Moments in My Life

I am done watching Gem of Life.  Ending is good.  I like it.  Made me cried a few times.  Reminds me of my mom.  And how much I miss her. 

For those of you whom like to follow the series, you can hop over to here and here to watch it online.  No download necessary.

For now, I will stop following any coming up series (unless is a big production like Gem of Life or Moonlight Resonance).  I have many tasks that still waiting to be done and they needed to be done ASAP.  So no more TVB series for me for a while. 

Since our trip back from Maui, my son has been waiting me to sleep with him at night.  Thus, I turn in early every evening.  I will be in the bed with him between 9-10pm.  And because of this, I hardly had time to finish editing the pictures meant to be posted in this blog.  That’s why I really need more than 24 hours a day.  The good news is that I’ve been having my 8-10 hours of sleep each night now instead of 6 hours.  Before this happened, my usualy sleeping time was betweenb 12-1am and waking up around 7am. 

Do I feel more energized with this extra sleep?  Not really.  I still feel tired.  The weird part is that I felt better if I slept less.  Guess that’s the way my body was used to. 

Probably most stay-at-home mom without helper/s will have immeasurable chores at home, like myself.  These chores go in cycle.  There are some daily and weekly chores that will have to attend to on regular basis.  I enjoy some of them but not all. 

My chores include but not limited to laundry (myself, Brandon’s, towels, bedsheets, mats, etc), planning and buying the groceries, cooking, taking Brandon to the bathroom, give him bath in the evening, filling up the water bottles with filtered water and organizing & cleaning rooms/shelves/cabinets (once in a blue moon). 

My hubby and I share chores like washing the dishes (we don’t use the dishwasher), vacuuming & mopping floor, yard work and paying bills. 

He has his own chores too, such as washing the cars, washing the master bathroom, sweeping the backyard, trimming the grass on side of the front yard and doing his own laundry.

How I wish there is more than just 24 hours in a day so I can fit and get more things done.  There are many items of my to-do list which I had wanted to get done with but can’t find the time to do.  Things like cleaning up the study table (dusty), organizing the files, bills and statements, puting away Brandon’s smaller sizes clothes, organizing underneath the bed with proper storage boxes, listing some of the pregnancy books and some other items for sale on ebay, cleaning the coat closet and so much more. 

If you have Facebook account, and have me as your friend, you can view some of the pictures of our trip to Maui uploaded there.  The pictures were not edited so it was easier just to upload at FB.  For the blogs, I need to edit and put the copyright statement on each pictures.  Will try to update soon on this blog with pictures.  But if you can’t wait, another option is to visit my FB account. 

Yes, I am back to reality (like mommibee said it).  We arrived at home safely last night around 10pm.  We had a wonderful time over at Maui and I will update more with pictures soon when I have time to do some editing to the pictures.  I have loads of laundy to do, dishes to clean, meals to cook and more.  That’s the reality.  How I wish the vacation would not end. 

Hello world.  I’ve been missing in blogging action lately because I became a TV series worm.  I was basically in front of my laptop all day but instead of blogging or blog-hopping, I was watching, rather chasing episode after episode of this Singaporean Media Corp Production of ‘The Little Nyonya‘.  I was introduced to this 34 episodes Mandarin TV series (with English subtitle) by CrazyChineseWoman.

When she posted a summary about this new series, I was intrigued and really interested in watching it.  But on the other hand, I wasn’t sure what to expect from a Singapore production.  After catching the first episode I knew that this is going to be a good one to watch.  It was much better than I was expecting.  Then when I saw my sister online, I told her about it and got her and her MIL into this series as well.  Next, when I saw my cousin online, I also told her about this series.  She went and bought the whole series in DVD and finished watching it before I did.  

The Little Nyonya is a series span over 5 generations of Baba & Nyonya family in Malacca and Singapore.  It mostly revolves around a little nyonya by the name of Yue Niang.    The story was told by her to her granddaughter, Angela, whom has just returned from Canada to visit.  Yue Niang had a very awful life as she was wickedly treated by her family (Huang’s family).  It was tragic that her own grandmother whom was maid back then was raped by the tow-kay (master).  The master’s mother was very nice and she agreed to let this maid became the master’s 2nd wife/mistress.  But the 1st wife and her children had this hatred towards the 2nd wife, her daughter (Ju-Xiang) and later, her grand-daugther (Yue Niang).  Ju-Xiang became mute and deaf when the master’s mother (Ju-Xiang’s grandmother) passed away when she was 9 years old. 

Ju-Xiang was arranged to married a rich scoundrel.  Before she was sent off to get married, she ran away.  Along, she met a Japanese photographer, married him and they had Yue Niang.  Both her parents died during the Japanese occupation in Singapore.  She survived and went back to her grandmother house in Malacca.  The Huang’s family already left for England during the Japanese’s occupation leaving behind Tao-jie (maid) and his 2nd wife.  They returned a few years later and started the ill-treatment towards Yue Niang.  Yue Niang didn’t believe she was fated to be like other nyonyas to get married, be a wife and later a mother and grandmother.  She had a different idea how and what type of life she wanted for herself. 

When she was sent off to married a butcher but she didn’t give up.  In the end, the butcher and her became sworn brother and sister instead of husband and wife.  Later she began her business in bird nest trading with the Singaporean.  She failed miserably during her first trading in Singapore as she was conned after using her money from selling the bird nest to purchase a bulk of silk which turned out to be low grade fabrics.  However, she was successful in her business venture later on. 

As for her love life, she fell in love with a rwealthy Baba from Singapore whom she thought was a chauffeur in the beginning. When she found out his real identity she was confused and she didn’t accept his sincere love. Her love life is very much interesting filled with obstacles and difficulties, but I am not going to tell all here. You have to watch it.

One loophole in this series I noticed that the Huang’s children supposed to be educated in England but upon their return to Malacca, their first English sentence spoken was full of slang. I was expecting them to converse in fluent British accent. Anyway, overall it is still a very good tv series.

Here is a preview, part of the first episode.

Happy New Year everyone! 

Sorry for not frequently updating my blog lately.  My hubby had a one week (25th to 1st) shutdown from his office so we were going out almost everyday.  He was back to work on Friday and then work half day on Saturday to close some reports.

What have I’ve been busy around doing?  Well, everyday when I have my meal (breakfast/lunch/dinner), I will watch Gem of Life online here.  I am on episode 53 now.  I didn’t watch much of the other TVB series, Pages of Treasures which has the series finale last Friday.  I was able to catch a few episodes in the beginning of it and then finished up with the last episode. 

The day after Christmas I went to the Del Amo Mall to check out their after-Christmas Sales but I was very disappointed as there were not many sales at all. I guess they probably knew that many customers would be spending their gift cards anyhow so they didn’t bother to cut the price lower.

On Saturday 12/27 we went up north to Camarillo Outlet Mall, which is about an hour drive from here. Hubby stopped me at the Coach Outlet first and it was crowded and most items on their clearance shelves were gone, the shelves emptied! It was only 10:30am. I didn’t get anything for myself there. We did about 1.5 to 2 hours shopping there and left. I bought two Banana Republic blouses for myself. Got two Carter’s PJs for Brandon and Hubby got himself a long sleeve top from Gap.

Sunday 12/28, we drove down south to Fashion Island Mall in Orange County. They have the BIG REAL Christmas tree on display. Since we already put away our Christmas tree at home, I promised Brandon the night before his bedtime we would bring him to see a BIG Christmas tree. We had lunch at Wahoo Fish Taco and Brandon was eating quite a bit. He must have been hungry after all the walking around the mall looking at fountains. We stopped at the Costa Mesa Ikea on the way back home.

Monday 12/29, was our big shopping day at Target for their after-Christmas sales. The Christmas items were marked down 75% from the original prices. Hubby bought a few ornaments and some other Christmas decorations. I bought food items that were marked down - Christmas cookies, biscuits and chocolates!

Tuesday 12/30, visited Long Beach Aquarium. Since it is the aquarium 10th anniversary, anyone whose birthday falls on the 10th of any month can get in with only $10 admission.  Both my husband and I birthdays fall on 10th and Brandon is free.  But it was very crowded in the aquarium as it was school holiday.  Brandon didn’t show much interest in ‘fish’ so we spent about 45 minutes in it and we left to walk around the marina. 

Wednesday 12/31, had a late breakfast at Norm’s.  I had two pancakes, hashbrown, two slices of bacon, two sausage links and two eggs over easy.  Hubby had the same but he had waffle instead of pancake.  I shared my plate with Brandon and he ate quite a lot of it.  He finished almost two of my sausage links, a few bites of hashbrown and one and quarter pancake.  After breakfast we went to Target in Manhattan Beach and then stopped at the Manhattan Village Mall.  At night, I watched the countdown on NBC and fell asleep right before the ball dropped to 0:00 2009.  But I remember hearing a lot of fireworks outside the house.

That’s what we did for the last week of 2008.  Sorry for the late posting, it took me 3 nights to finish this post.

12/25/2008 

We slept in and didn’t wake up until past 8am.  Usually, I would have gotten up by 7:30am the latest.  It rained very heavily the night before and the ground was wet.  We have to turn on our heater every morning when we wake up as the temperature inside the house drops down to the 50s.  We warm it till about low 60s and then we turn off. 

Around 10:30am we left home to drop off some gifts for Alan’s cousins.  The first one wasn’t at home so we left the bag near their main door.  Then we went to Torrance to visit his other cousin with two young kids.  One of her son is almost the same age as Brandon.  We were greeted by a lot of toys when we entered their home.  They had been opening the kids’ Christmas gifts.  Brandon enjoy seeing so many toys and playing with some of them.  We left around 12pm to go home to make lunch and stayed home the rest of the afternoon. 

At dinner time, we joined my IL’s for roast beef dinner.  It was very windy and cold outside.  I put on a huge jacket for Brandon with a hood.  After dinner we came home.  I carried two bags while Alan carried Brandon.  I was walking in front opening the door and then placing down the bags in the living room.  Alan followed my back and put Brandon down the floor and turned his back to close the door.  A loud thud was heard then followed by a wailing toddler.  He fell on his face and bit his mouth.  It was bleeding so I quickly took an ice cube to stop his bleeding.  His jackets and socks were stained with blood. It was not good sight. I didn’t know what else to do. I even gave him cold orange juice to drink.  Why he fell? Because he was wearing too many layers and couldn’t freely move about his hands to stop himself from hitting the floor. And his face was half cover by the hood and couldn’t see where he was going.

So that evening, Brandon received another gift for Christmas … a ’sausage’ upper lip!

He was fine the next morning as he woke up and told me his lip is no longer in pain.

Finally, the real estate transaction is closed!  YES!  I can relax more now since I won’t need to spend time calling this person that person asking and checking this and that.  I also received my first paycheck from real estate work for this year.  Not too much.  This is the smallest check I’ve ever received from my real estate work since I am doing this 50/50 with another agent.  Also this was the hardest and time consuming transaction I’ve ever dealt with. 

I also spent a lot of gas driving up to the property so many times.  A round trip drive to the property is around +/- 56 miles.  Also part of the check was taken out for my office fee, which is $50 a month.  I also paid for the sign up fee for the property as well as the MLS fee.  Although it is not as much as I hope for but I am still going to spend part of it for pampering myself.  A big part of the check will be put aside for income tax purposes and also for future payments of office fee, MLS membership fee, realtor board fee and supra key fee.

I am thinking of getting a spa service at Spa Mandalay for myself while in Las Vegas.  May be get another bag from Coach if I can find a nice one while shopping at the outlets.  Wow … can’t wait for my shopping spree.   

It was 8:20am this morning when I changed Brandon into his going-out clothes.  Packed his bag and we were ready to leave the home.  Put him on his car seat, closed the car door and drove the car out the garage.  Half way towards my office as I was driving pass a traffic light, my heart skipped a beat.  I quickly turned back to see if I had secured my son with the seat belt.  Ahh … a relieve … he had his seat belt on. 

Sometimes  I do things so mindlessly that I don’t know if I did it or not.  Another example is locking the house door.  I usually have the key on the lock before we leave the home.  I am pretty sure I will lock the door immediately when I closed it.  These are things that I do without thinking and sometimes it gets to me if indeed I actually do it or not.