My weird dreams

They say that pregnant women have very weird and vivid dreams and I can vouch for that. I've just had two really weird dreams on consecutive nights and they're so weird that I thought I would just blog about them.

Dream No. 1 was two nights ago. I dreamt that I was in the future and science was so advanced, they were doing things that we today would never thought would ever be possible. I dreamt that the scientists had perfected a technology where you could take a developing baby out of the womb and show it to the mum so that she could touch her baby and see for herself that baby's all right and then put it back into the womb again.
I could see them cutting up me belly (didn't hurt though I was conscious) and taking out a healthy baby for me to cuddle for a bit. Can't do that for long though! Then they took the baby and put it back into me and I carried it to full term. ??????????
What a weird dream. When I woke up, the first thing I did was to pat my tummy to make sure it wasn't cut open and my Little Monkey was still inside. I think this dream just manifests my desire to see my little one. I'm barely halfway there but I'm really excited about becoming a mum and being able to hold Little Monkey for real.

Dream No. 2 was last night. I dreamt that I was a detective. Not just any detective, but a white male detective. How did I know I was a white male? Well, on the phone, I identified myself as "John Connelly" and I saw my hands which were clearly white. JOHN CONNELLY???? How on earth did I ever come up with that name???
Anyway, I dreamt I was this detective solving a crime. It wasn't your everyday crime either. It was an unsolved murder that had occurred years ago and I had somehow come into possession with a telephone that enabled me to contact the detectives from that era who were desperately trying to solve that crime. I was really trying to solve crimes across time! Ooh! Think NYPD Blue crossed with Quantum Leap. That was my dream last night.
I guess I'd better stop watching so much crime and detective stuff on telly. I don't watch CSI but I do enjoy watching the other crime shows like Law and Order and there's a crime website that I read regularly.

I don't understand why I can't ever dream about finding the perfect pair of shoes or something like that.

Five on a Friday

This Friday tag came from Paris Beaverbanks. It's a good thing I remembered today is Friday, days can pass me by sometimes and I forget what day of the week it is! So anyway, here are the five questions I have to answer on a Friday after I've gotten is, so here goes:

1. To watch or to participate?
I pick to participate. God knows life is short enough, I'm not going to sit by the sidelines and watch it go by. However, if the doing includes either frying something in hot oil or bungee-jumping, then I pick to watch.

2. Malls, catalog shopping or Internet?
MALLS!!! Even though they start to look the same no matter where you go... but nothing beats trying on the stuff you want to buy for yourself. Besides, I enjoy people-watching and I enjoy seeing how malls structure their displays so as to entice me, the unsuspecting consumer, to spend more than I normally would.

3. A bath or a shower?
Shower, please. Besides, I'm not supposed to be soaking in really hot baths now that I'm pregnant. But lately, I've been taking a sort of bath-plus-shower thing here in the hotel. The problem is the shower stall is small and I always feel constricted while inside there. So I've switched to sitting about in a shallow pool of water for a bit and then rinsing it all off with a blast from the shower. Makes me feel a lot cleaner.

4. To talk to people by telephone, in person or by email?
Erm... really depends on how well I know the person and how clued-in the person is on tech stuff. For Mum and Dad, it's phone/person for sure. They don't even know how to reply SMSes, what more email! For friends, I don't mind any form of communication mentioned above. Perhaps it's because I spent most of my Uni years typing away on a keyboard and making friends all over the world that I've yet to meet via email/chat and so, I don't feel that email is as cold and impersonal a medium as others do.

5. Typing or writing?
Typing. My handwriting has gone to the dogs. LOL Unless I'm giving cards or personal msg, then I write.

As I don't know many people online yet who keep a blog, I'll just tag less than five people. (Okay hor, PB?)

• Shortcake Baby
• Andie Summerkiss

TGIF, everybody!

Congrats Pompey, FA Cup winners 2008!

A short note to congratulate Pompey for their triumph in the FA Cup. It's nice to see teams other than the big boys in the final and finally David James has his FA Cup winner's medal.

Other than that, I am now pretending that football doesn't exist. I have done so ever since we lost to Chelsea in the Champions League semi-final. *buries head back into sand again* Please do not wake me up until the new EPL season starts again in August.

The life of an expat wife Pt I

Way-hey! I'm practising real hard at being a spoilt, pampered expat wife! According to my friend ST, a good expat wife knows how to spend and spend without guilt. I'm working on it.

Last Wednesday, I decided that a haircut was in order and jumped into a cab to go to the nearest mall to me, which is Pondok Indah Mall. But first, my more important mission of finding a book of baby names! I picked one up in the Kinokuniya and then went all the way to the top floor for my next mission.

Lunch! I had a very nice lunch at the mall's food court which is so not very Mak Datin hor? Never mind, my spending is coming up soon. It was noodles with chicken on a hot plate, all drowning in sauce. I hate that. I hate my food drowning in sauce or gravy. But vart to do? I didn't know it would come drowning in sauce, as usual the menu showed something that looked different. That plus a chrysanthemum tea cost me about Rp16,000 (approx RM5). Wasn't too bad but a tad on the light side and I knew I would be hungry again come 3pm or so.

Now to find a hairdresser. I walked round and round the mall looking for one. The first one was full of ladies of leisure getting their hair done and I couldn't be bothered to wait, so I left. The 2nd was awfully expensive. The cost of a hair cut alone was something like Rp300,000 (Approx RM90) and a wash and blow-dry were add-ons. Eek. Next

Finally I found this shop that looked all right and the cost of a wash, cut and blow dry was in the region of Rp220,000 (RM66+). I took a look inside. Okay, no big-big hair aunties in sight. I'm very particular on that bit, I didn't want to end up looking like Imelda Marcos. I decided to give it a try.

The staff were very friendly and once they realised I wasn't Indonesian, they spoke slower (Indonesians seem to speak much faster than we do) and we got on fine. My stylist turned out to be this macho, sexy, heterosexual (I think) guy. WOW. He wasn't the foppish type which I hate. This guy looked like he smoked Malboros and could rip apart a barrel with his bare hands. His shirt sat just right on his shoulders and his jeans sat just right on his hips. And wow, what a sexy, husky voice he had! What a credit he is to Indonesian men everywhere! Drool, drool!

And boy, can he cut hair too! Dear Hubby didn't buy it at all when I told him excitedly about him, saying that all male stylists are either gay or ladyboys like his barber. I defended my Mr Indonesia, saying "Nono, he's quite clearly straight and very sexy!" Wah. I'm definitely going back there again for another cut. Dear Hubby is quite curious and may just tag along the next time just to have a look-see.

I then spent the next few hours wandering through the various shops. My baby bump is starting to show a little bit more now and my jeans won't fit me anymore when I sit. So I'm on the hunt for some maternity pants that I can wear right up till my delivery date.
I stumbled upon a store that had a sale.. wooh, a sale! Magic four-letter word! They had some nice tops on that I knew I could wear even when my bump gets a whole lot bigger than it is now, so I happily bought a few.

Finally at 4pm, tired from my shopping, I hailed a cab and went home. In the cab, I started tallying up my spend from the day and panicked when I realised I'd spent about Rp1.4 million. Oh gosh! Rp1.4 million! That sounds like a heck of a lot of money! I've never spent a million of anything before! What am I going to tell Dear Hubby? Oh god.. that is like.. erm, erm... *thinks hard and calculates*... RM420? Oh. Okay. Phew. What a relief.

I'm going to have practise harder at this guilt-free spending. I'm really not good at it.

My little angel visitor

I had a rather unusual visitor yesterday. At around 430pm, the doorbell went DING DONG! and I went to take a look. It was far too early for Dear Hubby to have finished work, so I thought it was hotel staff.
I took a peep out of the peephole and to my surprise, I couldn't see anyone. Eh? Curious, I decided to see who it was. When I finally opened the door, I discovered why I couldn't see my visitor through the peephole. It was a little boy, blond, blue-eyed in t-shirt, shorts and sandals, holding a pool toy under his left arm! He was so little and he was standing so close to the door, I'd simply missed seeing him through the peephole.

There was silence for a moment as the two of us stared at each other. I was looking at him thinking, "EH???" He was looking up at me, Kao Biore nose strips on nose and all, probably thinking the same thing. Finally, he spoke first, "I think I have the wrong room..." I bet you did, kiddo! Hehe.

He was really cute and I looked outside for his family but he was standing there alone. So I asked if he knew where his mum was and he said yes. He looked up at my room number again and I could see in his eyes that he realised it was the wrong number. So I asked if he knew what the right room was and he said yes again. I told him that if he got lost, he was to come back to me and I would take him down. Actually, I should have taken him to the right room but we two weren't thinking straight at that moment.

While we were talking, he kept looking past me into our suite. Suddenly he asked, "Could I come in and have a look?" Amused, I said, "Sure!" and let him in. He bounced in, pool toy and all, "Wow! This is much bigger than our room! Mummy said there were some rooms that are bigger but she didn't know how big they were!" I watched as he ran excitedly through all our rooms and took a good look at everything.
When he was done, he looked up at me and said, "Okay... I'm going now. Thank you." I was really amused, I thought he was just adorable. He assured me he would be all right and said goodbye and went off to the lift.

Heh. So what do you think, guys? Think this is an omen of sorts? Will Little Monkey turn out to be a baby boy?

When I told some old friends about it, one of them said that it sounded like he was a little angel sent to see that Mummy and baby were all right. I kinda like that thought. :)))

How to fight a tummy bug in Jakarta

Like most newcomers to Jakarta, we've had trouble with the hygiene. I mean, I come from Malaysia, which isn't exactly the cleanest place in the world. I've eaten at places where there are rats running around your feet and you've got to keep your feet propped up on the stool provided or you'll get a visitor up your pants. The food was delicious though! Hehe. I usually get tummy bugs at mamak stalls when the condensed milk they use to make my beloved teh ais isn't too fresh and then I get it. Otherwise, I'm usually okay.

But Jakarta is well... different. I've been here twice before and I got the runnies the first time simply because I didn't know tap water wasn't quite suitable for brushing your teeth. The 2nd time I was here, I was careful to keep my mouth shut during showers and only brushed with the bottled water provided and I was okay.
Dear Hubby isn't having it as easy though. He's been here for 5 months now and he's gotten sick at least once each month. This isn't endearing the city to him as he'd lived in KL for 5 years and only gotten sick twice. I can't remember the first time he was sick but I clearly remember the 2nd time. It was at his farewell dinner and he'd gotten sick because he'd eaten too much sushi and sashimi at a top-notch Japanese restaurant.

Our latest incident in Jakarta was on Monday. He'd come home from work looking positively green. I knew he was not feeling well at all. Lunch at the restaurant near his office had not been agreeable. He spent most of the evening running in and out of the toilet and according to him, all that came out was brown water. Eek.
He took Immodium, which normally helps plug him up but this time, it didn't work. I didn't know what to do, he was looking sick as a dog and all we could do was fill him up with fluids. I was starting to feel a bit ill myself. It wasn't sympathetic sickness though, something was wrong with the hotel dinner I'd ordered and I was starting to feel its effects.
I was getting worried because when he's sick like this, he's normally out for about a week. I knew there was no way I could persuade him to stay home the next day as the Global Director was coming for a visit and they were scheduled to meet a big client. So I was racking my brains, trying to think of something that might put him right.

Suddenly I remembered something DG told me. DG's an old online friend who comes to Jakarta frequently for business (and has kindly volunteered to be my pool boy, thanks DG!) and he'd told me that a swig of whiskey neat did the trick. No sense going for the expensive ones, he said, just pick a cheap whiskey. After all, you're going after the alcohol content, not the taste. Kills the germs, so said DG.
So while Dear Hubby's throwing up in the toilet, I went to the kitchenette and poured him some whiskey into a glass. Not much, just a little. I didn't want him drunk. He looked utterly sceptical but I insisted and anyway, I've never known him to refuse a whiskey. :))

And guess what? It worked! He woke up the next day, still feeling a bit groggy but was well enough by lunch time to eat a slice of pizza. By evening, he bounced through the front door, looking quite well and went off to the company dinner, wolfing down curry and beer. Thanks for the tip, DG!

As for me? I suffered through a tummy bug for the entire day yesterday and threw up twice. No whiskey for me, can't risk it with Little Monkey on board.

Hilarious Jakarta show - Bule Gila!

I just happened to flip to Antv station tonight at 7pm Jakarta time and they were showing this local show called Bule Gila. The language went a bit too quickly for me to catch everything but basically, what they do is take two bules (ie gwailo to you and me in Malaysia) and make them do local stuff.

This episode has Ron from Australia competing with John from Scotland to be the Bule Gila on the show. First up - the traffic policemen test! When I saw traffic policemen, I don't mean the official police guys in their uniforms. You see, in some parts of Jakarta, the roads wind in and out of local settlements where there's barely enough room for two vehicles to pass by and there are plenty of blind corners. So the local lads who live there come out to play traffic policemen and for their efforts, you drop money into the little bucket they hold out to you. I've watched our driver pay Rp500 or Rp1,000 to these guys and it's money well worth it.

It was simply hilarious to see the two bules put on shorts, faded tees, sling a Good Morning towel across their shoulders and go to work. They were competing to see who could get the most fares and the most ciggies. I think they stopped traffic more than they helped to move it along because the locals were all slowing down to stare at the sight of a bule directing traffic in their own backyard. LOL John the Scot appeared to be enjoying it, hamming it up and blowing his whistle merrily. The drivers he encountered must have enjoyed it too because he managed to rack up quite a sum in his cup.

The next challenge was to be a mi bakso hawker. I think mi bakso is meatball noodles. If I'm wrong, I hope any Indons reading this post will correct me. So first, they get this local hawker called Pak Bejo to teach them the ropes. The two guys learn how to manage the pushcart, how to use their utensils to clang onto the pushcart to create attention and how to prepare mi bakso.

Then off they go their separate ways to see who can make the most money. John again proved tops in this challenge. I suppose if you are a local and you hear a Scottish-accented voice shout out, "BULE MI BAKSO!!! BULE MI BAKSO!!!", you too would come running out of your house to check it out. Like all the ibu-ibu who came running out of their houses, I thought it was simply hilarious to see a white man pushing a mi bakso cart around, trying to drum up business.
The funniest part was when they interviewed the customers of the two guys and some of them wrinkled up their noses and said their mi was not salty enough and not spicy enough.

The winner gets a Bule Gila trophy, I think. The show tickled me so much I'm wondering if I could enter my own bule husband into the show. Imagine how funny it would be if we had a Bule Gila trophy to show off in our home!

We've finally moved!

Finally. Our bags have been packed, we'd left on our jet planes and are now sitting pretty in our hotel suite here in Jakarta. The suite has a hall, dining area, a kitchenette, two rooms and two baths, so it's not too claustrophobic.

We've grown tired of the hotel menu, so we went out and shopped for groceries and cooked dinner on Sunday night. On Sat, we went exploring in Kemang which is where we'll be living when our house is ready in July. We found this nice restaurant called Koi Gallery. It's actually a furniture shop-cum-restaurant. When I looked around the dimly lit, tastefully furnished restaurant, it was filled with mainly gwailo expats and well-to-do Jakartans. How did I know they were well-to-do Jakartans? Easy! They had Chanel bags and Imelda Marcos hair!

Food was quite good. We had duck spring rolls with hoisin sauce and chicken tempura with wasabe mayo for starters and the portions were just right. Dear Hubby picked a shrimp salad with ginger sauce for his main course while I went for the home-made fettucine with pan fried lamb. The home-made fettucine tasted a lot like pok mee, a noodle that can be found in my hometown but not in KL. This plus his two beers and my two pink guava juices cost us Rp280,000++ (Approx RM90). Not bad hor. I think a close local equivalent would be something like... oh crap... forgot the name... the place in Bangsar which is located at Jln Bangkung and serves great pasta in small portions? Dang. Memory going. Been that way ever since I got pregnant.

We're planning to go back to Kemang again soon to look for more restaurants. One had caught our eye that night, it was an eatery above a bookshop near the Duty Free area. Yes, Kemang has a duty free shop but I'm told only those with diplomatic passports can enter. Dang.
Another eatery I'm eager to try is a lively hawker stall area that's quite close to McDonald's, Kemang. This McDonald's is my landmark in Kemang. Since I'm not very sure of where I am yet, I always tell the cab driver to drop me off there and from McD, I can get my bearings and make my way around.

All our wordly possessions are now sitting pretty in a warehouse somewhere in Shah Alam. We can't ship them over yet as Dear Hubby has yet to receive his official work permit. We expect to get them at the end of this month though.
It was a very busy week for us last week as we hurried to pack our carry-on luggage and had to direct movers to pack our other belongings. The company settled on Asian Tigers and they were pretty efficient. They came in on Sat morning and packed up the stuff in our hall, save for the sofas and tv, and stored the boxes neatly under our Stairway to Heaven. Then on Monday, about 10 of them showed up at our place at 9am and by 5pm everything had been neatly wrapped, packed and labelled and wheeled out to the truck for transporting.
Credit to Dear Hubby who stayed behind and did most of the work while I was off at the Canadian High Comm securing my visa. He stayed up on his feet all day supervising the movers and helped them to carry stuff. So at the end of the day, he was rewarded with a nice massage from me, the least I could do to say thank you for shouldering most of the work.

Right now, all we have are two suitcases of clothes each, his golf clubs, my guitar and about six pairs of shoes. And Dear Hubby's cowboy hat. He dragged it out of storage and insisted on wearing it, saying he would wear it as well when we go to Canada in June. He went on wearing it until he realised the combination of his hat and my guitar made him look like the latest country and western singer employed by the hotel pub. The hat came off real quick then! HAHA!

All I felt when I stepped on the Jakarta-bound plane at KLIA was a sense of relief that this was all over. After months of shuttling back and forth and house-hunting and feeling like we were hanging in no man's land, we have finally settled that bit of our lives.

So yep, looking forward to this new phase in our lives, absolutely looking forward to checking out all the eateries in Jakarta (the Malaysian in me speaking there) and looking forward most of all to the arrival of our Little Monkey in Nov this year.

When East Meets West: Ep 1

While I was taking a breather today, I recalled next week is Mother's Day and reminded myself I must send a card off to my MIL. This is the first year I can co-sign the card, you see.

Thinking about her always makes me think about the time when we both went to the World Museum in Liverpool. When we reached the section about Marine Life, we looked around for a sea cucumber in the aquariums. I'd been telling her about how we Chinese eat it and she'd wanted to see it.
We wandered into a section where they kept erm... what do you call it.. those stuffed samples of animals? and looked for it. Couldn't find it, so she asked one of the museum staff, "Do you have any sea cucumbers?" "Yes, we do! Just come here with me!" he beamed at us, pleased someone was interested.
So we trotted after him and he pulled out a glass case with the carefully kept remains of a sea cucumber. "Ooh..." we went. He started his lecture, "This is a sea cucumber... Latin name Ihaveforgottenus whatziswas. It lives in so-and-so place and its main diet is so-and-so icky things. The most amazing thing about a sea cucumber is that when it is attacked, it can expel its intestines and confuse the attacker, enabling it to swim away." He ended his mini lecture with a wave of his hands (bye-bye sea cucumber, you forgot your intestines!) and smiled at us, clearly expecting us to praise his efforts or ask more questions.

I know he never saw what was coming. Beaming back at him, my MIL gestured at me and said warmly, "She eats them, you know! She's Chinese, they eat sea cucumbers!"

You could have heard a pin drop in the silence that followed.

My MIL was beaming, I was smiling apologetically at the young man and he was looking simply horrified that I was so.... so.... uncivilised as to be eating something like a sea cucumber, the poor harmless thing.
Finally, he recovered his senses and quickly placed the glass case back. He managed a stiff, "Oh. Right." and walked away as quickly as he could as we burst into laughter.

Happy Mother's Day to my MIL!

Our life is being packed away in cardboard boxes

Sigh. The movers are finally here. I'm seeing our life being packed into boxes as I type. The whole house looks like a typhoon has swept through it. It was even worse in the past two days because the water pump failed and we had only a trickle of water to shower and wash with. My god. I felt like I was on a camping trip in Inner Mongolia.

I guess the house didn't want us to move. First it "protested" by tripping a light switch and I was trapped in darkness the first night I arrived home from Jakarta. Boy, was I pissed. My flight had been delayed an hour from Jakarta, so it was close to midnight when I arrived home and I had to grope about in the dark summore. Wah liao. Funny thing was, the table lamps were working, so I put those on.

Then two days ago, the water pump just refused to work. Our landlord managed to find someone who would come in on a Saturday and they fixed it in an hour. So now we have water again. Phew.

I'm soooooooooo going to miss this apartment. It's the nicest home I've ever lived in. My favourite feature is the ceiling in the living room... erm.. what do you call it? A vaulted timber ceiling? Yes, I've just googled it and that's what you call it. I adore sitting in the living room with the music on and just staring up at the ceiling. Very peaceful, easy feeling.

(I love our ceiling!!!)

My other favourite feature was the built-in bookcase. Just simple shelves that reach up to our mythical 2nd floor and a wooden staircase was built so that you could climb up and reach the upper shelves. Most first-time visitors to our home will ask, "Eh...you got 2nd floor? Where is it ah?" We call it our Stairway to Heaven. :)))




*sniff, sniff* Bye-bye, KL.