The Joys And Woes of Working From Home

Thanks to the nature of my job and my kind boss, I was able to coax him into allowing me to work from home for the last one month. And oh, did I mention that I am 31 weeks pregnant with massive backpain and dizzy spells? Being IT geeks, our team makes full use of virtual and online meeting facilities that our company provides, this makes attending meetings and discussions a breeze from home, and Sanju gets to attend it with me as well, making his presence felt with occasional inaudible words.

Working from home is almost like a bed of roses, that comes with its fair share of thorns. For one thing, I stopped putting alarm for waking up. My kid's wake up time before 8am is enough to get us up and get ready for the day. As for hubby, his working timing is pretty flexible, we even get time to go out for breakfast before start my day at work (at home). On certain days, I cook up a nice breakfast meal for hubby and us that gets him charged for his work day. He could not believe his taste buds when my pancakes tasted 10 times better than McDonalds Big Breakfast! Damn, I have lots of hidden talent to be discovered, all the more excuse to continue staying at home.

I have ample of time to spend with Sanju while I stay standby with my laptop over the virtual network. But the tiring part is I have to plan my work tasks, house chores and Sanju bath/meal times alongside with each other.

I also get to plan and deploy (ok not intentional to sound so technical here) some new and improved recipes and meal plans for Sanju. There is nothing better than taking care of your own kid, I must admit. I have the convenience of feeding him different types of food and fruits throughout the day, which I must say, he seems to enjoy a lot.

However, emergency work issues become extremely difficult to handle if I have a similar emergency at home with Sanju, that requires an immediate diaper change, delaying which might bring unimaginable consequences of terrible smell and mess, and a mess of management emails on the other side.

For those demanding projects or issues requiring more effort and time, I end up burning midnight oil after I get Sanju off to bed with his daddy. It is seriously not easy trying to debug a script with a toddler climbing all over you for attention. Speaking of which, I now have a loose J and M keys, thanks to Sanju who did not have enough of pressing random keys and moving the mouse around, he decided picking out the keys was more fun. And yea, the space bar nearly came out too, but since its pretty wide, the other side is holding it in place. I tried to mend the J & M (I am having a hard time pressing these keys right this moment) keys with the trusted Uhu gum, but apparently, it does not work, as the plastic support is too small to get a grip. Remember, you heard it here first, Uhu gum does not work in fixing loose keys. If you know a method that does, do drop a comment.

At one time, Sanju singlehandedly changed the laptop display to a vertical mode. It took me good ten minutes to google the solution and fix it back. Apparently the mouse navigation do not work the same when your display is vertical instead of horizontal. I had to turn the laptop standing on its side to get this done. As they say, you learn something new every day, and with a toddler, it is not always about baby/child care.

Right now, being back in office sucks big time. I had a hard time leaving my toddler back at home with my mother in law. I know he will be fine, its me who is suffering from withdrawal symptoms. I am spending my free time wondering how to get off office next. I am addicted to being at home with my kid, and working on my flexible terms. Suggestions and ideas are welcome. I miss sipping on my morning ginger tea whilst checking my inbox!

SnuggBaby Cloth Diaper Review

About 1 month back I won Snuggbaby's new product on the block through their mini giveaway, the Snugg Cloth Diaper. It is the hottest new diaper in the local market, and what separates it from others is the unique selection of colours offered.

My prized diaper is of the spiceberry colour. The set is a diaper shell with snap closure, 1 microfiber and 1 hemp insert to provide flexibility on the degree of absorbency desired.



The Snugg CD has been among my (toddler's) workhorse diaper for day time use, and I have been loving it so far. The diaper shell inner is made of jersey-like material that is stay dry and easy to remove unwanted stains. It is also very quick to dry, either under the sun or indoors under the fan. The 2 row snap closure is easy to put on, and gives an excellent fit on my toddler. The additional hemp insert provides better absorbency for my heavy-day-wetter needs. The PUL outer is sort of stretchy type, which means it can fit the kid longer than the regular PUL types. And did I mention that the colour is so pretty, even on a boy?

Snugg CD is definitely value for money as it is reasonably priced and comes with excellent features that a good cloth diaper needs.

In my opinion some improvement can be done on the inserts. A thicker microfiber insert and another extra layer on the hemp can provide more than just basic absorption. The hemp insert does shrink a little after washing, this can be taken into account to provide larger hemp insert in the set. And my wish is that Snugg CD comes in pretty prints, surely a CD-mama can ask for that?

The special thing about Snuggbaby Cloth Diaper is that it is fully Malaysian-made, and I believe in supporting our Malaysian talents and products, especially when it is a sweet WAHM.

The Laundry Ball Revolution

Its been a month since I have been using the latest (well, at least for me) revolution in laundry, The Green Pocket Laundry Balls I won at the GCDC event.

The result? Clothes, cloth diapers, beddings and even comforters come out clean, smelling so fresh, while being free of harmful chemicals. I am kind of a clean freak, I take a sniff at most of my laundry while hanging them to dry, and seeing my laundry come out with great results gives me the high of junkie on drugs.



Here's the product description from the Baby-Mel website:

A REVOLUTIONARY NEW WAY TO CLEAN YOUR CLOTHES

That is Environmentally Safe and will Save You Water & Contains No...... !!

No Sodium Lauryl Sulphate
No Petrochemicals
No Harsh Detergents
No Toxic Chemicals
No Animal Testing

At Last! The Quickest, Easiest Way To Do Your Washing
That Will SAVE You 'Loads' of WATER, MONEY, TIME
and ... Contains NO Harsh Chemicals!

BENEFIT :-

- Wash Clothes without using detergent
- Green product (Environment Friendly)
- Neutral pH 6.8 (Normal Detergent pH13 - Harmful to body)
- Save washing detergent cost
- Last for 3 years, with usage once a day
- Comes with 2 laundry balls

HOW IT WORKS :-

The Green Pocket Laundry Ball generates strong infrared rays wavelength to break the bond between molecules, enabling the individual water molecules to penetrate into the fabric. The water is also highly charged with negative ions. The dirt, which is positively charged, is attracted to the individual water molecules and is flushed out with the water during the rinse cycle.

The good thing about this laundry ball is that since it requires no detergent at all, there are less (almost no) chances of detergent build-up on cloth diapers. As I have toddler clothes, cloth diapers and adult clothes to manage daily, with the laundry ball I just dump everything together in the washing machine and let the laundry ball do the magic! No more worrying over cloth diaper or baby laundry care. My laundry hours are now half of what I used to spend, and imagine the electricity and water saved!

It really works like a miracle, and the skeptic me does not believe in miracles, so I usually put in one third of a cap of Cosway Kiddiwash for luck. I'm still trying to gather the courage to one day go completely detergentless.

It retails at RM189, which may seem a little steep, but like cloth diapers, it is an investment as it lasts for 3 years, about 1000 wash cycles. Definitely would be buying another one after this completes its service in 3 years time.

A Foodie Tale of 3 Cities

Last weekend turned out to be quite a food adventure. It was not meant to be that adventurous, but it was inevitable as we were travelling down to Port Dickson to attend a friend's wedding. Adventure here is not like Andrew Zimmern's (from Bizzare Food) experience, although hubby would have wished for it. It was like a twilight zone moment where good food was suddenly scarce, especially when we have pledged to not go for the usual fast foods or franchise restaurants.

On Friday night, after 5 days of working from home and cooking food full of homecooked goodness, we decided to try this newly opened ikan bakar (grilled fish) franchise (this one exempted because we had not tried it before) named after a Selangor small town. You will know soon why I am restraining from mentioning the full name. Seeing the crowds there daily, it really made us curious to know how great is it after all. To our surprise, it turned out to be self service. Never mind that, we went ahead to choose our ikan bakar, we choose siakap as it was our usual fish we ate outside. Next at the nasi lemak stall, apparently they were still cooking, and it was already 8pm, weren't they expecting customers at the normal dinner time? We settled for plain rice, and had our ikan bakar, which in the end turned out to be not that great or even bakar-ed (grilled). The fish seemed to be just steamed (hours ago) and upon our order they just put on the spicy sauce over it. I was not impressed and I missed my Kampungku ikan bakar! But wait, this is not the worst part yet, the bill for 1 siakap bakar, sotong bakar, 2 rice & 2 drinks came out RM80!! The freaking siakap cost RM56, like what?? It was the most undeserving RM80 I ever spent on food. For that much of money, I could have had a nice main course with bottomless drinks at Chillis, or even eat at Kampungku Food Court like 3 times! Since the review of their food is pretty bad from my side, I think I will let you guess the name.

The next day in Port Dickson, it suddenly became so difficult to find any good place to eat, with a toddler in tow. Plus we were stuck in the jam, and had our breakfast hours before, my hungry-half was getting very hungry indeed. After checking with his PD friend, we quickly rushed to PD Eating Point after checking into our not-so-fancy hotel (thanks to the school & public hols). The menu was impressive and for an odd hour eating, there were plenty of customer in and out of the restaurant. We had local nasi goreng kampung (very spicy, me likey) and Singapore mee hoon. Never felt more grateful for good food in my life. Speaking to the owner we found out that he has been in the hotel line for 14 years. He definitely did a great job with the restaurant. And yeah, Sanju had also made good friends with him. As I was still traumatised from foodie ordeal the night before that I made hubby bring us there again for dinner. This time they even had western food in the menu, with damn reasonable prices and finger licking taste! You can check out more on the restaurant here.

The next morning was the wedding, and due to unforseen circumstances, we could not eat our breakfast at the wedding. Hubby was furiously driving around to at least get the cranky preggy wife something to munch on but with no luck (and we were being choosy too). As we got on the highway, something struck my mind. There was this chicken rice shop in Shah Alam that we used to frequent during our courtship days, and we had not gone there like in ages, literally! I convinced my tummy to wait and promised baby super-yum food in less than 1 hour. And the rest is history. What do you get with a hungry man & woman at the Spring Golden Restaurant? Stares of disbelief. We ordered chicken and pork portion for 3 people. The char siew turned out so succulent and heavenly, the only thing I can compare it to is Tony Roma ribs of unbelievable softness. We ordered another single portion of the char siew as we can't just get enough. The portions were rather huge though, which is the reason to the stares we got from the auntie serving the food. Apparently this restaurant is huge in Malaysia and has made it to the papers and TV a few times.



Highly recommended chicken rice and char siew in the most unlikely land of Shah Alam. It turned out to be a great ending to the foodie weekend, and since Spring Golden is just a toll booth away, we pledged to go there more often to earn more stares of disbelief!