New Kid On The Blog

27-FEB-2008:

Yesterday's post (How Can You Tell If a Child Is Color Blind) sparked a little talk (and thoughts) about child development, which then reminded me of a story that daddy told me about his childhood.

Daddy spent a few years of his childhood in the UK when his dad was posted here for an assignment. He received primary education the British style. He learnt to bake, play music and read. He learnt at his own pace and there were no exams at all. Education was based on creativity and experiments.

Then, he moved back to Malaysia where he joined primary school at Standard 2 or 3. According to daddy, it was the worst time of his education years. His report cards were full of red figures and the teachers invited his parents to the school to "talk about their concerns for their child". One of the teachers offered him private tuition (with payment, of course - trying to earn some extra income I suppose). One of them kept calling him "stupid" and actually told his mum that this child "has no hope".

But in the end, daddy went all the way to STPM and even managed to get into the local University of Malaya. Those days, not many people (especially the Chinese and Indians) can get a place in UM, much less for a degree that you actually want to take up. So when daddy bumped into his "mean teacher" after all those years, she was very, very surprised that daddy managed to get a University education, what more with a 1st class Honours.

I think the mean teacher's eyes might actually fall out if she knew that daddy is now a Siebel expert and is working in a Big 5 multi-national consulting company in London.

If there is only one thing I can nurture in Dominic, I would want him to develop a keen interest in books. Equipped with the ability and the interest to read, I believe there is no end to the knowledge he can gain and he will go further than being able to add '2 + 3 = 5' at the age of two. Unfortunately, if we were to move back to M'sia or S'pore, results are what matter the most. No wonder the parents are more stressed out than the kids when come exam time.

Finally, two things I'm happy about today:

1. I'm happy that work is so relaxing - nothing to deliver until 11-April actually.
2. I'm happy that it's the middle of the week already - 2 more days to go before the weekend.

# posted by Skye @ 5:58 am 0 comments

26-FEB-2008:

I have been teaching Dominic colors for over a month now but he doesn't seem to be getting it. Sometimes he gets it right, sometimes he doesn't and I think it's mainly by chance that he got it right. Sometimes red is red, sometimes red is blue, and sometimes yellow is green. But he always gets black and white right - I'm sure of that. What if he only sees black and white in his world? How can you tell if the child is color blind?

I doubt that Dominic is color blind though. How else would he be able to tell milk from juice by just looking at it? He could pick out matching colored socks too. But when it comes to painting and drawing, colors make no difference to him. Or perhaps he doesn't really care? Or maybe he's just a slow learner.

Another thing ... my brother told me that his girlfriend's son (who is 2.5 years old, I think) can already count from 1 to 30. So I started teaching Dominic to count - from 1 to 10, not to 30. Everytime I asked him to count, he would go "one ... two ... one ... two ... one ... two ... one ... two ...". Where is three? When I said "three ...", he would continue "four ... five ..." and then back to "one ... two ... one ... two ... one ... two ...". And then when I said "six ... seven", he would go "eight!" ... and then back to "one ... two ... one ... two ...". Hahaha ... I am having a mixed feeling of frustration and amusement.

Two things that I'm happy about today:

1. I'm happy that some normality has come back into life now that Dominic is back at the nursery.
2. I'm happy that Dominic is learning shapes at school although he already knows his shapes.

# posted by Skye @ 7:00 am 0 comments

25-FEB-2008:

Daddy's birthday: We recently celebrated daddy's birthday with a simple birthday-cake-candle-blowing occassion. Dominic was rather excited and he kept blowing off the candles even before we started singing the birthday song.

For his birthday, I got daddy the Sound A Sleep Pillow from Amazon. It has an in-built speaker so that you can plug in your MP3 player and listen to music as you doze off. Daddy has been using it every night since he got it. :-)

Amazon associate programme: About God-knows-how-long ago, I joined the Amazon associate programme hoping to earn some extra money from product referrals. I used to insert adverts and links into my blog (at that time it used to be Blogger at http://skye-vodka.blogspot.com). But then when I "migrated" over to Multiply, I couldn't insert those banners anymore because Multiply doesn't allow scripts, so I very quickly forgot about the associate programme. I recently received an email from Amazon saying that I've earned £1.79. Haha ... well, I guess it's better than nothing.

Wee-wee training: I haven't been very consistent with Dominic's wee-wee training. First of all, daddy thinks it should only be done during weekends. And then when weekends came, I often forgot about it. So, Dominic has had only a total of 4 training sessions so far. I wasn't really expecting any progress so it came as a surprise when one day as I was dressing him up, he kept repeating "she-she". I ignored him at first because I didn't understand what he was saying. It sounded more like "ji-ji". And then he stood up and clutched his penis. So I rushed him off to the toilet and he urinated. Woo-hoo! :-D And then it happened again the next day when he was watching TV. This time, he said "ng-ng-she-she" and he did both. :-) And then it happened again last night after bath. This time he went "wee-wee-wee-wee" for about 30 seconds before I realized what he was saying. Haha! At least, he was able to hold it until he gets to the toilet. So, these are the few "good" moments of the training. 90% of the time, I would ask if he wants to "wee-wee" and he would say no. 5% of the time, I would ask him to try and he would try. 5% of the time, he would pee on the floor 2 seconds after he said no.

Finally, two things I'm happy about today:

1. I'm happy that Dominic is recovering from chickenpox and has gone back to the nursery today. I really, really hope there'll be no more calls from the nursery telling that Dominic is suffering from some other illnesses. Really!!!
2. I'm happy that this morning was a really good one - I hope that every morning will be as good as this!

# posted by Skye @ 4:15 am 0 comments

22-FEB-2008:

Last weekend's project was to create a fish aquarium using cardboard boxes, kitchen rolls, paint and coloured strips of paper.

As usual, mummy did 90% of the work, but Dominic helped to paint and apply the glue.

This has to be the ugliest piece of art I've ever made. :p

# posted by Skye @ 12:01 pm 0 comments

20-FEB-2008:

Dominic contracted chickenpox! Parents, I need advice. What should I do? What can he eat? What can't he eat?

# posted by Skye @ 11:25 am 0 comments

20-FEB-2008:

Not many people understand what I do for a living. Sometimes not even myself. When I first moved to the UK, I had a tough time defining my roles to the head hunters so that they could match me to the right jobs.

I have a degree in IT and I worked as a programmer during my internship and for 3 months after my graduation. After that, Accenture (known as Andersen Consulting back then) offered me a highly paid job (for a fresh graduate) and I was known as an Analyst. What does an Analyst do? It varies and it depends on what projects you're working on, but mostly you just do whatever ... WHATEVER your boss asks you to do. For 4 years I was with Accenture, my role (or roles) were pretty undefined. Sometimes I would write business proposals, sometimes I would write tender specifications, sometimes I prepared powerpoint slides for my boss, sometimes I did testing and sometimes I just attended a lot of meetings for nothing.

My boss then left Accenture and joined Astro, and I followed shortly after. My job title in Astro was Solutions Architect. Haha ... it sounds ridiculous even when I think about it now. During my one year there, I've never architected a single solution. I got pregnant shortly after I joined Astro and my boss assigned me to a "relaxing" role so as to not stress me out. I was doing quality control for most part - which means here that when the vendor delivered a piece of software or functionality, I did the QA and signed on a piece of paper that said "okay". Simple stuffs ... just sign my name. :p

Now, I am a Business Analyst and here's what I do. I'll try to explain this right for the benefits of the non-IT people (and also for the IT people who have forgotten what they've learnt in school). When a project has an objective to deliver a piece of software or functionality, I come in to define the requirements. For example, the project that I'm working on right now involves building a new set-top-box (i.e. your Astro box). So what I do is to:

1. Define the use cases - IT people, do you remember what use cases are? UML? Basically I define all the scenarios in which a user will interact with the set-top-box. For example, how do I select a channel? I go to the TV Guide, select a category, browse the programmes, etc. It's more complicated than that but I'll explain later. Now, let me tell you what else I do first.
2. Define the detailed requirements (the fine prints) - this is a catalogue of what the system should do, the contraints, etc, etc. For example, TV guide must store 7 days of programming, it must display within 0.4 seconds after user requested it, etc.
3. Analyse the technical constraints - this, I mainly talk to the technical people and then document the constraints. For example, if satellite signal is lost, it can't display programme, so error handling is required, etc, etc.
4. Run workshops to get all the requirements signed off, i.e. everybody agrees that THIS is the system they want to build.

The final part is the toughest most of the time. Sometimes you get really funny responses that you don't know how to react to.

So my most recent use case documentation consists of scenarios where:

1. The user selects a future programme and schedule a recording.
2. When the time comes, the system records it.

In use cases, I need to define the Actors, triggers, pre-conditions and post conditions. In this scenario, the Actor is the TIME because it triggers the system to record the programme. Although it is bloody obvious what TIME means, standard documentation requires me to DEFINE what it is. So I wrote:

"Time - A nonspatial continuum in which events occur in apparently irreversible succession from the past through the present to the future."

One guy came back with a comment in an email saying: "I’m also not entirely convinced by the definition of ‘time’, I feel that time is inherently reversible at a quantum level and it’s only the innate entropy of biological processes that lead to a delusion of perception of singular causality."

I was like . We're not talking about Michael J, Fox and his time machine here. But he signed off in the end after I did some convincing to ignore the broader definition of time for the purpose of the context we're talking about.

So, do you understand what I do now? I can never make my dad understand it.

# posted by Skye @ 4:51 am 0 comments

19-FEB-2008:

Daddy dreams to have a farmyard life,
Because he is sick with city work,
He works harder than normal nine to five,
And that person on the phone is such a jerk.

So he took Dominic to the farm,
Hoping he can learn a thing or two,
The animals will do no harm,
Perhaps they are tamer than you.

Dominic was very excited,
He recognized the animals from his books,
He could tell the feathered from the furred,
Although they looked rather different in the books.

He knows the 'baa' from the 'moo',
And the 'oink' and 'quack' and 'cluck cluck' too,
As he ran around, mummy shouted 'Becareful',
Make sure you don't step into the poo!

50p for a bag of animal feed,
I don't think anyone would hesitate to buy,
The animals eat more that they need,
No wonder they are extremely fat, oh my!

The sheep ate out of Dominic's hand,
It was the cutest sight of all,
The camera battery went dead, oh man!
But mummy caught it on the phone after all.

There were various animals everywhere,
And Dominic kept asking 'what's that?'
Daddy mummy are not 31 but reaching there
But they can't really tell a mouse from a rat!

It was a beautiful day with lots of sunshine,
And mummy is happy for a great day out,
Mummy is also happy she can still rhyme,
And that are two things to be happy about.

# posted by Skye @ 6:24 am 0 comments

15-FEB-2008:

Yesterday, Dominic made this Valentine's card for daddy and mummy! :-D

But of course, he didn't write those words. :-)

Two things I'm happy about today:

1. Obviously, I'm happy to receive a gift made by Dominic's little hands.

2. I'm happy that my ordinary day is no less happier than Valentine's day. :)

# posted by Skye @ 12:15 pm 0 comments

14-FEB-2008:

The fact that today is Valentine's day didn't hit me until the DJ mentioned it on the radio this morning as I was traveling to work. I've even forgotten to wish Saimun a happy Valentine's day, although what is so happy about it - with all the illness going around in the house - I can't imagine.

Dominic came down with a fever late last week and recovered over the weekend. On Monday, he caught conjunctivitis. Daddy took him to the doctor but was told that it was only mild conjunctivitis and will require no treatment or medication. The next day, a fever developed although it only lasted for one day.

Dominic is still having a running nose and a mild cough. I am feeling under the weather myself. The cough still persists and daddy's ignorance is driving me up the wall. First of all, he kept insisting that Dominic has the flu - which for some reason means 'running or watery nose' for most Malaysians. In Cantonese, they call it 'seong fung', which is entirely different from the definition of flu here. Flu is a serious matter and therefore the over-the-counter flu medicine here will always contain paracetamol. I don't know how many times I've explained to him that the purpose of paracetamol is to ease aches and pains and to bring down the body temperature. It will do nothing to stop the mucus flowing out of the nose, but daddy's hard-headedness means that I get the same reply everytime, i.e. "but it says 'flu' here on the box". Sigh!

Secondly, it is annoying that daddy keeps tellng me that we have to "treat" Dominic's illness. His definition of a "treatment" is to pump him with medication - cough mixture, flu medicine or whatever he thinks "should" help. It is most annoying that he doesn't trust what I said. I said cough mixture and flu medicine will only ease the symptoms and will not get rid of the virus infection. When there is a virus infection, the body's immune system has to fight it. There's nothing much you can do except if there's a bacteria infection, in which case, the doctor would have prescribed antibiotics.

One thing we can do is to strengthen his immune system by giving him lots of vitamins (contained in vegetables and fruits). And annoyingly, daddy said nobody should eat fruits when he's having a cough! I know he got this idea from his mum, no doubt about it. Since I don't want to get the blame anyway (whether or not it is due to the fruits), so I stopped giving Dominic fruits and gave him vitamin syrup instead. But come on ... I think the idea is so ridiculous. Perhaps his mum is allergic to certain types of fruits. Perhaps she just heard it from someone else who happened to be talking nonsense. Can you believe that she once told me that tomatoes are not good for us (because I attempted to put TWO tomatoes into the ABC soup)?

Daddy suggested that I take Dominic to the doctor again. I doubt that the doctor will be able to do much but I'll just do it to please him. But this time, I'll at least ask for some eye drops for his conjunctivitis.

I've said it many times and I'll say it again. I don't like the health services in this country. It's difficult to get an appointment at the time and day that you want. You can't bring your child to a specialist unless it's something serious and that requires weeks of advanced scheduling. Of course you can always go private but then again you can't just go private - there are restrictions as well. I don't even know how it works. Most of the doctors come from India, Pakistan and God knows where. The midwives are inexperienced and the nurses are careless. I'm not saying all of them are but enough news in the papers to scare me. It could be worse in Malaysia but at least in Malaysia I am sure that I'm able to pay for the best doctors I can find.

More bitching about the NHS at http://sukye.multiply.com/journal/item/80/The_National_Health_Services. :p

# posted by Skye @ 4:55 am 0 comments

13-FEB-2008:

Chinese New Year's eve was spent working from home (as mentioned in earlier post), but we managed to have a proper reunion dinner, just the 3 of us.

Chinese New Year's day fell on Thursday and was spent working in the office - sick as well, all 3 of us.

The celebrations did not happen until Saturday evening when we had some friends over for a party. Good food, amusing company, great fun - the only thing missing was the exchanging of 'ang pows'. This year, both daddy and I only gave out one 'ang pow' each - to Dominic, and Dominic only received those two 'ang pows'. He wasn't even interested in them.

Sunday morning, we made our way to central London to watch the CNY parade near Chinatown. Lion dance, people dressed in Ching/Ming/Han dynasty style of costumes, traditional dancers, martial arts performances - it wasn't really that interesting - nothing compared to the Wesak or "9 Wong" parades we get in Malaysia but at least something.

There's a video too - wait for it. :-)

One of the 'lions' nuzzled so close to Dominic that I think it scared him a bit. He buried his face into my shoulders everytime a 'lion' came near.

For the first time in my life, I saw an 'ang mo choy sun', who gave Dominic a gold coin.

Finally, two things that I'm happy about today:

1. I'm happy that I didn't need to prepare dinner for the past 3 days because there was so much leftover food from the party.
2. I'm happy that the workshop yesterday went well yesterday and I didn't lose my voice talking.

# posted by Skye @ 4:47 am 0 comments

11-FEB-2008:

I meant to blog about our CNY celebrations this year but I've got all the photos still in the camera, so here's ranting about anything that pops into my head right now.

The one thing that I'm constantly reminded of is my nasty cough that had persisted for one week now. I think I've never coughed this badly for years, if I've ever coughed this badly at all before. My sides and my ribs now ache from too much coughing. I feel like reaching my fingers into my throat to scratch it. I've finished one whole bottle of cough mixture and tried tips advised by friends - from sucking on Strepsils to gargling with salt water but I don't think any of those help although they did provide temporary relief.

Between the three of us in the family, we drank about 3 bottles of cough syrup. Daddy was the first one to catch it ... or was it Dominic? In any case, the both of them caught it first and then later passed it on to me. Daddy has almost recovered. Dominic is still coughing mildly. And me ... I don't even want to talk about it. Even reading a book to Dominic takes so much effort now. I have a 2-hour workshop to run tomorrow and I'm worried if I'm able to go through it without coughing violently with every sentence that I speak.

Another thing that crossed my mind while I was showering last night was the concept of eternity. If you could be immortal and if you could spend eternity - I mean never ending eternity - with your loved ones, would you be happier? I imagine that Dominic, daddy and I turn immortal this very instant - we stay 30 years old forever and Dominic stays 2 forever, never growing up, never growing old - how will that be like? I suppose physically we don't age but we get wiser over the centuries and Dominic continues learning to talk, read, write, etc so given time he'll be the cleverest 2-year-old on earth. Haha! But my point is ... how long can you live with a person before you get bored and tired of him/her? They always say "I'll love you till eternity", but can you really? I don't know. I figure life like that - if it can be called life at all - will be pretty tiring. After a hundred years or so, can you still look into each other's eyes and feel the attraction? Haha! I guess I've been reading too much science fiction lately.

Alright now, I guess it's time for lunch. Speaking of lunch, this reminds me of the piece of news I read in the newspapers today. It seems that ratcatchers now have to use curry chicken and kebabs to trap rats because the rats are becoming fussy. Traditional rat food such as grains don't work anymore. Amazing. Even vermins are getting more sophisticated these days.

And oh yeah ... there was a huge fire at Camden Market last Saturday. It looked really bad and it took more than 100 firefighters to put out the fire. It's hard to believe the market doesn't exist anymore. We went there once during our early days in London: http://sukye.multiply.com/journal/item/98/Camden_Town. I wonder what's left of it now.

Finally, two things that I'm happy about today:

1. I'm happy that it has been sunny and dry for the past few days.
2. I'm happy that although the cough is still bad, it is gradually getting better.

# posted by Skye @ 6:34 am 0 comments

10-FEB-2008:

Daddy and I don't usually give each other Valentine's gift. We think it's too commercialized and neither of us what you would call romantic. Besides we don't like racking our brains for gift ideas. Flowers are waste of money and we buy chocolates all the time anyway.

This year, daddy bought a Nintendo Wii (about 1 week after he bought the Nintendo DS Lite).

I said (about the Wii): "Is that my Valentine's gift?"

Daddy: "Yes, it is. For you to exercise."

Me: "Thank you, thank you. If you said that to some other girl, she would slap you - like - 'What? Do you mean I'm fat?'"

Daddy: "No ... for you to keep fit and healthy."

There's only one game in there at the moment, which is Wii Sports. There's tennis, golf, bowling, boxing and baseball. Guess what? My favourite one so far is BOXING! Hahaha!

Daddy is very impressed with the box. It can play photo albums, connect to the Internet, download news ... But then again, daddy was also very impressed when he bought the PS2 many years ago. I don't quite remember where the PS2 box is now. I wonder how long it takes before the Wii is covered in dust too. :p He hasn't touched the DS Lite since he bought the Wii. Haha!

I almost forgot ... two things I'm happy about today:

1. I'm happy that we had a CNY gathering last night (will blog about that later).
2. I'm happy that I can still find two things to be happy about on a daily basis. :-)

# posted by Skye @ 10:06 am 0 comments

8-FEB-2008:

The "wee wee" training is not going well, unfortunately. First of all - and the most annoying reason - there was no support from daddy. Daddy said we should do it ONLY on weekends because weekday evenings are cold and he was concerned that Dominic's buttocks will get cold sitting on the floor without a diaper. Sigh! We might as well wait until next summer then!

Secondly ... well, there's no 'secondly' actually. That was the only reason. So the mission is "reduced" until further notice.

Finally, two things I'm happy about today:

1. I'm happy that Dominic is recovering from fever.
2. Although I'm off sick today, I'm happy that I get to stay home.

# posted by Skye @ 5:14 am 0 comments

7-FEB-2008:

Happy CNY everyone!

With proper planning, both daddy and I were able to work from home yesterday. It was great. It gave me time to finish whatever I needed to do for work, clean the house, shop for groceries and prepare a '9 tai guai' (well, sort of) for the so-called reunion dinner. Dominic spent the day in the nursery but we received a call at 3pm telling us that Dominic was running a temperature, so we picked him up. What a shame to fall sick on CNY. :-( I gave him a bath and put him down for a nap. He woke up for dinner and was ravenous.

I asked daddy what he would like to have for dinner and he said that the dinner must consist of everything - chicken, fish, prawns, vegetables and soup. Ideally, there should also be 'siu yuk' but although it's not impossible to get, it would be quite troublesome. So here's what we had for dinner yesterday. Dominic's favourite was the chicken and the broccoli.

Well, there you have it. That's how we celebrated CNY eve.

This morning, Dominic was still running a temperature and daddy is staying home with him. I had to get to work as I have a meeting scheduled in the afternoon. I may leave after that. I'd prefer nothing better than nursing my little boy back to health. The truth is, the whole family is down with cough and running nose - which really sucks. I've been having a mild sore throat for days now that threatens to develop into a fever.

Finally, two things that I'm happy about today (after all it's an auspicious day and we should only think about happy things):

1. I'm happy that I called my grandma to wish her 'Gong Xi Fa Cai' this morning.
2. I'm happy that my new desk is at the corner facing the wall so that I can blog inconspicuously (yes, I moved office again!).

# posted by Skye @ 4:44 am 0 comments

6-FEB-2008:

One of the most common questions asked by friends and relatives was "So, does Dominic speak with a British accent?". One would think that it is reasonable to assume that a child would grow up with a British accent just because he has lived in Britain for 2 years even though he mainly speaks to his parents who not only do not speak with a British accent but rather grammatically-wrong English most of the time. ;-)

Well, what can I say? It's hard to tell, really. I think all young children who have recently learnt to talk, speak the same way - with their own accent. Besides, Dominic doesn't speak more than one sentence at a time and his sentences are made up of a maximum of only 4 words. However, I've been paying attention to him lately and I noticed that he likes to emphasize certain consonants, such as the 't' in 'wet'. Some examples I've listed here (those that I can recall):

• Very strong 't' sound in words like - wet, sit, shirt, cat ...
• Very strong 'p' sound as well in words like - up, soup, stop, drop ...
• Likes to emphasize the 'ch' sound in words like - much, couch, ouch, bridge ...
• And the 'k' or 'g' as well such as - neck, big, sick, egg ...

Based on my experience, I'd say that Malaysians (Chinese in particular) will tend to de-emphasize the 't' and 'p' in those words making them sound like 'wed' instead of 'wet' or 'stob' instead of 'stop', but not my son. Nor would any Chinese fella say 'egg' with the slight 'guh' at the end of the word.

Dominic also likes to use expresions like 'oops', 'ouch' and 'oh dear' ... I imagine he must have picked those up from the TV or at the nursery.

Some say that a mother will always understand what her child is saying no matter how inaccurate the child pronounces those words, but not me. I'm struggling to meet Dominic's demands everyday. It was only yesterday that we were playing Lego and he wanted me to build a tunnel. I picked up the word 'build' but only the 'tunnel' doesn't sound like 'tunnel' at all. 'Tower'? 'Tall'? What do you want? Dominic was getting more frustrated by the second. When I built him a tower, he kicked and threw it away ... irritated. When I scolded him for his behaviour, he started crying. When he finally calmed down, he said 'dark tunnel'. It was when I picked up the word 'dark' that I understood he meant 'tunnel'. Phew! It was tough.

Finally, two things I'm happy about today:

1) I'm happy that daddy is also working from home today.

2) I'm happy that it's finally CNY eve today.

# posted by Skye @ 4:14 am 0 comments

5-FEB-2008:

The new year came with new year's resolution (as usual). Last year, my new year's resolutions were:

(1) Stop falling asleep on the couch while watching TV - I think I pretty much achieved that since I hardly watch TV anymore. It gets pretty annoying when you're watching the final episode of One Tree Hill and later found that you've missed the ending because you fell asleep during commercials! Now, thanks to Sky+ box, I can now rewind if I did fall asleep. :-)

(2) Pay off my home loan - done, and I'm happy that I have one less burden to worry about now.

(3) Eat healthier and more exercise - funny how I tend to make this same resolution every year. :-) Eat healthier? I don't know. I cook fresh food every day and have salad for lunch, but I also snack a lot - chocolates, crisps, cookies. I think I need to eat healthy AND eat less. Exercise is an on off commitment. I used to swim every Friday after work until winter came and my willpower gave way to ... excuses, I'd say.

So what are my resolutions this year? First of all, I think resolution number (3) above was under achieved so I'm going to start with that this year. Came 31st December 2007, I finally signed up for the company gym after working here for more than a year. I then started going to the gym at least twice a week and spent an average of 30 minutes per session on cardiovascular exercises. It has been a month now and I'm glad to say I haven't given up yet.

On a related note, the fitness manager took my blood pressure when I signed up for the gym and I was surprised to find out that it was low. I thought maybe it happened only on that particular day. And then when I moved to the new office site, I signed up for the gym there and again my blood pressure was low. Hmmm ....

My body fat reading was also taken and it was also low ... woo-hoo! It was 18.1%. According to the fitness manager, the normal range for a woman is between 20 and 25 - but maybe the average for British women is higher than for Chinese women?

My second new year resolution is to go to bed earlier. At the moment, my normal bed time is between 11pm and 12am. Yesterday I was in bed reading Eclipse (again) until Saimun turned off the lights and forced me to go to sleep. Ideally, I would like to be in bed by 10:30pm.

Every year, I would have 3 new year resolutions but this year I have only 2. I can't think of anything else I want to achieve except for the obvious ones.

Finally, two things that I'm happy about today:

(1) I'm happy that my Nintendo DS Lite tells me that my brain age is 23. :-)

(2) I'm happy that I'll be working from home tomorrow.

# posted by Skye @ 4:03 am 0 comments

4-FEB-2008:

Finally, as advised by my sister-in-law Kimusan Dominic had his first diaper-free experience over the weekend. I know the advice came a long time ago but there was always something happening every weekend and top it up with a little bit of procrastination, this is what we get. :-)

So ... on Saturday, we put Dominic out of his diaper for about an hour. In between, we showed him to the toilet once, where we asked him stand on his red Ikea chair and pee into the toilet bowl. Surprisingly, he did so immediately. Well, at least he understood what we were trying to do. That was the only time he pee-ed during the course of that one hour. The most difficult part of that hour was to keep him out of the rooms (carpets, you know) and away from the couch.

Sunday ... we did the same thing again, this time a little bit longer. Again, he pee-ed into the toilet bowl when we asked him to - so far so good. And he didn't wet any parts of the house (phew!).

From today onwards, my plan is to free him from diaper for an hour each evening between after his bath and his bedtime. During that hour, he will not be allowed to watch TV on the couch or play with his toys in his room - I imagine that would be pretty tough. Haha!

I reckon the best place and time to toilet train him is when we go back to Malaysia for our holiday in May - where he can freely pee anywhere in ma-ma's house as he likes, it'll just take a few swipes of the cloth to wipe it out.

Finally, two things that I'm happy about today:

(1) I had to send Dominic to the nursery today (because daddy left for work early) and he didn't cry. Even waved me goodbye. Woo-hoo!

(2) I'm happy that I got some exercise at the gym today.

# posted by Skye @ 11:29 am 0 comments

1-FEB-2008:

Work is so unpredictable, just like most things in life. I had just settled nicely into the new year's routine when suddenly, I was asked to work in a different project which would require moving to another office. I don't think anyone likes going to the new site. Not for me at least. First, it took me longer to get to and from work. Secondly, it's not next to Tesco anymore (sigh), which means I couldn't do my weekly grocery shopping during office hours anymore. Thirdly, it took me away from the colleagues who were closest to me. I couldn't join the "gang" for Friday lunches anymore.

At the new site, I met a completely different group of colleagues. There were about 20 of us in the team and only 20% were females. Were they fun? I guess so. They seemed like it judging from all the "toys" lying around the desks. Yes, toys - plastic sandwiches, rubber balls, toy vegetables, funny hats, etc. During the first few days, one of the guys kept staring at me as if I might taste delicious. Another guy who sat opposite me talked to his computer. Mostly, he just asked his computer 'Why? Why do you do this to me?' and told it to 'Fuck off!'. He didn't come in at all during the second week, perhaps too pissed off with his computer.

This team worked hard ... and differently. I have to admit that I gained loads of insight during those 2 weeks. I didn't have much work to do - mostly observation and learning. It wasn't exactly a honeymoon though. There were 'brown bags' almost every other day - the term 'brown bag' here means meeting during lunch time where you bring your own lunch (presumably in a brown bag).

It was interesting that every meeting has a name to it. Every morning at 9:45am, there's a 'Stand Up' - basically a quick 15 minutes status update where everyone gathers by the white board (standing) and listens to updates. Every Tuesday, there's the 'pre-planning game' - something to prepare for the actual 'planning game'. 'Planning game' occurs every Wednesday and often lasts for half a day. We really do a lot of planning, you see. Haha! Every Wednesday morning, there's also the 'retrospective' - a session to provide feedback on how the project is going and how things can be better. It was really interesting that my role would then end up having nothing to do except to tell people what to do. ;-) If only it could be like that.

# posted by Skye @ 10:11 am 0 comments