Mencandat sotong anyone?

Nak mencandat sotong kat Terengganu tak?

We have a fishing boat for rent at RM500 per trip, with handsome guide and bait included. Drop me an email if interested.


Disclaimer : mok cik tak bertanggungjawab atas kes mabuk laut, okay

Surat untuk boss

Dear boss,

I do not want to go to either Dallas or Kendal. Period. Reason being my current domestic affair is in shambles. And my other boss at home requests a spanking new Cambodian maid of whom I do not know where else to source. But most importantly, both places are not glamorous enough to justify the travelling time (economy class pulak tu...sheesh).

Rgds,

Your lovely FC

*sigh* wish i have the gut to really send this to the boss

S.O.S

Help!!!

No maid!

But we'll live.

Lost, found, lost then found again....

To our surprise, Amri's bicycle was sitting at our front porch when we came back from watching that Duyung movie. All parts intact. But obviously, an attempt has been made to repaint it.

Bibik told us that someone rang the door bell and when she opened the door, she only saw the bicycle, left at the gate. Hmmmm....

This one is really an amazing bicycle. It was stolen once last year then returned (taken) back after a few weeks. It was stolen again earlier this year but returned the next day and the boy's brother who took it apologized to Amri saying that his brother took it by mistake.

There was also one day when it was raining heavily so I decided to fetch Amri and his bicycle from school by car. And I saw a few bigger boys, could be in Year 5 or 6, playing with Amri's bicycle ( and some other bicycles) a little bit further off from where he usually park his bicycle. Then I saw Amri walking towards them and asked for his bicycle back but the big boys just ignored him. Amri was looking around him, presumably hoping to see a teacher or anyone and caught sight of me. When the boys saw him telling me about them, they quickly abandoned all bicycles and left the school compound. Hmmph! Anak sapa lah tu............ But, better not be prejudiced about it. You never know what's happening on the other side of the story.
















Well, sometimes I couldn't help but feel wouldn't it be fun if I could install a GPS on that bicycle. Just for the heck of it. Or convinced the school to install cctv, rather than spending it on that mosquito breeding pond

Genting Highland Day 2

Wonder how many rides it took to satisfy these boys?








Anyway, we had a great time playing bowling, the only thing that of interest to me there. I haven't played for the longest time. And even last time, it was just an intro. Did not enjoy it last time as my hand were not as strong plus the old injury made me extra cautious. Well, thanks to all my fitness trainers, I now had a pair of strong hands and relatively healthy bicep/tricep and whatever else were there.

The only thing is, I played at my best with loud music on. It was my source of energy and concentration. While hubby on the other hand, get annoyed and packed up to leave once the music started blaring. *Sigh*

School holiday - Genting Highland

We could not afford the time for long holiday so this will be it. Definitely not my choice of place but the boys loved it.

Genting was pretty cold (colder than I remembered) and wet. Though fortunately, not heavy rain. The girl at outdoor theme park counter warned me that if it rained heavily, people had to vacate the area and no refund would be given. Okay....okay!



Warlords with their baloon swords


















Dinasour park















Amri is 125cm tall. Too tall for kiddy ride, too short for adult ride. So video game, then

School holiday - Duyung

The boys were not well in the morning. Both of them were having diarrhea and kept on purging. I suspected the culprit was the water from Wet World from yesterday outing. It just occured to me that, though it probably had more water than PADE, I could not smell chlorin. Well, yes but just a little bit. It was nowhere like PADE where you could smell the chlorin even from the parking lot. So, minimal chlorin, insufficient (and horrible) toilets, people jumping in with their jeans and saree plus the usual school holiday crowd and you get the drift....

But then again, it could be that the boys had eaten something bad.

Fortunately, they were quite okay in the afternoon. So we (read : managed to drag hubby out of his office) took them to Cineleisure to watch Duyung.

It was a fun story, as long you keep your mind simple and switched off your brain for two hours. Highly recommended if your purpose was to entertain a couple of kids under 10 and wanted to avoid too many questions. Amri totally loved it. I guessed his own vivid imagination could accept it very well. Adam yawned throughout the movie but perked up during the aspalela song. From that moment onwards, he kept on repeating it with Amri occasionally joining in. Hmm...this one really loves to sing

School holiday - day 2

The boys were pretty restless. To a certain point, so was I. So I took half day off for everyday for the rest of the week to enjoy the company of my two boys. Three boys, if I could drag hubby away from his work.

With so much excess energy, we decided to go to Shah Alam Wet World. Believe it or not, despite being Shah Alam resident for oh so many years, I had never been to this place. Yes, I bypassed it on my occasional walk at the lakeside but never felt like checking it out. Neither did the boys asking about it.

It was raining heavily when the boys and I arrived there but I decided to go ahead and bought the tickets. By the time I came out from the changing room, the rain had stop and the two boys were already inside one of the pool.

The place was quite okay. Lots of lifeguard, which was very important when I was the only adult handling two waywards boys. Though Amri could managed himself inside water pretty well now but still, he was just 5 inches over 4 feet.

Well....we had a great time. No photos to share because i was busy splashing in the water myself.

Anyway, their toilet was filthy, dark and reeking of cocroach. The changing room, while big enough to accomodate the crowd, had some shower doors missing. In fact, there were more shower cubicles without door than the ones with door intact. Also, the lifeguard were pretty lenient and let people get into the pools wearing coloured t-shirts, whatever pants people happened to wear and even sari. Ewww.....

I dont think a second visit is a good idea. In fact, I'm going to strike off this place from my to do list if my nieces and nephews (dan juga anak anak angkat saya) were to come over for holidays unless they beg for it.

The boys slept all the way home. Lucky I did not make any plans to drop by anywhere.

School holiday - day 1

The boys were very happy. Tok Kie was coming over. They did not even eat breakfast at home, instead both chose to eat nasi lemak (yg tak sedap) at KLIA while waiting for Tok Kie's flight to arrive.

There'll be no balik kampung trip this time as I was pretty tied up with work. So was hubby. But the boys absolutely had no problem to keep each other entertained.

Post election day

It was pretty good, I guess. Dinasours are on their way out. We'll see the outcome in the next five years.

Spent most of the days either reading the newspaper or surfing the net.

Pilihanraya ke 12

Selamat Mengundi!

Mine will be at Section 6, Shah Alam so i will not be joining the crowd at highways. It will be business as usual. That is, breakfast-send Amri to USJ6-shop at pasar Section 6. Most probably I will vote first, then only stock up at the wet market. Or if the queue is too long (more than 5 people), I'll go back and cook lunch first. Will drop by on my way to having fun somewhere later. Hopefully the boys will behave.

Last time I voted, it was during my maternity leave. Hubby had taken Amri with him to vote at Terengganu. What a freedom. I went out to vote and only came home when my breastpads had reached their maximum limit :D

Vote well, everyone

And again

Amri's bicycle was stolen again. I said again because this was not the first time. It was stolen once last year and Amri was so upset about it. We bought him a new bicycle but he still wanted his old one. But one day, hubby came across a boy in our neighbourhood, riding that bicycle. It was modified but unmistakeably Amri's bicycle. Upon hubby's interrogation, he admitted that the bicycle was not his, but was borrowed from his friend. He later showed hubby where the friend's house was.


Amri and his latest best friend, Aqif












When hubby told this to me, I was imagining that the poor boy was probaby living in a rented house somewhere in TTDI Jaya, with at least 10 siblings and single income. His parents probably could not afford to buy a bicycle for each one of them. I was quite prepared to just forget about it and let the boy had that bicycle. As it turned out, the boys's father was a Finance Manager at a some highway management co (Litrak? Elite?) and his mom was just as well to do. And no, he did not have 10 other siblings to fight with. Hmph!

We took back the bicycle, of course.

Okay, I knew finance managers were a busy lot, but wouldn't you noticed an additional bicycle at your own house? Especially if you did not buy it. Every single finance manager I knew had eyes like an eagle.

Well, Amri was happy to have his bicycle back. The bad boy had the cheek to come to my house, along with his sidekicks and harassed my maid. But no damage there as bibik stood her ground.

That was one year ago. Bad boy and his thugs were already graduated to Form 1. Probably stealing motorbike and training to be a mat rempit.

Amri on the other hand, was happy with 2 bicycles but it was very clear which one he prefered. He cycled to school except for a few weeks when he took Sharlini missing case very badly and was too scared to cycle. Even with bibik escorting him to and fro. He was scared that bibik would be kidnapped as well. The phase lasted a few weeks then he was back on the wheel.

And now it was stolen again. *sigh* but Amri taken it pretty well. It happened at his school and I still did not make any report to the school admin yet. Shall I? Heard from teachers that it was pretty common. And a neighbour said he once came across a couple of boys trying to break a bicycle lock.

Dear God, please,please, please, do not let any of my boys turn out bad like that. I wouldn't know what to do if my boys start going around school and housing areas stealing bicycles and harassing maids.

Enough with that. Lets move on to latest favourite pastime of my boys - fighting. Nope, no longer just verbal shouting match and a few rough tumbling. It had evolved to full bloody street fight. Well, it started with verbal fight allright. Somehow, despite being our official motormouth, Adam always lose this kind of match. Probably because he was just four yrs old and has yet to acquire a variety of vocab. He knew it and was annoyed because he could not win. So he boxed Amri's mouth. End result - Amri had a bloody upper lip and Adam had a bloody knuckle. Both were wailing loud enough to give me migrain.

I was not too sure what caused the fight and which one of them started it. So we decided to penalise both. Hubby and I went out for teh tarik without them. Which caused the wailing immediately turned into full volume bloody murder scream.

Haiyoh....Maybe I need to look into sound proofing my house

The high and low of life

Someone tried to talk to me regarding her worries about her high blood pressure and the effect of it should she decided to try for another baby. Somehow I made light of her predicament, asking her to start exercising instead. It was very, very wrong of me to do that. And I am so sorry. Didn’t know what was wrong with me that morning, seeing that my office server was down and I had nothing better to so I should be able to talk her through her worries in a more helpfull way. But I did not and I regretted that.

Anyway, to make up for it, I decided to blog about high BP, of what little I know about it. If any medical expert reads this, feel free to correct me.

As a general rule, anything 140/90 is considered high. It meant the force against your artery wall when the blood is pumping is higher than normal. A very high blood pressure during pregnancy will limit the oxygen supply to fetus so there’s the risk of poor fetal growth there . Apart from that, there will be a risk of premature separation of placenta from uterine wall. In other word, low birth weight , premature birth or God forbid, stillbirth. And there is also pre-eclampsia to deal with, which could be fatal for both mother and baby. However, I have no doubt that this situation could be fixed with medication and proper medical attention. The only bad thing is that you may end up having to attend more pregnancy check up. Just remember to consult doctor and gynae first before conceiving that little one

Exercise? Well, it is good in a way that it will make your heart stronger. When the heart is stronger, it can pump blood with less effort. So less pressure on the poor arteries. On a moderate case, exercise alone is enough to keep the BP in control. Good for someone who is very indiciplined when it comes to taking medication everyday. But, just because I say so, please don’t just hop on to a treadmill and run for 5km daily. Check with any good doctor first and get the green light. Then start it easy. Increase the pace gradually. In two or three months, it will help put some stabilizing effect on the blood pressure. By all means, stop and run to the doctor if there is any chest pain, dizziness, shortness of breath or your heart skip a beat (but not due to your kids jumping down the staircase, ok). And no, I do not recommend yoga. What I meant by exercise is your regular cardio workout like jogging, swimming, walking, cycling or ermm belly dancing pun boleh kot.

Food? Perhaps go easy on salt and start increasing calcium/magnesium intake. I remembered my mom, whom also has high BP, initially prepared 2 sets of meals. One is low salt/low fat menu for herself and a normal one for the rest of us. But over the years, we all ate the same low salt/low fat food, which I still practice till now. Just excuse my occasional eating binge under the disguise of company entertainment.

One last thing is, to get a different doctor to check your BP, under different circumstances. (read : without feeling like murdering the boss, the hubby, the kids then blowing up the rest of earth). It may give different reading now that you're feeling less murderous.

Ref: http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov

Mengada-ngada

I was paying Amri's swimming lesson fees to Marilyn in her tiny office at PADE, when suddenly Amri said to her,

"I do not want to join Cikgu Shahir's class. I prefer Cikgu Hafiz"

"Pleeaaaseeee.....can I go back to Cikgu Hafiz's class?"

Marilyn was stunned for a second before she broke out in loud guffaws.
"But Cikgu Shahir is very kind and very fun. Plus, cikgu Hafiz has to teach other class" she said kindly to Amri, whom by now looked very close to tears.

I was seething inside.

"But Cikgu Shahir is nasty".

And guess who would appear at the doorside at that time, if not the so called Cikgu Shahir himself. Adussss...........

To my relieved, he just laughed merrily, ruffled Amri's hair, grab a bagful of colourful balls and rushed Amri along to poolside. Surprisingly, Amri just followed meekly in his wake.

Amri was allright, actually. Just in one of his annoying mood when nothing you said would make sense to him. When I swam nearby half an hour later, he was paddling happily with his friends, wearing new swimsuit and his paddlepop coloured swimcap. The cap still made me cringed but I must admit, it was easier to spot Amri that way. When the only visible part of the kids were their cap and goggles.

Boring, ordinary Sunday

I was back to normal. And had an ordinary Sunday for a change. Cooked breakfast, lunch and dinner. Beginning to feel like a goddess of some sort..hehehe. Oh...I even cooked for tea. In between, cought up on my reading, sorted out the boys junks in their room and get them a haircut.

For some reason, all the barbershop at ttdi jaya were closed. So we went to giant. Luckily not too many people in the one and only shop there. It was manned by two indian men so one man took one boy. Amri tried his luck by telling one of them that he wanted a mawi cut. Duh! Lucky none of them could understand. The haircut took quite some time, what with two fidgety boys who decided they could still fight from their side by side poisition on a very high stool placed by the barbers. At least, verbal fight. Nasib baik itu barber tak accidently (if not intentionally) cut their ears. Anyway, we managed to come through the haircut without too much damage and rewarded ourselves with a mango juice each. Then, the really, really heavy rain poured down. I parked the car quite far and nowhere near the covered walkway. So we decided to wait out the rain. But the rain kept getting heavier and it was already maghrib time. I had no qualm whatsoever to walk in the rain but I was worried with the contents of my bag - company blackberry, personal phone, a cheque for my claim, thumbdrive and what nots (I love carrying lots of junks). On the other hand, if the rain went on much longer, we might have flash flood on some part of the road leading towards ttdi jaya. Not to mention that the two boys might get hungry and insisted a kfc meal again. After much hesitation, I stuffed my bag underneath my tudung and dragged the two boys with me.

We however, did not run to the car. We just walked happily with the boys occasionally jumped into puddles. No point of runnning. We were drenched to the bones the moment we stepped out of giant. Thank god I did not drive the merc, otherwise the owner might not be too pleased having three wet bodies inside his car. The boys were having the time of their life and, ermmm come to think of it, actually, I did too.

Recuperating....

I was in a worse condition than I thought. I reached home about 5pm yesterday evening and went straight to bed. Something I rarely did. When I groggily woke up, Amri was nagging me to go to Burger King. But since bibik already cooked dinner, we ate at home first. However, Amri breezily ate another meal at Burger King later, barely one hour after dinner. Really, that boy had a bottomless stomach and a very indiscriminating appetite.

This morning was a different story. It was raining heavily and I really, really had to make a huge effort just to move an inch of the bed. Brazed the heavy rain to send Amri to his weekly session at USJ6 Dyslexia Centre and then to my own weekly session at Section 6 wet market. While piling the basket with vegis, I felt lightheaded then came the nausea and for a moment, at the brink of passing out. Gosh! If I didn't knew any better, I would have thought that I were pregnant. As it is, I was pretty sure it was one of my low BP, taking a dip lower than usual. A bottle of sport drink later, I was okay. At least enough to see me through the rest of my weekly purchasing. Back at home later, again, I went straight to bed. And woke up near panic because it was 12.20 and I was supposed to fetch Amri by 12.30. Called hubby and thankfully, he was already on his way to fetch Amri. Phew!

The nap had done what it was supposed to do. Put me back on my feet. So after lunch (that I cooked) we went to the warehouse sale and Amri got his new kickboard. As expected, he did not stop at just kickboard but instead, added to his pile, a swimming cap (which colour made me cringe) and a swimsuit (really cheap). Actually he wanted a floatie and a punching bag as well but at my rolled eyes, put it back cheekily. Apa da....
Went to Subang Parade afterwards where Adam was pleasantly surprised to see a live barney, albeit a bit slimmer version. He trailed after barney and tried to pinch him a few times. Since he was happy to trail after that purple dino, I was able to escape to speedy video without both of them. Thank god. Now I had that dvd that i had wanted for quite some time - Memoirs of a Geisha. Already had the book anyway.

Cooked dinner as well, though a bit in a rush since hubby and cu nan wanted to leave early to watch football match at shah alam stadium. They were back an hour later though, because of a power outage. Hmph! But actually, despite of earlier announcement, the game was not cancelled. Perhaps because the footie fans there start throwing things by that time :D
I was glad I just stayed at home and watched my newly acquired dvd.