Don't Bite Me

Variety is a spice of life, and in our lives we enacted several roles, wear several hats.

And being a parent comes with a whole truck load of responsibilities. Responsibilities that I can never imagined.

When I got pregnant, I was anxious about Ziv in my tummy, especially his development.
When he came out of my tummy, I was anxious about his physical and mental developments.
When he starts going to school, I get anxious about his adaptability.

And sometimes, you find yourself in a pickle whereby you lost for words for incident like this.

The thing is Ziv has a classmate (gal) 'M' (for monster), she bit Ziv whenever she failed to snatch toys from him. To make the matter worse, Monster-Sore-Loser M did it twice! Damn! The first time I was pretty OK with it because there bound to be commotions when kids get-together. But the second time was a tad overboard. So I asked myself, "Do I want my son to be bullied or to be a bully?" or "Should I tell Ziv to beat M?"

I am apprehensive that he will turn out to be a disesteem bully that everyone loathes later on in his life if I tell him to hit M back. A young kid does not know where is the limit and telling him to hit M may cultivate the little bully in him. However, it is heart-trending to see teeth marks on his delicate tiny arm. I gave up thinking for a solution for this tricky situation.

However when Kevin cheekily told Ziv to hit M, he replied firmly,"NO!" He seemed to know the that beating others is wrong.

Maybe the dilemma is now resolved with Ziv's reply and I believed the boy resembles his Daddy more than anyone else. And definitely not me!

Sometimes I do hope that he can have part of my character so that he is able to protect himself in the future.

Baking and Me (Episode 6)

I decided to try out the simple POPOVERS recipe featured on Sunday Times after work this evening.

And man, it is mouth-watering! It is like croissant in a ball shape.

It tastes best with butter & jam!! I ate 2 while it came out hot from the oven.

Popovers

Ingredients:

2 eggs

250ml full fat milk

140g plain flour

1 tbs salted butter, melted and cooled

1/2 tsp salt

5 tsp oil

Method:

1. Process the eggs and milk in a blender until smooth.

2. Add flour, butter and salt and continue to process at high speed.

3. Pour batter into a measuring jug and let it rest at room temperature for 30 minutes.

4. While batter is reaching room temperature, pour 1/2 tsp vegetable oil into each of the 10 outer cups of a 12-cup muffin tin. Leave the two middle cup empty.

5. Adjust oven rack to the lowest position and place the muffin tin in the oven and heat the oven to 230deg.

6. When the batter is ready to be used, remove muffin tin from the oven and close the oven door.

7. Quickly pour the batter into the smoking hot oil. Fill each cup about halfway up, divide the leftovers among 10 cups.

8. Return to the oven, bake for 20 minutes. Do not open the oven.

9. After 20 minutes, lower heat to 180 deg and bake till golden brown for 12-15 minutes.

10. Remove muffin tin from the oven and flip the popovers onto a cooling rack and let it cool for 2-3 minutes.

Make 10 popovers.

Bon Appetit!

Back from a long hiatus

I still can’t believe it that Chinese New Year holiday is OVER!! I took a long leave from work and end up having 9 days of long break. So what did we do during these 9 days?

- Sure-way to get blubber -
I cannot escape from the fate of getting blubber even though I don’t eat bak-kua, love-letters, and pineapple tarts (I don’t like them since young!). It is only this festive occasion that makes me feel that it is OK to pig-out, OK to gamble, OK to sleep late… I LOVE Chinese New Year and all the foods that come along with the occasion like steamboat, 10-course meal and Yu Sheng!
I binged from eve till to-day. The sinful-est meal of all? My visit to House of Seafood with my parents, 4 of us and only 3 likes to eat crabs (my dad hates crabs) and we ordered 2- 1kg crab cooked in 2 different ways! Along with the side dishes to cater for my dad and Ziv, I regretted suggesting this dinner to my parents cause that was the point that my weight started to gain!

Some other highlights (meals):
-- Spizza Delivery (nice but abit pricey)
-- Stone Grill (Ostrich meat) - JB
-- Ju Chun Yuan (Fried CodFish!!)

- Visiting -
I love visiting. To see people whom you only see once a year! It is always nice to get updates on their lives and it is nice to see how little girl transforms to a lady and ready for marriage. It is even better to let Ziv play with other kids and get worn-out so that he will sleep when we get back home.

- Spending a day at our neighboring country -
Had a road trip with Kevin to Malaysia, with the aim to eat, eat, eat and eat! We discovered a few nice restaurants but we missed the seafood place which we used to go years back. Well, lesson learnt, I downloaded the map to the seafood place and I make sure we eat it the next time we go there!

- Watching TVB Dramas -
Completed ‘Sweetness in Salt’ over 9 days and it was great! Now I am a quarter through ‘Beyond Realm of Conscience’!

- Gamble, Gamble and Gamble -
Our mahjong table was setup since CNY eve and it never leave our living room since then (sounded just like my Christmas tree). On CNY eve, my usual MJ kakis came over to our house to play MJ until 6am in the morning. Apart from the usual MJ kaki, I am glad that we recruited more kakis this time round, including my brother, cousin, ex neighbours and unknown players. The gambling only stopped on last Saturday!

So what’s next after Chinese New Year?

Lost weight of course!

Happy Chinese Lunar New Year

I am so glad that Chinese New Year is here!!

Will be enjoying a super long holiday (about 9 days) by going nowhere but home and MJ.

Unfortunately, Barbie didn't come out with a 2010 Chinese New Year doll. Such a let-down.

Wish everyone

新年快乐，心想事成, 全家安康！

Whassup being 30?

Do I sound HIP?

I believed that this is the last time that this blog is ever going to mention about numbers, birthdays, age or as a matter of fact, everything and anything that has got to do with the disclose of the blogger’s age. Subsequent birthdays will be celebrated in a discreet manner with no guest invited, no cake, no present (unless it is from Kevin), no days off to be taken from work and no one is permitted to breathe a word that screamed “Hhhhhaaaa----”.

Actually, being 30 isn’t as shitty and ruinous (i.e. end of the world) as many would have imagined. Not that I am trying portray that being 30 means voguish or oh-you-are-still-beautiful, or life-has-just-begun (hate this most, does that mean that the past 29 years are invalid?).

And well, of course there are millions of reasons why I truly missed about being 20s and that includes revealing my age without qualms in front of those whom I barely know, often with the evil intention to wow new colleagues and boast self-confident. All in all, what I like best about being 20s is having no commitment, no responsibilities to anyone and anything. Alas, no one can turn back time, and the only thing that I can do that is within my control is to maintain, maintain and maintain my outlook, stay stress-free and remember to smell the roses. Having said that, it probably elucidate on why coffee-shop beer aunties develop penchant for Jolin Tsai inspired outfits, with undying effort to just to look youthful. I don’t even want to think about what I will be togged up in when I reach their age.

Back to the part that being-30-is-not-end-of-the-day, I need to be truthful and unbiased about this. I have to admit that people tend to work hard during their 20s and it is only that during their 30s where they will get to enjoy a bit of what they have worked hard for. For instance, I worked hard on building relationship with my bf then, who is now my hubby. I worked hard to stay awake to take care of my son who is now more or less independent, I worked hard to earn moolah so that today I can afford to have my own house and I worked hard to save out of my stipend to buy the stuff that it would be impossible for me to buy if I am just 20.

To console myself further, 20s is often the age whereby people just don’t treat you seriously, even the sales associate at Hermes is not even thrilled to trail you in the boutique, property agents will assumed that you entered the private property show flat out of inquisitiveness or you simply passed by to take a peep, you will be pass off as a person who desires cheap thrill to test drive the cars when you entered an auto showroom to a continental car dealer. The moment when you reach your 30s (or close to 30s), it is just like having a kind-hearted angel that waved her wand, all of a sudden, you become physically visible to everyone in the world and you look like a potential buyer of everything under the sun, even students with donation tins will run after for you and it is this time that people start to entertain you whether they like it or not. Just recently, I had an ardent Hermes SA who brought me around the boutique, showing me 101 ways of wearing a particular scarf that I briefly laid my fingers on to touch the material. And well, being 30s gives you the permission of not buying anything even after a lengthy conversation and promotion, and I can even walk out of the boutique and still having the SA being all jolly and bided me goodbye and she seemed absolutely sure that she will see me again.

So now, am I happy with being 30?

Well, do I have a choice?

...

So as for my present for being 30? Nothing beats having the 2 Hengs (Kevin and Ziv) around me when I pathetically blow out the 30 candles on my cake! Maybe if a present needs to be something tangible, then that should be none other than the new abode which marked my achievement for the whole of 20s.

Happy 30 Birthday to myself this coming Sunday!