YowCH & Grace

We continued our sports to stay healthy, even with the lockdown situation.

Joseph went for some runs, 1.6km.

YowCH was regular in his 2.5km (3x per week) and 5.0km (Sundays).

Samuel went in-line skating (2.0km) while Grace went for brisk walks of 2.0km).

YowCH was also regularly doing weights and planking.

Instead of running, sometimes Joseph also skated.


Esther also joined in the skating.


As shown in the software records on the phone for his runs, YowCH has very regular in his runs, not skipping even in the rain.

Only David got lazy in May.

Tags: Esther, Family, Grace, Joseph, Samuel, YowCH by yowch
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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.

Tags: Joseph, Samuel, YowCH by yowch
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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.

Tags: Church, Esther, Family, Friends, General, Joseph, Samuel, YowCH by yowch
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Here’s Samuel having a class meeting, from home.

Grace made many face masks for the family to use once the lockdown ends.

We had our cell-group meetings on-line.

The family also recorded songs for the church virtual choir.

This song is Jesus Shall Reign, and YowCH, Grace, Esther and Joseph participated.


We also had mahjong time. The children loves the game.

Well, Samuel wasn’t ready, and Grace took over.

Tags: Church, Family, Grace, Samuel by yowch
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Home-based Learning became necessary during the Covid-19 lock-down. Here are some photos of the children attending online-lessons.




In addition to HBL, YowCH and Grace also tutored Samuel.


They had exercises (PE lessons).


Even group dance lessons!

And Samuel actually had class meetings!

Tags: David, Esther, Joseph, Samuel by yowch
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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.

Tags: Church, Esther, Family, Samuel, YowCH by yowch
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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.

Tags: Family, Samuel, YowCH by yowch
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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.

Tags: David, Esther, Joseph, Samuel, YowCH by yowch
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Esther hit her shin on the car back row seat a few time, because there is a steel loop for the buckle to hold down the seat after folding down. So YowCH used a sheet of aluminium and folded a cover for the loop, and padded it with materials salvaged from a old sock. Softens the impact when the leg strikes the loop.

On Sunday, 15 March, Joseph returned to soccer after his ‘no-sports’ M.C. for the fracture of his little finger. Samuel was playing well, too.

Our dinner 19 March, pan seared salmon. The salmon was bought from a vending machine, not too bad, and very cheap ($3.00 each piece). the soup is tong-o with eggs.

On 20 March, we had meatballs, eggs, vege-siewyuk and can soup with bread for dinner.

Tags: General, Joseph, Samuel by yowch
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YowCH’s favourite fruit, ciku (sapodilla in English). Grace bought a few large ones, sweet and fragrant.

Driving the Kallang-Pay Lebar Expressway (KPE) is very fuel efficient, having speed limit of 70-80km/h and smooth flowing traffic most of the time. Able to get 11.8km/L over a distance of 130km.

As a reward for Samuel’s good swim, we had dinner at Handlebar. Samuel shared a large platter, and then fell asleep.

Grace bought a serger on Saturday, 29 Feb 2020 before church. This machine is for sewing the edge of cloth. A good partner for the sewing machine. She can now have trimmed edges for the clothes or bags that she makes.

On Sunday, we had our swim followed by chicken rice for lunch.

Football training in the afternoon after a few week’s break, and Samuel did well at football, being very enthusiastic and active.

Tags: General, Grace, Samuel by yowch
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