Ally’s Adventures! Bilingual book series

I was trying to find some Singapore based Malay books for children because I can’t find any at Popular Bookstore. The only things I found were assessment books and no stories in Malay.

My friends instead recommended me to check out Ungu Pen online store.

Basically, there are a number of Malay books for children but Singapore based ones aren’t that many comparatively and there is a difference between Singapore, Malaysia and bahasa Indonesia too in terms of context.

Ally's adventures with Dawn the cat

I bought Ally at Home and some other books (will review that in another post) from Ungu Pen but then I decided to check Poppet World where the Ally series is from to just check out what more is available.

And I got more books and received a sticker sheet and also got a limited edition Ally plushy doll for a child because they can have story time with an actual Ally!!

Ally at Home by Norlin Samat

The Ally’s Adventure series is written by Norlin Samat and it’s a board book style which has a lovely smooth texture where kids can touch and turn too.

Ally is at home today

This is Ally at Home, you can see that it is in both English and Malay. They use simple languages so that your child can read or be read to, to know the story.

Also as you can see, the windows are “HDB” styled, if you live in Singapore, these things will seem more familiar to you.

Ally at the library

In Ally at the Library, it amuses me that Ally is with human children but let’s ignore that because this is a children’s book. I want to see more cat friends though!

And the library does remind you of the ones we have here at the National Library children’s section.

Ally at the zoo

For Ally at the Zoo, if you read this to your children, you can go to our Singapore Zoo and point out the animals or say “Hey, this is where Ally went!”.

I am amused that there are tigers and that Ally is a different kind of adventuring cat.

Join Ally at Poppet World

I won’t spoil the endings or how the story goes for each book but they are fun for you to read out to children in both English and Malay so that they can recognize words and understand them.

At the time of this post, you can join Ally at their facebook page to know if they have online activities or offlline ones too.

Ally's adventures stickers

Since I bought more books at the Poppet World website where they are the publishers, I managed to get a sticker sheet (while stocks last)!

Ally plushie doll

Also the Ally plushy doll is limited edition because of course, they wouldn’t be able to make thousands but just enough so if you want to get an Ally plushy, just get it.

She is really cute and her backpack actually opens and you can put maybe an eraser or something in it.

Anyway, feel free to recommend me Singapore based Malay books for children and young adults too! I feel like there’s too many angsty ones aimed for adults and the fun ones for children, there’s not enough?

A thousand stars

Alleycats had this song called Seribu Bintang and it’s such an iconic song to me.

This song was released in 1999.

I remember the family car was a Mazda. A boxy looking car. I do like boxy looking cars instead of the ’rounded’ corners that cars of today have.

We drove over the highway at night and this song reminds me of the cool night air. Trips to Malaysia, just to visit the kampung and leave ‘quickly’ to get back home before the jams happened. When passports covers to Malaysia was blue because it was a special Malaysia/Singapore passport. You couldn’t use it for international use but you could for going across the causeway.

When karaoke is back, or it survives somehow. I want to sing this in a karaoke room with friends as I put down my glass of honey lemon and dust my fingers off the complimentary spicy chips to grab the microphone.

Do you have a song that takes you back to a year? Also listening to this song, it’s such a tsundere song that fits with a lot of characters that I like in stories.

Translation of Seribu Bintang (A Thousand Stars)

by Alleycats (Malay lyrics by M Nasir)

I want to leave you
So I can understand why I miss you
I want to dive deep into your soul
So I can understand your love for me

I want to hate you
But there is no hatred within me
No matter what you think
I still love you.

I've been living a miserable life for a long time
I have failed in love
And now you appear with a thousand stars
These stars had been hidden from me
These stars were meaningless

If you are willing to touch my heart
I'm always close to you
But don't you dare
To play with my heart

I've been living a miserable life for a long time
I have failed in love
And now you appear with a thousand stars
These stars had been hidden from me
These stars were meaningless

If you are willing to touch my heart
I'm always close to you
But don't you dare
To play with my heart

Don't play with my heart
Don't play with my heart

Disappointment at workplaces

Is it the norm in your workplace to be disappointed? For example, there are so many articles about uplifting people or being disappointed about not getting a raise or whatnot.

This isn’t about that.

How about the disappointment where you expect the mere competence of a fellow colleague or worker but all you get is just subpar work. And the only way to make sure it is done is that you would have to fix it yourself because clearly they cannot do it even with exact instructions to do.

What do you do with the disappointment?

And those who disappoint people, do they even care that they did so?

Or do you change that sort of disappointment to the feeling of expectation instead. Expect that they would fail so you will not be disappointed and be slightly thrilled that they did not make too huge of a mess?

I will not find answers here, of course.

But is it an average thing to be disappointed by work people or that there are places where people actually excel and do competently at their work? And if so, where are they working at?

What sort of jobs are those?

How much disappointment can you take before you take further steps and what steps are those?