There’s a knight, who does not do much.
He grooms himself, and he looks smart.
There’s the maid who cares for two dames,
She works twenty four by seven, no rest, and three hundred sixty five days;
teaching, cooking and whatever chores.
With all the work and no rest, imagine the strain.
At times the dames misbehaved, and the maid screams (Oh, maybe a tad too harsh).
The knight will then put on his shining armour, and gallops in with his white white horse.
“I shall save thee from the wicked one!” he declared; and stirs up a storm.
Making him the dames’ hero, and the other, the crook.
The knight then just gallops off, since he’s said his piece.
The maid goes on, although beaten and crushed, to work on whatever that needed to be done.

If the maid was swearing and cursing so much, maybe she’s too stressed, don’t you think?
The dear knight should have taken pity and start rolling up his sleeves,
Instead of just trotting in only in his shining armour and to do the ‘save the damsels in distress’ stunt.

Zaria is a cheeky girl, but a little morbid at times..

Daddy was talking to me in the car, and Zaria wanted to say something to Zara, and so she told Daddy, “Daddy you stop talking!!! STOPPPPPPPPPP…”
Daddy told her, “I talk to mummy, you talk to jiejie, why must I stop?” and he continued talking to me.
Zaria shouted from the back, “I said stop!!!!! I cannot concentrate if you are talking. If you talk some more, I’ll buy some firecrackers and put in your mouth!”
o.O”
(Later, we asked her where did she learnt how to put ‘firecrackers’ in the mouth, she said it was in her Donald Duck show, where don’t know who put dynamite into Donald’s mouth.. See.. Disney cartoons do teach you violence too!)

We were talking about being a doctor, and Zaria said, “If someone cough cough cough until cannot stop. Then I’ll cut her neck and take out the cough!”
o.O”

I was showing Zaria a bracelet from Mom’s Little Treasure Box that I’d ordered for the girls.
Zaria asked, “Where is the bracelet now?”
I told her it’s still with Dinah.
Zaria asked, “In Auntie Dinah’s house?”
I replied, “Ya….”
Zaria said, “If Auntie Dinah don’t give us, then I’ll…. *she put her hand on her neck and did the slicing motion across her neck, then stuck out her tongue*”
o.O”

I was helping her at the toilet, she said, “Maaa… my she-she is so yellow.”
I said, “Aaah.. told you to drink lots of water right? See.. don’t drink water so your she-she is yellow.
Zaria replied, “Nooo.. My she-she yellow because I drink a lot of chrysanthemum.”
o.O”

She has a very fierce temper, when she’s unhappy, she’ll beat Daddy (it’s always him who became her victim), mess up the furniture and once, she even threw food from the dining table. When she behaved in such a manner, I’ll use the cane (actually it’s a big chopstick) and give her a stroke. Nowadays, she’ll cry after I smack her and say, “You want to leave me another cane mark, is it!!!???”
o.O”

When I told Daddy I wanted to meet my friend who’s back from Hong Kong for holidays with her children in Petrosains, he was skeptical about the place. I too was thinking what there was to do.

I was there with my nieces and nephew more than 8 years ago, and we really didn’t think it was nice. However, this was more of a trip to meet up with my friend, and not so much about enjoying Petrosains.

I met my friend and her sister at the entrance of Petrosains with her two sons plus her two nephews and her niece. 7 children and 4 adults all in, what a group!

We bought the family ticket, RM24 for 2 adults and 2 children, although Zaria is below 4, and is free, it still worked out to be cheaper buying the family ticket than individual ticket. We entered Petrosains after our lunch, and didn’t think we would spend so much time there.

Let the photos do the talking.

Six children trying to build a track with tubes so they can see balls roll through.

Zaria trying in vain to ‘catch’ a hologram car. She said, “It’s magic!”

There were lots of Information Panels, and computers throughout Petrosains, and Zaria loved pressing on the buttons and checking out what they each did.

Zara and her new friend trying to move around iron dust with magnets.

Look who’s an astronaut? You can actually take a photo of yourself, and see your face displayed as the suspended dummy astronaut’s.

Zara’s thermal scan.

Pulleys and tubes, and conveyor belts formed this play area for children (and adults) where they see how little metal beads travelled in a loop.

This is my favourite, the interactive art. Where the images projected on the screens moved and ‘reacted’ accordingly to your body movement.

Girls here were trying to make the butterflies stand on their shoulders.

Catching falling crystals.

Feeling the different viscosities of different oil.

My friend’s son trying to find out how fast the balls he threw travelled, and at what momentum they hit the wall.

Girls trying to race in an F1 race.

Zaria and myself driving our own F1 cars. I did extremely badly as the car was hard to control with such power. Zara told me, “If you cannot drive this car, then I think you cannot drive a real car”

Zara’s turn, she could hardly reach the pedal, but that’s not stopping her.

I don’t know how this work, but you put on a strap (with electrodes) on your forehead and try to use your mind to resist the ball from being pushed to you. My friend’s son (the champ of this game) and myself having a go here, he beat almost every contestant, including me, but I gave him a strong fight, lasting quite long.

Girls and me in a Hurricane Chamber, the girls didn’t like it, and when the ‘wind’ started being slightly stronger, they ‘escaped’.

My friend had to rush through some of the activities because she had a dinner to attend.

There are lots of other things to play with or try out which are not shown here. We tried the earthquake stimulator, helicopter simulation, etc etc. And before we knew it, we spent more than 4hrs in Petrosains!

The girls were exhausted and since we wanted to have dinner around KLCC, we brought them to Coffee Club at Kinokuniya to nap, while we had tea.

After a short nap, we brought the girls to the KLCC play ground, to play some more.

With all this time spent in KLCC, our parking came up to RM19! o.O”

Dinner was just us at Hakka Restaurant overlooking KLCC.

Two things that Zara can really concentrate on are : 1) TV watching 2) drawing.

And of course, because of that, she’s able to draw what she has watched. Can you tell what shows she’s trying to draw? (answer in comments)

Drawing 1

Drawing 2 (which is from the same show as Drawing 1)

Drawing 3

Drawing 4

And Zaria, much younger, wanted to try too, and this is her drawing, and according to her, of a very famous character in one of the movies she watched recently.

Drawing 5.

Too bad they are all drawn using colour pencils (except Zaria’s drawing), making the colours and lines a bit light.

The girls are growing up so fast, and loosing their Kiddish English or Thoughts.

Although we conciously try to correct them (especially Zaria) when they mispronounced words or made gramatical mistakes, so that they get a good start in the language, none-the-less, I like to reminisce the little mistakes or the innocent thoughts they have.

Here is to capture a few of them.

Over dinner, Zaria was holding a princess book of stickers (Thanks to Rachel), then she asked me, “Maa, which one you think is mosest pretty?”
(mosest = most)
😀

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

In the car, the girls wanted to see who can count the fastest.
Zaria gave the command to start the race, “Alamak… get set, go!!”
(alamak = on your mark)
😀

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

Zaria always pronounce Maggie Mee as Mega Mee, so I asked her, “Why you always call maggie mee as mega me?”
She replied, “No, I never say mega mee wut, I say meh-ger mee.”
😀

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

One day, Zara was standing behind me watching my computer display.
She asked, “Maaa, what are you doing?”
I told her, “You know how to read right? So you read this (pointing to the top left of the display), and tell me what I’m doing.”
She slowly read (phonetically), “Feh-Keh-dook.”
o.O”

If you don’t get it,
Fa == Feh
ce == Keh
book == dook (she always mixed up d and b)

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

We were seated right at the back in the church attending my grand father’s 100th day mass, making it difficult for the kids to see what’s happening at the alter (and although I’m Catholic, the girls don’t go to church. o.O”).
During the eucharistic prayer, when the server rang the bell, Zaria tip toed, tried to see what’s happening in front and asked, “Is that Santa Clause??”
😀

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

Daddy brought the girls out to do grocery shopping, and normally after shopping, he always gives the girls an ice cream treat. However, on this particular day, as both the girls had the flu, Daddy said no ice cream for the day.
Zaria begged Daddy, “Give me a chance dad…”
😀
Daddy gave her a chance by buying her smarties instead.

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

Girls were fighting just before I finished work.
So when I got downstairs, I took the cane and asked them who started the fight first, and what they each did.
Zara kicked Zaria down from the sofa; her punishment, 1 cane stroke.
Zaria kicked Zara numorous times because she wanted space on the sofa; her punishment, 1 cane stroke too.
While caning Zaria, her skirt actually prevented the cane from touching the buttocks, so I lifted her skirt and smack again.
She cried and looked at me with pitiful eyes, and through her sobs, she asked, “Maa, *sob sob*, you *sob sob* want to give me *sob sob* a cane mark?? *sob sob*”
o.O

Zara could read, phonatically. However, she takes time to read simple sight words like their, my, we etc. I do not know what reading level children her age should be at, but I’d seen her friends in the same age group (from school, from her music calss) reading phrases with difficult words effortlessly. If I used that as a bench mark, then we’re in trouble.

I thought I’ll do something about it.

Normally in the evening, I try to spend about 30minutes with Zara, helping her with her keyboard pieces, her Chinese, her maths, and English writing or reading. Most of the time she’ll protest having to do more work (on top of her school homework).

So since last week, I thought I’ll start a reward system. Every day, if she’s done well with her extra homework from me, she gets a star. And each star is RM1. She can cash out the money at any time to buy anything she wanted. When this was first introduced, she already had things in mind that she wanted to buy. A pair of sun glasses (30 stars) and a helium balloon (30 stars).

Since the introduction of the reward system, daily, before we read her her bed time story, she’ll proactively ask me to choose the book for her to read; she’ll try to read phonetically, and I’ll help her with the difficult words. For passages which she struggled to read, I will ask her to re-read them the following day to familiarise herself with the words she found difficult.

After slightly more than a week of doing this, I could see her reading has improved a lot! She’s more familiar with the sight words, and getting better with her phonics.

These are the books I used for her reading.

Zaria seeing her sister getting stickers and all, wanted to participate too. She’ll ask me to pick a book for her to read too. Being younger, I’ll do most of the reading, but I’ll ask her to read words that are 3 or 4 letters which are spelled phonetically.

Some days, I got her to spell out the words she has read too, and she could. This was one of her ‘spelling’. She got the D written wrongly in AND, so she wrote again; and she tried a few times before she got the tricky S in STOP right.

I gave them each a ‘sticker passport’ (just A4 paper folded into 4), and their rewards are pasted on the ‘passport’. Rewards come from reading mainly, but I also give them a star if they are able to spell, do some sums, or behave extremely well.

Each day, after getting their stickers, they will count the total, and Zara woud do a count down, “20 more stickers and I can get my sunglasses.”

And Zaria told me yesterday after getting her 11th stickers, “I’m going to the shop to find something with 11 (dollars) on the label.” 🙂

Everytime Daddy goes to Japan for work, all of us will be delighted, because it means, he’ll be bringing back some of our favourite things.

However, I do wish that it was I who’s going, because I think I shop more wisely than him. I’m more resourceful (i.e. checking out more shops); I do not hold the philosophy of “Expensive is Best”; I would probably come back with more things and not spend as much.

Normally, I’ll have to give him a shopping list to get the stuff I wanted, down to the product code if possible. However, depending on his mood (generous? bad? stingy? giving?) he does still buy some whimsical items, especially from the airport (airport shops are created for men like him!).

This sweet is one of the whimsical item, not in the shopping list.

One look at the box, you know it’s not something cheap.

Made with pure cane sugar, they look so lovely, even I do not have the heart to eat it.

But to the kids, they just went “Waaaaah, so pretty.” And then “Chomp!” Almost half the box gone in 30 seconds.

I won’t buy it if I were him. They tasted just like sugar, just prettier.

Royce Chocolate, something that you cannot come back without from Japan. So far, of all the chocolate I’d tasted, Royce is the best. If you have not tried them, you can now get them locally, brought in by Taitung Group.

I wanted just the bars, with almonds or without, he wanted to give us more variety.

The sesame is for me for baking; and the seaweed is for the girls.

And my Fancl supply, which will probably last me 3 to 4 months. For this, I have to provide him with the code, or else, he’ll end up buying something else.

I wonder when I’ll go to Japan and do the shopping myself!