Ah Ma's Chit Chit (7/7)

It's Ah Ma's Deathday Anniversay (uh, like Harry Potter wtf). So yes, 7th week, 7th day since Ah Ma left us.

We've got Ah Ma a new place just beside Ah Kong... hehe. Ah Ma had a really nice photo taken from MCC's wedding. She was wearing her pink nonya kebaya with pearl necklace along with the world's sweetest smile.

These were, like, a month or so ago I think. I had to take Monday off because the 'anniversary' is on a Monday. As usual, lots of good food when the Lee sisters get together hehe.

Good news is that I have moved on since Ah Ma's passing. I still think of her every now and then but no longer have the urge to cry my eyeballs out every single time I do so. She has had a long and fulfilled live, or I hope to think that way.

Ah Kong passed away when I was about 12. I still recall him smoking kirai sticks out on the porch. Sometimes he would drop me off to school and give me pocket money. How I miss him so.

I helped to fold some of those paper gold bars too! Hehe... Ah Ma is going to be really wealthy wherever she is. Hope she's playing mahjong with her friends and maybe even with Ah Kong :)

Sigh. Everytime BKK is around he would come up with all these ultraman poses. Tak habis habis.

Sigh...

This is one hell of a funny photo. See BKK making a fool and laughing like no tomorrow? Just on his right we have Ji Yi all emotional and teary-eyed hehe.... Well JY has always been very emotional. We were all like shushing Ji Yi because we hope Ah Ma would move on without having to worry about all of us.

Snaps of food. JY made her famous pai kut ong, Tua Yi also cooked jiu hu char, tu tor th'ng, and other miscellaneous vegetarian dishes.

MCC! I love her zebra top. So fresh and young!

Don't you just love that laugh carved on Papa's face? I miss my parents! Been calling them every two days or so. Hurmph, but those two are sooo busy. Their lives are more happening than mine. Earlier this evening I called and they were getting ready to go to a house warming party. Two nights ago I called but there was no answer only to find out later that they were having a karoke session.

Eh! Like reversed roles la! I should be out at parties and socializing whereas they should be the ones frantically trying to reach me!

T-T

BKK practically shoved Sien Ee's head to his side rofl.

Cousins and soon to be cousin in law lol.

Me and Pop. My hair looks short and darn retarded. It's getting long and out of control now lol. Shall have it snipped real soon! Damn hair when I want to leave it long it grows a millimeter per month. When I want to keep it short leh, it just goes on a growth spurt. FML.

Strange phenomena.... A chunk of the joss sticks are burnt at half point and they just sort of .
dropped around. We all joked that Ah Ma is having a fireworks of some sort of her own hehe.

Then everything goes into the flames.... including one of Ah Ma's favorite pillows! lol... We Chinese have traditions that are certainly not environmentally friendly. Still, hope Ah Ma is glad to have her pillow :)

Fat Days Ahead

A little sneak peak into my glamorous life -

Up late today and put on my cleaning uniform (basically my pajamas coz I don't want to have extra clothes for laundry) and then scrubbed my whole room with a brush the size of a toothbrush and polish the floor till it's all squeaky and shiny.

Bleah.

Ji Yee and gang are coming over next week, hence the pretentious cleaning hehe. Then Thursday Sien Chi Chi, hubby and ISABEL (!!) will stay over yeay! Can't wait to get my hands on those puffed cheeks of little Isabel!

Vegetarian dinner I whipped up using leftover cabbage, remaining crabsticks and edamame - had to clear the fridge because as expected, Ji Yee and gang are likely to bring along a whole fridgeful of food, so yea, had to make way for better stuff.

Oh did I mention that we will be hosting a kid's birthday party for Isabel? She's turning One! Cuteness. I shall snap loads of that baby Michelin.

Cleaned the room, wrapped some books that I've purchased, did two rounds of laundry, ironed my work clothes, swept and mopped the whole house, folded clothes, changed bedsheets, rearranged things by the vanity mirror, dug all my clothes from the cupboard and re-folded + rearranged them. Ah, life of the rich and famous ain't easy.

My humble hole for clothes.

With the arrival of the great cook from Baling + torrent of activities + Christmas around the corner, I have a feeling that I will be gaining a minimum of 3 kgs by the end of the month! Jeez... talk about starting the year with a rip on my pants.

Reflection

An excerpt taken from Tuesdays with Morrie.

Part of the problem, is that everyone is in such a hurry. People haven't found meaning in their lives, so they're running all the time looking for it. They think the next car, the next house, the next job. Then they find those things are empty, too, and they keep running.

Once you start running, it's hard to slow yourself down.

***

Death

Over the past 3 months, I have attended 2 funerals. Death has taken two of who were close to my heart.

Ultimately, this has changed my perspective in life and death.

We are so blinded by wealth and materialism that we never take a back seat and observe.

Each day we get up like a clockwork and make our way to the office like a pre-coded programmed beings.

After Ah Ma's demise, I tried to slow things down, try not to spend too much time at work and try not to get upset over small things.

It was hard, and it has to be done consciously and soon I forgot about taking things slow and being forgiving. Before long, I was my old monster self and striding briskly to work each day.

Then when Shan was thrown into a coma after a brain surgery and shortly afterwards she stopped breathing, I was taken aback. It hit me like being splashed with cold water. I mean, each of us knew it all along that life is short, we can die just about any moment and all that. But really, how many of us actually believe in it as surely as we believe we will wake up the next morning?

How confident are we, that if the next minute we succumb to Death, have lived the life we wanted? Made sure that our loved ones know we care and we still think of them to the very last second we were on Earth?

How often do we actually call our family members? The general favorite excuse is that we are too busy and barely have time to call. But the sad truth is that we don't MAKE time.

What is a couple of minutes off a single day? Are we so blinded by work and socializing with friends that we are no longer fueled by family bond?

Oh how cunning Death can be.... you never know when will be your turn... And no amount of money or power can be transcended over to the afterlife.

Am I ready today?

Sushi Cravings

More post on food hehe... favorite food with some of my favorite people. When I brought Wei En to a road side restaurant near my place for fish head noodles (omg, digressing, I have yet to blog about this awesome rendezvous! No worries, will be making another trip there soon - with my trusty camera) when she declared that she has a craving for sushi - even though she just had those a couple of days ago.

Not one to brush off any cravings - believe me, I am very much experienced in the field of cravings! We agreed to lunch at Sushi Zanmai when her beau comes down to KL the following weekend.

Zanmai usually has a long line of queue (jeez, doesn't it seem to be the case of almost every other restaurants in KL? Only KL people are willing to wait and pay big bucks for their food).

One of my all-time-faves, the Chuka Idako. SX doesn't want to eat them because he said it's cruel to eat such cute little beings.

-_-

So I 'had' to wallop almost all of them, not that I'm complaining :D

And how can I resist ordering my ultimate favorite meal of all things Japanese. Unagi Don! Lookie that unagi, marinated in kabayaki sauce which gives it the most delicious looking gleam. Mmmm.....

If there's one thing I can never get enough of, it's unagi. Every time after a gym workout, I would scout the food shelves in Isetan, hoping beyond hope that there is still that last pack of unagi don (at 50% off, of course!)

The unagi don deserves another picture in this blog because I want to drool over them *.*

WE's craving for salmon sushi brought this to our table. The Zanmai Salmon Special or something like that. Priced at RM19+ I find it too expensive for such a plate as the salmon slices are really thin.

Udons for the couple. On the foreground must be some sort of kakiage udon though I can't tell what the one in the background is.

From here onwards, I must really add that both WE and I were the gluttons (or rather, we were forced to be). SX doesn't eat the majority of the sushi or a la carte dishes served and thus WE and I had to DBKL the rest of the sushis.

Soft shell crab sushi in fish roe. By now you must understand that I have finished my unagi don (which is filled with rice), stuffed myself with a few of the salmon sushi (more rice) and then these soft shell crab sushi (more rice x 2) which SX conveniently does not consume T_T

And we finish with another of my faves - black sesame ice-cream. I first tried black sesame ice-cream in Equatorial Hotel and that was ice cream done to perfection for me. But Sushi Zanmai did not managed to pull this ice-cream off. It lacks the fragrance of black sesame and that was that.

WE ordered the green tea waffle or something like that which you can see behind my ice-cream. I don't know how to describe this one. The ice-cream totally lacks the green tea taste as the thin layer of red bean was overpowering what it should be enhancing. And the outer layer waffle was soft, uh, maybe it was meant to be that way, I'm not sure but it sure doesn't work it for me.

I am craving for unagi d T_T

Harbour Steamboat

Another food expedition, this time in Sri Petaling for a steamy steamboat meal. Unfortunately, it's not the all-you-can-eat type, but a la carte steamboat. Hmm, maybe I should say it's fortunate instead of unfortunate. You know how bah the quality of buffet steamboat ingredients can be right? 'Fresh' out of the cans and whacked onto serving plates like outcomes of a factory mass producing food.

The interior of the place used to be available for patrons to scribble or leave their marks on the walls, which, looking at some photos from other blogs seem somewhat unhygienic and distasteful in certain ways. However, when we were there, 80% of the walls have been repainted, so no more 'graffiti'.

The girls

There is usually a long queue out at the entrance, but Grace has already made reservations (at 7pm) but knowing the level of punctuality of those girls, we arrived fashionably late (not). We had to wait out for a while for one of the tables to finish and cleared. But no harm done - we had the menu and after a heated debate finally made our choices - all while my stomach was growling.

Pork and beef slices. We decided to boil the pork slices until they are fully cooked as we are not going to take any risks whereas the beef slices only require 5-8 seconds dip in the boiling broth before consuming.

Oh yes, we decided to have the herbal soup broth for our steamboat. At first we weren't sure if we can have 2 choices of broth and a quick glance around the restaurant we decided it's not plausible. However, upon further investigation (admittedly, it was on blog entries, so it was a bit too late by then) you can actually ask for 2 different types of soup broths. Ah well.

Herbal soup broth contains corn, kei ci (wolfberries), Chinese red dates, and two extremely ginormous pieces of pork bones. No kidding.

Among other things, we also ordered enoki (straw mushrooms), sai yong choy (watercress), mushroom pork balls, sotong balls, glass noodles and goodness I can't remember what else. Blame it on the tummy that I neglected to take more pictures.

The mushroom pork balls are highly recommended by moi. Compact little pork balls, they are really juicy and sweet. Or at least something different from the usual fishball la.

Harbour also offers three different types of sauces/condiments for you to dip your balls in (wtf...urh..). Here you see the sambal heh bi (dried prawns chili), chili sauce and a sort of fermented bean paste (which tastes a lot like mustard to me). Eve-Lyn had the idea of mixing them all up together to create this unique tasting dip. Fantabulous! I also took the liberty to cut up some eye-popping hot cili padi from SP, neh, the very light green type that I so love.

Imagine uh, chopsticking (what? got a word called spooning, so much have a word for chop sticks loh) a particularly juicy piece of beef slice then dipping it into soy sauce which has absorbed the spiciness of the cili padi. Walao! The perfect combo.

Actually hor, if got tu tor (pig's stomach) with the soy sauce and cili padi then it shall be a more perfect-er combo loh.

Which reminds me - apparently Harbour also offers pork liver which you can medium-cook and have them all bloody and chewy and gross. Ugh. Better not let Mr-I-become-a-black-hole-when-I-see-spare-parts see this.

Bill came to about RM18 or so for the five of us. Which I think is a great value for the quality of the ingredients served. Plus, the place is air-conditioned so it's a great place for first dates where you get to look all clean and fresh after a heavy duty session of steamboat without having your mascara melt and eyelash lopsided aye ;)

Harbour Steamboat Restaurant
No. 19, Ground Floor,
Jalan 13/149L,
Seri Petaling,
57000 Kuala Lumpur

Tel: 03-90594353

Open from 6pm-11pm

Shan: The Eulogy

Wah, seriously this is one of the longest period of time I have ever gone on without blogging.

It has been a horrible month, popping in and out of the hospital... Two weeks ago, TY's youngest sister was involved in an accident. She and her boyfriend were on a motorcycle close to the UTAR students residences when they were knocked down by a Mercedes. Shan broke her right leg and her boyfriend suffered the same thing too.

From that fateful crash, a hell lot of ups and downs took over our lives. The poor girl was first scanned and doctors found she had a blood clot in her brain. Immediately, an operation to remove the clot was performed and all family members waited anxiously for Shan to regain consciousness. She later woke up the next evening, with much relief.

Shan woke up feeling really sorry for her mistakes (the dad completely does not allow them to go on motorcycles) and she expressed her want of going home, to dance... But because of her broken leg, she may have to depend on a wheelchair or crutches to move around.

Doctors found her vitals to be strong enough to perform surgery on her legs. The procedure was done on the following Thursday. When she was pushed out of the operating theater, Aunty called to her and Shan opened her eyes in respond. However, the following morning, she had a seizure.

Things started going downhill from there. After the second operation, she did not come around.

Then, on Saturday, (I was also in Ipoh during the weekend), Aunty received a call at 6am from the hospital. Shan had to be resuscitated due to heart failure.

More waiting ensued, a lot of crying was going on. The tension was just too thick in the air you could almost use a knife to cut it.

An MRI scan later found Shan's brain to be in normal condition. This gave us a little hope. Later, a neurosurgeon revealed that Shan's brain is swelling.

Another neurosurgeon's opinion was sought. Shan is brain dead.

She passed away on 7th November.

.

.

.


Shan is like a sister I never had. I remember when I first visited TY's family in Kuantan, my first impression of her was "weird!". She was so skinny and seemingly shy. Back then, she was still studying Form 5. We shared a bed together (at that time, Wei En was still in college or something liddat) and she was just the sweetest thing.

Shan doesn't like pork (!!) and she lives in her own fantasyland. A land of Ayumi Hamasaki, Tokio Hotel and Adam Lamberts. The girl can go nuts over a band or a celebrity and go to great lengths to get her hands on their albums, posters, well, you name it.

I remember her being obsessed with The Suite Life of Cody or something similar to the TV series and when the whole family was going over to KL to stay in a suite she was so exalted because she can somehow live the life of the series. But I also recalled her being tremendously disappointed when the family then decided to stay with a close relative.

That's the extent of Shan in her world :)

God took her life away when she was only a few weeks short of her 19th birthday. She has touched so many lives and the gaping hole she now left in us will be filled with memories of the sweet girl who is so loving and tender.

Rest in peace, baby girl...