Preparing for Christmas

I cant believe tomorrow is Christmas...Have been busy with buying presents and travelling that I do not FEEL its Christmas tomorrow. Hmm, but is Christmas just a FEELING?

Of course not! No matter how many Christmas parties you attend, or how many times you go to Orchard Rd to view the lights to get into the atmosphere, or receive tons of presents from friends etc etc...Deep down, you will always have an empty feeling about Christmas if you do not find out the real meaning and purpose behind it. It will just be a day when we eat alot or just a day when we can get off from work.

If it is really just any day, or a festival for Christians, then why are millions or even billions Christians and non-Christians across the world celebrating it? What makes this day so special?

I know my two children sure doesnt understand the true meaning of Christmas at this age and I'm sure Caleb thinks Christmas is about Santa Claus, Christmas trees and presents as he's sure seeing lots of those around him!

Anyway, since I just came back from Malaysia, and being so busy running around for the past week buying presents, I feel that I should just stay at home for Christmas Eve, step back and reflect once again what Christmas is all about.

Yesterday when I went to Woodlands Factory to buy some Christmas party food, the atmosphere in the factories seemed like it was Chinese New Year. It was packed with people, jostling about and grabbing their last minutes stock of food! It was a mad house! I was just thinking to myself, how many of these people actually know what they are celebrating?

So anyway, today, Caleb had a hair cut as his hair was getting a little too messy for the start of his school next year.



Caleb has always been cutting his hair at home since birth and he has come a long way-he used to cry as he doesnt like the feeling of his hair all over his body. But today, he has learnt to just sit back, relax and get his hair cut without crying. So proud of him! Amazingly at his age, he can still fit in his Bumbo seat! So useful!



I also decided to cook lunch and dinner for the family today. For dinner, I prepared a dish which I learnt from one of my favourite local program,"3-in-1", which its a competition between 2 pairs of celebrities in preparing 3 dishes and 1 soup.

This dish is basically twee bah with dou gan beancurd and leeks. Quite tasty with rice!


I have also been trying to master cooking chye sim. I know many would think what's the big deal in cooking a plate of veggies? How difficult can it be? Well, its true that it is easy to cook chye sim as you can simply throw it in, add oyster sauce etc etc and just fry a bit till it cooks. But what I want is not just the taste but texture. I want my veggies to still be bright green, crunchy, but cooked and very tasty! And I also do not want to add any gravy to this dish as I want all its taste and flavour to come out from the natural sweetness of the prawns and vegetables.

Most veggies are tasty but because they are left in the pot for long such that the dish becomes sweet. But the texture is compromised because the veggies will become soft and overcooked. The colour will not be brightly green anymore.

So what I did with this dish was to boil the chye sim in a pot of boiling salt cum sesame oil water first till its 3/4 cook. Then remove it and run it over cold water. Then I heat my wok with oil, and lots of garlic, I throw in the prawns first (which was marinated with XO, salt, pepper and soya sauce), stir the prawns till its almost cook. Then throw in the veggies and stir a couple of times, add oyster sauce and quickly switch off the fire.


I feel I still havent perfected it as the veggies still fall a little short of being as crunchy as I wanted it to be. But nevertheless, was satisfied. Will work harder next time!

After dinner, I prepared my potato cheese and bacon dish for tomorrow's Christmas party at my sister-in-law's place! This dish can be prepared in advance to allow me time to cook other dishes tomorrow. Will only need to microwave and grill this tomorrow.




Also spent time doing some art and craft with Caleb after dinner. Here's the outcome of it!


Caleb was busy helping to paste those stickers to decorate the tree.



It was fun! I cant wait to wake up tomorrow to open all the presents below my Christmas tree!! Its nice to always wait in anticipation to tear open the presents on Christmas morning...just like when I was young.

There's always a reward to those who wait...(arghh...I am tearing my hair out inside me just waiting and waiting to open those presents. Its tempting)

Heading back home

Woke up early as usual.



After breakfast, we went for a swim across the other wing. Caleb was freezing in the pool as it was quite cold. But nevertheless, he still stayed in there for quite a while. I even made him go into the adult pool with me.



After the swim and bath, Caleb was busy with his guitar once again! During the trip, he kept taking it around wherever he went about in the hotel.


Then he did some drawing as we waited to check out of the hotel.

Here's a picture of an excavator! I think its nice! Well, at least I can guess what he was drawing. So not too bad.


We had lunch at JB before going back by Woodlands Checkpoint. After reaching Singapore, we immediately went to the Woodlands factory to visit Fassler-great place for Salmon, unagi, soups, scallops etc and Melvados - place for desserts and pastries. This was our last minute Christmas food shopping.

On the way back home, Caleb was busy singing and strumming his guitar. Quite funny. Check out the video!



I have really no idea what he was singing. For now, its cute..

2nd day in JB

Woke up catching this view from my bedroom..



Went down for breakfast at about 8 plus am. A few of the kids went up to Caleb and played with him. Andrew even lent Caleb his cap.

After breakfast, it was free and easy for us today. So we went back to the room to rest a while. Here's our one bedroom suite..








For lunch, the rest stayed back in the hotel to eat while I told CT that we should venture out as the hotel food is boring and expensive. So I took the wheel and just drove randomly...something I love doing as its exciting- just like going on an adventure as you do not know what will happen and where we are going. In the end, we ended up at Jusco where we had KFC. I enjoyed the lunch very much as it was so cheap. About S$4 for a KFC meal. Caleb also ate a lot as they served chicken rice with KFC chicken and it also comes with chicken ball soup.



We shopped for an hour before heading back to the hotel. By the time we reached back hotel, it was already about 2 plus-3 pm. Caleb fell asleep till about 4pm and so we didnt go swimming.

Met up with everyone at about 5pm and drove to Danga Bay for sightseeing and dinner. Too bad the weather wasnt good...it was raining. So we all went for early dinner at Grand Straits Garden. I would recommend this place for dinner if you have alot of people eating as its very reasonable and the food is nice! The place is also very clean and huge!





While waiting for the food to come, we were entertained by the decorations and Caleb could also walk or run about given the space.




There's also a live seafood area for the kids/adults to see and learn.


There were quite a number of seafood which I have never seen before. I enjoyed looking at them too!






Here are some of the many dishes which we ordered.

Homemade Bean Curd (Hakka Style)-$30 RM


Kampong Chicken with garlic sauce-$22 RM


Lala shells cooked in a very light, sweet and spicy broth! I kept drinking the 'soup'. - $35 RM


Veggies (quite unique. Have not tried this before. Its nice!)- $40 RM


Yam basket - $40 RM


2 Salted Egg Crabs - $94 RM


The children sat in one table while the adults sat in another table. The kids have their own food. They had Yong Chow fried rice ($10 RM), Seafood Hor Fun ($16 RM), De-shelled Cereal prawns ($32 RM), Brocolli ($14 RM).

Total bill for the 2 tables amounted to $444.40 (RM). As you can see, the price isnt very cheap, compared to other Malaysian food, but because there were 10 adults altogether, we only had to fork out $44 RM per person, which is less S$20 per person which is reasonable considering the amount of dishes we ordered and there was even crabs!

After dinner, the rain stopped and so we dropped by an Danga Bay shopping area to walk around. There was a one storey indoor shopping arcade place and a pasar malam outdoors.


At night, it was the men's fellowship. So what the women did was to gather altogether in one room and let the kids watch cartoons as one of our friends brought their DVD-recordable player which stored alot of the movies in it.



Didnt stay long as Caleb usually sleeps early and I was getting tired too.

When we reached home, I changed Caleb, brushed his teeth and then he automatically climbed into the cot and drank his milk...nitey night!

Cell group retreat at JB

This morning, we set off to Pulai Springs, JB for a 3 days 2 nights stay with my church cell group for a planning retreat. We first gathered at NTU hostel at around 10am before setting off to Malaysia. I found it interesting that I actually went on a holiday to Malaysia three times within Dec this year since I am not a huge fan of driving into Malaysia and getting caught in the causeway jam. But guess its the most practical choice, considering I have 2 young kids. But we left Danielle and Vicky with my parents as we felt more comfortable just bringing Caleb.

Dropped by at Sutera Mall first for shopping and lunch before checking in.


First impression of the mall- there's hardly anyone around! Unlike the malls in Singapore. And because of that, the kids had so much space running and pushing prams F1 style.



We had lunch at Secret's Recipe.


The food was BAD! It was very slow (maybe because they never had such a crowd for lunch before since there were about 20 of us, but the food also tasted bad! One of the lagsana dish was cold inside! As for the butter rice which I ordered for Caleb, it tasted more like pepper rice!



Even the cream of pumpkin soup that some ordered tasted bad! I tried a spoon and it tasted more like curry sauce! Oh man...Only the desserts were good. I ordered a New York Cheesecake while waiting for my chicken chop, since I was hungry.

We walked around after lunch, did some grocery shopping in Carrefour and spent some time for Caleb to 'play' (without putting in any money) with these machines.


I like these machines here as they were huge! It seemed big enough for 3 children. I know I cant squeeze in the Singapore ones..





Managed to buy a guitar for Caleb at the mall for S$10 since he loves to play guitar and drums!



Checked into hotel at about 4pm, even though we reached at 3pm as we kept waiting and waiting at the lobby for our room! Its frustrating for us since we were still in the Singapore mode- efficient. We had to keep reminding us that we were on holiday in Malaysia.

Here are some pictures of Pulai Springs which we stayed in.





There was another building we had to cross over. It was a sports and recreation building which had restaurants, lounge, fun swimming pool, kids club, library, Karaoke room, movie theatre etc.



I volunteered to be the Food IC for this trip and so, I brought the whole group to Huizu Hot Wok for dinner. I havent been there myself but I read the reviews and it seemed not bad. What was impressive was that it had a website and they even provided the GPS Coordinates for their location! It was useful since everyone of us had GPS in our car. We had fun travelling as all of us were equipped with walkie talkie and the communication with one another during the car trip was fun.



The Hui people is basically a Chinese ethinic Islam group mainly in Northwest China. So the unique flavours of their food can be seen in their food here.



While waiting for the food, I went around taking pictures of our group! Here are some of the kids and their families!

Here is Eunice, the oldest of all among the children. She is 10 years old, coming to 11 years.


Then there is Aaron, the second eldest in the group who is 8 years old. He is being home schooled. Very mature and sensible kid who likes to read.



Here's Dayna who is very photogenic. She is 4 years old.


Here's our cell group leader, Daniel and Rachel who has 3 kids- Eunice, Andrew and the newborn, Matthew. Their family is the DREAM team (Daniel, Rachel, Eunice, Andrew, Matthew)!


Then here's another family with newborn- Wi Sze, Jeannette and baby Denzel. Dayna is also part of their family.



Then there's the wonder family-Christian and Phyllis with 3 of their kids, Aaron, Julia and Elijah who are all being home schooled by their super mummy!



Here's Tony and Koon Eng with their son, Joshua. Tony is a pastoral staff in our church who happens to be in our cell as well!


Then finally, our family! (without Danielle of course)


Caleb was busy playing with the korkors before dinner.


The drink that we ordered was fantastic! I ordered ice blended dragon fruit as well as starfruit juice with sour plum! All so yummy! You must definitely order this if you come to this place to eat!





Here's our dinner! We ordered set menu since it was the easiest to order as they dont speak English at all! Only Malay..


Frankly speaking, I didnt know what I was eating in this dish but it was very tasty and good!


We had veggies, venison, butter prawns (which was sinfully yummy), sharkfins soup, roasted chicken with thai mango sauce, steamed sea bass and fried rice.

Most of the people who went there ordered only staples like fried rice, fried kway teow, fried bee hoon. So I guess that should be their specialty! haha.


I will be back again if I happen to be around this area.

After dinner, according to the programme, we had ladies fellowship. This means that the men had the opportunity to be left all alone with the kids to take care of and to put them to sleep. It was fun since I always enjoy seeing CT step up and take care of the children!

The ladies met up at the lounge where we ordered mocktails, finger food and played "Imaginiff"- a boardgame which I brought.




In the lounge, there was also a decent size movie theatre.



We had loads of fun playing the game as this game allowed us to get to know one another better.



Through this game, I realised that some of the ladies found CT cute with his dimples and blushed face. I also discovered that Rachel is a clean freak! I also found out that Jeannette who does not seem sporty, likes to watch ESPN channel!


We ended at about 11 plus pm and by the time I reached back my hotel room, both CT and Caleb were fast asleep. Caleb was even sleeping in the baby cot! I was amazed at how CT could convince Caleb to go in. In the end, I found out that Caleb, himself, wanted to go in and sleep. He probably found it interesting.

Here's my oversized baby sleeping in the cot!