Our Saturday, 29 Sept 2018

Breakfast today was with Cass only.  We had our favorite Tomyum noodles, cooked by a Thai lady married to a handsome Chinese man who is a super nice guy.

Today is the eve of the eve of Alycia's PT3 exam. It's her first major high school exam.  She stayed home the whole day for cramming, leaving her room every two hourly for short breaks and cut down on her gym time. 





Saturday is a day of chauffering for me. After dropping off Alycia at the tuition center, I dropped off the Fighting Queen at the gym for taekwondo. Today is her grading for the next belt.  After the grading exercise, she was informed by her Iranian master (who also teaches her Muay Thai) that she passed. Woohoo, welcome green belt!



Fighting Queen always avoids her paparazzi mum!  Pisses me off when she does that.


After fetching Fighting Queen back from the gym at 4 p.m., I dropped her home, picked up Cass and then attended piano class together.  After piano class, I fetched Alycia back from the tuition center, popped by the supermarket to get sushi for Alycia as she wanted to stay home to revise while we go out for dinner. It's frightening to step foot into this supermarket at our neighborhood. It is so complete with fresh groceries, imported products and new products that I always leave the supermarket at least RM50 - RM150 poorer, though my original intention was only to get sushi!  I go there 5-6 times a week. 😁





Dinner was at our favorite neighborhood 'tai chow' restaurant.  Dessert was ice-cream and waffle at Inside Scoop.




October and November will be two very difficult months for the girls and me. It's their finals, Alycia has to sit for two major exams in October (PT3 and UEC), Sherilyn has to attend a dance competition on the eve of her finals and the worst unimaginable event is that my most helpful and trusted part-time helper of 6 years will be going back to Indonesia to get married!!  For a frigging 5 weeks!! Will I ever see her again? She's been telling me YES and she even has plans to bring her new husband to KL to work. She even planned for her new husband to work at the hubs' kitchen. But will this materialize? I can only pray hard to God that she will come back to work for us for the next 20-30 years. I can't live in peace without her. She's God-sent and we all treat her like a family member 🙏🙏🙏

Mr Too Sweet Neighbor

Remember my previous post on the surprise my bachelor neighbor sprang on me exactly a month ago?

He did it again last night!

Nothing suggestive and stirring ok. Don't get me wrong. 😆

It's another sweet surprise from a man who calls himself "too sweet".

This time, he surprised us with a box of chocolate cake that he brought back all the way from Wien / Vienna, Austria.

When the doorbell rang, the mil opened the door without first checking through the peep hole who it was thinking that it was Alycia who was back from the gym. She was totally stunned when she saw the man standing at the door, with a box in hand.  Haha!

I quickly ran to the door and greeted him.   Awkward!! 

Story time again from Mr Too Sweet guy, haha!

Mr Too Sweet guy told me that he had just returned from Austria a few days ago. He was there to celebrate his birthday and he bought a chocolate cake back home. After celebrating the cake cutting thingy with his parents and sisters, he was still binging on the cake each time he sat down to watch TV.  Then he told himself that he gotta stop eating as he got the diagnosis of being diabetic last year. His doctor told him that he is "too sweet" and overweight.  I noticed since last year that he had started to go to the gym and walking around the neighborhood instead of driving.  But still, he didn't shed much weight, so said Mr Too Sweet guy. 

Mr Too Sweet told me that his hobby is traveling the world and eating. Googling for the best desserts and traveling all the way to the location to get it to satiate his craving is his job. Sounds like he is a perfect eating buddy to pair with the hubs!  But Mr Too Sweet guy is dang loaded. And my man ain't.  Only 48 years old, does not need to work (we have never seen him in his office attire), always traveling the world to eat, hmmm, what could his job be?

My Drama Queen in her usual dramatic mind thinks that he is a drug dealer. The mil, with a very conservative mind and old school of thought has been very dubious over his sweet thoughts as he kept saying "I know you have 3 daughters".  She thinks he is a pervert and warned our girls not to eat the cake that he gave us.
🤭🤣

The hubs and I think he is the son of some tycoon. 


His two times sweet gifts to us have stoked our curiosity to know what he does for a living.  The fact that I always see young foreign men coming in and out of his unit at different hour of the day leaves me with a leery feeling about him.

Anyway, what he does is none of our business la. 



As for this special edition chocolate cake from Hotel Sacher, Wien, we find it too sweet for our liking.  According to Mr Too Sweet, Hotel Sacher ships their specialty cakes worldwide.  And this birthday cake that he bought cost 80 Euros.

The girls and I had a real good laugh over this encounter. The best part was when the mil did not even check who it was thinking that it was Alycia and opened the door leaving me with no time to change into proper clothing. I went straight to the door in my night gown with messy hair (I just got out of the shower) sans anything beneath the sheer night gown.  I hope he didn't see what should not be seen.

🤫

Hope this post got you in stitches.

Happy weekend all and sundry!

Dancing Queen

Dancing Queen made my time stand still for a frigging 10 minutes yesterday. When I went to fetch her from school in the evening, she was no where to be seen. Never had this happened before. There were fewer than 10 students waiting outside the school, where she normally waits for me.

I was rattled.

I got down the car and asked the guard / traffic warden whether there were any more students inside the school, to which he said NO.

Panic struck.

Was she kidnapped? Or got into an accident and ambulanced to the hospital? Or maybe she's just being mischievous again and was frolicking with her sidekick somewhere?

I went up to a teacher who was waiting for her transport at the bus stop and asked her if she knew who Sherilyn from the DLP class was. She said NO.  Just as I was planning to stomp inside the school to search for her, Drama Queen ran out from the school compound with her sidekick.

I was both relieved to see her and incensed.

That girl accompanied her sidekick back into class to get something that she had left behind. And left her poor old mother waiting frantically for her!

😤

In the car, I harangued at her and told her that if she ever have to go back into her class to get something in future, she has to inform the guard/traffic warden of her whereabouts so that he can inform me.

In the morning, this willful child of mine who has an issue with punctuality made me blow my top.  In fact, she made me so irate that I was in a foul mood the entire morning.

This girl can kill me with her 'don't give a tinker's damn' attitude. Yet she can be my best helper in the house. She helps with the cooking and the cleaning.  She carries my heavy groceries too. Maybe I am not killed by anger yet as she manages to compensate her shortcomings with her strengths.




Dancing Queen rehearsing at our gym for a dance competition coming up next month.

It will be her maiden solo dance competition.  Earlier this year, she and two other friends went for a dance competition audition but they didn't make it as one of her friends had a panic attack and forgot the steps midway audition.

The coming dance competition made us RM700 poorer!  Her doting aunt from Hong Kong sponsored the registration and her dad sponsored the dance costume and GRAB fare for two days. I will be sponsoring my time for two days to be with her at the event. Her dad won't be in KL during the competition.  I honestly do not think she is 100% ready for the dance competition as she will be competing against pro dancers. But this dancing queen who always has confidence bigger than an ocean (she's fearless) thinks otherwise.  SIGH... we'll see.



Dancing Queen choreographed the lyrical jazz movements herself.  I have never heard of lyrical jazz until recently.  With 3 years of ballet and 1.5 years of hip hop dance training, it's no wonder why she chose lyrical jazz.

What is lyrical jazz?
Lyrical dance is a style of dance created by merging ballet and jazz.  The style is usually danced at a faster pace than ballet but not as fast as jazz.  Because of the links between the styles of dance, teachers originally struggled with whether to teach lyrical dance alongside jazz or ballet or as its own, separate style. Lyrical dancing is performed to music with lyrics to inspire movements to express strong feelings and emotions the choreographer feels from the lyrics in the chosen song.  Because lyrical dancing focuses on the expression of strong emotion, the style concentrates more on individual approach and expressiveness than the precision of the dancer's movements. Because of this, there is not as much focus on the choreography, and, in fact, the choreography often exists only as a general guide for the dancer, not as a routine that has to be exactly followed.

When Our Swimming Pool Water Turned Green

A few weeks ago, the water in our pool turned green! This had happened to our pool several times.  About 5 years ago, all the water from the pool had to be sucked out when human faeces were detected in the pool. It took days for the water to be drained out and another few days for water to fill up the pool.

Residents were told to refrain from swimming until the pool contractor came to treat the water. From a distance, the pool looked like a sewage tank. It looked really intimidating. The sight of our pool reminded me of Summer 2016 when the whole world had their eyes firmly fixed on Rio. And the question on everybody’s lips? Why did the Olympic diving pool turn green?




Photo taken from the 5th floor of our unit.




There are a couple of reasons that could cause a crystal clear swimming pool to turn green overnight, namely: algae growth and metals in the water.


When chlorine levels drop below 1 ppm, it can cause algae to grow in the pool, turning the pool water green. When this happens it is necessary to "shock" the water with chemicals to kill the algae and return the pool to normal chlorine levels. Pool shock has high levels of chlorine that wipe out the algae and sanitize the pool.

The pool contractor finally came after the long weekend. He scrubbed and vacuumed the floor of the pool and then added buckets after buckets of white powdery stuff (chlorine?) into the water. O.M.G. 😱  Imagine the chemicals that our body gets in contact with each time we swim.  The contractor dumps buckets of white powdery stuff into the pool about once or twice a week after testing the pH level of the water.



No wonder Cass got her first UTI attack in 6 years about 9 months after she started swimming lessons. Each time she spent more than half an hour in the pool, she would complain of pain in her 'down under'.  As for me, I would have throat discomfort with phlegm after each swim.  I have stopped swimming for a year and now doing strength training, exercises on the pool deck chair (leg lifts, sit ups and bicycle crunches), brisk walking and jogging 5 times a week for 40 minutes each time.

This said, I still love swimming and plan to go back to the pool soon, when it's not so cold in the morning. It's been raining almost daily and pretty chilly in the morning.  But my first love is still running outdoors. I find so much peace during my 40-minute pre-dawn workout session everyday.

Makan Marathon (Sunday, 15 Sept 2018)

Last Sunday the hubs was in a 'Makan Marathon' mode. It's been a while since he dragged us out on a pigging out marathon.

Our main mission on Sunday was to bring Alycia (who will be sitting for her PT3 and UEC exams next month) to Popular bookstore to get some revision books. But we ended up pigging out the whole day. 🐷

We first had brunch at Meng Kee 'tai chow' restaurant @ Old Klang Road.  We had half a roast 'Pei Par' duck, steamed Lala clams in wine, braised fish head, vegetables and braised pork knuckles.

About two hours later after our mission was accomplished at Popular bookstore, we were in disbelief when the hubs said that he was feeling  hungry! But that's really typical of him.  Good food always elevates his mood up a few notches.

Our first stop was at Take Eat Easy Gastro Cafe @ Pearl Suria Shopping Gallery where we had chocolate lava cake and coffee.




While enjoying the lava cake and sipping on his coffee, the gourmand hubs was hinting that he had a craving for 'La Mien' (pulled noodles). O.M.G.!

Before we segued into Paradise Dynasty to satiate the man's craving, he made a pit stop at KyoChon to get takeout Korean  fried chicken (two flavors)!  I could not even think of stuffing fried chicken down my throat when we just had brunch, dessert and were about to have another Chinese meal at 3pm!



At Paradise Dynasty, the hubs' pick were the signature La Mien (not in the picture), 2 racks of Xiao Long Bao and 'Gau jie' (dumplings).






The colorful Signature Dynasty Xiao Long Bao that comes in 8 flavours.



I could not believe how fast the hubs' stomach could process his food at such amazing speed! While waiting for our Xiao Long Bao to arrive, I  'studied' his eating pattern from our first meal to our last and then I tracked down the answer!  Though we had many meals, 70% of the food was scoffed down by our 3 perpetually hungry piranhas who all seem to have a bottomless pit!!  No wonder I too wasn't feeling very stuffed though we have had 4 meals.

Back home at 4pm, I did some house chores (I was happy I could burn off some calories,  haha!) before we headed to our next destination for dinner ~ roast turkey at the hubs' aunt's unit (two floors down ours).

Christmas dinner came really early this year as the hubs' aunt, the one who usually cooks up a storm for our annual Christmas dinner won't be in Malaysia this Christmas. She will be spending Christmas  in London this year.













My favorite dish is always the roast vegetables platter, in particular the oven-roasted beetroot, lightly seasoned with salt and olive oil.  Beetroot has risen to superfood status over the last decade or so. Beets contain a variety of unique health-boosting and disease-fighting nutrients.  I like beets cooked in any style. I am not a big fan of turkey though. I find the meat too dry and bland for my liking.

The hubs' makan marathon continued and today we spent the entire morning on a jaunt ~ eating and shopping for hubs' catering supplies while the girls were at school🤭.

Thursday Meals, 13 Sept 2018

Bento box prepared yesterday night for Alycia's 10 a.m. breakfast in school today (Friday):

Cold cha soba seasoned with sesame seed oil, organic soy sauce and toasted sesame seeds; organic cherry tomatoes; stir-fried traffic light colors bell peppers with brocolli and garlic. I thought that this would be too healthy and bland for Alycia but to my surprise, she came home today and told me that the noodles still tasted good when she ate them in school this morning.



Dinner kept for the Dancing Queen last night:


Mondays and Thursdays are dance rehearsal nights and she only gets to eat her dinner at 9:40 p.m.!
We had braised pork ribs with 'tau cheong' and kaffir lime leaves, blanched lady's fingers and sauteed brocolli with traffic light colors bell peppers.

I 💓 the glorious kaleidoscope of colours in this meal!  Colorful foods are good for you, naturally colored ones that is and  not artificially derived from.





Breakfast for Cass yesterday at 5:30 a.m. before school was vermicelli in prawn shells and anchovies soup with beef balls and mustard greens.

This is Cass' kind of breakfast now, something that's slightly salty or savoury. She's grossly sick of having buns, bread and pastries for breakfast or recess now. So I keep a very small portion of what we have for dinner for her breakfast the next day 😐

Beating Sleepiness With Story Books

Cass wakes up at 5:30 a.m. on school days. On most mornings she eats her breakfast with her eyes closed. I am always amazed with how Cass and Drama Queen can eat their breakfast and shower with eyes closed! 

Recently Cass discovered that if she reads her story book while she eats at that ungodly hour, she surprisingly feels very awake and 'energized'! It's as if she gets her energy from her most loved possession. She loves her novels and doesn't allow me to give away or sell her novels, especially her Harry Potter, Land Of Stories and Enid Blyton series.   Since then, Cass now eats her breakfast with a book in her hand, doing what she loves most. If only she would do the same with her text books or reference books! I'll bet she would be the top student if she has the same interest in her school books as her novels.   Cass can spend the entire day doing nothing but fixated to her novels.





Breakfast for Cass on Friday: 'yee mein' reheated in the wok.  The hard boiled eggs are for Alycia and me.

Homemade Chocolate Brownie And Healthy Roselle Tea

Whenever there's a holiday, my handy girl's hands would start to itch ~ itching to bake her favorite cookies and cakes.

During the long Merdeka weekend, Drama Queen baked a tray of chocolate brownie, using a new recipe. Instead of using regular baking chocolate, which I wasn't too keen to buy as I find those too sweet and too junky, I bought Whittaker's dark chocolate and another imported brand of organic milk chocolate.

This brownie is about 90% organic, made using organic flour, antibiotic and hormone-free chicken eggs, organic brown sugar and organic salt, organic cocoa powder and organic vanilla essence.  What's not organic are the Whittaker's dark chocolate. baking powder and UCC coffee powder. I bought Whittaker's as it's my all-time favorite brand of chocolate (from New Zealand).  And it cost me a frigging RM80 for all the ingredients!





This Drama Queen sure knows how to enjoy her food and life!  She took a scoop of her daddy's Häagen-Dazs macadamia ice-cream to go with the brownie.  The blueberries are organic too.



At the pasar malam on our country's Independence Day, Drama Queen saw some fresh Roselle flowers and asked if I could buy them to make Roselle tea. I told her that if she wanted to make Roselle tea, she would have to help with cleaning and peeling the flowers, which can be pretty time-consuming if you are time-strapped.  Some flowers may be covered with soil and insects and needs umpteen rounds of washing. The petals have soft spikes, like ladies fingers and if you are not careful, can poke your fingers. Be careful of the sharp pits too.

Our Roselle tea boiling in the pot, after Drama Queen helped to wash and removed the pits from the flowers.

How I love the bright ruby red color of the roselle tea!  And it's chock-full of health benefits from lowering blood pressure to boosting our immune system, aids digestion, relieves menstrual pain, nourishes the liver,  has anti-inflammatory and antibacterial properties, contains anti-cancer properties and is high in iron, among other health benefits.

Roselle tea has a taste that is very similar to cranberry juice. It can be described as tart, so you can add sugar or honey to add a little sweetness to it. Also, you can try adding spices like cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and ginger depending on your taste preferences.  I prefer mine without any sweetener.



A big bag of fresh Roselle flowers (at RM5 only) managed to yield about 2 liters of Roselle tea. I add Manuka honey for the girls as the tea is too sour for them. If you can tackle pure cranberry juice without sugar, you can down this Roselle tea sans any sweetener.


Cass made ice popsicles with the Roselle tea. She threw in some fresh orange cubes and cubed Japanese jelly into the mold.


Such a refreshing and healthy dessert on a sizzling hot afternoon.

Someone blew lots of bubbles on her Roselle tea with her new glass straw!



The reusable glass straws can be purchased from my online store. The starter kit comes with 3 straws (straight, bended and bubble tea straw) and two straw brushes.  If you prefer reusable stainless steel straws, I carry them too at my store! Check them out!

It's good to start training your kids from young to stop using plastic straws. These plastic straws are killing turtles and other sea creatures when these poor fellas swallow them thinking that they are jelly fish. We now return all plastic straws and disposable cutlery to the seller when we buy takeout. I even have a few stainless steel tiffin carriers and food containers stashed inside my car trunk so that I rarely have to use disposable plastic containers when buying takeout. Plastic containers release carcinogenic chemicals when in contact with very hot food and soups.

Finding The Best Bracelets

Whether it's for you or for someone else, you may be looking for a specific bracelet that says a lot about you, what you stand for, and what you love about life. Finding this perfect bracelet at a great price can feel like a never-ending task, but there are a few things you can do to find your chosen bracelet at a great price.




Speak With Recent Shoppers
The first thing you can do is speak with recent shoppers who purchased a bracelet that was meaningful and beautiful. It would be best to speak with shoppers who purchased a bracelet in the last 30 days because this is how fast bracelet designs and prices change. You should also speak with at least 10 different people because each of these individuals will have purchased their bracelet at a different place.




Trust Online Shopping
Many people have a hard time trusting online shopping when it comes to purchasing bracelets. The main reason is that they cannot try on the bracelet they are purchasing. However, if you choose the right online company, you can be sure to receive a great product. The best way to find the right online company would be to search for as many online bracelet dealers as possible, but you should only purchase from a dealer with excellent ratings and reviews and with a great customer service department. A great example of this is Coppin's, which is known for Bella Ryann bracelets. Every bracelet made by this company is made to reflect a person's birthdate, a special engagement, or some other important meaning. Customers can also have their bracelets custom made, too.

When searching for the perfect bracelet, it is important that you do not stop searching until you are truly satisfied with a specific company. A bracelet is meant to last forever, so you should make this purchase like your life depends on it.