As I was talking about how our family has outgrown our car. I am very honored to have been offered a Proton Exora for the weekend, a VIP test drive. I used it to run my daily errand (marketting, shopping, 1 trip to the kindergarten and 1 trip to the primary school), and here is my experience with the car.

(The car that I had for the weekend)

I’m not a technical person when it comes to car. If you talk to me about engines, torque, performance of a car, don’t blame me if you see me looking bored. What is important to me is what the car can do for me, as a mother, as a woman.

I find Exora to be one of the best MPV around, its design is very practical, it takes into consideration the various needs of Malaysian women or mothers.

There’s the key that can trigger the honk remotely! For a forgetful person like me, it’s very useful for me when I’d forgotten where I parked. Oh, and it can also be used to sound out an alarm if we’re in trouble/danger.

I love the car boot. So spacious! It means it has plenty of room to carry my shopping when I go to the market. And when the family goes on a holiday, there’s more than enough room for our bags!

The car has the flexibility to turn into 7, 6, 5, 4, 2 passenger mode with a few easy pulls or clicks. Even a car-dummy like me could adjust the seats myself.

Click. The boot in 6-seater mode. With 1 of the seats on the last row collapsed.

Click, and it turned into 5 passenger mode

Another click, and 1 of the 2nd row seats is lifted, easy for the person on the 3rd row to disembark, and also provide a longer boot space.
I’m even thinking, we can bring our bicycles to parks like Lake Gardens, Bukit Cherakah with all these extra space created by these easily collapsable seats!

Unlike some MPV where the 3rd row is super narrow, there’s still leg room at the Exora 3rd row! Girls were delighted to be seated there to allow the in-laws to be on the 2nd row.

I love the front seat, spacious, and with each seat has its own arm rest!

Seats on the 2nd row can be reclined! The girls love it, becasue now, they can recline their seats when they are tired and needed a rest.

I have no problem installing 2 car seats in the car, and still leave room for other passengers. And if the girls are not getting along, we can always separate them to reduce friction.

Wonderful isn’t it?

There are other little things which also delight me.

There 2 glove compartments! Alright! 1 can be for the manual (Daddy’s section), and another for my things (my section)! CDs, Sunglasses? And included is also a little hook for me to hang my packed lunch or breakfast.

And the best is the adjustable speed built-in aircon ventilation at the 2nd and the 3rd row. For the girls who always have different demands, one complains “I’m cold ma.” another complains “But, I’m hot!”; I can tell them to adjust their own ventilation themselves! They can solve their own problem and have controls over their own ‘aircon’.

What the kids like most about the car?
Zara the sociable one said, “I like the 3 sections (3 rows). It’s very nice because, now we can invite a lot of people into the car.
Zaria the wise one said, “The TV! I like it. And it’s very big (the car). So many seats. And there’s arm rest in the front!”

See them in action.

The Primary school gang, so engrossed with the TV.

The bags. Lots of room even in 6 passenger mode.

The kindergarten gang, who chose to sit on separate rows.

Now, if you are considering an MPV, do register yourself for the VIP Test Drive Session, it’s just a few clicks away.

Go to www.allaboutexora.com.

Go to Get Exclusive Treats with Proton Exora and click Enroll here!

Then click Register here.

Fill up your details then click Next (remember to fill up all your details or you won’t be able to go to Next)

Once you’d filled up your details on Page 2, click submit.

Easy peasy. Hope you’ll enjoy the car as much as I do.

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By the way, if you are not my regular reader and do not know my girls are 4 and 6, which explains the way the car seats (front facing) are installed in my car, take note of the below :

According to Dr Ng Lai Oon, Clinical Psychologist from Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM), for children below the age of 18 months, they should ride in a rear-facing car safety seat.

Photo credit : KONSUMERKini.net.my

Make sure you install your car seat the right way for proper safety measure.

“Malaysian Nature Society (MNS) hosted the 12th Raptor Watch event at PNB Ilham Resort, 10th Mile Tanjung Tuan, Port Dickson on the 12th and 13th March 2011.”
It is a festival to celebrate the return of the migratory birds of prey or better known as raptors on their journey back to their breeding grounds in the northern hemisphere.

Thanks to Daddy (who likes this sort of outing), we are glad we joined in the fun, on 13th March, the Sunday the school holidays began.

The grounds in Ilham Resort has been set up with tents, with different companies either selling goods, or promoting their club. Monoculars and binoculars were at various booths where we can use to watch the raptors when they flew passed.

They were for all to use, and free!

We were actually a bit afraid the girls may break the thousands of dollars binoculars, but nobody seemed to be as worried as us.

It’s not a guarentee that you may get to watch the raptors, but we were lucky, they were circlying above when we arrived, and appeared again later in the evening.

(That’s what our camera could take. Well, Daddy thinks he should get a zoom lens for these kind of shot.)

When the raptors appear, the real bird watchers whipped out their own equipment.

There were face/body painting as well, all contribution will go to MNS. Of course, we all, except Daddy, went for it.
Isn’t the owl cute?

The event being held next to the sea, the girls were so eager to move on and play at the beach. It was 3pm, HOT! But nothing is going to deter them.

It was low tide, very suitable for the girls to splash about (we were not really prepared for the trip, it was kind of impromptu, that’s why the girls didn’t get changed into swimming costumes).

Zaria seemed to like getting dirty wet.

There were crabs to be found as well.

Besides the beach, we explored a near by hill, with a 20min climb, got us to the lighthouse in Tanjung Tuan.

View from the hill.

Although it was a hot day, we all had fun! This might just become our yearly event.

After watching the video on Tania (who’s connected magnet and metal, and with that connection, was able to help her mother retrieve her lost key) I’d went to check out this site (www.connectedtots.com.my), which gives more information on connected tots.

There are a couple of games there which children can play, that allow them to test out their brain cell connections. Zaria finds the Dress Me Up game fun.

She likes the stories available on the site too (one on a boy connecting sponge with water absorption; and another on a boy realizing that light reflecting on water forms rainbow), and from these stories, she added her own connections to her experiences. E.g. Cloth and tissues are like sponge too, it can absorb water and drinks; and commented she has also spotted rainbows on bubbles etc.

Do check out the site with your children and have some fun time with them.

Also, don’t forget to request for sample of Anmum Essential while you are at that site. I’d submitted my sample request, and will be getting the girls to try when I get them. If they like the taste, I might consider changing brand.

In this post, I mentioned about how brain cells need to connect for learning to happen.

Here is a video that shows you a connected tot in action. It is an interactive video, watch it, and you can choose the different ‘answers’ at the end to see what the little girl did to help her mom.

The girl in the video has learnt about magnet, and she had made a connection between magnet and metal, and apply that learning to help her mom. This is a connected moment.

If you want to read more about connected tots, and brain connection, do go here to understand more.

My girls, are extremely good in applying what they have learnt or heard from us in our daily conversation.
Here is one example. Zara (6yrs 2 months) has seen me frying frankfurters for her. I’d always asked her to stand far away, because the oil may splatter while the frankfurters are sizzling. See what connects me with the frankfurters?

What a connection.

If you are my Facebook friend, you have read about Zaria being our new English police.
In a carpool journey home from Zaria’s school, I overheard this conversation between Aidan, who’s my neighbour’s son, and Zaria.
Aidan : No lar. (forgot what prompted him to say that)
Zaria : There’s no la in English.
Aidan : What are you saying lar?
Zaria : Hello Aidan, speak Harry Potter English please. There’s no lar wor meh in English.
o.O”

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

On a different occasion, Zaria was being naughty, and I was scolding her; the more I scolded her the more funny stunts she carried out, and the more I scolded her. Zara gave me the solution. ”Mum, just stop scolding her.”
I replied, “But she’s naughty.”
Zara told me, “But if you keep scolding her, she’ll be naughtier, and you’ll get more stressed. If you stop scolding, she will also stop being naughty.”
There, my new parenting guru.
o.O”

I recently read somewhere that all humans are born with 100 billions brain cell. And for learning to happen, brain cells need to connect. In other words, if I want your children to be smarter, they have to have more brain cells connections. Next time if you want to scold someone chi-sin (痴线), think twice, it might actually be a compliment. 😛

Children’s brains are like a sponge, they are hungry for information and knowledge, given the right exposure or stimulus, more brain cells will be connected, and they will be connected tots.

I’m happy to know that breast feeding has a part to play in assisting with this as well. Breast milk is found to have gangliosides, which help brain cells to connect for smarter learning. The girls being both breastfed for 18months, would have been taken lots of gangliosides.

I won’t say my two girls are smart, but I think they are very good in applying what they have learnt (consciously or unconsciously).This in fact indicates, their brain cells are connected, see how they can teach others what they have learnt from their daily lives?

While the children are settling down to the school routine, I thought I’d better start posting this back dated post or it’ll be stale news soon.

Zaria, who celebrated her birthday at the end of the year, wanted a birthday celebration at Jungle Gym too, but she only wanted to invite Tasha (my niece). Being a work day for my sis, we had to postponed the Jungle Gym play date to the weekend, so on her actual day, Daddy arranged these for her.

A visit to The National Science Centre. It’s free, don’t expect it to be as nice as Petrosains, but it has lots of things for children to play with.

There’s some dinosaur exibition going on (admission is RM25 for whole family) which we brought the girls as well.

(Obivously, they don’t know how to read signage yet)

For lunch, I suggested Japanese. Zaria asked, “Is it your birthday or my birthday? It’s mine right? So I get to choose where to have lunch.” And she chose Wendy’s.

After lunch, I was feeling tired and wanted to nap, but Daddy and the girls were all eager for more activities. What came after next? KL Bird Park.

(I looked after the girls, and Daddy had a jolly good time taking all these shots.)

This girl obviously is not afraid of going near animals.

Their favourite…… Petting Chicks at the hatchling.

It’s rare to see her smiling so happily for the camera. She had a great time picking up one chick after another and didn’t want to leave.

She really enjoyed herself that day.

For her cake, I did a boo boo. I used a new recipe, and the recipe specified a cake pan too small. The cake overspilled midway, and cannot be used as a birthday cake.

Luckily, Aunty C, sent a set of 4 cupcakes over after she saw my FB status.

And for the last day of the week day, we brought them to Bukit Cherakah, just to wrap up the school holidays. It’s a really nice place, but not well managed and maintained. We like the Four Season House the best, where the season is constantly set at Winter.

The thing is we were not properly dressed since we didn’t know there’s such a place in there.

We could only stay inside for a while, but the girls love it, and claimed they have now seen snow.

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.

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.

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!