Desperate to play pingpong

Desperate need calls for desperate measures.

Dui dui mien

In Central market, along Old Klang Road, there is this little eatery hidden in a little corner beside the side door of the aircond wet market. It's one of our favorite joints for a different type of pan-mien.


When I first tried it, the appearance of its sticky sauce already put me off, as I don't quite prefer sauces like these, similar to those mee jawa kind.

And I saw lots of other condiments in the noodle, which I abhorred. Weirdly, I eat a bowl of noodles plainly for its noodles, normally leaving most of the other "stuffs" intact. For example, for a bowl of laksa, I would savor all the laifun among the whole bowl of fish meat and other whatnots.

But this dui dui mien.... I found myself cleaning up the whole bowl of it on my first try! It was so good. We came back again and again and again....

There are rendang and curry chicken sauce to go with the pan mien, but I would prefer a plain bowl and add the dried chilli and green chilli sauce in it. Yum yum!

We were sold!

As good as new.

Remember I mentioned some time ago about a new camera that I might need? And it's because both of them which I owned are KO-ed already?

I took the Sony to repair as the center is nearest to me and was told later that the repair costs RM350, even when under warranty! I was so mega pissed, so I asked hub, he said no, and I told the guy no, and it's still in the center waiting for me to be collected.

The Canon service center is way much further, located in Subang, near to the old airport. I finally made a trip there and left it there. 2 weeks later, today, I received an sms in the morning which told me that it's fixed and no charges applied, that I can come collect it anytime. Yay!

I zoomed over again to the place and laid my hands on it. It's a good camera, I can tell you so. Good as new. This really made my day. But I was told they didn't do anything much with it, just cleaned up the contact point of the battery compartment. Oh well...

I took it with me and had been happily snapping away pictures of the kids. In school, at home, dinner outside. Everywhere. I was taken aback that my folder of "Pictures 2011" consists only 5 miserable pictures up till just now. Oh boy! So guilty that I hadn't been freezing their growing up moments. Do you have this problem? Taking lesser and lesser pictures of them as time slides by?

I can still remember hub bought a brand new videocam when korkor was born. And we recorded his firsts in everything. Digital cameras wasn't so popular yet, but we do have a few of them using hub's company's digital camera with a lousy resolution.

Then when didi came, the vids and pics became lesser.

Meimei's pics became even lesser than didi's.

And now all 3 of their pics also become scarce.

BUCK UP! BUCK UP!

For the moment, here are 2 of them I took today.

Welcome to the world

... to this lil ninja turtle.

This lil girl is a very strong-willed girl, I telling you, coz she fought a battle of wits with the world even when she was still in the womb and she won the fight!

(p/s: no need bertaubat liao, ban lifted, jom!)

Goodies from ashore.

The recent business trip seen hub buying back a whole load of stuffs for us, which is very different from the past trips. He went to Sydney and I suppose, delighted with the change of scenery from the normal SEA countries he'd been to that spurred him on a shopping frenzy.

When he unload everything onto our big round dining table, he said "most of the stuffs are for you". I was excited like a little child, smiling with glee. And so I checked out each one of them. If you knew him by now, you would know how he exaggerates. Guess I wasn't surprised to find, like, 10% of the things there is for me. Chiu! He defended saying the bulk of the expenses were for the things he bought for me. yeah yeah yeah...

Knowing I use SKII masks, which we bought 10 pieces in CP flight the last time we flew to Taiwan, he bought another 20 pieces for me from Changi airport. Woot! I can totally savor every piece of it slowly. Another item is the cleanser and a lip gloss. My eyes opened up, as I really think it's the first time he got me a lip gloss. Elizabeth Arden, dunplayplay.

Apparently, there was this promotion where 40 bucks voucher would be given to every 400 bucks spent. So the story goes that he ajak the man beside him at the counter to combine receipts to grab that voucher and that man agreed. But after combining it was still 10 bucks short, so he quickly go and grab the cheapest item he sees and pay for it. The man was in a hurry and in the end, just go "wtf" in the head and gave him his receipt. My hub was of course a happy man, and ended up buying that cleanser with that voucher.

I opened the lip gloss and wtf, it was bright pink! I told him, he can asks the beautician to put that color on my lips when I became a corpse. Sigh! Dunno laugh or cry, really.

But glad he's home, somehow. It was a quiet and unusually uncomfortable weekend without him around indeed.

Birthday party of an 11yo girl

Last night we attended my good friend's eldest daughter's 11th birthday at their home, which was a good timing as hub wasn't around for the weekend on a business trip to Sydney.

Their home is a spacious 3 storeys semidee which I had a part in designing once upon a time and is really good for any parties to be held there with the amount of vast space in and out of the house.

There were easily over 50 children last night, and a number of adults who are friends of my friend. They served spaghetti with finger food for the kids while the adults were served separately with a homecooked chinese meal with 8 dishes and a soup. I have to add, it's amazing! How her mommy did all that by herself with the help of her maid and her mother-in-law! Maybe the dad helped a bit as well, still, it's to me, LOTS of work there! The last time I did the big party for didi, we tapau-ed the food! *head hang in shame*

Not only I could see the amount of work preparing for the party, there was major work needed in running the whole show! Replenishing the food, recycling the utensils, filling back the drinks, clearing up and cleaning up... OMG! I can't see myself doing all those work for my kids! And I feel so guilty, should I be actually?

Two teenage girls were there to facilitate some games for the children and they didn't stop playing right until way over midnight! Not all stayed till the end, the crowd slowly became smaller as the night inched nearer to midnight and it was more manageable and fun.

My kids didn't have this privilege of having a party with all their friends over yet so far. As much as I wanted to do it for them, thinking of all the work involved already put me off. I can manage with a handful of guests, just like what we had done before. Maybe some day, I would just make it up to them by treating them a birthday bash with their own classmates when they turn 12, before the party of booze and ecstasy is what they want.


We went home at 12.15am, and that was really because meimei's battery really on very low level and needed recharged.

Taking care of myself at 16

My life took quite a drastic turn one fine day when I came home from school to find my mother sprawled still on the floor. I remembered that day as I was so worried, but relieved to find she was still breathing, thank God, only with swollen eyes from too much crying and looked very very sad.

I was still very worried and asked her what was wrong and please tell me, then I was told that our dad had left. My mind was racing with thousands of questions what she meant by "left", anyway, to cut a long long story short, apparently, that was the day my dad left Ipoh secretly to find a job elsewhere in Sabah as we were pretty hit hard by the 80s recession. He had left secretly because he knew that my mom wouldn't approve if he asked her to discuss about it.

My brothers were going on to tertiary education and my dad hadn't been receiving any salary for months. Both of them turned to pretty bad habits eventually as they had too much free time in their hands and the pressure was building up. I really have to give it to my dad for being our hero, the responsible father to face it up and find a job elsewhere to feed his family of 5.

It was also the day I suddenly had to mature overnight and took it in my stride to take care of my mom myself. Mom eventually stood back up and said since my dad was so responsible, she would also do her part.

And she went on a hunt to look for a stay-in domestic helper job in Ipoh, with the criteria that she could bring me along to stay with her. Mother and daughter, just the 2 of us to help take care of each other.

The first job she took up, was a babysitting job. The pay was good, unbelievably very good, and the employer agreed to have us both in. We wondered where the catch was. Apparently, we soon were to find out.

On our first day (not even a night!), as we lug our luggage into our room, the new young mother to the little infant stayed with us in the room. We were NOT encouraged to go outside of the room and we wondered why. All those questions in our heads, can you imagine? Pretty drama, if you would allow me to say.

I can only vividly remember the 4 of us stayed in the room for like hours, which seemed like eternity and were not told of WHY we can't go out of the room! Soon after, we heard loud banging noises coming from right OUTSIDE our door! and a guy shouting, vulgar or not, I can't recall but that definitely scared the shit out of both my mom and I!

The young mother started to shiver and held on to her baby and my mom and I looked at each other wondering what the shit was happening and NO WONDER why noone wanted this scary shit job! Soon after, we got an explanation alright.

Apparently, this guy shouting outside was the young girl's brother and he didn't like his sister giving pre-marriage birth (I think) and he was threatening to kill her and the baby (or am I dramatizing it a bit? aiyah.. it's something like that la, ok?)

Then this young girl with baby asked us to stay, trying to convince us that this only happens at that time of the day as he comes home back from school and he would be alright when his fierce dad is back. MY GAWD! Of course, we fled right away! And that was our very dramatic episode of our first adventure in the once employed as "STAY IN DOMESTIC MAID WITH HAWT YOUNG DOTTER (that's me, btw)" in the late 80s.

She found another job very soon after and I followed her again. This time no crying babies, banging doors and crazy guy shouting.

The bungalow is a very big and cozy home with a vast garden outside. It was a very beautiful home and I can remember myself amazed at such nice big houses there are! Our room was, sad to say, not at the upper floor, but at the little room at the back of the house, next to the kitchen. What do I expect, we were live-in maids. Well, I didn't expect anything actually, in fact I didn't feel any regrets or remorse for that experience I had when I was 16.

The bungalow was quite near to my high school, and it was only logical I cycled to school at that time. And so that started our life differently a bit. I would go to school in the morning while my mom worked at the employer's home, cleaning, washing, cooking. I come home from school, helped my mom to sweep and mop the floor and prepare dinner.

Everytime I sweep its floor, I would look at the details of its rooms, the curtains, the decors, the antiques. I wondered if I can ever stay as a master of a house like this one day. I knew that my life at that phase, shall past, it wouldn't stay like that forever and one day, one fine day, our family would be reunited again.

Surprisingly, the employer wanted us to have dinner with them and so, we would all be eating together every evenings. Once, my mom told me not to take my sweet time to enjoy the food there as it wasn't very polite since we were only the workers there. From there on, I gobbled my food and excused myself to do my homework while they continue eating. When they were done, I would help to clean up so my mom could rest for the day already.

After 3 months or so, I could tell, mom wasn't feeling very happy and she was also mentioning that her finger nails had been getting pretty bad from the harsh washing detergents. I encouraged my mom to quit this job and join dad, while I would be able to take care of myself. After this talk, she did just that and I moved back to our own home's back room while the other 2 rooms rented out to 2 couples.

I was alone to fend for myself.