YowCH & Grace

The usual of Sundays, we went for our swim, and Samuel is now wearing a new and bigger swim suit. He loves it.

Esther and David can swim butterfly now, but will need more refinement. Joseph’s frog-style is good, and he can swim non-stop now.

Samuel enjoys being in the pool, plays well in the water and no longer cries.

Other than swimming, YowCH has started training his running after 6-year stop, for a 10km run in mid-May. He started 3 weeks ago, and can now run for about 3.5km. Long way to catch-up.

We had dinner at United Square with YowCH’s sister and family. The Yong-children are very grown up now, and able to interact very nicely with the Yow-children over dinner, at Bangkok Jam.

We ordered a nice selection of food, and desserts. Grace had petai spaghetti (weird), YowCH had phad thai (kuay teow), Esther had olive fried rice (no photo) and David had chicken kebab. Joseph had the free kid’s meal of a rather miserable burger. For desserts, we had coconut ice-cream with red-rubies, mangos with sticky rice, and durian pannacotta.

It is always nice to have dinner with family.

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As Samuel dislikes the confines of the baby cot very much, we decided to upgrade him to a bed. Grace found a second-hand IKEA Kritter bed ($89 new) with Vyssa Snappna mattress ($40 new) for $50 at Tiong Bahru, so we drove over to the place after dinner and picked up the bed. It is in very good conditions as the owner (small boy) did not want to sleep on the bed so the parents sold it off. The mattress is cheap and soft foam, but for Samuel, it should be OK.

It fits just nicely into the car, with all 6 of us, too! The older children were very helpful in carrying and loading/unloading it.

Upon reaching home, and while we prepared the space by clearing the old cot, Samuel was already taking to like the new bed.

After cleaning the bed and the room, we moved the bed into place, under the close supervision and occasional help by Samuel.

That’s Samuel on his new bed. He likes it. We added some cardboard under the mattress as we can feel the bed planks under the soft mattress (cheap foam).

Here’s a little story about the cot. We found the cot thrown away at Redhill Close a few months prior to Esther’s birth in 2002. Thanking God for the free cot, we took it home and cleaned it. We had to find a piece of ply-wood and cut to size, and also bought a mattress from IKEA and cut it to size. The door rails were also damaged, which YowCH repaired. Esther was born when the new paint we applied was still wet! After 13 years, we left the cot, the board and the mattress at our Rumah Tinggi ground floor, perhaps someone else can make use of this cot.

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This is Samuel in the Learning Vision uniform, the old design.

We need him to grow bigger (much bigger) to fit into the new design which we bought for Joseph.

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We spent some time at the Church playground after Good Friday service.

Samuel really enjoys the slides. But he likes to slide head down!

Here are the children playing.

The 4.

Esther invited her friend, Chloe, over to our place and practiced baking cupcakes for her school exams.

While waiting for the cake to bake, they played Wii for a while.

David was also inspired and he did some crepes, filled with Nutella, peanut butter or marmalade.

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Today is Samuel’s first day as Toddler. He must wear uniform now, but we let him wear the very old design (David’s time).

Esther ran in her school’s cross-country race last Friday at Macritchie Reservoir, and got 6th place under Sec 1 Girls category. She’ll be training more to improve her time and position in running.

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Today is Samuel’s last day as Infant (2-18 months). He joins toddler class (with school uniform!) tomorrow, 1 April.

We forgot to post David’s birthday celebrations last week. We had a dinner at Brotzeit (his preferred food) on Monday evening and gave him the Blockopedia (Minecraft info book) on Tuesday (his birthday).

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Singapore’s founding Prime Minister, Lee Kuan Yew, died on Monday, 23 March 2015. The entire country, and even many international communities mourned for him. In Singapore, the mourning and process covered the entire week, and ended today with his body being brought from Parliament House to UCC, and finally to Mandai for cremation.

On Saturday, while Grace was at 1/2-day work in the morning, YowCH brought the children out to the common area for some cycling fun.

Samuel had some fun being pushed on the Y-glider.


Here are three sharks circling round the baby (more like 2 sharks and 1 guppy).

Joseph tried the beam, but not successful yet.

On Sunday, Grace had to work from 12:30 to 9:00. We left early to avoid the road closure for LKY’s funeral procession along Jalan Bukit Merah, and had lunch at Marco at Novena Square. Food was great.

After lunch, Grace left for work and we shopped a little at Novena Square. We followed LKY’s funeral through Youtube Live on YowCH’s phone.

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With the terrapins growing up, we fill the tank with more water and have just installed a larger pump-filter. Now both are large pumps.

Compare with the previous pumps (one large and one small).

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We visited the Alive Museum on Wednesday 18 March (mid-week of the 1 week school holidays). It is rather nice, but having gone to the Resort World Trick-eye Museum first, this is comparatively poor. The backgrounds are mostly painted on walls and the space is too tight for good photography. Click on the photos below to jump to the page.

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In order to coach the junior football team better, YowCH attended the FAS (Football Association of Singapore) FIFA Grassroots Football Coaching program from 13 to 15 March 2015 held at the People’s Association HQ at King George’s Avenue (Jalan Besar). The course was conducted over Friday evening 6:30pm to 10:30pm, Saturday 8:00am to 6:00pm, and Sunday 8:00am to 12:00noon.


With the coursework on training children, the program ended on Sunday with an actual organisation of a Football Fiesta. YowCH, being appointed the Deputy Chief, arrived at 7:00am to check the field, set-up and get things ready. The children rom various neighbourhoods arrived at 8:00am and the coaching team registered them, divided into teams and lined them up.

This is the setting up for the official group photo.

And here are the coaches ready to receive the children. YowCH is at the end (red shorts).

And so the games started, with 8 stations for various drills and short games, rotating the 16 teams to try each of the stations.

The medic was rather busy with minor injuries. The idea to number the water bottles for ID is fantastic.

Here’s a nice pano view of the PA field with Jalan Besar Stadium in the background.

At the end, after the 8 rounds to rotate among the 8 stations, the field was divided into 2 and the children were split into 2 great teams to play against 2 teams of coaches, great fun chasing after 1 ball!

After everything, a short de-brief by the Chief, followed by catered food.

YowCH received a certificate of attendance for the course. good experience to share with the West coast team coaches, in the approach, warm-ups, training plan and event organisation. Here’s the official photo of the Volunteer Coaches who attended this training course.

Updated 20 March 2015:
Added several photos taken by the event photographer.

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