MCO Day 31 ~ 17 April 2020 (Friday)

My MCO workout achievement today from stairs climbing (5th floor to 18th floor to ground floor back to 5th floor), star jumps, strength training and jogging outside our unit corridor, tracked by my trusted old FitBit:

Duration: 30 minutes
Number of steps: 5,035
Number of stairs: 28
Calories burnt: 969
Distance: 3.61km

Pathetic but better than just sitting at home and having my butt glued to my massage chair all day long. This is half of what I normally achieve on pre-MCO days.



My almost daily MCO Whatsapp conversations with the hubs be like this:










When hubs was out groceries shopping today, he got so excited when he saw a large consignment of toilet papers that had just arrived at our neighborhood sundry shop; he quickly snapped a photo and Whatsapped the photo to me 😆  And yes, he bought a bundle of 3 rolls 😁


The lady boss of our favorite tai chow restaurant saw hubs at the sundry shop, signaled for him to walk over to her restaurant and gifted him half a roast chicken, citing that she's about to close shop for the day and that's her leftover chicken. That just warmed the cockles of my heart 💓

That's the reason why I miss all these vendors and restaurant owners, who have become our good friends over the years. The char koay teow lady boss and us have been friends for over 20 years at this neighborhood, as with the kuih seller, whom we have not seen for over a month. I always wonder how they are coping with no income 😰  When the MCO is lifted, we're not going to cook lunch anymore!  We're going to eat at all our friends' stalls for brunch everyday to help them restart their businesses.




Dinner of stir-fried assorted vegetables with fish cakes, blanched lady's fingers, sweet corn soup, steamed egg with minced pork, stir-fried baby spinach and takeout chicken curry to help our neighborhood restaurant who's just re-opened her restaurant for takeaways.


Post dinner and cooking aftermath scene at our wet kitchen:
This is just 1/3 of what has to be washed (bigger cooking utensils, pots and pans are not in the photo), every single day.  Three times a day.  I am so so so sick of washing and cleaning.



Fortunately I have this girl to help me with the dishes. Most nights hubs will help to wash the bigger and messier utensils and equipment, leaving the easier ones for Sherilyn or Alycia to wash. I'll have to clean up the greasy stove, walls, floor and sinks and just about everything else in the house.



Hubs now has a MCO haircut combo of #2 and #5. The bald patch is behind, which I think he inadvertently chopped off a gob of hair and the front bangs are almost similar to style #5 😆  No way am I going to cut his hair, lest I bugger up his head and get blamed for a hilarious haircut, knowing how persnickety he is.



Which MCO hair styles do the men and boys in your house have?

MCO Day 28 & 29 (14 & 15 April 2020)

As the MCO progresses to almost a month, I tend to lose track of what MCO day that we're in. And I lost track of what day yesterday and today are because everyday feels the same! I have taken to writing down the MCO day numbers on my desktop calendar for ease of reference each time I update my blogs. 😑

MCO Day 28 (Tuesday, 14 April 2020)
After sitting in front on my PC for an hour and feeling sick of reading the same negative news, I forced myself to my bedroom to do something that I have been procrastinating because wiping the blinds and window grills is something that I detest doing. And it's not important to me. But these are not wiped for over a month and God knows when Maria our beloved part-time helper can start coming to our house again.  Each time there's heavy wind and rain, the dusty blinds get wet and the blackish water drips down the walls and onto the floor as if telling me how awfully dirty they are.  So whether I like it or not, I have to clean those dang blinds, which are a pain to wipe, panel by panel from top to bottom.  My sole motivation is I get to burn more calories since it's impossible to hit 10,000 steps a day now.







Our dinner: pan fried crispy 'sook yue' (salted ikan kembong) with a tantalizing tangy dipping sauce composed of garlic + chili + lemon juice, 'pak choy' vegetable + chicken soup, braised pork ribs with tomatoes and onions and blanched kailan and lady's fingers.



MCO Day 29 (Wednesday, 15 April 2020)
I told myself that I should catch up on my sleep throughout this once in a lifetime MCO period but at 5:45 a.m. today, I stared at the glow-in-the-dark numbers on my alarm clock and couldn't get back to sleep. My internal alarm clock had woken me up.  I had no reason to wake up so early as I don't have to prep the girls for school, no church to go to and no need to do my pre-dawn exercise. I shut my eyes tight but dang it, I just couldn't get back to sleep, so what the heck. I got up and did the usual stuff in the morning, enjoying the sheer quietude in the house. Yes I do enjoy and crave for total placidity everyday but if I wake up late, I will be missing it.  Sometimes I wonder if I am an anti-social and  loner since I like to be alone and not talk to anyone!

Today's sun rise is magnificent and I just had to snap a photo of the pretty colors in the sky for record.



Brunch of fried 'loh si fun' (rat noodles. Yup what a name for noodles!) and red bean tong sui.


Today the Education Minister announced that the UPSR and PT3 exams scheduled for this year will be cancelled! Woohoo, Sherilyn and Cass are 'lucky'! But they may have to sit for another form of assessment test, which will be announced later. Schools will not be reopened so soon and when the situation is safe and La Corona is no longer a fast and fury deadly threat, the fifth and sixth formers will resume school first. The SPM exam will be postponed to the first quarter of 2021, which means Alycia will have more time to prep for the exam.  And poor hubs will have to fork out an additional of 3 to 4 months of fees to Alycia's high school! Fees are to be paid in FULL throughout the MCO period.  Thank you La Corona!  And because of La Corona, students who are due to sit for their UPSR, PT3, SPM and STPM in 2020 are now mockingly named on social media as the "Corona batch" 😈





Dinner of steamed cod fish, fish paste and pork noodles, braised chicken feet (not my kind of dish but the kind organic chicken seller gave us a big bag of chicken feet), sauteed vegetables and chicken curry using the frozen curry paste that the mil made last year.

MCO Day 25 ~ 11 April 2020

Hubs was in the mood to cook today, thus he took over the kitchen to dish out both brunch and dinner  for everyone today!

Brunch was pretty simple, composed of fried wallet eggs and onion tuna mayo on sourdough toasts. I've never really liked sourdough breads but have now gained an acquired taste for it. The secret to enjoying the perfect sourdough bread is to toast it till it's crispy. This is how I enjoy it and I discovered my love for sourdough bread at Tommy Le Baker @ Jalan Kg Attap.



For tea time, we had steamed Japanese sweet potatoes while our Baking Queen prepped a luscious mango banana smoothie bowl for herself and shared some with me.




To celebrate the weekends (though every single day feels the same when you're quarantined at home!), which we always do pre-MCO, we had pan-fried steak, a grilled root vegetables dish composed of carrots, pumpkin and sweet potatoes, steamed organic sweet corns and blanched organic spinach and lady's fingers.  Hubs pan-fried the steak and turned the kitchen into a greasy smoky mess!!! 😱😭  And I spent the rest of the evening wiping down the stove, tiled walls, glass sliding door, floor and sinks.  And this is the sole reason why I just hate frying anything in the kitchen that would create oil splatters everywhere.  The only upside is that after chowing down the calorie-laden beef steak, my tummy rumbled again two hours later as I'd burnt off most of the calories from a solid one hour of cleaning both the dry and wet kitchens, washed two bathrooms and moped the entire house.

Perhaps next time I should place flattened cardboard on the kitchen floor so that cleaning up is minimal, like how the village folks do 😬  However I know my idea will be rebuffed outright by the two chefs in the house!



Well done steaks for the kids, mom and wifey and medium rare with oozing blood for the bloody carnivore.

MCO Day 24 ~ 10 April 2020

And so today the whole of Malaysia waited with bated breath for the PM to announce his decision on the continuity of the MCO / partial lockdown. In a survey conducted by the Star papers recently, most Malaysians want an extension of the MCO so that the number of cases would go down further until there are no more new cases. If the MCO is lifted, all hell will break lose again and no one wants all our hard work, sacrifice and effort the past 3 weeks to go down the drain. Even hubs whose income is impacted unselfishly wants the MCO extended for the benefit of our country.  We are aware that having the restriction lifted too quickly can lead to deadly resurgence of Covid-19. This is something that everyone in our country must work together to prevent.

I am sure everyone already knew what the PM would say even before his speech at 4 p.m.. Yes, there's an extension of another 2 weeks, ending 28 April 2020. The school session would be delayed further even when the MCO is lifted as many parents are worried of letting their children go to school. Home based learning / online study will be further enhanced and we are all waiting for the Government to announce the next course of action for teachers and school children.

So, bring it one! Another 18 days to go! We can all do this because we are all resilient.

Will this be the final phase of the MCO?  Only God knows and we pray that it will be the final, period.

Our lunch of fried organic beetroot meehoon with MIL's homegrown mung bean sprouts, cabbage, eggs, fried fish cakes, eggs and pork slices.



Dinner of steamed rainbow trout, arrowroot + carrot + red dates soup, sauteed pork with Bombay onions, stir-fried celery + bok choy + mushrooms + red bell pepper + fish cake and blanched lady's fingers.


We've been having arrowroot soup for 4 or 5 meals already because hubby's vegetables supplier sent a big bag of it to us 2 weeks ago! 😂

MCO Day 21 ~ 7 April 2020

Hubs has been craving to dig into prawn noodles since the MCO started.  And so after 3 weeks of MCO, he finally satiated his craving.  Today he boiled a big pot of prawn soup whilst his mom blanched the prawns, pork ribs, fish cake and water spinach (kangkung).  The soup is from instant prawn noodles paste that he bought for his catering business. We only remembered that we left out the hard boiled eggs and fried shallots after walloping everything 😐



Brunch ~ oh so comfortingly good prawn noodles! What a hearty temptation after missing it for so long. We can't wait for the MCO to be over so that we can dig into our favorite outdoor hawkers' food again at our neighborhood coffee shop. We miss those vendors too as most of them have become our friends. We will definitely patronize them everyday to help them restart their businesses again.



Feeling really bloated and edgy in the afternoon, I pulled Cass along to walk the stairs with me. From the 5th floor, we walked up to the 18th floor and walked back to the 5th floor. Miss lazybones didn't want to continue working out with me, so I continued jogging outside our unit, back and forth the corridor and only managed to hit over 2,000 steps 😓   My typical pre-MCO daily steps is around 8k - 13k a day.




View from the 16th floor, before rain bucketed down.



A wefie after we reached the penthouse on the 18th floor.




My temporary jogging trek - our corridor



Jogging back and forth the short narrow corridor outside our unit reminded me of my hospital quarantine with Cass 11 years ago in May 2009.   Cass and I were holed up for 3 torturous weeks at Gleneagles Medical Centre in Penang when she was 13 months old. She underwent a complicated Uretheral Reimplantation surgery, which had an unfortunate complication. Two weeks later she was operated in an emergency surgery after a battery of scans (including a CT Scan and a Fluoroscopy) did not pick up a kink on her intestines.  During our nightmarish 3 weeks stay in the pediatric ward, my only form of exercise was jogging back and forth the floor of our squeezy room.

So this MCO is not my first quarantine. It's my second and definitely feels better than our nightmarish 3-week quarantine at GMC Penang. Everyday was nerve wracking as I didn't know when Cass would ever get better. I wasn't even sure if she would survive. But God is great and we were discharged a day before hubs and my wedding anniversary on 27 May 2009!  You can click on the year 2009 - Month:May on the Blog Archive on the right side bar to read all about my stay with Cass at GMC Penang.

The calming view that kept me running back and forth on the dull corridor until it tipped down outside.




Hubs brought home a loaf of almond butter cake and best-in-the-world Portugese egg tarts from Red Kettle in the evening and these really made my day 😍  This also reminded me that whilst being holed up in the pediatric ward of GMC back in May 2009, hubs would bring me some tantalizing yummy Penang food everyday to cheer me up.  But nothing could really cheer me up as Cass just wouldn't get better after the first surgery and her belly just got bigger and bigger each day until it looked like a balloon about to explode and she kept retching green stuff  😭




Our dinner:



Slimy vegetable (Malabar spinach) egg drop soup, onion omelette, braised organic chicken with ginger, sesame seed oil and curry leaves and blanched broccoli.

MCO Day 18 & 19 ~ 4 & 5 April 2020

MCO Day 18 ~ I went to the supermarket today to pick up a few items, but that was just a stalking horse to get out of the house so that I remain sane. I've not gone out of my unit for exactly 7 days nor have I gone to do my pre-dawn brisk walking for more than 3 days.  Our condo Management office shot out a new circular with additional restrictions on residents, one of it is residents are not allowed to do any recreational activity within the compound of the condo.  This means I can no longer walk at our condo jogging trek until the MCO is lifted.  Without my daily pre-dawn quiet time, I feel crushed and even more depressed. I am imagining that I'll fall ill without my daily dose of workout.

MCO day 18 dinner: pan fried turmeric mackerel fish paired with a sauce of black vinegar, sugar and julienned ginger, braised organic miso and fermented black beans bitter gourd with chicken, sweet corn fritters and braised Hakka pork (given to us by hubs' aunt who lives on the 3rd floor).
The sweet corn fritters is made using leftover mashed potatoes, carrots and sweet potato from last night's dinner, with corn kernels added and pan fried.

Clear skies after a heavy downpour yesterday. Picture taken at 7:15 p.m.



MCO Day 19 ~  Since we have been advised not to partake in recreational activities in the compound of our condo, I decided that I have to start an indoor MCO workout. Though I have enough of movements everyday from house work and I have not gained an ounce of weight, I still need proper workout to break more sweat and for my heart health, mental health, bone health and overall health.  Since there isn't much washing and cleaning to do in the kitchen as hubs bought Yong Tau Foo takeout for dinner, I started my first HIIT workout with free online videos from You Tube, in front of our smart TV.

Alycia got up early today to attend an online youth church meeting via Zoom.  I got her to pan fry frozen Roti Canai for brunch, which she willingly obliged to. One of the upsides of the MCO is that this princess with royal fingers is more willing to help out in the kitchen as she's dang bored of being cooped up in her room.






Not crispy but still yummy!  We are all very deprived of Indian food, hawkers' food and Japanese food!  Next time, I will stretch out the roti canai before frying it (without oil) on the pan to get a crispy texture and fluff it up with my hands, just like how the Indian makes it!


Precious reheated chicken rendang from hubby's kitchen, cooked 2 weeks ago.  We are feeling the effects of the MCO now.   We try not to waste food and eat / cook mindfully. Another upside of the MCO ~ reminding us to eat / spend frugally and to reduce food wastage.



After brunch, I watched a streamed video of today's sermon by Pastor Lewis.



For tea time, we had tang yuan with black sesame filling in pandan + ginger sweet soup. Sherilyn made a batch of super fluffy and delish chocolate pancakes.

We bought the mini glutinous rice balls (Kg Pastry brand) in December last year, meant for Winter Solstice Festival but never got a chance to cook it until now! The tang yuan balls are mouth-wateringly good with generous amount of black sesame filling oozing out as you bite into the balls.



Sherilyn made chocolate mousse a few days ago. Today she whipped up some egg whites and added a little flour into the chocolate mousse to churn out some really fluffy chocolate pancakes that are eye-rollingly delicious. Not a cinch to make but since she's got all the time in the world in a house quarantine, what's there to complain?  She really knocked it out of the park with pancakes this time!


We had a very early dinner today, at 5 p.m.! Hubs bought takeout Yong Tau Foo from my favorite shop in our neighborhood.


Since there's not much washing and cleaning to do in the kitchen, I started my first in-house MCO workout at 6:30 p.m. and pulled Cass in to follow.  Hubs, Alycia and Sherilyn later joined in with their own workout.  Our living room has turned into a gym throughout the MCO. Everyone has to queue to use the house gym 😆

MCO Day 14 ~ 31 March 2020

The pork that hubs ordered online last week arrived today and that's a LOT of meat! This amount is definitely sufficient to last us until the MCO ends in 2 weeks. That's if it ends on 14 April. But again, although the curve has started to flatten, I seem to have this bad feeling and hunch that the MCO will be extended by another 2 weeks until new cases dwindle to near zero.😭

The box  of face mask that hubs ordered from his friend arrived today too, via Grab. As hubs was at his shop, Sherilyn was tasked to collect it at the lobby. Armed with face mask, a disposable plastic glove on one hand and hand sanitizer rubbed on the the other hand, the girl fetched the box of face mask back. Once she stepped into the house, she decontaminated the box of face mask with sodium hypochlorite water before decontaminating herself in the bathroom.  Each time we bring groceries or stuff home, we go through this tedious and tiring process of disinfection. 😴😫






Lunch was noodles with fish paste, bitter gourd, celery and foo pei.



Dinner of braised pork ribs with tomatoes, sand ginger and onions, stir-fried asparagus, stir-fried chicken thigh with ginger and mushrooms, lotus root + arrowroot soup and leftover turmeric chicken.