YowCH & Grace

Esther’s current laptop is rather slow and restrictive for her school work, so after much planning, we got a new laptop for her, an Asus TP412UA from Challenger. The brochure shows a lower spec, but the one we got from Challenger is the higher spec model, discounted from $1598 to $1398.

It is Intel i7, 8GB RAM and 512GB SSD, 14″ Full HD touchscreen, and comes with Asus Pen (a stylus), a lousy laptop bag and 1 year anti-virus.

Looks very nice and elegant, and runs faster than the older Asus.

This will be her birthday present (next week), but she’ll have to share the usage with the boys sometimes.

Tags: Esther // Add Comment »

We bought our first flat in Redhill Close.

It was announced in 2011 that Redhill Close 7-storey flats will be demolished and redeveloped. Subsequently, the exercise to move the residents out started in Oct 2018 and completed in Jan 2019. As YowCH was making his regular runs through this estate, he noticed that there were lesser people around progressively.

On 31 May, after meeting Joseph’s teachers at the end of term, YowCH walked pass the estate and noted that the whole place has been cleared and locked up.

It was a nice neighbourhood we stayed in after getting married, and frankly, the old and lousy flats were all we could afford.

Tags: General, Grace, YowCH // Add Comment »

Samuel is able to follow the printed instructions and assemble the shelf by himself.

Here are some of our recent food:
We had dinner with Grace’s parents and Gene at West Coast:

We had a dinner with the Yongs on 12 May, having popiah (and other food) at Novena Lao Beijing.

Grace’s mum did some chung and roast pork on 18 May.

And on 25 May, we had Nasi Ambeng at JEM (Jurong East Mall) Penang Culture.

Tags: Family // Add Comment »

On 24 May, as YowCH drove into the carpark at work, the rear left wheel hit the kerb, but the damage was quite bad as the tyre side wall suffered a cut. YowCH realised the rupture while driving home, and stopped at the nearby Caltex petrol station to change to the spare tyre. Esther and David walked from home to help.


With the spare wheel mounted, we drove to dinner and then sent the car for replacement tyre the next morning.

Returning to YowCH’s favourite tyre shop, Arrow Tyres at Ang Mo Kio, we are so blessed that the shop had 3 second hand pieces of the same tyre model, size and age (same manufacturing week!). The replacement cost was $80. The replaced tyre is actually in better condition than the other 3 that is on our car.

On 25 May (Saturday), YowCH drove Grace to work (starting 8:30am) and had breakfast in KKH together, as Arrow Tyre starts at 9:00am. Upon getting the car in the carpark, a note was left on the windscreen that the tailgate has been accidentally hit by a reversing car. YowCH called up the gentleman and had a quick discussion, and Kwan agreed to pay for the damages.


After the tyre replacement, YowCH got a recommendation from the boss of Arrow to look for Sau Hock Motor at AMK Autopoint, and got a quote to repair the dent and re-spray at $280. YowCH informed Kwan and Kwan transferred $330 to YowCH, with $50 for the inconveniences. Reasonable and gentlemanly. Matter closed.

Tags: General // Add Comment »

The children has gotten to swimming butterfly. Firstly, a photo from last week, of Samuel making a good dive:

This is David on butterfly, with Esther doing freestyle. The two had the same timing.

This is Esther doing butterfly:

And Joseph:

And Samuel, trying to do butterfly:

After all the hard swim, we had lunch with coaches Francis and Tobby at Henderson Kay Lee (roast meat):

Tags: David, Esther, Family, Samuel // Add Comment »

David’s school organised a Dads-for-life event, a visit to Semakau Island. click on the photos below to get to the page.

Tags: David, YowCH // Add Comment »

YowCH had a vegetarian dinner for his 45th birthday at Lingzhi Novena. Esther was still in school, so we packed some food for her.

Tags: YowCH // Add Comment »

We watched Avengers: Endgame at Tiong Bahru Plaza on 1 May 2019, 8:30pm show. It was exciting and nice, all 3 hours of it. We left at about 11:50pm and got home just past midnight. School and work in 6 hours!

Tags: Family // Add Comment »

YowCH missed the mid-week runs for two weeks and ran 5.0km on Saturday mornings, instead.

Last Sat was a drizzly morning, but YowCH still ran in the wet and cool weather. With hearty breakfast after the run.

We had a nice dinner at Sorrento after church, nice to have dinner with Grace’s parents and Gene.

Joseph likes the sewing machine. He managed to make a bag for himself, with guidance from Grace and mom.

On Sunday, YowCH managed to swim non-stop 20 laps (1.0km) in free-style, a new personal best. But it was quite slow, having taken about 35 minutes. In the afternoon, we went for soccer training for Samuel, while Joseph played in a friendly match against Bukit Batok East (lost badly).

We booked to watch Avengers: Endgame, this Wednesday night (1 May 2019). The cost for the family is $82.50, which is very high. This is the reason why we buy Bluray discs, at $30 to $40, each movie is still much cheaper than a family outing to the cinema. Plus there are many special goodies packaged in the Bluray or DVD.

Tags: Family, Joseph, Samuel, YowCH // Add Comment »

Perhaps it is another season, the turtles started laying eggs again. Lots of cleaning to do.

YowCH was dropping a colleague at West Coast Plaza on 2 Jan 2019, when a cyclist crossed the entrance without looking or stopping, and YowCH hit the bike. The guy claimed to have injury on his left ankle and YowCH called the ambulance/police. On 23 April, we received a letter from the police concluding the case as the cyclist’s fault. Thank God for justice. Nothing serious on the car, but the bike’s front wheel was damaged. Having a car cam is very very important.

Along the week, YowCH drove to Tuas for a meeting and managed to clock 16km/L on a casual drive, good economy.

Tags: General // Add Comment »