16 September 2022 ~ Malaysia Day Outing @ Pavillion Bukit Jalil

One of Cass' greatest desires is to learn ice-skating.  For more than a year, she saved money to pay for her ice-skating lessons. She did odd jobs for me and her dad as well as saved money from ang pow collected during CNY and birthdays.

Hubs finally had the time to bring Cass for her first ice-skating lesson on Malaysia Day, a public holiday.  Cass had earlier called the Blue Ice Snow Park @ Pavillion Bukit Jalil to book an appointment for ice-skating lesson but was told to walk-in to try her luck as it was a public holiday and all the slots were already taken up. If she's lucky, she may get a slot.

As expected Cass didn't manage to secure a slot for the skating lesson.  However, she and Sherilyn went for casual ice-skating @ RM35 for 2 hours.  While they skated, hubs and I had breakfast and checked out the mall. It was our first time at Pavillion Bukit Jalil, a newly opened mall.

We walked quite a bit before we finally found the Blue Ice Snow Park. The mall is very huge and if it's your first time to the mall, it's a tad difficult to locate the skating rink.

Very good exercise for us - it took us a good 15-20 minutes of brisk walking from the car park to the skating rink.

Very much smaller than the skating rink at Sunway Pyramid but we prefer Blue Ice Snow Park as it's new and the facilities and skating shoes are newer and cleaner.

Sherilyn & Cass paying for the locker rental using their dad's credit card.

The last time the girls went ice-skating was 3 years ago, before the pandemic, with Raelyne their cousin from Singapore.

There's a huge screen outside Blue Ice Snow Park that life screens the activities in the skating rink.

Cass balancing herself.

Sherilyn skates better than her sister, but ice-skating is not her jam.  

With two hours to skill, hubs and I had breakfast at Oppa Toast Cafe.

The BBQ beef teriyaki toast that hubs ordered was super scrumptious. Juicy BBQ beef slices wedged between crispy toasts topped with a jiggly egg and cheese. And you don't have to worry about messing up your hands as disposable gloves (packed in a tiny cute bag) are provided so that you can enjoy your killer toast.  The coffee was superb too.

Crispy Korean fried chicken. For the first time I really enjoyed holding my piece of fried chicken with my hands at a cafe as I needn't have to worry about having oily hands afterwards.

After the girls were done ice-skating, we brought them to Oppa Toast again for them to have their breakfast.  

Cass ordered egg toast and Korean hotdog.

Right after leaving Oppa Toast, we segued into Sedap to have roti canai and satay! 

Revenge feasting after almost 2.5 years of modest eating, mostly at home 😂

The girls wanted to try IlaoIloa's Milo froyo, only available for one day on 16 Sept as it's Malaysia Day. Their verdict - not much Milo taste but nonetheless still refreshing and yums.

The girls wanted to check out Tsutaya Books, a popular bookstore originating from Japan but what we saw before our eyes was jaw-dropping.  The queue into the bookstore was at least 500 meters long! This is the first Tsutaya Books in South East Asia.

Before we left, we had our lunner at Dai Cha Dim.  While we waited for the food to arrive, Cass and Sherilyn quickly darted off to Tsutaya Books as it's just opposite the restaurant. They were not about to give up trying their luck to step into the bookstore.  Fortunately the queue moved pretty quickly and they managed to get into the bookstore.

Lunner at Dai Cha Dim.

We clocked up almost 10k steps after spending over 4 hours at Pavillion Bukit Jalil. My total number of steps for the day was over 14k. 

10 September 2022 ~ Mid Autumn Festival

The day that Cass was discharged from HKL was Mid Autumn Festival. I thought that we could have a long overdue Mid Autumn family dinner at a restaurant that evening but my poor girl twisted her ankle on her way out of the hospital to her dad's car 😖. It hurt so badly that Cass could not walk. She had to hobble and hop around.

While everyone else went out for dinner, poor Cass stayed home and nursed her foot with the classic RICE regimen — rest, ice, compression, and elevation.

Our Mid Autumn festival dinner ~ steamed fish, steamed chicken with minced ginger sauce, stir-fried celery, stir-fried spinach and 'phai kuat wong'.  I doggy-bagged the dishes for Cass who ate them for lunch the next day.

The moon that night was full - round and bright!

The night before Cass' MRU procedure, I had a meetup with my ertswhile childhood friends.  Jo (first from right) is back for a holiday from San Francisco. We were supposed to have dinner at Pavillion at 6pm but had to cancel the dinner as one of our friends couldn't make it. We ended up having a late meet up at a friend's house and I only got back after 11pm. And the next day I was up at 5 am to get some chores done before leaving to camp at the hospital.  

I only had 5 hours of sleep the past few nights last week caused by Haru's constant wailing and having to wake up early to go to the hospital.  

Friends since primary school, over 40 years of friendship!

Haru's Sixth Sense

On Friday this week, the day that Cass fainted in the hospital, Haru behaved suspiciously differently.  She meowed and wailed the entire morning from midnight until 4.15 a.m. when I woke up that morning to get ready to go to the hospital.  

On Thursday, Cass had to stay overnight at the Institute of Urology & Nephrology @ HKL as her MRU procedure was postponed. The stay was totally unexpected.  We waited the entire day from 10 a.m. and at 5 p.m., we were informed by the Urology MO that the procedure had to be postponed as it was already late.  The MRU Dept. promised to let Cass do the procedure first thing in the morning at 8 a.m.   The IV line on her arm had to be re-inserted (the third time!) before 7.30 a.m. and she had to be at the MRI Complex before 8 a.m.  Thus, it is more viable for her to sleep overnight in the ward.

I had to leave the house at 6.45 a.m. on Friday so that I could get to the hospital before 7.30 a.m.  I was told by the staff that if I were late, Cass would miss the slot again. As Cass is below 18 years old, a parent must be around during the procedure.

Not only did Haru meow the entire night, but she also kept scratching on my room door, begging to come into my room.  The moment I opened the door, Haru sniffed the floor of all the corners of my room and kept jumping up my bed.  It was as if she wanted to sleep with me. She was extremely clingy.  This has never happened before and Haru is not a clingy cat. She's not a cat that likes to be cuddled.  And this bizarre behavior in Haru made me very worried as Cass was scheduled to do the MRU that day.

The night that Cass had to stay at the hospital, Haru sat at the entrance of the house the entire night, watching the door, as if waiting for her sister to come home.

Many cultures revere cats, considering them to be magical or all-knowing. Cats appear capable of predicting unexpected events before they occur. There is a reason why the black cat is often associated with witchcraft.  I often read of cats that have the ability to sniff out sickness in their owners.  

Now I believe that cats have the ability to sense danger happening to their owners too.  If you are a cat owner, I believe you'd have experienced this baffling behavior in your cat.  Some owners even believe that their cats can predict future events and I think it's true. Each time before an episode of lightning and thunder, even before we humans can hear the thunder, Haru would be already crouching somewhere as she's terrified of the sound of thunder. 

The two nights that Cass was away in the hospital, Haru meowed and caterwauled throughout the night. Last night she finally stopped wailing as Cass was already home.  When I opened my room door at 6.30 this morning, she was sitting quietly outside my room, waiting for me 💓

Yap Hup Kee Palace @ Kuchai Entrepreneurs Park, KL

This is a throwback post.

We had lunch at Yap Hup Kee Palace more than a month ago on 31 July 2022.  We chose Kuchai Entrepreneurs Park as Sherilyn was at a basketball court around that vicinity for cheerleading practice.  She didn't join us for lunch though as she ate with her teammates at another joint nearby - and later complained profusely over how terrible the food and service were.

Hubs dined at Yap Hup Kee with his friends recently and liked the steamboat. The steamboat set doesn't comprise the run-of-the-mill fish balls, pork balls, and foo pei.  Instead, you'll see unique seafood items like pacific clams, mussels, sea asparagus, etc - all with 'yong liu' (stuffed with fish paste). 

Besides steamboat, the other signature dishes are chee cheong fun with curry pig skin, 'sui kow' (fried or boiled), wantan noodles with minced pork, and delectable fried snacks.

Hubs ordered two plates of chee cheong fun with curry pig skin, two bowls of 'sui kow' in soup and  a plate of wantan noodles. By the time we chomped down these and the hot pot came, our stomachs were already about 60% full.  I was so stuffed that I didn't even get to try the stuffed mussels and pacific clams with fish paste.   I just couldn't put any more food into my mouth though the stuffed clams were yelling out to me to try them.

Note to self - the next time we dine at this restaurant, my priority will be the unique yong seafood and won't bother about the chee cheong fun and wantan noodles even though they're delish. 

Wantan noodles with minced pork.

Chee cheong fun with minced pork and sui kow soup.

Curry pig skin. The santan in the curry broth wasn't very fresh and had a slightly rancid taste.

Gastronomical delight.

After a heavy lunch, hubs suggested having dessert at Dáo.  Though everyone was stuffed to their chest, at the mention of Dáo, the girls and even the mil couldn't refuse. 

Dáo desserts is a specialty dessert cafe selling traditional soy-based desserts with a twist. They serve soy milk, silky smooth tau foo far with a choice of ginger, brown sugar, and chrysanthemum syrup, soft serve soy bean ice-cream and tau foo far with tong yuen (rice balls).

YAP HUP KEE PALACE

Address: 39, Jalan Kuchai Maju 7,  Kuchai Entrepreneurs Park, 

Kuala Lumpur.

Contact: 03-7971 6417

Operation Hours: 11am- 10pm

Sunday, 28 August 2022

Every Sunday hubs and I ponder for a long time over where to go for lunch.  Even when we are in the car on the way, we are usually still uncertain of where to go. Today hubs knew for sure that he wouldn't be heading to KL as there was a National Day parade rehearsal. So he headed towards the Federal Highway, but we were still undecided on which restaurant to go to.  As usual, the ball was in his court and he turned towards Mont Kiara.  He was bringing us to 163 Retail Park @ Mont Kiara for the famed ramen.

As we left the house a tad late today, by the time we reached the mall, it was already 12-ish noon, which means queues everywhere. There was a long beeline outside the Japanese restaurant and we were informed by the staff that the waiting time was at least an hour for a table.  We left after queueing for about half an hour and walked around to see which restaurant didn't have such a big crowd.  But almost every cafe and restaurant had a full house. Hubs finally settled for Lisette's and we waited for about 20 minutes before we got a table.

Long Q outside the Japanese restaurant.


Lunch at Lisette's

Overall, the food was average.  
I ordered Nasi Kerabu to try and compare with hubby's Nasi Kerabu and I'm glad to say that Catermate's Nasi Kerabu beats Lisette's hands down 😬

After lunch, I went grocery shopping while Cass went to the pet shop and the other two older girls dragged their grandma to the Korean mart to get her to pay for their Korean junk snacks.  The girls sure know who to go to when it comes to shopping for snacks and stuff that I would not agree to buy. Their grandma almost never says no to them unless it's something that's very costly.  Recently Alycia charmed her grandma into buying her a RM200 plain white shirt from Muji and this is something that I would never buy  😑

Getting Back Into Shape After Having A Baby

You finally have an adorable baby and your family is now complete.  The nine months that were fraught with aches, pains, morning sickness, anxiety, and sleepless nights were all worth it.  While you are happily embracing motherhood now, you get depressed each time you struggle to slip into your jeans.  You still look about six months pregnant. How do you get back into shape? Will you ever get back into your pre-pregnancy body?  

The answer is yes, most definitely. But you’ll need to put in some hard work to achieve your goals if you’re not blessed with a super high metabolism and skinny genes. 

A waist trainer for women can give you an instant slimmer body but how do you shed off those baby fat?

Pregnancy is the most dramatic change a woman’s body will ever go through.  She may gain 18 to 35 pounds during the 9 months of pregnancy. The uterus and its lining will enlarge around 500 times its normal size by the end of the pregnancy.

The transition from being pregnant to motherhood may happen overnight. But it can take weeks or months for the body to recover from pregnancy and childbirth.

Immediately after childbirth, a woman loses about 13 pounds, and another 5 to 15 pounds over the first six weeks. It can take six months to a year or even a few years to lose the rest.

These are some of the steps that a new mother can take to get back into shape after baby.

1.  Exercise – start with walking and gradually up your game to brisk walking, light jogging and running when your body has fully recovered.

2.  Breastfeed—this is a fast way to shrink the uterus back down to pre-pregnancy size. It helps you burn more calories and breast milk is best for baby. It’s a win-win!

3.  Monitor your calorie intake – monitoring your calorie intake can help you work out how much you’re eating and where any problem areas in your eating plan lies.  

It can also help you ensure you are getting enough calories to provide you with the energy and nutrition you need, especially if you’re breastfeeding.

You can do this by:

keeping a food diary

take pictures of your food as a reminder of what you have eaten

use a mobile calorie tracking app

Using these techniques can help you reduce your portion sizes and choose healthier foods, which helps with weight loss.

4.  Eat foods high in fiber -  Adding foods that are high in fiber has been shown to help with weight loss as these foods help you feel fuller for longer by slowing down digestion and reducing hunger hormone levels.

5.  Avoid added sugar, refined carbs and highly processed foods - Research associates a high intake of these foods to an increase in weight, diabetes, heart disease, some cancers, and even cognitive decline.

6.  Wear postpartum shapewear -  Postpartum wraps have been worn by women all over the world for ages after childbirth.

A 2012 medical study showed that wearing postpartum girdles can help women safely strengthen their core over time, especially when used in combination with physical therapy.

Postpartum wraps and the best waist trainer for plus-size women can be easily sourced from online apparel stores or specialized waist trainer wholesale shops.

Waist trainer before and after photos.  Waist trainers can do wonders by instantly transforming your body into a slimmer silhouette. 

Gaining some extra pounds after pregnancy is very common and nothing to get down on yourself about. Your body did an amazing job carrying a baby for 9 months.

Getting back into a healthy weight range is beneficial for your health and any future pregnancies so it’s definitely worth working at.

Mooncakes And 3D Flower Jelly

I got a pleasant surprise last week when a delivery rider called me on my phone to tell me that he had delivered something for me from my boss, an online news agency.  I quickly asked Cass to collect it from the lobby and was itching to know what it was! 

A very pleasant surprise awaited me from Mandarin Oriental Hotel!

It's a box of four mooncakes!

So aesthetically wrapped and presented in a quality wooden oriental gift box.

Red bean flavor.

Matcha flavor.

White lotus flavor.

Cass who was doing an IF broke her fast as she couldn't resist the temptation of the dainty mooncakes and tried all the flavors.

Thank you very much to my boss and Mandarin Oriental for the yummy mooncakes!!  

Yesterday hubs surprised me with a box of 2 mooncakes from Kam Lun Tai, just because I commented that the KLT white lotus mooncake that he bought last week was very tasty and not too sweet.  I'm not a fan of mooncakes and won't buy them.  Hubs usually buys them as he loves mooncakes, especially those with double yolks.

Love the gift box from KLT, with smiley cows. I'm born in the year of the cow 😁

These KLT mooncakes come with double yolks. Only hubs eats the yolks. We usually single out all the yolks for him.

These 3Q mooncakes were gifted to Alycia by Kaylee's mum last month when she visited Kaylee, her coursemate who's from Melaka.  Alycia took a bus with another coursemate to Melaka and stayed at Kaylee's lovely abode for 2 nights.  Before they left, Kaylee's mum gifted all the girls who came from KL with 3Q mooncakes, Melaka famous Gula Melaka (palm sugar) and mini mooncakes with grated coconut filling. 

The mooncake fillings are composed of meat floss, yolk, and mochi. The exterior of the mooncake is encrusted with white sesame seeds. It's my first time trying 3Q mooncake from Melaka.

Mini mooncakes with a generous filling of fresh grated coconut and pandan-flavored grated coconut.

Hubby's aunt who stays 2 floors below our unit recently attended a class on how to make 3D flower jelly and gave us a big 3D flower jelly.

Edible art - too pretty to eat. I'm always intrigued by how these intricate 3D jellies are made as the flowers, fish and animals inside the jellies look so real. No molds are used for the floral or nature-based designs inside the jelly. Instead, they are injected into the jelly using syringes and special tools.  The entire piece of edible art looks very convoluted and intricate.  It takes loads of patience and time from someone to create these beauties. 

Cass' Simple And Healthy Meals

Cass loves cooking and baking but she only does these to feed herself.  Unlike Sherilyn who will spend hours cooking and baking for everyone, Cass won't spend more than half an hour prepping her meals.  She only has the time to cook or do simple baking on Mondays and Saturdays when classes are held online. She'll prep her meals in between classes and quickly eats them while attending classes 😆. 

Most of her meals are befitting health freaks. She loves to include loads of veggies, carrots, pumpkins, and mushrooms in her meals.  Desserts are usually oat and yogurt-based or frozen smoothies.  She freezes her favorite fruits and then uses the Blendtec to blitz the frozen fruits with store-bought frozen berries and frozen walnuts.

Cass cooked this healthy veggie and shrooms rice for the first time last week where she dumped pumpkin, carrots, and oyster mushrooms into the rice cooker.  The rice turned out very sweet and flavorful. Even I liked it, though I don't eat rice.

Yesterday she cooked her healthy one-pot veggie rice again. This time she doubled up all the veggies and included a tomato. Then she placed a marinated boneless chicken thigh on a steaming dish on top of the rice cooker. Everything was cooked in under an hour and tasted yummeh!  This time she flavored the rice with freshly ground black pepper and garlic (from a grinder).
The marinated chicken thigh is meant for grilling or pan-frying but steaming tasted just as delish.  I recently replenished our stock of antibiotic-and-hormone-free seaweed chicken thighs from Beacon Mart (under Beacon Hospital and they have an outlet in our hood).  The marinated chicken thighs are available in several flavors and our favorites are the Nyonya, Green Curry, and Indonesia flavors.

Cass' version of healthy Bibimbap is assembled using her one-pot rice cooker veggie rice, added kimchi, poached egg, steamed sweet corns, blanched broccoli, chicken thigh, and a teaspoon of gochujang sauce.

Dessert is this baked organic oats loaf. She mixed oats with an egg, bananas, milk, and walnut and baked it for about half an hour.  It's served with melted butter and Gula Melaka syrup.  

If only everyone in the house could eat like Cass, cooking will then be easy peasy. All I have to do is chop up all the veggies and dump everything into the rice cooker.  But there are really finicky eaters at home who won't eat such healthy meals, making my life so much more complicated and expensive! 

Tuesday, 9 August 2022

Cass told me recently that she found an effective way of studying for exams.

One night I saw her playing Roblox on my desktop computer and she was chanting non-stop. I thought she was talking to her bestie on Discord but she was purging out what she was memorizing. She was memorizing Biology for a small test the next day.  There was a notebook next to her and she kept referring to it while playing Roblox.

Cass told me that ever since she went back to school full-time, she has found an effective way of memorizing for tests without falling asleep and that is to play a game on the computer.

Like seriously? Who does that?!  Am I that outdated? 

But lately, Cass has been doing alright in all her small tests.  Her mid-year exam class position is top 10. 

I know my older brother must turn the radio on whenever he studied during his high school years. He subsequently went to the National University of Singapore (NUS).  And I can only write my assignments with the radio turned on too. 

So Cass' method of studying may be working! I hope so!

Just now she was again playing Roblox on my PC and memorizing Geography facts. Later she passed me her notebook and asked me to test her. 

Me - hello, your mom doesn't know a word of Chinese. How can I test you?

Cass - can la, just compare the words.

Me - ok.. 

10 minutes later, she passed a piece of paper to me with a bunch of Chinese words that she'd written on it and asked me to check what she had written with her notes in the notebook.  

She got them all correct!

Ah, now I remember that I used to test Cass in her Ting Xie (Chinese spelling) using this method when she was in pre-school and primary school! 😁

One of the pros of studying in a Chinese Independent High School is the frequent small tests the school imposes on the students.  I think it's a great way of wiring a teen's brain to get them ready for university.  But I don't like some of the ridiculous rules the school imposes and the emphasis it places on academic excellence. Some students may not be able to handle the stress.  

I brought Cass, Alycia and MIL for Korean lunch at Kimchitiam last Monday when she had a 1.5-hour break in between online classes. It was so rushed and she had to attend the earlier part of her next class using my phone in the car.

Sunday, 7 August 2022

Our middle child is finally back from the 'war'. She's been so busy practicing for inter-school sports meets and school sports day for the past two months that she hardly had the time to take care of her health and well-being.  I've not seen her sleep on her bed for the longest time.  She had been so enervated that she dozed off on the couch or on the room floor on most nights.  

I think she's too ambitious and took on too many responsibilities and activities. Her teachers also enlisted her to be the head in charge of the school sports day, as well as to teach other students to dance and lead the cheerleading team. On top of that, she has to train junior librarians.

When the two months of daily training ended with the culmination of her school sports day on Saturday, it felt like my daughter just returned from war when I saw her that night.  With a skin tone twenty times darker after being grilled in the sun daily for two months (she can pass off as a Chindian), a minor skin problem, and a super huge ravenous appetite, she looked even more like a soldier who's not eaten well and slept well who just returned from war-torn Sarajevo 😂. 

For the past two months, she stayed back in school up to 6pm every day, and during the weekends, went to the basketball court to practise cheerleading.  On some weekends, she went to her dance studio for dance performances.  

I told her that from now onwards, she has to focus on her studies as she has only half a year left before her SPM!!  Speaking of which, she found new tutors to give her one-on-one and intensive tuition for the subjects of Math, Add Math, Physics and Chemistry. And not to mention, this is going to cause a huge dent in my wallet!

Oh well, I hope that this is going to be a good investment.

Today we had lunch at Seoul Korea, our favorite Korean BBQ restaurant, and by far the best one that we've tried.  Our lunch today is complete with all our 3 daughters around, which is quite rare now as our two older girls now regularly have their own activities with their friends.

We love the banchan served at Seoul Korea. 

BBQ beef and pork belly.

Super hot and spicy kimchi noodles with pork and lots of Chinese cabbage and onions.

This made everyone huff and puff and gulp down lots of cold water.

Kimchi pancake.

Bibimbap

Steamed egg in stone bowl, our favorite.