YowCH & Grace

Here are some photos of Samuel at 12 weeks old. He is still underweight but certainly fleshy and active.

Nice smile and developing bad habit of thumb sucking.

He is also into mixed-martial arts, starting with boxing-while-lying-down.

We got Esther a relatively cheap ($135) Aria STG Mini electric guitar (travel-size, but just the right size for her). Sound reasonably OK for the price. In the photo, the Aria is the smaller sun-burst coloured one standing next to the full-sized Ibanez that YowCH uses.

Some details:

And here’s the rocker girl.

Tags: Esther, Samuel by yowch
No Comments »

Greetings of a happy and blessed new year ahead from the Yow minions.

Tags: David, Esther, Joseph, Samuel by yowch
No Comments »

The day started with the 13th servicing for the Isis.

After lunch, YowCH went to church with Esther and David for carolling to Alexandra and National University Hospitals.


As with past years, it was a joy to see the patients happy with the Christmas songs and the package that church gave to them.

For dinner, we met up with the Yongs and the Loos. We ate Western food at Canopy (Bishan Park) and all the children ate nicely and behaved well.

Joseph completed his Lego Advent set as soon as we got home. Opening only 1 item a day for the past 24 days, Joseph patiently put the set together with some help from Esther and David.

Tags: Church, David, Esther, Family, Joseph, YowCH by yowch
No Comments »

On Thursday, Esther and David made some cornflakes cookies. Ingredients includes cornflakes, butter, raisins, cashew nuts and honey.


Feedback from a friend: better than Garrett’s pop-corn!

On Saturday, we had eFG Christmas gathering over lunch. Yows brought roasted pork (thanks to Grace’s mum), cornflake cookies, tomato juice (for Bloody Mary) and 5L of Golden Ale from Brewerkz (the last unopened keg from Samuel’s parties).

Lots of very nice food.

Fellowship was great, we sang Christmas songs with piano and violin accompaniment.

After the lunch, we went to church for the final rehearsal, followed by Esther’s performance with the Church Juniors choir at West Coast Plaza, singing Christmas songs.

Esther was also playing the ukulele for the final medley of songs.

Updated 23 Dec 2013:
On Sunday, we got to church in the morning, then stayed on for the carolling practice from 12:30pm to 3:30pm, and then continued to the children choir practice at 4:00pm ending with the West Coast Plaza performance from 6:00pm to 6:30pm (similar to Saturday).

We then drove over to W-Singapore hotel at Sentosa Cove and met up with YowCH’s cousin, the Loos. We had dinner at the one of the eateries there, where we had Belgium food at “Brussels Sprouts”. After dinner, we spent a little time in the hotel room and got home at 11:00pm.

Tags: Church, Esther, Family, Friends by yowch
No Comments »

We attended Matthan and Yi Ling’s wedding at church. Joseph served as the pageboy, bearing the ring. He did a very nice job of it.

Esther helped with the opening of the doors, also did a good job.

David was also helpful, he was in-charged of lighting the candles of the bride’s maids, but unfortunately, the lighter broke, and some adults ran to get the back-up lighter and lit those candles very urgently instead. Nevertheless, he was on standby for any candle that might be snuffed.
Samuel sat through the entire 2-hour ceremony without crying, mostly carried by David who took great care of him, and by YowCH.

Here’s a post-event photo of us.

And this is a photo of the ring-bearer, door-opener and the bride and groom.

Tags: David, Esther, Friends, Joseph, Samuel by yowch
No Comments »

ACES-YPC, which YowCH is a member, organised a trip to Chek Jawa at Pulau Ubin today from 1;30pm to 5:30pm. YowCH brought the children along.

Please click photos below to get to the page.

Tags: David, Esther, Joseph, YowCH, YowCH's work by yowch
No Comments »

We prepared the baby’s clothes and drawers next to the cot.

YowCH’s head injury is healing very well after 6 days, some bruise still visible, but the wound has fully closed.

Yesterday, the naked chef made pancakes with his sister, while the younger brother set up the table. Pancakes for lunch was a great idea, tasty, filling and nutritious.

Tags: David, Esther, Family, YowCH by yowch
No Comments »

The maintenance cost is rising, we added a larger filter ($12) on 25 Sept to keep the tank cleaner in order to change water less frequently. You can see it in the left side of the photo.

Today, we visited the new site at Jurong West again to look for some old structures, and here are our trail biking photos:



That’s a big ‘frog’ looking at a real one.

On the roadside drain top (and this drain is really a huge canal), YowCH managed to clock 35km/h on the mountain bike. The children reached 32km/h.

Tags: David, Esther, General, YowCH, YowCH's work by yowch
No Comments »

YowCH needed to visit a new earthwork site at Jurong West which is still very wooded, and the children are on school leave for PSLE Listening and Comprehension Exams, so we went to the site for mountain biking. Grace and Joseph went to work/school. We had breakfast at Block 37, then went to TYLin office for a short while as YowCH needed to sign some drawings and give some instructions. We reached the site at about 10.45am and took out the bikes.


The trails are partly metalled, partly dirt path and sometimes very rough.

We crossed a very rusted steel bridge.




We left the site at about 12.15pm, drove round the site boundary and then went to Colbar for lunch at 1.00pm.

After lunch, we reached home at about 2.15pm.

Tags: David, Esther, Work, YowCH by yowch
No Comments »

It is mid-autumn. This year we did not buy any mooncakes, spending about $500.oo less! We ate only a little mooncakes from relatives and friends.

Yesterday, Thursday, Joseph joined Esther and David in the Gan Eng Seng Primary School mid-autumn celebrations, and they made some snow-skin mooncakes and lanterns. The children went with Grace, YowCH was at the Association of Consulting Engineers (ACES) Networking Night.

Tonight, we had some standard mid-autumn fare: yam, water caltrop (菱角), pomelo, ‘pig-basket’ cake and of course, mooncakes.

The pomelo was peeled by David, although he doesn’t eat it.

This is the water caltrop top (菱角车) that YowCH made.

Tags: David, Esther, Family, Joseph, YowCH by yowch
No Comments »