It’s always been like this. Everything I get a wave of inspiration or a special feeling that I want to blog about, I’d start on it. But when I’m in the middle of it, something crops up that requires my immediate attention. By the time I’ve put out a few fires and get back to my blogging, the inspiration or feeling has vanished.
Sigh… There are simply too many distractions in Singapore. It is really bad business for any form of creative writing. I’ll need to lock myself in a room, turn off all communication tools and work on it!!
I kind of miss the time that I had spent in Germany, totally isolated and cut off from the numerous distractions. The quality of writing I did over there was much better and of course, being in a new place helped. There were numerous new stuff, quirky feelings to blog about. And a lot of time was spent on self reflection, getting to know myself better.
Right now I just feel myself getting sucked in the whirlwind of activities, doing things because other people wanted to and not for because I wanted to do it. Where’s my space??? Where’s my “me” time???
宝贝 has to do a show-and-tell twice each week; once in English and once in Mandarin, according to the theme of the week. Last week was purple week. So she needed to bring a purple object for each session.
I’m the English show and tell Oic. Initially we rehearsed the short little session over the weekend. She just needed to make a speech of 1-3 sentences. Yes, not those 5 mins session kind. Can’t expect too much from toddlers younger than 3!! As time goes by, I just look for something adhering to the theme and give it to her. Lazy…
The first purple object that I set my eyes on was her swimming goggles. “Would you like to bring your goggles to school for show and tell??” She agreed. Nowadays we have to get her approval so that she would willingly do it. Sigh. Kids nowadays…
Me : Can you demonstrate how you did your show and tell in school yesterday?
宝贝：ok. (she slipped the goggles over her head and over her eyes).
Me : hang on. You wore your goggles?!
宝贝：Ya. (I must start saying yes instead of ya. She’s picking it up from me. =.=”) Good morning friends! My name is Yihui. I have purple goggles. This is how I swim. (she “swam” around the room in breast stroke.) Thank you everyone!
Hmmm… Ok. Considering that I didn’t rehearse with her. Not too bad. I didn’t expect her to put on the goggles. She looked quite hilariously in them with her school uniform. Hahaha.
My mom is the Chinese oic. She’s much more hardworking than I am. She would rehearse with 宝贝 every single time. She brought a toy brinjal for it.
婆婆 （grandma)：今天的看看说说怎么样？（how’s today’s show and tell?)
宝贝：婆婆，很好。(very good)
婆婆：你怎么说？(what did you say?)
宝贝：大家好！我的名字是梁懿慧。这是紫色的。很好吃。它可以开又关，开又关。谢谢大家！(hi everybody! My name is Liang Yi Hui. This is purple and yummy. It can open and close, open and close.)
婆婆：为什么你没有介绍茄子？为什么开又关？(why didn’t you introduce it as the brinjal? And what’s with the open and close?)
宝贝：哦！我忘了它的名字。开又关是这样咯！(oh I forgot its name. Open and close refers to this)(she demonstrated by pulling the brinjal apart at the Velcro joint and putting it back together again)
宝贝：老师说我很棒！(Teacher said I did well!!)(grinning from ear to ear)
Last minute improvisation to cover up her brinjal boo boo.
Maybe all that presentations, seminars that I did while I was pregnant really contributed to her pre natal education. She was hearing my voice like 75% of the whole day!! Yadda yadda!! I talked so much that I even got tired of talking… =.=”
So if you want a talkative child, talk a lot when you are pregnant!!!
宝贝 finally completed one of her art pieces yesterday. She has 2 more uncompleted work – pictures of a fish and a ship. I must be guilty of passing these faulty genes to her. I’ve 101 projects that I’ve started but are still pending completion. *guilty look*
Ta Da!! Her Children’s Day (which was last Friday) t-shirt. She can wear it next year as it’s really big on her. I’ve seen all the children carrying their T-shirts out of the room yesterday. She was holding hers gingerly at the top as the fabric paint hadn’t quite dried.
宝贝：I did it all on my own!! (she announced proudly) I’ll carry it home myself.
Me : Great. Just don’t dirty the car or I’ll make you clean it up. By the way, why’s your Dolly’s hair red?? All your friends’ dollies have black hair.
宝贝：I like red hair! (I can just picture her dying her hair red as soon as she comes of age. >.< )
Me : Errr ok. But aren't the buttons too big for the face? (the eyes I've seen on other tshirts were made of smaller buttons or sequins). And she looks like someone punched her in the eye.
宝贝：Big eyes can see better!!! That's the makeup. And she's wearing a dress.
Me : =.=" (I can just imagine her with red hair and gothic style make up in future. Maybe I can help her with that for the upcoming Halloween party…)
Having said that I could notice that she had painstakingly stuck the red wool strands in two directions. The dolly even had a centre parting. And the cloth bits were arranged in the same direction to resemble a skirt, complete with a sequined belt. Her zombie looking doll kind of grew on me after a while. :p
After all, she's right. Why conform to the norm? Why does the sky have to be always coloured in blue? Why does the grass have to be green? Why does the dolly have to look like a regular girl? She can be a zombie for all I care!
Adults like us have too many rules and conventions that we live by and we have forgotten how it's like to think out of the box and to be different from others.
I hope creativity continues to thrive in my quirky little one. Maybe she will paint the grass pink next time!!
The hub is in India for a few days on business. In the middle of the first night, I heard someone tip toe into my room. I turned around and saw 宝贝 climbing stealthily up my bed, clutching her little bolster. She hasn’t come to my room in the middle of the night for months.
She said “mama” in a soft voice and snuggled against me.
The next day, she told grandma about it.
宝贝 ：爸爸在印度。妈妈自己睡。(Daddy is in India. Mama was sleeping alone.)
婆婆：哦！ 是吗？(ohh, really?)
宝贝：嗯。所以我陪妈妈睡。(yes. So I went to her room to accompany her) *she beams*
Awwww…. I am so touched!! I must be the luckiest mom on Earth. Where can I find a sweeter and more sensitive little girl than her??
It’s only today that I realized how frequently the emergency button has been abused on the mrt. The button is big and undoubtedly attractively red. That may explain why.
The “hot” button was pressed for several reasons.
1. Unwell passenger. Ok fine. Sounds pretty valid to me.
2. For no reason. Several times the Smrt was unable to locate the source of the problem. I suspect it lies with certain “itchy fingers” of the passengers. I wonder if there’s an illness called itchyfingerholic.
3. UFO. Unidentified bag left in the cabin. Well, ok. There’s the risk of a bomb. One can never be too careful. I still remember my fateful incident in a London tube station. We saw a bunch of officers running towards a solitary bag left in a tube station. Dear Seow said,”oh my goodness! It may be a bomb!”. We ran for dear lives. With a backpack full of 1 month’s *barang on our backs. We were pretty darn fit then. It’d kill me to perform the same feat now!!
4. Someone’s bag/hand/some part of the body was caught in the door. It’s happened to me before!! No one pressed the emergency button for me. T.T
5. But today’s the one that really cracked me up. Check this out.
Someone pressed the emergency button because he was upset by his neighbour’s loud music. He must have mistaken the button for the player’s stop button?? He stopped the whole train just so that all the rest of the passengers could be trapped in the train together with him and enjoy the loud music.
Wahahaha. I marvel truly at his ingenuity. I wonder who he is!! C’mon stompers!! You are not doing your job!! You should have *stomped him!!! He can then enjoy his moment of fame.
Next time if someone plays gangnam music I can press the hot button?!?!
*barang = stuff
*stomp = an online tabloid where people snap photos of unsuspecting strangers in various compromising positions and upload them. Link here.
宝贝 has been in a singing mood lately. She hums to herself or launches into a gusto tune, whichever suits her at that point of time.
She was playing with her puzzle when she suddenly decided that the room was too quiet and she needed to jazz up the mood a little.
十八的姑娘一朵花呀 (English Translation: A lady at eighteen years blooms like a flower)
一朵花 (like a flower)
每个男人都想他呀 (Every man thinks of her)
都想他 (thinks of her)
姑娘长大不得了呀 (When she grows up, she will be incredible)
不得了 (incredible)
粉色的笑脸 (Pink smiling face)
粉色笑脸赛晚霞 (Pink smiling face like the colour of dusk)
啊 姑娘十八一朵花 (A lady at eighteen blooms like a flower)
一朵花 (like a flower)
Whaaat???!! Her “Every man thinks of her” stunned me…. This song is one of the oldies (aka my parent’s era). Although I don’t really know the lyrics of the entire song, but it certainly didn’t sound very right to me… In fact it sounded a little “r-rated” to me, considering that it’s from a 3 yr old.
Me : Who taught you this song??
宝贝： 婆婆. (Grandma)
Me: Are you sure you are singing it correctly?!
宝贝： Of course! (rolled her eyes at me. She ROLLED her eyes at moi?!!) Following which, she did another heart wrenching rendition of the song… with her head swaying from side to side.
Unconvinced, I googled the song… this is the correct version of the song. It certainly is very very different from the version she’s singing.
十八的姑娘一朵花 (A lady at eighteen blooms like a flower)
一朵花 (like a flower)
眉毛弯弯眼睛大 (arched eyebrows with large eyes)
眼睛大 (large eyes)
红红的嘴唇雪白牙 (with lips bright red and teeth snow white)
雪白牙 (teeth snow white)
粉色的笑脸 (Pink smiling face)
粉色笑脸赛晚霞 (Pink smiling face like the colour of dusk)
啊 姑娘十八一朵花 (A lady at eighteen blooms like a flower)
一朵花 (like a flower)
See! I knew it! My mom has been teaching 宝贝 “r-rated” songs!! What happened to nursery rhymes and children’s songs??? Sigh… Meanwhile 宝贝 is still singing in the foreground like a *”ge tai” singer. I hope the neighbours have their earplugs on.
*ge tai = 歌台. Typically during the 7th month, many ge tais performances are staged all over Singapore. “to entertain the spirits” The ge tai singers typically sing oldies, hokkien songs etc.
For the original version of the song, please click on this youtube…
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After running through the entire song, I realised that the lyrics were indeed correct!! It’s just that they belong to the next stanza. So she’s mixed and matched the lyrics from all 3 stanzas… =.=”
I saw someone cook Cordon Bleu and posted a picture of it on facebook. So I had this wave of inspiration to recreate a simplified, condiment free version that didn’t require too much time to prepare. And also to cater to 宝贝’s liking for not-so-rich food. So I had to do away with the typical cream sauce. (she complained about tcc’s spaghetti gravy for being too salty. =.=” I have succeeded in my no salt no sugar diet training on her. Too successful in fact…)
A typical Cordon Bleu involves seasoning the chicken with herbs and condiments. Then bake it in gravy for a while so that it absorbs all the rich taste. Then combining it with bacon and cheese before cooking it again. It’s a multiple stepped dish.
Well lazy me just simplified it to a few steps.
Ingredients :
Chicken breast
Bacon
Cheese (preferably not so salty ones)
Cornflakes
Egg
Lay the chicken breasts nicely in a row. If they are a wee too thick, you can pound them down to desired thickness or slice them down. Lay the bacon over the chicken. Then lay the cheese slice over the bacon. I simply used the cheddar slices because they were available in my fridge. Big mistake… They were a trifle too salty. Swiss cheese may be better.
Align the slices to the top before rolling them together. Try to fold over the cheese so that it doesn’t flow out while being baked in the oven. Fasten the roll together with toothpicks.
Beat up an egg. Pour out the cornflakes on a plate and crush them into smaller bits so that they stick better to the rolls. You can use bread crumbs too. Coat the egg dipped rolls with the cornflakes.
Line them nicely on a baking tray.
Pop them into the preheated oven at 185 degrees Celsius for about 30 mins.
That’s the end product. You can make some cream sauce and pour it over. But since 宝贝 doesn’t like gravy. So lazy mom didn’t make any. :p
It’s Cordon Bleu and her favourite steam cherry tomatoes. A thumbs up from 宝贝. :)
It’s the time of the year when families gather to admire the bright, full moon, eat moon cakes, drink tea, carry lanterns and have fun with riddles. It’s the mid autumn festival, 中秋节.
This is the first year that 宝贝 is more aware of the various fun festivals and is not too “blur” to participate actively in. She has quite a few musical lanterns. Personally I find the music they emit pretty irritating and the least bit traditional. We bought her 3 paper lanterns from the supermarket, some candles and matchsticks.
In preparation for this happy occasion she set off to invite our neighbours’ boys on a lantern carrying escapade at the little park next to our house. The boys couldn’t really say no (although one of them is still in the midst of his psle), to an invitation from a girl.
The boys weren’t quite prepared for the occasion. Luckily we bought 2 extra lanterns.
The 3 of them, happily in the park after the “procession” from our house.
The boys had a go, at lighting the lanterns with matchsticks. Everything’s so automated now that they find using matches a novelty!! =.=” As usual, kids were excited to play with fire.
The highlight of the night was when Bryan’s lantern caught fire. They were squealing and stamping out the lantern on fire.
Check out the burnt lantern.
I still remember the activities that we had when we were kids. Modern kids are so deprived nowadays with over protective parents (me included).
There was a game that we used to play at mid autumn’s festival. Required quite a number of people though. We divided ourselves into two groups. Each person would find a flat piece of rock to stick our candles on. Each group had a base which was a lighted candle. Defenders were sent to guard the base, to make sure that the candle remained lighted throughout the game. The rest were attackers and were tasked to extinguish the candle of the enemies. At the same time we must take care of our own candles to make sure they were not extinguished by the enemies. Once extinguished they could only be lighted up with the base candle. Whoever extinguished the enemy’s base candle wins!!
I assure you it’s really exciting. After all it’s real fire!! And you are surrounded by people who kept attempting to blow your candle out!!
The good old days when kids were allowed to play with fire and real lanterns, instead of playing with toys, masquerading as lanterns which emit irritating music. I miss those beautiful cellophane lanterns of the zodiac signs. The biggest problem is they are especially vulnerable to fire. But they were really beautiful ones. I still remember this awesome dragon lantern that I had, resplendent in its colorful cellophane, paint and glittery, sparkling decoration.
宝贝: Has *Didi been kicking you?
Me: Erm no. I think he’s still sleeping.
宝贝 (nodding her head, patting The Tummy gently) : GOOD job!
Hmmm… The Tummy felt very pleased from her praise…
While I was reading to her,
Me: Owww!
宝贝: what happened??
Me: He kicked me.
宝贝 (with a very stern look at The Tummy, hands on her waist): YOU are NOT listening. BAD job!
The Tummy felt thoroughly chastised.
I felt like I was the 3rd party intruding in her conversation with The Tummy. =.=”
