There and Back Again

When to Playeum @ Gillman Barracks and we had a whale of a time. I don't think I need to elaborate too much, but just let the pictures do the talking. And the fact that we stayed there for 4 hours.  Building his car The art and craft area The track for younger kids. You can modify the track.

Our tags Today we went climbing. What did you say? Yes, our son who has a history of planning issues is going to climb rock walls. I expected a disaster, but you know what, if we never try, we will never know. It was also a Zee Juniors reunion. For some reason, the mothers of his kindergarten class got along very well. I think it has something to do with the fact that all of us banded together to fight against the tyranny of Zee's ridiculous spelling lists. Needless to say, he was not very keen in the first place. I think he knows his limitations, but the moment he saw his former classmates, he was keen to go. When I saw him climb, I was reminded of his rope ladder climbing during his days of Occupational Therapy, and also when he climbs bouncy castles. He had always struggled. I think it is a combination of his weak upper body strength, his weight and his coordination. Compared to the girls in his class, he was not fast. But I think he did very well in the sense th...

Today, we have a guest blogger. My son himself!               Funniest jokes in the world 1.What did the sushi said to the bee? Ans:Wasabi  2.What do you call a snake which eat a pie? Ans:python 3.One day tomato and lettuce were having a race lettuce was leading but tomato was trying to ketchup! 4.What do you call a pear which walks into the air? Ans:pear walker Note: He typed this himself. Any grammar or spelling errors are his and his alone.

Our first catch. The second part of our holiday vacation was the part that I most looked forward to. This holiday involved only me and my son - a perfect way to bond. It was organised by the Catholic High School Dads for Life and involved a fishing trip on a kelong. I have to confess that I have not fished before. I remembered fishing in my youth, but I cannot remember much of it. So I guess I am a newbie in fishing. Nevertheless, I was very keen on going. My son was also very keen to fish, despite having zero knowledge about fishing. Sometimes I wonder what goes into his head - he seems keen to do things he has no idea about. It was a long way to the kelong. We had to cross over to the Malaysian border, drive up 3 hours (at least) and then take a slow bumboat to the kelong. The only bonus... the driver played Jurassic World for us. It was a bonus for me, but for my son, it was obviously too much gore and violence. He kept complaining that he was sick of the movie (translation...

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. ...

Recently, I brought my son to an appointment at KKH's Child Development Centre for a routine check-up. The professor said that he was developing quite good. But she said that I should allow him more exposure to physical activities given his issues with motor planning. If you have been reading my blog, you will realise that it was what I intended to do. I am not expecting him to excel in sports, but more exposure to any sport will do him good. He is posing in front of the rules. So on my off-day I took the opportunity to bring my son to the SEA Games. For some reason, he wanted to watch Table Tennis. Since I had no particular sport in mind (other than Swimming - sold out and Football - sold out), I agreed. After all, I was in Table Tennis in Primary school. I think nobody can remember this anymore. Though I have to say, I am definitely not good in Table Tennis - my skills more or less remained stagnant at Primary school level. The table tennis tables... far far away. I...

This looks like a comprehension passage he set about a Ryan Gowith and Caleb Xia. Please don't ask me who they are. Last night, my son decided to write some stuff. He proceeded to write all these pages, which I guess was based on what he did in school. I am not sure if these are considered good or bad; I have never seen samples of Primary One writing that has not gone through the eyes of an adult. Nevertheless, these are totally unedited and without any intervention. The only reason I am sharing these is that it amusing that he writes such things. It is something he did unexpectedly, and I think will never do again.  "Today we are learning math. This answers are easy. Try them. Good luck." Looks like he needs to brush up on his continuous tense and 'this' vs 'these'. And stop being so arrogant about his math. They are easy because he is only in Primary One! According to him, there are science lessons. The school never requested u...

Playing a shooting game It's the annual Our Lady of Good Counsel (OLGC) fun fair. Even though I did not go as I had to work, my brother-in-law kindly offered to bring him there, together with his children who studies in the school. He sent me these photos. Thanks, Lawrence! Having his breakfast His favourite game - fishing

This week is Catholic High School's English Language Arts Week. And the school has organised some activities for the children. The theme is 'Around the World in 80 days' - the classic book. It is indeed a classic book, just like what Mark Twain said, 'Classic - a book which people praise but don't read'. I have not read the book but roughly knew the storyline. So as to help him, we managed to borrow the book from the library even before the holidays. Anyway, on April 6, the kids were supposed to turn up in school in a costume, made up of recycled and scrap materials, based on the ethnic clothing of selected countries. We were quite undecided on what to make my son wear. He was also not very forthcoming with suggestions. This is very typical of him - he is indecisive when faced with almost unlimited choices. Eventually, we decided on a Chinese emperor's costume. To keep with the material requirements, we sacrificed a bed sheet and a Transformer toy box. But...

My parents on the ferry to Bintan. This is a late post - we visited Bintan on the first Sunday of the March school holidays, came back and school has reopened. Yet I am only writing the post today! It has been a tiring March holidays for me. As you know, my son was hospitalised for the most part of the last week of Term 1. We had booked a holiday to Bintan way in advance and we held our breaths as we waited for the antibiotics to take effect. Fortunately, the antibiotics won and he was discharged on Friday. He had one day of additional rest and off it was to Bintan. There was only one problem. He enjoys swimming... but can he swim? I specifically asked the doctor what sort of water stuff he could do. I was told specifically that there was to be no swimming, but wading around was fine. Actually my mother was even not keen for him to go into water, but relented when I told her about the doctor's instructions. Actually, based on my own research, there is a lot of evidence th...

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...

Win-lose-draw. Note that I am losing. This is a robot. I thought it was Iron Man. A spiderweb He said he screwed up the first 'P'. This is actually Parkway Parade.

We were in Taiwan for a holiday during the third week of December. It was something we planned for quite some time. We thought of Japan and South Korea but eventually decided on Taiwan because my son is afraid of the volcanoes in Japan. Needless to say, we did not say anything about the fact that there are volcanoes in Taiwan too. He can be a very frustrating person to travel with. Once he has settled down in a hotel room, it is really difficult to extract him from the hotel bed and go sight seeing again. This usually happens at night and in the morning when we want leave the hotel room to have a meal. We usually try to persuade and reason with him, though it escalates to a stern tone and threats on some days.  But despite all the complaining, he does perk up when we reach each location. When we were in Sun Moon Lake. We wanted to visit the Formosa Aborigine Cultural Village (九镞文化村), but he kept complaining that there was nothing for him to do and that it was going to be ve...

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...

Some time ago, the whole family went to the trampoline park together with my brother-in-law and his family. This was our second visit to the park and their first to the park. It was great fun. Now, I always encourage my son to take up physical activities. This is because I always believe that good physical condition means peak mental performance . I know this sounds hypocritical when you see me, but I really try to exercise. It is just that I have a lot of difficulties in losing weight. (I still can swim pretty well now; I represented Catholic High and Temasek Junior College in swimming). I went to the Catholic High Alumni dinner two weeks ago and I was impressed by their Modern Dance and Wu Shu. I certainly hope that he can consider either one of this. Or a CCA that is sports-based. Though at the back of my mind, I know I should not expect him to end up doing exceptionally well in any sports CCA. One reason is that while I did well enough to participate in the national compe...

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...