I always wanted Emily to have a Japanese costume like a Kimono. I love looking at children in Kimono. My manager is coming from Japan, I thought I asked him to get one for me. However he told me that it will be too hot to wear kimono.

He suggested Yukata. He got Emily a very pretty Yukata. Doesn’t she look Japanese?

Read a funny post about BM Vs English in parkbay.net. If you are drinking any hot beverage, please put it down first.

Please pray for my dad. I got an SMS from my brother this evening that he had breathing difficulty yesterday night. It may be another heart attack. He got a mild heart attack once. Imagine, my aunt told me that all the government hospital is full. I wonder why.

Let’s hope he is going to be fine. Pray for his salvation and I really hope he will accept Jesus as his Lord and Savior.

P/S Thanks for all your prayer. My mom said that it wasn’t another heart attack, thank goodness. It was a lung infection. Please continue to pray for his salvation.

Today is a day off for my hubby and I. It is a replacement holiday for Saturday Governor’s Day public holiday. However no replacement for school, so Tim and Emily has to go school. Yeah for us! My hubby and I went paktor in Gurney Plaza. It has been a long time since we went out without the children.

I must say that it was good but at some point, I felt it was a little quiet without the kids. Ooh guess what? They didn’t know about our outing. I can assure you if they find out it will be 101 questions time. Anyhow, I got them both transformer pajamas which they were so happy once they saw it. Both wanted to wear them immediately.

By the way, today is Monday and some shops do not provide plastic bags. This is to reduce the use of plastic bags, which is very good. I do keep recycle bag in my car. This is what I overheard yesterday from some “lau yi” (aka elderly aunties)

Cashier: Tomorrow you have to bring your own bags, we do not provide any plastic bag tomorrow. *It is a gentle reminder*

Lau Yi: Kang kor (aka difficult) with no plastic bags.

Cashier: Yeah I understand but what to do. I want to give plastic bags but we cannot. Use recycle bag.

Lau Yi: Better we don’t shop on Monday.

I meant why it is so hard for folks to carry recycle bag. Well it is a slow process but I hope the people understand that it is for the environment.

Date: 9th July 2009
Time: 11 pm after we came back from prayer meeting.

It is always nice to hear this….

Mummy: What are the kids doing upstairs?

Papa: They are reading their bibles. *Sometimes they read their bibles before sleep*

Mummy: Aren’t you helping Emily with her reading tonight? *Emily still needs help with certain words*

Papa: Timothy is helping her.

It just melts my heart to hear that. After 30 minutes, I go check on them. Both fell asleep on their bed, with bibles kept and lights off except the toilet light.

I wished more days like these where both of them help each other, play and have fun together. Things like these ensure my hubby and I that we are doing something right in parenting them.

Back to square 1. I am really saddened by this news, not because they are switching back the language used for teaching Science and Maths. It is making a decision without any execution plan or how they want to implement it. In the news, it is stated that in 2011, student from year 1 and year 4, form 1 and form 4 will be going back to BM/mother tongue for Maths & Science.

Take Tim for example, he is in Std 1 and now he is doing Maths & Science in English.

2009 – Std 1: Maths & Science in English
2010 – Std 2: Maths & Science in English
2011 – Std 3: Maths & Science in English
2012 – Std 4: Maths & Science in BM. I am still wondering how they expect the child to switch especially on all the Science terms. Probably, he has to relearn all the Science terms in BM.
2013 – Std 5: Maths & Science in BM
2014 – UPSR in BM/English. Do you suppose student can answer half in BM and half in English?

It will be real difficult for any children and confusing for the teachers. It is like putting our children as guinea pigs. Oh, this decision doesn’t work, never mind we change it. Oh that doesn’t work, we switched back. Who suffers? The children and they are the leaders of the future.

Well at least for those in Chinese school, it will be 2 less subjects for them. However the disadvantage is they learn very little English.

The reason given by the minister is lack of English teachers. I bet if they pay the teachers well, there will be ample supply of English teachers. There are so many graduates who have no jobs, they can teach English to primary students. Is it that difficult?

Come to think of it, if they are taking away subjects in English, the future will be less and less English teachers. Soon, there will be no more English subjects because no competent English teachers.

I really do hope that they will do both Maths & Science in BM and English for those who have started it in English.

Today we venture to nature. My hubby bought a tent for us to spend the morning at the beach. The beach is near the fisherman’s village where I blog about it before. It is a nice beach and lots of fresh air. There is a beautiful lake there too. Here is what we did:

We pitched the tent, it took me and my hubby 10 minutes to put it up. I must say it is a nice huge tent. Both Tim and Emily were excited to sleep in there.
		While we were pitching the tent, my children were playing in the sand. By the way, there is no public toilet or any wash area near the beach. We brought few liters of water for washing off the sand.
Next I got a bunch of rambutan for RM2 and snacks. They were enjoying their snacks. Too bad, I didn’t have time to cook lunch. We could have lunch there too.

Emily decided to do some fishing, just for show only. There was a strong current and she didn’t catch anything.

Later they decided to have a short nap. Nope, they didn’t slept a wink because they still wanna snack some more and play sand.

I am sure they had lot of fun and were really tired. They slept in the car on the way home. We will definitely do it again! It has a great view too. I don’t know about you. It is really relaxing to look at the sea.

Emily came home with a nice piece of wrapped chocolate from nanny.

Mummy: Is that for mummy?

Emily: Nope, that is for kor kor? Aunty gives to kor kor.

Mummy: Where is mine?

Emily: You are not children anymore.

Mummy: Kor kor is not here, can I eat it? *teasing her*

Emily: No, this is for kor kor.

Mummy: You don’t love mummy?

Emily: I love you but I also love kor kor.

Mummy: Mummy won’t tell kor kor. Mummy eat ok?

Emily: I love kor kor wor.

Mummy: *show sad face*

Emily: Ok, you cut half, half for you and half for kor kor.

If I go on, she probably will give me the chocolate. I am glad that she still loves her kor kor. I will try this with kor kor and see what happens.

Yes, everywhere we go, we can see transformer banners, poster or picture. Even the door has transformers. They must have spent a lot of money advertising the movie. The movie is PG13 so we are not bringing Tim to watch. It will not be suitable for his or Emily’s age. Ben 10 is out of mind as of now.

Tim is digging back his transformers robot to play. Of all the toys he has, transformers and Lego are the most played. So parents, invest on Lego.

By the way, Tim created his own transformers from a book of construction vehicles.

Today marked my 9th Anniversary!

Today I went to work empty handed and came back with this. Maybe it is an early 9th year anniversary gift from someone big up there.

I was invited to a HP event in Eq Hotel. I wanted to find out the latest technology and how HP can help my company to save cost. Yes, cost cutting is inevitable. However I only like 2 of the 7 presentation that was VMWare and TCO. Technical things aside, they have a draw for the event. Three attractive prizes: 2 printers and 1 HP Mini. I was eyeing on the HP Mini. 😛

I was stunt when they called my name. Wow, there were about 60 to 70 people from many companies and they called my name.

It is an OfficeJet Pro K5400dn color printer that provide network capability, double sided print, near to laser quality text and fast. A small business would use this type of printer. I don’t need an office printer at home so I decided to donate to my church and Emily Tadika. They probably have more use than me.

The winning vibes must be going around my office. One of my colleagues won a Vios car from the “shop and win” contest in Queensbay mall. He only bought RM50 stuff.

At least it gave me a happy moment.

Tim: Why your present so boring.
Emily: Your present is so big! What is it?

On Saturday was Emily first Sport’s Day. She was really excited ever since she knew about it. She told me that she will participate in 2 events. It is something to do with hopping, walking on the bench and squeezing the sponge. She was talking about it before the school holidays.

Finally the day came. Boy, she was excited. She did well and her team got first in both events. Fortunately the weather was not very hot. She was fortunate because the day after the event, it was raining very heavily.

The school didn’t give out any medals for prizes and I wished they did. Emily received a bubble gun and a nice princess book.