The Dreaded Flu/Fever

These past two weeks, I have been on and off going to classes.

Yes, yes, I KNOW! Exams are super close. So nervous and anxious. Yesterday, I was still thinking about an answer I gave in a Q&A session. Still doubting myself in certain aspects. Hoping to eliminate them by May.

The reason for my tardiness including today's? 

The dreaded fever. Must have caught it earlier from Hubs and only now it's coming on. No flu yet thankfully. Just a slight runny nose but it has stopped for now.

The past one week over, it was Hubs all the way with me on and off. In my case, it was minor  enough. Nothing clarinase or claritine can't fix. Hubs however had the fever/flu full blown thang' going on. Not really a proper excuse but I stayed home to attend to him. On Wednesday, his appetite was back and he was excited to go to the pasar malam that evening for some Nasi Kukus Ayam Berempah. I skipped class that day to amuse him, upon his persuasion too of course. Once there, he wanted the same thing I bought which was Assam Laksa. I was happy that finally his fever abated.

Mine however started last night. I thought maybe it was the weather or that time of the month is coming on. My whole body ached so much I think I cried while I was asleep. This morning, it was not even 9.30 am yet and I had gone to the toilet 4 times. 

Hubs was annoyed this morning. He wanted me to skip class on the pretense I was not well when in all honesty it was for another reason...to attend a kenduri which was only made known to us last night.

Seriously, if I were to skip my classes because of my fever, it would be to rest at home and not gallivanting at a kenduri looking sickly and desperate for a clean washroom nearby.

"It's so that I can have you nearby?"

Seriously? Logic there is totally misplaced. Just come home quickly after the kenduri and attend to your wife MAN. 

In the meantime, studying at home with the door open so that I don't feel so lonely. Kitties came in and out to see what I was up to. 

Tengah-tengah study, felt as though someone or something was watching me. Then, saw this fella watching my back.

SPAAAZZZZZZ!!! 

His favourite spot in the study room.

Here's a close up. It's the same picture I posed on Insta.

Ok, break's over. Back to work!

Have a good weekend everybody.

Anya Hindmarch AW16

Over the weekend, Anya fans had the opportunity to view her AW16 collection streamed live online.  I've always loved her show.

These past few months I've been eyeing Anya's All Over Sticker Featherweight Ebury. Now with her pixalated, digital, arcade games/ pacman inspired designs, I may have to rethink which one I'd like to purchase.

These are some of the bling bling from Anya Hindmarch's AW16 collection backstage.

Just as I thought her designs can't get better, she manages to make it even more fun for her fans. Anya and her team explored each design using innovative leatherwork techniques such as heat-fusing and leather marquetry for her latest collection.

Among my faves so far are as shown below.

This space-man invader on the buckle of the clutch gave a nice touch of fun without being too overpowering to the design.

I love how she played with the tassle for her Georgiana clutch whilst leaving the clutch's bold colours speak for itself.

Most of all, I love, love LOVE this tote...hoping they'd have a medium sized version of it though.

This pixalated Bathurst Satchel is cute too.

This maxi zip satchel reminds me of the texture of the buah salak skin.

And finally, this Pacman handbag is playful and too hard to resist from including it among my wish list.

Can't wait for her AW16 collection to reach our shores. Yay!

Healthy Eating

Lately, I've been forcing my healthy eating habits at home. Well, trying to would be a more apt description of my efforts.

Since Hubs was ill and I was off and on ill as well during the weekend, what better time to go healthy right?

First, no more mixed white rice and brown rice. I was too lazy to go through all that effort. We went all the way with brown rice to much of Hubs' dismay.

Next, chicken soup. Using only lean meat and those I've already boiled to get rid of the fat. Loaded the soup with plenty of veggies too.

Then, came Sunday. Salad for late lunch. No snacking. Hubs was already pissed by this time.

"Boring ar all this healthy stuff!"

After our lunch, I went to our front yard to hang some clothes. Came back in to find Hubs in the kitchen wiping the floor.

"What happened?"

"Botol sos cili pecah. Dah you letak kat corner tu I tak nampak, jatuh, pecah ar"

Haizzz...he was trying to take out the snacks from the cupboard and in the process broke the unopened bottle of Life Chilli Sauce.

I felt totally bad ok. I may be able to withstand a bit of starvation to get to our goals but it seems Hubs is not ready yet.

"Come...I'll cooked some scrambled eggs"

"I don't want anymore healthy stuff"

I cooked it anyway and shared it with him. Gave the excuse I was feeling munchy. Even put a bit of butter to cook the eggs with for taste. At the same time assured him that what he got was not the healthy version. If it was, it would have been only egg whites, less salt and cooked with no oil or just a dollop of it.

How do I make clean and healthy eating more interesting?

No.1 Kid Clothes Online Store

With two nephews in the family, I’m always on the lookout for toys and clothes to lavish them with. However, with most of my time nowadays occupied with classes, law books and others, online shopping is my preferred mode to shop for kids clothes.

Where exactly?

Zalora , of course!

With just a few clicks, my purchase will be sent directly to my home safely, without having to go through the hassle of finding parking or fighting through the busy crowd to shop.

  

Not just kids clothes but the whole enchilada so to speak…shoes, belts, accessories...SEMUA ada kat Zalora Malaysia.

ZALORA carries hundreds of brands specifically for kids at a range of prices to suit your needs. Not just that, we pun dapat enjoy perkhidmatan penghantaran percuma dari ZALORA kid clothes online store terus ke rumah. We’d also get to return the items secara percuma within 30 days after the date of purchase.

At the moment, I have my eye on this cute little shark bathrobe.

So, don’t wait for the weekend to shop. Start clicking on Zalora and get those cute clothes for your kiddy cuties.

Valentine Breakfast

It was too lovely of a Sunday to spend most of my day cooped up in class.

Plus, it's Valentine's.

So, I skipped my Evidence class...haiz...to my Husband's delight.

Feeling partly guilty and partly elated for being able to spend our lovely Sunday together, we decided to keep the day simple.

We started off our Valentine's with breakfast at Levain's that morning. 

I love the smell of freshly baked pastries in the morning! I can feel my thighs expanding from just smelling those awesome sugar and butter coated carbs!

Look but don't touch!

It was these chocolate chip bread or the danish pastries.

Croissants anyone?

Look at those Octopus buns.

Me with my English tea.

By 1030am, we were done with breakfast. We felt it was too early to go home so we headed to Pavilion to kill time. 

Made a minor purchase at one of the shops in Pavi and with the shop's Valentine promo, got a free Teddy Bear keychain. Since hubs paid for the purchase, I was keen in displaying my appreciation and love by immediately hanging that said teddy bear on my Anya.

"Just for today yer! Spoil the bag's classy look"

Ermmm...dictate much...

Noonish, we were already home with my head buried in my Criminal Law books.

To avoid the Valentine dinner crowd, we continued our celebrations at Menate and by Maghrib we were already done with dinner. 

Though simple, both of us enjoyed our simple lazy Sunday. 

Time to Cook

Remember the frozen seafood we bought from KK?

Well, among them included a bag of mantis shrimps. I've never cooked one before. I googled for recipes and found two that was kind of doable sans some ingredients I didn't have at the time.  

I was absolutely intimidated by the size. There were three of them in a bag so I decided to first experiment with the largest one.

" How the bleep do I cook this thing? It's bleeping huge!!!" 

"Look at it?"

"Do I cut it? How laaaar?"

All my watsapps with pictures were greeted by Hubs I dunnos and lots of LOLs.

Google was my saviour. Turns out to dispose of the dirt sack is similar to how you would do for  shrimps.

Yes, I'm about to cook an alien life form. It's bigger than my face!

Arrrrghhh!!!

This is Hubs fave picture by the way. On two different occasions he resent the pics from work to emphasise that this is his all time favourite picture.

Hubs gave an A+ for my first, ONE AND ONLY, attempt for Butter Oat Mantis Shrimp. Please google the recipe as I didn't have all the ingredients needed and had to combine two different recipes and just winged it. Luckily it turned out ok.

The remaining two mantis shrimps will most likely be steamed and eaten with butter sauce. 

Yup Yup...This Mak Cik knows how much work went into it.

The Long Weekend - THE GOOD AND THE BAD

Hi Everyone...Hope you all had a lovely long weekend.

To my readers who celebrated CNY, hope you had a wonderful time with family and friends not forgetting all those yummy food and traditional dishes. May the Year of the Fire Monkey be a good one for all of us.

A dashing monkey in a suit to boot!

It wasn't even Valentine's but the recent long weekend proved to be very much enjoyable for us HusbieWifey as we got to spend some quality time together. Well, the first two days lar yang best. Tak gi mana pun. Spent our long weekend in KL with no jam, just amongst the holiday crowds in malls/main places tourists go to kill time.

The best was last Sunday where we went to check out Ikea Cheras to buy some household items. It was our first time there and with many being out of town we had no problems parking. There were still many people though so I can't imagine the crowd during any of the usual weekends.

We only go to Ikea after making a list of things we need to buy with some extras i.e. impulse purchases if and when we see fit. Tak main ar jadi tourists in Ikea. Jalan-jalan hassling among the crowd is so not fun. I love to see Hubs assemble items bought. Simple ones of course. Wouldn't want a repeat of continuous cussing overheard from the kitchen when he tried to assemble the metal cabinet the last time.

Did you guys know that for Ikea Cheras, they operate differently in terms of delivery and assembly services? In PJ, you'd only have to wait for one group to deliver and assemble your furniture whereas for purchases made from Cheras, you'd have to wait for two separate contractors/agents for delivery and assembly separately. Haiyooh, cannot keluar rumah lar. Next time buy from Ikea Curve ajerla!

The worst was on Monday of which the effects from the day lasted till Tuesday. I told Hubs I was not in the mood to go jalan-jalan.  NO, NO, NO...don't want to listen to Wifey kan?! After doing our house chores in the morning, waiting for the Ikea people and having our late lunch, I would have preferred to stay home, rest and study. Exam dah dekat. I'm still way behind in meeting my own personal deadline. Well, we don't always get what we want do we???!

Cue my long rant.

Hubs' relatives came from Penang over the long weekend. We were at his family's house everyday. Forget that my bro had his birthday on Monday. Yeah, my bro declined my invitation to go makan-makan as he had plans already but I still wanted to insist for lunch on Tuesday if possible to which I had to forego in the end as well. Reason? You will read it below. If I were to do that to any of his bros Hubs would have surely thrown a fit I am sure. UNFAIR I tell you! I get that we have an obligation to entertain family members and relatives but balance it out please.

Don't worry. This is not the bad bit. The bit that I am holding him accountable till the end of our days is this...

That evening, his parents told us to meet up at KLCC. This was on the pretense that it will not be long and I would still have time to cover at least a bit of my studies that night. Ok. KLCC it is.

UTTER COMPLETE WASTE OF TIME! SO NOT FUNNY!!!

One of my seriously MAIN pet peeves is to go somewhere and BERLEGAR. Like seriously just stand around doing nothing! Literally stand AROUND waiting for the Wrath of God or sumin. If cuci mata tengok-tengok survey pun I don't mind OK. Going into shops for nothing! Not surveying, looking out for something in particular or buying anything! TOTALLY FOR NO REASON.

After the huge Tanglung picture session, we took the kids to Toys R Us.

One of the things I highlighted to Hubs was it didn't sit well with me that we brought his less-well-off nephews and niece to Toys R Us. Just like retail bankers KNOW YOUR CUSTOMER and CUSTOMER'S CUSTOMER policy, we should KNOW OUR FAMILY lar. Have a plan. If it was with the intention to purchase and belanja them takper. Not to tengok-tengok. Just went in to entertain the nephew from his own family, whom is better off of course compared to the other nephews, to play at the lego area. Do you know how tiny that area is? To cram all three of his nephews, one niece, other kids and parents manning the kids in that small corner of the toy store for sure cannot lar.

One particular observation I relayed to Hubs was how one of his nephews was holding a medium sized Minion Plush toy. Holding it and telling his mum it's Rm19.90. No, it wasn't ok. Mum told him to put it back cos' it's actually RM199. Luckily, secretly Hubs and I already bought some Legos from Bricks Store for the boys and a plush toy for the little girl the day before but were only to give it to them that night. Again, not the so-bad bit.

After, we spent a good half hour to 40 minutes just standing around in front of Toys R Us debating where to go next. I was already sitting down on the floor. Not long as FIL and BIL came over to enquire. Final decision, MITSUI! Arghhh!!! SO FAR! To bring the relatives jalan-jalan! Ok, still not too bad. Neither of us had been to Mitsui as yet. The worst was yet to come as after Mitsui the plan was to have dinner at Bagan Lalang. I have my suspicion on whose brilliant idea it was to go there especially when it was close to 6pm when we reached Mitsui. Should have gone straight to Bagan Lalang from KLCC. But NOOOOOOOO.

Upon reaching Mitsui, we spent over an hour of sitting on the bench doing I-SWEAR-I-DON'T-KNOW WHAT. I didn't even go into the shops, just window shopped as we passed by the shops. The sales were OK but I wasn't looking for anything in particular. The relatives too seemed blur to kill time. Most of us spent our time on the bench in Mitsui. I'd rather have brought them somewhere where the kids could play about.

Whilst sitting on the bench, we tried to hurry all to leave for Bagan Lalang. Even suggested other places to go to. With a party of 12 people it would be no easy feat to get a table. When we relayed info that the wait in Bagan Lalang could take up to two hours if we're late, those who had not been there took it as us exaggerating info. NOOOO, don't want to believe us right? We left around 7'ish, through the jam, and reached Bagan Lalang close to 9pm.

Total time spent in Bagan Lalang, 20 blardy bleepin' minutes! AFTER AN HOUR'S DRIVEEEEE FROM MITSUI!!!!!  After observing for themselves the massive crowd there, they declared as "Takder Harapan" and debated where else to go.

Oh no, don't believe the people who had been there right? We're just exaggerating right? Sometimes, you just have to let them experience it themselves to believe it. Well, it should not have been at the expense of those who had experienced it before and with kids in tow. Through the jam and not well lit areas some more. Nasib baik budak tak ngigau.

So to save the day, Hubs suggested we head to Saba'a in Cyberjaya. Kids were already asleep by the time we reached there. Dinner time was 10:45pm for us.

Hooray ... (Sense the sarcasm here please).

Even then Hubs wanted everyone to be seated first before ordering. Here, I had to put my foot down and forced him to order and add on later if necessary. The restaurant closes at 1130pm.

We reached home close to 1am. The whole night my body ached and I was in pain whilst sleeping.

Next day, FEVER for me please!Ding!

Urghhhh...bad enough I didn't get my roti boom at the place I wanted that morning. We went to his family home and stayed there from morning till past 2pm. Whilst there, I couldn't take it anymore and had to go upstairs to sleep off my medication.

Total of TWO days wasted. Still want to cry whenever I think of it.

So leaves me 3 days with some serious cramming session minus this hour of blogging.

So, got fooled twice with "Jalan-Jalan" episode. The first was where we got stuck in the Thaipusam procession in KL sometime last year. Nasib baik tak cirit time tu. Dah sakit perut but tahan wei.

For sure, when I have kids, I shall not entertain such jalan-jalan session with no plans. I'm game for jalan-jalan but dekat-dekat where it would be convenient for me and the children. Budak nak tukar pampers, tido, minum susu and makan on time, merengek with Mummy frustrated as the minutes go by would not be an ideal combo. Just hope then we all have our priorities in mind when suggesting places to go.

Shopping for seafood in KK

It was the day we were scheduled to fly back to KL.

So, after checking out the wet market nearby with the added information from our own surveying done throughout our stay, we decided to purchase our frozen seafood from this shop. It's located near the hotel and comparing the selection from other shops, we felt here was the best place with more choices and comparatively moderate prices.

We didn't get the lobster but opted for these giant tiger prawns. You won't get them in KL for the price you pay here in KK for sure.

Other assortment of frozen seafood.

Prawns, prawns everywhere.

We left the shop with two boxes of frozen seafood. Any purchases made here are packed according to airport restrictions so you guys don't have to worry. Also, you won't need to pay extra for the packaging services at this shop.

Oooh, something to point out here. All transaction are done in cash. Cash business only yer! They don't accept credit cards.

Of course we made sure we bought dried seafood too. 

Memang borong ikan bilis Grade A banyak-banyak, cumi kering and a bit of the ikan kurau masin.

They were just packing the udang kering. Of course I just had to buy them. Tried them in my cooking once we got home and was definitely happy with our purchase. They were fat and succulent and weren't overly salty.

This was the dude whose shop we bought the dried seafood from. All were good purchases. 

However, upon our return, despite all the extras he gave, we felt the price he quoted was slightly on the pricey side. Just slightly, nothing too drastic. Definitely still cheaper from anything you would get in KL. 

I would still recommend a visit to his shop. His is situated at the front part of the Filipino Market, near the main road. Somehow I felt that his shop had more good stuff and definitely more selection to choose from. Just look out for the Afro dude and you won't miss his stall. 

Maybe those visiting KK soon may want to try buying from the shops inside? Or bargain harder with the Afro dude?