7 day food diary

KK says this is dead boring.

I disagree.

Food always brings back such evocative memories and one year later, when I read this, I will recall the smells, the tastes, the places, my thoughts.

* Day eats exactly the same things we eat. I'll die if I have to cook separate meals for her AND him.

DAY 1
Breakfast: Oats, weet bix (edible sawdust I call it but Day likes it), cornflakes
Lunch: Vietnamese-style noodle with pork ham salad and crispy-skinned chicken rice (KK’s fav) (from the Cheung Sing BBQ House)


Tea: Chocolate mud cake, latte and hot chocolate
Dinner (by KK): Pan-fried salmon (expensive as hell, A$30 per kg) with butter, steamed potatoes and stir-fried bak choi
Dessert: Mango, banana, peaches

DAY 2
Breakfast: Oats, hard boiled egg, weet bix
Lunch: Fried rice and beef brisket yellow noodle soup (from noodle.com)
Dinner (by KK): Beehoon soup with fish ball, fish cake, cabbage and pork


Dessert: Chin chow with canned rambutan (Day only eats the chin chow, he doesn’t like canned fruits), peaches

DAY 3
Breakfast: Oats, weet bix, yam buns
Lunch (packed and eaten at the zoo): Granola bars, grapes, bananas
Dinner (by KK): Stir fried fish cake and cabbage, salty vegetable and pork slices, white rice
Dessert: Chin chow with canned rambutan


Supper: Red bean soup (KK’s fav)

DAY 4
Breakfast: Oats, weet bix, yam buns
Brunch: Home-baked cookies (at Day’s insistence. The cookies don’t look so good but they taste alright warm straight from the oven)


Lunch (eaten in our tent at Coogee): Domino’s pizza, six chicken nuggets, green tea
Dinner: Beef stew with potatoes, carrots, onions, mushrooms
Dessert: Mango

DAY 5
Breakfast: Sweet corn, oats, yam buns
Lunch: Roast duck noodle soup, century egg porridge with dough fritter (from Chinatown’s Superbowl)
Tea: Egg tarts, cake
Dinner (too lazy to cook): Two beef pies and French fries
Dessert: Grapes
Supper: Barley

DAY 6
Breakfast: Barley, cakes
Lunch (at Bronte Beach): Beef burger with cheese, grilled fish/prawns/scallops/squid with chips
Dinner (by KK): Beehoon soup with minced chicken and bak choi
Dessert: Honey dew and peaches
Supper: Pancakes (the thing I cook best. I'm so pathetic)



DAY 7
Breakfast: Oats, cornflakes, bread with jam
Lunch (by KK): Grilled chicken wings, peas and eggs sunny side up with rice
Tea: Brownies
Dinner (by KK): Mince chicken with macaroni soup and bak choi
Dessert: Honey dew
Supper: Garlic bread

to the zoo

As what the real estate agents would say, it’s all about Location, Location, Location.

In the case of Sydney’s Taronga Zoo, yes, it’s nice and all, but it’s location is the jewel in its crown.


The zoo is right on the water’s edge and on the other side of all that water is the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House, so we pretty much got to see these two icons side by side (along with the Sydney skyline) from parts of the zoo.

And as getting there involves a 12-minute ferry ride (with the Harbour Bridge on one side and the Opera House on the other), the kids had a field day. Good start to our pricey excursion.


The A$78 price (for two adults) also covers a cable car ride from the ferry stop to the highest point of the zoo.

Otherwise, I am miffed to report that what Day found most interesting about the entire experience (good thing it’s free for him) was the Zoo Map.

Yes, the blessed Map.

Tracking our progress from the ferry to the cable car ride and finding all the toilets / heritage areas / eating places etc etc. on the map, his nose would probably have been buried in the pamphlet had we not occasionally (in irritation, I confess) prodded him to look up and justify the reason for our being in the zoo in the first place.


Thankfully, Dee – the one who we would have left at home if there were someone to look after her – was entranced. Birds, in particular, seem to turn her on. She points to them and talks a lot of nonsense.


As for us. Well. It’s nice but a zoo is a zoo is a zoo isn’t it?

I suppose highlights would be watching an ostrich dump a load of what appeared to be a pail of liquid paper from its rear end and seeing in the flesh the largest flower in the world (what’s it doing in a zoo?), the Rafflesia, which I read about in one of my secondary school textbooks.


I happen to be in the photo as neither KK nor Day would sit next to it. It smelt like what I imagine rotten meat would smell like.

inspiring eric carle

Cut by me, finger-painted by Day, stuck by me.

Pretty huh.

It's inspired by Eric Carle's book, Mister Seahorse, which comes with pictures of seaweed and rocks printed on transparencies so one can "spot" the sea creature hiding on the page behind.


He's the guy who taught me how to make pancakes via another of his kiddy books.

Children's books are such lovely things, so much more interesting than adult books. The kid's library here is full of Eric Carle books, pages all intact, which is great because they are sooooo expensive.

australia day

26 January 2007. Australia’s National Day. When the Australians celebrate what they love about their country.

Here, off the top of our heads, is what we like about Australia, based on our very limited experience in the short time we’ve spent here in our little corner of Sydney.


* Glorious fireworks, of which I have enjoyed three times in the last two months (Christmas, New Year and Australia Day) at close range (within 50 metres) at Coogee Beach. Back home I’m lucky if I get to see fireworks once a year on National Day.

* The four seasons.

* Loads of places to see. Rivers, parks, nature reserves.

* The air, which has zapped away my and Day’s eczema. And my sinus.

* Fellow neighbours who rummage through the communal trash bins of their own accord to sort out the recyclables.

* TV. Great public programmes for people who can’t afford cable. Favs include ABC Kids every morning, when a slew of good kiddy shows like Brum, Sesame Street and Play School are shown back to back with no ads, and What’s Good For You.

* Playgroups and toy libraries.

* Nice cheap Starbucks-type coffee, half the price of that found in Singapore (not including kopi tiam coffee but KK hates kopi tiam coffee anyway).

* Fathers. Lots of fathers (without mothers around) baby sitting the kids, bringing them to the playground, playing with them at the beach.

* A lot more respect is accorded to mothering. Women can get a year off work after they pop, after which flexi-work is the norm.

* People seem to spend more time enjoying than worrying about their lives.

big teeth

She's got two big ones. Teeth. Complete with a huge gap in between.

But as her brother (they look exactly the same) had just about the same set of spaced-out boulders when he was a year old...


... and as they are just about perfectly spaced now with no gap in between, I'm not too concerned. Her teeth will fill out nicely.

exam results

PASSED: Six. (1 distinction, 2 credits, 3 passes)

FAILED: One.

Despite all assertions to the contrary, that all Singaporeans are bookworms who are bound to do well in Australia, KK failed one subject – Investigation of Groundwater Resources.

Masters aspirations, going back to Singapore triumphant within the year, two thousand dollars, all dashed.

But WAIT. Happily, there is a twist in the tale.

Turns out that (while I am typing this, KK is next to me spewing invectives and “ridiculous-es”) his lecturer never received his sent-through-the-post assignment, which constitutes 50 per cent of the subject’s final score.

It doesn't take a maths genius. KK HAD to fail.

It was only today that the silent professor – nearly two MONTHS after KK first got his results, shot off enquiry emails and lodged a formal appeal for A$10– responded. That he didn’t receive an assignment.

I, the person responsible for posting it, am certain that it was sent. It was a duty I took very seriously.

KK has been tearing out his hair today, trying to reproduce the entire assignment to rush it to school so the man can mark it and factor in the grade.

The swear words were brought on by the fact that diagrams which were painstakingly hand-drawn four months ago with the help of library texts cannot be quickly reproduced, that the computer programme seems to have messed up his graphs, that in the first place the professor had demanded that hard-copy assignments be sent through the post directly to him instead of doing it through the school, that the prof did not acknowledge receipt of those assignments, that he insinuated to KK that he was trying to get a free ride by crying wolf, that he said there were many other students like KK who claim that their assignments were not received.

A lot is hinging on the result which we don’t know yet but is likely to be a pass at least.

Otherwise, KK cannot upgrade his course from a post-graduate diploma to a Masters course. Neither can he determine the number of subjects he should take in the coming term. Worst, we don’t know if he can complete his course by July and we definitely cannot stay on any longer.

For sure, though, KK is steering clear of this particular professor’s subjects.

frisbee play

This is what happens when we play with the Frisbee.

KK, the athletically gifted one, throws perfect spinning UFOs which are a dream to catch but spends most of his time plodding across the field to retrieve my wonky way-off throws.

I, the klutz with the poor physical memory, am lucky if I get one good throw out of 10 and I always end up laughing at how my wobbly Frisbee goes straight up and down while KK shakes his head in disbelief.

Day, who seems to have inherited my abysmal hand-eye co-ordination, can’t throw the Frisbee for nuts but runs around squealing and chasing dropped Frisbees like a dog after a stick or he goes hang out with his sister.


Dee, the placid one, settles on one grassy spot like a contented cow and proceeds to chew the grass and leaves around her with gusto.

40 degrees

It’s feverishly hot.

Temperatures reached 40 degrees Celcius today. Summer, relatively pleasant and spring-like to date, has lived up to its name.

Whilst the already charred natives fled to the beach in an attempt to uncover hitherto untanned spots and grill themselves further, we, I am ashamed to say, fled the other way.

I might have done the sun, sea and sand routine in my youth, but when the back of my middle-aged hand is starting to resemble a road map and I see skin cancer clinics everywhere, I dodge.

Still, a refreshing summer swim is a possibility with sun block. But as Day is allergic to the stuff and Dee laps it off her hands, I am not exposing them to the treacherous UV sans sun block.

So wild horses couldn’t have dragged me out there today.

My husband, however, proved a harder horse to rein in. We went out.

Predictably, Coogee Beach was packed, sunbathers in the more crowded spots having only enough space to throw out their oiled arms and legs on the blistering hot sand before hitting another sunbather.


Wearing hats, sunglasses and long sleeves, we gawped at the fearless revelers before quickly popping into the supermarket for refuge.

* Despite the heat, I didn't sweat a drop. Too dry.

wolfing it down

The dietary ups and downs of little kids make for such boring fodder, but to their doting parents, what makes it past their mouths is such a life and death issue.

I am therefore pleased to note that at this point, Dee has overcome food resistance and (more in line with her tubbiness) is now a bit of a glutton.

Actually I think she started eating after her papa took over her menu. Ooops.

The canny man introduced oats and condensed milk breakfasts, sometimes with fruit, in place of the bread morsels I was throwing at her.

And for dinner, in place of the steamed-for-five-minutes silken tofu with peas which lazy me had been feeding her for weeks, he sweats over brown-rice porridge with a mélange of chopped goodness including carrots, avocado, chicken, pork, broccoli, put on the boil for two hours.


In my defence, I can only say that the last time I tried feeding her porridge, it didn’t work. So perhaps his TIMING is right. Perhaps nine months plus is the magical time when Dee is finally ready to eat.

And she does. She laps it all up. Five minutes and a whole big bowl is gone.

KK is now her official feeder, he says he gets a huge kick out of watching the porridge he so painstakingly cooked disappear.


After that she tries to go after our dinner food, our dinner fruits, our supper biscuits.

Only thing: She still doesn’t drink water.

hello pills, bye diapers

Two little milestones in Day’s life.

Swinging by the chemist, I picked up the cheapest bottle of vitamin pills I could find (less than ten bucks) and fed it to him.


Pill popper boy chews one raspberry flavoured pill every morning now, after he has his breakfast. I’m big on the calcium, of which I think he is hardly getting any.

The other thing: He’s rid of diapers for good.

Yes, he was toilet trained, but he would still go to bed with the butt sponge and as it would be turgid in the mornings, I reckoned he was still peeing in his sleep.

Papa had enough. Especially since he figured that the night diaper was lulling Day into pee leaks, even during the day (BIG issue with KK, who hated seeing the perennial ever-widening wet patch between Day's legs and smell the sharp tang of ammonia)

So papa announced two nights ago that it’s Bye Bye Diaper Forever and that’s that.

Day squealed and ran to his diaper box for refuge. Too bad.

Success?

I think Day wet the bed last night. But as we are not particularly hygienic in that regard, we’re prepared for as many accidents as it’d take until he gets it.

too much time means..

… we have no routine. No working hours, no study timetable, nothing, we live one day at a time with absolutely nothing on the calendar until KK starts school in March.

… we can wake up anytime we want (930 for me, when Day comes in to wake me and Dee up, and 11-ish for KK) and sleep anytime we want.

… that after KK wakes up, we look at each other with our biggest worry for the day: What do we possibly do today?


… we go out every day because it’s maddening to stay at home without anything to do.

… we regularly go to the library as that is the only place where we can get books and toys for free to keep us entertained.


… that in a variation of our Coogee ritual, we go to the beach (nearly) every day for lunch, set up our tent under the trees, pass time by watching birds, planes and babes in bikinis, sleep (the kids anyway) for a good two to three hours, before returning home to find that oh goody! It’s already five o’ clock!


… we have time to learn the names of and admire all the summer flowers we see, smell the tang of freshly-plucked pine needles, scrutinize the amazing bark of the trees which peel away to reveal smooth silver-green.


… we can play Frisbee anytime we want.

… we do everything at a very leisurely pace. Apart from eating of course. A lifetime of rushing around can’t change us into French diners.

… we haven’t felt stressed or anxious or manic or adrenalized in a l-o-n-g time.

… we get to watch the kids grow and change. Literally by the minute. We don’t miss a thing.


… we keep thinking of ways to spend money. Eat out. Eat good. Buy things (there are tantalizing post-Christmas sales every where). But it’s just thinking, of course!

… we end up doing very little of what I would consider constructive because sometimes, one needs some routine, some stress, something unpleasant (like work) to jumpstart initiative.

… we get dead bored as there is only so much “holidaying” one can take, even Day gets bored and he asks me: “What do I do now?” to which I (bearing in mind I have just gone through three activities with him) throw up my hands and say “Play with your toys by yourself!”

… Day turns into something of a juvenile delinquent as he gets so easily bored, he refuses to be “taught” by his mother and so ends up roaming round the house making trouble.

… sometimes, because it’s just the four of us day after day after day, we get sick of looking at each other.

… KK keeps talking about going back home to loved ones, to a job, where he’d feel useful and be part of a community.

… I am going crazy, for who in their right mind would complain about a surfeit of time?

… that one day, when I back in Singapore, frazzled with a million and one things to do and not having enough time to spend with my husband and kids and loved ones and friends and myself, I will look back on this particular post and, despite the negatives, long for days like these.

music dearth

More than food, more than income, more than anything else, I miss music.

Having a piano which I can open and play at any time, guitars which I can strum, orchestras to play with, friends whom I can get together with to just jam for the heck of it.

Oh, the deprivation!

Yes, I do have my violin with me. It was the only thing lightweight enough for me to carry as hand luggage. But for me, the joy in playing the violin only comes when I play as part of a group and here, I have no groups.

So I take out the old 65-er (yes my violin is 41 years old) now and then to wiggle my fingers. But with nothing to look forward to and without scores even, it’s really no fun.

Funnily enough, apart from CDs, I haven’t even heard anyone playing the piano in my entire time here. None of my neighbours, it seems, have a piano, unless they had a sound proof room.

So I sing. I think the kids need that, at least. You know, early music exposure and all.

It was all so different then.

day sings do re mi

Is Day musically inclined?

I still don't know. But he likes to sing, and I think he sings better than his papa.

Here's one of his current favourites, which I hummed ad nauseum whenever I did the housework so I'd feel better.

tummy woes

Vomiting and diarrhoea is no big deal.

I feel compelled, however, to note Day’s food poisoning (that’s what we guess anyway) episode which started yesterday, because it’s his first.

He’s never had diarrhoea, and apart from hurling up a load of colostrum when he was a day old, he’s never known what it’s like to have stuff go back up his throat.

Predictably, he was very distressed.

As he sat on the toilet bowl, explosively dislodging liquid from his arse, he couldn’t stop crying everytime he gave a super-loud wet fart, and wanted badly to hold my hands.

As for the vomiting, he clearly didn’t know what to do. He’s never heard the word vomit in his life, and for a while, he’d say he wanted to spit or that he was choking.

We repeatedly told him to go hurl in the toilet bowl, but he was too scared.

His preferred method was to come crying whenever he felt nauseous and let loose all over us. Yes, us.

As for me, it’s a first having to clean up vomit from the carpet (how?!) and the sofa cloth cushions – which don’t’ have covers, by the way, and are already remarkably dirty with God-knows-what. Ah, the things we have to live with.

In a bid to capitalize on his food poisoning, KK told him he was sick as he had been eating too many sweets.

To Day’s credit, in return for a tube of Mentos which he had just been informed would make him vomit all over again, he promised “I will go spit in the toilet bowl”.

Proving to us that he unequivocally values sweets more than his health. But which kid doesn't?

first steps

Ah, 13 glorious seconds!

* If it's a bit dark, it's because our apartment IS that dark.

free toys

Certainly not ours to own! But free toys have been coming our way, courtesy of the absolutely wonderful, brilliant, indispensable Toy Library.

Why we don’t have these libraries in Singapore, I don’t know. I reckon it wouldn’t work because one, most people back home are leery of letting their kids play with and mouth toys which may have vestiges of saliva or food bits from some other (horrors, germ-riddled?) child.

Two, would folks be socially responsible enough to make sure that these free toys are returned in mint condition? Or would they say, heck, it’s not mine anyway, who cares if one piece is missing or if my kid totally wrecked it? Would they even return it?

We pay a A$33 membership fee to borrow toys for a year, up to five toys each time, for up to a month’s worth of play per toy.

It’s a damn good deal. The library aims to provide “premium quality toys and games” to those who are “financially disadvantaged” and any family with young children. That we are, former and latter.

And truly, the toys are premium.


The toy library itself is no great shakes on first glance, it’s just one small room within the library, the size of your average HDB flat living room, with toy-strewn shelves all round its perimeter.

Take a closer look, however, and you find that the toys are really quite marvellous. Wooden rocking horses, box cars, loads of building toys carefully inventoried in plastic boxes, wooden jigsaw puzzles. Lots of solid wooden things (I love!) and very mentally stimulating toys which you’d normally have to pay a fortune for.


Day is currently obsessing over a wooden train track set and a box of newish wooden number cubes to thread shoelaces through, which Dee loves too.


To date, the toys we’ve picked were in great condition. It somehow puts the onus on me to make sure I pass that on. I usually turn our apartment upside down to make sure every single little piddling piece in back in the box.

On that note, I have to say, too, that while the libraries I frequent here are smaller, the books are in far better condition. Especiially the children’s books. Amazingly, pull-out flaps are intact and pages are whole. Most of the books even look new.

That says something.

unbelievably crawling

Dee suddenly took it upon herself – today exactly at the ripe old age of 9 1/2 months - to crawl.

We had pretty much concluded that the girl isn’t going to do that and will go on to walk straightaway.

Surprise, surprise.

It was KK who, this morning, yelled at me from the living room: “Hey she’s crawling! Really crawling!”

I popped my head out of the kitchen and there she was right in front of me, a few metres from the table where she had been standing a while ago.

It’s been a hoot, looking up to see her crawling, slow and pendulous like a baby elephant, across the doorways.

dream car

Reposing outside our favourite roast chicken joint the other day, was a show-stopper of a van which looks like something out of Pimp My Ride.

Inside the very slick red and yellow Oporto Kustom Kombi were cream leather sofas, suede walls, a poker table, a fold-away bed, wooden floors, a disco ball, 24 speakers, a Xbox, bar fridge, a DVD player and not one but two 32-inch flat screen TVs (though I wonder why there is a need for two).


Possibly ours if we purchased an Oporto meal (it’s the grand prize of some lucky draw), we nevertheless felt the miniscule probability of striking gold was not worth the dollar it would cost to send the required SMS.

But it’s nice to experience it anyway. I don't think such vehicles are kosher in Singapore.

comfort food

Tastes don’t change.

No matter how we acclimatize to pizzas, pastas and potatoes in every form, there is just something about wonton soup and Chinese food in general that stimulates more than the tastebuds.

For comfort, we seek the Superbowl in Sydney’s Chinatown.


A restaurant we happened to come across one day and decided to sit down at because it was packed with Orientals (versus other nicer cleaner-looking restaurants which were packed with Occidentals) it proved a winner.

It wasn’t just that the food was authentic (of course it was), or that the wait staff all spoke in rapid-fire Cantonese, or that we were automatically served Chinese tea and given chopsticks.

It had that brusque, rough, slightly uncivilized edge which made us (well me at least) feel right at home. It’s the sort of place where the wait staff, who are rushing around everywhere banging plates around with nary a polite word, could well get into an argument with you, where tables are shaky, where the chopsticks might need a little wiping. Nice.

The best food, as my brother always says, comes from the dirtiest kitchens.

The fact that my parents both gave the thumbs up when they were visiting is a good sign of its pedigree.


Anyhow, my fav: Century egg porridge with dough fritters. (Quite) healthy, cheap and a taste of home. KK’s fav: Any sort of noodles.

Day’s fav: Everything. He eats a lot when we come here.


I don’t know if his tastes have set in, but he has a definite preference for Chinese food. Clear soups, noodles, rice. Forget heavy cream pastas and fancy meat dishes.

After the meal, we end off with divine custard tarts from the cake shop down the road, they are usually warm as turnover is so high.

changeling

Oh my little fairy child.

Just when I thought I had her labeled – serious, docile and very bottom-heavy – she fooled us all.

She’s gone and undergone another transformation in the last week, and rather a dramatic one at that.

Gone is the moody, sullen, grumpy gnome. Suddenly, she laughs at everything and anything. Her papa no longer feels disgruntled when he makes silly rubber faces because she chortles and claps her hands in glee.

Even I, the one with the straightest un-funniest face in the family, can make her giggle by just calling her name.

Docility has flown out the window.

She thinks the high chair is for standing in (not sitting) and infinitely prefers to eat while standing up (in high chair).

Lights out and she starts nocturnal games of climbing onto, heartily pinching and standing up against various body parts of her grim parents. Along with a lot of squealing and humming as she talks to herself.

As if she is thoroughly sick of having let her bum lead the way for the past nine months, she now refuses to sit on it.


Try to seat her and she arches her back and stiffens her legs so there is no way her bum can touch the ground unless she is flat out.

All she wants to do is stand, dancing from one leg to another, sometimes putting her pudgy feet this way and that. If we happen to brush past, she squeals and hangs on for dear life to our hands so we can walk her.

Carrying her in arms has become a chore for she darts this way and that, throwing herself around like a very heavy sack of potatoes because she wants to touch everything.

She’s become like Day was. Hyper, naughty and very inconvenient.

But we do love the laughter!

playgroup party

Considering that Day’s playgroup is organized by a motley crew of frazzled mums, they put up an amazing party for the kids.


The usual playgroup green, instead of toys, was littered with entertainment stations: A jumping castle, a petting farm (with some of the healthiest petting specimens I have seen so far including a beautifully smooth pink Wilbur-ish pig) and a face painter.


A rather good one, at that.


Day’s face proved to be the perfect canvas (he requested to be a puppy) because he didn’t move an inch.


Did it cost a lot? No. Just a dollar more than usual (usual being A$4 per session). The extra funds are apparently used for parties like these. Nice.

start of 2007

You know what they say about how we should try everything at least once in our lives.

May 2007 bring loads of new experiences for us!

For starters, I present my balloon dogs.


After cringing at every balloon twist's nauseating shriek (akin to nails scratching on the blackboard, in my opinion) and shrieking a few times when the balloons burst in my hands, I think I have finally got it.

No small feat considering I am balloon-phobic; the sort who, as a child, would rather die than participate in the traumatic childhood game of step-on-the-balloon.

So... don't be too scared to try anything!