It was rather distressing when the child was suffering from flu. First, you started imagining that she might suffocate herself while sleeping because of the blocked nose.

Then terror striked whenever she sneeze. Her nose erupted and lava began flowing out of the twin crater. The sprint for the nearest available tissue paper started, while my fear was on the fate of those disgusting sticky thing. It would be a relief if I returned fast enough to catch them, and most horrifying if they were nowhere to be found. When you see the kid licking her mouth, you know where it has gone to.

Having a runny nose didn’t seem any big deal until Yauyau started to run a temperature at 39.5C. So off she goes to see the doctor, and we return with the usual bottles of paracetamol and another bottle of medication for runny nose. I was rather pleased with that new bottle of medicine for runny nose to add to my existing (and quite useless) stock of standby medication. The fact that it may cause drowsiness also makes me a little bit excited as I imagined the kid fast dozing off after taking a spoonful of it.

My girl has grown up; she can use a spoon now! I don’t have to administer the syrup using a syringe and I don’t have to pinch her nose to force the liquid down her throat anymore. What a joy. She took the medicine like an eager kid waiting to feast on a fancy selection of candies. Well, two varieties to b exact. We paraded the two bottles in front of her, and told her excitedly that she is going to have orange juice and strawberry juice. She has to choose which to take first.

“Orange juice!” she replied while stretching out her hand to pick her choice bottle and gulped all her syrup like drinking her juices.

Then she began chanting “Orange juice! Orange juice! Orange juice!” after the whole affair. Wah, children’s medicine must really taste yummy.

I had the most interesting custom clearance at the Malaysia Immigration last night. The kid and I were on our way back to Singapore from KL, thru the Second Link.

We left our belongings on the coach as they weren’t needed for clearance, bringing only our passports and immigration cards with us. It wasn’t a busy night, not much queue at the counters. So I happily approached one for the lady officer and dutifully handed over our passports to her.

First, that lady asked to see my train ticket. I told her I arrived by coach, though I took a train to KL earlier on. She insisted that I present to her my ticket. Thinking that she wants to inspect my bus ticket, I inform her I left it was on the bus. She insisted that I go get it for her inspection. Maybe she wants to make sure I didn’t walked all the way from the wilderness, pretend to have taken a coach, and then try to cross the Second link on foot, or even cleverer, swim across the straits to Singapore. I might have been a potential suspect wanting to smuggle myself out of Malaysia back to my own country.

To applaud her vigilance, I told her I left it on her bus and will make my way to the bus to retrieve it. So I requested to have our passports returned to us too while I make my way back. I thought it was just too much a risk to leave my passport with a stranger, though she is an immigration officer. As expected, she refused. Oh well, I thought the risk of arguing with an officer seem to be even greater, thus I went back to get my tickets without them.

I promptly showed my invaluable ticket to her, thinking that I can finally get that precious clearance. Now what, she said she wanted to see the train ticket, not the bus ticket. What? She wanted to see the ticket I had with me 5 days ago when I took a train from Tanjong Pagar to KL Sentral? Which crazy person on earth will keep a used ticket unless it is for some sentimental purpose? If that is so, I would have it pasted on my scrape book or photo album. But wait, I happened to be that idiot and remembered I still have that lottery ticket in my pocket.

That should satisfy her now, I guess! And yes, it does. She finally stamped on our passports! Yeah. But before I left, I decided to clear my doubts. I need to find out if I need to keep all my future tickets. She said yes, I need to keep my future tickets. Then I decided to be stupid and asked her a dumb question. Do I have to keep the ticket and show it to her if I enter Malaysia and leave the country a year later? YES, she said yes!

I can fully understand the reason to check for a return ticket upon entering a foreign country, but I still can’t understand why she would want to check on a ticket that is rather irrelevant to my exit from Malaysia. Maybe someone could enlightened my on that. I was wondering what would happened if I couldn’t produce that ticket. Would I be detained? Perhaps I would get a stern warning for my negligence?

After the little adventure, I was thinking hard if I should keep my future used tickets. Probably yes, just in case I happened to be picked on again. But most probably not. It is just too ridiculous to me and I want to see what is going to happen if I failed to do so. Maybe I could make it to the headlines: Singaporean Women Detained - If You Can’t Prove How You Enter, You Don’t Leave.

It is very natural that parents devise all kind of strategies to handle the kids. Some coated honey on the bottle tits to entice the baby to drink milk, some pretended that they have ran out of coins to slot into the kiddy rides; most often, we try to stop their nonsense by distracting them with another object.

When only one parent is involved in such “treachery”, the young ones most probably wouldn’t find anything amiss. However, when both parents start giving each other ideas on how to handle the sticky whinny situations, we often fail to realise the kid is no longer a baby, she most probably understands the evil plans we are carrying out.

Very often, I caught myself telling James “Bring her out for a walk so I can get some peace, but don’t let her goes near the playground.”, “Don’t let her watch anymore Hi5, tell her the DVD is spoilt.”, “Tell her she will get an ice-cream if she finishes her food. She would have forgotten about the ice-cream by then.”, “Quickly, finished that cookie while she turns her head around.”…etc. I didn’t realise myself scheming so blatantly in front of the kid until James reminded me that Yauyau is already past 2yrs old, she understands what I am talking about.

It was a big shock, I have told so many lies in front of her, fully exposed. I guess the scheming shall continue, but perhaps more skillfully administered…heh.