YowCH & Grace

YowCH’s parents came over to Singapore with the drive back after Church Camp, and helped look after Esther and David during school holidays. We had great home-cooked lunches and dinners.

YowCH and his sisters gave mum an Acer Iconia A100 tablet for Skype and portable shows, and mum is seriously enjoying the freedom of mobile entertainment.

We now have 4 iPods, 1 unit of the latest 4th gen and 3 units of the 3rd gen, one each for Grace and the children.

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YowCH’s first group of friends in Singapore, mostly fellow ASEAN scholars from Malaysia in Temasek Junior College (called Temaseans), celebrated 20 years of arrival on 16 June 2012 at One Rochester. We had a great time looking through old memories and sharing about our 20 years in Singapore. 17 of us turned up, very good attendance for a group of about 25 people after 20 years.

We were most honoured to have our guardian teacher, Ms Tan, joining us in this joyous occasion (the pretty lady 2nd from right).

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We drove to PJ on 2 June 2012 and went for Church Camp from 4 to 8 June 2012 at Putrajaya. We then returned to Singapore with YowCH’s parents on 11 June 2012.

Click here for the page.

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We had a great time at Church Camp, from 4 to 8 June 2012. This year it is at Pullman Hotel, Putrajaya, the new administrative capital of Malaysia, about 45mins drive from KL (or 30mins from YowCH’s parent’s home).

Here are a few photos first, the dedicated page will be up later.

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We celebrated Esther’s birthday in PJ on 3 June 2012, just prior to leaving for Church Camp.

Esther’s grandparents, aunty Loon and cousin aunty Yin were with her in this small party.

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After a long break of more than 6 months, YowCH spent the afternoon painting the Space Marine Terminator sergeant while doing the time consuming digital photos back-up on the computer.

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The GESPS Choir performed in the Singapore Youth Festival very well, and was invited to perform again in the Singapore Conference Hall with 6 other primary school choirs on 22 May 2012 from 7:30pm to 9:00pm. Here are some photos:

That’s Grace doing the video and Joseph enjoying the show. David was in Chinese tuition class.

Here are the 7 choirs combined in the finale.

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We sent the Isis for the ninth servicing at 67000km, and after that, we added silicone spring stiffeners to the suspension coils. These were done at E-Rev, and costs $80 a pair (paid $160 for front and back). There mechanics cut a small piece off as the whole is deemed too long, well, they know best.

The stiffeners are useful to us because:
1. The raise the car by about 1.5 inches, less scratching of the spare tyre cage when parked over high kerb.
2. The suspension feels stronger, a little more sporty although bumpy. Good feel when cornering.
3. Shortens the spring movement, hence less impact on the shocks, and will probably prolong the life of the shocks.
4. Relatively cheap at only $80 a pair. The rubber ones are even cheaper, $60 a pair, but not so durable. Coil-overs are much better suspensions but generally lowers the car and costs around $1000++.

Here they are before and after on the front :

And on the rear:

The car body is certainly raised higher:

Sounds squeaky after crossing humps, probably due to the front stiffeners having a gap as the spring is not fuly compressed onto the stiffener even with the combined car and passenger load.

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We celebrated YowCH’s birthday at Suntec City with his parents on Saturday, 5 May. After lunch at home, we went out shopping at Carrefour and had a coffee break at Pho Hoa. That’s Yan’s father-in-law with us.

After Pho Hoa, we walked around a little more and had dinner at Gurney Drive Restaurant, eating Penang food. Rather good selection, but still not as tasty as Penang itself. For birthday, YowCH got a mega ice-kacang!

After dinner, we returned to Bishan and sat around for a while, then we drove mum and dad to the train-station at Woodlands to take the night train to KL.

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YowCH’s parents came to Singapore to stay with Yan for a week plus, and we spent the long weekend (from night of 27 April to 1 May) with them.

We had mum’s cooking for dinner at Yan’s place on Friday night, then lunch at Manhattan Fish Market on Saturday at Junction 8.

That afternoon, we went cycling at Bishan Park again.

The renovated park looks rather ‘natural’ in photos.



The night view is rather nice, too.

On Sunday, we had dinner at Yan’s place again, then took parents over to our home. YowCH and Grace took leave on Monday and met Yan at Vivocity for lunch with parents at Tunglok Signatures and shopping.

That afternoon, we watch Singapore movie “It’s A Great, Great World” which is about Great World City, then went to Great World City for dinner at Cz’zar and some shopping.

We ordered petai-tofu, but the petai was miserably little and minced up!

On 1 May, we had Fook Seng chicken rice for lunch, then spent the afternoon at Bishan. Mum cooked dinner and we had dinner together with PQ’s dad, who came to Singapore with PQ this afternoon.

Today is also mum’s birthday, so PQ got a nice coffee cake and we had a great time celebrating with mum.

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