One Night in Kuching....

I was in Kuching from end May to mid June (school holidays) with the girls and we stayed at my brother's house. My mum was in JB so she helped to accompany me to bring the girls back to Kuching and hubby went there one week later so that he could enjoy himself and accompany us home.


One night, my brother took out a red wine from my dad's collection for hubby and I to try out. He said if they were good enough, he would use this brand for his wedding at the end of the year. Nothing grand about the brand and the red wine was from Spain (not France or Italy where red wines were supposed to be more well known). To our surprise, the red wine tasted really nice. Smooth with a tinge of sweetness.


Hubby wanted to have some food to bring out the taste better so we raided my dad's cupboard and found a packet of straight dried shrimps. We ate some and finished that bottle of wine.





On the next day, remembering the dried shrimps I went to nearby grocery shops to buy shallots, chillies and lime and used them to marinade a bowl of dried shrimps with a bit of sugar. Hence, we had an extra dish to go with rice that day. I liked this dish as my mum used to prepare this when we were young.

So my dad gave me some of the dried shrimps to bring back to JB but before I could make another round of dried shrimp with marinade, I had 'accidentally' finished eating them all as snack. Whoops!

Tian and Tao's Birthday!

Today is Tian's 4th Birthday and Tao's 2nd Birthday two days later but we celebrated the girls birthday together last Sunday.

I had quite a hard time planning their cakes as I did not want them to share a cake for candle blowing (superstitions?) so I had to find a way to buy a cake for eating and another 'spare' one just for candle blowing (My hubby and his parents do not like sweet stuff so I know I will end up having to finish up 2 cakes and it would be a waste if I was not able to do so). Tian mentioned she wanted princess cartoons on her cake and Tao was into anything Mickey Mouse at the moment so I decided to order a black forest cake with a Mickey Mouse as decoration and I more or less forced the bakery to sell me a sugar/ icing thingy with princess cartoon. Then I bought a normal sponge cake from another bakery, did some chocolate frosting for the sides, sprinkled some colourful sugar rice onto the cake before pasting the cartoon on the top. So I got another cake for Tian according to her request at a cheaper cost and to her satisfaction. Heh!

I cut out their names from coloured A4 paper and it was too tiring so I decided to print the 'Happy Birthday' wordings from computer and cut them out.

Tian's Princess birthday cake. She thought I made the cake for her but in fact I only decorated the sponge cake.


Tao's Mickey Mouse birthday cake.


Jelly made from Dutch Lady strawberry flavoured and chocolate flavoured milk. I wrapped the packet drinks with coloured paper and pasted Disney cartoon stickers and the girls were happy to drink from their favourite cartoons.

'Mee Suah' in red yeast wine chicken soup. Foochow people in my home town practise cooking this for birthdays and we have adapted to that culture.

Tian and Tao getting ready for candle blowing.

My 2 sweet girls: One is 4 years old and another one is going to be 2 in 2 days time. I hope they grow up happy, obedient and healthy.

More vegetable planting....

My father-in-law was 'invading' more and more land for planting vegetables. Haha! Actually, those were public land at the side of the road, in front of TNB sub-station etc. It was no easy job to turn those barren soil into plantable land. He had to remove all those rubbish buried by contractors when houses were built, condition the soil with fertilizer (chicken feces) and turn the soil every few days before actual planting could start.

Those small vegetable patches are now full of variety of vegetables.

Sweet Potato Leaves. This is Taiwanese species as the shape is different with the normal types with pointy edges. More tender to consume.

Okra. Our favourite

'Di Wang Miao'. I don't know the English name for this vegetables. Holes can be seen on the leaves because we do not apply pesticides on our vegetables.


Chilies. This species is extremely hot and we end up seldom using them for cooking. Using half for one dish is more spicy than 'cili padi'.

Aubergine. We plant our own because aubergine and chilies are two types of vegetables with most pesticides if we buy at market.



Our little helper helping to carry our harvest.

Things they did

On most Saturdays, Hubby needs to go to work (although self-employed) and I am stuck at home looking after my 2 girls as my parents-in-law will go back to their home town nearby for a break.

I try not to 'work' but try to accompany them as much as possible. I will also get hubby to buy simple lunch like chicken rice or fish ball vermicelli so that I can skip cooking. Sometimes when I need cook lunch for them, they will end up watching TV and I think the time is better spent on bonding time with them.



Several Saturdays ago, I did some simple crafts with them. I helped to cut out shapes from coloured paper and Tian could do her own pasting. I would deliberately leave some details undone, in this case, the ladybird's spots so that Tian could colour by herself. After the bug was done, I pasted it onto a straw and she used it as a magic wand.



I also bought a 'pool' so that they could play with water without having to go to beaches or swimming pools.

They had a great time playing but Tao (my younger girl) could not understand why she needed to come out of water after playing for about 20 minutes and she would cry for more than one hour. Every time she peeked outside and saw the pool, she would cry again. Since then, I have kept the 'pool' in storeroom until she could understand "Enough is enough".

I know it is unfair to the elder girl as she kept on asking me when she can 'swim' in the pool again. Maybe one day, when hubby is at home and can help to keep an eye on them, I will let them play once in while.

Double Expenses

My girls have reached a stage where I have to buy everything for them in pairs. Tian usually refuses to share her things with her younger sis and the younger sis will throw temper tantrum to get anything her sister is having.

Usually we will insist for the elder girl to share her toys with her sister but on some days, I just simply could not resist to buy something for both of them so that they are both happy (and I do not have to start persuading, lecturing......and punishing).

Another reason is that I will do anything to encourage them to drink more water and I do not mind to stock up on all those formula milk powder for this.

Free gifts from growing up milk for Tian.

Tian is such easy-going girl and I can alternate between this and another more premium brand depending on sales and free gifts available. She used to drink the 'dolphin' brand but I started to mix organic soy, millet, oat milk into the girls milk one year ago (which is more pricey) so I balanced out by buying less premium brand for her. I plan to switch Tao's milk from 'lion' brand to less premium brand when she is four like Tian. After all the recent hoo-haa about added sugar in formula milk, I am even more determined to cut down on formula and replace with organic soy, millet, oat milk which has less sugar.

A visit to Johor Bahru Zoo

I am ashamed to say that I have been staying near Johor Bahru for nearly ten years but I have never visited any places of interest here.

Previous week, Tian came home from her pre-school and kept on pestering us to bring her to zoo. We wondered how she knew about asking us to bring her to zoo. Peer pressure at 4 years old? What will happen when she is 12 then? We promised to bring her to a zoo but I was thinking that Melaka Zoo would be too far away for a day trip with 2 kids and I remembered my ex-colleague mentioning a 'small' zoo at JB so I surfed net and found the location. A zoo only 20km plus away from my home!

Two Sundays ago, we went to zoo after breakfast and buying a new canvas shoes for Tian so that she could walk comfortably. We reached there around 11:30am and it was scorching hot (I forgot to bring sunblock for the kids, only hats) and it was difficult to find a place to park our car.

We bought tickets (RM2 for adults, RM1 for kids and free entrance for 2 yo and below and there was a compulsory ticket to buy for birds show which was RM1 per person) and the kids had a good time looking at real animals while my hubby and I was sweating all over and still had to chase after them.



There were about 100 species of animals on the 5 hectares land. Although the zoo was small compared to other zoos in Malaysia, one to two hours of strolling and 30 minutes of birds show were long enough for younger children. The compound was well managed and clean.



The area for birds show. The shops sold tit-bits and beverages at reasonable prices.


Hornbill and other birds could be seen near the entrance.

At least there were tigers and lions to see. A zoo would not be like a zoo if there wasn't any king of the beast and king of the jungle, right?

Baby elephants could be observed at close distance as they were chained as we walked pass the enclosure. I hoped that they were not chained all the time.

There were shelters with tap water nearby so it was convenient to let kids (and adults) to take a rest and for mothers to clean them up after feeding them. Tian and Tao had a great time playing in the 'hut'.

Birds show: It was a pity that there were only a few birds performing. Maybe due to smaller zoo management, they were not be able to organize performance on bigger scale.

As we reached home, hubby and I were dizzy due to the heat. I quickly cooked some cooling dessert so that the kids would not get sick. Papaya (not too ripe) and white fungus with dried winter melon, red date and dried longans. Cooling and refreshing!

Stay focused!

I am trying my best to stay focused with my most important task a the moment. That is to compile all necessary receipts, cash bills and documentations for 2010 Inland Revenue submission for hubby's business. There seem a lot of details to confirm and documents to dig out. Although there are still 2 months left but I plan to complete early and submit to the company dealing with taxes so that they will have enough time to review. There are 2 weeks holidays in June so I am sure I won't be able to get much done during that time. I keep telling myself not to surf net so much, watch movies or tidy up the house (I always like to tidy up or clean my house when I have more important stuff to attend to. Denial, maybe?).