible. Still have to figure out about my mom's part you see... on Mother's Day month somemore! Damn.

I hope people who made big money in SGIVC and the sales agent that withheld information on purpose sleep well at night knowing fully well that they have gained the hard-earned money from people like us by selling things that they never have the capability to provide.

Thanks for your attention (although I still suspect no one gives a damn!)

Regards,
Sook Fan

p.s.: Sorry if my words are harsh, but put yourself in my shoes. I very pissed off, you see. I promise to write a more polite mail next time, when I'm my usual self. But I guess you guys know promises are just promises most of the time.

Honey Wheat Black (well, maybe not so...) Bread

2011-05-08T17:53:00.002+08:00

I made this bread today, and I'm happy to announce that I've found myself another keeper.

This bread is so soft and easy to make. And it's simply delicious!

I got the original recipe while hunting for a copycat recipe for the Cheesecake Factory brown bread. I had that bread when I was in US years ago and until this day, the yummyliciousness of that bread still lingers in my mind. Hubby happens to love this bread too, so I had wanted to try making this at home for quite sometime now.

I halved the recipe and substituted the water with milk, and the granulated sugar with brown sugar. The end result was not exactly a replica of the bread from Cheesecake Factory, but I'm certainly not complaining.

I think this makes a good loaf of bread, to be eaten plain or with just a slab of butter.

The only thing I'd change the next time I make this is probably to change the ratio of bread flour to wheat flour (reducing the latter and increase the former) because I'd prefer a firmer loaf. And I'd probably knead the dough a little longer. I only kneaded it a little as the dough was pretty soft and sticky. I also omitted the colouring that makes the bread black so mine turned out a light brown which is okay for me.

Also making mental note not to soak the oat so long in milk (I must've had mine soaked for about 20mins or more and it turned out mushy). I saw one bread recipe that calls for the oat to be soaked only a few mins before spreading them onto the dough for baking.

Here's the recipe after being halved and with modifications (and I used the Pioneer Woman's bread recipe steps where the milk is scalded). This makes a small loaf of bread (ie. almost the size of a loaf of Gardenia bread):

Honey Wheat ~~Black~~ Bread:

3/4 cup of milk
1 tbs of unsalted butter (and some to brush onto the baked loaf)
1/4 cup of honey
1 cup of bread flour (I also used a little bit more for kneading as the dough was pretty sticky -- about 1/4 cup)
3/4+ cup of whole wheat flour
1/2 tbs of cocoa powder
1/2 tbs of brown sugar
1 tsp of instant coffee
1/2 tsp of salt
1+ tsp of instant yeast
1/3 tsp of bread improver
2 tsp of oat to be soaked in milk for about 3 mins

1. Heat the milk, butter and brown sugar until near boiling point. Leave to cool until just slightly warm before adding the yeast.
2. Let yeast bloom for 5 mins, then add salt, honey, instant coffee and mix to combine.
3. Add the sifted bread flour, wheat flour, cocoa powder and bread improver into the mixture.
4. Knead on a surface dusted with flour about 10 mins (I had to add some more flour to make it not too sticky to knead).
5. When the dough is smooth, cover and let rest until double the size. Punch out the gas.
6. Shape and place into greased loaf pan.
7. Let it rest another hour (it will rise again into a puffy loaf).
8. Spread oat on loaf.
9. Bake at 177 degree Celcius for 20-25 mins.
10. Remove from oven and brush the top with butter.

Oh by the way, hubby printed this out and asked the princesses to color them. It's a gift to me for Mother's Day. Being the picky me, I complained that the lower lips should not be purple and I insisted that Qian Ning adds the "my" after "Mom" because that's how they call me.

But despite all that, I'm loving it! :)

Why?!

2011-04-14T12:35:00.001+08:00

People in the room continued to yak away...

I tried to shut my ears without appearing so.

The more I listened, the more I felt like escaping.

Suffocated.

Tensed.

If only I could be some place else...

Never in my life had I hated where I was so much!

The good old days...

Remembering them only made me felt all the more frustrated for being there.

Here.

Have I been conditioned so much to only survive in one type of environment?

Maybe I'm just incapable.

My fault?

I longed for the day, when I could announce to the world: I QUIT!

That I'm so fed-up with everything around here.

That I hated everything around here.

That I'm so sick of the way the game is played around here.

And to tell everyone to get a life!

But longing aside, I don't even know if I have the courage.

Or the ability.

Or the strength to survive whatever is waiting. Out there.

This place... is definitely not my comfort zone.

But why am I so weak that I don't know how to walk away from all these nonsense?

Why?!

The new kitchen cabinet... at last!

2011-04-09T23:08:00.001+08:00

The dry kitchen cabinet is completed, at last!

Although there are still some minor touch-up to be done, but we're more or less there.

The kitchen cabinets were done by D'Format Cabinet Shop again.

It has been like a roller coaster ride, seeing the dry kitchen transforming...

The feeling of excitement, disappointment, relief and gladness all entangled, taking their turns in torturing us!

We scared ourselves silly, thinking that we have made the wrong choice of maroon colour for our cabinets. The cabinet doors arrived with their protective film still intact, which made the maroon colour looked brownish.

That was the first disappointment (or so we thought!).

And then the sales person who did the measurement made a mistake. It resulted with a cabinet on top of my fridge that had barely any gap from my fridge... which looked really ridiculous!

Bummer.

Luckily the manager of D'Format Puchong, Jack Hee, willingly replaced the cabinet for us with no additional cost. It took a few more days though to get the new doors for the cabinet.

So while awaiting the replacement doors, the kitchen was in this state for a number of days, which paled a lot in comparison to the wet kitchen cabinets.

*Minor heartache*
Today, after painting the ceiling and walls of the kitchen, we finally came to the moment of truth.

Peeling off the protective film from the cabinet doors, I was all giddy like a little girl unwrapping her birthday present!

To our relief, the cabinet looks so much nicer and the colour is what we have picked after all!

Yay! :P

We're loving it!

Obsessed with red

2011-03-25T15:12:00.003+08:00

There is no doubt about it, I am obsessed with *red* lately.

I think the reason is our non-existent dry-kitchen -- of which the cabinet guys will come and assemble tomorrow.

Yay! ^_^

We opted for red, quite a contrast to our black-coloured wet kitchen. But hey, it's been our dream kitchen.. for like... since forever!

Anxious...

I doubt I can sleep well tonight...

Anyway, here's a new wall shelf from Ikea which we installed onto the wall behind our TV.

As you would've guessed, it's red... and I'm loving it to the max! I lost sleep over it for a few days after it landed at our living room.

Yes, I've been having a lot of sleepless nights lately.

Too excited.

Red is bad.

But red is pretty. :)

And to top it all off, here's a pair of red pants I made for QianHui. It's my first time sewing a pair of pants, despite the desire to do so for a very very long time.

I used the tutorial and pattern from MADE which I would say is kind of fool-proof. It's pretty straightforward and there are detailed steps with pictures to follow.

The only thing stopping you from getting a pair of departmental store bought look-alike is probably your workmanship... just as in my case... bleh...

But still, I think this is not too bad considering it's my first pair and I do not have a serger to take care of the seams (so as usual I had to use French seams which makes it all the more complicated for a beginner like me). I opted to sew back-fold hems for the pants but it turned out disastrous, and so I did what I do best -- hide the imperfection with some ribbon ruffles... LOL! :P

Oh well, the bottomline is QianHui likes the pants and I'm happy and that's all that matters! :P

Reading again

2011-03-14T14:12:00.005+08:00

It has been years since I last properly finished reading a good book.

I used to read a lot when I was younger. But ever since I have kids, the only books I've been reading are children story books and books like "My First Words", "My First Numbers", "My First Shapes"... you get the idea...

The end of last year marked the resurrection of my reading interest. Eat, Pray, Love was the first book I bought in like... what, six or seven years?!...

Then I bought two other books after surveying which are the most popular books recommended recently. I settled for "The Help" and "A Thousand Splendid Suns".

Eat Pray Love:

A book on the adventure of a woman, Liz, travelling alone to Italy, India and Bali -- after a messy divorce and a break-up.

I read this book half-way, watched the movie then finished reading the remaining. So if you asked me whether the book or the movie is better, I really have no idea because I couldn't differentiate them anymore.

This is a good read as it has a lot of facts on the places that Liz visited, but that is also the distracting part for me because at times I felt like reading a travel guide rather than a story book.

There are many funny moments in the book, but the one that gave me the deepest impression came from the movie at the part where Liz's Italian friends taught her that she needs to speak Italian with her hands, not just with her mouth. I don't think you can find that in the book though.

You can basically see the journey of a woman who has everything in life, turned into someone who has nothing. And through 2 years of travelling through the unknowns, ended up with everything in life again. If you need something to make you see life in a more optimistic way, this is the book for you.

The Help:

The story revolves around the lives of black maids living in the Mississippi during the 1960s where they were mistreated and racial discrimination was deemed "normal".

This is a very moving read as the story was told from the point of view of two black maids, Abilene and Minny, and that from a white woman journalist named Skeeter.

Skeeter wanted to help the maids to highlight the mistreatments that they were going through but at that time, questioning the "rights" for the coloured people was a sensitive issue and it only meant that one was inviting for troubles (sounds familiar?).

I particularly like the storyline around Abilene and the white baby that she looked after, Mae Mobley. How despite the way Abilene was being treated, she loved the baby to bits and ensured that Mae Mobley was taught to grow up as a good person.

Despite the sad backdrop, there were quite a number of laugh-out-loud moments in the story. Yes, I was really laughing out loud while burying my nose in the book.

What can I say? I think this book will make a good movie!

A Thousand Splendid Suns:

This too is a very touching story about two women in Afghanistan.

Mariam was an illiterate plain-looking girl born out of the wedlock who grew up out in the nowhere with a wrathful mother and occassional visits from her father who was too embarassed to let others know of her existence.

Laila who was years younger than Mariam, was a pretty young girl who was well-educated in a family where the father was a lecturer and believed that the only way to a better future for his daughter was through education.

But both ended up married at the age of fifteen, to Rasheed who never thought twice about hitting his wives when he felt like it (unless they're pregnant -- and make sure it's a son while they're at it).

The story talks about how these two women grew from hating each other to the point where they're willing to sacrifice for each other. And how they survived the war in Afghanistan and the wars within the fours walls of a place they called home.

A book that will make you cry for these women out there...

Febrile seizure: The shock of my life

2011-03-14T10:27:00.001+08:00

Yesterday morning, we discovered that QianNing was down with fever.

It was a rather high fever but we did not have a thermometer to check as we were at my in-laws' house. We fed her some fever medicine and decided to head back home by noon.

On the way back, she threw up and became very lethargic. I could sense that her temperature was very high (more than anything I've felt on her before).

When we reached home, I quickly cooked some pasta for her as she refused to drink her milk or eat any bread. I wanted to give her some food before feeding her the second dose of fever medicine. And in the midst of all that, it did not cross my mind to check her temperature. She must have been over 39 degree celcius for quite sometime...

She took the pasta and looked okay. But it was too early for a relief!

She finished her meal and I measured her medicine. By the time I got back to her, she was lying down on the mattress and looking blank. I fed her the orange flavoured medicine. Her usual self would've taken the medicine happily, but yesterday she wasn't responding to me.

I felt something wrong when the medicine dripped out from the corner of her mouth. She wasn't responding when I called her and asked her what's wrong. The only reply I got was a blank stare into nothing. Her lips started turning purple and I was at a lost!

I held QianNing tightly and I asked hubby if her lips were really turning purple to make sure that I wasn't hallucinating. And hubby's reply was my greatest fear came true.

I shouted to him to start the car. At that point, QianNing's eyes started to roll back and her whole body started shaking uncontrollably in my arms. That lasted a few seconds.

I did not know what exactly happened after that. In a few chaotic moments, I carried QianNing into the car. Hubby carried QianHui (who was eating pasta on the dining table) to my side. I kept talking to QianNing not to worry, as we're bringing her to Dr. Chan.

By that time, QianNing's body has stopped shaking. But something else was shaking... and I realized it was my legs. That was the moment when the fear was eating me alive.

Hubby drove us to the clinic. Her lips were no longer purple and she started to respond to my questions while we waited for our turn.

The doctor asked us to monitor her. He said if she gets active again, we need not worry too much about it.

When we got home, QianNing slept for a good 3 hours which got me a little worried. I was so tempted to make her wake up that I got scolded by hubby for not letting her rest.

After 3 hours, I saw her turning in her sleep and asked her if she wants to watch Rapunzel. She nodded and climbed up to our sofa. My heart started to feel lighter.

Soon, she started scolding and laughing at her sister and that was when I was pretty sure that she's going to be okay...

This is really one shocking experience that I could do without...

Here are some advices given by the doctor if a child has seizure due to fever:

1. Let them lie down on their side during the seizure, this is to prevent them choking on their own saliva/vomit

2. Never hold them tightly while they are having a fit, it could hurt their muscles

3. Never attempt to put things into their mouth (they will not bite their tongue), putting things into their mouth could risk choking them/causing them to be out of breath

My new love: Pioneer Woman's Cinnamon Rolls

2011-03-11T16:31:00.003+08:00

This recipe from The Pioneer Woman is by far the best cinnamon rolls recipe that I've ever came across.

It's so fluffy -- even after it gets cold.

And so yummy as it is without the topping.

So yummy even after I've forgotten to put in 3 of the ingredients!

Yes! It is *that* good!

I've bookmarked this recipe the minute I saw it and it took me one whole year to lift my finger to try it.

And *this* is the best decision I've made in a long time!

I followed the instruction in one of the comments who has halved the recipe.

And I also did some kneading because I found that most of the no-knead bread recipe requires proofing of around 12 hours or more.

As I was almost dying from my cinnamon rolls craving and knewing I would not survive such a long wait, I've decided to give it some kneading (and that was when I forgot the baking powder, baking soda and salt... duh!). But these still turned out fluffy, I guess the kneading sort of substituted the rising effect from the baking powder.

Ingredients
*** halved from original

Dough:
1 cup milk
1/4 cup butter
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 tbsp dry active yeast
2 cups of bread flour
1/2 cup of bread flour (added later)
1/2 tsp salt (this can be ommited as I was using salted butter)
*** I'd omit the baking powder and baking soda since I find it doesn't make much difference to my rolls --> still fluffy

Filling:
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup brown sugar + 1 - 2 tsp cinnamon powder (I used less as I feel 1/4 cup is too much)
chopped walnut/almond

Steps:
1. Heat milk + butter + sugar in a sauce pan until near boiling point. Turn off heat and let cool 30 - 45 mins.
2. Once the mixture turned lukewarm, add yeast and let it 'bloom' (5 - 7 mins).
3. Add 2 cups of bread flour into the yeast mixture. Stir to combine and let sit for 30 mins.
4. Add salt (if needed) and 1/2 cup bread flour. Mix to combine.
5. On a lighted floured surface, knead the dough till non-stick (do not be tempted to add too much flour, it will get less sticky as you knead -- about 10 mins).
5. When you can pinch and pull the dough without breaking immediately, put the dough back into the pan, cover and let proof for 1 hour.
6. Punch air out and roll dough into rectangle, spread with butter for filling, sprinkle brown sugar and cinnamon over the butter (add chopped nuts at this point too).
7. Roll the rectangle into... well, as how you would make cinnamon rolls...
8. Cut using thread to get nice round cinnamon rolls.
9. Bake at 204 degree Celcius for 15-18 mins on a greased pan.
10. Once out from the oven, spread butter onto the cinnamon rolls.
11. Enjoy!

Bitten by the lazy bug and a dinner at Tanzini

2011-02-24T14:27:00.004+08:00

It's the same old pattern again.

I wanted so much to post something in this blog, but never gotten around to lift a finger to do it.

The lazy bug has bitten me.

Very severely this time.

Well...

To be fair to myself though (read: excuse excuse), I wasn't hanging my lazy bum around these few weeks doing nothing.

There were lots of happenings and the chapter of food poisoning during Chinese New Year had left me feeling rather tired.

I don't really want to let February pass without a single blog post, hence this backdated event: My wedding anniversary dinner at Tanzini.

As opposed to last year where we opted for a fancy pancy dinner at a French restaurant, we kept it simpler this year... but it was special nevertheless.

Tanzini is an Italian restaurant located at the 28th floor of the G-Tower Hotel in the heart of the city. And that is a plus point as you can get a superb night city view while enjoying your dinner -- which was the reason why hubby chose this place.

I remember it was freezing cold at the restaurant. Maybe it was just me... but if you've decided to come in your fine sexy dinner dress, I suggest you bring along a fancy shawl or something.

We have more or less made up our mind of what to order before we went to the restaurant, from info we gathered in blogs etc (kiasu you may call me but better to be safe than sorry -- I wouldn't want to waste a nice special dinner with nonsense food or anything not to my likings).

We ordered the following:
Tanzini Antipasti Tower
Saffron risotto with pan-seared scallops
Grilled Jade Perch Fish Fillet
Coconut Panna Cotta with Raspberry Sorbet
Tiramisu

But knowing that it was our anniversary dinner, the restaurant gave us a complimentary chocolate cake dessert with "Happy Anniversary" written on it and cancelled off our Tiramisu (without letting us know in advance... which was weird in a way, but I'm certainly not complaining on FOC dessert anyway).

If you asked me now, the only word I recall about the Antipasti Tower was "fresh". We loved them. Light and appetizing.

The Rissoto was too creamy and cheesy for me. Hubby and I both agreed that the grilled fish fillet was superb.

And lastly, the dessert...

My-oh-my the coconut panna cotta was so to-die-for-yummilicious. The creamy coconut flavour combined with the sweetness of the mango cubes. And the raspberry sorbet was hubby's favourite. I could just have multiple plates of this for dinner as appetizer, main course and dessert.

After our dinner, we went out to the corridor to enjoy the night view.

Looking down the city from that height, it was dreamy.

It was surreal.

It was just perfect...

For an anniversary dinner... :)

Mommy, bye bye...

2011-01-04T12:57:00.004+08:00

These were the words from QianNing's mouth when I dropped her off at the kindy this morning.

It was the last thing I would have expected from her... after the series of resentment during her trial class period 2 weeks back at the kindy. She kept telling us she did not want to go to school because she's scared of the teachers.

I kept telling myself that sending her to school now is the best for her, the main reason being that I really want her to start mingling with other kids. And learning to be independent at the same time.

Yesterday, the first day of school, was okay as she did not cry (like she did 2 weeks back). In fact she told me she was happy. I believe it was partially because there were more kids and more activities which kept her entertained.

So I was more or less confident that she'll do good today.

But a "Mommy bye bye" in a happy note was the last thing I'd expect her to say.

It was really surreal when she said that... that I was feeling like half-dreaming... Until she repeated that with a big smile after she greeted her teachers...

And when I reassured her that Grandma will come to pick her up soon (as with all the other days when she was crying to go home with me), she was already running off to other kids.

And deep down inside, there was a slight feeling of discomfort, because she no longer needs that reassurance from Mommy...

And because Mommy is no longer as important as before...

Yeah, I know this is a stupid feeling.

Oh well, couldn't help it...

But all in all, I'm thankful that she likes going to school now... well, for now at least.

And that is all that matters.

The need to create...

2010-12-28T15:38:00.004+08:00

I've been pretty restless nowadays.

There's this desire to create.

The need to create.

From anything to everything.

A bracelet.

A finger puppet.

A dress...

So this is the part where Mr Yap would start snarling at me, because I'd usually spend up to one whole day locked up in the room sewing away...

And so a few days ago, I made some pillow and bolster cases instead of a dress, because that was faster and it would somehow satisfy my craving to sew... a little...

Just a teeny-weeny little bit.

But that's ok... because I don't get snarled at.

Well...

At least, not that much.

Yes, that's my need to create...

Wanting.

Demanding.

Satisfying.

But addicting.

So near...

Because I can create anytime.

Yet so far...

Because I get snarled at... *sarcastic*

QianNing's first day at the kindergarten

2010-12-13T09:13:00.002+08:00

OK, it's the big day!

I think I was more nervous than QianNing herself. But I kept reassuring her that she'll have fun coloring and watching cartoons at the kindergarten (that's what the teacher told me they'll do during this holiday period).

QianNing is unfortunately down with runny nose. It made me all the more nervous. I stacked up lots of handkerchiefs in her bag and hoping hard that she'll use those instead of wiping on her clothes or worse, her barehands. I kept reminding her about the hankies again and again, as if one less reminder would make all hell break lose...

She was all cheerful and excited on her way to the kindergarten, telling me she'll do "coloring" and "cartoons".

When she reached the kindergarten, she looked a little different.

I could feel the slight resentment in her... when the teacher introduced her to the kids.

I could feel that QianNing's self-isolation mode started to build up.

I asked the teacher some questions which brought us into the office... in the back of my mind, I was so fully aware of QianNing's presence in the living hall and I was hoping hard that that few mins of me away from her would prepare her to face the 4 hours without me.

As I made my way back to where she was, she was frowning. Apparently, she must have started to discover that being in the kindergarten all by her own without mommy is not a bed of ~~roses~~ coloring books and cartoons...

I asked her if it's ok for me to go home and come pick her up later, she kept quiet for a while (to which I was praying hard, please please be yes -- as I really do not how to handle the situation if she starts crying and screaming on top of her lung!)

And then...

She nodded!

I almost dashed off the place in super-speed for fear of her changing her mind.

But as expected, part of my heart feels heavy. I peeked into the kindergarten as I walked back home. And I saw QianNing seated calmly on one of the chairs, looking to the teacher (or maybe her new friend seated on her left called Qian Ying).

I kept my fingers crossed.

The kindergarten is actually only 4 houses away from mine.

But not seeing her with my own eyes, even 4 houses away feels like 18000 miles... how I wish I have a CCTV which let me monitor how she's coping now.

Yes I'm a paranoid mommy like that...

*rolls eyes*

It's almost 1 hour now since she's there. 3 more hours to go...

QianHui and QianNing

2010-11-29T11:36:00.004+08:00

QianHui has learned a lot of new words and songs lately.

She can count from 1 to 8 in English. Well, more like memorizing it but she can get the sequence correct which was a good thing... :)

She can sing the alphabets -- well, part of it to be exact :P... which goes like this: "B C D E~...
She can also sing Do-Re-Mi -- again part of it... which goes like this: "Doe a deer (mumbling)... Ray (mumbling)... Mi Fa (mumbling)... (then she keeps looping on the Mi-Fa-Mumbling part like a broken record)"

She has learned to request for things with "Please, I want (something)" on some happy days without throwing a fit first. But most of the days, she'd throw her tantrum first then when I scolded her to tell me properly of what she wants, she'd stop crying and tell me "Please, I want (something)".

Other phrases she can say, and quite often at that too, is: (someone) huai dan. Anyone who does not do as she wishes, is termed "huai dan" which means naughty. And not surprisingly, everyone is naughty except herself...

QianHui and QianNing get along better recently. They played together and would laughed at each other for no specific reasons. It was a joy to see them play... well ok, only when they're not jumping on my sofa or performing dangerous stunts jumping off my bed or start hitting at each other after a while...

QianNing too has learned to speak in more complete sentences.

Sometimes when I was eating hot food and sniff, she'd say "Don't cry, daddy 'sayang' you"...

And she's getting very good at imitating us, especially towards her little sister. Talk about parenting by example...

London: Final (and the most happening) day

2010-11-29T10:10:00.009+08:00

The last day in London: My flight was scheduled for 10pm and my shuttle bus from the hotel to the airport was booked for 2.30pm. So I had the Saturday morning to visit the places that I have yet to go to.

First on the list was the Tower Bridge. I took the tube from Holland Park to the Tower Hill station. There was this small garden just outside the station, called the Wakefield Gardens.

Just across the road, was the Tower of London:

This was taken on the road leading to the Tower Bridge
The Tower Bridge

From the Tower Bridge, I decided to walk "along" the River Thames towards the direction of the London Bridge.

Cycle for hire
I dropped by a restaurant to have my breakfast. It was a nice little restaurant.

I had an English breakfast which was really yummy, and all these for £5+ only
"The London Bridge Is Falling Down" nursery rhyme was one that I used to sing a lot as a kid, so I just had to see how it looks like :P

The London Bridge
And apparently it was not falling down that day... :P
Next, I took the tube from the London Bridge station to Green Park. I had wanted to visit the Buckingham Palace.

But walking through the Green Park towards the Buckingham Palace was itself a very enjoyable journey. The park was really beautiful.

The Buckingham Palace

For some reasons, there was no guard changing ceremony that day
But I did see a troop of guards on horses passing by
Back at the Green Park station, I took the tube to Oxford Circus to visit the Oxford Street. A lot of nice paintings were on sale near the Green Park station
The Oxford street was really crowded with people. I walked from the Oxford Circus up until the Marble Arch station. Most shops have already put on their Christmas deco and it was a pleasant sight.

I returned to the hotel at about 1pm and saw this:

After that I took the shuttle bus to the airport, satisfied that I've managed to cover all the places I intended to visit. And glad that I'm finally on my way back to my home, hubby and princesses.

But I just had to mention about this Malaysian Chicken Soup I had at the airport while waiting for my flight. There was nothing Malaysian about it... and I doubt you can even find something similar in Malaysia LOL! It was like dhal with rice and chicken meat in it...

London: Day 6 & 7

2010-11-19T23:08:00.008+08:00

Thursday and Friday were nothing more than working days. But I took the chance to take more photos, on my way to work.

These were the buildings I passed by on my way to work daily, while walking from the Waterloo underground station to the office.

The building above is the office building. What I love most in this building is of course the canteen in it. One can get really cheap (and fattening) breakfast there... :)

Bacons, fried eggs, toasts and hash brown + milk have almost became my staple breakfast throughout my time there. This set above costed about £4... that's cheap if you don't convert it into ringgits. I mean you certainly cannot get this in Malaysia for RM4...

Some of the views by the river (right next to our office)

The other possibly best thing I found when I was in London, was this restaurant called "Cool Monkey" which was a Thai restaurant.

The Thai cuisine served there was somewhat okay, tailored to suit Londoners' tastebud -- which actually left much to be desired to my Malaysian tastebud...

But I had to compliment them because of the most wonderful - big - juicy - scallops they served. Being a scallop lover, the size of the scallops made me a very forgiving person despite the lack of authenticity in their food.

And so I returned the next day for scallops... and more scallops... :P

London: Day 5

2010-11-04T04:12:00.006+08:00

Nov 3rd, my birthday.

Nov 3rd, London's tube strike day.

Yes, what good timing...

I decided to work from the hotel as I am a little phobic to taking bus after the "losing my way" episode on Day 2. Furthermore, the buses and rails were sure to be crowded since the tube strike was expected to hit millions of passengers taking it everyday.

So I was pretty much stuck in the hotel the whole day.

For lunch, I went out to Holland Park Avenue, to this restaurant called "Singapore Chinese Restaurant". The owner spoke Cantonese and as the restaurant name hinted, most probably from Singapore.

I had the best meal ever since I arrived in London!

I ordered the seafood noodle soup. It was steaming hot, so warming to the tummy and came with large succulent prawns and salmon fillet slices which were - just - so - yummy!

Forgive the bad lighting, I just had to show this dish which was so satisfying...
In the afternoon, a colleague of mine brought me to a park nearby, the Holland Park. It was such a beautiful place... and you get to see squirrels and peacocks all over the place, without fencing.

Yes you read it right -- without fencing.

For dinner, I went to the Giraffe again (UK time celebration), to order takeaway of their Chargrilled Teriyaki Salmon.

And I dropped by Gelato Mio to get myself a slice of cake (can't let my birthday go by without a birthday cake of some sort, can I?).

I settled for a slice of caramel shortcake... does that qualify as cakes? well, in times of desperation...

London: Day 3 & 4

2010-11-04T03:43:00.007+08:00

Monday, I went to work at Southbank via the tube. As I did not know my way around so I decided to go there early.

Reached the Waterloo tube station at about 8am and quickly found my way to the office. Met some colleagues and worked for the remaining of the day.

Tuesday, since I knew how to get to work already, I decided to stop at the Westminster tube station on my way to work, to get some photos of the Big Ben.

I set off very early in the morning. It was a very windy day. And surprisingly, something about the atmosphere was pretty calming to my mind. Maybe it was the breeze... or maybe it was the leaves...

The Big Ben was just located right outside the Westminster tube station.

Then I walked over to the office, crossing the bridge over River Thames. Well, I lost my way a few times (as usual)... but I took the chance to take more photos of London.

The London Eye

A very crowded Waterloo station
Passed 4pm UK time, it was my birthday (Malaysia Time). So I decided to give myself a good dinner.

I ordered take away at this restaurant called Giraffe on Holland Park Avenue. The Giraffe Menu dinner set only costed £7.95, with a starter and a main course. I took the Crunchy Japanese Tiger Prawns and Pasta with mascarpone and pesto. Their staffs were friendly and polite. And the food tasted pretty good, not to mention the take-away packaging was pretty cool with a nice paper bag and wooden spoon and fork (instead of plastic ones).

London: Day 2

2010-11-03T15:05:00.006+08:00

I was having self-conflict, battling whether to go or not to go to Bicester Village...

In the night of Day 1, I doze off with the decision to give this place a miss.

But on the morning of Day 2 when I woke up, something that hubby always say to me was ringing loudly in my ears and my decision to go was set!

I took the tube from Holland Park to Oxford Circus, then from there I took the Bakerloo line to Marylebone. Switching into the railways from the Marylebone tube station, I took the train to Bicester North. The return train tickets costed £22.40.

The journey to that place from London Marylebone rail station took almost 2 hours. It was drizzling a little that morning but I was at ease with everything. Along the way I was rewarded with scenery like this which was not a bad thing at all.

But because it was a Sunday (or because there was some maintenance work or something), we had to stop at the Aylesbury Vale station and took a shuttle bus to Bicester North station.

At the station, I had to buy another taxi bus ticket which costed £4.40 (with return) which brought us to the Bicester Village itself.

When I reached the Village, it was almost 11am. I took my breakfast at a cafe called Pret A Manger. Had smoked salmon sandwich and a cup of hot chocolate.

Shopping spree started after that.

By the time I got back to London again, it was nearly 3pm. Had my dinner at a nice restaurant called Cyrano.

Chicken Caesar Salad and hot chocolate... the dressing was super yummy!
I wanted to go to the Buckingham Palace after dinner but to my surprise (well, I should have expected that...) it got so dark by the time I finished dinner.

4pm+ in London...
Figuring that I would not be able to take photos or anything, I decided to go to the Tesco in Kensington. And I did not know that it closes early on Sundays.

So half-way there on a bus, I got off to return to the hotel only to lose my way!

In the dark!

On a Halloween night!

Perfect!

Oh well, in the end I got back to the hotel and ended my "interesting" night with snapshots of my 'Catch of the Day' from the Bicester Village:

London: Day 1

2010-11-01T14:46:00.001+08:00

Hubby sent me to the airport at about 9pm. My flight to London (transiting in Dubai) was scheduled for 2am. We reached there early and hubby offered to accompany me until near my boarding time. I was grateful for it. Despite assuring him that I'd be fine waiting on my own because I wanted him to go back and tuck the kids to sleep, deep down inside I really feared parting with him and the kids. Although it was only a one week trip, but I was so not used to separating with them. I know I'd missed them badly. I kept consoling myself that good things and happenings were waiting for me in London. That helped to ease my fear of separation a little...

The 6 hours+ journey to Dubai was very tiring. I was sleepy but unable to sleep soundly. I think I managed to doze off an hour or two in between. All I remembered was that my knees were so sore. I met this man who sat beside me from Malaysia, who was on his way to Syria on a backpack trip. He was planning to tour a few countries in a month, which included Lebanon and Egypt. How adventurous! Unlike me...

The first impression I got when I reached Dubai International airport was "What?! I had to take the staircase to go down the plane?!". I was expecting some "walkway" or whatever they call it, that connects the plane's exit to the terminal. Well, lack of sleep plus a heavy handcarry luggage doesn't make a very tolerant me, so please excuse the grumbling...

We had to take a shuttle bus to the terminal from where we got down. Good thing was that the shuttle buses were all lined up ready to pick up the passengers so there was barely any waiting time required for this.

Took the opportunity to sms hubby to announce that I had safely arrived in Dubai. Did not want to call as I feared I would cry again when I heard his voice.

Dubai International Airport
The connecting flight to London took off at about 8.30am Dubai time. Had to endure another nearly 7 hours of sore knees time. Instead of sleeping this time, I watched a few movies, did some channel surfing and played Bejeweled without a mouse or touchscreen (go figure that out!). I also met this Chinese man from Shanghai who were in Singapore and on his way to London because his entire family was migrating there. Just like the backpacking man I met earlier, both were asking if I was a student going to London to study... Do I look *that* young and student-ish (if there's such a word)?

I was so relieved when we finally landed in Heathrow airport. Went through immigration without much hassles, and was on a taxi to the hotel in no time. My mood lighted up a bit as I saw the colourful trees along the way. The yellow and orange which were a rare scenery in Malaysia. The same excitement when I was on my business trips in Chicago few years ago started coming back. I still couldn't believe myself when I told myself "Wow! I *am* in London"... The traffic was a little jammed along the way but it wasn't too bad according to the taxi driver. Costed me almost £57.

I'm staying in the Hilton at Kensington for this trip. Reached the hotel at about 2pm+ and the room was not ready. Waited until 3pm to get the room. In the meantime I got quite a lot of tourist brouchures and maps from the Concierge. I have very little time to spare and needed to plan my "tour" for the weekend very well.

The room is a little small but I'm OK with it since there is just only me alone. When I finally settled down in my room, I got home-sick again. Entertained my moodiness a bit and quickly took a shower as I wanted to visit the Madam Tussauds Wax Museum. They close at 7pm and it was almost 4pm when I set off to the tube station.

It was raining when I was on my way to the hotel and I kept praying that the rain would stop. And imagine my happiness when my prayers were answered and true enough, the sky was clear when I stepped out the hotel. I did not have anything the whole day aside from a few pecks on the meals in the airplane. I was not hungry at all but I knew I had to eat something. So I dropped by a pizza outlet called Mr. Pumpernink to eat (half) a slice of pizza and had some hot tea. It costed £3.10.

Bought a weekly pass at the Holland Park tube station for £28.80. This should allow me to wander around in Zone 1&2 with unlimited tube rides for the rest of the week (plus I actually needed this for my tube ride to the office on weekdays). I took the Tube to Bond Street and changed from Central line to Jubilee line. There were a lot of sign boards along the way and one will never ever lost their way (if one can read, that is).

I got out at Baker Street tube station and there are sign boards with direction to Madam Tussauds in the tube station itself. The place was just a 5 mins walk (maybe less) from the tube station.

I was shocked by the length of the queue at the entrance of Door 4. From the look of it I doubted if I would be able to enter at all. I went to Door 1 to get my ticket (Door 4 was for advanced ticket entry). The length of the queue was nothing lesser than Door 4. So I waited and waited and waited...

In the meantime, I was observing if there are any single travellers like me. You see, you do need someone to take photos for you at a place like this. I almost given up after queueing for nearly an hour and began planning how I would ask people to take photos for me for a trillion times. And all this time I never noticed this young lady in front of me. She was from Canada and was called Anna. I asked her if she's on her own just like me and she, as if could read my thoughts, quickly said yes and suggested that we paired up and take photos for each other LOL! :)

When it reached our turn to buy the tickets, the nice couple behind us offered us a Buy 1 Free 1 Coupons. What a delight! So I only paid £14 for the £28 ticket. Nice!

I looked like a hobbit standing beside all those wax figurines. But I had a great time at Madam Tussauds and the 4D Marvel Superheroes show ended my visit like a dessert!

The only drawback I had with the visit was that we were ushered out very quickly because it was close to closing time. By the time I stepped out into the street again, it was almost 8pm. Took the tubes back to Holland Park and dropped by Mr. Pumpernink again, to take away my dinner: El Gamberi which was Tiger Prawns Pasta finished in creamy sauce. Again, I was not hungry at all, but I must feed myself for survival... *melancholy*...

Back at the hotel room, loneliness crept in again. I felt like Elizabeth Gilbert when she was in Rome (am reading Eat Pray Love now). Oh well, I planned my trip for Sunday a bit, ate very little of my dinner and at 9.30pm went to bed.

It's now 5.58am on Sunday and I woke up at 4am+ just now. Not able to sleep so might as well blog offline (internet access is expensive so I can only type this offline and post this when I got online on Monday)...

Yes, you can get your Malaysian passport renewed in an hour...

2010-10-24T12:14:00.003+08:00

NOT!

Well, YES if you exclude the waiting time... which was like 3 hours for me!

But then again, at least I could get it on the same day. Is that a consolation or what?

So if you're going to renew your passport, here's what you need:
1. A passport-sized photo of yourself
2. A photocopy of your IC (front and back)
3. Your old passport
4. And of course, the renewal fee (RM100 for 2 years, RM300 for 5 years)

I went to the Pusat Bandar Damansara Immigration Office on a Saturday. The opening hours is 8am to 1pm.

But don't be disillusioned, if you're planning to make use of the passport renewal kiosks, please be there by 9am. Because the entrance will be blocked by an immigration officer after 9am or so and late comers will not be entertained (they can still queue at the counters but god knows how long that will take...).

Another thing to note is that, it's best to check whether your MyKad and passport chips are OK (this can be done with the immigration officer 'somewhere' but I'm not sure how as I only saw this from a notice on the wall after I started queueing).

You would surely go crazy if you queued for an hour to reach the kiosk only to find out that the chips are faulty and you have to re-queue up at the counters (this happened to quite a number of people in front of me). Malaysian chips boleh?...

The air-conditioner was not working when I was there, to which an elderly man commmented aloud spot-on. He said, "Tambah budget-lah! 100 tingkat mau bikin, ini air-cond rosak tak mau bikin!" to the amusement of many of us.

I arrived at 8.30am and queued for an hour before I reached my turn to make the payment at the kiosk. In a room packed like sardines without air-conditioner and not knowing if the chips on my IC and passport are OK, try and imagine that...

The process to renew at the kiosk is:

1. Get an envelope provided and write on your name, IC No. and phone no.

(Queue forever and ever and ever...)

2. Put your old passport at the slot provided (also make sure that your Identity No. stated in the passport is your IC number. If yours is using your birth cert no. you should renew yours at the counters instead of the kiosk as your passport will not be readable at the kiosk)

3. Insert your MyKad at the slot provided.

4. Scan your thumb print as instructed.

5. Remove the passport and MyKad.

6. Select period of renewal (2 years or 5 years)

7. Insert money piece by piece (only RM50 and RM100 notes are accepted).

8. Insert your photo, photocopy of IC and the old passport into the envelope and drop into the machine.

9. Get your receipt and wait for an hour before proceeding to level 2 to get your queue number.

The receipt I got asked me to collect the queue number at 10.30am at Counter 17. But it turned out that the counter was changed to Counter 35 (I only found out later after waiting aimlessly for almost an hour).

At 10.30am, I was told to come back in 20 mins to get my queue number because the "system was slow" and my passport was not ready. At 10.50am, I was told to come back at 11.30am to get my queue number because my passport was still not ready.

I finally got my queue number at 11.45am.

And really finally, the passport at 12.20pm.

So much for 1Jam 1Passport...

One out of four...

2010-10-24T11:55:00.004+08:00

It's been a while... and what happened to my ideas?

Well, I've accomplished one out of four. Not bad? Considering that I had to work on a few weekends in the past month, I'd give myself a pat on the shoulder...

Here's what I've made since my last update:

A fondant cake

Another itty-bitty dress (slightly modified). This wasn't in my wish-list of things to work on earlier... it was made on an impulse because... well, I just felt like I *need* to make it...

So many ideas, so little time

2010-09-08T10:07:00.003+08:00

Making quilts for the princesses:

The idea has been playing in my head for quite sometime now -- ever since I bought that 2 pieces of fabrics which I had wanted to turn into dresses for them. But later, felt that the patterns fit more for a bedsheet than a dress...

So yes, all of a sudden I was all excited about making my first ever quilt.

And the idea that these quilts can be later handed down to my grandchildren... LOL! Such a long way to go... :P. Well, it'll be just like how QianNing inherited the patchwork blanket made by my mom for me.

Making fondant cake:

This is out of a challenge from hubby.

I almost abandoned the fondant-making idea after this adventure.

But recently, hubby had challenged me to make a fondant decorated birthday cake for QianNing after I objected to the idea of buying this cake for the price of nearly RM200+(!).

So yes, I've landed myself into this trouble... but I was thinking, how hard can fondant-making be?... Err... Right? *self-doubts*

Making jelly mooncake:

Again, I had wanted to try this for a long time but never had the chance. My recent trip to the baking suppliers while hunting for fondant ingredients (at Bake With Yen and Chang Tung in Taman Megah) exposed me to all sorts of tools and moulds for making jelly mooncake.

And yes again, my hands itched so badly that I did not even attempt to resist the temptation to buy them. Another thing in my to-do list...

Making sugar cookies (again):

The baking supplier shop is really as addictive as your favourite shoes or handbag shops...

I got myself some new alphabet cookie cutters and meringue powder (YAY!) during my N-th trip there. I'm now all set to try the genuine royal icing recipe on my sugar cookies *excitement*!

And on top of that I still have a work-in-progress dress that was sewn half-way and another that is pending de-construction...

That's me now...

An over-excited loony with tons of idea and not enough time to accomplish anything...

Baking Sugar Cookies

2010-08-30T09:22:00.003+08:00

I made some sugar cookies with the help of my sous-chef -- QianNing :P

After browsing through some recipes from allrecipes.com (one of my favourite sites to get good tried-and-tested recipes), I settled down for this sugar cookie and this sugar cookie icing recipes; which was a rather good choice I'd say.

The recipes are quite straightforward and made use of the ingredients available in my kitchen. The icing recipe is a tad sweet (just like any other icing/frosting recipes out there). Fortunately, the sugar cookie recipe which is almost non-sweet balanced off the icing's sweetness nicely. But then again, I would consider making the icing more runny next time so that we have a thinner layer of it, thus less sweet.

Here're the recipe I used (halved or reduced to the amount just nice for me + the 2 princesses and slightly modified from the original recipes):

Sugar Cookies

1/2 cup butter (room temperature)
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 1/4 cup of all-purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp vanilla essence

1. Cream butter and sugar till smooth
2. Beat in egg and vanilla essence
3. Stir in flour, baking powder and salt
4. Chill 1 hour covered
5. Roll dough on lightly floured surface and cut into shapes with cookie cutters
6. Bake 6-8 mins (until golden brown)
7. Cool completely and decorate with icing

Sugar Cookie Icing

1/2 cup of confectionery sugar
3 tsp of milk (I made it more runny)
1 tsp light corn syrup (I used the simple syrup I have)

1. Put milk into bowl
2. Stir in confectionery sugar slowly to get a smooth mixture
3. Beat in corn syrup until smooth and glossy
4. Divide into parts and colour
5. This icing takes a few hours to dry completely

I'll definitely make this again, as QianNing had fun cutting the cookies and I had fun decorating them. And most importantly, both QianNing and QianHui are crazy over the finished product and kept asking for the "fahwer" (flower), "buhfy" (butterfly) and "bear-bear" cookies! :)

When I'm done being civilized and well-mannered, I say...

2010-08-27T16:04:00.002+08:00

You low-life good-for-nothing maggot!

If your idea of getting more hits in your website is by leaving flaming comments in my blog along with your URL, you can just go rot and die in your pathetic toilet hole!

Another rainy day?

2010-08-27T15:39:00.000+08:00

The sound of thunder,
And clouds with silver lining;
The heart is raining...

The space void of light,
No shadows, no self, nothing;
Darker the mind still.

Cutting such thin line,
Of dreams and reality;
Now which hurts more?

QianHui and Baby Signing

2010-08-09T13:22:00.002+08:00

Some updates about QianHui and her baby signing. Since my last update, she has learned a lot of new words.

Words she can sign and/or speak now at 16 months old:
1.eat
2.drink
3.banana
4.water
5.milk
6.crackers
7.juice
8.orange
9.hurt
10.mommy
11.daddy
12.grandpa
13.grandma
14.ball
15.shoes
16.socks
17.more
18.horse
19.cat
20.dog
21.frog
22.bird
23.fish
24.hat
25.book

She can sign almost all of the words above and speak more than 80% of them.

Words she can speak and identify from a book with pictures apart from the above:
1.apple
2.yoyo
3.egg
4.moon
5.bear
6.tiger
7.chair (which she calls “zho zho” -- sit in Chinese)
8.book
9.lion
10.rabbit
11.balloon
... and some others which I can't recall now...

I don't know if the baby signing DVD does help with her speech development or she's just a fast learner, as she does seem to be able to pick up more new words than her sister when she was of the same age.

A shopping spree and a new dress

2010-08-02T10:38:00.005+08:00

I was all excited last weekend and went out to get more fabrics for making dresses. And I got even more excited when I ended up with these:

It's amazing that I can get this kind of excitement from buying something outside of the category of clothings, bags or shoes for myself! :P

I spent Sunday making another dress for QianNing... to redeem my self-esteem from the failure I faced last weekend LOL! :D

Talking about that dress, I'll disassemble it one of these days and turn it into a dress for QianHui instead. Well, it just look so weird as it is...

Here are the girls in the dresses I made:

QianHui's dress was a little too big for her. In fact it can serve as a little top for QianNing.

The dress I made for QianNing this time uses a zipper at the back. But the sewing on the zipper's side doesn't look as neat as I wanted it to be as I did not have the sewing machine feet for zipper. Hmmm... need to get hold of that one...

Typical conversation with QianHui nowadays

2010-07-29T16:18:00.004+08:00

QianHui: (looks at me with Madagascar's Mort's eyes then pats my chest)... Kakak...

Me: (frowns)... Mommy, not Kakak...

QianHui: (silence then looks at me and pats my chest again)... Kakak...

Me: (frowns further and in more annoyed tone)... Mommyyy...

QianHui: (pats my chest again)... Kakaaak...

Me: (stares at her with grumpy look)

QianHui: (smiles sheepishly)... Mommy...

Making dresses

2010-07-26T14:43:00.005+08:00

When I was small, my mom used to knit and sew a lot of nice dresses for me and my sister. And I just feel like wanting to do the same for my daughters.

I've been toying with this idea for a long time. And got triggered into action recently after seeing some nice home-made dresses in other blogs.

Here's a beginner's first attempt: A little dress for QianHui, which took me about 5 hours to complete.

If you look closely, you'll see a lot of flaws like measurement running off and extra fabric being tugged into some seam to hide it etc :P... but for a first timer, I'm quite happy with it.

My second attempt was less successful though (and I thought practise makes perfect?!...). See dress on right below:

First of all, I got too ambitious and made a layered dress, which involves more fabric than the first dress. And like QianHui's dress, I wanted to sew it by hiding the edges of fabric into the seams (as I did not stitch the edges using overlock machine). So the process got a lot more complicated and messy. If you notice the centre piece (the 'belt') looks weird because when I made the draft, my measurement ran off (wildly off -- what was I doing?!...) which caused the dress to be too short for QianNing. So I had to 'workaround' half-way through by adding a thicker 'belt' (which was a huge mistake on its own... It just made the entire dress looks so weird).

Note to myself:
1. Measure and cut very cautiously
2. Use overlock stitching for fabric edges (and don't try to be a genius by hiding fabric edges...) :P

So there, the summary is: Yours truly has upgraded from making Barbie dresses to making toddler dresses... ;)

I love puff pastry!

2010-07-19T09:45:00.003+08:00

Ever since my first attempt to make puff pastry 2 years ago, I've never gone down that road again. The failure had severely beaten my self-confidence LOL! :P

Until last weekend, that is...

I've decided to give puff pastry a second attempt, and made Caramel Apple Turnovers on Saturday. As it was my first time (OK I consider that failure 2 years ago an exception because that crust was *nothing* near what puff pastry should be), this time I did OK -- which was great!

The taste was buttery, the dough rose quite nicely... and there were layers! Many many of them! *gasp*

Although the surface cracked a bit (which I suspected was due to too much flour on the surface where I rolled the pastry), the pastry skin generally passed for puff pastry beginners... *beaming with pride*

So I tried again on Sunday, and decided to make Tuna Turnovers. That was the best decision I've made in a long time! Following the tips I found online, this was how the Tuna Turnovers turned out:

Yum! Even hubby gives me the thumbs up! after I harrassed him a little...
I used the recipe from this link but replace the lard with (more) butter. I also added more salt (overall about 1/2 tsp) and 2-3 tbs of castor sugar as we thought the pastry tasted rather bland in the first round.

Me 2 vs. Puff Pastry 1

^_^

Of love rival and a mouth ulcer

2010-07-13T17:15:00.003+08:00

We were back at the in-laws house during the weekend. While Mr Yap was busy occupying his time with mahjong sessions, I spent my weekend going through his old photo albums... you know, doing things like "scanning" for former love rivals and suspicious "friends".

It was like, you were calmly going through some photos (ie. scanning) and suddenly you heard that Red Alert beeping sound in your mind after seeing some opposite gender faces a few times too many. It was fun, you should do that sometime.

Anyway, fate is a very strange and wonderful thing. I met Mr Yap for the first time back in 2004. Before that, we did not have any sort of connection whatsoever... or so we thought. But would you believe that one of my primary school classmates was his secondary school schoolmate? And I'm from Perak, while he's from Selangor and he studied in Pahang. It feels as though this ex-classmate of mine became one of the many connecting dots between my life and Mr Yap's...

Interesting isn't it?

Somehow this just reminds me of the movie "Turn Left, Turn Right" by Gigi Leung and Takeshi Kaneshiro. Nice movie that one.

Last night, I was talking to QianNing about my mouth ulcer. I told her if she's naughty and always lose her temper, she'll get ulcers like mine.

Okay.

I lied... but I call these white lies. The intention is good, although the way could be wrong.

Anyway, Mr Yap who overheard the conversation laughed sheepishly.

Okay.

I'm guilty of losing my temper at times. Not always. And certainly not when that stupid mouth ulcer popped up. So, no that's not the reason for the mouth ulcer.

I guess all of us are guilty of that every now and then, you know losing your temper... and normally the people who matters the most are the ones to take the hit.

So, yes I'm guilty of that.

Chewy Chocolate Chips Cookies with Chef Yap

2010-07-05T11:18:00.006+08:00

Mr Yap got very excited after he watched an episode of Chef At Home where Michael Smith baked some chewy chocolate chips cookies. And he decided to make his virgin attempt at baking cookies!

Everything was well... until he got started that is... :P

While clearing up our kitchen top to make space for himself, he actually put the stuff onto the baking pan which I have nicely greased for him to put his cookies on!

Mr Yap did not realize that this baking sheet was for his cookies...

Next, came the first step of all baking recipes: Preheating the oven.

Mr Yap: 375... *started turning the temperature knob*

Me: That's Fahrenheit lah!

Mr Yap: *silence... and sheepishly went to get his handphone to convert the temperature*

A very focused Chef Yap

But still have time to camwhore lah...

Mr Yap broke my spatula and desperately trying to retrieve the broken pieces...

Dough was done, time for baking...

Cookies in the oven

A victorious Mr Yap and his "six-packs" he said... LOL! :P

Thankful

2010-05-24T11:07:00.003+08:00

I was looking at some backdated photos today. One of it caught my attention. This was taken during the second day of CNY this year.

Unlike past years, everything to do with CNY this year brings back memories which make my heart cringes a little. The feeling of insecurity and having things fall beyond my control. The very fine line between owning and losing...

On the first day of CNY, QianHui fell down a flight of stairs in her baby walker. You must be thinking, what kind of a parent would let that happen to their child? I don't feel like going into details of how it happened again. But the bottomline is, parents with small children should really do all the baby-proofing work there is to do at home, and better be paranoid than be sorry later.

I was lucky that QianHui was protected by the baby-walker and only bumped her forehead when she landed at the end of the flight of staircase. My heart skipped many beats when I ran down to carry her from my sister-in-laws' arms. But that moment wasn't the worst as reality has not sunk in. It was hours later, when we came back from the hospital, and recalling how things could have changed if we just got a *little* more unlucky. The mere thought of that made me shuddered.

We celebrated QianHui's birthday last month. Every now and then and especially on ocassions like this, I would be reminded of what happened during CNY this year. And I couldn't help but to count my blessings and be thankful for everything...

Baby Signing Time

2010-04-29T14:29:00.000+08:00

I came across the Baby Signing Time DVD during a visit to one of hubby's friends during CNY, who had bought it for her baby son. I liked the videos in it the moment I saw it. Simple and attractive animations with easy to sing along songs -- perfect for little children.

I quickly look for ways to get my hand on the DVDs soon after that, and about 2 weeks later, it was delivered to my doorstep. QianHui and QianNing like the animations and songs in them very much.

The amazing part was that, QianHui started to sign after watching the DVDs several times. About 10 days after she first started to watch it, she can sign 'eat', 'milk' and 'more'. I just came back from work one day, when QianHui quickly approached me in her baby walker and sign 'eat'. Then, I found out that MIL forgot that it had already passed her mealtime! That was the first time I saw QianHui applying her baby signing skill :P...

I haven't managed to play her the DVD more often lately though, maybe just once or twice a week, sometimes nil. Now, she can sign dog, horse, cat, fish and 'baby signing time' although this one looks really funny when she does it LOL! :P

But another good thing is, QianNing learned a lot of new words from the DVD, as well as how to sign them too. She even started to teach her baby sister how to sign LOL! :)

Another major turning point...

2010-04-26T10:17:00.002+08:00

Counting the number of months I've been missing from this blog, it takes no rocket scientist to deduce that I don't have much life since I landed myself into my new job.

Period.

Today, I decided to make a reappearance since it's not a normal day. Or should I say, probably it's the day when my working life will go back into *normal* mode... like any typical working woman in the rat race. Hmmm...

*background music*

Celine Dion:
All by myself...
Don't wanna be
All by myself
Anymore...

*background music ends*

In the meantime, somewhere in MidValley:

*background music*

Cliff Richard:
Congratulations and celebrations!
When I tell ev'ryone that I regained my freedom
Congratulations and jubilations!
I want the world to know I'm happy as can be.

*background music ends*

It's finally here!

2010-01-29T20:47:00.002+08:00

Our new sofa! *dreamy mode*

QianHui's Moment of Enlightenment

2010-01-12T11:44:00.004+08:00

These photos were taken few months ago. But it always melt my heart over and over again whenever I see them. Especially the facial expression on each of them, how they complement each other :)...

QianNing: Mei Mei, let's take some photos...
QianHui: OMG! What's that flash of bright light?!...

QianNing: Mei Mei, give us a broad smile!
QianHui: Oh no! That flash of light is back!...

QianNing: Mei Mei, that's the camera flash lah...
QianHui: Oh now I see heheh...

QianNing: To the count of three, let's smile together!...
QianHui: Cheeeeese!...

Kitchen Makeover

2010-01-10T01:13:00.006+08:00

The wet kitchen is done! ^_^

Here's before:

It was such a great feeling to see the transformation.

We engaged D'Format Cabinet Shop to build the kitchen cabinets. We had spent a lot of time surveying for a good shop and this shop was the only one with the least complaints so far. But there wasn't much recommendations of it either. We took no news as good news, so decided to take the risk. In terms of the service, I don't have much complaint about it, except that perhaps they can improve in terms of follow-up.

As for workmanship, I must compliment this Mr. Tee who came to assemble our cabinets. He was here the whole day, from 10.30am till 1am (yes, it's 1am!), working diligently, fitting and refitting until everything looks perfect. If ever anyone wishes to engage D'Format for building kitchen cabinets, please do ask for Mr. Tee to do the assembly. You won't regret it.

And here's after:

I almost wanted to cry tears of joy when I saw the finished product... :P

If you still wonder why I'm so excited about the new kitchen, this was how it has been for the past two years...

Now do you understand why? ;)

Update: [9 April 2011] We've engaged D'Format to build our dry kitchen cabinets too. Loving it!

A dream (bag) comes true

2010-01-09T06:42:00.004+08:00

I got my very first Coach bag! ^_^

Hubby bought me this Peyton Signature Sateen Carryall from the outlet in One-Utama. Love is in the air... for hubby... and for the new bag haha! :P

A Coach bag a year, keeps the missus in cheer!

LOL! :P

And today, the people at the cabinet shop will come to install our kitchen cabinets and that means it'll be a dream kitchen coming true as well! Fingers crossed hoping everything will go well...

What a yummylicious indulgence to start the year! *beams with happiness*

Team building (and fat building)

2010-01-07T18:48:00.008+08:00

Happy New Year!

I started off the year with a good experience. I attended a team building event which spanned 3 days 2 nights. The program was called It's My Business III, organized by my company.

The good things about it were:
- it was at a luxury hotel
- there was A LOT of good food (thus the fat building...)
- and I had lots of fun and met some interesting personalities!

The bad side was I had to stay there for 2 nights, hence had to be separated from QianHui and QianNing.

Also, we were given the "conteng muka" treatment whenever we lost in any games so yes, I get free "extreme makeover" on a daily basis too! :P

The venue of the event was at the Pullman Putrajaya Lakeside (This is the Clock Tower at night)

The hotel room

Nice!

Meals were served at the B's Cafe in the hotel, quite a decent place. I particularly like their lighting decors... Words of food starting with 'b', made up of crystal alphabets.

My group's training room

My team consisted of 5 persons, with a team name of "Jai Ho" (meaning Be Victorious) :P

We won the immunity for Day 1 (for God-knows-what reasons?! :P)

The miracle of teamwork: 10 of us pulled a rope (connected on both ends) into this shape, all of us blindfolded...

The first 4 millions USD we won for breaking the 19 secs record at the Number Punch game. We did it in 17 secs! If only the money was real... :)

We had to sacrifice sleep early in the morning for some outdoor exercise and be rewarded with this scenery...
And now for the best motivation throughout the event!

Food!

Food!

Food!

Food!

Food!

Food!

And more food!

My birthday 2009

2009-12-17T11:16:00.003+08:00

A back-dated post on my birthday last month.

Again, hubby and I took half day off for some good food and a movie.

We went to the Bavarian Bierhaus German Restaurant and Bar at The Curve to try some German pork knuckles.

We ordered the pork knuckles with garlic and herbs sauce and some German sausages. It was overall a nice luncheon. The food was quite yummy, the only drawback was that the pork knuckles was more to the dry side. Otherwise, it would've been perfect.

Oh I must also mention that the portion was very big! We we totally stuffed when we left the place.

What is a birthday without a cake right? Hubby wanted to mix and match all the flavours at Secret Recipe to form one whole cake for me. As much as I liked the sound of that idea, I had to ban it as I would not be able to finish all those cake slices on my own. So in the end, I just asked for a cupcake from Cupcake Chic.

The lavender cupcake we tried did look good but flavour wise, hubby said I can make better ones... :P

After the lunch and cake, we went for a movie (Where Got Ghost) and had a good laugh, not to mention, the movie was FOC thanks to my stupidity LOL! :P

Jack's Place: Super Rude Waitress!

2009-12-16T16:32:00.003+08:00

Had the chance to go to Jack's Place at One-Utama last week for lunch. I don't really want to blog about it but a rude waitress there really deserved a place on my blog!

The food was nothing to brag about. I ordered the set lunch of a pan fried dory fillet with tarragon sauce which came with soup of the day, dessert and tea.

The food tasted rather bland. The rude waitress certainly added some flavour of *bitterness* to the luncheon experience!

The expression on her face would make you feel as if you're the waitress and she's the customer. Whenever we requested anything from her, she would look so impatient and unwilling to serve us, at some point to the extend of raising her voice to show her dissatisfaction.

The more I write about her, the more angry I feel. I just feel like sticking her head up her butt!

Here are some photos of the food there JUST to make this blog post fancy. But unless there's a food shortage on earth and Jack's Place is the only place you get food for survival, please think twice before going to this restaurant!

Our third wedding anniversary: Dining at the Le Bouchon

2009-12-11T00:10:00.007+08:00

Today is a very special day. It's our third wedding anniversary. And we've decided to take half-day off from work to chill-out and fine-dine, as a means of a mini celebration.

Having spending too much time watching Asia Food Channel on Astro, hubby and I have always wanted to try some authentic French cuisine. We've set our target on the Le Bouchon restaurant for quite sometime, but haven't really go for it... you know, waiting for a special occassion where we can shamelessly pamper ourselves without feeling guilty (like today).

Just try to google for French food in Kuala Lumpur and this restaurant will pop up as one of the popular spots. And I just found out that Le Bouchon actually means "The Cork". Now that explains the abundant wine bottle corks in the restaurant...

We spent quite a good hour circling the area looking for the restaurant. Being not familiar with the area certainly did not help (but the Samsung Omnia II that hubby bought later certainly would've helped... with the direction, as well as with pushing me down hubby's Chart of Importance -- I'm now sitting at Number 3, after Facebook Mafia Wars and Samsung Omnia II... *duh*...)

Guilty as charged: Visual evidences that Mr Yap was ignoring the wife in what was supposed to be a romantic dinner on a third wedding anniversary, due to a new-found love called Omnia II...
We arrived early despite having made a reservation of 6.30pm. We did not take too much time to select our menu as we've already browsed through the online menu and have more or less decided on what to have.

Hubby ordered the RM148 Gourmet Menu Set which came with 2 appetizers, a main course and dessert:
- Gratin of asparagus with Champagne sabayon and black truffles from Périgord
- Grilled sea scallops with wild mushroom fricassee and Port wine sauce
- Mountain honey roasted duck breast, confit shallots and fricassee of vegetables with sundried tomatoes
- Crème brûlée with raspberries

I ordered from the ala carte menu the followings:
- Homemade goose liver terrine served with fig jam and grilled sour dough bread (Terrine de Foie Gras maison)
- Duck confit with melting potatoes, grilled vegetables and pan fried goose liver
- Warm melting Valrhona chocolate cake, white chocolate ice cream and Tahiti vanilla sauce

The foie gras was one of the items that we have in our must-try list before we went to the restaurant. After all, it is one of the well-known French delicacies (okay, I know about the fact on cruelty to animals...). At first taste, hubby and I recognized some familiar flavour...

Hubby's verdict: It tasted like chinese fermented beancurd. He joked about asking for a bowl of white porridge to go with it LOL! :D
My verdict: It tasted like chinese century egg... still goes great with a bowl of white porridge! :P

Note: Please excuse our suaku-ness (country bumpkin-ness). This is our first French food dining experience, ok?

Something
Gratin of asparagus with Champagne sabayon and black truffles from Périgord
Homemade goose liver terrine served with fig jam and grilled sour dough bread
~~fermented bean curd~~ ~~century egg~~ foie gras on sour dough... well at least hubby seemed to like it :)
Grilled sea scallops with wild mushroom fricassee and Port wine sauce

Mountain honey roasted duck breast, confit shallots and fricassee of vegetables with sundried tomatoes

Duck confit with melting potatoes, grilled vegetables and pan fried goose liver
Warm melting Valrhona chocolate cake, white chocolate ice cream and Tahiti vanilla sauce

So very yummy!
Crème brûlée with raspberries: It tasted good but not my cup of tea due to the sourish raspberries...
Of all of the dishes, to me, the chocolate cake dessert was the star of the day. It was so to-die-for-yummylicious!

We left the restaurant with a good dining experience and a RM300+ damage to his pocket... :P

Overall, I had a good anniversary celebration and thank you dear hubby! Muacks!

Hubby and I

This and that

2009-11-25T14:44:00.005+08:00

It's time to do some update, so here's a little bit of this and that.

QianNing: She's learning quite a lot of new words and it is always amazing to see her say them out loud. She's also getting to be more and more picky, troublesome and such a complainer... Mr Yap said she inherited that from me. Oh well!...

QianHui: She has learned to sit without support and getting more and more vocal (she's so into "screaming contest" with her sister so yes, we do get headache every now and then when the two girls start to scream non-stop at each other *slaps forehead*). On a happier note, she enjoys playing with her sister although the term "playing" now is only confined to QianHui sitting at one corner and laughing at her sister jumping up and down and contributing to noise pollution...

Home: This is the most Yippee! thing revolving around my life now. We're getting ourselves some nice looking kitchen cabinets and most probably a new set of comfy sofa. Yay! Finally, we're going to get rid of the old sofa (which has dutifully served us for the past 4 or 5 years) in exchange for something which looks nicer and is better suited for couch potatoes. I'm eyeing on this one from Ikea.
So very yummy...

Leading by example

2009-11-12T15:55:00.002+08:00

This is a reminder to myself that I should really really mind my words going forward.

A few days ago, QianNing and I were at the living room. She was playing while I was doing something (can't remember what).

I dropped something and "Shit!", the word slipped my mouth.

QianNing continued to play with her toys as if she did not hear me. Relieved.

BUT barely 30 mins later, her color pencils rolled off her table and she said "Shit".

*slaps forehead*

A mother first, above everything else

2009-11-01T00:03:00.004+08:00

Life has changed tremendously since the birth of QianHui and my change of job. I hardly have time for myself. My new phone, after 2 weeks in my possession, is still using the default ringtone is the perfect proof of that. The old me would've downloaded tons of fancy ringtones and stuff into the phone. Of course, the old me did not have to take care of a fussy baby, losing sleep and at the same time trying hard to adapt to a new job.

I've to admit that I'm still struggling in juggling my priorities while trying to not sacrifice things that matter...

I happened to watch an episode of The Oprah Winfrey's show and came to know about a tragedy where a mother left her toddler in a car and totally forgotten about it, causing her to die of heat stroke more than 8 hours later. The mother blamed it on her hectic lifestyle and the desire and pressure to be the perfect mom. Sounds like an excuse?... But no excuse in the world could change the fact that the mother has indirectly caused the death of her own child and nothing could be more heart-wrenching that this, especially to the mother. I could not imagine the amount of pain that she has to live through for the rest of her life.

But one thing I really like from watching that show, was something one of the viewers said. She was asking, who set the yardstick of the perfect mom? Why do people expect us to live up to the perfect mom standard; with the most tidy house on earth, the most well-behaved kids, always happy and probably having a good job too?...

Having 2 kids had really changed my lifestyle. There are many things that I won't be able to do anymore. But there are also many things that I wouldn't be able to do if I did not have 2 kids. Like getting all excited when QianNing learned a new skill. And not being able to stop a tear when she learned to speak a new word...

I guess life is like that. You lose some, you gain some...

You know you're a mother above everything else when you get so excited looking at an apple that doesn't look like an apple and can't stop snapping pictures of it, just because your child drew it...

I drew the face and the ears, and QianNing added the eyes and the skinny arms LOL!

Baking buns

2009-10-20T11:08:00.003+08:00

I came back to work today with an aching body, sort of like the after-effect of too much physical exercises... just that mine wasn't from any exercises.

I got this from baking buns.

The calories I burnt from kneading the doughs, was probably more than the calories I normally burn in a month!

Oh well, but I had fun and I guess that's what truly matters.

I made sausage buns on Sunday.

Looks can and do deceive. These buns looked kind of appealing (Hubby disagreed though. He said they looked kinda sad, which roughly told us how they'd taste with just a look... bleh!). Anyway, these buns were so dense I could probably kill someone with them if I threw them off a high-rise building.

And with those sarcastic remarks from hubby, I set off to redeem my dignity with another batch of buns on Monday. I made some cinnamon rolls which turned out surprisingly good, although there is still room for improvement. But with these, you'll probably survive if they get thrown onto your head... :)

Yippeee!

2009-10-20T10:51:00.003+08:00

Image: http://www.gsmdome.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/sony-ericsson-c901-greenheart.jpg

Yup, this is my latest toy. A 'be-earlied' birthday present from hubby... ^_^

Sony Ericsson C901. Mine is not the Greenheart version I think, but nevertheless still looks very hemsem...

Keypad with blue lights... yummy!

And it has a 5MP camera. *winkz*

With macro mode somemore! Sweeeet!

*grinning ear-to-ear*

Sample picture taken with the phone:

Now, everyone will be happy for a veeery long time, coz mama is veeery *happy*! LOL!

Behavioural Study on Children: The Genetic and Environmental Factors

2009-10-12T10:21:00.002+08:00

The Genetic Factor:
QianHui, a 5 months old baby, likes to pull up her shirt and scratches her tummy despite never having seen the daddy pulling up his shirt and scratches his belly like a grizzly bear.

The Environmental Factor:
QianNing, a two years old toddler, starts to breastfeed her Mashimaro...

... T_____T ...

QianHui's Look-alike Meter

2009-10-01T17:46:00.004+08:00

I was browsing through my own blog dated around December 2007, to see if there's any blog post on QianNing when she was 5 months old.

QianHui is around 5 months old now, am just curious to see the similarities/differences between the 2 sisters.

Then, I bumped into this.

So I decided to make one for QianHui too! :)

And here's the result, which I can't really agree or disagree as I still did not manage to figure out who she looks like (although people have been commenting that she resembles me more than her daddy...):

How about the 2 sisters themselves?

Makan-makan

2009-09-30T10:52:00.003+08:00

Am kinda busy to blog much, so just posting up some photos of food from our kitchen, coz I'm feeling kinda hungry now...

We made some burgers over the weekend. Hubby has always wanted to cook some of these... after watching too much of License To Grill on AFC. The burger patties were made from scratch... quite yummy...
Tried to make roasted chicken few weeks back and we got hooked to this recipe ever since. Really a must-try from Jamie Oliver!
Chocolate cupcakes with chocolate chips, recipe adapted from here. Use Hershey's chocolate chips, it makes *all* the difference! Yummmm...
Soy sauce chicken, one of hubby's greatest recipe and my favourite too! Ask him for the recipe.

Broken record

2009-09-30T10:45:00.002+08:00

And I mean my clean record on the road.

Last Monday morning, I had my very first accident on the road involving another car.

(You see, "accidents" I had before this mostly involved my car with anything but a car eg. toll booth metal bars, side walk dividers, roundabout etc etc... okay okay, my record ain't *that* clean after all *rolls eyes*...)

Someone banged onto the rear of my car along LDP.

It was one hell of an experience, but the lucky part in this unlucky incident was that the owner of the car who banged me was quite a reasonable person. So we settled this off the record with him paying for the repairs.

Case closed.

A hill is a hill no matter how many times you ask

2009-09-22T14:43:00.001+08:00

Went back to my hometown over the weekend. The journey itself wasn't a bed of roses, with a toddler and a baby to be taken care of at the back.

*And* especially when it involved a very curious and troublesome toddler.

In the car...

QianNing (pointing to a limestone hill): Mommy, pa-pa (translation: am scared)...

Me: No need to pa-pa. That's a hill.

QianNing (pointing to another limestone hill): This?

Me: That's a hill too.

QianNing (pointing to yet another limestone hill): This?

Me: Hill.

QianNing (continued pointing): This?

Me: Hill!

QianNing (still pointing): This?

Me: HILL!

... continue repetitions for n rounds...

QianNing (not yet done pointing): This?

Me: *_*

On a separate note, QianNing now knows how to count to ten.

It goes like this: One, two, five, six, ten.

Lots of numbers missing in between, but at least they're in a correct sequence LOL! :P

The big sister

2009-09-17T20:08:00.004+08:00

I'm talking about QianNing.

Somehow somewhere in time, she has started to realize that she's now the big sister to QianHui. She would tease her little sister like an adult, trying to talk to her in babytalk, imitating us. It's a really funny sight, especially knowing that just a year ago she was a little baby herself ^_^...

The big sister and the little one

An excited QianNing

QianNing trying to "sayang" her sister while the little one clearly did not share the same feeling :P

Cupcakes and all things pretty

2009-09-13T09:34:00.003+08:00

We've got ourselves an oven recently and I've been pretty busy trying out new recipes. I made some cupcakes yesterday and had fun playing with fondant for the first time.

It was nice to see but I had to be honest, it's not so tasty. The fondant was too sweet (since a huge portion of the ingredients is actually icing sugar). It's probably something I'm gonna make again to decorate my cake and make the children happy, but definitely not for the taste itself.

QianNing and QianHui

2009-09-13T09:04:00.003+08:00

Time to do some update on QianNing and QianHui. Looking at the links on the right, it's been ages since I last updated their blogs. Okay, I'm guilty as charged.

Anyway, some major milestones...

QianNing is now able to eat on her own and pretty good at it too. One would expect a toddler to make a huge mess when having their meal on their own but QianNing only did that the first couple of days. And now she can even eat half-boiled eggs on a plate (kopitiam style) and only had one or two spots of egg stain on her clothes. Pretty impressive to me.

As for QianHui has learned to rollover. She's very excited everytime she's on her tummy. I guess anyone who had to look at the ceiling for 4 consecutive months would probably had that reaction too! :P

About compassion...

2009-09-01T13:18:00.000+08:00

Yesterday, we were watching a TV show on MyFM's 11th anniversary celebration at Genting Highlands. As usual, QianNing would show us a dance trick or two when there were songs and music.

But then, when it came to a part showing the crews' visit to Pusat Penjagaan Kanak-kanak Cacat Taman Megah, QianNing suddenly became quiet.

There were images of unfortunate children who were blind, some who were not able to move and others who had breathing tubes went up their nose. I felt sad when I saw those images. And silently, thanking god that my children were born healthy.

While sitting on my lap, QianNing was staring hard on those images. Seeing that she might be wondering what happened to those children, I told QianNing those "gor gor" and "jie jie" (elder brothers and sisters) were "tong tong" (in pain). And as some of them probably do not have immediate family taking care of them, I told QianNing that she's lucky to have daddy and mommy.

When hubby turned up with a bowl of rice and asked QianNing to eat it, she walked to her daddy and at the same time pointing to the TV and told us, the children were "tong tong".

I'm not sure if she really understood what was going on, but I hope that's a sign that she's learning to be compassionate...

Without me...

2009-08-24T13:27:00.000+08:00

I was wiping QianNing's face and palms last night, when I suddenly realized that her palms are much bigger than what I could remember. Her palms used to be so small, her fingers so tiny... just like how QianHui's palms are now.

Ever since QianHui was born, I rarely spent much time with QianNing as my time was mostly taken up by QianHui.

I suddenly felt that I missed too much from QianNing's life.

I missed how she used to be the only child I need to care about.

I missed her being the center of my attention.

I missed seeing her grow and getting excited over every new thing she learned.

The other day, QianNing picked up a book I bought her and started to point at the pictures and told me what each picture was. I was surprised when she came to a page with the picture of a baby's hands and she said out loud "Hand!".

I was happy... but it wasn't really a pleasant surprise.

I did not know since when she had learned the word "hand". I felt a moment of emptiness in my heart. I used to be the person who taught her all the new words and knew everything about her.

But now, I feel more like a stranger...

Perhaps, I should just be happy that she's doing well... without me.

Why I took an hour to buy a water bottle?

2009-08-13T14:49:00.000+08:00

Juggling on whether to buy the plain RM6.90 or the nice RM11.90 - 9 minutes

Head settled for RM6.90 - 1 minute

Heart still eyeing on RM11.90 - 1 minute

Juggling on whether to buy the RM6.90 or the RM11.90 again - Another 9 minutes

Head and heart reached agreement to buy the RM11.90 - 1 minute

Juggling on whether to buy the blue RM11.90 or the orange RM11.90 - 9 minutes

Head settled for the orange RM11.90 - 1 minute

Wait in queue while heart still eyeing the blue RM11.90 - 19 minutes

Ran back to return the orange and get the blue RM11.90 - 5 minutes

Queued again and made payment - 5 minutes

Reason: I am a woman.

Those sleepless nights...

2009-08-13T14:47:00.000+08:00

Ever since QianHui was born, hubby and I have an unwritten rule where I'll take care of QianHui while he takes care of QianNing at night (thank god for helpful hubbies).

Here's a summary of it from my perspective:

while(sleeping){

   if(babycrying != null){

      if(babycrying.source == qianhui){

         take_deep_breath();
         drag_feet_to_baby();

      }else if(babycrying.source == qianning){

         thank_god();
         continue_snoring();

      }else{

         check_for_sanity();

      }
   }
};

When memory fails me...

2009-08-03T16:30:00.003+08:00

... I am super thankful that I have pictures and videos and a blog which allow me to "relive" those wonderful moments with my children...

There are a lot of things that I would love to blog about my life now, about QianNing and QianHui. Things that made me smile but (I know... why is there always a BUT?)... I seriously cannot afford the time to do that unless I sacrifice the time I spend with them (which is a NO-NO!)...

So, here's a short note to tell myself that at this moment in my life, I feel blessed to see that glittering smile on the face of my daughters. Just a small reminder of this good feeling... in case my memory fails me again...

Happy Baby + Happy Daddy + Happy Mommy

2009-07-14T12:53:00.003+08:00

Just a post to note down the sense of satisfaction of two silly parents when they managed to make their baby laugh... :)

Garlic and herbs buffalo wings and green curry spaghetti

2009-07-11T14:06:00.002+08:00

We made this...

Hubby's birthday... and the day he lost his freedom

2009-07-11T13:57:00.005+08:00

Some back-dated photos... the day I started work on my new job was also hubby's birthday. We did not do much to celebrate. After all, he has already had his wish came true when he managed to squeeze the last penny from my wallet by purchasing that new Seiko watch of his...

But he has been complaining that he did not have a birthday cake for a very very long time (he always declined it when I offered to buy him a cake in the past years... so not entirely my fault okay?...). So this year, I bought him a yummy blueberry cheesecake for a surprise.

The surprise thingy did not really go well for we only had time to ourselves at night after both the little devils were asleep. And QianNing refused to go to sleep after she saw the cake and the candles. Which resulted in a bit of chaos before we finally decided to quickly get over and done with the birthday cake cutting session so that she could go back to sleep.

Birthday daddy and daughter, with the cane that he used to threaten her to go to sleep (which obviously had failed)... the room was dark because QianHui had already fell asleep...

QianNing was really excited especially when she saw daddy blew out the candles that she kept imitating her daddy...

Catching up... again!

2009-07-11T13:52:00.003+08:00

Time to do some catching up over here...

Life has been pretty busy since the birth of QianHui and the start of my new job. There are so many things to do that I pretty much have no time left for myself. The only time I can stop and take a breath, I'll rather just chill out doing nothing or watch an episode of HK TVB drama, instead of blogging.

Anyway, here's a photo of hubby enjoying himself while entertaining our two little princesses.

And here's QianHui declaring her love to daddy and yours truly... ahemm! :P

And this is QianHui sleeping (with an attitude) while I finally had the time to blog here... :)

Family Day

2009-06-30T21:28:00.003+08:00

A few days before I officially started to work in the same company as hubby, there was a Family Day over there. Hubby and I took NingNing to the event.

NingNing had a great time there, as there were many other kids around and there were goodies bag and some games for children.

NingNing also attracted the attention of hubby's colleagues as she roamed the office while swinging her arms and swaying her butt as if she was the boss. Yeah, SHY isn't one of the words found in her dictionary.

She had a try with sand-art for the first time too (although I was more concerned on whether she'd pull down the rack with all those colorful sand... coz GENTLE isn't found in her dictionary either :P)

It wasn't an event where I had fun (as I had to chase after the little devil, fearing that she'd pull down stuff etc) but I certainly hoped that NingNing had some fond memories to take home with...

Deprived of sleep

2009-06-29T14:10:00.002+08:00

Woke up once every hour last night...

And was greeted with this kind of expression at 4am+ in the morning...

What would your reaction be?

Enjoying my new job

2009-06-24T17:26:00.002+08:00

I am alive.

Yes. Very much alive.

Just started work at the new organization last week and since jumping onboard, I was drowning in lots and lots of information. A lot of catching up to do and I don't even have time to blog like I used to. But despite the craziness of all this, I'm actually enjoying myself!

Some interesting facts:

1. I saw Paul Moss in person on my first day at work, during lunch-time at One-Utama. It's no surprise since Sri Pentas is just a stone's throw away but still, I seldom get to see celebrity face-to-face so yeah, I consider this interesting.

2. I'm now seated next to hubby at work and can begin my 24/7 surveillance on him. Yes, the day I started work here was the day he officially lost his freedom. Cool! (But seriously, getting to work with him in the same organization again certainly has its pro. We go to work and have lunch together like how it used to be, before we get married and have children. It's like re-living the dating days all over again LOL!)

Also, there's so much I'd love to blog about QianHui but... *sigh*... till I have more time I guess.

Grateful

2009-06-11T11:02:00.003+08:00

For the past two nights, I had better sleep as QianHui slept up to 4 straight hours during the night. Although that's only once a night, coupled with stretches of 2 hours, 1 hour and shorter, I'm so so so very grateful already.

I've been waking up at least five to six times every night since day one as the longest stretch of sleep QianHui had before was 2.5 hours. So basically the past two nights have been like a dream come true.

Just jotting this down to mark this small victory after suffering and holding on for 2 long months...

Is that needed?

2009-06-02T11:42:00.003+08:00

I was sitting at the other side of the living room as he pulled the napkin away from NingNing and put her onto the potty.

Then, he noticed a little yellowish/brownish stain on the napkin.

"Is that poop?", he asked aloud.

Before I get to reply him, he held the napkin near his face and took a quick sniff.

"It *is* poop", he announced.

I immediately burst into laughter.

"Anything of that colour coming out from "down under" must be poop right?! What do you expect? Durian?"

LOL! :D

The day I officially regained my freedom

2009-05-18T10:49:00.003+08:00

I burnt multiple holes in hubby's pocket...

Stuffing my face silly with chilli fries at Carls Junior...

Trophies...

Fulfilled promise...

NingNing and my "kang-kung"

2009-05-15T11:35:00.002+08:00

NingNing has started to learn some new words. Here's one word she learned recently.

A few nights ago, I was burping QianHui when she spit up. I quickly requested hubby who was sitting by my side to hand me a hanky.

"Lou Gong (in Cantonese, means hubby), please pass me the hanky".

NingNing who was sitting beside me suddenly looked at her daddy and said:

"Kang-kung, kang-kung..." in a very gentle manner.

I was amused. She was trying to imitate me and was calling her daddy "kang-kung" instead of "lou gong" LOL! :P

Happy Mother's Day

2009-05-12T09:48:00.000+08:00

This is a backdated post as I did not have the time to post this up earlier.

May 10th was my second Mother's Day. It was also QianHui's fullmoon.

I received a carnation for the first time. But I doubt I deserved it. I felt like a bad mother.

To cut a long story short, we went out on Sunday. QianHui was crying like mad and I did not manage to comfort her no matter what I did. That's me hiding in the car alone, trying to calm a fussy baby with no success.

At one split second, I want out. I was desperate for a break.

No crying baby, no screaming toddler, no nothing.

Just me and serenity.

Although it was just a stupid impulse, but I feel bad about it. What kind of a mother would want this? I guess I'm just not made of material of a good mother...

...*sigh*...

Highlights of the day

2009-05-06T11:16:00.003+08:00

Feed the baby. Burp the baby. Wipe spit up. Burp the baby. Feed the baby again. Cycle continues.

Noodles with ginger. Chicken with ginger. Rice with ginger. Red dates drink with ginger. Eat, drink, sleep, poop ginger.

Five. The number of time to wake up through the night.

And these are the highlights of the day during the confinement month. Interesting?

4 more days to go...

Isolation is not good for me

2009-04-30T15:24:00.002+08:00

It's a gloomy day. Rained for a while and the sky is all cloudy.

One song has been playing in my head all day long.

It is the perfect song to describe how I feel now.

Lemon Tree (Fools Garden)

I'm sitting here in a boring room
It's just another rainy ~~Sunday~~Thursday afternoon
I'm wasting my time, I got nothing to do
I'm hanging around, I'm waiting for you
But nothing ever happens -- and I wonder
...
...

And the best part of the lyrics which I suspect was created to describe the feeling of all women during their confinement month:

Isolation is not good for me
Isolation -- I don't want to sit on a lemon tree
...
...

Another 10 days to go. Please make time fly faster...

Isolation makes your mind go cuckoo.

NingNing and the new baby

2009-04-25T13:45:00.004+08:00

NingNing was down with fever in the past two days. She has been very fussy.

Especially last night. She cried and screamed non-stop for an hour plus during bedtime. There were a few moments where hubby and I nearly lost our patience. We suspected that her not feeling well and probably the feeling of jealousy creeping in have caused this.

Come to think of it, we're probably expecting too much from a little toddler. Even an adult like me find it hard to cope with the changes that come with the new baby.

How could a toddler understand these?

I guess it takes time to make NingNing understand that the new baby will not make us love her any lesser than in the past...

NingNing and her little sister

Is that our baby?

2009-04-25T13:03:00.004+08:00

QianHui has been discharged from the hospital yesterday. Was so glad that she's back, safe and sound.

The funny thing is, I couldn't really recognize my own baby. Initially it was just a voice in my head whispering to me... how come she looked so different?

For the past two days, I did not manage to visit her at the hospital and only relied on hubby to bring over some breastmilk for QianHui. The face I remember of her, was from the photos I've taken before she got admitted for phototherapy.

"People always say that babies grow up very fast. Maybe that explains why she looked so different", I tried to comfort myself.

But I hit panic mode when hubby asked me...

"How come she looks so different? Did we bring back the right baby?"

Oh no!

You see, I was the one who went to discharge QianHui from the hospital as hubby had to work. Did I really bring home the wrong baby?!

I quickly looked at QianHui more closely. I recognized the curve of her ears, the shape of her nose and forehead and her double eyelids.

It must be her. No mistake.

After spending sometime studying her look, we made the summary that QianHui has turned chubbier and her skin color is no more yellowish. No wonder we couldn't recognize her in the beginning... LOL!

QianHui has jaundice

2009-04-22T14:17:00.004+08:00

It's day 6.

And I got separated from Number 2. She's having jaundice and with a serum bilirubin reading of 240 imol/litre, had to be admitted into the hospital for phototherapy.

I'm reliving the nightmare I had with NingNing when she was born. She had jaundice too and I had to stay with her at the hospital for 4 days so that she could undergo phototherapy.

This time, QianHui will be there at the neonatal unit, alone.

She dislikes being undressed and would cry very very loudly when she's hungry. I would wrap her up again very quickly when changing her diapers, and never let her cry more than a minute when she's hungry.

It hurts me to know that she'll probably be crying her lung out now at the hospital, under that hot light.

Can't help but to feel down whenever I think of this. Especially when her faint baby smell still lingers in my room.

I think I'll just use the spare time now to update her blog that hubby created for her...

Things like these...

2009-04-21T15:54:00.002+08:00

... make the sleepless nights worthwhile...

The birth story

2009-04-21T11:11:00.008+08:00

Number 2 has arrived!
So, here's the birth story...

Thursday, April 16th morning. There was bloody show and hubby brought me to the hospital after breakfast. I made a big mistake of forgetting to wash my hair beforehand which explains how I transformed into a smelly monster hours later.

NingNing at the hospital, not aware that her little sis would soon join her :)
I was only half-expecting myself to be able to go into labour on the same day. After all, my record wasn't that good. For NingNing, I only delivered her 2 days after the bloody show.

I was very wrong.

10am+ I was admitted to the labour room and was given my most dreaded VE by one of the staff nurses... only at 1 cm (*_*).

30 mins later, the gynae came and gave me another VE (*_*') and I was already at 3cm. He assured me that I'd be able to deliver the same day.

Relief! I was already too tired of waiting.

Labour pain stepped in soon after. I tried to look at the clock every now and then to keep track of the timing of events so that I can blog about it later... but I couldn't remember much of the timeline now :P.

All I remember was that I requested for injection of pain-killer around 3pm and soon after, gas inhalation as well to reduce the pain. Both did not help much and the gas actually made it worse because it numb my hands and legs and at some point made me too drowsy.

Hubby was there throughout to talk to me and distract my attention.

Daddy, mommy and Number 2
This delivery was very different from my first time as I slept thru most of my pain during my first pregnancy (the labour pain came during the wee hour). But *this*, I was awake and struggled through every minute of it.

Fortunately, the labor process was shorter.

At about 5pm+, I was ready to give birth to Number 2. Everything happened so fast I did not have time to prepare myself for it. All I knew was, suddenly the gynae and the midwives sprung into action and asked me to push when I'm ready. I was still confused but did what they told me anyhow.

But then, whatever breathing techniques or pushing methods which I thought would come in handy after my first delivery went out the window together with my sanity.

The delivery process was very very chaotic!

One minute, the midwife asked me to push when ready. The next minute when I pushed, she told me "Don't push! Don't push!". Then when I stopped pushing, the baby was the one pushing to come out on her own. And they thought I was pushing so repeatedly asked me not to push. I was biting onto some cotton and not able to explain to them that I wasn't the one pushing. The summary is, I bet I looked like a mad woman screaming through my teeth.

I was so so relieved when the baby was finally out! As I was catching my breath, I saw from the corner of my eyes that hubby was crying while busy snapping photos of Number 2. It's heart-warming to know that a grown man like him would shed tears for me hehe...

Number 2 couldn't wait to "belanja" her daddy teh tarik
Mommy and Number 2
Daddy and Number 2
Food at the hospital was pretty good. Hubby can attest to it because he ate all my meals! I was only allowed to eat confinement food as directed by MIL T_____T....

Hungarian Chicken Goulash with Buttered Rice
Hubby enjoying *my* food
Baked fish
Hubby enjoying *my* food again!
Grilled chicken chop
Spent 2 nights at the hospital and currently I'm back home "enjoying" my confinement food (*_*) and my sleepless nights T_____T...

No this is not Number 2. It's Qian Ning in 2007. I found the most similarity between QianNing and Number 2 in their ugliest photo LOL! *evil laughs*
Number 2... what's your verdict on similarity between the 2 siblings? :)
QianHui says hello to all! :)

ps: To those wondering, I delivered at the Columbia Asia Medical Centre in Puchong. My gynae was Dr. Ng Soon Pheng. Apart from some very minor complaints (from hubby) about food served not warm enough and the lacking of parking space, we were pretty satisfied with the service there. I'll definitely go back for the next pregnancy. IF EVER there is a plan for Number 3, that is... *shudders*

10 more days to go...

2009-04-13T14:14:00.002+08:00

But I suspect it'll be sooner than that...

Lost part of my mucous plug and have been having regular contractions of about 6 to 10 mins apart every night. Getting more and more discharge and backache. Getting tired more easily too.

I'm not sure if I'm really ready for this. Just read back my blog post on the delivery of NingNing and somehow calmed myself down a little, knowing what to expect the second time around.

Memories of the labor pain, stitches (ouch!)... and the confinement month...

*shudders*

Can't wait to see Number 2 though...

Will you look like your elder sis? :)

Goodbye

2009-04-09T13:12:00.004+08:00

Yesterday was my last day in the office.

It wasn't my last working day, as I'll be working from home until Number 2 is due, which is about 2 more weeks to go.

But still, it was quite an important day as I had to bid goodbye to my cubicle and colleagues, clear off all my junks which I've accumulated over the years and will never be able to wander in there like nobody's business anymore.

The office is the place where I spent almost 20% of my time in the past 7 years. I wouldn't call it my second home, but it has certainly seen the many sides of me... transforming from a dumb fresh graduate to an "old butt" with an attitude.

7 years in this company... from a grateful contractor, to a grateful permanent employee, and back to a contractor (a very grumpy one). From being a software developer, to being a tester, to being a developer again, then a project lead (which was short-lived), and finally a tester+developer all-in-one.

7 years in this company... the place where I made many friends and one or two foes (although I doubt that these people know that I hate them!). And most importantly, I met the man of my life and fell in love, built a family with him and went through 2 pregnancies.

This is my very first job after graduation. One that I never planned to leave... but I guess life has its own arrangement.

Throughout the 7 years in the company, I've had the chance to learn and do many things I love. Things that I've done with no regrets and of which have made me a better person. And the trust and appreciation given which makes me believe that I'm worth my salt. I'm thankful for all that.

May 2nd, 2002 marked my first day in this company.

May 31st, 2009 will be my last...

Those good ol' days