I went to Shanghai for almost a week 2 weeks ago. Approval was pretty last minute, and the Chinese Embassy was closed for a whole week prior to my departure. I only got my passport at 9pm on Monday, 6th October night itself, and my flight was 3hrs later. Imagine my stress level prior to my flight.

The purpose of the trip was to conduct training to our clones new Shanghai colleagues. After months of being overworked, the management has finally decided to hire more people to ease our workload.

I arrived early morning on Tuesday. This time staying in Pudong (蒲东) instead of Puxi (蒲西) where we stayed last year. By the time I got into Raddison Hotel Pudong Century Park it was 9am. With less than 4hrs sleep in total the night before, I slept in for the rest of the morning.

The room was very nice and comfortable. I like the big glass panel seperating the toilet and the bedroom, making the place look very spacious.

The hotel is next to a commercial square with lots of restaurants and a Carrefour within walking distant. The only complain I have is there’s no MRT station nearby.

My first lunch, I just grabbed a fried noodle (blech!) nearby and then headed to the office, located in Pudong, in an isolated techology park. For the 3.5 days of training, I spoke mainly in Mandarin (I thank my parents for sending me to Chinese school, making me so ‘useful’ in my adult life), I wonder if I confused anybody since my Chinese isn’t that great. 😛

On my first day, I opted to be alone because I was still feeling tired from lack of sleep. Had dinner in a restaurant near the hotel. It’s difficult to order for one, I had a portion of smoke duck and pot stickers, and didn’t manage to finish them.

I spent the rest of the evening wondering around. Found a few road side DVD peddlers, so I did some DVD shopping (RMB5 for a movie, how about that?), and then also spotted a traditional massage place next to the hotel operating till 1am. I booked myself for a 1hr Duina (推拿) massage that night itself. I slept like a baby after the massage.

The next 3 nights, I have my colleagues accompanying me in the evenings, bringing me out for dinners. I had no time to shop in the malls, but thank goodness for all the DVDs peddlers which are opened till 11pm, I managed to buy quite a lot of DVDs. I also managed to go for another round of massage.

Here are pictures of my dinners.

2nd evening – with a colleague, at 鹭鹭酒家 (Lulu Jiu Jia) he ordered some of the more famous Shanghainese dishes. Chicken in wine; tofu with crab roe (蟹粉豆腐); some soya mock meat (四喜烤夫); steamed “many treasure fish” (多宝鱼), a type of sole which is only available in Shanghai.

3rd evening – Group dinner at Lang Yi Fang Restaurant (廊亦舫酒樓). Armed with a RM50/head budget, this was what we got.

5 types of cold dishes – I love the fried fish with sauce (熏鱼), they come in a stack.

7 types of warm dishes – Gosh, I thought there was no end to the food they dished out. The fried prawns and the cucumber and corn soup were really good.

The restaurant even has a very good view of The Bund (外滩).. For RM50 per head, I think it’s so reasonable.

4th evening, dinner was at Qiao Jiang Nan (悄江南). It took us almost 1hr 15mins to travel from MRT station (near office) to the hotel (to drop off some books I ordered) then to the restaurant at The Bund, all due to Friday rush hour.

This was by far the best meal. The fresh vege with sesame dip was so good, I tried to make it at home last week, and Daddy loved it too. Then there’s the famous spicy chicken (口水鸡) and the most delicious chicken pot stickers I’d ever eaten.

These few dishes were not too bad too. Prawn and corn fried with salted egg yolk; cold noodle; stir fried shredded duck with mushroom.

All these with drinks and beer for 3, came out to RMB300 (RM150). I think dining in Shanghai, is still cheaper than dining in KL.

If you think all my meals are this yummy, check out the lunch that they dish out in the canteen. Every thing is cold, and quite horrid tasting not to mention you have to queue around 10 minutes before you get your food.

Some sights :

The Bund (外滩) viewed from the Pudong side.

Shanghai Telecom Building (东方明珠)

Love their road signs, so informative, telling you exactly what’s ahead, the name of the roads that are intersacting with the road you are on etc.

On the last day, before my flight, I managed to go to Puxi, and shopped for some Shanghainese cakes in Nanjing Road (南京路). If you are ever in Shanghai, you have to try the ShenDaCheng (沈大成) cakes. They are really yummy.

To get to the airport, I took the Maglev. RMB40, and it only took 6min to get to the airport (instead of the 30~45min taxi ride). The fasted it went was 430Km/hr!

(All photos taken in Point & Shoot, such vast difference in quality)

Zaria loves talking just like her sister. And when she tries to tell us something and we cannot catch her meaning, she’ll keep trying, trying to correct her pronunciation, trying to use other words until we are able to make out what she says. She always like to see us confirm our understading by repeating what she says. 😛

Some of the things this girl says :

While waiting for Zara for her speech and drama class to be over, Zaria heard a loud bang on the door,
“Hor! Got thunder!”
A few parents seated around were looking at her, then me, “Did she just say thunder?” They didn’t believe such a small girl using the word thunder.

She tried doing a piroute, but looked a bit clumsy in her attempt (and she knew it), so she said, “Checheh do this very well.”

She’s started to tell on Zara. When Zara snatched things from her or hit her, she would come and complain. “Checheh bully her (me)” “Chehcheh beat her. Like this” *acting out how Zara beat her*

Jelly fed her a piece of chicken over dinner, she spat out the chicken and said, “Too big! (I) can only eat small small one, baby one.”

She normally takes her bath after her breakfast, so while naked, she touched her buttocks. I told her, “Eee Yew, don’t touch your bum bum, after your finger smelly.” She had a sniff of her finger and replied, “Nooo… Not smelly. Smell like Koh-song (Croissant, what she had for breakfast that morning).”

At the park, she wanted to go on the swing, but I was busy talking to my neighbour.
“Mummy, don’t talk. Come now.”

When we asked her what TV program she wants to watch.
“I want to watch Baby Ai-tine doc kong.” (Baby Einstein DOT COM. That’s what’s ‘announced’ at the end of each of her Baby Einstein program).

And every day, she wants to cling on to me. Only I can pass her her milk bottle (even though it’s made by Jelly or Daddy), only I can remove her from the car seat. She says, “I don’t like Auntie Jelly, I like mummy only.”

Oh, she’s almost off diaper, not wearing any in the day now (for 1.5 weeks), and not wetting her diaper in the night too. She will inform us when she wants to use the toilet, sometimes even climbing up two flights of stairs to ask me to bring her ‘she-she’ if Jelly is busy cooking. The only problem is, she doesn’t tell when she wants to poop, only tell us after the fact (soiling her panties). Still the same reason, “My bumbum painful.” o.O”

I’m sure those parents who have daughters (and probably some sons), will experience the same thing; their girls going for heels, or shoes that sparkle. For my girls, it’s the same, even better if the shoes make the clickety clack sound when walking around with them on.

The ones that the girls have is this pair a neighbour gave us, and they call it click clock shoes (in Zaria’s case it’s tick-tock shoes, since she can’t pronounce the ‘cl’ sound).

Both of them like this pair of shoes. And when one of them (remembers to) wear them, the other will (be reminded and) also says she wants it, sometimes ending in a fight or tug of war with the loser crying (most of the time Zaria looses because she’s not as strong as Zara yet). So we taught them to share, and sometimes they agree to.

One wears the left side

The other wears the right side

That’s how far they will go sharing this pair of click clock shoes.

o.O”

One day, after crushing an ant, she declared triumphantly, “Zah-yah press(ed) (the) ant. (The) Ant die already.”

On another day, she was looking for the grasshopper in the courtyard.
Zaria : “Where (is) gus-hopper?”
Me : “I don’t know. You tell me, where is the grasshopper?”
Zaria : “Die already.”

So I thought she knew what ‘die’ means. Until….
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One day she was playing with the Badger Sunblock, opening the tube and applying it on her face, so she had patches of white on her face.

I asked her, “Zaria, what happened to your face?”
Zaria replied matter-of-factly, “Die already” o.O”

Zaria is 21 month and 2 weeks old, another 2.5 month to her 2nd birthday! Gosh, so soon already??!!

Seen here crushing crabs. She seems to enjoy crushing tiny creatures like bugs or crabs. *sweat*

Here’s an update on her development.

♥Dexterity♥
~ She’s walking up stairs with no assistance now, and when going down stairs, she can do it on her own by balancing herself using the wall.

~ She’s able to do thumbs up and down to show things/food is good or bad.

~ She loves lifting her leg up and trying to balance herself with one leg, that’s the influence of Kungfu Panda.

She likes to get all dirty, here, she’s lifting her leg, doing the Kungfu Panda’s kick

~ Loves to climb up furniture, still has to ‘tie’ her down on her high chair even today. *sweat*

♥Language♥
She’s talking very well, and able to mimick most sounds, therefore picking new words up very quickly.

~ Like to relate to past incidents with “(Re)Member?”. E.g. “(Re)member, Zah-yah fall down, then knee painful. Mummy put cream?”

♥Vocabulary♥
Extensive vocabulary. She knows the names of most common things, and some uncommon ones. She knows her colours, although sometimes may still get it wrong. She can recite 1 to 10, A to Z (by singing ABC song), although mispronuncing some of the name of the alphabets.

Doesn’t she looks like a fugitive here?

♥Counting♥
Caught her counting her own fingers one day, then we realised she could count! Able to count up to 5 objects (“1, 2, 3, 4, Four books!”), and tell us the quantity of the items. If more than 5, she’ll forget where she stops. (“1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Three lady birds!”

She’s able to recognise a few numbers, i.e. 5 (thanks to High-5), 4, 8.

♥Favourite Phrase♥
“I don’t want.” (Because now, everything also I don’t want) o.O”

♥Language Structure♥
~ She’s talking in longer sentences now.
~ Using compound noun, e.g.
“Cheh Cheh drop biscuit, everywhere dirty”
When we want to go out, I normally ask if anybody wants to use the toilet first, I get her shouting, “Nobody!” (probably because she’s eager to get out of the house).
In the car, “Everybody sit down in the car go kaikai.”

♥Emotions and character♥
Suddenly, this month she turned into a cry baby and also very clingy.
Every day she’ll cry at least twice when it’s bath time, unless I bath her. “I don’t want. I don’t want aunty bath. I want mummy bath.” And after crying, she can still say “Zah-yah cry already. See, got tears.” *sweat*

She has no fear of anybody. No amount of scolding, nor placing in the naugthy corner will make her ‘repent’ or learn her lesson. The only person she’s afraid is Nenek (my sis’ MIL). If she ran to the road, I have to ‘threaten’ her, “After car bang you, and you have to go to the hospital.” She’s not affected, until I add, “Then nenek will jaga (Malay : Take care of) you.” That will make her stop, and reply, “Don’t want nenek jaga.” sometimes adding, “Nenek scarry.” Ha.

When we bring her out, we sweat, because she will not sit still nor hold on to our hands. She’ll be running around like a wild horse. Imagine how tiring it is? (I kept telling Daddy we should keep her at home until she’s 3 years old.)

Like a wild horse, she likes open space.

♥Food♥
This month, almost everything is “Not nice”, or not right, “Don’t want, too hot.”. Very hard to please her tastebud.

Luckily, she still loves her milk.

♥Toilet Training♥
Still working on this. She knows when she wants to go, but she may not tell us. So, she still has her diaper on 24hrs.

♥The Things She Likes♥
Must be her books and her selected TV Programs (High-5, Sesame Street, Barney, some Barbie shows).
She is starting to tell us what she likes.
“I like Zah-wa cheh cheh.” “I like Daddy. I like him.” Sometimes when she’s in a loving mood, “Like” is replaced with “Love”
She also likes to say “I like it!” when she’s shown things she like.

We like and love you too Zaria!

(Photos taken 11/10/08 – Daddy brought the girls to Bagan Lalang again without me)

One of our colleagues came from Sydney to Malaysia for a holiday, so Mom2Ashley and I met up to have dinner with him. We brought our kids along.

Ha, we didn’t plan this, but both Ashley and Zara wore the same outfit which we bought for them from US. Not to mention, I too wore the same outfit, because Zara insisted that I wear the same top as her.

When the 2 first met, Zara being the brave one, went over to shake hands with Ashley. Ashley was a bit shy, and she just stared at all of us smile-less.

At the restaurant, we put both of them seated together.
Zara initiated, “Can I borrow your car.”
Ashley said, “Yes”
They both played with a car separately.
After a while, when we said we wanted to take a photo with the 2 of them, Zara sat over at Ashley’s seat and put her arms around Ashley (See Ashley in the photo, still hardly warmed up yet).

Next moment, spark flew. They started playing like old friends, chasing each other around, laughing at each other’s jokes. When Ashley needed to go to the toilet, Zara followed too, holding each other’s hands. We can see both of them were enjoying each other’s company.

When it was time to leave, Zara asked me, “Why we go home so early? I was having fun with Ashley.” o.O”

That’s no way I can have as much fun with Zara as she could with her own group of friends. Just like the last time we went to Jazzmint‘s place, she too had lots of fun with Faythe. So we’ll need to organise some kind of play group for them in the near future.

Oh what about Zaria? That girl was too busy exploring, no time to make friends, if she could just sit down quietly like Aidan half the time, that’ll make us less tiring.

When we were at St Anne’s, I’m not sure what happened but Zara suddenly started to sulk and no matter how I tried to coax her, it didn’t help. So I let her be and walked away.

She followed me closely, but I let her be and didn’t try to say things to make her happy any more. She suddenly stopped me and said, “Mummy, be happy.”
I replied, “How to be happy? Bring you for holidays then you want to sulk for no reason.”
She answered back, “Mummy, this is a church. You come to church you must be happy. Come, be happy.” o.O”
(I think this is her way of ‘recovering’ from the situation without explaining why she sulked earlier on).

~~~~~~~~~~~~~ . ~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I was just saying out loud to myself, “Aigh, I’m old already.”
Zara heard and then quickly came over to tell me, “Mummy, don’t say you are old ok? If you say you are old, then you’ll be old. You must say you are young, then you’ll be young. Next time you better say you are young. Don’t say you are old ok?” o.U
(This is her advice on ‘positive thinking’)

Man, she’s turning into a ‘sin-ka’ (仙家, Cantonese sarcasm for a ‘sage’)

After leaving Penang (and spending 2 hours rounding George Town to find a place to lunch), we continued with our holidays and headed to Cameron Highlands via the Simpang Pulai way, roads are definitely wider this way, and less winding.

We arrived at 6pm+ and it was quite chilly. Even though it was low peak, when we arrived at our hotel, Century Pine Resort, it took like 15mins for us to get our room (although pre-booked). The beds were without sheets, and the day curtain was not hung up! Tsk tsk. Luckily they sent someone to fix that soon after we complained.

Our duplex room is big and comfy as well as clean. It has 2 floors, 1st with a sofa bed and a bathroom, and on the top floor another en suite room with king bed. Girls loved the room; Zara happy to get Nickelodeon channel and Zaria loved the carpeted stair case leading to the top floor; she spent a great deal of time walking up and down the stairs.

We walked to Tanah Rata to look for a place for dinner but found nothing interesting on the main street; we ended up driving to Brinchang and had steamboat.

After breakfast at the hotel on Wednesday morning, we went to the market at Kea Farm. Since it was low peak, there were very few tourists and the vege and strawberries were selling cheap.

We wanted to go strawberry picking but it was RM30 with 3 punnets given to us (that’s the max you get to pick). So the girls went flowers picking instead, mainly the morning glories, baby breath like flowers and the hibiscus that grow in abundance at the road side.

For Daddy and I, no visit to Cameron Highlands is complete without going to the tea plantations. We headed to Boh’s Sungai Palas Tea Estate after lunch. I just love the picturesque view of the green slopes, occasionally, finding a few tea pickers’ heads bobbing up and down. You have to see with your own eyes the beauty and tranquility that the camera cannot catch.

Unfortunately, the famous tea center was closed but the friendly gate keeper kept us entertained by showing us tea flowers and tea seeds, and the girls were going around searching and picking seeds from the ground (although Zaria was picking gravels on the road thinking they were the same thing).

We then had tea at Bala’s Holiday Chalet. Bloody rip off I tell you. RM18.90 for 2 scones with tea. I bake better scones than them, and they don’t even whip their own cream, it’s all sprayed out from a can (I can tell. I just can.) What we’re paying is really like an entrance fee to their English garden, quite pretty although not well maintained.

After tea, we sent Jelly and Zaria back to the hotel room, and Zara, Daddy and I took a walk on a short track just behind the hotel.

I love the moss, ferns and wild flowers found on this path. You can see them captured here (the roof belongs to Bala’s Holiday Chalet). You have to see Zara ‘manja-ing’ Daddy, “Daddy you are a strong man, carry me.” And so Daddy carried this close to 15Kg girl on his shoulder almost the whole time.

We had to turn back when the track becomes narrower and more difficult to handle with a toddler.

We went back to the hotel to find a fully rested Zaria and headed out to have dinner. This time we tried steamboat at Tanah Rata (Brinchang’s was better).

Thursday morning, we went to Kea Farm again to get our vege and strawberry. Check out the price : RM10 for 14 packs of organic vege (real organic or not, I’m not sure); RM20 for 7 punnets of big juicy strawberries.

We skipped lunch and checked out. We headed to Boh Plantation at Ringlet, thinking of grabbing lunch there.

On the way to Boh Plantation, there are quite a few watercress farms, and we stopped at one to show the girls how watercress is grown.

This farm grows eggplants and watercress. Here you see pools of shallow water used to grow watercress, and beautiful purple eggplant flowers. Surrounding the farms, wild baby breath like flowers were everywhere.

After some more winding roads, we again get to see the breath taking views of slopes with well trimmed tea trees (girls were of course not fascinated by any of these and fell asleep on the way).

The tea centre didn’t serve any hot lunch but only cakes and pastries. I took the last scone available (better and cheaper than Bala’s), the rest had some cakes and pies, the Masala tea there was so delicious.

Girls then had a good time checking out the flowers and enjoying the fresh air around.

You can tell Zaria having a good time with her many expressions.

Our last stop before heading the North-South Highway was the waterfalls. We only let the girls soak their feet in the cold water although both wanted very much to jump down and splash about. When it was time to leave, Zaria was holding on to the car door, refusing to get into the car shouting, “Don’t want (to) go home! Want some more waterfall.”

That’s an indication this was a good holiday. 😛

Zara was eager to check out what I got in a package a few days back. When I showed her the book, My Mommy’s Tote, she was eager to check out its content.

My Mommy’s Tote is a board book shaped like, well, a tote, with handles that you can carry around, and pages depicting sections of a tote.

A wallet, make up purse, a clock with dials, photos, mementos and a cloth handkerchief are just a few of the items you find in the tote. Witty writings as how a child look upon his/her mommy are included in each page, such as, “My Mommy is very kind”; “My Mommy and I like to do special things together”.

What the girls like most about this book is the detachable computer. They both ‘fight’ for it, and claimed is theirs. They will take it out and pretend to type on it, and ‘read’ the display on the screen. They also like carrying the tote around pretending they are going out. Zara loves the white board which she can doodle on and also the picture of mommy dancing with a girl; she said that’s the two of us doing some silly dance.

The book provides a lot of entertainment to the girls and allows a glimpse of what mommies keep in their tote, the closest they can get since I disallow them to dig into my bags. Haha.