YowCH & Grace

We gave David a Cajon (pronounced “car-horn”, Peru beat-drum) for his birthday, and got it last Wednesday (when stock arrived at Swee Lee). He had learnt to play it from Church friends and plays it pretty well. The good news: it is branded, a Meinl, and cheap at $70. The bad news: we must assemble it on our own (well, we also see this as good news for DIY practice and bonding time).

Ready made cajons are generally from $150 to $800. This piece costs $70, plus another $15 for brackets (YowCH’s idea), screws, white glue, brush, wood stain, lacquer spray and sandpaper. We also needed a drill, screw drivers, wood file, G-clamps, pencil and ruler.

Step-by-step:
1. Apply white glue to the boards and assemble them.
2. Screw in the brackets (for additional strength and stiffness, not in the included instructions).
3. Hammer the boards into place neatly.
4. Apply white glue to mount the back-board (with hole).

5. Put some weight to press the back-board while the glue dries.
6. Glue the timber batons and clamp into place.
7. All batons clamped for glue-drying.
8. Mark out the drill holes on the front panel (the drumming part).

9. Assemble the snare (for the ‘tsk-tsk’ sound).
10. Mount the snare into place with white glue and clamp to set.
11. Screw the front panel in place, 4 corners first to fix the position.
12. Drill the front panels other screw holes. All screws installed after this.

13. Sand down the edges and make any roughness smooth.
14. Clean up after sanding.
15. YowCH showing David how to apply the black wood-stain.
16. David applies the stain. He chose black.

17. Esther helped, too. Total of 2 coats for the front (lighter colour), and 4-5 coats for the rest (darker).
18. After the stain dried (with help of a hot air from a hair-dryer), lacquer was sprayed-on.
19. Screw the rubber footings onto the bottom of the cajon.
20. All rubber footings installed, cajon completed.

In truth, there was much adult supervision needed for the handling of tools and brush or spray painting, but a child of 10 should be able to follow the instructions and complete 80% of the work.
Here’s David playing the completed cajon. The completed cajon sounds good! It is a Meinl after all.

Here are some rare photos of Esther during her ballet lessons. The teacher helped take these photos.

Tags: David, Esther by yowch
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After church, we had dinner with the Tans at Fat Boy’s (Pasir Panjang Road), with really huge and tasty burgers.


Joseph can make the Fat Boy’s angry face:

Tags: Family, Friends by yowch
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At the Association of Consulting Engineers, Singapore (ACES) 43rd Anniversary Dinner on 27 March 2014, YowCH received the Young Consulting Engineer of the Year 2014 Award for Civil Engineering (one of 5 winners of 2014 of various categories). He received the award from ACES Vice-president Er. Ling. “Young” is defined as ‘under the age of 40′, which is almost at the limit for YowCH.

Among the 5 winners include his friend and colleague, Er. Yong Fen Leong for the Structural Engineering category, standing next to him in this group photo of winners.

His boss, Er. Dr. Tan Guan won the Lifetime Achievement Award, making it a hat-trick of awards for T.Y.Lin this year.

This is a photo of the certificate, and the present, a Sheaffer fountain pen with the Award and Recipient engraved.

Thank God for the recognition given to YowCH by ACES for his work and contributions to the construction industry.

Tags: YowCH, YowCH's work by yowch
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The website server was down from Tuesday afternoon until Wednesday afternoon. The reason given by the host is that the operating system (Linux) was lost! and although the data was intact, it might not be recoverable! That means the loss of all the blog entries! After the site recovered (thank god!) we started a a new operational procedure to have regular back-up of the blog files.

YowCH bought a new $50 guitar stand with 5 slots, now the guitars are nicely stacked and takes up less space in the house.

Compare to the older chaotic ‘layout’:

Tags: General by yowch
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Sunday started with breakfast at the neighbourhood, then we boiled some Chinese herbs given to YowCH by his colleague, Law KH, for his cough.

That’s lemon grass 香茅, dried orange 桔饼, Chinese mint 薄荷, red onions 红葱 and water, boiled for 1/2 hour. Nice soothing drink.

Then we went for the swim lessons. David is almost swimming, Joseph is still playing around, but Esther is able to do 50m free-style. Grace went 200m and YowCH was rather sick, so he did a casual 200m.




Samuel had some pool time, too, at the deep pool!

Then we went for soccer and ballet, followed by a dinner to celebrate David’s birthday, with Gene. We had a hearty meal at O’Leary’s at the Singapore Flyer, David’s kind of food.



Here’s David and his food.

And this is the birthday cake (brownie with ice-cream).

Tags: David, Family, YowCH by yowch
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It was tough when Grace is not around on Saturday, Samuel is dependent and things are not as fun, especially with YowCH having a bad cough. Nevertheless, we try to have some fun.

In the morning, we sent Grace to work, then had some snacks just before Esther and David went for their Chinese lessons.

Then YowCH brought Joseph and Samuel home for some TV time.

After tuition, we went for lunch at Colbar.

Then we spent 45 minutes cycling. YowCH coached Esther and David in sliding stop and drift-cornering, while trying to get Joseph to cycle.

At 3:00pm, Esther went for her Youth Service at Church, while YowCH practiced with David for the Junior Praise worship leading. Joseph took this photo of YowCH playing the guitar and David on the cajon (pronounced “kah-hon”, a drum instrument).

Then Grace finished work and joined us at Church service. We had a quick dinner followed by the Church Annual General Meeting, and thereafter, we reach home at 11:00pm.

A very busy Saturday.

Tags: Family by yowch
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Rain returned to Singapore on Sunday, heavy at Redhill from 11:00am to 3:00pm. With the end of the rain at 3:00pm, we went for soccer training at West Coast Park, and Ben brought 2 goal-posts borrowed from PA. These are inflatable posts and rather sturdy. While it rained, the ground wasn’t muddy as the water was soaked into the parched earth immediately. We ended early as the rain restarted with very dark clouds.

After soccer, we met up with YowCH’s parents, Yan and Loon again for dinner, this time Chinese food at Tunglok Teahouse at China Square.



The food was great, and particular mention to a nice dessert, which is yam-sticks coated with sugar-icing.

We have also updated our family icon photo on the upper-right of this page.

Tags: David, Family, Joseph by yowch
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Loon, Daren and YowCH’s parents came over to Singapore for a short holiday. We met up for dinner last night at Star Vista Morganfield’s, together with Yan and family.



We had good ribs, roast chicken and lamb chops, plus margarita and virgin mojitos.

The Fujifilm F550EXR camera, always with YowCH, died mechanically (the lens cannot move) on 12 March. We took 9000 photos (with some videos) with this F550. After arranging with a seller on Clubsnap, he picked up another 2nd hand Fujifilm F500EXR (no GPS compared to the F550) for $150.

The F500 is in the foreground in both photos below:

Tags: Family, YowCH by yowch
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David came back from Scout camp with a new badge, and some goodies. The goodies because he was selected by the teachers to be the best Scout of the camp!

There were about 30 Scouts at the camp, held at St. Joseph Institution Junior (at Moulmein, near United Square). He was running a fever and had coughs, but the appeal of the camp was too great, and he struggled through the two nights.

Tags: David by yowch
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The Suzuki guitar was broken earlier before Christmas, and after YowCH fixed it, it still plays rather well, so the set (guitar, cable and amp) has been moved to T.Y.Lin office for lunchtime and after-work playing.

On Friday, 7 March, David left for Scout camp at 4:00pm, and will return on Sunday 12:45pm.

We got a second hand Fender Mustang II amp for $200, big, powerful and nice sound.

Here’s the guitar to scale:

And this is the current guitar family at home:

Tags: David, General, YowCH's work by yowch
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