What I like about Tesco - they let my kid camwhore
What I hate about Tesco - The giant, hypermarket huge car park is packed! No parking, no trolleys.

I have always wanted to see my kids wearing one of these Chinese ahpek baju but I am too cheapskate to buy a suit eventhough it costs only RM19. Anyway, I know my kid will probably complain the Chinese clothing suffocates him due to the high collar and the fake silk materials. So, a couple of days ago, I couldn’t resist anymore. Eyeing if there is any Tesco’s staff or CCTV ahead and seeing that the coast is clear, I asked dear hubby to quickly put on one of those Oriental shirts on him while I snapped away. And we ended up modelling a few suits. LOL. Free of charge!

Meanwhile, have you asked yourself or your mom this? Every Chinese New Year, for as long as I can remember, my mother would buy some canned food stuffs for my neighbours. In return, these neighbours will give her their homemade cakes. However, when everyone gets richer (after their daughters fished for rich sons-in-laws), the tradition carries on. I buy you canned foods, you buy me canned foods. So, I think I was in my teens or late twenties when I asked my mother, “Why do you aunties have to buy all these and give each other? And then, every Chinese New Year, the canned foods come in container loads from China. You know…after we ate, all will turned into shits nia. Ciak ciak liao pun pien sai nia. I wonder if the shits volume increase after all these eating?”

And mom threaten to slap me if I say stupid things like that. Kong siao wua, wa pah ci liap lok khi. LOL. Anyway, have you marvelled at how people buy all those canned foods for Chinese New Year? Aiyor, if you don’t know any better, you will think there is a famine coming or something. But really, Chinese cannot help it. Eating and foods go hand in hand with happiness, wealth, prosperity and goodwill all around.

Again, I still wonder if IndahWater (or whoever handles the sewage system) notices an increase in volume? Serious shit, where did those container loads of foodstuffs went to if not to the sewage?

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Related Articles at The Obnoxious 5xmom:

• Chinese New Year is coming!
• Arrggh….my housekeeper threw my pussy willow away!
• Palm Sunday
• I got bitten by the bug
• Why I hate Chinese New Year (part two)
• There goes my plan for the day…
• Random pics of Chinese New Year

Yesterday evening, I roasted a chicken for dinner to eat along with some pasta.

Some really fat chicken which I seasoned with brandy, mustard, salt and pepper. Before roasting, I rub it with rosemary and lemon juice. I stuffed the lemon into the chicken along with some fresh button mushrooms which I had stir fried with butter and garlic.

Sometime around midnight, my eldest son buzzed me on MSN (because we are in different rooms, ok?) and asked me if I have blogged about it because his friend wanted to see the roast chicken.

I told him,
“Not yet, wait I eat already, digest and shit and smell if it smells nice first. Then only I post it.”

If you want to learn how to roast chicken beautifully like mine, head over to my best recipe food blog. During Christmas, that post got hit so many times.

So yeah, this is but a boring post about what I ate last night. Comments, please.

And hor, I NEED FOUR MORE PEOPLE TO SUBSCRIBE TO MY BLOG!!! Please!!!!!! I want to hit 300. How to subscribe? Aiks, just find that darn button somewhere and subscribe lah!

Son : Mom…..my bag is so heavy….

Mom : Eh, fren, you live next door to the school, be thankful already. Your school mates have to walk don’t know how far and some have to take a bus somemore.

Son : You know hor, one of my friend school bag strap already koyak today. Soooooo heavy….

Mom : Eh, complain also cannot help. All your brothers, all your schoolmates, every kid also must carry.

Son : But why they make it so heavy? Why need so many books?

Mom : Somemore hor, you are lucky you are not in Chinese school. If not lagi chialat.

Son : You tell them lah, don’t give us so many school books and so heavy books.

Mom : You ask all your school friends to write to the Education Minister lah.

Son : How to write?

Mom : Aiyah, in that case, I blog it better. Come, come we take photos.

My eleven years old (yet to be 12, only in Nov 2008) weighs this much. About 90 pounds. He is lucky he is of the average size. There are some really thin and scrawny kids who really struggle with their school bags.

The school bag weighs 11 pounds. (I know we use metric system but in pounds more dramatic mah) This is after he has pick and choose only the necessary books to bring to school.

These are just part of the workbooks the students need to buy. I think we need to spend RM50 just on workbooks. The textbooks are given free by our very *generous* Government.

I won’t complain about the heavy school bag. There is enough complaints already so what’s the point of talking about it? I had my share of worries when my eldest son went to Primary One. He had to take a school bus all the way from Air Itam to Bayan Baru and normally, he even had to run to catch the school bus plus fight off the crowds to get on the bus. That was like eons ago as he is now already 18 years old. This same problem exists today. I am still seeing poor little thin kids struggling with their school bags and risking their lives getting on moving buses.

Sad, huh? I am thankful we got a home next to the school and I am at home the whole day to layan the tired kids who got home from school.

Schools related stories :
Hot gucci mamas

Kids travelling on public buses

Suffer the little children

First day at school

Anyway…..I know all these heavy bags, tight schedule and etc helps to build characters for our kids. But seriously, those of us who are from the much earlier generation who didn’t have to endure such heavy bags and so many crazy co-curriculum activities didn’t do too badly too.

I was driving home after sunset mass in church. The traffic light indicates 90 seconds. While it was ticking away, and the little green man slowly walking, something flashed back in my mind.

When I was very, very small, my mom used to pray to my Hainanese ancestors who died in Hainan islands. Waitaminit, I was brought up a Taoist, I only converted to Catholic Christian in 2003. Another waitaminit, I think my mom was praying for her in-laws, i.e. my father’s ancestors. Or did mom prayed to her own ancestors who are Sing Ning? Wateva. God bless them.

(photos of the deceased Hainanese, taken from the Hainan Temple in Penang)

As a little kid of about five or six years old, she would instruct me to arrange all the chopsticks, spoons and tiny teacups and wine cups on the table. No shite, back then, we really have a table for 10 persons, whole chicken, whole duck and a whole banquet. There were chairs as well. Just like a normal banquet. None of those fake styrofoam things that lazy people nowadays buy from the shops.

(giant statue near Kek Lok Si temple in Air Itam, this is one of those gods who makes sure people behave, not sure of his name)

So, you can see the religious background I grew up in. During the whole prayer, none of us can go near the table and chairs. We cannot snitched any foods to eat before prayers.

The almighty ancestors would be angry so as a kid, I was terribly afraid of these unseen, dead, come from China visiting souls who will smack me if I dare talk nonsense. Oh well, if you have problems comprehending, watch Mulan and you will get a better idea.

My mother would bring me to every temples and she did love to go to temples. Kuan Yin temple, Kek Lok Si and Snake temple, just to name a few.

(this is an example of the prayer’s offerings. Photo taken at the grave where my inlaws offered a roasted pig and other foods to my parents-in-law)

I forgot which temple it is but they have these statues of people being tortured in hades. So, being all five years old and stupid, my mother had brainwashed me.

“If you tell lies, next time when you are dead, they will cut off your tongue.”

“You see that man with the hand chopped off? He gambled.”

“Ma…why did the gu mok ong (king of hades with a cow’s head and warrior body) step on the person?” (I forgot what punishment is that, sorry.)

“Ma…why did the man and woman got boiled in the pot?”

“It is not boil, it is fried in hot oil.”

“But Ma…..why did they get fried?”

(this is the paper paraphernalia which Taoists burned for their deceased ancestors. Yeah, don’t worry, you do get lingerie in the afterworld )

Oh well….my mother couldn’t tell a five years old girl that they got fried because they were unfaithful. So I forgot what mom braffed (bluff) me. But eventually, when I was much grown up and can read English, I knew about that. Does Haw Par Villa still exists in Singapore? That one is terribly grotesque. Those are life sizes statues of humans being tortured in hell.

(this is the pig I made last year, using Mandarin oranges)

Now, the red stick man is running. The traffic light is turning green for me. I gotta drive. But I realized that my Christian God’s promise of Heaven is so much more comforting. And the river of fire in hell ain’t half as scary as those being deep fried in oil or being chopped off the tongue.

Still, I am thankful that my mother instilled that little fear in me as a child or otherwise, I don’t know what I would have become. We all hate religion. It curbs our freedom. It gives us that fear of the unseen and unknown. But at the end of it, that’s what keep us all humans to behave somehow. And though religion is not everyone’s favourite topic, we still turn to God that we may not know in the first place when we hit deep shits. That Almighty God that hovers around us to save us from hitting rock bottom.

Before you comment, remember that my words are always the truth. Muahahar…I am not going to argue on religion so save your breath. I am not interested to hear your views.

However, I am curious if that Haw Par Villa statues are still around temples? (if you like photos of temples or Chinese culture, take a look at my Flickr album)

My son asked.

Science of course!

He said I was the one who said I would have done better if I had been allowed to go to Arts Stream when I was getting into Form Four. True. When I was in Form Three, I went up to my headmaster and insisted that I want to go to Arts Stream because I was only good in subjects like Biology, Geography and anything that needs me to write and not count. Physics, Chemistry and Add Maths, I get telor. I failed Adds Maths and got some P7 for Fizik and Kimia (Physic and Chemistry). Even I was 15 years old, I know my strong and weak points but the guru besar ordered I go to Science stream. At that time, we studied in Bahasa Malaysia. So I ended up being the stupid one who cannot grasped Add Maths, cannot count momentum, cannot calculate those Kimia etc etc.

Now, the same thing happened.

My eldest son’s result wasn’t that good and he barely made it to Science stream and was supposed to go for Accounts. But after talking with all the aunts, uncles and cousins, he applied for Science stream and got it. The reason is most people advised that with Science stream, you have better teachers, better students and if you are going for A-levels or whatever, those subjects are much more ‘valued’.

So, what do you think? If you can go to Science stream, will you choose Arts or Accounts? Is this just our perceptions? Faster tell lah.

School starts today. This year, only my #2 and #3 go to school. My #1 is shaking legs at home, waiting for his SPM results. And I know a lot of people asked what my #2 get for his PMR. Well, what he got was much better than expected. This is the person who never study at home, never do homework at home, never go tuition and he did not even do the few workbooks I bought for him. Still, he does well enough to enter Science Stream cos he scored an A in Science. So….that’s about it.

Unfortunately, that’s not what other students get. Some very hardworking and studious ones got only 1A and some Bs and Cs and were very disappointed with their results. That’s life I guess, some get lucky, some got short-changed. Or it could be due to the marking system? Wateva.

My little four years old going to be five years old is not going to kindie this year because he doesn’t show any interests yet. I will send him only when he is six years old. What’s the point of stressing him with routines of waking up in the morning, wear a uniform, line up, do mundane stuffs, get into competitions and etc? And no, he won’t be a social recluse because he can get his mingling with children at other places. I don’t need to pay RM160 per month to do that.

However, this year is sort of emo for me because if Vincent is here, he would be entering Standard One. He was born in 2001 and passed on in 2002. Sometimes, I wonder what he will be? Will he be needing school for kanak-kanak terencat otak or will he need to attend spastic children school or will he be still lying in the hospital or will he be just another one of my bright little boys? Well, I shouldn’t be thinking of such things but there are moments when I do wonder. Of course, it does sound kind of silly that I wonder things that cannot happen. But he is still very much part of me, and I do count the years he would be if he is around. Anyway, my little boy asked, “Mommy, if Vincent ko-ko died and goes to God, does he still have to go to school?” when both he and I were waiting in the car for my two older ones to buy their school uniforms. LOL, I guess you don’t need to go to something as boring as school in Heaven?

Oh ya, our very generous Government is giving all the students school books loan. That means, I don’t have to attend to the hassles of buying school books. Not like I need to spend a lot of money because all my children use hands-me-down school books from the eldest brother. But telima kasik gahmen. Saya berasa amat gembira dan berbesar hati dan sangat-sangat kamtoong sebab lu manyak generous. Sikalang gua ada manyak luit lor. Cukup mau naik roket.

And the most important thing to remember today is to dye my two sons’ hairs back to black. I suppose their teachers and headmasters will not take the excuse, “My father is an angmoh or My mother is an angmoh.” You know what? There are really sei8pohs lurking around. The other day, before Christmas, I was in the liquor shop and my #3 was jaga-ing the shopping trolley for me outside the shop.

One woman went up to him and nagged him, “Ah boy, how old are you? You so small you dye your hair, you can get brain cancer you know? Haiyor, tell you mader don’t dye your hair next time. Hair dye very poisonous wan, can get brain cancer and die wan.” CCB leh, I didn’t know that until my son told me much later. That #3 son is very good in mimicking people so he related to me with all the actions and tones. Cilaka, go traumatise my son like that, I nochet sue you only. Niamah. I koyak your CCB for being so crow-mouth baru tau.

Related : 2005 post on Back to school