A special gathering

Gathering with "old" friends is always special.  This one is very special.  

Lili and Joc are both my good friends, but from different place and time.  Lili is my JC choir mate (since 17) and Joc is from Deloitte time (22 yr old).  Lili and I are of different character (opposite attracts), whereas Joc is easy going like me.  They are secondary school classmates.  At that time, Joc is known as "Mei Ling".

Like I told Joc, there were so many times when I meet up with Lili that she told me ".. we should meet up with Mei Ling...".  At first it didn't register, cos I meet up with Joc so often.  Finally when I organised this dinner, I was told over dinner that they have not met up since they parted ways at the end of Sec4!!

I don't think my 2 good friends are going to end up best buddies, but I do hope that our 3-gals-Bangkok trip tentatively to be on in Sep can take place!

And we kept discussing what I should do for my 40th BD celebration, ha!

April Update (I)

April was a quiet month.  I'm not going to update 5 to 10 posts at one go, as there were nothing much to update this month.

1) April BD/Karaoke
I attended 2 birthday celebrations in April, and both were karaoke and/cum dinner.

This was the cake Mavis choose for WK's mum 64th BD.  The Karaoke was too short, but was a cosy affair; the dinner was good; the kids had loads of fun.  I think BD girl was happy, cos family time and appreciation were all that this-generation-of-mummy yearn and lived for.. Wishing her many happy returns..

My boss's birthday was on 1st May; we went K box @ Marina Sq on a Friday night to celebrate for him.  I think it's much more fun to do karaoke with colleague.  Different people sang different generations of songs, it's hilarious and entertaining.

I sang 2 男女对唱情歌with the BD boy.  I think the way we sang was really like we always were - can sing, almost in pitch, almost coordinated, but not much chemistry, hah!  The pics of him and me are in my computer, will get them into the post next week.  Here's a very fun pic of me, Eva, and Hui Fen.

I took a pic of this and send to my ex ex colleague, See Yin, the ex-Karaoke queen who introduced me to singing in the open hall instead of room.  Those were the young and bold days.

2) Nailed

It was coincidental, that this happened a few weeks after a heard a survey result on class 95 about ladies drivers and the tire!  I knew that I belong to that majority in the survey result that doesn't know how to change spare tire, and didn't even know where the spare tire is kept, ha!

Anyway, this happened when WK was out of town.  I called Wee Juin (BIL), he said that he doesn't have contracts for this.  I called my dad, then realised that he out of town.  I chat May and Macus, and learned that Macus (BIL) was in JB.  I thought of Wee Loon (my only bro - cousin), but I knew he's out of town too.  So finally I took up Caroline's - colleague, female driver who belongs to the minority in the survey -  advice, and called Shell service station at Lorong 2.

The Uncle and his workshop guys were fast and efficient.  Still took about an hour in the hot afternoon (3 to 4pm) to complete the whole task, but I'm happy that I settled this "by myself" :).

3) School syllabus
For the past 2 Saturdays, WK and myself attended mini seminars given by the school on school syllabus.  I find these sessions very useful, and I believe that nowadays all schools conduct such events.

After attending, now I know why there's a big demand for tuition.  Unlike parents in the past, parents of today are mostly educated and informed.  We realised that if other children learn faster/more/better than our own children, then the other children will get ahead in examination and posting to better secondary school.  Then we realised that every parent, including ourselves are truly kiasu, and we do not want, and don't think our children can afford to lose out.  Then the next decision is either to teach by ourselves, or otherwise.  Then we realised that we do not have the time, the energy, and maybe even the ability (upper primary) to handle such a stressful and demanding role.  Thus tuition..

Hmm, I in this system..  decisions, dilemma, decisions, dilemma..  Am I going to be any different from the other parents?  Are the changes that MOE implemented going to help turn around the situation?

Anyway, life in P1 is still easy and stress free, at least for this school that we had chosen for Lynn.  I am only coaching her in Chinese at home now, as I hope to build up her basic reading skills so that she can read independently as soon as possible.  

April Update (II)

Part 2 of April Update

4) Another Gardens by the Bay
On one of the Saturday mid morning, we went to Gardens by the Bay for a second time.  This time we did not visit the flower dome, but went for the super trees.  I think it's prettier at night.

We went to Satay by the Bay for lunch.  Lunch was so-so, but the satay was not bad.  Here's some pics of the pond area that area.

5) 1st of May
Since I'm updating, I shall go into the first week of May too.  Finally we went for MacRitchie Tree Top walk, after it had been opened for such a long time.  I have heard many times before that the shortest route is still quite a distant (5 to 6km).  That morning, we cheated big time, and did only like 3 - 4km, hah!

WK knew that the nearest entrance to the jungle is at SICC, which is just 600m to the Tree Top walk.  We drove up to SICC, then he realised that it is suppose to be open to members.  We were extremely lucky, the very kind security guard allowed him to drive us in and drop us at the entrance to the jungle.  The road in was long, must be more than 1 km!

After he dropped us, he drove out, parked, and walked in.  But he walked fast, so we waited for him for less than 1/2 hr.

See this map, we waited for WK at the  the Rangers Park, which is 300m from the entrance to the jungle at SICC.  From here, it is another 300m to the Tree Top walk.

When we reached the entrance of the Tree Top walk, there a queue to enter:

We saw 2 monkeys while waiting.  This one was munching on a whole pack of Kit Kat.  From the look of the packaging, I think it must have snatched the whole pack from some people.

The monkey knew how to unwrap the double layer of paper and aluminium foil wrappers.

Nearer to the entrance, there's another monkey.  At first, it was at our left, just sitting on the tree, waiting..  Then, see the woman in black holding a young child in this picture below, she gave her kid a biscuit.  The monkey saw or smelt it, and came rushing onto the right side of the bridge..  That family was ignorant, but they were very lucky that morning.  I told the daddy that it was the food that attracted the monkey, and he immediately understood, and guarded against the monkey.  Then in the next minute, it was our turn to enter the tree top walk, so we all moved on.  The monkey didn't follow.

In this pic, Monkey on our left, on the tree

In this pic, it is on our bridge, to our right, eyeing the food..

Here's pic taken on the tree top walk:

From the start to the end of the tree top walk was short, probably less than 1 km.  However, from the exit of the tree top walk back to the Ranger's park is about 1.5km.  Then from the Ranger's park out to SICC and then to our car outside SICC is definitely more than 1km.  All in all, we probably walked close to 4km.

Lynn complained, and asked her daddy to piggy back her for a short distant, but overall, she did extremely well. I didn't expect 4km, so I'm glad that we all did it without much trouble.

6) 4th of May
Yesterday (Saturday) evening.  Suppose to go Marina barrage, but end up at Merlion park again.   These pics were taken at about 7pm.  Lynn's orange T glowed strikingly against the jewel blue..

7) A shock this morning
I woke up early today, to update my blog before Lynn wakes up to monopolise my time.  Yesterday night before sleep, I set out 2 pieces of lizard traps (sticky sheets) in the kitchen.  This morning I went to check, and to my horror, I saw one of the hamsters trapped there.  Luckily I manage to get it off the sticky sheets, and he (the Gor Gor hamster) seems unhurt and I placed it back into the cage.  I saw that one of the tube holes on the cage was opened, so I just assumed that we forgot to close it, so I closed it.  About an hour later, WK's mum woke up and said that a hamster was on the loose. I told her not to worry and that I had taken care of it. Then she said no, the hamster was still running around the kitchen!  It was Gor Gor hamster again.  When i placed it in again, I noticed that the hole was opened.  This hamster is extremely smart, and actually manage to open the hole by itself.  So now I got to tape it (the hole) down.

These creatures are really like little kids who are unaware of the dangers around.  I hope they don't get hurt again.

8) Our "Neighbour"
Our neighbour country is holding election today.  A lot of news and buzz over this election.  Lots of folks in our office are hot blooded people who made effort in going home to exert their rights.

Our next door neighbour (the family with 5 kids) were not in since yesterday..  Probably they went where their hearts belong and where their families were too.

More shoes!

Recently I went shopping at Diaso, and found a product that I've been looking for a long time.  It's a shoe rack.  Here's some pics to illustrate my new "investment"!!

This is my shoe cabinet, a floor to ceiling cabinet, with 10 shelfs.  I use 5 out of the 10 (pie say...).  I place my shoes in boxes, and print out pic of the shoes to label my boxes.  Those without pic are new shoes.

Out of the 5 shelfs, the top and the 5th are shorter in height.  The 3 rows in the middle are taller, and thus they are not fully utilised!

This is the product I got from Diaso - a shoe rack that is tall at one end and short at the other end. Here's how it works.

Step 1, place my tall platform below.

Step 2, place the rack over the platform, with the taller portion behind.  the rack sits nicely over the platform without squashing them.

Step 3, place another pair of shorter shoe on the top of the rack.  The higher portion of the shoe goes onto the shorter side of the rack.

This is another kind of rack.  This is the same size as a slim shoe box.

Here's the end result.  By investing $8 - 3 black double racks, and one pink single rack, I can place 7 shoes on a shelf.  Consider before, which is 5 or 6 shoe boxes on one shelf, I can increase capacity by about 15% to 20%!  Haha, time to get more racks and more shoes!!!