Archive for November, 2008

I came across this advice from this dad when I was surfing the net recently. It says “Spend time with your kids before its too late.”  This is exactly my spouse and my sentiments exactly.

I agree totally with this part of the article which reads….

The best time to spend with your children is in the first 10-12 years of their lives.  As teenagers, they begin to distance themselves from you, so make the most of it when they are young, when they want to hug, sit on your knee and love every minute of your company.  (Teenagers, I believe, are less inclined to participate in these fantastic things!).

The author goes on to say that careers can wait. Of course not everyone can afford to take time off work like what he has done because we still need to provide for our families and plan our finances for their education and future.

However, I do think that while the kids are young, parents (not just dads) should try not to work so long hours, travel less, not go for that company trip etc. Of course there is a price to pay for this but its worth it to get to know the kids and bond with them when they are young. They grow up really fast and before you know it, you will have missed out on these wonderful early years.

I have written down all the ways that my kids dad spend time with the kids so that they can remember it in the future. The post:  “When daddy is left alone with the kids” is on my Parenting Times blog. Perhaps, all you other mommy bloggers out there would like to do so too?

I love to personalize my pages. One of the pages that loads whenever I switch on my PC is my personalized iGoogle Homepage. My husband doesn’t bother with personalization. Maybe he doesn’t have the time. Hehe.

My personalized iGoogle Homepage contains the RSS to all the local news. I read the foreign news from Google News so I don’t add it here. I have The Malaysian Insider, MySinchew News, The Star Online, NST Current, Malay Mail, Bernama, EMedia News, Malaysiakini. Everything also sapu for a balanced view. Hehe.

Then I have Inspirational Quotes because I like to look at beautiful pictures and read positive words. I have the KL weather, a dictionary and a translator. And of course I have a link to my Gmail and Google Reader plus all the RSS to all my blogs so that dear Google bot would not miss it. Hahaha. I read this tip somewhere.

Sometimes I add new gadgets to my personalized page and sometimes I remove it when I am bored with it. The above is what I have currently.

And at the moment I am using this really beautiful theme on the header. Its called Winter Village. It has a lovely snow scene with the sun that rises and sets in real time and a sky that brightens and darkens with it. Thats just so cool and the headers are all in a nice calming blue. I like it. I think the theme is just nice to put me in a Chrismasy mood. Hehe. I’m too lazy to do a screenshot but you can check out the link if you are interested. And no, this is not a sponsored post. Hehe. I just wanted to share the link to this theme because I love it!

Do you personalize your Yahoo, MSN, Google pages? What do you have on it?

Dad’s birthday was on Saturday. We decided to take him on a trip down memory lane.

Dad is a retired policeman. He used to be posted in Bentong a very long time ago. I spent my babyhood up to 5 or 6 years there but I can’t remember much of it. We  used to stay in the police barracks. All I remember is there was a big field in front of the barracks where we stayed and all the homes faced this big field in a square.

Anyway, we took dad to Bentong on Saturday. We went in an entourage of 4 cars which included us 5 siblings, our 5 spouses and our 8 kids altogether (2 more were studying so they couldn’t make it) plus our 3 maids (a Cambodian, an Indonesian and a Filipino. So that makes 14 adults, 8 children and 5 nationalities. lol. (My sil is a Singaporean).

We started our journey at 11am. There was heavy traffic on the highway so we arrived in Bentong at 1pm and headed straight for lunch at a restaurant. I can’t remember the name of the place now but it was expensive! I thought that Bentong would be cheaper than KL. Hmm mmm.. The food was just ok and there was a fly zipping about. Hmmm mmm. I forgot to take pictures of the food. I am such a lousy photo blogger. Hehe.

Oh, I forget. Before the journey, my girl vomitted 3 times before and after breakfast. She vomitted twice more in the car but we were ready with extra plastic bags for her. Phew! What bad timing. Poor little darling. Fortunately her stomach held up after lunch.

My impression of Bentong is that it is a clean and well kept little town. I was looking out for the bombers. I think thats what they call the birds that are often found perched on the rooftops and electrical wires all over the town. I saw some on rooftops but I forgot to take pictures again! I don’t know why they call them that. Maybe, you have to watch out for their bomb! Hahaha.

After lunch we headed over to a resthouse. We just wanted to find a place to have coffee and chat actually but when we got there, there was no one around to serve us although the doors were wide open and there was some food on the table. Hmm…mmmm.

So we took Dad to the police barracks that was our home long ago. We took pictures there and some policemen must have thought that we were a group of crazy tourists. Hehe. We even managed a rare photo of Dad with his 5 kids. Its hard to get everyone together these days with everyone’s busy schedules. The police barracks is just opposite my brothers’ and sister’s old school. So they went to peep through the fencing to look at their old school.

After that we went to the Machang Waterfalls (or is it Chamang?). I think thats what it was called. I am very bad at names. The road leading to the waterfall was very windy and narrow, quite scary and there had been an accident and there was blood on the road, even more scary. And so we travelled on this long and windy quiet road but when we got there finally, the place was packed full of people. The car park was full and there were loads of people swimming, camping, having picnics, eating or just enjoying the scenery.

Here’s a picture…. at last. Hehe.

Isn’t nature wonderful? I am afraid my camera is not that good and my photographic skills are even worse. lol.

Nature is so wonderful that this man decided to have a bath and a hairwash right there in the stream under the waterfall. Eww! He was happily scrubbing his body with soap and shampoo.

When he was done shampooing, he dived into the water and emerged…… All done! Hahaha. (The man is on the far left in the picture).

The kids decided to climb the waterfall a little bit. Hubby even allowed my 4 and 6 year old to climb with him and the maid. Aiyoyo. I couldn’t climb and I couldn’t look either. My heart went pip pop pip pop when I saw the kids climbing.  

The older kids or teens removed their shoes and walked about in the stream. My 4 year old pouted when he was not allowed to do that since the stones were rather slippery. We had some hot teh tarik and keropok lekor before we left for………. durians! Dad’s favourite!

We had a durian party at the stall. The stall owner opened up so many durians, all the best variety too. He told us the names but I can’t remember it now. We all walloped the durians. Yummy. Yummy. The stall owner reserved the best durians for Dad but I stole some from him. Hehe. I ate 4! Our durian party cost us RM80. On Sunday, I checked out the durians at the supermarket and they cost RM50 for 6 (no not 6 durians but 6 pieces. That would make it about RM8.34 per piece!)

Full of durian, we finally called it a day and drove home. What a nice day and meaningful birthday for dad. Dad has dementia and has good days and bad days. On his good days, he would be like his chatty old self but on his bad days he would be quiet. He was more quiet than chatty on Saturday but he smiled and laughed quite a lot too.