Some days are bad, some days are good...

Just a note to remember, today's one of the best.

Well, nothing special happened.

- Just a nice pleasant chat over breakfast with a friend (from the kids' school)
- Safe trip home from the malls and the groceries (it's a wild jungle out there!)
- Stock up the fridge for the next 1 or 2 weeks, and there's duku langsat being sold! And bought some mangoes home too, all good for the soul.
- No complaints from the teachers! Yay!
- Yummy spaghetti I made for dinner! mmm....I decided it's gonna be my serving dish to my guests in future house parties!
- Pleasant BM lesson with didi while the other 2 were in their respective classes, accompanied by laughter too! The laughter came from my explanation of ayat aktif and ayat pasif. Example of ayat aktif: Saya yang menghasilkan poot-poot tadi yang berbunyi tapi tak berbau. Ayat pasif: Poot-poot yang tak berbunyi dan berbau sekali dihasilkan oleh didi tadi. Both of us cracked up laughing in stitches!!
- Rojak tapao-ed by hubs (nom nom), had been craving for it for days! And hubs had stopped complaining or whining about how expensive rojaks are these days. Good job, my dear!!
- Kisses and hugs with meimei before her bedtime, on her bed. It was just lovely.

mmm.....

It's just this easy peasy to make me, the queen bee, happy.

Joining the bandwagon of smartphone nerds.

Late 1 night, hubs came home and threw a box over to me and said "A gift for you".

Immediately, of course, I was skeptical. Where got so good one? I know him too well, shall I put it that way?

If other hubs came home with a gift for the wife, sure people would say, sure he just "curi makan" outside la, feel guilty wudd... But knowing my hubs, this possibility, well, not impossible, but shall I say, low. Coz, really, he so kiamsiap, he won't pay to "curi makan". Free makan, who wants to offer la? Not like he so hansem or rich....

Anyway, I digress.

So, I took a look at the white box and saw that it was a Samsung galaxy S phone. Asked him where he got it from, he told me it's free!

Die! Free only means it's more expensive than the original! Scary!

I pestered him with a very worried look that says, die die also you must tell me...

He didn't want an S to replace his iPhone, he wants the S3. But he said he could give me his iPhone if I wanted that instead of this new phone. What do you think I'd say?

And, hence, finally, I get hooked to a smartphone like all those phone nerds do, every second of their time looking at the little screen and twiddling it around with the fingers. Before this, I always treat my phone as a tool for me to make calls or sms, sometimes facebooking or surfing the internet when I feel REALLY really bored. I don't see why people ought be a slave to their phones. But now I see. It's really all very interesting and brand new to me, but I had to tell myself to stop being addicted to it, like how I complained to hubs that he is one. Now, he's delighted that he can use back MY complaint on me! Hmmph!

The first thing I did was to transfer all my contact details over and before he could figure out for me how to do that, it was hours past after I did already! Not a big deal to learn the workings of a new phone. Maybe it's too user friendly also la. I love the way how it can connect the profiles of my contacts from gmail or facebook to the phone contacts and everything falls into 1 place by itself. Then I MUST group the contacts, which came to a huge number, like 800 something, to different categories. This would take some time indeed.

For him, he never does this kind of thing. He never does housekeeping for his phone and everything, his files, contacts, apps are all in a mess. Even korkor says he doesn't want to take over his dad iPhone when he does get his S3. For whoever takes over the phone, he/she is not allowed to delete his "stuffs" in it too. Where got people sooooo messy like that one? Oh yes, that's my hubs for you!

The other feature I like about is its' display of pictures from the gallery and I don't know how it does it, it somehow could pick up my very old blog's pictures and make a slideshow from the phone itself like a normal photoframe. It's so cool. And when I saw the glimpses of the kids' faces when they were like really really young, my heart just melted. Ooh... I so miss their toddlerhood!

I love the colors, the apps, the "smart" features and everything about it. But I'm still getting used to its new ring tones and notification tones. Maybe I shall turn off the notification tones coz it's too annoying that once it chirps, I have the urge to run straight to my phone and see who sent what. Yikes!!!! I need to get my life back soon!

What I wore last Sunday

*ROAR*

It's the first time I was adventurous wearing this leopard print.  But I didn't purchase this, as it had never crossed my mind before to own one and be in one!

Actually, my mom brought it back to me from Singapore. She saw it while shopping one day at her most recent trip to visit my elder bro and thought that it looked very special. So, my bro, who was with her, asked her if I would really wear or not. She told him yes and he bought it for me.

What a sweet thought! Nothing makes me happier than embracing a gift from own brother, even at this age! So, die die also gonna wear it.

It's really special in the sense that it's not symmetrical. One side is body hugging while the other side is loose. I wasn't able to take a full picture of me in it cos no matter how I hold the camera, it still looked like that.

How? Do I look hot? And wild?

Soups for warming the tummies

My kids absolutely LOVE soups, especially the ones I cooked (I believe!).

I am a very soupy person too. I used to have my soup covering my rice bowl, and savoring both together. Guess this habit is picked up by my 2 younger ones too and they just beg me to cook soup everyday. I read that it's not probably good for digestion, but I can't stop myself and can't stop them! We love it this way too much!

Their favorite soup should be the ABC soup, without the pepper. (Cannot pepper spray in it ah)

Hubs' favorite should be the watercress.

Mine is almost any or all of them!

Korkor's not too particular in soup. He doesn't like to have the soup in his ricebowl so he takes it in after he finishes his meal.

The usual ones I make are

1. ABC soup with potatoes, carrots, big onions, tomatoes with meat.
2. watercress soup with dried squid, red dates and meat
3. herbal soup with meat
4. corn soup with big onions, red dates and meat
5. old wintermelon with dried squid, red dates and meat
6. radish with red dates, dried oysters with roasted pork bones
7. lotus roots with peanuts, dried squid with meat
8. "fan-kot" with dried squid, red dates and meat
9. dried radish leaves with mushroom, dried squid and meat.
10. spinach with egg, mushroom, ginger and ikan bilis.

As you can probably notice, a lot of the ingredients used are dried squid and red dates. It does the trick to give the deep flavour to the soup.

A tips I learnt from my mom is to boil the water first and run the hot boiling water over the meat before mixing the meat in. Discard the used water. Then the soup won't turn too oily.

I also love the soup mug I discovered in a groceries outlet a few years back where the spout doesn't allow pouring from the top part of the mug but the bottom of it The strategy is to let the soup sink in first and allow the oil to float upwards and we only consume the bottom part of the soup. When it was poured out, it's definitely a big difference! To wash it might seemed to be a tricky part but a long thin brush like for washing milk bottles would do the job perfectly! Then again, my mom still prefers to use her method of scooping the oil from the surface with a special kind of utensil for that purpose. To each their own.

I wonder if their memories of childhood later includes lots of warm stomachs by mommy's soups?

Study area for the kids.

Hard at work still, at 9.30pm on a Thursday night.

This is where we would be at, almost every evening, doing homework, studying, reading and revising.

This is also where the tutor comes and teaches them mandarin.

Any suggestions to improve this area so it's more friendly, comfortable, enticing and interesting? Uh-oh, no TV. My mil stressed sternly that if there's a TV in this area, they are doomed!

Time out at a park

These were taken at Bandar Sri Permaisuri park when my sil was here with her family recently. The mahjong session was ongoing at home and 5 of us took my sil and her little 4yo daughter to breathe in some fresh air and let them have some playtime at a park instead of really doing nothing much at home

So, where is this park? Do you know? It's in Cheras, near to the HUKM, i,e Hospital UKM. So convenient, you injure yourself at the park, you hop over in less than 5 mins to see doctor. *wink*

 Zooming off to have some fun time.

 The boys like this park because of these gliders.

The few parks we'd been to, namely KLCC, TTDI, Lake Gardens, Bkt Jalil, do not have these gliders. It caters to a wider range age of kids instead of just the normal kiddy playground of slides and swings. That is why the boys really like this park a lot more than the rest. 

 Oops! Too tall for this low glider!

The girls love this instead. 

See all the tall trees that is providing a comfortable shade to park-goers? It's not a bad thing to be outdoors, but with the poor maintenance you'd see, sigh, it's such a pity. Anyway, it didn't stop the rakyat from enjoying the free entertainment for the whole family. A lot of benches are built for picnickers. I love the idea of having a picnic here, but there's somehow some other factor I don't quite like over here. The overall cleanliness? Maybe...

 See? The big kiddo also wanna play along. 

 They spent a LOT of time at this ..... THINGY MAGICKY!

 See what I meant by poor maintenance? It might be the weather or other factors, but still?

Maybe it's put there to train the kids to be vigilant about potholes la.

This huge monster is the THINGY MAGICKY which they spent, 
like maybe slightly more than half an hour there.

Apart from the playground, beyond the trees, there's some jogging tracks in some hilly ground and I could see many joggers in that humid and rather hot late afternoon. I myself yet to explore the outer grounds but quite honestly to say, I won't dare to jog in a public area like this in this rampage of crime spluttering around the city. It looks dangerous! I heard many stories of daylight robberies in the parks as well, not verified but I'm not surprised that it's true. In fact, these days, I observe so many girls/ women are carrying pepper spray with them. I myself do, and I sure hope I won't need to use them. OK, I digress.

Really, our time is really the best time to be born in, coz we could wander and run around within the whole kampung or town vicinity even at a young age without worrying at all. See the kids nowadays? Parents keeping a close eye on them playing at a public playground and watching like a hawk. 

We ourselves, well, my sil was following the girls every step of the way whilst the hubs stretched himself and played with the boys too and me, busy snapping pictures away. :)

Welcoming a friend home from US

On one of those lazy Saturdays, I held another potluck gathering at my home with my high school friends. One of them came back from US and asked my favor to have it at my humble home. Of course I said yes.

I attempted making sushi but it was kinda disastrous, as I didn't want to rolled them out early as it would be all soggy but I got excited when they were here and started ransacking (almost) my kitchen for one thing or another!

So, in the end, my adventurous plan to roll lots of stuffs into a piece of seaweed gets more and more fugly  and in the end, ditched the whole idea and just served them the sushi rice! What the heckaroo! But good ole friends shouldn't be minding about that and it was just IT! We had fun chatting and catching up and laughing the night away.

I need proper planning next time when I hold future home parties. First, I should go and get more stools! And then a folding table to put the food on! (Instead of cluttering the whole dining table) Then more garbage bags to hold all the garbage and more disposable utensils! OK! I'm ready and getting better in it already!

Meanwhile the kids were running amok all over the place and I was cool about it, not until when they left and hubs SCREAMED!!! when he saw pieces of food ON OUR BED!!! And I went "uh oh!!!! *faster hide myself* "

But it's all in the name of good spirit, for all of us who knew each other and spent a good few years in school together. Life's getting shorter, anything can happen and it's only proper to not only talk, but take action in cherishing our friendships. Cheers!!! *clang*

A nice group picture

Korkor 12th birthday celebration

Here he goes, officiating him turning 12!

Gosh! Was it that long ago? *pinch my cheek* I'M NOT DREAMING!!!

This time, my sis-inlaw came over to celebrate this auspicious occasion (turning 12 is a big deal! It's the year they get their IC, OK?) with her family, and also for a joint celebration with her daughter turning 4.

The lil one insisted she has a cake to herself, not sharing, uh-oh. So, I went to get another one of my all-time favorite cake for her to blow. That cake is finished in no time! Meanwhile, half of korkor's chocolate cake from Renaissance Hotel is still sitting in the fridge. It's not to say, not good, but too rich in chocolate and the household here is not really that fond of too chocolaty cake.

Other than them, we have my parents and parents-inlaw over from Ipoh for the weekend too. With them all 4, what other ways to make them happy than having mahjong sessions! Boy! They really love the game! All the time, any free time they have at home, they wanna dry-swimming. In fact, they are not interested in going out at all, even for meals! Prefer to just tapao home the food! Well, whatever that makes the old folks happy, don't you think?

So, as korkor is 12 now, as I've mentioned, I had to lug him over to the National Registration to get his IC done. This needs to be done within 30 days else a fine will be imposed. I didn't procrastinate, so yesterday when we did have some free time in hand, we got it done and over with. Both the public servant and I were tickled with him having to take his mugshot for his IC as he was such a unnatural. Finally after a few attempts, we settled for one senget picture of him. Haiz...

And that was him turning 12. As he puts it, he's now half-teenager, no more a child. hmm....