Tag : 8 Random Phats About Moi

Why is everyone so into the phat (8) tags lately? This is already my 3rd tag related to phat phat phat. Thanks to this slim mum for this tag. Here are the phat (8) random facts about moi :

1) I was born and bred in Ipoh and have been living in KL for 16 years.
2) I started to learn piano at the age of 6, swimming at the age of 7 and ballet at the age of 8.
3) I was awarded the Best Secretary award when I was in Secretarial College and was a Dean's List holder for 2 semesters. I can also type very fast and can take shorthand at 150 words per minute.
4) I learnt life-saving techniques and took a Bronze Medallion test in swimming when I was 14 years old.
5) I had a terrible honeymoon in Phi Phi Island 7 years ago where I stepped onto a school of sea-urchins whilst snorkelling and hobbled for 1 month+. I finally underwent a minor surgery on the sole of my foot to have the spikes removed.
6) I crashed my very first car onto an office building when I first learnt to drive. Luckily the insurer took care of the cost of repair done to the building and my car.
7) My sense of direction sucks. So, please never ask me for directions.
8) I drink at least 12 glasses of plain water everyday and am very fastidious about my health and vanity.

I'm now passing the phat choi tag to these 8 great mommies:

Hui Sia
Baby Shern
Lovely Mummy
Mummy In Vain
Chin Nee
Mummy to Chumsy
Rambling Moo
Shireen Loh

They Love Noah's Ark

Alycia has always loved the story Noah's Ark. She liked it even more ever since she watched the movie Evan Almighty, a rendition of the modern Noah's Ark. Yesterday as Sherilyn was sitting on her potty doing her poopie business, Alycia took out a cloth book on Noah's Ark (which I had bought for her years ago from my church), pulled out a stool to sit next to Sherilyn and began 'reading' to her sister. Alycia certainly did a good job as she even mimicked the way I normally read to them, i.e. pointing to the words as I read.

New Books

It's been almost a month since I bought these new books for the gals and so far, they've still not shown any signs of boredom with the books. In fact, they love the books and would plead with me to read each of the book to them everyday before their afternoon nap. It's the gals' routine now - before nap in the afternoon and before bedtime at night, they would insist on being read to.


This book gives simple and easy to understand illustration on addtion and subtraction.


A book on simple grammar.


This book teaches sounds made by different objects and animals.


This is Sherilyn's favorite book and is all about Teddy and its balloon coz Sherilyn is balloon-crazed too.

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.

Back in KL

Just got back from Ipoh a moment ago. I have had a good break back at my hometown. Didn't do much blogging, aside from posting 2 paid posts as the due date is today. Anyway, I took a lot of pix of hubby's DIY cards to me during our courting days, some even date back to 20 years ago! Shall be posting those pix soon, as well as some of my old pix taken with The Imperfect Mom 20 years ago when we were 14 years old.

I also ate quite a bit of good Ipoh food and my dad's cooking, woke up at 7am on two mornings straight (which is quite a rare event), didn't wake up at crazy hours to check for offers and even skipped exercising! Gotta get back to work tomorrow - both exercising and blogging.

When I got down from the car, I saw that my letter box was filled with mail. I was actually expecting a cheque from Review Me and true enough, the first letter on top of the pile of letters was indeed from Review Me. Thank God it didn't rain yesterday or today, else my cheque would have been soaked. Though the cheque is only for the amount of USD160, I am nevertheless very happy receiving my first cheque from RM. When I was in Ipoh, my brother also gave me my money which was transferred from my PayPal account in Singapore to his Singapore bank account. It's really great tasting the fruit of my own hard labour.

BTW, this post marks the 500th post in my blog!

Fun with Sculptured Balloons

After daddy had sculptured the sausage-shaped balloons into animals, flowers, a disfigured Pink Panther and swords for the gals several days ago, the gals had fun playing with them for the next few days.


The stalk of the flower-shaped balloon had burst, so I transformed it into a flower-shaped balloon hair clip for Sherilyn.



Alycia decorating the disfigured Pink Panther balloon with magic color. This is quite messy though as the ink comes off easily from the balloon, thus staining everything in contact with it.

Video - Sherilyn The Wannabe Musician

Really Funny

Yesterday, I had a real good laugh when I saw Alycia and Sherilyn trying to get inside this toy tunnel with the tunnel in an upright position. The tunnel is meant to be placed on the floor for them to crawl inside but nope, whenever their imagination run wild, they can just think of anything new to experiment with.

What tickled my funny bone was seeing the both of them giggling and squealing away as they tried to scramble into the small opening of the tunnel and as the tunnel sprang up, they tried to balance themselves in order not to fall on the floor. I stopped them from playing further as it was quite dangerous but before I stopped them, I quickly took a pot-shot of them.

Blog Marathon, Again

I'm running a blog marathon again today. I've just submitted 4 paid posts today and I have another 5 to complete. Reason being I'll be going back to Ipoh tomorrow to celebrate my dad's birthday. I'll be away for 3-4 days, during which time I dont think I'll have the time to do much blogging. So if you don't see me visiting your blog today, just be patient, I'll do so soon.

To Ashley's mum and the rest of the mommy bloggers, you have a great gathering at Bangsar Village. How I wish I could join you all too as I'd really love to meet all of you.

All-In-One Wholesome Dish

This is what we had for lunch yesterday :

A wholesome omelette made with 3 eggs, 1 Japanese sweet potato shredded, some minced chicken meat, chopped spring onions, Bombay onions and a dash of salt and pepper.

You get protein and iron from the eggs, carbohydrate and Vit A from the sweet potato, fibre from the sweet potato, spring onions and Bombay onions. Quite a complete meal for kids.

That's watercress vegetables ('sai yeong choy' in Cantonese) soup with carrots, Chinese almonds, honey dates, red dates and chicken. A very nutritious soup that's tasty and soothing.

Paid Posts

My favorite advertiser finally released some offers for me early this morning. That's the advantage of rising early in the morning, the early bird definitely gets to catch bountiful amount of worms.

This Tiga P is really driving me nuts. They rejected one of my posts today, citing the reason I used sentences from the web release and advertiser's site. Oh for pete's sake, the post is on a product, of course I have to write some stuff from the advertiser's website, otherwise what else is there to write? They are just nit picking on us posties (prob only m'sians) and making it really hard for us to earn our honest living.

Purple Cabbage

I was caught by surprise that not many people have seen a purple cabbage. Each time I have visitors at home and they see me cooking a purple cabbage dish, they would ask what that is. I love cabbages and also vegetables with dark colors. The darker the color of the vege, the more nutrients they contain. There's also the purple long beans and the purple cauliflower but I've not bought the purple cauliflower yet. Will try to get it one day.

Cabbages are rich in Vitamin K and Vitamin C, fibre, manganese, vitamin B6 and folate, thiamin, riboflavin, calcium, potassium, vitamin A, tryptophan, protein and magnesium. I normally shred the cabbage into thin strips and stir-fry them with dried shrimps or miso paste. Also goes well if fried together with noodles.


This is fried mee hoon with purple cabbage. When cooked with noodles, everything turns purple from the noodles to the eggs, garlic, puffed tofu and fish cakes. Alycia and Sherilyn find the purple dish very amusing and they enjoy eating them too.

My Gals Are Learning BM Fast

Yes they are. Alycia and Sherilyn can understand Bahasa Melayu (BM) pretty well when my maid speaks to them in BM. They can also speak a smattering of BM :

I tak mau (I don't want)
Mana (where)
Makan (eat)
Kencing (wee wee)
Berak (poo poo)
Buang (throw)
Simpan (keep)
Minum (drink)
Balik (come home)
Kasut (shoes)
Pergi (go)
Kucing (cat)
Kotor (dirty)
Mau banyak (want a lot)
Duduk sini (sit here)
Kakak you cari for me (kakak you find for me)
Learning to count satu, dua, tiga (one, two, three, etc.).......... in BM
and much more but that's all I can think of now.

When our new maid arrives in December, hopefully the gals will be able to converse with her in simple BM whilst I teach the new maid some simple English.

Mooncakes

Mooncake festival is around the corner again. Though the festival only falls next month, restaurants and shops are capitalizing on the situation and most have already started selling mooncakes and lanterns aplenty since last month. I am not a great fan of mooncakes coz I find most of them sweet and of course they are fattening. Hubby loves mooncakes and several days ago, he bought a box of mooncakes from Shangri-La Hotel and i tell you, they are so expensive. Since he loves salted eggs, he bought all of them with double egg yolks.... tasty but fattening and high in cholestrol. The ones with double egg yolks cost the most, at around RM19 each. For me, I will never spend this much money on a small mooncake. I'd rather spend the money on healthier alternatives.

I quite like the 'ping pei' or crystal jade pandan flavored skin mooncake with red beans, minus the egg yolk.


We had dinner at Overseas Restaurant, Armada PJ last night and daddy bought the gals a plastic basket lantern with mooncake, costing RM4.80 each.



The mooncakes from Shangri-La Hotel, all with double egg yolks.... which make them double fattening!



Alycia enjoying her sunflower seeds mooncake (with no paste inside) for breakfast this morning. The mooncake came together with the plastic basket lantern. I like this type of mooncakes best coz they have no paste inside, not so sweet and have lots of sunflower seeds.
I also love the 'jee jai yuet peng' or piglet mooncakes, the ones in the tiny plastic 'pig cages' with a plastic string. I will try to get some of these for the gals later.... and also for myself. I used to love them when I was little.

Issues With Tiga P Lagi

Tiga P is clamping down on bloggers lately. The latest I heard is that they are freezing accounts of bloggers to conduct investigation on their blogs. I know of several bloggers who just had their accounts suspended. Tiga P is really strict now but I feel they are still practising double standards. While some unlucky bloggers are 'nabbed', others who flout the T&C manage to get away. That's why I have a few friends who had long fired this 'lcly' Tiga P. Tiga P..... when you don't get offers from them, you feel one kind, like withdrawal symptoms but when you get them, you get all stressed up...

What A Pose

Several days ago, hubby bought an Evan Almighty DVD for the gals. I normally won't allow the gals to watch long movies but since this movie is a rendition of the modern Noah's Ark, I'd allowed the gals to watch. One of Alycia's favorite stories is also Noah's Ark.

The gals were hooked to Evan Almighty. They loved watching the scores of animals lined up in twos clambering up the ark and the great flood coming. This picture was taken when Alycia watched Evan Almighty.... she was all wrapped up with the movie and was obviously oblivious that mummy had taken a pot shot of her... what a pose!

Crazy Over Their New Shoes

2 weeks ago, daddy had bought Alycia and Sherilyn each a pair of white shoes from Tree House at 1Utama. The girls still haven't got a chance to wear the new shoes to go out so each day whilst I am busy at work on my computer, they would bring the shoes out from the shoe cabinet, put them on themselves and wear them round the house.

This one's for Sherilyn.

And this one's for Alycia




Sher's always with her BJ backpack, day and night..... and what do you think is inside? Her toys, books and some discarded tissue box and discarded Enfagrow box. I hope she won't grow up to be a pack-rat.

Another Dead Nemo

Less than 1 month after hubby had bought some additional fish for our pond, most of the new nemo did not survive at their new home. Yesterday, another nemo died. Now, there are only about 7-8 surviving nemos in the pond, from 20 over of them.

Poor nemo floating in the water on the left :(

Top 5 'Bribe' Items For My 2 Toddlers

I always have the following top 5 'bribe' items at home to avert a meltdown from my 2 gals :

1) Slice cheese or Laughing Cow cheese (all time favorite)
2) Pine nuts
3) Yoghurt
4) Biscuits or crackers
5) Barney DVDs, High 5 DVDs and karaoke nursery rhymes DVDs.

The trick is I cannot give these items to the gals sparingly. They have to earn their reward by behaving well and most times, I succeed in thwarting those dreaded meltdowns.

What's Wrong With The Offers From Tiga P?

There were so many offers from Tiga P a moment ago, most of which I was qualified for them but when I clicked on the opp title, there was a message in bold red stating "The opportunity was not approved or did not exist". I notice this message appearing in many of the opps for the past few days. Really anti-climax leh, one minute you see so many offers highlighted in green or white up for grabs but only 'see but can't eat'. What a bummer.