There and Back Again

Big Hero 6 Last week, we went to see Big Hero 6. We heard so much about it - watched the trailers and read the reviews. Lucas was also very keen to watch the movie. After I finished work, I brought him (he came to my office) to meet my wife at NEX to watch the movie. It was very funny at first. My son laughed out very loudly at many points of the movie. He also enjoyed the fighting scenes. However, at the last part, when Baymax (the marshmallow robot) 'sacrificed' itself so as to save Hiro, my son got very upset. He remained very upset throughout the whole journey back home, despite our attempts to point out that Baymax's memory chip survived and Hiro was able to build another Baymax. He did not seemed convinced that robots and people are different. Actually since young, he has been quite sensitive to loss, hurt and deaths in movies. When he was younger, whenever the television showed people in combat or in conflict, he will be very upset and demand that the televi...

Orientation Map of Catholic High The previous Saturday, my son went to his Primary One orientation. I hope he really loves his future school. I really love his school - for one, it is also my school. I spent 11 years in Catholic High School. One year in Pre-Primary (during those times, MOE allowed schools to run their own kindergarten programme), six years in Primary and four years in Secondary. I hope he gets to spend 12 years there - six years in Primary and six years in the Integrated Programme. Of course, I have little control over whether he qualifies for the final six years, but I am going to try my best to prepare him so that he can qualify. Mind you, it is totally fine if he does not qualify. I am sure my father was happy enough that I made it Catholic High instead of Raffles (his alma mater). We were soon separated after we arrived in the school hall. I was glad he did not show any anxiety after being made to sit with his future classmates. I also managed to catch up w...

Next year, my son needs to go to a student care. I know many people disapprove of it, but I think it is the best option for us. There are many reasons for this choice - both of us are working and we do work late (I finish earliest at 8.30pm and my wife needs to take conference calls at night when projects are due). The only person that can take care of my son is my parents. But they will be unable to help my son much - the syllabus has changed so much from 60 years ago after all. I visited three student care centres around the Marine Parade and East Coast area, checking them out. One of them turned out to be a total disappointment. Despite advertising that they give help based on multiple intelligence, they just do baby-sitting services. They do not even pretend to follow their own marketing! It left two choices. Both seemed to have good administrators and teachers, but one of them really bugged me. They needed us to buy past years examination papers, and the story was that after...

Optimus Prime I took my son out of childcare this Monday to bring him out for a day of fun. I know I will never do this when he is in Primary school, but since this is only Kindergarten, it is alright. My wife also took leave, and we had planned to go somewhere together. At first we wanted to go to LegoLand, but decided otherwise because we already had a LegoLand trip planned in December. It seemed to excessive to go there now. Anyway, I decided that we needed to go see the Transformers exhibition. We had sort of missed it when we were in Macau in June. When I said 'we', I mean my son and me. I had to go off in the middle of that trip because I was busy with my school's holiday programme and I did not stay behind to bring him to visit the exhibition. As you can guess, my wife's motivation to go to see Transformers is zero (actually, her motivation to see the things Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings, Indiana Jones is zero as well). Needless to say, she was very h...

Recently, a friend's blog mentioned about her trying out some audio books when she and her children were travelling in a car. That struck a chord with me. I am very busy with life, yet I want to read books. So what I have done is to subscribe to blinklist (a service that summarises books) and Audiophile (a audiobook seller). Thus far, I have been enjoyed my short summaries and listening to books being read out loud while I am driving. This friend's post got me thinking that since it worked for her, I can try getting an audiobook for my son so that he can listen to stories in the car. It is good for him to practise his listening comprehension skills, as well as to listen to crisp spoken English. The book I chose to buy was 'The Book with No Pictures' by BJ Novak (writer and producer of The Office). It was an excellent book and since there are 'no pictures', it works perfectly fine as an audiobook. The book was real good and my son was very tickled by the ...