Thoughts and sniffles

People (not my parents) have been asking me when I'm going to have a second kid. Not that I'm not seriously considering, now that my boy is pretty big, but it's rather tough to get around the idea of doing it all again. Can't we just skip that nine months of pure torture and get down to business? Hubby said I shouldn't have anything to complain about, seeing as how I did not even experience any morning sickness and was for the most part very happy-go-lucky throughout that period. But one wouldn't know what the second time would be like, ya?

I was just tired most of the time, and couldn't get up on time to go to work. And my reporting officer sure made my life hell making me feel awful all the time about that. Now that I think of it, I really dislike her. There, I've said it. I should have just asked my doc that time to give me lots of MCs. Ha. The way some of my colleagues are doing now. Doh.

Then again, do I really want another kid? We are still financially unstable, and I don't think I've been a good mother at all so far. Sometimes I feel like I'd rather work, and free time? I'd rather have the time for myself. To do my own things. As it is, I've not been doing to yoga. And there are still so many things I want to do. Watching animes is definitely one of them. :P

I guess I'm just tired. Baby is cutest when my parents are around to take care of him. He is so difficult especially when it comes to feeding time. Why did it turn out this way? He was such an angel once upon a time. Arrgh.

Oh no, he's awake.

...

I think I've caught some bug. *sneezes*

Tra...la...la

Things my boy can do at a tender age of 19 months:

1. Use a pair of chopsticks to pick up food. Well, at least he could hold his chopsticks pretty well now, and he managed to pick up his favourite prawn once. After a while, he threw his chopsticks down because his fingers were tired. (I got photo and video to prove) :P

2. Help me vacumn the floor. I got photo and video to prove too.

3. Play the piano and read music. At least that was what he was trying to do. Playing my piano and flipping through my score sheets like he knows how to read. Ha. Whenever I wanted to practice my Schubert, he'll quickly come look for me, and demanded to 'sit here sit here' and starting pushing me off my seat, [Mummy, go away] and even pawed (poured) at my music sheets like he can read the beansprouts. Yeah right. *rolls eyes* When he's done, he say 'close piano', and I have to close it and he'll squeal with laughter whenever I'll narrowly miss his fingers.

:)

In other news, Schubert is coming along nicely. I can play the first two pages of the sonata pretty well now, and that's because I've only got the first three pages with me. And besides now that I listened to Nodame and followed the score, I realised that she only played the first two pages and skipped to the end. Darn, must get a Schubert CD. I hardly have any Schubert at all, or do I even have any of his music?

Come to think of it, it's so much easier to learn a new piece when you get to listen to it. To think that when I was little, my teacher was/or appeared to me, at least, to be quite against listening to tapes of people playing the pieces. I think he once said that I shouldn't listen because I shouldn't be playing like that for exams. Only can listen to the exam pieces played by exam-approved players. It's no wonder I hate playing the piano when I was little, when each piece was an exam piece. School ya, Yamaha, ya. Got to make sure the little pesky kid pass her exams ya. It wasn't until I stopped learning, and made friends with Xel that I started listening and appreciating classical music more. If I have not known her, I think I'll never play the piano ever again. Or learn the violin. I wonder how many people have teachers like mine and got their interest killed.

I love Nodame Cantabile! The anime is extremely cute too! :)

Just watched Blood Diamonds last night. Thought L D'Capro looked extremely good in this show. No more that immature silly boy look. Heh. The story was pretty good, but we felt that it was too hollywood for anything. And I'm just too poor to afford so many diamonds. War is war is war. I wonder if the chap is a real story.

The wheels on the bus goes round and round ...

So I have this piece of music going round and round in my head. Schubert Piano Sonata in A minor. At least it's better than my boy's children's music going round and round in my head!

Eversince the first time I heard it, and saw it being played (by Nodame) I just fell in love with it. Managed to get my hands on the sheet music, and am wondering when I'll get to try it out. The last time I did, my boy quickly ran up to me, and started demanding that he 'sit here! sit here!' too, and 'Mummy go away!', trying to push me off my seat.

Maybe later, he's still asleep. :)

The things my boy says nowadays:
'Excuse me! Go away!' and he tries to push you off your seat
'Hand, go away!' and he tries to slap your hand off from holding him
'Ah Gong eat what?' Last night, he saw his Ah gong munching something, he actually asked that!
And lots of other stuffs. He's very chatty for a nineteen month old.

Last weekend we went to eat at Le Maison (spelling?) at the new Central (Soho?) place. It's a kind of fusion Japanese place, my younger brother said. I thought it was French infused Japanese. Anyway, food was really good. I love it, except that portion was rather small. Was still a bit hungry. Not too expensive too. Nice, can go back again. I remember the last time Wen and I had French. Portions were really small. *shrug*

Oh well, I think I'd better get some housework done before everyone wakes up!

Baby, aged 18 months

It's been a while since I've put up any of my baby's photos. Here are some taken from my handphone. Gosh, the resolution's pretty good, eh? I was thinking of buying a small camera to carry with me, but maybe this handphone also can do. The only problem is the lag time is very slow. What to do?

Baby is learning to twirl his pen. Can probably do better than me.


At my hair-spa salon. Not that he has got any *hair* to speak of.


I love him so. :)


He is a big boy now.

Life is tough

There, I've finally done it. Fell asleep at the wheel and kissed someone's butt. There was just a slight scratch on my number plate, but boy oh boy, the lady's fender was totally bumped. Plus she bumped into the car in front as well. Hmmm. *sigh* I guess I'm just too tired and stressed nowadays.

Baby is really very very tiring. I need to stop pandering to his whims. Really stop. Harden my heart and let him cry. I need my life back. I need to have time for myself and stop running around like a headless chicken. I need to stop. Period.

*****
Bad stuffs aside. On my last day of my holidays, before all the horrid meetings (which took up two days of my holidays), I invited PM over my place to do some baking. She was supposed to come at 10am in the morning for my pancakes breakfast, but I'm sure you can guess what time she arrived (finally). Almost 1pm. Oh well.

Anyway, breakfast was pancakes which I made for dear hubby.

Hmm, does it look good? I didn't quite drown it in the maple syrup because hubby didn't like it too sweet. But it tasted pretty good. I cooked more for my neighbours and for PM when she arrived. Baby took a couple of bites from hubby before refusing. He always refuse food from me out of some principle only he knows.

Lunch was more japanese udon with PM, after which we baked apple crumble again. PM made my crumble too hard and we ran out of flour, but I substituted with a little self-raising flour and crossed our fingers hoping it'll work. It turned out pretty good I must say, except the crumble wasn't as crumbly as I had hoped. My boss liked my crumble too. I hope he'll give me a raise next year. But then if he does, it'll be hard for me to leave. *sigh*

Do I really want to stop work? Baby dearest is the one who'll suffer. Poor baby.

Part Two

Okay, so the clothes are up. I've got a sneaky bad feeling about tomorrow, but let's not think about it right now. There's nothing I can do about it now anyway.

Min's vouchers bought me two more cookbooks. Nigel Slater's The Kitchen Diaries, and Donna Hay's Classics 2. I'm always a sucker for Donna Hay's books. Her pictures are beautiful, although the instructions aren't always a hundred percent clear. But then again, I never follow instructions to the dot. Furthermore, if I were to compare with Nigel Slater's book, gosh, some of his instructions are even worse! Like how long am I supposed to leave it in the oven for? What in the world is *blank*? Hey, where's the recipe for this one side dish etc. Still, it was pretty fun to read. It's a different style of a cookbook all together. Very refreshing!

My birthday book present from Wen: Shunju New Japanese Cuisine, is a bit more complicated. It has those kind of very beautiful pictures, really mouth-watering stuffs, which looks really difficult to make. They're those kind of stuffs which you'd really like someone else to cook for you. But it's really nice to look at the pictures and drool drool drool drool. :) Well, maybe I might try the oxtail hotpot. I feel like making oxtail one of these days!

All together I have now ... wow. More than 20 cookbooks! Including bake books. Waah. :) My collection is coming along nicely. I wonder how many books does Wen have? :P

*****
Am going to try making pancakes. Bought some ingredients and some utensils. Heh, it's always nice to buy new toys. :) Am looking out for a simple hand-held mixer. I remembered mixing some dough manually and being extremely tired after that.

Holidays are coming to an end, it's kinda depressing to think about it. I haven't really got a chance to cook something really different and special and nice or bake something yet. *sigh* It's quite difficult when my boy is into this super clinging stage. Plus he's only eighteen months and yet undergoing the terrible twos stage already. I can write a whole chapter about his naughiness. But, mothers are always terribly proud of their babies, and we are terribly proud of him because he's starting to speak in sentences. :)

Like: Ah gong sweeps floor. Lenny wears hat. Papa drives car.

And he can use many different words to express the same meaning. His favourite meaning now being:
No. No no no no. No need. Mai. Bu Yao. Dun want. Plus vigourous shaking of his head, and sometimes hands as well.

To chocolates, it's always a nod of his head.

Did I mention that he can say 'McDonald'? Especially whenever we pass by the McDonald's place (and I think whenever he sees that clown, whatisname). Can we send him to earn some money for us as their poster boy?

:)

My yellow lamborghini, revenge of the cow and all things domestic

Over the last week, a stamp of approval was given to get a new expensive vacuum cleaner. Ohh, just because it was the colour of one of his favourite cars. The infamous yellow. Yep, even my little boy likes it too, and quickly sat on it while I was playing with the controls. My boy didn't quite go vrooom, but he helped me with the vacuum for a while until his arms got tired. Metal tubes this time, not plastic. And it's so quiet.

Five minutes in all to vacuum the carpet. The old one kept dying on me which I think because the bagless bag needs emptying. So it got overheated. Heh. That was supposed to be the hubby's job. Anyway, my part-time maid was on leave, and a couple of times of using the old vacuum cleaner drove me nuts. I'm a happy vacuumer now. :)

Will continue to vacuum the floor during weekdays. Hey, it suddenly became fun!

*****
I've also got my lovely table-top electric grill plus hot pot. Can only do one thing at one time though, but who cares eh? So I went and buy the corn-fed beef especially for grilling. And we had grilled beef plus pork (because I didn't realised the packet contained pork as well, kinda felt cheated really!) for dinner tonight. Plus special lemon dipping sauce, from my Japanese recipe book. Oh ... the beef was mouth-watering. Even writing it here now makes my mouth water.

After dinner, I realised the drawback of grilling in the dining room. The whole house is oily. Arrgh.

So it took half an hour to mop the floor, wash the dishes and mop the floor again.

Arrgh, I just remembered I haven't hang up the clothes! Arrgh.

Much ado about nothing

I haven't been able to log in to blogger recently, I think there's a problem with netscape. Now with IE, everything seems to be smooth going. But somehow something is irritating me. Using this verison of IE. Maybe I should upgrade to the latest version. Hmm. The alternative is to login via someone else's page. Hmm ... anyway, no worries, here I am.

If I could have written something a couple of days back, the title of my post would be 'The things that made me angry'. Oh, I had a whole list of things that made me angry. So angry in fact, that it's not going to be good for my health. Venting it out might be good, but writing it down may not always be a good idea, since it serves as a reminder how angry one can get. So perhaps it was a good thing I did not write them down after all.

Then again, I'm still angry because I couldn't quite vent them all out. The next best thing is to indulge in guilt-laden shopping spree. Yep, Tods sale is around the corner. I shall have my shopping therapy. Paid up my credit card bills in anticipation of spending big money. hahha. There's a feeling of recklessness. One bag and at least two pairs of shoes. How's that to soothe my anger?

Of course all the money I spend will be from my own account. Here's to pay-raise and some bonus. I think there is some bonus, isn't there?

*****
Anyway, I just came back from visiting my Granny in Malaysia. It was a short trip of two days and nights. In future, I must remember that my aunt has very low taste. Of course she meant well, but her idea of an excellent hotel and an excellent breakfast fell short of our expectations. One look at the place instantly placed it to at most two stars. I rolled my eyes and muttered under my breath to hubby who rolled his eyes at me. Hey, and it wasn't cheap for a two star hotel too. Grrr. I mean, I don't mind if I've to stay in a two star hotel, but I don't expect to pay so much for that sort of place! I'd rather spend slightly more and have at least a four star resort. Grr. Next time I shall book online myself. The other place wasn't too bad. It was new if nothing else. New places are always nice. Until it gets old.

Grandma is stil very strong, if not a little forgetful and blur. Baby allowed himself to be held for a short while. On the second visit, he pointedly decided that pretty girls are much preferred over old ladies. He played with his little aunties so delightfully, and had so much fun being the center of attraction with my cousins aged twelve and below. He obviously didn't care who were the ones giving him angpows. Nope, not interested right now, except for pretty girls who swoon and held his hands. Lady killer, him. No, make that pretty ladies only. heh.

My poor dear came back with a fever, a bad cough and runny nose. It's been almost a week, and he's still coughing away, with lots of phelgm too. It breaks one heart to hear him cough like that, plus wheezing away when the phelgm blocks his airways and he coughs till he throws up. It is the nights that are bad. Moreover, giving him his medicine is also a nightmare. One look at the bottle and he starts crying. The teaspoon comes out and he starts struggling. And flailing his little fists. We had no choice but to syringe it, hold him down, and force feed him. And he's smart, he wouldn't swallow and goes phuuuutt and onto our face and hair and clothes. Or he'll just use his fingers and dig all out. So we have to grip him tightly, and pour it down his throat. It just make it worse, for he cried and cried and cried and eventually he threw up everything. Last night he seemed to be better. Last night I tried giving him his medicine with a bit of a bribe. One hand holding chocolates, he nodded his head decisively. The other hand with the medicine bottle, he shook his head and cried. Oh he knew what he wanted definitely. So I tried a sleight of hand, but it could only work once. I finally resorted to putting the chocolate (a smear of it) at the tip of the spoon and poured the medicine into the rest of the spoon. He saw, he knew and he grumbled. And still grumbling, he conceded. I guess he agreed to compromise.

So today for the whole day he seemed to be much better and I missed his medicine all together. It's stressful for both him and myself when giving him medicine. Sometimes I really feel like a single mother. Alas, he seemed to be worse tonight, and a few mintues ago, we fed him his cough syrup and phelgm medicine again. I hope he'll be okay for the rest of the night.

*****
The other thing which irritates me is some inane remark made by someone at work. A couple of weeks back. One's special profession doesn't make one a god. Ask me if you want to know what inane remark that person make. I'm just grouchy, because baby is still sick, and I missed yoga on Monday.

My cleaning lady will not be around for the whole month. I just scrubbed my yard three days ago, and it's cleaner than ever she could clean. This morning I tidied up my little terrace garden. The plants are growing nicely. Hubby sees me watering the plants and commented that the poor plants undergo draughts and floods. I think I shall pour some bleach on the floor on Friday. My vacuum cleaner works for about ten minutes before it dies everytime. I think the bagless idiot needs to be cleaned. But I'm allergic to dust, so I shall get a new vacuum cleaner instead. It's someone else's job to clear out the dust in the vacuum cleaner, but that is never going to happen. I shall get a better cleaner. Besides the dust and hair always get stuck in the duster (or whatever you call that thingy). Yep, certainly due for a new vacuum cleaner. :)

Other wants: a hotplate grill and steamboat. I've spied a tiger. I thought of getting one of those electronic rice cooker, but the sales lady said it takes like 45 minutes to cook rice. Hello?! Forty-five? You gotta be joking. I'll save my money then. Must get a new hood. Actually I'd like to change my whole kitchen. But that's another story for another time. Have been slowly putting things away too. The house looks just slightly neater now. Just ever so slightly. It's still too messy really. I'd like to visit Ikea too before the holidays end, but the next week seems to be looming up fast, and next week equals no more holidays.

*****
One last thing. The use of the miso paste I bought in the last post was a failure. Must. read. recipe. again. and. carefully. too.

Play. Start.

Blogger login seems to have a bit of a problem. Everytime it kicks me out of my browser when I tries to login. Have resorted to some tricks to get in. *sigh*

It's been a busy and tiring period of time. I'm really glad it's holidays now, although my first week is so burnt. Nevertheless, it'll be nice to be able to spend more time with my baby dearest. He's growing up so fast and oh-so-cute. He talks a lot sometimes, and has a really cute sense of humour. He'll do things like pretend to give you something, then take his hand back and chuckles. Or he'll hide behind me and do peek-a-boo at his daddy. And he'll hug and kiss you when you ask him to. The kisses come with a big smacking sound too. :)

Dearest baby my big boy is now fast asleep though.

The Great Sale has started, but I don't really have anything I wanted to buy. Thought of getting some nice kitchen stuffs, but don't really feel like buying anything especially when it's so crowded. I hate crowded places. Perhaps get some nice storage stuffs to make the house look neater and nicer, but lazy to go shop actually. This year, I've decided I'll save my money and wait for Tods sale. It's time again to get a new Tods bag and maybe even shoes. Heh heh. I spied a white Tods bag. Hmmm .... Then again, usually I'll end up not using them because they're just too damn heavy.

A friend called asking to catch up for my birthday. That day is long past, and somehow it just didn't feel very sincere in asking me out. Seems like she was more interested in telling me someone had a girlfriend. I wonder if she was disappointed that it was not her being the girlfriend. I used to tease her about him, but she always adamently insisted that she wasn't interested. So why is she still so interested in his love life? Am I missing something here?

My birthday itself was quite disappointing. Nothing much happened, and to make things worse, my phone broke into two parts on the day itself. I was one week without phone then. Somehow some things seemed rather forced. The birthday cake didn't arrive in time, only one week later, and three hours late. Still, it was a lovely birthday cake, and I left one bite-size in the fridge which I consumed five days later, and boy, that really tasted good. Baby dearest celebrated my birthday with me, and looking at the photos, one wonders whose birthday exactly it was. I bet six more months later, he'll be all ready to blow out the candles on his birthday cake. I haven't really bought anythine really nice for myself this time. Perhaps something T might be nice. I've spent a bomb on my face care, and don't really feel like buying anything else. But face care doesn't really count as birthday presents right? *bleah*
Yep, something T might be nice, but $900 for a piece of silver is just too steep. Silver oxidises too fast. I wonder how Wen can stand it. So we'll wait for the Tods sale. Yep yep.

On animes. Ouran High School Host Club is such a kick. I wondered why I thought it wasn't nice at all last time. I laughed and laughed. My cheeks felt rather tired after that. The rest are still on a weekly basis. Dennou Coil is really really interesting. It reminds me of Studio Ghibi's type of animes.

Other news, just bought a packet of miso paste. Time to try out some new recipes! :)

Bits and Pieces

The other day I wanted to blog, and tried logging in but my computer kept hanging. I'm still not sure why that happened, but I'm glad that today I managed to get through! It's been quite a while since I've written anything. I'm still lurking around reading other people's blogs and being super duper busy otherwise.

My boy is growing up very fast now. He's a big little boy, and he's super duper cute. :) Well, everyone says so. Heh. Here are some pictures of him I managed to take recently. Nowadays it's quite hard to take any pics of him since he's always in motion.


My dearest boy trying his hand at housework. See the mess he makes?


He loves sweeping the floor. I must show him this when he's older and tell him that he loves sweeping the floor. heh heh.


Awww ... actually I hate to complain, but after he swept the floor for me, he left lots of broom hair on the floor. Grr. And the broom isn't very clean. Looks like I have to buy him a broom for him. A real broom no less. When am I going Daiso again? :)

*****
My baby boy all ready to go swimming!

I guess he'd rather just play with the water.

Kick Wireless Ass

Oh yeah. I didn't know that it was free. Yep, the best part of anything is always when it's free eh? I didn't even know that such things existed. Not until PM came over and started surfing on her laptop. Whoohoo, now I'm on it too! Hip hip hooray!

Of course the downside of it is that I can only open one window. Anything more than one hangs my computer and/or slows the whole system down. But heck, it's free, so who cares if one can only open one window?

It's free!!! And it's much faster than the 56.6k modem running on telephone lines. And I got connection with my laptop! Yay!! :)

It kills a bit of boredom, but it certainly gives me a good break. Now I can surf on my laptop. Anywhere. Well, almost anywhere. But most happily, in the clinic where I am right now.

It's 8pm, and I'm hungry. Both of us had not have our dinner yet. They came one by one, and lots of odd screwballs around tonight. Some drove hard bargains, but with firmness, they don't get what they want. Those people are really annoying. We don't need such people here. Shoo.

I spent the whole day on data-entry. Keying in invoices and stuffs. All these should be done month by month. Thank goodness, it's still less than a year. Will have to be more diligent in keying in then. Am supposed to do some work of my own, but now my eyes are tired. And I feel tired. What would be nice for dinner?

I dream of the Japanese place Wen and I went for her birthday. I dream of the riceballs we had. I love their riceballs! If only someone can go there and pack some for me. Hear my tummy? It's growling. :(

Anyway, I'm still suffering from post-GH blues. No more GH to look forward to. *sigh* Some kind soul is doing some novel translation snippets, but it's too little! Too little!! *sob sob* :(

To destress, I need to get out and do more shopping! *bleah*

All good things must come to an end.

I've finally caught the last episode of Ghost Hunt. It's really sad, that the anime has ended. I wished I could get my hands on the novels, and can read Japanese, but that's not going to happen today or tomorrow.

I've also been watching Nodame Cantabile, and that is one hell of a drama. We bought the live-action drama, and the actors and actresses are pretty cool! What happened to all the Jdrama? Why is it only Kdrama nowadays? I still think Japanese actors and actresses are cuter than Koreans, and their language are more musical to the ears, their jokes are more funny and ... I still like Jdrama than Kdrama. The anime for Nodame Cantabile pales in comparison to the live-action, but I'm not complaining, seeing how Ghost Hunt has finally ended, and Saiunkoku too. *sigh* Life sure is sad without these good things.

Nodame Cantabile makes me want to play the piano. :-) I need a new piano. Next promotion. Yep, I shall look for a new one. The keys in my old piano are loose and the notes just doesn't sound as nice. I brought my scores to my in-laws place and happily played a few hours there, while baby is sleeping or being entertained by them. Not too bored to be there. heh.

Anyway, there are a few things I need to write, but I'm not sure if I should do so, especially things which concern work. I'm going to post them in my new livejournal, so if you're interested, drop me a line. Blogger should come up with some option which can restrict prying eyes from seeing, but then again, I'm not sure how private livejournal is too, even if it's for friends only. Hmmmm.

Another day

It's amazing how a person's mood can be so easily changed by another person, or a word, or a look ...

I was in pretty good spirits until towards the end. Still it wasn't exactly a bad day, nor was it a fantastically good one. It's just tiring. I'm glad for next week.

Yoga tomorrow. I hope I can make it.

Big words

One of baby's first three-syllabic word was umbrella.

Hubby's friends came over for dinner the other night. They didn't believe us when we mentioned it off-hand, when they asked if he was starting to speak. So we prompted him to say umbrella. At first, Len was quite reluctant to be our pet monkey, then hubby took out said object and showed it to our baby. It was one of those full size ones. Baby delightedly grabbed the umbrella and started yelling uuuummmm-brreeeeee-lllllaaaaah! And then there was no stopping him for the rest of the night, well at least until we took the umbrella away from him. :)

Baby is also starting to say words like dangerous, it sounds more like janjanrous, and he's finally learnt to say ah-gong, which comes out more like ah-geng. Ah well, but the strange thing is that he seldom uses mono-syllabic words, I guess he prefers big two and three syllabic words. We'll be teaching him more bombastic words then. :P

Baby also loves rolling his tongue and going brrrruuuummmm when he sees a motorbike. He'll go MMmmmmmmmmm when he sees a car. And he's also very interested in bicycles. We're thinking of getting him one, a tricycle. Time for him to learn to fall! Haha.

Just another day

Dear baby is now finally asleep, and I've finally got some time to myself. That is to do my own things. For myself. That is, to blog.

Otherwise I've been busy with housechores, work and hubby's work. Sometimes I do feel a little resentful that I've become expected to help him. Maybe it's me who can't say no, maybe that's what love is. But it gets a little tiring if when one helps yet gets criticised because of upspoken expectations and standards.

Like yesterday was a pretty bad day. I drove hubby to work, and got criticised for my bad driving, like tending to keep more left than right in the lane, accelerating when car in front isn't, and god knows what. I guess it's a bad habit of mine to always tend to be a little to the left, but you know what Professor Calculus in TinTin always say? A little to the left, that's what he'll say. I know what I'm doing, and I'm not going to get into any accidents, yet. And if he's in a bad mood, he doesn't have to take it out on me on my driving!

And another thing being later at night, when I was trying to help him do more filings, and overshot his closing time. Well, he could just have easily told me nicely to stop, and help me put everything back. After all, those were all his stuffs. Grrr. The last time it happened I swore I won't help him again, yet there I was, doing stuffs for him again. Maybe I should just stay away from his workplace totally huh.

Of course the last thing which pretty pisses me off is his webpage. Next time I'll just keep my big mouth shut and never never offer anymore help. As it is, I've offered to do something about it later today. But right now, I'm really really super unmotivated at all.

Oh yes, I have lots of complains today, but I shall not say anymore, else Wen will definitely criticise me too. :P

*****
Anyway, Tuesday I finally went back to yoga. General class. Perhaps Viv isn't doing really tough stuffs after all. After almost a year of no yoga, the class really didn't feel too bad! :) Yayayayay! Must continue to go for yoga! I really need more motivation!!

I hope baby sleeps a bit longer this time. Because I've been feeling pretty down in the dumps lately, I've been indulging in much shopping. Now gotta keep the spoils and check the receipts. Arrgh, just how much did I spend this time? *covers eyes*

And after I've done that, I hope I'll have time left to watch my animes. *sigh*

Friends Forever

So we had another dinner gathering to see Lin off. I was so busy, I didn't have time to shop for something nice for her as a farewell gift. I was hoping to get a nice book for her to write her diary and stories, maybe I'll go look for one sometime and send it to her via airmail one of those days. Time flies so fast. I didn't have time to shop for something nice for Wen either. She's only interested in Tiffany, unfortunately they're so ex, I can't even afford them for myself! *sniff* Still thinking if I should get that pretty charm bracelet, but it's silver, it oxidises. *sniff* I quite like to spend time to go shopping for nice stuffs for my friends, unless you know explicitly what they like, otherwise I have always hoped that things I give my friends are nice surprises, and they're like and treasure them.

So Lin will be flying off to Berlin and staying there for three years. I wonder if I could ever have the time to go visit her there. I remember when she was studying in UK, I told her that I'd like to go visit her, but it never materialise. Now with a hubby and kid, dreams to travel and explore becomes even slimmer.

All my girlfriends are workaholics. Yep. PM was late for two hours, and she sure looked so haggard. She told us some interesting stuffs, and it just reinforces the fact that the world is changing so fast. In the past, when you're angry and frustrated with something, you tell your friends or write in your diary and that's it. Blogging online doesn't help. People will find out who you are. Especially if you're stupid/naive? enough to put some specific names and use strong language. There's no privacy in blogs. Blogs are not diaries. Never will be.

And I wonder what the person is thinking. Or maybe that's what young people do nowadays. When they're unhappy, they'll blog about it all without thinking that other people might read it and it'll get back to them. It sucks, but it's like that. So be really careful what you're writing online. If you want to vent, vent it with a friend, or write, but not post online. Or better still, what happen to the good old days where you make a voodoo doll and stick pins into it? Hmm, I'm watching too much GH. heh heh.

So saying, there's also not much for me to blog about. Maybe I'll write fanfics instead. :)

And come to think of it, I've been writing quite a lot of complainy stuffs in my blog again. haha. I guess it's good to vent, perhaps I should put in more happy stuffs here.

But I'm really not unhappy. There are a lot of things to be happy about!

Tell you next time. :)

Last night ... last week ...

Last night the moon was very beautiful. I had wanted to post this last night, but somehow I did this, and I did that, and time slipped by my fingers again. Last night we stayed over at my parents' place. So that hubby need not travel the length and breadth of the country again. It's getting rather tiring, and I have a bad throat. Last night I came home to iron the clothes, an hour into it and I had to call it a day. Last night I watched my animes again and again, and fell in love with all my animes again.

Last night the moon was really very beautiful. I thought I saw it had a crooked little nose too. The moon that is.

I've lost a friend. Irrevocably. This is the first CNY where I sent out my messages and never got a reply. I guess it really can't be help, but I really felt sad. And I've probably been blocked off at frienster too. It's really sad.

***
CNY this year was pretty hectic. The first day was spent at my in-laws place then at my auntie's place. In-laws' place was very quiet. The happening brother-in-law plus wife plus two kids were missing, and the place was definitely quieter. The rest of us weren't exactly social butterflies. They played cards as usual after the usual lunch, and I got an excuse to stay upstairs in the only air-con room with baby since he fell asleep after lunch. Oh yes, I switched on the air-con to super cold plus fan full blast. I probably wouldn't be able to do that if not for baby. Yeah. That's the way to enjoy! And I sat down, switched on my laptop and found to my utmost horror that the program couldn't run avi files. Xena heard me scream bloody murder all the way to her place. Heh heh. I complained to just about anyone who was free to listen to me. Arrrgh.

Oh, and lunch ... was a disaster. Remind me never to buy sashimi again. I bought >$20 worth of salmon belly sashimi for the yusheng, but hubby and I forgot to bring it along on the eve to go with the yusheng. So we had it the next day, which was the CNY lunch. Dear MIL plonked the whole stub of wasabi into a bowl, poured the packets of soy-sauce into it, and proceeded to stuff all my expensive salmon into that bowl. Then she picked up her chopsticks and vigourously mix and stirred and poked EVERYTHING in the bowl!!! Arrrrrrrrggggggghhhhhhh! All of us kept our faces as bland as possible. I think I heard my brother-in-law made a choking noise. Hubby protested a little, but MIL seemed to be in a nasty mood, and she was attacking the poor salmon like they'd done her wrong. We still ate the fish, I definitely did, hey, I was really looking forward to enjoying the salmon belly you know. I've never buy them before for myself. The wasabi was a little too much, but it was still ... edible. Until. . .

MIL came up with this brillant idea to add the sweet plum sauce from an extra packet of yusheng into said bowl. This time brother-in-law protested, saying (very gently) to take it easy. Then hubby had to go out of the kitchen for a while. Bro-in-law stood up to look for some tissue. One was out, the other had his back turned, MIL quickly and quietly poured all that sweet plum sauce into the bowl. My eyes popped out. She happily mixed the sauce and the fish. The boys came back, sat down, saw what was in the bowl, and kept very quiet. No one said a thing. I observed. She finally took one slice of the fish to eat. Her face made a face. I observed. No one else took anymore fish. Neither did she.

So question is, do you think she'd throw the rest of the fish away? Or do you think she'll actually cook them?

BTW, wasabi do not kill/ or disinfect germs. Some Japanese eat raw fish without wasabi. The idea is you drink sake after that.

I rolled my eyes. Tell me how not to be miserable. Tell me why I put my foot down and not want to live with her. Tell me what I am to do next time?

I know not to laugh or cry.

***
A few days before CNY, father-in-law had an accident, whereby after the incident, he put it very cheerfully to my sister-in-law, that it could have been fatal. Yeah, what a nice way to reassure people. So much for thinking that they are still spring chickens. One would have thought once bitten, twice shy ... but nooo. Misery as misery does. In the end, they spent more money being hospitalised, plus being tramatised plus almost being blinded and losing one's life. I spent that day running errands and driving them around. To get a CT scan, then to their home, then car inspection, then to their home, then clinic, then to their home, then clinic, then hospital, then to their home, then convinced MIL to stay with us overnight. So that she can take care of baby. I'm not that nice. Hubby is the one who will be stressed the next day having to send baby to my parent's place.

So the next day I went to school, and just four hours away and I came home to an extremely messy home. There were lots of food particles on the floor. The carpet was full of crumbs. The ants were already scrambling to harvest the food on the floor. The kichen was in a mess. The dining table was dirty. Arrrrrggggh. Four hours. I immediately got onto my hands and knees and mopped the floor. In my work clothes. Then I wiped everything, washed up, vacumn the carpet and bathed baby, then I sent MIL home. Whew.

Our personalities definitely clash. We'll drive each other crazy yeah?

On a side note: nowadays I never let baby wear nice clothes when he goes over to MIL's place. His nice shirts all come back stained and dirty and I just can't get the stains out. They're usually food stains. I put him in the oldest and dirtiest clothes ever. And probably hand-me-down from ... his father and uncles. hahaha. It makes her happy, I guess, to see baby wearing those clothes.

***
Dinner at my aunt's place on new year was wonderful. Dinner at mom's place on the eve was wonderful. It is times like that that I still retain my sanity. We played some mahjong, and even hubby got into the groove. He's pretty good at it now. :)

The rest of the holidays was work, work and work. It wasn't too bad, I spent my free time catching up on my animes. D Gray Man, Death note, Bleach etc. Yep, it was pretty nice, except that we had less time to spent with baby and the house was still pretty messy.

And it still is. I'm so hooked on Ghost Hunt nowadays that I really don't feel like doing anything else. :P

I guess things could have been better. Sometimes. But I guess things are pretty good already.

I guess everything will be heaven if the next episode of GH will come out fast, and if I could get my hands on the novels. :P

Happy Lunar New Year.

A series of events

Over the past few weeks, there were many birthdays to celebrate and many outings/gatherings to attend. I met up with Min for her birthday, then met up with Min and PM again to celebrate Min's birthday, then met up with Min, PM, YS and Lin to celebrate Min's birthday again plus farewelll party for Lin. Then I met up with Wen for her birthday, and also met up with Xel also for her birthday.

So I'm quite broke. But that didn't stop me from spending money. Haha. I'm hoping to buy a new camera, a small one which I can carry around, not like the one my hubby got, the PowerShot. I wished I had a camera when I went out with all my friends, but no way am I going to lug along a big camera (plus a big baby!)

This is one pic taken when I met up with Min and PM. We had dim sum lunch at this place at the International Building. I like their special har gua very much! Baby loves PM very much too, as she was feeding him quite a lot of dim sum from her plate! tsk tsk. And to think that I've actually fed him before we went out! One big bowl of porriage!

Baby loves pushing his stroller around like using it as a walker, and he sure walks around and around the whole place, chuckling happily everytime. And he sure likes to be photographed by Min! Someone is definitely one big happy baby that day!

Dinner with Wen was at this Jap place next to the Crazy Horse. Never even heard of the Crazy Horse, and suddenly everyone starts talking about it! I always go by that place, but never knew the existance. I guess even adverse promotion is good promotion. Anyway dinner was at Kura no Naka. The food was excellent. We shared a set of three types of appetisers, a tofu mentai, one hamachi kama, one yasai tempura and each of us had an onigiri, Wen had ume and I had mentai. There was raw squid in the appeitisers and after one mouth, Wen admitted defeat, so I had them all to myself. Haha. If you don't mind slimy stuffs, they're actually quite nice. The place is pretty dark, and you get authentic Japanese ladies serving you. It has a nice clubby feeling, and is probably a pub later on at night, in line with the Clarke Quay atmosphere. Not bad, can go again. Too bad no photos.

That day I dropped baby dearest with my parents. They were at the family place (Tampopo) in the next building. We always go there almost every weekend. I picked Wen up from her place, and baby was with me in the car. He cried all the way to our destination. After dinner, I collected baby from my parents, and sent Wen back. Dearest cry-baby cried all the way back too. Even with Wen carrying him, he cried and cried and tried climbing on my lap. There was even a period of time that he sat on my lap with his head on my chest while I drove. And he was so happy and quiet and hiccupped a bit. TOo dangerous though, I was seriously sweating, and had to return him to Wen and he screamed even louder after that. All the way back to Wen's place. *sigh* I think he needs spanking.

In other news, baby was kissed by the little girl next door. Awww. He looked a bit stunned after that. Heh heh. He also got a bit braver, and is able to stand by himself now. He is also able to take a few steps by himself, just that he's still to scared to do so, and he'll always end up squatting when he wants to start moving. Otherwise, most of the time he uses just about anything as his walker.

Baby now climbs up the stairs very fast and without supervision. However he still dares not go down the stairs himself. He'll look at me from the railings and whine and whine and whine until I go up to get him. Otherwise when I'm upstairs and he's downstairs, he'll make his way quickly up to look for me. We have gotten a gate but it's not fixed yet. :P

*****
Yesterday I was able to get off work earlier, and I rushed home to do housework. It just never ends, you know. All those clothes and dust. I even managed to cook a nice dinner for hubby and myself, since baby was still at his granny's place.

Yep, dinner was pork-ribs cooked in my own creation. I looked through some of my cookbooks, and whipped up something myself. Why pork-ribs? They were sitting in my freezer since dunno when. Usually I made pork-ribs with soup, but hubby doesn't really like them that way. So this time, I cooked it with salted black beans, and baked them in the oven. The oranges were just an inspiration, because there were lots of oranges in my frige (and some of them might be already rotten, don't ask, I haven't really looked), so I thought to put in a couple, for taste and for appearance. I know the picture doesn't look that pretty, by the time dinner was ready, I was too hungry to re-arrange everything and take nice photos. But it tasted pretty good! yay! :)

It's nice to be young

Sometimes I wish I'm ten years younger.

Heh.

I wonder if there are any people my age who goes completely gaga about animes. Definitely not any of my galfriends. They're all serious hardworking types who earn lots of money! And they work long hours, have a masters degree and are pretty highflying super achievers. Damn, make me sound like an under-acheiver. Yikes.

Anyway, I was so crazed over Ghost Hunt, I bought all the manga. Some in Jap, no less. I feel like buying the complete set (the earlier ones) in Jap, but I shall wait till there's a discount. Read: I'm definitely going to get the Jap version. Perhaps it might be better to get the Chinese version, but have to pre-order, and I figured that since my Chinese isn't top-notch either, might as well get them original and start learning Jap again. Heh.

That was one of the reasons why I haven't been blogging. Been visiting forumns and reading all about GH. *sigh* ... am still waiting for the next episode. Can die man. Will I be able to watch it tonight?

:(

**
In between anime watching, working and busy with domestic life, some days I suddenly find myself very tired. Tired of everything. Makes me want to do things. The heart and head is willing, but the body is not. I must go and attend yoga classes again, start playing the piano and learn the violin. Especially now that I have some time to spare. The latest anime Nodame Cantabile has been pretty motivating. You hear the sweet sound of Beethoven's Violin Sonata 'Spring', and you immediately put on the CD to play repeat x 100 times, and you search for the score and run through the piece with it, and you wish you could play just a little of it.

It's really uplifting.

But it's just too damn difficult to play. I tried running a few notes on Chopin's Fantasie Impromptu, and I realised that I have to start from ground 0 once again. *sigh* The piano in school have many keys missing, otherwise it was kinda showy (I guess) to drum up some Mozart and fool the kids just a little. Hahahah. Oh yeah, I was bored.

**
I got a swollen eye right now, it feels like someone punched me there. *mutter*

Sometimes how I wish time would just stop and let me do just what I want.

One more day before the weekend!

...

My darling little boy is no longer a baby. His molars are coming out. These past two nights he has been having extremely high fever. My parents drove him back on Tuesday night to return him to me. These past two nights I have not been having enough sleep. Last night his fever hit a high of 39.6 degrees. My dear boy doesn't appreciate sponging. When I left the wet cloth on his forehead he snatched it away irritatingly. Tsk tsk tsk.

I was supposed to keep an eye out for his fever, but I kept dozing off. That's why his fever went up so much. :( We woke up to give him his medicine and I stayed awake to continue sponging and comfort/feed him. I dozed off with my head on his forehead, and I could feel the heat. I even went down to the kitchen to get some ice to sponge him, then I realised that I was only dreaming. That was such a vivid dream. Strange how one subconscious can do. I didn't get any ice eventually, but hubby said the trick was to keep wiping him down so that the water evaporates off him, thus cooling him down. Poor hubby, unlike me, he couldn't take a day off to rest.

I hope baby's fever will settle. I hope he would not be feverish again. Nights are the worrying part cos that's when the fever really goes very high. Right now he's sleeping soundly, last medication was in the evening, and still no sign of any fever. *crosses finger*

Babies are such delicate creatures. If there is no one to take care of them, how will they ever survive?

So baby and I spent quality time together today. I brought him down to see the birds and cats in the morning, and tried to get him to have his morning nap. It's difficult to cook while carrying him, and he kept fussing when I put him down. Yet thank goodness, I managed to cook my lunch. :) Lunch was more claypot udon. I have given up making a different set of lunch for my boy. I gave him some of the udon plus the cod fish which was actually for him. My mother buys expensive fish for my dear boy. :P I forgot to put in my mushroom though. :(

My father came over in the evening, and I managed to cook dinner. So quickly a day flies by. Where got time to do any other thing? Am still waiting for the next episode of Ghost Hunt, but it seems the server is down. *sigh*

*****
Over at my parents' estate, my mom told me that their management wanted to get rid of the stray cats roaming around the estate. They put out food laced with poison but the cats were too smart to eat the food. Unfortunately, someone caught the mother cat and bashed her in. The cleaning lady told her, she said. Whacked the head till she died. It made my blood boil when I heard that. I'm not sure how accurate this account is, but if it's true, who should I report this murder to? The police? SPCA? Cat welfare? I told my mother to confirm with the cleaning lady if she actually saw that happening, and to note down when it happened, and if she knew who did it. I am definitely going to make a complaint. If they can do it to the mother cat, her two babies are just waiting to be done in by that person. What a horrible thing to do. Nowadays the two poor kittens are mewing away looking for their mother. What a horrible thing to do. I hope the person who did that evil thing will rot in hell.

I would understand if the management need to control the population of the cats, but they should just call in either the SPCA or the cat welfare to settle the matter professionally and humanely. Either that or let the cat be steralised. If the account is true, I hope that person who killed the cat will not get away with the murder. The cats were always around and they're very nice cats. Besides cats keep rats away. The people in the estate who complained about the cats should also rot in hell. For over twenty years there were never any such complains. Must be some new residents. I wonder ...

Underestimate not the little one

So you would think that at a tender age of 13 months, he'll not be able to tell the difference.

I took the one on the right away from his gubby fingers, distracted him a little, and passed him back the one on the left. He screamed bloody murder. Oh yes, he protested and threw the controller onto the floor and SULKed at me. Oh yes, that is my little cutie pie at a tender age of 13 months.

Even my mom couldn't tell the difference between both controllers as she was always trying to use the one on the left to change channels on the TV and failed miserably of course. How could my little one know which was which. Hey, I even held the left controller in my hands for not-very-short time and pointed it towards the TV in front of him. Oh nooo, he was still not tricked. He knew the one on the right changes channels on TV, and he'll hold it in his hand, and points it to the TV and happily change channels for me. And when given the other one, he'll get angry and throw it onto the floor.

My dear little cutie pie, really cannot underestimate him!

I missed him so. Tonight he's spending his night at his grandparent's place and the whole house is so quiet without him. I really miss him. Was supposed to have dinner with some friends but it was cancelled, so I'm all alone at home. Have washed the clothes, hope that there'll be some sun tomorrow. Am supposed to catch up with the ironing, but I'm stuck ... watching animes. :P

I missed my little boy annoying me when I'm watching my animes. I missed my little boy when he'll crawl to me and tug at my legs wanting to see what I'm doing just out of his reach. He's always curious, more curious than anything and wants to know what is happening around him. I missed carrying him in my arms. Going to be a long day tomorrow. Else I could go see him immediately after work. *sigh*

Am still coughing. Can I call in sick? :X

Much ado about nothing

It's a quiet day today. Feels so peaceful. Too quiet in fact. What has happened?

*looks around*

*gets up and walks around*

Oh, the little terror is sleeping like an angel. So sweetly. Wait, did he just twitched? Shhhhh, let's tiptoe back to our room. Let sleeping lions lie.

Baby dearest was extremely clingy, fussy and annoying the whole morning. I had to carry him while I prepared lunch, and he refused to sit on his baby chair all the way during lunch. No wonder my arms ached. Lunch was a delicious Nabeyaki udon. Yay, I finally cooked my own hotpot udon. It tasted really nice and hot and just lovely for a cold day plus I'm down with cold too. Couldn't be bothered to cook porriage for baby so he shared my udon (with extra fish). I guess it's ok for baby to be eating udon right?

Hmm ...

Baby dearest doesn't like his own baby food. I think I've mentioned this many times. So nowadays he likes eating sushi (but of course I only give him the cooked stuffs), and rice and fish (it's so much easier to feed him) and bread and biscuits. Baby dearest certainly has expensive taste! You should see his mouth opening big big when we give him 'adult' food. He's not tricked too. He can see very well what is in the spoon (or in the hand/ most of the times in the chopsticks actually) and he'll grab the hand with the 'real' food while pushing away your hand with his 'baby' food with his other hand. Something new? He'll stick out his tongue to 'taste' the food first before opening his diamond-clad mouth. I wave white flag.

It's so hard to take care of my big baby. Two weeks into work, and work is so much more relaxing. There is also a guilty feeling one tries to ignore, when one places baby dearest over at mom's place for the night. That makes two nights in a week. Not really missing him for the first night, but rather so for the second time. And have been spending long hours at work, if not helping the dear hubby. Oh, the wonders of not having to feed baby solids. Or to change his diapers, or bathe him. Suddenly life goes back to normal - the pre-baby time, except for that niggling guilty feeling!

It's so hard to be a mother, and a working mother at that.

*****
What should one do for dinner tonight? The plan was to go down to parent's place for dinner, but it's still raining, and one is feeling very lazy. And one's butt is stuck to the chair.

Whoops ... was that a wail from the sleeping cat?

. . .

This little pig went to the zoo

I realised that it really takes a long time for everyone to be ready and out of the house. By the time we reached the zoo, it was just nice for lunch. Baby dearest didn't want his own baby food of course, and he indulged in junk food too. Baby is getting really a handful to take care. He is. very. naughty. Very. Very. Naughty.

So we saw lots of animals, and strange creatures. There were these ...


and these ...

And I think baby likes the fishes.

Of course there were the normal giraffes and elephants, lions and tigers and monkeys. And the poor polar bear.

It was so warm. The so-called air-conditioning they were blowing over the polar bear was like ... lukewarm. Poor polar bears. They definitely looked like they're suffering.

Anyway, by the end of the trip, baby dearest was sleeping like one of those pigs above. Overall, I think the zoo is a nice place to go with kids, but I wouldn't really want to go to the zoo. First of all, it's really too damn hot. Secondly, the place is really small. The enclosure for each animal is really really small. I remember the wildlife place I went in Oz. This one cannot compare. All the animals seem so caged in. The poor leopard had OCD. She was going round and round and round in circles. So did one of those mountain cats. I would too, if I had to endure such small cages. Poor animals. The zoo doesn't give one a nice feeling at all. I think I hate it.

Maybe we'll bring baby to one if we ever to Oz again. :)

*****
This little pig had roast beef

More of my cooking. Still trying to achieve that elusive donobe gohan. :) Still this was nice, but I think the plum sake was just a little too sweet, and too like a cough mixture. Mom said it was good, which prompted me to buy, but I think I was tricked. I'd rather stick to the normal sake, thank you very much!

January 2007

Definitely not a good start to a new year. Maybe I should go and see a fengshui master. Yep, caught the very cute Leong ChaoWei and dunnowhatsthenamebutlooksfamiliaractress on TV about fengshui and all that stuffs.

Anyway, to cut the long story short. Baby 1. Parents 0.

Poor baby cried for one hour. Cheeks full of tears. Hairless head full of sweat. Chin - quavering. Lips - extreme down. Eyes - swollen. Hiccups and all the works. It was heartwrenching.

All it takes was five minutes. And he was all smiles again. Happy, bubbly, cheerful, grinning self. And he looked at us in the eye and wagged his finger at us and told us, 'Don't you understand Daddy Mummy? That was all I wanted!' Of course it came out as babblebabblebabbleDADAMAMAbabblebabblebabble plus finger wagging.

Hubby was too tired to walk the mile with him. It was too painful for me to hold him and watch him cry. And when he started looking and pawing and I had to say cannot, no more, he understood, he stopped, and he looked at me sooo sadly and cried and cried and cried buckets. I can't do this thing alone. But hubby couldn't help. So we're back to square one.

Forty dollars down the drain. When I saw the cost of the two tiny pills, I called PM and practically shrieked down the phone at her. So bloody expensive?!?!!?! The two bloody tiny pills was 1333 times more expensive then gold. Ok.

*sigh*

So I'm back to ice-compresses, and antibiotics and hopefully no more need of fever medication. High fever for three days is no joke. High fever with chills for three days is no joke. High fever with chills, headache and pain is really no joke. Spoilt the last of my holidays completely. I took so many paracetemols that by 6pm, I finished the maximum of eight. Fortunately nowadays there are other types of medicine and hubby passed me bifen (yep, in syrup - the ones for kids, orange flavoured - 3rd tablespoon gave me a sorethroat :P). I took three tablespoons (because hubby insisted that one tablespoon is 5ml - but I didn't pour each tablespoon full) and felt pretty strange in the middle of the night. Humf.

*sigh*

Back to square one. Everything else is moot. I think I messed up my antibiotics taking time. *sigh*

So in order to cheer myself up for such a rotten week, when I didn't have fever this morning (all other symtomes were still there), and I thought I was going to stop forever, I went to do my hair in preparation for the new year.

Heh ... finally rebonded my hair!! :)

And I got a really really strange fringe.

My hairdresser was telling me that she just came back from London and learnt a few stuffs. Would I like to try blah blah blah ... because it's the in thing now and also since everyone else here is blah blah blah, this would be pretty cool and nice? And I thought why not since 1. I've been stressed, and 2. my brain is scrambled from all that pain and fever and drugs. So ziap ziap ziap she cuts and now I got a really really strange fringe which makes people turn their heads to take a second look. hahaha.

It's just .... .

:P

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? :(

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.

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*

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! :)

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.

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*

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

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.