March 2018 – HEALTH FREAK MOMMY

Wednesday, 28 March 2018

This morning, Alycia’s transporter left her behind when he came to the condo to pick up another student. Maybe the driver was a minute or two earlier today and he didn’t even have the courtesy to give us a call to inform us that he was here. How dare he! Thankfully Cass’ transporter came and I asked her for a favor to drop Alycia at school. Alycia sat on her van for 6 years when she was in primary school. The boss of the fleet of vans apologized profusely to me for his driver’s oversight. Apologies accepted.

My breakkie today was a bowl of corn flakes + Milo cereals + Cecile’s seeds & nuts with honey & quinoa (the mil bought this from New Zealand) + pistachios; half an avocado, an orange, a banana and a packet of Izumio hydrogen water.

Dinner from last night was lunch for Cass in school today ~ Japanese kids curry + fried fish + Basmati rice + a packet of Izumio. It’s CoCo day today. My baby girl did high jump, long jump, short put and running today. She told me that she came up on top in almost all the events!

Our dinner last night:

This is going to be a short post coz I am rushing off to bed. My 2018 Resolution is to get a minimum of 6 hours of sleep every night.

Good nite everyone! 😴

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Saturday Eats ~ 24 March 2018

Saturday breakkie with Drama Queen and Cass was at a neighborhood coffee shop.

I had vegetarian food ~ fried noodles with curry vegetables, grilled pumpkin and crispy fried spinach:

Wanton noodles for Drama Queen and Hakka noodles for Cass. Ordered only half noodles for each of them. I am controlling their food portion these days. They can really wallop a cow … and perhaps grow into a size of one too if I don’t control how and what they eat! The big girl is more vain. She eats like me and is a workout buff too!

Dinner was at K88 food court AGAIN! The hubs was a tad reluctant as we had only dined at K88 last Saturday. But his girls voted for K88 and as usual, the majority wins, hah!

With over 50 stalls at the K88 food court, the girls commented that we would need to go there at least 5 times and order 10 types of food each time to try every stall.

Here’s what we had this time:

Pop corn chicken, claypot yellow wine chicken (from the Ba Ku Teh stall) and claypot chicken rice. As usual, the two older girls went round the food court by themselves and had the liberty to order whatever they fancied. Had I known that they were going to order deep fried pop corn chicken, I’d have stopped them. I rarely allow deep fried food for the girls, especially from dodgy eateries.

Fried lobak ko (radish cake), char koay teow and roti naan with cheese.

Mee suah soup and baked tomato cheese rice for the cheese crazed big girl:

Rawang steamed fish head and steamed 3-variety eggs (from Rawang Steamed Fish stall) and oyster omelette (these 3 are my favorite):

As you can see, we ate to repletion and felt 3kg heavier after dinner! I had to down a cup of Korean fruit vinegar to help speed up the digestion. And I think it really helps.

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Wednesday, 21 March 2018

Lunch today was just me with Drama Queen and Cass. Alycia accompanied her grandma to Sunway Medical Center (SYMC) for a medical check up. As a reward for accompanying grandma, she got a treat of Starbucks sandwiches and coffee for breakfast and McD burger for lunch from grandma! The girls love going to SYMC because of Starbucks, free WiFi and the hotel-like atmosphere. During my surgery at SYMC in May last year, the girls had Starbucks coffee, sandwiches and cakes for 2 days straight. I think they really enjoyed themselves at the hospital while accompanying me! They had a time of their lives camping at the comfy couch at the hospital concierge the whole day while hooked to their phones and iPad and sipping on Starbucks coffee.

We had lunch at one of our favorite neighborhood cafes today just so we could enjoy the air cond. I don’t mind paying a little more to enjoy my lunch to avoid getting sweat-drenched clothes and rushing off my meal. It’s the hottest time of the year now and I try not to be out in the afternoon. Thus I run all my errands and have brunch before 11 a.m. to avoid the hot afternoon sun later.

Cass had portobello mushroom pasta and Drama Queen had Japanese grilled salmon, potato salad + rice. I had mee siam. Just one forkful of the Japanese potato salad to try and I was hooked for more. After lunch, we shopped for ingredients to make Japanese potato salad. I just had to have Japanese potato salad for dinner tonight!

Typical scene while waiting for food to arrive ~ one was hooked to her phone and the other to her novel.

I summoned the girls to the kitchen to help with prepping the Japanese potato salad. The littlest one was very earnest in helping, the middle child was a tad reluctant this time but helped out anyway (dare say no? Then don’t touch the food later!) and the oldest always finds an excuse to avoid the kitchen like the plague as she’s got royal fingers 🙄. Her excuse today is she had to go to the gym after being cooped up in the hospital for half a day doing nothing.

With two helpers doing all the tedious chores from washing to peeling, chopping, mashing and mixing, our insanely delish Japanese potato salad was ready in under half an hour!

This Japanese potato salad is quick and easy to prep and off-the-charts delicious. I love eating spuds this way. The crunchy raw carrot, cucumber, onion and apple make it a little healthier while giving you the fiber and rawsome goodness. You can even add in finely chopped raw cabbage and it goes well with this salad. And you get the protein from the hard boiled eggs. I could have this alone as a meal and it fills me up pretty quickly. We made a big portion today and the girls can have it again for breakfast tomorrow before we head to the mall. This is a brilliant back pocket recipe for appetizer for a party. Serve the potato salad in dainty Japanese appetizer bowls and you’ll sure to impress your guests.

Japanese Potato Salad

Ingredients (serves 6-8 pax)
4 large potatoes
1 medium carrot
1 red apple
1 large Japanese cucumber
1 large Bombay onion
4 eggs, boiled
Japanese mayo (plain)
Japanese mayo (with wasabi)
Freshly ground black pepper
Few pinches of salt

Instructions
Chop potato into cubes and steam until soft.
Boil eggs. I cooked the potatoes and eggs in the same wok.
Chop the carrot, cucumber, apple and onion into small cubes.
Mash the potato and hard boiled eggs in a large bowl.
Squeeze in the plain mayo and wasabi mayo. You can use just the plain mayo if you don’t like the taste of wasabi.
Add ground black pepper and salt to taste.
Add in the chopped carrots, cucumber, apples and onion into the mashed potato + egg and mix everything up well.
Keep in fridge if you prefer it chilled before serving.

いただきます (itadakimasu)!

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Ruay Thai BBQ Restaurant

Lunch with the hubs, girls and mil today was supposed to be at Seng Kee, our favorite ‘tai chau’ restaurant, but it was closed. We then tried Ruay Thai, a newly opened Thai restaurant as the RM12 set lunch promotion banner outside the shop caught my eyes as I was driving. Good thing we gave it a shot. Food was to our liking.

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Cass ordered boat noodles, which was delish. The broth is guaranteed to warm your soul and get your taste buds dancing! It is slightly sweet, with aromatic Thai spices and has a generous serving of beef slices, meat balls, liver and smooth rice noodles. Cass was lapping the broth away and I had to stop her from downing all the broth. As the hubs only joined us later, he ordered another bowl and it was finished to the last drop.

Thai fried glass noodles with big prawns for Drama Queen and green curry + rice for the mil. Both dishes were very flavorful, especially the green curry.

Pineapple fried rice and Thai style minced shrimp omelette. Love the omelette, though it was a tad oily as it’s deep fried. The omelette is uniquely executed and tastes like those deep fried egg floss / egg strings scattered on Chinese style butter prawns.

Both the green curry and pineapple fried rice sets came with a bowl of tomyam soup. The tomyam soup was very aromatic but the chilli padi was too stinging on my mouth and I just couldn’t swallow it down my throat. If only the spiciness level was milder, I would have walloped the soup as I love the aromatic taste of Thai spices and lemon grass.

The RM12 set meals came with a glass of super refreshing and aromatic chilled pandan drink.

I also love how the food is served on pretty Thai enamel trays and bowls.

By the time we left at 1 p.m., the restaurant was already fully packed.

The bill came up to RM74 for the 5 of us. Will definitely be dropping by Ruay Thai again soon to try other dishes.

Ruay Thai BBQ Restaurant
51A Jalan Desa Bakti, Taman Desa
58100 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Call 03-7971 1333

No. of times viewed = 197

Canyon Spice Curry Roux For Kids

About 2 weeks before the mil was due to return to KL from Hong Kong, she shipped a box of goodies back to us. As per usual practice, she always couriers a BIG box of goodies back to KL after her long vacation traveling the world. That’s the ‘treasure box’ that the girls look forward to each time their grandma comes home from a long overseas vacation. In the treasure box this time was a pack of Canyon Spice Japanese curry roux for kids. Grandma knows that her grand daughters are big fans of curry.

It was my first time using Canyon Spice curry roux and I found the roux tricky. The roux is not in the form of paste. Instead, it’s rectangular in shape and hard; I thought I had screwed up the meal the moment I opened the box. I thought I shouldn’t have cooked it the way I did. There wasn’t any instruction in English and I had just dumped the entire chunk of roux into the wok to simmer with the seared chicken drumsticks + garlic + onions + water. Thankfully after about 15 minutes or so with constant stirring, the roux dissolved and the sauce thickened. Now it finally looked like Japanese curry, phew! I did a quick test taste and immediately fell in love with the curry!!

My Japanese kids curry was cooked using drumsticks instead of cubed chicken as I didn’t have sufficient time to cut the chicken into cubes. I always rush off cooking dinner as I have school and tuition runs to do in the evenings. Instead of potatoes, I used Japanese sweet potatoes, which is a healthier alternative.

And the outcome was a very, very yummy Japanese curry which the girls loved to bits!

Canyon Spice curry roux for kids is sweet and not at all spicy, albeit with the taste of aromatic curry spices. I added about 1 tablespoon of Baba’s meat curry powder to give the curry a hint of spiciness.

Wok-licking-good ~ that’s how yummy the curry was. Check out Drama Queen scraping the bottom of the wok for whatever remaining curry sauce that was left 🤣

I have not seen this brand of curry roux at our local supermarkets. It costs about HKD36 per pack in HK. Two days before the mil returned to KL, I quickly Whatsapped my sil to ask her to get us 3 more packs. TQVM tai kar che for the curry roux, we love it!

No. of times viewed = 1372

Simple Bento Lunch Boxes For Cassandra

Cass has grown terribly fed-up of having bread and buns for recess in school, or even to have them as breakfast at home. She loathes at the sight of buns now. She used to love bread but I guess she’s had enough of anything that’s doughy from the same bakeries most of the time. She prefers to eat a proper meal consisting of rice and noodles. But the food from her school isn’t my ideal choice of meal for her. Yet, I can’t muster up the energy and enthusiasm to cook for her at 4:30 in the morning. So the best that I can prep for her that’s fast and still nutritious is to heat up the food that I cook for dinner the previous evening.

These are some of the bento boxes that I prepped for Cass:

Penne pasta bolognese with blanched broccoli and a packet of Izumio.

The bolognese sauce is made from scratch with tomatoes, carrots and pumpkin puree blended using my powerful Blendtec blender + lots of onions, garlic, dried rosemary, Italian herbs, celery, shimeiji mushrooms, minced pork and a little salt and palm sugar syrup to taste. The pumpkin puree gives the sauce a very creamy and rich texture.

Canyon Japanese kids curry (curry roux) with chicken drumsticks and sweet potatoes and sauteed mustard greens with shimeiji + garlic. The mil bought the curry roux from Hong Kong.

Fried salmon + steamed minced pork with ‘mui choy’ + Japanese rice.

I keep a small portion of food for Cass during dinner on most days for her bento box. Sometimes she brings porridge. Even a simple blanched green tea noodles or buckwheat noodles seasoned with soy sauce, sesame seed oil, toasted sesame and seaweed is more appealing to her than bread, cake or buns now. She doesn’t even mind eating them cold right from the fridge ala Japanese.

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I Got Scammed

This is a must read post for everyone! It could save you from trouble, inconvenience and loss of money.

Scammers are ubiquitous lately. Who knows, as I’m typing this post, a scammer is already lurking around waiting to hack my blog or post a scam comment.

While I was in slumberland early today, some crooks stole my credit card number and made two transactions in the UK. The transaction was for purchase of some digital items from Argos Milton Keynes, one of UK’s leading digital retailers. Perhaps the purchase is to facilitate this scammer to perform more frauds and scams on me and other new victims.

My entire morning was spoilt the moment I woke up to prepare the girls for school. I received a text message notifying me that a transaction had been successfully made with my credit card for GBP328.94 and GBP0.01 for Interparcel service. This crook had made a purchase with my credit card and paid for shipping with the card.

In fact, some three weeks ago, I received a text message informing me of a successful transaction for GBP0.01, also for Interparcel. I didn’t have a cloud of suspicion that it was an attempted fraud as the amount is only for 0.01 cents and I thought that it was for my Waterfall D-Mannose order from the UK which I made during that time. Now that I know it’s a scam, the crook must have been up to his sleeves trying to hack into my credit card since three weeks ago! Bog off bastard, your unscrupulous acts will soon be exposed and be prepared to stew in your own juice!

After my morning exercise and shower, I quickly made a call to the bank to report on the fraud. My credit card was blocked immediately and a new card will be sent out to me. I still need to call the bank again 5 days from today to validate my dispute. And the new card will only be sent to me next week. Hate the inconvenience!

I pray that the crook’s days of scamming will be numbered and may he face the long arm of the law and get what he deserves!

On another scam incident which happened last month, I received a message from a school mate (my bff’s younger sister) via Facebook Messenger with this brief message that lured me into clicking on a link to a video, thinking that I was the ‘star’ in the video. I couldn’t view the video anyway.

🙁 !! It’s you Shireen Yong?? File:icon surprised.gif

I then happily replied my ‘friend’, not knowing that her account had been hacked. It was only later in the day that I found out that her Facebook account had been hacked when I read her update on Facebook. And this hacker sent a similar message to most of her Facebook friends. I immediately changed my Facebook log in details.

More on scammers! In December last year, while I was back in Ipoh for a holiday, I received an overseas number on my mobile phone. Thinking that it was my mil who was trying to call us from New Zealand, I tried to answer the call but there was no reply on the other side. This happened twice and I didn’t have the slightest sneaking suspicion that those were scam calls. A month later, the hubs showed me his phone bill for two overseas number and asked me who I called. He was charged RM70 for each of the call. Again I was scammed! Bastard, go rot in prison and leave our hard earned money alone!

Peeps, be very wary of messages from Facebook Messenger, Whatsapp, text messages and unknown telephone numbers. Even when you have the slightest sneaking suspicion that something isn’t 100% right, take action pronto. Do not be the next scam / hack victim.

No. of times viewed = 14

Saturday, 12 March 2018

I ~~sacrificed~~ spent my Saturday morning (forgoing my desperately needed beauty sleep) to accompany Cass at her school’s yearly jogathon. An hour before we left the house, it rained heavily. I got ready the rain coats just in case we needed to wear them during the run. Thank God it stopped raining when we left the house for school.

Parents and students warming up with a dance before the jogathon started:

Less than a minute after flag-off, I overheard a bunch of students commenting that they were already very tired! And we had at least twenty minutes to half an hour more to go eek

Cass started off with running at full speed, something which I had told her NOT to do before the run as this would exhaust her very quickly. But this overzealous runner forgot all about it as she was merely following what her other friends were doing. About 15 minutes into the run, she started to have side stitch. This is one of the worst things to happen to a runner as it would slow her down tremendously. I told Cass to do some deep breathing and to slow down from running to walking.

Half way through the run, we almost stepped onto this dead monitor lizard lying at the side of the road:

Cass with one of her besties, Chloe during the run:

Cass and I managed to complete the run way ahead of many other students and parents, though we were not the first fifty to reach the finishing line. I was pleasantly surprised that the fun run was easy peasy for me (no gasping for breath, side stitch or anything like that, yay!), something which I should rejoice as this means that I am no longer severely anemic.

The good old Milo van always makes a school jogathon complete. Its presence always puts a smile on everyone’s face. After sweating buckets under the sizzling hot sun, nothing beats a cup of cold Milo. Cass downed 5 cups of Milo while I downed 3 cups 😀 I told Cass that she had busted her sugar intake for the day and should go easy on sugar for the next two days.

All in all, it’s been a fun morning in school. Cass and I enjoyed ourselves tremendously at the jogathon and will definitely take part again next year. The only thing that bore me to the point of dozing off was waiting for the lucky draw to end. And the fact that I didn’t comprehend 95% of what was being said in Mandarin made it worse.

As for our weekly pet therapy after piano class, we saw a new batch of pedigree pups ~ baby French bulldogs. The fluff ball Samoyed pup that tugged on our heartstrings had been sold off quickly once again, which disappointed us yet again. Cass said that she wouldn’t mind a pug or a bulldog as long as she could have a pet dog. But err, pugs are just not for me. I prefer big, hairy and fluffy dogs with a more pleasant looking doggy face lol

A pup gnawing on a big piece of raw pork.

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Please Vote For My Twin Niece And Nephew!

Let me present to you my super duper adorable, huggable and kissable twin niece and nephew ~ baby Razyen (big brother) and baby Raeanne (little sister):

Tiny but mighty, these twins are fighters. They came into the world with a big bang unexpectedly at 32 weeks, spent a good one month plus in neonatal care in Singapore and now, they are thriving and getting cuter and cuter by the day.

Baby boy Rayzen:

Baby girl Raeanne:

Who can resist these babies? I feel broody each time I hold them. Please do me a favor, will you? Would really appreciate it if you could take a few minutes off your precious time to help ‘Like’ the photo of the twin’s contest here.

Thank you dearies lol

No. of times viewed = 13

Grandma’s Back

Grandma’s back from New Zealand, Japan and Hong Kong!

What the girls really look forward to each time grandma’s back from overseas is this…

Ransacking grandma’s luggage bags to find treasure!

Every time grandma’s back, everyone is sure to get something and lots and lots of expensive snacks (something that I hardly get for them here) ~ Royce chocolates, Potato Farm fries from Sapporo (we’ve got 2 big boxes this time!), Whittaker’s chocolate and an assortment of snacks and jellies from Japan.

Black skin and zebra skin groundnuts from Taiwan, sweet potato snack, preserved plum and lots of Whittaker’s chocolate from NZ:

Waitrose organic shortbread and biscuits and Remy Martin liquer-filled chocolate:

Healthy vegetables crisps and Pocky almond crush:

My favorite almond biscuits from Hong Kong and Nescafe Gold Barista Style for moi:

Our restock of Comvita propolis tincture and propolis oral spray (best line of defense for throat infection!) and Lucas Paw Paw ointment (for wounds):

This is just a small portion of our goodies. I don’t have the time to take pix of all the goodies and souvenirs. Mil came home at 9-ish p.m. and we were preparing for bed, thus we did a quick treasure ransack this time while I quickly snapped the pix before rushing off to bed.

Thank you very, very much to sil #1 and #3 for all these goodies!

No. of times viewed = 16

Nutrition Geared to Your Needs

Today there’s a quiet revolution going on, and it’s a revolution that has to do with restoring people to a perfect state of health. This healthy way of living, feeling and behaving isn’t about taking daily doses of medications and following a rote set of rules. It’s about living well in the perfect state of health we deserve, by eating food that is nutritional and delicious, and that feeds us in a way we are meant to be fed.

There are plenty of diets available today to anyone who is interested in signing up for an expensive fad that doesn’t really get them on the road to great health. What many nutritional experts (like a colorado nutrition consultant who has been making breakthroughs in helping people achieve perfect health) are talking about is getting healthy by eating what’s naturally good for us. We live in a world that’s filled with plenty of processed, prepackaged foods that are loaded with preservatives, added sugar and empty calories. These foods are causing many people to put on extra weights, lose their natural energy, and add extra stress to their heart and other vital organs. What’s the answer? Top nutritional consultants today say that the answer is to take advantage of all the great natural food that is inexpensive and easily available to us.

In generations past, people lived on farms and ate the food that grew naturally all around them. Today, we have too much access to food that is poor in real nutrients, but high in calories. We need to get back to a more natural way of living and eat fresh food on a daily basis. A diet that includes fresh fruit, vegetables, legumes, grains and nuts will supply a body all the nutrition they need to be well and to stay active.

Good health shouldn’t be a secret. By embracing all the natural abundance that surrounds us, we can enjoy vitality and energy, without sacrificing great taste and the enjoyment of a delicious meal.

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Tips for Dealing with Hair Loss

As you start to get older, it is very likely that you are going to notice that there are certain areas of your scalp where your hair is either thinning or balding. This can be extremely frustrating. In addition to the fact that it makes you realize that so many years have passed, you understand what a negative effect it is having on your appearance. It makes you realize that you can never go back in time and be the youthful person you once were. While you may feel like the situation is completely grim, there is no need to worry. There are lots of things that you can do to combat hair loss.

The first route that you may decide to take is to use natural products. There are a variety of at-home treatments that you may decide to try it first that may be able to help you deal with the problem of thinning or balding hair. For example, many have found that by using a treatment of onion juice, garlic, egg, and olive oil, they are able to not only improve the areas where their hair is thinning, but they also see fewer gray hairs.

If this does not work for you, you may decide to speak with a medical professional and look at the different options that are available for hair transplants, like Artas robotic. When a person uses a hair transplant treatment, they need to have an area where donor hair is growing in a healthy way. For example, it is common for men who are dealing with male pattern baldness to take the hair follicle donations from the back of their head. The hair follicles will be transplanted to the top of their head. Since the techniques have advanced so much, very few people are dealing with ugly scabbing, scars, bleeding, and the other things that used to be associated with these types of treatments.

Do not give in to despair if you are dealing with hair loss. There are a variety of treatments out there that can help you. Improve your diet, improve your hair care routine, and speak to your doctor about the different treatment options that are available for you.

No. of times viewed = 5

My Monday Morning

For the past few mornings, I’ve been bumping into a putu mayam seller at the news stand. Each time I see him on his bike, I’d have the urge to get a few pieces of putu mayam from him. It’s been coon’s age since I last ate putu mayam and I miss it. It’s one of my favorite Malaysian desserts. But it’s a high caloric and high carb food. Wolfing down one piece of putu mayam would mean dumping back all the calories that I had burnt in my morning’s 40-minute exercise. But what the heck! Life is short and treat this as a cheat day treat, hey? 😉

Today I finally bought 3 pieces at 60 sen a piece. I wonder how this seller earns a living selling putu mayam at 60 sen a piece. Even if he earns a 50% profit, it’s only 30 sen profit per piece. He can’t even earn a Ringgit of profit from my purchase of 3 pieces. How can he possibly survive in KL with his meager earnings? I think I’m going to buy 10 pieces from him the next time and give them away as treat to the friendly guards at our condo.

Good ‘ol putu mayam wrapped with plastic and newspapers. It’s a dessert made up of all my favorite things ~ fresh and aromatic grated young coconut (I could live on this alone!), gula Melaka (palm sugar) and rice flour noodles (very similar to mee hoon). This is such an awesome combo albeit it looks plain and eaten cold. Another yummy version of this dessert is ‘Putu Piring’, which is composed of the same ingredients but steamed in bamboo cups or a stainless steel steamer.

After my breakkie of a piece of putu mayam, I dropped Drama Queen at the tuition center, then brought Alycia to the clinic. She’s down with food poisoning (possibly from an overdose of some wrinkled month-old mini Mandarin oranges) and had been purging and vomiting since 2 a.m. I could have just self treated her at home with charcoal pills and Izumio. But at the high school that she goes to, absence from school without an MC would mean 0.2 points deducted from each subject. And a few points lost may render her being kicked to lower ranking classes, something that petrifies her.

After Drama Queen’s class ended, we went for a short retail therapy at Mid Valley Megamall! 😆 We had lunch at Nana’s Green Tea, which is the girl’s favorite restaurant just because of the macha latte, which is her absolute favorite drink. Nana’s Green Tea serves one of the best macha latte, much more better than Star Bucks *in our opinion* and according to Drama Queen, better than the ones she tried in Hong Kong.

Drama Queen giving me the Dab to avoid being photographed rolleyes

Despite a short retail therapy at the mall in the rush hours of the morning, I managed to drop off Drama Queen pretty early in school. I then went to the bakery to get some buns for the girls before going home, got some work done on the computer before Cass returned from school. Thank God Alycia got better by noon and needn’t have to pop the pills that the doctor prescribed her with. My approach is always to wait and see if it’s not life threatening and where there’s no fever.

No. of times viewed = 14

Random Matters

As I tore off the February page off my calendar and ticked the 1st March box, I realized how terribly fast time has flew past us. And I realized that I am on the cusp of touching 45. I certainly don’t feel and look anywhere near 45 but knowing that Alycia my eldest daughter will go to college in 3 years, reality sets in. I am growing old!

This weekend was another hectic week for the hubs. He and his team were hired to provide catering services for a private function at Janda Baik on Friday and the entire team stayed overnight at the mansion that his client rented. On Saturday, I had breakfast with Cass while the 2 older girls preferred to stay home to have a simpler breakfast of cereals and banana pancakes (cooked by chef wannabe Sherilyn). Cass has been bugging me for soup yee mee.

Below: Miss Eleventh Hour rushing her Chinese writing homework given by the tutor at the eleventh hour while waiting for her noodles to arrive:

Her tutor’s due to arrive in less than an hour but her homework wasn’t completed yet despite umpteen reminders and nagging from me since Thursday. I told her that if she didn’t complete it, she wouldn’t get her pocket money on Monday. This threat almost always works not just for her but Drama Queen too!

On Sunday morning, 4th March, Drama Queen attended an international taekwondo event at Putrajaya. This event was attended by taekwondo participants internationally.

Below: Sherilyn with participants from Korea. The Indian lady on the right is her Moral teacher, a black belt holder.

Drama Queen came home and regaled non-stop about her first experience at the international event. She was actually more excited about meeting the PM face to face more than anything else 😆

Lunch was at Taste & Memories, a newly opened Chinese restaurant that serves grandma’s old recipe dishes.

I love their black vinegar pork trotters and signature pork lard rice.

Even the health freak moi dug into the pork lard rice. It’s the first time I’ve heard of pork lard rice and it was indeed addictive! I’m going to get some organic pork lard from my favorite butcher and cook it with Basmati low-GI rice.

Dinner was Dominos Pizza delivered to our home as it was pouring and we couldn’t go out.

The mil will be back tomorrow but I guess I’ll still be cooking for a couple of days until she settles down in hot hot Malaysia.

Below: celebrity couple Alan Yun and Emily finally tied the knot. Hubs and I and the girls are SO happy for them. Hubs and I have known Alan since he was a teenager and he’s like our younger brother. I wish them a lifetime of love and may their years together be filled with lasting joy.

Image may contain: 2 people, people smiling, people standing and outdoor

Have an awesome and good week ahead everyone 😘

No. of times viewed = 19

Cheesy Online Purchase And I Discovered Something!

I’ve always thought that I am DIY-challenged. I hate anything that’s DIY, including Lego blocks. I have zero patience for DIY stuff. I think they are a waste of my time. Thus, I never buy DIY furniture and fixtures. Why waste an hour assembling a furniture when you can buy ready-made ones? I just don’t get it! But the hubs is the polar opposite of me. He’s a sucker for DIY furniture. For someone who doesn’t have much patience, I’m surprised that he actually has tons of it when it comes to assembling DIY furniture and appliances. Alycia has inherited this DNA of mine, unfortunately, thus I can never count on her to help me in this department. Thankfully I have two other daughters who love this sort of challenges. But I can’t always count on them due to their limited time spent at home.

Last week, I ordered a Felton 5-tier plastic cabinet from 11 Street. It’s my first online purchase from 11 Street and I think it will be my last. I’d stick with Lazada.

5 Tier Drawers Plastic Cabinet / Plastic Furniture / Office Cabinet & Storage
Picture of the cabinet from the 11 Street website.

From the 11 Street website, the plastic cabinet looks pretty good. I chose pink, which is my favorite color. NOTHING is stated under the description section that this cabinet is a self assembled cabinet. I have never once come across a fully dismantable multi-tiered plastic cabinet. The existing multi-tiered plastic cabinets that I have at home are all with a one-piece frame and drawers that come in one piece which I can slot into the frame easily and smoothly. I was in for a huge shock and WTF moment when my parcel finally arrived after 5 days of wait with no update on the website on the status of my parcel. When the medium-size box arrived, I knew I had been ‘scammed’. When I opened the box, confirmed I was ‘scammed’.

See the pieces of the cabinet here. I didn’t order a DIY / FIY cabinet for Pete’s sake. All in there were about 40 pieces with NO instructions. WTF!! How on earth am I supposed to fix this darn thing? I am DIY-challenged and I have absolutely no time to assemble this. And the cheesy quality of the plastic is another WTF moment. Inside the drawers were strands of cut-off plastic. The color of the black plastic looks faded and dusty. The frame bars were crooked and they looked as if they would dent after a few knocks. I wanted to return this piece of crap to 11 Street but I dreaded to think of the tedious return and refund process.

So gung-ho me squatted under the fan in the living room (it was a sizzling hot afternoon) and started assembling the pieces together. I had no frigging idea how to slot the vertical bars into the rectangular frames tightly. The bars just wouldn’t lodge properly. Then I remembered Drama Queen using a hammer to knock on a DIY wooden picture frame with multiple parts, done under the school’s Living Skills project. I used some strength and knocked the bars into the gap on the frame and then I heard the clicking sound. It was secured finally! That’s only for one bar. There were 20 bars and I had to use my cow strength to knock them all into the frame using my hands. Securing the wheels was another WTF and cussing moment. Even the handles of the drawers had to be lodged into the gap of the drawer. I was sweating and mad as hops and vowed that I will never ever order such furniture online again. Long story short, after an hour, the 5-tier plastic cabinet was erected but it wasn’t perfect. As the cheesy plastic frames and bars are not aligned, the drawers can’t shut tightly. Cass found out later that she had to bang on the drawer with all her might to shut the drawer. WTF!! LOL!

This piece of crap is a joke. It cost me RM136 (RM119 + RM17 shipping). I won’t even donate it to charity. It looks like it’s going to end up in our balcony to store our floor mats and gardening tools. The hubs had a good laugh. Well honey, it looks like you’ll have to bring me to the mall to get a better quality one.

On the hindsight, I’ve discovered that I am not that DIY-challenged after all. Even without my handy manny and Drama Queen around to help me, I still managed to assemble a FIY (fix it yourself) furniture. Not bad ya? I won’t deny that this felt like brain surgery to me but nothing is impossible if there’s a will.

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