about christine

Amelie and Her Colors

Just sharing my little girl’s video, which I took just this afternoon before her nap time. She just loves her books.

More of her videos on her multiply site.

A Thread of Errands and Trip Updates

Last week, I was busy preparing for our weekend trip to the Snowy Mountains. This week, I am busy unpacking and organizing the whole apartment. When you have a toddler in tow for weekend trips, it’s just like packing your whole house! Towards the weekend will be another thing because I will be packing for our trip to Perth.

Amelie’s Winter Clothes

Our busy-ness last week started with errands and appointments. My Tita D bought Amelie three sets of winter wear in December last year, which we didn’t manage to bring to Sydney last January. To make the long story short, my sister’s office colleague brought them to Sydney and we picked them up on Monday in the city. Unfortunately, all the tops no longer fit Amelie. They are size 24 months and she’s now wearing size 3-4 years. She can wear the pants still but sayang talaga.

Thermal Wear at Anaconda

Our next errand was to get thermal wear for the little girl. Our church friend tipped that we can get them at Anaconda’s store in Paramatta so we all went Thursday evening. We also rented our winter gear there.

Dinner at Darbar

Friday night, we met with our wedding sponsor, Ninang R, who came from Manila to visit her daughter here. We had dinner at a really good Indian restaurant called Darbar. I had a filling of chicken tikka masala and tandoori. Na-miss ko tuloy ang Indian food in Singapore.

First Photo Installment with “Stitching” Efforts

Well, I have to get back to my chores and I should be back blogging about our snowy trip later today. Meanwhile, I’ll share with you this photo from our get-away. It’s my first time to “stitch” photos, so please bear with the rough merged edges and the obvious “stitching” done. I don’t have a lot of photos to share (reason for this on my next post) so I should be able to share them all soon!

Taken while on the road back to Sydney.

A Basket of Updates

Matthew 18:20

Thanks to all my blogger friends who prayed for our friend B. He is now out of ICU and is recovering very well. He might need to undergo a major procedure still but as of now there’s no news/confirmation as yet.

Up and About

Our little girl recovered from her colds and slight fever the very next day. She was running around the apartment when she woke up that morning. Thanks for your well wishes for Amelie.

My Piggy Bank

I must admit that my main motivation to blog these days is for my piggy bank [read as: sponsored posts] in my other blogs. Somehow I’ve lost my inspiration to blog here and to blog hop. I know it’s not fair for those few and valued blogger friends who take time to leave comments (I don’t mean to be a blog snob, pramis). Someday, I just might get my blogging “groove” back.

Trips in the Horizon

I’m pretty busy these days planning and packing for our trip. This weekend, our family together with friends will go on a road trip to Snowy Mountains. We will be there for three days and I hope everyone enjoys our first snow experience.

A week after, Amelie and I will join R on his business trip to Perth. I don’t have a checklist prepared yet but I’ve got plenty of time to prepare for this next week.

Through My Lens

I’m also looking forward to my photography class that will start next month. I enrolled in June but didn’t make it to the June-July batch. Of course, I don’t expect to be a good photographer after the course but I’m very, very excited to meet both hobbyists and pros, learn tips and tricks from them and finally put some direction to this passion of mine.

Until next update.

Storming the Heavens

I hope this is not too much to ask but would you kindly pray for our friend B? He is at the hospital now recovering from a heart attack. Both B and his wife F are our good friends since our Singapore days. B and my husband, R are batch mates in UP.

I feel sad and helpless at the same time. But I know God is in control and that His healing hands are over B.

Please, please whisper a prayer for him and his family. I will be eternally grateful.

At Sick Bay

Our glass doors turn into Amelie’s writing board because of the moist during the early mornings.

My little girl is down with a runny nose and slight fever. I suppose her body is acclimatizing to the winter cold. She started sneezing last night after her evening bath. I wonder though if I had bathed her at an earlier time, would she still be sick today? Oh well, who knows.

She spat out the soup and noodles she ate for breakfast. She ate only about ¼ of rice with soup for lunch and didn’t ask for milk before she took her afternoon nap. I can tell she was feeling drowsy because she’s extra clingy and always rested her head on my chest.

I didn’t give her medications yet save for her Ceelin vitamins, which I mixed with her juice twice today. Later, I will check her temp again and see if she needs a dose of Tempra.

She doesn’t get sick often, if I remember correctly this is only her 2nd time to catch a cold and be feverish at the same time. With just a few hours of being sick, I already miss seeing her very active and playful.

These are times when I am thankful that I am her main caregiver. I hope and pray she gets better soon.

Not Fond of Business Trips

Today is not my typical Friday. R left again this morning to fly to Canberra after arriving home last night from a four-day business trip to Perth.

Needless to say, I was upset. He didn’t have the chance to rest after his very busy project go-live activities and now he’s going to another ‘war’ again. There is an “emergency” situation with their client in Perth and a team of consultants was sent there.

Anyway, his absence the past four days was not as ‘dramatic’ for me as it was the first time he left us on a business trip here. Amelie is a lot more mature now and is ‘easier’ to look after than before. However, I was on my toes the whole time keeping in mind my schedule for the chores, baby caring duties (e.g. bathing, feeding), cooking and yes even throwing away the trash.

Today, as soon as R left for his flight, I brought Amelie to Rhodes Shopping Centre. I had planned to get her some new toys. I was that upset that I want to vent it out through R’s credit card. I know moms out there can relate with this. But being a “classier” shopping mall of its kind here, I backed out when I saw that a drum set that could be worth 20aud in Big W is sold for 45aud in a kiddie store there. Kuripot pa rin talaga ako.

I ended up getting Amelie a set of number flashcards (they’re made of plastic and are pretty nice) and a red ball that she personally picked. She made a playground out of the halls again and kicked her new ball to her delight. I heard several “ooohs” and “aaahs” while passersby notice how she precisely kicked the ball and ran after it. May future yata sa soccer ang baby ko.

Well, I don’t have plans yet for the coming days. I might bring her to the park if weather permits and if the park renovations are done. Or, we’ll likely hit the mall again if Amelie becomes bored at home. I’m still not up to driving beyond the shopping centre point. We’ll see R again on Monday.

Happily playing with her new flash cards.

Ginisang Munggo Recipe

One of the bigger Asian stores here is called Chowking, located in Westfield, Paramatta. As I was checking the Filipino merchandise there, I saw bags of munggo or mung beans. I was hesitant to get a bag at first because I don’t know how to cook it and I have no idea about the ingredients. I even thought that it is a difficult viand to cook.

As I surfed the internet, I found two interesting recipes of Ginisang Munggo from Market Manila and Celia K. I eventually settled to use Celia’s detailed recipe. I first poured about a cup of munggo beans in the pot only to find out that it is a lot to cook for two. I had to throw away a big portion of it.

Then, I fried the pork strips making them as crispy as lechon kawali. (I dislike pale and raw looking pork on my dish). I sauteed garlic, medium size onion and tomato. As soon as the onion and tomato are soft, I poured the fried pork in the pan. I then put the cooked munggo with the ’sauce’ (the water I used to boil the munggo with). I used fish sauce and salt to taste. After about ten minutes, I put in ampalaya leaves. Another 10 minutes and it’s cooked! This goes well with porkchop or fried fish.

If you check out Celia K’s recipe, she shared some tips on how to strain the munggo (which I didn’t do anymore because it’s so troublesome) and some optional steps like adding bagoong. Thanks to Market Manila and Celia K!

WS 6: Royal National Park

It is unusual for me not to ask my husband for details about our family day out. However, last Saturday I felt confident not to ask him where we were going in order for me to prepare what we needed to bring.

When he said that we will go to the park the day before, I thought that it’s probably 20 minutes away from our place. So I packed a small picnic bag with chips, cookies, bottled water and our baby’s munchies. On the way there, we stopped by McDonalds to grab our lunch that we’ll eat at the park.

Forty minutes had passed and we were still on the road! It was past our lunch time when we got to the park and much to our surprise; the people there were better prepared with food. So there, we brought out our cold burgers and while we were eating I told my husband to just imagine having a barbeque feast just like the other people there. He he. Lesson learned: I should always take charge in planning our outings.

While our tummies weren’t happy with our lunch, we were craving for something warmer and heavier, the beauty of Royal National Park more than made up for it. It would be nice to go back there with proper picnic food and friends.

As always, our daughter Amelie enjoyed the outdoors.

I have another entry here. More from the other weekend(ers)!

Chicken Sopas

I love chicken sopas. It’s not only good for merienda but works well when someone is a little ’sickie’ and needs some steamy hot soup. Since I love its milky taste so much, I took it to heart to learn how to cook it. But despite several attempts, I still was not happy with the taste. Until I tried Shai Coggins’ very simple recipe, I discovered the things that I was doing wrong.

First, I put way too much chicken. Second, I was scared to put too much fish sauce but when I did add a bit more, it made a lot of difference. Third, I just needed to be a bit more generous when pouring in milk. Three simple things that made my sopas taste like how it should be.

Thanks for sharing your recipe, Shai!