Assoc. Prof. Dr Rachel F. Mansa

The salesman called me yesterday and when his name appeared at first I was surprised and wondered who this person was. Then a chill ran through me cause it dawned on me that my car was here. Oh my God! Thank you. Thank you. I am just so excited. I could not stop screaming. I will be able to drive my car by this Friday. Can you believe it? My car is 2 months early. God must love me very much. I thank him for His grace over and over again. I am so happy, I am over the moon about this. I am thinking of my new car registration number. I think I found the perfect one. Hopefully I get it. We shall see. Everything is done. The loan agreement has been signed, the downpayment cleared, insurance set and lastly the car registration number. Oooh. I am so happy. Come to mama baby rush. This news came to me on the eve of my PTK exam. How did I manage to concentrate in studying. I tell you eeet wuzzzz veeerry ard. Ha ha ha ha. I just kept on repeating to myself if I do not want to suffer paying for t...

Frying chicken wings and blanching kailan Good morning, friends, panel judges and countrymen, lend me your ears. I think everyone here would NOT say no to a “fried chicken wing”. It definitely taste “finger licking good”. However most of us are aware that it has a high amount of oil content which is bad for our health. Excess fat consumption can contribute to obesity, coronary heart diseases and perhaps some types of cancer. This brings my talk to certain points that I do not think you know. Did you know that the action of frying chicken wing not only make it safer to eat, taste and smell better but can actually improve the nutrient contents of it? Yes it does. Believe me, I teach the subject. The frying action actually causes the outside of the chicken wing to crust over. This is due to the Maillard reactions with amino acids. The protein structure changes. The outside of the chicken wing hardens, sealing the nutrients within the meat. Therefore there is a high amount of nutrien...

Me and the Apple iPhone. I already see it in my hands. Hmmm... (hoping that "the secret" laws of attraction works). First and foremost the iPhone is an electronic organizer or daytimer. Other types of organiser can be more expensive than this. I have always needed an electronic organiser but I need to save money as I have mentioned earlier and using paper and pen looked the economical. Yet after two years of working, I have learned that time flies by you so quickly and a yearly diary runs out too quickly. I lose so much information and I do not have the time to transfer all my information from one book to another. Which will be solved if I get myself an electronic organiser. On top of that " the iPhone have combined three products—a revolutionary mobile phone, a widescreen iPod® with touch controls, and a breakthrough Internet communications device with desktop-class email, web browsing, searching and maps—into one small and lightweight handheld device. " It is a dr...

It would be to early to state this but I am all ready to get my hands on this hot baby from Apple. I have been keeping my eyes close from the moment I decided to become a mother of two. Let's face it children cost a lot. This is why, I have not purchased anything electronic since 2006 except for my laptop (which is important for work), and it is now 2008. Poor me... I am a techie girl gone on a diet. I need new techie stuff to keep me vibrant and alive. LOL. Okay I am exaggerating. I can live without these gadgets but what is a Sagi Techie girl suppose to do? I can hear myself singing the Janice Joplin song "Oh lord won't you buy me an Apple iPhone, my friends all have cool phones, mine's from the last ICE AGE. Worked hard all my life time, no help from my other half", ha ha ha ha. Oh well, a girl can have her dreams and wishes. A mother needs to put her wants and need aside. Hmmmm... aw.... I will keep on dreaming. It never hurt anybody. Maybe if I save on shopp...

To all Mothers. Happy Mother's day. I heard from the radio that there was a research done on how much a Mother should get paid if there was something like that. They should get 30K per year. That is for being a cook, house cleaner, carer and at times a psychologist. :) It is hard. I work but I also feel for the mothers who are homemakers. I salute you. I cared for my very sick son for one week at home and the work just does not end for mothers. I am not belittling working mothers for running away from the original responsibilities. I am one myself. I am just saying we should appreciate each other wherever we may be. A mother is a lover to the husband, a house cleaner, a laundry person, a cook, a dishwasher, a carer, a milk making machine, a seamstress, a first aider, a counselor, a giver of life, a DIY expert, and in our some places usually the Breadwinner. Thank you moms for having superhuman strength to do all these. If your kids are still young and nobody thought of giving you a...

I finished the 310 exam papers yesterday. Yahoo. Guess what? I went through 2 red pens. Luckily I had spares. Hah. Today I have to start on my next 44 for another subject. Ugh.. but this one should be more fun. There are subjective questions mixed with calculations. :) Wish me luck. I have been working myself so hard this week. My body aches everywhere. 8 hours a day marking 40 papers per day, I feel it. My hands are cramp. My legs hurt. My lower abdominal hurts. It is hard for me to walk. I feel like I jogged a marathon or just finished climbing Mount K. Prof Andy Lydiatt would say, plug on. :)

I was sitting at a coffee shop with KIL (kakak in law aka Sister-in-law) having a chat and marking the exam papers when a lovely old American tourist came over and said the unbelievable. Guess what he said? I could not believe my ears as well. He said, "you are very beautiful, do you have a boyfriend?" My dear I am sooo pregnant. Was this old American man blind? So I replied to him with a smile and showing my bulging 6 month bump, "I am actually pregnant." And he asked, "Was it planned or unplanned?" Oh mio dio .... Cheeky old man. I answered, "yes it was planned". Hmmm that left me flabbergasted and flattered. I smile widely. It was truly hilarious. KIL and I shared a hearty laugh at that incident. Nevertheless, although this old American tourist was the first to actually come up to me to tell me I was beautiful. But it is not the first time I felt well... simply flattered by people who silently stare at me as if I was the most beautiful thing t...

To date at 17 months My Kiddo can say 4 words clearly and understand what they mean. Albeit the rest of the time he "mogulambang" (meaning he is doing this trial and error pronunciations). He is quite a talkative toddler in terms of baby talk. Talks all the time, we brought him to a picnic and another kid actually told him to literary shut up. Hmmm. His four words are, mama (me or his dad), momom (food), nenen (milk bottle) and main-main (play). Cool eh? Oh and he calls everyone else Eah, his cousin's name is Leah. Precious.

This things are worst situations than the one I am in. So I thank God for my safety and my family's safety. But God please forgive me for asking. Why did you let this happen to a girl so young, so much ahead of her and so innocent? It would not have been so bad if you took her from us. BUT did she have to go through that ordeal just before she dies? I do not know how she died but I just heard it from a friend. There are no news coverage which can confirm its truth. So much questions going through my head. Did she die from internal wounds? Did her terrible ordeal drive her to commit suicide? Two weeks ago, on a dinner with Dr Herbal Malteser and Shell Lady, we heard that a UMS student got kidnapped in Kingfisher. My thoughts immediately went to praying for her safety and that she does not get raped. It seems my prayer was not heard. Furthermore it seemed that she went through a truly horrific ordeal. An experience even the worst type of criminal did not deserve to get. Why? Why? Why...

I know this happens a lot. My friends have all fallen into this. A shame. It usually ends with a lot of pain. I will highlight a few words from a webpage I found which was very religious but touches the heart of " why good girls go with bad boys?" . Everything I have taken out has been directly copied and pasted from the weblink above. So please read the full text. Definition of a bad boy " A bad boy is a man who seems outwardly attractive, but is unwilling to offer sacrificial love in a relationship. He is too immature and preoccupied with himself to share genuine compassion, concern, or acceptance. A bad boy lacks character and might exhibit the following behavior: lying, aloofness, irresponsible dreaming, fear of commitment, sexual promiscuity, addiction to substances or pornography, selfishness, hunger for power, disinterest in surrendering to God, etc. In addition, a bad boy is not interested in true love, because real love requires consistent sacrifice. A bad boy w...

I am a labourer. I laboured everyday since I returned from my studies. Recently I labour over exam papers. Woo hoo.. So I took a break today! I deserve a holiday. I hope everyone else enjoyed their labour day as much as I did. My other half and I went for an early breakfast at my favourite Tj aru Kon Lau Mee. I do not know why I keep on going back there when I know I will only get to sit after shooing people off their table before they are ready and that I only get served an hour after I have ordered. I order at the counter not when I am sat down. Hmmm but I love the texture of their noodles and they way they mix this particularly yummy breakfast. Then we went to pick up our kiddo, (yes we decided to leave him home so we can focus on enjoying our food) to visit his cousin at my parent's place. Seeing the two children play brought joy to my heart. :) What I mean by playing is fighting over toys. My sister's little girl is a very tiny dictator who I will christen as Lady Dictator...

Okay I admit I am a closet nerd. Geek. Whichever you wish to label me. I am boring because I found this page from tce dec 2007/jan 2008. It got forwarded in my email. I do not. I repeat do not ever read forwards but I did not know why I read this one and rolled about on the floor laughing. How sad. It reminded me of all the days that I spent in the lab. My lab did in fact flood. Due to a rather mysterious unknown dark man who looks a bit like George Clooney but a character to actually booth out the door the instant you see him. Okay he was not all that bad but he definitely pissed off a lot of people. About my literature review, it is true that it is always crap the first time it is done and it had to be redone. If you find anyone saying that they never had to redo theirs. They are either lying or they have not really grasp an understanding of what research they doing yet. I did realize early on that what I was doing was NEVER done before and I felt totally alone. Actually I lie. The p...