Promotion Announcement

I'm happy to announce that Cobby has recently been promoted from being the number 5 man to the number 2 man. And he has been promoted by non other than Princess Jolie herself.
For your information, the ranking has been this way:

1. Miss CoCo :)
2. My Mother
3. My Dad
4. His Mother
5. Cobby

I'm not sure exactly when it happened, but 2 incidents confirmed the promotion.

On the night I went to the Korean Pop Concert, my Mom came over as usual to help me watch over Jolie. Usually my Mom would be able to handle and get her to sleep, but that night was pure terror. She didn't sleep much during her afternoon nap, so she was super cranky that night, screaming and crying all the way from 8pm plus till 11pm. Interesting fact was that she REFUSED to be carried by my Mom, insisting that her Dad carry her whole night instead. Poor Cobby was exhausted by the time I came home and put her to bed.

The incident happened again yesterday night, when I went for my Japanese lesson. Usually she would be playing at my Mother-in-law's place, having a good time. But again, she didn't sleep much during the day, so at night she was inconsolable, crying and screaming, refusing anyone to touch her except for her Dad. So once again, I came back to her place with the sight of an exhausted Cobby carrying a sleeping baby.

Like they say, "With greater strength comes greater responsibility..." Now that Jolie has promoted him to be the number 2 when I'm not around, he would have to endure all her crying, screaming and tantrums. I asked him if it's worth it, if he has regretted getting this "promotion". He happily said that even thought it's tiring and his arm ache after I take over, he's very happy that Jolie has promoted him, and he happily accept everything that comes with the promotion.

Congratulations Cobby!

DIY Cartoons

I read somewhere that you should bring some educational DVD for the child to watch while on the airplane, so as to let time pass easier. I thought that was a great idea, problem was, the DVD for Jolie's favourite show, Timmy Time, is not sold in Singapore. So I just have to resort to different means...

I bought a portable DVD player at the EXPO electronics fair the other day, so now I just need a DVD. So I used the video function on my camera, put on the stand and record the show on TV!



I've tried various methods, including using my handphone. But the resolution wasn't very good, and my arms ache from holding up the phone for so long! Also, shooting the image from CTV would give me flickering images, which was quite annoying. So, my final, and best result comes from using the camera to video from the LCD TV.



As you can see, my study room has become a make shift studio while I video Jolie's favorite shows over the pass few weeks. It takes so long as each episode only comes up to 10mins max! So it was a long process to fill up one blank DVD.

Hopefully the effect is OK, but I know that Jolie is not picky, so it should work out quite well. :)

Terror at the playground

The playground nearest to our block recently has been teared down and a brand new one has been set up. Yeah! Did I ever mentioned that I actually wrote a complaint/feedback to out town council because the old playground was in such a terrible state? Anyway, I was super impressed at their customer service as they personally called me the next day, informing that there has already been plans to set up a new playground and they were starting work soon. Hmm good... good...

Anyway, that's not the main story. Yesterday evening I brought Jolie down as usual and met a little terror that made me lost my temper at the playground. He's a boy, probably primary 5 or 6? And he's such a mafia!

Strike one:
He and his "gang" of boys were playing and Jolie approached them as one of them had a hula hoop. Of course they didn't share with her, but what pissed me off was when he walked pass, he INTENTIONALLY bumped into Jolie at the shoulder, and even had the nerve to laugh about it! Luckily it was only a very slight bump and Jolie didn't fall down or anything, so I just let it pass. It's just boys being immature right?

Strike two:
The boys were throwing granite rocks the size of baseballs and sticks into a tree, I don't know what they were doing. Meanwhile Jolie was playing ball with a new found friend, a small boy about the same size as Jolie. The ball rolled to where the bigger boys were and the small boy approached them. He didn't even do anything, but the terror boy, thinks he's so cool, made a gesture like he's threatening to hit the small boy's head with the rock. WHAT?? What the hell was that? Why did he do that? OK, very not 爽 already, but hey, he didn't threatened MY child right? So I swallowed my anger again.

Strike THREE! YOU'RE OUT!!!
It was quite sudden. I was standing near the foot of one of the slides, playing with Jolie when I suddenly hear loud banging noises. I turned around and saw the terror boy, throwing the big rock down the slide! Something inside me just snapped. When he slide down to get his rock, I shouted at him! "HEY! WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING? THERE'S SO MANY SMALL CHILDREN AROUND, YOU COULD HAVE HURT THEM! THROW THAT ROCK AWAY RIGHT NOW!!"

The most infuriating thing was that the boy stared at me! Not staring out of fear mind you, but staring at me with anger! Then he just threw the rock half-heartedly at the edge of the playground. At that moment I wished that there was a wide open field for me to fling the rock into a distance. Unfortunately it's only a small patch of grass, so I picked up the rock and threw it into the furthest part of the grass. Duh... Then I turned to him and said, "don't even think about it..."

As I turned back to look for Jolie, I realised that most of the children were staring at me, and I was feeling a little sheepish as I tried to act normal and jovial again, playing with Jolie. What's so funny was that one boy ran up to me and was all excited as he said, "He's playing with the rock again, he's playing with the rock again!" What a tattletale! Haha... As an act of defiance, and probably to save face, the stupid kid went ahead and played with the rock again, but at least he didn't do it within the playground area, so I just let it slide.

Later I saw another boy that just arrived, about the same age as the terror boy, throwing rocks nearer to the playground. This time I just said in a low, firm voice nearer to his face, asking him not to play with rocks as he may hurt the smaller children around. I know it sounds a little double standard, but it's only 1st strike for him. Besides, all my hot air has just been defused, so, lucky for him.

After that Jolie was ready for dinner, so we said our goodbyes and hurried away. I guess it's always good to have some parents around the playground. It keeps the bigger kids in check, making sure they don't bully the smaller kids or do stupid, rash things.

Ants and Muffins

The ants at my place has been a real pain in the ass. They are everywhere and I can't seem to get rid of them! I even tried using ant poison all the way from Hong Kong and yeah, they would disappear for awhile before they come back again. Argh!

One day Cobby comes home and found out that the shelf next to the door, where we kept all our old photo albums, was crawling with ants! WTF! The ants made their nest among my old photo albums!

OK now that I know where they live, I can destroy them. But it took me another 2-3 days before I actually got the guts to do it. Yesterday morning, I brought out the vacuum cleaner and got to work.

I quickly pulled one album out from the shelf and threw it near the door. Immediately hundreds of ants scurry around, panicking as the giant with the vacuum cleaner sucked them up together with their precious eggs. Then I quickly go back to the album on the floor, hit it hard on the floor to get all the eggs out and alternate between vacuuming the eggs and ants between the pages and all the other ants trying to escape.

As you can imagine, I was sucking away like a mad woman, screaming with disgust, anger and satisfaction. How dare you built your nest in MY house! I can almost hear the screams of the ants as they run around, trying to escape while I laugh like Dr. Evil with my pinky finger on the corner of my lips. MUAHAHAHAHAHA!



Anyway, after about 20mins, most of the ants were gone. But I'm not done yet. I took out the bag in my vacuum cleaner, I don't care that it's quite new and not full yet, and I dunk it in water. But the damn bag was waterproof! No worries, I opened the cover just enough to fill the bag with water to drown the little suckers!

As I was going outside to throw the watery grave away, I noticed that alot of the ants were outside my house, wandering around hopelessly, probably hoping to find a new place to set up a new nest! Oh no you don't! I brought out a bucket of water and washed them all away.

There.

I would have loved to show you some pictures, but as you can see, I was a little busy to stop and take pictures.

After that I was feeling pretty good about myself. Yeah I probably killed more and a thousand lives all at once, not very good for my karma, but the adrenaline was definitely pumping. I need to do something! So immediately I continued with the pain staking task of removing all the photos and throwing out the old and moldy albums.

By then I should have started making lunch for Jolie, but I was in such a cleansing mood that I used all the old oranges in the fridge and made orange muffins. Which was surprisingly delicious!

Now that all the photos were out, I have the opportunity to get some new albums and organize all my old photos. Yeah to new projects!

Korean Pop Night Concert 2010

Sis managed to get tickets to the Korean Pop Night Concert 2010, and invited me to come along. I'm not a big fan of Korean Pop, but I know they are great performers, so I went along gladly. I asked Mom to come over to help watch Jolie, took the car and drove off myself. The concert was at the Expo, but I was afraid that there wouldn't be parking space, so Sis suggested that I park at Changi Airport and take a train to Expo, which was only one stop away.

The concert starts at 8pm, so since we were early, we just hung around, ate some snacks before going in. Little did we know that there was a huge line just to get into the hall!



Oops, so we just queued with all the thousands of fans. No worries, we just killed time taking pictures with the different phones and cameras that we had.







When we're nearing the gates, there was a sudden rush by the ushers to get everybody in. Apparently the show was about to start and they wanted to quickly move everybody through as fast as possible. Yeah! Love it that they're on time.

The stage...



Our seats...



Finally the show was about to start and almost everybody got light sticks of different shape and sizes, depending on who you are supporting, apparently. We felt a little strange and bare without any light sticks... S thought of using her iPhone app, which has many choices of light. One of which was a neon light stick! Haha... so cute!



We had great seats! It's a little far, but we're on the 1st row of the section, and we had a clear view of the stage!



But before we had the chance to get excited, suddenly everybody in the front section started to stand up! OK, it's a pop concert, I fully understand of you want to stand up and dance and scream. But the people actually STOOD UP ON THEIR CHAIRS!!!





OMG, we were perplexed! What do we do? We certainly don't want to spend the whole night looking at other people's butts. But because they were at the other section with a wide passage way between us and them, we couldn't asked them to seat down! Our shouts were simply drowned out by the hysterical screams of the audience!

So we did the extreme. There were dividers between different sections, but there was a gap, an opening in the divider, so many people actually slipped through and went to stand along the walkway of the section in front of us, aka, the people who were standing on their seats. (see the map below, we were seating where the blue star is, and people (including us) slipped and stood where the red star is)



So begins the vicious cycle. People in front stood up to get a better view, so people behind had to stand on their seats to see better, thus people way behind can't see anything, so they had to resort to sneaking in front, thus blocking the people seated in front, thus people had to stand up, etc, etc, etc.

Haiz... Even standing there can't get you a better view as there were many tall guys. So after one or two songs we went back to our seats, defeated. So what to do? We just sat there, watched the tiny screen with bad resolution, listened to the singing and screaming.

But we were SUPER amused by the undaunted fans seated behind us. The girls were HYSTERICAL. They were MAD! They were CRAZY! After awhile I was actually NERVOUS right before they announce the next band coming out because the people are SO CRAZY! They were screaming at the TOP OF THEIR VOICE like mad! And they were screaming out the lyrics as loud as they could, probably hoping that their precious idol could hear them, which was scary and yet super funny.

We were all giggling while listening to them. One kept repeating, Oh My GOd, Oh My GOd, Oh My God,... The other was screaming so much she had lost her voice, but she kept screaming air out of her throat anyway. The one behind me was screaming SO LOUD, it was like she was screaming directly into my ear and I had to press a finger on my right ear each time she scream. If this was a cartoon, my hair would probably fly forward each time she screams.

Sis even suggested that we leave and go for KTV, but we thought we stayed, since we're here. Halfway through we even had a little snack! Sis thought that I was only using my torchlight. She didn't know that I was filming! Heehee...



OK lah, to be fair, it was still a great concert. Even I, who's not so much of a fan, was so impressed that the Korean Pop groups were such great entertainers! Even in a live concert like this, they were excellent dancers and singers! Some of our favorites were Girls Generation, which was one band that I actually know and saw their MTV. (I've added their MTV to my bar) They were very girly, very sexy and very lovable! This was during one of their songs, sorry my phone's not very good at video.



Other hot favorites include Shinee, Infinite and the hottest group, BigBang, which my Sis is crazy about. I have to admit, they were more like an American R&B group, more cool, especially Taeyang, which is like, cute... :P



I can totally understand the madness for Korean pop after that night. Even though I don't understand a word they were singing, they were really good. The Koreans were greater performers than I had expected, and if the concert organizers had done a better job, it would have been a great night. Even with all the complaining, I actually enjoyed myself! Imagine if I actually got to see the performance!

Lunch with Connie

Met up with Connie for lunch today. We've been trying to meet up for... do you believe it, since May this year, but we keep post phoning the date for various reasons, and in the end, I had to go Hong Kong to visit my family, so we just called it off until now. Hahaha...

Connie has been a close friend and colleague from when I was working at Prudential as an Insurance Adviser. Yes, I was also close with some other new advisers like myself, but in my agency, Connie has been like good adviser and a good friend. When I left Prudential, I was confident to leave my own policies with her. So, yah, she's my Prudential Insurance adviser now.

I was a little hesitant as usual, like I always do when I'm going to meet up with old friends. I guess I was afraid that we'll run out of things to say and things would get awkward. Strange why I always feel that way.

Surprisingly, it turned out to be a great lunch. We ate at a coffee shop at Toa Payoh, Connie gave me a treat. :) While we ate we catch up on how everybody at the agency was doing, the latest gossips! We also updated on our family, how her kids and my child were doing. Her kids were already in Primary school, one going for PSLE next year. It's amazing how time flies!

After lunch, the coffee shop was pretty warm, so we headed to Polar cafe for coffee. This time I bought her coffee, just to be fair. :) We then chatted and chatted non stop about holiday trips, bitched about our husbands, :) talked about work, etc, etc. Oh yes, we also talked about some official insurance stuff, but that was only like 10% of our conversations. Haha...

I was supposed to go for my facial at 1.30pm, but we were so reluctant to leave that we chatted until the guy at the beauty salon called me at 2pm and politely asked if I'm on the way. Then we chatted about 5min more before we finally said our goodbyes. Haha...

It was really nice meeting up with Connie. I have alot of good friends, but not many that I can share my frustrations with regarding children. It's nice to actually talk to someone who knows exactly what I am going through, and get advice based on actual past experiences. Connie did asked me if I ever wanted to come back to the agency, and I gave her a quick and certain "NO". I did think about it, I missed working, but being an Insurance Adviser was a really tough job. You get SO MUCH shit just for doing your job, and it's SO MUCH hard work. Really, they just don't get enough credit for what they do.

So be nice to your insurance adviser! That's all. :)

Shopping Extravaganza!

OK finally we have decided on Shanghai for our family trip in November. But since its gonna be quite cold, I have to shop for some warm clothing for Jolie! So over the weekend, we went shopping! Here's what we got...

At a clothing sale at Takashimaya exhibition hall:
2 sets of Osh Kosh B'Gosh clothes ($21.95 X 2)
1 Osh Kosh checked top ($21.95)
1 Bennetton jeans ($20.00)

Hello Kitty shoes (FOC from MIL)

At Mothercare:
2 pairs of pants ($28.80 X 2)
1 set of 80's jogging pants ($41.40)
1 set of turtle neck sweaters ($28.80)

At Winter Wear:
1 Parka ($79.00)
1 wooly hat ($16.90)
1 pair of mittens ($14.90)
2 Sets of inner wear ($14.90 X 4)

Ahem... of course, I would need some winter clothes too! I have nothing to wear! :)

So AT Esprit, I bought 4 tops for a total of $158.06 (I'm already wearing one of them. I also got a pair of leather gloves at Winter wear for $45.00.

At FOX, I found another few winter wear!
Cardigan ($63.90)
Cardigan ($39.90)

Also I just could not resist this beautiful jacket! I just LOVE it! The jacket was $99.90, but we got a whooping 25% of by using our OCBC credit card! What great savings!

Oh, Cobby got something too!

A sweater from FOX, $69.90.

Hmmm I think the next credit card bill is gonna be pretty scary...

What the...

A few days ago, a few red bumps appeared on my right palm. They were red and painful to the touch, but not itchy. What were they??? I have NO idea. I went to see the GP downstairs a few days later as it grew larger. Honestly, it's not VERY painful, but it grew on my RIGHT palm, and I'm right handed, and it is only painful to the touch. So... It's painful to do anything.



I think the doctor don't know what it was either, so she just gave me some cream and mumbled something like, It's probably some sort of allergy.

I started to freak out a little when the pox started to grow in size, and then one pox became a circle of smaller pox. Eww... I kept thinking of all possibilities regarding what the heck it was! Maybe it's a flesh eating bacteria and I'm actually wasting away from the inside. Maybe they are insect bites, but how could I have been bitten so many times on the palm of my hand without me knowing? Worse, maybe insects laid eggs underneath my skin and the larva was gonna grow and wriggle their way out! AAAAHHHHH....!



I was thinking maybe I should go to the National Skin Centre to see a specialist when Cobby suggested that I try his super-duper, anti-biotic, anti-septic cream he used for his infected chickenpox. Oh well, might as well give it a try right? Amazingly, the pox seemed to have improved alot after just one application! Maybe it's the cream from the GP that I've been using for a few days, or maybe it's really because of the super-duper cream. Who knows? Important thing was that I was recovering! Yeah! My arms were not gonna fall out, and no mutant insect larva was gonna chew their way out of my skin!

Jolie on the phone

Jolie developed a real liking for talking on the phone. Even though she doesn't know how to talk yet, she doesn't mind using her own language! Here she is, having a chat with her Grandaunt.

Jolie can read!

Jolie feeding herself

Jolie would always want to feed herself, but her definition of "feeding herself" includes placing the food bowl on top of her head, or flinging the bowl around till the food goes flying around the whole room. So I found this Stay-Put suction bowls from the brand Munchkin and they were great!

At first I was worried. I tried it out by sticking the bowls on the floor, but my little Hercules just yanked them out with brute force. -_- Thankfully she didn't do that when we stuck the bowl onto her feeding chair.

OK to be fair, when she's seriously try to feed herself, she would try to scoop food from the bowl, but the bowl would tip over to the side. Now that it's suctioned onto the table, she can easily scoop the food up and into her mouth.

I wanted to do cartwheels when I see her successfully place the food INSIDE her mouth. YEAH! Now I can just scoop a little food into the bowl, let her wrestle with it and top up with more food when she's done. My baby has yet again reached another milestone in her life. :)