Energetic Weekend

This my-so-called energetic weekend started on Friday night where I baked 60-70 pcs soft choc chip cookies for no particular reason...just Sarah & hubby like them so much. The recipe can be found in one of my older posts. Sent an sms to Fas to drop by and take the cookies home as her son Faiz liked them too. But I guessed she didn't read it that night as she only replied in the morning...well not too late though. She came around 10 on Saturday morning to pick them up. After doing our weekly Giant's trip, went to BWY to get some baking stuff...well I planned to cook spaghetti bolognaise with chickenmeatball for lunch so need some breadcrumbs for the meatballs. Back at home around 12 and straight away prepared the meatball before cooking the sauce and later the pasta. After Asar, baked a moist chocolate cake which the two girls ate it while it was still warm...tak menyempat2. Let the pictures explain it all...

Lunchtime Today

Walk Down Memory Lane - Diploma Level

I was reading one of my friend's posting the other day. She has been blogging about her life experience during her college days in UiTM (formerly ITM)Dungun, Terengganu. I think she could be in her early or mid 40s so she must've been my super duper senior I guessed...as I was also studied there after my SPM. Her post felt closer to my heart (and mind) as it somehow commemorates my student life in the same place almost 20 years ago. I was 18 then, just lost my father a few years earlier and if I further my studies my mum would be left alone at home. I was happy and sad at the same time. I was happy when I received the offer to study there, first beacuse I don't have to do STPM. secondly the cost of studying in ITM at that time was much much cheaper than any other local universities, at least my sponsors(you-know-who)can afford it...alhamdulillah. I was sad because I've never been hundreds and hundreds miles away from my family ever and alone. My mum was sick at that time too. Nevertheless, pulled myself up and go with full of expectations and great spirit!...yeay!

When I think about it now, I can't believed that it has been nearly twenty years now and look at where I am now. I took Diploma in Banking Studies merely because I like the idea of being a bank officer, you know...nice officewear, counting money...hehe, good pay...didn't really care about what are the syllabus or subjects that I will be dealing with. First 3 semesters, my favorite subject was accounting..got straight As for it for the 3 semesters. Kinda blur with economics...dunno why do we need to study curve la, demand vs supply la...boring2. The last 3 semesters, my favorite subject was Finance...loved doing time value of money & capital budgeting and stuff...really had fun doing the trial and error to find IRR..at one point it became a hobby just doing the trial & error thingy. At this time was contemplating and reassessing whether I really wanted to work in a bank???..hmmm. Loved Business Law too as it was kinda reading a novel with all kind of cases...hehe macam Jeffrey Archer's short stories la kiranyer.

End of 1993, I passed my final exam and continued to do my Degree on the following year...that's another story of Hogwartslah..hehe

Cookie Decorating Project

Baby Shower Theme @ Cake Connection 24 Oct 2009
I wasn't so lucky with cut-out cookies. Been trying a few recipes for raya but the results had been quite pathetic or should I say...disastrous to my own standard. However my soft cookies were always, always excellent and delicious and yummy and something that I can be proud of and definitely can jual one!..hehe:)
Last Saturday I went to cake connection for baby shower theme cookies class mediated by Azrina....mainly because it was so cute and thought of doing it for my grandnephews' aqiqah next month. It was fun, the baking and the decorating...but when it came to dry the cookies off..here comes the problem. It has to be dried in an aircond room @ 17 degree for at least 5 hours. Wow! very expensive cookies mehh!!...having a second thought about the aqiqah>>>

Cupcake Decorating Classes

After searching, google-ing, asking people and stuff on cake decorating classes, I decided to enroll myself into classes held by Nancy & Shymala of cake connection @ Jaya One. The website www.cakeconnection.com.my seemed nice and quite informative so ok...decided to try one of the classes first. Actually I didn't know the existence of Jaya One, I know the collapsed Jaya Supermarket, I know Digital Mall... so, where the heck is that place??? Googled the place so it is near the old IIUM, seemed easy to find and yeah!...it was very easy to find it!
Went for the Cupcake Level 1 class in the middle of fasting month and Cupcake Level 2 last week. Wow! it wasn't that hard at all. Look at the outcome!

My MBA Convocation 15 Oct 2009

One fine Saturday morning in the last weekend of June 2006, I registered myself in U**M SA for MBA program. The very same morning, I got a call from kampung that my brother in law had peacefully passed away. A couple of weeks later, I received a much unexpected yet anticipated news that I was pregnant for the 3rd time after waiting for more than 4 years. The reason that I enrolled myself into the Masters program was just because my 2 kids have grown up, still no luck for no. 3 and I had quite free time for myself during weekend. Why don't I further my studies? So when I found out that I was pregnant, it was a mixture of feelings...yeah I was happy, definitely! but..will I be able to complete my MBA? Will I be able to manage time between the little baby & assignments? 2007 was a challenging year where I was in my second semester when I delivered Maryam and I dropped 2 subjects that semester. During the 3rd semester I had to juggle between classes, tons of assignments, exams and the baby. Always brought 2 bags to the class, 1 for the books & the other one was for the breast pump. During lecture breaks, I went to the surau in the faculty to express breastmilk. One of the classmate (Abe Mi) used to ask me one question that I will remember for the rest of my life...nak buat ape bawak camera tu? OMG! but yeah the spectra breastpump bag do look like a camcorder bag...hehehe.
Well...after 3 years, finally I had my convocation on Thursdy morning 15th October 2009. Received my scroll from His Majesty himself. Alhamdulillah.

Food tasting

Was browsing @ I***an@ The Gdns on one Friday with you-know-who-my-shopping-buddies, when suddenly felt like trying one cafe infront of that departmental store. Hmmm..the menu looked really nice with stuff that we could not be able to pronounce. Well, we decided to give it a try. Here what we had;
1. Scones - I can tell straight away it was horrible the moment I cut it into halves. Took a really tiny bite and that's it. No thanks!
2. Liegeois Chocolate - well it was an ice cream with cereal and cream on top. And that costed us about 12 bucks??
3. Lavazza - A typical milk shake with a shot of espresso on top...it was ok!
4. Cupidon - A waffle with ice cream & love letter with strawberry sauce...paddington pancake is better

The verdict: It was my first and my last! Thanks for the experience.

Kids's duit raya

Naim is in Year 4 and Sarah is in Year One in primary school. Both of my schoolkids bring their lunchpack to school everyday and were never given any pocket money as their 'duit belanja' except for some special cases like tak ada gas nak masak or nothing to masak. So the only money that they can keep for themselves and allowed to spend is their duit raya collection. Every year after raya, we will normally make a trip to Toysrus to buy whatever they want using their duit raya collection. Most of the time, the choice of toys would be a bunch of hot wheels for naim and barbie doll for sarah. The balance will go to their individual bank accounts. This year they did something different.

It started when we got back to my kampung in NS. One of my nephew, a 20 year old Asrul has a PSP and everybody (Naim, Sarah, Ina, Arfah & Ika) is taking turn playing with it everyday (..or every chance they got). Some took a longer time to finish their turn ( sebab terror sangat, tak mati mati!), some like 5 minutes only game already over ..hehe esp yang Year One tu! Naim has been like an expert already in PS2, XBox and PS3 since 4 years old, so what is PSP la right???? And of course he hold the gadget longer than everybody else...Bangun tido pulun PSP dulu sebelum makan sebab 12 yo Arfah bangun very the lambat.

On the way back home after spending 4 days raya in NS, hubby asked the kids whether they are willing to combine their duit raya to buy a PSP. And of course as expected both of them were thrilled and trying to remember and counting how much money that they will have altogether including maryam's...ewah..ewah. I told them Maryam's portion is out of reach and definitely untouchable.

As promised we went to digimall to buy the PSP on the following day. As for Maryam, we got her a fisher price musical & activity table from toysrus.