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Author: Zhiwei

Apple Crisps!

Apple Crisps!

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An attempt to “dewhiten”, I just coined the word, one of my many white elephants in the kitchen.

This is an idiot proof (I’ve proven it! Even I can do it!) recipe. No oil involved, natural food, totally yummy!!

Just slice your apple thinly (you don’t even need to core it) if you are skillful and patient with the knife. I’m not equipped with the skill nor the temperament, so I chose to do it with the shredder. I ended up with various shredded sizes, thickness of apple slices. But I’m chin chai lar. So I find it ok.

Spread them out on the wire mesh of the air fryer. Set the temperature at 160°C for 15 mins. Just stir them every 5 mins to keep them from sticking together.

Voilà! Apple crisps! Mine don’t score too high on the looks department but they are yummy!! Don’t judge my apple crisps by their looks!!! The small slices are crunchy n sweet. The bigger slices have crunchy edges and sponges middles. Thumbs up from my 宝贝!

They are easy to prepare and definitely healthy! Not only that, economical too! You don’t have to pay the exorbitant price for apple crisps from the supermarkets.

Family Portrait

Family Portrait

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A rare family photo. Thanks to Michelle! We hardly have the chance for one of these. We are always taking turns to take photos.

Not only that, it’s au naturale, without makeup. See all those eye bags and wrinkles! Eeeks!

Even 小小宝贝 is in it!! Inside my huge tummy lar!!!

One day, just one day, we may walk into a studio to have some nice ones taken before they all grow up and lose their charming innocence.

Another addition to my never ending to do list…

Card Play – UNO

Card Play – UNO

This post should have preceded the chess play post.

We taught her how to play UNO just before our Gold Coast Trip in Aug last year, before her 3rd birthday. The game box stated that it’s suitable for ages 7 and above. But since this game has been around for decades (I remember playing it when I was a wee kid and I’m not young), they probably should have revised the age recommendation as children are becoming smarter these days!!

We taught her that because we ran out of games to play with her. Haha! Ok ok, it’s actually to train her matching skills for colours and numbers. We were not expecting her to know how to use the special cards like reverse, draw 2, skip, wild, draw 4. But she picked it up easily like a fish in water and actually understood when to deal them out.

She started off holding the cards in one hand and she had to pick them up one by one to see them. Now she’s able to fan them out nicely – see! Improve fine motor skills!! She’s also able to deal the cards out to everyone, 7 for each player by counting out loud.

The only thing she needs to be trained is to develop a poker face when she plays. It’s so obviously written on her face when she receives special cards. It’s pretty amusing to see her giggle to herself when she gets good cards. No hurry for her to lose her childish innocence. There are enough years for her to ease into the masked society, hopefully, not too disillusioned along the way.

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*Contemplating which card to throw out. Hmmm….

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*The evil laugh just before dealing a draw 4 card.

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*Watching Godma Eds closely to make sure that she’s dealing the cards properly.

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*A snapshot during the game.

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*A snapshot of the 4 players @ sakae sushi at Changi Airport. You simply must have self taken photos at an all girls’ outing. No girly outing is complete without this!!!

It All Happened One Day… On April Fools’ Day

It All Happened One Day… On April Fools’ Day

Today is April Fools’ Day. I hope this is the biggest joke I’m getting today.

I was on my Facebook (as usual, fb addict Mah), reading posts on April Fools’ Day (ironically) and cuddling my smiling baby.

Suddenly I felt a warm liquid coursing over my right thigh. A thought flashed across my mind. “The baby peed on me! Can’t be so heng right?!” And cursing my hub who changed his diapers this morning for not doing a proper job.

I looked down. KANA SAI!!! My thighs and shorts and t shirt was covered with thick yellow gooey stuff (think of yellow curry with white milk curds and mucus).

My son just pooed all over me, himself and my leather sofa. All 14 hours worth of shit (the last time he pooed was before he slept). What does it mean? It means there’s A LOT of shit.

F¥€k.

I’m in deep shit. Literally.

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Blissfully sleeping after all that shit aftermath.

Candy Crushing!

Candy Crushing!

Candy crushing has taken over the iPhone and Facebook communities by storm. For the uninitiated, it’s a matching game like bejeweled but more fun and addictive as it has incorporated more variety.

There was just a handful of us on the map when i started, now it seems like the whole world is on the map. Ok lar. A bit of exaggeration.

It took me a loooong while to get here. But here I am!!! Completion!! For now! Until they add new levels. So I must blog about this achievement while it lasts. Now I can add it into my résumé. :) Logical thinking, tenacity, perseverance, management of addiction.

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Management of addiction is perhaps the biggest achievement in this game. It is darn addictive. It’s been frequently reported in the news on the staggering amount that people actually spent on the game. Someone actually spent $4000! And he’s a child. That’s not even including the massive number of people who have spent slightly less than that.

Me arh? $0 lor. I’m the giam gana. Can’t bear to spend money on games. (Excluding diablo 3 :p)

We were just discussing about this and Boonk said he knew of people who paid to get full sets of lives ($1.28 only. Can’t even buy a bowl of Fishball noodles with that) instead of begging their friends to send them lives. Or it takes just $1 to get 5 extra steps at the end of the game. So tempting when you see the last irritating jelly sitting there, beckoning you and you’ve run out of moves. Argh!!

Not only that, newspapers have reported that this evil candy crushing has drastically reduced productivity at work. Hmmm… Freakonomics writers should examine if the last economic recession was brought about by bejeweled or angry birds??

For me, yes, the temptation was indeed great. To keep going at it, to keep going up at levels, to stay ahead of my friends. This evil evil game. But yet I’ve a real life out there. Children to take care of, work to be done, a life to be led. Well, you just need to learn how to manage it. So is the game evil or it’s just weaklings we are?? I can only applaud the game creators for creating this game that is so well balanced, not too difficult to discourage and not too simple to bore the players. They are brilliant.

The rest is, well, up to ourselves. I’ve read Facebook posts of people who have proudly declared that they have deleted the game to stop themselves from playing it. Is this an achievement? I hardly think so.

I attended a course. The speaker mentioned that many people are afraid to walk around town with huge wads of cash, fearing that they would drop the money. If you can’t even take care of a few hundred bucks in your pocket, how are you going to manage your wealth?

It’s the same theory. If you can’t even stop yourself from bringing up the app every time you switch on your phone, how are you going to manage your life?

Candy crush is like a marathon. Sometimes you start off early, you get overtaken by others, and vice versa. You get to the end but it’s not the end, because they will be adding more levels to the cash cow.

Wa! So much theory about candy crush arh??

At the end of the day, it’s hell of a fun game!!! Just don’t let it take over your life.

Sleep Laughing Baby

Sleep Laughing Baby

I’m waiting for my little time bomb to wake up anytime for his milk feed before I can ko.

He just laughed in his sleep!! I wonder what can make a little baby who is 3 months old laugh in his sleep?

Do babies start dreaming at such a young age? Milk, perhaps. =.=”

Anyway it’s ultimate sweetness to see him smile and laugh. Just can’t resist documenting this. It’s a pity that it’s too dark and unpredictable to take a photo of it.

But, yes, another little joy in life after a tiring day. No wonder we celebrate Mother’s Day!!!! Motherly duties for life…. Still can’t believe that I’ve signed up for life duties. Haiz…

Chess Play

Chess Play

Ever since we introduced Uno to 宝贝 during the Gold Coast Trip, she’s been playing it regularly. We started playing it with her so that she could learn colour and number matching. However, she’s far exceeded our expectations by trouncing us regularly with her draw 2, reverse, skip, draw 4 cards. Believe me, when she dealt the special cards, she actually did it with a relish and evil laugh.

I decided to introduce her to the world of chess. I wanted to start off with checkers, but I wasn’t unable to dig it out of our disorganized boxes (many were unpacked since we moved in…. 1.5 years back…).

While browsing in a bookshop, I came across a set of animal chess, which cost a very affordable $3.90. Huh?! Now still have such cheap games arh! Mai tu Liao! Buy lor!!

She was on her best behavior that day. So I rewarded her with a present – the animal chess set.

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It was easy enough to match the pieces to the pictures on the mat. What wasn’t so simple was to explain the rules to a 3 year old!

1. The ranking of the animals by size. The bigger one can “eat” the ones that are smaller than it. The only exception is the mouse – it can kill the mighty elephant (by climbing into its truck n tickle it to death :p).

2. The pieces can only move one step at a time, to the adjacent square.

3. The Mouse is the only piece that has the ability to move into the water areas.

4. The Lion and Tiger pieces can leap across the banks of the river, unless the Mouse is in the river, in the line of the leap.

5. If a piece ends up in the opponent’s trap, no matter how large it is, even the smallest piece can gobble it up.

6. The game ends when you move your piece into the opponent’s den.

6 simple rules. But oh so difficult to get it across to her. I decided to just play and teach along the way. I ate up so many of her pieces that she started looking like this.

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So I sacrificed some pieces to retain her interest in the game. She won in the end. Although she wasn’t able to remember all the rules, but at least she’s remembered the ranking of the animals and she was very tickled that the mouse could eat up the huge elephant. She liked having her mouse swim in the river too.

Not too bad for the 1st time. There’s still a chance that she may turn out to become an expert animal chess player. We fell off our seats when she defeated us in UNO, even when we didn’t intentionally lose to her.

But for now, she remains as an animal chess noob. I must eat up her pieces while I still can. :p

Goldilocks and the 3 Bears

Goldilocks and the 3 Bears

Singapore Repertory Theatre (SRT) has been a personal favourite theatrical group of mine. I’ve watched quite a few of the plays put up or brought in by them. Their children’s plays are particularly enjoyable and of pretty high standard. Although I like the ones brought in by Act 3 and Alliance Français but the inaccessibility of the car parks deters me from attending their plays.

During this term, 宝贝’s school did fairy tales with them. Goldilocks and the 3 bears was one of them. How timely! I bought the tickets way before I knew the theme for this semester. The price of the tickets was reasonable. I’m a pretty cheapskate mom. I wouldn’t pay too much for children’s plays. There were some that I was interested in, during the ACE festival. Alas… The pricey tickets. So, no go lor.

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The set was beautifully done with movable wooden tree frames and pull out beds and all. In the cozy, colourful country style that I like! And of course, the actors and actresses were first rate.

Throughout the whole show, 宝贝 was upset that the bears were going for a walk and Goldilocks would come and eat up baby bear’s porridge. Not to have breakfast is like the end of the world for her. And when Goldilocks’ father couldn’t find her in the woods, her lower lip was quivering when she said in a shaky voice, “Why hasn’t her papa found her?” I was quite amused by her. Bad mama! Laughing at her daughter’s misery. She was genuinely distressed though. Maybe she was putting herself in the shoes of Baby Bear (to have to go without breakfast) and Goldilocks (getting lost in the woods).

The only grouse I had was that SRT blocked out the entire middle section of the stall seats for school groups. Only the first 3 rows and last 3 rows were opened to the public for booking. And yet, there were plenty of empty seats. Best seats! What a horrid waste!!

Anyway, I would highly recommend Goldilocks and the 3 Bears if you have children. Even as an adult, I found it pretty enjoyable.

Hungry Babies

Hungry Babies

She brought a whole armload of her bears downstairs.

“Ooh! My babies are hungry!!!” She pulled up her pink little t-shirt, exposing her chest and charming little chubby tummy, while her mommy looked at her, agog. She grabbed the first bear and pushed its furry face over her chest. Shouldn’t she be bottle feeding the bears, just like all the other little girls???

“Erm…. Are you feeding your babies??”

Her mommy almost fell over, laughing. But she just had to keep a straight face because the little mommy looked so serious.

“Yes. They are hungry. They were crying!! Didn’t you hear them?”

Hmmm… Her mommy must get her hearing checked for she heard nothing.

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The pensive mommy feeding her baby.

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The mommy scratching her back while feeding.

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The mommy posing for her breast feeding glamour shot.

She gently set the bear down and repeated it with the next one, and the one after and finally all of them.

“Wow! Your babies drink really fast. Are they full?” Observed her mommy.

“Yes. All full. They are fast, not like your baby. So slow!”

She gave me a proud-mommy look because her babies were fast drinkers.

=.=”