YowCH & Grace

Entries Tagged as 'Family'

After YowCH’s Quarantine

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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YowCH under Quarantine Order

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:

Tags: YowCH, YowCH's work by yowch
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Covid-19 – Study and Work from home

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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Masks, Church online service, Yongs dinner, swim, Joseph’s specs

Grace made masks for our family, a very needed protective gear in this time of Covid-19 pandemic.

Church service is not held due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the children attended Youth Service (Teenacity) via webcast with interactive responses through their phones.

After the sermon, they went to their terminals for the Discipleship Group studies.

Thank God for technology, allowing group interaction even when we cannot meet each other.

In the evening, the Yongs visited to have dinner with us, a small celebration for David’s birthday.

As David is now past-16, he can drink alcoholic drinks, and his favourite is cider.

On Sunday, we went to the pool for our swim, and the pool was very empty.

After swim, we went to Tiong Bahru Plaza for lunch, buying some provisions and equipment (for the upcoming ‘work from home’) and to replace Joseph’s spectacles which was broken accidentally. YowCH managed to make an emergency repair, but new glasses were needed as Joseph’s power went up.

Tags: David, Family, Grace, Joseph by yowch
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Swim, David’s birthday, YowCH’s run

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!

Tags: David, Family, YowCH by yowch
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Ody back-seat loop cover, Jo back to soccer, dinners

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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Home dinner, guitar loop pedal, Ody steering wheel cover, Jo’s nails

We cooked some simple dinner at home on Wednesday, 4 Mar:

Esther got herself a guitar looping pedal. This allows several tracks to be recorded and looped (played round after round) to have layered (multi-track) playing. $200, second-hand from Esther’s friend.

The steering wheel cover for the car is all cracked up and loose after 3.5 years. So we bought a replacement, exact same model.

Our church gave out 3 nails for the season of Lent, as a reminder of Christ’s suffering for our sins. We are free to use the nails in whichever way, and most people glues them together to make a cross. Joseph did this:

It is nice and cool, but too dangerous, so after taking photo, he took off the nails.

On Sunday night, we watched Robin Hood (2018) with Taron Egerton and Jamie Foxx, in our bedroom because the blu-ray disc can’t play on the living room player.

Tags: Esther, General, Joseph by yowch
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Ciku, car efficient driving, dinner for Samuel, Grace’s serger, soccer

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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Samuel Swimsafer Bronze award, dinner with Yongs

Samuel took his Swimsafer 2.0 Bronze level exam on Sunday afternoon, after our regular weekly swim. He was the smallest size taking the exam (probably one of the youngest). Most are actually taking Stage 3, with 3 taking Bronze. Samuel took his Stage 3 recently on 17 Nov 2019.

First to take an on-line multiple choice questions text. Then swim survival-backstroke, survival-sidestroke, back-stroke, freestyle and breaststroke, each for 1 minute. Wear float in the water, take off T-shirt and shorts while in the water and to thread water for 2 minutes.

Francis (our coach) was present, too. Tobby was the examiner.

The Bronze cert:

In the morning, Grace swam 20 laps continuously, YowCH did 10 (freestyle) in 17m40s (5 secs faster than last week), while the children did resistance training. We ordered lunch from Kay Lim to eat before Samuel’s exam.

In the evening, we visited the Yongs, and had dinner together. We brought along spam-fries and maoshanwang durians.

After dinner, we enjoyed gin-rummy: