Monday, December 30, 2013

Swimming like a Fish

Although Ryan has always wanted me to stay through his hourly swimming lesson, I have often opted not to, because the indoor swimming pool tends to get rather stuffy and hot (even in winter) since the pools are heated and I always ended up with a splitting headache after staying there for 30 minutes.

Ryan doing a backward flip into the pool for me to take this picture...

He was his usual self, asking us to stay behind after dropping him off at the pool for his lessons. Since my wife and Chenya came along, we decided to stay to watch his progress. After all, this would be his 58th hourly lesson since we started him off one year ago with Mr Lee, his coach. We knew that Ryan has learnt much and came a long way but seeing him swim that evening was simply awesome.

The moment he changed into his swimming suit and had his cap on, he jumped right into the adult pool. His coach was already there waiting for him. He put Ryan through some simple warm up exercises in the pool and then sent him off to practice his breaststroke, which was the very first swimming style that Ryan learnt.

Ryan coming up for air as he did his breaststroke ...

I sat there, watching him swimming from end to end of the pool, each lap measuring 50 meters. Ryan is a small size boy and it is rather cute to see his tiny frame floating across the pool with his tiny head, popping up every so often for catch his breath before it disappeared again into the water ...

I started to count the number of laps that he is doing while his coach urges him on, screaming instructions and corrections, to make sure that his technique is right. Second, third, fourth, fifth and so on. I started to realize that the coach is now not just ensuring that Ryan knows how to swim but having the right technique to swim the breaststroke to maximize speed, as if he was being trained for Olympics. To my disbelief, he actually swam TEN laps of 50 meters each continuously without stopping. That was an amazing 500 METERS for a 5 years old boy. I can't even do three continuously but then again, I can't swim!

Then, after a short breather, he was put through his paces with his free style and then his backstroke, all of which he demonstrated with such ease and little difficulties.

Ryan doing his freestyle ....

Ryan doing his backstroke ....

It has always been our dream to see our son swim like a fish and whenever we see a child swim the entire length of the pool, we wish that Ryan could do the same. Sitting there, that evening, I realized that our dream has been realized. There he was, swimming the entire length of the pool, not once but ten times, and not just in one style but three.

Finally, the coach took Ryan through his paces on his most current technique, the butterfly. Although his timing and his coordination is still not exactly right, I can see his determination to learn and to master it and that was exactly, what his coach sees too.


"He is a very determined child. He does not have the physical strength but his mental strength is amazing." Lee shared with us.

Ryan with his coach whom he adores....Lee

Well, Ryan, as parents, we believed that this is one of the best gift that we have given you, apart from all the toys that you have been receiving...the skill to swim like a fish, a skill that will last a lifetime, a skill that we hope will strengthen your self confidence.

A Tree For His School

Ryan's school had a Christmas party just before Christmas and the school closed for the Christmas season recently. Parents were invited and were requested to bring some food or drinks to the party. We were scratching our heads as to what to bring for the party. I am definitely not one into baking and hence baking Christmas cookies was definitely out of the question. We were thinking of buying some fruits but we were uncertain as to what fruits we should be buying and who is going to cut it for the kids. Moreover, we were quite certain that there would already be fruits at the party.


Then, the idea of presenting the class with a Christmas Tree and some ornaments came upon us. We made a quick call to the school as to whether that would be OK. They more than welcome the idea.

We believe that the tree would be a more 'lasting' gift because they could use it for several years (hopefully) and it fits in nicely with the theme and festive period of the season.

Ryan, Mommy and Chenya enjoying their snacks ...

Hence, we rushed back to the vendor where we got our own tree. She was too happy to see us when we told her that we wanted an exact tree and four boxes of shinny ornaments. My wife, of course was the negotiator and by the time, she finished with her bargaining, the vendor (she) and her were practically best of friends. The vendor was an equally shrewd businesswoman herself. I guessed that they finally found someone to match their wits and crossed swords and were happy and satisfied at the end of the day.

The children taking part in the unpacking the tree ....

The children at the class were all excited when they learnt that they were getting a Christmas Tree. Ryan, of course, was running up and down telling everyone that his mommy and daddy were the ones would bought the tree and he has one similar one at home. Everyone took part in the unpacking of the tree and took turns to put up the ornaments with some help from the teachers and some parents.

"Now, how am I going to organize this and get them to work together without fighting ??????"

All in all, it was interesting to see how the children came together to get it done without crashing the tree, and helping each other out with the taller children decorating those parts of the tree where the younger ones could not reach.

With them putting up their ornaments, the tree somewhat became `their' tree and that sense of belonging.

The children all taking part in putting up the ornaments to decorate the tree ...

We actually suggested to the teachers if they could just get each student in the class to write their name and year on an ornament and put them on the tree, hence, leaving behind a mark that they have been there before. Over the years then, one could see all the children who have had a hand in decorating the tree every Christmas as way of remembrance.

Ryan with Jeff, the Santa Claus and Grace, two of his favorite teachers in the world right now ....

I certainly hope that our little gift has somewhat made this Christmas more memorable and exciting for Ryan and his little friends in his class.

Thursday, December 19, 2013

Putting Up The Tree

We will be spending Christmas this year in Beijing and I certainly hope that it would be a white Christmas. The temperature has already plunged below zero but snow is slow this year. However, Christmas is still a week away and there is hope yet.

I packed my 7 foot Christmas tree from Malaysia when we shifted over to Beijing last year and we opened up the box to put up the tree last year, we  found that the stand for the tree was damaged in the shifting. Hence, we have not tree in Beijing last year.

The new Christmas tree that we put up this year in Beijing ..

This year, since we are staying put in Beijing for Christmas and no Christmas is complete without a tree, we went out to buy a new one. We were told that they were much cheaper here but we have no idea how cheap they really were until we got ours. We bought a new 5 footer with fiber optic lights, just like the one we had, for only RMB150 (RM75)!!! I remembered that we bought ours back in Malaysia for RM400 (RMB800) at a special discount and we had to drive all the way to Petaling Street to get it!


This would be the first year that Chenya could help in decorating the tree and she had fun, both helping and fighting with her brother while helping of course. Daddy was busy in putting up the ornaments while mommy was busy with the camera (or busy figuring out how to use the camera).



We also bought a Christmas wreath to hang on our door for the very first time. I have always wanted to buy one and hang on our doors for so many years but they were so so expensive back in Malaysia that I could not bear to pay the price to buy one. After much bargaining, of which my better half is pretty good at, we managed to get one that we like for a steal. Only RMB70 (RM35)! 


In fact, when Ryan had a Christmas party in school last week and we were asked to contribute some food, we contributed a similar tree instead of food, so that the children could put up the tree and hang up the ornaments themselves. And the tree can be used for a few years to come and we told the teachers that it would be a cool idea to get the kids to write their names and year and hang it up on the tree. Hence, over the years, they can actually see ornaments belonging to different kids who have been to that class previously.

More of that and pictures in the next post.

Tuesday, December 3, 2013

Ryan in The BeijingKids Magazine

The much awaited December 2013 issue of the Beijingkids expat magazine is finally out. We have been eagerly waiting for it because Ryan would be featured in it, promoting a Northeastern Chinese cuisine restaurant known as Liulaogen located at Dongcheng District.

Ryan featured promoting a Northeastern Chinese cuisine Restaurant in the December 2013 issue of the BEIJINGKIDS

He was invited by the magazine to be photographed, promoting this restaurant last month, after we wrote in with pictures of both Ryan and Chenya, informing that we would be glad if either one of them could be given opportunities to be used as models for their magazines. Our sole purpose is to provide them with the commercial photography exposure and experience.

I did not think that the invitation would come so fast but came it did, one month later.

Well, I must said that Ryan was a super easy child model to work with because he was just super friendly and obedient on set and did everything that was asked of him, without raising a fuss. On top of that, he actually enjoyed tasting the food that was put before him and that made the photographer's job so much more easier.

He was enjoying his food so much that the writer wrote in her column "During the shoot, our photographer had to stop to let the model finish a piece because he found it "too yummy to concentrate on the camera."

It was certainly a `First' for everyone at home. Hopefully, he would get more invitations in the future, not so much for the money (that would be good too) or the free stuff (I would not mind having any of that) but more so, for his own personal exposure and experience.

Monday, December 2, 2013

The Legend of Kung Fu

As far as I can remembered, Ryan has always been interested in kung fu and has been demonstrating and posing with his self taught moves in a lot of his pictures as far back as when he was only two. He was agile, flexible and above all, focus and passionate for the art.

Ryan, his friend Slevin and his head coach posing with the performers on stage after the show 'The Legend of Kung Fu'

Hence, as I have posted in one of my earlier post, we wasted no time, in registering him to one of the Shaolin kung fu classes for children his age when we finally found one bear our place. He has been practicing and learning his Shaolin kung fu for a couple of months now and had learnt quite a number of impressive moves which include his signature eagle, tiger and snake stance, all of which he is just too eager to demonstrate whenever he has a chance. Chenya is picking up her kung fu `moves' too, imitating his brother, watching from the sidelines.

Ryan going through his kung fu moves during training every Sunday afternoon.

His head coach seemed to have a special liking for him and at times, pushed him to practice with some older kids or used him to demonstrate some moves to the younger ones, all of which Ryan was just too please.

Ryan with his kung fu stance, taken during our holiday trip to Club Med Bali in 2011. We had always wanted him to learn wushu properly. Little did imagine, that he is now learning Shaolin Kung Fun in BEIJING, CHINA!

Recently, his class organized an evening to watch the well received 'The LEGEND OF KUNG FU' performance at the Red Theatre in Beijing (www.redtheatre.cn). Ryan was over the moon. Honestly, so was I as I have always, always been amazed with the`seemingly super human' feats that this monks could do. It was a family affair. We got special discounts for our seats and only had to pay RMB260 (RM130) for the RMB325 seats and it was 90 minutes performance.

Right from the word go, Ryan was sitting at the edge of his seat, eyes glued to the stage as the monks of all ages, leaped, jumped, somersaulted and `flew' with amazing flexibility and ease, occasionally yelling in recognition, some stance that he could identified with... "Tiger!!! Monkey!!! Eagle ...!!!"

Pictures from The Legend of Kung Fu website

The show was spectacular both as far as the stage production is concerned as well as the high quality of performance from the performers, bringing forth the message of the true value and meaning of practicing kung fu, their quest in training their body likened to rock and steel, as protectors of peace.

And where was Chenya in all this? Silently being cuddled by her mommy, hanging on to her trusty napkin, her thumb comfortably in her mouth, and her eyes peeled, constantly on a lookout for performers dropping from the ceiling or coming out from the side doors.

They must have been impressed by the performance. Why? Because I caught Chenya that night, smiling and with her eyes still closed, laughed and yelled "Very good (in Cantonese) and clapped" and continue sleeping.

And Ryan? He now inspired to be as good and wants to be able to break a metal bar over his head!!!!!! Not wanting to disappoint him, we told him that he could do that in due time and he need to practice harder and eat more to build up enough muscles and strength.

I just found out that they organized special tours to visit the Shaolin Temple. Emmmm...that would sound interesting, don't you think?   

Sunday, December 1, 2013

I hate the word ACUTE

There is one word that I fear the most here in Beijing. And that dreaded word is ACUTE.

Why? Because, every time, both the kids fall sick and when we bring them to the hospital for treatments, this dreaded word will almost always appear in their diagnosis.

It seemed that everything that they were infected here were ACUTE.

Both kids enjoying some rare moments, playing together without fighting and quarreling. Ryan was pretending that he was on his high power motorcycle, bringing Chenya for a ride.

With winter kicking in recently and temperature plummeting from high 30's during summer to sub zeroes in winter coupled with strong chilling wind, the entire family has been under the weather for almost two weeks now.

Both the kids are back to school today after over two weeks of coughing, diarrhea, vomiting, fever, running nose and more coughing. Daddy and mommy were not spared either. Both of us were also done with fever, coughing and diarrhea.

At first, Chenya came down with diarrhea and was diagnosed as Rotavirus. Before she recovered, Ryan was down and while both were recovering, both mommy and daddy were infected. When both Ryan and Chenya finally recovered from their diarrhea, Chenya caught the flu bug and was down with fever. By then, Ryan came down with a nasty cough and fever. 

He was first diagnosed with ACUTE upper respiratory infection. By the second day of infection, his cough got worse and was `barking' like a seal at night, leaving everybody with very little sleep. We brought him to the hospital again and this round, we was diagnosed with ACUTE laryngotracheobronchitis or CROUP COUGH! We were warned that the virus is infectious and air borne. We were worried sick because the last thing we wanted was Chenya coming down with it, especially since she is only two. We had to split up the kids in separate bedrooms since just to make sure.

I just hope that the worst is over and that we could now get through the winter with less drama and hopefully enjoy our very first WHITE CHRISTMAS here in Beijing.

"Dashing through the snow, In a one-horse open sleigh...
O'er the fields we go, laughing ALL THE WAY! .."


Sunday, November 17, 2013

First Anniversary in Beijing

The temperature has dropped drastically over the last couple of weeks and the wind has picked up significantly. As I took a walk at the park of the apartment where we stayed, I noticed that the leaves have turned yellow and a little orange and the path were strewn with withered dry leaves, signalling that the Beijing harsh and chilly winter is at hand.

Leaves had turned yellow and orange as the temperature drops and the wind picks up. Autumn is almost over and winter is at hand.

While trees are perpetually green back in Malaysia, living in a country with four different seasons in a year is indeed interesting, seeing leaves, turning yellow and orange, withered and drop off as winter sets in, covered in layers of pure white snow, which soon melts away as spring comes on, followed with blooms of colorful flowers and fresh young leaves signalling rebirth leading to a hot and humid summer. And soon, before you realized it, autumn is here yet again for another cycle of life ....

As I pull up the hood of our winter jacket, I vividly remembered this almost exact scene about one year ago, when we have just relocated to Beijing. Yes. 6th November 2013, marked the first year anniversary that we have been here in land of our ancestors, a place that I have never in my wildest imagination, thought that I would be visiting, let alone stayed and call home. And yet, here I am, still alive and kicking after one year living in a land where the inhabitants have a totally different culture, where shouting at the top of their lungs and being LOUD is NOT rude but merely to ensure that they are heard, where the streets are considered public dumpsters for convenience to spit upon and the best way to cool down body temperature during the hot summer is simply to roll up your shirt, exposing that mid section called belly.

Please do not get me wrong. I am still perpetually SHOCKED, almost daily when I read the local newspaper or tuned to the local TV stations. News where pork are injected with water to appear heavier, woffberries are dyed red to appear more inviting, god knows what meat were apparently sold in some local wet markets to pass off as pork, beef or lamb are just some that kept me constantly weary when I go about doing my marketing and shopping.

If you heard that the rich here can get away from almost anything, well, you are right. This is a land where MONEY almost literally TALKS. News of an owner in Haidian, building an entire rock formation and garden, complete with ponds and posh dining halls on top of the roof of their apartment, where they occupied the penthouse, totally disregarding the safety and convenience of other occupants was just the tip of the iceberg of what these super rich would and could do in fulfilling their ravish lifestyles.

This is also a land where you can get anything copied, and even the big famous YELLOW DUCK that makes her way round the world was not spared. One day before she arrived in Beijing, we already had one almost similar swimming in a lake somewhere. Anything and everything is possible here. They said that when there is a WILL, there is always a WAY.

Strangely though, I have begun to love this city of which I have made home. I have learnt to ignore the loudness, or maybe my own volume has began to drown out the rest and I am not sure which is which. I have learnt to pay attention when I walked on the streets, constantly on a lookout for those who display the slightest inclination to have the urge to clear their throat. I have learnt to accept that cars are meant to be driven as close as possible to the next in order to get ahead but they will never collide because someone will always give way at the last dying moments. I have accepted the fact that almost all taxi drivers spot the same hair cut and behind that grumpy look, are actually rather pleasant people to start a conversation, even in my stammering putonghua.

I have accepted the fact that education for children will cost you an arm and both legs (YES, both legs or should that be both arms and legs!) and a fifteen minute consultation with the doctors for a simple running nose and cough for the little ones (after waiting in line for 2 hours at the ER) will set you back as much as RM750!

Moving around has always been our first initial concern when we arrived. I sure miss my car back home and the freedom to drive to any destination at anytime I wish. The talks of how difficult it is to hail a taxi during peak periods especially with little ones and how unsafe it was to take one of the many illegal taxi were quickly put to rest, when we befriended a group of illegal taxi drivers who have now become our permanent pool of drivers, ever willing to drive us to whichever destination we desires, wait for us should the need arises without us having to worry about direction or car parks, and it is still cheaper than hailing a taxi back home in Malaysia.

China is certainly a huge country and very diversified culture and landscape, rich in history and dating back several thousands of years. So rich and diversified is she that it would take several life times to see and appreciate all she has to offer, and among all her lovely attractions, I have started my love affair with one of her most awesome, the GREAT WALL OF CHINA. In my last 12 months, this magnificent structure has both bewitch and intrigue me, so much so that I have constantly been a look out to see more and more of her.

They said that kids will adapt easily and they are right. Both Ryan and Chenya have adapted well to their lives in Beijing and have both achieved some significant milestones individually here.

The children has made progress too in the last twelve months. While Ryan had always refused to speak Mandarin or Cantonese while we were in Malaysia, he is now able to hold a conversation in Putonghua with almost anyone on the street. Chenya's daily addition of a new Putonghua word to her growing vocabulary is astounding and almost always, shocking to say the least, because they were always used at the most appropriate time and situation.

Both have adapted well and Ryan in particular is so into his school and his teacher that not going to school is a sad moment for him. Chenya on the other hand has just started going to school and as expected, is a challenge every morning.

If there is one single achievement that we will always associate Ryan with his stay in Beijing, it would have to be his ability to swim now like a fish, thanks to the lessons that we have signed him up for and his very dedicated, not to mention rather handsome trainer. With 40 hours or so lessons under his belt, he swims faster and better than me in both breaststroke, free style and back stroke. He is now half way learning his butterfly!

Lastly, living in Beijing has also brought more quality family time. Instead of just spending weekends, walking around aimlessly in shopping malls like we used to do back in Malaysia, our weekends are spent traveling, walking in parks and boating whenever the weather permits, or simply lazing around at home.


We have one more year to go according to our initial plans. Whether or not we will extend our stay on is still uncertain. However, one thing is certain. We are now looking forward to the coming winter, getting ready to welcome the snow and snow fights, the short but refreshing spring and the places we could go during the next summer. We are drawing up plans to ride horses on the vast grasslands of Inner Mongolia, hike up the beautiful sites of Juizhaigou or a skiing holiday up on the mountains, or attend the ice lantern festivals at Harbin, or should we be making a trip to visit some of the interesting minority groups down at Yunnan, but then, why not hike up Huangsan, the most beautiful mountain in China. Wait, should we not visit the famous Shaolin Temple but it would not complete without visiting Ermei San or Wutong San right? Decisions, decisions decisions... So many places, so little money and so little time....Like I say...it will take several life time to see it all ...For now...I am looking forward to the next 12 months!

Thursday, November 14, 2013

2013 Halloween In Beijing

We can definitely feel it this year as Halloween approaches. Unlike back home in Malaysia, where Halloween was only celebrated by a handful, parents here, especially coming from the States were already busy preparing for their children's Halloween party, trick or treating and celebrating weeks ahead. There were loads of bright orange pumpkins  stacked up at the grocery shop at the apartment where we stayed (nothing of course compared those we found when we were in USA last year where pumpkins were everywhere and the entire Disneyland was celebrating Halloween).

As the fever of Halloween picked up, I was tempted to try my hands to make this Halloween a little special for the little ones - carving our very first Halloween pumpkin. I have seen so many such carved pumpkins before and always wondered how difficult and messy it would be to carve one ourselves. However, I was hesitant, not knowing whether it will turn out right until the very last night before Halloween when I finally took the plunge and went out to buy myself two medium size pumpkins. But I was still unsure how to get started and what is the best place or resource for information? The internet of course. Armed with some basic knowledge, I told the children that we would do it as a family project. With the images I wanted to do in mind, I drew the outlines on the pumpkin, cut off the top and told the children to dig out the seeds with a metal dinner spoon.

Me and the kids goofing around with the two medium size bright orange pumpkins I bought before we started our quest to carve our very first Halloween pumpkin.

First step is to have the initial design I wanted to carve and trace out the outline on the pumpkins.

Being totally immersed in the experience is the most important key to carving out a successful Halloween pumpkin and I am sure you could see how `immersed' I was in the process ....

Ryan, deep in concentration, digging and digging, working very hard to spoon out the seeds of his Halloween pumpkin.

I had to wait till both the kids were asleep before I could start the real carving because I knew that I would never be able to do it in peace and with the consideration, especially not with two very eager `assistants' bugging me. Once they were in lala land, I took out a small sharp carving knife and a little thin saw and started out my quest.

Two hours later, I have two rather impressive carved Halloween pumpkin staring back at me. I was rather pleased with myself.

The final masterpieces ....The ones on the right and the left were those I carved on the first night. The middle...that is a different story ...

I must said that I outdo myself this year because I did not stop at two. We registered ourselves to participate and attend our apartment's Halloween's party and we were given another two pumpkin as part of the goodies. I had to carve one more and since Ryan would be dressing up as BATMAN to his school's Halloween party, I thought that I would be rather cool if he could bring an EVIL BATMAN HALLOWEEN pumpkin to school. 

The evil Halloween Batman .....

Ryan has a new costume this year. His mommy bought a new costume for him during her recent visit to the States. It was Sulley from the Monster Inc. movie. Chenya was not left out in all this. This would be her first Halloween, one that she could participate (since she was too young to remember or participate in the first one when she was one year old). Mommy got her an extremely cute red and black Ladybird costume complete with a very attractive head gear.

Mommy goofing around with her two most favorite characters of Halloween, Sulley and the Ladybird



As much as we love the Sulley costume, Ryan very much prefer his Batman costume and insisted to wear that for his school Halloween's party as well as the party held by our apartment. He only wore the Sulley costume at home for some pictures and a short while walking around the park.

One of the lobbies of our apartment turned into a Halloween party grounds, complete with hanging pumpkins, spider webs and creepy spiders.

The party at the apartment was packed and all the children came out in full force, all dressed in their cute and some, rather scary costumes. It was a night where little Iron Man fought with Spiderman, Superman holding the hands of Cindrella and Batman was seen having fun with some witches.

Mommy with the two superheroes of her life, the Batman and the very cute Ladybird

Our pumpkins on display .....

"This pumpkin is MINE ...."

Batman striking up his pose .....

Our Batman surrounded by pretty ladies .... I definitely need to dress up as the DARK KNIGHT next year ...

It certainly was a fun night for the children and an exhausting one for the adults, but a definitely an interesting Halloween for me.

Tuesday, November 12, 2013

His First Commercial Photo Shoot

Ryan has always been photogenic even when he was a little baby and with his easy disposition, he basically can get along with almost anyone (except with his little sister most of the time, although most of the time, it is no fault of his).

He was once spotted by a talent hunt when we were still in Malaysia at KL Hilton just before we left for China and as requested, we have sent in his details as well as some pictures of his to them.

So, when we are in Beijing, my wife actually wrote in to BeijingKids, an expat family magazine to express our interest to have our children do photo shoot for their magazine if there are any opportunities.

And to our surprise, they actually replied and asked us to sent in some sample pictures and details. I sent in for both Ryan and Chenya and we got a call last week that they were interested to have Ryan do a photo shoot, to promote an upmarket family friendly Chinese Restaurant.

We were definitely excited since this will be Ryan's first commercial photo shoot. When we told him that, he was excited too and told us to give his hair a trim to make sure that he looks NICE! (He actually told the hair stylist to cut it to make him looks nice!)

We took him from school earlier, get him to have an afternoon nap, ensuring that the gets enough rest and off we went in the evening to this restaurant for his shoot.

The staff writer for the magazine turns out to be a real looker and Ryan as usual was in his element, chatting her up in no time and holding her hands like he has known her for the longest time.

When it was time to do the shoot, they laid the food before him, told him to relax and enjoy the food and looked up to smile at the camera. AND he actually enjoyed the food!! We have so much trouble getting him to eat anything at home, and here he was, in his sales and marketing element, selling himself, giving thumbs up for the food, saying how nice and delicious they were.


The photo shoot was over in 30 minutes because he was so so so ready to smile and pose and do whatever the photographer asked him too.


It was a good experience for both us and him. He has done HIS COMMERCIAL PHOTO SHOOT!!! And we are looking forward for more to come, for his sake. Do we have a model and star in the making????

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Cook with Love

For those of you who have been following my adventures as a parent, you would have known that I actually learn to cook after my wife had given birth to Ryan (now 5 years old) during her confinement months. What got me started were two confinement recipe cook books and I remembered faithfully following the ingredients in those recipe books to the letter.

Over the last 5 years I have developed a passion for cooking and coupled with my passion for photography, I am obsessed with the thought of making sure that my food looks delicious and tempting to start with. I love to cook but I must admit that I DO NOT have the discipline required to be a good cook. I, for one would and could never remember or even bother to record the types of ingredients and their measurement that I used to whipped out a dish. Hence, I always have problems trying to tell or teach others how to prepare a dish that I have just cooked because I could hardly remember what I had just dumped into the pot nor how much I have used.....

I get bored cooking the same dish over and over again because there is no challenge and above all, nothing interesting to photograph. I am always game for a change. Anything visually stunning excites me and hence, my wife always know that I would order something visually attractive whenever we go out to dine, not bothering whether the food is going to be delicious or not. Yes..I am a sucker for good looking food. That is because I am curious to see how exactly these professional chefs laid out their creation.

 This is one example where I ordered this dish earlier from a Yunnan restaurant. I have always had challenges on how to plate an eggplant dish and since my mother in law adores eggplant, I got tired of cooking the same egg plant dish over and over again. So, when I saw this dish at the restaurant, I ordered it immediately and over the next few days, I went out to buy me some eggplants and attempted my version. The result was oven grilled eggplant, stuffed with stirred fried eggplant with minced pork meat and Chinese mushrooms and red chillies with Chinese cooking wine of course, topped with chopped chives and Chinese parsley leaves. My wife said that this is even better than that at the Yunnan restaurant ! I am a happy man!

To me, cooking is an adventure. Gone are the days when I would follow a cook book by the letter (although I still do when I run out of ideas to cook). Most of time, I would just buy something that I fancy, conjured up the taste I thought I wanted as outcome and picture the dish being presented in my mind. Other times, I would just open my refrigerator, and plan what I wanted to cook based on what I still have left in the fridge.

 This is a dish where I roughly know what I wanted to cook yet had never attempt before nor do I have a recipe for it. I wanted to cook a mussel dish in premium soup (something rather popular back home in Malaysia in restaurant like LaLa Cheong) yet I have absolutely no idea what the ingredients are. Cooking is an adventure and being innovative and creative. I roughly knew what taste I would want my dish to come out as and I made used of some of the ingredients that I have left in the fridge, such as some left over lemon grass and lemon. The final product was mussels cooked in thick spicy and sour lemon grass soup with lots of black pepper and red chillies to provide the extra kick I needed. To thicken the sauce, I add some corn flour and whipping cream for colour. I am not even sure whether I am using all the right ingredients to get what I want but I got WHAT I have set out to prepare. Verdict: My mother in law whacked every single mussel that is left and even kept the left over soup for her next lunch!

I am not one who could cook every meal because once cooking becomes a daily chore, I will loose interest and the desire to cook. I see cooking as a escape from my mundane daily routine, something that I could exercise my creativity and at the end of the day, a sense of achievement and satisfaction with a nicely taken picture of that creation.

 This is one dish that I have been cooking almost two to three times a week for Ryan since he absolutely adores salmon. The only thing that keeps me interested with this dish hence, was to see what other sauce I could use to accompany this dish or how else can I better present this dish. Here, I made a horseradish sauce based on a recipe I found on the internet (Thank God for internet!)

Above all, I think I cook with a sense of love for the those that I am cooking for, wanting them to enjoy the same journey that I have taken in preparing them, when they feast upon the food before them.

 One of my wife's favorite is scallops and I have always been on a look out on different ways to prepare a good scallop dish. I used to bake scallops with Japanese mushrooms and Japanese mayo but I have got bored preparing that dish. I wanted something different and instead baked these lovely scallops that we found at the wet market near our place in Beijing, simply with some Chinese cooking wine, sea salt, black pepper and minced garlic topped with finely chopped chives for color. If you cook with love for the one you love, you would constantly think how to better yourself with fresh ideas to surprise them and in the process, learned something new.

Prior to this, I always thought that cooking is something beyond me. But if I can cook (and only started to do so when I was 45), so can you, as long as you cook with LOVE for the very ones that you LOVE.

Am I a good cook? I seriously do not think so but one thing I do know, I can cook, I love to cook and I love to cook for the ones I love. Bon appetit!