Living Serenely

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Showing posts from 2007

5 things...

Received another tag. Quite interesting so let's see how I go... 5 Things in My Bag 1. Loreal Lipstick No. 708 2. L'Occitane Shea Butter Mini Hand Cream 3. Essentiels De Chanel palette 4. My new Nokia 6120 5. Business cards 5 Things in My Wallet 1. Credit cards 2. ATM cards 3. Photo of hubby and me 4. Driver's licence 5. Spare bandaid (for emergencies) 5 Favourite Items in My Bedroom 1. Currently reading The Language of God by Francis S. Collins 2. Trying to finish Big in Asia by Michael Backman 3. My cuddly hubby ^ ^ 4. Jug of water on bedside table 5. Royal Selangor pewter box - wedding thank you pressie from Wini 5 Things I Wish To Do 1. Sleep 2. Get a pay rise 3. Learn how to be be more patient 4. Be able to cook Kiu Nyuk in the original Hakka style 5. Finish knitting the scarf for hubby 5 Things That I Am Doing Now 1. Writing this tag 2. Watching Heroes 3. Enjoying a glass of port 4. Checking my iGoogle page 5. Chatting on MSN Anyone else interested to pick up this...

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I like islands

In case you're curious, here's a peek into the house design we've selected for our home. We're making some changes here and there, but generally this is what the layout looks like... One of my favourite features in this design is the kitchen island. I like the open and airy design of the living and kitchen area... (image from display home) What you think? You like?

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Tidy eater

It's been a while since we took Christopher out. And today all the men in his family besides Christopher were down sick. Diana had to stay home to look after them, so hubby and I picked Christopher up to go to church today. One of my ( occasional? ) readers is probably curious to find out how well her son behaved today without his parents around... Well, I'm happy to report that he was a very good boy. It was pretty much like a normal routine Sunday. Dropped him off at the Little Bubbles room, he didn't even make a fuss when we said good bye. After church, we took him with us for lunch with the youths. He ate a small bowl of hor fun and kept himself amused playing with his cars. Some of the youths also helped to entertain him playing car racing on the table. One thing I admire about Christopher is that he is the tidiest eater compared to other kids his age. When he took a mouthful of hor fun , he used his teeth instead of chomping down with his whole mouth, lips and all. T...

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Fishy meals

Mum brought over some lovely fish from KK when she and dad came over on holiday a couple of weeks ago... including this succulent ikan bawal putih .... mmmmmm.... steamed and drizzled with a bit of soy sauce... perfecto! Whipped up this recipe for fish cake on my own... minced fish fillets, mashed potato, chopped chives, flour, dash of milk, egg, salt and pepper... then pan-fried with some olive oil... yummy!

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8 random facts about me

Tag from Sue Ern (and thanks for your own 8 random facts… very intriguing! ^ ^) So here goes… 1) I know sign language , i.e. Signing Exact English (SEE) . I picked it up from Jorena , a hearing impaired girl from Singapore whom I struck up a friendship with when I was in Perth. I actually surprised myself that I picked it up so quickly, that I was even able to do some basic interpretation of sermons for Jorena in church (my sign language might be a little rusty now though, through lack of use) 2) I don't like milk . Ever since I was a kid, I loathed having to drink milk. My brother was the total opposite who would drink the stuff straight out of the carton. To make up for my calcium and nutrition needs, mum (being the sensible mother she is) let me eat cheese and yoghurt instead. Remember those colourful milk packets we used to get in school that all the Malaysian primary school kids get excited about? I wasn't one of them. But I faithfully took my ration of milk packets...

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Wisdom and guidance needed

Hubby and I are in the midst of getting a piece of land to build a house. A house to call our home. There is so much to consider, but so far we haven't had much time to meditate on it as much as we'd like to. We have been receiving both negative and positive comments from various people. Positive being that the suburb has been picked out as a key development area in Perth, with plenty of infrastructure and amenities planned. Negative being that is perceived to be a little further away from Perth. It is so scary. Scarier than buying the investment property a few months ago. Hubby reckons that it feels scarier than getting married! So please pray with us over this.

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More pics of our favourite little somebody...

We were at Ronald and Diana's house to get our haircut and have dinner. Yes, a haircut - we know a hairdresser who does house visits. Christopher after his haircut (which was 6 months overdue!) For dinner, we had this very interesting dish called 'Golden Pillow'. It's basically chicken curry cooked inside a big bun. Very nice! Apparently it originate in Singapore, but one of our church members learnt how to cook it, so we tarpau-ed a couple of them from him. After dinner, it was play time! Chrisopher's latest trick: Jump so high, up in the sky!!! Wheeeeeee....... For some reason, some people seem to be surprised that hubby gets along with kids so well. Why should it be surprising? He likes children very much lar--his favourite now being Christopher. Anyway, again we had a tearful parting when it was time to say good-bye. This time he wanted to follow us 'home' and bawled when we tried to explain to him that he was already home. Sigh, hard to tell if it was ...

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Our passenger of the day

Today we had the adventure of playing surrogate parents to little Christopher. Ronald was at worship practice and Diana had to stay home to look after Daylan who is sick, so they asked us to help pick Christopher up for church. He was very happy to sit in our car. For some strange reason, he seems to like sitting in our car very much... and kept himself amused, looking around and making funny faces with MH-koko. After church, he insisted on following our car to lunch. Perhaps he just likes the variety of sitting in a different car for a change from seeing mummy's and papa's cars every day? I suggested another theory of a subconscious memory of his papa's old Mitsubishi Mirage when he was still a baby? Who knows? During lunch at Emma's Seafood, he sat between Ronald and MH--it was quite a comical sight to see the two grown men looking after Christopher. Ronald was trying to get Christopher to eat his food, while MH was trying to keep him clean, wiping his hands and dusti...

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Sydney to Newie...

Yeah!!! We're in Sunny Sydney!!! Touched down on Thursday night. We rented a car for one day and decided on a whim to drive up to Newcastle to visit Paul. Here we go on the road once again... Smiley driver EVERY single time we go on a road trip, we end up going through a navigational nightmare (perhaps because I am the navigator?) Arrrghhhh!!! We're LOST!!! And we can't seem to even get OUT of Sydney, much less get on the freeway to Newcastle... Finally after going a few circles around Sydney, we made it OUT in one piece onto the Sydney-Newcastle freeway... Stopped at McDonalds along the way... french fries and milkshakes always help to put a smile back on faces... Here we are at Paul's student accomodation... Typical student room... quite tidy lar... :) Hehe... no need for those books anymore... bring on the game consoles!!! Some assurance that our dear Paul isn't starving to death out here... We went out to a nearby Chinese restaurant for some dim sum We ordered d...

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Walk by the river

Monday was a public holiday in WA. It was such a nice day, hubby and I decided to go out for a walk by the river. Nice to have a day like this as a break from the cold weather we've been having... This was one of the parks we used to pak tor together last time... Just something about walking in a park on wintry evenings that just draws people together. I know we weren't the only ones who used to frequent places like this... ahem !

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Instilling same values in kids

This week is officially the last session for our Marriage Enrichment Course. It's been quite an extended course - 12 sessions but held over the past few months. Because it was paused over certain busy holiday periods, plus we only have it once a fortnight anyway. We had a pot bless before our final wrap up session to share what was the most significant thing we learnt in this course. So our Mondays are free again. But our pastor said that they might soon be starting another course on Parenting, which I will be keen to attend. I feel there is so much to parenting that I still don't know about. I guess I could just dive straight into it and still survive, because so many have gone before me and lived to tell the tale. I think the most important thing I want to learn about good parenting is how to instill the right values in my children. I always find it interesting to see how different kids from the same set of parents can turn out so completely different from one another. Class...

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Where is home?

This evening I checked my mail (as usual) and lo and behold, I received an e-card from mum and dad... surprise, surprise! For no special occasion (at least not that I can remember) but just a sweet card just to cheer me up I guess... so sweet of them, I confess I felt a little choked up and slightly teary when I saw this card... The card came with some background music... Fur Elise... a familiar tune as it was one of the songs I used to play on the piano when I was a girl. Sigh... seems like it was so long ago because many times I feel that I am so far off from the carefree little girl I once was. I wonder why my parents sent me this card. Okay, the obvious thing to do would be to call them and ask them myself... but I'm feeling sort of reflective tonight so let me have a crack at it... Sometimes I feel I've changed so much... I find it hard to remember who the real 'Serene' is. I feel like who I am now is someone that has been pieced together... a mozaic combo compris...

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Highlights from long Easter weekend

Swan Valley on Saturday afternoon... an indulgent afternoon of chocolate, cheese, wine, German beer, German sausages and pork shanks - the pork shanks were especially MASSIVE but super yummy! More photos here Easter Sunday!!! Our church had an Easter carnival after service with food, face painting, mini-golf, sumo wrestling and lots more. Click here for more photos After church service and the Carnival, we headed down to Mundaring to see the Mundaring Dam ... very beautiful. Unfortunately there were no civil/structural engineers in our group, so can't comment on the structure or design of this dam. More photos here And to enjoy a scrumptious pizza dinner at Little Caesars ... we ordered six family sized pizzas and two dessert pizzas. Their pizzas are super unique, among them were Pisagnes (combination of lasagne and pizza) and Fettucine Pizza. For dessert we had this chocolate mud pizza and a cheesecake pizza. I was sooooo full after that, I think I ate about seven slices in tot...