Why do you go to church?

Dear Teens in the row in front of me,

It's not the first time you have sat there, sometimes it's behind, but really what I witnessed yesterday, annoyed me. From the moment mass began, and the fourth person in the group joined in, it was a non-stop chitchat session till the end of mass. You did not care that you were in the Holy presence of God, and did not respect the congregation or the priest. You didn't care at all about the people around you. You carried on with your chatter without listening to a single word the priest said, although you did stand and sit and kneel with the rest of us. Guy in the grey top, the Eucharistic prayer is the most important part of the mass, and the body and blood of Christ is at the altar, not found somewhere on your iPhone.

When we are singing the 'Our Father', it is really okay not to hold hands if you feel it's uncool to hold your guy friends' hands. You didn't have to play the clapping game or catching using your hands. The 3 yr old kid behind me, and others around were better behaved throughout the whole hour in church.

If you are just there to mingle with your friends and have fun, I would suggest KFC which is just a stone's throw away. You get to feed your tummies too.

A beautiful Monday

It is a very beautiful Monday morning and we couldn't ask for better weather. The breeze that is blowing into the flat is so chilly. The rain is not heavy thus is perfect. Unfortunately the night wasn't so good and I was awoken by an irritating car alarm that just went on and on for approximately 10mins. Hubby got me to call the police and while I was on the phone to them, I could hear a man down the road on the phone as well, informing, I would assume the police, the address here. Looks like we were not the only ones irritated by it. The time was 3.20am, and after that I couldn't fall back to sleep for over an hour as I nursed a terrible aching left ear as well as a blocked nose. I'm not having a cold or anything. It's when the air quality is bad that I suffer from it. Thank goodness it is not bento preparation morning. I did pick up some cutters over the weekend and am excited to use them. I'm also on a roll after fixing so many bentos last week which got me started on a bento frenzy. Spent the weekend going through my bento books from cover to cover. I just love browsing them, not just to get ideas, but also to marvel at all the wonderful creations by talented ladies out there.

I'm waiting for the doctor to open so I can get my ear and nose treated and hopefully sleep better tonight. :/

Susan got me excited about Pillsbury Buttermilk biscuits and I spied a couple of bottles at Cold Storage last week but as they were near the expiry date, I didn't pick one up. I failed to see them yesterday when I went again. Instead they had everything else like pizza dough, crescent rolls (which I got), cinnamon rolls, and breadsticks. From Susan, I learnt that the biscuit dough is very versatile and you can prepare lots of stuff with it. Hope they bring in some stock soon. Meanwhile, I will just make some basic crescent rolls aka croissants and see if they taste good.

Losing it...

I really thought I had lost it... my mind that is. Just last week, a mum from class messaged me regarding the dates of the exams and I confidently told her that it was English paper 2 tomorrow, and right up to this afternoon, actually believed that. So, imagine my shock and embarrassment when I came across the exam timetable while sorting the mountain high of textbooks, assessment books, files etc, and realized that that mum was right after all! It isn't tomorrow but Monday that they will sit for the main paper as well as listening comprehension. I couldn't understand how I had made that error and came up with the date 7 May that was in my diary, but she soon proved that I didn't lose my sanity. Her explanation was that the school had given us our termly newsletter and that was the original date given. I must have written those dates down in my diary. It was later followed by an updated timetable, which was the one I referred to today. The good news is that I have another 3 days to revise more stuff with her!

Really feeling the heat now - temperature, stress, temper... The weather has been terribly unbearable. I really wish some rain would fall to take away the terribly intense heat. It gave me a migraine last Sunday and it has been years since I last had one. It also makes me very easily irritable lately.

This is Princess' cleaning week in school, so this poor mum has been getting up at 5.30am again. It was prata with sausage yesterday and chicken teriyaki onigiri today. Gosh imagine cooking rice at 5.30 in the morning! :( Thank goodness this is a short week and tomorrow is Friday! Yippee! Don't need to wake so early tomorrow as she requested a simple Nutella bread and it's usually a pack of Milo for breakfast before she goes for her morning run in school. :)

Have a great weekend ahead everyone!

Smoking cabs

This topic really gets me on my nerves. Why is it that taxi drivers need to smoke in their cabs? It was never a problem before, but since the ban on smoking in coffeeshops, I noticed a steep incline in drivers smoking. Have they no consideration for the passengers who use their services? It is their bread and butter thus shouldn't they take proper care of their working environment? Is it the rising costs of living, or the ban in eating places, or they just simply do not care since everyone is doing it?

I had an experience about 3yrs ago, and it wasn't a problem yet at that time, but I had the misfortune of calling a Trans cab (not sure if that's the name of the company, it was a red cab) during peak hours, so you know there's already a surcharge on top of the booking fee. There was a very long queue at the taxi stand and I had my girl with me and we had to rush home thus couldn't wait in line. So he pulled up and once I entered the cab, the smoke hit me. It was fresh smoke, which means he had just smoked on his way to pick us up. Fumbling with a little kid and bags etc, I had to take it. I didn't have the energy to reject the cab. But I let it be known to him that I wasn't happy at all. You know what his reply was? Oh, that is not smoke, it's the smell from the zhi char stall. That got me fuming! Was thinking to myself, you think I'm the age of my 3-yr-old daughter?? I wound down the windows and refused to speak to him the entire journey even though he was trying to mend things. One retort from the drivers (hubby can attest to that) is that the person who was in the cab before us had smoked and they couldn't stop them . Classic! Try a better excuse next time.

In the past year, it has gotten very bad. When I call for a cab, as it is, the fares are exorbitant, so I don't see any reason why I should pay to suffer and put my & my family's health at risk. Even when my dad used to smoke, my sis and I would banish him out to the balcony with the sliding door closed over. Thank God he has quit now for quite a number of years. I always say to people, if my dad can quit, so can you. He's been smoking for so long and he even used to work for a company that retails cigarettes, and worse of all, the staff were given cartons of cigs every month.

These days, since my girl is older and easier to handle, I reject taxis which pull up stinking of cigarette smoke. I don't care what they think. If they were responsible, they shouldn't do it in the cab. Some smell like the nightclub the morning after as all the smells have been absorbed by the leather etc over time. It is pretty disgusting. I often see them on the roads with their windows wound down puffing away. I also never flag for cabs with a window wound down for that reason. I hate it that I've always showered, washed my hair, and then step into a cab and come out of the ride smelling like a smoker. That disgusts me to no end.

The other thing that I used to do when I called for a cab after my many unpleasant experiences was to request for a smoke-free cab. The operator gets a shock when he/she hears my request and they usually say, but the drivers are not allowed to smoke in there. Well, tell it to your drivers then! That option didn't work well for me as sometimes the driver arrives early and will step out of their cabs to have a puff. The smell of course goes on their clothes, so now I say, give me a cab with a non-smoking driver. ;)

Am I being too sensitive? Well, maybe I am but I do not care. That's the stand I take about smoking and and I strongly believe that I am not wrong to protect my family and I. Someone once said that I can't protect my girl forever, but where her health is concerned, I will protect her for as long as I can. As for smokers who do not care about others but simply blow smoke into faces, well, I can't stop my girl from turning her nose up at them. Who will protect you if you don't protect yourself? Therefore, I ask you, is the rapid increase in taxi charges justifiable if we are given such shoddy service?

Friends

I was very upset by someone yesterday. I'm one person who greatly values friendship. Friends mean the world to me. I have a handful of friends who've been with me since my primary school days, and along the way I picked up more in secondary school, pre-u etc. I'm so thankful for these friends who've stuck around. You know who you gals are.

When my daughter started going to playschool at around 2 plus yrs old, naturally I was surrounded by other mums. I got along particularly well with a certain mum and we both adored each others' daughters. We had common interests and became fast friends. We were very close. We spent Christmas, Hari Raya together and our girls enjoyed each others' company. It was very sad for me when cracks began to appear in our friendship. I often wondered to myself during those days if I had done something wrong, something which upset her. But after speaking to a couple of friends, I was enlightened by them that in actual fact, she was the one with the problem. Being the only girl in the family, she was used to having her own way, thus she was very possesive. She even told me once, after her daughter had left the school as she was a year older than mine, that she was jealous of another mum whose husband used to give us lifts home after school. That friendship gave me a lot of heartaches as I had invested a lot of trust in it. I was very affected when she shunned me without so much as a warning and left me in a very sad, wronged state. I shed lots of tears during that period and hubby too was aware of it. But the thing with hubby is, I daren't tell him too much bad things about a person as he takes it very personally. I guess he probably doesn't like to see me get hurt.

From that experience, I vowed that I won't make friends with the mums from school when my daughter started pre-school. I didn't want to get hurt so badly again. In the initial stage, I hardly went to school and only did so when she was bullied by a certain classmate when she was in nursery and I wanted to observe them in class. (Her school has viewing rooms with one way mirrors which you can observe through). There was a grandma who was there every day as her little boy has serious food allergy and it was she I first made friends with. I then got to know her daughter. Our kids were classmates for 2yrs. Through the 2-1/2yrs there, I've gradually formed some wonderful friendships. I guess I've been slowly recovering from my broken heart. I've made a couple of very good friends there and they are ever-so-wonderful. When hubby was in hospital they came to my rescue without my even asking them for help and I would say that it really touched me to know that there are genuinely nice people around. It renewed my faith in friendships again. And I am thoroughly spoilt by them. They always offer to come and pick me/us up when we are planning to meet, and I really appreciate that, although it isn't necessary. Thanks much J,B & P. The list goes on. As our kids have 1/2 a yr left together, we try to spend more time outside of school together so they can play with their friends and hopefully create some memories for them before they go on to proper school.

Likewise at swimming and ballet classes, I unwittingly make friends with other mums while we wait for our kids during their lessons. This incident yesterday involved a mum from one of the enrichment classes. I won't go into details as it is too long and complicated to relate. What pissed me off yesterday was that she (mum A) had made plans with another mum (mum B) whom I'm also close to and they had a meeting today at the latter's home. I was curious, as I had forgotten to bring something when I had met mum B and she told me to give it to mum A, that they would be meeting on Sunday. I kind of felt left out as the 3 of us are pretty close, so just wondering why I wasn't invited. Then I thought, well, maybe it was a gathering with their mutual friends and I didn't know them. So I didn't dwell too much into it. On the other hand, I tried to sound out mum A. Unfortunately for me, while I was rushing out to class yesterday, I again failed to bring the item. So I said it to mum A that I was supposed to bring something for her to pass onto mum B and she kind of tried to avoid the topic. I thought it strange. At the end of class, her daughter came up to her and said, 'when are we going to so-and-so's house?'. She was in a fluster and tried to cover it up and ran off without saying goodbye, and even left the note which the teacher had given out, behind. I mean, what's with her? Why did she have to be so ridiculously guilty and secretive? I honestly hate people like her. One minute they pretend they are your good friend and behind your back, you don't know what they say. She insisted on picking us up the day of the funfair even though I told her it's ok we'd make our own way there. Her hubby had rented a car and I suppose she just wanted to do something good to boost her own morale. It was clearly out of the way, and I'm not even sure her hubby was too pleased with having to do that favour. And her daughter has been acting weird too. I'm not sure if her mum has been talking bad things behind my back, as kids pick up all sorts of stuff from listening in on adults' conversations, but she didn't wanna look or greet me yesterday. I said it to her sarcastically, 'you don't like me anymore?'. Honestly, what is it with me that I attract these kind? And the other thing I hate most is that when something happens and no one comes and gets the truth from you but instead talk behind your back, not that anything happened in this instance. I was just quoting an example.

To think that we had lunch a few weeks' back, and she had taken my girl for the rest of the afternoon, and now this is the way she treats me. But I do know she's not a simple person. I can't describe it. You just have to know her to understand what I mean. Unfortunately I have a knack for sniffing out people like her and how they work. Hers is a superficial kind of friendship. Let's put it this way, you won't want to tell her any secrets or they won't remain a secret anymore. She even said something about mum B to the teacher which she told me. Well, not being a b**ch, I won't be spilling the beans.