Recipe (During Confinement): 做月必品 – Ginseng Brown Rice Ginger Tea

I kind of forget that this is my all-time favourite during confinement and decide to pen it down in case I can use this for who-and-who’s confinement. Afterall, sharing is caring.

注: 请用 <<泡参>> instead of 人参 as 人参 will reduce milk supply if you happen to breastfeed.

Ingredients:
1 x Ginger
1 x Bottle of North American Ginseng
1 x Bag of 2.5kg of Brown Rice

Note:
You can get the North American Ginseng from Hock Hua Group that cost $20.00 for one small bottle. Normally I use up half bottle of the North American Ginseng for half packet of the 2.5kg Brown Rice. And also, you can use more Ginger(s) if you like some “spicy-ness” in the drink.

Steps:
1. Pour out half packet of the Brown Rice from the 2.5kg bag.
2. Rinse it over tap water and sun it to dry. (Normally I sun it for 1 – 2 days).
3. Slice the Ginger into thin pieces.
4. Then heat up the wok, put all the Ginger in.
5. Fry the Ginger until it’s dry.
6. Pour the Brown Rice in.
7. Stir fry over big fire for 10 mins.
8. Then continue it over small fire for 15 mins.
9. Add in the North American Ginseng.
10. Stir fry it over big fire for 10 mins.
11. Stir fry over small fire for 30 mins.
12. Then, wait for it to cool down before putting it into a container.

For Consumption:
1. Boil some water until it reaches the boiling point.
2. Take 3 Table Spoon of the Ginseng Brown Rice Ginger Mix into the Thermo Flask (approx 1.5litres)
3. Pour in the boiling water.
4. Keep it aside for at least 30 mins before consumption.

Ginseng Brown Rice Ginger Tea
Ginger will repel the wind from the body and Ginseng is to boost one’s energy. Ginseng Brown Rice Ginger Tea is said to reduce water retention, help one to boost one’s energy and quench thirst. And also, after confinement, one can do away with the Ginger to make it an everyday drink. 🙂

Note: One can also add in Red Dates or replace the Ginger with Red Dates (after the Confinement) to serve as a daily drink. 🙂

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2019 Plans

2 Months Down and seems like I’ve not achieve anything. I guess I need a Marie Kondo weekly to declutter my thoughts, decide to plan down what I need to do by end of this year:

• Launch Piggyback
• Followup on Scentimental
• Clear off my bad debts. I will speak about this soon.
• Aim to sell $100,000 worth of items via E-Commerce
• Create a passive income wallet through positive and stressfree channels.
• Create a Parenting Blog. 😛

Seems like I should be looking out at these 6, firmly and with focus and I calculated that if I need 1 million to retire by age 40. I would need to save approx $10k per month.

This amount is doable based on calculations. 🙂

Year 2018

I always thought such post should always wait till the last week of Year 2018. To be written as a form of reflections or reminders.

3 more days to my wonderful 30th perhaps this post will be a prelude to my reborn – Life after 30s.

I guess Year 2018 is indeed a fulfilling year for me. I had went through a roller coaster of emotions, the ups and the downs, the lost and the found. Perhaps I should just highlight some important keynotes.

1. The pregnancy – Earlier this year, I begin to sink into the fact that I am pregnant and had to cope with the thought of the terrible four. The painful part is the progress where I reached a point from denial to acceptance on what the future awaits. The pregnancy was indeed a tough one due to complications but I survived through the network of support.
2. The baby – 6 years after the birth of Rayshirl, I need to restart the whole engine and this time round, on my own and by myself. Thank you to the friends who stood by me and the encouragements that tied me through the difficult moments. Say Yay to curb Pre/ Post Natal Depressions.
3. O-Bye – Tell me about it. The dramas of the bike-sharing companies from the regulators barking on my back (with a pregnant belly) and my personal details released online by raged citizens to the formalization of liquidators. The whole episode set my mind on business management and also, wowed by the fact that I  have the experience to validate a company’s lifecycle within a good 15 months.
4. Career Options. Offers came by and I was at lost to pick partly due to priorities listed out as I finally antagonized by the fact time with kids are something I do not wish to compromise. This is the part where I am at lost and doing some soul searching. Eventually, I picked something but was it the one?
5. Entrepreneurship – I begin to let go on something I had embraced strongly for the past 2 years and went on an unknown pathway.
6. Lifestyle – from cars to none and I finally understand that simplicity is the best key to everything. The way of life is be simple and stay humble.
7. Friends – I made friends who turned out to teach me various lessons in life. I met alot of Entrepreneurs that set the tone of my mindset on managing people. I had spoke and learned to let go of toxic people within my circle.
8. Sharanne – After 2 years of waiting, the transfer to NPS is finally validate and tears wiping on the last day at HIPS taught me that kids are the best investment that I had put in thus far.
9. Family. My sister is finally off the shelves and this year I choose to embrace time spent with family over anything else.
10. The Choice. I begin to understand that a lifetime is a long time and decide that the choice need to be made instead of just sitting on it and contemplate whether is this the right thing to do. However…

I learned and prayed that Life after 30s for me meant Peace and  No Dramas and slowly, finetuned my career and life choices.

I read about how Dragons fared in Year 2019. Sounds like a good year to me. Shall keep my fingers crossed. 🙂

Overthinking versus Depression

I guess it’s always a fine line in between everything. And best, overthink leads to depression.

As an over-comer (if there is ever such a word) of depression, I guessed when I became inactive at work, depression started to kick in. What a workaholic life — which brings me to the next point.

Why did I choose this path? 2017/ 2018 is a bad year of bad decision making.

1. Preggo and no one wants to hire and get stuck in a situation where I can’t seems to figure it out and stuck in the deep shit with all the relevant agencies.
2. Why did I choose to be preggo when I had already kind of restart my life – with the kids all grown up and ready – I need to restart my life in terms of fine tuning to the lifestyle. I need another 7 years to be ready as I need the youngest one to get into a Primary School.
3. Because of Pointer <1>, I speculate that I need to return to the workforce soon enough and again, I guess I will not have ample time to bond with my kid(s)/ recover from the post par tum and once again, my body will be screwed up due to all these. Correction – it’s already screwed up.
4. Pregnancy/ Motherhood seems to be enjoyable from others POV but all I feel that I am suffering – to take care of all the bills, fret over life and etc, all alone.

I need to tell myself, stop thinking for others because no one will think for you. And for the kids, I will pick $ over anything else.

This is my main motive in life and indeed harsh fact of life that I had to choose a career that $ is more important than my own passion. What a joke.

Why can I find someone dependable when I’m at my lowest.

Why is everyone after motive? Why can’t I find someone who shares the same mentality – sometimes it’s better than to give than to receive. No expectations, nothing.

Penning these down to remind myself in near future. Perseverance will get me somewhere one day.

Countdown to see my baby, wipe out my savings 也是值得 (f_ _k the bills) and the depression.

August 2018 – 我会一切从头开始.

37 Weeks

1 more week to 38 weeks and it’s the legit full term of the pregnancy. Looking back, it seems that this pregnancy had made me realised alot in life, appreciating things that I once didn’t bother:

1. Health – Healthy body bags a healthy pregnancy. I got no guts to announce this pregnancy because every single day, I am threading the fine lines between life and death. I had been experiencing STB (short-term bleeding) from Week 7 to Week 35 and need to get certain jabs done every single 2 weeks. Expensive pregnancy I would say but all is well for the priority of #BabySayge.
2. Pace of Life (Time) – Yay. I used to be a fast-paced person and a renowned workaholic but this time round, I take things slow. Thanks to o_Bye shitty management, I manage to take a break on the compromise of money.
3. Wealth – Because I had spent too much on this pregnancy prior to the arrival of the Queen aka #BabySayge, I realised I had learnt alot in this. Rich not in terms of cash but experience and I hope this will make me a stronger person.

The pain had kind of made me too depressed that everything seems to take a negative toll on me but thank god for BFFs, mummies, friends and closed family support that made me walked out from all these.

In the meantime, I will just pray that Sayge will just hang on, as much as I do/ would.

Thirty/ Thrifty Mum

There are a lot of keyboard warriors hiding behind the screen giving judgmental shxts about stuff, tons of stuff.

Yup, turning 30 and this year seems to be a bad year for me. Out of job, weeks before my delivery because the company went into liquidation mode thus every single cents count. I was looking through alot of Influenzers/ KOLs postings on motherhood/ babyhood but apparently, not many would touch on the nodes of many surviving mother struggling to keep the place/ home/ kids/ job together. Challenging to be a lady nowadays man~

So when I turned 30, I realised I become alot auntie-r for obvious reasons. Duhz.

1. Different priorities and needs (I just want a simple life, not a luxury life.)
2. I’m getting old – priority is having more $ for rainy days and etc.
3. I have 3 kids and the economy of scales need to work for me (otherwise I need to wait for the money to drop from the sky, as if huh).
4. Harsh facts of life that the income gap is getting wider – meaning to say, the richer is getting richer but the poor is also getting, challenging. (I refused to use the word, “poorer” because in my opinion, they are rich in other ways. Experience is something you cannot buy.)

So being a mother of soon to be FOUR girls, I had made various choices in life in terms of labour and I hope this really help those who are struggling, like me.

1. CHOICE OF DELIVERY/ HOSPITAL/ WARD

• Okay, IF you are someone who can take high threshold for pain, money is an issue and you do not mind not having a fixed gynae – the cheapest option, delivered at KKH via Natural Birth without Epidural, stays in B1 Ward. Just book an appointment online here (Click the “Book an Appointment” on the right panel) and there you go. You can just end up paying less than 1K+ after Medisave Claims and etc.
• GYNAE Choice – For my choice because of health/  pregnancy complications, I went back to my beloved Gynae who delivered the 3 sisters – Dr Lawrence Ang who knows my conditions better than anyone else. I had c-sect done for the 3 sisters (Do not judge me. I did try natural birth but thank you to my No 1 as I couldn’t dilate after donkey years and thus went for an emergency c-sect due to complications and I can’t look back anymore.) And for your info, his rates are good, competitive rate for a Senior Consultant and also, his clinic is in Sembawang (I stay in Yishun ok?) which is nearer to me. Otherwise, you guys can pick his BFF, Dr Adrian Woodworth who is also on the same par and had clinics at Sengkang/ Choa Chu Kang.
• DELIVERY Choice – Bo bian leh, got to choose the cheapest option – aka C-Sect with Spinal. C-Sect with Epidural is slightly expensive but well, it depends on individual.
• WARD Choice – One thing I like about Dr Lawrence Ang is that, his rates hor, he will charged you for 4-bedded ward pricing but there is an auto upgrade to 2-bedded one. I did stay in single-bedded before and the only pro is that, the baby AND the husband can be forever with you throughout your stay. But LOL, I’m going to see the baby for the rest of my life. That 3D2N will not make a difference to me.
• For the Medisave part – Can claim up to $3,500 and $900 for antenatal expenses (Do bring along all the original receipts upon your admission and the nurse will assist you on the claims for both)
• I will share my final bill with everyone here after delivery but expected to top up cash between $4k to $6k depends on how serious my pregnancy complications. Sighs for my lousy body/ health and me.

2. CONFINEMENT NANNY – YAY OR NAY? (SEE OPTION 3 IF U WENT ON A NAY).

Okay being a mother of 3 and had experienced confinement for 3 times, I guess I am seasoned enough not to engage a confinement lady. A NAY FOR ME. That 3K plus to engage 1x confinement lady hor, I can put it for better use like buy stuff for the girls and etc. But of course, if anyone in the family can help you to look after abit, is a bonus – like my mum/ family members/ extended family had always kept a lookout for one another. And in the past aka the ancient days, where got people engage confinement lady? They look after the babies/ the whole kampung by themselves.

The only shit thing that one needs to do is that; follow the strict confinement rules. Here’s mine:

• Shower with the Confinement Herbs. You can get the herbs from Eu Yang Sang/ Hock Hua or those traditional medical shops and just ask for Da Fong Ai 大风艾. Otherwise you can check out Carousell or purchase the herbs from JB, Malaysia (Price is definitely cheaper). I bought a 31 days worth of herbs because I had intend to shower almost everyday. The keyword – intend. If my mum happens to see this, she will slaughter me alive but well, I think hygiene is way more important.
• Eat alot of Ginger and Sesame Oil. I intend to airfry Old Ginger as Chips before my birth and add into every single shit I eat for confinement. LOL I will share the recipe and etc in hopefully my next post.
• Drink alot of Ginger/ Long Gan + Red Dates Tea. The elderly says, drinking water during confinement will cause water retention and thus cannot drink water during the confinement, instead drink alot of ginger/ long gan + red dates/ dang3 sheng1 water. For me, I stock up Taiwan Jiang Mu Tea + Taiwan Long Gan + Red Dates Tea via Qoo10 here and also bought the dang3 sheng1 water combi from the traditional medical shops. Lastly, I had stocked up this cordyceps + ginseng bottle similar to bu3 yao1 jing1. AND my mother gave me alot of D.O.M. Again, for cheaper option, can carousell/ ask friend to buy from taiwan/ airfrov or buy from JB, Malaysia.
• Wear well. – socks/ long pants and etc. I bought alot of nursing wears from Qoo10 and Carousell sia. Cheap and good. 🙂

3. CONFINEMENT FOOD DELIVERY.

Another option is that if you are not engaging a confinement lady, you can consider ordering a 28-days confinement meals. For me, as I am a vegetarian. I only had one choice that’s from Nature Veg. I did order their trial meal to try and guess what, the portion is scary that I think I can eat the same shits for 3 meals. So as of now, I decided not to go without the ordering of confinement meals and cook on my own (See Pointer 2, Point 2 – Eat alot of Ginger and Sesame Oil.) because:

1. I am a small eater. I eat like a bird and NOT particular about food.
2. Save the money. Look at the cost of the engagement.
3. Improved my cooking and thank god for the invention of double boiler/ slow cooker and etc.
4. I can use this time to improve my cooking. And I had prepared alot of recipes to go with for my 28 days. 🙂 I will blog about this real soon kays. 

Perhaps I might change my mind if I decided to put time into better use. But well, as of now, I shall keep it as it is. And my mum did say one cannot always touch the water. Looks like I have someone to prepare my ingredients and wash the dishes. =P

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Afterall, even if I engage the confinement lady/ meals, after my 28 days of confinement, I will still need to be on own what. So doesn’t matter. I bathed my 3 girls since they are a teeny tiny little bub.

And hor, if I can save near to 4K plus if I do everything on own leh. Of course, got help is a bonus but 天时, 地理, 人合 is not with me right now. I can do it. 🙂

And for the others essentials for myself/ baby – I got it from Qoo10/ Carousell/ Baby Fairs/ Online Promotions. Great Singapore Sales for the win. For baby clothes/ items wise, I am good with preloved from family (Thank you Aurelia. :X) and BABIES OUTGROWN THEIR CLOTHES DAMN FAST.

Good to have a network of supportive family/ mummies and friends.

Thank you to those who had lend me a helping hand thus far and give words of encouragements. Staying positive is important. And ta-da, I spent near to 2 hours to blog this entry sia. Going to continue my packing of the room and some admin works.

Till the next post. xoxo