I came across this ad in a local newspaper

So… have you registered?

We had our first spring/summer BBQ for the year yesterday. Weather was sunny but cooling with light gust of wind. All of us ended up with bloated tummies due to the amount of food - kebabs, pork chop, sausages, salad, tiramisu..

Our friend’s cat, Oscar was inquisitive as he gently put a paw on Cameron’s foot. Cameron was in deep sleep, so he didn’t give a damn.

Eng had his eyes intently on Oscar to make sure he doesn’t set his paws on his precious son again..As you know, dog lovers don’t normally like cats.

New season, new wardrobe. Cameron has outgrown all his winter suits and we have to shop for his summer clothings. His dad bought a couple from Netherlands a few days ago and he seems quite pleased with the new ones which are made of thinner materials. It’s been unusually warm lately and he needs to get used to the weather in preparation for his trip to KL.

From fruits to cakes to main dishes…these are our never ending indulgence…Enjoy!

This is the Avocado season…Taste so good with sugar….Good source of vitamin E for the skin.

Banana Loaf Cake…get adventurous with custard cream topping…

Chicken with Cream of Mushroom ala Casserole…Using my own homemade cream of mushroom…

Braised Pork Shank and its aftermath….To instill the CNY mood…Lady would love that piece of bone.

Pasta Pesto with turkey breast, prawns, mushrooms and rockets…So satisfying with a cup of piping hot tea…

Comfort food - Porridge…Eng the Porridge King is so good with cooking it, be it pork ribs porridge, chicken porridge, salmon porridge, black bean porridge, pork porridge….

Cameron started smiling at 6 weeks but it took us ages to capture his precious smile…’Kai Ma’, you can finally see his smile. See how cheeky he is. Now when is he gonna roll over…I’m getting impatient.

After a long silence, here I am again, reenergized and back online. Past few weeks had been pretty challenging as I was down with mastitis and later diagnosed with breast abscess. That’s the downside of BF. My advise to all BF mums are:-

1.        Treat immediately if you discover lumps in your breasts as a result of engorgement. Use warm compress to massage and empty the breasts so that the lumps will dissolve in a day or 2. Either feed as frequent as possible or express.

2.       If it turns out to be mastitis – you will feel the pain as it would be infected, seek medical advice immediately to obtain some antibiotics. Early detection would help the condition to recover in less than a week. Acute mastitis could turn into breast abscess with pus and might need to be drained using needle and syringe or worse still surgery. Thank God mine is settling down and hopefully, it wouldn’t come back!

3.     During normal BF routine, make sure you empty the breast(s) to prevent the problems. I’ve not completely recovered as I’m on a second dose of Keflex (antibiotics) but I’m feeling much much better now. It would take another 4-6 weeks to completely recuperate and fingers crossed, I will be well by the time we get to KL.

During my idle state, so many events had taken place. Eng has been updating the blog as frequent as he could but there are lots more that we didn’t mention as we are so occupied with Cameron and so little time is left to ourselves. However, in summary…

-          We got rid of the old fridge and got a bigger one. With generous amount of fridge and freezer space, we have been shopping for groceries like mad. Therefore, we did try a couple of new recipes which I will blog separately.

-          Cameron has been smiling a lot and is getting quite playful. However, he is so attached to us and wants our attention all the time. He prefers to look at our facial expressions rather than his activity gym or mobile…. really hard work man.

-          I’ve been resting more and poor Eng has been preparing both lunch and dinner.

-          We prepared meals for 2 couples from the church who have just had their newborns. Forgot to mention that the church members took turns to prepare meals for us during the first 2 weeks of my postpartum.

-          I’ve been topping up formula for Cameron as he seems to be hungry all the time. However, he doesn’t really like the bottle and I’m worried if it will be another difficulty weaning him of breast milk.

……etc which I can’t recall.

Cameron is actually sleeping next to me as I’m blogging this….Rushing to finish this post before he wakes up….what a life…

I was deeply touched and in tears looking at these photos (cited from Jeffooi). The photographer won an award for her intimate portrayal of a single mother and her young son as he loses his battle with cancer. Warn you, it is very very despressing.

Can you ever imagine how strong a mother can be ?

During the major service last year, I was told that the rear brake pads of my Audi were 80% worn out while the Discs were OK and no complaints on the front brakes. So I sent it to Kwit-fit (KF) in Woking last Saturday to get them changed. I left the car with KF, and they said they would check all brakes and tell me what jobs need to be done even though I told them it were only the rear pads. I thought no harm with the extra checks, since they were free anyway.
I got a call an hour later and was told that all four discs and pads need changing! What the H*… (Blimey! for Brit). They said the rear discs were heavily corroded while the front were under legal limit. They wanted to charge me £480 all together with £240 for each side. I was in total disbelief and told them to put everything back together without changing anything.
Couple days later, I got a local car service contact from Johnny, the guy I met in the church. Booked the chap for Saturday (yesterday) to work on the brakes. He came around yesterday, did the job in the parking lot. In the end, he only changed the rear pads as all others are OK. Total of the job was only £65!

I have been getting this message many times this week. Do they bring the system offline during Malaysia midnight time?

Another annoying thing is that, the Website doesn’t tell you in advance about the system down time on the login page, so you don’t need to bother login in. So many times I entered the username and password only to find out that the System is unavailable.

After much thoughts and considerations, I have decided to stop blogging politics related posts here. Not that I have received dead threat from anyone, (they are probably busy looking at those big time politics bloggers) neither I am frightened by the Government’s statement that they might be looking to register blogger (another bullsh*t).
I just very much feel that this place is best to be kept as the place it was before, post about Cameron’s growth, what we have gone through, cooking, our holidays, photos etc. Having my politics thoughts between these posts will just spoil the whole mood and don’t look right at all. Furthermore, I hate to see Cameron’s pics stand among these crooks.
Meanwhile, I need to channel my grieves elsewhere. I will find a new place to whine and to mourn about politics. A new place where I can use the words I have at the back of my mind the moment when I read my dailies.

We survived the London test with Cameron! Yes, we went to London on Friday and got everything done in a day.

We woke up early in the morning to beat the queue while everybody was sleeping through the peaceful Good Friday morning. Parked our car in Osterley, we took a tube to Hyde Park Corner station. It wasn’t easy to maneuver the pushchair especially when Quinny‘s back wheels appear to be wider then the normal pushchairs. I felt sorry when Mel has to either help to lift the front or hold the back of the pushchair when going up down the steps (as she hasn’t been feeling well). I think Cameron enjoyed the tube journey and noise as he didn’t fuss and seemed to enjoy staring and looking around the tube.

After the Embassy, we went across to Hyde Park for Cameron’s breast feeding session while we enjoyed our sunshine and the lively surrounding. That was Mel’s first time relaxing in a park since December! We then took the tube again to Leicester Square. Arrived in China Town, we didn’t want to try Wong Kei this time as we wanted a more spacious restaurant due to the pushchair. We decided to try this fairly new one called Golden Pagoda. Although the staffs were new on the job but we were complimented with their friendliness. We enjoyed our roast duck, roast pork and Char Siew Chu Chiong Fan until Cameron decided to wake up and spoilt my moment with the duck. The rest of the meal was done single handedly. The bill came out £17 for two; think I can have a better one for that price elsewhere. After the meal, we went across to Loong Foong Chinese Market to grab couple of things on our list. And again it wasn’t easy to move around with the pushchair as you know Chinese are pretty smart at squeezing every bit out of the space they have. Then, we returned to Hyde Park for another feeding session while I went across to collect Cameron’s passport (yes, collection on the same day).

I must say that having Cameron around has such an impact on our lives. Before that, it was so easy and flexible to plan things but now we have to work around him, everything is him, him and him. He has become the center of everything (well not forgetting the Him in our belief). I was also quite stressed throughout the trip. I worried that if he will scream in the tube, or in the restaurant or in the Embassy, and we would be looking like jokers trying to pacify him. Glad that he didn’t, just a single cry in the restaurant. I was also worried if Mel could cope with the whole thing as she has just recovered from mastitis 2 weeks ago and now battling another one. (That’s the reason why she has been kept off the Blog for such a long time). I have so much more to think about and so much more constraints compared to Mel’s pregnancy time. However all these hard work, emotional and physical strains were paid off when we hear good comments and praises from others. People stopped and asked about Cameron when we were in Hyde Park, the Chinese Market, tube and the restaurant. The Embassy officers said he is big with ‘muka berani ‘and they like his hair while a shopper said that he is cute and an American couple asked/chat with Mel about Cameron and etc… We are glad to hear these compliments and at the same time we were surprised that so many people here understand the hardwork of bringing up babies.

     Our first family photo

On another note, the condition of Malaysian Embassy is pathetic, things look old and seriously in need of modernization. You basically can’t sell Visit Malaysia with the condition like that. The toilet is not any better than the R&R stop stations along the PLUS highway and a girl even got locked in the toilet as the door was jammed! And Mel was saying that the girl spoke complete British accent, the poor girl will definitely ‘sell’ our Visit Malaysia campaign. However the officers were friendly, can’t complain of their service.

This passport photo was taken last Saturday. He looks older than his age, isn’t he? Unlike his dad! Anyway this Friday is Good Friday. Surprisingly, Malaysia Embassy will be open. So we will be making a trip down to London to apply for a passport for Cameron.

We are pretty excited as this will be Cameron’s first trip to London which is also the furthest he has traveled apart from the fact that we get to gobble few plates of roast ducks and roast pork in China Town.

p/s: the picture is for illustration only, not a real passport.

Najib was quoted saying this in a debate with Lim Kit Siang in the Dewan Rakyat

“Whether the government is not fair, whether it has integrity or not, Machap voters will support us.”

The BN is such an arrogant a**, isn’t it? It is disgusting to hear this remark from somebody in the capacity of country’s Deputy Prime Minister with no trace of regrets or shame over the Government wrongdoings. A matter of fact, he is proud of all these sh*t! He is damn right to say that. People of Machap will support BN even though the Government is not fair and has third-world’s integrity.

Before even the day of nomination, council officers were seen working hard in the town, potholes on the road were filled, broken road lamps were replaced, roads were resurfaced, Ong Ka Ting was seen approving new community hall, new funding from Government to schools, all major newspapers were seen promoting BN’s related news in Machap, BN Ministers appeared on Machap town. Even the Samy Vellu who would normally ignore pleads from the poor Indian community has vowed to make a visit to the Indians in Machap which consist of about 1400 voters. Why wouldn’t people of Machap fall for that? It’s like a kid being brought first time to a candy shop. It’s like having year long constipation and suddenly gets a relief after taking laxative pill. All these were just too difficult for people of Machap not to vote for BN.

Will Machap voters know that it’s the laxative pill that cause the intestines to weaken and encourages constipation as a result? Do you think the Machap voters know that the money that being spent in BN’s election campaign, resurfacing roads and funding for schools, were the money that they have paid for escalated living expenses, increased fuel, electricity and Water tariff.

They also need to understand that these are the people:
-who cause their children who obtained As in the exams but never get into the public universities due to the racial quota.
-who eat further into their pocket when they use the toll highways.
-who treat their children / grandchildren who were born and bred in the Malaysia as a second class citizen compare to those Muslim immigrants who were given citizenship and given Bumiputra status automatically.
-who cause the violent suppress of anti-toll hike / anti fuel-hike protest in KL where some of these protestor could be their son or daughters.
-who glorify Mat Rempits doing illegal racings in Machap streets
-who impose publication law so that only their praises to Government were heard while complaints mute
-who didn’t keep the promise to setup IPCC (Independent Police Commission) as a result they have no one to turn to when being treated unfairly from the police force.
-who put their teenage children / grand chilren onto national lottery to be selected for National Service where there have been 12 death cases in the facility without any improvement being done.
-the list goes on and on…

It will need more than miracle for the Machap voters to see the bigger picture at national level rather than the new tar-ed road in front of them.

I have always wanted to watch the real bullring action in Spain but never get to actually planning it. This short clip hasn’t changed my mind… yet.