There are a couple of changes in the household these past weeks.

♥Juicing For Health♥

After comtemplating for a while, I decided not to get the extremely expensive Vitamix (~RM3000), or its OEM equavalent (~RM1000). Since we just bought a Philip blender a year back, I thought I better make more use of this.

And for almost a month now, I’d been juicing. Well, not really juicing, but blending fruits and vege, and drinking up all the juice and pulps that comes with it.

Using the Philip, and having it set at Smoothie mode, most vege/fruits can be blended to a smooth drink packed with goodness in 3 minutes. I change the fruit and vege daily to give ourselves a variety. In case you wonder, the juice does not taste fibrous or yucky as long as some water is added to make it not ‘paste-ty’. Unfortunately, at this point in time, the girls still do not like the taste of any of the juices (Zara said it taste like a ‘salad drink‘), so it’s just Daddy and I getting a glass each to start our day.

♥Change of Milk♥

After being a sucker for Enfa milk for the past 4.5 years (Zara started taking formula only when she was 1year +), and accomodating their ever escalating price, we’d finally had enough!

Switched the girls to Dumex which is 1/3 of the price! If you were like me who didn’t know, Enfa milk is Made in Thailand with milk from US. Dumex is Made In Malaysia with milk from Australia and New Zealand.

Girls didn’t mind the change, they claimed, “They taste the same.. This one (Dumex) not so sweet.”

Their bowel movement remain the same. Oh maybe they will be less inteligent than the Enfa kids (so the Enfa advertisement claims), but we pumped them up with DHA pills and they have fish every meal time, should be enough brain food for them.

Unless Dumex becomes greedy too, or the girls are allergic to the milk, Dumex it is.

There, Enfa, you just lost 2 loyal customers due to your greed by always increasing your price!

♥Change of Sleeping Partner♥

I’d been Zaria’s sleeping partner since she was born. She won’t sleep with anyone else if I were around.

Suddenly these past 2 weeks, she said she wanted to sleep with jiejie instead. Not everyday, but maybe a few times a week.

So when she wants jiejie for the night, she’ll share a bed with Zara, poke Zara’s belly button; I kind of enjoy seeing this closeness between the girls. On days, when she wants to sleep with me, I still love her small body next to mine, and her roaming fingers finding my belly button in the middle of the night.

I’m not capturing much of what Zara said these days because she’s speaking longer sentences, and I have a hard time memorising these. I’m however, started to capture the more interesting things she said using my phone Note Apps. Even she’s telling me, “Ma, are you recording what I’m saying?” 😛

This girl is getting extremely good with articulating her thoughts or getting her message across.

She’s very good with giving a punch line, or being creative with names calling.

For example, when she’s upset with Daddy, she’ll say something like “Excuse me, Daddy Raddy, …..” or “I’m dissapointed with you Bow Daddy.”
(Daddy Raddy or Bow Daddy terms she made up along the conversation).

She’s good in talking back to Daddy; like telling Daddy, “You don’t have a brain, you just have a butt.”

One day, the two girls were playing in the car, shouting, laughing, making so much noise. Daddy told them to be quiet, and then he started talking to me. Zara said sulkily, “The one who asked me to be quiet can’t keep quiet himself.” o.O”

Another day, Zara stepped on Daddy’s tripod, and Daddy scolded Zara, “Told you how many times not to step on my things! Come! Let me step on your head and see.” (oh, all the photography gear to him is soooooo precious)
Zara started crying and told him, “My head is more important or your thing is more important? My head right? Why did you say you want to step on it?” o.O”

Yesterday, on the rare occasion where I turned on the TV, I saw an interesting TVB drama on NTV7 (I think that’s the channel). The TV was left turned on while we were having dinner. When I saw Zaria was not eating her meal but kept looking at the TV, I turned it off.
Zara said, “Just now you were not my real mummy. Now you are my real mummy.” I asked her why did she say that, and she replied, “Real mummies won’t teach their children bad habbits by having bad habbits themselves.” (bad habbit == watching TV while eating) o.O”

She did very well in her Chinese reading homework and also piano practice (normally, both of us end up being angry with each other because I get angry with her not paying attention, and she gets angry with me loosing my patience), so I told her, “You did so well today for your reading and your piano playing, and I’m so proud of you.”
She replied, “Ma, I did well to impress you.” o.O”

This girl, if she’s going to a English medium school, will sure not have problem. But.. this is Malaysia, and I cannot afford to send her to international school. 🙁

Continue from here.

♥1st September♥

Each day, we probably spend more than an hour at breakfast. Girls have their daily egg (ommelete or just egg white sunny side up) and heaps of bacon.

Zaria who doesn’t quite like using cutleries, having fun with her bacon here.

She told us, she’s turned into bacon vampire.

After breakfast, it was straight to the pool again.

I went out with my sis to have a massage done in town, and got Daddy and Annie to watch over the kids.

We have to pay 200Baht 1 way to go to town, but it was worth it, Massage was good and cheap, 400Baht for 2hrs. The Heavenly Spa in the hotel was charging 4 times that price!

T and I are not fussy people when it comes to food, so we just had some street food for lunch, and packed something back from the supermarket before we headed back to the hotel.

Girls were in the room and napping with Daddy keeping watch on them.

In the evening, T, Tasha and Annie were going to watch Fantasea. We didn’t follow because we thought the ticket was way too expensive. Instead, we spent the event strolling to the Gypsy Village via the beach.

Zaria who likes the beach, kept stopping and playing with sand. She was trying to dig a hole just like how a dog would have done, using her 2 bear hands.

We have to stop a couple of times to hurry her to come along.

I think the Westin stretch of beach is constantly being cleaned and combed, making it look sooo spotless. However, I think the water is probably very poluted. On our 1km walk to the gyspy village, we saw 2 Fugu-like fished washed ashore, probably poisoned by the sea water, struggling to get back to the sea. Beyond Westin, the beach was extremely dirty, with lots of rubbish, and among the human created dump, we found bodies of fishes, crabs and squids.

At the Gypsy Village, there were lots of fishing boats. You can see from this pix, the hotel is not that far from the village.

The people there depends on the sea for a living. We saw women digging up cockels at the shore, and men mending or making cages for fishing.

Children have simple toys. We saw girls having competetion on shell pickings, and the boys, have a make shift snooker match.

And to get back to the hotel, we took a bike taxi back. The whole family squeezed into the small area, and got taken back to the hotel for 50Baht.

That night, we just have a simple dinner at the hotel.

♥2nd September♥

After eating in the hotel for breakfast for more than 3 days, the food is getting a bit boring. The dishes remained the same, except 2 or 3 variation.

Girls although still eating, were getting a bit bored at times for the long wait to get to the pool (they finshed early, but have to wait for us to finish ours, since we took our time).

Zaria found games to keep herself occupied.

(and Zara obviously bored)

My sis went to town again for another round of pampering. We got Annie to help us watch over our girls at the pool, and we rented a bike to explore the island.

We wanted to go all the way south, but struggled a bit just to get out of Phuket town. Then there was also a sudden downpour, so we had to stop at Wat Chalong to wait for the rain to subside. I saw a big sign “Factory Outlet” just outside the temple, and thought I can shop while waiting. Guess what Factory Outlet was that? A latex mattress factory outlet! And even if I wanted to buy any mattresses, I cannot afford the price, the cheapest, a thin single mattress, was going for 18000baht!

We got to Cape Promtheap eventually, the southern tip of Phuket, with beautiful view, and super strong wind.

On our way back, we even have a little adventure. The tyre got punctured and we were lucky we were near a bike repair shop. Got it fixed (for 180baht) in 20mins and moved on.

It took us less time to get back to the hotel, but still we arrived at 3pm with our packed lunch. Girls and Annie were femished, they gobbled up the food very quickly and went back to swim.

I stayed with them while Daddy explored Siray Island.

In the evening, with Zaria constant begging, we took the girls out to the beach.

Zaria really had fun.

Zara kept asking us when we could go back to the pool.

Tasha didn’t mind either.

For dinner, it was back to Look Mai again, for some cheap(er) home cooked meal.

♥3rd September♥

Check out after breakfast. As it was raining, the girls spent time at the Kids’ Club.

When the rain stopped, the kids went back to the pool.

The hotel gave us a room to shower and change before we departed to the airport for our 6:30pm flight.

The girls knocked off in no time on our way to the airport.

Zara and Zaria really enjoyed the holidays. Zara said, “This is like the queen of all holidays.” I think having Tasha around made them enjoy themselves even more.

When my eldest sister, T, told me the a new Westin Resort was opening in Phuket and they were running some really good opening promo; I quickly went to make the all the necessary bookings.

We planned and decided to go a week before the school holidays, just so the flight was half the price (of the school holiday’s rate). T too was going with Tasha, and Annie, her helper.

♥30th August♥

We arrived in Phuket early in the morning. The Westin Siray Bay Resort is ~40mins from the airport, so by the time we went through immigration, collected our checked in bags, hired a taxi and got to the resort, it was late morning. We were lucky, our room was ready. T had to wait for hers, and it wasn’t ready until almost 3pm!

The room was sea facing, and had such a spectacular view. With 2 hollywood single beds + a complimentary child’s rollaway bed, it still felt spacious (although Daddy complained a bit). I forced the girls to take their naps (because I wanted to take mine too, since I was packing till late midnight, and woke up 5am that morning) once the Ooos and Aaaas died down in the room.

Zara slept in her rollaway, Daddy has the huge bed to himself and I shared mine with Zaria.

We woke up around 2pm, and the girls were eager to get to the pool. So off we went, and met Tasha there.

The rest of the first day was spent with the girls in the pool, and exploring the facilities in the hotel.

For dinner, oh, I must share this, because it still makes us pissed just thinking about it.

We (including T, Tasha and Annie) thought we’d go to a near by restaurant OUTSIDE the hotel and thought we’d walk.

It was dark, and we didn’t know how far we must walk. Half way walking, a driver in a Westin car asked us to hop on. He’d send us, for FREE. So, ok, we got him to drive us to the restaurant (which was less than 1km from the hotel).

This restaurant, Plaey Leam, is those outdoor type (like our Warong Tomyam); menu showing prices of Tomyam 450Baht; prawn cakes 400Baht etc etc. Reasonable right? So, we ordered Tomyam, prawn cakes, a fried fish, a vege, pineapple fried rice, drinks for everyone, I think that was it.

Before we settled the bill, the person in charged came over to tell us that the driver ordered fried rice, did we want to pay for it? We thought, ok, we’d pay, just as a treat to him.

Who knows, soon after, the man waved to the driver, and both of them went to the back, and less than 3minutes, the driver was out, stuffing something, probably fried rice (?), into the pocket!

And the bill came. Freaking ~5000Baht (~RM500). The driver’s fried rice was 200Baht! All the dishes was double the price of what was indicated on the menu, apparently, he gave us double the portion of everything. We complained, and he just gave us the grin, “This no expensip, this Thai plice.”

So we got blardy conned, by the restaurant, and the driver! Daddy was fuming; but T said, the consololation was the food was not bad.

♥31st August♥

After breakfast, we went to check out the Westin Kids’ Club. An adult have to accompany children below 4 (Zaria) but for children above 4, you can actually leave them with the staff, and they will have activities from 9am to 5pm to keep the kids occupied. There were also lots of arts and crafts to be done and most of them were free.

One of the staff taught the girls how to draw chicken, and Zaria immediately started working on her (four legged chicken) piece.

At 11am, thanks to my sis who prebooked our seats (only 11 seats per trip), we followed the hotel free shuttle to Phuket town.

We spent all our time shopping in Ocean and Robinson, and had late lunch; and then took the free shuttle back at 3:30pm.

Children didn’t want to nap, and preferred to do more swimming.

That night, we walked out to Look Mai, another restaurant near Westin (only 2 within walking distance). This time, we checked all the prices and made sure ‘small’ portion was ordered. The prices were definitely more reasonable, and the cooking more homely.

The girls wanted to watch TV when we got back to our room, but Zaria knocked off 5mins into the show (no nap == early bed time). Tasha came over to sleep with us, and shared a bed with Zara. Daddy moved to the roll over, and claimed it was more comfortable than the heavenly bed.

I love books (or maybe owning books).
I was called a book worm when I was younger.
I tried not to miss any book sales if I can, but I think I have to vow not to go to the next one just in case I went on a buying frenzy again.

After Daddy came back from China a month back with 10 new recipe books for me, I (and he) thought that should last me a while; then The Bookfest @ Malaysia 2010 organised by Popular started (4th Sept to 12th Sept)!

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Last Sunday, I told Daddy to bring us there in the morning.
We were in KLCC from 11am till almost 7pm.
The Bookfest was held in KL Convention Centre, occupying whole 6 Halls! Brightly litted, strong air con, with lots of staff around to help seach for titles, putting books (people took and placed somewhere else) back where they belong, it was very pleasant to be spending time going through books.

I spent the whole time in the hall, while Daddy went in and out.
He walked through the halls, picked up some stationary.
Then he brought the girls out for lunch (and bought me back a sausage roll so I don’t have to waste time going out to eat).
And after seeing I was not planning to leave still, he brought the girls to Aquaria, and paid RM85 just for tickets for the 3 of them!

Daddy took these photos just to show how boring interesting Aquaria was.

The most interesting part of Aquaria is probably the scuba diver feeding the fishes. The girls got lucky this time and managed to watch it.

When they were done, Daddy called me to see if I was ready to leave. I wasn’t, of course, so he brought the girls to KLCC park.

By the time I paid up and left, it was almost 7pm, and our parking cost us RM20!

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Last Saturday, while we were thinking where to go, I suggested the Bookfest again. Daddy complained, “With all the cook books you have, if you picked something from the books to make each day, it’ll last you your whole life. Why do you want to buy some more?”
I argued back, “You should support my hobby. Instead of spending money on bags, and shoes and clothes, I spend on books!”
We went anyway, and had dinner at Hakka Restaurant; parked our car there (so that we don’t have to pay the exorbitant KLCC parking), then walked to KL Convention Centre.

Daddy brought the girls for ice cream so that I can have a start going through the books first.

Then he brought them in and left them with me while he looked at his books.

Girls followed me with their books, and made themselves REALLY comfortable.

Daddy took this shot before leaving for the English section.

We stayed till they closed for the night.

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Yesterday, Daddy asked where we should go after dinner, and I said, “One last trip to the Bookfest?” I didn’t think he would oblidge, but he DID!

And we were there the 3rd time.

This time, only I entered. The girls followed him to KLCC to shop.

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Besides these books, I got the girls some stationary, stickers and stamps as well. I also bought Christmas presents for the neighbours.

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My 坏人 isn’t that 坏 after all…. 😛

Woh… more than a week I’d not posted anything. If you wanted to know why, go here. I’ll be posting more photos of the holiday here once I sorted out all the photos.

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Recently in blogsphere, we’d lost a dear friend, Lisa. She has been battling cancer with so much spunk, but eventually, cancer won. We’d lost her, but heaven has gained an angel.

We’ll always remember her fighting spirit, her generosity, her humour despite the situation, her positive vibes.

We’ll always miss her.

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I’m not sure if it’s a good thing to expose my children to death at such an early age.

This year, Zaria has attended my grandfather’s funeral, and I also brought her along when I went to pay Lisa my last respect.

She used to tell me “Ma, I don’t want you to be fat.” occasionally. Because she knows fat = unhealthy or maybe it was the Harry Potter’s Prisoner of Azkaban that she saw where Harry inflated his aunt.

She would tell me I need to exercise, and if I missed my sit ups in the night, she would ask me, “Why you didn’t do your exercise, ma? I don’t want you to be fat. You must do your exercise.”

Now this week, her tone has changed. She’ll tell me “Ma, I don’t want you to be old.”
She says that to me, Daddy, and even Jelly.
And she’ll work herself to tears after a while, sobbing quietly away, and said, “But I don’t want you to be old.” after we’d explained to her (upteenth time) growing old is natural, and we’ll all go through that.

Yesterday, she brought this up again. Before she shed her first drop of tear, I told her, “All of us will grow old. Even you, you’ll grow bigger, you’ll be 4, then 5, then 6 and then one day you’ll be sixteen.”
She replied, “But I don’t want to grow bigger or older. I want to be small forever.” o.O”

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On our way back to school, we had a chat about the day. Zara as usual likes talking about her best friend WY, telling me about WY’s dad etc. I asked her, “Do you know what WY’s daddy do?” (I was asking more of occupation).
She replied, “I don’t know.”
I asked again, “If people asked you what your Daddy does, do you know (what to say)?”
She replied, “Ya, I know. My Daddy always sleeps, sometimes he snores. My Daddy wear glasses. My Daddy always drinks tea. Sometimes my Daddy goes out with his friends to drink beer.” o.O”
(Wow Daddy, you sounds like someone who’s retired and having a good life.)
I asked another question, “What does Mummy do then?”
She replied, “You bake and you read a lot of books.”

I’ll have to give her more details about our occupations soon.