No More P Sticker On The Car

Now that my son has left his teen years, I need to come up with another nickname for him on my blog knowing that he really values his privacy and wouldn't want to publish his name and photos on the internet for all to see.

But his mum, being the forgetful person that she is, is a blogger and she wants to keep a record of all the experiences in her life as a mum so that there would be stories to tell her children when they become parents, as well as to her grandchildren in days to come.

Hence all the nicknames and lack of photos of ourselves so as to have some degree of privacy. In this age of advancing technology, you'll never know what unscrupulous people can do with your mugshots, right?

OK...back to the nickname bit.

I'll refer to my son as Mr. CoolGuy from this day on, a slight difference from his old nickname, Mr.CoolTeen.

Mr. CoolGuy has exchanged his Malaysian Probational Driving Licence (PDL) for his Competent Driving Licence (CDL) and the P stickers on our cars can now be removed, much to his pleasure. He complains that drivers of larger vehicles usually like to bully drivers in smaller cars with the P sticker by cutting into their lanes. 

Took him to the nearest branch of the Jabatan Pengangkutan Jalan, bringing a photo, MyKad and P driving licence. I didnt know that the photo needed a white background now instead of the usual blue, but thankfully the photo could be scanned from the new MyKad. So the chip in the MyKad works after all. The strange rule is that we can only renew the licence within a week of the expiry date. 

Queue was really long. After a 1.5 hour wait, I paid RM150 for 5 years plus RM15 processing fee but because CoolGuy's birthday falls in March, he gets another 11 months FOC since his P licence expired end of April. Not bad, 6 years for the price of 5!

Mother's Day 2014

Usually whenever there's a celebration in church, the mothers will each bring some food  and all the church members would have a simple lunch together. For Mother's Day this year, the youths and young adults were assigned to bring food instead.

So early on Sunday morning, my kids were awake and busy in the kitchen frying sausages. Too bad I was having blocked nose that day, as I'm sure the kitchen would have been filled with a lovely aroma. I was not allowed to cook  but I did supervise them. It was such a sight having my 2 kids cooking together that hubby couldn't resist snapping some photos.

But my kids were camera-shy, so you would only get to see their busy hands at work....

During the church service a little later on, the youth group presented a mime using coloured gloves.

Cookies and spatula flown all the way from
USA, given by my pastor :)

To end the day, we had a simple family dinner at Nando's. Really appreciate everyone who took the effort to make us mothers feel special on this day.

Mr. Postman, Where's My Letter?

Our front gate has served us well for the last 19 years and has begun to rust and lean off its hinge on one side. So we're in the midst of getting a new gate and doing some minor renovations to our porch. The workers took off our old gate and left it along the side wall as well as demolished our pillars to build new ones that are further apart since we're buying a bigger gate. 

Two days ago, Miss SweetTeen saw the postman ride his motorbike into our porch and then ride out again, which meant that he had mail for us. We now have no more letter-box because our pillar has been demolished, so when she went out of the house to collect the letters, she didn't find any. Puzzled, she mentioned it to me when I came home and I went out to have a look. 

Old habits die hard, so guess where the postman placed the letter?

View of my porch from inside the house. Pillars are gone,
so no doorbell and no letter-box.

Old gate taken off its hinges and leaning against
the side wall.

There it is!

A closer look.
I suppose letters should be placed either
in the letter-box or on the gate, and no where else?
Haha

Another Year Older

Beginning at 12 midnight on April 11th, birthday greetings were posted to my Facebook timeline and kept coming in even until the next day. I never cease to be amazed at how technology has advanced so much that I can receive birthday greetings from my friends around the world all on the same day. About a decade or two ago, we would have relied on sending greeting cards through the post and had to send them well before the actual birthday so that the card would reach the other person on time. 

For many years following my birth, my parents celebrated my birthday on April 12th. It was only when I had to bring my birth certificate to school for the Standard 5 exam (before we had UPSR for Year 6) that I realised I was actually born on the 11th, but very close to midnight, so I suppose by the time my dad called everyone to announce my birth it was already the morning of April 12th. On top of that, I found out that my Chinese name was misspelled in my birth certificate - what was supposed to be 'Ching' became 'Cheng' instead. So, 2 major surprises at the age of 11 for me... which led to having to change my name on ALL my school exercise books and the school register, as well as having to celebrate my birthday on the proper date the following year.

Anyway, turning 46 isn't as bad as I imagined it to be, haha. Still trying to keep my wrinkles away and stay young at heart, even though my creaky joints do protest if I attempt any vigorous activities. Hubby took the afternoon off and just told the kids that we were going on a lunch date. They were quite curious to know where we went! My parents came over for tea later in the afternoon and brought chocolates (yum!)

After dinner we had a cell meeting in a friend's home, where we gather in a small group to study a portion of the Bible, and I had a candle to blow and a cake to cut. The birthday song was also sung in various keys and didn't seem to end!..courtesy of the fun-loving young adults in our group.

On the way home, my kids decided to drop by the Tutti Frutti frozen yogurt store for supper, and since it was my birthday I had a discount. At the cashier counter my son took out his wallet and said he would pay for all our yogurt, so sweet of him.

My daughter, SweetTeen, bought me my favourite lip balm :)

(Not quite sure how the photo keeps rotating
to the right as I have already corrected and saved
the file the right way round.)

 Spent the rest of the night thanking all those who wished me on Facebook and Whatsapp, really appreciate them.

As the saying goes... Another year older, (hopefully) another year wiser!

Blog Revived!

Are we in the 2nd quarter of 2014 already? My, my, how time flies! 

It has indeed been a busy few months, and I hardly even have time to sit down and have a tea break on most days. Just a quick recap of what has happened so far...

Chinese New Year celebrations was rather quiet this year. Met up with my ex-colleagues for our annual CNY gathering and marvelled at how our kids have grown while we exchange stories about all the goings-on in our lives.

SweetTeen celebrated her Sweet 16th birthday in February followed by CoolTeen's in March. Now that he has turned 20, I have to come up with a new nickname for him. 

Teddy Bear cupcakes for SweetTeen

Went to OneCity Mall in Subang Jaya to celebrate CoolTeen's birthday.
This is the view of the mall through a glass floor 10 storeys up! 

It has also been an emotional roller-coaster ride with unusual ups and downs this year. Probably the biggest reason why I decided to take a break from blogging. Perhaps I'll comment on it when the ride is over.

Oh, and there was some hoo-ha when a baby snake slithered into my kitchen one night. My no-longer-small kids are terrified of creepy crawlies so guess who had to corner it and trap it in a plastic cookie container?

It looks large in this shot but it's only about 30cm long

So, having said all that....it's good to be back! *smiles*