We bought through EZBuy Xiaomi hair-clipper (and a fake Kenwood hand-mixer) in early-May, but they arrived only on 29 May 2020. Just in time to cut hair for school re-opening on 2 June.
That’s Joseph’s before and after.
YowCH’s did the barber duties.
And that’s Samuel’s before and after.
Somewhat more experienced after working on Joseph first.
Samuel’s church meeting, big group on Zoom.
We watched the Michael Bay Transformers movies, and took out the toys for Samuel to have some fun.
We did some home improvement works (in this case adding a shelf to Esther’s table), but the drill spoilt. YowCH opened it and found that the problem is the electrical direction switch, with the forward drive spoilt and the drill only works in reverse. So YowCH shifted teh wires around to make teh drill work in forawrd, but no more reverse now. Replacement part is too expensive and not worth the money.
YowCH received a cheque from Prudential for $500.00, benefits for having served Quarantine Order due to Covid. Good pocket money!
Another BCG meeting online.
The whole family recorded another church choir session (David was conducting and doing the filming on the camera). We had 3 good takes, but about 12 bad starts, mostly with us laughing due due to Samuel’s behaviour.
Esther also contributed to the church Youth Service worship.
Samuel doing church activities online.
We contacted our friends, the Lims, in Melbourne, Australia, to catch up with them in this Covid period.
We still drove the Odyssey around, mostly sending and picking Grace as she is working daily at KKH. But the roads were quite empty and we had great fuel efficiency, covering more than 600km in 1 tank (55L) of petrol!
Things in the house keeps needing maintenance, the plug point plastic broke, and YowCH had to buy the part (the box against the wall) to replace it. The face was changed about a year ago.
YowCH bought a sound mixer for Esther, to let her have better mixing controls for the worship and other musical recordings.
Joseph built his Gundam robot.
YowCH had to visit his construction site prior to the planned worksites re-opening on 2 June.
We picked up an old light cover that a neighbour thrown away, and it serves well as a Bey Blade arena.
Grace and YowCH went out to buy some food, and picked up the government-issued “improved” masks on 30 May.
Gene ordered some nice burgers and such for YowCH’s birthday on 6 May 2020. We ate over video conferencing with Grace’s parents and Gene.
On 7 May, we had dinner at home, and had video conferencing with YowCH’s family.
With the Covid lock-down to stay at home, our church immediately started online service:
We bought some toys for Sam from internet orders:
YowCH and Esther recorded their parts as part of the church online choir, singing O For A Thousand Tongues To Sing:
You can watch it here on Facebook.
This is Samuel attending his Junior Service, with activities which we printed for him to do.
We collected the reusable masks issued by the Singapore Government for citizens and PRs.
Our shower heater died, and thankfully, we can call the electrical shop owner and arranged for a replacement unit, which YowCH installed immediately.
Our cell group met online through Zoom. The juniors held their own meeting.
When we went to NTUC, we bought some beer – Corona, to celebrate the virus!
Gene arranged for a Zoom meeting dinner, where she even bought the food to be delivered to our place.
We recorded another song for the church online choir, this time, with YowCH, Esther and Samuel, singing The Revelation Song.
You can watch it here on Facebook.
On 8 April, we gave Samuel a watch, to let him learn to read the time during the 1 month of ‘stay-home’ due to the Covid-19 pandemic. This used to be Joseph’s watch.
Because of staying home, we had lots of opportunities to cook. These are some of the simple meals that Grace, YowCH, David and Esther cooked.
David and Esther had been running for exercise, here are some of their 2020 runs. David is now fastest, completing 2.4km in 10m10s, much faster than YowCH’s 12m
YowCH bought a Samsung S20+ on 3 April 2020 (through Grace’s Singtel account) at $168, with free 256GB SD card. But due to his Quarantine Order, he cannot leave his room and therefore could not transfer from his S9 until 9 April 2020. The Samsung S9 was damaged after water leak during a swim and wasn’t functioning well, with damaged camera and occasionally flickering or darken LED screen.
YowCH attended a work meeting on 24 March 2020 at LTA HQ and among the attendees, there was one person with confirmed Covid-19 infection. On 2nd April, just before lunch, he received a call from MOH to inform that Quarantine Order has been issued, and YowCH needs to stay in a room until Quarantine is over (14 days from contact on 24 March, hence 7 April).
Click on photo below for the adventure:
On Monday, 30 Mar, YowCH started WFH (work from home). The old monitor helps much as a second screen, and he bought new keyboard, mouse and USB hub to ease the work. The webcam is our old Logitech, and he uses the Samsung phone headphones-mic.
Esther’s piano lessons became home-based.
Joseph and Samuel had home-based learning (HBL) on Wednesday, followed by home-based piano lessons.
In fact, given that they are not in school, Joseph picked up the ukulele to practice playing, too.
David will have his HBL on Thursday and Esther hers on Friday.
Swimming pool implemented social distancing, and limited the number of swimmers. With cancellation of group classes, the pool is quite empty. Our family gets 2 lanes for our swim!
Our coach Francis helped us take a family photo underwater.
Unfortunately, the underwater photo using YowCH’s phone caused some moisture leak into phone and the cameras are now blurred. Sad…
David’s 16th birthday on 24 Mar passed quietly, with the COVID-19 situation. We will have a small dinner with the Yongs on Saturday to celebrate, instead of the party that we originally planned for. Photo below was taken on Sunday, a very empty pool.
YowCH has been consistently running 2.5km 3 times a week, clocking the fastest 10 runs all within 2020. In fact, the fastest 2.5km was achieved on Saturday 21 Mar in 11m50s. He also ran a 5.0km on Tuesday night 24 Mar and clocked 28m00s, the best timing for 5.0km. Two best runs within 3 days!
We had one more niangao which we sliced it up, battered and fried. The children loved it.
On 14 Feb 2020, YowCH and Grace had a lunch at Handlebar. Rather fun.
We cooked simple dinner on Sunday night (16 Feb), wantonmee which we bought in PJ. We used meatballs, eggs and abalone-soup!
On Tuesday, 18 Feb, YowCH had another review and the doctor continued the Micardis Plus 40/12.5 daily for the next 2 months.
Joseph’s cast was removed on 13 Feb 2020, after review and x-ray by the doctor.
Some miscellaneous stuff:
Esther at piano class:
The Odyssey can actually be driven very economically (on the 70-80km/h KPE, Kallang – Paya Lebar Expressway). Managed to clock 16.7km/L over a distance of 47km in smooth traffic.
