YowCH got a set of frameless silicone wipers for the car at $50. The brand is Crystal, and wipes very smooth and clean. Let’s see if they last at least 3 years!
Comparing the normal type of wipers with the frameless:
Details of the Crystal wiper.
Well, with the Isis coming to two years old next week, we decided to give it a little wash and polish. As we spend 2 hours every Sunday in Funan Centre, we just gave it to the carpark polishing guy to do it (rather expensive at $150 for wash, polish and wax).
A photo before:
And a photo right after:
This afternoon, just as YowCH was leaving the NUS site office, the wind blew and the site office gate hit the left of the front bumper, leaving bad white streaks.
But thank God that it is not a very bad damage, just paint from the gate rubbed onto the bumper, nothing that a hard rub of Soft99 liquid wax couldn’t help.
Only a small cut and notch left behind by the incident, barely noticeable.
Sadly, the caterpillar is dead, being immobile on the leaf for over a few days. It is probably at the stage where it changes from black to green, according to the Wikipedia reference here.
The life-cycle graphic here is very nice.
Woohoo, last Sunday (29 Nov) we managed to get the whole set of 7 of the Constructicons at Funan ($78). Each transforms from construction vehicle to robot mode and they combine to form Devastator. The combined robot is actually very robust. Much better deal than the large $200 Devastator toy which only has vehicle mode and combined mode (no individual robots mode, no different from Voltron).
The packing:
Individual construction vehicles:
Individual robots modes:
Devastator:
We also bought the underwater casing for the Fujifilm F200EXR camera to shoot the children swimming. At $224.00, it is not cheap but we can have more pool, beach or sea fun with the camera.
Joseph was dedicated to the LORD on Sunday, 8 Nov 2009 in church by Elder Andrew Chua. This is a photo of the family before service (thanks to Paul for helping take the photo):
Photos during service taken by Quincy:
[ADDED 15 Nov 2009]
Here’s a photo of the Ngs with Daniel and the Yows with Joseph.
And this is when we, the parents, pledge to bring up Joseph in Godly manner.
We have also started putting together a new PC last Sunday, 1 Nov 2009, in hope that the existing WinXP SP3 and installed software can just be run on the new platform. However, after struggling with Windows, drivers and software problems for 1 week, we moved onwards from WinXP and bought the newly released Windows7 and started a new installation on Saturday 7 Nov 2009, finally completed this morning (past midnight). There are still many software that must be installed to make the system fully workable. Total cost for new casing, power supply, mainboard, processor, 2GB RAM (we would probably up this to 4GB), 2 x 250GB harddrive, video card with DVI, VGA and HDMI, keyboard, mouse, 23″ full HD Samsung LCD monitor, web-cam and Windows7 Home is about $1300.
[ADDED 15 Nov 2009]
We added another 2GB of RAM and a new mic, the whole PC now $1400.
We have selected the nice photos and posted our Melbourne trip, please see all three parts here:
It was less of Melbourne and more of Victoria state, as we had effectively been in the city less than 6 hours over the whole 9 days from 5 to 13 Sept. Big thanks to Paul and Alison for hosting us.
The repair was faster than expected. After sending in for repairs on Tuesday 11 Aug late morning, the taxi driver went to Ricardo to pay the $900 repair cost. We had also asked him for a nominal $100 taxi fares for Grace over the loss-of-use of the car, which he gladly accepted and paid.
Ricardo informed that the car would be ready by afternoon of Friday 14 Aug, but the car was ready by afternoon of 13 Aug. Replaced cover, repaired bumper and door, and straightened out the bumper hooks which were bent. After the bonding and spray paiting, we noted no signs of the damage. Hopefully the bonding and paint job would last.
Grace is down with food poisoning, she’s on MC yesterday and today.
This morning (8:00am, 6 August 2009) we were on Orchard Road leading to Scotts Road, while sending Grace and the boys to KKH, a ‘sleepy’ taxi hit us on the back. He was trying to turn into the bus lane while the traffic was really very slow, and we were actually stopped. Thank God the impact wasn’t too hard and nobody was hurt. But our boot door and bumper was damaged. The driver offered to pay for the damages (out of his pocket, not insurance), exchanged contact info, took some pictures and moved on from there as it was a very busy road in the morning. The driver was apologetic and gentlemanly in behaviour.
That’s our damage, dent door, crushed bumper, dropped tow-point cover and some dents and bends on attachments inside:
That’s his damage, not much but you can see the tow-point (very hard) being imprinted on his bumper and license plate:
That’s the position after he reversed and we exchanged info:
YowCH went into Ricardo to assess the damage, and repairs would come to about $1k, depending on final count.
Lesson:
1. Wear seat belts, we can’t prevent others from driving into us.
2. Sit properly. If the children were moving around, they would have been thrown, even with this light impact.
3. Don’t drive when too sleepy. The taxi driver later told YowCH over the phone that he was sleepy after night shift.
4. Don’t turn into the next lane too early, wait for the car in front to clear more space in case of any sudden brakes.
Here it is, Joseph’s 1st tooth. He is now five and a half months old.
He rolls over easily and pulls himself along the bed or floor to get to his toys. He now sits well in the car seat, and often falls asleep in the car, even over short distances.
The whole family will be having a one-day fun trip to Malacca thanks to TYLin’s family day organizing it. This coming Saturday, 16 May 2009. More reports after that.
Today is also the 1st anniversary of our blog! Hooray!
