Random Updates (RMCO Day 93 ~ Thursday, 10 Sept 2020)

 This is our edible garden on the balcony:

Spring onions (grown from red shallots), Thai purple basil, red Malabar spinach and stink grass (fragrant actually).

Chinese parsley (both pots alongside spring onion on the ledge), baby shoots of green Malabar spinach  (on the right) and red Malabar spinach. Both the red and green Malabar spinach plants were grown from stems after we ate the leaves.  The Chinese parsley were grown from the root bunch after we used the top part.  The plants on the bottom left are Sherilyn's school RBT project where she planted lettuce and chilies from seeds.

This was my breakfast yesterday: 

A packet of vegetarian meehoon with vegetables curry and fried tempeh with curry leaves as add ons. The mil and I shared this.  Lately, she's been reducing her food portion too. Guess my health freak practices have rubbed off on her 😆.  She also walks an hour a day in the morning sun. As a result, she lost quite a bit of weight, something for her to rejoice in as she was advised by her doctor to shed some weight some time back.

My new stock of pickled raw mango, papaya and Ambarella, bought from a seller on Facebook.  I didn't expect each box to have so much pickles in it and I shared them with Maria our part-time helper as well as hubby's aunt who stays 2 floors below ours.  

Today there was a little drama at the supermarket car park. After I took the parking chip coin, I dropped the coin (which is super slippery and small)  which fell through a small gap between the driver's seat and a tray and landed at the bottom. There was no way I could wedge my hand between the tiny gap and the bottom is too deep for me to reach. I searched my car and handbag frantically for anything that's long and thin to slot between the gap to push the coin out. I was so glad that I found a tube of hand cream, which is almost finishing, thus flat enough to go through the gap.  When the tube reached the bottom, in my excitement, I pushed the coin forward a tad too hard and then the coin flew away and was no where in sight. Fudge!!  

Again, I searched for the coin frantically, like I was looking for a needle in a haystack and had to squat down in my tight mini denim skirt to search under the car seat, which made things harder! With the coin no where in sight, I ran into the supermarket after going through the My Sejahtera QR code scanning and temperature check and looked for the manager. He's someone whom I'm familiar with. Told him the sob story but he said sorry, you still have to pay RM30 as the replacement coin costs almost that much.  Bummer.  I went back to my car to do another thorough scan of the car floor. This time I had to literally stick my  head and hand under the seat but still I couldn't see the dang coin. I flipped the double layer of floor mat on the back passenger seat and blimey, the blue coin was sitting underneath the mat!  And I was perturbed as to how the coin could have gone backwards when I pushed it forward!  

Happy yet flustered after I found the coin.  I think I'm going to have a phobia putting the parking chip coin on the seat next to me after today's drama. Just like how I'm now paranoid of holding my keys when I get in and out of the lift. A few years ago, the bunch of house keys slipped out of my hand as I exited the lift, fell through the elevator shaft and landed at the bottom. The condo manager had to call the elevator technicians over to retrieve the keys 😑

Random Updates On Cassandra

Today is the 5th day since Cass' discharge from the hospital after a bout of UTI attack which required her to be hospitalized for 3 nights 4 days at Pantai Hospital.  Tomorrow she'll be back to school and will be sitting for an exam.  Before Covid-19, she was to sit for the UPSR government exam from 1 - 8 September.  Then came the MCO and she escaped the exam. When school reopened after a 4-month quarantine break, the school announced that there will be a school-based exam on the same dates. And Cass escaped the exam on those dates again with an unexpected UTI attack. Tomorrow she will finally be sitting for the exam and she's so NOT PREPARED.  

This is Cass and her two best friends, A and J since they were 8 year olds with Ms L, their favorite teacher. Ms L was their class teacher from Primary 2 through Primary 4.  This will be their last photo with Ms L in the school as Ms L will be transferred to another school and it's her last day of school here.

Instead of revising for her exam, this brat spent hours on end to do a thank you card for Ms L.  Today, she rummaged through her stamp album to find unused stamps as she wanted to send the card to Ms L via snail mail to surprise her. After brunch, we walked to the post box to drop off the card.

All smiles as the trainee nurse removed the IV catheter from her hand on Tuesday.  Freedom at last! It really sucks to have a needle poked inside your hand for days which restricts your movements.

Taking a nap and it's the best time for me to steal a photo of her. She goes hopping mad with me each time I try to snap her photo 😏

I took this photo as I was bored to the core with nothing to do at the hospital.  This creaky reclining chair is where I sat and took my siesta in the room.

The nurse administering antibiotics infusion to Cass via IV. She has to be given antibiotics twice a day at 12 noon and 12 midnight.  After a week of strong antibiotics, I've started Cass on Duolacto probiotics now.

Treat and exercise after antibiotics infusion. We walked around the hospital and Cass spent quite a bit of time at Borders.  Her treat is usually a smoothie from MBG.

Cass with Dr EL, her pediatrician since she was 6 weeks old.  Dr EL is the first doctor who attended to Cass when she first got her first UTI attack at 6 weeks old.  He's the only pediatrician whom I really trust and can rely on as he's a very detailed and careful doctor who truly cares for his patient's well being.  

Today's sunrise with blue hues at 7-ish a.m.

Cass will likely have to undergo another surgery next year but she will have to go through a string of diagnostic tests first from a Cystoscopy to a MAG3 scan.  The former requires Cass to be sedated under GA and the latter requires radioactive material injected via IV.  This will be in another blog post.  

RMCO Day 80 ~ Friday, 28 August 2020 (Piano Tuning & Cassandra's UTI Attack)

Last week the piano tuner guy came.  Did I tell you that I have not tuned the piano ever since I got it from hubby's relative about 6 years ago?  And if it wasn't because of Cass who kept reminding me to have the piano tuned, I would have procrastinated even longer.  She kept telling me that the pianos at her music school sound so melodious but ours is out of tone.  Excuse the tone deaf mother who also plays the piano but I couldn't tell the difference 😬

MY BAD! 

And because the heater also conked out, the wooden keys inside the piano turned moldy. The tuner had to dismantle the entire set of keys to bring it back to his shop to clean and remove the mold from the keys.  From an initial price of RM150 quoted to me, I ended up having to pay RM1,600!!  This includes two times tuning, servicing the moldy keys, fixing the pedals, replacing the heater and purchase of a new high quality extension wire with plug for the heater. I also had to call in our in-house condo technician to help us replace a wall socket for the heater. Oh. My. Gawd.!  This is the year that we've been dealt with the most misfortunes, misevents and expenses, with the worst being the year 2009 where we had to dig our life savings to pay Cass' surgeries and hospitalization bills amounting to over RM50,000.

And on the day that the tuner came to our house again to re-assemble the piano, and caused a mess, Cass had high fever and flank pain, a result of the UTI attack that she had. From a mild lower urinary tract infection, the pain slowly went up the urinary tract as the bacteria traveled up. While attending to the tuner, I had to get a dr's appointment for Cass, made sure that her fever is under control, that she drank enough Waterfall D-Mannose and Ural  and went to the toilet regularly. The fever suppository that I had in the fridge had expired and I had to run out in the Friday lunch traffic jam to get them from the pharmacy.  Boy was I stressed out to the max!

It was the safety of my daughter's precious kidneys that was stressing me out. I was scared stiff that the longer I waited,  the more chance I would be giving to the bacteria to travel to her kidneys to scar them.  It didn't help that Dr Eric put more worry in me when he told me that Cass' kidneys could be inflamed and scarred if I didn't take immediate action. And he told me that because it's already a Friday evening, all the charges would be double if I brought Cass to the hospital now (Friday night). And charges would be double and even triple on a Sunday and public holiday (National Day holiday on Monday).  I was so stressed out and rattled that I just couldn't think straight of what to do first.  I only trust Dr Eric, the pediatrician who's been treating Cass since she was a 6 week old infant and knows her through and through.

On the day of Cass' admission, my online boss had an offer of 10 urgent articles for me to write, for submission in 2 days. GOSH that's a lot of money but I had to turn her offer down to settle what's more important to me first 😰 

The next day (Saturday), we went to Pantai Medical Center very early in the morning. Dr Eric told us to go to the A&E first for all the tests including a pre-admission Covid-19 rapid antigen nose swab.  At the A&E, we were attended to by a very friendly doctor and friendly nurses.  Her urine and blood samples were taken.  Staff were all draped in PPE suits, which would be charged to our bill!  Thank God Cass took the Covid-19 nose swab pretty well and even laughed after the 3-second procedure, albeit teary eyed from the discomfort.

Never mind about the bill and cost. My immediate worry was for Cass to be admitted for antibiotics infusion via IV catheter (her usual treatment for UTI), get an ultrasound scan done to check her kidneys, blood works done to check her renal function and urine FEME test and culture to determine what bacteria had attacked her.  While waiting at the A&E, I called our insurance agent to arrange for a guarantee letter.  My next hurdle was to get the insurer to approve the claim.  Thank God the initial guarantee letter was approved pretty quickly and my next worry is whether the insurance company would pick up the hefty bill. As you know, insurance companies will always find ways to reject claims, especially if the insured has a congenital condition.  Praise the Lord, on the day of discharge 3 days later, our claim was approved (90%).  The bill was over RM6k, a figure befitting 5-star service and 5-star facilities. We were very satisfied with everything except that there were baby cockroaches in the bathroom and room and Cass was terrified!  She Whatsapped me at 3 a.m. to tell me that she saw a baby cockroach in the bathroom 😁

During our 3.5 days stay at the hospital, Cass and I did quite a bit of walking around the hospital.  Pantai is like a mini mall with Borders, MBG Fruits, Tealive, Starbucks, Subway, Paparich, Wrap N Roll, Caring Pharmacy and other well known cafes.  I made sure that Cass clocked in at least 2k steps rather than remained sedentary on the hospital bed with eyes hooked to her phone and TV (complete with Astro!). She was feeling well with medication and looked forward to walking around the hospital to kill boredom.

We had the entire room to ourselves as the next bed was vacant. I even did some light exercises in the room.

Despite the stressful few days for me, there was a little calm during the storm:

1. The bacteria is E.Coli and is not a resistant bug. It's sensitive to a few antibiotics that Cass is tolerant to.  This also means that I can easily flush out E.Coli from Cass' urinary tract with D-Mannose at the right dosage.
2. The WBC (white blood cells) quickly went down from 200+ to 19 in  just 2 days upon starting antibiotics drips twice a day.
3. Maria our part-time maid came in to help out with the chores everyday and this really gave me a peace of mind and huge relief knowing that someone whom I trust is at home helping me while I was in the hospital.
4. We had the entire double bedded room to ourselves and didn't have to share bathroom. 
5. Our insurer approved the claim. Praise The Lord!

RMCO Day 75 ~ Sunday, 23 August 2020

This morning hubs brought his Charlie's Angels to the Datuk Lee Chong Wei Sports Arena Sentosa to play badminton while I stayed home and burnt calories doing chores.  Hubs used to bring the girls to the park to play or to our condo's pool to swim and play water guns when they were younger.   And not forgetting the many trips to the indoor theme parks and kids' gyms where hubs would sacrifice the entire morning to have fun with them. He used to be the fun daddy who would play and be crazy with them. But when our pre-schoolers turned into tweens and then teens, these outings got fewer and then stopped as they no longer like theme parks and playgrounds. Plus daddy has always been super busy with work.   Fortunately there's something that the girls and their dad like to do together at the court now besides eating. Besides badminton, the girls like to play basketball, just like their dad who's a basketball fanatic. They sometimes follow hubs to the basketball indoor court to watch tournaments.

After badminton, we had lunch at Banh Mi Cafe, a new Vietnamese street food cafe at our neighborhood. 

Pho with tender pork knuckles and beef, BBQ squids, grilled quail and lemongrass turmeric frog.

Beef Pho, rice noodles salad with BBQ chicken, shrimp spring rolls and pork banh mi.

The Vietnamese desserts knocked my socks off and well worth the calories!   I love every one of the unique dessert as they are all served with thick, luscious coconut milk while not being overly sweet.  Diet be damned!

What an epicurean street feast we've had that was to be our lunch and dinner. As usual, hubs ordered too much again and that filled us up the entire day.  Food was a delight and everyone enjoyed it.  Prices of all the dishes on the menu are reasonable and definitely a bang for your buck. We'll definitely be back again soon!

After lunch, we segued next door to another newly opened coffee place - ZUS Coffee and took advantage of the buy-1-free-1 coffee promotion.  I chose the pandan gula melaka coffee which hit all the right notes for me.

Banh Mi Cafe

266, Jalan 4/109f, Taman Danau Desa, 

58100 Kuala Lumpur, 

Phone: 03-7971 6527

ZUS Coffee

No 11-0-10, Jalan 4/109F 

Danau Business Centre 

Taman Danau Desa,

58100  Kuala Lumpur

Our Teenage In-House Chef

Her love for cooking and food is uncontainable.  She'll go the extra mile to cook something yummy (complete with food aesthetics) for herself, any time of the day. She would wake up at 6 a.m. to prep her lunch box for her breakfast and lunch in school before leaving the house at 7:15 a.m.  Earlier this week, when she got home from school at 2:30 p.m., she darted straight to the wet kitchen for a quick prep of sweet potato dessert before savouring the yummy bowl in front of the PC whilst she attended online tuition class.

This is just so not me for I'm not a food lover, don't like cooking and don't like washing dishes 😂.

Sherilyn reminds me of my mum who has always loved baking and would bake delicious snacks for us several times a week when we were growing up. I was always her assistant. Thus, though I don't like baking, nonetheless, I still know the basics of baking.  Mum was a teacher and she would bake snacks in the evening for our teatime and  our recess the next day.  I miss mum's char siew pau, sardine puffs, sausage buns, chicken pies, bread pudding, sago pudding, pandan chiffon cake, steamed sponge cake and the list goes on and on. If only mum stays near me!

Purple and orange sweet potato boiled with ginger and Gula Melaka with chewy sweet potato cubes that she made two weeks ago.

And she cooked Japanese style garlic fried rice at 9 p.m. so that she could bring it to school the next morning:

She cooked extra so that Cass and Alycia could have it for lunch the next day.

Restaurant Eight Treasure @ Taman Connaught, Cheras

Today hubs was in the mood to venture a little further out of our neighborhood for lunch.  Since the start of the Recovery MCO, we've only been eating out at our neighborhood or places near our neighborhood. Today hubs brought us to Cheras for an indulgence in sublime homecooked style Hakka dishes.

The Yong Tau Foo platter was so good that we ordered another portion for takeaway for our dinner tomorrow.  As Maria only comes in twice a week now, I take every opportunity to tapau food back so that we don't have to cook.  Cooking = washing = oh. my. poor. hands. 😖  I'm still nursing a painful right wrist that cannot be turned at most angles. Though recovery is slow, it's getting better. I have to be careful not to overuse my right hand.

The braised yam with pork belly was a delight and the sauteed brinjal with minced pork tastes like the one cooked by the MIL.

Steamed pork belly with prawn paste and red chillies (very tasty but a tad salty for our tastebuds), steamed tofu with homemade fish paste (perfect!), braised chicken with ginger and wine and sauteed 'lai park' veggie.

Eight Treasures serves very good 'Pan Mee' too but when we were there at 11-ish a.m., it was already sold out.  

The menu isn’t diverse enough to please those who expect to see a thick menu with at least 30-50 dishes but it reads as a strong statement that the food is modest traditional Hakka dishes. Eight Treasure doesn’t pride itself on inventiveness or fancy presentation but the food exudes the quality and taste, as can be evident from the steady stream of patrons walking in and a full-house eatery by the time we left at around 12-ish noon.

Today's lunch is definitely well worth venturing out to Cheras. Thankfully there was no sight of the usual traffic crawl along the highway. After lunch, we went to our favorite bakery to get low-sugar chocolate cake and chocolate chiffon cake for the girls to bring to school tomorrow.

Restaurant Eight Treasure

20 Jalan Waras 1,

Taman Connaught, Cheras

56000 Kuala Lumpur

+603 9130 1066

RMCO Day 64 ~ Wednesday, 12 August 2020

I have just submitted the 10th and last article to my online boss and the euphoria feeling is akin to completing my last paper in the SPM exam😁. When my online boss told me on Monday noon that she's got a large batch of articles to write and gave me 10 topics with a deadline of Thursday, I had little confidence that I could meet the tight deadline. I told her that I'd return the unfinished articles to her by Wednesday to enable her to find other writers. And for the next 2.5 days,  my butt was glued to my work chair and I kept typing and typing till I have blurry vision and stinging eyes now.  Add on a gassy stomach too from stress and loss of appetite from all the rush 😐.  As I'd mentioned before, I always work better under stress. My brainpower seems to only get properly fired up when Cortisol floods my system, which has its pros and cons. 

After two days of staying home to complete the articles, I really need to go to the supermarket to stock up on groceries and fruits. And I need my fix of  Nyonya kuih  to help me de-stress 😁.   I'm going to run for an hour at the park tomorrow morning to get my dose of Endorphins to zap away the stress hormones in my body. Running and exercising give me a high and IF I had more time for myself, I'd put the time into exercising.  This will be my retirement plan - exercise twice a day! That's how I find my zen.

I'm back at eating an egg a day after eating rather unhealthy food for breakfast for the past few months during the MCO. During the house quarantine, I was craving for junk food (to de-stress) and you'll be shocked to see my kitchen drawer stocked up with Twisties, muruku, Mamee and other 'healthy' snacks in packets.  My girls were in disbelief each time I got back from groceries shopping 😂.  My junk food crave is satiated now and I'm back to healthy eating again, with the exception of Nyonya kuih, my ultimate kryptonite. 

Snacks of crispy bread biscuit and kaya which I bought from a street vendor this morning to support him, to give to Maria, our part-time helper who's coming in today.

RMCO Homecooked Meals

Lately I've been posting many photos on the delectable food dished out by hubby's chef as we've been eating a lot of these.  Before the MCO, we ate mostly homecooked food as we have Maria, our part-time helper to help us wash and clean up 5-6 days a week. Now that she only comes in twice a week and I've overused my right hand till the wrist is inflamed, I try to take the easy way out with takeout from hubby's shop. Since his chef cooks everyday, why not get him to cook extra for us?  The Mil can take a respite from cooking too and my poor hands get to rest.  Although my right hand needs many days and weeks of rest to fully heal, it's not quite possible not to use it. The best I can do for my wrist is to try not to turn or twist it at certain angles, avoid carrying heavy things, rub deep heat cream and stick Salonpas on it. 

Thus, the mil only cooks about 3-4 times a week now.  I plan the menu and shop for the ingredients. These are some of the dishes that she dished out this week:

One pot chicken rice with yam, long beans, dried shiitake mushrooms and Chinese sausage. My kind of meal!

My all-time comfort food - roast pork bones porridge with carrots. 

Stir-fried French beans with fried 'foo pei' and Mugwort ('Ngai') omelette:

Fried 'Loh Sue Fun' with homegrown mung bean sprouts, prawns, fried 'Foo Pei', crab balls, eggs, French beans and pork. We had this for lunch and dinner today.

Banana cupcakes (with ground almonds) baked on Tuesday and marble loaf cake baked on Wednesday, by MIL:

My 100% flawless Cameron Highlands avocado, bought from a family at the park. It's jumbo sized and only costs RM7.30.  I hope the seller has Camerons avocados again next week.  

This vegetables seller lost his job when the pandemic swept the world and shut it down. He's another new kid on the block at our neighborhood, joining the dozen who had to resort to selling vegetables and food by the roadside during the MCO.  His whole family comprising his wife, aged mother and two young sons (aged about 13YO and 5YO) tag along to the park to help him sell vegetables. His stall is always swamped with customers (mostly senior citizens) who go for their daily morning exercise at the park.

A stone's throw away from the park are two new pop-up roadside stalls selling Nyonya kuih, biscuits and traditional Chinese desserts. One vendor used to sell ladies clothes and bags at the night market and another vendor used to be a tour operator.  Covid-19 is like the Black Death for micro businesses and tour operators.  I've been patronizing these stalls regularly to give them all the support that they need right now so that they can continue to place food on the dining table for their families. 

RMCO Day 54 ~ Sunday, 2 August 2020

Hubs still had the Oriental Group vouchers that he received when he applied for membership at the Oriental Cuisine Club late last year.   He was too busy with work back then and didn't have the time to bring us to dine at participating restaurants. Then came the sodding virus that kept us grounded and catapulted our lives upside down for many months. Now that we are all allowed to go out together as a family for a meal, hubs quickly utilized the vouchers before they turned void. 

Our lunch today was at Oriental Treasure @ The Sphere, Bangsar South.  The last time we had dim sum together as a family was half a year ago. The girls used to sulk whenever their dad said that he's bringing them for dim sum as we were having dim sum pretty frequently back in the good days, until the girls got disinterested. Now that they've been grounded for so long, any meal in a fancy air-conditioned restaurant seems to be a luxury to them. Sometimes all we need is a misevent in our lives to press the reset button in us; to make us appreciate the things that we are blessed with instead of taking things for granted.

We also ordered two trays of char siew pau for takeaway. And the bill was only slightly more than RM100 for all these after utilizing the vouchers.  What a great deal!

New norm at restaurants:

Face masks are only allowed to be removed when we eat or drink, else everyone has to mask up 😷

RMCO Day 52 ~ Friday, 31 July 2020 (Homemade Sweet Potato Cubes / Balls)

It's Hari Raya Haji and a public holiday today.  Our baking queen decided to play with play dough and doughed out something that she'd wanted to make for a long time - sweet potato cubes / boba balls! And mil decided to make Jiao Zi (dumplings).  Grandma and grand daughter sat alongside each other at the dining table, kneading dough - grandma made savoury delight and grand daughter made dessert delight. It's like a scene from a Chinese restaurant where kitchen staff are hard at work kneading dough to churn out dumplings for hungry customer waiting impatiently outside the kitchen.

Purple, orange and yellow sweet potatoes were steamed, mashed, mixed with tapioca flour and  a sprinkle of sugar and kneaded into  addictive chewy cubes and balls -- cubes for Taiwanese dessert bowl and balls for 'tong sui' and bubble milk tea!

Kids and adults will find it hard to say NO to these colorful chewy cubes that go inside their dessert bowls filled with red bean tong sui, shaved ice cream and grass jelly.

These precious babies are stored in Ziploac bags in the freezer.

Sherilyn's creative ways of savoring the sweet potato cubes and balls:

Added into red bean + lotus seeds + Mandarin peel tong sui with swirls of evaporated milk (to replace fresh santan):

Added into boiled ginger and Gula Melaka water:

Taiwanese sweet potato cubes / Taro balls dessert bowl, composed of red bean tong sui, shaved ice-cream potong (red bean flavor) and sweet potato cubes. Would be good if we had taro/yam too, for the cubes and balls.

This one is without red bean tong sui but with grass jelly:

Sherilyn's homemade sweet potato balls and cubes are so addictively chewy and delightful that I think she should produce them in bulk to sell. It's a way healthier alternative to commercial boba/pearl balls.  This is another item on her 'to sell wishlist' which she can produce to sell during the long school holidays.  This girl is overflowing with creativity and ideas and I'm just so amazed at what she can make and do!