It amazes how total strangers stuck in endless grocery checkouts can start chatting and end up like old friends while waiting in line. That’s how I got to know this woman who was in line behind me at the Jusco sale recently.

Looking at us deep in animated conversation, you would never have guessed we’d never met each other before. But we were talking about everything under the sun. Seriously.

She told me she’d been living in the States and was just getting used to life here when she got slashed by a robber right in front of her own home in broad daylight!!

Gosh, the poor woman, she had a deep gash on her face, of all places!! That must’ve been an awful experience, all the more frightful as she had two young children at home at the time.

She had to have plastic surgery done. If she’d still been in the States, she would’ve consulted with Dr Grossman of Denver Plastic Surgery. He is a reknown plastic surgeon assisting people with their looks.

But you know, I looked at her face and I couldn’t see her scar at all. I mean, every woman wants to look beautiful and I’m really glad she’s none the worst for her nasty experience.

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I’ve just dropped Steev off at his college prom at a six-star hotel, no less! Yes, isn’t it grand how kids, who haven’t even started making their own money, are dressed to the nines, dining and dancing the night away at an event that cost their parents a freakin’ 100+ bucks per head!?!

At around this time last year, Steev’s secondary (high) school prom was also at a hotel and it cost us another small bomb! Money doesn’t grow on trees, ya know and I wish the schools and colleges would impress that on our very materialistic generation of kids instead of leading the way.

Steev is hardly the party animal and he doesn’t really care if he goes or not. He just gets a big kick out of playing photographer. As for me, I get a big kick out of seeing my son looking all grown up in his father’s tie and dress shoes !

Tonight he let me kiss him on the cheek when we stepped out of the elevator at the hotel ballroom. I was pleasantly surprised when he bent over and offered his cheek. Normally I’d just squeeze his arm so as not to embarrass him in front of his friends.

But hey, tonight’s kiss was nice, it gave me a warm feeling. There’s my son, bigger and taller than me now but still my baby .

I’ll be the first to admit I can’t live without my nice strong cup of morning coffee. I’m getting tired of those 3-in-1’s. I only drink them because I’m too sleepy to brew up a real cup of coffee!

I’m sure you have coffee freak friends like me. Who doesn’t indeed?

Well, then the perfect gift for them this holiday season is the Shock Coffee gift set. Shock Coffee’s energy coffee blends come from 100% Arabica coffee beans.

The gift set contains ground coffee, canned latte and cappuccino, a travel mug, a ceramic mug, and a matching “Sleep is Overrated” t-shirt and hat. Pretty neat, huh!

It’s got a bit of everything that a coffee freak will definitely appreciate! They have whole beans and ground coffee in ‘energy’ and ‘organic’ blends, powdered instant cappuccino and something I find very interesting - chocolate-covered coffee beans.

From now thru December 31, 2008, use their Black Friday/Cyber Monday coupon code - 5OFFSHOCK - to get 5% off all Shock Coffee products and give your coffee lover friends a pleasant ’shock’ of a gift for Christmas.

I received two awards recently from a couple of my favorite mommy bloggers. A big thank you go 88dlejrfan88 of Renaes Crafty Corner for presenting me this :

And big hugs to Lindsay of Glamorous Housewife who, in spite of being super-busy with Nanowrimo this month, took time out to give me this award :

When my friend invited me to join her yoga class, I instantly agreed without a second thought. How was I to know it was not a real class, that it was a practice session organized by one of the ladies for her group of friends?

The moment the ladies started strolling in with their own personal yoga mats was the moment I realized I was the only noob in the room! Haiz! Good thing I don’t blush easily or I’d have turned into a tomato and rolled out of the room right that minute!

Okay, so I fell behind, wa-ay behind! and by that I mean I couldn’t get my limbs to bend over backwards for me, no matter how hard I tried. I would’ve thought since I’m such a gym freak that I would have no problem with the moves ! Uh-huh, yoga and gym are two different animals. There was just no way I could get my limbs or my butt to go anywhere !

I’ve since dropped out of the class. Didn’t want to make a fool of myself any more in front of that roomful of yoga guru types whose bodies are like rubber bands. That said, I definitely plan on taking it up again. I find the torturous routines very challenging and the after-effect makes me feel really great.

Next class I join, it’ll be the noob beginner’s class where they teach your limbs to obey and do as you say. Next class I join, I’m going to bring one of these, my own personal yoga mat so I won’t look like such a complete idiot .

Come to think of it, this would make a great gift for someone like me. Such nice colors and they’re non-slip too so I won’t go sailng across the room when I try to bend and flip over backwards. Duh!

If you have a yoga enthusiast on your gift list, you’ve found the perfect gift. YogaAccessories.com has a really good selection of high quality yoga accessories at unbeatable prices. You can save 10% off any order above $75 by using the Black Friday coupon code - SAVEAS10 - between November 26 thru 30, 2008.

Well, that’s it, my baby is finally done with primary school! We collected her upsr results from school yesterday and I just came back from her school’s prize-giving a short while ago.

Eighty-nine students from her school took the exam and she’s one of the 17 who got straight A’s. We’re so proud of her. You should’ve seen her big old grin when her brother and sister congratulated her, such a baby, goo-chi, goo-chi.

Skye only took one tuition class but she’s very disciplined and does her work without me having to sit on her all the day. I just cook all the good food and make sure she’s well-fed .

We’ll be going out to celebrate (more food, gah!!) and she gets to choose where she wants to eat. My kids don’t get any monetary reward for their achievements. Instead they have to make do with intrinsic rewards.

Our policy, they work for those A’s because they want to do well, for themselves, for their own future, not because they’re going to get paid for them.

So no selling those A’s to us, we ain’t buying. No X amount of money multiplied by the number of A’s they score. Well, maybe just a teeny-weeny gift to make them happy although Daddy tends to get carried away sometimes .

We always feel a bit uncomfortable when our friends ask Steev “so what books are you reading now?” and Steev would just shrug the question off with an inaudible mumble under his breath, an answer I always hope our friends won’t hear .

Truth is we’ve been trying to get him to read without much success, or so we thought. Steev and Raine were both early readers. Before age 3, they were able to read simple Peter & Jane books and were progressing nicely up the number series and onto Enid Blyton books.

Skye started late because I was so busy with the two older ones and she always being the ‘baby’, I didn’t realize she was already 3 and still couldn’t read a word!

Today, Raine and Skye are my two bookworms always reading, always hungry for more books. Steev, on the other hand, has probably read all of two books in his entire school life.

I only realized recently that we’ve probably wrongly accused him of not reading when all this while, he’s been soaking up technical and technology articles on the internet. Okay lah, bad mommy thought he was only playing games!

Today I read in The Star that many of our schoolkids read only two books a year! It’s a shame, too many distractions competing for their attention these days. The trick is to start them young and consistently build on their interest from there (how to get kids to start reading?).

I did it the hard way but it really doesn’t have to be that hard. Funetics actually has a phonics-based Early Reading Program that’s not only a great place to start but also lots of fun for both parent and child.

It also makes a valued Christmas gift, or anytime gift, for friends with kids. It contains 81 lessons from early letter recognition to preschool concepts to reading and writing.

Like I always say, each child is different and this kit contains lots of interesting games and activities to suit your child’s learning style and allows you to pace the lessons according to your schedule and his/hers.

The printed version comes with a free audio CD of the program. You can try out 3 lessons for free. Shipping is available worldwide and it’s free for those living in the US.

Many working parents don’t have time to figure out how to get their kids interested in books and a guided program like Funetics is just the thing to get started.

The girls have been counting down the hours to their guitar class, and meeting the new teacher, of course. We had no idea who he was or if he was going to be meaner than Mr Mean Goat himself *shudder*.

Well, I’ll let Raine and Skye tell you, in their own writing words (unedited):

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Raine, my 15 year old:

He’s better than stupid cranky old Mr Mean Goat. He’s an okay sorta guy who doesn’t keep asking stupid irrelevant questions and he doesn’t smirk nastily at us when we do the wrong thing. Plus, he can really play the guitar and he didn’t make us play stupid baby games.

Except.. he went a little too fast. He was like, “Okay, E minor is here. C is here. No, this way. Now G chord. This finger over here. This second finger on this string. And now D for donkey.”

OMG. :O

I felt like I was in an advanced program going 150miles per hour. And my poor fingers were switching from chord to chord like some freak and at times I didn’t even know which finger I was using. I thought my first finger was the third and stuff like that.

Boo hoo. Gonna have to ask him to slow down to above snail pace.

Skye, my 12 year old:

Newt (new teacher) is alright, I guess. He asked a few questions and started the lesson. He taught us the E minor chord, C chord, G chord and D chord.

He went too fast. Well, at least, he didn’t laugh at us like Mr Mean Goat or go, “See! Hah! See!”. He just told us if we were wrong and corrected us.

Newt played some songs when teaching us. But I was hardly interested in that because I was busy trying to correct my fingers and ignore the lines on my fingers. It hurts but I guess it’ll go away. Sooner or later.

Back to the point. He didn’t even mind when we asked him how to place our fingers for whatever chord that is for the hundredth time.

Psst! Newt said we could play some songs in a few weeks.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

So I’m happy and the girls are happy. Sore fingers aside, it looks like they’re still as enthusiastic as ever. It’s happy days and I’m looking forward to hearing some funky music soon .

This school term has barely ended, and already tuition teachers are asking me to confirm my kids’ spots in next year’s classes. Yes, they do start early and they’re making a kiasu (scaredy cat) out of me! Seriously !

Unlike many parents, I say blek to tutors with proven A track records because some use the wicked stepmother approach which I’m so against.

A’s are nice and a great bragging point for parents but not when they’re forced out of the poor kid!

Personally I prefer tutors who create an active interest in the subject and take the trouble to explain things through simply and clearly. I’d be crazy to pay someone to kill my child’s interest in learning, won’t I?

My kids have done okay so far with minimal tuition. One or two classes, that’s all. Like I always say, no point cramming their growing years with tuition and more stress after school. If they can manage or if I can help them, there’s no need for tuition. I find kids try harder on their own and when they’re not just wait to be spoonfed.

Our rationale for tuition is based on how the subjects are taught at school, and how confident the kids are about doing well. I use their grades and their feedback to assess their tuition needs.

Come to think of it, I hardly had any tuition in my time and I turned out okay. See? But I know some of you will jump on me and say, yeah but things were different then, it’s so much more competitive now.

True, but at least we got childhood memories to share with our kids and their kids from our rocking chairs. I wonder what our over-scheduled kids these days will remember of their childhoods? Childhood? What childhood?

Raine’s classmate is working at McDonald’s. If it were any other guy, I’d have said so what? But this is the young man who is sorta Raine’s unofficial ‘brother’ at school as he shares the same last name as us.

He likes to ‘bully’ Raine and the other girls at school, splashing water on them, snatching their food, pulling their hair, stuff like that. And he’s also the one who says I’m one hot mama.

Naturally I was curious. This cheeky 15-year-old, I have to see!! So when Raine suggested we go to McDonald’s to ’stalk’ him and give him a hard time with our order, I happily played along. Hey, I’m a sporting mom .

Turned out he was the guy making the french fries, not the guy at the counter so things didn’t go as we planned. Still we had lunch and spied on him from our corner table.

His seriously over-salted fries aside, he didn’t look like a bully to me at all. Maybe his behavior has to do with his parents being divorced. He lives with his dad and sister, and is pretty much left to his own devices. I can’t imagine how his dad could let him cycle on a major highway to/from school every day.

Not having a mom also means no homecooked food, I guess. Maybe that’s why he likes to pinch the girls’ food. There I go playing shrink again ! The more I looked at him, the more I felt a soft spot for him. Coming from a broken home myself, I can see myself in him.

Anyhow, he finished his shift shortly afterwards and the girls suggested we follow him as he set off at a deadly speed on his bicycle. We spotted him at the traffic lights way ahead of us.

Since I had to turn off to pick up Steev from college, Raine wound down the window and shouted to him while I leaned on the horn. Whee, that was fun! Poor guy probably didn’t have a clue who he was waving back at. We laughed all the way to Steev’s college. That was such fun!!

Today I made two big pans of pasta bake. Yeah, when you have 3 teens, you think B-I-G! Figure we’d bring French Fry Guy a slice over to McDonald’s. But Raine was too shy to give it to him as there was another guy from school working there.