Week 17 - At home

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I couldn’t sleep after waking up at 3.30 am just now and so decided to update my blog. Raph was away the whole of last week for a business trip so I was packed and shipped off to my parents’ home.

The office allowed me to work from home upon condition that I could receive and respond to emails & phone calls as regularly as I would if I were in the office.

I was a bit stressed by this because they don’t have broadband there but luckily things worked out fine with dial-up. Just a matter of planning, right?

FOOD
I looked forward to a whole week of REAL home-cooked food instead of the military list of dishes I slosh around on my own. The dishes were limited because my mum is not that well and my dad has to chip in now with the cooking.

It’s quite hilarious actually since he’s not the Jamie Oliver type but it’s interesting to see that he can turn out a nice chicken with soy sauce quite well. Since he doesns’t like to fuss with garlic or other stuff you’d put in a stir-fry, we’re impressed the chicken turned out tasty anyway after just 15 minutes on the fire! Maybe he has discovered some express way to delicious dishes…

I love the selection of hawker foods you can get at this market so I enjoyed thinking of what to ‘order’ for breakfast: nasi lemak, curry mee, fried beehoon mee, char hor fun, chee cheong fun.

Everything except the curry mee turned out great coz there was too much santan (coconut milk) and my stomach still can’t handle this stuff yet. So, the next day, I resorted back to my half-boiled egg on bread with the trusty mug of hot Milo.

The menu for the week: pai kut soup (pork bones soup), too kar tau yoo (pig trotters with soy sauce though I only took lean meat), fried puay leng (???), fried bayam (spinach), fried broccoli, meatball & taufoo soup, steamed fish, steamed pork with egg.

Lots of nutritious home-cooked goodness! One day, we pigged out though and ordered a large Super Supreme pizza…it was good as we paced ourselves and only had one slice for mid-breakfast, tea and then breakfast the next day. And I kept to my 3 fruit servings per day: guava, green apple, oranges, starfruit or grapes.

FUN
Tuesday to Friday were the usual hectic days since I kept to my regular working schedule, including an awfully late 8.30 - 10.00 pm conference call. I was exhausted after this call and was allowed some time out the next morning.

As we were in the midst of revising our budget for the next two quarters, I had to crunch numbers and discuss them over the phone with my colleague. Thankfully, things ironed out by Thursday and I looked forward to Friday being the last day of work.

I used to check emails on weekends in the past but now that I’ve got to get enough rest, I strive for more balance between work and life…can’t say the same for poor Raph though. I hope I’ll be able to get a job like this again after the baby’s here.

Anyway, I spent some time rummaging through the boxes and bags of stuff my sister left for me. Among her black and blue maternity dresses, I managed to find a few cheery ones that suited my picky taste. There were lots of baby stuff too but being a tad superstitious, I didn’t look through them since it isn’t time yet.

We spent Saturday evening watching a 1952 classic of “The Prisoner of Zenda” starring Stewart Granger and Deborah Kerr. My sis had read this classic for her Form 3 literature component so she wanted to see how the movie version was.

I haven’t read this book but it sounded interesting from her brief synopsis just before the movie. Even my mum sat with us to watch it. It turned out to be nice remake though she said that the romantic twists between Rudolf Rassendyll (the poser king) and Princess Flavia and Michael, Duke of Streslau with Antoinette de Mauban were Hollywood contributions. If not, I’d be impressed with the Ministry of Education’s sudden open-mindedness about English literature and love!

It was a swashbuckling adventure movie and Deborah Kerr in a very different light from her role as Anna Leonowens with Yul Bryner in “The King and I”. The plot was tight and I was happy to note that the cloying “damsel in distress” scenes were minimal and the movie was a witty hit with some well-executed stunts.

That didn’t keep us from laughing at how sudden the “fisherman” Rassendyll, posing as King Rudolf could suddenly swing from tree to tree, leapt off roofs and fence like a musketeer although he’s supposed to be a regular English gentleman on a fishing trip!

FAMILY
Since it rained after the movie, we couldn’t go out for our evening walk/ride so we hung around indoors and then took naps. We had just finished dinner when we heard the gate opening, tiny feet running in and voices calling, “Grandma! Grandma!” My NIECES!

I haven’t seen them for quite a while and was amazed at how big my elder niece WYW had grown - she’s 6 now while WSW is 2 going on 3. I was a bit worried that the t-shirts I’d got them from Argentina and Sarawak may not fit WY.

Once they’d scrambled in and performed their perfunctory kisses and greetings, I summoned them to measure them against the tees and was glad to see that they still fit.

Also glad to see that WYW liked her blue and pink t-shirts and little WSW did not reject her yellow and blue (with a bonus dolphin) selections - they can be real queens sometimes. These dynamos immediately pounced on my younger sister for play and also conquest of her bedroom.

My sis decided to have some fun with my camera phone to see if these two little tykes were willing models. Both of them were not but she managed to get quite a nice shot of them. Hmm…I think we’ve got our baptism photographer already ;-)

They rushed and romped around the house with their horseplay while I sat pretty and caught up with my elder sister and brother-in-law. The usual topics were food, health, gossip about known acquiantances and the upcoming holidays.

WY will have to say goodbye to her long hair soon as these tresses will be chopped off once she joins Std 1 at her local Chinese school. Too bad coz I think she looks quite nice in this hairstyle. WSW isn’t particular about hair couture yet unless it shields her vision from play and other practical purposes.

Soon my sister became exhausted with their romping and came to hide in a corner near us, curling up with a book to ward them off. But they are not so easily put off and lingered nearby, waiting for her to crack under pressure. After a warning look from their mum, they decided to go bug Grandpa instead with the thundering of the kiddie piano. Aargh!!!

Thankfully, they soon stopped when they saw me munching on my guava ration and WSW soon came running. After robbing a few pieces from me, my sis cut a whole one for them but somehow forbidden fruit tastes sweeter and they did not finish the ones their mum cut for them.

Finally, she coaxed them to settle down to their Mr. Bean CD and soon we got some yawns. And since it started to drizzle again, they packed them off into their new spanking new Avanza and were off. Wow - we felt like we’d been passed by a tornado after their visit! But their burst of energy was a nice change to the quiet pace during the week.

FICTION
On Sunday morning, I was reading through Sunday Star and the column “Encounters” caught my attention since it called for contributions of spooky stories. I’m quite a scaredy cat so I stay away from writing such stuff but I thought I’d try my hand at writing this and so asked my Dad and Mum for some ghostly tales. They provided a few juicy ones but they couldn’t give more details when I suddenly recalled one that happened with me around.

While my sis helped mum with the cooking, I sat and typed out the 800 worded story and finally ended up with almost 900. I was spent and so asked my sis if she’d read it — she even offered to edit it and cut it down to 800.

I was game and let her take over while I had lunch. After that, I read it over and found that she had made some good deletions and interesting replacements I hadn’t thought of. Two heads are certainly better than one! I told her that if it got published, she could get 50% of the payment.

I’d got a measly RM100 for the children’s story I submitted so I imagine the rate would be the same for this. For a teenager, RM50 for some editing work is quite good remuneration!

After that, we played a round of PICTIONARY after taking it off the cupboard top and dusting the layer of dust. It’s been ages since we last played and though there were just the two of us, we played a quick game with lots of laughs and jibes. This reminds me to get a set of TABOO for them to try out since this, UNO and SCRABBLE are such hits.

Ok, I’m pooped now so I’m signing off to catch some shut-eye before getting up to do some real work and also to wait for his call…

BABY NOTES: Your baby is now up to about 6.5 ounces, and should weigh more than the placenta from this point on. Since hearing is more “fine tuned”, your baby may respond to loud noises. You may feel movement at the sound of large trucks passing or a slamming door. Epidermal (skin) and fatty tissue are developing all over your baby’s body to protect them when they are longer growing inside of you. A substance called “vernix” is beginning to form on the skin tissue to protect the skin cells from the long exposure to amniotic fluid.