YowCH & Grace

YowCH took his first shot of Covid vaccine on 5 April at Radin Mas. Only a short wait in the morning.

A simple home-cooked dinner.

On 7 April, we got official news that David was given several awards in Gan Eng Seng Secondary School for his academic performance in O-levels. Here are the screenshots from the YouTube video of the online-awards ceremony.
GESS Progress Award:

Gan-clan Academic Value-added Award:

Academic Excellence Award:

YowCH had some yam cakes (made by Grace’s mom) for snacks.

On 8 April, Grace cooked dinner.

Salted-egg sauce with scallops (and prawns in another plate, Esther is allergic to prawns).

And a dessert made from old bread.

YowCH added 2 more sets of the head-rests to the Odyssey for the middle row seats. Very nice to sleep on.

Here is a photo of Samuel at Kids For Christ (Junior Sunday School) on Saturday.

We received our kalimbas orders online from China, with 17 keys. They both sounds great! We had a smaller one made from coconut shell from Bintan quite some years ago (only 7 keys).

Dinner at home with mussels, and long ‘finger’ grapes.

Tags: Church, David, Family, General, Samuel, YowCH by yowch
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We had a one-night staycation at Pan Pacific from 18 to 19 March 2021, part of Grace’s benefits as a healthcare worker during the Covid crisis. click on the photos below to enter the page.

Tags: Grace, Grace's work, Joseph, Samuel, YowCH by yowch
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After all the CNY festivities, David joined his friends for a night cycling trip, starting at 10:30pm 13 Feb and returned home about 7:00am the next day.


The pool was empty on the CNY weekend, David swam 20 laps after his night cycling!

Lunch at Fish and Co after our swim.

On Monday, YowCH took Samuel to the carpark for some cycling. He can handle the bike well now, and moved on to the bigger bike.

Tags: David, Family, Samuel by yowch
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On 4 Feb, YowCH had dinner with some friends from work at Hillview area. Nice Italian restaurant “iO Italian Osteria”.


On 4 Feb, Grace received her 2nd dose of Covid vaccine. Her first does was taken on 14 Jan 2021.

5 Feb, David’s first day in his CJC uniform.

A pre-CNY dinner at Sorrento on Saturday, 6 Feb:

We fried some niangao for snacks on Sunday:

Monday night, YowCH and Grace had supper at a Japanaese bistro Izakaya Hikari after Grace ended work at 9:00pm.

The on Tuesday night, YowCH attended ACES’s appreciation dinner at Ah Yat (probably the last since he is no longer consulting engineer). Max 8 to a room, and ACES booked 4 rooms.

A photo of Samuel at his piano class:

Tags: David, Family, Grace, Samuel, YowCH, YowCH's work by yowch
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YowCH was consistent in his runs, rain or shine, day or night.

In fact, sometimes, Esther and David also ran.

For the month of January, YowCH managed 6.0km runs on Tuesday nights and Saturday mornings, and also gym and stretching on Saturdays.

This is the run summary of the 30 Jan run, 6.0km in 34min00sec, his second fastest 6.0km run (the fastest was 5 secs faster at 33m55s). Heart rate ave 162 and max 176 (which is quite consistent with all the other runs). Average pace of about 5m40s or ave speed of 10.6km/h.


This calendar shows his runs for the month of January.

We also have our regular weekly swim (about 45 mins), typically about 500m each person. On 31 Jan, Grace had just finished night shift and missed swim. Here are screenshots of videos of Joseph, YowCH, Esther and David doing butterfly, and Samuel (middle) swimming freestyle.

We fried some nian-gao in the afternoon after swim, wrapped in spring roll skin. Tastes great!

We shared the dessert with friends, neighbours and the Yongs.

In the evening, we visited the Yongs and had dinner at Bishan.

Tags: David, Esther, Family, Joseph, Samuel, YowCH by yowch
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YowCH teaching at KFC, Samuel’s in class too.

Sunday’s lunch after swim at Gyu Kaku, Novena Square.


We fried arrowhead as a snack.

Wanton mee dinner with Grace’s parents and Gene. Has assam prawns, and bought braised duck and char siew.

A gift from Gene to Esther, Steinberg UR22C Interface to record analogue and digital inputs into the computer.

Tags: Esther, Family, Samuel, YowCH by yowch
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2021 started with Samuel frying bananas for breakfast!


Then we went out to Star Vista for lunch at Morganfield’s.

While the rest of the family went home, YowCH spent 4 hours doing his hair blue. Needed 3 rounds of bleaching to get to strip the hair of melanin.


The result is rather nice!

On Saturday, YowCH went for his first 6.0km run in the morning. The plan is to do 2x 6.0km weekly.
In the afternoon, YowCH started teaching Junior Sunday School at church.

On Sunday, the children went for swim, YowCH wasn’t feeling very well and Grace went to work.

After swim, we had lunch at Vivocity, and YowCH bought a G-shock GSteel GST-B300SD. This is a watch with ‘silver’ stainless steel bracelet, carbon fibre body (instead of resin), and solar powered, with Bluetooth connectivity to a smartphone for settings. The face has a large digital display which helps with YowCH’s long-sightedness.

Tags: Family, Samuel, YowCH by yowch
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On 23 Dec, YowCH visited Chye Joo office (his new employer starting from 4 Jan 2021).

His cubicle, large space in the middle of the office.

And his Asus Zenbook 14 UX434 laptop with touch screen and second screen at the mouse pad.

Esther wanted to play an electric bass guitar, and YowCH found a unit on Carousell. It was $320 with bag, and it is actually very new (the previous owner didn’t play much with it). The Ibanez Gio Bass:


Here are our 4 Ibanez guitars, basses (acoustic and electic) and guitars (acoutic and electric):

Grace took Joseph and Samuel out to cycle, they both did well.

Today is the last day and the Lego Advent sets (Star Wars and Harry Potter) are both completely opened.

Our Christmas eve dinner.

Tags: Esther, Family, Joseph, Samuel, YowCH, YowCH's work by yowch
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YowCH visited the dentist for routine cleaning, and also got advice to wear a mouth guard to prevent grinding during sleep.

Our dinner, with 6 pieces of pork shoulder meat fried on the large skillet all at one go!

YowCH visited his Simpang Kiri Bridge on 18 Dec.

On Saturday, after Samuel’s Chinese tuition, we had lunch at Shi Li Fang.

Our church had a Star Wars themed Christmas service for the juniors, Samuel dressed up!

Roll back to the past, Grace bought a Tetris game.

We had lunch at Tiong Bahru Market after swim on 20 Dec.

Mom made a fruit cake, and YowCH marinated the cake with rum, brandy and Cointreau.

We had satay and otak-otak (bought from NTUC) for dinner with Grace’s parents and Gene, followed by tong yuen, as tomorrow is mid-winter.

Tags: Family, Grace, Samuel, YowCH, YowCH's work by yowch
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Our lunch and dinner on 12 Dec:


YowCH bought an even larger skillet (30cm/12″) from China, at only $21 including postage! The skillet is very much larger and heavier. Again, YowCH did the rope-works on the handles for better grip.

As part of his Junior Camp, Samuel wrote a card to a friend.

16 Dec 2020 is our 20th wedding anniversary. Earlier, on 4 Dec, Esther took the photos of us re-creating our wedding photos. Joseph helped to carry things and set up the scenes. YowCH then got the photos printed, laminated and made into a large album and several small albums as a surprise for Grace. Click on the photos below to get to the page.

Tags: Family, Grace, Samuel, YowCH by yowch
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