Esther celebrated a low-key 18th birthday at home, due to Covid situation.
But she received lots of food and drinks ordered by her friends and family:
David prepared good salmon and steak for the dinner.
And we had watermelon after dinner.
After a random Facebook post about a Malaysian lady (Baizura Muhammad) having worked out a recipe similar to Famous Amos cookies, we tried our hands on it.
Round 1: 20 May: First try, we made them too large… but they tasted good. Without chocolate chips, we crushed cashew nuts instead.
Round 2: 23 May: Better now. We used Lindt 70% Cocoa chocolate (cut to chips from the bar), expensive stuff!
We gave some to friends, neighbours and Yan.
Round 3: 2 June: We made 2 portions in one go. Save electricity.
Lots of cookies, about half given away.
We bought through EZBuy Xiaomi hair-clipper (and a fake Kenwood hand-mixer) in early-May, but they arrived only on 29 May 2020. Just in time to cut hair for school re-opening on 2 June.
That’s Joseph’s before and after.
YowCH’s did the barber duties.
And that’s Samuel’s before and after.
Somewhat more experienced after working on Joseph first.
Samuel’s church meeting, big group on Zoom.
We watched the Michael Bay Transformers movies, and took out the toys for Samuel to have some fun.
We did some home improvement works (in this case adding a shelf to Esther’s table), but the drill spoilt. YowCH opened it and found that the problem is the electrical direction switch, with the forward drive spoilt and the drill only works in reverse. So YowCH shifted teh wires around to make teh drill work in forawrd, but no more reverse now. Replacement part is too expensive and not worth the money.
YowCH received a cheque from Prudential for $500.00, benefits for having served Quarantine Order due to Covid. Good pocket money!
Another BCG meeting online.
The whole family recorded another church choir session (David was conducting and doing the filming on the camera). We had 3 good takes, but about 12 bad starts, mostly with us laughing due due to Samuel’s behaviour.
Esther also contributed to the church Youth Service worship.
Samuel doing church activities online.
We contacted our friends, the Lims, in Melbourne, Australia, to catch up with them in this Covid period.
We still drove the Odyssey around, mostly sending and picking Grace as she is working daily at KKH. But the roads were quite empty and we had great fuel efficiency, covering more than 600km in 1 tank (55L) of petrol!
Things in the house keeps needing maintenance, the plug point plastic broke, and YowCH had to buy the part (the box against the wall) to replace it. The face was changed about a year ago.
YowCH bought a sound mixer for Esther, to let her have better mixing controls for the worship and other musical recordings.
Joseph built his Gundam robot.
YowCH had to visit his construction site prior to the planned worksites re-opening on 2 June.
We picked up an old light cover that a neighbour thrown away, and it serves well as a Bey Blade arena.
Grace and YowCH went out to buy some food, and picked up the government-issued “improved” masks on 30 May.
We did many rounds of siew yuk (roast pork belly). So far, not successful in making the skin crunchy. But the taste is good. Mostly by David and YowCH.
Round 1: 6 May 2020.
Round 2: 7 May 2020, made the wooden frame to support the meat to allow oil dripping.
Round 3: 15 May 2020, made more at one go, save electricity.
Round 4: 26 May 2020, made a tool to try to rupture the skin, didn’t work.
In the Covid lockdown period, we planted some tougeh. It was Joseph’s idea. Only needed 4 days.
Must keep in the dark to prevent bitter taste. Joseph helped prepared them.
Tasted ok, but rather skinny.
Here’s Samuel having a class meeting, from home.
Grace made many face masks for the family to use once the lockdown ends.
We had our cell-group meetings on-line.
The family also recorded songs for the church virtual choir.
This song is Jesus Shall Reign, and YowCH, Grace, Esther and Joseph participated.
We also had mahjong time. The children loves the game.
Well, Samuel wasn’t ready, and Grace took over.
Gene ordered some nice burgers and such for YowCH’s birthday on 6 May 2020. We ate over video conferencing with Grace’s parents and Gene.
On 7 May, we had dinner at home, and had video conferencing with YowCH’s family.
Our food photos are here:
FOOD!
We will update again in June.
On 1st May, we celebrated YowCH’s mom’s birthday with a lunch meeting. We bought lots of good stuff from Morganfields
We also ordered yam-cake in PJ and had it delivered to mom (via Chee Kean).
In the evening, lead by Esther, we made the tapioca flour balls for bubble tea, using gula melaka.
Tastes ok, but lots of work for a small thing, not worth the effort.
Our sub-woofer died earlier and YowCH spent some time to remove the parts and salvage the case and the working speaker. The case is now a seat for wearing shoes (and also a cajon) and the speaker is up on Carousell for sale.
Grace made nice covers for the cupboard in our room.
Here’s Esther helping Samuel with his church activities.
