When There Was No Internet and Social Media

Growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, life had a different rhythm—one that many today may find hard to imagine. In a world without internet, smartphones, or social media, entertainment meant simpler things that brought families together. TV time was the highlight of our evenings, and it wasn’t just about watching our favorite programs; it was a treasured family ritual.

My brothers and I would eagerly wrap up dinner, so we could all settle into the living room in our cozy little house in Moonlight Park, Ipoh. It was our first home, a small single-story house, where the six of us shared countless memories. That house holds some of the best moments of my childhood, where every evening was marked by a comforting routine, all of us gathered around a modest black-and-white TV.  My papa sat on his lazy chair and I sat on the floor next to him, with eyes glued to the TV.

Growing up in Moonlight Park brought other memories just as precious. The house may have been small, but it was home to a world of joy for me and my best friend, Michael Yong, who lived next door. Michael who is the same age as me was my closest playmate , and our parents affectionately called his parents “chu lai,” meaning friends with the same surname in Hakka. We spent endless hours playing outdoors, exploring, and making memories that remain some of the best of my life.  When I was little, I even told myself that when I grew up, I would marry Michael 😂.  I haven't seen Michael for decades and wonder how he and his older brother, Vincent are doing now. I would love to meet up with them one day.

Our lineup of shows was one of pure nostalgia: Mind Your Language, The Six Million Dollar Man, MacGyver, Empat Sekawan, and Eight Is Enough. I can still vividly recall Mr. Brown, the English teacher in Mind Your Language, and how much we all laughed. Even as kids, we learned so much from those shows—they sparked our imagination and made us laugh, giving us something to look forward to each day.

Then, in 1981, everything changed. My papa brought home a video player, and it was a moment of pure excitement for us kids. I was only eight years old, and watching our first videotape—a Chuck Norris action movie—was nothing short of thrilling. Soon after, papa started renting more videotapes. Our early favorites included Jackie Chan movies and, eventually, TVB dramas. Every day, we’d eagerly wait for papa to come home with the next tape, ready for another night of excitement and family bonding.

By the way, Chuck Norris is still alive and he's 84 years old. Bless that man. I loved watching his movies.

The absence of digital devices meant we were fully present. Life in the 80s felt simple but wonderfully rich. There was a sense of happiness and contentment in the small things, and our evenings together filled us with a joy that only grew with time.

Looking back, I’d do anything to go back to those simpler times, to No. 11 Hala Taurus, Moonlight Park, to our cozy living room, and to those cherished family moments that formed the heart of my childhood. I still remember this address even though we moved out of this house 40 years ago!

MCO Day 58 ~ 14 May 2020 (Wednesday)

Our dancing queen had an interview via Zoom with the Aspiration International School board and teachers today. It's an interview of the top 3 winners of the recent talent competition organized by AIS, which Sherilyn is the second runner up.  She won RM500 in cash prize and a RM6,000 scholarship to study at AIS.

To prep herself for the interview, she set up the laptop in her room, warned everyone, especially her sisters not to barge into the room like hooligans yelling away. I told her that we would forget that she's in the room having a VIP meeting unless she puts up a notice on the door as a reminder and this is what she wrote 😆




When I was cleaning the shelves in my room today, I found this photo of myself taken at The Great Wall Of China in September 1997! That's 23 years ago.  I was a 24-year old spring chicken then😆.  I was on a tour of Beijing, Tianjin and Chengdu with my parents and it was our first holiday in China together and my most memorable holiday with them.  I hope we can do this again, this time with the girls tagging along too.  I was actually planning a holiday to Vietnam with my parents and girls in December but with this global pandemic sweeping the world and shutting it down completely, only God knows when we can travel back to Ipoh again to see my parents, let alone abroad.

I wish that there was a time tunnel or time machine that could teleport me to September 1997. I really miss those juicy sweet peaches available in abundance everywhere in Beijing. They were so cheap that we ate peaches every day throughout our 10-day stay in China.

I remember very clearly that on the day we flew back to Malaysia, we read from the newspapers on the plane that Princess Diana had died in a car crash.


Extremely foggy day at the Great Wall that day and the walkway was so steep that one could hardly walk up without holding on to the hand rails at the sides.



Mum and papa, let's do this again soon when the pandemic is over. Deal? 💓

46th Birthday

My 46th birthday came and went in a modest and simple fashion. No chi-chi day-long celebration and no fancy gifts. Everyone was busy on my birthday - my hubs, my daughters, my mil and even myself.  But I'm happy as I had a sumptuous and intimate dinner with my family, at a fancy restaurant 😁

Dinner was at Stone Nine by Jiro Shabu @ Old Klang Road. Other than a crazy 45-minute wait for the food to come, we nonetheless enjoyed our personal hot pot Japanese shabu-shabu with premium assortment of meat and toothsome array of specialty dipping sauces to go with the meat.


My visiting SIL from Hong Kong surprised me with cakes from Just Heavenly Cafe @ Bangsar.

I think I have never shared any baby and toddler pictures of myself with everyone eh?  In commemoration of my 46th birthday, I'd like to share with all and sundry my birthday photos taken over 4 decades ago! 😍



Me on my 2nd birthday with Raymond, my elder brother, my sexy mum and my por por in our first house in Moonlight Park, Ipoh.  I can still remember the address by heart, though we moved from the house when I was 12 years old.  My birthday gift was an inflatable Bugs Bunny toy 😁.




Me on my 4th birthday. Mum was preggers with Roy, my younger brother. My birthday present that year was a doll that could blink her eyes and that doll slept next to me on my double bed together with a bunch of soft toys until I was 12 years old!




On my 5th birthday, Roy my younger brother was 11 months old. Next to my granny was Molly, our part-time helper cum nanny, who was only a teenager. She would come over to babysit us whenever there was no adult at home.

Hope you've enjoyed this brief walk with me down memory lane 💗

Down Memory Lane

My mum Whatsapp-ed me this picture of her taken with the girls about 5 years ago.  Alycia was 8, Drama Queen was 6 and Cass was 3.  Love this picture so much of all the people whom I love the most in the whole wide world :)

This picture is now set as lock screen picture on my desktop computer. If only I could teleport myself back in time to relive just one of those days. I miss the girls when they were at that age where they were  still cute as little puppies and ever so cuddly, where they have not learned to retaliate and answer back rudely.




Well perhaps I'll be saying the same thing 5 years down the road when the girls turn 18, 16 and 13 (OMG, all teenagers by then!).  I would probably be missing them at their age now.  Sometimes I wish they were all grown up and working so that I have no more stress of caring for young and growing kids and on some days I wish they were little helpless babies again. Ask any parents and you will get the same sentiments of stress - financial, emotional and physical stress of raising kids.

This is the ebb and flow of life - there are highs and lows. There is bitter and sweet, gloomy and sunshine days and it's all part of the package of life.  If it were peaches, sunshine and roses all the time, I guess we’d probably get bored or even worried of life being too perfect.  Agree?

Landlady Stories From The Early 90s - Part 3

I remember that our landlady had a washing machine.  One day, I asked her if I could use her washing machine to wash my clothes.  She said yes BUT no clothes and underwear were allowed.  Only blanket and bedsheets were allowed.   And each time I used it, she charged me a fee for it. Fair enough.  One time, I placed some clothes hangers on her dining table for a short while and all hell broke lose!  She chided me and said that hangers (in general all hangers!) are very dirty because hangers are also used to hang bras and panties,  thus cannot be placed on the dining table! What??!  Where is the logic?  The clothes are clean what, no?!  *roll eyes*!!

Madam Yap was very protective of her son.  Her son, John was  not allowed to do any sports.  John was her golden goose and if she lost him, she would have no more golden eggs. Once when John was only 7 years old, he was run over by the school bus and have had surgery done on his legs.  This explains why John was so sheltered.  Every morning, my landlady would boil fresh cow's milk ordered from an Indian cow's milk supplier for John before he left for school with our Indian neighbor.  She would then take a taxi to bring John back from school in the afternoon.

Renting a room next to ours was this lady by the name of Jeannie.  Her husband had gone to work in the US for a 4-year contract.  She had to rent a room with her toddler son whom we all fondly call Bebe who was about 2 years old when I moved in.  Each morning, we would be awaken by Bebe's cries for his mother when Jeannie was in the bathroom.  He was our alarm clock.  I would sometimes help to soothe Bebe until Jeannie came out of the bathroom.   When my mum came to visit me in 1992, Jeannie was so kind to lend us her car so that we could bring my mum around KL. The last time I met Jeannie was over 10 years ago at her new house.  Bebe was about 8 years ago then.  Bebe would be about 31 years old now.  Jeannie would be in her late fifties by now.  I hope that I will bump into them one day.

After Jeannie moved out from her room, a young and newly married couple rented the room.  The woman was a teacher. My landlady had so much respect for her just because she was a 'lao xi' (teacher).  I remember that this woman kept having miscarriages one after another. I remember how forlorn and depressed she looked after each miscarriage. She had a very good husband who treated her with so much love, gentleness and care.  She finally moved out from the room into her new place. Just before I moved out from Madam Yap's house, I heard from Madam Yap that this teacher finally had a baby girl.

to be continued....

Landlady Stories From The Early 90s - Part 2

My roomie and I found out one day, that at 8 years old, our landlady's son still had to wear a diaper to sleep. That's because our landlady could not wake him up when he was already deep in his sleep and thus, had to wear a diaper to sleep to prevent accidents on the bed!

John had a weird taste-bud.  Throughout my 5 years living in that house, I had only seen my landlady cooked two or maybe three types of dishes for her son. He only liked to eat eggs and spam meat.  On most days, she would steam two slices of China-made pork spam meat for her son.  On spam meat off days, she would fry an egg for John.  Other days, she would make a quick-boil  mint leaves soup with egg drops.  Occasionally, there was a stir-fried spinach.  I hardly ever remember seeing her cook chicken or fish. Never beef or pork.  I had also never seen John eating any fruits throughout my 5-year stay in the house.  While John ate his dinner, he would be glued to the idiot box.   John never used any cutlery to eat. He only ate with his bare hands.  On festive occasions like Mooncake festival, my landlady would braise a big pot of mushrooms.  She would offer some mushrooms to me.  That was considered a real big treat from my stingy landlady ok!

When I told my landlady that I wanted to cook and boil water using her gas stove, she imposed a fee.  She asked me to share half the cost of the gas every month!  Fine, I paid for it, though I only cooked instant noodles, fried eggs, boiled water and occasionally stir-fried some vegetables.  I never cooked any meat.  One day when I told her that I was buying a mini TV to be placed in my room, she increased my rental by RM10 (or was it RM20?) a month.  That was 23 years ago.  For every electrical item purchased, an additional rental fee would be imposed.  I even had to pay a small fee to rent her fridge to store my fruits. 

There was another housemate (my college mate) who rented the smallest room  on the ground floor of the house.  That was meant to be a storeroom but my money-minded landlady transformed it into a room to rent out.  This housemate by the name of Soo Chin (from Johor) loved to cook and eat.  Before she left for college in the morning, she would discreetly throw in some red beans or mung beans into a mini slowcooker and left it cooking in her room.   By 10pm when our evil landlady went up to sleep in her room, it was PARTY time for us muahahaha!  Oh how sweet and tasty was the red bean tong sui, which we quietly savored in the stuffy small room!!   On some days, Soo Chin would cook Maggie Mee using her slow cooker and invited us to eat in her room after the evil landlady had gone to her room. Instant noodles had never tasted so yummy when cooked in a slow-cooker and shared among 3 daring young college-going girls living on a shoe-string budget, who knew that if caught, we would have to face the music. Pay or pack our bags and leave, knowing how evil she can get.  But my sixth sense told me that she somehow knew about our clandestine rendezvous every night but she kept mum.  So she wasn't that evil after all! 


to be continued....

Landlady Stories From The Early 90s - Part 1

This morning while driving back home from the mini mart, I saw a young lad. He was stout, short and had small eyes. I wondered if this would how John look like now.  Each time I see a young man of that built and looks, my mind would go back in time to the early 90s, back to the time when I rented a room at Taman Rainbow, Jalan Ipoh from a woman whom I called Madam Yap.  She had a son who was only 8 years old when I first rented her room.  Her son's name is John.

I will never forget the day when I moved into Madam Yap's house.  John raced upstairs just as I was carrying my belongings up.  He stood at the highest step of the stairs and stretched out his hands across the space of the stairs landing, blocking me from going up.  My landlady chided him and he moved aside.  Several days later, he tried to be funny with me.  He touched his birdie and smiled cheekily at me. Then he moved his hands forward and made gestures like he wanted to fondle me.  I was aghast and told his mother but his tidak-apa attitude mother ignored me!

My landlady was a mistress.  Her man was a  "Latuk" (Datuk - but my landlady pronounced it as Latuk) and wealthy timber tycoon trading in East Malaysia.  My room-mate Cheng Cheng and I always wondered how she could be someone's mistress with those looks and dressing! She looked no where near a mistress.  To anyone, she was just an ordinary looking 'ah soh'  in the market who was in her mid forties.  She did not bother  much about her appearance and frumpy dressing.  But a man is not so much hooked to a woman by her looks but by how "willing and good" she is in the room!  That's what one of my male colleagues told me once.

John used to sleep in the same room with his mother.  One time Cheng Cheng and I overheard John saying this to his mother in Mandarin -  "mummy, can you let me touch your breasts please"!!  He was pleading his mother but his tidak-apa mother just remained silent.

Each time my landlady's man came for a visit (once a month), John would be sent out of the house to cycle on his bicycle. My landlady and her man would be in the bedroom for an hour or two.  After her man saw me once, my landlady instructed me not to come out of my room if 'John's father' (that is what she called her man) was here. She also instructed me not to wear shorts as John's father was ogling at me!   She was just insecured, fearing that her man would leave her for me.  Oh puh-lease!  They knew then that I had a boyfriend.

Madam Yap installed a lock to the house phone but some how, my then boyfriend (hubs now) managed to dial out  muahahaha!

Each time Madam Yap went out, my roomies and I would open our landlady's photo album cabinet to look at her photos. That was our cheap thrill - to discreetly go through our evil landlady's albums and have a good laugh.   Her photos told many stories.  We saw many cut-out photos of Madam Yap where the other half were missing. We surmised that the other part was her ex-husband. She has an elder son from her estranged husband.  We also deduced that Madam Yap was once a 'bar girl'  (the term used for GRO in the sixties and seventies) from all the photos.  And we figured that she managed to catch this 'big water fish' timber tycoon from the bar.

Oh yes, she also had double eyelid  surgery done on her eyelids, which she proudly told us.

I have not seen Madam Yap or John for 18 years.  I always wonder how John would look like now.  Is he married with kids? Did he go to university?  Or is he still a lazy slob who only liked to watch TV?   I guess that he would still look stout, fair and clumsy as he never did any sports throughout the 5 years I stayed there.  And he would be in his mid thirties now. Most of all, I am curious to know how Madam Yap is doing now. I used to send her festive cards for many years until I got married and got too busy with my own family.  She would have been in her late sixties now.  I wonder if she is still with this timber tycoon.   And I wonder if she still lives in Jalan Ipoh. I would love to meet up with her one day.  I even dream of her all the time. Yes, I kind of miss her despite her flaws and her muddled background.  After all, I lived with her for 5 years.  And I miss my room mate, Cheng Cheng and my other housemate, Jeannie too. I wonder if Cheng Cheng is still in London or back in Malaysia.



... to be continued.

Antique Stamps

During our recent stay at my parents in Ipoh, my mum finally exposed to the girls some of the old 'treasures' that belonged to my brothers and me.

The girls are now old enough to appreciate these 'treasures', hence my mum unlocked the 35-year old cabinet that all the hidden old 'treasures' have been kept all these years after my brothers and I left our nest.

Apart my beloved collection of pencils, Sanrio and Disney stickers and stationery items, these stamp albums were once dearly cherished by my brothers and me.

If you are 'old enough', you would have probably seen these old Malaysia stamps....


Cass was delighted to see such a lot of stamps!  This babe of mine seems to have a deep interest in stamps collection and has been keeping stamps that she sees from our envelopes.





Do these stamps look familiar to you too? Some of these are stamps from London back in the early 1980s.



Stamp albums aged over 30 years. Some of the stamps in the albums are dated in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. I think our antique stamps would have probably cost a lot now!

Who wants to buy? ;)

Down Memory Lane (8 June 2014)

Today being a Sunday, we were homebound, except for Alycia and Sherilyn who followed by parents to the wet market early in the morning.  Dad bought us breakfast of all my childhood favorite food from the Kg Simee wet market.  And he cooked us a very yummy dinner.

In the afternoon, my mum opened her 'old treasure chest' to show the girls some of the most prized possession that once belonged to my brothers and me.

The girls were elated to see so many pretty note books, pencils, stickers and envelopes from the Sanrio brand that I have been keeping deep inside the treasure chest for more than 30 years!



This Hello Kitty note pad and box of pencils were once my very, very treasured belonging.  I did not have the heart to use them and kept them until today!  They were and still are very precious to me.  Though my girls asked if they could have all the things, I said no and only gave away some with a heavy heart.  Perhaps I will slowly give them away each time we are back at my parents :)





While digging for treasure, Alycia found my bunch of love letters from my then boyfriend (now hubby la, LOL!).  They also found my diary which I wrote "Strictly Private & Confidential" and read it!




Sherilyn came running to me and asked me why I kept these 2 pieces of old handkerchiefs in a box.  I felt sentimental when I saw the handkerchiefs. My late beloved por por (maternal grandma) bought them for me when she went to China circa 1984, when I was 10 years old.

 



Can you believe what a good keeper of things I am?! If only I lived in a double storey house in KL, I would have kept many of my daughters' things too just for remembrance sake. It sure feels sentimental and happy at the same time when you retrieve these things many, many moons down the road.

Old Treasure Found

During our recent trip back to Ipoh, my mum dug out some very, very old seashells and pebbles and showed them to the girls.

When I saw them, I felt really sentimental.  I felt as if I was brought back via a time machine to the early 1980s!  These seashells were collected by my older brother, Ray and me from the beaches that my dad brought us to for holidays.  I remember some were collected in 1979 when I was only 6 years old at Golden Sands in Lumut.  Some were collected from the beaches in Teluk Batik.  And some were collected by my mum when she was a child (the hugest one, held by Sherilyn in the below picture)...
 




I could not believe that seashells and corals do not decompose and ours still look very solid!

You see those shiny brown and grey pebbles?  My maternal granny brought them back from China for my brothers and me circa 1988.  I remember we placed them inside a plastic aquarium that we kept our 2 pet tortoises.


"These are MINE!" "NO NO, they are MINE!" And the row went on and on over some old seashells! *roll eyes*!






Oh yes, the colorful marbles belonged to my older brother and they are over 30 years!

As with all bickering and tug of war, there must be a concession, so...

each one has some of everything :)




 

Down The Happy Memory Lane

I was playing with some new photo apps installed in my new Samsung Note 3 and was pleasantly surprised to stumble upon a Gallery which showcases all the pictures in my Picasa gallery dated way back to 2007. Looking at the pictures brought me back to memory lane, when I was a newly turned stay-at-home-mom with Alycia and Sherilyn who were 3YO and 1.5YO respectively. I really do miss those days when my life wasn't that stress as I had a very capable and good live-in maid - kakak Su. I left the entire household to her to handle, with me giving her minor supervision. Plus I had only 2 kids then and I did not have any online business to run back then.  My online assignments got me lucrative pocket money until the global economy disaster towards the end of 2007.

Anyway...

My hands got itchy and I transferred the pictures to my computer and then did photo collages using this new app called Fotor on my new desktop computer running on Microsoft 8.

My 2 babies - cute moe?  And the cute things that they did -- plastering daddy's body with stickers, trying to eat flowers and lots more. And I miss those daily evening or morning walks and play time in the playground with them and kakak Su.  Back then, I made sure that they exercised every single day. I was a staunch believer of Glenn Doman who extols the benefits of exercise for kids.  And oh yes, those 3-4x a day of reading homemade flash cards! I actually had so much time to make flash cards and to flash the cards to them 3-4x a day to my 2 babies!

   

 I so miss Alycia and Sherilyn's baby and toddler days very, very much!

Down Memory Lane

I was going through my pictures folder to save some pix into my thumbdrive when I came across this pic. This picture was taken almost 4 years ago at our old house. Can you recognize the cute little girl seated next to Alycia? Barb - I almost forgot that you came to visit us 4 years ago :D

Sherilyn was seated on the lap of our previous Cambodian maid. She was not even 3YO then.

Down Memory Lane

As I was going through my pictures folder on the computer desktop, I found some old pictures of Alycia and Sherilyn taken several years back. Looking at the old pix brought me back in time to the year 2005 and 2006. Gosh, can't believe how fast time is zooming past us. It really felt like it was just yesterday that I was at the coffee house of PJ Hilton having buffet lunch with my hubs, Alycia (who was then 3YO in this pic) and Sherilyn (who was then 1YO+) ...


I can still remember vividly that day when this picture was taken.




and that's us in May 2005 @ Genji Japanese Restaurant, PJ Hilton, when Sherilyn was only 3 months old and Alycia was 17 months old.

I can also remember crystal clear the events that transpired on that day. Good times will always be etched in our memory, don't they?

Is That You Mummy?!

Alycia was rummaging through my drawer and stumbled upon a 2-decade old newspaper cutting, to which she exclaimed "hey mummy, is that you? Wow, cool, that's you in the newspapers?"

That was me, my first ever appearance in the newspapers when I emerged top secretarial student in a college. And that was a Datin putting a sash on me...

My proud angels, "ooing" and "wowing " over their discovery hehe...

That Rattan School Bag I Will Never Forget

During my time when I was a primary school girl, my mum bought me a rectangular shaped open rattan school bag, which looked like a picnic bag. I hated that bag as I thought it looked so hideous while my friends had nicer covered school bags. But my mum did not buy me those school backpacks, which were very costly 3 decades ago. I had to carry that hideous rectangular shaped bag for a few years which gradually turned crocked and slanted to one side over the years. Some of the rattan strips even jutted out of its place, which made the bag look really beat up. Oh how I hated that rattan bag! I will never ever forget that rattan school bag LOL! Now, Alycia gets to change her school bag at least once or twice a year! Kids these days are so lucky, aren’t they?

Muruku Craze

When I told my Sikh neighbor that I loved the homemade muruku that she had given me during Deepavali, she gave me another big tub of her homemade muruku the following week. I've been eating them almost everyday till I have zits appearing on my face and I feel really heaty. Her murukus are really tasty - they are super crunchy and are made of coconut milk and dhal. Now, I am having a muruku respite despite being really tempted to much on one everyday. I think I should double boil some pear with honey dates tomorrow to 'yun' and cool my body.

Deepavali Hamper From My Neighbor

My Sikh family neighbor gave me a basket of goodies this evening. When she called me, I was so hoping that she would give me some piping hot tosei or chapatti with her aromatic curry which has always caused my tummy to rumble when the aroma of her cooking wafted to my house. I was really disappointed that there were not Indian cuisine in the basket. Nevertheless, there were some peaches and fragrant pears and 3 jars of goodies in the basket - a jar of London Almond cookies, a jar of bees' hives cookies and a jar of muruku. Yay, I saw muruku, something that I have wanted to eat for a long long time and the last I ate them was years ago. Nevermind, no curry but there's muruku, yum!

What's That Creature?

When Sherilyn saw this creature gliding up our oven door one morning a few days ago, she went "mummy, what's that?" When I took a look, I saw a baby snail slithering up the oven. The snail had actually come from a bunch of vegetables that we had bought and left leaning against the oven door. This is the first time Sherilyn had seen a baby snail. More than 20 years ago, the sight of a snail slithering outside our garden was so common. My brothers and I used to play with these snails. We also played with sand, marbles, kites, climbed trees, cycled round the neighbourhood, plucked flowers from our neighbours' trees, played inside drains, played hopscotch, played 'kor kuang' a.k.a. passing the border (LOL!), etc. every evening for hours without the supervision of our parents, yet nothing bad happened to us. Now, if I had left my gals to play outside the compound of our house for more than an hour without supervision, I dread to think what would have happened to them. Times have really changed.

Sweet Memories (part 2)

When I was back at my house in Ipoh, I managed to fish out a couple of my old pix whilst I was rummaging through my old closet.

This pic was taken in Pulau Kapas, Terengganu during one of our camping trips when I was 16 years old. I am the one wearing a peach colour t-shirt on the right and the one seated on the wooden bridge is Theimperfectmom. The one directly above Theimperfectmom is Irene, a former Ipoh Teen Princess. She's now happily married to an Aussie Taiwanese and residing in S'pore. The one on the left is Jo and currently working in San Francisco. The tallest one behind me is Poh Lin. I haven't heard from her for ages but I last heard that she's now a psychologist.


This pic was taken when we were all 15 years old, during our very first camping trip at Pulau Sekadeh in Pangkor Island. From left to right : Li Lian, me, Jo and Theimperfectmom.

How I miss my childhood days and I must say, I've had a very good childhood, filled with lots of fun, adventure, mischief and laughter. I'd do anything if only I could turn back the clock.

Sweet Memories

As promised, when I was back in Ipoh, I'd taken pix of hubby's love cards to me during our courting days. Most of the cards were DIY cards by hubby who, I must admit is quite an artistic person.

This is my very 1st Valentine's Day card from hubby, received when I was barely 14 years old.

Hubby made this card himself to send me his best wishes for my SRP exam when I was 15 years old.


Hubby made this Valentine's Day card for me, which was my 2nd Valentine's Day card from him, when I was 15 years old.


Another DIY Valentine's Day card from hubby to me, when I was 16 years old.

I'm sure many of you would be curious as to when I first met my hubby and when we first started dating. He met me in my old house in Ipoh when he came to visit my big brother (they were classmates) and it was love at first sight for him. I was only 12 years old then and he was 13+ years old. We only went out for our first date when I was 17 yrs old and we got married 10 years later.