Mixed feelings

After 7 years in Jakarta , this December 2018 we are saying farewell to our life and friends here.

Next week will be the final week of school for Term 1. Final and last term for me and my kids.

How all my 3 girls started their early years and primary years here.

To them , BSJ is their first school. And forever it will stay embedded in their minds.

It's the first school for my eldest. She was supposed to join Standard 1 in KL. But joined Year 2 when we moved here 7 years ago.

As for Aisyah and Alya , both joined the Foundation Stage at BSJ for 2 year before moving into Primary school.

How luckily they are to be able to join this great early years programmes. One which is different from back home in KL.

Of course 2 years in Tadika bunga tulip for eldest really paid off as it helped her a lot in Year 2.

Allah is the best planner..no doubts in it. And forever and always we will stay thankful to Him.

Throughout that 7 years in BSJ, me and my girls have become the regular faces that you will see in school. Both at drop offs and pick ups.

Having all girls leave me with no choice of not sending them to school. So Alya and Aisyah used to tag along to school before they join school.

And that how Alya became that time reminder for all those we have seen in school. A reminder how time passed by so quickly . A reminder of how old we have become as we see Alya grew up from being just a 3 months old baby to a friendly 7 years old girl.

Dedicated and friendly teachers had come and gone by through that 7 years. And how they have touched and leave good memories in me and my girls.

Until now my girls still remembers Ms Deborah O'callaghan , Ms Emma Russell , Ms Jeanette Sy .

And soon we will remember all the teachers in BSJ.

These days im school you will see me long hard and long of each things . If only what I see can be straight transferred into a video or pictures that me and my girls will forever cherished in the future.

We always pass by the kiddy pool . And how I can see Aisyah and Alya swimming there for their first time.

This last 3 weeks Arissa and Aisyah didn't get to do their swimming after school activities. Luckily I had look hard and long when I had the time ..with Alya . How we both always waited and sit at the shaded swimming dock whenever her big sisters are doing swimming.

And yes , I took endless photos of it. 😢

It's hard when you have lived quater of your life long in one place. Hard to leave when you have made good friends .

posted from Bloggeroid

Friday franctic

Afraid of see what next Friday will be.

Usually we were the ones who saw sad teary faces of those school leavers and their family.

How we were the ones who witness friends hugging the leavers . And how moms also hugs their friends for the last time in school.

So comes this Friday , me and my kids will be trading our places as leavers of BSJ.

I do know for sure how it will turn up my Year 9 daughters. Deep down inside I am dreading that teary scene.

As for Aisyah my girl in Year 5 and she is just 9, she may cry at pick up or in a car. This too I just don't know what should I do or say..

And as for my 7 year old girl Alya , she might be indifferent to this..but she will join Aisyah in crying later.

And me ? Well , I wish I don't have to cry..for I wish to be the strongest one to support and hug my kids in that last bye bye moments ..

posted from Bloggeroid

Back to gym life

Don't know why I didn't start hitting the gym back when Alya was in FS ..

It took me 3 years to enrol myself again as gym member..

I have always enjoy doing the aerobic and cardiovascular classes. .those day my choice is limited as I were only be able to do it after office hours..wait! Actually more of only when my work is done which could be at 6 pm..

So since January this year , I have been going to the gym and doing all the classes that I can..

And wow!! The feeling of doing those zumba, RPM, body combat, yoga , fast fit was sureal. ..

I enjoyed every minutes of it..

And now I am worried of having to miss these classes during that 1 week of CNY school break..I will be in KL ma. .

Did strong Zumba and Fast fit which was awesome. .had me looking forward to my class this week. .

These days my life in the morning just before I need to pick up my gorgeous girls from school after 2 pm daily, it is sandwich with groceries at pasar and supermarket, gym and my kelas pengajian 2x a week. .

Alhamdulillah for the reliable house helper that I have ..just need to tell what dishes to cook or prepared the bumbu for me to cook
..

ALHAMDULILLAH. .

posted from Bloggeroid

Being a mom

So we are back in JAKARTA after long summer holidays. .

And back to my routines.


And came back with more determination to lose some weight.

Talking about losing weight, it's easy when you have the knowledge of what's and why's of good eating habits.

Did my full health screening last month. Talked to a dietitian as it was part of the package.

Must say that I am glad and thankful for the results.

Have to credit this to my hubby. He has been constantly reminding me and sharing with me good eating habits.. also to exercises. .which I still have not start going to the gym..

Seeing the dietitian left a big impact on myself..I can only say it motivates me to watch what I eat ..and portion is important.

And being me who loves eating, this is helpful..I get to enjoy what I eat but with the right portion.

The tips is , be aware of what u eat at meals time. This will help you to decide what food u can eat for snack . Should u be hungry between the main meals. Go for smaller portion. And yes, lotsa water too.

When you watch and aware what carbo or protein or sugary or salty food that you had eaten , then losing weight will be easier.

posted from Bloggeroid

Check list

I have 2 more days left in KL/Seremban.

Thus cracking my mind on what else to be bought , done , and eat actually.

Feeling and going through the same thing each time I am back here for a holiday.

Balik kampung is always good.

Even to my kids. No doubts they like the idea of going vacation at other countries.

But nothing beats balik kampung.

posted from Bloggeroid

Hikmahnya

Another plus point that I can see from me being a SAHM is that I can call my mom whenever I can at anytime of the day..

Unlike working woman, not much choices of the time when can call our parents. Sometimes at lunch time too not able to do it as we may need to do a quick groceries buy. And postpone that catch up calls at night time or next day again.

Indeed our moves to Jakarta has many silver linings . Not only to the benefits of my children but also to my parents also.

Alhamdulillah.

posted from Bloggeroid

Teh tarik

Hubby said that I have been feeling homesick as I keep on ordering teh tarik either hot or cold lately. And how I crave for Malaysian style cooked dishes even on hari raya Haji.

To be honest, I won't deny it. And thank you my dearest superb half for driving me to Ah Mei in Living World Alam Sutera. However we ended eating at Kopi O as Ah Mei was closed for renovation.

This year raya Haji was a low key one. In fact almost all raya Haji that we celebrated in Jakarta had been a low key celebration. All this because it was a school day the next day. How uncool is that..

No doubt I cooked the the rendang ayam N9 . And this year we had lemang. Luckily I managed to order it from another fellow Malaysian. So apart from those two food , I bake a gugelhupf chocolate cake which is a recipe from Chef Wan. First time baking it and it was yummy. So that's it..that was the menu for raya.

Back to my homesick, I miss being in Malaysia. Blame it also for the fact that I spent my whole summer holidays in Malaysia this year.

posted from Bloggeroid

Mrsfina

I have a pray..

And my pray is that may Allah swt opens up your heart to contact us again.

Us as in we your friends that you have pushed aside .

posted from Bloggeroid

Payback by Him

Sometime I can only shake my head in disbelief upon hearing how friends or people treat their parents or parents in law

Don't they fear of the payback from Allah.

Maybe now in these present time, they may think that their act is ok. No harm done. No heart is broken .. but deep down inside , are they sure that no heart is broken or pain by their acts..?

And the most unthinkable is how sure are you that your kids won't be doing the same things to you?

How sure will you be that your sweet well manared children won't mistreated you in your olden days.?

Never forget that our children are just human beings. The influence of their spouse may changed them from your sweet well manared children to unthoughtful and ill manared children.

Allah is fair. And most of the time we forgot why certain bad things happen to us.. And we always forgot to look back at our own past action towards other people even our own parents and in law.

And for muslim , we must never forget not to cause even the slightest pain in our mother's heart. It's written in Quran on the consequences of that act.

Until then, I can only hope and pray let it not be any pain felt by those mom's and dads too..

posted from Bloggeroid

Spouse by love or religion

How lucky we are if we were advised and told by either our parents or by someone we trust on the important and logic reason why we should find prospective husband or wife based on religion. This I am referring to Muslims.

Of course it is mentioned in the Alquran on how to choose your partner ie what is the criteria one should choosed based upon.

But even if we know, nobody did say the logic behinds it..or our minds just don't want to accept it . And ignore it like most of the times.

So choose your partner because of his/her religion. This means choose a person who has great understanding of the religion and all its teachings.

With that , only after what had happened to someone dearest to me, do I fully understand the logic behind it.. but then, it's too late for my dear friend to change the past. You can just turn the clock back and reset everything when this is about your marriage and kids are involved.

But things would be different had my friend choose her partner first based on religion. From my observations on friends marriage, I noticed that having a spouse that has great and depth understanding of religion does help a lot with the marriage.

And this is different for those who aren't.

So many people fall in love with the outer beauty..some do get lucky to fall in love with a person who has both beauty and depth religion beliefs.

But when marriage get sour when your spouse suddenly changed from good to evil, not much you can do actually. You either try to save your marriage or divorce. And for a Muslim, divorce is one thing that Allah hates.

posted from Bloggeroid

BBQ

How old memories sting me like a bee tonight. More because of the presence of the people from the old memory itself.

How we used to have BBQ when my late brother in law was still alive.

I don't know how it started but what I do know is that he always do bbq even before I was married to my husband.

We always have bbq whenever he feels like too.. he did it whenever Baba Nong, Hala Pachik came all over from Singapore to visit us ..And Khuya Fazul and Kak Iz and the kids will drop over also ..

I remember the big open porch of his house where we did the bbq . How nice to have your bbq witness by the clear night skies and the twinkling stars. . Sometimes the night air was cooling..sometimes no wind at all..

But the things that never missed was the laughter and happy mood ... especially when it was Baba Nong and the company..

I don't know why all of a sudden dearest hubby said about wanting to do bbq tonight.

He only said that the girls will like the idea. . And we only went out to get the new bbq set together with the charcoal and my new yellow and red stool from Ace Hardware store at 430 pm.

My MIL is here ..so do her old maid Wiwi that came to visit Umi and us tonight. Here in my Jakarta house.

I do know for sure these two people remember those old days of bbq ... and tonight seeing Wiwi again and having her with us doing bbq , the memories is just so strong... Wiwi was there in the old memories right from the beginning. . And she was also there when my late BIL passed away..

I do love bbq ..the chicken wings ,the lamb and meat was deliciously cooked with loads of loves from my hubby..

posted from Bloggeroid

When maid goes pulkam

My maid is at her kampung now. That is since Tuesday nite I have turned myself into Cinderellaa. ..

And looking at how I sweat each day by just doing all the house chores including cooking , I think I may stand a chance to reduce my weight.

Last night the sweat after mopping the whole ground floor of my house ie from kitchen to living room ...hmm...it's like doing a sauna ..

And today more sweat after doing the laundry..

But then again , it will be meaningless if I didn't control what I eat...

And now I am on my way to pick up my Alya from school.. Today there are 3 school pick ups .. Yeah three different timing due to Arissa having an after school activities which ends at 340 pm. While Aisyah will finish school at 140 pm.. Phew !!!

More walking for me today ..

Luckily today there is no mengaji. ..

posted from Bloggeroid

Puncak Cisuaria retreat

Last week, we were in Puncak Cisuaria Bogor.School was off for a week for mid term 1 break. And as this time , we didnt go home to Malaysia, we decided to go somewhere near for a holidays. So off we drove to Puncak on Wednesday which so happned to be tanggal merah ie public holidays . We stayed for a night there . The weather was chilling as you have mountains around you. But what i and also my hubby will remember most is when we got to witness the one way traffic direction down the mountains heading to Jakarta from top..me and hubby was driving out from hotel to get dinners for ourkids and my mil too. And how we did waze up before leaving the hotel. So traffic was a bit slow and we thought that it was just normal. Little that we know that we were soon caught up and stuck in the abovementioned situation. we had to park our car by the road side. What we saw next to us were hundreds of cars mostly bearing Jakarta B plate numbers heading downwards the hills. The 2 way traffic had becomed a 1 way traffic. And all cars are moving down the hills. We had to wait by the road side as the KFC outlet that we wanted to go is in the opposite direction. i think we were stucked for almost 30 minutes. The whole scene could have started much earlier before we were there. So how do we know that the one way traffic was about to stop? Well, we only realized it after we saw one police patrol car with loud sirens and a few police motorcycles passing next to us. Shortly after that I saw many cars behind us making that quick u-turn to go up the roads. Had i not look back at that time, we would have be stuck again in another traffic. The roads was chaotic with cars and vehicles making drastic u-turn and people busy crossing roads. With that, we have become like other fellow indonesian..macet and stuck in traffic during holidays..

That feeling again..

Again I have to be a single parent for almost a week as dearest husband is away on a business trip..

A feeling that most unwelcome by me!

How empty I feel inside of me. And boredom is everywhere that it got me thinking and planning of what to do for this week ! Haiya !

I wonder how others who are really a single parent either by death or divorce, do they feel the same way I do ?

Someone that is dearly to me is going through one of the unhappiest moments of her marriage.

I feel empty and bored because my husband is away. She being empty and bored because her husband is neither here nor there.

posted from Bloggeroid

10 years

SOON it will be our 10th year of marriage...

Once a while, walking hand in hand strolling at the beach under the magnificient round moon , its amazing how I can still feel like we are just newly married or at the phase of our married life with no kids of our own... Arissa came during our 2 year of marriage. Perfect timing blessed by Him.

So here we are in Bali. Its our first outside Jakarta holiday... And alhamdulillah , everything went smoothly..

My Miss Van Gogh

I was having dinner with my husband tonight when this piece of art work done by my Aisyah caught my attention.

Straight away it reminded me of the conversation that I had earlier with one of Aisyah's friends' mom at the school library today.

As you can see, the drawing is purely done by children . And its not a piece of art work like Van Gogh or any other famour painter.

Nevertheless, to me as Aisyah's mom, its Van Gogh to my naked eyes. And I can see Aisyah in it with all the girly frills and pink color that she had chosen.  And its precious to me . So are all her other art scribbles and paintings done at school.

That lady friend of mine shared with me of how nice it would be to hang up beautiful paintings done by her girl.. Just like what she sees at some of her friends' houses.

So i texted her after dinner. Told her to go easy with this things... Of course we parents only want the best for our children. And who wouldnt be proud when our offsprings can paint beautifully ..

But along the line, it is better if we try to see through our children's naked and naive eyes...All the chosen colors and all the naive lines and scribbles were actually done from our children's heart.

And when they show it to us, just look at those happy excited eyes of our children. How proud they are to share and show it to us..

Aisyah do this almost everyday when i pick her up from school. She just cant wait to show it all to me..It can be some.colorful scribbles , or small paintings or any craft work that she did in school.

Each day, I will stop and listen and look at what she has for me... And those are so precious to me ...

And we have displayed what ever we can of our children's art work.  Come to think of it, there are a lot ....

Rewards

Blamed it on my new hectic daily routine.

Blamed it on my spouse for what he had learned at some company training.

For I have been rewarding myself by buying a few stuffs since the last summer holidays begins.

And yesterday, I did it again.

At first it did cross my mind that I shouldnt be buying on impulse. But somehow I did managed to do a quick analysation on the rationalisation of buying that. pair of sneaker.

Yes . It was a sneaker not by expensive brand but by the humble brand Bata... Humble in the sense that its shoes are comfortable and stylish in a certain way that fits everyone's budget.

To tell you the truth, I have been buying Bata shoes or sandal ever since I moved to Jakarta. When I couldnt find the comfortable heels in any other brands, I found it in Bata. And just so happen that I like the design too.

Back to rewarding myself unstoppable , it feels good .. For my work has been getting busier in this new school term..

Currently its like a touch n go system between my house and my children's school. I am in and  out from the house like 3 - 4 times in a day... And its tiring ...of course having a supir helps a lot...but to be in and out from the house more than 2 times is tiring...

And I have started drinking cafe latte , cuppachino or mocha too... Even the guy behind the cashier at the school's cafe knows my drinks. Irk!!!! 

Eventhough being a homemaker itself is rewarding in the sense that I get to be with my kids all the time, it feels great when I rewarded myself now and then...

Pity the boy

How I pity the 5 year old boy if he were to know that his ex-nanny who had taken care of him for the last 3 years is now a nanny to his best friend..OMG !!!

If it wasnt for me who spotted that nanny, none of this will be known. I guess we all will have to wait until either the mother or the boy will bump eventually with the x- nanny at school.

And my only assumption that i can make on why the x-nanny quited her job is that salary issue..This is because the new employer of that nanny is an ambassador here in Jakarta. Entirely a different league from the former employer who is still wealthy but just not as rich as the ambassador..

At the end of the day, money rules in this side of the world..Even for a difference of a few hundred rupiah.

Forget about the kindness of the former employer who had been good to you for that last 3 years.  Nor the feelings of the little boy...

The mother is a friend of mine. How shocked she was when I told her that I saw her former nanny at the school. I told her how shocked I was when I saw her waiting for another boy who is the same class as her boy.

We all didnt know that she is now working with the ambassador. Plus she is now wearing hijab. And because of that, none of us notice of her while waiting outside the class room to pick up our kids.  She will be picking up the ambassador's son sometimes during the week. This is because they have a supir to help to do it also...So one day it could be her while the next day could be the driver..

And you want to know what my friend did after she found out about this? Well, my friend asked the xnanny  not to let her son see the xnanny face when in school..

My friend's son is still missing that x-nanny who had stopped working since the last 3 months. I really pity that boy. All because I had seen both the xnanny and the boy together in school for the past one year. Liked me, they will wait at the school from 12 noon until 240 pm. This is because the older sibling finished school late. So during that two hours of gap, I will always bump into them. Either at the cafeteria where the xnanny feed the boy his lunch . Or at the waiting area just before the school bell rings at 240 pm.. They are the sight that I used to see for the last one year..

so how on earth would the little boy not be sad and shocked if he were to find out about this!

New gadgets for BFMoms

I felt like having another baby to breastfeed!!!

And i should blame this to the moms and baby expo that is going on at Mid Valley Mall now...

I was at the Philips Avents booth last Friday... And OMG !!!!

Latest designs of bottles steamers. Latest  breastfeeding pumps. Latest designs and shapes of  bottles and teats...

Any mommies will go gaga and crazy  when seeing all those latest breastfeeding gadgets ....

The thoughts of getting a new bottle steamer is dancing in my head..And so is the cool  breast pump and the new teats and bottles too...all avents!!!

But sanity came knocking quickly too to my head.. Alya is going to be 2 years old in October. And it wouldnt be a good idea to buy latest design of that bottles and teats that look almost identical like a mother's breast when breastfeeding.

I want easier transition from bottles to cup for Alya for her milk drinking. Which is why new bottles n teats will just delay this process or even make it harder for Alya to switch to cup ...OMG !!!

Wished that I could stay longer but only managed to be there for less than 30 minutes..

Arissa didnt like it being in that crowded place..We arrived almost noon. Cant blame her also..

Pity her..Quickly did my exit from that place once I got new teats for Alya's avents classic bottles, bibs for Alya again as no spare one left in our malaysian house , and a bottle holder for our one and only stroller. Hope dearest hubby will like it as i he has been asking for it....

this moment

There are three of us now lying on the mattress on the floor. Arissa is missing as she is spending the night at my abang's house.

I know for sure that night like this will soon past.

Kids grow up fast . I noticed that in Arissa  and Aisyah. How school in Jakarta has had shaped their growth within less than 2 years.

Gonna miss nights like these when I am an old woman .