Day Trip to Malacca

It was a bright and sunny day today and after talking about it for the last few days, we decided to go ahead and off we went to Melaka (Malacca) today!! Daddy and I have heard a lot about this famous chicken rice ball dish that originates from Melaka and neither of us have tried it. The more we talk about it, the more we wanted to give it a try. Anyway, it is only a 2-hr trip from PJ and we have experience in long distance driving before.

We reached Melaka at about 12pm for lunch, fortunately Sofia had a good 2-hr nap in the car and the drive was very peaceful. One of the old coffeeshops that was supposed to be famous for their chicken rice ball was packed to the brim and the crowd at the front door was still growing! We would have joined the crowd if not for Sofia and out groaning stomach. So we headed for a commerical one, with aircon and a clean environment so that Sofia will feel more comfortable and not fuss too much.

Here's how the chicken rice balls look like.

Unfortunately, the rice balls did not taste as good as they look. We were all soooo disappointed. Afterall, we drove 2 hours here just to eat these.

The restaurant was very well renovated and even had a majestic throne in the backyard. We happily put Sofia on the throne and snap some photos.

And guess what? She sat there happily and when we tried to ask her to come down, she refused to and went "Dak! Dak! Dak!" again! That was pretty amusing for everyone!

Melaka is also famous for their cendol and that was the other dish we wanted to try while in town. After asking around for recommendations and directions, we found a little shoplot that serve this dessert and had a long queue streaming down from the backdoor. We joined the queue and fortunately it moved pretty fast and we gave the laksa and cendol a try.

Yes, these were yummy!

Both dishes were good, made with very fresh and fragant ingredients. In the end, I think it was this bowl of laksa and cendol which made us felt that the trip was pretty worth it!

Farewell!

I thought long and hard during the last 2 weeks while laying off my contact lens in preparation for the operation. For me to be born with sight and to lose it now is unimaginable for me. If that should happen, I am very likely to lose the will to live and would be very very depressed. BUT living with my spectacles during this two weeks was horrible too, it felt so heavy on my face and got extremely crooked after several "accidents" with Sofia.

That was it! am going for the op!

I turned up on the dot at 11am at Optimax for the thorough eye check which would take about 2~3 hours. It was easy and the friendly optometrist brought me from station to station explaining in detail what the individual machines were for. We came to an end at about 1:30pm and they were officially going to do the last bit to prepare my eyes for the op, that is, to dilate my pupils. This would take at least an hour. So I sat there, being fed with eyedrops every now and then, nervous and excited. Finally, my eyes were fully dilated at 3pm and was moved to the waiting room for my turn. I was afraid suddenly and bad thoughts started to flood my mind again but prayers helped and assurance from the surgeon also calm me down a bit.

I stepped into the operating theatre at 3:30pm and was out in less than 10 minutes. It took me some efforts to keep my eyes REALLY STILL and hold them open for the longest I can but keeping the eye ball still and focused was not so easy for me, especially when I am nervous. Fortunately the operation was really brief and I made it home within the next half an hour. The toughest part for me was actually the next 4-6 hours after the op, my eyes sting and were tearing badly. These are the immediate side effects which I can help to relieve through eye drops as I was told. Yes, the eye drops did help!

Amazingly, my vision was almost perfect the next day and I could drive back to the center for my follow-up appointment! I am thankful to God that this op went well and I can continue to admire his creation around me!!

Reptile Exhibition @ One Utama

We brought Sofia to the reptile exhibition at One Utama in the afternoon. Actually I only got to know about it a couple of days when they had a tiny roadshow and had a few cute animals on display.

Well, the main aim of this excursion was to expose Sofia to more animals. We still do not know where is the nearest zoo to go and thought this would be a good opportunity to brighten her day. Unfortunately I only realised that it was mainly displaying reptiles after buying and entering the exhibition. How blur can I get??

We tried to make the best out of it but Sofia did not show the slightest interest in the snakes and cobras, simply because they were either sleeping or lying so still in their individual glass box. The monkeys certainly did catch her attention and she stood there watching their agile movements, eyes glued. One part of me felt pleased ... at least I did pay for something that she enjoys but one part of me was hoping that she would not adopt this sort of agility back home, or we are all going to have a good time with our new "pet"!

Now you see me, now you don't!

My mum has been here for about one and a half month and you know what she thinks of Sofia?

In hokkein - "Bo Si Tiam!", it means not a minute of stillness.

In mandarin - "San Tiao Chong!", it means Sofia has the energy of not one, but three worms!

My attempts to take good shots of her have been failing miserably and she is not being very cooperative either. We tried to prop her against the sofa to take a portrait of her but look what this mischievous girl did?

Hopefully my skills will improve with more practice!

2 New Additions

Sofia has 2 latest molar eruptions on her lower teeth, this is good news for me cos it is disturbing our sleep at night. Well, 8 more to go ...

Dirty! Book! Dak!

These are the three latest words spoken by Sofia. It is really funny. She will point to whatever dirt on the floor and says "DirTY!" with much emphasis on the ending, while wriggling her fingers under her chin (American sign language for dirty). So you can imagine how "dirty" the kitchen was when we came back from the wet market. Sofia would point to the vegetables bits on the floor and keeps saying "DirTY! DirTY! DIRTY!".
"Book" is another new word and if you happen to be reading a book, she will point to the book and says it loud and clear "BOOK!". It certainly makes some things easier, for example, during meal times, she must have some sort of "entertainment" like books, pen and paper to draw or bottles with some little toys. So when she wants her storybooks or notebook for drawing, she will say "BOOK!" so we know what she wants.
Another powerful word she learned recently is "DAK!". Initially we thought she was saying "duck" since she will verbalize it when a picture of a duck is shown to her. But she starts saying "DAK!" when we ask her if wants milk/food/sleep. Then we figured out there are actually two words here: DUCK and TIDAK. Tidak is "no" in Malay and she must have picked it up from my Indo maid. I wished she had picked up "boleh" instead cos now she knows how to strongly reject milk/food/sleep by saying "DAK!" and if you insist her to do what you want, she will go "DAK! DAK! DAK!"!

Little Miss Trouble

The beautiful blouse given by my sister describes Sofia best at this time.

"Here Comes Trouble" it says and indeed.

One moment Sofia would be wanting to watching her signing time DVD and barely 5 mins into the show, she would ask us to turn it off. Asking her to drink 4oz of milk takes repeated efforts which really makes my patience runs out. One moment she would ask to be carried and then put down again?! Can she make up her mind??

Sometimes I get so tired that I just hide in my room and let the maid take care of her for a while. It can really be exhaustive. Perhaps this is the famous "terrible two" stage that she is in?

Wavefront Lasik

This has been on my mind for ages. I want to get rid of my spectacles and my contact lens. My eyes are getting drier these days from lack of sleep and age and wearing contact lens for long period makes my eyes very very tired. I am now seriously considering wavefront lasik to correct my short sightedness. Daddy is toying with the idea too but he got no guts time to make the first move. I made the first move today.
I went for a preliminary eye check at Optimax (TTDI) today. It was a very brief check but the good news is - I am a very suitable candidate!!! Yippeee!! One of the most important condition was the thickness of the cornea, it had to be >500 to be suitable, usually 550 is the average. My reading was 599! I was so happy that I immediately made an appointment to have the surgery done end of May.
BUT as I am writing this entry after reading all the pre-surgery materials, I started to have some fear in me. I only have two eyes, created and given by God. What if after going through this human intervention I lose them? Eeeeeeekkkkkkkkkssss! It was a terrible thought. I better think it through thoroughly, maybe I will chicken out at the last minute.

Our Dream Home

Daddy and I have started looking for our own place in KL. Well I guess if we have decided to stay here for good, it makes more sense to own the roof over our heads rather than paying rental every month. The problem is houses in this area are not cheap. We have to fork out RM550k minimum for a terrace link house in original condition or with jaded renovation. So we started looking into new developments and we found Damansara Idaman.

Whao, it blew us away! It is a development of 54 units of semi-detached houses on a piece of freehold land, comes with 24-hr security, clubhouse, swimming pool, etc. We visited the showhouses and they were all soooo beautiful and the price tags were beautiful too! The cheapest unsold unit with better facing comes with a hefty price tag of RM2million!!!

*Sigh* *Sigh* *Sigh* The houses are really pretty with modern design and finishings BUT the price is way beyond out budget. We really love it but unless the developer gives us a 50% discount and we will probably consider ... otherwise we will just continue with our search ...

Mother's Day

We celebrated Mother's in advance of the weekend cos we do not believe in giving those greedy, profit-driven, heartless businessmen a chance to make extra pennies from our hard-earned money. Our orignal plan included Sofia but since she was sick, we had no choice but to leave her at home. Moreover, she has recently reduced her nap frequency to only once a day and knock out around 7:30pm at night. So Daddy, my mum and I had a night out today by ourselves!
We do not know of many good restaurants in this place yet but we passed by some attractive restaurants in One Bangsar the other day. The restaurants attracted us cos they operated out of beautiful houses with very cosy setting and neatly trimmed garden. It was a perfect setting to unwind and get ready for the weekend. We choose the one which served Vietnamnese fine dining. Fortunately the choice turned out correct and we had a lovely dinner there!
Our programme for the second half of the night was to scale the Petronas Twin Tower but we only made it there at 9:30pm after many series of wrong turns. Yes, I was the driver. To our disappointment, there is no public access to the top of the towers, the furthest we can go is the skybridge AND tickets to the skybridge are given out daily at 8AM! There are limited tickets available daily and usually the tickets would not last more than half an hour!?!?!
We were REALLY disappointed. Really disappointed. We had thought it would be like the city towers in Melbourne and Sydney and we just pay to go up. In the end we strolled around the area and took some shots of the jewels from the bottom.
We are still very interested in getting on the skybridge BUT how on earth are we going make it to KLCC at 8AM? The roads are all jammed up and we are likely to lose our way ... unless we leave the house at 6am in our pajamas??

Flu Again!

Just got back from Kuching today after a one day meeting and found Sofia coughing again!!! Really don't know why, does kids at this age really fall sick that often?
Everyone gets worried and uptight when she is sick and of course I am going to be badly deprived of sleep again during this period.

Kindermusik

We brought Sofia to Kindermusik yesterday morning. Unfortunately it was a weekend class and there were so many first timers that we had more than 10 babies! There were 4 month old ones all the way to walkers, like Sofia. Looking at those little babies remind us of her baby time, so cooperative ... unlike now, she spends half the time walking around on her own looking at other kids or going to the glass door to peer into the outside world. And we spend half the time coaxing and bringing her back to the group, hoping that she will not throw a tantrum.

As this was just a trial class, we concluded we have to try out the next age group class (18 mth - 3 yo) and see if she fits better there.

A Sleeping Cat

Our pet FeFe is also settling down very well in the new place, just look at how she sleeps. I like to watch a sleeping cat, they sleep without a care in the world. Even if the sky were to drop on them the next minute, it does not seems to bother them. I have always longed to have a cat whom I can hug to sleep, it is really nice cos their body temperature is higher than human so hugging them to sleep keeps me warm and the fur feels so nice to touch. Unfortunately none of the cats I have adopted like to sleep with me, they prefer to sleep alone. Humph!