Mommy's Little Helper in the Training

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

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

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)

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!*