Blog restructuring

Hello everyone... sorry have been busy and will be for the next few days restructuring my blogs.

Clever me put all my 3 blogs under one account, so I have apparently now run out of space. I only realized this when pictures started going missing on my old posts!!

Anyway, I'll be busy moving my other 2 blogs to new addresses and all.

So, until then, Happy Easter everyone!

Little Miss Destructive II

Little Miss Destructive strikes again.

You know how, after years, or at least months of wearing slippers/ sandals, they get worn out? Sometimes the soles start coming off and you get "crocodile jaws", or the straps break or come loose. Those are the usual wear and tear results right?

Anyway, I bought Eva a pair of slippers which were rather expensive, compared to the less than RM10 cheapo China ones. They were the Bata, Bubblegummers ones which cost around RM20, I think. That was only what, 2-3 weeks ago?

Well, after school yesterday (she sometimes just refuses to wear school shoes), I saw her dragging one foot along when walking towards the car. When she got in, she showed me her slipper:



I have never seen someone wear a slipper until it broke into half!

I smelled something fishy, since footwear rarely break in half on their own! So, I asked her whether she had bent it back and forth while sitting on the bench waiting for me.

She replied innocently, "No..."

And after a while added...

"At music class. "

*sigh*...

Glee! Happy, happy...

I've been having too much sleep the last few days!!! I never thought I would say this! :)

Hubby has gone travelling since Monday, so without him, I have no nocturnal social activities like watching movies at the cinema or going clubbing. Of course I still have my other night shift job, i.e: Solomon's three, sometimes four feeds at night!! (I seriously don't know why he still needs so many feeds at night!)

Well, despite waking up for feeds, I've been getting plenty of sleep because I make it a point for the kids to go to sleep early, then I wake up late because it's school term break right now! Heavenly...

So, I found myself unable to sleep just a couple of hours ago, which is very rare indeed. Usually, I'm a very talented sleeper; anywhere, anytime... :P

Anyway, I was too lazy to bake, don't have a good book to read, and there's only so much Facebook and Blogspot one can stand in 24hrs (though apparently my blogging right now proves that I can stand just a wee bit more!)

So, I decided to see what was on the tv, when to my pleasant surprise, I stumbled across "Glee'' on Starworld. I've been meaning to watch it, since seeing the curious trailers of this new series while flipping channels. It looked like something different from your regular 'good-looking-kids-in-high-school' series and it had won lotsa Golden Globes. My sister in law also said on her blog that it was real good.

Well, after one episode, I'm hooked, though I doubt I'll remember, or have time, to watch the subsequent episodes. Wednesdays, 10pm, Wednesdays 10pm, Wednesdays 10pm... Usually I'll be in dreamland by 10pm...

Anyway, imagine your regular high school series, but musical (think High School Musical or Camp Rock), and cast all the actors from American Idol! It's about a bunch of so called 'losers' or oddballs who form the glee club, the antithesis of the resident cheer leading squad known as The Cheerios! And boy can these oddballs sing!!

Definitely something different and loaded with talent. High School Musical singing is chicken feed compared to this! :) A must-watch.

Have a peep here, go, go:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LOdL4-Jh6M

Pat-a-cake

My inspiration (from the internet)/ my creation (latest)
(still looking for creator of this one)


Wouldn't life be peachy if we could get rich doing something we love? For me that would be decorating cakes. However, to make cake decorating profitable enough to send four kids overseas to study, my cakes would have to be mighty expensive! hahaha...

So... not quite economically feasible eh? Besides, my hometown is such a small market, any retail business is not going to get you rich. There is this girl who makes gorgeous cakes in KL and sells them for RM1k and above! (look here) Sure, you can survive in KL with prices like those, but here... your business will die a slow, miserable death I think.

In actual fact, considering the hours put into creating a masterpiece like those she makes, the price is actually quite reasonable. I now know this, after so many trials and errors, it takes plenty of passion, time and patience to do what she does. So, it's not so much of the raw materials which go into the cake (which, mind you, can get rather expensive also when you use good quality ingredients), but the hours put into assembling it.

inspiration/ my creation (one of my earlier attempts)
(made by Kimmy's Kakes)


Anyways, I can dream away at owning my own cake boutique, but deep down I know that if I were to make my hobby into a business, it wouldn't be as fun anymore. I prefer to bake as and when I desire and not have to answer to fussy customers! From years of running my own pharmacy, I've already had enough of being nice to rude customers when in fact you're visualizing strangling their necks!!! hehehe... So, I guess baking for family and friends during free time is still the best option.

One of my favourite past times when whiling away the hours at the shop is to surf the net for pictures of super gorgeous cakes.

Here are some more beauties:

I might try this for a friend's wedding come June. (made by Jennifer Studor Cakes)




Is this even a cake?? (made by Elizabeth's Cakes)

Too cute!!!!
(made by A Cake for You)

Fish, fish, fish

I wonder, what's with fish that makes them so fascinating. I know I've always loved fishing and catching guppies in the drain. It must be something that runs in the family. Mum used to tell us that she could be found catching fish in the drain even during her nursing college days! I also remember dad going deep sea fishing and also bringing us kids fishing at ponds.

Hubby also loves fishing, be it pond fishing, deep sea fishing or even spear fishing! He even ran a floating fish farm once!


Annie's first fishing experience on Daddy's floating fish farm.

Grandpa deep sea fishing.


Hubby's deep sea fishing biggest catch.


So now, Annie is also obsessed with fish. She will keep an eye out for fish in the drain and looks forward to fishing trips.

Last Saturday, we went to a friend's home. Uncle Mike lives at the foot of a mountain. He is an outdoor enthusiast who obviously enjoys living amongst nature. The older kids went for a mountain hike early in the morning with Aunty Jinny and Sis no.2. The mild trek takes about an hour up and down. There is an Indian temple at the end of the trail.


We went later with the small kids and met the rest as they returned from the hike. After a delicious lunch, the kids started fishing at Uncle Mike's pond which is stocked with tilapia and other types of fish.

The older kids were eager to try their luck with the impromptu fishing rods. We made them using branches and fishing string and hooks which had their barbs cut off, so we could release the smaller fish which would not be eaten.

The younger kids were not as patient and preferred to feed the fish with fish food instead!

It was quite a productive morning, as all three of them managed to catch a few fish each. Some were of quite a good size. There were also a few larger ones which were strong enough to get off the hook and jump back into the water!


Everyone had a fun time. It sure beat the last time when we went fishing at a commercial pond. They charged per rod and if you caught any fish, you could choose to release it or to buy it by weight. Well, we didn't have to decide, because after an hour there, we didn't catch a thing! :)

No bites at the commercial pond...


Next Sunday, scuba diving season here reopens! Hurray! Hubby and I will be going diving, so there will be more fishing! Spear fishing is actually "not that legal" here, because of the weapon involved. So, sshhhhh.... :P

Multi-tasking mums

Yoo hoo.. calling all cyber mums (bloggers, FB addicts, Tweets...etc..)!

This should be our logo dontcha think??

Someone should print it into a T-shirt...

Enterpreneur training

Annie loves craft and took up the hobby of making beaded jewelry quite a while back. Grandma is into making rosary beads, so she had been encouraging Annie and also gave her some of the necessary tools and taught her some basic techniques.

Since then, she made quite a few pairs of pretty earrings, bracelets, key-chains and necklaces. So, I suggested to her that she sell her creations so that she can use to money earned to buy more beads to continue her hobby.

The beads and other parts like earring hooks and necklace clasps can actually be quite pricey. I estimated the cost of making a pair of earrings to be around RM3-4, so I instructed her to sell them for RM4-5. She could then keep RM1 for herself and give the rest to me for buying more beads and other materials.

I thought this would also be good exposure for her to learn about the world of business!

Thus, she brought her creations to school to market them!

She has since then learnt quite a few lessons on "Economics 101":

1. Don't count your eggs before they hatch.
On the first day of peddling her ware, a lot of friends reserved items and told her they would bring the money the next day. She was very excited indeed and was convinced that making money was going to be a breeze! She was going to be rich!

Unfortunately, the next day, no one paid up! :)


2. You have to sell your product above cost price to actually make a profit!
After a couple of days, she proudly announced that she had successfully sold off a pair of earrings!

Then I asked her how much she sold it for, and she replied, "RM1"!
I then asked her why she sold it off so cheaply and she said simply, "Because nobody wanted to buy!" :)

This was a good time to explain to her about the concepts of cost and profit!


3. In all endeavours, perseverance is a virtue. (i.e: not easy to make money!)
Since then, there have been a couple of sales and many given out free! Currently, she has more or less given up, or forgotten about what she had set out to do the weeks before! The excitement has worn off I suppose...

Well, at least she tried and learnt a few things in the process eh? Isn't that what life is all about?

Chinese New Year

For the first time since I can remember, Chinese New Year fell on Valentine's Day, the 14th of February this year. We ushered in the Chinese lunar year of the tiger with family and friends. It was a little quieter this year, since all three of the Singaporean siblings could not make it home, due to the lack of available leave and air tickets!

I personally love Chinese New Year and I want my children to experience it like I did when I was a kid. I want them to overeat, get high on fizzy drinks, enjoy illegal fireworks and bask in the delight of 'temporary wealth' which comes with receiving many, many 'ang pows' from elders! 'Temporary' because mum and dad will 'keep' it for them later :) (meaning it usually goes back into circulation!)

To be fair, we did open a bank account with the money Annie collected last year, to introduce to her the idea of 'savings'. The rest are still too young to appreciate one. But this year, we decided to give them a treat and used most of their 'collection' to buy a Wii games console which they have longed for for ages.

I try not to indulge their material wants too much as I do not want them to place import on material things. I pity those who find they have to spend every last penny on that Louis Vuitton bag. I consider myself not much of a slave to material lusts and am happy I was brought up that way. I went to a private primary school where many of my classmates were much better off than me. They had Barbie dolls and Transformer toys but I had many sisters and neighbours to play with.

We could have loads of fun with just pots and pans and 'cooking' leaves and grass! Some favourite games included hide and seek, which we called "koma- kiuma"; don't ask me what that means, it's what we had to shout out, like "Marco-Polo". There was rounders (bak pao) which was played with a tennis ball and a pyramid of 3 standing slippers/sandals as the 'wickets'. Then there was police and thieves, or 'mata liak chat' . Being the youngest then, I would always have to be the gu yew pao (butter bun) seller who gets robbed and screams for the police!

It was great training for our imagination. We had a big swing at the car porch, the metal kind which could seat 4 adults, or 20 kids! :) This was the source of much fun. Boredom is indeed the mother of invention, as we created many interesting 'games' using this swing!

We would be adventurers and traverse along the length of our house fence to get to the swing (our life-saving ship), all the time being careful not to let our feet touch the ground, lest we be eaten up by the 'crocodiles'! We would also be circus acrobats, doing leaps and cartwheels towards the swing, then do our 'tricks' like hanging upside down.. etc... Yes, there were casualties resulting from this swing, I think Sis no.4 dislocated an arm once.

We even had fun from a simple game where everyone's slippers were stuck in between the bars of the swing floor. We would then push the swing to and fro and slippers would drop off one by one.The one whose slipper was the last to remain would be the winner! Hahaha... those were the days of simplicity.

Well, that was a big detour from Chinese New Year 2010, I should do more blogs on our childhood fun times! When I have more time, I'll dig out old pics and work from there.

So anyway, here are some pics from Chinese New Year:

Sa Chap Meh (Chinese New Year's Eve) family reunion lunch at my dad's. That colourful dish which everyone is communally digging into with chopsticks is called 'yee sang'. It's a fishy, sweet, sour-y, salad-like dish which I do not like, but tossing it as high as possible without messing up the table is supposed to bring prosperity. So hey, "Toss away!!"

Sa Chap Meh night at Kung Kung Paul's house. We had the traditional family reunion dinner followed by Hubby's favourite; the fireworks display, this is when he has a legitimate excuse to play with gunpowder :) This year he restrained himself a bit, as compared to years past, when the back of his pickup would be full with boxes of fireworks!

This was the first day of Chinese New Year at Kung Kung Titus' house, the first house we visited.

On the second day, I was busy cooking the whole day for friends who were coming over that night for our open house cum house-warming dinner and also for the next day when family would be coming over for another house-warming cum house blessing lunch.

Our friends came over for dinner and we had a gambling session which is compulsory during Chinese New Year! I was too busy entertaining to take any pics, and Hubby 'KO'ed early because of 'headache' (read 'too much alcohol'...)! :)

Luckily Aunty Julie got some pics of the house blessing the next day. Fr Richard, Hubby's cousin, blessed our new home and sprinkled holy water around to "chase away the ghosts!" hahaha.. at least that's what he jokingly told the kids. He did say later at Taiku's house warming that it is just a symbol of the water we were baptized in, not magic water!

On the third day of Chinese New Year, after our house-warming lunch, was Baby Hugh's first birthday dinner. It was held at the newest hotel in town, Pullman's. Here are the kids having fun with all the cousins from Vietnam and Miri.

Later that night, when the kids had settled down, Hubby and I went to Kelvin's house for more gambling and also to celebrate another 2 friends' birthdays, Alex and Allan's.

The fourth day of Chinese New Year was also Ash Wednesday, which marks the beginning of Lent and is a day of fasting. (enter guilty smile...)

On the fifth day, Taiku and Uncle Dylan had their house-warming, as they had also just moved into a new home. Fr Richard again blessed their house that night, and it was followed by a buffet dinner.

Things quietened down a bit and on Saturday, the seventh day, Sis no.4 held her open house dinner. Hubby had gone to Bintulu for work by then.

Well, it was a busy Chinese New Year I must say. An enjoyable one too! Belated Gong Xi Fat Cai everyone!

Butterfly

This afternoon, Sis. no.2 and I attended a funeral. People come and go, such is the flow of life. Deaths and funerals are commonplace in the fragile lives of humans.

This one however, was a little harder to swallow, because it was the funeral of a sweet little 5 1/2 year old princess. She is the daughter of one of our friends. She has an elder sister (who was Annie's classmate last year) and a younger brother.

She drowned at a swimming pool. It was an accident and nobody's fault. It is very tragic indeed, sad and scary as well. Tragic and sad for obvious reasons. Scary because this struck pretty close to home and it makes us realize that such an accident could have happened to any one of us.

So treasure every second you have with your loved ones. Life is indeed fleeting. Our children are only on loan to us from God. I for one am definitely going to ease up on the kids and try to be more patient with them! :) Even if nothing tragic ever happens, their childhood will pass in the blink of an eye.

As for the little Butterfly, at least we can be assured that she is with God in a beautiful place without pain.

Jesus said "Let the children come to me. Don't stop them! For the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to those who are like these children."

Innocent children are guaranteed a place in heaven (Not as easy for us old buggers!) :)

May she rest in peace.