Category Archive: Et-cetera

This is not what you think, definitely not vulgarity using the third finger ok.

Yesterday was a classic Monday blues day for me.

After the week-long Raya holiday, I was worried on Sunday night that I could not wake up at 4:45am the next morning. I triple-checked the alarm on my alarm clock and mobile phone on Sunday night. After my previous incident of oversleeping when I had forgotten to turn on my alarm clock, I now have a phobia of not setting my alarm clock.

When my alarm clock buzzed at 4:45am on Monday morning, I stumbled out of bed. In the haste to get up, I accidentally scratched my left finger with my right fingers when I pulled my blanket off… from the third finger all the way 8cm up to the knuckle shiats! It was darn painful pulling my skin off too *SOBS*  The skin from my injured left hand was scraped off and lodged underneath the finger nails of my right hand. How gross can that be, ewwwwwww!!

While Cass was brushing her teeth in the bathroom, she slipped and fell backward.  She hit her head and back. This rascal who hardly cries, cried. I was scared shit, worried that she had injured her brain and back.  Her back is now bruised and the back of her head has a bump. She told me last night that her back was painful when she lay on the bed 🙁

The much scornful haze is back again, no thanks to weeks of drought. It is very dry, hot and humid now.  My kids and I are starting to get itchy nose, blocked nose and phlegm easily now, caused by the haze and the extremely hot weather.  To add fuel to fire, many parts of our country are hit badly by the water rationing exercise. During the water rationing period, we will get 2 days of water and 2 days off water.   For those of you living in cold countries, count your blessings for the cold weather and free flow of water from your taps.  I just wish that we could escape from this country to a place that is freezing cold, to a place where water flows out abundantly from your tap, without any restriction!

While waiting for Alycia to have her hair cut at a hair salon today, I saw a lady seated next to me having a hair rebonding done.  On the table in front of her was a plate of bite-size snacks, a cup of tea and a cup of water.  Moments later, the air in the hair salon was wafting with the familiar aromatic smell of coffee, you know the kind of coffee from coffee boutiques and hotels.  I turned to my side and saw the owner of the hair salon serving the lady with her hair being rebonded with a cup of latte, complete with foam and decor on the foam!  I turned back and saw a sophisticated coffee maker and tins of illy coffee powder.  It was illy coffee and not just any brand of coffee ok! What do you know?  Customers who go to this salon for expensive packages like hair rebonding or hair keratine costing hundreds if not thousands of bucks are served like queens! Hmmm, maybe I should have my hair rebonding done there too, so that I can be served like a queen too lol! Seriously, I have been wanting to do a hair rebonding since my last hair rebonding 7 years ago but just cannot find the time to do so.

Besides getting ‘heatiness’ from consuming ‘heaty food’, the Chinese believe that one can also get “kar for” or ‘fake heatiness’ from lack of sleep.  This I have to agree because I am susceptible to throat infections or simply feel sluggish and sickly if I do not get enough sleep. I have been getting only 5 hours of sleep for the past few nights and feel lackluster now. I am SO GLAD that there are 2 public holiday falling on Thursday and Friday respectively, followed by the weekend! This would mean that I need not have to be up by 5am to get the girls ready for school.

YAY!!!  And happy holidays peeps!!

A sparkling apple with shiny red skin does not necessarily mean that the inner part is just as good. Well, the outer flesh can still look enticingly white and juicy but you can only tell that the apple is 100% good after you cut it into half to expose its core.

I was very much disappointed when the seemingly red, sweet and juicy apple that I bought turned out to have a ‘rotten heart’. As it was an expensive apple, I felt it was such a waste to throw the entire apple away. Before binning the apple, I nibbled away the outer flesh which still tasted very sweet and crunchy. But as I was chewing on the half rotten apple, I was overcome with worry. I had once read from an article that said that if a part of a fruit has turned bad, the entire fruit should be discarded. What if my frugality by eating half rotting food leads me to some kind of major ailments over time?

Do you throw the entire fruit away if only part of it has turned bad?

Do not judge the apple by its skin! And do not judge a person from his/her looks as it is really deceiving!

Not mine lar, I hope the title didn’t scare you 😀  It’s the butcher / veggie seller whom I normally patronize in the morning.  This morning at the market-on-van, I overhead the butcher’s wife telling all the ‘see lais’ (housewives) that her hubby was at the A&E Dept. of the hospital on Saturday.  She was telling them that it was gory, blood was everywhere and he needed 6 stitches on his fingers.  I then asked her what happened and she told me that her hubby chopped his own fingers with the huge, sharp cleaver while chopping pork for his customer,  YIKES!   When I heard that, my legs felt wobbly.  I felt nauseated.  I quickly took a look at the butcher’s fingers. Two fingers were bandaged and on top of the bandages, he wrapped them with a plastic bag.    Eeewwwww, I don’t think I want to buy pork and chicken from him for the next few days!  The accident was on Saturday and today is Monday, which means it’s only day 2 of the accident and the wound is still quite raw.     But the burly butcher was nonchalant and looked cool and smiley…. and business was as usual for him.  He was chopping the meat as usual on the huge wooden chopping board, with bandages and plastic bags wrapped round his fingers.  Thank God I wasn’t at his stall on Saturday. I almost wanted to buy chicken from him on Saturday but changed my mind at the eleventh hour.  I will surely have nightmares if I were there and saw him chopping his own fingers instead of the chicken that I wanted.  Gawd, so geli!!

I bought a packet of white sesame seeds the other day to toast them in a non-stick pan. After my maid had poured all the sesame seeds into the pan, she noticed something wriggling in the pan.

She quickly called me and here’s what we saw :

2 worms wriggling amongst the seeds, yikes!  So don’t you think that sesame seeds are worm-free food.  Even pearl barley can easily be infested with worms and I tasted them once when my maid boiled the barley with water.  Thank goodness I felt something on my tongue and when I spat it out, gosh, I was horrified to see a dead worm!  When I checked the pot of barley water, I was aghast to see lots of worms floating in the water!  So be extra cautious before you boil or cook any seeds!

Whilst I was waiting to see Baby C’s pediatric surgeon yesterday, I saw a mother sitting on a wheelchair, also waiting outside our doctor’s office.  On her lap was her 5-year old son, with a urine bag attached to his bottom,  hanging on the wheelchair.  When the lady saw me and Baby C, she smiled at me and commented how cute Baby C was and as usual, commented on how much hair Baby C has.  I always get this comment from strangers about Baby C’s thick hair.  I then struck a conversation with her. 

I learnt that her son had just undergone a surgery, his second surgery in 1 week and he has had undergone almost 10 surgeries since he was 1 year old!   Some complications arose after the initial surgery 2 weeks ago and 1 week later, the boy had to operated on again.  The lady told me that though her son is a very tough boy with high pain threshold, he was however very, very traumatized by the 2 most recent surgeries, as the surgeries had to be carried out one after another, in such a short gap.  This cute and handsome little boy has a blockage somewhere in his urinary system and thus, his pee could not come out in full stream each time he pees.  Each time he pees, he would also feel pain.  His first surgery was at 1 yo, second one at 1.5 yo, third surgery at 2 yo, etc, etc. This lady told me that she has to be really strong for her son and has to try not to cry. When everyone in the family was crying, she had to stay strong, hold back her tears, all for her son. My eyes were wet when I heard her story. I tried not to be seen with my eyes wet too. It was such a heartbreaking story.  Even as I am typing this post, I can remember vividly the look on the little boy’s face, hugging his mummy and when he was inside the doctor’s office, I could hear his screams and cries as the doctor cleaned his wound.  When he came out from the doctor’s office, I saw blood everywhere on his clothes.  I pray that this boy does not have to undergo anymore surgeries, ever.