She says.....

I was hanging clothes outside the house this morning and took a peek into the living room to see if any of the girls were up to mischief. I saw Tian who was sitting on the sofa put her foot on her sister's head and Tao was annoyed.

Me: Tian, don't bully Mei Mei. She does not like having your foot on her head. Do you like people putting their foot on your head too?

Tian: I do not bully Mei Mei. I am just using my foot to 'sayang' her.

Me: *Argh*

I miss my confinement period

Most people thought that I was crazy when I told them I enjoyed my confinements a lot. That was because I was being pampered like an 'empress'. I had my confinement lady, my mum and my parents-in-law to help out and they had unspoken job delegation.

1) Confinement Lady: Cooked confinement food (breakfast, tea time-missed if I had late breakfast, lunch, tea time, dinner, supper), helped out with baby (bath, changing diapers, feeding milk (formula and expressed milk etc)), slaughtered chicken (yes, we bought live chicken and the auntie would slaughter the chicken and cook it immediately so that I could have fresh chicken), washing baby and my clothes, boiling red dates drink, preparing herbal water for taking bath.

2) My Mum: Helped to take care of the baby when confinement lady was busy so that I did not have to touch cold water to clean baby's bum, helped feeding baby and washing my pump for expressing milk. When baby no.2 came, my mum also helped to entertain elder girl, Tian so that she would not disturb me.

3) My parents-in-law: Helped to buy food for the family and for me like pigs' stomach, liver, kidney, chicken, kampung eggs, pomfret fish, additional Chinese herbs etc.

4) My job: Tried to express milk as much as possible for the baby before she learned how to suckle. I took care of the baby at night but my mum and confinement lady would take care of the baby from morning around 7:00am until baby slept at night around 9:30pm.

I had a lot of rest but I did not treasure the time I should be resting. I kept on reading magazines and surf net when my mum asked me to rest my eyes.

I will be writing some posts regarding confinement as a record for future references in case my sister or friends need them.

How would you choose names for your children?

Choosing a name for an unborn baby is very important to every parents. For me, at least. It is not just a matter of choosing good sounding name with good meaning but for me, I have to ensure the number of strokes in the combination of characters reflects a good hidden meaning as well.

Most people will scoff at this practice but I just want to ensure everything that is within my control will bring the best for my children. I heard from my BIL mentioning most of his colleagues in Singapore will also practise this when choosing names for their babies. I am not the only 'kiasu' one here.

I will only check on the hidden meanings from books. If it is good enough, I will use the names. However, I know some people will wait until the birth of the child to get the year, month, day and time of birth (ba zhi) for a naming expert/ fortune teller/ medium to choose a name. I am not that extreme yet.

I heard that there is a lady expert in choosing names in my hometown who is able to tell a person's characters by just studying the names. It is so accurate that even the most skeptical person would be amazed. Normally her 'story' regarding the person's life will coincide with the prediction of the ba zhi. So I come out with the conclusion that when we think of a name for our baby, the destiny is fixed and it will affect the time the baby is born, ba zhi. Or we can say the other way round. After the baby is born, the parents will use the ba zhi for choosing names. The names chosen will then reflect whatever contains in the ba zhi. However, some people believe that if the ba zhi for the child is not that favorable, choosing a name with good meaning with rectify the ba zhi a bit. Simply choosing a name might magnify the negativity.

This lady mentioned that when parents choose certain name for their children, the children's character will be moulded to fit the hidden meaning behind the names. However, I do not deny the importance of upbringing by the parents as well. I have not met this lady yet so I am not able to judge her accuracy yet. Hopefully I am able to meet her one day and hear the 'story' behind my name.

No matter there is truth in this or not, choosing a good name is better than deliberately challenging destiny by choosing names with less than favorable meaning. Don't you think so?

* This post is only a reflection of my opinion regarding above mentioned title and it is not intended to offend anyone who thinks otherwise.

Shopping Continues!

My business is not exactly thriving but I have a customer who orders certain fixed amount of cut foliage from me weekly. Her weekly order is more than a few florists' orders added together.

The problem is every time I deliver those cut foliage to my customers, I will go to shopping centres or grocery shop after that. That means I will spend the money, if no more, that I have just received.

The only excuse I give myself is that I will need to buy those things no matter business transaction is done or not. At least I am not withdrawing money from ATM. Heh!

Excuse for buying: Buy 3 tins of MG 1.6kg FREE 1 pack o MG 600g. Need I say more?


Excuse to buy Ah Hong's Healthy Medicated Diets: My MIL likes to get cooking ideas from cookbook and this book contains a list of benefits of Chinese Herbs as well as nutrition of normal foods that we take for granted like black bean paste and fermented bean curd. (Ha! Ha! As if this is very important)

Excuse to buy Diet Therapy for Infants: I have been wanting to buy this book for a long time. The first time I saw this book was when Tao was a few months old. Still breastfed and never got sick. Tian had always been healthy and never even cough before going to pre-school. So I thought I had taken care of a child without needing this book so I probably would not need it. This book was at 20% discount today and I made a decision to buy it because the two kids had just recovered from cough, fever, flu a few weeks ago. If you read my posts before here and here, I prefer natural therapy for children instead of giving them multivitamins (even though from organics origin). This book contains recipes for children who are suffering from cough, constipation, nappy rash etc and the ingredients are natural foods like barley, red beans, chinese yam, fruits. I regret I did not buy this book sooner. I am not doing promotion for this book. I am just being a busybody to share the good points about this book and to justify buying it :)


Excuse to buy: Ermmm...... What can I say? I finished using my moisturizer and when I was buying Phytomilk for the kids at organics shop, I simply asked the shop owner types of organic moisturizer that she recommends. I was tempted by the ingredients like daisy, rosehips oil, avocado oil, evening primrose oil, green tea, essential oil etc instead of my normal moisturizer ingredients like glyceryl stearate, cyclomethicone, steareth-21, ethyparaben, isobutylparaben, propylparaben. Yikes! I read that parabens will disturb our endocrine system and it enters our bloodstream when rubbed onto our skin. Do you think this excuse is valid for buying organics (but more pricey) skincare?

Books for Tian

I have stopped buying toys for Tian for a long time. Reason: She never asks for toys when we go shopping and even if I buy one for her, she will only play for a few hours and very seldom after that.

She is happy when I buy books for her and will pester for me to read and explain to her. This is a good habit but I have been guilty of not allocating a lot of time to read to her.

Books that I bought some weeks ago at discounted price

One thing I do not understand is that she likes reading but when I try to do revision on her flash cards from her pre-school, she is very reluctant to learn. I will need to bribe her by telling her that I will read the books that I have bought for her if she finishes revising her flash cards.

Did I do wrong in showing too many colourful pictures to her since young? The principal in her new pre-school told me that children will only love words and letters if we do not show them colourful pictures before 2 years old. This is to prevent them to be attracted to pictures instead of words. She showed me the materials that they use for teaching are plain and mostly without colours.

I do not know if this is true but since Tao does not like looking at books, I might be able to start showing her letters and words (not pictures) when she is older and see how it goes. I think my parents-in-law will think I am mad if I start flashing letters and words to Tao instead of pictures.

Understanding Monthly Tax Deductions

I went to LHDN (Lembaga Hasil Dalam Negeri) in the city a few days ago to apply for employer income tax number for the company as well as employees' income tax number. The officer taught me how to download a software that would reflect income tax deductions from employees' salary that we would need to bring to the bank when paying for Monthly Tax Deductions.

I began to understand how salary my salary was deducted before. Employers will refer to Schedule of Monthly Tax Deductions to determine amount of tax to be deducted from employee's salary. That is why it is important to let employer know any changes of marital status, whether one's spouse was working and how many children in the family. These information will ensure accuracy of deduction so that one does not need to claim overpaid PCB (Potongan Cukai Berjadual or Monthly Tax Deductions in English) the following year when we need to submit Borang B or BE.

Schedule of Monthly Tax Deductions provided

I noticed newer generations of government servants were very polite, efficient, helpful and understanding. We do have people around us (especially older generations and those influenced by them) who will not hesitate to criticize government servants but I am sure these services from government servants will continue to improve.

Shopping Spree

I am always ready for shopping whenever my parents visit me. My family members are the only people who can tolerate my 'passion' for shopping. I could walk around one shopping centre from morning until night (resting only for meals) even when I was pregnant. I would also lug around my two daughters and my 'unwilling' hubby for shopping when there were nobody at home to look after them.

When my parents visited me last week, I brought them shopping and bought a lot of stuff. The excuse that I used was 'These are all for Chinese New Year and I will not have time to go shopping after they left'. So let's see my loot below.


For Tao, I bought 3 sets of clothes for Chinese New Year, 1 pyjamas (my kids must have new pyjamas for CNY as my parents practised this when we were young), shoes bought by my mum. I will need to buy new socks and some comfortable clothes to wear at home. This is only the minimum requirement as I always end up buying at least 5 sets of clothes for each of them.


For Tian, I only managed to buy a dress for her, 2 pyjamas and the Jusco brand blouse and shorts were too cheap not to buy so I could let her wear those at home. I will need to buy at least 2 more sets of Chinese New Year clothes, a pair of shoes and socks for her.

I bought those at Padini. I have been wanting to by a cardigan but nice ones were not on sales before. These are not considered as Chinese New Year clothes though.


I bought the blouse because it looked nice after being worn.


This pair of shoes was really cheap after discount due to no sizes left. Excuse to buy: Shoes were flat so I could carry Tao when going out. Not that I never carry Tao in high heels before. Haha.


This shirt was expensive even though after 50% discount but hubby did not like the faded effect. He would wear whatever clothes I buy for him anyway because he disliked going shopping and trying on clothes. So I will buy for him any clothes that I think will look nice on him.

I have been busy.....

Last three weeks were busy weeks for me. Florists began to orders cut foliage from me but quantity was really small and each florist would only order once every two weeks. What I had heard was that most of the florist here tend to plant some species on their own and they would only order from suppliers when there were huge orders from their customers.

I was busy not because of the orders but because I did not fix a day with them for delivery. I ended up delivering one small batch of leaves to customer A and received a phone call from customer B requesting for same types of leaves the following day. I will need to come up with an agreement with them so that I can save some petrol.

My mum came two weeks ago and my dad five days ago and both of them went back to home town yesterday. They went to Resort World Casino in Singapore with my PILs last Friday using tourist bus and it was a good deal. Each person paid SGD100 that included bus fare, SGD10 meal vouchers, SGD100 betting chips (not exchangeable for cash, one needed to place bet and only the winning chips could be cashed), some betting vouchers that needed to be topped with cash of similar value.

I planned to bring them to Desaru but the kids and my mum were not well due to the hazy condition here. We ended up going shopping most of the time. I wanted to bring my mum to buy clothes but I ended up buying lots of stuff for Tian and Tao. I saw some really pretty dresses for the kids that costed above RM90 and some branded ones above RM120!! I kept on telling myself not to buy as kids grow so fast. Only if I have more orders for leaves, then I will consider to use the extra income to buy for them.