Hello all!!

It’s been awhile since I blogged or anything (across all my sites)…apparently the need to sleep like a baby do not go away!!Ugh! Thanks so much for all your congratulations….I was overly optimistic when I said that the worst is behind me now. Apparently not and it sucks. Well the sickness IS actually behind me now, but I am still sleepy ALL THE TIME which is really messing with me.

Things that no one tells you about re the ‘Joys of Pregnancy’:
The Bads
You sleep, and you sleep and you sleep….and yet its never enough.
You eat, and eat and eat…..and then you feel sick from eating too much.
I can spend all day sleeping, eating, going to the toilet and then repeat. So much for weekends.
Sleep at night is interrupted about 4 times because the baby’s sat on your bladder. Ugh.
I am a walking burping and farting machine. Gross. That is if I can walk at all.
Your changing figure is all well and fine , but it’s so hard to get off the sofa or the bed!! Or even out of the car!
Your belly button shrinks. Ugh. Mine’s not popped out yet, but it’s been threatening to do so.
How can someone so small need so many things bought even before they’re born?

The Goods
The kicks. OMG the kicks. They are ever so wonderful, even if it’s a roundhouse kick to your ribs. I love it and would lay in bed for hours just prodding and feeling the baby kick against me.
The sounds. I got a doppler listening device during my first trimester, and hunting for the baby’s heartbeat and hearing it go is just amazing. We tried it once when it was having a hiccuping session….the on-time gurgling was hilarious
I like having a reason to be fat. No one can say anything about me having double portions of dessert.
Touch wood – no stretchmarks as of yet. Hopefully lathering myself up twice a day since month 2 is going to help.
Cleaning. I have always been a slacker with cleaning the house and it’s usually left in a state of messiness. I am now thoroughly OBSESSED with getting it tidied up and cleaned in preparation for the baby. Poor bacon – as I can’t really move much at the moment, he’s the slave whilst I’m the slave-driver.

I’m well into my 3rd trimester now…and getting fatter by the day if it’s possible. Baby’s due on 9th Jan…which means I’ve got around 8 weeks. GULP. 8 WEEKS. I am terrified. Okay, so this was planned for (not an accident!), but still I can never imagine myself being responsible for someone else….let alone carrying it for 9 months. I’m just trying to enjoy it one day at a time at the moment as we honestly don’t know if there is going to be a no.2….just in case we don’t, then I want to remember this time of my life as I sit back and create a human being.

And also for you that don’t know – we’re having a boy .

PS: Do you like my photo? Heh….self-snapped!

It has been an awfully long time since I was last here and posted anything of any value – three months would you say? This time around it ALL my blogs and not just my personal one. I completely went off twitter as well as I concentrated on making myself feel as comfortable as I could. I would apologize profusely, but this time around I actually have a valid reason.

Hello!

This was the reason why I have been unable to cook for the past three months (can’t stand the smell of raw meat), feel so sick at night (morning sickness my behind) and just sleep and eat whenever I get the chance. In fact, I still do that…seems to need loads and loads of rest. No bentos for me either, I could barely cook dinner let alone lunch….so poor bacon have been doing all the cooking and cleaning and letting me nap. When I go out, all I want to do is come home and crash in bed…..extreme tiredness is one of my symptoms. It’s been quite unpleasant, but it was mostly due to my incessant worry that something might be wrong. Apparently the worst is behind me now…so I’m looking forward to some months of somewhat feeling more myself than I have done in the past few months.

Probably being off the caffeine is not helping with my tiredness…there is just so much that you’re supposed to limit your intake of or just cut straight out of your diet. I don’t really mind things like liver and certain fishes, but caffeine limitation is not one of my favourite. You’d think that after avoiding it for two months (had no idea during month 1) that I’ll be completely off it…but no. I’m still sleepy, and crave for coffees, teas and chocolate. Yeah you didn’t know chocolate contain caffeine huh? So does soft drinks. I have been going de-caf but even that contains some caffeine. Sucks. I can replicate the taste but not the effect!

Other than the random bits of being uncomfortable, me & bacon are looking forward to welcoming our new addition in January. We’ll hopefully be finding out the gender in the next 6 weeks or so – buying items for team yellow is just too hard! We both have an inkling that it’s going to be a boy. Nothing scientific, just a feeling….but we’ll find out in about 6 weeks!!

PS: Yes I still have loaddds of pictures of China. And no, this was not made in china

Or is it?

My bags are packed and I’m ready to go. I am heading off to China; with about 30ish members of my extended family meeting us there. We are only heading there for a week, not much – for a long-planned family visit. We don’t actually have any close relative members living there any longer (my great grandparents migrated to Penang a long long time ago)…and none of us had ever been back, including my grandparents and their siblings. However, as it is pretty much a clan in Malaysia and in China, relations have been maintained throughout the years, with the people from China visiting Malaysia every so often. Some of our second cousins (it is after all, a clan) visits regularly, spending time at the village on business and pleasure.

I really have no idea why it took us this long; China really isn’t all that far from Malaysia. Why did it take over a century before anyone in the family (second and third cousins ignored) headed back to the land of our forefathers? Most of us have been to China, hitting major cities and attractions over the years. I for one had not seen much of China at all, and this will be the first time that I am in China for a whole week. It is only going to be one area, I won’t be heading to the major sites like Shanghai and Beijing and will see nothing of the Great Wall – but I am heading home.

It took the clan (it’s too big to be simply a family) a decade or two to plan this epic trip. In the meantime we have travelled far and wide; and I have been fortunate to discover countries and cultures across continents and the opportunity to live in a few. But in a way I am very glad that it took them so long to plan the trip – and on perfect timing as well. My parents did not actually think I would even consider on going; they were just letting me know that they are going. I insisted on going, because this is most definately a once in a lifetime trip. It took them decades to plan this trip and there will not be another.

Being a lover of history and stories, I for one am extremely excited in visiting the land of my forefathers. Even with the impending dread of spending five full days with a bus-load of relatives, I am excited. I want to see how they live, what they ate, how their lives were.

To add on to my impending doom, the clan have been invited to lunch by the Chinese Government. Uh. Yeah. **gulp** I could really do without that as I am not a big fan for etiquette, pomp and splendour. But I don’t quite know how do you actually say no to the Chinese government. I would much rather spend time exploring and reflecting, but oh well.

We will be spending a few days with the clan sightseeing and visiting attractions around the city. We are only spending a day in the village, with the clan leaving the next day back for Malaysia whilst me and bacon stay for a couple more days. To be honest, we are in desperate need of some relaxing time, so in the last few days we might just be chilling out by the pool and recharge after the massive stress (of my part) in dealing with family members that I have not seen in years (for a good reason mostly). It’ll be exciting for bacon (heh) I’m sure in being surrounded by cackling, loud people chattering in a foreign language. He’s clinging on to the fact that there is a KFC next to our hotel

Wish me luck – and have a great Easter wherever you are in the world my dear faithful readers. And this time, I will be blogging about my adventure to China here – you can bet on it. This is one trip that I want/need to document for posterity . I’ll get bacon to do a blog post review as well on beers and other strange alcoholic beverage consumed for those of you interested

PS: All cooking posts have been moved to eatwithsticks – I am currently running a GIVEAWAY if you can spare 3 minutes to join in the fun!

Hello!!

I seemed to have mitosis-ed on myself – you can now find me at eatwithsticks for my cooking/recipe related stuff and notabrownbag for all my bento-related stuff. These links are linked to each other, but not linked here. Pretty special huh .

So yes, if you follow me for food-related tweets and happenings, please re-point to either one of the sites above .

Why hello all.

For whatever that remained of my usual readers, you would be no doubt be sick of me sticking recipes and food-related items up here. Well, so am I. This had always meant to be a personal blog, and as my intrests grew out of control (do you remember that spate with jewelry, and then soap?) this tiny space had struggled to cope with the alarming variety of posts on various topics. So has my brain, confusing itself between the totally irrelevant segmentations of my life. Well, that will be ending as of today.

I am moving all my food-related postings in the future to a separate space. At the moment this is under construction, but it should be up soon-ish. As for my bento-related craze; it’s still going on after all this time; and you can visit it here. I have restrained from too many cross-postings between my personal blog and that, only on important issues like my bento4Japan cause – which I hope you will consider donating to.

In the past few years I have minimized posts of the personal nature. This is probably due to my increasing posts on my other interests and also some local-interest postings. I no longer felt comfortable blogging about personal rants/issues/whatevers in this space that I had publicised as a hold for recipes and my other mad-cap ideas. In time I hope to be in that space again – and it is with hope that moving a big chunk of my ‘cooking’ off this blog will help. I will still post my travel blogs here, it is after all me on holiday – but other than that I hope for this space to start becoming my own personal punching bag again. With time I will learn to divide my time between the various segments of my life – and in the meantime I hope you bear with me.

***omg it all sounds so dire doesn’t it?***