YowCH & Grace

YowCH’s high blood pressure medication increased after 14 days with review from his doctor. He now take Micardis which is the same Telmisartan 40mg as before, but with Hydrochrolothiazide 12.5mg added. Started on 5 Feb 2020.

YowCH ordered a Marantz SR5013 receiver/amplifier from Lazada last week. The model is a few years old and shops doesn’t seem to carry it. This is to replace the Denon 1708 which we have been using since start of 2008, and is very sickly already. This Marantz SR5013 still has analogue 7.1 input, which is great for playing back SACD.

Then we found out that the Velodyne CHT8R sub-woofer had no sound, so YowCH brought it to be checked and found that the circuit board is burnt, repair is $250 and not guaranteed to work, so we bought another sub-woofer, the Mirage MM8 with 3 speakers. Nice bass sound from a small sub-woofer, and with the low-frequency sounds of movies, our windows and walls rattle!

Grace was not working on Thursday, 6 Feb, so she made a caramel cheese cake for Beacon FG. We had our new-year meeting on Friday night, 7 Feb, where we tossed the lo-hei (also prepared by us, with abalone instead of fish).

Here’s a photo of Grace swimming. She has been swimming 20 laps a week recently.

Tags: Church, Friends, General, Grace, YowCH by yowch
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Here are photos of Joseph and Samuel at ther piano class with D-flat Studio, Tanglin.

YowCH has been running 3x 2.5km weekly, and going fast. On 1 Feb 2020, he had a fast run of finishing 2.5km in 12m05s.

Tags: Joseph, Samuel, YowCH by yowch
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YowCH got his health check (done on 13 Dec 2019) on 21 Jan 2020 and consulted a doctor at Whitecoat clinic which is in the building next to his office. Started high blood pressure medication on 22 Jan 2020.

YowCH and Grace brought Joseph to KKH for a follow up on his finger fracture. The fracture needs a cast, and likely out of action for several weeks. Here are the X-rays.

The finger are still swollen after 1 week.

He chose purple for his cast.

Tags: Joseph, YowCH by yowch
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Our soccer team, West Coast Wolves had the annual meeting and dinner on 19 Jan 2020. The children had their weekly games/training, while the parents met at West Coast CC. David helped with the training, and Joseph had to sit out because of his fracture. Here is a photo of the meeting to discuss training needs, strategies, development and plans for football leagues.

At 5:30pm, the children joined the adults at West Coast CC for dinner. We catered nice food.


Grace helped get 2 sets of ‘yu sheng’ (we paid for these). Unable to find the prepared sets, she bought the ingredients from Sheng Siong and sliced the raw vegetables in Church before bringing over to the CC.


We had fun at the party.

Tags: General, Joseph, Samuel, YowCH by yowch
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Just as he clocked his fastest run the previous Saturday 11 Jan, YowCH’s run on Saturday morning, 18 Jan was yet another personal record, the fastest since 2015! He did 2.5km in 12m05s and covered 2.4km in 11m34s. Very fast.

With this, his top 3 fastest 2.5km runs were all in Jan 2020 – fastest on 18 Jan, then 11 Jan and 3rd place 4 Jan. Perhaps he can still improve on the timing.

Tags: YowCH by yowch
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YowCH increased his running from 2x weekly 2.5km to 3x weekly 2.5km in 2020. On 11 Jan, Saturday morning, he clocked his fastest ever 2.5km run since he started regular running in 2015. He covered 2.5km in 12m10s (2.4km in 11m40s). Perhaps it was the compression tights that helped!

The step counter is 1972, usually he takes about 2050 steps for 2.5km. Perhaps longer strides helps.

What’s interesting is that the fastest runs (1st, 2nd and 4th) all happened within the last 2 weeks. The 3rd fastest was in Oct 2018.

We invited Siu Hei for dinner for his birthday, but he prefers to eat at our place, so we prepared home cooked salmon, pork, beef and lamb, with sides of portobello mushrooms, mussels and egg-salad.


After dinner, failing to have a cake, YowCH made a stacked-up-ice-cream-potong cake.

Tags: Family, YowCH by yowch
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YowCH ran 2.5km on the morning of 31 Dec 2019 and again the evening of 1 Jan 2020. Both runs were quite fast, at 12m40s.

We went for the Church Thanksgiving Service on 31 Dec 219 (7:30pm to 9:30pm), then visited Grace’s parents until past midnight. Esther and David went out with church friends for their youth groups activities.

We stayed at home on 1 Jan 2020, mostly to prepare for school, to clear the home and to rest.
Here’s a photo of Samuel, his is well above the 1.0m line on the wall now.

Compare with Feb 2019.

Esther and David reached home in the morning. We had chicken rice for lunch and then walked to Carrara for dinner.

We slept early at about 10:30pm to prepare for school and work in the new year.

Tags: Family, Samuel, YowCH by yowch
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Happenings on 27 Dec 2019 (Friday)

YowCH had a good 2.5km run in the morning, completing it in 12m20s which is his best time equally the run back in Nov 2018. 2.4km was reached in 11m55s, which is very good.

YowCH decided to make fresh ginger juice (to make ginger honey or ginger soju). Did it the traditional way, with Joseph preparing the ginger, then pounded using classic pestle and mortar. Esther and Samuel also joined in to help. David was in school for basketball practice.

While the ginger juice was being prepared, we prepared seafood for the Beacon Family Group Christmas party at the Lyes’ place (Castle Green). We bought salmon, ikan kuning and prawns. YowCH collected the seafood from the market (pre-ordered 1 week ago) after the earlier morning run and dropping off David at school and Grace at work.
Salmon was prepared with salt, lemon, thyme, and butter.

Ikan kuning with sambal belacan sauce.

Prawns with salt, garlic and ginger.

We celebrated the Dec and Nov birthdays, so Joseph was included.

Tags: Church, Family, YowCH by yowch
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YowCH’s hair was long. Snip snip:

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Our new West Coast Wolves uniform:

We had soccer training in our new red West Coast Wolves uniform. David helps out with coaching.

That’s Joseph in training.

And that’s Samuel. Nowadays, YowCH trains the youngest age group.

Here’s a photo of Esther at her piano class.

And here’s YowCH in his running garb. He now runs 2.5km once on a weekday after work and 5.0km on Saturday morning.

And here is Grace lying in the pool.

Tags: David, Esther, Grace, Joseph, Samuel, YowCH by yowch
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