Samuel enters primary school today, joining Joseph at Gan Eng Seng Primary School.
And here is a photo of all the children on the first day of school. This is the year of major exams, Joseph taking PSLE, David taking O-levels and Esther taking A-levels.
We pray for God to bless them with focused minds for their studies.
YowCH ran 2.5km on the morning of 31 Dec 2019 and again the evening of 1 Jan 2020. Both runs were quite fast, at 12m40s.
We went for the Church Thanksgiving Service on 31 Dec 219 (7:30pm to 9:30pm), then visited Grace’s parents until past midnight. Esther and David went out with church friends for their youth groups activities.
We stayed at home on 1 Jan 2020, mostly to prepare for school, to clear the home and to rest.
Here’s a photo of Samuel, his is well above the 1.0m line on the wall now.
Compare with Feb 2019.
Esther and David reached home in the morning. We had chicken rice for lunch and then walked to Carrara for dinner.
We slept early at about 10:30pm to prepare for school and work in the new year.
Esther had a school trip to Chiang Mai from 21 to 27 Nov 2019, just before our trip to Korea. Click below for the page:
We watched Star Wars 9 at Vivocity, courtesy of our insurance agent from Prudential on Sunday, 29 Dec 2019, 4:00pm show.
They had goodies bags including coke, pop-corn and a water tumbler. One for every seat!
The story was good, and a reasonable ending to the saga.
Happenings on 27 Dec 2019 (Friday)
YowCH had a good 2.5km run in the morning, completing it in 12m20s which is his best time equally the run back in Nov 2018. 2.4km was reached in 11m55s, which is very good.
YowCH decided to make fresh ginger juice (to make ginger honey or ginger soju). Did it the traditional way, with Joseph preparing the ginger, then pounded using classic pestle and mortar. Esther and Samuel also joined in to help. David was in school for basketball practice.
While the ginger juice was being prepared, we prepared seafood for the Beacon Family Group Christmas party at the Lyes’ place (Castle Green). We bought salmon, ikan kuning and prawns. YowCH collected the seafood from the market (pre-ordered 1 week ago) after the earlier morning run and dropping off David at school and Grace at work.
Salmon was prepared with salt, lemon, thyme, and butter.
Ikan kuning with sambal belacan sauce.
Prawns with salt, garlic and ginger.
We celebrated the Dec and Nov birthdays, so Joseph was included.
At 13:24, 26 Dec 2019, an Annular Eclipse happened and it was perfectly viewed from Singapore.
Using the Nikon D5000 with Tamron 18-270mm lens, with an infra-red filter mounted (modified mount using a strip of foam), we managed to capture very nice images from the carpark roof.
Grace also suggested making a pin-hole viewer box, which Esther made 2 units. The results were rather good!
We even ordered McD to be delivered to the carpark for our lunch.
Here is a shot from YowCH’s mobile phone (Samsung S9) as the dark clouds passed, making it possible to take the photo.
Some Christmas makan and photos.
On Christmas eve, we had brunch at Uncle Ho’s Tuckshop Vietnamese Food at Pasir Panjang.
The children on Christmas day.
The family photos:
And a nice grill dinner with Grace’s parents and sister.
YowCH’s dad, Yow Ka Meng, passed away peacefully on the afternoon of 6 Dec 2019 (while we were in Busan, Korea). He was 74. We rearranged our flight immediately to return to PJ (via AirAsia from Busan to KLIA2) on 7 Dec 2019, arriving home at about 5:30pm. Here’s a photo of dad, taken in 2006 (Yan’s wedding) which we used for the death notice, the framed photo and also to put with the urn.
On Sunday, we prepared the home to received dad’s body and casket. Friends and relatives started coming over to visit from Sunday late morning.
Dad final rites were conducted in a Buddhist ceremony. Mom was offering dad his favourite KL Hokkien thick noodles.
Some rites were conducted on Sunday night, before the guests left at about 11:30pm.
We stayed up the whole night, as per tradition.
On Monday (9 Dec) morning, we viewed the body once more before the coffin was sealed.
Then the procession to send him off.
We cremated dad’s body at the MPPJ Crematorium at 10:20am.
After the cremation, we went home for a quick lunch, before returning to the crematorium to collect the bones.
After preparing the urn with the bones, we drove to the Kwangtung YiSan Columbarium.
Dad’s urn is housed in 9-C-3002.
Esther and David left with Gene and Grace’s parents by car as they needed to run Youth Camp for Church.
With the funeral completed, the family went out for dinner at Paradigm Mall.
The next morning (10 Dec, Tuesday), we had food at Taikong.
YowCH, Grace, Yan and PQ then went to Uptown for massage. Later, the Tans, the children and mom joined us at Uptown for dinner.
To end the night, we had supper at Kayu.
On Wednesday, 11 Dec, we flew with Yan’s family to Singapore via AirAsia.
We had another family holiday to Korea, this time to the Southern areas of Jeju Island and Busan. We flew on 1 Dec and planned to return on 8 Dec. However, the trip was cut short by 1.5 days as we rushed back to PJ, following YowCH’s dad’s demise on 6 Dec 2019.
Click on the photo to start the dedicated pages:
The 3 pages can be reached here:
191201 to 02 Trip to Korea 1/3
191203 to 04 Trip to Korea 2/3
191205 to 07 Trip to Korea 3/3
Joseph turned 11 today. We got him some professional yo-yos and a mini basketball hoop.
In the morning, regular swim:
And in the afternoon, regular football, with friendly match against Bukit Batok East.
In the evening, dinner at Handlebar with the Yongs:
He starts his 1-week Maths Olympiad classes at NUS on Monday. It will be 9:00am to 12:30pm daily until Friday.
