YowCH & Grace

180215 to 19 Chinese New Year (PJ and S’pore)

We had a great Chinese New Year with our family.

15 Feb 2018, Thursday:

We took a day off from work and school on Thursday, 15 Feb 2018, and started our drive to PJ at 2:50am. With a short stay, we didn’t have much to bring along, so we brought the guitar and basketball for some fun.

The checkpoint at Singapore was quite clear, but we had to queue 45mins to get through the Malaysian checkpoint.

Thereafter, the drive was rather clear (and we managed to drive up to 180km/h at some point). With one short toilet break at Pagoh. We reached home at 7:25am after refueling.

After some family time and rest at home, YowCH went out with his mom and Samuel to buy some nasi lemak and roti canai breakfast, and then, at 10:30am, we went out to Giant for some sundry shopping and returned home for lunch.

We rested after lunch and had some family time.

At 6:45pm, we had our reunion dinner, this year, the Tans were with us.

After dinner, we had some family time and everyone went to sleep at about 10:00pm. YowCH had to rush an urgent tender and went to sleep after finishing work at about midnight.

With the arrival of Chinese New Year, sleep was interrupted by the numerous blasts of fireworks and fire crackers from the neighbours.

16 Feb 2018, Friday, 年初一.

We woke up at 8:30am and had breakfast with YowCH’s parents at home.

Mahjong time. Joseph started learning this year. Esther and David were cruising along.

Lunch at noon time, nice food that YowCH’s mom prepared.

Angpow time!

And more mahjong.

Chee Kean, Ming Meng and Jeanne visited us in the afternoon.

The Tans arrived.

We had a great dinner at 6:30pm.

After dinner, we watched TV and rested. At 10:00pm, we visited the Chans and then went out to Kayu for supper.

We finished supper at about 11:20pm and reached home shortly after, sleeping at midnight again.

17 Feb 2018, Saturday, 年初二.

YowCH woke at 7:30am and went for a run while the older boys played basketball.

After his 3.0km run, YowCH took Samuel out to the playground.

We found many unfired pops at the playground, including an unopened bag!

At 9:15am, we returned home and woke the girls. Just shortly after, at 9:40am, the Yongs (with the parents and brother) arrived from Kajang. We had brunch together at home.

The older Yongs and Ping Yew went shopping while we played with the pops, mahjong and toys.

We then went out to visit YowCH’s uncle in Kepong, reaching at noon.

We took various group photos of the families. Here are our family photos:

At 2:15pm, we all went out to a local dessert shop for lunch/snacks.

YowCH’s aunty Sook Mee and her daughters met us at the restaurant.

By 3:45pm, we left the dessert place and went home. The Yongs went back to Kajang, and the Loos stayed on for mahjong and other dinner.

At 7:15pm, we had dinner at home, with raw fish salad.

After dinner, we watched TV and ad a great time chit-chatting before going out to Kayu for supper with the Loos.

We returned home at 11:30pm and slept at midnight.

18 Feb 2018, Sunday, 年初三.

Grace has night duties at work on Sunday night, so we woke early at about 7:30am and packed to leave. We started our drive at 8:40am. The road was not yet crowded, and we enjoyed the smooth traffic. But we missed a turn and ended up in LEKAS instead of PLUS-E2. LEKAS was very empty, heading towards Seremban.

To get back into PLUS, we passed through Seremban, where Grace gave a nice guided tour to the children.

Along the PLUS, traffic was not too heavy although at times we had some stretches of complete stop.

We took an early lunch (with Baskin Robins ice-cream) at Pagoh at 11:00am.

After lunch, the traffic slowed further, but still moving along at about 80-120km/h.

We noted that the Johor Bahru traffic has jammed to the Tuas turn-out. Thank God that we arrived at about this time, any later would mean that we will be queuing to get out of E2.

We reached the Malaysian checkpoint at 1:50m after refueling at Gelang Patah.

It took only 15 minutes to clear Malaysia checkpoint, but the Singapore checkpoint queue started from the middle of the bridge.

We can even see our car queuing from LTA’s public camera!

We finallly cleared the checkpoint at 3:10pm, total of 1 hour and 20 minutes, and we reached home at 3:25pm.
The children were very helpful and fast in unloading the car and clearing the luggage at home.