Food Cravings

All-time Favourites: (which have recently intensified)
Hot Chocolate
Yami Yoghurt - Peach
Soy Bean Curd
Guava
Raw Tomatoes
Marks and Spencer's Strawberry Cereal
Tim Tam Dark Chocolate Biscuits

Surprise Favourites:
Peaches and Nectarines
Burger King's Mushroom Swiss
Spaghetti Bolognaise
Beef Porridge
Sausage Rolls
Starbuck's Dark Mocha Frappacino
Fresh Milk
Maggi Mee (Chicken Flavour)

Food I can keep down:
Chicken Rice
Chicken Porridge
Ban Mian
Subway Melt (Turkey Breast, Ham, Bacon)
Mashed Potato
Curry Puffs
Digestive Biscuits
Miso Soup
Avocado / Salmon Skin Handroll
Hard-boiled eggs with soy sauce (especially at 12am)
100 Plus
Gardenia Raisin Bread (Not Sunshine)


Diabolical Food: (Even the smell is unbearable)
Anything with sambal sauce
Anything with gravy
Anything oily and greasy
Bak Kut Teh
Cooked Vegetables of Any Kind
Fish (especially cod)

Mood Swings

I had a technically nice day today. Early morning, driving lesson, vacuuming the house, lunch at a restaurant at Great World City with mum, Theresa and Minghui, followed (yes, immediately) by lovely tea with scones and brownies at The Eclectic Attic @ Plaza Singapura, a bit of shopping, then dinner at Panliang's parents' place.

Now I just feel irritable , like the world owes me something big. I didn't sleep well despite being tired last night, I can't eat well despite being hungry, and I just feel tired and lethargic. I just want to curl up on the sofa with a book, but I figure that going out is probably good for me. New spots appearing on the face (due to hormones and beef cravings) doesn't improve one's mood either. Panliang's been a brick. Immeasurably patient, empathetic, sayanging me when I'm grouchy, pampering me, preparing food for me at strange hours of the day while I watch YouTube videos of Jack Russells hunting snakes and catching fish, playing his saxophone and jazz improvisations less (which is a major sacrifice), and keeping the house neat and tidy and up to my anal standards (like pressing the soap dispenser before wetting his hands so the water doesn't drip outside the sink). I must be quite a horror to live and dine with, but Panliang has risen above himself and pumped in enough strength and cheer for the both of us. I have renewed respect for him and I can see him becoming a more of a dad each day.

Thinking about this makes me thankful and I realise I have been blessed in many ways. This first trimester is no honeymoon (it's like a very very very long turbulent plane ride) but I wouldn't trade it for anything. They say the second trimester gets better and the nausea and appetite loss goes away. That would be nice.


Late night entertainment while having my midnight snacks

9 weeks: The Paddling Baby

The first time I saw the little legs kicking my heart did a flip flop. What had been a baby bean just 2 weeks back now had a recognisable head, arms and little paddling feet. (as if he was diving!) There is something miraculous about having a little life form inside you which is both awe-inspiring and humbling.

Sometimes, when I'm a squashed commuter on a peak-hour train, I look around me at the different shaped, sized and textured people, short people, tall people, fat people, skinny people, people with big hair, people with thinning hair, people with oily faces, people with fresh faces and people with tired faces - and I marvel that every single one of them was at some point a tiny foetus growing in a woman who worried often that the baby might not be healthy, or that she might be unknowingly doing something that might hurt the foetus.

It's comforting to hear from other pregnant woman or ex-pregnant woman ('mothers' doesn't quite convey the same meaning) that I'm normal. My imagination wanders and creates the most worrying scenarios in a way it never did before. Mum says it's important to remain cheerful and positive because negative thoughts can send signals, hormones and chemicals through the body which could affect the foetus. (See! Doing something wrong again!). It truly is mind over body, and I'm determined to be happy and optimistic and enjoy this pregnancy, nausea and all. And surround myself and thoughts with happy, nice things and look at cute creatures like Darcy. I heard from a pregnant lady that her parents forbade her to even LOOK at her dog in case the baby came out looking like it - the dog is black, furry and has a flat nose! I am thankful that I have a loving a supportive family on both sides, which makes all this very much easier and happier.

Akai EWI 4000S

Check this out! It would be great if I had one of these. I would be able to play into the night without being complained about by my beloved wife for excessive wailing :)

Amazing the kind of effects this can have!
But the sound is still not as rich as a real saxophone.

- a salivating lion

Yamaha Tenori-On

I want one! Then I would bask in Orchard MRT with Darcy and earn lots of money. Rex got his in London for 600 pounds!

The First Meeting

Place: Fong Clinic for Women
Date: June 25th, 2008
Time: 16:33:24

We met our dearest baby bean for the very first time! Baby is the size of bean and is 8mm tall. We think this is the cutest creature we have ever seen, maybe even a bit cuter than Darcy. Here is the baby's 1st picture:


I know it's not easy to spot. Serene kept asking, "Where, where? I can't see!" But I tell you most solemnly, I saw it quite quickly when I noticed some movement in the centre of the dotted line. It was our our baby's heart beating. The most amazing thing was that it was magnified for us to see and hear!
That was the most amazing rhythm I have ever heard and I was very moved at that instant, that I could experience a new life through my own ears and eyes. Leaving the clinic, I saw the world around me with a whole new perspective: that of joy, hope and overflowing life everywhere. I will not forget the heartbeat rhythm I heard, it is one that signifies a miracle, a gift that God has given.

I will end the post with this picture:
This was the 2nd sign that baby is coming. The first was 2 weeks of mood swings from Serene and hunger pangs that kept hitting her :)

The Dog Who Loved to Sun Tan

One of the happiest feelings in the world is to watch Darcy sun tan on our balcony. I love the way he plonks himself just where the sunlight streams in. He looks so happy with himself and afterwards is just a nice pile of warm, white fur. I miss him so much during the week when he stays at my mum's.

The Ultimate Authority on Tampons

Look! I am the new authority on tampon insertion! How cool is that? Rex did the animation.

Fantastic Diving at Sipadan

The sea scape at Sipadan is lovely. Wall dives mean great visibility of 30m or more (no silt to cloud the water), even in rainy weather. Hanging Garden was a magnificent wall of brightly coloured corals of all shapes and sizes, with turtles sleeping in the crevices. Lovelier than the most intricate and ornate cathedral.

Lionfish
Quite common but always thrilling to watch and think about how majestically poisonous they are.

Mandarin Fish

We were fortunate enough to witness these tiny creatures (no bigger than 2cm) engaging in carnal pleasures amidst the grey coral rubble of Kapalai's house reef. Cheek to cheek, the happy couple rose slowly together and quick as a flash, released their embrace and darted apart. It must have afforded them great pleasure as they repeated this over and over (and over!) again!

White-tip Reef Shark
We saw so many sharks that we no longer got excited!
Normally, the dive guide clinks his tank with a metal rod to attract our attention when something interesting is up ahead. The Pavlovian diver's reaction is an increased heart rate followed by rapid finning ahead to have a closer look. In Sipadan, it reached a point where after we raced forward to look and saw it was yet another shark, we thought "Chey! It's just a shark!"(In most of the other places we've been to, if you see ONE shark during your entire trip, everyone hears about it!)

Bumphead Parrot Fish
They are amazing to watch in a grotesque sort of way. As their name suggests, they look like they've just developed a baluku from swimming into a wall. Their parrot-like beaks are for snapping off coral bits. We saw a large school of these huge 4 foot long creatures.

Chevron Barracuda
Being encircled by a school of thousands of barracuda is not something you'll forget easily. You feel hopelessly outnumbered for one, by a silver battalion with mean faces, and you know better than to aggravate them. It is an awesome experience.

Stonefish
If it looks like a stone, acts like a stone but is vaguely shaped like a fish - don't touch it!

Frogfish
These are really hard to spot - because they could easily pass off for bits of coral. They are absolutely cute. They have 4 legs, and if you prod them, they waddle away placidly!


Nudibranch: the cutest slug in the world
I love these cute little self-absorbed sea slugs that come in bright combinations of every colour. But in Sipadan where you have too many huge pelagic creatures to gape at, nudibranches are more often than not overlooked.

Turtle
I never thought of turtles as cute until I saw them asleep in rock crevices, or holding onto corals. After a particularly turtle-filled dive, the first thing Panliang said when we ascended to the water surface, his regulator barely out of his mouth, was - "The turtle's so cute! He looks like Darcy!" At that moment, I could not have loved him more.

The Camouflaging Octopus

One of the most amazing and mind-boggling creatures we saw was the camouflaging octopus. We were about 14m underwater at the Kapalai house reef when we saw this little octopus, about 25cm long, being stalked by 3 nasty-looking fish. They wouldn't let him out of their sight and blocked off all his escape routes. We hovered there for about 10 minutes, watching in awe as the octopus melted into his surroundings. Settling between a blue, spongy coral with vertical tubular protrusions on his left, and a light and dark brown rock on his right, he seamlessly became both, growing light blue moving tubes on his left and melting into the brown rock on his right.

That was one of the most amazing things I'd even seen. I really wished there and then that I had an underwater video camera. It would have been jaw-dropping if I didn't have to keep my mouth firmly clamped around my regulator to breathe. There we were, clumsy and fully dependent on our big air tank and dive gear, watching effortless underwater magic. Diving always fills me with great awe and respect for creation.