Ikan Nun dan Nabi Yunus

Bought Baby K a new VCD. Currently watching it on repeat, just the two of us. Love is still in class.

The movie was fun. The graphics are not that bad. Khaira loves the song. RM 19 was worth it.

I learned a lot from the movie too.

Considering my expectation on islamic vcd has gone quite low, I rate this 5/5. :)

Braces and retainers

After what seems like a looonggg painful 18 months of my life, I finally had my braces removed!

Love said I'm gonna miss them.

WRONG!!

I can finally eat whatever I want! I don't even like chewing gum to begin with, but knowing that I couldn't have it for the past 18 months, I had one recently. FREEDOM!!

Removing the braces was easy. No pain, no sensation, no weird taste like when you had your braces on. Just easy.

But the thing is, the glue they used to hold your braces stayed even after they removed the braces. Even scaling is not able to clean it off entirely. I plan to throw another visit to scale them one more time.

I was given a plastic retainer. Which gave me so much pain at first but getting used to it now. Had to wear it day and night for 2 years. But I just used it at night.

Talking about retainer, there are three types of retainer:

Hawley retainer

Clear retainer

Fixed retainer

I left the decision to my dentist to decide which is suitable for me, he chose clear retainer and so far, I'm happy with it.

My thoughts on braces: If your teeth are almost perfect, forget it. It hurts.. BIG time. Trust me. Every now and then, I was cursing those who said pakai braces tak sakit. Grr..

But the results, totally worth it.

On a different note, I am removing some of my old pics, those times when I haven't started wearing yet. So, please do pardon me for any inconveniences. :)

On the broker fee

They said the best teacher is your experience.

I couldn't agree more.

Before I invested big.. I bought 2000 units of shares for a trial run.

Little did I know about the brokerage fee. So let me explain to you a little bit on brokerage fee..

It's actually somewhat like a service fee to your remisier/broker. Every company has different charges. As of TA (the ones I'm using), it's 0.7% per transaction but minimum charges at RM42. When I said per transaction means that RM42/0.7% when you buy and another RM42/0.7% when you sell.

What I'm gonna share from my second jual beli saham:

1. Be very patient. Buy the shares when the price drops, not according to rumors or prediction. I bought mine when the price was quite high because I predicted the price was going up as days passed by but it dropped a couple of days after I bought mine.

2. Bare in mind on the broker fee. It affects your break-even especially if you buy in a small amount. For example I bought mine at RM 1/unit  × 2000 units = RM 2000. To break even, we add with the broker fee RM 2000 + RM 42 (buy)  + RM 42 (sell) = RM 2084. Which makes the break even RM 2084/2000 units = RM1.04. Meaning you can only gain the profit after the price of the shares increase more than RM 1.04.

Whereas if you buy more, eg. 6000 units, break even is RM1.014.

3. Set the percentage that you want to gain the profit and don't be greedy. My target was 25% clean profit, but I sold mine at 7% clean profit in less than a month due to the fact that:
1- Bought it at a quite high price.  To wait for 25% profit will need a long time.
2- The break even factor
3- A little bird told me the price is gonna drop soon. I know I said don't trust in rumours.  But shares is a high risk investment. Anf if you're not a risk taker, I wouldn't suggest you to proceed with this.

All the best, friends. I'm waiting for the price to drop for my third cycle. Doakan!

Happy Raya!!

It has been a wonderful Raya this year. I submitted my hardbound thesis 10 days after viva, so this year I took a very long Raya break.

I started my raya leave on Monday before Raya where I pampered myself with facial and body scrub at my favourite Seputeh Kapas spa.

Tuesday and Wednesday, we were busy cooking for Raya.

Then four days of non-stop eating.

And I am still on leave today and tomorrow.  It's laundry day today and tomorrow I'll be out settling the banking matters. Such wonderful day.

Selamat hari raya to all my readers. Maaf zahir batin from the bottom of our hearts.

Khaira's progress on flash cards!

I guess it's been a while since I last talked about Khaira ♥

She's doing well in her flash cards thingy. Despite of my hectic schedule, I still try my best to teach her hijaiyah everyday.

Along the way, I almost gave up on teaching her. Her progress was not as I expected. I guess Al Furqan method was not suitable for her. I mean, she super love the song.. but there's no stickiness factor. It just doesn't stick.

She would remember her Aa, Ba, Ta today and got confused between Ba, Ta and Ya the next day. Even counting the dots didn't work for her.

When BFF Sumayyah ordered Al Barqy for us, I tried the method with Khaira. The way to use flash cards are the same, but the letters you introduced to her differ. The first four combinations..

On the first day I taught her, she already memorized two out of the four cards. And even when I showed her the letters not in sequence, I just randomly picked between the four cards, she already knew which is which by day three.

On day 7, I managed to capture this.. :) *Watch her video on youtube there.

As of today, she's still progressing very well. She can differentiate the Ba, Ta and Ya. Ja and Ha. And I am ever so excited to take 5 minutes of her day to teach her all these.

There are ups and downs in teaching our little ones of course. But the ups make everything worth it. Happy teaching, mommies!!

The loss of Cory Monteith

If you've been following my blog for quite a while, you'd notice that I'm a huge fan of Glee.

I was not a big fan of Finn Hudson aka Monteith. I'm in Jesse's team. So I wonder why Finn's death had a profound impact to me.

You see.. Monteith was found dead, alone in his hotel room where the autopsy confirmed the cause of death was excessive alcohol and drugs. He was struggling with his addiction for years.

It was unbelievable. A healthy looking young man with a quarterback sort of body.. who would have thought.

At the moment I'm writing this, one of my closest friend was struggling with drugs and alcohol him/herself.

And I of course was not at all equipped to deal with it. Other than accepting him/her as who he/she is (probably the reason why he/she came clean to me and only me..) I'm pretty much as clueless as you are on drugs and stuff.

People can be rebellious. I never told him/her to stop. But by showing him/her enough love over the years.. I hope it'll help him get over them.

But the passing of Monteith made me wonder.. it's obvious how much love and support Lea Michelle provided him on his addiction but the addictions were still there all along. And to tell my friend to stop altogether might lead to a risk that he/she will never tell me the truth afterwards.

Sigh..

RIP Cory Monteith.

The day I passed my PhD viva gracefully

Alhamdulillah.  I am surely a blessed servant of Allah SWT.

That morning of 8th July, god knows how many butterflies wander around in my stomach, I arrived safely at the viva place an hour before my viva. Greeted by a good friend, Kak Husna who came for the moral support.

One of the external was already there! I was not ready for a small talk with my examiner, but I ended up with one I'll forever treasure.

While setting up the slides, BFF Sumayyah surprised me with her little boys. Came all the way early in the morning for me!! At that point, I told myself.. I must do this. For everyone around me.

With the 2 Ms

15 minutes before viva started,  my friend Sajaa came. At this point, everything I read became just some blurry lines. She told me to recite Al Ala instead. I did and felt good afterwards.

I began my presentation with full confidence. One of my external fell sick on the day, he just sent his report and the chairman decided to proceed. At that point I know that for that external examiner, I already passed with minor correction. Otherwise they won't proceed with the viva.

And when I presented with my full of animations slides inspired by Love, I knew I had the second external examiner. You just knew the look of awe. Later when I was done, she said, "the slides were too beautiful that I immediately forgot what to ask you."

Right after presentation, the chairman opened the floor for general questions. The external gave me only 1 question and 2 from my internal examiner. The questions were very minor. Then, I know I had this.

Taken by my supervisor during viva when they went through the thesis page by page

Specific questions were very minor too. My viva was done in an hour; thats a new record.. the fastest so far. With very minor correction to be done in a week. Normally they gave 60 days. Just to show how minor it was.

5 minutes after viva taken by Kak Husna, was trying to call Love to tell him the good news

 

Right after my viva, a good friend, one of my mentor asked me to come to the pantry where he.. I repeat it's a he.. baked a cake for the first time in his life for my viva. It was perhaps one of the best carrot cake I had in life.

More lovely friends came..

And met some more for our pre celebration at Nando's.

So now I'm struggling with my correctionns. And I guess I'm the happiest person in  planet earth who was about to be awarded as a Dr before I even turned 28. Alhamdulillah.

My gratitude goes to my supervisors, my hubs for the continuous support, my daughter, my parents and family, my lovely friends and to everyone for the doa of which without it I myt not be here today. Alhamdulillah.