Being Jobless is SO busy

"Respect Yourself Enough to walk away from ANYTHING that no longer serves you, grows you, or makes you HAPPY". I found this quote from Pinterest very true.

Hence I promptly typed my letter (again), waited out my notice period and さよなら永遠に!!! Loved my job, too bad no such feelings for the company. Changed my Linkedin status from Associate Director to Free n Easy on the last day and watch the clock... tick tick tick... FREEDOM!!! RESPECT!!!! DIGNITY!!!!!

farewell high tea on my first resignation

Nope, don't ask me where I am headed, I have not reached out to people. But offers are starting to come in, but all I want to do is chill...Hey people, I just broke out of jail, I want to lie on the beach, don't ask me to rob a bank now...  Luckily I have Kenneth to lean on.... so dearest, greatest, SUPEREST lao gong, how long u reckon I can hang around doing nothing?

Before I drive you crazy? Right! Let us recap the many little ways family life has improved since I've gone part time in March and quit totally now.

I signed up for a cooking class at the CC with my MIL. Chef was teaching cereal prawns, sichuan style steamed chicken and sweet and sour pork. I was obviously the youngest and prettiest among them all hence was given special attention by the Chef after a short while, "大姐, 大姐, 你听得懂吗? 你是channel 5 还是 channel 8 的?".

They say the best way to a man's heart is through his stomach. How about some french toast with bratwurst sausage, banana slices, blue berries and raspberry sauce for breakfast?

Baked eggs and prosciutto in portabello mushrooms, plus meatballs in tomato puree for lunch?

Kuey Sala for high tea? Wah this one is too pro to be made by me, surely. Its painstakingly made and delivered to my place by no other than our little nyonya, Ally... (great to have friends who either do not bear grudges or do not read my blogs... hohoho). But stingy poker, the rice is not blue enough, she obviously had not killed enough smurfs to dye this. 

This is the gem of our typical Saturday dinner - Shabushabu. And above is a two person portion. A great thank you to Puna for passing me the recipe, it was the best thing that ever happened to my family. I always boost to people that my shabushabu is authentic, taught to me by a Japanese!!! Finished with tang yuan for desserts? Yum Yum...

My plan is working. Ken watsapped me this:

He loves me!!!!!!!

Enough of food, what are the other little things that filled up my days...
B said the first thing she will do after resigning is to look pretty again. SAME SAME.... not that I had any advancement in the looks department before but I can start right?

First, I got Kenji to chop my long hair short and he suggested a new shorter hairstyle every other month... I gave him all the freedom he needed and am loving the results.

It is very ironic that when I was busy earning money, I hardly spend. Now that I am jobless and need to be frugal, I end up shopping and spending a lot more. Check out this very cool watch. It shouts " GOT NO TIME BUT GOT PLENTY OF MONEY". I like... ( no, I did not buy that! Please! )

Coco Chanel is right - "The best things in life are free. The second best are very expensive."

Driving... Nothing motivates me to learn driving more than having to fetch Megan around. Joined SSDC and the experience has been amazing. I loved it and am very good in circuits. However, the roads are filled with arrogant pedestrians whose life must be damn cheap and nasty drivers refusing to give way... Urgh... why cant people be more like me? I who failed my advance theory in order to keep the roads that bit safer for all my friends.

Growing plants. Bought three pong pongs in Bangkok. They travelled with me from Bangkok to Laos to Bangkok to Shanghai to Singapore. Been ridiculed by Ally everyday on the Bangkok-Laos leg. Why spend good money on pong pongs when you can go east coast and pick them from the ground, she kept nagging. And why the hell are you buying pong pongs?

To grow on my table lah!!! I even bought this ladle to compliment the plant. Anyway they all died before sprouting green. Or rather, nothing happened, I think they died.

Jessie gave me her pot of dragon fruit plant on my last day in office. Can you imagine, this little pot is a dragon fruit plant. How cute is that?

Yes, a dragon fruit... oh wait... how is it possible that this grew from that? You sure this is a dragon fruit plant you are giving me, Jessie? Regardless, I promised to look after the plant well and hopefully one day bring the fruits of labor to you. I am thinking this will be a breed of mini dragon fruits.

Oh Megan is back.... busy busy again! Being jobless is SOOO busy...

A Sushi Making Afternoon

Food blog from YY again! Just goes to show how free she is.

But let the story begin... It all started from Ix, trapped in Taiwan (typhoon!!! typhoon!!!), who finally got evacuated by Hello Kiddy EVA air. He watsapped us to say "the flight was too happy".

I said "wat?! Hello Kiddy?" This sounds so wrong. (obviously I am not a fan of that rat... oh I meant cat, got a bit confused with mini mouse)
Show me a photo, I texted but that bugger said it was very beneath his image to do that. Please!!!

So I had to google... Then I was dumbstruck.... WAHHHH.....

You know exactly what the typical singaporean will do... Kapo the cushions home man! If handcarry is big enough, ask for the blankets as well! Mai tu liao!!!

Incredible. Lx said the food tasted great. Fred said the air stewardess doesn't even need to clear the plates after meals. Passengers will just finish the food, fold the box and down the whole thing into that same handcarry.

Anyway I digressed. This blog is about my first attempt at sushi making... Not that I am trying because Kenneth likes to eat sushi, sashimi maybe but all these kiddy bentos were getting me very inspired and motivated to make some myself. Between form and substance, I am pretty confident of the former. I just need to confirm my suspicion. Then I found this.

OMG .... cute 到！

So the gals were gathered and Xianger even brought a sushi roll machine. Can make cat, bear, flower, grapes, and heart shape sushi. Our sushi photos are going to look awesome.

Sadly this toy kit meant for kids was way too complicated. Nope, if you are entertaining the thought that women cannot assemble parts to save their lives, you are wrong! Blame it on the manual (in Japanese and very possibility badly translated English). Its was total flop. 

Alright, forget about the machine. Lets concentrate on things that work - our very first egg tamago. Damn, all the youtube videos feature cooking tamago with a rectangular tin pan and I don't own a rectangular tin pan! I only have a Happy Call pan and it is huge. But no one says tamago cannot be BIG. 

Looking good yah? So proud. Pat on my back. 

Check out how the bottom actually looks like... Hohohoho.

Tried to roll the rice ball for the tamago sushi. Disaster! The rice stuck to my fingers and palms as I tried to squeeze the rice balls into shape. Can't shake them off, can't wipe them off. So I ate them off my fingers. This method removed most of the rice. Now back to squeezing the balls... Fine, even I felt way too disgusting and unhygienic to eat the end product. However to note, I wrote "ate the rice off my fingers" not "lick the rice off my fingers". Precision contact between teeth and grain, not teeth and fingers. Ok maybe not that precise but I tried. 

More youtube videos. More rice on my laptop keyboard. More rice on my phone (where did you think these photos came from?!) More sushi in progress. Yes Ally, by now, you must be screaming "OH MY GOD! WHAT DID I EAT??!!!". Yes, the moment your "on the way" message was received, we scrambled to clear up everything that gave hint to this progress.

Eyes and smiles were immediately punctured from the new Diaso puncher. Sushi rolls arranged neatly in trays. 

Admit it, they look quite pro right?

What we learned from our first lesson on sushi making:

1 - Sushi is not as healthy as we think. A lot of sugar, salt and vinegar goes into the rice.
2 - Hold your puncher down because the eyes and mouths tend to fly and they are too tiny to locate. (I am not suggesting that we salvage any from the floor, do not let your imagination go wild)
3 - It is hard to cut sushi into equal sizes. And they get stuck to the knife.
4 - Always use seaweed to wrap the rice. Unless you are Jiro.
5 - 2 cups of short grain rice makes this amount of sushi. One cannot ignore the wastage of a few damaged products plus rice on our hands, bamboo rolls, table etc. I shall not elaborate...

Anyway it was a great afternoon. One which we downed sushi with ice cold Kirin beer. So my dear friends, I promise I will practice hard on my sushi adventure so wait for my sushi lunch invite!! COMING SOON...

Megan's Stall

Kenneth had a mega brillant idea one day. 

Buy Megan a stall so that she can start selling her own wares and learn the concept of money... wah.. and that was before the age of two. He found the perfect wooden stall at The Better Toy Shop and it fit into Megan's room nicely. 

Comes with a chalkboard for her to price her wares and plastic wrap to keep the food fresh. What should she sell? At first, everything from mini books Stacey and me bought to sweets and trays of vegetables we can find and buy. 

Bought a wooden crate from Diaso and stocked it up with a vegetable set from Ikea. Ikea sells amazing cabbage, leek, brinjal, carrot, cucumber and mushrooms. 

They also sell a very cool banana, watermelon, oranges, apples and grapes. But there is not enough variety and their numbers are limited. Megan can't keep selling one banana and two oranges. She needs more of each to learn counting. To stock this stall up properly, we turn to the expert hands of mimi. 

Instantly she made a basketful of mangosteen. Oh they look so great, especially the ones what are peeled open. The unpeeled ones, Megan can't tell them apart from tomatos.

And every fruit and vegetable stall needs strawberries for that added touch of brilliance. Good for counting into the large numbers as well, so mimi made 25. 

Kiwis looking great so we need a handful. 

Pears not appealing to me but they are very much in season. 

Cucumbers are so damn neat and crunchy.

Soon, more and more items were added. Bought a grill set so that Megan can BBQ the food and sell them at a higher price (since this is value added service). Somehow adults are very into this grill set but Megan never bothered touching it.

Since we now have main course to serve, mimi threw in some mini burgers and ice cream cones. It was only after a few months that I noticed that the burgers are stackable. I mean you can Velcro the veg, cheese and patty and stack them in whatever order you like. What effort...How did I realise that? Because I am now missing the burger bread. 

So far, the hot favorite of Megan is still the biscuits. Numerous types of biscuits.  Day in day out, she transports them out of the room, back into the room, arrange them in different bowls and containers... "Mine, all mine" she says. Yah they are all yours, we are not fighting for them.

To me, the stall is a huge success. It is now stocked to the brim so I considered this project completed. It wasn't until yesterday when mimi asked me this... " Isn't Megan tired of selling vegetables? She can't be interested to sell the same things forever right? You need to start clearing out all these stuff and start a brand new line of products. Toys are seasonal, they need rotation! "

Huh.... 

"...what is her school teaching now? If they are teaching about ships, cars and buses, you should complement the school by stocking the shelves with vehicles so that you reinforce the learning. Start playing with cars and buses instead of making her sell vegetables all day long..."

Huh.... 

Luckily I checked, this term's theme is all about food and nutrient.... Heng! But no harm getting my mum to start working on vehicles just in case that is next term's theme. 

Finally a blog update

Gee... my last blog was like nth months ago... prove what a crazy year it has been for moi. No time for family, no time for friends, no time to even think about updating my blog for you guys who practically only realise YY is alive from my turtle updates... anyway this baby turtle is no longer baby, now a old turtle... slow and haggard... BUT its ok, I am catching up on my beauty sleep and applying a inch thick of face mask to rejuvenate. 

Ah yes stop making funny faces, Megan... I know you are trying to get my attention. "Daddy, pls get Megan to the playground while I announce to everyone I am plugged in AGAIN!!!".

Dear all, welcome back to baby turtle... as you can see, Megan has grown up. She started to go to a Pre-nursery near our place. Ken and me, as usual, did not do much research before deciding on which school to send her. Our only criteria is that it must be natural ventilated with no recycled aircon air, the rest we went on gut feel. 

School as we all know, is the supermarket of viruses. Within a week, she collected her first chop in her thick virus stamp collection booklet. Way to go my girl! Brace up for wimpy days and sleepless nights, adults!

In truth, I do not know if she enjoys the school coz she crys buckets on the way to school in the morning but comes home laughing and singing. 

We suspect one of the many reasons for her reluctance is fear of the water play sessions in school. Teacher Tina informed us that she will burst out crying when water is being splashed at her. Recently, thanks to Ni Hao Kailan, she learned to verbalise her thoughts.... "Be gentle, don't be rough!". On yah, if I haven't told you yet, Megan really behaves like a girl... wah biang.

Mimi continues knitting and coquetting dresses for sweetie pie. These dresses are to me collectibles but not exactly practical in Spore's weather, so I told mimi to channel her energy making some more toys for her grand daughter instead...

... and she started Megan's craze for balloons. Kudos for attending a balloon sculpting course, kids and balloons are a match in heaven. But uou do know your own daughter is balloon phobic right? Just as long as Megan doesn't start asking me to do all these twisting of highly combustible objects when you are not around, thank you very much...

They say imitation is a great form of learning. The "once in a blue moon" handy man Ken must be so proud to see Megan using her chopstick to tighten the screws of her own chair... 

... crosses her leg when seated ...

Now that we have committed to spending more time with Megan, we started to bring her out to beaches or parks on weekends. Have we not done these before, you asked. Err... not really, weekends were precious sleeping time for us if we were even in spore... But looking forward, we certainly need to open up her world beyond the living room and television. 

Obviously the park and bicycle stunt is not my forte, so I shall concentrate on bringing out her inner creativity by engaging her in art. Which should be easy for moi but Mimi says my approach to art is too serious for a kid, might not help in getting Megan interested or building her confidence in drawing...asked me to recalibrate these sessions to become more free, fun, expressive and dirty...  oh, oh.... the "how" is the question... 

Playing hide and seek is also a great way to pass time away from the TV. Yah anything to take her away from Dora and Ni Hao Kailan. 

On a seperate note, parents who want some "me" time and get their children to shut up should sign up for Starhub TV. The kids channels rank number one in the "money (most) well spent" chart of all times.  

Right... its 11am. I need to be discipline and move on to the next errand of the day... Moby here I come, where is lunch????!!!