Toddler Clothes Hunting at Hytex Warehouse Sale

Recently Mommy noticed that Juan Or's homewear singlets for 2-year-old toddlers are getting tight and short already - something similar (but not as bad as that!) to how it looks like for the T-shirt that Winnie the Pooh wears. Then came the Hytex Warehouse Sale from 2nd to 11th December 2010 which got Mommy's saliva driping! Previously Mommy bought a substantial number of Winnie the Pooh T-shirts (both with and without sleeves) and shorts from the Hytex sale. But unfortunately what Mommy stocked up for Juan Or's 3rd year of age was not sufficient for homewear. So with this sale, Mommy was very excited and hopeful to get more T-shirts/singlets for 3 year olds.

This time, Hytex holds their sale at a multi-purpose hall - no longer at their factory's vicinity. Parking-wise, it was quite diffucult to get parking because the hall's compound itself has limited parking space. So Mommy parked at the roadside in front of a school. Others parked in front of people's house but not blocking their gates though.


There were many people there. Sad to say, this time, everything looks so messy - messy in the sense the racks were merely identified by the price tag of the clothes in it. Even then, you can still find clothes of other price range in the wrong rack (no thanks to some customers who simply chuck their 'loot' at their convenience when they changed their mind)! There is nothing to indicate what age group of clothes the rack contains. So in the end, customers really have to go to each rack to see exactly what kind (e.g. adult, teens, older children, younger children, toddlers, babies) of clothes are there before deciding whether or not to dig further into the rack.


Not just that, all the racks have clothes in heaps - nothing is organized unlike last time. As for toddler and baby clothes, Mommy could see lots of girl clothes whereas boy ones are so hard to find. Also, you can easily find clothes for 1-year-old girl toddlers but it's so very hard to find clothes for 2- and 3-year-olds. It's just so different now for Hytex sale. Last time, you didn't even have to dig deep just to find what you want and the quantity for each T-shirt design and for each age was plentiful. There were also a number of selfish customers who 'usurp' whatever they can reach without thinking whether in the end they are really buying them or not, and then they go to one corner, sit on the floor and start choosing what they want one by one. Those that they don't want they just leave aside on the floor so much so you can see a number of hills of clothes on the floor! So in the end, other customers don't really get what they want or don't get those nice ones since they are searching from the racks.



In the end, Mommy only managed to find one piece of Baby Looney Tunes T-shirt for age 3 for RM5 and a Pooh shorts for RM3. Mommy also bought one pair of toddler socks and 2 pairs of children socks, each for RM3, all are Looney Tunes design. This time's yield is really disappointing! *Sigh!*

 
In order to make the trip to Kepong more worthwhile ( since it's so far away from Cheras or even Puchong!), Mommy decided to buy some T-shirts for Juan Or for ages 6, 8, and 12! Only the green Tigger design (RM5) is for age 6 while the rest are for age 8 (blue one for RM5 and the rest are RM8 per piece).

Here are the Mickey Mouse T-shirts for age 12, each at RM8. And mind you, Mommy only managed to find these nice Mickey Mouse T-shirts (both for ages 8 and 12) from the hill of clothes on the floor left behind by those selfish customers! However when Mommy was still searching at the racks, Mommy cannot find anything like that. This goes on to show that basically these selfish customers grabbed all the good and nice ones without really thinking whether they really buy them or not and in the end just left them on the floor when they decided not to buy them and then led other customers into thinking that there is nothing really nice to choose from the sale! Tsk! Tsk! Tsk!

The queue at the cashier counter was long but still manageable and clearing quite fast. Only cash payments are accepted. Mommy's total damage for the day was RM59. 

So, bottom line is that if Hytex doesn’t want to lose the trust of their old warehouse sale customers, they had better hold it in their own premise just like the good ‘ole days!

Christmas Deco at 1 Utama

This is an outdated post dating back to 28th November 2010.

It was Sunday, our family outing day, and Mommy decided to go to 1 Utama to see the Christmas deco. Our first stop was at Eneos, i.e., Jusco's DIY centre. At Eneos, Juan Or had a good time playing with real tools. Otherwise, if at home, Mommy won't let him play them for fear of him banging the tools into the furniture or worse still, Papa's flat screen TV! Arghhh!

Then we went on to see the Christmas deco. Turned out, the deco was still in renovation, but 90% of it was already done. This year's theme is Christmas scene in old English village setting with homely-looking old English houses and inns, and bridges on white background that seems to depict river that has turned into ice and covered with snow.

And of course, Juan Or and Mommy took some photos there as well (with Papa being the photographer!).

And of course as usual, before we left 1 Utama to go for lunch at McDonalds, Juan Or had his fair share of static kiddy rides with Thomas the Tank Engine being his favourite.

Then he went to 'ride' with Stuart Little.....

......and then in an alphabet car.

Actually Juan Or was not really keen on riding the alphabet car. It was the bear that he was more interested in. He even went to the extend of hugging.....

.....and kissing the bear! *Muah* Not just that, Juan Or also said,"Sayang (love) Bear-bear!"

"OMG!"

Don't be deceived by this sleeping boy who seems to be so peacefully asleep and minding his own business. For your information, Mommy only had the opportunity to snap this photo while waiting for the traffic light to turn green when we were about to reach the babysitter's house (to which by then Juan Or had already dozed off).  This was what transpired earlier......

Early this morning, Mommy was getting ready to go to work. 'Getting ready' here means packing putting Juan Or into the car, buckle him up and then go lock the wooden door and grill, and then unlock the gate. After unlocking the gate, Mommy went into the car to start the engine and Mommy remembered seeing Juan Or sitting quietly and not doing or holding anything unusual (he was already awake then).That time was about 6.50 am and it was still a bit dark.

Fine, nothing strange, right? Then Mommy reversed the car out of the house, got out of the car again to lock the gate and went back in again. Something unusual caught Mommy's attention from the corner of the eye (though it was still quite dark) so Mommy turned to look and OMG! There are thick, dark and big scribbles on Juan Or's side of the car wall! OMG!

Well, Juan Or appeared so innocent and appeared not to be doing anything unusual whenever Mommy turned to steal glances at him and here it is, all of a sudden, scribbles all over the wall! He must have 'hijacked' Mommy's brow pencil (that's why the lines are thick!) and went on with his drawing frenzy just in the nick of time when Mommy was locking the wooden door and grill and unlocking the gate! Hmmmph! Grrrrrrr! Call it scribble, artpiece or vandalism?

Santa Claws at Manhattan Fish Market

Shortly after the Cherating trip, Papa and Mommy were still on leave (15th November 2010). Recently, Papa saw an advertisement by Manhattan Fish Market on a dish called 'SANTA CLAWS' which was actually the claws of those huge, expensive crab that you normally see in those Chinese restaurants that offer live seafood with aquariums (of exotic live seafood) decorating their shop. Manhattan is selling the dish for RM35.90. Papa reasoned that since such giant crab is very costly to eat in Chinese restaurants and also there's no guarantee whether the crab tastes very good for such price paid, Papa said why not go to the Manhattan Fish Market in Sunway Pyramid to give it a try (at least we don't have to buy the whole crab just to taste it!), so off we went as the family outing of the day.

We reached Sunway Pyramid early, partly because Papa wanted to make use of free wi-fi to check prices of shares.So while Papa 'internetted', Mommy looked over Juan Or as he fooled around with a piece of bendable straw that Mommy took from a muffin kiosk.

After that we headed off to Manhattan Fish Market but found the restaurant was still not open yet. Never mind, so we took Juan Or to loiter around and we found this choo-choo train deco at the M&M's stall. Since we had a lot of time to kill, we allowed Juan Or to linger at the choo-choo train to his heart's content.

See the smiling M&M's figure at the choo-choo train? Juan Or loved to put his hand into the figure's mouth to be 'gobbled'.

Finally at 11 am, the Manhattan Fish Market resturant opened and Papa ordered for a plate of 'SANTA CLAWS. Here's how it looked like!

A closer look at the claws......

Both Papa and Mommy shared the dish while Juan Or looked on and fooled around. Don't be deceived by this photo below as if Juan Or was waiting to eat his share! Not at all. He refused to try anything from the dish, instead he climbed up and down the bench, walked here, walked there, so much so the Manhattan staff had to give him Mentos candy to keep him at bay! Well, that's good service by Manhattan! ^_^

So how did the crab taste? Well, nothing to shout about, really. Taste-wise, the flesh is naturally salty, but as you continue to chew the flesh, the saltiness revealed sweetness. However, the sweetness is nothing compared to the sweetness of those mud crab flesh! So our conlusion is the very high price you have to pay for when eating those huge or almost giant-like exotic live crab in Chinese restaurants may not be very worthwhile after all compared to paying RM70 or RM75 per kg for eating live Sri Lanka mud crab!

After Manhattan, we headed to McDonalds for our proper lunch, and then to an indoor playground set for Juan Or to play.

Somewhere near the playground was a stall selling toys and Juan Or was attracted to one toy puppy that yaps and moves. That was the first time Mommy saw his fondness for animals (though it wasn't a real animal!). He even patted and sniffed the 'puppy', and even said,"Sayang (love) puppy!" Even when Mommy coaxed and took him away from the stall, he still turned back to look at the 'puppy'.

This sums up our humble outing at Sunway Pyramid. :-D

Trip to Cherating: Final Day 3

As mentioned in the last blogpost, after the barbeque dinner, Mommy went back to the hotel room (after Papa and Juan Or went back first) and found Juan Or already asleep, and turned out Juan Or had not taken his bath yet. And he slept the whole night through without taking his bath!

OK, never mind, so the next day, after he woke up from sleep (which was very late - as late as about 8.30am, only half any hour more to go before Mommy had to attend another meeting), Mommy asked him whether he was ready to go for bath and his reply was in the negative. So Mommy forced him to take bath instead. So there he was, in the hotel room's bathroom, screaming and crying all the way while Mommy bathed him! Apparently he was uncomfortable with the bidet-cum-shower shooting water on him! Hmmm! After taking bath, he was a happy boy again! ^_^

Papa also managed to capture some sunrise photos on his handphone while having breakfast at the hotel's restaurant. See....Papa has more photographic eyes than Mommy, right?

And here's Mommy's version of a later sunrise.

Mommy packed our things into the luggage before going for the next meeting. Then by about 1pm when the meeting finished, Mommy ate lunch at the hotel's restaurant (Papa and Juan Or had taken their lunch their much earlier) and immediately left the hotel as Papa wanted to start the journey as soon as possible before traffic builds up. We reached the East Coast Expressway at 2.04 pm and came out at 4.04pm, reached the Karak Highway's first toll at 4.07 pm and the second toll at 4.46 pm. We finally reached our house by about 6 pm. That night, Mommy merely cooked pasta for dinner since we already had heavy breakfasts, lunches and dinners for 3 days. Papa was drained off his energy because of the long drive whereas Mommy felt stressed out coming back to a messy house with loads of laundry and chores waiting to be done! Hahaha....back to reality and routine!

P/S: Do mummies out there feel stressed out too coming back home after an enjoyable outstation vacation? ^_^