Powderpuff Mae

As I was strolling along the buffet counter of medicine in my mother's home, I noticed a bottle of thick black sticky stuff similar to dark soy sauce ("hak si yau"). The label read "Organic Blackstrap Molasses". Out of curiosity, I asked my "physician" mother what it was.

Blackstrap Molasses is rich in calcium, iron and potassium. That explanation meant nothing to a layman like me. On further enquiry and in summary, the benefits of Blackstrap Molasses are as follows (women please take note):-

1. It reduces menstrual cramps
2. It reduces heavy blood flow during menstruation
3. Reduces or prevents the growth of fibrosis
4. It is anti-cancerous
5. Good for nails because of its high calcium contents
6. Gets rid of heart palpitation

A 1kg bottle of Blackstrap Molasses is priced at about RM15.00. I gave it a try, it wasn't revolting or putrid, there was just a lingering sourish taste behind my tongue. I will probably give it a go afterall its benefits outweighs its taste.

I have not taken enough to see its results and those facts were compiled based on my mother's research.

GONG XI FA CHAI to everyone.

We made our journey back to Taiping on the eve of New Year in the wee hours of the morning. My brilliant husband had made an elaborated plan concerning our journey in order to get us home without getting stuck in the jam. He slept at 9pm the night before the trip and woke up at 3am. I on the other hand had to do all the packing to ensure that the family had everything we needed for the next 3-4 days. I slept at 11.30pm and woke up at 3.30am. We left the house at 4.30am for Taiping.

Despite planning and coming up with the best route to take to avoid the crawl, we were stuck in the mother of all crawls at 4.30am. There was an accident in Rawang involving a bus. As such it took us 2 1/2 hours to get to Rawang when normally a 50km stretch would probably take us 15-20 minutes. The rest of the journey was smooth save for the congestion at the Ipoh toll.

Breakfast at Dunkin Doughnut in one of the stops

All in all we had a good time in Taiping. We didn't really have a big celebration this year as we were suppose to be still "mourning" the death of Ah Poh. When we got back to Taiping, we managed to eat the famous "kai see mein" (shredded chicken noodles) aka KSM. I find it strange that the "Taipingans" seem to love their KSM to no end and they never seem to get enough of this stuff. For example, we had "KSM" the morning before New Year . The next morning, Uncle Ricky bought KSM for breakfast. And James' doting mother made more KSM for lunch but she made enough to feed an entire village for a few more days. So everyone had KSM for breakfast, lunch and dinner. By lunch my entire bodily system was on red alert, too much KSM, need to eat something else, anything but KSM. So I stuffed myself crazy with all the chinese new year cookies and peanuts. Anything will do but please not another bowl of KSM.

Sadly all the good stalls were closed for the new year. So for the next few days we ate the worst food Taiping could offer. The good hawkers were on a well deserved holiday. Whereas the rejects were out to make a quick buck from hungry diners like us who refuse to eat at home. Anyway, the cookies at home were much better as such I stuffed myself with more cookies as the cousins festered in front of the idiot box for a whole 8 hours for our "Heroes' marathon. It was a great series.... save the cheerleader!

The cousins festering in front of the TV eating CNY cookies

Jesse and Baby

We got back last night. It was a long journey. We were stuck in another jam, but it was a great trip nonetheless.

I just came from the doctor's. I discovered this morning that had I lost my voice. In my attempt to avoid KSM, I stuffed myself with too much cookies and peanuts and this my friends have cost me my voice.

Today is Valentine's day. I am one of the few who have difficulties remembering auspicious occasions. Heck I even forget my own birthday until I receive birthday wishes via sms from family and friends.

I remember when I was still dating James, I put off getting his gift until the very last minute, the night before Valentine's. I rushed off to One Utama that evening. I ran out of cash and was the ATM machine. I went into the air conditioned booth and when I was about to retrieve my cash, I felt someone hugging me from behind. I was startled and my instinct told me to deliver my kungfu tiger fist onto the deranged pervert. Quick as lightning I turned and when I was about to deliver the deadliest blow mankind has ever tasted, it was James. Thank God my reflexes were quick as lightning, it could have been a fatal blow if I hadn't stop on time.

What are the chances that he should catch me buying him a last minute gift? And to make things more embarrassing, I made up a lame ass excuse why I couldn't meet up with him that night.

Anyway he was there to get me a last minute present as well. That was seven years ago. Today, we are cool. We do not fuss over presents, flowers and dinners. Just a quiet night alone together watching DVD without any interruptions would be good enough for us.

This year James got me something big, which I will blog about another time:)

A symmetrical face

Last week was an interesting week. My friend Sally was back from Australia. Despite our age gap, we enjoy hanging out together. We had one thing in common, we are both vain and we would pay the price or suffer the pain for the sake of vanity.

Sally had always wanted a set of full lips like that of Angelina Jolie's. She didn't believe in injecting some foreign substance into the body but had not qualms about cuts, stitches and pain. As such collagen was out of the question. She opted for lip embroidery. Sally was to an extent able to choose the shape of her desired lips which she had coveted for such a long time.

We made an appointment with Ms Tang at Metro Prima at Kepong. Ms Tang and her sister are trained "surgeons" from China who had performed thousands of "minor cosmetic surgeries" for more than a decade. Both Sally and I were hopeless at Mandarin and both the sisters could only converse in Mandarin. Still, that didn't stop us from our pursuit for beauty.

Sally knew exactly what she wanted. She had pictures of Amber, Angelina and Gong Li ready for Ms Tang. However, Ms Tang couldn't give her Amber nor Angelina's lips. There are some factors that had to be considered, the original shape of her lips and facial structure. As such, she could only give her slightly fuller and thicker lips.

Couldn't keep my eyes off this picture


Amazing, you can choose the eyes and lips that you desire

My personal favourite - Arousing

Check out the English. I think it is a direct translation from Mandarin

First Ms Tang drew the outline of the lips for Sally's approval. After many corrections and half and hour of chicken and duck talk trying to convince Ms Tang that thick lips are now fashionable and not abominable, the next step was to choose the colour to be tattooed on the lips. Fortunately Sally chose a light colour.

Ms Tang took out her "tattooing pen" and she started inflicting pain for a whole hour on Sally's lips. For the sake of beauty, Sally withstood every prick from the needle that fell onto her lips. She had an option, to either take 4 jabs of anesthetic around the lips, a painless process but her lips will swell up for a few hours or just opt for numbing liquid. Since she had a business presentation in 2 hours, she opted for more pain less swell.

Tattooing in progress

I was with Sally throughout the whole process. I was contemplating whether I should get my lips done. I saw every gory detail. Asked as many questions I could with my limited Mandarin. Saw the end result of my friends ordeal. Ms Tang assured me that I would look lovely with light pinkish lips as I had pale skin and didn't have much pigmentation on my lips. The cost of lip embroidery is RM1,000.00 which includes touch ups.

There are alot of things I would do for the sake of vanity, but I think I will pass on this one.

Look at those eyes....

We did some New Year shopping at Metrojaya last Sunday. We had a great time shopping, just the three of us, Jesse, daddy and mommy.

There were some really cool shoes for little boys at Metro. Usually we have problems getting Jesse to try any shoes but this time he cooperated with us. He tried on most of the shoes, actually only the ones that he liked. They didn't have Jesse's feet size for the ones that we really liked so we grabbed whatever that was available. As I was queueing up to pay for the shoes, James walked Jesse over to the toys section. It wasn't a long queue, it was just my luck to have a really slow cashier on duty that day. I was bored to tears. Thank God for small distractions, the aunty infront of me had really beautiful hair, her hair stylist did a great job perming her hair. As I was admiring her great hair and analysing every detail of it, James came back with Jesse with a new addition, which would eventually be the new addition to the family.

According to James, Jesse fell in love with the toy instantaneously. Usually Jesse doesn't make a fuss when it comes to soft toys, he merely hugs and kisses the toys that he likes and walks away. But not for this puppy, whose name was supposed to be RAVI (the name came with the tag). Anyway Jesse couldn't resist RAVI, he was mesmerised by the dog, somehow. We caved in and RAVI became the newest addition to the Tan family.

Jesse and his new friend, Ravi


It is all in the eyes, I tell you. Look at RAVI'S over sized pupils or some will say cute puppy dog eyes. There is power in that pair of eyes, the ones that had a grip on Jesse which caused him to go "Ehhhhhhhhh" when taken from him and made countless passerby stare at our boy sleeping in the stroller with his beloved RAVI. I think they were hypnotised by those eyes.

Remember this fella and what he did after giving "that loook"

Back to the eyes, I posted about the power of the eyes and how a woman can get a man to think that he is in love with her by just gazing at him. Apparently his heart will go "bedeboop" "bedeboop" if the woman looks and flirts with him with the eyes. Never knew how powerful those eyes were until I met RAVI.

I knew an English couple, Sarah and Robert, who were seconded to Malaysia for 2 years. Their daughter, Charlotte was 5 and took a school bus to kindi. Sarah found Malaysians to be extremely polite people, they often refer to anyone and everyone as uncles or aunties. They found it even more amusing that Charlotte had picked up that habit from her friends. Even if she didn't know the name of the aunty or uncle, it didn't matter, every uncle and aunty had a special name. Thus the bus driver was officially named "uncle bus" by Charlotte and her friends. We had a good laugh, but as I recalled back, all the 4 designated school bus drivers who ferried me and my siblings throughout our 12 years of schooling were either called uncle bus or aunty bus.

Parents at Jesse's kindi had to pick their kids up in an orderly manner. We had to queue up outside the kindi. Everyday when I wait for Jesse in the queue I meet two aunties who were the designated drivers for some of the children at the kindi. The first aunty drove a Toyota Unser and she had 16 kids under her care. Imagine all 16 kids in a van. It was really amusing watching the kids get in. They just keep hopping into the van of unlimited space which reminded me of a tv commercial for Toyota Unser sometime ago where they showed the "forty vertically challenged thieves" getting into the unser in a similar manner as the kids. Indeed the Unser is great for space.

Both the aunty unser and friend had brownish yellow hair. They have kept up with the trend of having their hair coloured and bleached. Similarly, some decades ago, they must have kept up with the trend then and had their brows and eyeliner tattooed black and that event must have slipped their minds when they coloured their hair recently. The tattooing must have happened some decades ago. Today they have grayish black eyebrows and eyeliner (the black must have faded of) with light brown hair. Not good. It was quite excruciating looking at the pair of aunties everyday under the hot sun. Somehow under the bright natural sunlight, every colour and flaw seemed accentuated.

According to a professional makeup artist, she pointed out that the colour of the brows had to match the colour of the hair. As such black hair, darker or black brows; brown hair, brownish brows. I never saw the importance of such colour coordination until I saw how ghastly aunty unser and friend looked in their trendy new hair colour.

Chinese New Year is around the corner and I know many of my Cantonese (Canto) speaking friends who are itching to do something new and drastic to the hair. Just yesterday two of my canto friends, with great enthusiasm and in anticipation of the New Year coloured their hair brownish yellow, it did look very stark with their black brows. SO do be careful if you intend to colour your hair for the New Year, choose wisely.