Thunderstorms Are Lovely Aren't They?

There was a heavy thunderstorm last night and Zen was initially disturbed by it. It was almost his bedtime when it started to rain very heavily and soon, thunder was heard too. Zen had been playing with his toys and was trying his best to avoid bedtime (as usual). Sigh, he's now running away whenever I say "bedtime" or "bath time" for that matter. And I mean really running away... to his favorite corner. Only hubby's stare can make him come to me albeit reluctantly! *bow down to hubby*

Oh, back to last night. When the thunder became louder and more frequent, Zen was a little affected by it and he came running to me. Didn't cry but wanted to be hugged whenever he heard the thunder. So I thought it would be nice to "introduce" him to Thunder-boy and Lightning-girl! I love watching storms actually and playing in the rain too. Hubby thinks I'm weird! hahahaha!

Brought Zen to our bed, drew back the curtains and we watched the show. He was initially scared of the lightning (it was pretty near) so we tried to make it fun by singing songs and clapping whenever there was thunder. In the end, he fell asleep on his own while the show went on. Ahhhhh...

Age Is No Barrier

Ahhhh, in this time of economic downturn and political protests and yoga ban for Muslims (the latter being the recent instruction to my fellow Malaysians of the Muslim faith), it's wonderful to hear about the marriage of a couple whose age difference is 69 years! And before you go "Wow, the lady must be really stunning" or "the guy must be filthy rich", it's the groom who is younger at 37 years old and the bride a 106 year and I don't think it was because of money!

It wasn't mentioned if the lady was married before but I couldn't help wonder what if she was and had children. How would the new husband address her children? Imagine a 37 year old greeting a 70 year old as "son". hehehe... Opps, guess I should not make fun of them ya. Here's wishing them lots of happy years ahead \(^O^)/

What's That In Your Mouth!?

Zen gave me another scare today. He was playing on his own which was very rare. So I blogged and monitor him from the corner of my eyes. But after a few minutes, I was suspicious, as he is hardly ever so quiet unless he's up to some mischief. So I turned towards him. Immediately he ran behind my chair, playing hide and seek with me! It was those swirling chair and whichever way I turned, he kept running behind the chair.

That's when I really know he was hiding something. You see, he's at the age where he knows when he has done something wrong but doesn't know how to hide it well yet! I caught him and saw that he was sucking on something. Made him go "ahhhhhh" and on his tongue was this tiny piece of wood chip or something like that. Good thing he didn't swallow it! Phew! I'm sure he didn't need this type of fiber. I still have no idea where this came from as we didn't break anything and I couldn't match this color to any other furniture etc.

the wood chip being compared to a 5 sen coin
so you have an idea how small it was.
Sorry about the picture though,
didn't know it was this blur until I downloaded it and
by this time I had threw away the chip to take another photo.

Hubby The Appointed Chef

We always go back to MIL's house for Sunday lunches. That's when all of MIL's children would come back for her yummy dishes. My MIL's a good cook and hubby's always asking me to bai hoi joh sifu (to ask my MIL to be my sifu / master ie to learn from her). (^O^)

Anyway, last Sunday, MIL was busy in BIL's farm and had asked hubby to take over the cooking. And so hubby became the appointed cook. He made fried koay teow (rice noodles). How did it go? Well, it was quite good but could have been better. Even hubby thinks so. And he feels that it was because of the soya sauce. Oh, for hubby, different brands of soya sauce has different taste and hence some are suitable for dipping and some for cooking while others he will not use at all! As for me, I use only one brand of soya sauce and it's for both cooking and dipping!! hahahaha!

frying the prawn and garlic
(aren't those prawns huge? *hungry look*)

adding the rice noodles, soya sauce, dark sauce and sambal
and finally frying everything on high heat.
hubby had to repeat this process 3 times coz there were quite a lot of people for lunch!

PS: sorry there's no final product nicely-placed-on-the-dish picture because we were just too hungry and had forgotten to take picture!

Child-Proofing

We did some child-proofing to our drawers and cabinets recently. Yup, Zen struck again! We had gotten a few types of child-lock and are hoping it would prevent further "destruction" by our little mischievous one, at least until he figures out how to unlock them. Of course, the kiddo was not too happy that some of his "toys" were locked up though. hahaha...

Locking up the TV cabinet to protect daddy's precious DVDs.
Zen was extremely frustrated with this coz it was his daily plaything.
In fact, it was from these DVDs that he mastered the fine motor skills of opening DVD covers!

We also got this lock for drawers but...

...unfortunately, it hooked to the top drawer instead (there was no fixed piece under the top drawer that we can hooked to) and since the top drawer was movable too, you can see as below that it didn't work at all...

It Came, We Saw, He Destroyed

I'm sure when you read the word "destroyed" in the title of the post, the first thing that came to mind was "so what did Zen destroy now" Sigh... yes, he did and the latest "victim" was this lovely book that he got from hubby's aunt. She was in UK visiting her 4-month old grandson recently and she was so sweet to get this gift for Zen.


And you know what Zen did? In less than 24 hours after receiving the gift, he did this! *slap head* I had even kept the book in the drawer (read: away from him) so that I can read to him during his bedtime.

My New Glasses

Remember my glasses came broke and I went to get a new pair? Well, I've got my new glasses now and so far it's pretty alright. I wished that it was once of those $ 8 Complete Rx Eyeglasses but it wasn't. Cost me RM300 (about USD82) for the frame and glasses. And this was one of the more common frames (not those branded ones) and the shop owner even gave me 40% discount! Hmmmm.......

So what do you think of my new glasses? You can tell me the truth... I can take it :-) I know, it's not exactly the most interesting frame but hey, I was erm... tied up with chasing and yelling after Zen when I was choosing the new frame! Should have gotten my frames from The popular online eyeglasses shop instead. Then again, my outrageous-frames days are behind me. Am now going for more "conventional" looking frames. Need to look the part now that I'm a mummy! LOL!

I remember when I first started working, I was wearing contact lenses, had funky frames for my normal eyeglasses and of course those super-cool golf sunglasses! Actually, I still have that golf sunglasses and no, I don't golf at all! You know, I would have chose this Holiday Glass Frames From Zenni Optical too during those days just to be different.

My Kind Of Cooking Show

I'm so excited and can't wait for next Wednesday! Because my favorite cooking show (actually our favorite coz hubby loves this show too!), Iron Chef is going to be aired on our paid-tv. I heard it's quite popular in the West too.

But you know what, it's more of a game show than a cooking show as it's very high paced and has suspense and sometimes don't show all the steps of preparing the dishes! LOL! The Chairman, who is the host of the show always introduced a themed ingredient that will only reveal at the start of the show, and with much fan fare I should add. Contestants have 1 hour to prepare their dishes (usually between 4-5) and are supposed to use this themed ingredient in all their dishes. But I read somewhere that the contestants were told of a few possible ingredients a couple of days beforehand so that the organisers can get the other "supporting ingredients" that the contestants may need.

Every week there'll be a different challenger and they will challenge one of the the iron chefs. Oh forgot to mention the other hilarious thing about this show is the iron chefs always make a grand entrance, ie on a raising platform! Just like in those sci-fi movies! And they are always holding some sort of item eg a knife or a pear! Unbelievable!

Our Beary Friends

I recently realised that Zen has quite a lot of bear friends... \(^O^)/ Introducing (cue drum roll)...

the twin polar bears (used to be daddy's)

Cadbury bear (also once belonged to daddy)

Forever Friends bear (this one came from mummy)

Pooh bear (ahhh, finally one that is not a hand-me-down bear!)
a split second after I took the previous photo,
Zen had snatched Pooh's pot of honey...
good thing it's magnetised

Zen's current fav bear... (was mummy's)

Why? Because it's his sparring partner!
"But mummy, bear-bear started it first!"

Yippee!

School is out! Why am I so happy you asked? Especially when I don't have a school-going kid. Well, traffic is always so much more smoother for once. And that's a celebration for me. And I guess most of the boggers mummies and daddies out there are busy planning for trips. Have fun ya. Remember to send me a postcard! :-)

On another note, petrol prices came down again today (or was it yesterday?). Yippee! Went to fill up my car's tank and the Esso station had signs on its pumps saying "petrol finished"! And this was only at 2pm. Oh well, it's ok since there were other petrol stations nearby which had petrol. Am now waiting for other "related" prices to come down too especially food prices, you know, those that shot sky high when the petrol prices went up. Or am I waiting in vain? Some had gone down but will the others follow? Hmmm... food for thought ya.

Parking Wars

Nope, am not referring to the game in Facebook! :-) This happened to our friend and I'm curious to know what you would have done if it was you...

Location: A peaceful neighborhood somewhere

Time: Slightly before 10pm

Scene:
Our friend was on his way home after spending long day outside and was looking forward to taking a nice warm bath and spending some time watching late night TV eating popcorn (okay, am not so sure about the TV and popcorn part). Just as he reached his home, he saw his entrance blocked by another car and he had no idea who that car belonged to.

So he got out of his car slightly agitated and started ringing his immediate neighbors' doorbells looking for the owner. None of them knew anything about it and he started asking his neighbors' neighbors. And you can imagine him getting more and more heated up as he rang more bells.

Finally he found the owner to be his neighbor few doors away (actually it belonged to this neighbor's relative, which explain why our friend didn't recognise the car). Let's call this neighbor L. So L came out to remove the car and apologised and explain that "since we didn't see your car, we thought you have gone for a holiday". And our friend, in a raised voice, remarked that that was not a right thing to do. L got shocked since our friend was always a very nice guy. But before L could say anything, neighbor R who was our friend's immediate neighbor (by this time, all the neighbors that our friend had inquired, have came out to watch and were wondering whose car that was) exclaimed that it was wrong for L to do so and if they do it again, she'll have it towed! Protective neighbors our friend got ya...

L shouted to her that it was not parked in front of her house and she should not interfere. R shouted back and our friend went to defend her. Cut story short, a shouting match started. Tempers flew and abusive words thrown. Finally, one of the neighbors came to calm everyone down. Took some time but everyone calmed down. L apologised again and our friend accepted. Phew... (^o^)v

What would you have done if you were L? He was clearly in the wrong but how would you have acted, if you were him, when R said those things? Would you have raised your voice too to defend yourself or would you ignore it and thus may prompt more "comments"... (^-^)?

Quarelling Again...

One of our neighbor that is... The husband and wife quarreled frequently... Am not sure what exactly they argued about since I tried not to eavesdrop (though it's kinda hard not to hear it) and also because they speak in a dialect that I am not familiar with. But sometimes I could catch a few hurtful things they shout at each other like asking the partner to... well, take a one way trip out of this world(!) and I don't mean on a rocket to the moon.

They both seem like really nice and hard working people. We always have cheerful greetings whenever we bump into each other. Wonder what went wrong... Is it because of their characters or is it because of work / family stress? Character wise, the husband is a little bit on the quieter side while the wife is more vocal, one who will speak whatever she thinks, including how she felt about the husband. Guess this didn't go in well with the husband...

I do feel sad for their kids. They are good kids, well mannered and smart. But there are times I could hear the kids shouting mean things to each other, words that I'm sure they picked up from their parents' arguments... I do wish that the kids won't grow up slipping into their parents' shoes.

My Glasses Broke For The 3rd Time!

Well, not exactly broken but the screw is loose and I had to get it tighten 3 times in the past 2 weeks. Getting a replacement screw didn't seem to help so I guessed I have to make a new one. It started in July when my glasses fell (the youngest member of our family made a grab for it and it fell onto the floor and the left glass broke) and I had to replace the left glass. Since then, the screw was a bit loose but it could still hold the glasses... until 2 weeks ago.

So we went to the optician and chose a new glasses for me. It was challenging as I was on a budget (it's amazing how expensive those frames costs!) and I had Zen with me. It was an almost impossible task choosing a new frame and had my eyes check. Zen treated the place like his own home! He climbed the chairs, pulled at the plants, threw magazines off the table and removed the shop's "open" signage that was stuck to the glass door! As if he wants to close the shop for them! *slap forehead* And all this while I was chasing after him.

I must have been their most easiest customer since I wasn't fussy and just picked one out of the 5 frames that the shop owner showed me! Not that I didn't want to check out the other frames but I just didn't get the chance! Hope the one I chose looks good on me! And I think Zen was the shop's most difficult child! hahahaha!

Routing For Better Internet Connection

Yes, it's another one of my post about my computer and internet service... sigh... is there no end to this you asked? My apologies ya... I just need to get his out of my system else I'll go nuts... I'll be ok once I post this. Because it sort of gets sent out to blogging space and I no longer feel so upset. Hehehe, blogging is my therapy. Anyone else can relate to this feeling? (^O^)/

Well, my internet is still slowwww... And I'm beginning to wonder if it was our computer that's the problem. I mean we do the occasional maintenance eg defragmentation, virus and ad scanning etc but there's no problems there (so far... cross fingers). Our computer technician did suggest that it could also be our wireless router or modem that may be causing the problems. If it's really our router's problem, then I think we'll get one of those new routers that incorporate safety eg anti-virus, anti-spyware and anti-phishing software. I mean if it has all these anti softwares, I'll definitely be very interested since I can save so much time!

The other product I'm looking at is a portable router. Am thinking of hopping over to the nearby shopping mall for people watching and blog at the same time! hehehe...

Trust No One!

Was at the bank just now to withdraw some money. Just as I was walking towards the bank's ATM machines corner, I could see people crowding outside. But they were having a bored look on their face so I knew there weren't anything serious (eg like someone crashing their car into the bank... can read about it here! I wonder if the car owner's insurance company be paying for the damage... hmmm).

Anyway, saw the security company's armored van outside and guessed they were either putting money into the ATMs or it was collection time from the ATMs or both. But what was interesting was the way the security company's guard behaved. He barred everyone from entering the ATM machines corner (which explains why there was a crowd) and stood in front of the glass doors looking as if he was expecting robbers anytime! It's true. He's got this don't-mess'-with-me look and he kept scanning the crowd for suspicious people or actions and held his rifle as if he was going to shoot anytime. Even Zen was afraid of him! hehehe...

Well, I guess I don't blame him... one can never be too careful especially when he's "in charge" of so much cash!

Busy Babe

Part of Zen's daily "chores" includes the following... It's tough being a kid :-)

Before...
N0te: The smaller parts were intentionally removed as they are choking hazards

After...

Shhhh... recharging after a hard day's "work"

Indy Interrupted

Over the weekend, hubby and I decided to watch Indiana Jones and The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull on DVD. We are great fans of Indiana Jones and had been wanting to watch it for the longest time.

Did we enjoy it? Certainly! How did it go? Well, there were lots of "Be Careful!", "Come Here!", "Don't do that...", "Watch where you are going!", "Don't climb that!", "Put that back this instant", "Please don't move!".....

Oh, those exclamations were what hubby and I were telling Zen... in case you thought it was from the movie... :-) As for the movie, you just need to watch it yourself. Hmmm, I think I need to watch it again since I missed quite a lot too...

Upgrading... Or Was It Downgrading?!

Warning: I just want to get this off my chest and if you are feeling lousy today, do give this post a miss ya...

A month ago, we upgraded our internet service and were told that we can come and collect our new modem in a month's time. Our current modem is not the service provider's but ours. So we happily went to the internet provider's office today to "collect" the new modem.

This is where things didn't go well. We got our number which was "327" and we waited... and waited... and waited... but it seemed that numbers with 3xx were not moving though other numbers were being called. We waited for almost half an hour before we realised that some people were queuing up in front of the counters. Apparently, the machine is unable to dispense queue numbers for 3xx and customers were told that they should line up instead... Hmmm...

So we lined up and when we got to the counter, we were told that the modem would only be given to new applications and not for upgrading. Huh? But at least they would provide warranty to our current modem. I'm not upset because I did not get a new modem... rather, I'm upset because they gave us the wrong information the first time. Both hubby and I heard the same thing so it's not a matter of misunderstanding and I even wrote it down on the receipt the date of collection. Sigh... wasted much of the weekend...

Moral of story .... "trust no one!" Muahahahaha!

My Heart Almost Stopped!

Yeah, and no prize for guessing who made me felt that way! Zen, of course!

You see, he's currently teething and is always looking for something to chew on. Well, almost everything... he doesn't want to chew on his teething ring (chilled or not) and instead uses it for target practice... (-.-)

The latest thing he chewed on was this:

I turned my back on him for 2 minutes and in that 2 minutes, he had managed to dig out my new tube of face cleanser which I kept in my drawer and started chewing on the sharper end of the tube. He must have chewed quite hard because when I turned around, I saw blood literally dripping from his mouth! And he still have the tube in his mouth and the cheek to grin at me!!

I panicked and immediately took it away from him and tried to get him to open his mouth. He wouldn't cooperate (not surprising) so I wet a hanky and ask him to bite on it. It was soak with blood. My heart was beating so fast. Called his pediatrician and she asked to put pressure with hanky and monitor if bleeding still continues but thinks that it should be alright. Repeated a few times despite Zen's struggles and after about 10 minutes, the blood stains grew lessor... phew!

My life just got shorten by a few years!

To The Park

Nowadays I have difficulty getting Zen to take his nap and to sleep at night. He just have too much energy or so it seemed to me... So sometimes I take him to the park and let him play (read: wear him out)... hehehe But sometimes I come home more exhausted than him... signs of getting old....

And once again Mighty Zen save the planet by defusing the dangerous bomb!!

Presenting wabbit teeth boy!
(he loves to clench his teeth this way...)

"Mummy, I had great fun... Can we come again tomorrow?
Mummy? Mummy? Are you pretending not to hear me?"

More Calls...

I'm beginning to think that I don't have much friends! This call that I received this afternoon was from an opinion research firm. The caller is a student currently studying PR and wanted to earn some extra income. How I know? I asked her back.... *grin*

Hey, she was asking so many questions! And most of them were regarding the current political and economic situation. Hmmm.... Do I think there are enough jobs out there? Was I satisfy with how the country is ran? Are prices of goods high or not? Some I answered and some I choose not to answer while others I don't have an answer... eg Do I think the economy is going to be good or bad next year?! Well, I hope it would be better though I have a feeling it may not... and my answer to the researcher "I don't know... and if I know, you would be able to tell your friends that you just spoke to God!" I said that in a nice manner so she laughed but still pushed me for a yes or no answer. Sigh...

Red Rose Award

Got a lovely rose from KM and Sweetiepie. Thanks ya girls!

Red Roses for 7 Friends

The rules of the award are:

1. The winner can put the logo on her blog.
2. Link the person you received your award from.
3. Nominate at least 7 other blogs.
4. Put links of those blogs on yours.
5. Leave a message on the blogs of the girls and boys you've nominated.

Awarding Amidrin, Judy, Rachel

In the Middle Of The Night

We had some prank calls in the middle of last night. Was at about 3am I think. The first time our phone rang, hubby answered and I think there was no sound on the other end. The 2nd time it rang, it was after we had dozed off. But the ringing stopped before hubby could answer the call. So we decided to unhook the phone. Unfortunately, Zen was woken up by the calls and had difficultly sleeping after that and I had to accompany him... sigh... So am feeling sleepy now...

Anyway, this reminds me of another phone incident a couple of days earlier... This guy called up twice asking for I-can't-be-bother-to-remember-who and I told him twice that he got the wrong number. He even confirmed the number he dialed which was mine, so I requested for him to recheck his number. Instead, he got another person to call! This was how the third call went...

Me: Hello?
Caller: Is this xyz?
Me: Nope (too lazy to explain anymore)
Caller: Where is this?
Me: Thailand
Caller: WHAT?
Me: Thai-land.... (in pretended Thai slang)
Caller: OK.. OK.. sorry... *click*
Me: muahahahahahahahaha (the things I do for entertainment!)

For the benefit of international readers, Thailand is our neighboring country and it would costs so much more to make a call there... :-) But I'm sure the caller would realise that I was joking after he hung up... hehe

Lots of Mickey and Minnie Mouse

We went to hubby's cousin sister's house this morning. She just gave birth to a baby girl and it was the baby's "fullmoon" (1 month old). And she is such an adorable baby... And on my side of the family, my cousin sister gave birth to a baby boy in June and her brother, my cousin brother, too just got a baby boy last week. And so Zen is no longer the youngest and has now been promote to older brother status. In the blogging world, the stork were busy delivering babies to Sasha, Chin Nee, Shireen, Mott, Chanel. Congrats all.

Most people were asking when are we going to have a second one. It's funny how people will always ask you when are you getting married when you were single and when you are married, they will ask you when are you going to have a baby and now that you have a baby, they'll ask you when you are going to have a second one! Anyway, for the record, we probably will wait till Zen is bit older since he's quite a handful now. You know what his new trick was? Climbing onto chairs (and sometimes onto the tables) and start doing his rain dance! *slap forehead* Hmmm, I wonder if he'll tone down when he's older?

What's The Price Again?

As usual, I found some hypermarket promotional pamphlets in our mailbox this morning. They usually distribute these pamphlets just before the weekends. Smart! Anyway, was interested in Carrefour's pamphlet. Reason... hubby's and my favorite chocolate milk drink was sold with a 16% discount. Yes, both of us are into chocolate! And the reason melamine scare didn't stop us (of course we made sure the milk was not from China first... hehe) but the recent unbelievable price hike did reduce our consumption.

So off we went to Carrefour for our weekend shopping. Hmmm, these pamphlets marketing works... seeing that we seldom shop in this hypermarket. So there we were happily loading into the trolley our one-year supply (just kidding, maybe one-month supply) of chocolate milk drink as well as some other groceries and then proceeded to the checkout counter.

Now, both hubby and I usually do not memorise all the prices of the stuff that we buy and making sure the cashier punch in the correct amount. Since they now use that point-of-sales laser gun (don't know what they call them) so we assumed it's correct. That's it until the cashier "beep" our chocolate milk drink and we realised the price shown was before discount.

So we inquired and the cashier was clueless and had to refer to her superior of whom we showed the pamphlet. The superior, after looking at the pamphlet, asked us to request for refund from the customer service counter since "the computer has not been updated". Hmmm, and this was into the 2nd day of the sales. Anyway, we received our refund without any problem but I couldn't help but wonder about the other consumers who were not paying attention to the transactions and ended up paying more than they should. What's your shopping style? Do you look closely at the prices being "beep"?

mummy, are we done yet?
daddy, why can't I scream?
mummy, see me pull these clothes off their hooks!
daddy, I think I squash the grapes!