We prepared the baby’s clothes and drawers next to the cot.
YowCH’s head injury is healing very well after 6 days, some bruise still visible, but the wound has fully closed.
Yesterday, the naked chef made pancakes with his sister, while the younger brother set up the table. Pancakes for lunch was a great idea, tasty, filling and nutritious.
We had dinner last night at Brewerkz (Riverside Point) after soccer and ballet. We were really in the mood for Oktoberfest – beer, pork knuckles and sauerkraut. We ordered some drinks (virgin mojito for David and Shirley Temple for Esther, with a Honey Apricot Ale for sharing), the Massive Pork Knuckle, Black Angus Rib-eye 300gm, Beer-batter Onion Rings and Sautéed Mushrooms.
As the beer (Honey Apricot Ale) was a fruity-tasting fresh-brewed hand-crafted ale, the children each got to taste it (and so did Grace). The beer was not too harsh on YowCH (who reacts to hop with bad skin swelling).
Joseph and Esther liked it, David hated it and Grace felt that it is still too bitter. This was the beer that ran the fastest among 5 types when YowCH organised a beer tasting party last month for ACES-YPC.
Here you see David and Esther cutting the very delicious rib-eye.
At home, we have just set-up the baby cot, the very same one we picked up from the neighbourhood dump almost 12 years ago for Esther.
YowCH had a bad dream on 9 Oct 2013, and at 4:30am, rolled off the bed and fell on the ground. Unfortunately, the dumbbells were right at the bed-side and his head hit the metal in the fall, resulting in a deep gash on the right eye-brow. After a stunned 15 mins and applied pressure to stop the bleeding, he went back to sleep. Next morning, with a plaster stuck, he sent the children to school, Grace to work, sat in a meeting at work, and attended the SITCE conference in Suntec City. By the time he saw the doctor at about 2:45pm, the wound has clotted and closed up, so no stitches needed.
Today, 3 days later, the swelling has reduced and the bruise is improving.
Thank God that the damage was not serious and missed the eye. Lesson learned: keep the area around the bed free of any hard objects.
Joseph started using chopsticks on 15 September 2013, and tonight, he ate dinner by scooping rice from a bowl using chopsticks. We were at Mouth Restaurant at Vivocity, eating Sam Sui Chicken.
We met up with YowCH’s sister’s family for lunch at Square2, where we ate at Bread Bar (油炸鬼, yau-jar-guai, officially in Mandarin, you-tiao, 油条). There is a page in Wikipedia for this simple food.
The meal included curry chicken, bak-kut-teh, assam chicken, tau-fu-fa, kekou mian, and of course plenty of yau-jar-guai.
We visited the doctor today and everything is great, praise the Lord. 1 ultrasound image of his face added to Baby 4′s page.
The maintenance cost is rising, we added a larger filter ($12) on 25 Sept to keep the tank cleaner in order to change water less frequently. You can see it in the left side of the photo.
Today, we visited the new site at Jurong West again to look for some old structures, and here are our trail biking photos:
That’s a big ‘frog’ looking at a real one.
On the roadside drain top (and this drain is really a huge canal), YowCH managed to clock 35km/h on the mountain bike. The children reached 32km/h.
YowCH needed to visit a new earthwork site at Jurong West which is still very wooded, and the children are on school leave for PSLE Listening and Comprehension Exams, so we went to the site for mountain biking. Grace and Joseph went to work/school. We had breakfast at Block 37, then went to TYLin office for a short while as YowCH needed to sign some drawings and give some instructions. We reached the site at about 10.45am and took out the bikes.
The trails are partly metalled, partly dirt path and sometimes very rough.
We crossed a very rusted steel bridge.
We left the site at about 12.15pm, drove round the site boundary and then went to Colbar for lunch at 1.00pm.
After lunch, we reached home at about 2.15pm.
It is mid-autumn. This year we did not buy any mooncakes, spending about $500.oo less! We ate only a little mooncakes from relatives and friends.
Yesterday, Thursday, Joseph joined Esther and David in the Gan Eng Seng Primary School mid-autumn celebrations, and they made some snow-skin mooncakes and lanterns. The children went with Grace, YowCH was at the Association of Consulting Engineers (ACES) Networking Night.
Tonight, we had some standard mid-autumn fare: yam, water caltrop (菱角), pomelo, ‘pig-basket’ cake and of course, mooncakes.
The pomelo was peeled by David, although he doesn’t eat it.
This is the water caltrop top (菱角车) that YowCH made.
We had two weddings in 2 countries on Saturday, 14 Sept.
Lunch at Sheraton from 1:00pm to 4:00pm for Pearly’s wedding (Grace’s ex-colleague and good friend).
At this wedding, we started teaching Joseph chopsticks. And a surprising event happened, David’s glass just cracked on the edge while he was drinking! haha.
After the lunch, we drove to Pontian straight, but was caught in the check-point jam spending 30 mins on Singapore side and 90 mins on Malaysia side. We reached Pontian at 7:15 and had to join the Pontian local jam for another 20 mins, reaching the restaurant at 7:40pm. Thank God, we were safe, and the ‘valet’ gave us the space in front of the restaurant next to the wedding car.
This is the wedding of Grace’s cousin (youngest daughter of her eldest uncle).
The food was fantastic. After dinner, we sat at 4th Aunty’s house for a while, left Pontian at 11:00pm driving in convoy with mum and dad, and reached home at 12:15am.
Here, you can see Joseph having mastered the chopsticks, picking up peas! Now he needs to work on strength.
