Inspired Momx1

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Plan Your Work


I was busy preparing the ingredients needed for my pot of old cucumber soup after clearing the dinner dishes when Ian walked into the kitchen.

Ian: Mommy, what are are you doing?

Me: Mommy is getting ready ingredients to be put into the crockpot. You will have old cucumber soup for lunch tomorrow. (Seeing a good opportunity to teach him a moral lesson, I started drumming into his head the importance of planning his work to get desired results, must do revision everyday and not lag behind larrr, don't rush last minute lah bla bla bla).

Ian: (Half way into my lecture, Ian quickly opened the kitchen tall cabinet and took out a packet of Milo). Mommy, can I put this in the fridge now to chill so that I can have cold milo for breakfast tomorrow? Is this called planning, mommy?

Me: *-*

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Monday, March 29, 2010

TTDI Park (Taman Rimba Kiara Park)

My boy jogs ahead of me

TTDI Park is located in front of Sekolah Kebangsaan Taman Tun Dr. Ismail (2). It is a popular haven for jogging and recreational activities to both residents and outsiders. It is also famous for its natural trails and fresh air especially for avid jungle trekkers and mountain bikers.

It is supposed that part of the massive 188.93 hectare public park are to be connected with the KL Golf & Country Club, Bukit Kiara Equestrian Club and Sri Hartamas. Supposedly, it will be our version of London’s Hyde Park. Well, only time will tell when.

Ian has been bugging me to take him to the park to train and prepare for the upcoming school Sports Day where he takes part in the 50m Sprint.

As we woke up from our afternoon nap to a bright and sunny sky yesterday, I decided to take Ian for a jog. Ian has not had the luxury of getting his afternoon naps since school started early this year as he attends afternoon class.

It was a short drive from our condo to the park. There were already cars lining up on both sides of the road though it wasn't long before we got a parking infront of the kebangsaan school.


After crossing the suspension bridge.
A human monkey posing for my camera;)
Kiara View Condo next to the park
.Monkeys on the tree

Tame monkey... responds to me calling

We walked (in between jogs) a complete circle around loop of jogging trail going up and downhill. Along the trail, we could hear birds chirping and insects making their myriads of sounds. We even spotted a troop of monkeys swinging from trees to trees. One of the monkeys on the ground responded to me calling and I quickly took a snapshot of it.

View from the finishing trail

Ian at the playground


Ian bumped into his schoolmate at the playground and while they played together, I wandered around taking some photos.


Kids playing in the stream

It's surely fun playing catch with those fishes!

The playground


The Signage

People from all walks of life, be it lone or with families

The fountain


Ian was so enthusiastic about his upcoming race at the school's Sports Day that he went to bed at 9pm the night before so that he got to swim this morning as the house rule says he must go to bed by 9pm to be able to swim the next morning.:)

Tonight, again, after finishing his homework, he had his supper as usual and while watching his Yamaha DVD (JMC 4), he asked if I could take him for a jog tomorrow morning to get himself prepared for the coming race. O.o. What a determined boy I have here. Hahaha....

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Sunday, March 28, 2010

A Lazy Sunday

Our 2 for 1 Pizza

(Left) Hawaiian Classic (Right) Seafood Delights

We had pizza for lunch today as I did not cook. This time I ordered Canadian Pizza instead of the usual favourite Domino's. This is the first time we ordered from Canadian Pizza and the pizzas were so good with generous cheese toppings, tomato paste and fresh cut tomatoes.
They have all year long promotion of 2 for 1 which means you get 2 regular pizzas of your choice and only pay for 1! I paid RM29.90 plus RM3 delivery charges and that comes to only RM16.50 per regular pizza which is really value for money.

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Saturday, March 27, 2010

Getting Kids To Eat Vege The "Soup" Way

My pot of homecooked Cabbage Soup


Getting Ian to eat greens has been a chore ever since he started taking solids. He only likes long beans, french beans, carrots, onions and potatoes and that undoubtedly limits my cooking boundary in terms of dish options.

On normal days when Ian has to attend school, I will usually boil a soup to go with anything dry such as fried rice. I will either put all the ingredients into my crockpot the night befoe and let it simmer till the next morning or make a quick soup with some meat as stock in the morning.

Last week, I realised I didn't boil soup after cooking a pot of tasty rice and the last batch of minced meat went to the rice already, thus no meat stock for the soup.

I remembered having a bag of dried anchovies in the freezer, I quickly took it out and poured some into a bowl, wash and then transfer it to the pot of boiling water. I then sieved the anchovies from the clear soup and added cut cabbage and carrots into the boiling clear soup together with some fish paste I bought from the wet market for RM5 per box.

And.. Tadaaa.. The soup was ready in 20 minutes and just in time for my boy to have a nutritious meal before going to school. While drinking his soup, my boy kept praising about how delicious the soup was. Hahaha....

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Friday, March 26, 2010

Green Technology

Parents' actions and attitudes toward the environment have tremendous influence on the behaviours of our children.

Help your kids turn trash into treasure. We always encourage Ian to keep all bottles, boxes, papers, cans and stuff that we no longer need in the household and take them to the recycling center on a monthly basis and let him keep any money he earns.

Many people may not know that N-Viro International Corporation has generated sales in excess of $40 million dollars from converting wastewater sludge and other bio-organic wastes into biomineral agricultural and soil-enrichment products with real market value.

N-Viro utilizes patented technologies to stabilize and disinfect municipal bio solids and other organic waste products. These technologies safely and efficiently transform waste streams into beneficial reuse products.

Alternative, renewable and clean coal are some of the energy adopted by N-Viro to reduce the environmental impact and transforms waste to energy.


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Wednesday, March 24, 2010

How To use Kita & Kami




Ian lost two marks to this question in his BM paper. I did not bother much about using either "kami or "kita" in our daily conversation as long as I could put the message across until Ian came to me with his BM paper. Either answer (Kita or Kami) sounds correct to me but I have to find the actual answer and explain to Ian why he got it wrong so that the same mistake will not get repeated.

I googled and got this information from wikipedia:

There are two forms of "we", kami or kita, depending on whether the speaker includes the person being talked to. Kami (exclusive) is used when the person or people being spoken to are not included, while kita (inclusive) includes the opposite party. Their usage is increasingly confused in colloquial Indonesian.

My boy likes to read and view his pictures in my blog and hopefully by putting this down in record, he would get reminded of the proper usage of "Kita" and "Kami".

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Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Playing "Masak"

Getting the "Grill" ready for BBQ;)

Like a big bro only.
In fact, he is 1 yr+ younger than Mei Mei



While we were back in hometown, Ian and Mei Mei liked to play masak together. My parents' house has a spacious backyard. While waiting for the PSP to be recharged or on ocassions when it was taken over by my nephew (Ian's elder cousin), two of them would go out to the backyard and played masak.

The weather there was so freaking hot, with no rain but drizzles for mere few minutes when it did since months ago, according to my sister. I had to change Ian at least thrice a day and luckily I brought along half a dozen of his singlets;) My boy is prone to sweating more than others and to make things worse being super duper active that he is.

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Monday, March 22, 2010

13th Wedding Anniversary



Forgot the name, but there are abundance of Macadamia nuts,
cheese and caramel topping, thumbs up.

New York Cheese Cake, this is Ian's favourite.

American Brownies, too sweet and chewy to my liking


Should have ordered Apple Cheese Slice in the background.


Today marks our 13 years of life journey together as a married couple. As hubby would be home late as usual, he suggested that we went to Secret Recipe for supper instead.

We went to the outlet nearby our condo as tomorrow is a school day. As we had our homecooked dinner at home and were still full, we ordered only cakes.

The place was a bit deserted when we arrived slightly over 9pm. Ian could not finish the brownies that I ordered for him as it was a bit too sweet and chewy. Hubby, being the garbage bin of the family, had to finish it for him.;) My boy instead, chomped down the New York Cheese Cake which was smooth and creamy.

The cake with macadamia was nutty and not as heavy which I like. I would have ordered my favourite carrot cake but it was sold out.


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Ocean King Seafood Restaurant, Sandakan (Revisited)

A New Face Lift of the signboard


The night before we flied back to KL, my brother hosted a dinner at Ocean King Seafood Restaurant, yet again.;) My last visit there was a year ago where we had our breakfast and dinner there. I personally reckoned that the standard of food had dropped and could it be due to the big crowd when we reached there about 8.15pm. The tables at the verandah which overlooks the ocean has all been taken and that left us no choice but settled for a table inside the restaurant.

Business Hours


I think they now open earlier than last year.


The front part of the restaurant

The place where we dined as the verandah was full. We did enjoyed the strong wind that blew in from the side window and the view from the window was great too. I tried many shots to get Sandakan town view from the window but all came out blur.;(

The extension from the verandah

The new extension from the main verandah, there was a vacant table but could not fit the 12 of us in. We get to have a closer view of the live fishes reared in the ocean itself though confined and guarded by netting in cubicles.

Live lobsters

Mantis Prawns

Garoupas


Crabs

White Clams

Prawns


Boy Boy, my sis's 2 1/2 yr old son

Ian and Mei Mei


Sea Snails (tung fung luo)

Closer shot

The flesh.. after being removed from the shell
Deep Fried Seafood Tofu (Beancurd)
This one tastes yummy

Steamed Garoupa
a bit overcooked

Fish Maw Soup
not bad

Crispy Chicken
the meat was quite tough

Butter Prawns
preferred unshelled, quite tough though

Stir-fried Vege, tastes right

All of us agreed that the food at KeranaMu was far more satisfiable than what we had here.

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Sunday, March 21, 2010

Updates on Mom's Progress - Post Chemo





We were back in Kuala Lumpur last Friday after a 6 days/5 nights "Balik Kampung" trip to Sabah during the school holidays and I am relieved to see mom all well andh healthy.

It has been 3 months since mom went back to hometown and I am grateful that she is back to her normal self, both physically and mentally sound and able to cook us delicious meals. The homecooked "chan luo" soup (a type of snail) and steamed "Lai Mang" (a type of fish called slimy spinefoot) greeted us as soon as we arrived home from the airport. I only get to eat these two dishes when I am back in Sandakan and they are simply yummilicious! My mom likes to add some sun dried mandarin peel for zest on the "Lai Mang" fish dish and steam over boiling rice in the rice cooker. Slurps...

My mom and I would walk to the wet market located about 300kms from the house every other morning to buy breakfast, veges and meat. We enjoyed our moments together when we could chat about anything under the sky and as I share my mom's bedroom while Ian sleeps with his cousin brother and sister upstairs, we would continue chatting at night until one of us doze off ;).

Mom still experiences frequent urination during night time and visits the toilet at least twice every night. She had her blood and ultrasound test done here in KL before she left for Sandakan and everything including her renal function was all well. She did yet another renal test at Hospital Duchess of Kent in Sandakan and the result came back fine. I bought her a bottle of Bragg Organic Apple Cider Vinegar to try out as I suspect the frequent urination was due to a recurrent UTI attack. Apple Cider Vinegar contains high concentration of enzymes that prevent the bacteria that cause UTIs from multiplying. She has been taking 1 tbsp of the vinegar with a full cup of water on empty stomach every morning and we will see how things go.

She eats well too and her thinning hair from the chemo side effect has since grown back. Everything looks good for mom and now my sister is trying to get the soonest appointment available for the 2nd abdominal CT scan to be done at the local hospital there, 1st CT scan being done pre-operation at Assunta Hospital 9 months ago to see if mom's internal was clean. We keep our fingers and toes crossed..

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Friday, March 19, 2010

Holiday Ends Here

Sandakan Airport Boarding Hall
Everything good has to come to an end. We left my parents' house for the airport after breakfast. Ian hugged his Popo, GungGung and Yiyi who saw us off before walking into the boarding hall. He spotted this Orang Utan huge plush toy displayed in front of a souvenir shop at the boarding hall and insisted that I took photos of him with the Orang Utan.

The Free T-Shirt was out of stock:(
We boarded the plane as scheduled and were allocated the very last row of seats. Ian said he was hungry and requested me to order spaghetti bolognese for him. He was so drained that he knocked out way before his meal arrived, the result of playing non-stop with his 2 cousins every day the moment they open their eyes through midnight.
The school holiday promotion set that I had wanted to order but the T-Shirt was out of stock even it was still 2 days away before the promotion ended. What a dissappointment!
All drained up. Had to wake him up to eat.;)
As hubby was outstation and unable to fetch us from LCCT, we took a cab back and that set me back RM70+. We enjoyed our trip back home and would certainly cherish the quality time spent together with my parents, brothers, sister, old friends, nephews and niece.
The RM9 Inflight Meal for my boy

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