Rianne turns 1!

I felt so guilty for only planning Rianne's birthday celebration a few weeks before. It was my princess's first birthday, and I was ever so swamped with work!!

Initially I was rather hesitant about getting a chalet and holding the celebration there. Rianne's birthday was on the 3rd day of the Lunar New Year this year, and that means the chalet rates are going to be sky high. The cheapest available were charging per night $288!!

I reckon it is silly to spend a bomb on some place to hold a birthday celebration for a tiny toddler, whom I'm pretty damn sure will not remember a single thing post the party. Well, maybe take lots of pictures and show them to Rianne when she's a tad older; and try to imprint the impression of a fantastic 1st birthday she had into her mind.

Hopefully these will do the job..






Special thanks to my dearest family, who helped make this birthday party possible! And not forgetting my kind friends for their presence and generous gifts to baby Rianne..

Happy Birthday Rianne darling!!
Love, Mummy..

Exams.. Finally over!!

Extremely glad that they are finally over! However, am quite certain I would have attained a supplementary paper in one of the modules - Productivity Management.

Not sure if it's just me, or everyone else in the class who hated this module. The lecturer wasn't too great to begin with, although he is a Doctor. Sure, every lecturer has his/her own style of teaching; but unfortunately his methods don't work for our class. The one thing Dr Lim said that was imprinted deeply into my mind is, "You can sacrifice sleep for now, and sleep next time coz you will then be able to sleep for good and never wake up."

Honestly, which working adult who attends part-time courses, doesn't sleep very little hours? For myself, with Rianne around, my sleep is so much more compromised as I have to ensure that Rianne goes to bed before I can take my rest. This can sometimes be as late as past midnight, if Rianne is too hyped up and refuse to sleep.

Anyway, I am almost completing my studies. One more module to retake (I dropped it during my final trimester in my pregnancy), the MAP project and the supplementary paper (hopefully paper, and not papers). Would love to take it further with an advanced diploma program or degree. But not so soon..

Sympathy.. Do you deserve it?

I really hate to sound like a heartless, vicious and unsympathetic bitch.. but think about it, if I am not as strong as I am today, my whole family would have starved to death, and I probably would have killed my offspring even before I could give birth to it..

I must re-emphasize this - I have never regretted giving birth to my daughter, whom most of you would agree with me, is a hard-not-to-dote darling. I have also never felt unwilling to become a single mother, and have a complicated marital status.

All these purely because I am a strong individual, who was brought up to survive in hardships; and stand up to lead the pack. In fact, at the age of 10, I was already taking care of my two younger siblings whilst being a kid myself who needs to be cared for too. I had to teach, feed and stay united with my little sister and baby brother, because our parents were undergoing a divorce and they both hated to be around each other.

Maybe because of my childhood, I always detest weaklings who fall weak to their knees at any tiny setback. I am a girl, and if I can take any 'wave' that comes hitting me; I expect a guy to be able to face the music too, or not, do it even better than me.

It is obvious to anyone, boy or girl, that childbirth is probably the most noble thing a woman would do for another living thing. For some, childbirth brings the most excruciating pain they have ever experienced, and for some unfortunate others, it may turned to be the most trumatising, and devasting chapter of their life.

I did not have an easy pregnancy, and it even became life-threatening at the last stage! I was lucky to have pulled through, and my baby was born prematurely and needed to be kept at the Special Care Nursery for a whole week after birth. This was hard for a postnatal mother, to be separated from her newborn that soon. And did I mention costs? Imagine the kind of hospital costs a single mother has to bear without any financial assistance from anybody; not even from the father of the child.

The purpose of me saying these now, isn't claiming credit for what I have done. It is what I am supposed to do, and doing it with whatever means it needs me to. I cannot picture what would happen to a baby if the parent has not got the capacity to provide for it, but yet choose to bring him/her into this world. Many young people, I believe are guilty of it..

You may be terribly ill or totally unfit to work, but life still goes on for everyone around you. If you have a baby, you would have to feed him/her regardless of the kind of situation the adults are in. They get hungry, sleepy and wet themselves, just like how they would every other day. It applies even to the sick person. Being sick doesn't make you less dependent on food and the basic necessities. Maybe you might use less of makeup and fashion items; but, you would still need to get on with each day of your life. And doing that, it means you need to have money.

For the adults, it's easier to scrimp on stuff and probably eat simple so as to reduce costs. However, for a growing baby who needs to be fed and changed, just about as soon as we started talking and finished, expenses are incurred like a flash.

It has been tough for me, really hard to bring up Rianne all by myself. And with Rianne's daddy denying that he have never said he wouldn't take care of us, doesn't make it any easier. What is practical to me, is the financial support. Taking care of a baby isn't feeding him/her any piece of food that you can find off the garage bin, or leaving the baby to starve for days and maybe he/she will forget they are hungry. It is money, the monetary capacity to provide for it..

A for APPLE

Guess what?! Rianne spoke her first word 2 days back!! Yes, Rianne, my princess Rianne! =)

There's this alphabet poster in my room, which was on the wall in my room months back. Since then, my mum & I have been reading the A-Z to Rianne everyday. Until whenever she hear us sing the alphabet song, Rianne will automatically look at the poster.

It didn't occur to me that she will hold a strong memory of any word, especially when the words are more than 3 letters long. So, when Rianne said 'APPLE' in front of me; I was stunned.. in a good way! Who wouldn't?!

At first, I thought the word came out coincidentally; and was not expecting to hear it for a 2nd time. But there was more to come.. Rianne practically said 'APPLE' everytime she tries to talk! I'm surprised the pronounication of the word was quite accurate, for a 10 month old infant; that is way too brilliant!

My mum thinks that the credit goes to us always showing Rianne the fruit at the supermarket, and telling her it's an apple. She even knows to sniff at it the minute we placed the fruit in front of her nose. So far, Rianne has smelled an apple, an orange, a grapefruit, a mango, a lemon, and even a dragonfruit before. This girl will be good in the fruits section when she grows up!

Rianne now also recognizes words of objects in the house, like our X'mas tree in the living room, her bathing toys (the duckie and the alligator), and us. She will look around for those items when we say them. We are trying to teach her to point at them, which is probably harder as Rianne hate people pulling her hands.

Well, I hope to be able to video her saying 'APPLE', but most of the time; she caught me off guard. So, pls watch out for the possible video of my little girl saying her first word - APPLE. =)

Get inked!

I know I have been talking about this for some time, and there's no better time to do it than now.. especially when this new tattoo is all about me and my princess.

The concept is to have our initials, the letter "R" facing each other, or back touching each other. Then cherry blossoms will surround.. The significance - Mama R will protect baby Rianne with all her might, and with that it means, Mama R has blossomed from a bud into a beautiful cherry flower; from a girl to a woman.

The tattoo artist my colleague's boyfriend strongly recommend, runs its operations in-house, at his own house. Looks professional, and his works are mostly portraits and horror pieces. My first consultation with him reveal the kind of font the two letters "R" are supposed to be; and also the position of the tattoo. I would want to have it on my inner calf (left inner), with the cherry flowers contouring down to my ankle.

Like any other soon-to-be-tattooed person, I did my research and found several fonts online. On my first consultation with Elvin, the tattoo artist, he told me about the impossibility of having my desired design on my calf as my legs are too small. Unless I am willing to alter the design to have only one R, then that would be fine on the small area I have. However, that is not what I want.

We further explored areas which I could have my ideal tattoo, and have it tastefully done. Elvin suggested my abdomen to hip area (for the flowers to appear like floating in the air). I thought that would be quite nice, and also a very concealed spot. At least I don't have to worry about cover-ups if I were to change jobs and have to dress formally.

The consultation ended with an appointment fixed, and the price agreed on..

So, while waiting for me to show off my new tattoo, check out the works of Elvin here on his website - http://www.elvintattoo.com/

Little Miss Chatterbox

Yes, Rianne is now talking, talking and talking every single minute.. watch it below. =)

Birthday & Jokes

This is so ridiculously funny, listen.. "When the telephone ring, Green Green Green. I Pink up the phone and asked Blue are you? White do you want? You don't Purplely call me. If I am angry, I will not call you Black!" Damn hilarious, isn't it? - a portion from the local movie "Happiness Matters". Go rent the dvd, if you need a laugh badly!

You may think that I am in high spirits since I can tell jokes. Sorry, you are wrong. The jokes are so much needed, exactly because I'm in a foul mood..

I turned 31 on 29th Oct, and to be honest, I wasn't exactly happy about this milestone at all. It feels weird to be this old when I ain't even feeling like I'd aged. There were a total of 5 birthday celebrations, and 4 birthday cakes. The first cake came as a surprise at my workplace. My dearest colleagues pulled a stunt on me that was almost uncoded by the birthday girl herself, if the cake hasn't appear soon enough. My sweet mum & Rianne also had a cake waiting for me at home, on the day of my birthday!

The 3rd celebration was the one I least wanted it to happen. It was at school, where our class always celebrate birthdays of people in that particular month. At first they left out me, which was a good thing. But then our kind lecturer went through the register, and found me to be one of the birthday people. The whole class sang, and I'm sorry to say that I wasn't very smilely at that time. Probably because I was a little annoyed at my project mates for showing me 'smelly' faces, when I didn't turn up for our project discussion. I had my reasons!! Already informed one of them via sms, so if they want to be mad, let them be!

I had the most fun in my last birthday celebration with my bestest chums - the F5! Rianne, the party pooper (yes, she tagged along!), however did ruined some of the fun times. At the celebration, we welcomed another member to our gang, our ex-classmate of sec 4D - Y. It was great seeing Y again, especially when we haven't met for more than a decade. I bet she was enjoying herself, coz you could hear her laughter the whole time during the gathering! Y will also join us in our very exlusive X'mas gift exchange annual practice this year. I really wonder who did she pick? Who is she getting the gift for? Me? Heeheehee..

Wonder who enjoyed my birthday celebrations the most? Answer below :