"Sissy" & "Ki Ki"

We bought two little "puppies" back last week and the girls name them "Sissy" and "Ki Ki", Sissy is a male whereas Ki Ki a female, to support our church raising fund activity, we bought them for RM20.00 each. It is made of more than 200 colourful beads and consumed 5 labour hours. I tied them with a string to keep them visible as I don't want to get busy searching for a 1.5x1.5 inch puppy around the house. The girls are to take good care of them and as for now they are sleeping with them, eating with them, doing homework with them and sometimes crossing overboard to mummy and daddy's room...

"Sissy" belongs to Emily


"Ki Ki" belongs to Michelle


Note: I made a mistake... Emily's dog is "Sissy" not "Chi Chi"...blur blur mummy

"Paint" art

Michelle drew these using the "Paint" program this morning... I must say it's a very good piece of work of hers and decided to post it.




Poor Michelle is down with a fever early in the morning and got to skip school today, she has poor appetite, ulcers in her mouth and vomited just now. She's resting now and hope that she will recover soon... arghh.... a new neighbor is renovating his unit exactly 2 floors above ours and it's driving all of us crazy since 9.00am... please please go for a long lunch, tea time and stop work early......

Earth Hour

Yesterday back from school, Emily reminded me that Saturday, 8.30pm is Earth Hour, got to switch off our home lights to save mother Earth. So 8.30pm came and we switched off the living room's lights, kitchen light, MIL switched off her room lights but daddy still has our room light on stating that he wanted to read... "bad" daddy.... the kids dozed off by 9.30pm...

Life 1, 2 and 3

I will be continuing another semester with my present college on a part time basis, this time I will only work 2 days/week which means more time at home and less $$. For the past 3 months, my schedule has been very flexible and unpredictable which is completely different compared to my permanent job days.

I'm not sure how long I'm going to be in this situation, one part of me actually enjoy the current arrangement and one part of me felt "unproductive and uncertain". I read an article yesterday, the writer shared about 3 stages of life.

Life 1, Life 2 and Life 3.

Life 1 - the kind of life that all of us are familiar with, we grew up, go to school somewhere, form our family, labor hard for career advancement, retired and... Focus is to pursue "success" and success are most often derived from acquiring more wealth (money, power, reputation, position)

Life 2 - mid-life crisis, turning points in life, people who live life 2 will begin to place importance on rebuilding neglected relationships, some may give up their high-paying jobs, some give to charity or missions, others will begin to nurture and develop successors for the next generation, a life-significance exploring stage.

But for Christian we ought to live a Life2+ - not living our own purposeful life but living out God's purpose for our lifes and that is through total surrender to God.

Life 3 - the eternal life, we enter into this life when our physical life ends, life 1 and 2 are a prelude to life 3...

What stage of life am I in? What stage of life are you in?

Above content are abstract from the magazine "The Great Comission" written by Ling Yok Wong, Director's of MCCC.

A trip back home

Since it's school holiday, we went back for an early "Ching Ming" last week. It has been years since I last went back hometown for "Ching Ming", used to be my brother and dad's duty, since girls in the family are supposed to follow the husband's side after married. Well, this year was an exception as this is the first year that we are paying respect to mom since her passing away a year plus ago..

Visiting her resting place sends tons of emotion back to me, can't control my tears at the sight of her beautiful photo planted at her tomb stone. The only assurance that I have is I will be with her one day in heaven.

This trip also serve as a good time for family bonding, me with my brother and sister and the kids with their cousin sisters and brother. One day we were all sitting on the family swing, the same swing that we sat on 30 over years ago, we ask the children to take a shot of us, from left is me (beginning to look more like my sis), my sis (beginning to look more like my mom), my brother (beginning to look more like my grandma)... ha guessed we all have aged gracefully...

Western meal

Just for today, thought of pampering the kids with home cooked western meal. First time doing this as I don’t normally cooked fried stuff at home, firstly it’s oily, secondly it consumed a lot of oil and definitely not healthy… anyway I tried to incorporate healthy side dishes to compensate for the extra calories…

This is what I add on…
Fruit salad
Boiled carrot & slices of tomatoes
Wholemeal bun

To compensate for the….
Fried chicken and French fries…

The results…. Ta da… the kids finished everything without having to be fed or rushed into finishing their meal..

Penang "Sakura"

“Sakura” in Penang? Yeap. One need not have to travel to Japan to enjoy Sakura. We found it on our way back home last Sunday, our homegrown “Sakura” besides the Pantai Hospital in Bayan Baru. If you are staying in Penang, please make a trip there before all the flowers dropped. They came in blooms of glorious white and light purple/pink.

Yesterday evening, packed with my camera we drove there and guess what we are not the only one, there are already few cars stopped by the side of the road and people coming out with their cameras snapping pictures. Children were seen stepping and collecting flowers from a sea of white and purplish flowers, some posing for the cameras.

Of course we got puzzled onlookers staring at us when they drove passed us but soon they realized the purpose of our gathering. Ha ha, some even pulled to the side and slowed down their cars to enjoy the spectacular sight. Bikers, motorists, pedestrians stopped and soon all of them were snapping pictures with their mobile phones.

I’m not sure what trees are they (Tecoma??); in fact I realized such trees are commonly planted by our government along the streets. Somehow this stretch of trees stands out as most of the leaves have fallen from the dry season some months back and the flowers are in full bloom leaving a scene of white and purplish trees. If we are blessed with such beautiful scene each year, I think the government of Penang should dedicate this spot as one of the tourist attraction.

So why wait, if you are staying nearby, please hop on and drive there ya! And remember to bring your camera…

Below are some shots to share with you all...

The many sides of Emily...

My lil old Emily is sure one big "irritator" and who is the victim if not her one and only jeh jeh. Basically everyday I will hear "mummy, jeh-jeh do this to me" or "mummy, emily do this to me"... Hubby keeps on reminding me "Don't die on every mountain... just focused on the main ones" meaning not to be too overly concerned on the little misbehaviour of your child, just come in the picture for the big ones.

Emily always ignored my first instruction, maybe I nagged too much at home quah.. I will have to say twice or more to get my message across... When hubby instructs and stared at her with his big eyes, she will obey immediately. When asked, hubby commented "because I meant what I say, yes means yes, no means no". Somehow I admit using hubby's name to make things easier... "oh daddy is coming back.. oh daddy won't like this... oh daddy..." Hubby commented I'm giving a negative perception of him... okay I'm guilty lor...

On the other hand I realized Emily has great compassion, a good care giver and a heart full of love. She wiped my tears and kissed me on the cheeks whenever I cried over sad movies, she served me with glasses of water and sponge my forehead when I'm down with fever, she lied down with me and keep me accompany when I was unwell. She comforted me with words when I missed her poh poh.. She stroked jeh-jeh's forehead when she had a bad fall and kissed her pointer when I accidentally closed the car door(ouch.. careless mummy...)

Just yesterday I caned her for her wrongdoings...she cried and cried...poor girl but mummy got to discipline you...at the end of such session I always reassured her that I loved her and we end up in each other arms....

Mom, I miss you

For two consecutive nights, I dreamt about my late mom. In my first dream, mom and I were having buffet together, second dream I bumped into mom on the street but she could not recognize me, I held her hands and brought her to look for my sister.

My sis shared that whenever she missed mom, she will look at one of mom's picture, told her that she missed her and hope to see her in her dreams, for a few times mom did actually appeared in her dreams.. :D. We missed her terribly...

Today while preparing for lunch, I was cracking my head on what to do with a piece of lean pork meat. Suddenly I remembered a favourite dish cooked by mom, minced meat with salted vegetable, immediately Michelle and I went to the market to get the required ingredients. While I was cooking the dish, Michelle came in and said if she can helped, I told her of the origin of the dish and someday I will pass the recipe to her just like po po passing her cooking legacy to mummy....

Life is short

A colleague, our librarian passed away recently. The day he passed away I bumped into him while I'm on my way to the rest room, the next morning I heard he was gone. I don't get to know him personally as when I joined this college he was already moving in and out of the hospital. Recently he has been more regular at work, though I don't quite know him, I felt the loss...

One of my students is very closed to him and he shared how they used to spend time together and how on that fateful day they had lunch together, chatted... He was in a shock upon hearing the news and suffering from sleepless nights....

We got the chance to discuss life and death in class, how such incident remind us to reflect the way we've been living, to put our perspective in place and re-examined our priorities.

Life is short....