Month: April 2020

Today the Government announced that they’re going to consider allowing outdoor jogging and exercising soon. Just like how business sectors are slowly re-opening.  That’s one of the happiest news for me, to date. Not that I’m going to get out of our condo to jog.  At least I can jog around our condo compound without the fear of getting caught by the police.  I was informed by one of our neighbors that the police came into our condo premises several times to do a random check for covidiots.

I was out at our neighborhood supermarket yesterday and the number of cars and congestion at the business park have some semblance of normalcy, but not quite so, yet. Mr DIY (one of my favorite places) has re-opened recently. Really happy to hear that more economic sectors will start re-opening. People need their jobs and pay for survival. Families will crumble with no income. I hope Maria, our part-time helper gets her job back as a cleaner at the office building.  She’s been out of job since the MCO started on 18 March. And we can’t take her in as she’s not allowed into our condo.  I can’t wait to have her back at our place again. I think of her all the time and always wonder how she’s coping with just a paltry income from her hubby who’s a leaves blower at our neighborhood.

Sherilyn has been spending the past few days learning to play the piano from some online sites. She’s never really had formal music lessons, except for 2 years of Ukulele in primary school. Something’s up her sleeve and she’s making music for a competition submission.  This girl has an unquenchable thirst to partake in competitions since young.

Dinner: steamed cod fish (everyone’s favorite but they’re not exactly affordable), ‘Tai Yi Ma Kar Lui’ (braised hairy gourd with mung bean noodles, leftover char siew and dried shrimps), Great Burdock meatless soup again (good for detox), leftover braised chicken with potatoes and tomatoes and stir fried celery with red bell pepper and fish cake.

It’s going to be another busy day for hubs and me tomorrow. He’ll be at his shop to prep Nasi Briyani food boxes for delivery and I’ll be glued to my chair and keyboard to churn out articles again. Blessings, no complaints 🙂

Have a great quarantine day y’all!

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Our baking queen indeed finds pleasure and satisfaction through cooking and baking.  About an hour before her online class this morning, she quickly cooked Japanese rice in the rice cooker for Korean seaweed balls or Jumeokbap (주먹밥) and sushi and pan-fried some egg rolls.  When the Japanese rice was ready, in hot-foot and swift hands, she quickly mixed the rice with sesame seed oil, sesame seeds, leftover salmon and seaweed and rolled them into impeccably round balls.

She also took out the sushi bamboo roller and quickly formed some sushi, then pan-fried the eggs before rolling and cutting them.

Brunch for herself and her two sisters.

Guess there’s where she gets her dose of dopamine and serotonin, besides her phone.  And I think she takes after my mum who finds so much joy baking and cooking since she was a teenager. Thank God I have a daughter who loves cooking and baking as I don’t really enjoy them, mainly because I don’t like cleaning up the aftermath in the kitchen.

MIL pan-fried some ‘lin ko’ for tea time. Much as I heart them, I had to try hard to limit myself to only one piece.  It’s not the best time to indulge to my heart’s content now as I can’t workout like I used to. I even struggle to hit 6,000 steps/day throughout the MCO.

Dinner of stir-fried broccoli + celery + red bell pepper + fish cake, braised Sanbanto pork ribs with tomatoes, sand ginger (grown in our balcony) and onions, tofu with minced meat and Great Burdock soup (aka 5 Elements Miracle Soup).

The Great Burdock soup is a meat free broth composed of daikon radish, daikon radish leaves, carrots (we left out carrots), Shiitake mushrooms and burdock root. This soup is beneficial for those who are detoxing, fasting, recovering from cancer and suffering from high blood pressure, nourishes the internal organs, expels heat and purges toxins.

When hubs got home from his shop in the evening, he gave us another surprise!  I love surprises from him throughout the MCO as he’ll bring home goodies to cheer us all up, including himself.  This time he ordered some mega delicious black ‘Oh Ku’ kuih and Nyonya white kuih kochi from Happy Nyonya Kitchen

They’re one of the best Nyonya kuihs I’ve tried. Sweetness level is just right. I’m going to pester hubs to order these again next week! But first, I must persevere and continue with my daily stairs climbing and corridor jogging, which I find monotonous.

And this was our dinner yesterday:

Braised pork ribs with yam, stir-fried water spinach with fermented bean curd and red chilies, old cucumber soup and Ayam Goreng Berempah cooked by hubby’s Indon chef.

Yesterday’s surprise from hubs were these  yummy babies, ordered online from Devour Bites:

Teochew dumplings with filling of turnip and dried shrimps.

Finally, our day ended with announcement from our PM that the MCO will be further extended to 12 May 2020 with possibility of further extension!!  Bring it on.  We’ve already gone this far and what’s another month of house quarantine, right? Right?  😕

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I looked at my desktop calendar to see what MCO day number it is today and next to today’s date, I’d earlier written down Cass’ Diagnostic Exam date on today’s box. Had La Corona not invaded our lives unexpectedly, Cass would be sitting for an exam that would last the entire week! And she escaped this exam and the major one in September. My Corona batch girl is rejoicing and so am I .😁  Anyway, the Primary 6 students will still be tested, in another form of assessment, to be decided and announced by the Education Ministry in the near future.

Miss Lazybones again sneaked back into the house after stairs climbing with me but daddy didn’t let her off the hook. He dragged her to do 20 minutes of stretching exercise before she’s let off for breakfast 😆

Our baking queen dished out her maiden spectacular lasagne dish today, just in time for tea time as we’d all skipped lunch. We had pau and siew mai for breakfast.

I took almost an hour to slow cook the beef bolognese sauce to perfection and she spent the entire afternoon in the stuffy kitchen to shape the pastas to perfection and we took less than half an hour to nosh it down.😬

The salmon that hubs ordered from his supplier arrived today. The girls are so happy!

For dinner, we had salmon fish head cooked in Assam sauce, which is insanely delish.   The flavour of plain fresh salmon is already lovely but the tangy and spicy Assam sauce with kafir lime leaves just puts this over the top from tasty to exceptional. We can have this dish everyday and never get bored of it.

Other dishes for our evening include braised tofu with minced meat, lotus root soup, sauteed cabbage and stir-fried chicken tenders with sesame seed oil, ginger, black fungus and Shiitake mushrooms.

With our everyday lives dramatically transformed almost overnight, self-care has also transformed from nice-to-have indulgence to must-have necessity.  We must look after ourselves because if we don’t, then we can’t look after anybody else. That’s the reason why throughout the MCO period, I still prioritize exercise everyday.

We can’t control La Corona but we can control exercise, diet, sleep and keep in touch with loved ones and friends via virtual meetings and positive behaviours. And reward ourselves for doing them by self-administering dopamine, a molecule released when you hit a goal, which in turn motivates you to repeat those behaviours and makes them easier to do. This can be as simple as telling yourself well done for going for that 20-minute run along the corridor of your apartment unit or doing a group Tabata / Yoga / HIIT with your buddies via Zoom. Because if you keep eating and stay sedentary, after the lockdown is lifted, you definitely can’t look down 😆

Stay healthy and active and stay safe at home peeps.

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I started off the day at 6:45 a.m. with the usual house chores while the entire family was still in lala land and then dragged Cass along to exercise with me at around 9:30 a.m.   After walking up the stairs to the 18th floor and back to the 5th floor, Ms Lazybones didn’t want to proceed with stretching and jogging at the corridor.   Hubs didn’t let her off the hook and dragged her to do 15 minutes of stretching and then had a ball game with her at our corridor before breakfast.

During the MCO, it’s really easy to fall into a lazy rut, even for adults. When there are no online classes, the girls are glued to their devices. I have to think of activities for these dopamine frazzled zombies to detach their eyes and fingers from their idiot gadgets.  Sherilyn will be experimenting with recipes in the kitchen when she’s overdosed with everything that her device could offer. Alycia spends most of her free time working out in front of her phone. And Cass, this brat is addicted to online games, which I am trying with my might to break her addiction.  I’ll get her to fetch things for me and to help to do some chores, besides having to do her duty, which is pretty easy – keeping the dishes after her sister has washed them and dad has dried them.

We had toasts with chicken mayo (from leftover roast chicken breast), French butter and Emmentel cheese for breakfast.  For lunch, Sherilyn cooked instant noodles with kimchi, spinach and lady’s fingers for her sisters and herself.

My parcel from Shopee finally arrived today. So happy that despite the MCO, delivery wasn’t badly delayed, though longer than usual. Hubs forced me to bring along the bottle of PECA disinfectant water to the lobby to spray on the parcel before bringing it into the house.  I am expecting another parcel from Shopee, which is a yoga mat, shipped from China. I hope to receive it by next week.

I had a sudden craving for haw flakes and Mamee today. I think I just need something sentimental from my happy worry-free childhood days to give me some comfort to pass these forlorn days.  My late maternal grandma used to order these from our neighborhood sundry shop as treats for my brothers and me in the late 1970s till 1980s.  Simple treats like this was a luxury for us.  It only cost 5 sen each (or maybe cheaper) back then.

Another long forgotten snack that we used to indulge in back then was fresh lotus root seeds which my grandma would buy from the wet market. We would while away our free time at night peeling lotus seeds skin and core one by one before popping these sweet and healthy seeds into our mouths.

Dinner: sweet and sour fried mackerel fish slices, leftover sweet corn soup, steamed organic chicken with assortment of fungi and red dates, stir-fried mustard greens with fried foo pei and sauteed bean sprouts with red and yellow capsicum.

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Today is exactly one month that we’ve survived our country’s partial lockdown and home quarantine.  Congrats to all our fellow Malaysians!  We’ve all made it this far and we’ve got another 11 more days to go, hopefully.

The total number of new cases have now gone down from triple digit to double digit for two days already.  But we must not let our guard down. We must continue to practise the MCO protocol and hygiene that we’ve been doing since the MCO started. God willing, we will all win this war (which I call WW III).

Hubs cooked breakfast for everyone again today! We had something luxurious and cafe-styled:

Crispy sourdough tartine with smoked salmon, French butter, avocado and scrambled eggs atop.

What lifts up my mood in the evening is when the hubs comes home with a loaf of sourdough bread with my favorite almond cake ❤️

Thank God for our organic vegetables seller whom we’ve been patronizing at the neighborhood park for the past decade, she is now delivering her farm produce to us once a week.

Whenever I need to be ‘outdoor’, I saunter to the kitchen and gaze outside to admire the view, practise deep breathing and people watch — the diligent guards patrolling our condo and fellow residents walking to collect stuff at the lobby.

Whenever I go down to the lobby to collect our parcels, fresh produce delivery or the newspapers, it warms my heart to see my neighbors.   We can’t see each other’s facial expression from the mask but we bow and wave to each other. Some of them are Japanese whom we have barely talked to before but during the MCO, we have suddenly developed such joy to see each other.

Parcels are now placed on a long table outside the guards’ control room. Delivery guys can no longer go to the individual units to send parcels. Residents have to collect them at the lobby after getting a call from the guard.

And today, I finally see hand sanitizer placed at the entrance of the main door. Bravo to our condo Management for taking heed after I sent them an email on this matter.

Today Yamaha finally started online piano classes and it’s Cass’ first online piano lesson. My phone is placed on the far left corner of the piano, propped up with decks of cards.

Sherilyn, who must have been influenced by Alycia who is intoxicated by an excessive of Korean drama, whipped up kimchi fried rice with spam meat, topped with fried eggs.

Dinner of steamed fish, organic slimy Malabar spinach egg drop soup, sauteed organic bitter gourd with chicken and sauteed organic French beans with leftover beef steak.

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The lockdown blues is really biting into my temperament. Everything and everyone seems to get on my nerves. It does not help that we are staying in a condo and besides my room, I have no where else to let off steam.  When I am at my nadir, my way of disinfecting my mind of all the codswallop and pent-up negative emotions is through exercise.  I did something unfathomable yesterday. Right  after my shower last night, I decided that I needed to exercise and I did 20 minutes of lower abdomen exercises and planks on the bed, right under the fan in my birthday suit as it was terribly hot and humid. Right after the exercise, I was drenched in sweat  and showered from head to toe again! At least I got my dose of endorphins for the day.

I have two yoga mats and both the mats have been hogged by the fitness enthusiasts in the house since the start of the MCO. Thus you see why I have to exercise on the bed.  I am going to get myself another yoga mat from Shopee and when it arrives, I am going to stash it in my room!

Our brunch on MCO day 27:

Fried hor fun with bean sprouts, fish cake, pork slices and eggs. The girls and I like our noodles with kimchi for the sour and spicy kick.  We now have one last packet of precious kimchi in the fridge.  Ever since the MCO started, kimchi is one of the hottest selling items at our neighborhood supermarket.  I was at the supermarket  yesterday and the kimchi shelves were all empty!

When I told Alycia that she has a dental appointment (change of braces wire and rubber), she was elated! And so was I. Going to the dentist’s office has never felt this exciting and happy for us.  The police can’t arrest me for having another passenger in the car as I have a valid reason! And while Alycia got her braces fixed, I indulged in a super quick retail therapy at two supermarkets and pharmacy.   Payment for all my purchases at the two supermarkets and the pharmacy was contactless, via Boost.

It’s Alycia’s first time out of the condo since the MCO started almost a month ago!

For tea time, Sherilyn made a healthy and aromatic low carb lemon cake using organic almond meal, BG22 oat bran powder, lemon juice, lemon zest, eggs, organic coconut sugar, extra virgin olive oil, milk, baking soda and turmeric powder (for the natural coloring).  The half cut cake (half was already in her tummy) is baked in a mug in the microwave oven and the cupcake is baked in the toaster oven.  I like them both. This creative baker can certainly earn a decent sum of pocket money selling her healthy bakes to fund her college fees next time!

Dinner of pork ribs + fish porridge for the porridge lovers and chicken rice for those who don’t fancy porridge.

How has the lockdown been for you? I hope you’re keeping well and having your sanity in check.  We will definitely win this third World War. Only time, patience, obedience and discipline will bring us out of the war safely.  So hang in there. Love to all. Thanks to all the heroes / frontliners. 😘

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