Thursday, December 28, 2006

Not so merry Christmas -- new year week

Am no scrooge but Christmas this year wasn't exactly jolly. Maybe it had to do with the fact that I had to work on Christmas day, and two long days of meeting immediately after that. And after the two long days of meeting, I had a spliting headache today, my neck and shoulder hurts like hell and I'm just bone-weary tired.

But Christmas day wasn't too bad really. We even had a wonderful christmas supper cooked by Wen. Although I wished we could be having dinner at her place instead. Still, supper was fantastic. Between hubby, myself and even baby dearest, we polished off everything. I was remarking to hubby that the carrot soup and mashed pea potato was soooo baby food. hahaa. Baby dearest loved it very much! Hmm ... one wonders if Wen is going to cook dinner on New Year's Day too? One is working on New Year's Day ... *nudge nudge*

:P

I think the headache is probably because the ventilation in the meeting room isn't too good, or because of being unable to express as often as I should. *sigh* I might even be having a slight fever. *sigh* Poor me. And there's another meeting tomorrow. *triple sigh*

Why do I always suffer from headaches? :(

Saturday, December 23, 2006

Tis a season to be eating ... take two.

And I'm sure getting fat. Especially around the tummy. Damn. Need. to. Exercise.

Good food for the past few weeks. Dim sum almost once a week. And two new places.

The first was the Crystal Jade Korean Ginseng place, recommended by and went with Min. The ginseng chicken soup was absolutely delicious. Yum yum yum. I scrapped the bowl clean and drowned myself in the soup. Yum yum yum. The six types of veges were pretty okay. We didn't like all types obviously. So there was one little portion which wasn't finished. The cod fish absolutely melted in your mouth. I love cod fish! Can't imagine how impassionate Min was about fish. Fish is good. Fish is yummie! And cod fish's the best! Yum yum yum. How could she not eat the fish skin? I reached over and plucked the cod fish skin off her plate. Yum yum yum. Heh heh heh. Hmm, it'll be nicer if the skin is fried and crisp, but ... it's still cod fish skin. Man, to think that when hubby and I eat cod fish, we'll always fighting for the skin. How could one not like it at all?

Speaking of which, will cook cod fish tomorrow. Best way of cooking is still to fry the cod fish. Heh. I tried grilling, but the skin wasn't as crisp as I'd like. And it took too bloody long.

The dessert was pretty normal. Sweet and cold, and nice to complete the meal. All in all, can go back again. Yum yum chicken soup. Now I understand why Min is kinda addicted to it. I'm dreaming of food right now!

The second new place I went to was the Imperial Treasures - Teochew cuisine with Wen. Many moons back, I wanted to go in with my family, but the lady at the front desk was rather intimidating with her pinched face and arrogant and looking-down-her-nose attitude. So we veered away and I never gave it much thought. Obviously the lady at the front desk need to go for some coutesy training. Even Wen thought she was extremely rude and curt. However once we got in, the other service staffs were pretty friendly. Food was served pronto. Too fast in fact, that the noodles was pretty cold (and oily) by the time we could eat it.

Still, the pig stomach soup was ze best! Yum yum yum! And the Oh Nee ... ahhh .... Wen was too polite to mention that I was practically licking the bowl (or spoon, I was too polite to lick the bowl in front of her). Hahaha. Can go back again. I'm sure my mother will love the place too. Only thing is that the dim sum were still a tad too salty for teochew cuisine. But it is still pretty nice.

Man ... my mouth is watering thinking of all these food! Dinner tonight consisted of one rice ball and two pieces of califonia sushi. Healthy and therefore thinking of all those food makes me mouth water even more.

Arrgh. :P

*****
Take two. Because bloody netscape hanged and died while I was typing a lengthy blog. *mutter*

Anyway, had finished wrapping up dear hubby's present. Something simple, and something he'll definitely like, although not very special. It'll be a nice surprise for him I hope. :)

Me? I bought so many presents for myself, I guess I don't need anymore. heh. I forgot shopping with Wen is extremely dangerous. Just fifteen minutes or so and I've splurged on a lovely new bag and a new pouch. Old bag is looking rather mangy. Want. a. new. wallet. too. But still haven't found anything nice. I am quite tempted to get the same one as Wen at colette. :P

I've also finally bought a pair of new shoes for baby. It's quite a headache to get him shoes because 1. they are damn expensive and 2. he'll grow out very fast. But poor baby didn't have any shoes. My aunties gave him a pair too big he couldn't even wear them now, so I finally got him a nice one.

... to be cont.

Thursday, December 21, 2006

Tis a season to be jolly! - and spend money.

Ho ho ho ... I think tis a season to be tired, more likely. I've never been so tired with my hyper-active little boy. The other day he climbed up the stairs, and down, and up and down then up again. Then I carted him off before he started going down again. *whew* Just now he wanted to climb down again, I quickly grabed him and put him in the room and closed the door and he threw a tantram. My age sure is catching up with me. One kid sure is enough.

*rolls eyes*

Now he is happily asleep. I should catch some sleep too, but then this is one of the few times I can have some time to myself. To do some reading, watch more animes, write my blog etc. Min was complaining how come I have yet to upload the birthday photos ... heh. Whatever time I have, I am watching animes first, reading my books and sleep.

Favourite anime currently is Ghost Hunt. :)

Haven't been able to do much shopping. Was very disciplined and did not buy anything at the Tods sales. Wasn't too keen on the autumn/winter stuffs. Wen told me about the sale at Betula but there wasn't anything my size. And colette just didn't have anything pretty. The wallet Wen got is really pretty, but it's super heavy, and I guess I don't want something the same as hers. Maybe a visit to Ferragammo to see their new wallets. I thought I spied something nice. Heh. Could only catch a glimpse. Nowadays shopping is pretty much non-existent.

Hmm, maybe not really. Been quite busy at the bookstores. Time flies when you're browsing books. I got a couple of new cookbooks too. 'The Japanese Kitchen' by Kimiko Barber and 'Cook with Jamie', my first Jamie Oliver's book. I didn't really have time to really look through all his cookbooks, but I guess this one with the explainations should be pretty good. Reading all these cookbooks makes me feel like cooking something from in there, but all I cook is the usual style. Tonight we had stir-fry kailan with garlic, claypotsoup - pork-ribs with corn and carrots and fish with chilli. I think kailan is also known as chinese brocolli. Hmm, would be good to get something which talks about all the different types of food ingredients. There's a book with something like that on sale, but have not decided if it's really a good book.

Last night we deposited baby dearest at in-laws place and hubby and I went out for a nice dinner. At Shashlik. The food there is just as wonderful as ever. We even shared a glass of Russian coffee, and I say, the alcoholic coffee rocks. I'm drooling just thinking of eating there! Yum yum.

I haven't been eating mom's homecook food for a while now. Sometimes I'm so sick of cooking, I wished there's someone who could cook something nice for me to eat. It's really so unfortunate that hubby doesn't cook at all and is not interested in cooking. *sigh*

We went to look at apple. The iPod Video is realllllly cute! And reaaaallllly pretty. But it doesn't play avi format. Next.

I haven't decide what I want hubby to give me for Christmas. I guess when you have to tell him to get something for you, you really can't quite be bothered, because you might as well get it yourself. So I'm still eyeing the tiffany charm bracelet, but silver tarnishes, and I'm not sure if I really really like it. Man ... I'm getting very fussy with things. :P

It's nice to get a surprise present for Christmas. :) So far, my two girlfriends have given me something. And you know what? The two of them actually gave me the SAME thing. Hahahaha. Come to think of it, both of their birthdays fall on the same day (same year too), although I think they're very different. Or maybe not. One never knows huh. :P

Damn, tummy doesn't feel too good. Mustn't eat so much chocolates and cookies .... *mutter*

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Happy First Birthday!


Happy first birthday to my dearest boy. :) He's finally a year old.


This was his birthday cake on his actual day which we celebrated with his daddy. :P But then it was the third time he celebrated his birthday. On saturday, I invited some of my friends over and we had a huge ice-cream cake, and baby dearest got lots of presents! There were lots of little kids to play with him too, and open his presents for him. Haha. I was just slightly annoyed that one little girl chose to be one big bright lightbulb when all I wanted was just a photo of me and baby dearest. Grrr.


Baby dearest can be quite camera shy

On Sunday, baby's grand-aunties and his aunties came over to play with him and he got lots of presents too.


Here he is with his new walker-rider toy, but it still isn't motivating him to learn to walk, for when the thing starts to roll, he quickly squats and sits on the floor and looks up expectantly, waiting to be carried or he'll abandon ship and start crawling instead. Tsk tsk!


OH well, boys will be boys. Here's a super cute pic of him with my old pair of sunglasses. Penguin-sir? Cute eh? Heh

My dearest boy is certainly a big boy now. Every morning when he wakes up and I wake up and I stepped out of the room into the bathroom or study room and he'll cry like he's such a pityful little abandoned little poor thing. Grrrr. Even hubby cannot stop him from crying (although most of the time he'll cover his head with his pillow :P) And baby dearest only stops when I step into the room again and sit by the bed with him. How is it going to be now? *slaps forehead*

*****
Anyway, it's nice to be a ditzy gal-fan. Man, I'm so much a fan of Saiunkoku Monogatari. I so absolutely am gushing about the anime. At someone's else blog of course. Hahha. People here wouldn't know what I'm talking about if I were to start gushing here. Hahahaa. Gah .. it's nice to be so happily a big fan. :P All the characters are so absolutely cute! And the story is so absolutely cute! And funny! :)

Friday, December 08, 2006

It's almost a year!

Yep, how time flies. My dear baby is almost one year old. He's a big boy now, and he still has a cuteness rating of 10/10. Heh. :P Mothers are always bias. :P

I'm so fortunate that I have all these time to spend with him, seeing him grow up from a tiny baby to a big baby. I love the closeness both of us share, and how his eyes brighten up when he sees me. Of course sometimes I'm oh so irritated with him when he doesn't want to sleep or take his porriage and when I want to watch my anime or read my books or do housechores and he keeps wanting my attention. But now he's sleeping peacefully and all is forgiven until he wakes up and cry. :P

I love him so. :)

:)

Today I was extremely pissed off with my father. He probably didn't know why. After another exhausting ordeal, I finally managed to put baby dearest to sleep, so that I can start washing the clothes. Many clothes to wash. Two loads in fact. I scrub and scrub and huff a puff puff and the phone rang, and my father with his insignificant ramblings. Arrrgh. Yep, baby woke up. I'm all soap and scubs. And baby deaerst didn't want to go back to sleep no matter how much I tried to make him to. So all my anger was directed to my father for calling! So extremely pissed off.

So I took the phone off the hook during baby's afternoon nap.

I still managed to cook lunch with baby prattling around in the kitchen and he found the damn bleach bottle and shook it up and down spilling bleach on the floor. I shrieked and had to wash his hands, his feet and the floor. Arrrgh. Two against my father for waking baby up. Baby dearest seemed to have escaped with no bleach on him, but my hands itched. Maybe it has to do with later on, when baby was asleep and I transfered the big bottle of bleach to the small glass bottle and poured into all the drains. *eyes point daggers at hubby* Grrrr. That was supposed to be someone's elses job, but I'm doing everything nowadays. Hell, I might have to wash the bloody freaking vacumn cleaner and air-con myself. *eyes point poison daggers at someone*

And that someone had the audacity to suggest that we put up the window film ourselves. My eyes rolled all the way to heaven and I stamped my foot and no way are we doing that. Saying which, I'm not going to wait anymore for anybody, and I'm going to call and confirm tomorrow, and cancel the other viewing. So there. Humf.

I also managed to wash the clothes with baby dearest wide awake. I strapped him down in his baby seat and placed him in the toilet with me while I scrub and huff a puff puff. Baby dearest had his current favourite toy with him, so he was pretty all right. Until he got bored and threw his toy away and started figeting. Good thing I was almost done. Btw, know what his current favourite toy of all toys is? A toothbrush. (Especially mine but a normal one with a straight handle would do as well). Err, don't look at me. :P

I wonder if other people scrub their clothes before putting them into the washing machine? Hubby complains that if I don't scrub the clothes and simply wash them, the clothes stink. How leh? My poor hands are all wrinkled. I even got onto my hands and knees and mopped the floor, with baby dearest following behind me ... with his toothbrush. Heh heh. Didn't want to give him a cloth cos he tends to put it in his mouth after wiping the floor. :X

Then I cooked lunch, porriage for baby and instant mee for me, with baby dearest stealing quite a bit of my food. The fish that is. I let him try some seaweed and he seemed to enjoy it quite a bit.

:)

After that we went to shop shop and I bought stuffs for tomorrow. Baby dearest went out with his toothbrush but was willing to let me keep it while he looked around happily. Heh heh.

Dinner was wonderful. I made the donabe gohan with chicken and asari and lots of mushrooms. Couldn't find frozen peas ... oh well. :P A meaningful and exciting day indeed. :) I'm going to miss such days when work starts. *sigh*

Still ... there are some things to look forward to (like earning money and wearing nice clothes :P), but I'll definitely miss my time with my baby dearest.

I even managed to catch Ghost Hunt ep 10. It was such an anti-climax. You would think the previous episodes were sooooo good, you would be expecting something more, but the conclusion fell flat in the face. Arrgh. For a whodunit-ghost-story genre, the detective part is a bit very the obvious. The bad guy is soooooooooo predictable. The horror was good though. I was hoping for more twists in the story. :( Rather disappointing. Hmmm.

Still waiting for my all time favourite. :) There are others to fill in the gap, but still, saiunkoku monogatari is the best yet! Damn, I can't believe I've become so ... soo .... :P Heh.

Tuesday, December 05, 2006

Ping pong peng

So I'm in the coughing stage now, which means I'm recovering. Prospan's pretty nice (taste like honey), and doesn't have all the problems which comes with some cough syrup. People who recover from a bout of cold/flu usually have a cough after that. I wonder why some people insist on antibiotics and kick up such a big fuss on cough medication (on standby). This just shows how uneducated or boorish they are. Ha.

Anyway, it's hubby dearest turn to experience the same set of symptomes I had. Low-grade fever, neck ache, headache and sore throat which is not very painful. Man, am I not at all sympathetic! Okie, I tried to. :P But my eyes kinda rolled upwards when he mentioned viral meningitis. Well, it could be true, especially the stiff neck part, but I didn't exactly get much sympathy when I had all those symptomes either! :P Men can be such babies.

I just hope that baby doesn't fall sick again. Especially how we are always so close together. *sigh*

*****
I read one page of the chinese novel and fell asleep. Progress is extremely slow. Maybe I should have just gotten the book in Japanese. At least I can learn more Jap! When is the next episode of the anime going to be out? Arrrgh. *tears hairs*

Anyway, it's amazing how Japanese stuffs can be so nice. Just look at the music. Japanese music is always so nice. So much nicer than the chinese music. Take any song and listen, they're so much nicer. Some of the Chinese songs even came from Japanese! And I'm still so impressed by their animes, by their drawings. Give me an anime anytime. The anime characters are also so much nicer than real people! Hahaha. :X

I wish I could go Japan again. *sigh*

Sunday, December 03, 2006

Falling in love ...

Is when you start doing these things.

1. Actually watching the anime with chinese subs on YouTube.
2. Actually watching the anime withOUT any subs on YouTube.
3. Buying the entire set of novels in Chinese.

My roots certainly revisited. :)

I am so in love with the latest anime I'm watching. Latest craze I guess. It's aimed at young ladies, it's funny, it has got beautiful music and beautiful drawings, and it's kinda loosely based on a historical setting. Who wouldn't fall in love if you're a woman? :P

Damn, the only Chinese books I've ever read in my entire life so far were one or two from You Jing. Now I've got like seven novels all to read, and they are in fantizi (the older chinese version) no less, and how am I going to achieve it? Where is my trusty Chinese dictionary? *sigh*

Definitely an impulse buy. Naaahhh ... let's just say it's a christmas present for myself. Heh heh heh.

Actually I'm a very traditional Chinese girl. I love my roots, I cannot imagine not speaking Mandarin at all. I went to a school which was kinda cheena in a way. But my chinese was never very good. I shall blame it all on my chinese teachers. If they were only more fun at that time, I might enjoy the lessons. All I remember is mo xie, and ting xie. And the lessons were always so boring. Oh well. Things are changing now. Perhaps if I had been more interested, I would have joined the Chinese Orchestra. Did I ever mention the erhu was one of my favourite instruement? Perhaps I shall learn that one too. :P

Anyway .... my current favourite animes are:
1. Saiunkoku Mongatari (in love ..woohooo!) *)
2. Ghost Hunt

And I'm also currently watching:
3. Bakumatsu Kikansetsu Irohanihoheto
4. D Gray Man
5. Death Note
6. Bleach

Hmmm .....

If you're curious, go check them out! Warning: Quality on YouTube is quite the crappy. :X

Friday, December 01, 2006

The good, the bad and the ugly

Being able to be in this room means being able to tolerate baby pulling all my books down from my bookshelf. Then he flips through the books. If I'm lucky, he may put them back. Haiz.

Otherwise I have nothing else to entertain him with. His toys lay in one corner, forgotten. He likes looking out of the windows at cars below, but that doesn't take a long time before he gets bored. Actually, he's most interested in what I'm doing on the keyboard. Not going to happen yet!

Anyway, today is the fifth? sixth? day that I'm sick. Nowadays I fall sick with fever. This time is some irritating annoying low-grade fever, and a pesky sore-throat. It was only a matter of time that baby dearest fall sick too, and his symtomes are exactly the same as mine. Hey, at least I don't wake up in the middle of the night and howl my head off!

I thought this holidays would be good. Last week, I met up for lunch with Xel, and brought baby dearest along. The bloody freaking escalator in the underpass to the esplanade was broken and I had to carry baby in one hand, and the pram on my shoulders and walk down the stairs. And it was escalators all the way too, no lift access! One have to call to activate the so-called handicap access. Too troublesome. My shoulders ache!

Okie, I just opened a pandora's box and showed baby how to open the CD drawer. *rolls eyes*

Anyway I was hoping to meet up with Lin and Min for lunch, but it rained and I was also sick. So there goes one precious week, being cooped up at home, with a sick me and a sick baby. Emergency call to mom and managed to get her to come down a few days to look after us. Thank god for my mother! :) The difficult part is feeding baby his medicine on my own. Some of it always ended up splattered on his face, my face, my clothes, his clothes, my legs etc. Humf.

And so what does one do when one is sick? Binge on animes. Yay yay aya yay. Latest craze: Saiunkoku Monogatari. I love this kind of girly girly stories. hahahahaha.

Oh well, baby is whining again. Will write about his adventure with Max and Rust next time! The two big dogs.