House on fire!

Wah.. today really keng-chau. I was talking on the phone with my son's friend's mom, she called me to ask for my opinions on how to deal with exams.. aiseh, do I look like a wise person or what?

Or maybe she wants to ask if I could ask my son to let her son see his test paper during exam? Just kidding, yeah... lame joke.

OK, back to this event, I was yakking on the phone, when suddenly my mom worriedly call me over to check what's happening, she smelled foul woh..

Knowing how my mom very easily kancheong one, I leisurely sashay while STILL chatting away on the phone to the area she pointed..

What the heck! The whole damn store room was filled with smoke..

Just a woman alone in the house with 3 kids and 1 elderly person, and hubby away on business trip, I'm superwoman meh? What's Batman contact number?

I had to quickly end the call, something I really seldom do. And almost jaws and pants dropped. Dare not touch the black box which is emitting smoke heavily. Meanwhile, my mom panicked like mad, and quickly grab the kids who are still sleeping soundly and rush them outside.

Well, so next thing I did, have to compose myself first (as always), and think what the right thing to do. It often works to take a deep breath and think. Then, I quickly went to take a wood, long one too, to poke the black box and detonate it. Whew.. lucky it worked. What is that thing huh, you wonder?

That black box is said to cut electricity bill for us one loh. I guess we were more than being duped. Not only it didn't cut down the bill for us, now it's attempting to barbeque us. Really..

Now then, thought the emergency was over, suddenly the black box turned on again by itself and cause another alarm. Freaky or not? I had to missed my appointment and call an electrician in, before we have to take turns to keep awake and an eye on that thing whole night. Damn! And it's raining outside and he just called me to say traffic is heavily jammed. Darn the KL traffic during rainy days and at emergencies like these.

Pray pray you hear from me again, else, if I'm not continuing blogging, means I might have gone mai-ham-ngap-tan!

Impulse buying a woman's strength.

The other day, I was rather mood-less, so the best thing to do is to go for retail therapy. So easy peasy for a woman to be happy, don't you agree?

So, I was wandering aimlessly with nothing in particular in mind to buy. Lucky for my hubby, I am not the kind to stray and look see look see in jewelery shops. Else, I don't know how many jobs I have to blow to get myself off the hook.

I suppose the next best thing is those accessories shop, don't have the real thing, just get the pirated stuffs la. And pirate way is the way to go nowadays. I lingered around, found some girly stuffs for my girl and there I saw a nice looking bracelet. I sure have taste, I'd say, because when I look at the price, it's always much higher than the usual ones. Others tagged at RM20-30, this particular one need to fork a blardy 80 bucks out for it. And it was not even silver (I like silver)

So, I put it back very very reluctantly, told myself to save money la, don't waste money like that, nanti hubby screw me again...

I went to the counter with my loot, cashier ding ding here and there, and said "That will be RM47. But now, we have a promotion, if you buy RM60, then we minus RM10 for you straight away from the bill, would you want to top the amount to 60?"

Aiks.. just what I needed. How can these people take advantage of women's weaknesses everytime like that?

So.... that day, after pondering long and hard, in the end I paid 117 whereby I should have just walked off just 47 cash poorer. Die la this time..

Then again, when I came home, yes happier, I happily show my little dotter the girly ribbons and nice nice clips to put on her hair. I admit I am sending the wrong signals. This is not the right thing to do to train girls to be vain from young!! Yes, I'm guilty like hell. Will slap my own self when she wants to be sexy and pretty all the time when she reaches puberty.

But... can you control yourself?? Come on.. she's the Barbie doll I never had in my life.. this the fun in having dotters, right? After all, I only have one. OK dude, I am really contradicting myself, don't know what I want. Enough rant.

One of my favorite

After this game addiction, now it's THIS...


Mali mali semua kawan-kawan sekalian...

Even though we might be oceans apart and thousand miles away, we can meet at virtual lau-di-fang and play some chor tai dee together-gether now.

What a wonderful internet world it is.. with blogging, blog-hopping, leaving some shit around other people's blogs, chatting online, email-ing, reading juicy gossips news, surfing for porn, watching "friends", where got time to do some work around here? Oh yeah, forgot, these are work *grin*

Petty questions, but...

...that's because I'm tagged here and I feel uncomfortable not doing it, so here goes..

1. WERE YOU NAMED AFTER ANYONE? Nah.. my name pretty unique.

2. WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU CRIED? just few days ago after doing that beautiful Monday post.

3. DO YOU LIKE YOUR HANDWRITING? Depending on the pen and mood used at that time, but mostly, yeah, I adore it.

4. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE LUNCH MEAT? huh?

5. DO YOU HAVE KIDS? No need for me to introduce them here now, I guess.

6. IF YOU WERE ANOTHER PERSON WOULD YOU BE FRIENDS WITH YOU? you kidding? I would be head over heels in love with myself!

7. DO YOU USE SARCASM A LOT? i sure like to use more of it.

8. DO YOU STILL HAVE YOUR TONSILS? err.. let me check dictionary first..

9. WOULD YOU BUNGEE JUMP? if i were to commit suicide, i might consider that.

10. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE CEREAL? not at all.

11. DO YOU UNTIE YOUR SHOES WHEN YOU TAKE THEM OFF? if it's a necessity.

12. DO YOU THINK YOU ARE STRONG? in what way?

13. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE ICE CREAM? banana split.

14. WHAT IS THE FIRST THING YOU NOTICE ABOUT PEOPLE? actually, i'm quite an un-observant person, i don't notice anything about people until someone point it out to me.

15. RED OR PINK? oh, certainly pink.

16. WHAT IS THE LEAST FAVORITE THING YOU LIKE ABOUT YOURSELF? *censored*

17. WHO DO YOU MISS THE MOST? apart from the people i love most who are beside me here (so I'm not missing them too much), i think it could be all the guys I've loved before?

18. DO YOU WANT EVERYONE TO SEND THIS BACK TO YOU? not necessary la.

19. WHAT COLOR PANTS AND SHOES ARE YOU WEARING? none at this moment.

20. WHAT WAS THE LAST THING YOU ATE? nothing exceptional.

21. WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TO RIGHT NOW? my son's gurgling song.

22. IF YOU WERE A CRAYON, WHAT COLOR WOULD YOU BE? will i be a male or female crayon first?

23. FAVORITE SMELLS? certainly not fart.

24. WHO WAS THE LAST PERSON YOU TALKED TO ON THE PHONE? hmm.. someone who loves me.

25. DO YOU LIKE THE PERSON WHO SENT THIS TO YOU? oh sure.

26. FAVORITE SPORTS TO WATCH? badminton, if there's either malaysian playing or some cute players.

27. HAIR COLOR? colorful.

28. EYE COLOR? not quite sure though.

29. DO YOU WEAR CONTACTS? nah, i call them only when i need to ask favors from them.

30. FAVORITE FOOD? durian?

31. SCARY MOVIES OR HAPPY ENDINGS? a happy ending scary movie (that would be a comedy, right?)

32. LAST MOVIE YOU WATCHED? Dark Knight, absolutely enjoyable.

33. WHAT COLOR SHIRT ARE YOU WEARING? none *shy*

34. SUMMER OR WINTER? need to ask?

35. HUGS OR KISSES? can it be, hugs and kisses? yeah, i admit I'm greedy.

36. FAVORITE DESSERT? durian.

37. MOST LIKELY TO RESPOND? irrelevant.

38. LEAST LIKELY TO RESPOND? irrelevant

39. WHAT BOOK ARE YOU READING NOW? Dr seuss

40. WHAT IS ON YOUR MOUSE PAD? my mouse a male, no menstruation so no need to use a pad.

41. WHAT DID YOU WATCH ON T.V. LAST NIGHT? aiyah, where got time to watch tv now la?

42. FAVORITE SOUND? my darlings' voices over the phone.

43. ROLLING STONES OR BEATLES? are they edible?

44. WHAT IS THE FURTHEST YOU HAVE BEEN FROM HOME? err.. my geography totally sucks. which is the furthest, us, uk or canada from here?

45. DO YOU HAVE A SPECIAL TALENT? aiseh, this one you might not believe, i can "predict" when my hubby will fart..haha..

46. WHERE WERE YOU BORN? i heard it's a hospital, but my mom can't be sure too. :(

47. WHOSE ANSWERS ARE YOU LOOKING FORWARD TO GETTING BACK? i would love to get comments though.

Creating your own story book

Over the past, I was very engrossed in a hobby, clicking my digital camera, learning Adobe Photoshop, editing the pictures which is aka playing Barbie doll, don nice make up and wear nice clothes for her and go kaikai (around the dollhouse).

Then, I learnt html programming from this hilarious website tutor. His explanations are so darn funny, it wasn't hard at all to learn the basic from his webpage. But I stopped after the Frames and Tables, as it was too confusing for my humble little mind.

After learning of the basics, I went to create my own webpage and surf the internet to look for a free server to store my files and publish my website. And here it is, I found out it's still around, notably gathering dust. At that time, I had even bought a domain name and named it w w w. storyinpixels. c o m for USD5. That was all for the sake of fun and it died a natural death after one year, as I didn't have time to update it much and the traffic, I think consisted of 1 visitor only, that's me.

But heck, I was happy with my little achievement, for someone who's not very IT intellect, and gaining household name as a see-lai, it's not any see-lai in the wet market, yeah?

Then again, I had this dream of turning my hobby into a business venture, just like most business models which started from just a hobby or a passion. What I wanted to do was to compile pictures of memories and personalized it into a book, a story, which would be able to convey to the next generation. Everyone in this world is the main actor or actress in their own story, waiting to be unfold to the next generation and after. Isn't that good?

I mean, if I had a book which my granny or great granny wrote in her lifetime, that would be such a treasure.

And coming to this point, my 2nd son just proved how right I was. One day, I felt "hiao" and took my old albums out to look at, my son was so enthralled with the pictures of me para-sailing in Penang, shots of me putting on the vest, to flying up in the sky, and coming down after a round. He asked me what I was doing at that time, and I told him the entire process from beginning till the end like we were reading a story book. And his deep interest in it was clear, he had to look at the pictures all the time for a few days straight. Kids' gestures are really funny at times.

I could be rather sure there are many people, especially sentimental women, are like me. And that's why we are here blogging, writing stories, partly for enjoyment, partly for our children, partly for entertaining, what's your reason for blogging? Well, that's another story for another day.

Back to this dream of mine, sad thing is, it just remained a dream. And the dream was materialized, but for some other people. I was shopping the other day and found out that this idea is IN business.. We can be ordering our own books from Photobook, and the book is really of good quality indeed. Not to mention its price, it's relatively affordable, depends on how you look at it. And I'm not even advertising for them. *Sob*

Thing I want to say is, this is just yet another moment of "seeing things happen" instead of "making things happen". How ironic is that. And that's also the difference between the normal person and the other. So sad. So sorry. Sorry that I felt sorry for myself.

I'm considering to order a book for my 3 little ones, telling the story of their birth, childhood, parents, or maybe meanwhile this blog would do for the moment?

Meantime, I stumbled upon some of my own creations stored in my hard disk from some years back.





It meant nothing to you, but it is everything to me.

A beautiful Monday today.

Know why? Because it's the start of the 1 week school holiday. Ahh... the joy of sleeping till the sun burning the bumms. The command to tell the stupid alarm to go OFF. Yeah, nothing beats holiday time now.

Apart from that, the weather is extremely nice today. Not hot humid stuffy hazy as usual. It's cool, breezy, overcast just nicely, in fact, my boss said he felt like being in UK right now!

But hey, the real "cause" is.. I have a surprise call today.

*ring* *ring* "Hello?"

"Hi, Mrs. C? This is Suzie, from GeniusSchool." (OK, Suzie is the principal, and GeniusSchool is where my younger 2 kids are going every morning, I made up the names myself)

Funny, my heart skips a beat whenever I have calls from schools. Like my kids caused some trouble and I have to mend it, is something wrong with me?

BUT, apparently, she calls to ask me for my permission to put my 2nd son's picture up on a bunting for the coming concert day. Hey, fancy that? How would you have responded to that?

Frankly speaking, I really beamed from ear to ear, any mommy who wouldn't be proud that their kid is the chosen one, right? Secretly, I would have loved to become a "star mom", shh... don't tell anyone that I'm getting big-headed.

So, tell me that this ain't a beautiful day? Even my inlaws who will be coming to stay for the night today, I am so gonna make them have a goooood time. *shocking*

Have a nice day yourself!

Olympics spirit at home.

Riding on the Olympics heatwave, I started some "challenges" for the 3 youngsters too.

Being frustrated with the constant nagging, pleading, begging which at most times would turn into desperation, threats and punishments to instill well mannerism and good behavior in the house, I have, this week, started on the "Olympics" challenge for them at home.

I read from a friend of mine, physiomom's, blog that she used this trick to encourage her children to be helpful at home sometime ago when she was adapting to her "maid-less" days. Told myself that "hey, it sounds to be a good one, can try it on my youngsters". But being me, the normal me, had been procrastinating, dragging.. until I finally decided to take my lazy butts off the couch and do something finally.

And up on the fridge is a paper with their names on it. The game is to get as many "stamps" or "chops" (as they call it) under their names, so by the end of the week, whoever gets the most will get to ask from me whatever he/she wants to eat or get. Of course got a limit, later they say they want me to buy a real big playground for them, I'll be ... a toothless witch and liar! And that is something I do not like, honest.

So, it's darn easy to get one chop. Just do a good deed, either be helpful, or show good manners or do what I tell them to do, and there! I just can't understand why children feel so delighted to do "chopping". Such a simple act, and it pleases them till no end. Why ah?

Anyway, so far, the progress and results seem to be quite good. It does encourages positive behavior and challenges to beat the other. Only thing is, the youngest being clueless on what's happening would whisper and nag non-stop to me "mommyyyy... i want a chop".. what to do? curi curi chop one chop there for her loh. Else, she won't stop nagging, give me headache only.

I hope the Olympics heat won't die off so soon. Hmm.. where's the fireworks to officiate the opening ceremony of Home Olympics here, huh?

Come, let me tell you how to babysit.

The next thousand words.


All sorts of advice kept pouring to the new mommy whole night. Poor thing, who to listen, huh?

"You can't be carrying her all the time la.. you manja her like thaaaaat...". (Any proof to show?)

"You don't think it's superstitious hoh? Must go and get one "fu" blessed from the Kuan Yin and place it under her pillow, then she will only be goody goody hoh". *raised eyebrow*

And many more....

Come on la.. you have one kid makes you an expert? I had 3 and I know what I need to do there was to savor the food served only, not for drowning people with words of know-how and wisdom. And she wasn't even asking for your opinion or advice. But poor girl, she has to be nice and nod and pretend to listen attentively because you are her friend and guest.

Every baby has her own characters and personalities. I suppose it's more important for the new parents to understand her during the process of bringing and caring for her, so all these sorts of uninvited comments and advice are not exactly welcomed. Let them learn along the way, can't the people around see that? Eeyer.. I felt geram la, but who the heck I am to comment, huh?

Being a new parent, all the new experience and fuss of handling a baby by herself can be overwhelming. I can still remember that clearly when it all began 8 years ago. I'm thankful I have my mom who unselfishly came to my side to help me out every time I need her till I adapt to the new lifestyle. Not every mom can do that, I hear. Ya I know, I do have a great mom.

As for us "certificate holders, embarking on undergraduate course on child development and upbringing study-ology", we can *cuddle cuddle baby*, *ang ku ku* *wail wail wail* (fast fast hand back to her mommy) "nah, baby's crying, back to you" tee hee.. the joy of it. Those opinionated parents, just shaddap la, for baby's sake.

Pictures speaks a thousand words?

Home sweet home.

Back home now, safe and sound, everyone in 1 piece.

An anecdote from the journey: approaching the destination, there were various digital messages on the road saying "Traffic jam at causeway, avoid it by using 2nd link", something to that effect. And as I drove on, we noticed there were no signboards directing those unknowns to the said 2nd link. No words of "SINGAPORE". Just TUAS, along with some other towns of Johore, in the same font, same size.

Will you know Tuas is actually the 2nd link to S'pore?

At the Immigration, the officer was angry, unhappy, almost "vulgar" (I think!), that I held his booth up as we had to fill in 6 white cards at the spot! He said "why don't you take more white cards when you left S'pore last time and filled all of them before coming in?" Duh! As if I love being heavily verbally abused by him. That moment was really panicky and stressed. I had to squint my eyes really really forcefully to see the tiny prints on the card and match the info from the passport to the blank area. And some more, the phone kept ringing. Adui! Such a relief when we were done.

And all these while the whole world eyes on Beijing. I didn't miss the later spectacular show though. Wasn't that a really good show? And that was the 080808 for me.

Heard this before?

Saw this in my mailbox and made me laughed.

------->

Three women: one engaged, one married and one a mistress, are chatting over lunch and conversation turns to their relationships. They decided that night to surprise their men. All three would wear a black leather bra and thong, stiletto heels and a mask over their eyes.

A few days later they meet up for lunch.

The engaged woman: The other night when my boyfriend came over he found me with a black leather bodice, tall stilettos and a mask. He saw me and said, 'You are the woman of my dreams. I love you.' Then we made love all night long.

The mistress: Me too! The other night I met my lover at his office and I was wearing the leather outfit, heels, mask over my eyes and a raincoat. When I opened the raincoat he didn't say a word, but we had wild sex for hours.

The married woman: I sent the kids to stay at my mother's house for the night. When my husband came home I was wearing the leather bra, black stockings, stilettos and a mask over my eyes. He walked in the door, looked at me and said, 'What's for dinner, Batman?'

MUAHAHAHA.

Singkapoh, here I come.

This weekend, I'm going to make a very lightning fast, super hurry, rush trip to Down Below. Remember the little baby who appeared some weeks ago? It's her full moon's day, and there's going to be a little party at her posh home. Who wanna miss that?

Actually, I'm not really keen to make the hurried trip, considering the big guy needs to go to school and it's just like, what, probably about 40 hours packed inside. And most likely half of it will go to spending it at my hubby's sister's area. Not that I am unfriendly to her, but when you have (a) your own nephews and niece to play with and (b) your inlaws with a newborn baby who is just good for cuddling for, say, 10 mins, which one would you like to spend your time with? See? Exactly what I'm trying to say.

Anyway, my big boss is really a family man, and he made some "threats" discreetly, so there we go, committed to see that the big guy is well trained to be the top ponteng student in future. Sigh..

(Oh dear! I look like preggie into my 5th month, after savoring each biji durian one after another, not daring to drink water when I was done for fear I will bloat, and here I am, still bloating and I can't sleep.. ish! Angry, but still not regretting what I had done, God, I'm a hopeless case)

Back to the little baby, here I was chatting with the new mom, and listening to the oh-so-familiar tales of crying baby nonstopping, asking for advices what could possibly go wrong and how to overcome it super fast. I wanted to tell her "enjoy the process, dear".. hehe, yeah, I'm just wicked, kill me.

But that was exactly the kind of nightmare I had dealing with my eldest son. The first month when I had him was pretty good, albeit me being a little bit depressed for God knows why. Into the 2nd month, he was making me paranoid whenever he started to stir from his sleep, and the first hint he will be wailing for unknown reason, I will pick him up before it starts. I have tried rocking him to sleep, letting him suck on my "wonders of the chest", oh just whatever there could be.

Most times, I carried him until he sleeps in my arms and I dared not make any movement to just let him sleep on. Once, I had done just that for about few hours straight into the night and my bladder almost burst! *violin playing in the background the song "shi shang zhe you ma ma hau...*

But no, he just lurved to wail.. and it could go on for hours. And frankly speaking, I would have this evil thought to just cover him with a pillow to stop the noise. Of course, my better self held me back. The point I'm trying to say is, having a baby is unlike playing Barbie doll. The reality of babysitting is so harsh we can't fathom it at all before we got ourselves pregnant. All I had wanted at that time was "Give me a baby, I don't care, I believe I can manage, I can, what comes may".

But of course, your own blood and flesh brings lots of other good stuffs and many cheers and laughter. Especially in their toddler years. The best years in a mom's life, aren't they?

So, to my sil, I advised her not to stress herself over the baby too much, and it's basically all "trial and error" to see which methods works and which not. Nobody will be able to advise her what's the best way for she's the only one who understands her baby in this process.

As for myself, I can't sit back too much either. My kids are driving me nuts and need serious attention from me for some disciplinary actions.

(Oh yeah, I was out shopping to get gifts for my nephews, niece, little baby, new mommy, shopping is really rejuvenating, so happy now, but won't be happy when big boss sees all that, blek)

Who else gonna share some miseries of baby not equals Barbies? Those with easy going kids, you need not comment. :)

What a day.

Today is a day of mixed feelings.

It began with a grumpy me who hadn't have enough sleep from a late-for-bed the night before, all because of a worthless little disagreement with the unreasonable man of the house. I'll get to that part later, maybe.

So happened, as most Fridays, we set off to our normal routine work in separate cars. I first drop off the younger two in the kindy, and on the way, as I was still a little fumed, decided to skip breakfast with him later, so I called a friend to invite her for breakfast. And thus, I stopped by midway enroute and spent about 45 mins eating and chatting over breakfast.

When I was done, it's back driving to the office, and almost reaching, I was stuck in a massive jam. Dammit, I called him and yelled over the phone on why he didn't warn me earlier, which I can then avoid that road and used another road. He retorted why I didn't ask him! See how unreasonable he is?

And that was about 30 mins in the traffic crawl, and the traffic alert on radio was warning road users about it due to a terrible accident. It's not fun to be sitting in the car, feeling trapped front and back, left and right. Why can't there be moveable dividers at intervals of the highway to let the cars make a U-turn and take another route when these thing happens? I really wished I can just push a button to make my car "jump" over the divider and speed off in the other direction! This is the side effect of entrapment, wild imaginations began to visualize.

Later, some police on bike and cars were "bee-boo-bee-boo" weaving from behind. Then came the siren again, this time the bomba. Then came another siren, the ambulance. And another 5 mins later, 1 more ambulance. Wah.. hampalang came. I was surely curious how ugly the accident can be.

When I passed by, I really had the urge to stop at the roadside together with many others to kehpoh. And yet, I was also very afraid to see what I might see. Eeyer.. nanti I can't sleep for weeks or months, how? So, I chicken-ed out and drove past, went dutifully to report to work.

The whole office were talking about the accident already and how far the jam stretched until, and one guy came back telling about how it happened. After all the information digested, I felt the kind of chill in my head, thinking, well you should guess why already.

I don't know, if I hadn't stopped by halfway to have breakfast with my friend, I might just be the one passing by that fatal spot when it happened. It's really about that timing where we would pass by everyday. In any case, most of us at the office used that road everyday at about that same time too. Lucky we are all in one piece and escaped death. And how eerie, today's the start of Hungry Ghost Festival too, I heard. I think I heard somewhere before, there are more obituaries during this time of the year every year. Aiks!

So, I realized, it's back to that old age reminder of how we should seize the day everyday and appreciate those whom we love dearly when they are still around. Ironically, don't most of us just open our eyes and tell ourselves just that everytime something like this brushes by and reminds us to, but only to fade away again sooner than we expected?

Anyway, apart from letting the fire of despise go, I told myself I'm going to pray a bit tonight too, remembering to thank God for letting me hang around here a little while longer and enjoy my time with my children.

And also apart the feeling of gratitude, I thought to myself, we should be working on ideas or things we wanted to do, instead of delaying, procrastinating, postponing... (even the thing might not be be something everyone approves of?), just seize the day!

I said it's a day of mixed feelings, right? So, this is not the end. I browsed around the news the whole morning (no mood to work, friday mah). There, the funniest story ever about Malaysia products, I don't even know to laugh or cry, neh, the one about RM500 computers and such. The names they came up with to name their babies, can't they even be more professional about it? How much more mockery they want to come up with?

And yes, the word that hit me most... the target market... HOUSEWIVES!!! Cilaka! How gigantic huge their man's ego can be? I knew one of the bloggers will mention it, and truly, she had written exactly the feelings that came over me when I was reading that piece of junk, except of course, more witty and cleverly. Somehow, it seemed like it's an April Fool's joke, but isn't April 1 long over? Seem to be getting hopeless our bolehland, I want to migrate and join goolypop in her not so faraway land, at least her entertainment really funny, can die laughing.

On the news today, apart from this overdue April Fool's joke, another case of rape was reported. Reading that, it reminds me of that movie "I Am Legend". This seems to be what will happen when night falls in KL. Of course, daytime robberies still occur, just like what happened to me sometime ago, but night time, even worse. Chances of abduction and raped if you are a lady roaming on KL streets after sunset and before sunrise seems to be darn high.

So, what wraps up the day? A turbulent day of mix feelings? On one hand, alleluia, on the other, what a big sigh...