Feeding the little mouth

Just like any other working mother out there, I want to give my baby home-cooked food. It is cheaper and I get to control what goes into my baby's diet. But then, there was a problem. I can't be making the food everyday.

I leave to work at 6am everyday. And it wasn't 12 hours later that I step my foot back home. In this case, how do I prepare food daily? I was giving pureed sweet potato, pumpkin and carrots which were frozen into small baby cube containers. My mother-in-law would heat them up before serving it to my baby. But as she grew, pureed food wasn't enough. As I moved to feed protein (chicken, fish), the idea of feeding frozen porridge with fish or chicken wasn't really appealing.

So, I devised a solution. After much researching, I invested in two kitchen gadgets. I now thank myself for making this decision earlier and not wait for the immense need for it to arrive. What tools?

A slow cooker and a hand blender.

Honestly, this is by far the best investment I have made to prepare my baby food. I did buy a mini food steamer but it was only useful when my baby was into pureed food. As she went into more coarse type of food, the steamer lost its usefulness though I still use it to steam fruits to be pureed which can be added into breakfast cereal for my baby,

I bought the 1.5L Morgan slow cooker from Lazada. Every night, I will place washed brown rice, some vegetables and some pieces of protein into the slow cooker,.After filling it up with enough water, I'll set the cooker to "Low" settings. 

The next morning, the porridge will be ready. All I have to do is stick my Philips hand blender in, and mash up the contents. My hand blender has 16 different speed settings, plus a turbo option. I usually will set it to level 1 settings, which will blend the porridge in a coarse consistency. 

And because it is a stainless steel hand blender, I don't have to cool the porridge down or transfer it to different container. A quick stir, and I'm done. The slow cooker will keep the porridge warm until it's needed.

This allowed me to cook porridge for my baby girl everyday, with different flavours and ingredients. The amount is usually half pot, which is enough for 2 feedings, or 3 at most. But what I like about these tools?

I don't necessarily use it for making baby food alone :) Cleaning up is just SO easy. Because of the ceramic pot, the slow cooker is just so easy to clean, without even much effort. The hand blender just needs a quick rinse under tap water, and it's done! Phew! Who invents these things?!

Polar for my polar bear!

Haha...

My husband is a fitness freak. And as I cracked my head what to get for him for Valentine's Day, I stumbled upon the idea of getting him a watch with heart rate monitor. He loves to collect watches so a watch that helps to monitor his heart rate? Sounded good to me :)

The hunt begin. What brand which model. I took me 2 weeks of research to finally settle for Polar FT60. Polar is synonymous to quality heart rate monitor and they have been making these since 1977. Deciding on the brand wasn't tough.  But the real challenge was to decide which model. 

So I took quite a bit of time to finally decide to get FT60 for Anand.

What I like about this watch is the STAR training program where he would be able to create his own personal training programs and track his progress online. The drawback is you'll need a data transfer device called FlowLink to transfer data into your computer. So I forked out additional bucks to get the FlowLink as well. The good thing is it works with PC and Mac.

So here you go my love, a new toy to keep you motivated throughout the year. No more blaming me if you go out of shape :P I know the technology is little daunting but you'll find your way :))

The first step for a long journey

Some things that I don't understand is the marketing of a product. I have been on the hunt for breast pumps from the day I completed my first trimester. There are MANY breast pumps out there in the wild and stripping down the options to a handful few was not easy. 

First of all, I wasn't even sure whether the milk would come. And if it did, for how long would it last? One year? Six months? I don't know. So given the multitude of options that comes in variables features and prices, I was just - lost.

I started out by researching understanding the mechanism of the process itself. Why pumps in breastfeeding? Then as I understood further, I started taking note on what I needed and wanted. Once that was finalized, it went on to which brand?

I researched for what is the best on the market. And obviously, the best came with heavy price tag. Which led me to another dilemma - find more alternatives and options. I finally came down to my earlier choice which was Medela breast pumps and listed Ameda as well as Spectra breastpumps as alternatives - just because they are cheaper than Medela.

After months of research, discussion and more research I finally settled for Medela. Then came another dilemma - which model? I was initially interested in Freestyle - for its handsfree option that came with it. That's what the name is all about! Freestyle = handsfree! Right? Wrong! 

Apparently, the Medela manufacturers decided to stop providing handsfree kit with the Medela Freestyle set. Why? Beats me to pieces to figure out why they did that. Then what is Freestyle all about? Swimming with breastpumps and the pumps are waterproof? That is why I said, I don't understand the marketing of a product. Freestyle became popular because of its handsfree and removing it from the set is just pure madness.

So I looked at the Freestyle alternative from Medela - the Swing Maxi. Works just as good as Freestyle, has the same features and 50% cheaper than Freestyle. I really don't understand why Medela wants to confuse consumers. Just Google around and you'll see heaps of forum discussion on Freestyle vs Swing Maxi. The best part is, most shops that I step into don't even know what's the difference between these 2 models!

Couple more weeks and I need to make the decision. So yesterday, Anand put a full stop for all my dilemma. We took a tour to the maternity expo in Midvalley Megamall. After almost an hour of negotiation, this is what he got for me to support my journey in breastfeeding.

The Medela Freestyle breast pump, and comes with free disposable breast pads, purelan nipple cream, Medela's Calma teat and the HANDSFREE kit for free!

With some additional buck (purchase with purchase option) he got the Medela B-well baby milk and food warmer. I initially didn't think I would need one of this. But then, since the price was at 75% off Anand justified it's a bargain that will make my life easier.

It didn't stop there, the next buy was the Medela B-well Steam Steriliser. Again, it was something that I didn't want to spend money on as I thought I could put up with the hassle of disinfecting the milk bottles and breast pump parts manually. Anand didn't like the idea of wasting my time doing something that can be done using an already available device. The steriliser comes with free four Medela 5oz milk bottles as well! So, with the 4 bottles from Freestyle set and another 4 from the Steriliser set, I have storage for 40oz of breast milk. At least enough for the next few months.

In addition to all this, he also got for me the My Best Friend nursing pillow. Something that will help ease the strain on my arms while breastfeeding :)

Long post huh? It actually took longer for me to actually decide whether I needed all this. I sure do hope these goodies from Anand will help me stride through my motherhood journey. :)) I am definitely grateful.

Had some time to kill...

... and decided to have these uploaded.

Dessert selection at Eastin Hotel, Penang

My Sprocket Rocket!

Lotus at a Buddhist temple, Thailand

Artisan sculpting Lord Ganesh's statue, Thailand

Close up of the dessert, again.

Copyrights reserved.

Lifetime companion

People may know me as someone who is constantly engaged in technology. I am simply surrounded by gadgets and a whole load of technologies that make these gadgets work in an interconnected way. That's how people perceive I am.

Well, true to a certain extent.

What most people do not know is my appreciation for things that bring me out of from my tech world. I appreciate every little thing there is. Whenever I get the chance to disconnect from my wonderful world of gadgets, I do so oh-so-willingly! The work I do, the knowledge I strive to earn and the skills I try to develop often leads me to my own solo-world - it keeps me away from things that I enjoy - a good walk outdoors after a heavy rain, watching sunset with nothing running in my mind, watch the birds fly, read a good book with a cup of coffee next to me, waking up late hugging someone that I love very much, walk to no where with a good companion. 

These are simple things but they mean a lot to me.

That is why when I got a pen as a gift recently, I was overjoyed. Never has anyone thought of buying me a pen as a gift - never! :) It is such a personal gift that I honestly feel only someone who knows me deep within my soul would be moved to actually go through the hassle of getting a fine writing instrument for me. Like I said, most people would not even had a blip second thought that I would appreciate a good quality pen - something that I can treasure for years to come.

But then, someone finally did! :) It even came with my name on it!

And it's finally mine!

Yes, after much anticipation and going through the agony of waiting for an awesome piece of technology product to be released, I have finally owned Asus Transformer Prime - on the day it was released in Malaysia. The sweet, sweet smell of the Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0 by the way, for the non-geeks out there) is just sublime. 

If you've been wanting to get your hands on one and did not go beyond a demo unit (probably because you were being asked to wait few weeks for a new stock or was not sure this is the tablet for you), I deplore you my friend. I truly am saddened by your fate.

Anyway, to further rub the salt here's a box picture of my new gadget which I named CJ7 (which stands for Cherry Jubilee flavor from Baskin Robbins. Why 7? Go figure :P)

 The box

And this is the real product - designed the way a tablet should be. My CJ7 is in champagne - exactly the color that I wanted. 

So I've been using this tablet for almost 2 weeks now and I simply love it. The camera is just good (8MP at the back), the extended battery power by docking it to the keyboard is smart, the display is just awesome not to forget the Gorilla glass thing. Tegra 3 wasn't much of a remarkable feat but it's nice to know my tablet is powered by a quad-core processor (which basically runs 4 times faster than any other tablets out there). ICS 4.0 is just delicious. MicroSD slot, and most importantly, SD card slot and USB port which means I can expand my storage to whatever space my external HDD supports! Really cool. Really, really cool.

I would recommend this tablet to any photogs and book worms out there. I can finally view my pictures instantly on a good display out from the SD card instead of using my PC to transfer my pictures to the tablet. And I can finally purchase ebooks to read on my tablet. I just love it.

So, is your stomach burning yet? Hehe...

On Gadgets

These past few weeks I have been getting lots of things. Topping up the list are gadgets. I'm a girl with loads of gadgets surrounding me all the time. 

Let me begin with the my Sprocket Rocket camera! It is actually a lomography camera which is something that I have been wanting to own for a very long time! When it finally became mine, it was surreal. So surreal that I am yet to use it because I'm still trying to grasp the fact that I now own a lomo camera! :) Here's a picture I took from the web of my lomo camera. It came with rolls of film as well.

For the couple of months I have been working on a plan for a backpacking trip. The challenge is, I am definitely bringing my Nikon D7000 with me (why wouldn't I?) and I definitely need a tripod. But the Jusino tripod that I have is too big and heavy for me to bring on the trip. So I decided to get a Joby's Gorilla Pod from Amazon.com. Here's a picture of the tripod

I think this is probably one of the best photographic equipment ever invented for people like me of course. It snaps to anywhere, like poles and chairs, etc. Definitely will be useful for those self-portraits for my lonely travels. :)

So this post is dedicated to Puspa (since she wanted me to update something for her reading sake :P)

Introducing my Senshie

An unexpected birthday gift from a friend - Sennheiser HD229. Well, it's about time I upgraded my current earphones and this headphone came as a savior!

I named it Senshie. Loving it very, very much :)

Worth the wait!

Coming soon! *all smiles now*

An app for everything

Today I found an amazing mobile application from Citrix. Citrix Client Receiver for Android. I call it amazing because with this nifty technology my work is now mobile!

I am now able to access almost everything I need to do my work using my phone. I can even remote into and reboot a server from my phone! I can run database queries, approve change tickets, run through my incidents and the list goes on. It's really cool.

Ok, here comes the best part. This application is not limited to Android alone. Those who has Blackberry, Windows, or even iPhone/iPad can use this and turn their mobiles for business use. I find it very useful, because now I don't have to carry my notebook around with me when I'm on-call. I can take care of everything from my phone alone. :)

Here's a picture of a remote server on my phone using Citrix Receiver. It is really awesome.

Now, I have all the reasons I need to get a tablet...soon!