The Weekend That Was

The Weekend That Was

The weekend flew by faster than you could say Dodgeball, and before you knew it, it’s Monday again. Life as a parent does help to shorten the weekend somehow, what with the weekend now mostly spent entertaining the little one. Spent Saturday in the office though, trying to finalise a report my boss dissected and butchered so badly that the reconstruction of it took 3 days and a lot of my depleting brain resources to do. But as usual, it’s the boss’s funny way of making me learn stuffs a quality executive should have, which is what he is. I’m not complaining really. I guess I should realise I have light years ahead of me before I could become as good as him.

Sunday was better spent however, and I really mean spent. My wife and I took Insyirah for shopping at One Utama. Insyirah has finally outgrown the current car seat that she’s using, which is really Hannah’s which she in turn had outgrown earlier. And additionally, we were also looking for an alternative pushchair for Insyirah, as her current one is a rather too big for us to bring along on long distance travels. It seems that the Matrix’s boot space is not as big as I’d like it to be, and the current pushchair that we have is a Mercedes equivalent of its kind; big, filled with gadgetaries, and probably the most comfortable pushchair a baby could be placed in. But the only problem is that it takes the whole of my car boot space away.

So we set out on our shopping expedition early in the morning. Well, around 10ish to be exact, to avoid the traffic congestion madness that usually occurs when you’re trying to park at One Utama. Having a baby in tow, such crawl in traffic is best avoided, and with Insyirah having no tolerance being stuck in traffic, it’s not really an option. The little girl has a tendency to scream impatiently when the car stops on the road, even when I’m stopping for the red lights. My father-in-law once joked that perhaps she should marry a royalty one day and drive around with a police escorted entourage, and drive through traffic without having to stop. Hmmm... now that’s a thought.

We went to a couple of stores that sold baby products, and in the end decided given our product spec and budget, Jusco still provided best value for money. It’s just like shopping for a car really. Some people might give more weight to posh or snob value, and would settle for nothing less than a Beemer or Merc. Baby products wise, the equivalent would be Maclaren or Preggo. Then there are those who are Honda or Toyota loyalists. Here the comparable would be Chicco, or maybe Graco. In my case, as always, I go for maximum value for the minimum expenses.. hehe... so if you’re anything like me, Jusco usually provides value for money. Sweet Cherry is to baby products what Naza / Inokom is to the Malaysian car market. The products are reliable and good, but some are still tempted to replace the Inokom badge on the car with its foreign made cousin’s name Hyundai. You get the drift...

The choice of the pushchair was rather straightforward. Since this was just going to be a complementary pushchair to the current one we have, I opted for the cheapest yet comfortable one there was. The car seat I wasn’t too sure of though. The choices available were aplenty. But in the end one caught my eye. The salesgirl told me if I waited for another month, the car seat could go for a 20% discount. Hmmm… discount. My calculative mind started calculating the saving I could make. RM60… not bad. That’s a week worth of lunching. Hehe... but the moment we placed Insyirah in the seat for her to try it out, I just melted seeing how much she enjoyed sitting in it. She was waving and kicking her legs about, smiling in delight at all of us. Having seen that smile of hers, how could I deny her the pleasure? So in one of my rarest moments, the accountant in me gave in to a little child’s show of innocent delight, and we got the car seat anyway. So you see what a child’s gestures could do to your better sense of judgement. Hehe... well, suffice to say it was all worth it.

Praying for a good week ahead.