Here's My Story

Some relevant information: before this, I've never bought this curry mee from this stall, and the eggs from Juicy Bites. Ban helped me to buy those: Me: RM 8 for the eggs? Ban: Ummm yes. Me: RM 7 for the curry mee? Ban: Yeeeeessssssss. Wah, how do you know the exact price? Me: I'm amazing, right? *laugh at my own self-praise* Ban: Yes, you are *smiles*

My first time cooking red spinach soup. Overall, it was good but the poor poor tofu... I've been hankering for soft silken tofu for ages and so when I saw some at Jaya Grocer, I grabbed it with both hands and feet. Ok, maybe not my feet since my hamstring is very tight. I also bought sai tou / ikan parang /wolf herring fish balls. During MCO, only one person is allowed to shop for the household. So Ban and I took turns to shop for grocery. So, this time I went out shop for grocery while Ban prepared a pail of water mixed with some clothes detergent. I came home, tore my mask and threw it in the wet bin and then went straight to bathroom to shower, while placing all my clothings in that pail. Meanwhile, Ban would unpack the grocery. Unbeknown to me, he didn't know that he was supposed to place the soft tofu in the fridge...not the freezer 😨 When I discovered this at night, it was too late. Luckily, it was just the texture that changed. Still could eat but just not my...

"  Minister for National Development (of Singapore) Lawrence Wong had claims of not having the “luxury of the benefit of hindsight” in a news conference on 9 April, to which journalist Kirsten Han had to say, “recent developments have demonstrated that you can’t have foresight for things you refuse to see”.  " I love this quote.

After about 9 days of this routine during MCO, I started missing food that I usually have when we go out for dinner on Saturday and Sunday. Our usual routine sans MCO is lunch at our favourite chap fan shop Mon - Sat, dinner at condo's cafe Mon - Fri, Sun lunch either around The Curve/IPC if we go to gym or another chap fan shop at Aman Suria, and weekend's dinner at Sushi Tei/Go Noodle/Cow Brothers/An Viet. I suggested to Ban that we order Japanese food from Aoki-tei Japanese Restaurant, one of the many F&B shops listed on https://fooddelivery.com.my/. I read about this platform in a newspaper article. Storehub made it free for listing during this MCO and offered Beep Delivery to those who requires food delivery service. I ordered Udon + Sashimi. I can't remember what Ban ordered. It cost most than RM 50 and thus qualified for free delivery. I believed it took about 45 minutes, after placing the order, for the food to arrive from Kota Damansara. Hmmm I wonder fo...

During this MCO, Ban and I were buying chap fan for lunch and cooking for dinner most of the time. The exceptions were few. I remember there were reports of panic buying few days before the first phase of MCO was announced. Grocery delivery slots were all booked until the end of time (it was still so about 3 weeks ago). Yet, Ban and I knew we had to go out to shop. He had a good idea: shop at Oliver Gourmet at 3 Damansara. It's generally more expensive than Tesco and Jaya Grocer and so should be the least crowded. He was correct: there were few people at Oliver when we arrived around lunch time on the day before MCO kicked in. So we lunched at Sushi Tei and then shopped at Oliver. There were gradually more customers as we shopped but still not crowded. Thank goodness. Since then, besides Oliver, we also tried shopping at Jaya Grocer at three different locations: Mutiara Tropicana, Centrepoint and Starling Mall. Jaya Grocer and Tesco had something that Oliver didn't have: ...

I thought we should try cooking something else besides Chinese food. One of my favourite food to prepare is sushi rolls i.e. maki. It's not hard to do but tedious as it involved lots of slicing and washing. However, I thought it would be a fun activitiy that both Ban and I could do together. It took a while to sort how Ban could help me (been years!) but after that it went well like clockwork. I was fortunate the supermarket restocked salmon. Also, for the first time, I decided to indulge a bit by putting in avocado as well (expensive in Malaysia). The end product: delicious! In line with tradition, we made more than we could eat 😁 So, on Ban's suggestion, we had the leftover maki and sliced cucumber with instant noodle and some sausages for dinner.

I'm so glad that much earlier my siblings and I started thinking and preparing for the activities that needed to be done immediately after my father's death . Probably prodded by my sister in Australia (hardly a surprise 😊). One main activity was the funeral arrangement. After a one time long-ish discussion and a few amendments, the idea was to have it simpler than the "traditional" Chinese (specifically Taoist) funeral. It was my mum's idea actually, and she too gradually made it simpler. My dad wanted to follow her way. For example, the initial idea was to be cremated, placed in urns housed in a temple (my dad bought two lots side by side) and we children were asked to pray at certain dates, in certain ways at the temple. My mum later made it simpler because "what matters most is how our children treat us while we're alive, not when after we're dead". So was then changed to urns buried beneath huge potted plants and finally changed to simply...

Just in case someone pointed out the date of post " Bedsore x4 ": most of my blog posts were written in advance of their chosen published dates. With that aside, 4th April 2020 is when my dad no longer suffers: he passed away at 11.45am. Coincidentally, I had trouble sleeping from 6am onward. It was the recurring hot-with blanket-but-cold-without-it syndrome. So I woke up, had breakfast, read news and played Slay the Spire while waiting for my food to be digested and to go to bed when tiredness set in.  At 10.08am, my sister called to tell me that dad probably would moved on in the next 24 hours. Much later, she told me how she knew: dad had some difficulty in breathing. Sounded like lots of phlegm. Coincidentally, my sister was shown a video by the hospice nurse of the condition of another patient before he passed away the next day. So that gave some hints. She then sent a video of my dad to the hospice nurse, who then told her my dad's time was ending soon. Note th...

I realised that I haven't provided upate on my dad's bedsore in the previous post. It was ugly: there were 3 new bedsore spots 😭 One piece of good news was that the first one, which is the biggest, is cleaner and recovering. I have photos but too yucky to show them. Consequently, following the hospice's nurse advice, we had no choice but to turn my dad to his sides regularly, on top of him doing so whenever we wiped him, change diaper or change wound dressing. Hospice nurse suggested him lying on his side for 30 mins twice daily but he couldn't. We suggested the following sequential compromise for each one that he couldn't or didn't want to do (argh!): 10 mins every 2 to 3 hours 10 mins in the evening 5 m in the evening, 3 mins rest, another 5 mins total of 20 mins once a day with few minutes of rest within that time, and done on alternate days  He sometimes didn't want to take his medicine or have his diaper changed (now doesn't realise wh...

Once a while, there's a blip in quality of food served at my favourite restaurants. Bad day, bad luck, lapse in supervision etc. The key thing is that it should be rare. Sometimes I let it go but if it happens again, I'll tell a senior staff. Other times I give feedback immediately. This was a plate of salmon belly sashimi at Sushi Mentai, Butterworth. I had already eaten 3 slices but they were the same as these two in the photo: scrawny. Fortunately, it was back to normal the next time I ordered. I rarely order anything else at Sushi Tei @3 Damansara other than sushi and that too the bulk of it consists of 4 pieces of salmon sushi and 2 pieces of butterfirst sushi. On this rare instance, I forced myself to order something else. Something that I had before and praised it for having carrots as displayed in their photos ( unlike Sushi Zanmai ): curry udon. I was surprised to see these tiny bits of chicken. All curry udon I had thus far had chunky pieces and so if ...