25 (random) things about me

25 Things

Rules: Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it's because I want to know more about you.

1. My real name is not Linda. Holly molly such an ice-breaker! Well it's not like that. My name is Maria Yulinda but I always go by with Linda - since the day I was born. That is what my parents have been calling me all of my life. Though it's not always easy explaining it to people - and sometimes I just can't be bother. In fact I let my now-husband-then-fellow student called me Maria until we started dating.

2. I think I spent too much time studying. I did degrees in International Relations, Marketing and International Business -- only last year I decided that what I really really wanted was to be a graphic designer, so I did another course. Yet when I finished I ended up setting up my own business in baby online shop, specialising in baby t-shirts & onesies with quirky & personalised designs. I do all the designs though. Check it out on http://www.lollipopbaby.com.au (shameless advertising!)

3. My favourite actor is Audrey Hepburn and my favourite movie is My Fair Lady.

4. KFC is my comfort food.

5. I get bored easily. And I am getting a bit bored now....

6. Okay. Focus. I can't hold a tune at all, but my son is the best singer. He started humming twinkle twinkle little star since he was 12 months old. He still can't pull a string of sentence at the age of 23 months but he sings a lot. He opens his mouth the minute he opens his eyes in the morning and closes it when he closes his eyes at night but this note is about me, not about him so -- moving along..

7. I can say "I am sorry, I don't speak (Italian/English/Japanese/Chinese/French/Hebrew) language' in those languages. I said it to an Italian in Rome one night when I was backpacking in Europe, unfortunately he went on and on after that (and no single word was understood by me, since I didn't speak Italian, of course).

8. The most drunk I have been was on New Year's eve 2001. I was in Madrid, at a party of my Spanish friends' friend which I didn't know, passed out on a lounge next to a spew. I have never been drunk like that again in my life. Although it was still the best holiday in my life!

9. I would love to sky-dive and I have been nagging my husband to pay it for me for my birthday/christmas present. He said he'd give me one when he doesn't love me anymore.

10. My current ringtone is 'all the single ladies if you like it you should've put a ring on it o-o-o'

11. When I was quite young I climbed a tree and couldn't come back down.

12. When I was a girl, my hair was so long it reached my waist. I had it cut to bob when I was 13 years old.

13. I taught myself how to create a website -- check it out on http://www.lollipopbaby.com.au (shameless advertising #2)

14. I won the 'social butterfly' award in college.

15. I had my first crush when I was 6 years old.

16. I love my beauty sleep. I still need 9-10 hours sleep every night - doesn't mean I get it these days.

17. I am a coffee snob. My husband and I-- that is. We'd go to a cafe and the coffee has to have a right temperature, right density of milk and right amount of foam. Sounds bad but it's just like someone who doesn't like japanese food or korean food, we just don't like bad coffee.

18. Shamelessly, even though I am a coffee snob, I admit that I can't cook. My secret ingredients are the ready-made-sauces you can get at the supermarket.

19. I used to exercise regularly, at least twice a week.I hadn't really been into it since I was pregnant, but now I am getting back to doing bikram yoga and hoping that it will continue.

20. I love what I am doing but working from home makes me feel lonely sometimes.

21. The first concert I have been to was Jason Donovan. Eeks!

22. My parents live in Indonesia, two of my siblings live in Indonesia, I live in Melbourne, my other brother lives in Sydney and another one lives in Japan. We also have become quite a multicultural family.

23. Is it only 23? Aren't we there yet?

24. I thought Prince William was gorgeous, until he turned 20 and started to look like his father.

25. I have been enjoying wasting my time on this. I love procrastinating!

"the invitation"

I was a bit grumpy this weekend but this beautiful poem "the invitation' by Oriah Mountain Dreamer puts me into perspective.

The Invitation

It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for
and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me how old you are.
I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool
for love
for your dream
for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon...
I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow
if you have been opened by life’s betrayals
or have become shrivelled and closed
from fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy
mine or your own
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us
to be careful
to be realistic
to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me
is true.
I want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself.
If you can bear the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty
even when it is not pretty
every day.
And if you can source your own life
from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure
yours and mine
and still stand at the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,
“Yes.”

It doesn’t interest me
to know where you live or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up
after the night of grief and despair
weary and bruised to the bone
and do what needs to be done
to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me who you know
or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
in the centre of the fire
with me
and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom
you have studied.
I want to know what sustains you
from the inside
when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone
with yourself
and if you truly like the company you keep
in the empty moments.

O Come All Ye Faithful

I am 'lulling' people to sign up for Lollipop Baby newsletter. Starting next month I am going to start randomly throwing some project freebies in our newsletters that you can download and print and use . Most of them would be related to babies, such as gift tags, party invitations, etc, given the nature of Lollipop Baby business. Here is a little teaser on what is going to be in the newsletter next month.

If you like it and would like to get a high resolution pdf of these postcards which you can print and send to your favourite people, you can sign up by clicking here. Don't forget to let your friends know as well!

There are some new baby t-shirts and onesies design on www.lollipopbaby.com.au -- please come and visit!

Happy Valentine's day!

Hope your day tomorrow is full of love, lots of kisses and hugs! Please spread the love on Valentine's day and release your positive energy. We all are in need for that.

Make a Smilebox greeting

I was crying in the car this afternoon listening to a montage which a radio put together for the bushfire appeal. People have been calling on phone in their studio all day to pledge money for helping the people affected by the disaster and all those who have been touched by it. They called on behalf of their companies, their organisations, their families, their kids (because when something like this happened, you realised how precious they are)...
Some people called to say thank you for the generosity and that we didn't know how much it meant for them.
Some other people called, crying - telling the audience that the weekend was the worst weekend of their life, and that they saw everything they had disappeared before their eyes - their home, their cars, their family...


My heart just goes out to them. And all the beautiful heroes out there and so many of us who are offering their hands to help. We just don't know how precious our lives are until you get a wake-up-call like it.

Grumpy

Oliver and I must have gotten up on the wrong side of bed today . It's one of those day when I just want to stay curl up in my bed instead of running after Oliver trying to 1) change nappy 2) put clean t-shirt on 3)put his shoes on etc etc.

He just got very quirky behaviours, that boy is! For one, now if we are going out, he gets very very worked out about it and runs around the house when I try to do all the above. He loves to go out and my theory why he runs around the house naked (and big loud whinge comes with that activity) is that he just can't wait to go out. And the more I chase him the more whinge comes out because obviously, instead of opening the door and step out the house, mum is wasting time by chasing me around!!!

These days he tires me more. His energy just makes me feel so tired. And so old.

In or out?

It's very hot in Melbourne today (and for the rest of the week -- 40 degrees days are coming!). We stayed home all day mainly because the air conditioner in my car is not working -- I just couldn't do that to Oliver. Whenever we went out in hot days he always came home sweating his face off sitting in the back seat.

I exhausted all my parenting skills and creativity by the time my husband got home. Funny enough. I remember reading something somewhere only last week about there are two types of parents. One who likes to go out with their children because they think it's a hard work to keep them amused for the whole 10 hours their children up, and one who likes to stay home - and happy to stay home and keep their children busy at home.

I never really thought about it but I think I must be fallen in the first category. Before Oliver was born, I used to get bored all the time if I have to stay home. I love going out. I love seeing things. Even if I ended up just going to the mall to kill time.

Then Oliver came along. And it is so much easier to stay home sometimes. Not having to worry about what snacks to bring, or try to work around his mealtimes and naptimes. Nor have to worry about keep him well behave and not running off the street when we are going for a walk or pulling things on the shelves at the shops.

But the problem with that is, off course, trying to keep him happy and content for the whole day. I found that if I stayed home all day, I started ignoring him by doing my work at the computer. Having only set up my online business, I spend so much time in front of the computer - I always try to steal some time to work when he's up, although he doesn't always let me.

So that's why we go out. When we are at the park or at the music class or any other activities, I am all his. No distraction. No computer (I can't really work with him around anyway), no dishes to wash, no clothes to dry (yay! I like this arangement *cheeky smile*)

And he is happy. And I am happy too because I don't steal my time with him. And he'd go to sleep happily. And then I can sit here and work on my computer. Or facebooking. Or blogging for that matter.

Have a look at my works on www.lollipopbaby.com.au

O at the park

...and we're back!!

After about ehmm six months of a little glitch, we're back in business (meaning I am back in doing the blog!)

I am blaming it to, of course, motherhood and a growing toddler and growing needs (and growing tantrums I should add).

Over the past year I've finished my graphic design course and proudly started my own business. After months of works in designing the website, it's gone online 'officially' early this month on http://www.lollipopbaby.com.au

Lollipop Baby label offers baby t-shirts and onesies with quirky and personalised designs. As I was telling people I'd like to think of my designs as 'sweet and colourful' as lollipops yet funny and quirky as our babies can be from time to time.
I was having so much fun designing these designs and hoping everyone else woud find them exciting too! *finger crossed*.

As with Oliver, he is growing like a speedy bullet. He's a delight with his cheeky attitude and antiques, and there isn't any dull moment with him. Here's a sneak preview!

teletubby in the backyard

Baking with Mama

Now that I have got my replacement camera and finally my new laptop, you'd think I would update my blog and website more regularly, right? Wroooong.. as i am too busy to be a mother of a toddler who (officially) toddles like a teletubby now (and needs 24-7 supervision) and also too busy playing around with my new toys.

My husband gave me the 'bla bla bla' last night and I told him there wasn't any point to update them anymore since no one really looking and he said no one really looks because it has been rarely updated. Yeah right.. which comes first, chicken or eggs?? Hehehe..

Anyway..  Am working on the website updates. Will let you know when it's done. 

been wanting to get an ornamental Buddha for the pole at the backyard - found the perfect one!

ATTITUDE!!! (alias kelakuaaan...)

"never again" always came out from my mouth after outing with Oliver but mostly after we go shopping. What a stressful time!
Today not only he refused to sit on the stroller (which is an old story), but he also insisted on pushing his stroller (so I pushed from the top and he pushed from lower - he only walks like this, hasn't been able to walk unassisted but I have to admire his persistence!) and refused to be taken away from it, but then ran away when he saw toy section at Myer, and started pulling all toys with wheels (and imitating the 'brrrr' 'brrrr' sound as things falling out of the shelves!!). Isn't he growing!

Olivers twist

*My sitemeter reports every week show that quite a few people visited my blog every week. Which is intriging , given that I have not updated it as often as I should -the visits might have been more random than not. Anyway so I thought I should make more effort, so well, I hope I keep it up :D*

Had yumcha this morning and saw this very tiny baby in her capsule and thought about the first time we took Oliver to yumcha. He was only 4 weeks old and we put him in his capsule on the floor in the corner of the room. I remember thinking that I had conscience about putting him on the floor . Now I sometimes wish that he was that young again and we could just put him in the capsule and we could enjoy our meals!!



Oliver knocks on the door when he wants to get in now. He also waves bye bye, points at planes flying in the sky, plays car toys like a big boy (pushing it along the floor and making the brrrr brrrr noise), BUT he also started to throw tantrums, throwing everything off the table (not good when this involves food), not wanting to sit still in his stroller, throwing things away (have I mentioned this??) and waiting for me to pick it up so he can throw it away again, and if I refuse to do it he would try to jump off wherever he is in, either it was the high chair or his stroller..


How I wish they come with a manual! The thing about being informed (as you do nowadays with the abundance of imformations) is that the more you know, the more paranoid you are about something.
Last saturday we had dinner at Scott's colleague's place. They have 2 kids - the eldest one, three and a half years old, apparently suffers food intolerance. 1 in 4 children in Australia apparently has food intolerance in some degree but the only way to find this out is by elimination diet - which is a bit tricky and require a lot of commitment (as if you haven't got enough on your hands!). Predictably, we went home convinced that Oliver must have had some kind of food intolerance.

Enough about Oliver.

Started my graphic design course this week and guess what - not only I was the only girl in the group of 5, but I was also the oldest by far (one of them is still on year 11!)! Our first module is drawing, and when the tutor asked if anyone liked to draw, there were only 4 who raised hands. Guess who didn't!
So far so good though, even though I have to say we are only on the stage of drawing perspective - not sure what's going to happen when we start drawing objects & humans.

That's it for now. I've got some hilarious videos of Oliver to be posted so keep watching this space!!

Favourite thing

blast from the past - oct 07

My hubby: "Do you know what my favourite thing in the world is?"
Me: "Me??"
My hubby: "Close enough (grrrrh). it's the sound of Oliver's laugh "

isn't it sweet??

one for the boys!

Mooloolaba blast

We just had a nice holiday in Queensland. Two weeks in the sun. And beach. And water. Oliver got cold and had snotty nose all the time (still do) but doesn't seem to bother him. He & dad spent a lot of time in the surf, also playing with the sand (and eating it). Mama & Dad got to have great coffee at the cafes within walking distance from the apartment, and went out a few nights while letting Oliver fall asleep in his stroller. Poppy & Nanny even came and visited for a night and we had very nice meals at the restaurant in the marina - best calamari I have ever tasted. Judith & David, our friends from NZ who now live in Qld also came and visited for a night. Had a very delicious Tibetan dish for dinner.
The apartment Scott rented at Mooloolaba is on the 7th floor, overlooking water everywhere. It is so closed to the water that I had trouble sleeping the first few nights because the surf was so noisy (Hehe.. you think it's funny but the surf was very rough those nights it felt like tsunami blazing from the window and louder it was because our bed was facing the ocean and we slept with the window open). On the third day I nagged Scott to find me a chemist so I could buy earplugs :P -- I didn't use them though, I swear! Not to mention that Qld refused day light saving which means sun is up at 4.30am and they use the skimpiest materials for the blinds & curtains that they don't even block any light. What's the point, guys!!

pictures pictures pictures

Apologize for being slack - very busy months we had last couple of months. With Oliver's first Christmas and Oliver's christening and travelling to Orange (9 hours drive, try that with a 9 month old!), and meeting the whole Bradleys family for the first time and having my mum & dad came from Jakarta, my brother & girlfriend from Japan and my other brother from Sydney, who would have time to sit in front of the computer and updating this space.

Anyhow, so much things happened, as I mentioned before, with first Xmas (Santa did come to our house!) and big Christening celebration and so on and so on... I can only tease you with the pictures for a time being before come up with the whole story - eventually!

Enjoy!
http://home.exetel.com.au/bradley/baby_album/my_pictures.html

Where is Oli?

Well, you might like to click it bigger to see if you can find Oli :P

Also, we took this video this morning and it's just too good and too hilarious not to share. While we are on the topic of sharing, the ninth month album has been uploaded on the website: http://home.exetel.com.au/bradley on the baby album.

Baby einstein

This is our little buddha enjoying baby einstein dvd. This phenomena has only started a few weeks ago, during which I put him in front of the TV because I was just so tired seeing him jumping up and down and climbing and crawling - and there is no way I could get him to sit for 5 minutes although you can tell he really needed it.

I have heard so much praise about this baby Einstein. Lots of mothers swear by it, not so much because of its educational claim, but they are saying that the only time they get time-off is when they put the babies in front of the television to watch it. I heard some mothers said that their babies eyes are fixed to the television and not moving an inch when it's on.

New research actually shows that all these development & educational dvds do not making the babies smarter. No surprise to me. I personally think it is a waste of money and the dvds look so much like brainwashing that it makes me sick. The idea of the Baby einstein was to tell a story from a baby's point of view, plain and simple. Interactive puppets and images of toys, children, and other everyday objects comprise the basic format of these videos, which are set to the sounds of classical music. Hence the metronome ticking for half a minute, a cow moo-ing for another half a minute, a ball rolling back & forth for another half, water rippling for another half... you get the point. And it all was produced in the low-budget style production. I was happy that Oliver wasn't interested in it

So all the dvds that I bought because I was lured by other mother's testimonial, and the classical music cds which is said to stimulate their little brains were a waste of money for us. But then all of the sudden it changed. We were driving in the car for quite some times and he started to whinge, as he does when he is a bit buggered, so I put the Baby Einstein lullaby on -- all of the sudden he got mesmerised and got those dreamy eyes and bingo - he was asleep!! We tried it on again on different occasions and it was like magic.

So I put on the dvd just to test it. And voila.. amazing.. he stopped whatever he was doing, and sat still for the whole show. Which is very unusually him.

The funny thing is that Cara, the little girl from the mothers club apparently has been enjoying the baby einstein since she was 4 months old, while Oliver only just picked it up. How bizzare, maybe this really shows that boys brains develop slower than girls!

The Undomestic Goddess

The big tree in our backyard was loaded with beautiful yellow orange fruit, come in cluster and tastes nice and tarty like apricot. After a few trial and errors and no one got poisoned, we found out it was loquat. According to our research, firm, slightly immature fruits are best for making pies or tarts. The fruits are also commonly used to make jam, jelly and chutney, and are delicious poached in light syrup. Loquats can also be used to make wine.

Wazza thought that we should make jam and I felt compelled in doing it, because they just got rotten in the tree otherwise. But let me make it clear from the start, I never thought it was a good idea. And it turned out to be the most ambitious project I have the whole year. Obviously, my kitchen brain is not as big as my kitchen bravery. And believe me, I haven't got any satisfaction in doing it.

Right. So, first of all, we need to find out how to make a jam. Hmm.. mr. google makes it sound easy, just boil the fruit til it's very soft, add some sugar and the pectin -hang on, what? With a little assistance from mr google (how did we survive without internet?), we revealed that we can purchase the thing (it's a thickening agent actually, for the jam) at the groceries stores. Piece of cake. I couldn't find any jam jar anywhere but it's not a biggie either, I could always use old jars in the pantry, only need to sterilise it before putting the jam in (this part sounded a bit tricky as a matter of fact).

You would not believe how much sugar is needed for a jar of jam! I bought a package of 1 kg sugar, thinking that this would be plenty.But the recipe said 2.5 kilograms!! Eeeek.. My creative mind decided to portion down the recipe - this and the fact that pitting 1.5 kg of loquat (according to the recipe) took forever.

3 hours of boiling the fruit later, they are still not soft and Oliver and I had to go to our gymbaroo session. Oh well, the jam can wait...

As soon as we got back from gymbaroo, I picked it up where I left off . But during the period where the recipe said : "bring to boil vigorously and stir occasionally for 5-10 minutes" Oliver woke up and screamed on the top of his lungs! so there you go, no stirring occasionally.

The jam turned out to have too thick consistency, taste too sugary (and I only used half of the sugar!) and... smells like chicken stock (Mppph... this is because I used the jar that I previously used for chicken stock).

Now update on the boy. He's turning into little rebel - and not even a teenager yet! changing nappy is fighting session now, so is bedtime. Rianti said there are times where you need to wave the white flag and admit defeated, but in my opinion, there are times that you need to be 'stepmother' and these are the times. Doesn't really work though, he still gets his way most of the time.

helping mama with the laundry? I don't think so.