A Farewell to Remember

After about 8 months at FingerTips, I finally made a heavy decision to move Sze Yi to a nearer school. I have been very happy with the way they took care of her there, but the only drawback was the distance. It's actually out of the way from my route to work everyday, and it's more than double the distance from my house to my workplace. So why did we choose it in the first place? Well, it's rather near to my MIL's place, but still it was not within walking distance so we still had to fetch her ourselves. Actually it was highly recommended by a friend of hubby, and I've also received very good feedback from others. After checking it out ourselves, I loved the system there immediately. We also noticed that Sze Yi felt so much at home instantly. So that's why we went there.

But as time went by, I was always late for work in the mornings. Not to mention that my lunch time was also very rushed, and I could hardly schedule for any lunch appointments with my friends. I've tried switching her to full day instead, but it turned out worse because after office hour that area was especially jam. A 15 minutes drive (one way) could easily turned out to be an hour's journey. And we had to leave work very early, or else we'll be fined if we're over the allowable time to pick her up. We've experienced reaching there to find that everyone had gone back, and our poor girl was waiting outside with her teacher for us.

In the end, I decided to go for distance and convenience as my top priority. Hubby was reluctant to switch at first, saying that we should not choose a school based on our own convenience, rather the quality instead. But I maintained that I'll find one with equivalent quality but nearer, since I was the one chauffeuring her nearly everyday, with Hubby as my backup. Despite all that, I myself was in a mixed of emotions as well because I was afraid how my decision would affect Sze Yi. How would she adapt to a new environment? Furthermore, she had the chance to experience gardening, outings, baking, and etc in her current school. She brought back Murukku on Deepavali, dressed up for their Halloween party, and they actually observed all the festivals by doing something special.

In between hesitations, I finally found a suitable school for Sze Yi (I hoped), which was rather near to my house, although it was not directly in my route to work as well. But my travelling time had been slashed by more than half, which was the main reason anyway. I decided to give it a try. The school was newly set up, and I signed her up when I heard about it. It was a little more pricy than the first one, but I guessed that's a way to purchase convenience without sacrificing the quality. Furthermore, her previous principal was very understanding, and she told us that we could always go back if we still wanted to.

Well, to appreciate the teachers and everyone at FingerTips for making it such a nice place to learn & play for Sze Yi, I decided to have a small farewell for Sze Yi. I found it rather awkward to order a cake, because it was not a birthday celebration. So, in the end, I decided to bake something for them. I got the recipe from Pei Sze, and decided to go for this because it looked quite easy. Furthermore, it's suitable for kids. However, I couldn't get a self-raising flour, so I bought the normal one. Luckily Pei Sze had been very kind to give me some baking soda so I could still continue baking without needing to go hunting for that particular flour. I made a little modification to the recipe by adding some vanilla & banana essence, also for every 100g of flour I added in 4g of baking powder to make a self-raising flour.

It was not easy as I thought. Luckily I had my MIL with me this time, unlike my previous attempt with the otak-otak. We had to bake 3 rounds to finally get the amount we wanted to feed the whole school. The first and second rounds, I was doing halfway before MIL had to take over because Sze Juin wanted me. Sze Yi was very enthusiastic in helping during the first round.

But not the second. And during the third round, I got to do it by myself (Sze Yi wanted to help again this time) since Sze Juin finally had a nap. Phew! We took the whole afternoon and evening to get this...

This was actually from the first batch. Since we left it in the oven without taking it out, it was rather brown. But it tasted good! And this was from the subsequent batches...
For the 2nd batch, we added some mini cupcakes version for the smaller kids. It turned out to be very crispy and we all loved it! Here were some snaps of them all (big & small) in the making...

And finally when they were all packed nicely...

I also included a little card but I forgot to take a picture of that. It was handmade as well (not by myself, although I had initially wanted to make one myself with Sze Yi's help, but we just didn't had time to slot that in).

Farewell FingerTips, thanks for everything and Sze Yi sure had a great time there!