More Common Than a Proton on the Road

Here's a dootzy one for you: What's more common than a Proton on the road these days? A Vios? A City?
A Food Blog!
They are aplenty. Everyone eats, so now everyone shoots what they eat and put together strings of words to tell us what they've eaten. (Yours truly included, except I don't lug the Nikon around very much, so I don't do many food reviews). Some great blogs I've stumbled upon are: Ms. CK Lam's What2See: The Best of Penang Food (which has a friendly writer to boot), Penang Tuapui, and out of KL, A Whiff of Lemongrass (whose picture-perfect shots are enough to make me green).

Kayrin's Dream

"I had a dream last night," Kayrin told me over the phone today. "A hippopotamus ate daddy. Luckily he escaped."
Thank goodness daddy's not in a hippo-infested area. He's just in Hanoi this week.

Skin Care

As I age, the search for effective skin care becomes more pressing. Since last year, I've been using Renova. It's tretinoin, 0.05% strength. It's one of those creams, as KK my friend said, we can't recommend to everyone. Once you start, you go through the "it gets worse before getting better" phase.
There's the flaking of my skin initially. Yes, it can seem quite awful. Skin near my nose and my mouth could be easily rubbed off my face if i scrub too hard. Shaw Feng, at one point, remarked that I looked like hadn't cleaned my face properly in the morning. Eeeek.
But wait, tretinoin does exfoliate the skin or something like that. Supposed to help with acne too. And reading reviews on SmartSkinCare.com helps. It's a good site in that the articles are written in a very objective manner. Any questions I have on the latest treatment I read about in magazines, I come to this site for details and assessments. IPL, dermabrasion..they've got it covered.

July

July is a month filled with sadness and happiness. A bit oxymoronic. July 6 marked Woan's second anniversary in heaven, and we placed flowers for her at Nilai Memorial Park, where her remains are kept, on July 5. Khoon Eng and Ivan made their way there on July 6, a Sunday. It was especially hard in the days leading up to the anniversary. I kept thinking about her last days with us two years ago. Well, she's not suffering now, as Shaw Feng said.
July 12 came along and Shaw Feng was very sweet to arrange a dinner at IOI Marriott's Japanese restaurant, Midori, for all nine of us! Whoa...it was fun doing a buffett with the family, where you get to peek at what others on the table are eating. Kayrin had lots of fun with Ivan around.
And my birthday present? a HTC Touch Diamond! So, after 1 Ericsson, 4 Nokias, I've now abandoned the main brands..Thanks to the lovely, terrific gift from Shaw Feng. I promise I'll one day be posting lots of pix on this blg ;)
And July hasn't endd. There's more to come. July 31 is when Shaw Feng turns 38. Scratching my head now trying to find a place for dinner. Somewhere he, Kayrin and I can eat good food and have some fun. Any suggestions?

The Good and the Bad

I was mulling this entry for the past two days and had wanted to write solely about how awful weekends can be just before SF travels. He gets stressed and I get worked up about his not helping, and we end up having rows or simply ignoring each other. Well, it did go that way this past weekend. We snapped at dinner on Saturday. The crappy food pretending to be Penang favourites didn't help either. That was at Simply Penang at Bandar Puteri Puchong. I'm not going there a second time, that's for sure.
Today, it dawned on me that SF is one who's always there with me for family gatherings. He comes along without complaint. If this was a piece only about how awful my husband is, I'd probably get labelled a witch then!
He cooks for us most weekends. His latest venture: Tofu in minced pork, laced with Shaoxing wine. Oooh, superb!
In the previous few weeks, it was braised pork in soy sauce, with hard-boiled eggs.
As you can tell, pork is very favoured by SF.
Thanks sweetie, and Happy Birthday!

Extra Mandarin

Kayrin started her extra Mandarin classes this month. That's an additional 1/2 an hour a day, which brings her schooling hours to 12 p.m. from 11:30 a.m.
So far, the little one is enjoying it. What a relief for me! I was initially against lengthening her hours. Why torture a kid, right? But being a kiasu mom, I was also worried she wouldn't adjust to Mandarin-medium classes next year, so after speaking to the headmistress, we're doing a one-month trial. I'll speak to the little girl at the end of the month to see if she wants to continue with the classes.
She's caught on that there is some difference with the additional class.
"In class I speak English, but during pou chup (tuition), I speak Mandarin," she told me two days ago.
She's having fun so far, she said.
I am an anxious mom, ya? I worry about overloading her. I worry I'm not giving her enough lessons.
And oh, now, our evening past-time is reading C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia. We've finished The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Now, it's Prince Caspian.