My home :)

Ever since I moved to Penang in 2006, I only went home during CNY. The last time I went home was in 2009 CNY, and after that I never go home ever since I'm pregnant with Eunice, until recently. My brother got married in Aug and of course I have to go home. :)... and we took Eunice for her first flight at her 18th month.

There are some special things in my home. :)... Besides my family, the home cooked food, the famous Sarawak kampua mee and their laksa, there are some other special things in my home that I cannot find else where.

My dad plants vegetables. And no, he doesn't do that for a living. He worked in a bank before he retires, and now he's helping a relative doing some office work. My grandfather was a farmer. Hence that's where my dad and two of my aunties got the skill from. He uses natural fertilizer (he used to ask my brothers to pee in the potty :P) and no pestiside for his vegetables. The reason he does that is very straight forward - to save money. Now that I'm paying to do the marketing every weekend, I do know that it doesn't only save money, but it also saves the time spent to go and buy in the market - not forgetting that you can always get the freshest vegetable just at your home. :)

That's me in my dad's straw hat cutting some vege for Eunice's porridge

My dad's little farm

Kangkung, spring onions, and some other vege that I don't know what their names are :P

Close shot of some new baby vegetables

We even have dragon fruit trees in my house! :D... And it's the one with the red flesh. During our home trip there weren't any fruit but when my mum visited me few times in Penang, she used to bring some over for me and wow, they are sooooooo sweet! In Penang, sometimes I pay nearly RM3.50 for 1 red flesh dragon fruit, no guarantee that it's sweet. :). And we also have papaya trees. We had papaya trees since I was young. My dad always says papaya are the cheapest fruits to feed a family of 6! :)

The dragon fruit trees


Papaya trees

When we had our wedding in Miri, EG was having some kind of "cultural shock" to see how we, foochow (or hock chew), celebrate a festive day.

First, we won't run away from our famous Sarawak mee suah. This mee suah is different from those that we buy in the market from Peninsula. EG said it's nice and he has never tasted them elsewhere. It's salty, and very thin and soft. I recently got some mee suah from Setiawan from a friend. I'll see if it's the same as ours in Sarawak.

The mee sua

I told EG, I had eggs for breakfast since I'm primary 1 to form 5, almost everyday, except weekends. We'll either have hard boiled eggs, soft boiled eggs, or fried eggs with baked beans. Funny thing is, we never complaint. Maybe because all of us love eggs. And probably that explains why all of us get good results in our exams - eggs are full of natural DHA mar... :P. Anyway, hard boiled eggs are also another must have to eat together with mee sua during a celebration in my hometown.

Hard boiled eggs

Tang Yuen, made of glutinous rice flour, will also be served - but this one is mainly during wedding. I remember my aunty made me and EG to feed each other the tang yuen to signify that we'll be in love forever. :). One thing special for this is that in Miri, or at least in my home, we only have the dry ones - which is coated with crushed peanuts or beans. This round, my auntie made it with pumpkin to add more flavor to it. Actually, I only eaten tang yuen in syrup when my best friend brought some for me during uni time. :P

The yummy tang yuen

The Foo chow red wine chicken soup is definitely a no miss when we go back to Miri. We'll eat this with mee sua together. We'll be served this the day we reach home, and the day we leave home before going to airport. We'll also eat this during birthday, baby fullmoon, or any celebration. It has been the tradition all the while since I was young. This is a very simple dish cooked with chicken, ginger mushroom, and the Foo Chow home made red wine, but for me, I taste really good. I tried to cook it here using the same recipe but it doesn't turn out as nice as my mum's. I checked it through this round and finally concluded that it's the type of chicken that we use. I have to find the special chicken "species" in a bigger market. :)

The boiling chicken soup

And this, is how the mee sua be served to all the guests. A piece of meat with a mushroom, and mee sua. :)

The famous Foo Chow Mee Sua

Sometimes I feel sad that I can't speak Foo Chow anymore since I have not been speaking it after I left home. Even at home, I was speaking the very basic ones with my grandma before she passed away. So, I don't think Eunice will ever learn Foo Chow. But I do hope that I'll continue to let her eat all these traditional Foo Chow food since she's half a Foo Chow now. And I hope she'll appreciate the culture like how I do. :)

Logo's Hope Floating Bookfair

EG's parents came Penang during 1 Malaysia holiday. So, we went to the floating bookfair - Logos Hope that docks in Penang since 25th Aug till 18th Sep.

The ship

Logos Hope

Logo's Hope is the biggest floating bookfair in the world that travels around the world. I have been wanting to visit so we took the opportunity to bring my in laws there together on the holiday.

It was a public holiday but I was hoping the crowd will not be too many. I heard my friend actually queued for 40 minutes to get up to the ship. Thank God when we went, the queue wasn't long - actually there were no queuel. :). The entrance fee is only RM1 per adult, and free for children less than 12 yrs old.

Going into Logos Hope


Though there's no queue, still there're quite a lot of people

Once we went into the ship, there'll be a 2 minutes video to give a short introduction of Logos Hope.

The little girl was also attracted to the video

The mission of Logos Hope

There are quite a lot of books in the bookfair priced from RM8 to RM80. They have a very unique pricing - the books are priced in Units. Every 100 units = RM8. Hence, you'll see books tagged at 100 units, or 300 units. The reason is very obvious - they are travelling around the world, so they just need to change the conversion to the local currency of the countries that they stop. Brilliant idea, I thought. :)

Though there were no queue at the ticket counter, but there are many people browsing the books. That explains why I don't have pictures in the ship. I had to carry Eunice with one hand(worrying that ppl will bang into her), and look for my books with the other hand, while EG looking around for his parents. There's no signal in the ship so we couldn't call. I let Eunice walk at the less crowded place sometimes but still I need to watch over her.

We did not stay long in the ship as the crowd got more and more and we started to feel warm, plus Eunice is showing sleepy sign (yawning). So we decided to pay and get off.

Pose again while on the way back

While doing my payment, I asked the cashier if there are so many ppl everyday. She told me that they haven't had so many visitors for long until today - must be because of the public holiday.

I like the children books on the ship. There are many Christian books and I feel that they are very reasonably priced. I got 2 books for Eunice that is 100 units each (RM8), and EG got a story Bible for Eunice @ 200 units (RM16). I thought they were really not expensive.

For myself, I got a recipe book (to cook for Eunice) and a small baking book at 300 units each. My mum in law got some books too.

Our books from Logos Hope

For EG and my father in law who read a lot, they thinks the books in the bookfair are just so-so, they actually didn't get anything. But I thought it was a very good experience to visit a book fair in the ship, and I won't mind going again. :)

Wei's Wedding

We were away to my hometown for my brother's wedding. I remember during my wedding, we had some trouble looking for photographers in Miri. We got my brother's friend to help us but they came out so-so.

But recently, many photographers bloomed in Miri. I am very impressed by the SDE (Same Day Edit) done by my brother's photographers - who are also my sister's friends. The song is not exactly to my liking but my brother and sis-in-law like it.

But for the videographer, hmm, LOTS of room for improvement still. :)

Lung Wei + Siew Siew SDE from Ruidi Photography on Vimeo.

New Kitchen Gadget

I have been cooking dinner after work since few months back. And I need to work very fast in order to clean up everything by 8pm so that I won't be too tired. I have been telling EG about getting a steamer so that I can steam and cook at the same time.

Though we have a normal pot that can do steaming, but somehow, the water always get collected on the dish and it became not so nice. If I use my wok to do the steaming, it'll be nicer but that means I need to wait for the steaming to be done before I can cook other stuff.

I wanted to get an electric steamer, but my husband is really an old fashion guy though he might not look like one. He prefers the conventional steamer. So, on Friday, we went to this shop that sells kitchen stuff at Bayan Lepas, and got our steamer.

My new steamer - It can go up to 3 tiers. :)

I tried using it today to do the steam pumpkin muffins. The steamer works fine and I really like it (so as EG though he's not the one using it... :P). And look at my muffins. :). They don't look as nice as the recipe links and they tasted a bit hard. However, my cutie pie Eunice loves it very much. She ate 2 straight after the muffins are cooled down.

Steam pumpkin muffins

I purposely did these muffins for Eunice's snack over the weekend. So, it's done by using some organic unbleached flour, organic molasses & organic pumpkin. No I didn't do it purposely, just so happen that I bought them few months back so I need to use them before they are expired. Not sure if it's because of the flour that the muffins didn't crack as nice as it's shown in the recipe. :P

Anyway, I'm still not good in baking. My muffins always turn out hard, or the cake turn out a bit wet. Though it's still edible, and sometimes EG said it's nice and I can see Eunice enjoy eating it a lot, but I still think there's a lot of rooms for improvement - though I seriously think I have no talent in baking. :P

New T-Shirt

Aiyo, I just noticed I haven't been blogging for a month... Geezzz....!

Anyway, EG bought me a t-shirt today from Parkson, 1st Avenue. Nice? He wanted to buy this for me when he brought his parents there few months ago and when they were buying some dresses for Eunice.

He told me the Ben 10 t-shirt was very cute. And he insisted to buy for me.

OK loh. So, nice or not?



See the tag - it's for kids @ 10 yrs old.



OK he's happier than me, and he couldn't wait to wash it so that I can wear it soon. I thought it looks like a boy shirt, but he said it's unisex. OK loh....


Later he added:"But if you wear this to church and 'zhong sam' with Chris on Sunday then I dunno har... I saw him wearing Ben 10 t-shirt before...."

Note: Chris is our worship pastor's son, 7 yrs old or 8 yrs old maybe? @.@

Drawing

Being parents is always challenging. You'll need to know how to sing, how to play hide & seek, how to entertain a small kid, and now, we have to know how to draw too!

I never like drawing... I don't think EG is the artistic kind of person too (except he's more into music, not art :P). But for our little one, we HAVE TO draw.

My 2-legged elephant

EG's evil rabbit

Ahhh... Failure! :D

Easiyo Yogurt Maker

I'm not exactly a yogurt lover, but while reading up on what food to give to a baby / toddler, yogurt always is mentioned as one of the good snack for small children.

I tried buying the yogurt from the supermarket and gave to Eunice. She eats them. But I don't really fancy them - 1) it's sweet for me 2) they are all low fat! They said babies need all the fats to grow. I never notice that most yogurt from supermarket on the shelves are either low fat or zero fat, until now. :P

I saw this Easiyo yogurt maker in an organic shop. I read up about it, asked around friends who used it, and all of them are giving very positive feedback on the yogurt maker. So I finally decided to get it. :)

Easiyo also has their own yogurt powder, which came with different delicious flavor. I just need to mix the powder with room temperature water in the Easiyo container, pour the hot boiling water into the maker and put the Easiyo container in, close the lid of the maker and leave it for 8-12 hours (I normally do it before bed time, and leave it overnight.). The next morning, I'll take it out and put it into the fridge. When I'm back from work, I have 1KG of fresh yogurt waiting for me! So easy!! :)

So far I have tried Apricot and Forest Fruits flavor, and they are just very nice! Eunice loves it very much. I have been giving it to her as snack after she's back from babysitter, or during weekend for breakfast. It's very filling and she can finish a bowl of it all by herself.

Both EG and I bought this for our mothers as Mother's Day present. My mum has used it to make 3 times already since there're more people in my house in hometown and they can finish it faster. And they love it so much. :)

This is definitely a highly recommended products for a family. :)

The yogurt powder mix

The yogurt mixture

Closed up - Benefits of Easiyo yogurt

The maker sitting on my kitchen counter overnight

The end product out from fridge (pic taken late, already eaten few times by Eunice :D)

The fresh home made yogurt! Yums!!

Satisfaction

Satisfaction.....

Mopping the whole house in an hour+!

Result....

Clean & fresh house, and a happy hubby!

Reward......

Free Seafood dinner

Kukukuku! :P

Advert

Saw this advertisement board last week, it says "1 mangkuk Nestle Koko Krunch dengan Susu = Protein sebiji Telur."

I thought something is not right. And true enough, EG's first reaction was: "Like that I eat egg mar better, cheaper some more!"

:P

New Toy

Gee... work has been SO BUSY that I couldn't even find some time to blog in my personal blog, though I have so many things to blog about! Being a mummy now makes life even busier!

EG and I have been thinking about upgrading our old panasonic lumix camera since last year. But we couldn't find any camera that we like. Either we don't want to pay so much for a compact camera, or we just couldn't afford a good DSLR, or couldn't find a justification on why we should spend so much on a DSLR that we might not use in the end.

And here comes Canon 550D. My friend used it to shoot Eunice first birthday party video and we thought 1) it's not THAT heavy 2) it's not THAT expensive too. But we still waited for a while, till Canon lauched 600D, and 550D price dropped RM500! And we went and get it! :P

For me, I just snap with the default setting. But EG will play with the settings (so much so for an engineer :P). And he has been busy experimenting with different settings on the cameras which doesn't really interest me. :P... That just shows that I'm definitely not a camera person. But I love this new toy, I could take really nice pictures on my active girl now. :). And the best thing is, I can use it to take videos too! :D

Some of my first experience with my first DSLR with my pretty girl at home:

Magnolia

My husband has a very special taste in movies. He collects DVDs, and most of his DVDs are the movies which are not shown in the cinema. It's one of his hobbies to collect good movies, according to him. However, I'm not interested in most of his movies because they are mostly mafia shows, some war shows, or some i-dont-know what show also. It's always violent, and saddening, though he said some of them are real life stories. But one thing I'm sure that these shows will never go up to the cinema because if it ever does, I think half of the movie will be muted, as most of the movies are full of foul languages. :P.

Few nights ago, after my Eunice fell asleep, as I came downstair, I saw EG watching one of his weirdo shows. Since I didn't feel like sleeping yet, I sat down and watched together. And I got hooked! The show talks about coincidence. There're many things going on with different people in the show in 24 hours, and in the end it shows how all these people are related to each other.

We used 2 nights to finish the show (it's 2 hours+ long), and after I finished the show, EG was laughing at me (as this is one of the rare times when I sat down and watched his show), and asked if the show is nice. My answer to him is: If anyone asked me what is this show about, I wouldn't know how to answer! There's no story line or drama going on. It's just some life stories of a few people in a city. Or like wikipedia says: Magnolia is an epic mosaic of several interrelated characters in search of happiness, forgiveness and meaning in the San Fernando Valley.

No doubt, it's very mind throbbing. It makes me think a lot. Even until now I still don't understand some parts of the movie (though I have been reading the synopsis in wiki over and over again). But one thing I learnt in the movie is, there's something called Raining Animals. And in this show, it was raining frogs! Ewwwww.... it was really really gross.....!

I have to agree with EG that it's not a bad movie really. A very different show with bizzare storyline. Just too many foul languages. That's why we can only watch when Eunice is asleep. :)

Alice in Wonderland

I have never gone into the cinema ever since I became a mother. During weekend, I'll be so busy taking care of a child and sitting down quietly to watch a movie is a luxury. I have not been watching a show quietly from start till end for a long time until recently.

Ever since Eunice turns 1, I have been trying to sleep train her - sleeping by herself and sleeping through the night. After some time, she's now able to do it. It makes our lives so much easier nowadays. And she sleeps almost the same time everyday - about 9.30pm. After she sleeps, she'll sleep well (unlike when she was younger - when she'll suddenly wake up to cry) until the next morning. :)

It's now that both me and EG can sit down quietly to watch a show. I watched Alice in Wonderland when EG on it last few days. And he's been very kind by bringing Eunice up to our room and help sleeping her so that I can continue watching the show downstair.

I like the show. Maybe it's a girl show but I really like it. I couldn't take my eyes away from the TV screen. I told EG I'll watch it again on one of the tiring weekends with Eunice. I really like this show. :). I think it'd be even nicer if we can watch it in cinema but it's OK. The DVD that EG got is of good quality and it's nice showing on our 50" plasma. I will watch it again this weekend. :)

Bear & Cat Talk

Bear: Eh Cat, when is the last day for us to submit our tax filing thingy?
Cat: I think it's 31st of April.
Bear: .... ?! Cat, I give you another chance to tell your answer again. When is the last day?
Cat: I don't know, I think it's 31st of April. No meh?

Bear: ...........................

Cat: Oh, 30th of April. There's no 31st in April hor?

Bear: ...............................

*It has been a while since we do our stupid talk. I hope I'll have more to write about. :)

人生就是一个。。过程。。。

最近的我，对人生有很多的感叹。。往往发现，生命中有很多事情不是自己能控制或安排得到的。。
朋友在面子书上share了这个短片。。觉得很有意思。。

Life, is just a process.

My meals

My meals yesterday:

Breakfast @ 7.45am
1) Kuey Teow Soup with minced pork & egg @ Sg Nibong Kopitiam

Late Lunch @ 1pm (hence was extremely hungry)
1) Mc Chicken set (Burger + coke + french fries)
2) Donuts x 2
3) Cheese bun

Dinner @ 6.45pm
1) Mee Suah Tow @ Red Chopsticks

Supper @ 10.30pm
1) A piece of butter cake
2) Homemade Ribena Cheesecake (about size of 15cm x 10cm)
3) 2 hard boiled eggs

The best thing is the comment from my colleague this morning
"Hey, did you lose weight again? Your face looks sharp & thin. Did you weigh yourself recently?"

Ya. It's crazy. I know. :P

Hi 2011

A friend of mine delivered a baby after Christmas, and on the first day on 2011, the baby passed away due to heart failure. When I received the sms, I didn't know what to say or how I should feel.

I'm a mother now. I can feel the pain for my friend. I couldn't imagine how she'd feel. I couldn't imagine how she felt when she held her baby for the last few moments. It's just so disheartening. Everytime when I tell him EG the bit and pieces of what my friend has gone through, my tears roll down uncontrollably.

This is how I started my 2011 new year. There isn't much excitement, only sadness.

When we went for the prayer meet on Sunday, Pastor mentioned that if we have doubt or fear in entering the new year, let's all submit to God. Even if we have uncertainties in front of us, let's just trust in God. Things are not in our control, let's just depend on our Mighty God.

I have learnt that life is fragile, life is short and life is full of uncertainties, so love yourself, and people around you. Treat them good, treat them well, and treasure the relationship. As we grow older, we see many unfortunate things around us. We'll still grow, life goes on. And we'll support and help each other - regardless of our differences.

But for those who hope in the Lord

will renew their strength.

They will soar on wings like eagles;

they will run and not go weary,

they will walk and not be faint.

Isaiah 40:31

So, Hi 2011. Bring it ON!