Classes with Jamal

Julian spent the greater part of last week attending Jamal's classes,and in the process also spent the greater part of my hard saved cash. Cost me an arm and a leg !!!Boo hoo hoo...:( For those not in the know, Jamal Othman is the current Swiss National Champion and if his name sounded Malay, that's because he is half Malaysian. Google him if you want more info!!

Anyway, Julian made very good progress in his classes and hopefully it will show this week during the competition. Jamal is very meticulous and paid a lot of attention of details which made a world of difference to Julian's presentation.

So, if you happen to see a one armed and one legged woman hopping around the rink- that's me!!! I am also lop- sided cos the cash in the handbag is lessened and so I can't balance properly!! haha...

If you want to catch Jamal in action, he's performing this Thursday 2 July at 5 pm, during the Skate Malaysia opening ceremony!

Lucky wristband

This morning started real early - was at the rink by 6 am. Ryan wanted to practise....I think he is feeling the heat now that the test date is this week. That's a good sign, usually I have to cajole them to get up that early and skate before school. Anyway, since he wanted to do it, I was more than happy to sacrifice a few hours of sleep.

However, the morning didn't start off too well. He just couldn't land his jumps :( It was quite a shame as we were the first ones at the rink and he had clean ice and a clear rink ! Besides, it broke my heart to see him fall again and again, and I worry about injuries. Touch wood!!

It was getting frustrating as the morning wore on and he still was not getting it. Told him to stop but he wanted to try. Then he had a brilliant thought and said that he could not jump cos he didn't have his wristband on!! Rubbish,eh? Or so I thought...but after he put it on, he did a pretty decent program, not clean but pretty decent. That's is the (very) biased opinion of a doting mom! Of course, Coach is not too pleased as it was not clean. Yay...talk about superstitions!! Ok, now we know he has to wear it for the Freestyle test this Saturday. Wish him luck , and to those who happen to read this, keep your fingers crossed for him!!! Hope to bring you good news next week.

Transformers

Today is THE big day for all Transformers fan, and I of course followed the crowd! I was not disappointed - the movie was fantastic, albeit a tad long, almost 2 and a half hours but it was non stop action all the way. The cast was simply great, all roles were reprised, although Shea Labeouf looked slightly older and somehow didn't quite fit in as a freshman in college. He looked more adult here. Megan Fox was just stunning, I can see why Ryan thought she was hot. He is not wrong!!

Okay, okay, I won't spoil it for those of you who have not seen it, but I may consider a second round myself. It's that good. Actually I thought the first movie was better cos it seemed more 'controlled' The second movie, however was so action-packed that my poor old mind was utterly confused in all the non stop adrenalin pumping stuff going on. There is so much for the eyes and brain to absorb. Michael Bay outdid himself here.

Before the movie, there was a little 'drama' outside at the cinema lobby. 2 guys almost got into a fight and a mineral water bottle was sent hurling our way - got water on my shoes! Don't know what the commotion was about, lots of shouting but can't make out what was said , probably over a girl cos one of the guys was pulled away by a girl when the security came. Anyway, made the outing a bit more exciting, sort of a 'prelude' to a great movie...haha. Did secretly wished they came to blows though, just to spice things up!! So evil huh? What to do...my life is so mundane...:( I'm sure if you were there, you would think like that, too!

History of steps

I just realized that despite the title of my blog, I have yet to post anything about steps. I know some people have not idea what step is. Step or stepping is an aerobic exercise done to music and pre-choreographed movements while stepping up and down a board, or several boards. Get it? What is so fun about that, one might ask. Well, if you have not tried it, you will never discover the thrill. Anyway I did a little bit of research and guess what? The founder of steps is a woman...yay...Gin Miller is a fitness instructor who injured her knee and was doing rehabilitation by stepping up and down her porch steps. This was way back in 1978 and she found that this type of exercise not only strengthened her knee but was also cardio intensive as well. So she approached Reebok and step aerobics ( as it was known then) was born!!! Double yay !!! So stepping is now 20 years old!





This is what people wear for steps in the 80's . Would you dress like this now?









At that time, stepping was considered low impact and was done mainly by quote middle aged women unquote.....yikes....how do you macho guys feel about that, huh?? Anyway, the craze caught on and was made popular by Jane Fonda in the early 80's, and that's when people of all ages and both sexes got into the game.

I started in the late 90's and even then, stepping was not like what it is now. Choreography was much more simple and a 2 board routine was considered advanced. It has since evolved into something really awesome now, with complex choreography , great music, multiple boards and is simply adrenaline pumping. No one will ever call it low impact anymore!!! ( It's still done by middle aged women - ME!!) But boy, is it ever fun , not to mention addictive !! Nothing like a solid hour of stepping to get an all natural adrenalin high. To those who have not tried it, you don't know what you are missing. So give it a shot - I promise you will not regret it. To my fellow stepaholics....way to go :p

St Mary's

An email by SK has me going back down memory lane...at Jalan Tengah, KL to be precise, down St Mary's corridors. Of the great times we spent there, and the fantastic friendships made, nurtured and maintained to this day.

SK and a few others are the St Marians I still see today. Imagine, how many people can boast that we were friends since Std 1 and still keeping in touch regularly now. To give an inkling of how long it has been, well, we left St Mary's after Form 5 in 1978, so go figure!!! And we still keep in touch with some teachers. Hi Mrs Sheo, Mrs Monteiro!!

Our kids grew up knowing each other, and LK aka the Alien ( cos she is too good to be of this world)'s kids are in the same school as mine, both Secondary and Primary.

St Mary's really has given us a lot of memories, the one that stands out most is when we locked Mr. Lee ( Add Maths and Physics) teacher out of the class, demanding for a free period. Of course, we opened the doors immediately upon his threat to tell the HM !! Spoilt sport. I bumped into him when I first started working and I don't think he was too pleased to see me. Nightmare revisited!!! :) The other one was of LK who passed the 1st Add Maths test in Form 4 when the whole Form failed. ( That's the reason why she is not of this world , and therefore an alien) To add salt to the wound, she had an A and was pestering Mr. Lee to give her another half mark cos she claimed he has mis-marked her paper. To this day, we still talk about it and I guess she will never be allowed to forget it.

If only the school walls can talk, I guess there would be plenty of stories to tell.....both the human and non human kind!! Yeah, the toilets had ghosts...what self respecting old building didn't have a resident ghost? Especially one that was used by the Japs during the WWII. Although this fact was never proven, we always scared ourselves silly whenever we stayed overnight in school.

Any St Marian reading this, do drop a comment and say Hi. Share your stories. Keep in touch and re connect :p
PS. I 'borrowed ' the photos from the St Mary's Facebook owner, so must given credit to her ok?

My hair story...the 'after' part

My good friend and fellow Mama blogger , who incidentally is also my inspiration to start a blog, commented that my hair story is not complete without an 'after' photo .
So, ah fun, this is for you!!! See what I mean about subtle differences? Who would have thought I had to make such a big decision to cut my hair!!! Anyway, I am so seriously thinking I'll go short...:P

Hair today....gone tomorrow???

This is not a scene from 'The Ring' although it could well be...





I have wrestled with the idea of cutting my hair for some days now, and have had feedback from various friends and relatives. My dear sweet nephew suggested that I cut to Victoria Beckham's style. Oh , the folly of youth...I wished I could cos I have neither the face nor the body of good ole Vic to go with it!!! But I do love him for thinking I did!! Hehe...thanks W !



Most have agreed that I should have a hair cut, and so I did. Thot I'd better get it done before I chicken out. Anyway, it was not as traumatic as I thot it might be! For those who have not seen me with short hair, this is the first time I have ever managed to grow my hair so long, so the hesitation was due to a tinge of 'um seh tak-ness' ( can someone tell me what it is in English? Gee, my 'engrish' very rusty already...no thanks to a healthy diet of HK tvb series!!)
So, off to the stylist, who have not seen me for a year. You bet he was very surprised and determined to make me succumb to all sorts of treatments to lighten my wallet!! Pay back time for not giving him business for a whole year!! Anyway, I agreed to a cut, not too short cos I want to have an option to re consider, and a highlight.

Result: A layered look but not too short that it was noticeable that I actually had a hair cut. In fact, everything was so subtle that even the hubby did not notice. He is ever so going to lose brownie points! Actually, I regret now...should have had a very short cut to create an impact. And colour my hair pink or green!!! I love shock tactics...remember when I had a blue Maybe I will go back this week - didn't quite like the layered look - made me look old. So it's either a rebonding to straighten or a drastic cut...hmmm....thinking...thinking......still thinking.....

Fake prawns, fake mutton and fake goose...

Vegetarian Pizza (Sandwich)

Butter Prawns

Mutton Curry

Fake meats....er..actually it was vegetarian food lah. Took BL, C and D, together with the boys for vegetarian dinner Monday night. It's not that I am particularly religious or anything like that, but BL is vegetarian for 2 months and I owe her a dinner for helping out with Julian's FS8 test. (Note; he passed. Yay...) Plus I have not had vegetarian for a very long time cos Blue is not keen on it. He prefers real meat. :(

Anyway, we were supposed to go to one in SS14 but ended up in Taman Megah cos more convenient. Ryan filled up before he went cos he didn't know what to expect - thought it was only vegetables.


It was good and cheap. We had so much, a mutton curry, char siew, goose, claypot taufu with fake salted fish, butter prawns, egg plant and seaweed soup. And that is not all, Ryan had seaweed fried rice which was nice and Ju had a pizza!! Weird eh? Apparently it was the restaurant's best seller!! Actually it looked nothing like a pizza, the only 'pizza-rish' thing is the dough, and they put fake ham and lettuce with mayo in between 2 slices. more like a pizza sandwich to me. But it was delicious.

The butter prawns were awesome, I swear I could taste prawns! And the char siew is very good, it even had some 'fatty' parts. the best thing about eating vegetarian is that I can eat everything and not worry about it. ( I usually do not eat fatty meat - hate the taste)

All in all, we had a super meal. C even met the boss of a vegetarian restaurant she frequents in SS18 there!! So it shows that the place is not too bad. Must go there again. Anyone interested??

#@$%! Spoilt Sunday

What promises to be a nice Sunday was spoiled by 2 stupid ( for want of a better word, but since this blog is family friendly ,I shall restrain myself) fellas. What happened? Stupid fella #1 wanted me to wait for stupid fella #2 to arrive before we go for lunch. But stupid fella #1 didn't know what time stupid fella #2 would be arriving??!! So why should I wait? And to think that I got up at 5 am this morning to go to the rink and have not had anything to eat since. To top it all, when SF#1 called to inquire, SF#2 was having lunch. Now that made me see RED!!! very very RED,and it really ruined my mood for the entire day. Even a phone call from Ian did little to lift my spirits. :( Hmmm, but I guess if LEON called, then it would be a different matter , hehe :)

Ok, I feel slightly better now that I have gotten it off my chest but I am still mad at SF#1. If you guys didn't understand this load of ramblings, never mind, it was not meant to be. But if you are still kay poh enuf, you can email me and I will reveal who SF#1 and SF#2 are, and oh, also who LEON is and why he is so important to me!!! Hehe...those who know me well, know who he is!

Bad drivers...boo and rude people at toilets..boo,too

I often wonder why people jump queues in their cars but not when they are standing in line. Slow as it was coming, it occurred to me that because they are in their cars, they are anonymous and so do not have to face the other people in line face-to-face. But is this a reason for such rude behavior? Sometimes I wish I have a loud speaker and can shout out the car registration number loudly and embarrass them. Have you guys ever felt that way? And to those who have this disgusting habit, do you know that you are actually slowing down traffic and inconveniencing everyone? Boo to you. What makes you think you deserve to be in front of the line?

In this same vein, boo also to those who do not know how to queue in public toilets. Don't you realize that if there is a line, it means we are all waiting for the first available cubicle? You cannot just barge in and stand in front of any cubicle you like. I had a bad experience in the Dubai airport with such a woman, and when I told her there is a line, she actually had the cheek to ask me if I was going to use all the toilets!!! Boo to you. What kind of logic is that?? And China is worse. At the Harbin Railway Station, I once told an old lady to queue up and she told me bluntly that there is no such thing as line up!! Double boo to you.

Blessings

Am in a happy mood. Why? My boys, bless them , have decided to eat in Pyramid last night, so I got to do my aerobics class after all!! Yay..love you both to bits. So sweet and thoughtful , I am touched.

But the aerobics class turned out to be a step class ( by popular request cos Jason was replaced by Kok Seng)...more bonus..yay yay! So I got a great workout. It has been a super day afterall.

The boys had a great time as well, at the Jungle Jungle arcade, Played Go Go Ball as well as had a ride on the kiddie ride. Luckily no one scolded them as they are wayyyyy too big to be on those rides!! Had some problem posting the video - dunno why it wouldn't play. But decided not to post personal photos and videos here afterall. However, you can see them on my Facebook if you are on my list!!

Grumblings...

Time really crawled this week. Gosh, it's only Thursday but it feels like a whole millennium already :( Dunno why. Hmmm..maybe cos my maid is coming back this Sat..yippee, so no more getting up at 6 am to get Ryan and Ju off for school. No more having to babysit them ( much as I love them dearly) when I could be off for steps...yay. My workout schedule has been thrown off this week...pls come back quickly, Meriam.

WE had a major house cleaning operation last Sunday. Had to pay Ryan and Ju to sweep and mop the house. Ryan did downstairs while Ju did upstairs. Good deal la altho the mopping consist of merely swiping the mop across the floor once on one pail of water. But never mind, little bit clean better than not clean and it sure beats me having to do it!!! Will post up the photos when I upload from the camera.

Actually cooked dinner last night...surprise!! Hehe...if one can call making macaroni and cheese from a package, cooking dinner. :) Ryan made the dressing for the Caesar salad by chopping up the anchovies , and he washed the lettuce. Ju did the washing up. I had to do the floor mopping which is so much more hard work than an advance step class. Step class anytime!!! hehe. BTW, we are still thinking of what to have for dinner tonight. Damn hard work, this thinking activity...hmmm, but not as hard as mopping floors. Looks like the aerobics kakis will have to miss me in tonight's class cos I have to feed the boys :(

Just finished watching Rosy Business...really nice show la. Got my wish when the dai siew yeh conked off...hurray. So nice to hate a character like him ...and his horrible mom, too.

The first step

I finally did it, creating a blog that is. Hehe...that's the first step. gosh I didn't realize that to create a blog would entail so many steps ! ( pardon the pun ) Anyway, people, it's done and my mission is to keep this alive, not like Ryan!

Some of you may understand part of the title - the ice part , cos you probably know I spent much of my waking hours at the ice rink. For those who don't, let me explain, I am not a skater but I am an ice mom, meaning my kids skate so I have to practically live at the rink!

The step part, you guys may not understand but to my step class friends, well, you all know what i mean. I love steps. For those of you who don't know what steps is, it's a wonderful creation by dunno who - someone in Reebok, i think ( but God bless him/her) whereby you use one or more step boards and do a series of choreographed movements up/ down and around these steps. The end result will have you wanting more!

Today was a good day - first good thing was that Julian passed his Freestyle 8 ! Yay, Ju - way to go. Congrats. Secondly, today's step class was great. Looked complicated but was actually not. cos despite the weird looking layout, you only use 2 boards and don't even have to share boards. But... I still managed to mixup the 3rd and 4th combo. :( Guess my memory is really going...muahhaha.. Only thing I am not happy about is that the class is too short. Why can't we have a 90 mins class? that would be so awesome. Still am on a natural high from the class. thanks Annie and her assistants!

I going to get back to my TVB series now. Am in the middle of 'Rosy Business' and it's so exciting now. The Tai siew yeh is such a horrible fella - hope he dies :)