There and Back Again

Cousins Yet another late blog post - how do people blog when they are having so much fun? Is the Lego and Police arresting him? C3PO and him The Knight Anyway, for this holiday, we went to two places - LegoLand Malaysia and Batam. It was our 4th trip to LegoLand Malaysia. Since it is our fourth trip, I got nothing much to say with regards to the theme park itself. We have been to most of the rides that we want to go. We have even visited one of their newer attractions - Star Wars, twice. However, I just want to mention two things. One, we saw this tie-up between LegoLand and Star Wars regarding their robotics programme. It seemed really interesting, but since my son is only 7, we passed. Two, we finally went into this attraction that we missed the last three times. It was a "build your car" attraction and race against your friends. It was a blast creating our lego cars and racing each other and other strangers to see whose car has the best design. ...

This is actually a very late post. Sometime in March, all of us went to a farm, harvested some plants, and ate the plants we harvested. It was all good fun, the children enjoyed the trip even though it was really, really hot. My son (with cap) looking at the herbs while my wife seems to be smelling them? Firstly, we went to look at the farm itself and were introduced to the plants and herbs. I think the kids learnt quite a bit about farms, rural areas and agriculture. That is something very new for urban kids nowadays.  Then they were made to harvest certain herbs and plants, and after having harvested enough of them, the children (and adults) proceeded to cut them, grind them and basically prepare them for cooking. My son is grinding squeezing lemons or grinding something. Finally, we sat down to wait as the owner of the farm started to cook the food. The end result was a delicious Thai style vermicelli salad, egg omelette (with some vegetable we harvested) ...

We probably mentioned before that my son was interested in learning the violin. We sent him to the trial class and he seemed to enjoy it. He was quite undecided though when we asked him if he wanted to continue learning. But it was clear that he was not against it. So I decided that we should go ahead and let him continue, at least till the end of the year. Sometimes, we need time to develop our interest. I was quite interested in music when I was young and I still enjoy music (though I admit it is more of the singing inside my car then actually performing). So why not let him try it out. It also helps develops the brain because the brain is picking up a new skill. Best of luck! His brand new violin. That's an instrument I have no idea how to play.

When parents start on the topic of enrichment classes, I always think about the enrichment classes I had when I was young. I had swimming classes - that was something I did well in and maintained my interest in throughout all my life. Not that I swim a lot nowadays. But given the choice of doing a sport, I would probably choose swimming. I also played the organ. It was not something that kept my interest, but my mother made me learn it all the way till I was in secondary school. One benefit knowing the organ was that it helped me in my ECA (now called CCA), the symphonic band. I did a short stint of art classes, and I remembered that I was quite good at sketching at one point. Unfortunately, the lack of practise meant that I returned everything back to the teacher. Now, it is my turn to be a parent and decide on my son's enrichment. I am doing it slightly different from my mother. I mean there are some things that were good - I cannot complain my mother did not try to expose m...

Happy during recess (taken by another parent) It is the middle of Term One Week four, and I finally believe that Lucas has settled into his new schedule. It has not been easy for us. Week 1 was full of frowns and tears as Lucas refused to let us go. I had mentioned this in an earlier post. He was unhappy with everything - Catholic High, Master Hand (his student care), going to my parents place (this was surprising considering he had been going to my parents' place for the last few years). It was especially traumatic for my wife, who at some point in time was so shaken by the experience that she was thinking of part-time work. I was also thrown off my stride a bit. But I told myself that everything would be alright. Some of the little things we did help, I think. Firstly, we arranged it so that I was the one who walked him in. He tended not to be so emotional around me. So I drove towards Bishan and just before we reached the drop-off point, I switched with my wife so that s...

Minecraft on Xbox 360. My son is on the left and I am on the right. I am looking at his pet Iron Golem (he told me his name, but I cannot remember it now) As mentioned , my son watches many Minecraft videos on YouTube. During this December holidays, we have given him more time to play games on the iPad and Xbox. He is going to start Primary One in one week's time so we have been closing one eye to his game playing time (though I do drag him to the bookshop, to swimming and test his spelling once in a while). Nowadays, my son wants me to join him in his Minecraft games- both on the iPad and the Xbox. I have to admit that he is better at this game than him. He creates really amazing worlds in his games. I am really humbled when I see his creations.  He has named himself '8469 tryert'. His first online screen name / user name. I am looking at a trap he build. Unsuspecting villagers will walk and fall into the lava pit. He's a devious boy. He h...

This month, my son finally completed his kindergarten education. Not that it is a big deal - after all, who really wants to know what kindergarten you studied when you were a little tot? But for a kid, it is a big deal. It is basically all they know! Lucas in his graduation gown Anyway, you can guess that kindergarten is almost over when there is a graduation ceremony. In kindergarten, when you complete it, you get to wear a graduation gown  and a mortarboard (actually, it is properly known as academic dress). When you finish primary and secondary school, you do not get anything! Even though you have achieved more! I hope I will get to see him in a graduation gown again. Maybe a few times. Maybe with a lot of colours and a Tudor bonnet instead of a mortarboard. My wishful thinking. The final day of his school was last Friday. We are going on a holiday to Taiwan and after that, he is not going back to kindergarten. We hope to let him have a good two weeks of 'rest'. He ...

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...

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 ...

A couple of days ago, my son surprised my wife. It was my wife's birthday. Now, I did not have the opportunity to go together with him to Popular, so there was no card. Of course, my wife did not mind that a bit, though we joked as a family that we were not even giving a card to my wife. When I picked him up from school the day before, I was shocked. He actually produced a birthday card for his mum. It was made by the school teachers and his classmates! I could see the childish scrawl of his classmates wishing my wife happy birthday! Apparently, this little man had gone to school and managed to convince his teachers to draw a birthday card for mother. Either that, or the school had some time to burn and decided to make use of that time to draw a birthday card.  Regardless, my wife is touched that at least he made the effort to declare his desire to make a birthday card for his mother. So, presenting the birthday card.

The kids playing Xbox 360 The other day, I chanced upon my son's Minecraft game. He had this underground home that was unbelievable. It had doors, a library and other things that a house might have. I was very impressed. After all, he is only six. I never thought that a six year old would actually build a library. I know he has been watching Minecraft videos, but I did not realise that learns anything from these videos. So today, I thought I wanted to take a look at his 'world'. He was swimming with his buddies (the children of my wife's friend) so I took the iPad and opened the game. I could not find his underground home, so I searched for it by entering a nearby hole. But I could not find it. Needless to say, I continued to poke around, hoping to find it. Eventually, I went deeper and deeper underground. And I got lost. And I fell into lava. Because it was set in creative mode, my avatar was not killed by lava. Instead I got stuck. Then I panicked. I spend t...

Captain America Shield. Made by the dad. Our usual night time schedule is actually not too ideal for my son. He sleeps too late, and I feel that he does not get enough sleep sometimes. Unfortunately for him, both my wife and my schedule does not really allow for early sleep times like 8pm or even 9pm. I work till 8.30pm and my wife sometimes works even later. This is because she works for a transnational company and needs to have conference calls with her European and American counter-parts. Fortunately, these calls can be taken at home. As a result, he usually sleeps around 10.30pm; though sometimes it extends to 10.45pm. This is something we need to address next year when he enters primary one. Even though the current situation is not good, I guess all of us have to adjust. We do try to let him sleep until the very last possible minute before waking him up for school. One of thing bad habits my son has is watching too much iPad. At least I think it is too much; though he obv...

The last weekend was spent at F1 with my son. My wife had refused to come with us, so it was just the two of us. It was my son’s first live F1. Actually it was mine too. I never really fancied watching F1 live – firstly, I watched the Macau Grand Prix before and motorsports was never my thing and secondly, I always thought that F1 wasn’t that exciting.  It only turned exciting when there was a crash.  Nevertheless, my son was quite enthusiastic, so I brought the tickets. Of course one of the objectives of bringing my son there was because of entertainment. He had always been fascinated with cars since young, despite the fact that his dad was not a car fanatic. So he was excited whenever he saw sporty cars on the road (he must be extremely disappointed that my car came original without any changes at all and looked like a typical sedan car). But back in my mind, I wanted to expose him to different experiences – travelling, exhibitions etc. From my own experience as a teache...