DRESSES

Monday, June 25, 2012

Tokyo DisneySea

When we had our first Disneyexperience in Hong Kong, a friend of mine asked my opinion of the place. For first timer like me, my honest opinion was the place is GREAT to me. I had so much fun and a thrill plus roller coaster lover like me, Disneyland would be something that brings joyful moments.
She however has different opinion. She told me something like : “Hong Kong Disneyland to her is just a notch higher than the district on-the-go fun fair we usually have. It’s not at all comparable to other Disneyland, in fact it brings down the standard of Disneyland. The least of a Disneyland to opt is Tokyo Disneyland.”

I don’t get her. I was happy with our Disney experience in Hong Kong and I am sure I enjoyed district fun fair too during my childhood years.

On the 5th day of our holidays in Japan, we spent one whole day at Tokyo DisneySea. (Tokyo has two separate huge parks one called Disneyland and one called DisneySea)
Having visited Tokyo DisneySea, I now understand what my friend meant and for someone that had toured all the existed Disneys, she got her point.  

In Tokyo, the park is colossal, triple the rides and shows in HK ! .. I now wonder how is it in Miami ?

We queued to enter the park before the entrance gate to be opened at 8.00AM and left at 10.00PM as the gate is to be closed. Still, we couldn’t manage to cover all the rides and shows within the given day period.

O well, we moved around at the dictate of the tiny dictator – none other than our miss sassy : Nada.

If she decides to stop at every water cooler stand that she sees, be it, we stopped.   
If she decides that she needs a break, that’s it, we took a break.
If she decides to have her doze of addiction, no choice, on my lap she was.
If she decides to take a nap, willingly, Daddy's shoulder she rested.
If she decides to stand still and pop pop-corns in a middle of walking crown, grrrrrr, we braced and prayed she would not be stomped upon.  

As long as she is happy. The rest… it doesn’t matter.
milk stop
break
cooler

cooler again
who is the happiest?.. daddy !!!
pass for min 900mm ht ride 
first roller coaster experience for Dew, she's cool...
nap
cooler again..


it was magic...

Thursday, June 21, 2012

We love Japan

We had an 8-days holiday in Japan, covering bit here and there of Osaka, Kyoto and Tokyo.
It’s hard to visit Japan and not to love this unique country of more than 3,000 islands.

I don’t think there is any single word that can describe the place as a whole. But if somebody put a gun in my head and force me to do so, my word choice would be :

ORDER

And if I am given the luxury to blurt out words to describe the place and people of Japan, they would be the below words in no particular order :

- PRACTICAL
- EFFICIENT
- COMPACT
- SYSTEM
- COURTESY
- CUTE
- STYLISH
- PRECISE
- PERFECTIONIST
- SPECIFIC
- TIME KEEPER
- TRADITION
- HOSPITALITY
- TECHNOLOGY
- A+ PUBLIC TOILETS

It is a beautiful and ‘weird’ country, indeed a must visit destination. I wouldn’t be surprise if one day I wake up in the morning and news travel to me that the Japanese are not human but they are actually programmed robots! They’re too defined in whatever they do.

As though all words to describe Japan are the positive adjectives, I do have my displeasure. My only complaint was sometimes my sensitive nose could detect unpleasant surrounding smell every now and then. My guess would be, with all the underground drain and sewer system plus multilevel subways that keeps on gushing powered wind from the train rush, some stinky smell couldn’t be avoided.

Just my presumption.

I hope I’ll be able to write more about this trip that I did enjoy so much the company of one of my closest cousins, Feby whom is more like a sister to me.

There were a lot of laughter due to our silliness to cope with Japan amusing orderly systems and whine of how much sore we had on our feet that we walked too much, sore on our back that our backpacks weight are almost killing us.

~ Order ~
Inari Shrine
photo courtesy of : Isao Nagashima San

Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Be wise with time

I was browsing through our photos in the hard drive and found this one captured by my beau.


Totally don’t remember the photo and also don’t remember mending this dress of Nada’s while on a drive – of course as a passenger. Good thing about crafting, it can be done on-the-go, and it sure help to have my girl strapped in her car seat at the back. I have my hands free of holding a kid and could be used to benefit time spent in travels.      

Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Baju Kaftan

We usually make a trip to Pasar Siti Khadijah every time we return to my beloved hometown, Kota Bharu just before we head back to KL. There’re many interesting buys there. Fruits-fruits-fruits and thousands of nick-nacks. Love!
My girl however, is not so fond of the idea. She complains of being tired, sweating… and I just couldn’t get across her yet that it is how it goes when people go to market. It’s not Carefour or Tesco or Cold Storage for that matter!






The trip during Aidilfitri break last year, I bought her a caftan at Pasar Siti Khadijah. She was delighted, she thought Mommy and her are twins when we both wear caftans at nights.




Just after three washes, her very own first caftan frails. Ugly, Mommy can’t take it. I threw the caftan onto Lady Gaga knowing I would do something about it.


Not only upon four months I did take action, applying self made polka-dots bias at all sides. Frails no more!

Monday, June 4, 2012

"school"

Couple of Saturday ago, we attended the regular bi-term Parent-Teacher Meeting (PTM) at Nada’s school.
I guess, I do owe a write up la about Kindicare Montessori & Pre-school. In case, someone google to find out about it, at least my experience herein could be made as guidance. Like la this blog gonna appear at all in google search…, I’ll write anyway.

When I was looking for a school for Nada to attend last year, I had in my mind something like NO FRANCHISE!. I am not sure of my own reason, but I am also not saying SMART READER, Q-DEES or the like are not good. It’s just the matter of choices we have. I just don’t fancy the sort of chain for pre-school.

Kindicare was introduced to me by a friend. I visited the school before enrolling Nada and it just fit into my wants and needs. It is a modest, small scale school with homely environment. Each class contains small numbers of children. The big part of me actually, I don’t really want to send Nada to ‘school’ as yet. That’s why I was avoiding those with daily uniform schools.

I remember myself being a free kampong kiddo, unschooling until primary. It was a fun childhood I had, tagging along my big brother everywhere he goes. I played a lot. Underneath our on-stilt-home, climbing trees, running in the meadow full of ‘kemuncup’, sometimes in the woods collecting rubber trees seeds, when monsoon season came – we played in the stagnant flood water! My brother would catch fish (read : tadpole and worms) or even did some stunt, doing summersault into man groove. I was his most trusted and loyal spectator. Dangerous it may seem, but it was F.U.N.

I enjoyed myself playing back then - I wanted the same for Nada because PLAY is a child’s job.

Would I been a SAHM or a WAHM, she would most probably be a homeschool or an unschool child. The fact that I am a typical 9-5 (read 10-9, sometimes 10-10) office working mom, I just don’t have the opportunity of providing the luxury of homeschooling. Quitting my job is an option but not really possible, I have my mami that is my responsibility all my life.

The fact that Nada is sent to an Indon Nanny while I’m at work added more points for her to be in a place where she could play, interacts, make friends, exploring creative minds and develops or else she’ll just watch Indon soaps on tele all day long. She needs to be at least in a more conducive environment, I hope so.

During my visit to Kindicare earlier, these were my questions :

  1. Would there be homework ? Answer : NO
  2. Would there be ‘examinations’? Answer : NO
  3. Would there be grading of children, like No 1, 2, 3, 4….. in class? Answer : NO
All the NO answers makes me happy. I really don’t get it as to what is the need of homework, examinations and grading pre-school children? They are “babies”. It’s intimidating for me to hear parents telling me : “Ooo, my child got number ONE in his/her 3year old kindi”.

At this point, it’s not my objective to know if Nada is the smartest in class or less smart or least smart and I do hope it will never be my objective.

For now, all I want for her is to play like I used to. The difference would be the sorts of playing I had with her sorts and my play was free but hers is at cost! .. O, well…

I did ask a lot of questions and this one really got into me :

“ What happen if my daughter feels like taking a nap? ”
Aunty Jeane (the principal) gave me the most diplomatic answer : “Awwww… you’re not ready to let her go yet, don’t you? Not to worry, we have all the fun activities,  Nada won’t get sleepy.. trust me. Besides, a child shouldn’t be sleepy from 8am to noon. If she’s sleepy, that means her sleep routine is not right, mom! ” 

So, Kindicare offers the needs of what I was looking for in terms of it’s “syllabus”. But what actually captured my heart was the warmth of the teachers or all being called as Aunties. They are lovely, humble people, and they enjoy being around children, I can see. There’re a lot of hugs and kisses, dear and darling in their words.   

They also treat us parents with kindness no matter what car we are driving. J It so happen, every other kids’ parents drive or being driven in monsters the like Porshe, Beemers, Merce, Volvo, Audi, Vellfire bla-bla-bla. I am the cheapoket one, not wearing Christian Louboutin or Hermes… still very nicely treated.

Kindicare is also well-organized, Nada thus far never mistakenly brought back other children’s stuff or other way round such as bag, containers or water bottle. I don’t know how they manage it as no names written on any of the stuff being brought to school. What I do realize, they make it a habit to scrutinize every and each child every day. Example, when I hand Nada to them in the morning, there’ll be greetings like :
“Hi Nada.. Good morning darling.. hey look at you…..Today you are wearing plaid smocked dress. Did Mommy make this dress also? Is that new Barbie snack container you bring ?”…. Things like these, give me confidence.

I’ve experienced other nursery for a short period that I sent Nada when her Nanny returned to Medan, the very first day she came back home, all her stuffs were name written. Towel, milk bottle, milk dispenser, food container… yet they still got mixed up!

Nothing is perfect I would say. So far, there’s no big blunder that could make me angry except couple of small encounters at Kindicare. I didn’t receive school newsletter which in the later I checked, I was told it had been distributed. I couldn’t blame the school also, because it might had been given and dropped in the chartered car that ferries Nada after school or it could be at her Nanny’s. I don’t really know. It’s no big deal, anyway. Other than that, Aunty Jeanne is very-very careful and meticulous.

So, for this time PTM, we were briefed of Nada’s progress and what-not, which was fine.  

Until towards the end, Aunty Marie (the class teacher) told us, again in a very diplomatic way..

“Nada is an independent child, confident, she knows what she wants but……….. she’s rather BOSSY.” Toing! Tu… dia.

Apparently according to Aunty Marie, my girl has the tendency and very much successful in directing and ordering her friends around. She would get agitated if they don’t listen to her. OMG! whose DNA does she inherits here? I look at Harris…. Harris look at me.

OK-OK-OK –OK.. that would be Mommy.!

Aunty Marie also told us, despite her bossiness… she does have close friends (that she also directs around).  Three of them are clique. They play and learn together but they can never agree with each other. All have their own opinions. OOOOOhhhh.. This,……..Mommy like. Good!



My Saturday morning routine this couple of months. Inspecting my cousin, Mentibang Paku’s house renovation. I’ve been ordering the contractor, here and there, practically treating this house like mine. Mesti Cik Ripin berbulu dengan Mek.

Well, we have no money to renovate ours.. at least this feels like ours!.. hehehehe..

Harris sure can be awarded as Bapa Mithali. He let his daughter step on his foot not wanting her bare foot on the ground whilst little miss uses her slipper to play sand.
Could it be me, I would just shout : “ It’s OK !.. You sit on the sand, later wash your feet ! ”