Cluttered Mind

A few untoward incidents happened today. First of all, (d@#n the gov) I have to pay extra RM1k income tax, even after deducting the PCB. My salary is already so low and still have to pay so much tax (it is a lot to me). Why? Coz the gov is so hungry for money and has started taxing us on meal allowance that we got for travelling. Stimulus package....WHAT STIMULUS PACKAGE!! For God sake, that money was given to us to buy food! If we eat McD every day, then we might have a few extra $$ left for some souvenir shopping. The worst part is, we are not allowed to get exemption on money spent on food by showing them the receipts. In other words, if you get RM200 per day for food and you spent it all on food, the gov. is still taxing you the full amount. I am really PI$$ED!!

Secondly, the pipe in my house is leaking. Fortunately (or unfortunately) the water drips to the car park which is one floor below my unit. As it is not someone's house, no one complaints. But if it is somebody's house, we can share the cost of repair. The water mark on the wall is already 1 feet high and spreading across the whole wall in the living hall and my bedroom. We have identify a plumber to fix it but hubby said he's too busy to apply leave. So, I might have to apply leave. Worst case scenario is, the plumber might have to hack the wall/floor to seal the hole and we do not know how big the damage is coz we cannot pin point the source of the leak and where should we start hacking. After the plumber finish his job, we have to look for people to fix the tiles and paint the wall. If we can get the same tiles, then not so bad. If not, we will have different colour tiles on the floor.

Thirdly, I wanted to register for a course and need to submit my examination transcript and certificate. I lost them and went back to the University to get them. They said they will not issue another cert so they will just give me a letter to say that I lost it. I paid and submitted a form. To my surprise, they called me 2-3 days later (I thought it takes them at least a week) to inform me that the papers were ready. So, I went to collect the papers last Monday BUT they only gave me the transcript and not the letter. Fine. They said they will do it and call me when it's ready. I haven't receive their call until now. The worst part is, the line was either engaged or not answered when I called!!!! How on earth that could be? I called another no. and the guy asked to call back the same no. coz. he does not have the details. The closing date for submission is 15 April. Wish me luck.

I couldn't think anymore. Talking to people around me did not ease my frustrations either. I hope the day will be saved by some good news.

Cuti-Cuti Bandung & Hot Air Balloon Festival in Putrajaya

2 years, 10 months & 2 days old.....

Bandung, 15-18 March 09

I went to Bandung with a few of my colleagues for cuti-cuti. We bought the ticket at zero fare and just paid RM200+ for airport tax. I enjoyed the trip very much coz for the first time, I travel with colleagues for holiday and not for work. The feeling was totally different. So relaxing and enjoyable. The best thing was everything was well planned and arranged before we left for the trip. From hotel and itinerary to money changing. I just packed my bag and hopped in.

All we did there was shop, eat, spa, reflexology, shop, shop and shop. I'll never get to do all these in KL. I didn't buy lots of things but I just enjoyed shopping all day long. I haven't done this in many many years. Just imagine, 3 full days of shopping without worrying that you will be late to pick up your son from school. No need to worry what to feed him tonight. The only worry is that he will be sick at home but I called and sms hubby to check everyday. Both of them were ok throughout the trip.

I went for my first ever spa in Bandung and paid 425,000 Rupiah (approx. RM 136) for a 2.5 hours package. So much cheaper compared to KL rite? The foot reflexology is also very cheap. It only cost 25,000 Rupiah (approx. RM8) for a 1-hour session. Unbelieveable. I asked the girl twice for the price coz I was really stunned.

One thing I realised was that their chickens taste so much better than those in KL. They are more juicy and taste like ayam kampung, not ayam pasar. I better let the photos do the talking (most of them were taken by my colleagues - A&A).

We visited the crater on the second day. Nice place but have to
go there early in the morning when it's more cooling.


The crater.


What we saw from one of the viewing decks.


Rows of shops selling local handicrafts.

Riung Sari, the restaurant where we had our lunch on the first day.
Nice food, nice ambience, fair price.

Lunch at Riung Sari. The one on the right is Nasi Timbel Special. Delicious!

One of the outlets

The price list at one of the beauty salon.
This is where we did the foot reflexology.

The spa we went to.

The place for baju kurung, kebaya and kain.

Putrajaya, 22 March 09

After returning from Bandung, me and hubby brought Ethan to Putrajaya on Sunday, to see hot air balloon. We were supposed to meet a friend, her hub and son there. We all arrived almost at the same time at around 8.45 pm to find that all the ballooons have been launched at 8 am. Only one balloon was still at the launching pad and it was only opened for charity ride, i.e., for orphans, etc. We saw some balloons floating around while we were on the way there but thought that there will be a few more around. Mana tahu, only one left. They called it hot air balloon festival but there were more stalls selling food than the hot air balloons around. I didn't have high expectations for the festival so it was only a minor dissapointment for me.

However, Ethan enjoyed it very much coz he saw the big balloon and a few paramotors flying around. He was so amazed to see the 'Uncles' (he calls any stranger men as uncle) flying around and kept saying 'So many, so many'. We spent slightly more than an hour there before adjourned to Alamanda for brunch. He started to warm up with Zac, my friend's son and played with him while we ate. The kids had a good time playing while the adults had a good time chatting. At end of the day, we were happy coz the kids were happy. That's all that matter.

The one and only hot air balloon around.

So many! So many!

Looking at the paramotors with full excitement

Playing with Zac

So You Want A Cheap But Meaningful Valentine's Gift

It was last Friday when I realised that it will be a Valentine's day the next day because my colleague said she want to get a Valentine's gift. I was blog-hopping then and I found the recipe for steamed moist chocolate cake. Thanks to Family First!. It looks very do-able to me. The recipe and instructions are easy enough for me to understand and I know I can get the ingredients easily from the supermarket. So, I printed out a copy of the recipe and my colleague saw it and asked for a copy too. I went and bought all the ingredients after work. On the way home, I mumbled to hubby. I said "The ingredients are not cheap and I don't know if the cake jadi or not". He said something like "Might as well buy one from the bakery". I said "I have not even started and you didn't even give me support".

Hubby was not working on that Saturday, which happened to be a Valentine's Day lar. Not that we have any plans. I didn't feel like going out to the mall and so was he. Since we all "mou-mou liu-liu", I might as well try to bake the cake lar. Meanwhile hubby entertained Ethan with a bubble-blowing session.

Everything went on smoothly until the last step when I needed to pour the self-raising flour into the mixture. I bought the flour few months back and when I opened it up, it was infested with tiny insects, which look like 'kutu' to me. OMG!!!!! So geli. I tried to sift the flour but it failed to separate the insects. Sigh.........my pot of mixture was sitting there and half way done and I don't have the FLOUR!! I quickly grab the car key and went to the nearby mini markets to buy the very important FLOUR. I went to 3 mini markets and all of them do not sell self-raising flour. ARGHHH!! How ar!! Then I thought, rather than throw the mixture away, I might as well give it a try and use normal flour and add more baking powder. That's what I did and the cake turned out well.

Thank goodness, I have a Valentine's gift at last. Ethan, who does not like cake, happened to like that cake very well. He insisted to blow candle but we couldn't find any at home. We just asked him to sing and so he sang "Happy Birthday" and insisted to cut the cake himself. He ate 2 slices of the cake!! As for hubby, when I asked him how is the cake, he said "Hmmmmmm.....". My translation of that answer is "If you must get an answer, I think it is nice". Luckily I still have a son, who is more supportive than the father.

The ingredients

The mixture in the steamer. I put the plastic timer
too close to the heat, it melted a bit :-(

Part of the mess!

Finally, the cake with a small deco that Ethan brought back
from school.

P.S. My colleague used the same recipe but she said her cake turned to be more spongy than mine. Maybe it's the self-raising flour. So, it's blessing in disguise? Since I have extra ingredients, I'm going to try to bake another one with chocolate glaze.

My Baby Can Cycle!

2 years, 8 months, 2 weeks & 5 days old.....

I bought a tricycle as a gift for Ethan's 1st birthday and he played on it on and off. Most of the time, we just pushed him around in the apartment compound and he always gets bored after a while and ended up pushing the cycle himself. The other day when we were at my mum's place during CNY, he sat on it (my sis has a similar one for my niece) and suddenly I saw him pushing on the pedals and the tricycle moved a little. Seeing that his legs are long enough now to reach and push the pedals, I started to teach him to cycle on that day (yeah!! after buying it for more than a year). He made a little progress and most of the time he cycled backward.

Since then, he's very interested in cycling and there was one day he cycled in Giant while we shopped. I kind of like it coz it's easier for us when he cycled compared to pushing the big trolley around and hitting everyone in his way (he wouldn't let us touch the trolley). In the end, Daddy had to force him to let go of the bicycle coz we're not buying another one just yet. He was crying non-stop on the way home. I told him that we will play bicycle at home and once we reached home, I quickly washed the bicycle and let him played in the house. So there is an additional thing now to clutter our house further.

Here are some photos and a video of him cycling.

No. Lelaki / No. Perempuan

I received a call from an anonymous and this fella is definitely "sot-sot dei" (tak betul/ crazy/ cuckoo).

Me: Hello
Caller: Hello......................
Me: Yeah?
Caller: Ini no. lelaki ke no. perempuan?
Me (scratch head, never heard this kind of question before): Huh? You cari siapa?
Caller: Takda.......mau tanya ini no. lelaki ke no. perempuan?
Me (WTH??): HUH?? WHERE ARE YOU CALLING FROM????
Caller: Takdela....saya mau tanya ini no. lelaki ke no. perempuan?
Me: Kalau perempuan jawab...No perempuan la!!
Caller: Ok.....bye...
Me: ?????????????????? Wasted my time. Should have just hung up.

WTH? Can't he just tell me where he is calling from or at least tell me the name of the person he's looking for??? CRAZY!!

32 Months Old

Time flies!! (So many people said it so many times already, but I still have to say it). Ethan will celebrate his 3rd birthday in four months time. I have no idea on how to celebrate his birthday this year. We had 3 dinners and 2 cakes for his 2nd birthday. Why 3 dinners? Coz there are 2 people in my family, who cannot meet face to face, so got to celebrate separately. Very the "ma-fan" (troublesome). The 3rd dinner was a simple dinner for the 3 of us on his actual birthday.

Some updates on Ethan:
Height: 92-93 cm
Weight: 13 kg

Speech
Life is easier now as he is older and he can communicate pretty well with us.....sometimes can "bok-jui" (argue) somemore. The Aunty at his school told me last week that he also argues with his teacher and when he lost, he will pout his mouth. The teacher also "saja kacau" him.

He picks up words very fast nowadays so I try very hard not to say bad words in front of him. Instead of f@#k, I say s@#t. Better right?

When I scold him now, he will say "You naughty....I don't want you...Go away....I say go away". (Lei war sei mmm sei...)

Latest craze: Ultraman!!
It happened when I went to NZ late last year. Hubby introduced him to that rubber-costume-super-hero, which shows on tv in the evenings. The craze started from then on. I think he should be watching Barney instead at this age as it is more educational.

He is so crazy about it that he can watch the same cd over and over again. And when he's not watching it, he wants to play Ultraman with us. He is Ultraman and Mummy is dinosaur (monster). My mum scolded me for letting him watch too much Ultraman coz he always pretends to be dinosaur and makes ugly faces.

His current Ultraman collection consists of:

• 6 Ultraman figurines (5 pasar malam toys and one came free when we bought a cd). Of these, 2 has broken into half, 1 with head fell off but glued back. Cheap toys ma....
  
• 4-5 CDs
• 1 set of pyjama. I normally buy RM 10-19/pair types of pyjamas for him but this set cost RM24!! I made daddy paid for it.
  
• 2 sticker books (all bersepah already)

Talking about stickers, there were a couple of times I went to work with his stickers (thank God not Ultraman!!) on my leg and sometimes elbow and shoes. The best part was I only realised about it when I was about to finish work!! So darn malu if people saw me with the stikers on. OH GOSHHHH!!!!!

School
He adapts pretty well at the school. Instead of saying "Don't want school", he sometimes says "Ethan go to school" when I'm driving him there. He still clings to me when I drop him off especially when does not have enough sleep. Then I have to spend 10-20 minutes sweet talking to him until he let me go willingly/ half willingly...as long as he doesn't cry. I don't want to leave him while he's crying as I'm worried that he will hate going to school. He's barely 3 and he has a long way to go before University. I don't care if he does not excel academically, I just want him to get a degree, at least. Not too much to ask for right?

I don't know what he learns at school but I'm not too concern about it. I think it is still too early to emphasis on education at his age. I doubt the school is practising Montessori as claimed but I don't care la. As long as he likes to go to school, mix around, happy and healthy, I'm a happy mother. I'm also happy that the daycare Aunty is taking good care of him. She always reports to me what happens to him at school and she speaks fondly of him too sometimes.

Diet:
He takes milk 3-4 times a day:

• 6 am, when I wake up, when he's half awake.
• Noon, before nap
• Late afternoon, before I pick him up but sometimes he skips that if he takes snack
• At night, before sleep
  

He's currently on Friso Gold and Pediasure (chocolate flavour). After I changed him from Enfagrow to Friso, he seems to be less interested in milk. Then, his solid food intake also seems to be reducing. My sis was giving her daughter Pediasure coz she will only drink milk with chocolaty taste. So, my sis found Pediasure with chocolate flavour and mix it with Mamil and the little girl started to drink milk. From then on, she became chubbier and chubbier. Ethan tried the milk and he likes it too. Hmmmmmm........ so I also went to buy a tin of Pediasure too and mix it with Friso and walla.......problem solved.

I mix 4 scoops of Friso with 1 scoop of Pediasure in 7 oz of water. At school, he's taking Friso only. I asked the Aunty about his milk intake and she said no problem. So I just let it be lar.

Other than that, I also noticed some differences in him after changing milk- less phlegm and less hyper. However, I'm not too sure if the phlegm thing improved because of the milk or because he's growing up. He used to have a lot of phlegm from time to time when he was younger and the doctor did advised us to change milk and see if the situation improved. We didn't change his milk at that time coz he's still young and seemed to be ok with Enfa. If I remember it correctly, the doctor also said that the phlegm problem will get better as he grows up. So, I don't really know which is which.

About the hyper active thing....I think I'm pretty sure it's caused by the milk. I'm not saying that all kids taking that milk will be hyper active. Maybe the milk is not suitable for him...that's all. He was so active at one point and it worried me. He can run non-stop, like for more than 15 minutes, in the house just chasing the ball alone excitedly. He can never sit down and concentrate on one activities like drawing, playing puzzle, blocks, whatever it is. Even when he's watching tv, he will move around and stop for a while to catch a glimpse of his favourite show. Now.......he can watch movie with us at home, from beginning till the end. Hubby has been contemplating of bringing him to the cinema. Probably his attention span is longer now as he's older and has nothing to do with the milk. I don't know.

We seldom take photos of him nowadays as our digital camera is not good at capturing moving objects :-) Here are some photos taken by a good friend during our friend's wedding in September 2008. I like them very much. Thanks Erica!!

Christmas Is Over

2 years, 7 months & 2 weeks old.....

I like Christmas. Probably it's because of the decoration that cheers me up or the holiday (= no need to work) that sets the relax mood. I was on leave from 23 - 31 Dec. SIL and family came over to celebrate Christmas and I thought it will be nice to have a Christmas tree at home. If we went back to hubby's hometown to celebrate Christmas then I guess I would not have insisted on that. So, for the first time in my life, I decorated a Christmas tree. We bought a small tree (4' height) at RM39.90, very cheap. After adding all the ornaments and lighting, the bill tripled. I was so eager to put up the tree that I started immediately after we came back from the mall. That time was around 11pm and I completed it more than one hour later. Ethan was happy to see the lights and he gave me a big smile. Worth the effort, I thought. Unfortunately, his excitement lasted for only 10 seconds.

Our first Christmas tree!

Ethan with the tree and presents

After getting the tree, I thought it would be nice to have some presents under it. I told hubby the idea and he said "Of course it's good to have presents" and that's it. No mention of buying, what to buy or when to buy. Nevermind, I went ahead and bought everyone a present, a total of 7 of them (excluding myslef). So, I told him I'm the Santa Claus this year coz I gave presents only. My nephews (3 of them) were so happy to see the presents with their names on them when they came to our house. I'm so glad they were happy. At least I know someone appreciates my effort. Ethan is happy too but not because of the presents (he's too young to understand what is present) but there will be 3 cousins to play with.

On Christmas eve, we went to Malacca with SIL's family. The Eye On Malaysia is there but we didn't take the ride. They have beautify the river bank and I think the money is well spent. After a half-day sightseeing tour and lunch at the Jonker Street, we adjourned to A Famosa Resort. The last 2 times I went there, I stayed at the bungalows but this time, we booked the condo. They have a few blocks of high rise buildings but they look rundown and to some extent look haunted. Only a few units on a few floors were occupied and the foyer area of our block was idle. The reception, cafe and swimming pool are at another block. We went to the basement parking but what we saw was only old furniture. The place is used as storeroom and abandoned! No wonder all the cars were parked outside. We even saw a man (looks like someone who was staying there) took a framed photo from a store room near the lifts. Luckily the studio room was ok. Whatever it is, I will not stay there again.

He loves the guitar!

After checked-in we rested for a while and went to the water park at around 4.30pm. Ethan had a ball of the time and the weather was perfect. The park is not well maintained and some of the rides for adults were shut down. Some of the facilities at the play area were faulty too but it didn't affect us coz Ethan just played with the slides. After shower, we went to the Cowboy Town for dinner and watched the Red Indian show. My advise: DON'T EAT THERE!! All you get is expensive lousy food. The rides are lousy too. Worse than the local funfare. The only good thing is the Red Indian Show, which includes a parade and firework. I think the parade and firework are special programme catered for Christmas. Not sure if they have the same thing for normal days. If not, not worth going.

We just lazed around the next morning before checking-out and went home. I think the kids enjoyed the trip but for that kind of money, I prefer Genting.

Thrilled with the rides

Waiting for the show to start


Dozed off less than 5 minutes after the show started

We also took the kids to Aquaria KLCC on Saturday, 27 Dec. It was darn crowded especially during the shark feeding time. The area was so packed that I had a hard time squeezing in with Ethan. I had to be kiasu for the sake of my son...hehe....We got to the centre after some people left the area. By then, I was already drenched in sweat. When he saw the guy feeding the giant ray, he was stunned. He just watched without saying a word. After watching the show, we went back to see other exhibits which we missed earlier on.

Other than the two places, we just spent the holiday eating and shopping.

Surprised? Frightened?


Shark Feeding Time but we didn't see the shark


Posing with the turtle before going home