An Islander Weekend

In typical Singaporean fashion, we decided to get our money's worth from our recently acquired Sentosa Islander Family card. We visited Sentosa on both days this weekend! Woohoo, is this an overkill or what?

On Saturday, we only had time to take the Express to and from VivoCity before we had to go back for Cheryl's music class. It was just as well because it started to rain.

On Sunday, the weather was perfect. Perfect for me is NO sun, cloudy and windy... actually there were small pockets of pretty threatening dark clouds here and there. We decided to pack lunch of chicken and char siew rice and drive into Sentosa. We parked at the huge carpark at Beach Station and then we took a beach tram to Siloso Beach. Surprisingly it was not as crowded as we expected for a Sunday. We found a nice spot under some coconut trees and the kids played with sand. I just love the sand here. They imported fine white sand from Indonesia to make the beaches here in Sentosa. It's so blardy clean and fine, and because it was slightly damp from the rain recently, it was perfect for making sandcastles. I didn't manage to take any pics of my creations because ZaacZilla destroyed them as soon as we made them. Ate our packed lunches and bought some ice cream too.

We also took a walk across the beach and wooden bridge/boardwalk (see pic above). So many tourists taking photos on the rocks and boulders. We couldn't lose out, so we took many shots on the rocks too! This is TT trying to perch Isaac atop a boulder, below is the shot of the same boulder from afar. Notice a bunch of foreign workers congregating at the bottom left.

More boulder pics...



We visited an IslandLife shop and bought 3 sets of die-cast Sentosa Express model trains for the kids at $12 each (see pic below). Needless to say, the kids were delighted. Blue for Isaac, Orange for Cheryl and Purple for our neighbour Sean. We also bought an orange Sentosa bus.

By the time we left the shop, it was raining. Wanted to take the tram back to the Beach Station but the tram was full. Fortunately it stopped raining, so we trudged back on foot. Time was a little tight because we had to send Cheryl for her art class at 4pm, but we decided to hop onto the Sentosa Express anyway since they gave us free train passes when we entered Sentosa. We thought we'd just take a joyride to VivoCity and back (remember we parked at the Beach Station). Unfortunately it's not a simple case of staying put in the train at VivoCity. We were "chased out" of the train and had to exit at VivoCity and get train passes again from the counter to enter Sentosa. Bother, but no worries, we have the Islander card! *evil laughter* So wasted some time to get ourselves another set of free entry passes and boarded the Express back to Sentosa's Beach Station. Then we had to drive at Formula One speed from Sentosa to Bencoolen for Cheryl's art class. Phew, just five minutes late.

Hey and you thought this was the end of our Sentosa adventure? Think again. When we returned home after class, our neighbour Sean heard about Cheryl's Sentosa trip and wanted to go too. He was also thrilled with the purple train we got him. So after her bath, we allowed Cheryl to follow our neighbours back to Sentosa again! Yes again! They even managed to catch part of the musical fountain show while aboard the Sentosa Express. Isaac was already knocked out by dinner time, so he didn't get to go.

I now have a "collection" of at least 12 Sentosa Express passes, just a few more visits to Sentosa and we would have gotten back what we paid for the Islander card! Sentosa should ban us...

East Coast Park

The weather was fine this morning so we decided to go to East Coast Park for a picnic and to celebrate my mum-in-law's birthday which was actually the next day. The mango cake we had was nice. The weather was a little too hot and humid though. Such drastic weather changes... just yesterday it was pouring. After the picnic we headed to Suntec where we had lunch at Just Noodles. The food's ok, but not fantastic.

Sentosa Express

My neighbour Sean has been eagerly waiting for this day... to finally take a ride on the Sentosa Express! It was just recently opened on 15 Jan. So after Cheryl's Chinese class, we decided to tag along too, because we knew if it had anything to do with trains, Isaac would enjoy it.

Our family, Sean and his dad packed into our car, and we headed for VivoCity. We had our lunch first at Food Republic. This is a pic of Cheryl having paper prata. They spread it out thin and sprinkle sugar on it, so it's crispy and slightly sweet. Tastes yummy on its own. The teh tarik from the same prata stall was also teh-licious (by our standards).

We had wanted to get the train tickets but decided to apply for the Sentosa Family Islander card instead because we figured we might be taking visiting Sentosa pretty often either on the Express or cable car. With the card, we can take get entry into Sentosa and take the Express free, and enjoy discounts for the cable car, as well as other attractions on Sentosa.

The Sentosa Express consists of 4 monorail trains, each of a different colour. Nothing too impressive but needless to say, the kids enjoyed the ride. I wonder if the four trains are capable of handling the crowds when the IR is up.
We alighted at Beach station, which is the third and the last station on Sentosa. We wanted to take the chairlift but Isaac is still below 90cm, so only Sean and Cheryl and the dads took the chairlift and luge ride while Isaac and I waited down below. Isaac spent the time watching the Sentosa Express trains go by. By the time they finished with their luge rides, it was time to go back because Sean had his swimming class, and Cheryl her music class. So to Isaac's dismay, we had to head back home. It was fortunate anyway, because it started to rain. In fact, later on the way back home from Cheryl's music class, we got caught in a jam along Commonwealth Avenue caused by flash floods. Here are pics of the chairlift and the photofinish of the Luge race!

Art Class

I managed to peep in and take a photo of Cheryl during her art class at NAFA. She was doing some messy paintwork. Fortunately I had bought her an apron, so she didn't get her clothes dirty. Bought more art materials required in her course. Boy, art classes can be costly!

While she was at art class, I took the opportunity to explore the Bencoolen area. Nothing much nearby unless I walk a little further to go Bras Basar Complex, Bugis Junction or the National Library. Maybe next time I should bring my notebook and take advantage of the free WiFi at TCC in NAFA or the National Library.

Happy Birthday Mum!

It's my mum's 66th birthday today. After Cheryl's Chinese class, we took her (Mum) along to Giant at IMM because she had wanted to do some grocery shopping too. This is a pic of me with Isaac taking a silly animal ride in IMM. It costs $2 per ride. Later, at mum's request, we ordered pizza, bought salted fish fried rice and fish & chips for dinner. These are some of mum's favourite foods! She didn't want to go to some expensive restaurant. After dinner we had the usual candle-blowing and cake-cutting. We had bought a durian cake earlier that day from Emicakes.
Later that night, I picked our maid up from Changi airport while TT put the kids to bed. My fears of the maid not turning up were unfounded. Yay, our maidless days are over!

2nd Maidless Week

The second week without our maid also went pretty smoothly. I coordinated with TT to take turns to take leave to help mum out at home. Occassionally TT would take Cheryl to my sis place where she would play with my nieces. The week was also very wet, just look at the terrible flooding across the causeway at Kota Tinggi. Our warm beds felt very cosy in the chilly mornings and it was very hard to wake up!

Toothless No More

The highlight for today was that I would be fixing up my broken front tooth! I decided to take the whole day off and run some errands in the morning, like banking in my four $1K cheques from Mr. Sim! Also took the opportunity to realise my existing unit trust and switch to another fund which will supposedly give me more returns.

Having had to endure six days of embarassing toothless smiles and spastic drafty pronunciation, I was actually looking forward to the dental appointment this afternoon. After about 30 minutes of unbearable drilling... lo and behold, I have a new tooth! Because the tooth was orignally slightly crooked, that's why the patched up tooth looks naturally "sengek". It's actually shorter than the original tooth, but I guess it's also not a good idea to make the teeth longer as that makes it more prone to breaking again.

This is supposedly just a temporary solution. No point doing crowning (which is very expensive) now because my tooth could just die on me and I may need to remove the crowning to do a root canal and then crown it again. So it's just a $50 filling for the time being. I will need to monitor the tooth for the next 6 months or so and then decide on my next course of action. The new tooth extension still feels a little foreign and I must be careful not to bite anything too hard. But at least now I don't feel so "naked" anymore and it even looks quite natural. :o) These are before and after pics of my front teeth.

Cheryl who followed me to the dentist patiently sat at the waiting area while the dentist did the job. When I came out and showed her my new tooth, she was quite intrigued and asked me if the dentist had glued my broken tooth back!

Back to Pasir Ris Park!

We decided to go to Pasir Ris Park today as we will be going to my SIL's place at Tampines for lunch. The kids had fun at the big playground, playing with sand and the apparatus. This is the sandcastle I built with Cheryl's help (see pic above). This is Isaac climbing...one of those moments when I really appreciate seeing him well and cheeky again and having fun. Nothing worse than having a sick child.

In the afternoon, Cheryl had to attend her first KinderArt lesson at NAFA. As we expected, she didn't want to go. So we promised to let her do some sand art craft if she went for class. We bought her a new set of 36 oil pastels required for the lesson, along with other art materials. Although she didn't say, I think she enjoyed the lesson, or at least I know she didn't dislike it. While she was having her lesson, we (and Isaac) had a snack of roti prata and teh tarik at a nearby coffee shop along Bencoolen Street.

After the lesson, we went to Suntec City's 3rd level where Cheryl got to do her window art instead, since there was no sand art there. I let her do a large piece costing $8. In the meantime, we wanted Isaac to get a haircut at the nearby Little League shop but he simply refused to put on the protective apron. After that we had dinner there at a Thai restaurant called Tuk-tuk. I don't know about the other food, but the dishes we ate were sub-standard, and I didn't really enjoy the meal.

Back to Busy Saturday

Our busy Saturday routine begins again today. Cheryl had her Chinese class at school in the morning and her music lesson in the afternoon after a 3-week break.

As for me, after much contemplation, I decided to attend my department outing today despite of my fall. My colleagues & I have been planning and organising an outing to Snow City for weeks. About 30 people turned up for the event. I was physically fine after the fall, but I just needed to overcome being too conscious about my appearance. My face is a lot better than what it was 2 days ago, which looked like Rocky after the big fight! But it was really difficult to smile or talk to people with a straight face. What a difference a tooth makes! Now I can't even pronounce my s's and f's properly! But I'm glad I went. I didn't participate in the more physical "winter games" in the snow chamber for fear of another accident. We learnt how to make ice cream using liquid nitrogen and had a ice-cream decorating competition. After that we had a lunch buffet at Sakura in the nearby omni-theatre. I'm glad the outing turned out OK and everyone enjoyed themselves.

Update: I managed to get some photos of the event from my colleague. Here are some pics showing how we made the ice-cream. It's almost the same way I've seen them make ice cream at The Daily Scoop (a small shop at Sunset Way that sells yummy hand-made ice-cream). Except that we use liquid nitrogen to accelerate the freezing, so it took about 15 minutes for the ice cream to be made with constant stirring. We poured the cream, sugar and flavouring in a big metal container and placed this container within an aluminium foil tray. Then liquid nitrogen was poured into the aluminium tray to cool the metal container, while the contents were stirred continuously until it thickened.

The finished product looked like this after we managed to get it out of the metal container. These are pics of how the four teams decorated their ice cream!

The Great Singapore Tumble

This goes down in record as one of the worst days of this year and possibly in a long time, and I'm only 4 days into the new year!

In fact, I fell twice today! The first fall was not so bad. I had just dropped Cheryl off at school, and nearly at my doorstep. The corridor floor was wet from the downpour in the night. I slipped and fell on my bum. Nothing serious, just got my shorts wet. When it was time to pick Cheryl up from school, I decided bring Isaac along and wheel him in the pram. I was early but I had waited at the wrong back door. By the time I realised this, I was late, so I rushed to the other back door. As I pushed the pram along the road, the front wheels of the pram got caught in a metal grille, and I simply tumbled forwards along with the pram and crashed my face onto the road. Ouch! At first, I didn't realise the seriousness of my fall. I was more worried about the impact on Isaac who was strapped to the pram, and I was worried that Cheryl would be waiting anxiously somewhere. I picked the fallen pram up, and Isaac was crying. But he looked ok. I thought he had grazed his knees, but only later I realised he had taken a knock on his forehead as well. By then I was bleeding at the mouth,but I didn't realise how badly. My teeth felt strange too,but I also didn't know I had actually chipped off half of my front tooth. The sharp edge of the broken teeth had cut my inner lip, and I had bad abrasions on my chin and above my upper lip.

I must have been a sight to behold, probably frightened all the kids along the way! I borrowed some tissue from a passing bewildered maid. Cheryl revealed to me later that she was terrified when she saw me. She was almost in tears. The admin clerk insisted that I go to the principal's office where the principal herself applied some first aid on my injuries. Only then did it dawn on me that I had lost my tooth and noticed Isaac's bump on his head because the bulge had started to show. Many things came into my mind: "Boy, it's my front tooth! How am I to face the world? How much will it cost to fix it? Will I not be able to eat chilli crab for the rest of my life?" The principal was going on about the merits of this particular antiseptic cream she had just applied on my wounds, but I wasn't really paying attention. There were some bad bruises on my legs but it didn't really matter to me. I felt helpless, with one bawling kid and another traumatised one. I had called my mum, and she came down immediately and we went back home together.

TT came home later and brought me to dentist who helped me to temporarily seal up the edge of the broken tooth. I had to come back about a week later to fix the teeth up properly. Then it was off to the doc who gave me some cleaning liquid, dressing and antiseptic cream... and 2 days of MC.

I was relieved Isaac was ok. He even said, "Mummy fall down. Dun push pram so fast!" Frankly, I was quite shaken by the whole episode, and it didn't sink in till in the afternoon while I was resting in bed. In retrospect, I really wish I hadn't rushed. It really wasn't necessary. That's me, always rushing for time, trying to do things as quickly as possible. I've learnt my lesson.

First Day of School

We changed Cheryl's school session to the morning, so she'll have to be in school by 8.30am. We were a bit worried she wouldn't be able to wake up, but thankfully she even managed to wake up before the alarm clock went off at 7.30am. Not much of an appetite for breakfast, so she just ate a little before we had to rush her off to school. A bit worried too that she would be facing so many new classmates, but fortunately a few of her classmates from her previous class also went to the morning session, so luckily there were some familiar faces. I'm taking leave from work in the mornings for the first 3 days of school, while TT will try to pop to help my mum in the afternoons.

New Year's Day

With the stomach flu episode out of the way, life's going back to normal again, although we are starting the new year without our maid around. So far we are coping well, with me doing the housework and laundry, TT helping out with the kids and my mum with the cooking. I have to wake up earlier to do the chores. While cleaning around the house, I discovered that the maid was rather shoddy in some areas. Managed to clean some neglected areas like the children's toy boxes. It was also a good opportunity to spend time with the kids and I think Isaac has grown a little closer to me since I have to take off from work frequently to be at home.

Isaac is slowly getting his appetite back again. Poor little thing, he's already so underweight and so unfortunate he got sick. But since he's back to his happy self,I've also got my own appetite back.

Anyway, 2007 began with a really fine day in Singapore, very cloudy and not too hot. TT mentioned about going to the Animal Resort located at Seletar West Farmway 5 (near Jalan Kayu) as his friend had told him about it. So we decided to go there in the morning and thereafer take a ride around the Sengkang LRT, as we've not taken this before.
The Animal Resort is a rather neat haven for animals. It's quite well kept and they keep most domestic animals. I'm guessing some of them are abandoned animals. We managed to see quite a number of kampung animals and I think the kids found it an experience. They saw chickens, parrots, a cockatoo, dogs, rabbits, guinea pigs, hamsters, a goat, pea hens, geese, a turkey, a swan, cranes a cassawory and another large weird looking bird that appeared rather aggressive. We were all quite intrigued by some newborn rabbits. See those light pinkish things at the top right corner of this pic.
We spent about an hour there before proceeding to Jalan Kayu to have a snack of prata and teh tarik. After that we parked at the carpark at Ferndale and we took the Senkang LRT. We took both the East and West loop before proceeding back to Ferndale station. You won't believe how many phots and videos we took of the light train as well as our journey and the tracks. You might mistake us for terrorists doing rail system research! We just hook up the camera to the TV, turn on the slide show function and Isaac would be enthralled for hours!

In the late afternoon after Isaac had his nap, we decided to follow our neighbour to Sentosa's Tanjong Beach to let the kids play with sand. They had quite a good time before some showers forced us to pack up.

At night, TT conducted a "mahjong class" for Cheryl and Sean to teach them some basics of mahjong. Many people may frown at this, but we're not teaching them the gambling aspect. I think it's a good game to recognise sequencing, chinese charactes and practise strategy. And at the same time we'll always have some ready "kakis" in the future! heh heh

Play Cheat

In case you hadn't noticed, I have been manipulating the post time of my blog entries because I can't keep up! I'm actually writing this entry on 11th Jan but I'm gonna say 1st Jan 2007. Play cheat hor? Since my blog is some sort of a diary, I've decided to drop the dates from the title and just assume the post date.

So many things happening on top of being without a maid... always too tired to blog. Also too lazy to insert pics. The days pass so quickly ...

Sun, 31 Dec - Goodbye 2006!

It was a really fine morning, so we decided to go to the Botanic Gardens since we had lots of leftover bread to feed the fish. Seems like we haven't been to the park for a long time because of the wet weather. My sis family came too.

After that we had a lunch of chicken rice... from me and mum's favourite chicken rice stall which had shifted from Tanglin Halt to a coffee shot near my sister's place at Clementi! What luck!

Later the kids came over to our place for a swim. I watched the movie "Nacho Libre" which my sister lent me. It was hilarious! Mum cooked my favourite ayam buah keluak and kiam chye soup. At last some real hearty food after the stomach flu episode...

TT managed to squeeze in a game of mahjong with our neighbours. Then close to midnight, TT brought my sis and kids to Seletar Country Club where my BIL was working, for the year-end countdown. I remained at home as Isaac was already asleep. I watched the fireworks display from my living room window. Personally Ithought it was quite an interesting display, as I've never seen a couple of firework formations before.

So 2006 came to a close just like that. Without much fanfare, at least for me. The final week of 2006 had turned out to be quite different from what I was expecting it to be like. I'm putting that behind me and silently praying this new year would be a good one for the family.