Saturday, April 3, 2010

Kids these days!

A shopkeeper asked Aidan today.


" How old are you? "



5


" How do you know you are 5? "


He calmly responded, " Measure me then".

Monday, March 22, 2010

When did they grow up so fast?

Whilst driving my little girl to school today, I decided to ask her a hypothetical question. `Girl, if mummy stayed home, not work, and looked after you, will that be okay?'. She opened her already large eyes really wide and said, "No mummy! You cannot do that. How will I get my butter cookies from Aunty Alina if you don't go to work".

I guess I had that coming. Since she was born, I have always been a working mummy. Quite an alien concept to me as a child growing up because I always had my mummy at home with me. I wonder now how I would feel if I had grown up with a working mummy.

"But mummy will get to get to spend more time with you". "Its okay mum! I get to see you at nights, on weekends and on holidays". 

So now I ask myself. That should be every working mummy's dream answer. But its not. I do wish that I had more time to give her. And that by being home more, she would want me to be around. Not just a night, weekend or holiday mummy. 

But mummy.

Saturday, March 20, 2010

A long hard day - gimme energy

I wished I had the energy of both my children. Its amazing how they can still play and chatter (its now 11 p.m.) while I am almost too physically drained to do anything else than let my brain out and allow my fingers to use whatever remaining energy I have.

AAAARARRRRGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH .... (that's the voice in my head). Just letting it out.

Started the day off going to BKT in Klang and found a home made bao shop that sold peanut lotus paste bao. Thats a first for me and surprisingly a rather nice first. I asked for 2 dao sa bao and 2 lotus paste peanut ones. I think the old uncle seemed bent on having me try the yam pork one so he sneaked 2 inside. Not sure if I actually paid for that. So that's 2 extra bao's for me.

Got home after that and decided to bring the car for a wash, buy a few more fishes and vegetation for the tank.

Oh! Did I tell you that SH (soon hock, from a few articles down) has been moved to the un-used 6 foot tank a few days ago. Why did I decide to do that?

Well, I had 3 goldfishes before I left for Macau and to my horror, upon returning,  I had 2 goldfishes left and one very full and smug looking SH. That was when I decided that it was time SH to moved out. He has had a very expensive diet. 5 neons, 6 tiger fishes, 1 gold fish and hordes of prawns and longkang fish. I just feel very bad :( for that goldfish. May his soul RIP.

After that, I went for AmBagus. Kinda like an American Idol thing. A yearly affair. A first time for me. And I was rather pleasantly surprise. Our in-house talents were absolutely amazing and I was entertained. Am so proud of David, the eventual winner. You know when someone sings from their heart, he pulled a few heartstrings. David's actually visually impaired. Saw Ella and Awie. Wow. They rock the house but of course, I never heard any of their songs before. Ella actually came up to me, gave the celebrity handshake. She got a few people to sing a line from her song. I so thanked god she sang another part of the song when I had the handshake. 

6:30 pm and I am driving to my parents to join them for dinner in Klang ( Two trips in a day. That's my yearly average, accomplished in one day). I love highways. Pity there aren't many in Klang. So I snailed my way through to dinner. One hour drive. One hour dinner. 45 minutes drive back.

Kids are still playing. Supposed to have gone for a friend's daughters birthday but I don't trust myself driving this late tonight. My minds awake but my body is going to shut down pretty soon. Sorry Shirley ....

Kids are still playing ........ and the smaller one wants his milk. I hope all that activity he had today will knock him out easily. Fingers crossed.

Well, here is looking forward to another night of sleep without having to wake up early tomorrow .... Happy Sunday folks!


Wednesday, March 17, 2010

The Ugly Malaysian








The Ugly Malaysian exists. 

To board a flight, there are some who would push the elderly and shove children out of the way and be very proud of the fact that they have absolutely zero civic conscience or a single ounce of decency. I am embarrassed that at an international airport, to hear a foreigner ask, `Are you guys Malaysians?, Do you even know how to behave?'. It is absolutely embarrassing but the Ugly Malaysian does not care. Four Ugly Malaysians, Four able bodied men jostling each other, older and younger passengers to be right in front. Let me tell you how this happened.

This all happened on Monday evening/night. In Macau International Airport. First, the Ugly Chinese who introduced themselves when I queued to get in line for check in. Of course, the Ugly Chinese took advantage of the fact that I had children travelling with me. So that should be easy enough barging their trolleys ladened with heavy luggage at my unsuspecting kids. That really pissed me off. Don't mess with this mum. So the Ugly Chinese had to wait their turn. All this time, I thought how un-educated and horrible these people were. But I think the Ugly Chinese somehow, have been put in a society that is so competitive that in order to survive, these are some of the hard choices people make. Its a dog eat dog world.

My flight home, AirAsia AK55 that was scheduled to leave at 5:10p.m. Weather conditions unfortunately did not favour me as Macau was shrouded in thick fog. Giving the AK55 pilot the benefit of the doubt, whilst all the other pilots landed their planes, ours ended up in Hong Kong instead. 

After 5 hours of waiting, AirAsia gave AK55 passengers the choice of:

(a) Take our luggage, board a ferry and find ourselves into HK and board the flight from there. That was a really bleak option and had that happened, we would probably fly out of HK 9 hours later. 
(b) Wait until the next available flight, that could happen over 2 to 3 days. No reimbursements.

But luck be on my side, the later flight AK57 landed in Macau. IN FOG. Still, I give the AK55 pilot, the benefit of doubt why he could not land IN FOG. And the flight was not full. So AirAsia, gave passengers the option to board this flight but unfortunately, there was no enough space to board everyone. That's when the Ugly Malaysian surfaced. And the jostling and shoving just to get in front. Our four friends where already amongst the first 10 in queue but this obviously was not enough. 

Tip to Air Asia. Be a responsible corporate citizen and make it a policy to board the elderly, pregnant and those travelling with children first. There will be more incidences where the Ugly Malaysian will surface again. And sadly, no amount of education can help but to teach them through conditions placed. The sad part of this episode, there were 43 elderly tourists travelling together and they could only board 23 of them. If I were travelling without kids, I would have given up my seat. I don't know what time those grandfathers and grandmothers got home to their families. 

Shame on you. Ugly Malaysians!

Tuesday, March 9, 2010