Happy Birthday to my beloved girl.

Happy 15th birthday Ayang.

Its that time of the year again for you to become a young lady. Today you are 15th years old. My little girl is all grown up. I know you always look forward to your birthday and today I hope you feel the same. Its a beautiful day today, you woke up to a bright and sunny day as always. Since its sunday we are treating you to birthday lunch with the whole family. You liked it but your begged us not to give you a birthday cake, because you are just so shy and dont want the attention. I felt bad since every year I never missed giving you a birthday cake and a birthday party. But this year its different. You didnt want any of that. You said you are all grown up and didnt need all the fuss. And your dad and I respected that. So we only gave you a beautiful watch, with your favourite purple colour as your birthday gift. You loved it when I gave it to you so early in the morning the moment you opened your eyes. Love those glittering in your eyes.

Anyway, to my beautiful daughter... Here is hoping you gonna have a wonderful year. May Allah bless you with abundance of good health and happiness. May all your dreams come true, darling. Mom and dad love you so much and want everything turn out well in your life. I know you are on the verge of all the beautiful things in life as an adult and I do hope you would be able to face life on the face with faith and dignity.

All the best to you my sweetheart. You are in my prayers every day. I said this with tears in my eyes, I know you have been through alot in your life and I hope life will treat you fairly. I hope you would thrive in your life, study hard and be strong. Love you always and forever. From Mommy & Dad.

Latest collection.

Ok, I gave in yet again to my craving of handbags. We went shopping the other day and stumbled on this handbag, well in fact my husband saw it first. He came to me while I was just browsing through and admiring the collection of new arrival of handbags, not really thinking of buying one, and told me about this handbag. I fell in love with it right there and then. He loved it too and it was the latest from Bonia. It was really lovely, even the cashier said so which I felt so guilty since costs so much. I do still have this passion of handbags, cant seem to stop the obsession. I have about 20 handbags at the moment and this is the latest one. I never missed to buy new one every time we went away on holiday. And this one is the first time in a long time I bought one locally. Well, this is what I called impulse buying and its costs us a few hundred bucks. But hey.. if its here to stay for a long time then why not!

HLP

That stands for Healthy Lifestyle Programme. For Shell employees thats a must. Everyone must participate. In so many ways, its very useful and I am fully supporting the initiatives. This programme was introduced 3 to 4 years ago when all Shell employees are asked to go through health check, done by the Panage Health Centre. It was widely known and acknowledged that most Bruneians and in our case Shell employees were either overweight, under lots of stress, smokers and not doing enough exercise, thus this HLP was introduced.

What Shell tries to emphasise is everyone has to make their own initiatives to look after themselves, control your own destiny in terms of health and to have a work life balance. Thats so important. I know some Shell people who work until 7 to 8pm at night. And we dont usually take breakfast breaks and go round town to have breakfast. Its very unhealthy to be workaholic. But this culture is already instilled in our core being. We work hard for the company and of course for the money.

And the management awares of that now. So by having this programme, the management hopes that the people can take a breather from work and have fun. Like from my previous department, they had so many fun and enjoyable activities which was great.

The way HLP works is, first and foremost, the health check for all employees. Usually blood sample was taken, amongst other things like your blood pressure, urine, weight, height and BMI. Then we have our review done by the nurses as the review panels and if things dont look so good then we are referred for further analysis or diagnosis. Apart from the health check, each departments have their own programme to stay healthy. We have exercise say once a week, once within 2 weeks, or do any interesting activities such as hiking, brisk walking, aerobics, etc. Its so fun and so far I do enjoy it. Of course I think health is important and who else to control our own body apart from ourselves? From this health check also I was caught with having high blood pressure! And now on medication for life. But its ok, that disease couldnt be avoided if you are a Bruneian, unfortunately.

The health check expires within 3 years, and my last check was 3 years ago so I am due for one now. Lets hope my results are better this time around.

My review will be on the 6th of May, I will go to the panel and review my blood test. I am nervous but I know my overall health improves a bit since I have done lots of cutting down, merely because of our plan in June. So we will see.

Trying it out.

Spent our sunday morning at Yayasan and Kg Air, while my girl was at her school for her girl guide badge presentation done by Yang Teramat Mulia Princess Hajjah Masnah. While waiting for her to finish we tried out our new camera and captured all these images. Here are some of them.

How long it takes..

If you are interested in how long it takes the items we toss into our garbage to decompose?

Read on:

Paper ................... 2 to 5 months
Orange peels ............ 6 months
Milk cartons ............ 5 years
Filter-tip cigarettes ... 10 to 12 years
Plastic bags ............ 10 to 20 years
Leather shoes ........... 24 to 40 years
Plastic containers ...... 50 to 80 years
Disposable diapers ...... 75 years
Tin cans ................ 100 years
Aluminum cans ........... 200 to 500 years

Styrofoam ............... Never

I wish the supermarkets stop giving us plastic bags and use paper bags instead but I dont know if the supermarkets even care. I for one still use lots of plastic bags even styrofoam but now that I know how these products can stay in our environment for a long time, I wish I could do more to avoid using them. One thing for sure, these products can be recycled so that they would cause less pollution and havoc to the environment if dumped in the dumping areas.

Nikon D90

My hubby bought a new camera, very cool. We both are interested with photography these days but he knows much better on how to take good pictures than me. There is so much to learn and I am starting to know bits and pieces of taking good pictures, and things like apucture, shutter, ISO, wide lense and so on. The camera is awesome, so powerful and we can do so much. I took below pictures as starters which I think is cool.

The pictures were taken last night when we had dinner at Charcoal and Grill at Jalan Tutong. And I took this girl picture while she immensed herself watching tv. She didnt realise I took it while at the same time learned how to use the camera. And the result is just fantastic. And the other two were taken at home, one is from our fridge and the other was the donout we bought from Yayasan.

The Cough

The cough is still bugging me. I have the worst time of my life. Cant sleep properly, and get tired in the morning. All because of this cough. It really persistent and as a result I have the worst case sore throat ever. It is mighty painful to swallow. I cant eat right very very frustrating. I have taken so many cough syrups, different colours and taste, from our company hospital and from private clinics, also from the supermarket but none works. Hubby also has his fair share of cough, he is struggling too. We both are struggling. Usually we cough to each other which is really funny, what a pity and awful sight. I wonder when this gets better? Its lucky my girl hasnt got it yet. I dont know how she manage to avoid it living with two people who cough all the time.

The new Amah has arrived.

Got a phone call yesterday from our new agent, saying exactly that. Thats record time of less than one month of getting an Amah. Excellent. But now I have a mixed feeling. Its been nice to be without amah, although life is busy but I enjoy the alone time. Its quiet and nice. However, need amah to sort out all the housework. I think the house need alot of spring cleaning now. I havent done any house cleaning apparently the house was spotless when our amah left. We just do the day to day house chores like cooking, cleaning the dishes, laundry, ironing and things like that. But not the heavy stuff like cleaning the windows, mop the entire floor and so on. So its about time, the house cleaning is now overdue!

We may go and collect her tomorrow, if the time permits. For now she is taken around for medical checks, and other things. So we gonna stay away for a few days.

I am a bit weary and skeptical. She is just 18 years old, wonder if she can do her job. I hope she will be good.

Busy Life

Its been a month since our Amah has gone. And so far we are doing ok, I think. Things have gone to a routine which is nice. The one thing I love most about being without Amah is the privacy of it all. We have no stranger in the house. I can go around in my underwear if I want to but of course not ;-) My girl is getting more independent, she stays home on her own while we are at work. Weekends she cooks her own breakfast, week days she heats food I cooked for her lunch. Do her homework and put away clothes from the hanger outside and fold them neatly and nicely. She looks after Robbie too and wash all the dishes.

But still I have to rush to do everything when I get home from work. Reached home usually around 6pm or later if we have to do some grocery shopping, look for things to cook for dinner, that sort of things. I try to be systematic when doing the housework since I don’t have lots of time in the evening and because I am so dead tired already but have to do it. The first thing I do when I reach home is go right to the kitchen, take out food for dinner and cook the rice. Put all the dishes, plates, cookery and all the glasses back to their places from last night. Then I go and take a shower and do my magrib prayer. Then I rest for about 5 minutes depends on the situation. Off to the kitchen, do all the cooking including all the preparations, cut the chicken or fish, vege and fruits, the onion, chillies and everything else. At the same time I also take the whole basket of laundry and wash the clothes. Very happy that we have washing machine which can do everything on its own and in one go, all I need to do is to dump the dirty clothes in the machine and I am back to the kitchen. I don’t even have to be there to do anything else, so glad that we bought that machine.

Around 8pm have dinner with my hubby and Ayang. Wish we could have dinner earlier but its just not enough time in the world! After dinner, Ayang or hubby help me with the dishes while I boil the water for our drinks, tidy up a bit and prepare vege dinner for Robbie. And make tea put it in a thermos for tomorrow breakfast before work. By this time the laundry is ready to be put outside so I do that at around 9pm. Once thats done, its time for me to iron the clothes. Try to do as much as I can, need to sort out my girl school uniform for the next day and hubby and my clothes too. My last task for the day is to take out the gabbage outside. All done by 10pm and its time for me to hit the bed and drift off. Of course has to wake up again at 4.45am the next morning for work.

Earth Hour 2009

Its today between 8.30pm - 9.30pm. We are going to participate, very simple, just switch off the lights for one hour and we have done our part. This thing is big, around the world would participate. Its all over the news, on tv and on paper. Even Shell also promoted it in our online bulletin. We rushed back from dinner with my parents so that we didnt overshoot the time. After shower and prayer and its already 8.30pm. I turned off the lights and surprisingly most of our neighbours took part tonight and the neighbourhood was just pitch black. So its cool. I wonder how the rest of the world reacted to this. Cant wait to hear and watch the news tomorrow.

Our neighbours without lights.

Our house with no lights

Crazy!

What a day yesterday. Took the whole day off work to sort out the mess. Really really pissed me off. This women our previous amah agent to be, but not to be, drove us all crazy.

The story goes like this. We are in the midst of arranging our new amah with our new amah agent. All went well until he went to immigresen to apply for amah approval. Lo and behold, the immigresen people informed him that hubby's quota is now full. What the hell??? Our amah just left early this month and we dont have any amah at the moment. They told us there was already an amah under my hubby's quota by the name of Wartiah. We knew straight away who was the culprit! Using somebody else's quota is not cool man!

We tracked her down and she admitted that she put that amah name there, without telling us, and she said that amah was meant to be with us. Again, what the hell?? I thought we no longer deal with her after we cancelled our agreement and all the money returned?? How dare she put a new amah into hubby's quota without telling us. And the amah was now with her but of course we didnt want her. We didnt even see her biodata let alone chose her to be our new amah. So the amah must go since we can to cancel that quota and stick to our chosen one from our new agent.

It was really messy, we even went to the police to make a report, since she didnt turn out at first when we asked about the original letter from Immigresent. We need that letter before the cancellation can be made.

At last everything was settled at around 4pm. And the amah who was here without us knowing had to go back to Indonesia on the same day. She must be so frustrated and upset since she just came on saturday to find out that her employment has just been cancelled. All due to the good nature of this woman named Siti Sufinah, and her company called Syazmena Employment Agency.

We were lucky our new agent was there to help us out otherwise it might not be as smooth as we wanted it to be. We owe him big time. Thanks Haji.

So now the waiting began again. Looks like we are going to be "amahless" for another month or so. And in the meantime, my girl has to be on her own at home and I have to sort out all the housework all by myself, which seems to be ok for now. Lucky me we only a small family so its not too bad.

Thats alot of meat!

We consumed lots of meat this week. Early in the week we went to Charcoal and Grill in Jalan Tutong, both hubby and I had our sirloin steak and our favourite soup. We love the place and we really had a good lunch. This is before we went to pick up our temporary Amah.

Then last night we had dinner at Fratini's in Yayasan. Again we couldnt do without our western craving so hubby chose his rack of lamb and I went to have my beef fillet which were so yummy. My girl as usual chose to have her sphagetti carbonara. And the mushroom at this place was awesome. They tasted soooo good. This was hubby's idea to have dinner here like we always do since we both share the same passion for western food, we enjoyed dinner so much but of course it cost us more than 100 bucks. Thanks hubby for the lovely meal!

Food at Charcoal and Grill.

Our meal at Fratini's last night, yummy.

Temp Amah is here

Her name is Kasinah. We came to know her from my bro. They recommended her to us since we are so lost without Amah hehehe. Not exactly! More to accompany my girl at home when we are away working. Pity her so much when she has to stay home on her own.

We picked Kasinah at Bandar Multipurpose Parking. She wanted us to pick us up at her house in Kota Batu at first, but that is so unfamiliar territory and asked her to pick some other place instead. She was with her husband, found out later her husband works as a contruction worker and she is a "freelance" Amah. Very glamorous. Even Amah is freelance ;-) She asked for B$20 per day since she lives with us and we are desperate and has to agree. Its very very expensive. More so she doesnt have to do much in our household. So we will see how it goes, we may not keep her all month long maybe occasionally.

She starts work today, on her own while we are off working. So far she is ok, very humble and respectful. She also wears tudong even in the house. I am ok with that, of course we are all not her muhrim so I guess she just wants to covers up.

Its more a necessity than luxury all of this Amah stuff. Wish we dont have to have one but the situation is just crazy not to have one at the moment. I was ok with the housework for the last few days. Although its tiring but I can keep the momentum and in control. And its good feeling not to have a stranger in the house. Its just me, hubby and Ayang, my little family and we did enjoy the time. I think my girl loves it too, she is more independent and take care of the house. Its lovely. Anyway, its part of the everyday life and having an Amah is part of the deal.

My good girl

So our amah left yesterday right at the end of her contract. She was tearful but thats inevitable. I've decided not to renew her contract and prefer to hire new one. She left and thats the end of her.

Now we are without amah. I know we can manage just fine. My only concern was my girl who has to stay on her own when we are at work. Like today. I left the office with heavy heart, since I have to leave early before 6.00am I have to leave her at home to wait for the driver to pick her up for school. She has her own key to the house and she has to lock the door, switch off all the lights, have breakfast on her own, prepare Robbie's meal for the day, close the gate and off to school. After school she has to come home to an empty house. My heart goes out to her. This is the first time ever that she has to do this. She is home alone.

When I came home today and asked her how did it go? She said she was ok. She didnt look sad or distracted or afraid so thats very good. She is all grown up I think. So glad she went through today without so much hussle.

Now working on hiring a new amah after the last one flopped. Very bad experience so we are weary of doing it again but we have to I am afraid.

Very Stressful

I never been so stressful in my life, not at this magnitude. This is awfully painful and excruciating.

We have been waiting for our Amah since Dec 2008 and the Amah Agent keep on promising the Amah will arrive soon but she never has. We are so sick and tired of the delay. Our current Amah is leaving tomorrow since its the end of her contract but the new Amah is no way in sight. We contacted the agent again, and she promised to loan us a temporary one. We were supposed to collect the temp Amah yesterday but there was none to collect. Another empty promises. This woman has been telling us so many lies, and there is no way that we want to deal with her again.

Driving me and hubby up the wall. How could someone looking so innocent can do such a thing. We have been promised the new Amah will arrived in December, then January then February and its now March. Our intention to find new Amah is for obvious reason, so that the old amah will go and the new amah continue. But it didnt turn out that way. My girl couldnt stay at home on her own, thats the main reason.

We have enough. We no longer want to pursue this business with her. We want our money money back and never to deal with her again. Very frustrating.

So for anybody who wants to find new amah, pls do not deal with this person.

Her name is Finah, Syazmena Employment Agency. She is poison and a liar, plain and simple.