A Mother’s Monologue

It’s been more than a year and I just realised that I never got round to judging this darn competition that I playfully set up last year!!! AIYOH!!! Did you ALL forget too???? How come nobody reminded me??? I am SO SORRY, peeps. If you’d allow me to blame it on dead brain cells from pregnancy, I will.

I found this whilst going through the blog cleaning it up for bigger and better things and suddenly &@($^**@)!!! All kinds of expletives exploded out of my pores. SO PAI SEH!!!

So I quickly rounded up a panel of judges to decide on the winning entry and *drum beats*

It was a really difficult decision because there were less than 10 entries (you guys are so un-sporting! Or maybe the prize wasn’t big enough, heh.).

However, Ashley’s Mommy was a cut above the rest because she not only took T1′s expression into consideration but her costume/outfit too. A close 2nd came Mott’s captions and Szu’s. If I was richer, I’d pay all three of you but for now, I can only afford to pay the winner. However, the winner will get an extra bonus because the delayed pregnancy brain forgot all about the competition. Unbelievable.

Congratulations, Barb! Please send me your PAYPAL address!

So on top of our current woes that have been occurring one after another, yesterday I got a police summon for running out of parking money. Yeah, I brought my laptop out to SBX so I could work in peace (away from baby) and spent the whole morning working and lost track of time. Mind you, I’d already been stopped by police twice in the last month after not being stopped by police since I was a teenager! I was going to blog about it but just haven’t gotten down to it yet (there’s a funny story to it so we’ll eventually get there) but yup, suddenly, I feel as though my whole world is crumbling. Like God is testing me. And because of that, I deleted my bitch post. I am angry at myself for even allowing so much anger to come out of me, and I  decided that I didn’t want any toxic posts in my blog.

This is a happy blog. It has my children in it.

Last night, after a birthday party, I suddenly felt really sick. I went pale and wanted to go home immediately. Everyone was still loitering around saying forever goodbyes and I just wanted to PUKE. I told the Hubs let’s go, let’s go and he saw my face, how ill it looked, and he suggested I went to the washroom first to let it out before I messed up the car.

I controlled myself by rubbing my own back till I reached the washroom, then released it all. I felt much better but still felt ill. Must’ve been something I’d eaten and no, I couldn’t possibly be expecting. We had arrived in 2 cars so I made the Hubs take the girls home because I couldn’t have dealt with either of them in my ill state. But when I was about to drive out of the parking lot, I’d stupidly placed the parking ticket on my dashboard and voila, it fell inside the dashboard. Great.

After paying the lost ticket fine, I finally came home and went straight to bed after a shower. It’s like, now is the time we needed to be most prudent with money and yet, I’m wasting all this money unnecessarily! What is wrong?

The next morning, I woke to start work and discovered that all my work that I’d done yesterday, had vanished. Not saved. I had been having some issues with my site and had been liaising with my host to resolve them, spam issues and what not and ever since then, it has been one problem after another.

I feel completely overwhelmed. I feel that there is a reason for this string of bad luck. I feel I need to pray.

Some people have been so kind – paying for my meals, paying for my coffee, giving me little things here and there with a show of support. I am so grateful and as I sit here typing this, I almost want to take 10 steps back and reflect upon life. I am certainly guilty of not giving my 2 girls my best. I have been stressed out most days and engrossed with how we’ll be making an income. I need to take a back seat and spend more time with them. Forget the income. If we have to sell the last twenty years of hard work, so be it. I need to give my girls what they need and the income has to be secondary. We will not starve, only lose all our material bits.

And after all your comments yesterday about J, *LOL*, I need to cleanse myself off her. NO MORE. Unfortunately, as much as I want to tell her, look, people don’t like you because of ABC and you need to stop (because I really think she may not know it?!), I have learned that it is not worth my time. I have in the past been brutally honest with some people (as I consider myself a really good friend!), and they have been hurt by it. Not all people can accept the truth so I’ve learned that it is no longer my place to tell someone things they’d rather not know. I always want to know but not everyone’s like me. When she next calls, I will not be picking the phone up. And I shall tell BOTH my parents the same. May God bless her.

And although I’m feeling pretty crappy, I am of course, grounded enough to realise that these troubles are nothing compared to the greater world. Neither of my girls have leukemia, my mother whom I love so much is still here with us today despite 9 years of fighting that ill-dreaded disease cancer, and I have the most wonderful husband beside me to hold everything together. So really, life is GOOD.

To everyone here who’s reading, I hope things are even better at your end!! Happy weekend!

Ladies (and Gentlemen), please do be very careful of your belongings and kids, not only in the more popular shopping malls but EVERYWHERE.

Last Saturday (8pm, 31st July), a friend of mine got her handbag stolen in the parking lot of Bangsar Village Old Wing. CCTV cameras clearly showed her handbag hanging on a shopping trolley all around the shopping mall but once she hit the parking lot, BV’s CCTV cameras no longer supported the security of her handbag, which is why they have 2 security guards stalking the area. However, it is obviously insufficient as otherwise her bag wouldn’t have been stolen. We have no idea how it happened but in her busyness of loading her car up with stuff, a very quick passer by must have casually picked her handbag up on the way.

She didn’t mind losing her cash and valuables but her heart aches that all her daughter’s 1st birthday photos were in that bag (she was loading up the car just after the party) and all other memories of her kids, captured on 2 I-Phones within the bag. *sad*

We go to BV a lot. Lots of Mommies and Babies go to BV a lot. It is no longer fun if we cannot even feel safe at our own neighbourhood mall. We are urging the management to step up security this week. I will keep you posted.

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Updates – I managed to get some contacts for my friend to look further into the BV theft issue and it turns out that her handbag was stolen RIGHT OUTSIDE GYMBOREE (after a Gymboree birthday party). By a LADY!!!! Yes, this lady works together with 3 other men, loitering around BV searching for easy targets. BE VERY ALERT. They are extremely slick.

My friend was busy chatting to other Moms, thanking them for attending the party, and a lady passed by and just lifted her handbag off the trolley when nobody was really paying any attention. We were all leaving and this lady did it right in front of everyone, as though she blended in to be one of us, then casually slipped out coolly. The 3 men were on guard. They looked South American from blurred cameras.
You have been warned.

Yeah, can you believe it?

Longan, also known locally as mata kuching, is not a favourite fruit of mine, but recently I bought some because the Malays believe that it helps you produce more milk. Try? Why not…so I bought some but noticed that every time I ate a few, I suddenly started wheezing and it only got worse and worse.

I decided to do some research if longan was an asthma allergen and whaddya know?! It was really the longan that was giving me asthma attacks!

In a test on longans, sulphur dioxide was detected, used as a fumigant, on the peels of the fruit. Out of 11 batches of longan samples, nine batches were detected with sulphur dioxide ranging in pretty high quantities. Like 10 times more the amount an average person is allowed to take! The chemical may provoke asthma attacks in allergy sensitive people. These tests were taken from longan available from different areas including wet markets, fruit stores, supermarket counters from countries claimed as follows – Thailand, Australia and China.

The test showed that sulphur dioxide was mostly on the skin and not inside the flesh thus it is always better to purchase longan from its stalk rather than loose pieces. As sulphur dioxide is soluble in water, it is advisable then to soak and wash your longan whilst it is still on the stalk so that the chemical does not touch the fruit internally. The best way is to rinse it under running water and then wipe dry. This method significantly reduces the amount of chemicals, up to 75%. Total elimination was not possible.

Thus, people who are allergic should just stay away from longan! Or if desperate, then to handle the fruit with care. Always wash your hands after peeling and before consumption, wash your longan properly and never bite on longan skin or put it into your mouth!

Gosh, I’m never eating longan again!!!

It has come to my knowledge that some people have managed to access my blog somehow (perhaps hackers?) and have started putting random links within my blog. I learnt this when viewing my blog through my phone and realised that as I scrolled to the bottom of my blog, there are many links advertising viagra and what not. This pisses me off because not only would I not purposefully promote illegal and unwarranted material, but they are doing this without my permission and are not paying me for it.

The problem is, if you view the blog from the PC, you won’t see the long list of links below after the Statcounter on column view (if you have a blackberry) but if you view it from a phone, then there it is. Can you please check at your end and tell me what you see, from PC or otherwise?

It is certainly not a Google Ads product and I want to stop it but have no clue how. If you have any ideas, I’d really appreciate your help.