LJ to Bollywood Veggie & ISH

It was a very busy week for me last week. I had to attend a 2 days conference at the Marina Bay Sand Expo and Convention centre. It was a good 2 days of education sessions and general sessions. I had the chance to meet a lot of people from the travel industry and was good to see some “old friends”.

Then on Friday, it was Anthea School Learning Journey to Bollywood Veggie. This trip is in conjunction with their English lesson – A Feast.

I joined in the LJ as a PSG. In the morning I went to the school around 9am as the children had their Mother Tongue test before the trip.

As usual I was tasked to go with Anthea class as I am familiar with her classmates. Unlike the other regular PSG whom are familiar with almost every kids.

We set off around 9.30am and reached the farm around 10am. The children were breakout into a few groups and followed different Tour Guides whom brought them to the different plot of land. The guide make introduction of the different kind of plant/trees/fruits to the children. It was a great learning experienced for the children, especially to feel/sense/taste the different plants.

About 20 minutes into the introduction, the sky started to turn dark and lightning started. For safety reason, the organizer had to end the tour and the children went to the bistro area for their snacks.

While eating the snacks, Anthea and her classmates were very lucky to have the Professor telling them the stories of those portraits in the room.

At around 12noon, the rain got lighter and we managed to board the bus for our journey back to the School. At the boarding point, Anthea form teacher had the children to say Thank You to the professor for his interesting guide for the tour.

Although the tour was short due to the rain but I had managed to see quite a variety of interesting plant/fruit. I am sure the children had enjoyed the tour and found it useful too.

A few of my friends played badminton on weekend and thanks to their recommendation, I got to know about Indoor Sport Hall (ISH) booking for badminton court.

Last week I managed to book a hall for the Saturday and we brought Anthea and Anders for their sport. Adrian had the chance to train Anthea in her badminton while I played 嗒嗒球with Anders at the side of the court.

We enjoyed the 1 hour of sport fun and both of them commented that it was very fun to play in the hall. With these approval votes, I managed to book another hall for this Saturday sport fun, let’s hope we will enjoy once again.

“LIFT” us up

Since our last E-polling in August 2008 for the Lift Upgrading Program, renovation work started about 1 ½ years ago. Yes, we endured all the inconveniences of daily dust, noise and walking up & down stairs when the old lift was out of order for a few weeks.

Finally after all the above, our new LIFT is up & operational few weeks back. Now we had lift landing on every floor. To celebrate the occasion, Anthea and Anders have been pushing their own bicycles downstairs in the evening and ride around at the open space.

Our old lift were built in those old days and it served mid floors to the units. This mean if I stayed on the 4th floor, the lift will only bring me to 3rd floor and I have to walk flights of stairs to get to my floor.

An ex-colleague of mine had asked me: “since you already had a lift, why do you want to VOTE for a new lift? You need to pay government monies.” He said his estate has been voting against LUP.

I told him - During my younger days, I was very active in sport and got a sport injury during a badminton game. I had a minor operation in my right tendon and was on hospitalization leaves for almost 2 months. At that time, I was in cast and had to walk around with crutches.

I was still staying with my parents during those days and thankfully the new block we stayed in had lift landing on every floor.

Yes, LIFT is that important to a person who is partially incapacitated because even one flight of stair proved to be a painful challenge.

Beside this point, there are other users like parents with prams, wheel-chaired bound person and senior citizens who may have difficulties in going up and down the stairs.

So the lift is a saver to many of us…: )

Now we are enjoying the convenience of our new LIFT Services and it has definitely lifted our spirit to a new level too… : )

Happy 45th National Day!!

What a fun day we had on this 45th National Day celebration. We woke up to a rainy morning and Anders told me: “mommy, we can’t go cycling because it’s raining.” I told him not to worry; the sun will be out later. True enough after breakfast, the rain stopped and we started packing our stuff for a day at Pasir Ris Park.

Now that both Anthea and Anders both owned a bicycle and had learnt to cycle on their own. We would like to bring them to the park to let them get used to the crowd in cycling.

As Bishan Park is undergoing major renovation and most part of the parks are closed off. After some discussion, we decided that Pasir Ris Park would be more idea for the children as it is not as crowded as East Coast Park.

We headed off around 10 plus with both bicycles in our car. The drive to the park was very smooth and fast, as the road was quite empty. We off loaded both the bicycles and headed to the park and the children were all excited about cycling in the park.

They saw a big playground and started heading toward the playground. The playground was huge and had different kind of slides and play area. Both of them went to try the different slides and had so much at the playground.

Then after play about ½ hour, we told them to ride their bicycles to explore the other side of the park. As they were riding along the way and I was following Anders while Adrian jogged beside Anthea. I could see many families having their family picnics by the grass patch and some under the canopy. Most of them were dressed in our National Day color – Red & white. It was really fun and we can feel the National Day mood with all these colors surrounding us. One of the families was even doing BBQ under the hot sun…: P

We had water breaks in-between and I also brought along cheese buns for the children as snack. During their rest, we even had the chance to play 嗒嗒球 at the open field. We had so much fun doing all the different sport at the park.

Then at about 1pm, we started to get changed before lunch. Anders even took a quick shower at the changing room. We headed toward Elias Mall, which was nearest to the park, and had a simple lunch at the food court. Then followed by a good treat of ice-cream for a hot, sunny afternoon.

Finally we reached home around 3pm. The children bathed and had their usual afternoon nap. They had planned to dine-in to watch the LIVE National Day Parade on TV.

In the evening, we packed Macdonald’s for dinner and sat in front of the TV for dinner. We had so much fun watching the 2 ½ hours parade and the children sang along to the tune of the familiar National Songs.

At 8pm, we even caught a glimpse of the Mobile Column that drove passed our street. Then at 8.10pm, the children recited the Pledge and sang the final National Anthem and this brought us to the closed of the ceremony.

It has been an enjoyable National Day for our family and we were glad that we had discovered this new “GEM of the East”. We will be there again as the children said they really had a good time at the park.