Complaints, complaints & surprises (the all-in-one post)

Gosh my blood is boiling. I know, it's Lent, I should try to be more forgiving. Unfortunately, argh, even though I know who the culprit is, I can't confront them without evidence! We just got home a little while ago and saw some little black creepy crawlies, and if you know me by now, I hate those little things. Hubby saw two climbing along our door frame and then when I went to throw out some rubbish, I found to my shock, that someone had left a cake box with the cake base and leftover cream and cake beside the bin area. That is what they are coming for! Sometimes I do hate these common rubbish bins. Granted, it's better than having your own within your house, because we don't get cockroach or rat problems that way. Still, people need to be more considerate. The whole area stinks, as not only have they put the cake box there, they have also thrown some bags of rubbish (foodstuff) along with that! Argh!!!! Why are some people so lazy they can't even open the chute and dump stuff in?? It's not like they need to physically pull it open, they just need to use their foot on the pedal! If they are that lazy, they do have a helper!!!

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Little people are people too.

How many times have you been to a restaurant and the little people aren't given menus? Somehow they are always invisible and only adults can be seen. Also when in a queue, I've seen adults ignore kids and cut the queue or the service staff totally ignores them. We experienced that today when princess went to order a cake at a coffee joint. She came back without her cake and said that the lady didn't see her, and didn't want to go back again to get it. I think what could have happened was that she must have served the person behind princess. It takes a lot of effort on a kid's part to have that much courage to go independently to do stuff. I've always taught her from a very young age to be independent and not be shy. She is still struggling a little with it but on the whole she's doing a good job.

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On a brighter note, so pleased to catch this beautiful sight last evening from my kitchen window. I love rainbows. I remember one year we went to Hawaii and there were rainbows every day. What a pretty, awesome sight!

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Friend told me that she had sent this over in the beginning of the week. I'm so pleased that it took 5 days to arrive. Love all the stuff she sent especially the face punchers, and the fork & spoon one which I can't find at all in Singapore. She even got the sausage cutters! And so kind of her to get those Happy Birthday candles as well. Yippee! I do so wish that the 100 yen shop will find its way to our shores soon. Thanks very much, girlfriend. :D

These were some of the bento boxes that she got from 100 yen. Love them all. :)

I love how compact they become when they are folded up.

Here's another gift from another friend...

I sprinkled some hello kitty seaweed on princess' dinner last evening, and made her a Japanese curry which she's currently in to. I wouldn't even call it curry, it wasn't even a tiny bit spicy haha.

We had chicken nasi briyani which I had bought from my hawker centre in the afternoon. Was a good move, as it rained very heavily in the late afternoon, so we didn't need to go out to get food. Hubby enjoyed it and it was very reasonably priced at $3 a packet. Where can you get a nice packet of nasi briyani at that price these days??

Have a good week ahead. For me, I'm looking forward to being on my own again during the day. :)

Bento #43, 44

Was meeting the lovely Miz KY for lunch and she requested a bento. I feel sorry for her for all that has happened recently and really wanted to cheer her up and spend time with her. Hope she liked the bento. I was going for fuss-free and convenience so I won't have to lug home the boxes, Managed to get these ones from Daiso. Sorry that T couldn't join us today, but hopefully soon, we can gather again, just the 4 or 5 of us. :)

The second box of bento was for dear princess. I had fish beehoon soup at the food court. :)

Bento #42

This is the last bento of the term for school. I might do a few in-between for home, so will not be updating bento on a daily basis from now. I get a break of 3 months, yippee, but back to it again in July. :) Hopefully have more ideas then.

This bento was done in a hurry. I didn't even plan to do one in the first place, but had nothing 'instant' (such as buns) for her so had to prepare something quick and think on the spot. It was right after we got home for ballet with about 1/2hr to spare before the arrival of a friend and baby to visit at our home. It was lovely seeing H again and getting to meet dear baby A. Can't wait for her to be back again in Sep so we can spend more time together then.

M said the two guys in the box look like hantu (ghosts) :( I guess they do look like. But that wasn't the plan. I didn't know what to do with them. Wish I have the lovely bear cutter too, as wanted to do bear peeking out. Unfortunately I don't.

If you are wondering what is making the men stand up tall, it's the use of two thin pieces of vermicelli holding them up from behind. The cheese was all soft and lying down so decided to do that. I also made bunny apples for the first time. It sounds easy but I wasted a few pieces of apples when trying to slice them after making a 'V'. I found some beautiful organic young corns with their husks on at the bottom, from NTUC and it's one veg that princess loves and I thought they look cute. Couldn't resist getting a pack. :) Hamburger gummy was a reward from ballet teacher. Well, frankly speaking, I am not very pleased that she gives them lollies and sweets every week. I did offer to give stickers for them to give out, but they think the kids will be happier with sweets after all their hard work in class. Oh well.

Daiso

P says I should document my bento collection. Well, I do take photos of them sometimes but not all the time. This is my recent addition to it. I was in two minds about getting the red onigiri box (which Bento Pet bought) or the beige one, so I seeked P's opinion. She preferred the beige one so I decided to get that. It goes with the green leaf strap so am pretty happy with that. I had seen in some other blogs where they used this box and thought I could use it for things other than onigiri. I didn't realize too that I didn't have the animal collection food picks. What I have is the sea collection of fish, dolphin, turtle, etc.

Bento #41

Having been inspired by all of shopping mum's bentos, I prepped myself up to make a beautiful one for my girl, with maximum effort. My initial plan was to do a zoo bento seeing that they (the school) will be making a trip there. Unfortunately, mine ended up with a little lamb, and a bunny. Haha! There are also strawberry tulips (which I learnt from Angeleyes) & dragonfruit butterflies. What a mishmash! I think the little girl looked weird too! Haha!

I wanted to make sure that she was well-fed as I can't do a proper bento for her to take on her outing. I just spread two slices of bread with Nutella for her snack later in the afternoon.

I spent an hour on this, but of course, it included cooking the pasta, warming up leftover rice and Jap curry from dinner two nights' ago, boiling carrot, cuttlefish ball, and salmon sausages. It was pretty tough to not be able to use ham today but it did work out in the end. However, after all my effort, she left most of the rice and didn't even touch the pasta. She said she was too full. Well, she did have 2 little cups of milk in-between.

I doubt I will make this often. It really takes loads of effort. Maybe I'm not such a pro yet, that's why. ;)

Bento #40

The bento above was made for school on Wednesday. I didn't have time to upload it as we were busy yesterday - having fun at Sentosa.

I needed food which could last for hours as our dear Little Miss Independent wanted to get a lift to school from her ballet teacher. She banned me from going to class and all I could do was drop her off in a cab at ballet school, and she had with her her character skirt, school uniform, school bag and ballet bag. All these to be managed by her alone. Oh gosh! Well, anway, I let her have her independence but had to remind her a few times to thank the teacher for the ride. My date cancelled on me that morning (you're forgiven S, I know you must have been suffering), but a pleasant surprise came in the form of M, who wanted to surprise S and me with her appearance. :)

Well, anyway, I wrote a note to teacher giving her the address of school and if she didn't know the way, to call me. Little Miss Independent called just before 12 and said she was arriving at school soon. Well, great... they made it!

Bento #39

I made rice balls today - one with sakura denbu as flavouring, and I added some corn kernels to it; one with seaweed flakes which I put sausages in it, as well as the last one flavoured with cod roe which also has sausages in the middle. I made quite a lot of rice, and was wishing KY or P stayed nearby so I could pass them the rest. In the end, I gave them to a neighbour. The kids do not like Jap food so I'm trying to change their opinion of it. They have been conditioned by their mum to think that Jap food = raw food. Well, when we met the boy while waiting for the kids' school buses, he told me that he loved the rice balls! Wow, that was great news. :D

Bento #38

This was hastily put together before we left for ballet yesterday. I had actually bought a packet of vegetarian beehoon for Princess and I for breakfast. However, she wasn't in the mood to eat beehoon. I still needed her to have her lunch as it was a rushed day for us. And truth be told, I couldn't wait to use the Mickey, Minnie, and friends pasta. I had bought her a piece of kueh lapis which I cut into smaller pieces. This was consumed in the cab after class, while on the way to pick up hub. We were rushing off to the Science Centre, thereafter to the godparents' place for a bbq. We were given free tickets to the Science Centre and the magic show, but in the end, what we spent on cab fare was far more than the cost of the free tickets. Blame it on the rain, and a very silly surcharge at Nicholl Highway of $2 at 2pm on a Saturday afternoon. Quite mad at that, as it was totally unnecessary to go that way. The cab driver was using it as a shortcut to enter the ECP. Was mad, but it wasn't totally his fault. He hadn't known about the ERP charges. It used to be free to enter. And the worst part was that we all had a miserable time there (at the Science Centre), especially dear Princess, who was in tears half the time. It was way too crowded to have any fun as people were in your face all the time, and she got her foot stomped on by a little girl who didn't apologize to her. Oh well, just another of those days.

Her bento consisted of pasta, some vegetarian char siew, crispy fried bean sticks or whatever they are called, some cabbage, carrots using my new mushroom cutter (which is a cookie cutter I had come across in the market in the morning), kueh lapis, strawberry, and 2 little Japanese snacks of a little girl and boy. I couldn't resist getting those little snacks because of the packaging. How cute! The little 'hands' tongs were from McDonald's in Perth, collected on our last trip there. They give them when you order a pasta dish for kids. Princess loves to use them once in a while with her pasta.

Have a great weekend!