Picture was taken outside shell station petrol kiosk at Loyang just as we are about to leave for our weekly cycle.
settings
Exposure:0.077 sec (1/13)
Aperture: f/2
Focal Length:5.1 mm
ISO Speed: 400
taken with LX3 and lightroom2
Archive for January, 2009
introducing my workstation. shot in a different light or more accurately, in no light! i just love the way my laptop glows when its dark. settings
i usually get disappointed with the quality of the local ramly burger sold at the night bazaar, so i didn’t expect mine to be any better, but surprisingly, this is one of the rare instances where the burger is really comparable to those across the causeway. the bro who cooked the burger was rather pro about it, doing the whole shebang of scrapping and banging the spatula, impressive! so was the taste of the burger, just look at the oozing cheese in between, simply magnifique!! settings shot with LX3, edited in lightroom 2 so you may have known that i was convicted of a crime recently and sent to a correctional institution. yes, i did time again at east shore state penitentiary, my friends. i was deep in slumberland one night when big momma came into my room to give me some milk. (with no cookies, so why bother, i ask you?) she told big daddy that i was, as paris hilton would say, ‘hot’, and they brought me to see The Doc (code word for Drug Dealer) in the morning. it was there where i was busted! framed! incriminated! kena pluck! they said i had been harbouring a dangerous fugitive called UTI. i wonder if it was previously hiding at Yew Tee MRT, along with mas se/lam/at. behind bars, i was only given some hardtack for sustenance, barely enough to keep me alert for the long hours i needed to study the blueprints of the floorplan i smuggled for my prison break.
to pass the time, i chilled with my cell mate (see calloused, un-pedicured foot in picture) and hung around, rattling the cages and jeering at the prison wardens.
which was a bad idea, because they then performed daily acts of persecution upon me that made me howl a hundred howls, involving an excruciatingly large needle poked into my thigh. one of the prison wardens there was a crooked old fella who cruelly and inhumanely tortured me with a cavity search for contraband (he found some all right – in my butt crack, hah!), and if that wasn’t enough, a complete strip search. oh, the indignity!
i was bailed out eventually, after two hard nights in cold confinement, and appeared in court the next day to hear the verdict. the judge ruled: i was out of danger. ==== ok, that was auni’s version, of course. to summarise, i went into her room at 1am to feed her, something i don’t normally do after she’s gone to sleep, and found her body warm, although she just slept through with nary a whimper. brought her to the paedi the next morning when it didn’t subside, and discovered she had high fever of 38.5. since there were no other symptoms and the fever came unexplained, a urine test was done, by attaching a sterile plastic bag thingy to her girly-bits, and we had breakfast while waiting for her to fill it up. a urine dip test was done, and a purple stain showed traces of possible urinary tract infection. and off we were, warded once more, like the time she had jaundice. and so it was deja vu, rushing home to pack our things for the 3-day-stay, which was necessary as we had to collect another urine sample, which then had to go for a culture, which took 48-72 hours, and her fever had to be monitored, and antibiotics to be administered by injection. i was kinda bummed at having to stay at the hospital again, this time with an active baby who’s awake most of the day, with little space to play and explore (what to do? what to do??), but looking back, it was nice, a little bonding time, just chilling on the cot bed, going on short strolls around the (boring) hospital premises, finding out things about her i didn’t know she could do. the third day, we asked to be discharged since she wasn’t having anymore fever, and after the urine culture result came back, the doc told us that it was an external infection, ie. just the skin. it could’ve been worse, like in her kidneys or bladder. that would’ve caused permanent scarring and lead to long-term medication. so, syukur alhamdulillah, we hope there won’t be a recurrence. so what actually caused UTI in babies? who knows. possible factors are hygiene, dehydration, or genetic, i guess. it’s different with adult UTI, which i hear is painful. i asked the nurse and she said it’s not so with babies. from the way the little one looked, it sure didn’t look like she was in a lot of pain. either that or she’s got that pain threshold i was talking about. it’s more common in girls, so be careful, mommies out there with baby girls. i can’t say that we practice bad hygiene at home, because we all, including her daytime caregivers, do wash her girly-bits with water and baby soap whenever we change her diaper. maybe we should change it more often. maybe we should offer her more water to drink. maybe maybe maybe… but as some tell me, well, these things *just happen*. :S
took aniq for a ride to the library to return the library books. picture taken outside tampines library. settings taken with LX3, edited with lightroom 2 i guess i haven’t been writing as much as i would have liked of late, due to a lot of things happening, that i simply can’t keep up. especially with this little girl.
she’s only just starting to show glimmers of her personality lately. otherwise, she’s still quite a mystery to us. yeah, seriously.
sure, she’s by and large the smiley baby you see in the pictures. her laughs are still characteristically… ‘inaudible’ – coupled with crinkly eyes and nose – but her displeasures are definitely vocal. she’ll growl along with you like a revved-up engine when you point out the cars zooming past outside the window, and she’ll growl too as she attempts to play with her brother’s toy vehicles or anything that resembles one.
she calls out for her abang in an excitable “AH!” or “BA!” each time she spots him, and they’ll engage in some playful tussle, very much like two little sibling kittens. speaking of kittens, she’s as curious of the feline creatures as they are of her, but when you put her close to one, she’ll pull herself back and look away. same thing with the $5.95 touch-and-feel pop-up book on cats i just bought for her from borders the other day – she touched the furry bits and immediately retracted her hands, and i think i may have traumatised her, coz one of the cats that popped out admittedly looked kinda creepy. oops. there’s this stretch of pictures i’d pasted over her cot (from aniq’s baby days) and, to keep her from wriggling, have been pointing them out to her whenever i change her diaper/clothes, and the other day i asked her where the cat was, she seemed to register and looked up at the right picture, so mummy takes it that her pseudo flashcard attempt worked after all. :p she’ll flail her arms when we look at birds flying. she’ll imitate my animated hand-waving to the incessant “bye bye!”s that accompany it. she’ll tap her hands when she hears music, and randomly claps when she’s excited for some reason. her favourite nursery rhyme is of a fat, clumsy egg who sat on the wall and fell. she’s hopeless when i’m in sight, her arms will reach out to me, her face will crumble, and she’ll go “ehek.. ehek…”, and sometimes i try to hide myself behind whoever is trying to take her away. i deny labeling her as ‘clingy’, although she’ll cease and desist all forms of tears and protestations with immediate effect upon being handed over to me. the stranger wariness we skipped with aniq, we got with her, though i think it’s relatively mild – she’ll look away and bury her face, then look again to scrutinise the unfamiliar person. a shy one, this is turning out. then again, no no, i’m not going to do the labeling thing.
she’s got her brother’s pain threshold, as witnessed from the various bumps and bruises she’s inevitably collecting along the way. her love for crawling and climbing around (and at such speed!), and her ability to play by herself show that she can be an independent baby, also like her brother. but i’ll try not to label her as a tomboy, just yet. sometimes the daddy and i look at her, chuckle, and go “she’s so cute eh?”. and the daddy will always try to take credit for it. i still have things to write about, particularly about our recent stay chez hotel eastshore. bear with me. i’m known to be labelled as a bit ‘slow’.
the guys must have their weekly fix of football. so we will designate once a week as futsal night where we would troop down to safra tampines, sometimes with much reluctance from the WAGs. settings taken with LX3, edited in CS3 saying goodbye is never easy even if its just for an academic term. we were at the airport to send off our dear friend, ayu, back to baking school in perth.
settings taken with d80, 50mm f1.8. edited in lightroom 2
aniq loves to visit his grandpa. more than often, he will cry once its time to go home, always clinging on his grandpa tight. picture was taken at the toa payoh interchange foodcourt. settings taken with LX3, edited in lightroom 2
we love to bring the kids to the airport, especially aniq. he enjoys going to the airport as he can roam freely in the open spaces. picture was taken at terminal three as we were walking towards macdonald’s settings taken with LX3, edited in lightroom 2
aniq loathes to wake up early in the morning to go to school. one of the many ways to get him to wake up is to give him a ride on my bicycle. that he likes taken during breakfast at the LPS (local prata shop), somewhere in tampines. taken with my touch pro camera phone, edited in lightroom 2 auni was warded at eastshore for UTI (urinary tract infection). so the whole gang came down to visit. i guessed, many of them were too excited to see auni that the security guard came over to inform us to keep it down!
settings shot using LX3, edited in lightroom2
we regularly buy our groceries at the giant hypermart right here in tampines. aniq used to call it “big shop” when he was small, now just plain old “giant”. oh well, kids grow up! anyway, i took the picture while returning the trolley. apparently they have a “no photography” sign just at the entrance of giant, so i just shot outside instead. heh… settings
there’s a mini night bazaar at our place. i’m always looking forward to such bazaar for my food fix of vadei, ramly burgers, jap balls and other snacks. they also have stalls selling toys and bags of popular cartoon characters at a fraction of the cost what you would normally pay at the shopping mall. but hey, the kids can’t tell the different! settings |
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