GOOD ( and I really mean GOOOODDD!!) Food

It's post exam period in school and this is the best time to arrange enrichment programs and learning journeys for students. I decided to bring them to learn more about a chinese traditional food--饺子(dumplings).

The students had a lot of fun learning the tradition and types of dumplings. They even tried their hands on trying to wrap the dumplings! After the learning session, the students and teachers get to sample some of the food in the restaurant. We all LOVE the food! It's just so delicious! I tell you, this place serves one of the best dumplings I have ever tasted! The sesame pancake is also excellent!!

It's a very humble and small restaurant at 3 Kampong Bahru Road. It's called 稻香拉面小笼包馆. Where is this 3 Kampong Bahru Road? It's at the end of Neil Road, opposite the bus interchange near SGH. The nearest MRT would be Outram MRT.

Turst me. You got to try the food there.

I am bringing Clement and Jaimie there this weekend. :)

童言十分无忌

（之一）
爸爸在生闷气。

媛媛叫了他好几次，他都不出声回应。

媛媛：“爸爸，为什么你不应我？你是不是耳聋？”


（之二）
媛媛：婆婆，人老了是不是去天堂？

婆婆：是。

媛媛：那你以后去了天堂你会不会想媛媛？

婆婆：会~

媛媛：那你从天堂回来看我啦！

Rosemary Chicken Dinner

I made baked rosemary chicken for dinner. I got this recipe from my best friend, HappyPig, which was a little different from how I used to bake. It's interesting. You add garlic cloves and onion to add to the fragrance, and at the same time cut some potatoes and bake them together. Seasoning is simple. Just salt, black pepper and dried rosemary, with a little olive oil. Bake at 200 for 25mins and 180 for 40mins. And you are done!

Clement loves the baked potatoes.

I would love to make rosemary chicken bento but that means I will have to wake up at 5am to do the baking?????

Huh!

Anybody has any solution for me?

Trial Dancing Class

Last week, Jaimie pleaded us to let her join the dancing class at Jody Marshall. She has been looking forward to this Sunday and finally, she gets to attend her class.

This is the kind of dancing class I wanted Jaimie to go to. Loads of fun, lots of movement, happy, enjoyable and expressive. The class was 45mins and Jaimie was smiling and laughing happily for at least an hour. Even after the class, she was in all smiles. When I asked her how much she liked her class, she stretched her arms to the max and told me "THHHHIIIIIISSSS MUCHHH!!!"

We didn't sign up for the classes now as there are only 4-5 weeks left for this semester and of which, we wont be around for 2-3 weekends. We'll sign up when the term starts in July. Meanwhile, we'll still bring her there and pay-per-lesson.

I have never seen Jaimie so happy in a class. The joyful look on her face is priceless to us.

Training For SAFRA Run 2010 (6)

We had a very good dinner at Imperial Treasure last evening and this afternoon is my mom's birthday lunch. Hence, there is a compelling need to exercise although we both felt a bit lazy.

10km on the threadmill again. This time, I completed mine at a record speed of average 9km/h so that means it was about 67mins!

I was even faster than Clement! Yeah! Well, he wanted to run at "fat burning zone" hence he chose to jog at a slower speed. Look at his new gadget. It is a Sony plug-in MP3 player. I think we bought quite a lot of stuff for our training (read: shopaholic!!!) and I am thinking of getting a polar watch...hmmm...

Now I think I deserve the good lunch.

Do You Want To Visit Taiwan? YES WE DO!

Clement and I were walking around Suntec City this evening after a good dinner at Imperial Treasure, enjoying our regular couple time every Friday evening when we walked past a wedding photo booth right opposite the Duck Tour counter.

We were talking about my upcoming Taiwan trip and remembering the wonderful moments in our previous Taipei trip when somebody approached us with a brochure with the opening statement "Do you want to visit Taiwan? We give free accomodation and free air tickets."

DING! DING! DING! DING! YES WE DO!!!

So it was a wedding photo studio working together with Taiwan Tourism Board to promote "Visit Taiwan 2010". But we have taken our wedding pictures 12 years ago~?

Take family pictures then!

We thought the deal was fantastic. We get 20 outdoor photos (5R) in an album, a 16" (I think?) photo with frame, 3 changes in outfit plus makeup and hairdo including Jaimie's, 2 nights' stay in a hotel and 3 air tickets to Taipei. No time limitation. Just email them 1.5mths in advance to book the dates. For a very special weekday late night price of $2000.

They will be there till this weekend.

Do you want to visit Taiwan?

YES WE DO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Training For SAFRA Run 2010 (5)

I went to Suntec yesterday to exchange for a tshirt size but the shop was temporary closed for a salesperson's short break. I walked a few steps and saw Auntie Anne's. A healthy pretzel and a cup of cool lemonade should be good for tea while I wait for the salesperson's return. Then, I saw something which I think is a sign from ... wherever. Gelare is RIGHT beside Auntie Anne's! GOSH! And Tuesday is Waffle Day @ Gelare!

I was literally having a debate within myself and torn between the 2 shops. It is happiness vs discipline. At this very moment, I received my BFF's message and she told me the good news that the garmen is not going to reduce the MT weightage at PSLE! That calls for a celebration! So I asked her where should I hold my presonal celebration. In case some of you do not know, she is in this weight loss competition with me. My BFF, who was sending me messages while working out on a stepping machine, told me to go for BOTH because it was such a happy news!

I happily walked into her "trap" and ordered myself a waffle with my favourite cookie and cream. I was rational enough to ask for no whipped cream and no syrup to minimise the sinfulness.

Happiness is induldging in waffle ice cream and a funny book.

My very nice colleague, Yanya, baked this yummy yummy cupcake for a few of us today. I am just posting this because I do not know where else to document it. Hahaha~~

Anyway, I decided that I must burn off some of the calories I consumed. I ran 10km on the threadmill again at an average speed of 8.3km/h. It burns off 550calories. For your info, I had to run 6km to burn off 300 calories-- the amt in a cup of avocado milkshake.

I read this in a friend's FB status: "If only mosquitoes suck fat...". I so like it.

Funny Jaimie

(1) Having introduced to Ultraman, Iron Man, Superman, Spiderman, Jaimie came up with her very own super hero, APPLE MAN!!!!Apple man is originated by Jaimie. It has the head of an apple with round eyes, a smiley face and a a pig-like nose. It's background story and super powers is yet to be revealed. Stay tuned for the next super hero on the blog!


(2)
"I love my friend Ai Ning. When I see her my eyes turned into heart shape."
"Oh. Do your eyes turn into heart shape when you see mommy?"
"YES!"
"Do your eyes turn into heart shape when you see papa?"
"No. My eyes are round."

Training For SAFRA Run 2010 (4)

I ran for 1hr 15mins on the threadmill at an average speed of 8.1km/h.

Let me recall my maths... distance= speed x time

This should be about 10km then.

Primary school maths isn't so straight forward anymore!!!

My friend posted this in her FB-- a Primary 4 Maths question:

MRT is 2/5 full. 1/2 got out and 17 came in and it was 1/4 full. How many people were there at first?

Try solving it without algebra!!!!

Little Dancer?

After having a Mother's Day lunch with my parents and my in laws, we went to Suntec City to look for an Ultraman toy for Jaimie. Jaimie, under the heavy influence of Clement, is very much into Transformers and Ultraman now. =_='''

Anyway, on our way to Toys R Us, we passed by the dance school and it seemed to be having an open house or road show kind of thing. In one of the studios was a pre-school dancing class and the teacher was teaching 3 children to dance with some basic ballet movements. Jaimie was literally begging me to let her join the class!

I enquired about trial classes and signed her up for the one next Sunday. I gave Jaimie the timetable and told her it was the "ticket" to her dance class. She pressed her face against the glass door and waved her "ticket", asking to go into the class. Clement and I had a hard time trying to explain to her the "ticket" was for next week. You should see the disappointing look on her face... she then held on to her "ticket" so dearly and carefully. She even refused to let me safe keep it for her.

Well, it seems like Jaimie likes dancing more than Taekwondo! She refused to join in the TKD class when we went for the trial class and we actually had to convince her to try again. Clement said, "I think we'll forget about taekwondo lah. Michelle Yeoh started off as a dancer too."

Hmmm. True.

Let's see how Jaimie enjoys her trial lesson before we commit her to dancing classes. The fees are quite reasonable -- $240 for 11 lessons, $25 for trial lesson.

Join us next week?

Happy Mothers' Day

When we celebrate Mothers' Day, let's remember the mothers who gave their heart and love to their physically challenged children.

Training For SAFRA Run 2010 (3)

You see, we are really quite serious in our run so we needed to get the right shoes for the running event (read: shopacholic). So we went to the Running Lab in Velocity in Novena Square 2 to get a pair of track shoes that best suits us.

For my entire life I have been choosing track shoes based on the asthetic design. I never knew I should get a pair of shoes that suits the kind of feet I have. Alvin from Running Lab is an excellent, excellent consultant. He observed us very carefully when we walked and jogged on the theadmill so that he can give us the best advise. If you want to read more about how to choose jogging shoes, click here.

His observation is I am an overrpronator with low arch. Upon checking my injury history and running habits, he recommended me to get shoes that are of "moderate stability". Clement is also an overpronator with even lower arch and his right foot is close to flat foot. Hence he needs maximum stability shoes. He went on to measure the width and the length of our feet. I never knew that running shoes, like bra sizes, have width from A-E! New Balance have shoes for people with a bigger, er... width. Other shoes are usually a A-B width. So I am a B and Clement is a D.

After finding out all the statistics about our feet, we still need to try on different shoes to see which one we are most comfortable in. Alvin brought out shoes from Nike, Asics, Saucony and New Balance for us to try. In the end, both Clement and I chose Ascis.

In our new shoes, we happily planned to go jogging around Jurong Lake and even aimed for 10km. In the end, after 5km, we were quite dead already because the weather was simply too hot!! We dragged our tired bodies into the Chinese Garden and motivated each other to carry on. Oh, correction. I was the one motivating Clement to carry on. He kept saying he was dehydrating already. I told him we'll get a cold drink from the vending machine when we returned to the entrance to hang the carrot in front of him. What I didn't tell him was I didn't bring coins with me. Hehehehe!!!

In the end, we managed to run 1 hour and 55sec. Nothing tastes better than a Big Gulp after the hard work!

Training For SAFRA Run 2010 (2)

It's Labour Day off-in-lieu for both Clement and myself so we headed to ECP for our training for the run after sending Jaimie to school.

Armed with an IPod fully loaded with MayDay songs, we aimed to run 10km but in the end we only managed something between 7-8km. We jogged from Carl's Junior to the ECP Food Centre and then we turned back. After that, we went to Carl's Junior for breakfast to tap on their free flow of drinks. I think we refilled our cups 4 times to quench our thirst!

Not bad for me because I will only be running 10km. It's just a little more than today's distance. It's important to train on the road as it is very different to run on the treadmill and on the road. Running on the road requires much more effort and energy. However, this is only ONE THIRD of what Clement is in for!!! The thought of it demoralised him already. =_='''

Half way mark-- the sand castle. I always wonder how did it survive the rain.

Ending Point!!! 1 Hour of hard work!!!

Total time clocked-- 1 hour 3min 27'26sec.

Young Cyclists @ West Coast Park

It has been a while since the Usual Suspects meet up. Today we brought our children and their bicycles to West Coast Park to cycle. Unfortunately Wolfie had a toothache and couldn't come.

The storm riders.

Ezra was too shy to join in the group of girls for photo taking. He's the only boy in the group. Count your blessings, Ezra!!! So many boys would love to be in your shoes! :D

Jaimie managed to cycle well! In fact, her maneuvering skills has improved since the last cycling session at East Coast Park!

Paddling the bicycle is a lot of hard work. So does chasing behind the bicycle.

After half an hour of so, the kids were tired and so were the adults. We decided to sit down and do some less physically demanding activities such as flying kite. However, this morning wasn't the windy. The daddies as usual were very enthusiastic and made a lot of effort in trying to get the kite up. The kids were bored by the unsuccessful attempts and ran off to have fun among themselves.

Jaimie enjoys the company of her friends. She was happy to see them.

So do the mommies.

Jaimie trying out Cherrlyn's scooter.

Enjoying the ipod (every child has one!!!) and the banana muffins (yummy~~) Viv baked.

You have, I have~~

The kids couldn't sit still for more than 10mins. They decided to go to the playground. MF joined us after their breakfast at MacDonald's.

It was getting unbearably hot by 11am. We drove off to West Coast Plaza to enjoy the good food and company at BBQ Chicken (again).

It is always so good to meet up with friends!