Haven't cooked mee hoon kueh

for the longest time. I'm only able to cook this today coz' I didn't have to pick lil' one up from school after her CCA. So was able to dish up and get it ready on the table the moment she steps into the house. With this temporary arrangement, I'm also able to juice drinks fresh for them. 

Hmm............. makes me want to do this once in a while - get her to take bus home herself - so I can free my time up. 

As you can see from this dish, there's no sight of greens at all. My girls are carnivores.   

Simple food to satisfy them. They usually ask for extra helpings when I cook this. 

Living without a car

(in my case) in small easily accessible Singapore is inconvenient. Maybe I'm just too spoilt after having a car freely at my disposal for the past 16-17 years.

While Singapore is linked by every possible ways with efficient bus and train network, the thought of the slow commute under the hot sun made me think twice about going on public transport. (ok, I'm spoilt) Though there are possible things that I can do in the bus - sleep, check emails, phone housekeeping etc.. I think I still prefer to save the time. I will be more healthy since i need to walk to the bus stop from home but under the hot sun? 

Though we are not entirely handicap without one, we still have hubby's car. However, there are days when he need the car to get to his ulu workplace.

It's not like I do amazing race across the island when I had the car but there are days when I need to run my errands and I am so restricted.   

How did we ever come to such situation? It started coz' we had to scrap Mr Nissan in mid Jan, so in October last year we went to the motor fair to look for a new car. Auto Germany, the agent for Opel, couldn't even deliver the car in 6 bids. That means something is wrong right? We bought so many cars before and this is the first time such incident arose. I was so skeptical that the price for the car was so low for what hubby claimed to be, the price is like 20K cheaper than original price. Perhaps it was a hunch. Hubby posted a negative comment on their FB page and received message from a stranger. Seems like she's in touch with some people who are stuck without getting their refund back. So is Auto German a dishonest agent?

But -- for a SAHM, my job was to chauffeur the kids from school and I couldn't even do it. Sure, it was nice to just stay at home and get lunch ready on the table the moment the girls reached home. It was nice that I didn't have to leave house halfway to pick them. Sure, it takes only 35- 40mins to reach home, which is reasonably not too bad. But with the car, they can have their meals in the car. Reach home slightly earlier than when taking bus and immediately they can shower and have more time for doing their homework/s, revision or whatever nots.     

26th Jan - we went down on a car-hunt and got a car. Hopefully we can get the car by April. 

** update on 23rd Feb - we're getting our new Honda car soon. 

HOLIDAY 2019

It’s 2 months into 2019 and our tickets has been booked for our year-end holiday. It helps that we know where we are headed for the year. 

Yay! USA here we come!

Shouldn’t leave decision to the child because she will repeat the same destination. Che-che likes San Francisco and LA so much that she wants to go again but I prefer to travel somewhere else. Well, at least somewhere where they've never been to - midwest. East is not a bad idea too for first timer lil' one. In the end, she did heed our advice when hubby suggested to add Seattle into the road trip where "Starbucks began from there. Don't you both like Starbucks?" 

San Diego, San Jose, Sacramento, Catalina Island. Hmm.... sounds so ambitious to want to go so many places. Not forgetting National Parks. 

This time, I should do my research on astrophotography sooner and get the settings right. Maybe have more time to save up on another lens? Perhaps a 200mm or more f/2.8 lens? So that I can zoomed into the sky and hopefully get nebulas. Tripod is a must, I'm glad I bought a better and sturdier tripod. I opened up the FOC Olympus tripod that was meant for compact camera in Grand Canyon, wanting to use it with my DSLR but we should be thankful that the tripod didn't tip over the canyon with the strong wind. With us armed with more knowledge on constellations, we should do a better job in identifying the sparkly stars this time. 

I should think we have more time to plan this trip right? I'm not supposed to be helping out lil' one is any work now that she's in secondary level so I guess I'm able to free up more time. 

    

Ang Ang

I should make more effort to decorate house for CNY . See friends do so nice with all the 好余头  things they put in house. Pomelos, red flowers, pussywillows etc.. As red as possible, I don't put alot around the house so maybe that's why we're down on luck.

Been wanting to make angpow lantern but I never got the time to do it.

Sometimes also tempted to cook longan drink or make yuan for auspicious meaning. See friend cook nian gao and serve kueh lapis, I don't. Normally we get packed breakfast from outside. Cooking for the girls pose a big hurdle as they are super fussy about food.