Sunday in January

Experiencing quite a chunk of money set-back as we have to change the entire toilet bowl due to the debris that my late FIL threw into it. I've had several Plumbers come and go, after several attempts in clearing the toilet choke but none of them took the time to explain why their prices to replace the bowl cost so much... (almost $700). Finally, one Plumber took the time to explain that it is due to the toilet being a squat toilet before it was converted to a sitting toilet bowl. The tank and pipe has to be flushed against the wall and there are fewer such designs, hence scarcity equals higher pricing. 

Our water heater has also weakened, so we'll replace it at the same time. 

Hope our toilet and bathroom will return to functioning state in no time. Plumber's scheduled for next week. 

 Hello? Anyone out there?

 Fried Carrot Cake 

 $2.50 egg noodle Wan Ton Mee

this market at MacPherson still has good prices albeit small portion. 

Coffee at 70-80 cents, rare find. 

 Colin asked to visit a Car Showroom but we didn't pass by any. 

We did, however, passed by Tamiya's mega store. 

 I bought the cheapest one that was on sale. 

 Promised this little girl an art & craft session several months ago. 

She reminded me about it and we finally got down to it yesterday. 

Some micro-beads thingy. 

 Trying out the handmade, non-preservatives, sun-dried noodles from Taiwan. 

$18 for five packets.... 

 Chinese Spelling. Hanyu Ping Ying. 

Gosh, look at what time my uncle sends me texted messages. 

3.33 am!

Why did I forget to silent my phone!!!! Argh! 

Obviously a light-sleeper like me, will not be able to fall back to sleep...........................

Surfed the net for what I might go hunting until it was time to make the kids' Recess lunchboxes.

There was no bread available for breakfast. I am so tired of having to give standing orders to buy bread. What I delegated doesn't get carried out and I can only blame myself for not imposing them firmly enough.

Saturday

Start of the day is to Phonics Class. (Colin)
The wind was strong and chilly felt like 21 Deg.

Back home, lunch, Chinese class X 2. 

Catch forty winks before heading to Violin class. 

I suppose naps are important for allowing new brain cells to grow, create more storage space and allow electrons to better connect the brain cells for new learning. 

After class, dinner time. 

heh, heh, heh....

 Before I had children, I wondered why Parents make their poor kids do homework at public places, even at wedding dinners.

I was like-- Are they really that short of time? 

Or-- Can the kid absorb what he's reading / working on?

Now that I have kids of my own, it is typical that homework is on-the-go, anywhere and everywhere.

20 mins wait for our food to arrive, we can do five sums. (Chinese). 

 Our long-time-no-eat Xiao Long Bao at Ding Tai Fung 

 Egg Fried Rice (Pearl Rice)

 Duck Poh Piah 

 Chocolate Lava Xiao Long Bao 

(a tad too many, next time just order the smallest basket when there are more diners)

Festivities coming. 

This CNY, we will just be visiting my Aunt (because she's harassing me to visit OR ELSE!)

Other than that, we will try to avoid house visiting so that my sis' absence won't be too obvious. 

One jing-gang MIA better than one person MIA. 

Last Friday Night

 Met my sis and her colleague Winnie. 

Chit-chat, chit-chat. 

After which, Winnie left to go do some cosmetics shopping while cousin Janice joined for dinner. 

A seemingly uneventful dinner turned out to be a rather huge revelation on her romantic status. It is always good to catch up with your cousins and close friends, be it once a quarter or less. 

We lend each other moral support or brainstorm ideas or 

share funny antics that only we would understand. 

 Whiskey Sour 

Bus home. 

Cold Day

Last night I met S for steamboat at our regular joint but that entire coffee shop was locked and closed. The steamboat operator had CLOSED DOWN. The entire coffee shop might have been sold to redevelopment. We were sad because we didn't get the chance to say Goodbye. We didn't like, meaningfully ate there one last time and now all we have is hanging on the hinge of memory. So, really, always be in-the-moment so that you'll have a richer memory when retrieval is needed. 

It was so cold last night, we were both shivering, no kidding. Cos after steamboat we both had glasses of Coke and also ice slush lime. We ended up cold. 

This morning was chilly. 23 deg out in the open. Yes, I was waiting for my bus at 6.27am. It was cold and rainy but it felt nice. 

Interesting to learn of regular people getting "famous" these days. Especially Singaporeans. 

This Singaporean lady embroiders scenes and scenery wherever she travels. Be it locally or overseas. Such a neat idea to use her hobby to capture the scenes instead of using the camera. 

She now gets commissioned work by big-shot names like Gucci, SIA, etc. 

You can find her at IG - "teeteeheehee" 

About a year ago, Kiki had asked me for embroidery materials. While I was in Taipei with Val the other time, I did come across embroidery starter's kits at the nice, mega stationery store but I was refraining from spending money then and I didn't buy them. I might want to let her do some cross-stitch first. I remember in primary school we used to make pencil cases from cross stitching, surely stitching requires fine motor skills and patience, which would do kids good. 

Regular people are gaining spotlight now. 

We have the lady that does miniature clay commissioned by John Legend. 

We have florists who runs workshops and also does commissioned work. 

I have not discovered any hobby or talent in any field so I can't make money from a sideline work. Hopefully, I will stumble into something that will give me residual income, something that doesn't interfere with my work nor my parent-duties. 

Random

KiCo's CCA schedule.

These days the school don't phrase it as ECA- Extra Curricular  Activity because the word "Extra" sounds like hard work. LOL. They call it CCA- Co-Curricular Activity to give those extra activities the same value and to have them as an integral part of a kid's school life or education. The piano school has an open slot so now we could move Colin's slot to the afternoon instead of night. Friday is a free day after school hours. 

Saw this poster at the MRT station.
Shall be bringing the kids there.

 Coming movies

 Oh,,,, I can't find this. I was watching Season 1 halfway...............
Come on, let me find this series again, man.

Metro-tuner / Metronome 

I am not too sure what this gadget does. I supposed it is for tuning and some kind of tempo guide. 

We have been advised to purchase one of this, which I did; the stock will arrive in a couple of weeks. 

Hindsight

I hope some big-shot executive will revive their plan to put up Season 2 of Hindsight. They had a change of management and the last I've heard is that Season 2 had been shelved. This series has no A-listers and it looked low budget but still, I watched it like how I would watch a soap opera. 

Hindsight is about this lady, on the verge of her second wedding, she fainted while in a lift and woke up to 10 year back, right on the day where she was about to go through her first wedding. Back in time but with knowledge of how she "messed up", she (Becca) tries her best to avoid some more significant mistakes, especially the ones that had cost her her friendship with her bestie Lolly. She did make much "better choices" but unfortunately, at the end of episode 10, the break-up of the friendship was inevitable despite her best efforts (or lack of the most crucial of difficult bit of admission of guilt to her friend). So now I'm left stranded, not knowing how she will live the next ten years while in the past, with double the guilt of having messed up twice. 

Class Apps

Colin's form teacher communicates to us via an App known as "ClassDojo". 

She would update us on class activities, eg: the kids were out of the classroom for a road safety briefing and they learnt to use the zebra crossing, etc. 

The class' Whatsapp group is also useful. The Parent Support Group (parent volunteer) is helpful and assuring. 

For Kiki's class' Whatsapp group, we've been juggled hence we now have different sets of parents from before. Parents without older kids (like me), will benefit from parents with P5, P6 children. We learnt that there are no CA1 & CA2 for P3 & P4, that means we only need to do the mid-year exams and the final exams for P3 & P4. Not sure if this is a good thing but still, less tests means Yay? Just hope I don't get unpleasant surprises from Kiki. Given me, a lazy parent, hope that both my kids will do well for school. Can't help feeling unsettled. 

Lady Bird

A coming-of-age movie about the relationship of a 17-year-old and her mother's struggles with having a full time job (paramedic) and making ends meet (household expenses and school expenses), her soft-spoken, more senior-than-average-dad's retrenchment, her black brother (adopted), her Catholic school friends and outside school boyfriends, and her flare for stage-acting. As they say, movies draw materials from real life, how relating it may be depends on the nuances of the story. So there was this scene where the teenager, in the heat of a disagreement, asked her mom for a figure. A figure (amount) that she will work to payback her mom for having spent on raising her so that she can be free from hearing how hard it was for her mom to be raising her. They are just two hot-headed women, loving but not know how to love each other. 

If you have the "Watchme" app from Appstore, you can catch all these movies.

From my GV member's cheap-tickets-Tuesdays to this movie App. Binge watching to the max. Me.

The Greatest Showman is so good

First, I've watched Three Billboards. It is quite difficult to watch but it was quite a good movie nonetheless. (psycho-drama) Deserving so, it bagged the Best Actress at the Golden Globle (Frances McDormand)

Good thing I ignored the critics and watched The Greatest Showman. 

It was spectacular. I would have bought all my friends a ticket to watch this and it would be a thousand times better than Bill Gates buying that stupid Rosie Project book for his friends. I've read that book, it was entertaining for more than half the book but at the end of the day, it was nothing but an elitist, nerd, overage fantasy disguised as rom-com, what a shame. Oh, I really shouldn't have brought it up here. The Greatest Showman was really good, for the sake of my witless comparison, it was as good as the Rosie Project was bad.