Entries Tagged as 'YowCH'

Repaired YowCH’s cowboy boots

YowCH’s cowboy boots has great leather, but the heals wore out (as usual). And cobblers are either charging $60 or not able to do so. So YowCH redid the boots by himself, with a little help from David and Esther.
1. Cut off the rubber heels, and replace with timber heels (nice clicking sounds). Timber was cut out from old left-over pine wood from IKEA Sten shelf-legs.
2. The timber heels are screwed on from inside. Note the washer and countersunk screw to prevent injury.
3. The heels were then ground to shape with the rotary sander (actually the drill with sand-paper mounted on the sander tool).
4. Detailed works with a wood file and further sanding with sand-paper.

Here’s a detailed shot during sanding, David holding the shoe with YowCH grinding the heel.

Next step, the rubber base.
1. Attach hard rubber sheet by rubber-glue. The rubber sheet is cut from ‘fridge base sheet’ from hardware shop.
2. Press to set.
3. Trim down the rubber to shape.
4. The timber heel was painted black using stamp-pad ink, which stains deep and leaves a lasting black.

The final product, feel good (a bit taller than before) and clicks nicely.

Total effective time spent on the heels replacement – 5 hours (but done slowly over 3 weekends). A nice simple and practical project.

The Phantom of the Opera

YowCH and Grace went for the third run of The Phantom of the Opera in Singapore, this time at the Grand Theatre of Marina Bay Sands.

All dressed up for the event, the show started at 8:15pm and ended at 10:45pm (with 15 minutes break).

The seat was not at the centre, but the view still quite good. With the aisle in front, we were not blocked (the camera is low-angled, we can comfortably enjoy the show over the guy in front).

This is the ‘pro’ photo taken for $10 (Canon donates all income from photo to Singapore Cancer Society).

Weekend: terrapin light, crepes, soccer, Ngs visit

Firstly, we got a rather necessary UV-A light for the terrapins, $50.00 for $3.00 animals:

To make it complete, we need UV-B, too, and we are still looking. Not exactly low maintenance pets.

On Saturday, we had crepes at Out-of-the-Pan at Raffles City. We remembered having crepes with Esther when she was an infant, and went there for a very late 3:00pm lunch.

Back to soccer training on Sunday afternoons after the school holidays break which was also affected by the haze. David is wearing his new boots bought in PJ.

Nate joined us, too.

Joseph was ok during training, but went ‘tired’ during the last 30 minutes of friendly match.

YowCH was wearing his new boots, too, from PJ cheap sale.

In the evening, the Ngs came over and we had pizza (thanks, Alison) and watched Astro-Boy.

Haze, “Man of Steel”, revive YowCH’s handphone

The haze situation in Singapore is quite bad due to Indonesian fires, starting from 17 June and looks like the skies are clearing only today (23 June). This photo outside our home was taken on a relatively clear day on 22 June.

In this hazy condition, our family photo is rather interesting:

We went out at 2:00pm to catch “Man of Steel” at Lido, courtesy of our insurance agents (Adelia Huang and Willy Tan, wife-husband team) at Lido. Very exciting, dark story and violent.

Then it was a nice burger dinner at &Made (French eatery in Pacific Plaza).

And after a terrible 4 hours, YowCH reloaded his repaired handphone for use starting on 23 June, Sunday.

Trip to Legoland and YowCH’s phone repaired

We took leave on Wednesday 19 June 2013 and went to a very quiet Legoland. We got to take most of the ride several times! Click on photos to enter the Legoland page.


YowCH’s phone which was sent for repairs on Monday was returned on Wednesday (to TYLin office) with a new mainboard and all data lost. Sad.

YowCH’s phone crashed

YowCH’s phone (HTC Desire X) crashed yesterday (16 June, Sunday) aged 7 months. The phone had trouble reading the SD card, asked for reboot and when rebooted, the phone showed the HTC sign and went black, never to wake again.

Sent into HTC at Keppel Tower (Harbourfront) during lunch today, and quite confirm that the main-board died. They will change the main-board, meaning that all data on board will be lost. That’s 2000 over contacts. The Outlook back-up was corrupted when YowCH tried to sync into the older HTC Desire. Miserable day.

HTC will repair and give free delivery to YowCH’s office when done.

But thank God that the older Desire was at hand as a back-up phone.

Hiking at Dairy Farm Nature Park

Today, Grace works half day, so YowCH brought the children to Dairy Farm Nature Park for a short 4.0km hike. Click on the photo to get to the page.

NUS Bridge wins BCA DESEA Award

YowCH’s project, the NUS Link Bridge won the Building and Construction Authority’s Design and Engineering Safety Excellence Award 2013. The QP, Er. Yong Fen Leong received the prize during the dinner on 16 May 2013 at Resorts World Sentosa. The bridge is curved on plan, and the cantilevered construction over AYE was a huge challenge to design and construction engineering.


YowCH brought the children to the NUS Link Bridge on 18 May 2013 after our morning hiking trip to walk the bridge.


Very nice to roll on the carpet grass of Town Green next to the Education Resource Centre in University Town.

New IKEA Billy shelves for DVDs

The shorter Billy shelves we have for our DVDs are grossly insufficient for the growing collection, so we went over to IKEA today and bought 2 tall Billy shelves with 4 extra planks, all for $198.00.

This was the condition before:

And this is the new:

The whole family helped out (except for Grace, who is at work the whole of today).

1. Joseph cleared the toys from the area.
2. YowCH had to transfer the light switch about 4 inches to the right to be outside the shelf.
3. Esther helped move the shelf into place, note the good fit of the cut-outs for the wall power point and the switch cable.
4. David helped loading up the planks.

As a matter of fact, the assembly was mostly done by the children, YowCH provided guidance and strength. All detailed works are by Esther and David, and Joseph helped bring the tools, parts and gave support.

A final picture to show the cut-outs for the power point and light switch.

TYLin Taiwan annual dinner at Taipei

Tagging along with the TYLin Taiwan annual dinner at Taipei on 16 Jan, YowCH and Grace had a short work/holiday trip from 15 to 17 Jan 2013. We met up with YowCH’s cousin, Wei Lian, too.

Click on photos for the dedicated page.