April Fool’s prank?

I was having a discussion with my boss in her room when our department’s marketing coordinator came in and wished me Happy Birthday. She said there’s a bouquet of flowers and a cake waiting for me at the reception.

No, I’m not an April Fool’s girl…so was it a prank?

Hubby usually sends me flowers to the office on my birthday but since my birthday falls on this weekend, he had planned to send them on Friday. Which explained why he was so shocked when I told him two days ago that I’m taking replacement leave on Thursday and Friday, since I’ve been working for two consecutive weekends. Anyway, he confessed to his plan, and even told me he’ll be sending a cake too, so I could share it with my colleagues. But since my leave was already approved, I suggested for him to call the florist and cancel the order.

However, he asked me yesterday night if I’ve got a meeting today, and I suspected that he might have arranged to send them today. So true enough, I got these…



He’s so sweet, right? Yeah, he’s sweet when he doesn’t get on my nerves!!! Haha…

And to hubby, thanks for the once-in-a-year opportunity to bask in my colleagues’ envious eyes! :-) And oh, they asked me to thank you for the yummy treat.

Bento post #33 – #37

Monday – had some leftover pizza from my meeting in Hilton KL the day before, so I just simply heat up 2 small slices in the oven and packed them for Yiu Yiu with some peeled and seeded grapes. Separated the two slices of pizza with a carrot and strawberry baran dividers.



Tuesday – another lazy and easy bento with two pieces of cut out kaya puff, with some rose apples.



Wednesday – French toast cut into the shape of dolphins and a heart. The bread cutter fits the squarish slice of bread nicely to produce two dolphins and one heart. Fried two pieces of homemade chicken nugget for protein, and some peeled and seeded grapes, again.



Thursday – babysitter made some yam cake and gave us some the night before, so I cut one piece into small cubes for Yiu Yiu. In the silicon cup are two meatballs and two butterfly carrot slices, with some rose apple slices in the other silicon cup.



Friday – the bento box looks really sparse but there’s more than enough to feed my small eater. The two flower shape sandwich consist of three layers of bread, with cheese and luncheon meat in between. Again, fruit consists of some peeled and seeded grapes. Notice she’s been getting the same type of fruits the whole week – either grapes or rose apples. That’s always the case, coz there are just too few mouths in the household, and whatever I buy will last us at least one whole week.



Tomorrow is a brand new week, and the headache starts again – sometimes I’m really lost for ideas on what to pack for Yiu Yiu. Can’t help but keep repeating the same stuff week in week out. Wished I had more time to surf other bento mummies site for more creative ideas.

Story telling

When I came out from the shower last night, I found Yiu Yiu sitting on the bed yakking away, with hubby listening attentively. I then realized that she was actually telling a story to hubby. I listened on and her story progressed from princesses to Barney to some imaginary friends to police and bad guys to … (you get the drift). Though the characters are varied, she actually linked them all together. I suddenly had the presence of mind to record it, but as my camera was downstairs, I grabbed my mobile phone. But by then, she was already wrapping up her story, and I could only record about one minute of the ending.

Listen on and see if you can comprehend her story, as the recording quality wasn’t so good.
Click here to play

Did you hear how she ended the story? She said "And then!" when she meant to say "The end!" Ha ha...

Hubby told me that she had been yakking away for about 10 – 15 minutes, non-stop!!! She didn’t even have to pause to think of her story line but just yakked away linking different stories/concepts one after another. I was really surprised, as this is the first time she told us bedtime stories, instead of the other way around.

Pixart refund

Sometime ago, I wrote about how dissatisfied I was with the Pixart book that I received. The very next day after the post went online, I received a call from the folks at Pixart. Apparently they monitor the Net for any comments/postings/linkbanks to Pixart. They wanted to understand my dissatisfaction with the book, and initially thought that there were problems with their printer. They said they would service their printer, after which they would print several pages from the photobook again for me to have a look. I could then decide whether to reprint the book at no cost, or opt for a full refund (the full refund clause is in their T&C by the way, which I wasn’t aware of, and the kind folks in Pixart readily advised me of this option).

After seeing the reprinted photos, I was still not quite satisfied with the quality. I couldn’t quite decide whether to just let it be, or take the full refund and work on a new book with Photobook, which would mean more time investment. Eventually I decided to take the refund, and the kind folks in Pixart sent me the cheque without further questions. I am really impressed with their customer service, and have nothing but praise for their attitude, especially Dominic, the co-founder of Pixart, who kept in close contact with me throughout the whole process. Kudos to Pixart, and though the quality of their photobooks may not be as good as that of Photobook, they are miles ahead of Photobook in terms of customer service. My email to Photobook on a query related to a recent purchase is still unanswered after two weeks.

Disney’s Princess Wishes

A few months ago, when the billboard announcing the Disney on Ice – Princess Wishes show was put up near the Rothmans roundabout where we pass by every morning when sending Yiu Yiu to school, she kept asking us to bring her to the show. We decided to indulge her and just before we balik kampung for the Chinese New Year, I dropped by the Axcess ticket office, which is just down the road from where I work, to pick up the early bird 20% discount tickets.

The show was scheduled to run from March 20 – 22, but as I have to work today and tomorrow, we went for Friday’s night show. Traffic leading to the Putra Indoor Stadium was heavy as the concert by Ah Mei, the Taiwanese pop singer was just next door at the Bukit Jalil Outdoor Stadium. We arrived about 30 minutes before the show started and spent some time browsing at the stores selling various overpriced Disney’s memorabilias. Still, hubby couldn’t resist buying some of those for Yiu Yiu.

Posing beside an ice carving of a princess - can't make out which character this was

The show started punctually at 8.30pm, with Mickey, Minnie and Tinkerbell introducing Aladdin and his crew. This was then followed by most of the other beloved Disney shows and characters such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Beauty and the Beast and Little Mermaid, followed by a 15-minute intermission. When the show resume, Cinderella made her appearance followed by Mulan, which I thought was the least impressive of the lot.

The set and props for the Aladdin and Cinderella segment

Top: Beauty and the Beast. Bottom: The Little Mermaid

The show ended with all the characters making a final appearance on stage.


Yiu Yiu hasn’t been really exposed to the Disney characters so she couldn’t really identify most of the characters throughout the show. But since she just watched the Snow White DVD earlier in the day, she remembered Snow White as the princess who ate the poison apple. Nevertheless, she enjoyed herself throughout the show, and fell asleep in the car on our way home.

Bento post #29 – #32

Yiu Yiu had a break from mummy’s bentos for two weeks while I was away. The first week, hubby was home so he still tried to fix something really simple for her to bring to school. On the second week when he joined me in Hong Kong, Yiu Yiu stayed at the babysitter’s and I guessed she must have gone to school with bread and buns from the bread van. Since Monday was a holiday, here’s her four bentos this week.

Tuesday – was still a bit lazy so took the easy way out and gave her two pieces of cut out kaya puff. Fried some fish fingers for protein and tried making the bunny apple, courtesy of Angeleyes.



Wednesday – luncheon meat sandwich cut in the shape of flowers, and pears slices in the shape of butterfly and bear.



Thursday – had some leftover rice from dinner last night and decided to heat some up in the microwave and made onigiri for Yiu Yiu, my first attempt. Gave her two meatballs to go with the onigiri, and some grapes for fruits. Instead of buying seedless grapes, I bought the seeded type this time, which I find is much sweeter than the seedless variety. So I peeled them off, cut them into halves and removed the seeds before packing them into the bento box. Yiu Yiu woke up early and was polishing off the grapes as fast as I could seed them.



Friday – fried meehoon and boiled egg. Yiu Yiu requested for egg yesterday while watching me prepare the onigiri. In order for her not to make a fuss, I promised to make one for her the next day. Instead of grapes, I gave her some rose apples, another favourite fruit of hers.

Back from Hong Kong

I’m back, after being away for almost 2 weeks. Hubby joined me after my meeting ended last Saturday, and we spent few days exploring Hong Kong and Macau. We arrived on Thursday night on flight MH363 from Macau, and this was the view from the rear end of the plane.


I’ve never flown on such an empty flight before. There were only 12 passengers, so the plane actually took off with less than 10% of its capacity. Is it any wonder that MAS keeps losing money year after year?

When we got back home, I was greeted by this rude shock!

The broken zipper

Small items and toiletries bags dumped into this plastic bag, which originally contained only several pieces of wet clothing

Visible smudges/dirt on the contents of my bag

I didn’t suspect anything amiss when I saw my luggage shrink wrapped at the conveyor belt. The upper handle of my luggage was broken so I thought they must have shrink wrapped it in case I lodge a false complaint against them for damaging the handle. So it didn’t occur to us to open up the bag to check while at the airport. Since we didn’t lodge any report while at the airport, I had to call MAS to lodge a complaint. And that turned out to be another extremely frustrating affair. I called the toll free number close to 10 times, and each time, I was put on hold until the line got cut off after waiting for 20 minutes. I finally got to speak to someone who asked me to email them with my details and photos of the damaged bag in order for them to assess if it’s a valid case…DUH!

Anyway, Friday was spent unpacking, laundering and cleaning up the house, which was extremely dusty due to renovation works next door. There are still lots of things to be done – sorting out the photos, updating my blog, and of course, catching up on blog reading, which would keep me very very busy for the next few days. And of course, spending time with my precious, whom I’ve not seen for almost two weeks.

Mid way through my pregnancy

This week marks the mid-point of my pregnancy – I’m already into the 20th week. In my last visit to the gynae, which was about three weeks back, I had not gained any weight. At this point in my first pregnancy, I was already 8kg heavier. I’m quite happy with the way things are, weight wise, as I started at a much higher baseline, 5kg more compared to my first pregnancy. I’m hopeful that my weight at full term will not exceed that of my first pregnancy.

We did a thorough anomaly scan at the 18th week and everything looks good – from baby’s head circumference, heart, kidney, spine, ribs, hands, fingers, feet and toes. Baby’s weight was 254g then. I could also start feeling baby’s movement since the 18th week.

Symptoms wise, this pregnancy is slightly different compared to the first. I had much less nausea and vomiting, unlike my first pregnancy when I had a vomit bag hanging over my head for the first five months J. The only food I could tolerate then was pork/chicken and salted egg porridge from the neighbourhood coffee shop. This time around, the hunger pangs were much more prominent, and there were times in the earlier months where I still felt hungry after a heavy bak kut teh lunch! Thank God that phase has passed coz it felt really terrible feeling so hungry, and yet trying not to eat too much.

In terms of food, though I normally loved seafood, I couldn’t stand the sight of fish or prawns during my first pregnancy. This time however, I have an aversion towards vegetables and soups.

People say that if the pregnancy symptoms are different, then the baby is likely to be a different sex. Also, Yiu Yiu really looked like a boy when she was younger (people will not fail to ask if she’s a boy, even when she was wearing a pink suit which says “Papa’s little girl” or “Grandpa’s princess”), and people tell me the next one would be a boy. But truly, girl or boy, all we’re asking for is a healthy baby.

It’s getting harder…

…to leave for business trips. I’ve been psyching Yiu Yiu last week that I’ll be away in Hong Kong for work, and that she’ll be staying home with papa. She seemed to take the news well but started acting up on Sunday night. She was reluctant to go to sleep and followed me up and down the house while I packed my luggage. She finally went to sleep at 12.30am after I was done packing and went to bed together with her.

When she woke up in the morning, I was fixing her bento and asked her to brush her teeth with papa’s help. She refused and insisted to wait for me – and I ended up having to carry her while brushing her teeth. When I asked her to step out from the bathroom as I wanted to take a quick shower, she started to cry. Papa tried to distract her by offering her some toys, which kept her occupied for a few minutes. She started crying again while knocking on the bathroom door. I quickly finished up and changed, before changing her into her uniform as well. She just clung on to me and I had to show her the waiting taxi outside from our bedroom window, and told her that mummy is late. She relented and I went downstairs first, while papa helped her keep her toys. She was sobbing when papa carried her downstairs, and kept calling out for mummy. She told hubby that she cried coz she’ll miss mummy. I gave her a hug, and she held me tightly while sobbing loudly. I also beh tahan already and started crying myself. I promised to call her every day and showered her with kisses, before finally getting into the taxi.

Hubby told me that she was still sobbing quietly in the car while on the way to school…SIGH!

Bento post #23 – #28

These were her bentos for last week.

Monday – cheesy sausage sitting atop a slice of circular cheese and carrot. I don’t have a small circle cutter so I used an old scoop from Yiu Yiu’s milk powder. The circles were still slightly bigger than the diameter of the sausages. Added a mini banana muffin for carbo, and some cucumber sticks and mandarin oranges for fruits.

Tuesday – it’s been some time since I gave her some fish fingers so fried some for her. Packed the last mini muffin for her, this time, it was pandan flavoured. Bought some grapes the day before so she’ll be getting grapes for fruits throughout the week.

Wednesday – bought a set of bread cutter from CP few weeks ago so decided to try them out. Made her a simple luncheon meat sandwich and cut them with the three cutters – rabbit, bear and flower. I pressed too hard on the first rabbit so the ear got cut off as well. For fruits, it’s grapes again.

Thursday – Yiu Yiu asked for spaghetti, which was simple – just cook the spaghetti and heat up the frozen sauce. For some colours, added a carrot flower with french beans stem, and a cheese butterfly. Filled up the spaces with what else but grapes.

Friday – another request by the little missy, she wanted some dried noodles. Cooked a noodle cake and tossed the noodles in light and dark soya sauce, oyster sauce and sesame oil. Decorated the noodles with carrot, french beans and cheese on a bed of meat balls.

Monday – this is the only bento she’ll have for this week, coz I left for Hong Kong after fixing her this. It’s meatballs with french beans and carrot, and two small slices of fruit cake. I still have grapes in my fridge so threw them in as well. Hopefully hubby will remember to finish them; otherwise they’ll be rotten by the time I get back.