dear melissa..

Sorry dah lama Mama tak menulis untuk Melissa disini.. Mama tengah sibuk belajar cara-cara menjalankan perniagaan berasaskan internet!! Yes, when you get older.. you may want to read what I've written in my own blog about this, so that you can start your own internet business as well someday..

Your talent, creativity and sanguine-ness could have very obviously come from me!! What is sanguine, you ask...?? Such a big word for you who still hardly and malas-ly read any books!! :(

Should you come across any big words like these.. go find yourself mama's 25-year old Collin's Australian Pocket English dictionary near my pc/printer, or Kak Ika's Kamus Dwibahasa Oxford Fajar on her study table, or your own Macmillan's Dictionary for children in your book cabinet.. I can see your dictionary still looks brand new!! Mesti jarang-jarang bukak, kan...??? ;(

Okay, to put it simply, sanguine means.. humourous, cheerful, confident, optimistic..



23rd sept 2007
Sorry that I did not finish the above posting! Mama is always going back to her own blog to write about her internet business! Maybe you should start writing this blog yourself? When Mama is using her notebook? Mmmm... think about it okay?!

that's my son..

Atok and Opah left us with Pak Teh and family last night, approximately 8.30pm.. and as soon as the salams, huggings, goodbyes were over and we closed up the auto-gate.. my 3-years & 10-months old boisterous boy shouted "yaaayyy.. imal nak tengok kartun imal..!!!"

Without us realizing it, he had been very accommodating to Atok's and Opah's tv-viewing preferences the past 6 days.. not even once he came up to me complaining about not being able to watch his favourite shows like he normally would whenever his elder sisters changed the channels.

I'm feeling proud all over.. yeah, that's my son..

atok and opah came visiting..

Abah was flying to Pakistan for three nights, therefore to keep us 3 girls (Mama, Melissa, Kak Ika) 1 strong boy (Ikmal), 1 remaining makcik ( our maid Anis) and 6 furry anak-anak angkat (our cats) company.. Mama went to Mak Yang's house in Subang Jaya last Tuesday night to pick up Atok and Opah and their entourage (our other maid makcik Mazita and Pakcu Boy's maid makcik Susilo).. and brought them home to Bukit Beruntung..

Atok and Opah have been living with Mak Yang and her family since July last year, eversince Atok got a stroke and immobilised for a few months and now still undergoing therapy. The right part of Atok's body especially the right-hand is still weak. Atok now uses a tongkat to walk around, but would forget to use his right-hand all the time.. Opah and Mak Yang would always need to remind Atok about his liftless arm.. jangan lupakan tangan lagi satu tu..

Last Tuesday was 28th August, a few short days before Merdeka day on 31st of the same month. Atok and Opah have been very politically and socially aware about the happenings around Malaysia all these years through watching tv and reading the newspapers, but Opah has been more and more vocal and emotional about the issues she came across with eversince her retirement from teaching more than a decade ago..

And with Atok becoming less interested in reading the newspapers (page to page, line by line, for hours on end like he used to do before the stroke) due to his slow-ability to hold up and turn the pages, or watching the tv-news because of poorer-hearing and maybe boredom for having nothing else to do due to his frail-conditions.. Opah has made her grandchildren more the subjects of her concerns..

So the past few days my children have been 'forced' to watch the national tv1, tv2 and tv3 for hours on end.. ie. no more cartoons on astro-channels 60, 61, 62, 63 for Ikmal and Melissa, or channels 17, 70, 71, 72, 76 for Zulaika, or channels 10, 11, 18, 40, 41, 42 for Mama.. Atok and Opah have conquered our viewing space!!!

With 3 tvs around the house, Mama and Abah should have provided more than 1 Astro in the first place.. right??? But 'no we shouldn't', Mama decided when we first moved here to this new house less than two years ago. The reason? 'I want my children to give and take and learn the concept of sharing and compromising'...

And with that concept 'successfully' embedded into the minds of the 3 children.. Ikmal, Melissa and Zulaika (and Mama included..) we have let Atok and Opah to have free reins of which national channels to watch during the past few days. The children have had to watch (together with Atok and Opah) drama minggu ini (present-day versions), debat perdanas, berita jam 8, senario-repeats, bersama-mu programes, etc.. on top of the various merdeka-programmes leading to the big day. And for the first time in my children's life, they watched the Merdeka live-celebration parades from start to finish.. wow..!!! Impressive!!!

To Zulaika, Melissa and Ikmal.. Selamat Hari Merdeka!!!

life's still the same in taipan..

It's a one week school break now, and we have started it last friday after school by going back to our old neighbourhood in USJ9 and Taipan in Subang Jaya. Mum's main reason was to go find one of her regular tailors to do up (ie. sew) our on-coming hariraya's matching bajukurungs.. but we eventually discovered that all her three regular tailors had moved on to other locations!!

In Taipan, we stopped and parked within convenient walking distances to our favourite shops.. ie. the animal/cat-shop, vcd-store, guardian-pharmacy, beebee-bakery, McDonalds and baskin-robbins-icecream-joint. These were some of our regular destinations when we stayed 9-years in this highly-developed commercial neighbourhood. These kinds of 'cool and happening' shops are rarely found in Bukit Beruntung, our permanent home since less than 2 years ago.. therefore my girls especially the eldest one Zulaika, were particularly excited and sentimental..

By repeated requests from her, we even had to pass by our old house at 17 jalan USJ9/3B just so we could catch a glimpse of what life we used to have there..

Mmm.. so many new changes in terms of new shops opening and renovated houses here and there, but somehow life seemed to stay the same.. everybody still busy going about their daily routines.. and coming back and forth to their terraced link-homes.. like what we used to do..

But of course, dear mum has been coming back to this old neighbourhood many times without the children, hence was not feeling the least sentimental and nostalgic like Zulaika and Melissa. The boy Ikmal was only two when we moved away, therefore not much memory has stayed in his young mind..

Living in Subang Jaya since 1989 including 9 years in USJ9 was very convenient. Almost everything was accessible and available in this self-contained modern township. But now living in Bukit Beruntung 40mins away by the main highway is more relaxed and slow-paced. Maybe not so exciting for teenagers similar age-group as my eldest, but the bigger house-space and self-contained 'facilities' that abah and mama have provided and incorporated for and around you.. should be enough compensations, right???

We cannot have everything in life, my dears..

Puan Tom and Ikmal in bed..

For a blog solely meant for the weekly readership of my ten year old daughter.. the heading above doesn't sound appropriate at all, ehh..??? But that is exactly what's happening in our household lately..!!!

Puan Tom has decided that her bed for the night.. after day-long of slumberings and lepak-ings on top of our cars, under the benches, on little nooks and corners around the house.. is our master bedroom.. on our master-bed.. intimately beside ikmal..!!!

I guess Puan Tom has given up waiting for my hubby coming home late almost every night from work.. therefore instead of waiting patiently for him to come home, she has opted to go for a much much younger and more available male..!!!

it started with Puan Tom..

We were building our current house back in late 2002 when we first saw this small female kitten playing underneath the construction materials lying infront of the front-gate. White mixed with black kitten playing alone.

As the construction continued and progressed slowly and haltingly over three years and three contractors.. we kept seeing this cat every once in a while, and more often towards the completion of the house. I started saying hello to her and casually named her Tom after Tom Abang Saufi, one of our local fashion designers. Why?? I'm also clueless but at that time i had a small gift-shop in the same building as Tom the designer. There!! ;))

A few weeks before we can finally move into the house in dec2005, the cat was getting friendlier and would seek me out whenever i came to visit. Her tummy was also getting rounder and rounder and straight-away i assumed she was pregnant. When she started 'talking' and meow-ing to me all the time as she followed me up @ down the unfinished house, i straight-away (as any seasoned cat-lovers would) understood her request for permission to 'beranak' at any secluded and safe spots in the house. And i told Tom "yes, go ahead my fellow mum.."

When we finally get comfortable in our new house, we could see Tom's tummy had flattened and she was regularly going up our rooftop. We never saw her kittens until she decided that it was time to introduce them to us by getting one by one of them down the roof. There were three of them, all females. By the time they came down to meet their human landlords, the kittens were already a few months old and therefore needed some time to get acquainted with us, humanoids..

Melissa, then 9yrs old, was the one most excited compared to her big sis Zulaika who couldn't care much. Baby brother Ikmal was only 2yrs old and was always shrieking around the house frightening the kittens all the time. Therefore Melissa had full control of what names to give to each kitten and she decided on these: Pebbles, Pickles and Pumpkin..

And as all of their names started with the letter 'P'.. we uninamously decided that the name of the cat-mum Tom should start with 'P' as well.. hence 'Puan Tom'............

dear mum is busy..

yeah, yeah, yeah..
dear mum is still busy with this and that..
and this and that..
and just yesterday, she started her own personal blog..
and therefore still no time to write to melissa at the moment.. ;)

lazy saturday at home..

Saturdays are our lazy, lazy days spent at home..

We'd wake up late.. breakfast late.. shower late.. even the cats are fed late..!!

Yes, we have cats living with us.. 6 of them all de-sexed and castrated. 3 females and 3 males.. my six feline children with each having different personalities.

Melissa and i are naturally cat-lovers since birth.. my husband and the rest of my human children have had to take some time to warm up to this concept of having 6 fur-ry animals co-existing and sharing our homely comforts.. but so far they've been most accommodating..!!

The fact that our current house has enough running space, poo-poo space, and whatever-else space have made this co-habitations very comfortable for every feline and human member..

finding time to be a regular blogger-mum..

It's been over a month since i started this blog, solely to get my little melissa to get interested in reading.. but i've only managed to do 2 postings..!! Finding the right time to blog on a regular basis is not so easy after all.. even just blogging to your own daughter!! I told melissa earlier on that she should check out this blog every friday after school to read and find out what i've written.. she has been doing that, and enjoying reading what has been written.. but the problem now, mum hasn't been writing..!!

Dear mum has been busy with this and that.. and this and that.. mmm..

yesterday we found a dead cat by the side of the busy road, 200m away from home. the cat's head was flattened and the body was stiff and hard by the time my maid and i decided to go and have a look..

dear hubby told me about it in the morning, saying that it looked like pumpkin, our highly-strung one and a half year old female cat. i didn't take much heed of it, thinking it was too far for our de-sexed cats to be wandering about. furthermore i had a lunch appointment to rush to that day..

by the time i got back around 7pm, my maid was telling me that pumpkin never came back for lunch and was not seen around the house all day long even towards dinner time. therefore as soon as my maid finished cooking dinner, both of us along with ikmal went for a short drive looking for any dead bodies along the busy road..

oh my, my heart started to pound.. coz the dead cat that we immediately found really looked like pumpkin..!! all the colour combinations, one black legging, white tummy, long tail.. all seemed to match..!! we tried to look for the little 'tahi lalat' on her small nose that could positively confirmed our worst nightmare.. but couldn't find it due to the bloodied nose and mouth. as we tried to hold back our tears, we decided there and then to bring home the body for burial..

once home, we put the stiff body at the porch for hubby to bury it once he comes home from work that night. i called melissa down from her room while wondering how she'd react, coz pumpkin was a favourite of hers...

introducing my little melissa..

Melissa is my ten & a half year old daughter who is still enjoying life as though she is still in her kindergarten days. She was the youngest of our two girls for seven years before our son Ikmal was born, therefore in looking back, i must have smothered her with plenty of baby-ish treatments for her to be still feeling baby-ish even at std5...!!

I was never concerned about this, infact i thought it was rather cute especially when she gets along marvellously with her three & a half year old boisterous brother. They'd run around the house screaming, shrieking and laughing, oblivious to their surroundings. They'd sing, jump up&down the sofas, play barbies, doll-houses, play-dohs, scribbling & drawing, swimming, watching playhouse disney on astro.. i was thinking.. what very good buddies they make, and what a good babysitter & teacher melissa is to her toddler brother..

I was a late bloomer too, i was telling myself..

She's very talented, her piano teacher was telling me. She hardly practiced at home especially when under pressure, yet scored high marks in her music exams. She draws and scribbles all the time since she was four.. her sketches of toys, dolls and cats all have uncanny little details resemblances of the actual items. She can finish painting her cats in a matter of minutes. She would be absorbed in her creative ventures for hours on end, and sometimes would include her brother into her private world, but with little conditions imposed onto the boisterous buddy..

So melissa is creative like her mum..

But her school-grades are not so excellent. Average B's alternating with C's have been making dear mum anxious whether she's doing all her best to encourage little creative melissa to perform well in her academic life. Dear mum was a straight-A student all her primary & secondary years, therefore although not strictly-enforced, her children are always encouraged to do well in school as well.

Melissa hardly read any story books. She'd buy books just so her collection of books by her bedside could complement her big sis huge collection of kids novels, the likes of harry potters, supernaturals, misadventures etc. Melissa would choose books with plenty of pictures over those thick volumes of words so cherished by her sister.. This dis-interest in reading is somehow reflected in her grades. Understanding the written words doesn't come easily and naturally, and admitting to this mis-understandings and confusions is not easy as well. She's very quiet and reserved, her school teacher tells us..

Am i expecting too much from my little girl...?? She's talented and creative in her quiet and child-like ways.. shouldn't that be enough blessings...??

This blog is my little daily or weekly notes to my little girl melissa.. i'm hoping that she'd take more interest in reading now that her mum has created this blog especially for her.. and in the process of reading what her mum writes about her, melissa can continue nurturing her creative talents while improving her communication, reading and writing skills.. if not to improve her grades, at least for her to take more interest in her academic subjects.

Dear mum hopes that eventually melissa herself would be the one writing and posting entries in this blog..