Adventures of Juan Or and Mommy

Juan Or's First Day at Kindergarten

2012-01-18T23:19:00.000-08:00

Mommy knows this is already the 3rd week into school, but shy to say, now only Mommy finds the time to blog about Juan Or's first day at kindy. By the way, as usual, Mommy was really caught up with management matters during the end of the semester and dealing with countless students at the beginning of a new semester in Mommy's workplace. That's why Mommy has not been updating this blog for about one month already.

Juan Or is officially in kindy already! Here he is, ever ready and eager to go to school!

Here he is in his class called "Pre-K" for 4-year-olds. Good thing - no frets and cries from him - probably because he is mentally prepared after Mommy sent him for off and on holiday classes for the whole of 2011.

Mommy enrolled him for the kindy's daycare as well. In the daycare, the typical routine is lunch followed by nap time and then snack time at 4pm. If the child has finished his/her snack and the parent has not come yet, the teachers will guide the child with their homework (if any) until the parent comes to fetch.

According to the daycare's caretaker, Juan Or willingly ate his lunch, only thing is that he will take the spoon ans twirl and twirl and twirl the rice (instead of eating) if he is left to eat by himself. So the caretaker actually spoon fed him, otherwise he will end up 'eating forever'! ^_^ He slept well too during the nap time and ate together (ate by feeding himself) with the other kids during the snack time. In in all, Juan Or seems to be able to adapt himself well with the new environment Here he is, eating together with his daycare mates.

A close-up pix of him eating....

(surprisingly he ate the jam spread as well instead of just the white bread - very much unlike last time!)

....and him drinking the milk.

Overall, Mommy is very happy and relieved that he adapts himself well both in the kindy and the daycare. :-)

**********************************************************************************

18th January 2012

This is the 3rd week into his kindy. Just yesterday, Juan Or was not quite himself when Mommy fed him dinner. He seemed withdrawn and kept on rubbing his stomach. So his Papa asked whether other kid punched him or not to which he said yes. So Mommy asked Juan Or whether he punched other kid first or other kid punched him first to which Juan Or could not give a consistent answer. He also could not give a consistent answer when Mommy asked whether the teacher scolded him or scolded the other kid.

So Mommy asked his class teacher, Ms. Ida as to what transpired. According to the teacher, apparently Juan Or and one other boy played rough with each other (i.e. shoving each other roughly) and playing while the teacher was teaching. So the teacher punished both of them by ordering them to stand at the corner of the class for 3 to 4 minutes (time out punishment!) and thereafter the teacher explained to them what wrong did they do. According to the teacher, after the punishment, Juan Or became more silent in class (Feelings of guilt? Or feeling bad ?) and more mindful of things he shouldn't do in class (which is a good thing to Mommy!). Well, the fact that he couldn't hide his guiltiness at home shows that the time-out punishment has effect on him! ^_^

Of Litt Tak Toys Warehouse Sale and Man-Woman Sexuality

2011-12-08T22:35:00.000-08:00

Currently, Litt Tak is holding her toys warehouse sale again (till this Sunday) and Mommy, being a fan of Thomas and Friends toys, is sure to be there.

Sadly this time, although there is variety in the kind of Thomas and Friends toys offered, nevertheless, the kind of price cut offered is by far the worst ever Mommy encountered compared to all other previous Litt Tak warehouse sales. Previously, the warehouse sale prices offered are at least 25% discount, but usually are 30% lower than what you see in Jusco and Toys R'Us. However, the current one is only 10% to 11% cheaper than normal retail.

The only good Thomas and Friends deal this time is the Stanley set, selling for RM60 (normally retailed at RM99.90 and previous Litt Tak sale price was RM75).

Mommy saw another good deal too. It's the Power Rangers figurines, selling for only RM2! So Mommy bought two characters only just for fun, after all Juan Or isn't exactly crazy about Power Rangers.

However, when Juan Or laid his eyes on them, boy was he crazy about Power Rangers to the point of bringing the figurines with him to sleep and no forgetting, showing off the figurines to the other boy whom the babysitter is also taking care of! ^_^

Not just that, when Mommy handed the figurines to Juan Or, Mommy was surprised to hear Juan Or labelling the green one as 'man' and the blue one as 'woman', which is factually correct according to the illustration and labels on the figurines' packaging. As if saying 'man' and 'woman' is not enough, he went on to show that if 'man' and 'woman' are together, they must 'KISS!'

Huh, now Mommy knows where does Juan Or's level of knowledge/perception on man-woman sexuality stand! ^_^

P/S: If you are keen to go to Litt Tak warehouse sale, see the details here.

Spoooooooky Hands!

2011-12-05T22:19:00.000-08:00

Come late evening or night, lights have to be switched on in the house. So not too long ago, Juan Or spotted this shadow on the ceiling....

He said it's SPOOOOOOOKY HANDS!

Look here, look there, apparently this is the culprit.....

It's the clothes-hanger stand!

But Mommy knows where he got the idea from. It's from one of his favourite storybook called "The Berenstain Bears and the Spooky Old Tree"!

Juan Or at UCSI-CDC Holiday Camp 2011

2011-12-02T18:48:00.000-08:00

This holiday camp is the last of the holiday programme organized by UCSI's Child Development Centre (CDC) for the year 2011. The holiday camp was for 5 days from 9.00 am to 12.30 pm, fee was RM250 for all 5 days, food provided everyday during morning break and the kids work together with the same group of friends everyday unlike the previous holiday programmes organized before this.

As usual, Mommy enrolled Juan Or for this camp as a preparation for him to go to school officially next year. This round, Juan Or showed his eagerness to go to school when Mommy was driving him there, but once we reached the school, Juan Or became clingy and insisted on Mommy sitting around with him first before entering class. Of course there were initial cryings from Juan Or when the teacher took him in, but luckily he adapted himself quickly.

Many kinds of activities were conducted during the camp such as music and movement, speech and drama, kinder cooking, kinder science, fun play,, arts and craft, water play and telematch. Mommy couldn't be there to see him do the activities, otherwise he would become very clingy and refuse to cooperate during class. ^_^ So these are the photos snapped by the teachers so that Mommy can see what he did there without having to be there!

Making snowman (and X-mas tree but Mommy has yet to snap his end product photo) .....

Rolling on the exercise mat during fun play and dance session.....

Kinder science experimenting on different densities of different kinds of liquid.....

Mommy isn't exactly sure whether this is painting or playing with gooey chocolate, but he sure is enjoying himself!

Telematch......passing the bowl around? Or perhaps passing the ball around using the bowl?

Another telematch scene.....probably the kids were asked to sit down to rest first before another game starts.

A reward (Cars stickers) for winning some games in the telematch....here's Juan Or with the Headmistress, Ms. Adeline Tan.

The week after that (but the camp was already over), when Mommy was driving him, Juan Or asked to go to school. So Mommy answered,"Soon, Juan Or. Next year you will be going to school everyday!"

Big Bad Wolf Books Aftermath Sale (24th-28th November 2011)

2011-11-24T19:34:00.000-08:00

For those who followed Mommy's adventures and hoards at the recent Big Bad Wolf Books sale, you can surely expect Mommy to go for the aftermath sale as well. Well, yes indeed, being the bargain hunter that Mommy has always been! This aftermath sale's objective is to clear out all leftover stocks from the recently-held sale in MAEPS, Serdang. And the good news is that all books are sold each at nothing more than RM5!

This aftermath sale is held at South City Plaza and starts at 10am. Mommy had an unpleasant encounter with one rude and bossy aunty driving a big four-wheel drive when looking for parking in the mall. The parking lot is where people round their cars to look for empty parking lots and here is one rude aunty who is ever-ready to honk fiercely! Then to get out of her way, Mommy diverted slightly towards a section where there is a no-entry sign so that she can head into the correct path and speed all she wants at the parking bay. For that, the rude aunty also has to show her bossy side by giving another fierce honk at Mommy as if saying that Mommy has no right to divert the car to the no-entry direction! Bugger! This is what Mommy has to say to the rude and bossy aunty who seems to think she's all so important and grand - "If you think your time is so precious such that nobody can be in front of you, then why go for this kind of sale? Better go for book stores like MPH, Borders or Popular during their normal business hours where there's no long queue and no crowd! Some more you can afford to own a big four-wheel drive vehicle, why have to come fight with poor people to buy cheap books!?"

Putting the unpleasant parking encounter aside, there was already a long queue at the sale even at 10+am. To avoid the queue, Mommy went to Watsons first to buy something before heading back to the sale. Luckily by then, the queue had dispersed. There were really lots of people there and the walking pathways between display tables are very narrow, so it was quite difficult to walk from one display table to another. And because of the extreme crowd, Mommy only concentrated on the children's section and did not at all bother to venture to the other genres' tables. Most display tables have their books all turned haphazardly. Despite the chaos, Mommy still managed to find some decent books for Juan Or.

These books (10 books altogether) each at RM2. Eight of them are Scholastic books. Mommy is happy to have found some books on Scooby-Doo, Bearenstain Bears and Fluffy the Classroom Guinea Pig. The book at the far bottom right is a postcard book. It contains 30 pull-out postcards. Maybe Juan Or can use them next time when writing to pen-pals (that's if he wants to have pen-pals!).

Here are another 3 books, each at RM3. Two of them (Duck Soup and the one with choo-choo train picture) are hard-cover books and the Safari one is a fact-cum-sticker book.

So total price is RM29 for 13 books, but because Mommy has OCBC credit card, Mommy got extra 5% discount, so paid only RM27.55.

How about the queue? Well, the queue was HORRENDOUS! Mommy started queuing at 11.35am, but only got Mommy's turn at 12.45pm! So this sale is definitely not advisable for people who are not fit, sickly or who are in their middle and late pregnancy (depending on the pregnant mum's fitness level) at least during the 'hot period' of the sale. Imagine standing on your feet for more than an hour to get your turn and in low-oxygen condition some more! You have to be fit to survive in this sale!

How about parking fee in South City Plaza? It's only RM1 for up to 12 hours of parking - cheap!

Would Mommy ever go for another Big Bad Wolf aftermath sale in the future? Highly unlikely.

Cameron Highlands Apartments for Rent!

2011-11-14T19:25:00.000-08:00

Juan Or and Little Sprout, holding hands as they walked up the hilly tea plantation at Boh's Tea Centre at Sungei Palas, Cameron Highlands.

Not too long ago, Papa, Mommy and Juan Or had organized a one-day big family trip to northern Perak to visit the beautiful cave temples. However, after further discussion with Little Sprouts' parents, we finally decided to go to Cameron Highlands instead to enjoy the mountainous view and the fresh mountain air. However, in as much as we would like to stay overnight in Cameron Highlands, we could not do so because the hotel stay (let's say minimum 3-star type) for 7 adults and 3 kids would not come cheap! The cost of hotel stay for 7 adults and 3 kids in just one night can easily come up to RM800 to RM1000!

Just yesterday, Mommy discovered this Malaysian travel website called iBilik. This website offers apartments, homestays and budget hotels for short term rental in Cameron Highlands at affordable and economical prices. The good thing about the accommodation is that they are fully furnished, can fit a variety of maximum number of people (maximum from as few as 2 people to as many as 15 people!) and most of them offer cooking facilities as well so that you can still enjoy home-cooked food (and save money!) even though far away from home. And their rental prices are very attractive too, ranging from RM180 per apartment per night for maximum 10 people to RM320 per apartment per night for maximum 15 people! But of course if you are looking for more comfortable accommodation akin to villa, this website also offers RM750 per family villa per night for maximum 4 people, which is still cheaper than actually staying in a hotel-type villa. So if you are going for vacation as a big family and staying overnight, then Mommy recommends browsing this website for good accommodation offers.

Well, had Mommy discovered this website earlier, we could have gone for overnight stay in Cameron Highlands without having to burn a big hole in the pocket!

What Would Puss in Boots Do?

2011-11-11T21:05:00.000-08:00

Does this feline character look familiar to you?

There you have it, it's Puss in Boots in 3D version! For those who have been following Mommy's blog for some time, you can probably guess it's another blogging contest held by Nuffnang and United International Pictures Malaysia.

In any story, there always are the bad guys causing some havoc and chaos, and then the hero (and/or heroin) comes to save the day! Imagine Mommy in the form of this cute kitty with big doleful eyes.....

....small-bodied, yet saves the day!

The question of the day: How to defeat the bad guys if Mommy takes the roles of Puss and Kitty Softpaws (Puss' female feline partner)? Here's how according to sequence:

1. Go find the Wizard of Oz and ask for his help to make money that has magical power. The magic money is only workable on the named bad guys whereas anyone else not named will not be affected by the magic money. What magical power does the money have? Anyone named during the spell-making of the magic money will be turned into mice the moment the money is touched. If Wizard of Oz is reluctant to make the magic money, never mind, Puss can give him the big, doleful eyes look. Otherwise Kitty Softpaws can give him her female feline charm! What if Wizard of Oz still resist? Never mind, go find Merlin to do the job. What if Merlin also rejects the job? Never mind, go find the local bomoh to do it - chances are, at least one of them will fall for Kitty Softpaws' feline charm! ^_^

2. Once the magic money is at hand, just scatter them on the road where the bad guys are known to be around. The bad guys are sure to come to pick the money! Tell Mommy, who doesn't need money to use? Everyone needs to use money. Even the bad guys are no exception!

3. The moment the bad guys touch the money, they turn into mice! Voila! Then Puss and Kitty Softpaws can pounce on them and have a feast of their lifetime!

Simple, eh? Just use some wit and feline charm to do the trick - nice and clean! ^_^

Oh and by the way, Juan Or is sure to be happy and thrilled to see Humpty Dumpty in action too! Humpty Dumpty is Juan Or's favourite nursery rhymes character.

My Happiest Moment

2011-11-10T20:54:00.000-08:00

This is Mommy's favourite photo - the photo that captures Mommy's happiest moment.

It was Juan Or's infectious laughter and giggles that makes Mommy's happiest moment - something that Mommy wants to capture forever. Well, you may be wondering now what made Juan Or so happy that made Mommy so happy too. It's none other than seeing monkeys swinging around at close range in Bukit Melawati, Kuala Selangor!

Though this happiest moment was just as simple as watching the monkeys swinging around, nevertheless, this is the story behind Juan Or’s infectious laughter and giggles.

Juan Or was about 1 year 1 month old when his walking ability became somewhat established. What started to be like the Frankenstein walking style.....

(animation credits from Animation Playhouse)

......improved by leaps and bound to be more and more like how a human kid walks. With his walking skill getting more and more polished, so did his appetite for physical adventure. He began to explore (and imitate) jumping, skipping and whatever ‘funny’ leg movements that he saw both on the television screen and also in real life.

One ‘leg activity’ that Juan Or particularly liked most was jumping on the bed, most probably because of the springing sensation it gave. Mommy had warned him countless times before not to get too carried away with ‘the activity’ lest he falls down and hurts himself. However, the countless warnings all fell on deaf ears. Mommy even resorted to teaching him about the consequences with the nursery rhyme on monkeys jumping on the bed which sounds like this:

Five little monkeys jumping on the bed
One fell off and bumped his head
Mama called the doctor and the doctor said

"No more monkeys jumping on the bed!"

Or if you prefer to hear the nursery rhyme in the form of song and video, here is one from You Tube.

As if to mock Mommy, Juan Or would merely laugh out loud and parrot the nursery rhyme as he continued his jumping. Mommy wondered when he will ever learn. *Sigh!*

Then, one day, in the midst of feeling high from the springing sensation, sure enough, true to Mommy’s word, Juan Or tumbled down the bed. Crash, boom, bang! – he fell down just like nangka busuk (rotten jackfruit)! If falling down the bed (and landing on the hard floor) was already bad enough, nothing could be worse than having to fall onto a kiddy stool just next to the bed and getting a cut near the lips before landing on the floor!

There was blood all over his mouth, both Juan Or and Mommy went panicky but luckily Mommy managed to control the situation. Mommy carried Juan Or to the bathroom to rinse away the blood stain and then used handkerchief to press on the wound to stop the bleeding.

Many weeks went by since the bloody incident. The wound healed, but the ‘wound’ in his memory did not! Whenever Mommy read him the monkeys-jumping-on-the-bed nursery rhyme, Juan Or would cringe his face and shouted “Scared! Scared!” Whenever Mommy showed him pictures of monkeys in his kiddy books, he would give the same reaction. Poor boy! Now he seemed to associate monkeys with bad fall! *Sigh!*

Then one day, Papa took us for an outing to Bukit Melawati, Kuala Selangor. Our main reason for going there was to get up close and personal with the real monkeys, but of course knowing that Juan Or was phobic towards monkeys, Papa and Mommy kept the monkeys a secret. Instead, Mommy told Juan Or all about the tram that ferries visitors up and down the hill – the one children would prefer to call as choo-choo train! Boy was Juan Or excited to ride on the tram!

Well, we reached the part of the hill top where trams would normally stop the visitors. As expected, the monkeys came in flocks to ‘busybody’ around because the visitors had food to offer. Bold ones would openly come forward and ‘beg’ for food whereas the more timid ones would merely swing around or watch from a distance and only pick up food that were thrown to them.

What about Juan Or? Much to Mommy’s surprise, Juan Or seemed to have ‘forgotten’ about his phobia for monkeys! Was it because of watching the cute monkeys swinging live? Or was it because of the natural beauty of monkeys that can be seen so up close and personal? Whatever the ‘magical factor’ was, what was clear was that Mommy did not do anything special to break his monkey phobia and that Juan Or was obviously enjoying watching the monkeys! Maybe something in him realized that it was not the monkeys that caused the bad fall, but rather, it was recklessness and getting too carried away.

Whatever it was, Mommy was happy that the mental wound is gone for good and that Juan Or is able to enjoy the beauty of nature without associating it with his past traumatic experience. Seeing and hearing Juan Or laugh and giggle are the simple things that make Mommy’s life so happy, beautiful and rewarding. When Juan Or is HAPPY, Mommy is HAPPY too!

By the way, all the photos here were taken using Mommy’s handphone camera. Mommy has long been yearning to upgrade Mommy’s photography tool. So this “Happy Photography Contest” held by Olympus and Nuffnang is a good chance to make the yearning a reality – a chance to win Olympus’ new range of PEN Lite.....

and PEN Mini digital cameras that come with high DSLR image quality.

So here it goes:

HAPPY Juan Or = HAPPY photography = HAPPY Mommy!

Juan Or at the Premier Screening of The Adventures of Tintin in Secret of the Unicorn

2011-11-02T22:53:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Nuffnang and United International Pictures Malaysia, Mommy won a pair of passes to watch the premier screening of The Adventures of Tintin in 3D on 2nd November 2011, 9.30 pm at Golden Screen Cinema Midvalley Megamall!

Papa, Juan Or and Mommy reached Midvalley pretty 'early', i.e., at about 6.10 pm because that's about the best time to look for parking since Midvalley office workers are most likely to be driving out by then. Since the show would only start from 9.30 pm, we had a lot of time to kill in Midvalley......

Juan Or got to have his static ride on his favourite Thomas the Tank Engine and the Troublesome Truck!

We went to see Transformers toys too at several toy figurine-specialized shops (Anime Tech, Comic Mart) at Megamall's top floor, but didn't buy anything as their prices are not competitive. We went to Toys R'Us to see too but there were not many varieties left.

Finally, by 8.15 pm, we headed for GSC to collect the passes. Well, there was already a long queue of Nuffnangers even though there was no sign yet of Nuffnang staff nor a Nuffnang counter. And guess who we met there? It's none other than Juan Juan and her mum from My Little Sprouts! By the way, Mommy met Isaac Tan from eXperiences too (via introduction from Juan Juan's mum).

It wasn't too long after queuing that Mommy got the passes plus two "I (heart) Nuffnang" badges. Juan Or was very eager to wear the badge and even insisted that Mommy should wear too!

By around 9.15 pm, we were allowed to be seated in the screening hall and the 3D glasses were distributed upon entering the hall. Juan Or treated the glasses more like a toy - wore it and made funny faces!

Since only two glasses were distributed (but there were three of us), Mommy made it a point to stand by with a pair of cardboard 3D glasses taken from Juan Or's 3D book of dinosaurs. Mommy wasn't exactly sure whether such cardboard 3D glasses are compatible for warching such 3D movies, but no harm trying, right? Anyway, the cardboard 3D glasses were meant for Juan Or to use whereas the proper 3D glasses were for both Papa and Mommy to use! ^_^

Finally, the show started and guess what? Juan Or refused to give Mommy back the proper 3D glasses! He insisted on using the proper one and that Mommy should use the dinosaur one! *Faint* Mommy made several futile attempts to coax him into giving Mommy the proper glasses with each attempt ending with Juan Or making faint crying sound. *Cunning boy!* So what to do? Mommy used the dinosaur one while he used the proper one! On several occasions, Mommy caught him watching with the proper glasses being lifted up to his forehead (in other words, he was watching without the glasses!), so Mommy insisted that he give it back for Mommy to use. Guess what was his reply? With an almost crying voice and pleading tone, Juan Or said," Cannot see without glasses!" *Double faint*

So at the end of the day, Mommy watched 3D Tintin without any 3D glasses for about 90% of the time, 5% with the proper glasses on and the remaining time with the dinosaur glasses on. Without any 3D glasses, the subtitles are of course double image, but the pictures are not too double image - still a manageable view, though. With the dinosaur glasses on, the subtitles still look double image, but the pictures are a little better off. And of course with the proper glasses on, the 3D-ness is very good! The only downside to Mommy about wearing the proper 3D glasses is that it adds extra weight onto the short-sighted glasses that Mommy is already wearing, thus giving a heavy and uncomfortable feeling or pressure on the nose bridge. Looks like watching 3D is definitely not for Mommy, but for Papa, the 3D experience was heavenly (he didn't seem to experience the heavy-nose-bridge symptom)!

How about the Tintin movie? Well, it was an enjoyable show despite some tug-of-war-of-glasses inconvenience with Juan Or and some brief sleepy spells due to tiredness from work plus the tensed waiting period (before the show started). Personally, Mommy felt it could have been better for the producers to have a non-3D version as well to cater to different needs of their viewers. Here's a trailer of the show:

Basil and Mommy....the Adventures that Could Have Been

2011-10-27T01:48:00.000-07:00

Basil. Who is Basil? Now, don't get Mommy wrong. Basil has nothing to do with being Mommy's future fetus (or future sibling of Juan Or) nor an old flame. Basil is Mommy's favourite dog. He is probably or could have been known as 'The Late Basil" by now. But nobody knows about his whereabouts now. Nobody knows whether he is still alive or not. But one thing's for sure - Basil lives within Mommy's heart till today.

You may be wondering what happened, right? Well, it all started about 5 years ago when Mommy left home for certain reasons. Well, when Mommy left home, Mommy only had to take the bare essentials. So taking Basil along is certainly out of question because Mommy certainly could not provide well for him. So it's better that he stays on with the rest of the family. After three years of Mommy going 'missing', finally Mommy got in touch with Mommy's Mum. You know what Mum said? She said that probably Basil sensed that Mommy went 'missing', so one day, he found the opportunity to slip out when the gate was open and left home. She said probably Basil was depressed and so went to the outside world to look for Mommy. And he never came back. Mum and Dad went to search for Basil but till today, they never found him and he never return home. Probably he vowed never to return if he cannot find Mommy. That is why he could still be out there looking for Mommy or he could have been 'The Late Basil'. *tears*

This is Basil or rather, the late Basil. This photo was taken about 6 years ago when Basil was about 8 human years old (or equivalent to 56 dog years old).

In Mommy's dreams and heart, this is the adventure that could have been to make up for the lost time and Basil's undying loyalty and sacrifice:

He could have been Mommy's Superman, flying here, there and everywhere looking for Mommy without vain.

Once Basil found Mommy, we could have gone for a flying spree......to everywhere and anywhere in the wide, wide world with Mommy in his pawy clutch. Forget about air tickets! Who needs them when there's Basil the SuperDog? At most, Mommy needs to feed him well to make sure he continues to have the energy to hold Mommy and fly!

To the theatre hall in Europe!

Or fly to US to meet President Barack Obama!

Or fly to see and feel the street life in Spain!

Whatever it is, it doesn't matter where we go for our dream adventure, what's more important is that Basil and Mommy enjoy making up for the lost time.

~ In loving memory of Basil ~

P/S: All photos (except for Basil's photo) are courtesy of Photofunia. This blogpost is a true account submitted in conjuction with a contest held by Nuffnang.

Boy in Superhero Mask

2011-10-21T00:11:00.000-07:00

This is just a short random post of Juan Or since Mommy's office table now has lots of theses piling up waiting to be edited and proofread.

This pix was taken at Parkson of Plaza OUG, the place we went to for a MacDonald's lunch after our trip on the last day of the Big Bad Wolf Books Sale. As usual, Juan Or insisted on visiting the toy department to see his favourite Transformers toys. At the shelf, there was a section selling masks - Transformers and Captain America ones. But there is also this mask which Mommy has no knowledge of what superhero it represents, but it sure suits Juan Or's looks very much. Do you know what superhero's mask is this, anyone?

Anyway, the sword here was 'loaned' from Star Wars' toy section (do you call that the 'light saber'?).

Here is Juan Or, ready for his galactic battle! ^_^

Juan Or's First Time at the Big Bad Wolf Books Sale

2011-10-17T01:53:00.000-07:00

16th Oct 2011 is the last day of the Big Bad Wolf Books Sale and is Mommy's 4th visit there for the season, but is Juan Or's first. Mommy is eager to bring Juan Or there just for him to experience riding on the tram, but buying books is secondary though.....hehehe!

We reached the parking lot at around 9.30 am and didn't have to wait before three trams came by. So we chose the third one because it is the least crowded tram.

Off we went into the tram!

Since the sale only opens at 10 am, we still had to wait after getting off the tram. But not to worry, there were lots of chairs to sit around because the chairs were provided by the food stalls nearby (KFC and Pizza Hut).

Juan Or as usual, cannot sit still for long. Well, old Chinese folks say kids like Juan Or have worms in their anus, that's why cannot sit still! ^_^ So Mommy took him for a short stroll somewhere near the sale area - first, to see how long the crowd has queued up long before we even arrived.....

...and lastly is more of Juan Or's fancy for the alien spaceship and the Big Bad Wolf figure itself, seen as a big display board.

Finally when the sale is opened, Mommy could see that most , if not all of the tall pile of books at the children section last seen on Tuesday were gone! Basically, there are not much choices left where chuildren's books are concerned. Anyway, Papa gave Mommy only 30 minutes to browse and buy - it's either 30 minutes only or nothing at all! So Mommy made a quick dash here and there to check out books and finished buying within the stipulated timeframe! Phew! And Juan Or was very happy that the cashier gave him the Big Bad Wolf in alien spaceship bookmark! Juan Or was even delighted to see that the plastic bags containing Mommy's purchases had the Big Bad Wolf figure on it! Such innocent delight!

Here are Mommy's purchases within the 30 minutes timeframe......a book on Thailand's temples and traditions in hard cover and excellent photography and paper for RM12 only - more for Mommy's general interest.

.....children's (and also family's) non-fiction book on wildlife in hardcover with excellent photography, text and paper plus DVD (mind you, it's not even VCD) for RM10 each (cheap!)...

....storybooks for Juan Or, each for RM6 (but Mommy finds the dinosaur one a little pricey, but
never mind-lah, just close one eye since Juan Or likes the book)....

...and an Ironman make-a-scene vinyl sticker set for RM5 (again, quite pricey but never mind, close one eye-lah since Juan Or loves Ironman!) and a storybook on Stanley (from Thomas and Friends' storybook box set) for RM3 (cheap!).

Total damage? RM68.40 (after 5% discount from RM72).

Here's Juan Or enjoying his Ironhide vinyl stickers at his grandparents' house. :-)

By the way, here's a closer look of this season's Big Bad Wolf bookmarks which are Juan Or's favourite (even after coming back from the sale!) because of the alien spaceship and the wolf's growling look! ^_^

P/S: Actually Juan Or expected to see a Big Bad Wolf figure appearance at the sale - not so much about the books though! ^_^ Must suggest this to Big Bad Wolf's management.....hehehehe!

Mommy Gone Crazy! 3rd Round at Big Bad Wolf Books Warehouse Sale!

2011-10-11T21:34:00.000-07:00

Yes, it's true! The urge and temptation to see what have been replenished or topped up is so great, Mommy just has to go to Big Bad Wolf (BBW) Sale again, now for the 3rd time!!

This time, the crowd is still a lot but way lesser than Mommy's 2nd round visit. Indeed, true to BBW's update in Facebook, they have replenished with some new titles, both for the adult (fiction and non-fiction) and children sections. Mommy recall seeing a few BBW staff carting a trolley-ful of children ready-for-kindergarten type of hard-cover workbooks to be placed at an empty rack...that was something like 4.40 pm. By then, Mommy was busy filtering Mommy's pick because the hoard (no doubt cheap!) was going to burn a big hole in Mommy's pocket!! ^_^

Here are some snapshots of what appear to be newly replenished stock.

Here are Mommy's purchases for the day....

Recipe books, spiral bound hard cover, each for RM10. What Mommy likes about these recipe books is that the steps are in point form and not wordy at all, unlike other Western-published recipe books that are so wordy and not friendly to the eyes especially when you have to take a quick glance at the recipe book while cooking. Other kinds of cooking (especially Western style ones) are available from this series, but Mommy only chose those Asian cooking ones, simply because Mommy is not a fan of Western food! ^_^

Each book at RM8 with the top row ones being recipe books again and the bottom one a children non-fiction in hard cover. The recipe books are in soft cover and same like the recipe books just now, the steps are in numbered point form and not written in a wordy manner. As for the Flying Machine book, Mommy recall seeing the same series of book (not the same title though) sold in Popular Book for close to RM50 and in soft cover some more!

Winnie the Pooh books for Juan Or, each sold at RM6. These are in full-color, hard cover and narrates science principles (e.g. evaporation, bouyancy, growth, sound) in the form of a story.

More junior-level storybooks for Juan Or, each at RM3 only, but in soft cover! Mommy purposely chose those that has the super heroes or favourite characters from his favourite cartoons/movies. As for the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse books, be careful though that some similar ones (though not the exact title) are priced at RM5.

Hard-cover junior storybooks and non-fiction, each for RM3 only - really value buy! The non-fiction ones and Puss in Boots are Ladybird books. Again, be reminded that the price tags are not consistent - most bear the RM5 tag - so it's your luck whether you get the RM3 ones or not! ^_^

And finally, some adult books for Mommy's own reading/viewing, each for RM15. The Power book is in hard cover and Mommy finds this little book a bit pricey, but judging from the contents (it's a mind, body and spirit self-help book), Mommy thinks Mommy can benefit from reading it. The book on Life is actually a coffee table book with no much text to read - just photos and captions. It's in hard cover, very thick (many pages) and printed on excellent quality paper. Mommy bought it because of the excellent photography of things associated with life such as the internal parts/chambers/sections of organs, embryo and fetal development at different weeks, gametes at pre-conception and conception stages, chromosomes and the likes which are the things Mommy studied for degree last time. Here's a sample of a very beautiful and detailed image of the early-stage human fetus.

As part of BBW's effort to pull the crowd during weekdays, BBW is giving out 5000 freebies starting from 10th October (Monday) to 14th October (Friday) or while stocks last, only limited to one set per book receipt. For those who came before 10th October and got nothing, do not despair nor be frustrated because the freebies are nothing more than just two pieces of paper: one is a fun activity map (more for children) whereby you are asked to spot all 31 wolves hiding in there and the other paper is merely a DIY bookmark called "Book Buddy". So for those who didn't get these, do not go banging your head because you didn't lose much - in fact, it's negligable. ^_^

By the way, total damage for the day amounts to RM182.40 (after 5% discount from original price of RM192).

Ah-wooooooooooo! (*Wolf howling*)

Prize from Fisher-Price

2011-10-10T21:26:00.000-07:00

This post is actually a little outdated because Mommy is stricken with the Big Bad Wolf Books Sale fever. Nevertheless, after this and this rounds of book hunting, finally Mommy is ready to blog about the prize that Mommy got recently from Fisher-Price after participating in a contest held by My Little Sprouts.

Here's the prize which was couriered a few weeks ago......ta-dah!

Here's the official opening ceremony....

and thus reveals the Fisher-Price's Classic Doodler with 2 Stampers!

As expected, this boy can't wait to start doodling and stamping to form his own 'abstract' art.

Ever since then, Mommy introduced the 'tic-tac-toe' game to Juan Or, which he finds entertaining but he still does not quite grasp the concept and objective of the game. Juan Or won over his Papa on one occasion of the tic-tac-toe game, but subsequent rounds of Juan Or losing seems to point out that his initial win was just a fluke! ^_^

Mommy did writing alphabets with Juan Or as well (but forgot to take photos!) and found the doodle board to be a very convenient tool because Mommy didn't have to look for papers or rough book and the board cleans easily with just a swipe!

On the night the doodle board prize was opened, Juan Or insisted on sleeping with the doodle board! ^_^

Not just that, lately, Juan Or has been very possessive about his belongings. No one else is allowed to touch his things, not even Papa. See how he tried to pull away his doodle board from Papa's grasp? He even 'commanded' Papa not to touch his things, saying that thing is HIS!

Mommy's 2nd Round at the Big Bad Wolf (BBW) Sale!

2011-10-09T22:28:00.000-07:00

Following Mommy's cut-short browsing time after a distress call to attend to work matters (for more details on what transpired, see here), Mommy had a very, very strong urge to go again the following day, i.e., the 1st day of sale opened for the general public.

Being the 1st day of sale, there was already a huge number of people there as expected. However, walking space for you to browse is still not compromised, thanks to BBW holding it in a space as spacious as MAEPS. The most notable difference between the preview sale and the 1st day of sale is that on the 1st day, the books laid out on most of the tables are scattered here and there, tall piles of books last seen on preview day are totally gone by then and an overall more chaotic environment.

Despite braving through the chaotic 1st day sale, Mommy still came up with something fruitful!

All are hard-cover books for RM8 each. The Tinkerbell story-cum-activity book has 100 vinyl stickers for Juan Or to stick and re-stick and re-stick on the board pages. The other two books are comic books - not really for Juan Or to read now - but rather for Mommy's collection. ^_^

Each for RM10. The book on Dream Cars has CD-ROM for you to design your own car based on the given templates but this is more for Juan Or when he is much older - definitely not now! As for the dinosaur book, this is a book that comes together with dinosaur-making kit (plaster of Paris and dinosaur moulds are included) together with flash cards - a real value buy!

Each for RM5. The two top row books are actually glow-in-the-dark books. Mommy tried the books on Juan Or yesterday night and turned out he was wow-ed by them! ^_^ As for the Mickey Mouse books, the Choo-choo Express has all the pages in cardboard and flaps to lift plus stickers (which is value for money compared to other Mickey Mouse Clubhouse books with paper pages only but selling for the same RM5). The Daisy's Pet Ptroject book is hard-covered with board pages.

Mommy found these value-buys as well, each for RM3. For the top row books, Mommy noticed the price tag for these series is not consistent, with most of them bearing the RM5 tag. As for the bottom row books (all hard cover), the Dr. Seuss books especially are value buys because they have been known to be expensive even when sold in the MPH Distributors' warehouse sale.

These are sold for RM12 each. The top row ones are in hard cover and has many Disney stories compiled together (very good buy because normal price is RM59.90 and Book Xcess sold it for RM24.90). The book on blood, goo and boogers is a pop-out book in hard cover. The Valentine Classics is a compilation of Mickey Mouse comics since the 1940s and is in hard cover too. Mommy bought it more for collection purpose.

Total damage? RM123.50 (after 5% discount from RM130).

By the way, despite having 20-plus number of cashier counters to manage the crowd, still the crowd overwhelms the cashier counters! Mommy remembered joining the queue at 4.30 pm and only got to have Mommy's turn at about 5.00 pm! That's half-an-hour of waiting! This was how it looked like to be among those standing in the queue.

Just today when Mommy checked BBW's Facebook update, BBW says that they are replenishing with some more new books from this week onwards. Urggghhhh.....looks like BBW is not giving any chance for Mommy's 'fever' to subside! ^_^

Big Bad Wolf Books Preview Sale 2011

2011-10-06T19:43:00.000-07:00

Mommy is very lucky to have the opportunity to attend this preview sale despite not joining any Big Bad Wolf pre-sale contests, thanks to Mommy's sister-in-law from My Little Sprouts who won two passes, so had one to give away to Mommy! :-)

This years's Big Bad Wolf (BBW) sale is held at Malaysia Agro Exposition Park Serdang (MAEPS). To go there, Mommy used a toll-free way starting from UCSI University in Taman Connought, Cheras. Here's how: Head into MRR2 and then enter the exit that mentions Seremban (which leads you to KL-Seremban Highway) and shortly after, look out for signboard that says exit to UPM or Seri Kembangan. That will lead you to the roundabout (with MINES, Palace of Golden Horse Hotel and Equestarian Centre signages) and head for 6 o'clock. Shortly after that, take a left exit to enter the old road of Seri Kembangan where you will see many furniture malls and a food court on your left. It's a long straight road and then you will reach a crossroad, turn left and you will see South City Plaza on your left. Go straight all the way to the end and turn right, but make sure you keep right to enter into BESRAYA Highway (or known as Sungai Besi Highway). Travel on it till you see a signboard that says UPM exit. Turn right and shortly after, left into UPM and go all the way straight (it's a long road with traffic lights) till you see signages for Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences and MAEPS which prompts you to turn left. Go all the way straight (again a long road, but passes MARDI headquarters on your right) till you see MAEPS on your right. Voila for using highways without having to pay! ^_^

Once on MAEPS ground, there are sufficient signages to direct people to park their cars. Once Mommy parked, a tram (or rather a mini bus of sorts) came waiting already! Mommy quickly hopped into the tram and was driven to Hall A. By then it was already 2.50pm and there was no queue nor crowd at the entrance. The BBW staff checked on Mommy's pass and the chopped Mommy's hand with the BBW initials as a marker to prevent double-entry.

Once Mommy stepped into the hall, Mommy was amazed by the spaciousness of the area and the hugh bulk of books for customers to browse!

Not just that, this season's sale is really well-organized - two thumbs up to BBW! Here's why:

Hugh and easily visible display cards indicating the genre of the books are erected, so you can quickly and easily zoom in to the pile of books of your genre of interest - a real time saver!
There are customer service counters to provide you with boxes so that you can browse and do your book-hoarding. Not just that, they also allow customers to deposit their hoards in their safe-keeping and a number tag will be given to the customer. That way, customers don't have to carry their heavy hoards around as they browse.
Numerous cashier counters are available (something like 20+ counters!). Not just that, BBW also has several staff assigned to each cashier counter to sort the books according to prices and thus report to the cashier for keying-in. So they work really fast!
After sales service is also provided. They have staff (and the tool!) to help customers cart their heavy hoards to the tram-waiting area. Otherwise, customers can opt to do their own 'pickup' by depositing their hoards at a place and then sit the tram to get to their cars and drive over to Hall A for pickup.

Anyway, Mommy opted to carry the heavy hoard into the tram because Mommy had to rush for time. Why? Because halfway through browsing the books, Mommy received a distress call from the uni regarding a disgruntled parent coming over to sort out her dissatisfaction with the son's exam results. Because of that, Mommy's enjoyment of browsing books had to be cut short to only one hour! So at 4.10 pm, Mommy left MAEPS and headed back to UCSI University.

Even though it was just one hour of enjoyment, Mommy managed to grab some value buys.

With both Juan Or and Mommy being choo-choo train enthusiasts, Mommy got these, each for RM8. The 'Railway Restored' books have very beautiful photos (plus specifications) of vintage steam locomotives found in UK and Ireland. The 'Pacific Senator' is a true-life story of a train driver since the World War I days.

Since Juan Or loves to play with stickers (and loves peeling the stickers out again!), Mommy found these books just right for him, each for RM8 (very worth it!). Mind you, the books are hard-covered, the pages are that of board books and they are storybook-cum-activity-fun books, plus there are 100 (or more) vinyl stickers for Juan Or to stick and peel till his fingers ache!

P/S: By the way, Juan Or opened the "Cars" book already and pasted the stickers all over a page so much so you can see cars floating up in the sky! *Sigh* Looks like he still has not developed the maturity of placing stickers correctly according to context.

Since Juan Or likes to look at cars and jet planes (he often thinks of Starscream,, Thurderwing and Dirge, the jet plane Decepticon characters in Transformers), Mommy bought these for RM12 each. Each book is in full-colour, hard-covered and with glossy pages.

Mommy also bought these pre-school workbooks emphasizing on reading, writing and counting, each book for RM5. The four books at the top row have 320 pages each and two of the books are in black-and-white, the other two in full colour (value buy, right?). The bottom row book, however, is 26-page only, but is a wipe-clean book. Be reminded though that some of the top row books are not consistently priced because Mommy spotted some having the RM8 price tag. So be careful!

More activity books for Juan Or, each for RM5 (really worth it!). The Wall-E construct-and-play book would normally costs RM17.90 whereas the Transformers activity book has 64 pages, is in full colour and the paper quality is excellent (100-gram type of paper)!

The final hoard for the day - car repair book for RM10 and children X-mas storybook for RM8. This car repair book has full-colour step-by-step photos to show you how, has useful how-to and what-to troubleshooting tips for different departments of the car and is written for the laymen - good for both Papa and Mommy! The X-mas book is really a value buy because it is hard-covered, has board pages and has movable optical illusion pictures to prick children's interest.

Total damage? RM111.15, because Mommy got extra 5% discount for using OCBC credit card. ^_^

Excited about what you may hoard there? The sale will be on from 7th to 16th October 2011 from 10 am till 9 pm.

P/S: Know what happened after Mommy drove back to office, so-calledly to counsel and resolve issues with the disgruntled parent? Anti-climax no. 1 - the parent didn't turn up at all. Anti-climax no.2 - after getting clarification from the colleague who first received the complain, turns out the parent is trying to argue or fight for a lost cause! *Grrrr.....wasting people's time, energy and petrol only!! *

Gumball Prize from Parenthots

2011-10-05T01:57:00.000-07:00

Last week Friday, Mommy happened to log into Facebook and found an update by Parenthots (parenting column in The Star newspaper) asking who will be online at noon because there will be something up at Parenthots. At that time, it was about 10 minutes before 12 noon, so Mommy browsed Parenthots' website first to see whether there is anything to anticipate, but turned out nothing looked suspecting enough. So Mommy went on to browse other things in the Net and almost forgot to go back to Parenthots' Facebook update to check when the clock struck 12. By the time Mommy remembered, it was already 5 minutes since the quiz question had gone virtual!

Nevertheless, Mommy didn't want to lose hope even though Mommy was 5 minutes late. The quiz question asked participants to state why would you want the prize shown in the accompanying photo (it was a souvenir box containing Gumball knick-knacks) and indicate when Gumball will start, and answers had to be send via email. So Mommy quickly turned back to Parenthots' website because Mommy remembered seeing something about Gumball and then typed the answers as quickly as possible, then clicked 'Send' and hoped for the best. :-) By the way, there was only one unit of the prize up for grab and only the first correct entry gets the prize.

Within less than 5 minutes, Mommy received a reply from Brigette Rozario (Parenthots' editor) saying that Mommy is the winner! Then we communicated further to make arrangement for Mommy to collect the prize.

Yesterday, Mommy went with Juan Or to Menara The Star at Phileo Damansara 2, Petaling Jaya. Mommy registered at the receptionist's counter while Juan Or made himself comfy because the interior of the building felt like a hotel! By the way, Juan Or loves to go to hotels and showhouses because of the beautiful and classy interior! ^_^

And finally Brigette Rozario arrived with the prize!

However, once in the car, Mommy forbid Juan Or from opening and seeing what's inside for fear of him crumpling and 'destroying' the cute things inside the prize box. At least, photos of the prize has to be taken first before he can lay his hands on it! ^_^

Once home, Mommy asked him to pose with the Gumball prize.

....and then pose with the prize box opened. See Juan Or making pouty lips face even though Mommy pestered him to do the proper smiley face?

After much cajolling, he came up with this kind of face - smiley but with eyes closed! (Not quite what Mommy wanted......*slap forehead*!)

Aiyah.....so in the end, Mommy had to give in to him eagerly wanting to play with the knick-knacks inside. What are they? There's the Gumball door hanger whereby you can turn one round thing indicating your status in your room such as 'Busy Watching Cartoon Network", "Come inside and play!" and "No parents allowed", a sticker sheet, a lanyard and three hand-sized plush Gumball characters .

Want to know why Mommy wants the prize (as what the quiz question asked)? Simple reason: to make Juan Or HAPPY! ^_^ By the way, this new cartoon started since 1st October in Astro Channel 616.

Juan Or's Own Contraptions

2011-10-03T00:39:00.000-07:00

Recently Mommy caught sight of Juan Or making his own contraptions during playtime.

For the first contraption, he made a tunnel for his choo-choo trains by using a book and DVD boxes stacked and balanced against each other. The challenge in making this 'tunnel' is to find the right balance in stacking the roof part of the tunnel since both walls are not of the same height.

Here's another angle of viewing of the tunnel in which the choo-choo train is ready to pass through.

Juan Or's second contraption was made when he was helping Mommy to wash a plastic bowl to which he ended up playing with water and in the process, he came up with this.....

It's a water redirecting contraption. He stuck a chopstick to the outlet of filtered water, then turned on the tap - just a small flow - and the water can be directed to flow at a further target than what it initially was.

Here's another angle of viewing of the water redirecting contraption.

Mommy's Little Apprentice Cook

2011-09-29T23:39:00.000-07:00

Of late, whenever Mommy is busy at the kitchen preparing meals for the family, Juan Or would come and ~~busybody around~~ help out. So far, Mommy only allows Juan Or to do simple tasks like hoarding the vege out of the soaking water, and washing those small bowls or spoons used during the cooking process but does not require soap. And, yeah, he did the washing, but his washing seems to take forever to finish. Why? Because he also plays with water! ^_^ Tsk! Tsk! Tsk!

So far, other things that Juan Or has helped Mommy are peeling the skin of the stalk of the sweet potato leaves, plucking out the leaves of 'kou chye' (bitter vege) for Mommy to cook soup and pounding the shallot-garlic-dried chillies mixture in the mortar. However, Juan Or is still not able to stay on long doing the tasks, at most is only for about 15 to 20 minutes, then off he goes to play with his toys or disturb Papa! As for the pounding job, he could only manage less than 10 times of continuous pounding because the pestel is too heavy for him.

There was once too when Mommy was chopping the shallots and Juan Or came over to ask to help but Mommy only allowed him to see and not do. At that time, Mommy's eyes already became watery. So when he came near to see the chopping, his eyes went watery too and he gave Mommy the kind of look like as if he doesn't know and cannot understand what's happening to him! Poor boy!

This morning, as Mommy was sending him to the babysitter's house before heading off to office, Juan Or looked at Mommy with a thoughtful look and said,"Ai (Want) help Mama housework!"

At this point of writing and thinking back about Juan Or's eagerness to help with the cooking, Mommy feels guilty for scolding him (ferociously) when he started playing with water as he does the washing, more so when Mommy is rushing for time to finish cooking. Mommy is glad however that Mommy's scolding still does not hamper his eagerness to help Mommy!

"Hugs from Mommy to Juan Or. Forgive Mommy for being so harsh on you even though you have been so eager to lend Mommy a helping hand."

Going Brief

2011-09-28T22:07:00.000-07:00

12th September 2011

This was the day Juan Or proudly (and willingly) put on his first brief!

Actually, Mommy bought his kiddy briefs when Mommy was still pregnant with him. You may be wondering why Mommy bought them so early? Because that time, Tesco came up with her new clothes brand, Southfield and Tesco sold them cheaply as introductory price.

When Juan Or was around 2 years 6 months old, Mommy tried introducing the briefs to him but he refused to allow Mommy to put it on him. Then off and on again, Mommy reintroduced the briefs and he still refused.

Now back to the present..........see what he's up to with his brief? Drum roll, please!

Eeeeeiikkkkkk! Don't do that!!!!

(*Slap forehead*)

Cameron Highlands Trip with Little Sprouts

2011-09-28T00:50:00.000-07:00

On 1st Sept 2011, Juan Or had the opportunity to join a day family trip (with Little Sprouts and their parents) to Cameron Highlands. In the trip, Juan Or's favourite Grandpa and Second Uncle were in too, so Juan Or had a really good time being cuddled by Grandpa while on the way to Cameron Highlands. However, Grandma stayed back home because of painful legs.

Our first destination was the Boh Tea Centre at Sungei Palas. The road leading there was really narrow and easily jammed up. Nevertheless, we managed to go through that and parked somewhere. After that, we had to climb up a substantial amount of terraced steps and wooden stairs to actually reach the tea centre. Both Juan Or and Juan Juan held hands all the time while climbing the steps/stairs. How sweet!

Finally, we have almost reached the top.....

...and now at the Boh Tea Centre.

We looked for an empty table to sit and found one. Both Juan Or and Juan Juan eagerly sat down together....

......until the food arrived. What food? It was a set of English tea, strawberry cakes and scones.

And surprisingly though, Juan Or finished up the entire strawberry cake - not something he would usually do!

Mommy managed to take a quick tour to see the tea processing factory, whereby there are exhibits of their tea processing machinery.

Then it was all the way down to the car park again. Again, Juan Or and Juan Juan held hands while climbing down. Notice the sun was high up already but it was not noon yet (but near already).

Of course, as expected of young children, their itchy fingers plucked some tea leaves out of curiosity.

Our next destination was to the Kew Market but Mommy did not snap any photos there because the place was crowded and narrow. Mommy did not buy any vegetables there because the price was not at all comparable to the prices offered by NSK hypermarket in Kuchai Lama. Imagine we went all the way up there and yet those 'Cameronians' cannot afford to sell their vege any cheaper than the vege that has been send down to the lowlands for sale! The only vege Mommy bought was the fresh tiger lily buds - 2 packets (each 600g) for RM10, simply because you can't find them selling here in the lowlands.

After the market, we headed to a strawberry-cum-garden salad farm (can't remember which farm is that) and we had garden salad as snack together with strawberry milkshake drink. Shown here is Papa and Second Uncle taking their garden salad serving and Juan Or fooling around in the background.

Here's the salad....

....and all three - Juan Juan, Ah Xuan and Juan Or - were very eager to wash their hands before handling the salad. However, Juan Or did not eat a single salad even though he washed his hands.

Mommy took some snapshots of the farm....

....and an amusement corner of the farm (for children who are bored about vegetables!). ^_^

There is also a souvenir shop corner to which Juan Or tried on one J.W.W. Birch hat with a cheeky face!

By then, it was already lunch time and our final destination was to a nyonya restaurant.

Mommy didn't take photos of the food because the situation was not very conducive to do so and that everyone was so busy eating. As for Juan Or, he was satisfied with eating only white rice and drinking his own 'home-made tuak' which is actually his white rice poured into Chinese tea!

A closer look of his air tuak.

On our way down from Cameron Highlands and heading home, Mommy stopped by an Orang Asli stall to buy bamboo shoots. According to the Orang Asli, this breed of bamboo shoot is known as rebung manis (sweet bamboo shoot).

There are five pieces in a packet selling for RM10 and the whole packet weighed about 2.5 kg. Mommy sliced them...

....then boiled them to get rid of the strong smell and also so that the bamboo shoots can be stored in refrigerator for a longer period of time.

After boiling, drain the water away, wait till the bamboo shoots cool down and then store in refrigerator.

Anyway, many thanks to Little Sprouts' parents for treating us to the food in Cameron Highlands! :-)

1-day School Holiday Programme at UCSI-Child Development Centre (UCSI-CDC)

2011-09-27T01:21:00.000-07:00

It was the eve of Hari Raya (i.e., 29th August 2011) and the UCSI-CDC held another session of school holiday programme but for one day only. Since Juan Or has been expressing his desire to start schooling, Mommy has no qualms to enrol him for such short classes since time is still well ahead of Mommy's plan to start his school from January 2012.

This time round, only two classes are offered in the one-day programme: martial arts (9am-10am) and cooking class (10.30am-12.30pm). So as usual, Mommy would park the car at Southwing, took Juan Or to sit around in Mommy's office first, and after that boarded the UCSI shuttle bus to Northwing where the kindy is. Here's Juan Or enjoying his bus ride.

We arrived quite early at the kindy, so Juan Or had the chance to play with the kindy's building blocks set with other children before the martial arts class started.

Finally, the martial arts class started, but Mommy hid somewhere so that Mommy can take some photos of Juan Or doing his punches and kicks. ^_^

The teacher first went through some warming-up exercises. Notice there were only 3 kids including Juan Or? Turned out too that Juan Or is the youngest of them all.

During the warming-up, Mommy noticed Juan Or was not very good at following the actions of others. Instead he would rather stand and watch what others were doing. Because of that, finally the martial arts teacher had to go to him and guide him in moving his body parts!

After that Mommy left the kindy to go back to office while Juan Or stayed on for his morning break snacks and cooking class.

Here's Juan Or's yield from the cooking class - teddy bear-faced sushi plus other sushis!

For him, it's more like playing rather than eating.....

....and as expected, he only ate the teddy bear-faced sushi simply because he is only interested in white rice and nothing else! Even the seaweed and tiny ham pieces that make the eyes, nose, ears and mouth were all peeled out before he ate the sushi! *Slap forehead!*

Looks like Juan Or is one classic example whereby those parental tips on decorating children's food to make it look more attractive to eat does not work at all! To put it simply, Juan Or is not easily taken in by decorations, frills and the what-nots on the food.

After a whole morning at school and right after eating his sushi for lunch, Juan Or went ZZZZZZ......

Sweet dreams, baby!

Mommy's Yield at Toys R'Us Members' Clearance Sale

2011-09-23T01:34:00.000-07:00

Recently, Mommy got an SMS notification about Toys R'Us holding a members' clearance sale at The Summit, Subang Jaya from 21st to 25th September 2011. Since both Juan Or and Mommy are Transformers fan, Mommy took the opportunity to see what good deals are in store for Transformers toys.

Here's how it looked like for the section selling Transformers toys.

And here's how the discount scheme is like for Toys R'Us Star Card members.

However, not all toy items have these colour-coded member discount stickers. Meaning to say, this clearance sale is also opened to non-members, only thing is that if the toy bears no colour-coded sticker, then everyone buys it at the price-tag price regardless of whether you are a member or not. As for the Transformers toys, none of them have the colour-coded stickers, but the tags' prices already show prices that are lower than the normal price. However, beware that there are still some Transformers toys which are priced no different (or only slightly lower) from what you can find in Parkson or even the Toys R'Us chain stores. All in all, if you want to know whether you are buying at a bargain, then you have to really know the normal retail price!

Here's Mommy's yield....

The Power Core Combiners consisting of 5 individual robots combining into one big robot is priced at RM49.90 (normal price is RM99.90) and that's an attractive 50% discount compared to most other places who don't even offer discount or even Parkson at Plaza OUG that offers only 10% discount. Funnily though, in this clearance sale, Toys R'Us does not label the price consistently. That means, other exactly same units of Power Core Combiners bear the price tag RM99.90! For non-members, do not despair as this item does not bear the colour-coded stickers - that means both members and non-members get to buy it at RM49.90.

As for the front row robots in the photo, from left is the deluxe range of yellow Cybertronian Bumblebee (RM29.90, normal price RM49.90) and purple-and-white Autobot Skids and Mudflap (two robots in a set combine to form an ice-cream vendor's vehicle, RM29.90, normal price RM49.90). There are other deluxe class Transformers robots too (all are from the Revenge of the Fallen or even older Transformers), but they are priced at RM39.90 and some even at RM41.90 which Mommy feels is still not a good clearance price.

Some cartoon movie books (Cars, Toy Story, Ben10) and magazines are on sale too, selling at flat price of RM5 each. So Mommy chose these Cars' storybooks (normal price RM9.90 each). However, not all the books are in tip-top condition - that's if you are particular about the condition of the book (e.g. slightly crumpled pages, dented book cover corners, etc., yes, Mommy is one such person! ^_^)

The sale is on from 10am to 8pm only. Both cash and credit cards are accepted (no minimum amount required). There are only two cashiers on-duty but there is no long queue at all. By the way, parking at Summit is RM1 on weekdays for first 3 or 4 hours (can't remember) and RM3 for weekends for the same duration of time. Overall, a good sale if you are specifically looking for a particular toy and have good knowledge of the toy's normal price in order to know if you are in for a bargain.

The Story of Juan Or and the A&W Bear

2011-09-20T03:47:00.000-07:00

Yes, Mommy is back after a long hiatus with work and a battle with autorun worm infection issues on Mommy's micro SD card (yes, Mommy was virtually 'sick'!). So the posts you see from now on will be a little outdated, nevertheless Mommy has to catch up from somewhere, right? Forgive Mommy, ya? ^_^

Juan Or, Papa and Mommy attended The Little Sprouts' birthday party not too long ago (on 21st August 2011) held at the A&W Restaurant at 3K Complex, Subang Jaya. In the party, the main attraction was the A&W Bear's appearance. At first, Mommy thought that with the bear around, at most is that the children would go all joy and laughter to see the A&W bear come alive, and when the bear disappears, the excitement subsides. Period. But no, there was something more to it for Juan Or that prompts Mommy to blog about Juan Or and the A&W Bear. Here....let the photos tell you the story.

The bear appeared from a door and Juan Or was all ready to pose with both Juan Juan the birthday girl and the bear.

It was like love at first sight for Juan Or! Other children have sort of 'deserted' the bear when the bear walked to the centre stage, but Juan Or faithfully escorted the bear!

The bear was all ready to start the children activities but Juan Or still sticked to the bear like leech so much so the A&W staff had to purposely separate Juan Or from the bear and led him into the group of children. If the A&W staff didn't come to separate them, then the song and dances wouldn't have started. ^_^

Finally, the song and dance started, led by the bear and the A&W staff. So the other children followed suit and Juan Or paired with Juan Juan in dancing.

After the dancing, all the children were rewarded for taking part. So here's Juan Or receiving his present from the A&W Bear, but first he had to kiss the bear - left cheek, right cheek, and the nose!

Next came the birthday song session to celebrate both Juan Juan and Ah Xuan's birthdays. However, Ah Xuan dared not go near the bear, so Juan Or gladly (and unashamely) took over his place at the limelight! *Slap forehead!*

All the children there had their share of the ice-cream (with Sesame Street-like faces) that also served as decoration for the ice-cream cake.

But Juan Or was not too exactly bothered about the ice-cream at hand. Instead, he was more concerned about spending time with the bear! How? He held on to the bear's paws, kept on telling the bear "Come! Come with me!" and led the bear to meet and greet his family members! Haha, Juan Or is really a public relations (PR) boy! Watch his PR-ness in this video!

Notice too how in the end Papa has to separate Juan Or from the bear? If not, Juan Or would have held on and led the bear to God-knows-where so much so the bear cannot perform its actual official duties! Anyway, many cheers to the A&W bear for being so sporting and obliging to entertain Juan Or's antics! ^_^

Here are more photos to record the joyful event of The Little Sprouts' birthday bash.

Notice how both Juan Juan and Juan Or are similar in the sense that they tilt their heads a little when posing for photo?

Cousins sharing a happy occasion.

A pose with paternal Grandma.

Ah Xuan loving his birthday present to bits!

Posing with paternal Grandpa!

There were A&W hot dogs, fried chicken, French fries and root beer to indulge in, but Juan Or only settled for the French fries and refused the others.

Juan Or and his beloved bear.

Now with Juan Juan in the picture as well.

A closer view of the Baskin and Robbins ice-cream cake.

A family photo with the bear!

Here's Juan Juan the birthday girl showing how much she enjoyed her ice-cream!

Celebrating Papa's Birthday at Shogun Restaurant, Sunway Pyramid

2011-08-26T00:23:00.000-07:00

Recently in mid-August, Mommy treated Papa to a Japanese buffet lunch for his birthday at Shogun Restaurant in Sunway Pyramid. Why Mommy chose this restaurant? Because the birthday person gets to eat for free, the paying person enjoys a 30% discount since the birthdate day falls on a weekday and children below 6 years old gets to eat for free! So all in all, after adding whatever tax and service charge, Mommy only had to pay RM43.70!

We arrived in Shogun just as soon as it opened at 12.00 pm, so there were not much people yet. This is the ambience....

There were lots of cooked dishes and sushi as well. Well, basically customers are spoilt for choice. There were desserts, drinks, soups and Kings ice-cream too. Anyway, both Papa and Mommy like cooked dishes, so we had soft shell crab, crab, prawn in tempura and other prawn dish style, bamboo lala, cod fish, lala, baby octopus, oyster baked in cheese, some Japanese fish and a whole lot of seafood!

The plus point about Shogun's food is that the seafood served is fresh and the cooking is good! Papa and Mommy had many rounds of servings with each serving being full plate! By the way, the cooked dishes are in various styles - Japanese, Western, Chinese, Malaysian or fusion. However, their shark fin soup is definitely no good! Mommy also took the opportunity to eat a lot of this seaweed and hotate frills which Mommy saw are being sold in Jusco for an expensive price....

As usual, while Papa and Mommy were busying walloping as much as we can, Juan Or was busy playing with the tea and utensils. French fries were offered in the buffet too, however, Juan Or refused to eat or even try Shogun's French fries. So in the end, Juan Or merely drank tea and ate nothing else in Shogun. Luckily, Mommy brought a container of plain pasta as his backup lunch and he finished everything! *Slap forehead*

The creative part of Shogun is that every customer's place mat is not just a paper, but a paper printed with interested facts or jokes for customers to read while eating, that's if customers have run out of topics to talk with each other!

Luckily too, Shogun provides free wifi to 'entertain' customers who have to wait for others to finish eating......just like in the case of Juan Or and Papa having to wait for Mommy to be satisfied with walloping the food! Papa managed to check stock prices and Facebook updates while Juan Or gets to watch snippets of Family Guy cartoon while waiting for Mommy......at least they won't bore themselves to death during the wait.^_^

Overall, we (except for Juan Or) ate till it reached our necks, so Mommy didn't have to cook dinner as we were still feeling full by night time. So the RM43.70 was really well-spent for 2 adults' lunch that spanned till well beyond dinner time! ^_^

Blissful Sleep

2011-08-03T01:43:00.000-07:00

Mommy is still very tight of time at work to do things with the internet so today's post is just a very short one.

Here.....the same day after Juan Or and Mommy returned home after an outing at Sunway Pyramid (see the post below), Mommy caught this photo of both father and son sleeping blissfully while Mommy was busy washing the dirty dishes, clearing things in the kitchen and bath for the day.

What a peaceful sleep - both father and son together - with the son laying his head on papa's arm for comfort and security! :-)

The Space Bridge (Inspired from Transformers 3:Dark of the Moon)

2011-07-28T01:28:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, Mommy took leave from work to 'rest' and spend a good time with Juan Or. Mommy took Juan Or to Sunway Pyramid to visit a newly-opened Toys R'Us outlet because the outlet offers members 3X points and free RM10 voucher for every RM150 purchase.

At the middle area of the new wing section where you can gaze several floors down from the top floor, if you look up, you can see this dome-like thing at the ceiling.

Juan Or's immediate reaction on seeing it was like this....

...and this!

Juan Or was actually acting out the Space Bridge from Transformers 3! For readers who are not familiar with Transformers 3, the Space Bridge is something like a 'wormhole' that acts as a short-cut pathway between two worlds or planets whereby the pathway is used for transporting anything including weapons and Transformer robots.

Here's our visit at the Toys R'Us store with Juan Or fiddling with a demo video game and wearing a toy fireman hat.

He even had a photo with Optimus Prime's head!

Had a 'car ride' with Garfield too!

And finally we had a sort of 'picnic' at the shopping mall.Well, that's our lunch - Mommy had spiral pasta cooked with pasta sauce, canned tuna flakes, cabbage and Shitake mushrooms while Juan Or prefers to have his spiral pasta just plain, no sauce, nothing. ^_^

Mommy managed to capture these cute series of photos that showed Juan Or's sequence of eating his pasta. ^_^

Solution for Slow Eaters

2011-07-26T01:43:00.000-07:00

Juan Or is a slow eater - more so for food that are not to his fancy such as rice mixed with main course dishes. For every one tea spoonful of soggy rice mixed with vege soup plus finely mashed/chewed meat and stir-fried vege, it takes him ages to finally swallow the tea spoonful of food in his mouth! Somehow the food stays in his mouth for long - don't know whether he chews the food or not or only chews occasionally, but it sure is annoying for Mommy to have wait for him to finally swallow his food and be ready for the next tea spoonful of food!

Mommy finds it really annoying because Mommy has got loads of housework waiting to be finished - clearing the mess on the dining table, storing leftover food if any, scrap and throw away solid food wastes, washing the dirty plates and utensils, washing the wok, washing the soup pot which usually has hard stains, pack away wet rubbish for Papa to dispose off the next morning, wiping oily stains on the stove if the stains are too obvious, take bath of Juan Or because he's usually very sweaty after having dinner and finally Mommy gets to take bath! Because of this, if the day is getting late, Mommy resorts to juggle both housework and feeding Juan Or at the same time.

Recently, Mommy discovered a solution to get Juan Or to eat fast! Be reminded, however, that what works for Juan Or may not work for your kid. This is the solution......

........use ladies' fingers!! ^_^

Yes, that's right! Mommy would steam three or four pieces of ladies' finger together while cooking rice. Mommy would then chew the ladies' fingers till fine (hey, sounds yucky but it's true - Mommy's mouth is the 'food blender' for Juan Or!), spit them out to mix together with his rice that has already been soaked up with vege soup, mixed with mashed/chewed meat and stir-fried vege. The chewed ladies' fingers will have sticky mucousy texture, so when mixed with his rice, the whole concoction becomes sticky and mucousy as well! For that, Juan Or eats very quickly! ^_^ Well, whether it's because Juan Or likes the sticky and mucousy texture or because the texture makes it easy for him to swallow his food, Mommy is not exactly sure but hey, ladies' fingers sure work very well to counter his slow-eating habit!

By the way, when eating his favourite French fries and Dahfa fish fillet strips, Juan Or doesn't need any 'additive' to make him eat faster! ^_^

A Working Sunday and Steamboat Buffet at MaChiano's

2011-07-12T00:54:00.000-07:00

Just last week Sunday (or first Sunday of July to be exact), Mommy was required to report for duty because it was UCSI University's Convocation Day. So Juan Or and Papa tagged along with Mommy in the office. Papa was busy playing with Internet while Juan Or was busy watching Transformers' DVD cartoon series on Mommy's old laptop. Not to mention too, Juan Or did some 'fooling around' in Mommy's office like this....

Anyway, we were there as early as 7am due to potential parking problems and left the uni at 12.15pm when the event ended. We headed off to Plaza OUG to have MacDonald's for lunch. At MacDonalds, Papa ordered only one McValue set (Big Mac) just so that our stomachs don't go empty prior to the 'big walloping' session at MaChiano's steamboat buffet later for dinner. After the lunch, we window-shopped at the mall itself and also at Central Supermarket before heading off to Juan Or's paternal grandparents' place for a stopover. Over there, Mommy took the opportunity to have a thorough nap (*Well, Mommy woke up at 3.30am to wash clothes first before going to work!*), Juan Or had his nap as well in his favourite spring cot while Papa chatted all the way with his parents and younger brother.

Finally the time has come for Papa, Juan Or and Mommy to head off to MaChiano's for our steamboat buffet dinner. MaChiano's is situated along Old Klang Road, somewhere opposite an international school and is at the same vicinity as Old Town Kopitiam.

The steamboat buffet fee is RM28 per person. However, Papa bought online coupons from www.everyday.com.my website that offers RM28 for 2 diners (drinks included), i.e., RM14 only per person! Now that's a deal! The plus thing about this also is it's free for children under 4 years of age and Juan Or fits that condition! ^_^

There we were at MaChiano's - a table already reserved under Papa's name and with a baby chair prepared.

And here was Juan Or waiting eagerly for Papa to take the foodies for steamboat while Mommy stayed on to take care of Juan Or.

The waiter came to pour two kinds of soup into the steamboat pot - chicken stock soup and tom yam soup.

Now, here's comes the steamboat foodies ready to be thrown into the soup.

Here's the steamboat-ing process!

How's the taste like? Well, both Papa and Mommy found the tom yam soup to be delicious and Papa found the chicken soup to be not as good as the tom yam. Mommy enjoyed it the most because there were the clams seafood that Mommy loves - big lala, bamboo lala and green-shelled mussels! Another of Mommy's favourite are the mushrooms - shitake and grey oyster. Only thing is that the staff did not snip away the bottom end of the shitake's stalk that sometimes still has the woody remnants. There was a barbeque section also, but because it took quite long for your turn to be served, so Papa only managed to get some beef strips and lamb chop barbequed. Papa particularly loved the barbequed lamb chops because the marinate recipe was good! By the way, Mommy ate and ate and ate to get money's worth (*yes, Mommy was eating Papa's share as well!*) while Papa ate just enough to satisfy his taste bud because of his gouty condition. What about Juan Or? Well as expected, he ate only a little because he is not adventurous about trying new food. He only ate the yee mee noodles - that also he played with the yee mee by stringing the noodles all along the wall of the bowl so much so the bowl appeared to have grown hair at one glance! (Sorry, no photos of the 'hairy bowl' because Mommy's hands were too oily and dirty to hold the handphone camera!)

Overall, this steamboat restaurant is a good place to dine in and cheap since we used the special deal online coupon and the ambience is nice too. Parking? It was RM2 since the parking area around the blocks of shops there are managed by one private company.

Bloggers' Sports Carnival at CityGolf, Bangsar Shopping Centre

2011-07-04T00:11:00.000-07:00

Recently Mommy participated in a Nuffnang contest and won a pair of invites to the Bloggers' Sports Carnival at CityGolf, Bangsar Shopping Centre. What does CityGolf has to offer? According to Nuffnang, CityGolf is actually an indoor golf park and the F&B section is managed by La Bodega. Nuffnang also mentioned in their blogsite that La Bodega's tapas (or snacks) are 'to die for'. So let's see how far is this true! ^_^

The day of the sports carnival was on 2nd July 2011, i.e., a Saturday whereby Mommy had to teach piano. So for that day, Mommy only taught for 3-and-a-half hours and left the music school at 3.30pm sharp. The sports carnival was supposed to start from 4pm and end at 7pm. However, Papa, Mommy and Juan Or only arrived there at about 4.20pm after going through some mad Saturday afternoon traffic-jam.

After asking the shopping centre's guard for some directions to CityGolf, we headed to the 4th floor with a "My Play Room" board and CityGolf tag (far left) directing us to an escalator that will lead you directly there.

After reporting attendance with Nuffnang representatives, we were ushered inside to have some food and drinks (2 complimentary drink coupons were also given) first before the indoor sports programme began. There was a long table spread for the food but Mommy was taken aback to see the serving plates empty or almost empty! The foodies served were mostly refreshment-type food - cute and square-shaped cakes, tuna sandwiches, cube-shaped omelette-like thingy and hard bread with chopped tomato and onion toppings.

The only dish that can be made into 'dinner' is deep-fried chicken drummet in tomato sauce.

But sad to say, the chicken drummets especially (and the other food items) are almost finished or totally wiped out everytime the staff come to top up the food. But then this is no excuse for La Bodega to be under-prepared with the required amount of food since the Nuffnang-CityGolf arrangement has 50 pairs of invites coming in, i.e., you can expect 100 people! Perhaps you may be wondering if the food is outstandingly delicious such that most of them get snapped up within a short period of time? No, wrong - the taste is just so-so only. Nothing to shout about, yet is not a failure either.

After taking the food, we headed for the outdoor seats because there were no more empty seats left on the inside.

Juan Or only ate the cube-shaped cakes, probably because they looked cute to a kid's eye.

Other than that, Juan Or didn't eat at all (Mommy expected that!), instead merely played with the chicken drummets and sandwiches, to which Momy walloped everything that he didn't eat.

Then, here came Mommy's complimentary drink - orange cordial drink.

Then finally came the announcement of the starting of the indoor sports programme. There were 4 types of indoor games arranged for the bloggers - dart, snooker (or was it billiard! Don't know! ^_^) and the other two being indoor golf type of games. Almost all the bloggers congregate around the games stations except for you-know-who (Answer: Papa, Mommy and Juan Or!) simply because Mommy was still not done with eating! ^_^

Anyway, by then, many of the indoor eating tables were vacant already, so we moved to eating inside. By then also, many were no longer eating already, so the newly topped up food supply did not quickly get snapped up. By the way, Papa and Juan Or sat and waited while Mommy ate and ate and ate because we didn't feel like going for or cooking dinner anymore. Here's Juan Or making agony faces to pressure Mommy to hurry up eating! ^_^

Here are some random shots of the insides of CityGolf before we headed out (Yes, Mommy did not join the games at all!).

CityGolf even provides a computer terminal for patrons to surf the Net.

Here's an overview of the benefits if patrons sign up for membership.

Finally, we were out. "Bye-bye, CityGolf!"

Where were we headed to next? To take Juan Or to see his favourite - toy shop tenants, particularly to see Transformers and/or Thomas and Friends toys! Mommy noticed there is one toy shop by the name "York Home" that seems to be owned by one old Chinese man and the Transformers Dark of the Moon range of toys are sold at about 3% to 5% cheaper than in Toys R'Us! Mommy personally finds it hard to believe that a posh area like Bangsar can have Transformers toys sold slightly cheaper than what Toys R'Us has to offer, but it's true!

All in all, we only spent about one-and-a-half hours in Bangsar Shopping Centre (including at CityGolf) and by 6pm, we headed home already. The parking fee at Bangsar Shopping Centre? Expensive - RM4 for almost 2 hours of parking! Overall, this is not a very worthwhile trip to make.

Back home, Mommy decided to cook Chinese cabbage soup to supplement what we ate at CityGolf just so that we can have a more balanced diet since the food there lacks vege.

And for Juan Or's sake, because what he ate there was negligable, Mommy threw in a handful of macaroni to cook together with the Chinese cabbage. That would be his dinner for the night (besides milk).

Treating A Special Kind of Fever

2011-06-28T02:17:00.000-07:00

Recently people have been falling sick here and there, Juan Or and Mommy included - the usual cough, sore throat and flu that comes over and over again. But both Juan Or and Mommy are also experiencing another kind of fever - the Transformers Fever!

These are the ways both Juan Or and Mommy tended to the fever......

1. Went to Parkson at Subang Parade to see Transformers toys, took photos with a Transformers standing poster.....

.....and thereafter to Toys R'Us at Empire Shoppng Gallery for another round of Transformers toy sight-seeing and poster pix session with.........Bumblebee!......

......and Optimus Prime!

Well, Juan Or was so excited and energetic about the whole Transformers toy sight-seeing trips that he was totally knocked out upon reaching home. Guess he needs to recuperate from the fever! ^_^

2. Made a second time visit to the Chevrolet showroom in Puchong to see Camaro-Bumblebee again!

This time Juan Or remembered to bring along his toy Camaro-Bumblebee to compare with the real Camaro and also to show off his toy to the car executives on duty! ^_^

Other 'accompanying symptoms' include making funny faces....

....and checking at every nook and cranny of the car to look for any sign of robotic life.

And then a pose with Sentinel Prime!

3. Went to TGV cinema at Sunway Pyramid Shopping Centre and spotted this 3D Transformers deco.

Here's the same deco but taken from another angle.

Then Juan Or also spotted this Transformers popcorn and drink combo package at the F&B section of the cinema.

Well....he insisted that Mommy should capture a photo of him with the combo package as well. *Slap forehead!* What an odd photo composition here.....

4. Juan Or also asked Mommy's permission to have Bumblebee and Sentinel Prime accompany him in bed for his night time sleep.

5. Even insisted that Mommy should capture a photo of him as the peacemaker of the Optimus Prime vs. Megatron fight! ^_^

Wanna Be Like Papa!

2011-06-26T23:54:00.000-07:00

Everytime after taking bath (Note: still wiping the wet body, but not yet put on clothes), Juan Or will insist that he wants to show Papa that he is like Papa. So everytime after wiping the body, he likes to make a run over to the master bedroom (where Papa usually watches TV) clad only in towel just to show Papa that he is like Papa!

And once he shows himself towel-clad to Papa, he will then bend down to see whether his Precious One 'peeps' out from the slit that results from bending down low! ^_^

Here's another shot of Juan Or wanting to be like Papa, but this time sour-faced because Mommy scolded him for moving around too much while taking photos. ^_^ *Bad Mommy!*

Juan Or's 'Toy Bed'

2011-06-23T01:48:00.000-07:00

Recently, Juan Or reopened his old toy storage box where most of his infant toys are kept. He digged out everything, jumbled them up and then fill them back in a disorderly manner again. Then he went on to 'dip' his body in the jumble of toys as if taking bath in a bath tub! No just that, he even went on to use the Toy Story box as a backing to place a baby pillow to support his head which is dangling from the toy box, like the photo above.After that, he requested Mommy to bring him his big Mickey Mouse to hug.

Mommy was about to go to sleep already but he still didn't want to come out from his toy box. So Mommy gave him the mandate to use the toy box as his bed for that night, gave him goodnight kisses and lastly told him,"If you already feel uncomfortable sleeping there, then come and join Mama on the bed ah?" He nodded with a smile. Mommy switched off the light and went to bed. Not even five minutes had passed, he came out from his 'toy bed' and felt for Mommy's body so that he can climb onto the bed to sleep!

The next day, Mommy purposely asked him if the toys pricked his skin when he slept in the box so much so he had to come back to sleeping with Mommy on the bed, to which he nodded with a cheeky smile! ^_^

Of Camaro-Bumblebee and Transformers Fever

2011-06-21T00:58:00.000-07:00

It all started when one night, Juan Or kept on telling his Papa "Bumblebee! Ai (Want) Bumblebee!" At that time, Mommy was ignorant about the characters in Transformers and later found out that Bumblebee is the yellow and black colour robot in Transformers. However, both Papa and Mommy were puzzled where this boy learnt to ask for Bumblee from because both Papa and Mommy never talked about Bumblebee before. We gathered he must have learnt it from the babysitter's son!

Soon after that, Mommy found out that there was a Chevrolet-cum-Transformers exhibition at One Utama during the second half of the recently ended school holiday. However, Mommy had to work seven days in a row that week so could not bring Juan Or to see this. Later after searching through resources in the Internet, Mommy found out that all hope is not lost yet! There is a new Chevrolet showroom in Puchong with its opening ceremony on Wednesday (15th June 2011) and the Bumblebee car called Camaro is displayed there!

So that Wednesday evening, after work, Mommy took Juan Or to the Chevrolet Puchong showroom to see the Bumblebee car live! The showroom is located somewhere between Tesco Puchong and IOI Mall. As expected, Juan Or was very excited to see the real thing right in front of his eyes!

More poses.....

Mommy even teased Juan Or and said,"Be careful that the yellow car suddenly springs up into a robot!!" ^_^ At one point, Juan Or even believed what Mommy said so much so he dared not go near the Camaro. Luckily, his fear didn't take long to overcome and soon he was happily posing with the car again.

More views of the Camaro from various angles.....

Chevrolet is also proud that its Camaro is associated with Transformers as what the evidences suggest here......

Hehehehe.....the car is nice to see, but the price is not so nice to see. In Malaysia, it costs about RM520K after adding all miscellaneous fees and road tax! ^_^ However, Papa went on a little further to do a check in the Internet. He found that a Camaro only costs RM100K if purchased in the US. Just see how much ~~damage~~ the Malaysian import duty has done!

Anyway, there are Transformers posters in the showroom to pose with!

Bumblebee!

Sentinel Prime! (The newest character added in the coming 'Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon'. Sentinel transforms into a fire engine.)

By the way, when Juan Or and Mommy were at the showroom, the car sales executives had been very kind to us, i.e., they never come to bother Mommy with buying a Chevrolet nor asking Mommy to see this, see that or to test-drive this and that. Mommy guessed they knew very well why we were there - to make a young child happy! ^_^

Anyway, back home, Juan Or has his Bumblebees: the small one.....

....and the one he fondly calls as "Bumblebee Big-big".

"Hail the Transformers Fever!!"

Juan Or at UCSI-CDC June School Holiday Programme

2011-06-17T00:39:00.000-07:00

Mommy enrolled Juan Or again for the school holiday programme held at the kindergarten section of UCSI University, called UCSI-CDC. Mommy liked the previous one that Juan Or joined in last March, so Mommy is sending him again for this since he has not officially started kindergarten yet. This time, Mommy enrolled him for 10 classes (costs RM250 altogether), i.e., 5 scattered days of classes with each day having two different classes.

Day 1 (30th May 2011)

Juan Or was still sleeping in the car when we reached the Northwing parking lot. So Mommy fed him milk when he finally woke up.

Here he was at the kindy - no fuss and no crying, probably because he was mentally prepared about it. Mommy also noted a few improvements in how he carried himself there compared to last time:

he allowed the teacher to pin the name tag on him (Last time, he won't allow any unfamiliar people to touch him!)

he entered the classroom readily and did not fuss or cry at all even though he knows Mommy would be leaving the place. He even smiled readily when he realized Mommy was snapping his photo from outside the classroom. (Last time, he would cry frantically when he knows Mommy is leaving him with the teacher.)

The first class for the day was 'Kinder Cooking 1'. Here is Juan Or's yield from the class: a tuna patty bun, mashed potatoes and Honey Lime Melon fruit mix.

Here's a closer look at Juan Or's DIY (but of course with assistance from the teacher!!) foodies.....

See him digging through the bun? That's because he refused to eat the tuna patty, lettuce and tomato slice. So Mommy ate them while Juan Or ate the bread bun - that also was after he asked Mommy to lick away the butter coating on the bun! As what Mommy mentioned previously, this boy likes to eat things plain and not all the butter could be licked away, so Mommy passed the bread bun back to him to which he was hesitant to eat (just because a little bit of the butter was still there!). The solution? Mommy turned the bun upside down so that he sees only the brown bottom of the bun and not the inside part. Then only was he willing to eat it. After finishing the bun, he ended with a "Yummy, sedaaap (tasty)!" Can you believe it!? *Shake head*

As for the mashed potato and Honey Lime Melon, Juan Or blatantly refused to touch them at all, so Mommy walloped all his rejected food! ^_^

The second class for the day was 'Cool Science 1'. There were 3 experiments done: pepper and water science magic trick, layer liquid and marbleized paper. After finishing all 3 experiments, the teacher rewarded each of the students with a pack of Power Rangers stickers!

As a reward for being a good and cooperative boy, Mommy took him to Econsave Cheras for a quick outing-cum-shopping and kiddy ride before sending him back to the babysitter (while Mommy went back to office).

Back in the car, he kept on holding and flashing his new Power Rangers stickers! ^_^

Day 2 (1st June 2011)

Juan Or was not so cooperative on Day 2 as he was feeling unwell (gassy stomach) and kept on complaining of stomachache and wanting to vomit. So when Mommy left him there with the teacher, he cried. Anyway, he still went on with the classes and only had one incidence of small vomit.

The first class was 'Learning to Draw', in which all the drawing activities were compiled into a book.

The first drawing session was to place a string freestyle on a glued surface of sugarpaper. This is Juan Or's yield.

The second drawing session was to draw specific kinds of lines according to instructions and after that followed by freestyle lines, to which Juan Or drew his favourite - circles!

The final drawing session was to colour a picture drawn by the teacher. Actually Mommy was surprised Juan Or was able to colour within the space provided, but don't know whether it was because he did it with the teacher's guidance and supervision OR was it because he tends to be more compliant when taught by people unfamiliar to him! Way back home, Mommy had taught him to do his colouring before but somehow he just wouldn't comply and instead went on a scribbling frenzy! *Shake head*

The second class for the day was 'Batik Painting'. The picture with waxed outline was already pre-drawn by the teacher. He only had to colour the picture with the batik paint provided, but of course with guidance, otherwise the colour scheme would have been a disaster! Here is Juan Or's batik yield:

Day 3 (6th June 2011)

For that day, the kindy was opened a bit late (usually it would already have opened by 8am), so Mommy had no choice but to leave him there with some teachers who were already waiting there as Mommy had to quickly drive down to UCSI Southwing and start a lecture at 8.20am. That day, Juan Or showed eagerness to attend kindy, so there was no fussing nor crying.

Here he was, sitting obediently next to the teacher to wait for the kindy door to open. This is a great improvement compared to last time whereby he won't even allow any unfamiliar people to sit right next to him!

The first class of the day was 'Cool Science 2'. As usual, there were three experiments conducted. The first was the 'Bouncing Egg' experiment whereby comparison was made between an egg placed in water versus an egg placed in vinegar. The students were allowed to take their eggs in vinegar home for further obsrvation for seven days to which it will become like a bouncy rubber ball.

The second experiment was 'Red Cabbage Rules' whereby the students were taught to make a simple pH tester by using boiled red cabbage water. They were then supplied with various solutions (e.g. Dettol, milk, lemon juice, sugar, etc.) to be dripped slowly into separate cups of boiled red cabbage water and then observe for colour change. A pH colour comparison chart was also provided in the booklet to let them compare the colour changes observed. Juan Or was also guided to make pH testers to take home to try by dipping cotton buds into the red cabbage water and leaving them to dry. So Mommy saw Juan Or's cotton buds placed in a small plastic pocket in his science booklet.

The third experiment was 'Invisible Ink' whereby students were taught to make make invisible ink from lemon juice mixed with water. The invisible ink can only be seen after heating up the paper. Attached in the science booklet was a secret message in envelope from Juan Or to Papa and Mommy. All Mommy had to do was to iron the paper. What did it say? "I (heart shape) U!" *Kiss-kiss from Mommy!*

The second class of the day was 'Art & Craft 2' in which Juan Or worked on painting a recycle bag which already had a fish picture drawn on it. Again, Mommy was surprised to see Juan Or's painting because Mommy can imagine a whole lot of disaster (spilt paint, dirty water dripped everywhere on the floor, etc.) if Mommy is to do this with him at home.

Day 4 (7th June 2011)

It was a Tuesday whereby Mommy did not have to conduct any lecture, so Mommy decided to park the car at Southwing, let him loiter a while in Mommy's office and then quickly catch the UCSI shuttlebus to Northwing. So for Juan Or, it was a bus ride adventure day!

The first class was 'Drama: Lights, Camera, Action!' whereby the students were guided to act out characters of a story and the second class was 'Outdoor Sports Games'. Among the games played by Juan Or were football and golf. The teacher, Ms. Lenny Pang, also complained to Mommy that Juan Or was very possessive of his water bottle so much so that when she offered to put his water bottle in a storage cabinet while the students were out for games, Juan Or refused to give her his bottle and insisted on it hanging on his neck while he runs around playing the games!

Day 5 (8th June 2011)

That day, Mommy had lecture only in the late morning, so Mommy decided to do the same like yesterday, that is to accompany him to take the bus ride adventure to Northwing for his classes.As usual, Juan Or smuggled some snacks from Mommy's office first before hopping on the shuttlebus.

His first class for the day was 'Art & Craft 1'. There were two activities done. The first was to make a collage board on the word "KITCHEN" using assorted beans and a cinnamon stick for the letter 'I'. Mommy managed to stay on just a little longer to snap a photo of him doing the collage before leaving for office.

Mommy was very happy to note too that this time, he entered the class readily without any hesitation even though he knew that Mommy was still hanging around nearby. Notice his water bottle hanging on his neck? There he went as usual - possessive about his water bottle and not wanting to place it on the table. Here's his artwork which Papa has hanged in the kitchen.

His other artwork or craft for the day was making and decorating a photo frame with seashells and ribbon-shaped pasta.

The second and also the last class for his holiday class season was 'Baking & Decorating'.

So what did Juan Or bake for the day? It was bread and then he was guided to decorate his bread to look like a sports car!

As expected, Juan Or gave all the zucchini slices, frankfurter end and mayonnaised mashed hard-boiled egg to Mommy and kept the bread for his own eating.

When Mommy came to take Juan Or back, Juan Or looked a bit different. Mommy remembered putting on a pair of Kiko brown shorts (with hook and zipper) but now he had a pair of black-and-white-stripe pants on!

So you can guess what probably transpired! Yes, he urinated in his pants! According to the headmistress, usually the teacher will organize a toilet trip for the students but Juan Or had ran to the toilet ahead of the others before the trip was even organized (due to emergency!). And because of wearing a hook and zipper type of shorts, he leaked before he could even figure out how to undo the hook and zipper!

Then at the end of it all, Mommy asked Juan Or whether he would like to go to school again and whether he likes his teachers, he eagerly replied "YES!!" *Smile*

Mommy's Little Helper in the Training

2011-06-12T21:52:00.000-07:00

Today's post is just a quick one as Mommy's afternoon is occupied with appointments.

Just last week Tuesday at night, Mommy did a quick treatment with the lime fruits that Mommy bought from Econsave. Actually, Mommy should have done this 'treatment' earlier, but had been postponing it for about a week or so after buying them (blame it on low motivation after long hours at work!). Now with the thought that 'rotting' is not too far away, Mommy's motivation to 'do something' picks up again.

Mommy bought this big handful of limau kasturi for cooking purposes. Usually for the kind of dishes that Mommy cooks, the juice of limau kasturi is to add a tangy twist to canned sardine dishes, assam prawns cooked with bird's eye chillies and also as one of the ingredients for a prawn marinade. Before this, Mommy would just buy a small amount and store in the fridge's drawer in special green plastic bags that are supposed to prolong the shelf-life of veges and fruits. However, this shelf-life prolongation thing has a limit. And sometimes it's just not practical to purposely buy a lime fruit or two whenever Mommy needs to cook a dish that uses it. But then again, buying according to needs is not cost-effective in the long run because you will be subjected to the highs and lows of the market price at any one time you need to buy it. So that 's why Mommy has finally decided to spare some time to make bulk preparation of lime juice for long term storage, usage and cost-effectiveness. And in view of the future too, Mommy has decided to train this Little Boy to be Mommy's Little Helper for few reasons:

to train him to help Mommy do some housework so that next time when he's older, he knows how to help around without being told (hopefully!)
to let him develop his motor skills and hand-eye coordination
to let him 'play' (while doing the real thing) since he likes to play masak-masak (cooking) with his toys
this is part of Mommy's long-term effort to delegate household tasks since children are still easy to mould at this stage (this relates to the first bullet point as well!)
this will be a great help to his future wife next time! ^_^

First, using a cleaver, Mommy halved all the lime fruits. Then using a garlic crusher, Mommy demonstrated to Juan Or by putting in a half-fruit and then bringing the handles together to squeeze the juice out into a mug. After that, discard the lime debris and repeat the whole procss again.

Now it's Juan Or turn to do all this. ^_^

Putting in the lime into the garlic crusher........

Then squeeeeeeezeeeeee........

To make sure all juice is squeezed out, add more strength - "Eeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!"

After that, let Mommy pick up the lime debris to throw away......hehehehe!

To make the juice 'cleaner', Mommy strained the juice into another clean mug.

Here's the final yield - the limau kasturi juice!

For long-term storage, Mommy covered the mug with a plastic cap salvaged from a Mr. Potato canister......

.....and store it in the freezer. Voila! The lime juice will be thawed (and refrozen) as and when needed.

By the way, Juan Or only managed to sit through the squeezing process for about 15 to 20 minutes only, after which he told Mommy he wanted to join Papa upstairs to enjoy the air-cond and play with his choo-choo trains. *Smirk on the face*

Juan Or's First Time at Litt Tak Toy Warehouse Sale

2011-06-10T01:36:00.000-07:00

It's the Litt Tak Branded Toys Warehouse Sale again from 8th till 12th June 2011! Mommy is a regular of this toy sale because Litt Tak is the distributor for Tomy brand of toys, more specifically Thomas and Friends toys. All the while, Mommy went to this sale alone, i.e., without Juan Or tagging along. Mommy loves to go for this sale because it is near to Mommy's work place plus the crowd and payment queue is far better than the crazy (and ugly!) and huge crowds seen in Hasbro, Fischer-Price and Mattel warehouse sales.

Mommy went on the first day of the sale, i.e., on Wednesday, right after picking Juan Or up from the UCSI-Child Development Centre (Mommy enrolled him for some school holiday programme there but will blog at later time). Mommy wanted to reward Juan Or by making a trip to this toy shop since he had been a very good boy that day - he went into class eagerly without any fuss or crying!

Here he was at the Litt Tak Warehouse Sale - happily smiling because toy shops are his favourite outing destinations. ^_^

Checking out Ben10 toys at the ground floor of the shop......

There are a few classes of Ben10 Omnitrix watches on sale, the cheapest being RM15 and most expensive being RM40. Juan Or wanted the RM15 one, but Mommy disagree on buying it since the babysitter had already given him one as birthday present recently. Juan Or also asked to buy Ben10 figurines and playsets (the cheapest being RM45 for a set of 3 figurines), but Mommy refused again because Mommy felt RM45 is still considered expensive considering Ben10 toys are not very educational in nature. Even the figurines are mere simple figurines (call it as boy's version of Barbie dolls!), unlike Transformers robot toys that are made up of various small but movable parts that require a substantial amount of 'engineering thoughts' to assemble let alone transform them.

Another corner of the ground floor has Thomas and Friends sets stacked up high. The set with the bridge costs RM140 (normal outside selling for RM199.90 if not mistaken!) and the one with Creaky Cranky the Crane cost RM105 (selling for RM149.90 if not mistaken).

There are still more selections of Thomas and Friends playsets on the upstairs. As Mommy was busy choosing, thinking and calculating, Juan Or occupied himself by playing with an electronic gun from a nearby shelf. When the trigger is pulled, you will hear electronic shooting sounds that sound quite like what you hear in movies. In fact the shooting sound was so 'real' so much so Mommy can see Juan Or was so absorbed in aiming the gun and shooting at customers who passed by him - very much like a toddler being in action figure mode!

By the way, the gun costs RM9 and luckily Juan Or did not pester to buy this because if Mommy is to buy it, then it will be at Papa's agony since Papa has zero tolerance for noise.

So finally what did Mommy get from the sale? Mommy bought two items only this time since Mommy's budget is very tight for this month due to a recent high expenditure for car maintenance. It's the Thomas and the Shake-shake Bridge set for RM105 (outside selling for RM149.90)....

.....and Bertie Motor on the Road set for RM48 (outside selling for RM69.90).

Once back home, Mommy allowed Juan Or to open the Bertie set and ta-dah!

But where is Bertie the Bus!!??

A check here and there at various nook and cranny of the box reveals no Bertie!!

All Mommy could see were merely hollow boxy indentations or cave-ins, whatever you call it and Bertie is nowhere to be seen! Darn! Even the leaflet of specifications indicated that there is supposed to be a Bertie Bus included!

So Mommy immediately packed the set up before Juan Or could do any damage to the packaging to the point deemed unexchangeable.

The next day, Mommy dropped by at Litt Tak again to exchange for another Bertie set, but to Mommy's surprise, all the other Bertie sets don't seem to have any Bertie Bus in them! So Mommy took down some Bertie sets to the cashier counter to report about missing Berties. Then one of the man staff opened one to inspect and there Bertie was hiding all the while! *OMG! Has Mommy gone blind already!?*

Anyway, all problem's solved now and back home, Juan Or is happily playing with the Bertie set.

That night, he even insisted on taking Bertie the Bus together with him to sleep. ^_^

And....... (*drum roll, please!*)........ta-dah!

In the second visit to Litt Tak to 'exchange' the Bertie set, Mommy decided to add one more purchase! It's a Tomy choo-choo train set again, but this train bears the classic steam train appearance minus the cartoony look plus its fittings are compatible with the Thomas sets.

Here's the front view......

.....and the side view. Note the detailed finishing of the train.

This choo-choo train design reminds Mommy of the Russian movie "Kray" because the toy train looks similar to the one in the movie.

(The more-in-front train in "Kray" taken from here.)

Enough said about choo-choo trains.....hehehe. This set costs RM75 (outside selling for RM99.90). Anyway, Juan Or was very eager to dig the train out from the box.

Not just that, since he is in choo-choo train fever, he even digged out a choo-choo train storybook from his bookshelf to accompany the toy train. This photo was taken in the car when he insisted to bring the choo-choo train book while going to the babysitter's house. ^_^

Juan Or's 3rd Birthday

2011-06-09T00:11:00.000-07:00

This is an outdated post, but still not more than a month after celebrating his 3rd birthday! ^_^

Pre-birthday

His paternal Grandpa and Grandma, and his Third Aunty and Uncle (from My Little Sprouts!) already gave him his birthday present on the day of his lunar birthdate which is a few days earlier than his Gregorian birthdate (but Papa and Mommy only celebrates on his Gregorian birthdate). As usual, 'patience' and 'wait' are not in Juan Or's vocabulary, so he had already opened Grandpa's and Grandma's present which is 'The Jungle Book".

Here are the birthday messages.

The next day, Juan Or pestered Mommy to let him open the present given by his Third Aunty and Uncle. Actually Mommy kept that present high up on the fridge top because it was meant to be opened on his birthday. And boy, he really pestered Mommy very hard and very pitifully! In the end, Mommy gave in (*What to do?*).

It's a choo-choo train book - his favourite!

Not just that, it's a pop-out book with lots of interesting nook and cranny to peep, touch, hold and feel!

Then, a day before his birthday, the babysitter gave him a Ben10 watch present which is what he is crazy of.

The babysitter also helped passed a book present from Juan Or's Second Uncle.

On the birthday (12th May 2011)

Mommy left office early that day to pick Juan Or up from the babysitter's house and go home to cook dinner first before doing the birthday celebration. However, before stopping at the babysitter's house, Mommy went to collect the Scholastic books that Mommy had ordered through UCSI's kindergarten. The books are presents from Mommy regardless of whether it's Juan Or's birthday or not. ^_^

These were what Mommy cooked for dinner.....

.....assam chye (big mustard with chicken stewed in tamarind water and light soya sauce), which Mommy had already started cooking very early in the morning before going to work,........

......ladies fingers stir-fried with bird's eye chillies.....

.....and a soup dish - small bitter gourd soup with Chinese wolfberries and potato. Actually Mommy had wanted to use red dates instead of the wolfberries, but don't know how, Mommy just couldn't find the red dates from the food cabinet! The potatoes were purposely boiled together in the soup to add bulk (when mashed) into Juan Or's rice later.

Since Juan Or was very eager to have his birthday cake, Mommy made it a rule to him that he must finish his proper dinner food first before taking the cake out..... and he obediently did! ^_^

After that, Mommy guided him to 'cut' the cake.

Post-birthday

A day after his birthday celebration, Mommy allowed him to open a new Thomas and Friends choo-choo train playset - Thomas and the Jet Engine set, which Mommy bought from a previous Litt Tak Warehouse Sale in March 2011.

A few days later, Aunty Mamarazzi from Small Kucing dropped by to give Juan Or his birthday present. Of course in this case, he didn't have to wait anymore to open his birthday present!

It's a ukulele! Don't know how or why, but his first instinct was to play it like a steel guitar - the kind of guitar where the player plays it horizontally across the knees and sliding one metal piece on the strings.

Then he started to handle the ukulele roughly and so got scolding from Mommy! That's why the sour face here......

Not just that, just because there's a hole right in the middle of the instrument, he has to take his odd and ends, bits and pieces of his toys to throw inside the hole! *Slap forehead!* Or perhaps he has his own idea of making a percussion instrument out of a ukulele? Anyway, perhaps one day Juan Or can get together with Small Kucing and do a jamming session! ^_^

Our World, Their War (Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon)

2011-06-06T20:57:00.000-07:00

This is our world – the world of the earthlings, but the war is theirs, the Transformers – Autobots and Decepticons. It’s a war that has gone on for centuries. I would choose to be Megatron – leader of the Decepticons.

I would execute these strategies simultaneously to challenge the Autobots and then destroy the world:

Strategy 1 - Get the Autobots to be complacent by making it economical, easy and convenient for them to frequently watch movies. For that, I would make sure each and every Autobot is given the Ultimate Movie Card, made possible by Golden Screen Cinemas and EON Bank. With the Ultimate Movie Card, the Autobots can afford to watch movies everyday till they turn into movie junkies and even movie addicts, thus the complacency and apathy to protect the world! Once their complacency and apathy reach the peak, my team of Decepticons would strike them off guard! And once the Autobots are gone, nobody’s going to help the human earthlings anymore! Hahahaha!

Strategy 2 - I would also make sure that the movies watched by the Autobots are hypnotic in nature, i.e., they go into a sort of hypnosis. And the movies’ storyline will also bear hidden agenda. What’s the agenda? To not resist any advances by the Decepticons! Because of the Ultimate Movie Card, the Autobots get to watch these hypnotic movies several times everyday and so got their ‘brains’ reprogrammed – call that brain washing! Once reprogrammed, my team of Decepticons would wipe them off clean and the human earthlings will be at my mercy! What an easy win! Hahahaha!

Strategy 3 - Over the years, I was able to watch lots of science fiction movies made possible by the Ultimate Movie Card. From there, I have learnt a lot about the potentials of cloning, stem cell culture and genetic engineering. Because Decepticons are transformable to almost anything, not just limited to automobiles unlike the Autobots, I would make use of stem cell culture to create real human skin and fat cells to ‘wrap’ around my Megatron body transformed into the shape of human beings! I would go for the shape of a human child, because children look so innocent and adorable. I would mingle with the Autobots, playing with them like a human child. I know the Autobots have a soft spot for humans, more so a human child. There…..this is the child that I would love to take the shape of…..

I would play and nap with the Autobots, gain their trust, treat them like my own guardians. Just when their guards are at the lowest, like when they are napping, I would transform and strike! Now that’s like cutting from inside the seams. Hahahaha!

And when the destruction of the Autobots become a reality, the Autobots will merely become history. People will merely make Autobot figurines for child’s play……

......or even Autobot suit appearances for fans to pose with, ……..

(Photo taken at Toys"R"Us, Empire Shopping Gallery on 15th May 2011)

…..but who cares, they are not for real anymore! And when human earthlings are busy enjoying themselves, that’s when my team of Decepticons will attack and destroy the world! Hahahaha!

So what are you waiting for? Go get the GSC-EON Bank Credit Card because that’s the Ultimate Movie Card for ultimate experience and ultimate potential! Getting hold of this card is the first step to the destruction of the Autobots! *Evil grin!*

Huggies Play Date (1st June 2011)

2011-06-01T22:58:00.000-07:00

Not too long ago, Mommy received an email invitation from Huggies Malaysia to attend an event called "Huggies Play Date" at Saujana Hotel, Subang. Mommy reckoned that Mommy was invited not because Huggies know whether Mommy is a mummy blogger or not, but rather because Mommy's name is in their mailing list since Mommy joined the Huggies Club long time ago to get some free diaper samples. ^_^

The event started at 3.00 pm but Mommy only arrived there at almost 4.00 pm because Mommy wanted Juan Or to have more rest first before starting the journey (anyway Mommy felt uncertain too whether to go on with the plan or not). For your info, Juan Or had his UCSI kindy holiday programme class for the whole morning till 12.30 pm and on top of that, Juan Or had vomitted three times in the morning, had no appetite for milk or food and even complained of stomach pain that went off and on throughout the morning and afternoon. His vomit looked slimy which from Mommy's experience, indicates gassy stomach.

So when Mommy went to pick Juan Or up from the babysitter's house (Mommy left him there after the kindy so that he can have his lunch and sleep), Mommy was still at the stand-by mode of going or not going to the event. Apparently Juan Or was still asleep at the babysitter's house. As the babysitter was packing food for him (since he did not eat well during lunch), Mommy stroked his 'big' head (yes, Juan Or has a big head!) and he woke up. Mommy asked him whether he wanted to go to Saujana Hotel or not to which he eagerly said yes despite his condition. So off we went. This was how he looked like in the car - with sulky face whenever his stomach started feeling uncomfortable.

When we parked at Saujana Hotel (yes, Mommy was really lucky to get a vacant and valid parking spot despite being 1 hour late!), Juan Or became cranky but after some scolding from Mommy, he cooperated and went into the event room with Mommy. Upon entering the room, at a glance, all seats seemed occupied, but Mommy managed to find one empty chair meant for the media person! Anyway, who cares, Mommy went ahead to sit at the media chair - after all this event is meant for parents and their babies/kids, so how can Huggies expect a mother to be standing and carrying her child all the time when no effort has been made by either the Huggies or hotel staff to quickly bring a chair for Mommy?

Magically too, Juan Or did not appear resentful of the surrounding despite him not in his best of mood. Anyway, Joanne Kam Poh Poh was doing her talk performance and Mommy had Juan Or on Mommy's lap and we snapped a self-portrait as well.

Mommy wanted to snap a photo of Joanne Kam doing her performance, but too bad, Mommy's handphone camera is not sophisticated enough to take good pictures of faraway objects, so this was the yield and Mommy decided this was all that Mommy would snap of the programmes on stage.

After Joanne Kam's performance, the emcee came out and based on what the emcee said, looks like Huggies Play Date is actually a marketing event to promote (and perhaps launch?) the Huggies Ultra line of product being pure and natural. After that was the parenthood chat session by four celebrity parents, among them being the fashion model, Amber Chia. However, Mommy couldn't recognize or recall the names of the three other celebrity parents, out of which are two daddies and a mummy (call Mommy old-fashioned and outdated! ^_^). As their on-stage chat went on, Mommy questioned (in the heart) whether they are actually appropriate authority parenting figures to promote this baby product, or are they simply selected just because they have the celebrity status? People in the showbiz and glamour business - how much time do they really have to attend to, care for and nurture their offspring? More often than not, the get-hands-dirty job in attending to, caring for and nurturing a baby is done by a hired (or who knows a live-in) nanny or babysitter or mother or mother-in-law.

Anyway, Juan Or's patience with the surrounding did not last very long and halfway during the celebrity's on-stage photography session (after the chat), Juan Or asked to stroll outside to see the hotel's landscape. On the whole, his mood still did not get any better during the stroll as off and on, he complained of stomachache. Mommy guessed his stomachache sensation was something like the line graph in the share market - up and down, up and down! Basically, his face became sulky whenever he knew Mommy was pointing the camera at him!

This photo was taken when his stomachache reached the peak. Poor boy!

With his stomachache gone down already, his face was not so cringed up now, but still sulky though.

Yay, finally it was time for food! Malaysian dishes (white rice, mee siam, steamed herbal chicken, ginger beef and mixed vege) were served at one side of the room's corridor while the Western and tea-time food were served at the lakeside corridor. However, Mommy only ate from the Malaysian dishes' side because Mommy does not appreciate Western food. The downside to the organization of this eating session was that there were not enough tables for you to eat your food. So Mommy resorted to going to another neighbouring restaurant's outdoor table and chair to sit and eat. The outdoor table and chair also has lakeview.

(P/S: See the coaster near his hands? He was playing with it initially and somehow his hands are quicker than Mommy's eyes and the next minute, the coaster was gone! Guess where is the coaster? In the lake!)

Juan Or's favourite utensil for the day turned out to be the goblet! He drank water very eagerly for that matter.

Mommy offered him white rice (that's what he loves most!) but he was reluctant to eat due to poor appetite. So Mommy forced him to eat at least a spoon or two to which he did. Soon after that, he complained of vomitting sensation and he vomitted out the chocholate biscuit he ate earlier. After vomitting all he could, magically his appetite picked up a lot - eventually eating up all of Mommy's rice soaked with steamed herbal chicken gravy! And he didn't vomit too!

After the food, Mommy went to get souvenirs that were given out to guests of the event. One is a vege and fruit hamper, and 3 boxes of Huggies Ultra free sample diapers - 2 diapers in a box, each box being size M, L and XL, respectively.

See a wordy-looking tag attached to the hamper? The tag contains a thank you note for making time for the event on one side and the other side being steps and tips on how to puree baby food.

Wanna see the contents of the vege and fruit hamper? There are 5 sticks of carrots, 2 yellow bell peppers, a handful of cherry tomatoes, 5 apples, 2 sweet potatoes and 2 brinjals. The apples are for Papa's consumption, carrots for making ABC soup, yellow bell peppers to be used for stir-frying together with Beijing cabbage, cherry tomatoes for Mommy to snack on, sweet potatoes for boiling and brinjals to make sambal brinjal dish. Mommy will buy some more brinjals to top up to make a vege dish for future dinner. Meal planning time! ^_^

By the way, Juan Or no longer vomits on the way back home till this time of writing. Also, he was in his usual bubbly self all the way back home. Once home, he started asking for milk again and was able to jump, laugh, talk, kick, throw, etc. Mommy is relieved and is thankful that we still made it to the event and came back with 'rewards' and full stomach for both Juan Or and Mommy despite the vomitting and stomachache ordeal! ^_^

Juan Or’s Love for Choo-choo Trains: Past, Present & Future

2011-05-30T03:01:00.000-07:00

Juan Or’s love affair with the choo-choo train started when his Papa downloaded Thomas and Friends’ Misty Island Rescue from the Internet. What seems like a ‘boring’ typical British cartoon turns out to be something that Juan Or watched over and over and over again. And that was when he was about 2 years 4 months old.

Then, as time goes by, his choo-choo train things were added one by one, starting with his very first Thomas and Friends starter set. Today he is an 'ardent' collector of all things choo-choo train. Here is a flashback of his past choo-choo train journey.

Past (before Juan Or reached 2 years old)

Actually, Mommy bought this starter set when Mommy was still pregnant with him. However, the set was brought out only very briefly for him to see (then 1 year 4 months old) and quickly put back into the box to prevent damage and rough handling by this little boy. Only when he started showing interest in Misty Island Rescue did Mommy take it out for him to play again.

His next choo-choo train ( or rather pseudo-choo-choo train) experience was the ride on the tram at Bukit Melawati in Kuala Selangor . He was indeed very excited because the tram looked like the choo-choo train in The Choo-choo Express of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.

Present (from 2 years old to the present)

For his 2^nd birthday, Mommy bought him a choo-choo train jelly cake. Surprisingly, he wasn’t too enthusiastic about the cake although it has the choo-choo train shape.

Along the way as Juan Or grows up, Papa and Mommy took him to sit on all possible choo-choo train kiddy rides.

Papa and Mommy also took Juan Or to see the Malayan Railway exhibit at Sunway Pyramid Shopping Centre during last year’s Hari Raya celebration. The theme was “Balik Kampung” (Back to Hometown).

Juan Or also managed to ride on the M&M’s choo-choo train at Sunway Pyramid.

When Juan Or was 2 years 4 months old, Papa and Mommy took him on his first ever Light Rail Transit (LRT) ride from Bukit Jalil station to Bandaraya.

Nowadays choo-choo trains are so ‘modern’ looking, however, Mommy didn’t forget about the more old-fashioned ones – the steam locomotive – which is an exhibit at the National Museum, Kuala Lumpur.

Then, along the way, when the Litt Tak Toy Warehouse Sale came by, Mommy took the opportunity to buy Thomas and Friends train sets at a cheaper price for Juan Or, and much better (and more age-appropriate) than Hornby train sets for younger children. Some choo-choo train accessories were bought as well from Jusco during the sale seasons.

Sometimes, Mommy also took Juan Or to Toys R’Us to see choo-choo trains. Can see but cannot buy ah! ^_^

But if there are free shopping vouchers from some redemption programme, then Juan Or gets to have the choo-choo train (with Mommy paying the difference, of course!)

And this is how Juan Or likes to play with his choo-choo trains – in a very dramatic manner – fall down, crash, boom, bang!!! He actually wants to imitate a scene in Misty Island Rescue where Diesel caused the jovi logs on the flatbed to tumble into the river.

Not just that, he needs to have his choo-choo train toys paraded at the laptop as he watches Misty Island Rescue. So is he watching the show or ‘watching’ the toys (since the toys have covered quite a substantial part of the screen)?

Along the way, Papa and Mommy took Juan Or f or m or e choo-choo train rides on the LRT.

Mommy even sourced f or choo-choo train books to nurture his interest….

……ranging from fiction ones……

…..to borrowing a non-fiction choo-choo train book from Mommy’s workplace’s library…..

…..to buying adult reference choo-choo train books from MPH Bookstore…..

….and junior reference choo-choo train books from other bookstores!

Even choo-choo train DVDs,…..

……choo-choo train magazines,……

….and choo-choo train pencilbox are not excluded!

By his 3^rd birthday, his Third Aunty (from My Little Sprouts!) gave him a choo-choo train pop-out book.

And he couldn’t stop inspecting the trains, tunnels and what-nots of the pop-out book.

Future

This is what Mommy has in mind to continue to nurture Juan Or’s interest in choo-choo trains:

Guide him in building a choo-choo train city on his own by combining all the complete sets plus accessories bought thus far. To do that, he will definitely need space to lay the tracks to form a ‘city’. So the third empty room upstairs will be all his for the envisioned choo-choo train city since he is the only child and there will be no other sibling to take the room.

(P/S: However, what you see here now is a choo-choo train city built by Mommy!)

2. Hop on the new Electric Train Service (ETS) which was launched in early 2011. This will be our future joyride family outing. We will either be heading north to Ipoh or heading south to Seremban from Kuala Lumpur .

3. Get hold of Meccano toys that come with the choo-choo train designs. Mommy has just discovered this brand of toys where it’s very DIY in nature, so it’s good for developing the child’s motor skill, thinking skill, independence of thought and all other good things to exercise the brain! The child gets to twist and turn the bolts, nuts, screws and what-nots to construct something just like how Papa does it with his hardware tools!

Meccano’s toys offer something for every child’s stage of development, like the Train Tool Box for ages 2 and above…..

…..to the Meccano train that comes with flexible parts for children ages 5 and above. The parts can be taken apart again to build 5 other non-train models, so you get to have both variety and versatility all in one package! Isn’t that value for money?

Hopefully, Meccano toys will come to the shores of Malaysia soon. So far, Mommy has not seen any Meccano toys in Malaysia’s Toys R’Us stores yet. ^_^

Gnomeo and Juliet

2011-05-25T02:20:00.000-07:00

Imagine when you - the master of the house - are gone and all of a sudden, your garden deco figurines come alive and have lives and adventures of their own? Well, this is certainly what happens in Gnomeo and Juliet!

Gnomeo and Juliet (read in the mind as "Romeo and Juliet") is an adaptation of Shakespeare's well-known work which revolves around the forbidden love between a man and a woman who come from two feuding families. Of course Shakespeare's version deals with real human whereas Gnomeo and Juliet deals with ceramic-made garden deco gnomes that come alive when their masters are not around (doesn't this coming-alive thing resemble Toy Story?). As you can expect, the two neighbouring masters do not get along well with each other, so do their teams of ceramic garden gnomes. See their hilarious antics - the blue-clothed gnomes vs. the red-clothed gnomes - in showing their hostility towards each other. Then one day, Juliet from the red-clothed gnome family wanted to pick a special flower situated at the blue-clothed gnome's garden and that was how she stumbled upon Gnomeo and love-at-first-sight sparked between them although they didn't quite want to admit the attraction initially. See the two lovebirds' hilarious antics on how they struggled to come to terms with their attraction (and love) for each other and how they 'fought' for their love knowing very well that their families are at loggerheads. The good thing about this show is that it's a happy ending for everyone unlike Shakespeare's whereby the lovebirds ended up dead (*touchwood!*). Not just that, the gnome Juliet is also an articulate, strong-willed and hardy (or rather tomboyish) girl who can jump, kick, fight, and drive the lawn mower just like a male gnome unlike Shakespeare's portrayal of a very feminine and submissive Juliet. Watch this Gnomeo and Juliet and you won't be disappointed!

Anyway, just recently, Papa bought this Gnomeo and Juliet DVD and thanks to its entertaining and interesting storyline and lively computer graphics being catchy enough to sustain Juan Or's interest, Mommy was able to finish watching it (otherwise how would Mommy be able to write about it?)! What are you waiting for? Go get Gnomeo and Juliet DVD now!

Here's the official trailer if you prefer getting your foot into it first before getting hold of it with your hands!

Where to Look for Cheap but Good and Nice Ben10 Clothes

2011-05-23T03:30:00.000-07:00

As Mommy's readers might have read before, Juan Or caught the Ben10 fever not too long ago. There was once when we went on LRT joyride and landed in Sogo, then saw one section selling Ben10 clothes. Juan Or asked Mommy to buy one for him but Ben10 clothes are not cheap, mind you! With just the T-shirt part alone (without pants), the lowest available price was RM25 and that also Mommy felt is not justified because the fabric is the type that cannot absorb sweat! So Mommy didn't entertain Juan Or's request.

Then one day, the opportunity came. We were merely window shopping at IOI Mall (Old Wing). Mommy spotted this tenant selling children's fancy dress (e.g. marshal, bear and bunny suits, etc.) but still did not know that the shop offers more than that. Then Mommy spotted one section displaying Ben10 clothes. It was chilren's suit set - singlet-styled top and a matching shorts. Price? RM14.90 for size 6, 100% cotton - cheap! Not only does the range offers Ben10 designs, but also Spongebop, Thomas and Friends and Power Rangers at that price range. If you are looking for short-sleeved T-shirt with shorts suit set and 100% cotton with Ben10 pictures and at that price range, there you have it too!

So Mommy bought a mixture of Ben10 and Thomas and Friends designs of suit sets: a size 6 and size 8 singlet-and-shorts sets for RM14.90 each, a size 10 and size 12 singlet-and-shorts sets for RM16.90 each and a size 6 short-sleeved with shorts set for RM17.90. All are 100% cotton and the cloth texture is quite thick. Although Mommy suspects these are not original Ben10 and Thomas and Friends merchandise, however, the pictures of the design are not out either. And the good news is that so far, Mommy has washed one of the sets before and found that the pictures remain intact and the clothes remain the same size after washing. Only thing is that the dye came out into the soapy water and yet the dye was not absorbed by the white parts of the suit set and neither did other clothes (Papa and Mommy's clothes) absorb the dye. After it was dry from washing, the colour did not look faded either. Yippy! The label also says: "Made in Indonesia".

Anyway, this boy was and is still very happy and eager wearing the Ben10 clothes again whenever they are dry from washing.

He even made it a point to wear the Ben10 clothes together with his Ben10 watch, called the Omnitrix! By the way, the babysitter gave him the Ben10 watch as his birthday present recently.

Be warned however that the cutting is considered small for the size no. it portrays. For example, although the label says size 6 (supposedly for children age 6), actually it's more for children age 3 to 4. The one Juan Or is wearing in the photo above says size 6. So be sure to size the clothes according to the child's body first before buying. Credit cards are accepted for whatever amount you are buying. Happy shopping!

The tenant's address:
Yang Young Gui, F43 & F43A 1st Floor, IOI Mall, Puchong. Tel. no.: 03-8076 9980

Not Quite an "OUCH!"

2011-05-05T02:21:00.000-07:00

Again this is just a quick post and an outdated one as well. ^_^ (Those familiar with Mommy can probably understand this!)

As usual, Juan Or likes to insist on doing certain things himself without anyone's assistance. This time, it was about closing the DVD cover. Mommy was about to press the two covers together to clip together but he made noise that he would like to do it instead, so Mommy let him. Then the next thing Mommy realized was that his shorts at the groin area got caught in between the DVD covers but luckily his foreskin was not part of it!

Of course this innocent boy did not realize the consequence of the what-could-have-been, so Mommy warned him that he was lucky he did not accidentally clip his kuku-chiau (penis), then only he realized! Finally the DVD cover slipped off by itself. And this cheeky boy, thinking it's fun to have something clipped to his penis (wait till he gets it, then he will know!!), he went on to reclip the DVD cover back onto his crotch area! *Slap forehead!*

Ta-dah!

Wait till he really gets it one day!!! *Evil grin*

New Way to Play with a Toy Wrench

2011-04-19T23:51:00.000-07:00

Hello! Mommy is glad to be back again at blogging after a bout of 'silence'. Please forgive Mommy for not being able to visit your blogs as frequently as Mommy wanted to. Anyway, today's post is a short one as Mommy is still hard-pressed for time with office work.

This is Juan Or's old toy wrench. Mommy bought the DIY toy tools set from the Litt Tak'sWarehouse Sale about 2 years ago.

Then, Juan Or's itchy fingers went on to dismantle the wrench into 3 parts.

Juan Or used the middle-sized piece as his gun, .....

....and the smallest piece as his ring.....

....or rather his wedding ring!

There he is....sitting and posing like a big tai-ko (big brother)!^_^

Mommy's Articles Published in CozyCot.com

2011-04-04T03:25:00.000-07:00

Somewhere towards the end of year 2010, CozyCot.com, an online women's magazine based in Singapore, contacted Mommy to invite Mommy to be one of their guest writers for the Motherhood section. Mommy accepted the invitation and so far, Mommy had contributed two articles to CozyCot.com. CozyCot.com would give Mommy a topic to write about and of course the deadline to submit the article. Of the two topics given so far, Mommy always end up scratching the head as to what to write about the topic because somehow, the given topics don't seems to 'click' well with Mommy. Because of this, Mommy always end up writing and submitting the articles at the very last minute. For that, Mommy must thank Mommy's 'last-minute' lucky stars for always being able to spring an idea on how to approach or write about the topic that didn't seems to 'click' well with Mommy at first.

The first topic assigned (in January 2011) to Mommy was about pregnancy fitness. Mommy isn't one person so keen on exercise and fitness to begin with, so Mommy finally came up with Mommy's anecdote called "Confessions of a Fitness Non-enthusiast", which was published on 4th March 2011. The second topic assignment on children's party only came in early March 2011 and the deadline was 21st March 2011. But Mommy remembered submitting the article only on the 22nd March 2011 (as usual, the inspiration to write only came in on the deadline iteself!). So that's how Mommy's second article called "Children's Pseudo-party Ideas (for Parents Who Are Not That Into Parties!)" came about and was published on 25th March 2011.

Happy reading! ^_^