Old Friends

Met up with the old ladies. I know we are old when we reminisce much about the past. 

It's nice to catch up with old friends, catch up on what we're up to, catch up and laugh. 

 very nice truffle mashed potatoes. maybe i can learn to make this as a "pot luck" dish? will it work?

also very nice Crème brûlée

i must bring my sis and KiCo there

 

28 April

Iresh's BD today. Yum!

Date

Having dinner with my old, old, Bintan friends tonight.

Which hair?

5566

The story about my personal 5566.
The year my dad passed, was a bit tough for me.
In my family clan, my dad "died young". So it was hard for me to come to terms.
But I know should let grief pass and carry on by living well.
So I said to the Universe to give me a kind of a "comfort sign", like saying - It's all right, I'm always here-- that kind of comfort sign. I said that the sign would be 5566. (it was a random number derived by a quick fitting; has to be four digits that are not too common and not too complex).
I am quite darn sure the Universe responded.

I shared my,,,,,, you can call it day-dreaming thoughts or self-talk or mad idea, with my sis. And I swear that more often than not, the appearance of this set of numbers occurred uncannily between us. The other time we went to pay respects to my dad at the temple, and we went for a drink after that, while on the way to East Coast, a car with 5566 plate drove us by.

Last weekend my sis sent me the picture above.

I asked her, what was she thinking of or what was happening around the time she spotted the number. She told me she was OVER THE MOON over a pair of heels she has just bought in preparation for her wedding day. Well, I can see why she is so happy. That pair she bought is almost identical to the pair she dreamed of having. So yes, she was overjoyed and I guess 5566 came to congratulate her. Haha.

So anyway, that was.... Friday night.

Saturday morning as I was walking toward music class with Colin, I was wondering to myself if really 5566 came to seal its message to us or whether I am just plain............... Ally McBeal.
Then, at the car park,,,,,,,,,,, the number showed up to flick my doubt. So I smiled to myself but the chapter didn't end there.

I thought again.... maybe this is the same car that I saw last year. Maybe the car is residential. *you see, my doubt is not easily persuaded.

So I looked up the old photo.

It is a different car.

So there you go, 5566 twice!

Llao Llao

I'm a laggard when it comes to food, especially those that you'd have to queue up. 

Now, Llao Llao is not new (but still has long queues), they opened a new outlet at Parkway and sometimes the queue is short on a weekday evening. So I finally gave it a go, my first taste left me wondering why it tasted of cheese. Anyway, it is truly gratifying, I can't stop eating this! Every weekday evening, I kept my fingers crossed that the queue would be short. Sometimes I get disappointed to see a beeline but I say to myself - well, there's always tomorrow. Haha.

To counterbalance and level off some guilt, I treat it as my dinner. Hope that helps! 

No nothing

I have no pictures to capture what I'm gonna rattle about. 

The weekend was busy and I think marriage for me is a lot of hard work. 

I feel rage filling in. 

They say first you marry the person you love, and then you love the person you marry. 

No matter how I see it, it's a lose-lose situation. That is when I'm unhappy. 

I try to ride over my feelings because sometimes when situation improves, well, it improves. 

So then I would be all centered and am able to maintain my optimal Om. Carry on with my work, the kids, catching up with friends and what-nots. Well, when I feel better, I am inspiring.

My friend XX has a 9kg tumor removed from her abdominal 2 years ago and it came back last year and she had a second surgery. Her doc told her that they would just make her comfortable. Nobody knows what else to say. Last week she was not answering phone calls and not returning texts, so I went to her house to find her. Her helper says she's out for dinner and I can't help but to worry about her.

I met up with Pam last Friday, it's been months since we last chatted. I think it was last May we met up. The next morning she texted to tell me that she thinks I am a wonderful mom, wife, DIL,etc even though I don't think any of it. I think she, is doing a fantastic job as a mom considering she's raising the kid all by herself. She and I are accidental friends. We met at our post grad course and I was very dismissal of her (sorry!). Who on earth carries a teddy bear to class. Wa Lau Eh, I thought to myself, who on earth carries a TEDDY BEAR to class. This is not a pre-school man! Well, that person is her and she kept asking me out every time she tried to make small talks. It's like I had said "no" two dozen times. I mean, I said things like, no I'm not free, no I'm tired, no I have no money kinds of NOs but she never gave up. So when I relented one time, she came to pick me up every time since. And so we became loyal friends and I'm glad we did. We say we should go on a cruise someday. 

Last night I watched "A Beautiful Mind" on cable. A work colleague commented to the wife (Alicia) of mathematician- John Nash, that John is lucky to have her (despite the stress and hardship in dealing with his mental illness), Alicia replied that sometimes she feels angry with god and that they were plain unlucky, but she held on till they were old and pruned, and even helped him overcome his illness and see him receiving the nobel prize. I was thinking to myself- what remarkable strength she has, and so I went to google about them. What the movie didn't show is that they had been married for 6 years, divorced for 38, and remarried in 2001. That would be - the first part of the equation, i.e: marry the person you love. Maybe the second half of the equation was too hard for her. It would have been too hard for anybody. So honestly, in sickness and in health is not for everybody.

Boh Gey

 You don't earn the title until it comes to the front tooth, so now Kiki is officially Boh Gey. 

We made an appointment with the dentist earlier this week but the tooth didn't wait, it came off while she was having Pasta in school during lunch and she showed me how her teacher scrambled for toilet paper to wrap her tooth. (her teacher is new to teaching). This time, her Tooth Fairy exchanged the relic for six pieces of $2. (I just made it random) Anyway, she normally choose to buy some trinkets, toys or toy jewellery.  The other Tooth Fairy- her dentist, charged us $170 this morning. That's for filling up a few holes and scaling, polishing stuff. It's so costly, man! Already her dental treatment knocked me off one grand. There was once $550, another $300++, a few miscellaneous and now $170. Pediatric dentists don't come cheap.

Eating

 I find the term Chiobu distasteful. Hot Chick mildly distasteful. 

But I guess others find them cheeky. 

The word is supposedly - "Chic" but it evolved into Chick, and then Hot Chick.

I've also had a can that says "Pak Tor". 

Very Lemak Laksa.

Charity Movie Preview - Avengers - Age of Ultron

 I enjoyed the 3D effects. Makes me wonder what I had been missing.

 Eight theatres filled with school going children, it was noisy and fun. 

The kids all "Eeeww" whenever there's a kissing scene. Lol. 

 Colouring done by a kid in appreciation of our corporate sponsorship. 

Gathering of old friends

These are my ex-colleagues at Marinehub some ten years ago.
Everyone bemoaned that we had let too many years slip by without first catching up with each other.
The bunch of us used to work in the office every week night usually past midnight.
We sleep so little, work so much under pressing conditions given it was boom time.
When you are young, there might be little ill effects but the body takes a toil after a too many years of grinding conditions. So anyway, we all learned the important lesson on having a balanced lifestyle and we say we must all go for a short holiday together soon.

Eating in

Shifting Gears

Bye bye, baby toys. 

KiCo played with them for one more night and we gave them away to Baby Russell on Saturday.

Chorus from Judas Maccabaeus ( G.F. Handel)

 One daddy in class was so confused, halfway through lesson, he excused himself and went up to teacher S to inquire if he had missed anything or any of her "homework". This is because several (in fact all other kid except his and mine) were belting out the new song in book 2, which he doesn't remember teacher teaching in class at all. Unlike us, he hadn't missed any lesson and felt stunned. In his words, he said he thought he had stepped into a time warp and missed time. which he knows he didn't because he didn't miss any class.  Welcome to real time, fellow daddy! Ha ha ha. After 2 years, didn't you realize this class is an Express class? Teacher S joking told him that we were at the end of book 2.

I have very thick skin. I brace myself for any criticism and try to improve. Sometimes daunting but that makes an occasional praise rewarding. So I try to focus on improving. 

Of course there are criticism that are hard to digest but I guess 良药苦口, so just dust off and try again.  

 

 I was browsing an Art book when I came across an instrument - Lira da braccio, that resembles the violin. (this painting was made in 1505)

Meanwhile...

Meanwhile, Colin stayed over at SJ's place with my sis while we were away, made friends with Boy-Boy, and had an adventurous morning at the Fire Station watching demos and such.

And numerous kiddy rides