Hissing Kitten

When Maria our part-time maid came back to work last week after a hiatus of 2 months during MCO 2.0, it was the first time that she met Haru, our new pet kitten.  Thankfully Maria loves cats and naturally, she rubbed Haru's belly but our little tiger cub lookalike hissed at Maria.  Haru has a tendency to hiss at strangers who try to get near her. She hissed and spat at us when she was just a few days old! Such a feisty and fierce kitty she is but she can be very charming and timid at the same time.  

Today Alycia's friend came to our house to wait for her dad after sitting for their SPM Moral paper.  When she carried Haru, to our surprise Haru didn't hiss but she whined quietly like a pup when Alycia's friend patted her 😂.  

We finally got Haru a cage with a little stairs up to her bed! I'll get her a little hammock for her cage next.  Will post pix of Haru in her new cage soon...

Meatless Bibimbap

We had a meatless Bibimbap for lunch on the last day of Chinese New Year, whipped up by our chef Sherilyn.  She prefers eating vegetables over meat and whips up wonderfully tasty meat-free meals.  Sherilyn truly makes being a vegetarian so much more exciting, although I am not a vegetarian now, but if she lives with me forever, I will convert into a vegetarian to enjoy all her meat-free dishes.  When the girls no longer need me to cook for them in future, I think I'm going to be a flexitarian.

Sherilyn's meat-free dishes are superb tasting - from grilled vegetables (pumpkin, sweet potato, potato, zucchini, onions, garlic, etc) to Bibimbap, Shakshuka, Baba ghanoush, Ajvar (Serbian Roasted Red Pepper Sauce) and many more. 

Everything you see in the pot is made from scratch, including the kimchi, pickled radish and Bibimbap sauce.

Here's Haru sleeping with her favorite towel, which has a plush bear sewn on it. 

Haru is getting more daring and mischievous by the day. She loves playing hide-and-seek and catching with us. She runs so fast that no one can catch her. And then hides under tables, chairs and cabinets. When we holler "where's Haru?", she will pounce on our leg from behind playfully, then gnaw on our foot.  

Don't you think she looks like a big fat rat? Or a racoon? And sometimes like a monkey when she claws her way up the mozzie net!

23 February 2021 Homecooked Chinese Dinner

 Since it's still CNY, Sherilyn whipped up a few Chinese dishes for dinner yesterday and today: 

1.  Mock crab meat soup with mushrooms, dried shredded scallops, black fungus and shredded chicken meat.

2. Koong Po chicken with cashews. She toasted the fresh chilies for over 10 hours to produce dried chilies for this dish.

3.  Yam basket (Fatt Put)

Lunch today was Mee Siam with chicken rendang and deep fried quails (burung puyuh goreng berempah) from hubby's shop, Catermate  😋

It's amazing that this girl can even whip up yam ring. The process is very tedious and a lot of oil is used to deep fry the yam ring and vermicelli. Discarding the used oil is also a hassle as I had to pour the oil into a container and then wrap the container with plastic bags before leaving it in the refuse chamber.  That's the reason why I never ever deep fry anything!  But this girl is a sucker for challenges and if the dish is too simple, she wouldn't cook it 😐

Burung puyuh goreng berempah (fried quail with spices) and Mee Siam with chicken rendang from Catermate.

Sherilyn's 16th Birthday ~ 16 February 2021

Sherilyn turned 16 today!

I asked her what she'd like me to order for lunch and dinner and of all the food, she requested for a foot long Subway sandwich and Subway choc chip cookies, albeit she could make way tastier and healthier sandwiches and cookies.  She also requested for Fire Tiger boba and jelly tea and salted egg fried sotong 😆. 

Her wish is almost always my command and we ordered all her favorite food and had a low-key birthday celebration at home. 

Lychee strawberry cake from RT Pastry.

Sweet and spicy crabs with extra sauce.

Fried chicken with fish paste.

Salted egg fried sotong/squids

Her best birthday gift - Haru. She's always been a cat lover.

Haru's new afternoon nap spot - iron grill on the window. Such a hot spot in the afternoons but perhaps she finds it warm and cozy.  Hubs commented that Haru looks like a sea lion with long whiskers 😹

Haru is a super duper light sleeper, so light that she would even know that we're next to her when we tip toe to take a brief peek at her when she naps. 

Second Day of CNY 2021 ~ 13 February 2021

Hubs had a last minute order for delivery today and since none of his staff are at work, he had to do all the work.  And he roped in Sherilyn and me to help as well. Thankfully hubs knows cooking (he studied hotel management and catering and later did a bakery course) and Sherilyn and I could help with some simple kitchen work. But it was a mad rush having to get the food ready to be sent out by 11:30 a.m.  to the customer. 

We were home on time for our Hoi Nin Fan (first meal of the Lunar New Year) with hubby's aunt who lives on our block joining us.  The mil did most of the cooking.

It's been a super hot day today, typical weather of CNY every year.

Chef Sherilyn insisted on donning her cloth face mask, cap and disposable gloves in her dad's stuffy kitchen.  I told her that since it's so stuffy she needn't have to wear a mask when chopping veggies but she insisted on wearing it throughout the 2 hours in the kitchen.

Sherilyn to me - do you know what hygiene is?? 

She even wore the mask when she was frying otak-otak but when she got home, she said she felt dizzy from the lack of oxygen 😁

Ready to be Grab-ed to the customer ~ rendang chicken drumsticks, mutton rendang, fried otak-otak, sauteed mixed vegetables and loh sang with jelly fish. 

In the evening, Sherilyn made Tiramisu which was a winner!  The Tiramisu was so delish that even the two super critical foodies in the house gave their stingy compliments.

I think the Tiramisu is good enough to be sold.

Roast duck from hubby's aunt.

Braised pork ribs

Braised stuffed oysters with fish paste and abalone.

I'd like to wish all my readers "Koong Hei Fatt Choy" and may the year of the Ox be a prosperous, happy and healthy year for everyone!

My heart melts whenever Haru gives me this pitiful look, begging to be let out of the box to roam freely and scratch her nails on my slippers (which is now her scratching pad).

9 February 2021 MCO Homecooked Dinner ~ North India Cuisine

When Sherilyn was younger, she used to tell me what she'd like to eat and her wish was my command.  Now it's the other way around. I tell her my request and she would execute it. All I have to do is to buy the ingredients and she would gladly dish them out 😍.  

Caveat: this is only possible during the MCO. When the MCO is lifted and she's back to school, she won't be able to cook for us anymore.

Our Tuesday dinner this week brought us down to memory lane, back to the year 2019 where we could travel anywhere to fix our cravings. In that particular year, we were hooked on North India food. We especially loved Tasty Chapathi @ Damansara and Khan's Indian Cuisine @ Bangsar South.  Now that we are not allowed to cross district or dine in, we have our in-house teenage chef to satiate our cravings.  Sherilyn prepped all these from scratch herself, assisted by the TMX6:

1.  Butter chicken

2.  Palak Paneer

3.  Naan

4.  Passion fruit and vanilla ice-cream

Sherilyn even made the cottage cheese herself, for the Palak Paneer. Everything is super yums!!

 

Homemade cottage cheese.  Her first attempt in it.

Homemade vanilla and passion fruit ice-cream. Also her first attempt, using the TMX6.

Here's Haru saying peekaboooooooo!  She loves playing catching and hide-and-seek with us.  She's looking more like a cat now at about 7 weeks old, though her face sometimes still resembles a tiger cub. We all love her to bits!

Homecooked Bibimbap

MCO lunch on Thursday, 4 February 2021 ~ Just because it's still the gawd damn MCO with no end in sight to the pandemic, we get to enjoy more of Sherilyn's kitchen trials 😐.

Today she cooked Bibimbap for lunch, prepped from scratch - from the kimchi to the pickled radish, marinated spinach, zucchini and bean sprouts and bibimbap sauce.   

All those colours! This would put anyone in a good mood!   😋

Though I'm thoroughly enjoying all of Sherilyn's delish experimental cooking, I can't wait for her and her two sisters to be able to go back to school for proper classroom learning.  Teenagers should be in classrooms, not confined at home for prolonged periods 😓😢.    Next month on 18th March would be our country's 1st anniversary of being in a movement control order. I hope that by then, our country would be placed in a recovery MCO 🙏. 

MCO Dinner ~ 3 February 2021 (Pork Wellington and Beef Lasagna)

Sherilyn whipped up yet another labor-intensive dish ~ Pork Wellington served with red wine shallot sauce, French potato puree, caramelized onions with Italian Balsamic vinegar and seared zucchini.

This girl is truly a sucker for challenges and competitions since young!  She hardly settles for cooking simple and easy dishes but likes to try out new recipes.

Pork Wellington is such a labor intensive dish with a slew of ingredients and Sherilyn made everything from scratch, inside out -- from the puff pastry to the crêpe, red wine shallot sauce, French potato puree and the pâté (with minced mushrooms). The French potato puree and mushroom puree were done by the TMX6.

As long as the MCO doesn't end, we're going to be chef Sherilyn' guinea pigs, trying out new dishes almost daily 😁

Another skill that Sherilyn learned as part of producing this dish is opening a bottle of red wine with her dad's wine opener! 😁 The red wine shallot sauce is truly amazing and gives the Pork Wellington a moreish flavor.

So much hard work, time and passion goes into this Pork Wellington.  

The first time she baked it, the pork inside the puff pastry was still slightly pinkish and uncooked. It's a thick chunk of meat.  As it was already 8-ish p.m. (yeah, we all waited till this late for this dish!), the girls ended up eating instant noodles, while I drank organic almond milk with oats for dinner.

And the Pork Wellington was kept in the fridge for lunch and dinner for the following two days 😂

The chunk of seared pork is wrapped in several layers ~ pâté, crepe and finally the puff pastry. Every layer is handmade by Sherilyn.

I just love the caramelized onions with Italian balsamic vinegar and seared zucchini.

Beef lasagna from hubby's shop, Catermate.

And I end this post with Haru saying meow meow hello!  Ain't she adorable?

IT Exams For A Promising Career In IT

2020 was a difficult year for most of us and it's spilling into 2021.  Many of us felt like we were challenged at all fronts, emotionally, financially, physically and more. Not only has the Covid19 pandemic roiled the entire world, it has caused severe disruption to the lives of many people. Millions of people all over the world have lost their jobs and with there no end in sight to the pandemic, more people will continue to lose their jobs.  I've seen pilots switching jobs dramatically to such jobs as Grab delivery rider and food seller (there's even a pilot who's now driving a hearse to earn a living) and those in the tourism sector now selling food and vegetables by the road side.  Of course there are some who are still safe and protected as the industry that they are in are not affected by the pandemic.  Those in the groceries business, pharmaceutical, face mask and gloves, IT and manufacturing of IT components are some of the industries not affected by the pandemic.  Good on you if you have sat for an isaca cism exam as the certificate will prove valuable to you if you're now looking for jobs such as Network Engineer, Information Technology (IT) Manager and Systems Engineer.

I bumped into my neighbor at the car park the other day and chatted for a while. We were talking about how MCO 2.0 would kill the country's economy.   I thought that he was also impacted but he told me that he's very thankful that his IT business has not been impacted at all. In fact, business has been good throughout the lockdown as more people are staying home and everyone is now reliant on IT to get through their daily routines from learning, meetings and making purchases.  

If you're looking at a career advancement in Information Systems and Information Security, first find out the isaca certification cost as this course is available online. ISACA certification holders are among the highest paid IT professionals. Big enterprises recognize the value of employing top-notch information security specialists to manage the risks and costs associated with cyber crime. Becoming ISACA certified is one of the best ways to prove you have the skills and knowledge to secure the modern enterprise against escalating threats.

If you have experience as an information systems auditor and want to move up or over, consider acquiring the Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA) certification from spotoclub.com. The CISA credential recognizes individuals who are skilled in auditing, controlling and assurance of enterprise IT systems. The CISA is by far the most popular ISACA certification, with more than 115,000 credentials granted since the program began.

Computer technologies are integral to modern life.  A career in computing and IT security is promising and rewarding. Whether you want to work for a big corporation managing networks and designing software or become an information security analyst to ensure that all the systems and applications are secured to avoid any breach, there is a lot of potential in every IT job.  A computer science degree or an IT certification will open up a world of possibilities.