Beginning a Life in Perth

It has been more than 4 months since we last landed in Perth, Australia. We are pretty much settled with most of the essential things in place and life has now moving from been chaotic into a more "routine" mode. Nothing has come easy for us as we were basically started off everything from scratch, with no relatives and friends here to begin with.  We were very fortunate as we made a few friends here through other friends and relatives in Malaysia and there were two Malaysian couples in particular who had rendered a lot of advice, and tips in helping us to start up here.  They have shared their experience in various aspects ranging from where to buy oriental food, which are the good area to live, to tips in securing a rented property, etc.
A) Temporary Accommodation
To get into the swing of an entirely new life down under, accommodation has certainly become the first priority among all other stuff.  I booked a room in a family home for 8 days to begin with, hoping to get a rented house within two weeks of us setting our feet here. Booking and payment was done through airbnb, which I only got to know much later from the locals that it is a very popular portal for people to rent rooms in a non-conventional way (as it is not hotel room, but a room in a house).
The rate was definitely much cheaper than hotel but still it was a whopping $60 a day for just a room. The positive side of renting a room in this manner was that we have got to live in the desired suburb for us to experience the life before we finally decided on the desired suburb for renting a house for longer term.  To cut a long story short, we rented a room in Leeming, which is only 4 km from Wen Jia's school.

B) Renting a home
Renting a house has not been an easy task here. Due to the influx of migrants and the high demands in suburbs with proximity to good schools, getting a rented home is indeed very challenging.  Imagine we had to compete with so many other home seekers out there to the extend of there are more demands than supplies. Unlike those in Malaysia, house viewing here has to be done at the timeframe stipulated by the property agent and it is usually done only when there are sufficient viewers committed to turn up. The timeframe was usually a short 15 minutes and home viewers were expected to put in an offer based on the limited knowledge they had on the house from the 15 minutes viewing.  It is so competitive that at times there was more than 10 viewers turned up for a single viewing.
We were required to submit an application for rental within 24 hours from the viewing.  There were so much details to be filled in, such as financial details, details of all family members intended to live in the house, details of previous rented property, "why did you leave the previous rented house?", contact details of 2 reference in Perth, etc.  It was a tedious process as we needed to submit a full stack of documents to support our application, let alone the lack of local financial information amid we were new here.
The hassles aside, we ultimately got a 3 bed room, 1 bath room house at a suburb called Parkwood. Though the house is a bit small and the rental is expensive, it nevertheless was a good beginning for us.

C) Schooling
Wen Jia goes to Oberthur Primary School which is situated at a suburb called Bullcreek, some 6km from our rented house in Parkwood. We secured a place for Wen Jia back in October when the school contacted us via email that they accepted Wen Jia's enrollment, much to our relief as the school actually took in students out of its local intake area. This means that we could live outside of the catchment area of the school for at least until Wen Jia reaches her age for Senior High School. The Senior High Schools here on the other hand do not usually take students outside of their catchment areas.
Oberthur Primary School is a medium size school with just over 400 students from Pre-primary to Year 7. Australian Curriculum is somehow different from Malaysia's. One prominent difference is that she does not carry heavy school bag as most of the learning materials are not text book based. She has a workbook that she brings home everyday and that usually contains sheets of exercise or homework. It is learning in a fun way and more well balanced as subjects such as music, swimming, and gymnastic are introduced at various stages in the term besides the conventional language, maths, and science subjects.
Overall, Wen Jia enjoys her schooling here.

More to come.....

A fruitful year for Wen Jia

This year marks the 3rd year since Wen Jia was born. She has been doing wonderfully in terms of physical and intelligence growth.
Physically she is a healthy, tall girl with improved physical strength - a natural process of growth.  Like most of the grown up kids, she doesn't like to eat vege.  We often mixed meat or fish with finely cut vege so that she could  get a better combination of nutrients as much as possible.
She likes most types of food especially oranges, and grapes.  Her taste on fruits has changed a lot. Her old time favourites such as banana, papaya, and apple have now become part of the list of food that she will avoid.  Well, I forgot to mention that she likes pineapple - the one cooked together with pork rib, or even in pineapple fried rice. 
In terms of learning and games, she has started to pick up interest in puzzle. We started with some simple puzzles (the 12 pieces one) and slowly moved to 18 pieces and 24 pieces.  She still need some guidance when come to the more complex one but overall it was a good start.  My friend in Singapore was right, always start with some character that she likes the most and she will slowly build interest in whichever games associate to those characters.  In Wen Jia's case, she likes the Mickey & Minnie, and also the Disney Princess puzzles the most.
On flash card learning, it has been reduced significantly. I have started to show more on the computer than the hand-made ones.  Also, she has started to explore more online learning such as the ones in sesame street, Nick Jr, etc.  The important part is, I selected the games for her to suit her age and development. 
She started rhythmic gymnastics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhythmic_gymnastics) class early this year.  Possibly due to her yong age, the results have not been significant. Anyway, as our objective wasn't for her to be a gymnast or the sort, it is fine for her to play and have fun in the class once a week. 
She joined a mandarin word card lesson under a "Teacher Yap's" program.  It has been very good that she managed to pick up 20 over charcters over a period of 1 month but she has lost interest in the class soon after her 3rd month.  Our observation (having personally sit in the centre to wait for Wen Jia to finish her class) was that the teaching quality has deteriorated so much so until her actual time spent in the lesson was merely 20 minutes out of 1.5 hours in the centre.  We stopped the lesson for a while and would decide in next year if she should continue. 
I started Hooked on Phonics program with her since early this year after been introduced to this material by a friend in Singapore.  She has just completed Pre-K Level 1.  A bit slow but I think it was partly my fault for not been able to spend more time more frequently with her on the lesson.  Overall it was a fun program to follow, and I took it as an oppotunity to foster bonding with my girl.
Wen Jia will be in Pre-Kindy when the school opens next year.  Seriously we will have to observe more on her progress and most importantly to understand more about what is going on in the kindergarten.  It is really not about how good she can cope with her homework but it is very much on how well she enjoys a new learning milestone.

Wen Jia's quitting pacifier

How to get a child to quit using a pacifier?
These are the suggestions posted on wikihow (http://www.wikihow.com/Get-a-Child-to-Quit-Using-a-Pacifier)

# Set up a rewards program. Give your child a star each day they go without, and after they have (x) number of stars consistently, they can get a treat, like a Popsicle, or even going to the movies.
# Simply take it away. This will upset the child for a few days, and they may dislike you for about a week. But after that, they won't remember. And you can have a huge sigh of relief because you don't have to deal with it anymore. This is most effective for younger children, who can't understand a reward system like a 3-5 year-old could.
# Use an older child as an example. Even a cartoon character, like Dora the Explorer would work. You just have to say, "You don't see your cousin Sam with a Binky, do you? That's because he's a big boy. And you want to be a big boy don't you?" often works. Using a model can help them begin understanding comparisons earlier then say, preschool.
# Inform the child that there are other children that need Binky's that are just being born. Send him out to hang them on a tree,or to hide them throughout the house, so that the Binky fairy can pick them up. Keep a close watch to see where he hid them, and then get them that night. Leave a small gift, something cheap and plastic but that the child will like, in each child's place.

It is too young for Wen Jia to understand rewards program so the first suggestion won't work. We used a combination of suggestion 2 and a bit of tricks to help her to quit pacifier. First, we took it away while on our vacation to Singapore. We stayed in a friend's house so we created a trick (as suggested by our friend in Singapore) that "uncle" had threw the pacifier away. In exchanged, my friend bought her a toy cake which she likes so much to make her believe that "uncle" had exhanged the pacifier with a toy that she likes.

Though she cried a few nights asking for the pacifier, but we managed to calm her down by telling her the "uncle" story again and again.
But, the story didn't end here, when she was back in KL, she requested for pacifier again. Probably she thought that the "restriction" was only for as long as she was in Singapore. Siew Wei has had some tough time at night calming her down and rocking her to sleep. We started to believe that pacifier did miraculously caused addiction to my girl that she felt unsecure and uneasy without it. Until today, she still asks for pacifier although less frequent now.
Well, for Wen Jia, it takes a lot of persistency and patience for us to stop her from using pacifier. We nearly gave up but we knew that the golden rule is "never give up or else it will take double the effort now to make her quit". I think we are 70% there as she is getting more and more comfortable without pacifier.

爸爸的生日

六月二日是父亲七十岁生日。
当天为他老人家办了个小聚餐。刚好爸妈都来了吉隆坡，我便在家附近的酒楼订了座。 其实也只是家常便菜， 主要还是咱几口子能一起好好吃一顿。
还有，蛋糕当然少不了。特地定了巧克力香蕉蛋糕，因为爸和女儿都喜欢吃香蕉。
人生七十古来稀，那是爸爸的福。也祝愿爸爸安康快乐，逍遥无忧。

Life without maid

I have just sent my maid home this morning. She has been with us for 15 months now and should rightfully be with us for another 9 months.
She didn't pass her health check therefore it is compulsory to send her back now.
Life has changed a lot since the helper is now gone. We have to take care of the house chaos for a while until the new maid arrive.
We will be getting help from Siew Wei's sister for next week while waiting for my mum to be in KL the week after next week.
It is definately not something easy for us as Wen Jia has grown up now and she can walk, climb and mess up the house. We just need to pay more attention to her in view of the fact that we are now without the helping hands.