Staying put

Since we couldn't go to my parents' place, we stayed put in the apartment.  The kids missed school the next 2 days.  If I thought my maid Jane could help take care of things.... she wasn't even leaving her room haha.  I was tending to the sick kids and the sick myself.  But can't complain also, she did come out to cook meals.

It was actually rather relaxing not to leave the apartment at all.

All of us got better and on Thursday the kids resumed school, albeit still with sore throats.  I resumed working from home.  So peace in the morning (Jane happily staying in her room), Jane cooking around noon, JE coming back for lunch then SE around 3pm.  SE had to be watched like a hawk for homework:

Kakak making sure homework getting done

And sometimes I would return from a toilet break to this:

 

Now how shall we reply this email

My car would end up in the workshop 2 weeks.  I kidnapped my parents' car since they were obviously not needing it.  Good timing also that everything happened at the same time!

Streak of happenings

The Monday 27 June started well.  For dinner we celebrated a belated Father's Day with food ordered in:

1. Crispy duck to be rolled in popiah skin with cucumber strips, spring onion, hoisin and chilli sauce
2. Braised pork trotters to be sandwiched between lotus leaf pao with fresh lettuce 
3. Chicken and beef satay with cucumber and onion

Food turned out good and was a nice change from our usual.

Duck, pork, chicken, beef... and friends

SE hadn't been well and she wasn't looking well that night though, so decided to take her to the clinic shortly after dinner.  That's when it started.

I drove a few meters and my car stalled.  Kept trying, the engine would start and immediately stop.  Luckily we were still outside my parents' house and everyone was still there.  We managed to push my car to the side after a few tries and my brother drove us to the new clinic below our apartment.

Poor SE was already sick.  With all this plus the wait at the clinic, it was an hour before we got to see the doctor.  Finally we got the meds and walked back home.

Kiddo getting sick - pic from the weekend before

Reached our apartment and.... the dining area lights went out.  Both the most frequently-used lights must blow at the same time?  Sigh.

Fed SE the meds from the clinic.  JE didn't look too good either so checked her and... FEVER.  Sigh.

In the middle of that night, both me and our maid also started feeling unwell.  Sigh.

The next day, both kids weren't well enough for school.  Kept them at home.  I made arrangements to have my car towed to the workshop.  Took medical leave (but had to attend a long meeting in the afternoon).  Sick day for all four of us.

That night, my mother tested positive for Covid.

The following day, my father tested positive for Covid.

So many things happening at the same time!  My parents were relatively fine but it would be 10 days before my father finally got a negative on the Covid test.  It was pretty certain they caught the virus from a dinner they attended the weekend before.  SE tested negative all this time.

Bit sick

When SE was not feeling well and not going to school for the day.  I went swimming in the morning and made her bring a book to read (she doesn't quite like reading yet).  Brought her a snack also.

Oh if you look closely, she also brought along Piglet, placed in a cup.  So she was pretty happy.

Read and crunch my snack

Ahmm

She has missed a few days of school recently.  Guess we should all resume taking Vitamin C - I make the fizzy 1000mg version and share the drink with my two girls.

1 Utama again

For the same holidays (yeah I must have forgotten about posting a while hehe), we also went to 1u.  What used to be a perfectly regular thing we did on weekends, has changed to become a special occasion due to MCO!  This was without hubby who isn't up to going out to malls yet.

And JE was wearing something that's not black!  She actually picked this dress for her birthday.

 

Girls in green 

SE found some of Mole's relatives and cuddled them.

Aww.  Cute

The girls love cotton candy, don't know why.  I keep trying to brainwash them that it's just sugar fluffed up, with an teensy amount of colouring and flavouring.  But since I'd already made the effort to take them out for the day, bought a container for them anyway.

Cotton candy is Yums!!

And for lunch, we tried a new place - Big fish small fish.  There are so many outlets in 1u and we always go to the same few.  Well we did enjoy lunch but there's such a thing as too much fried food.  So we decided "been there, tried that, no need to revisit".

All kinds of fried stuff

JE wanted to take a photo with these Genshin Impact characters.  Apparently the cup sleeves with these characters are very limited and popular.

No cup sleeves, photo also can

It did feel good to be going to 1u again. Of the few places on my list though, some have closed down for good.  Top of the list would be Cookies & Coffee -  miss getting to stuff freshly-baked cookies into a bag, sigh.

Ice-skating at Pyramid

I didn't get round to posting on this one earlier.  JE had been asking to go ice-skating so we eventually went during the Raya holidays.  They forgot something and I was let in to pass it to them (without paying the RM5 to officially have access to that area).  Quickly snapped a pic.

We need to get our skates

Then I went out to the main area to wait. And wait. And WAIT.  I was getting antsy as each session was only 2 hours and we'd arrived half an hour late into the session as it was.  After a good 25mins, the two princesses finally appeared on the ice.  

Oops fell down

I thought they might remember a little from their previous session, and not be so scared, but no.  They crept slowly around the rink holding on to the side.  And fell every few steps.  Hahaha.

Creep creeping along

Oh well my job was to take them ice-skating and that's what I did.  I went away to walk around the mall and came back, and each time they were either not on the ice or creep-creeping along.  Still, they claimed to have enjoyed the session.

After that they did some window shopping.  Hmm my girls are growing.  They used to check out toy stores, now it has changed to clothing stores.

How would this look on me?

Well I have to say I'm bored looking at clothing.  After some time, the mummy started making noise to want to go for lunch.  Reversal of roles haha.

Checked out K Fry, a place that used to have super-long queues before MCO. 

Cooking the cheese to wrap the fried chicken

Huge watermelon bingsu

The girls were a bit grumpy as they were tired from the skating.  

At the beach

Pantai Remis is only a few minutes' drive from our accommodation.  It hardly qualifies as a beach though, consisting mainly of rocks.  We made do with the scarce patches of sand.  Oh this creature looks rather cute...

Strange creature spotted at the beach

A close up.  Oh it has a tail.  Cute!

Close up of strange creature

Disappointingly this beach wasn't happening with stalls and activities around like there are in Sekinchan beach.  Anyway there wasn't anything left on our agenda so we went again the next day.

Tiny bit of sea and sand

SE busied herself doing something with seashells.  Finally she unveiled her 'masterpiece'...

PIGLET!

Haha.  Spot the little white face of the toy.

After this beach visit we went back to our accommodation to chill until it was time to check-out. Lovely holiday!  I must check out where to take the kids on holiday next.

Food n firefly

One of the things I was looking forward to in Kuala Selangor was seafood.  When we finished the nature park though, it was raining (thankfully after holding it in the whole morning!).  So in the interests of time and convenience and to the delight of the kids, our first lunch in KS was... McDonald's.  No pics of this meal obviously.

Luckily managed to have a seafood dinner at "Grandma Restaurant".  Although apparently Waze thought it would be funny to lead us to the opposite side of the river from where the place actually was, with no way across except by stealing a sampan and rowing ourselves.  

It took a while for our orders to be taken, but after that food arrived fast.  Food was pretty good - ordered lala clams in superior stock, nestum squid and kangkung belacan.  JE liked the drink of lime assam boi.  More so since she'd assumed we would be drinking plain water haha.  Well I don't normally buy into the idea of sugary, over-priced drinks!  Unless it's special and lime assam boi qualifies.

SE liked drawing in her book

After the wrong turns and whatnot, we couldn't make it for the firefly tour I'd booked.  But it was fine, they had a later trip.  

On our way to see some fireflies

Hmm it was boring actually.  I'd gone for this many years back with my parents, that time I remember enjoying the sampan ride in the night air where we were rowed by humans.  THIS trip was by motor boat which isn't fun.  There were plenty of twinkling fireflies in the trees by the river.  We drifted along for 10 mins then headed back. RM90 for this - RM25 for adults, RM20 kids.  Oh well, at least the kids had tried this now.  We went to a nearby Speedmart for drinks and snacks before heading back to our accommodation half an hour away.  Smooth end to our first day at KS!

The next day lunch we made our way to Grandma Restaurant again (totally patting myself on the back for the smooth drive this time) only to have the operator inform us they were closed for repairs.  Checked out a few places which were only open for dinner.  Finally ended up at this unassuming place called Hong Eng.  The Thai-style squid on crunchy kangkung turned out fabulous!  I would almost purposely come back just for this dish.  The other dishes of salted egg mantis prawn and braised pork with yam were decent.

Hmm quite yummy