YowCH & Grace

YowCH needed a new watch after a short 3 years. The bracelet keeps snapping loose at the joint to the watch and finally the watch dropped and cracked. So Grace helped get a new watch, nice black face just like the previous 2. Also Seiko 7S26 movement on 21 jewels. The previous change is here.

After soccer and ballet, we had a nice picnic dinner with the Tans at the Rumah Tinggi Eco-park.

Special thanks to Gene, who lent us her 3-days old new BMW 316i to run about this Sunday, as our car is in workshop after yesterday’s accident. Nice drive, very good pick-up and super stable car at only 1.6L.

Tags: Family, YowCH by yowch
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YowCH drove Esther to church on Saturday afternoon, and after dropping her, met with a multi-car accident at about 3:00pm on the AYE towards City, just under the Buona Vista flyover. Car 1 (blue taxi) braked hard (probably due to the other 4-car accident further to the front). Car 2, silver car, swerved right and avoided the taxi. Car 3, YowCH, braked, swerved left and was hit from behind by car 4 (yellow taxi). When YowCH got down, there was actually car 5 (maroon taxi) which hit car 4. There was only YowCH in the car at the time, and the speed was about 80-90km/h as the road was rather crowded, with good distance between cars.

The damage on the blue taxi was minimal, some paint scratches from YowCH’s front right bumper. The yellow taxi’s head was pushed in, having crumpled our boot. But the worst seemed to be the maroon taxi, with the hood popped and the radiator leaking.

On survey, the external damages:
Rear – tailgate and bumper.
Front – bumper right (scratches), fender bent a little, rim scratches.

Internal damages:
Rear – floor bent, seat stuck, plastic panels bent and broken, reverse light wire damaged.

Thank God no injuries, and all involved will report to insurance to take care of it. Car repair will take 2 weeks or so, and YowCH will rent a car in the meantime. We are also thankful to all the friends who offered assistance upon hearing this.

Tags: General, YowCH by yowch
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A little update on the swimming progress.

Grace is now swimming her 10 laps in breast-stroke every week. YowCH was having bad back-pains since last Monday (probably due to work stress), so he didn’t swim laps, but was floating and diving in the water to help relieve the back pains (and it helps!).

Samuel is more tolerant to the pool now, and quite enjoy the swim. Drank some water, though, when we threw him about! He can kick himself back to the surface from under water.

Joseph is practically swimming now, but the stroke is not perfect, and his playful nature makes it hard to teach him. David is as playful as ever, also making it difficult to teach, but he can swim well now. Esther is swimming great, but needs more build on her muscles to carry the distance, and she can handle the life-jacket, clothes and somersaulting 4 times in the water.

And here are our non-Dinobots from Transformers 4 range:
Bumblebee, Hound, Drift, Crosshair and Lockdown (the Lamborghini Aventador).

We are probably not getting anymore, perhaps rusty Optimus Prime and Stinger. Galvatron is not very nice as a toy. With recently gotten Slog, we are short of 1 more Dinobot, Snarl, and the set of Dinobots will be complete.

Tags: David, Esther, Family, Grace, Joseph, Samuel, YowCH by yowch
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David climbed a tree near home! This is really fun.

We bought a plastic planter box in Malaysia and transplanted our mint plants. With fertilisers and soil, we hope that the mint will grow and gives us endless mojitos.

Dinobots! We got Slog (silver), the tall guy on the right. This adds to Grimlock (brown), Strafe (blue), Slash (cyan), Slug (purple) and Scorn (red). Last one to get is Snarl (green) which is not yet on sale.

On Sunday morning, we went to Shuqun Sec School at Jurong East for friendly football match with Yuhua and BB East View. A nice cool shady morning and had great fun playing. Esther was helpful in taking photos.

Samuel had a great time rolling about the artificial grass. And the football friends were all very happily playing with him.


David and Joseph both played very well. David was either defender or goal keeper, and defended very well. Joseph was playing striker and scored a goal!

After football, we went for our swim. Grace is regularly doing 10 laps now (with rests in between) and YowCH is pushing for 10 laps in less than 15 minutes, but so far only got to 15’35″.

In the afternoon, Esther had ballet for 2 hours and we shopping in Funan Centre. Then we had Brotzeit dinner at Star Vista.

Thank God for a nice weekend.

Tags: David, Esther, Family, Grace, Joseph, Samuel, YowCH by yowch
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On Saturday, for Church life-story at the Kids for Christ (Junior Sunday School), YowCH impersonated Benny Prasad, who is the world’s most travelled man having visited all countries, and a Christian gospel witness. You can Google “Benny Prasad” for more info.

David took this nice photo.

Here’s a nice photo of the children on the slide at the playground downstairs of our flat.

Tags: Church, David, Esther, Joseph, Samuel, YowCH by yowch
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We played against Taman Jurong this morning. Both David and Joseph played well, and won both their groups (Under-8 and Under-10). YowCH coached the Under-8 team for this match.



Nice photos, taken by Esther.

Tags: David, Esther, Joseph, YowCH by yowch
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YowCH brought Esther, David and Joseph, together with friends Isaiah and Nathaniel to hike at Macritchie, covering both the Tree-top Walk and the Jelutong Tower this morning. Please click on the photos below to get to the page:

Tags: David, Esther, Friends, Joseph, YowCH by yowch
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A small birthday dinner at Tunglok Signatures Vivocity on 7 May with Grace’s parents and Gene. This is YowCH at 40 years of age:

YowCH insisted on ordering the “Dragon paw”, which is actually stewed crocodile hand! Nice.

After dinner, we drove to Holland area and picked up some second hand Lego Primo for Samuel. The blue aeroplane and pilot on the left was actually Joseph’s, the train set is what we got this time ($15).

The white Lego brick is there for scale.

Samuel loves the Primo, nice colours, nice size for grip and good to chew on.

Tags: Samuel, YowCH by yowch
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At the Association of Consulting Engineers, Singapore (ACES) 43rd Anniversary Dinner on 27 March 2014, YowCH received the Young Consulting Engineer of the Year 2014 Award for Civil Engineering (one of 5 winners of 2014 of various categories). He received the award from ACES Vice-president Er. Ling. “Young” is defined as ‘under the age of 40′, which is almost at the limit for YowCH.

Among the 5 winners include his friend and colleague, Er. Yong Fen Leong for the Structural Engineering category, standing next to him in this group photo of winners.

His boss, Er. Dr. Tan Guan won the Lifetime Achievement Award, making it a hat-trick of awards for T.Y.Lin this year.

This is a photo of the certificate, and the present, a Sheaffer fountain pen with the Award and Recipient engraved.

Thank God for the recognition given to YowCH by ACES for his work and contributions to the construction industry.

Tags: YowCH, YowCH's work by yowch
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Sunday started with breakfast at the neighbourhood, then we boiled some Chinese herbs given to YowCH by his colleague, Law KH, for his cough.

That’s lemon grass 香茅, dried orange 桔饼, Chinese mint 薄荷, red onions 红葱 and water, boiled for 1/2 hour. Nice soothing drink.

Then we went for the swim lessons. David is almost swimming, Joseph is still playing around, but Esther is able to do 50m free-style. Grace went 200m and YowCH was rather sick, so he did a casual 200m.




Samuel had some pool time, too, at the deep pool!

Then we went for soccer and ballet, followed by a dinner to celebrate David’s birthday, with Gene. We had a hearty meal at O’Leary’s at the Singapore Flyer, David’s kind of food.



Here’s David and his food.

And this is the birthday cake (brownie with ice-cream).

Tags: David, Family, YowCH by yowch
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