Grandmaster in the making

Since you refuse to go back into the water (like me), since you want to become so much like me, welcome to the world of chess, baby.

From work and weight to house renovation and vacuum cleaner

Work has not been slowing down as I expected. Just as I thought we have some extra time on our hands, it kept piling up again, with more new special projects coming up. It is becoming a norm to HAVE TO work on weekends. This is tiring especially when I have a major exam coming up in June and I have yet to study. =.= Signed up for a revision class in Sunway though next weekend. Hope to be able to cover the syllabus one round before I attend the revision class (which at this rate, is impossible). Paid RM720 for 3 days revision class and one mock exam. Hope it pays off.

All this stress is taking a toll on me and I don't know whether this is a good thing or not. Yesterday, after lunch I felt dizzy and little out of breathe. My initial thought was, am I having high blood pressure. When CY (colleague/friend/TCB batchmate) came in, he said maybe I was just tired. That is probably true as I have been sleeping late the whole week. I have even lost weight. 3-4 months gym workout could not give me this result. I am at my wedding weight now? I thought it was impossible to achieve. I still feel flabby though... looking at my fats protruding from every angle of my body. If this goes on, I might be able to achieve my ideal weight of 52kg after all.

Was it 3 weeks ago... I came home late from work on a Friday night and found out hubby took a room at Equatorial Bangi. The hotel was not bad at all. But I wasn't so thrilled because again, I had to work that Saturday so only went there to sleep. Hubby and Tricia got to enjoy themselves in the bathtub and had breakfast at the hotel. He later told me that the reason he needed to check into a hotel so much was because he smelled like cow dung after delivering cows during the day. So it got me thinking, why don't we buy a jacuzzi? As usual, when I got excited about something, I will keep talking about it and my colleague/friend/gym partner Soke Yee suggested that I go to perfect living expo in PWTC that coming weekend. Maybe I can get a good offer as the jacuzzi I was looking for apparently costs around RM10K. So 2 weeks ago, we went to PWTC for the expo. Initially found a 2-person jacuzzi for RM11K and it was not even that nice. Continued walking until the first hall and found this at a much lower price, 35% cheaper than the first one! Put in 30% deposit for it. There are a lot more choices, nicer ones but at a slightly higher price but I am opting for the cheapest one I can find first as we have many other things to think about. Maybe then if we have extra cash, we could change to those with see-through glass design. 

Our next problem is renovating the toilet. We know our toilets can't fit in this huge jacuzzi. It is a 5' x 5'. I wanted to renovate the toilet in our master bedroom upstairs because it will be in our room. But the renovation cost is going to cost a bomb. Extending our toilet downstairs make sense because we only need to do minimal renovation to extend it to our backyard and hubby was all excited to put it downstairs as we are practically living downstairs anyway. After a long thought, I told hubby, we might as well make a new master bedroom downstairs. It is going to be easier for me to when the next baby comes around. I can serve my confinement period downstairs without having to go up and down the stairs for water/TV/internet. The design has been giving me headache. We are going to get hubby's cousin Dira, who is an interior design student to design it for us. But first I need to know what I want, right? And I want to take down our 8-feet-cupboard downstairs with us. (This design was sightly altered by Soke Yee from my initial design.) I prefer Option 1 as it makes the room looks bigger and spacious but am still open to suggestions. We have not asked for an estimated renovation cost yet and I am just praying that we could afford it. All travel plans (other than the UK one for abang's graduation) has been cancelled.

One final purchase I am looking for now is a good water-based vacuum. One rainbow vacuum salesperson came to our house the other day. I wasn't even interested to listen because I knew the product already. I don't deny that it is a very good product and I want it very much but the price is just ridiculous. RM8K for a vacuum? That's a bit too much. Surveyed online and found people selling a 3-year one on mudah.my for less than half the price. I excitedly called my husband to tell him about it but he said he is tight on cash now so hold that thought. With sad heart, I let go. But last week, Soke Yee was also looking for a good vacuum. And we agreed that rainbow is a very good one. So we decided to call the seller. Funny thing is, when I told this person my name is Farah, she was confused because she said I sound like a chinese. Yes, my English now has a Chinese accent to it after more than a year working in this department. (Okay, that is definitely not a good thing.) Moving on, she told me that a lot of people are looking to buy so we must hurry if we want it. Soke Yee said she will think about it. After much thought and after telling her mom (she got scolded by her mom for wanting to buy a RM3K second-hand vacuum), we decided not to pursue it. She then threw me some other good vacuum names. And I think Dyson is a good alternative at only quarter the cost of a rainbow. Maybe later today or tomorrow, we can go around looking for one.

That's it for now. So many stories cramp up into one post while I have the time to blog about it. Now I am going to spend the little time I have with my babies until I have to go to work later in the afternoon. Until next time, peeps.

1 year + 5 months = 17 months

Woke up Saturday morning and I was excited to try out the new swimming class in Bangi. Went over to UKM and when we arrived, we noticed we left our swimming bag at home. =.= So we ended up watching the class that was going on. There was only one baby in that class and we saw she was doing some basic stuff so we decided not to join. Went back home and took Tricia to Pusat Maritime Putrajaya for a dip but she cried and cried and hang on to me for her dear life in the pool. Ended up playing by the poolside with papa while mummy had some time for herself in the water. Okay. She IS turning into ME. That was exactly what I did when My mummy sent me to swimming class when I was 4. Hmm. How? She is scared of the water now. Mummy said I shouldn't force her because she didn't force me. But that would mean not going to swimming class at all. All the classes before would be such a waste. Haih.

Last Sunday night, we had dinner with mummy in KL. Since mummy was going to work in Sunway after Maghrib, we left around 8pm and reached Bangi around 9pm. Tricia slept on the way home. When she woke up and realised we were home, she got restless. Got very cranky and kept asking us to help her put on her "tacut" or kasut ie shoes. She became very demanding and kept showing us the door. Later around 10.30pm hubby gave in and said "Okay, let's go out". I needed to do some groceries anyway so I suggested we go to Tesco Kajang. Tesco is open until 12pm on Sunday nights. And off we went.

After a little shopping and pushing her in the trolley between the isles, we went home. On the way back, we were talking about her singing her favourite song, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Her father said she can only sing the first line. I argued she can sing until the second line. I don't know whether she could really understand what adults are talking about. But for the first time that night,  while we were arguing about it, she suddenly "sang" the WHOLE song for us in the car. *Speechless* and PROUD!!! Awhhhh sayang. (You are SO clever.) Of course, the third line onwards all we could hear was some mumbled words but the fact that she can hum the whole song was something new to me. (For the first two lines, we could hear the resemblance of her words to the real lyrics.) We have been unable to record her singing the whole song yet. Every time she sees us taking out the phone while she is singing, she will stop.

Now she has also learned the art of kissing. No, no, not the french kiss one. The "comforting" one. I fetched her home Wednesday night. Being in her car seat, she can't reach over to me to kiss me while I was driving. But out of a sudden, I felt she was kissing my left hand that I put on her. It was such a "romantic" moment. (Awhhh, you miss me?) And then at home, I was laying down in front of the TV and was suddenly hit with her tab on the forehead. Then I cried out. "Tricia, sakit laa" sambil ngomel2. She suddenly bent over and kiss my forehead to comfort me. *melt*