Days Without Daddy

Fortunately, TT doesn't fly for business very often. The last time he was away, Isaac was still small. This time he's off to London for about 6 days. I was a little worried that Isaac would be crying for him as he's quite attached to Daddy. I remember when Cheryl was Isaac's age, she would be crying her eyes out during bedtime looking for Daddy. Now that she's older, she understands and even tries to convince Isaac not to be sad that Daddy's not around. Not that Isaac needed any convincing or pacifying anyway. Since the first night Daddy was away, he hadn't really asked for Daddy and allowed me or my mum to put him to bed without too much fuss (usually TT and I would each handle one child during bedtime). Even when I accidentally asked him where Daddy was, he would answer: "Take airplane" and point his hand up like a plane taking off. Keeping them busy with activities so that they don't miss Daddy too much.

Sun, 29 Oct - Public Trip to Nowhere
We had a delicious "ta pao" lunch of chicken rice bought from this halal chicken rice stall called Evertop Chicken Rice at Tanglin Halt Road. It's run by chinese but has muslim helpers. It is my and my mum's favourite chicken rice stall. TT prefers the famous Maxwell Market stall.

After lunch the kids were bugging me to take a bus ride. Not just any bus ride, but must be a double-decker bus! So we decided to take Bus 51 to Jurong East Interchange. This bus takes a "round-the-world" route (actually all SBS buses do!ha).So the five of us (me, my mum, my maid, Cheryl & Isaac) trouped to the bus stop and as we approached it, bus 51 arrived, so we all ran! No way we were gonna wait for @#%min for the next one. This bus is notorious for long waiting times (wait a minute... so do all the other buses! ha! ok enough of SBS bashing!) True enough, about three-quarter way to our destination, Cheryl fell asleep! What's more she had originally wanted to take the bus back home, but luckily on the home trip she wisened up and agreed to take the MRT back. Isaac surprisingly managed to stay awake, enjoying the sights along the way. I wanted to browse a bit at Popular bookstore at Jurong East Station but ended up staying there for less than 15min. The kids were bored and wanted to take the MRT back! Hiyah, these children! My maid had a more fruitful trip... in less than 15min, she managed to pick out several cheap blouses from a TOP100 bargain shop just beside Popular.

Isaac slept on the way back home on the MRT. Fortunately my maid was around to help me carry him home because he we did not bring a pram with us. While he was asleep, I helped Cheryl do this keychain for Daddy. She also coloured some pictures of flowers to be given to her beloved Daddy.

For the keychain, I bought this transparency-looking thing from Daiso, drew on it with a permanent black marker, then I let Cheryl colour in with coloured markers. Then I use a normal papaer hole puncher to make a hole. After that I have to put it in the oven toaster for a couple of minutes for it to shrink to about 20% of the original size as seen in the pic.

I drew these flowers for Cheryl so that she could colour them. Subsequently she drew another one (below) all by herself.


Personal Favourites
FOOD
Evertop Chicken Rice. Coffee shop at Tanglin Halt Road - Be prepared to wait for 15 to 30 min when crowded.

Thu, 2 Nov - Cheryl's School Concert
I rushed back from work to attend Cheryl's concert which was held this evening at 7.30pm. It was held in the church hall of the kindergarten. The hall was quite big, but still there are really alot of parents because the kindergarten population is quite big. Not quite ideal to hold the concert there because the seats are all on a flat level, so people at the back had to strain or crank their necks to see the performances. Needless to say, it was difficult for me to get any good shots ... on top of that, I was equipped with my old, not-so-powerful digital camera. Anyway I've already ordered 10 4R photos with Cheryl inside taken by the professional school photographers at a princely sum of $1 a piece!

Since TT was not around, my mum attended in his place. We brought Isaac along but he got bored after one hour and we had our maid take him home. The guest-of-honour happened to be the Dean of NTU's School of Computer Engineering who used to lecture us in Computer Graphics during my undergraduate days in 1993. Apparently he is also a deacon in the this church and member of the kindergarten's board of directors. Wow, I wonder if he still remembers me.

Some of the performances were rather draggy and the concert ended around 10pm, 30 min later than scheduled. I'm sure the children were all tired, and probably hungry as well! Cheryl's performance was OK but she must have been very shy or intimidated by the crowd because she kept hiding behind another girl!

Later I picked her up from her class and together with our neighbour, Sean & his parents, walked back home together. Sean is graduating from K2 this year. This is a pic of Sean and Cheryl after the school concert. After changing to her PJs, eating some bread and drinking a cup of milk, Cheryl went to bed. Could see from her eyes she was quite tired. Isaac, who had been eagerly waiting for his sister to return home from the concert, also slept soon after.

Fri, 3 Nov - Daddy's Back!
Really thankful the kids coped well with Daddy away. I caught the cough and sore throat from Cheryl a few days ago. Thought with my vitamin C intake I would be invincible, but also kena... Had some problems trying to read stories to Cheryl during bedtime because my throat was so hoarse. Somemore Isaac wanted me to sing along with the nursery rhyme book that comes with those buttons emitting electronic music! And Cheryl had to choose those books with so many words! These kids are so relentless!

After work around 6pm, I drove the car from my office at Jurong East to Changi Airport Terminal 1 using the PIE. With peak hour traffic, it took me about 45min. TT's flight arrived at 6.15pm and I reached at the arrival belt just in time to see him and his colleague collect their luggage and come out of the gate. TT was longing for some local food after a week long of western food, so we drove to Beach Road's Food Centre opposite Golden Mile complex (I can't remember what it's called but it has lots of good food!) to have Hokkien Mee from this popular stall at the basement. Waited almost half and hour for the food to arrive. But it was delicious. Then we had our mandatory cup of teh tarik which was really satisfying, especially for TT.

We reached home about 8.30pm and of course the kids were delighted to finally see their Daddy! Stuff at in England isn't very cheap so Daddy didn't get much stuff. He bought Isaac the toy London red double decker bus and London cab and several postcards of the London Flyer, a gigantic Ferris Wheel. He also got lots of chocolate and some fridge magnets to add to our collection.

Unfortunately the Canon camera's memory card got corrupted and some pictures he took of the Tower Bridge could not be retrieved. We're still trying to use some software to try to recover these pics.

Personal Favourites
FOOD
Beach Road Hokkien Mee. Can't remember the name of the stall nor the name of the hawker centre. You know lah, it's that place that sell all the army stuff. Such a good foodie I am hor. Just walk down to the basement using the main central staircase and it's the hokkien mee stall on the left.