YowCH & Grace

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.

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

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.

Tags: David, Esther, Family, Joseph, YowCH by yowch
1 Comment »

We got two more sets of Wall Tracks, one from Taipei and one from Malaysia. Just added them on today, now the tracks starts much higher and the car takes 20 seconds to run down the wall.

Refer here for the previous posting with the initial set-up.

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

Thanks to Kum Yuen for bringing the 3 sets of trains back from USA, our train tracks set has moving trains again. Really fun!

Warning to all who own such battery operated toys – take out the batteries before storing or the batteries will leak and spoil the toy. Our original 4 sets of trains were all spoilt when batteries leaked and destroyed the circuit boards.

Tags: David, Esther, Joseph by yowch
2 Comments »

First posting for 2013.

On 31 Dec 2012, we bought a replacement camcorder for our Canon HV30. The HV30 is about 4 years old only, but the flip-screen ribbon-wire has snapped and Canon refuses to replace/repair saying it is end-of-line model. In any case, looks like MiniDV tapes are getting oudated, too. So we bought a new full-HD Canon HF-M56 for a little less than $1000. Uses SD cards, performs very similar to the HV30, and it is lighter. The only problem is that there is no mini-jack mic-input. The next model, HF-M52 has mic input and more built-in memory (32GB against 8GB) but costs $200.00 more, so better not pay to have a mic input which we rarely use.

Samples below are all auto-exposure, auto-white-balance and no digital filters.

Joseph has started his Kindergarten earlier (in December 2012) and the new school uniforms (formal and sports) has recently changed. Here he is in his new uniforms on 2 Jan 2013.

Tags: General, Joseph by yowch
No Comments »

The Gan Eng Seng Primary School Choir performed at Amara Hotel (Sentosa and Tanjung Pagar) for Christmas on 21 Dec. Esther is standing on the left (front):

YowCH and Grace got 3 sets of 2nd-hand Hotwheels Wall Tracks for the children at $50 (these three sets totals about $130 new) after studying them while on holiday in Malaysia. The advantage is that the tracks are all on the walls, minimising floor space, and allows fast action at the slopes. The bad news is that Tomica cars runs better on the tracks than Hotwheels cars. Note that the tracks can go round a corner!

Tags: David, Esther, Joseph by yowch
2 Comments »

YowCH brought Joseph along to the driving range on Monday (3 Dec) to try out golf. He can hit the ball, but unable to keep the posture. The club also seems to heavy for him, maybe next year.

Esther and David continued to train, perhaps best to get a professional trainer for them soon.

Today, we took some time to cycle, also to let Joseph train on 2 wheels, but he is not yet ready for 2 wheels yet as he can’t balance. We had to raise the seats on Esther’s and David’s bikes, they must have grown taller!

But he is great on the Y-Glider.

We also updated an earlier post (TYLin 40th Anniversary Dinner) with a group photo of the TYLin Pricipals on stage for the birthday cake. Click here.

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

Chee Kean came over to Singapore for the Standard-Chartered Marathon on 2 Dec. He completed within time to claim a finisher T-shirt and medal. The night before his run, he coached Joseph to start off on 2 wheels on his bike.

Chee Kean also brought along an item ordered on-line by YowCH (Malaysian internet sale), a solar powered fan for car cabin ventilation when parked in the sun.

Under direct sunlight, the fan works and quite effectively reduce the stuffy air when parked under the sun for long period.

Joseph received from Sze Wee and Hong Kian a Y-Glider for his birthday, you can see it in action here:

This was at West Coast Park while David (number 40) was having his soccer training session.

Joseph also went with Esther on in-line skates.



Esther went 2 rounds (about 1km each round), Joseph 1 round on skates and 1 round on Y-Glider, Grace 1 round on skates and YowCH 2 rounds on skates.

Tags: Family, Friends, Joseph by yowch
No Comments »

Today, Joseph turns 4.

We had lunch at Suntec City Turkish Deli (thanks to Yan and PQ) with all our family members staying in Singapore. Very nice kebab meal with fantastic desserts Künefe and Baklava.

Tags: Joseph by yowch
No Comments »

Today, we celebrated Joseph’s 4th birthday (2 days early) in his school. He wanted a football-strawberry cake and that’s what we got him.





And for his friends, instead of goodie-bags, we gave Lego favour-packs instead. The packs each builds a bunny and a chick. These 20 packs were rather affordable (US$2.60 each) and thanks to Gene for bringing them from the States as they only deliver to US addresses.

And after that we went in-line skating at the carpark under our flat.

Tags: Family, Joseph by yowch
2 Comments »