Science Centre trip 2

We visited the science Centre again, with some free tickets from NUS Science faculty for alumni (Grace) and got some mooncakes and drinks, too!

Please click photo below to get to the page.

YowCH at night futsal with TYLin colleagues

On Wednesday night, 3 Sep, YowCH played futsal with his colleagues at The ARK Taman Jurong (Fourth Chin Bee Road).


Great fellowship and fun, but YowCH was rather out-of-breath and had back-ache.

Rental car after accident

We are now driving a rather old rental Toyota Wish, rented from Mova (the workshop for the car and also for the insurance claims) as the post-accident Isis will be in the workshop for 2 weeks plus.

YowCH new watch, picnic with Tans

YowCH needed a new watch after a short 3 years. The bracelet keeps snapping loose at the joint to the watch and finally the watch dropped and cracked. So Grace helped get a new watch, nice black face just like the previous 2. Also Seiko 7S26 movement on 21 jewels. The previous change is here.

After soccer and ballet, we had a nice picnic dinner with the Tans at the Rumah Tinggi Eco-park.

Special thanks to Gene, who lent us her 3-days old new BMW 316i to run about this Sunday, as our car is in workshop after yesterday’s accident. Nice drive, very good pick-up and super stable car at only 1.6L.

Accident on AYE, boot crushed

YowCH drove Esther to church on Saturday afternoon, and after dropping her, met with a multi-car accident at about 3:00pm on the AYE towards City, just under the Buona Vista flyover. Car 1 (blue taxi) braked hard (probably due to the other 4-car accident further to the front). Car 2, silver car, swerved right and avoided the taxi. Car 3, YowCH, braked, swerved left and was hit from behind by car 4 (yellow taxi). When YowCH got down, there was actually car 5 (maroon taxi) which hit car 4. There was only YowCH in the car at the time, and the speed was about 80-90km/h as the road was rather crowded, with good distance between cars.

The damage on the blue taxi was minimal, some paint scratches from YowCH’s front right bumper. The yellow taxi’s head was pushed in, having crumpled our boot. But the worst seemed to be the maroon taxi, with the hood popped and the radiator leaking.

On survey, the external damages:
Rear – tailgate and bumper.
Front – bumper right (scratches), fender bent a little, rim scratches.

Internal damages:
Rear – floor bent, seat stuck, plastic panels bent and broken, reverse light wire damaged.

Thank God no injuries, and all involved will report to insurance to take care of it. Car repair will take 2 weeks or so, and YowCH will rent a car in the meantime. We are also thankful to all the friends who offered assistance upon hearing this.

Swim update, Transformers (T4)

A little update on the swimming progress.

Grace is now swimming her 10 laps in breast-stroke every week. YowCH was having bad back-pains since last Monday (probably due to work stress), so he didn’t swim laps, but was floating and diving in the water to help relieve the back pains (and it helps!).

Samuel is more tolerant to the pool now, and quite enjoy the swim. Drank some water, though, when we threw him about! He can kick himself back to the surface from under water.

Joseph is practically swimming now, but the stroke is not perfect, and his playful nature makes it hard to teach him. David is as playful as ever, also making it difficult to teach, but he can swim well now. Esther is swimming great, but needs more build on her muscles to carry the distance, and she can handle the life-jacket, clothes and somersaulting 4 times in the water.

And here are our non-Dinobots from Transformers 4 range:
Bumblebee, Hound, Drift, Crosshair and Lockdown (the Lamborghini Aventador).

We are probably not getting anymore, perhaps rusty Optimus Prime and Stinger. Galvatron is not very nice as a toy. With recently gotten Slog, we are short of 1 more Dinobot, Snarl, and the set of Dinobots will be complete.

Weekend post

David climbed a tree near home! This is really fun.

We bought a plastic planter box in Malaysia and transplanted our mint plants. With fertilisers and soil, we hope that the mint will grow and gives us endless mojitos.

Dinobots! We got Slog (silver), the tall guy on the right. This adds to Grimlock (brown), Strafe (blue), Slash (cyan), Slug (purple) and Scorn (red). Last one to get is Snarl (green) which is not yet on sale.

On Sunday morning, we went to Shuqun Sec School at Jurong East for friendly football match with Yuhua and BB East View. A nice cool shady morning and had great fun playing. Esther was helpful in taking photos.

Samuel had a great time rolling about the artificial grass. And the football friends were all very happily playing with him.


David and Joseph both played very well. David was either defender or goal keeper, and defended very well. Joseph was playing striker and scored a goal!

After football, we went for our swim. Grace is regularly doing 10 laps now (with rests in between) and YowCH is pushing for 10 laps in less than 15 minutes, but so far only got to 15’35″.

In the afternoon, Esther had ballet for 2 hours and we shopping in Funan Centre. Then we had Brotzeit dinner at Star Vista.

Thank God for a nice weekend.

Trip to PJ over National Day holiday

We had a 3-day trip to YowCH’s home at PJ from 9 to 11 Aug, mainly to meet his new niece, Tan Yen Li, born to Daren and Loon. Please click on the photo to get to the page.

Esther swim stage 2, David & Joseph soccer, Samuel up the stairs

Esther received her Stage 2 swim cert today. Cool!

Here is are photos of Joseph practicing dribbling and shooting goals, and David playing in a friendly game of under-10-years 9-a-side against Anglo-Chinese School. We won 3-2 in a good and nicely matched game.

And here is a photo of Samuel crawling up the stairs at the playground! No stopping this guy. (Sorry about the poor photo, it is a screen capture of a low-res handphone video.)

In the swimming pool today, he was also able to lie on his back in the water and kick to stay afloat!

Shelf & cabinet, West Coast National Day dinner

With the KKH childcare moving out, there was a sale of the furniture and we got a shelf and a cabinet. Rather large and nice timber ones, and barely managed to fit into our car!

On 2 Aug 2014, we joined the West Coast residents in the National Day Dinner, having gotten free tickets under the football team. We walked over to Clementi Wood Secondary School after church. There was a fair before dinner and we shared a table with Raphael and Kieran’s family.


Dinner started at about 7:30pm. The food was reasonably good, worth the $25/person (but we shouldn’t complain as we got the seats for free). Our table had 4 adults and 7 children!



We stayed on and enjoyed the joyful atmosphere in celebration of Singapore 49 years, and left at the end of the event at about 10:15pm. A rather interesting experience for us.