Praise the Lord, Joseph is 1-year-old today. He is really smiley and bubbly, and started liking to play rough with David and YowCH. Another favourite of his is hide-and-seek.
He has not started standing on his own yet, and prefers to crawl than to walk or cruise. He is also consistent in using some ‘words’ now. In the car, he sits in his baby-seat very nicely, often ‘talking’ to others in the car.
Joseph was dedicated to the LORD on Sunday, 8 Nov 2009 in church by Elder Andrew Chua. This is a photo of the family before service (thanks to Paul for helping take the photo):
Photos during service taken by Quincy:
[ADDED 15 Nov 2009]
Here’s a photo of the Ngs with Daniel and the Yows with Joseph.
And this is when we, the parents, pledge to bring up Joseph in Godly manner.
We have also started putting together a new PC last Sunday, 1 Nov 2009, in hope that the existing WinXP SP3 and installed software can just be run on the new platform. However, after struggling with Windows, drivers and software problems for 1 week, we moved onwards from WinXP and bought the newly released Windows7 and started a new installation on Saturday 7 Nov 2009, finally completed this morning (past midnight). There are still many software that must be installed to make the system fully workable. Total cost for new casing, power supply, mainboard, processor, 2GB RAM (we would probably up this to 4GB), 2 x 250GB harddrive, video card with DVI, VGA and HDMI, keyboard, mouse, 23″ full HD Samsung LCD monitor, web-cam and Windows7 Home is about $1300.
[ADDED 15 Nov 2009]
We added another 2GB of RAM and a new mic, the whole PC now $1400.
Since getting the car half a year ago, we gave the Isis a good soap and then a wax yesterday (Saturday) at Moh Guan. Really tiring.
And then it rained heavily.
Wow, the last update was more than 1 month ago!
We were very busy at work and home. Esther is also going through her exams now.
Since Melbourne, we had not really gone about much, except for a wedding lunch in Skudai, Johor last Sunday.
Joseph will be 1 year old soon, he is now eating a lot and very interactive.
David is doing fine and starting to use more Mandarin and Cantonese.
We have selected the nice photos and posted our Melbourne trip, please see all three parts here:
It was less of Melbourne and more of Victoria state, as we had effectively been in the city less than 6 hours over the whole 9 days from 5 to 13 Sept. Big thanks to Paul and Alison for hosting us.
We are now waiting for departure flight at the SIA Lounge at Tullamarine Airport. 9 days of fun and travelling around Victoria, half the time with the kind hospitality of the Ngs. Thank God for a good holiday, safe travels, nice weather and lots of fun.
Trip updates soon in a special page.
We arrived at Melbourne early on Saturday morning and spent a great weekend with the Ngs on the hills East of Melbourne (Dandenongs and Yarra Valley). It’s Phillip Island penguin parade viewing today. It is quite cold here, 5°C to 20°C.
The Yows shall be off to Melbourne from 5 to 13 September for a holiday and to visit Paul and family. Woohoo, more than 1 week of fun in the 5° to 15° spring weather. And flying SQ!
The repair was faster than expected. After sending in for repairs on Tuesday 11 Aug late morning, the taxi driver went to Ricardo to pay the $900 repair cost. We had also asked him for a nominal $100 taxi fares for Grace over the loss-of-use of the car, which he gladly accepted and paid.
Ricardo informed that the car would be ready by afternoon of Friday 14 Aug, but the car was ready by afternoon of 13 Aug. Replaced cover, repaired bumper and door, and straightened out the bumper hooks which were bent. After the bonding and spray paiting, we noted no signs of the damage. Hopefully the bonding and paint job would last.
Grace is down with food poisoning, she’s on MC yesterday and today.
This morning (8:00am, 6 August 2009) we were on Orchard Road leading to Scotts Road, while sending Grace and the boys to KKH, a ‘sleepy’ taxi hit us on the back. He was trying to turn into the bus lane while the traffic was really very slow, and we were actually stopped. Thank God the impact wasn’t too hard and nobody was hurt. But our boot door and bumper was damaged. The driver offered to pay for the damages (out of his pocket, not insurance), exchanged contact info, took some pictures and moved on from there as it was a very busy road in the morning. The driver was apologetic and gentlemanly in behaviour.
That’s our damage, dent door, crushed bumper, dropped tow-point cover and some dents and bends on attachments inside:
That’s his damage, not much but you can see the tow-point (very hard) being imprinted on his bumper and license plate:
That’s the position after he reversed and we exchanged info:
YowCH went into Ricardo to assess the damage, and repairs would come to about $1k, depending on final count.
Lesson:
1. Wear seat belts, we can’t prevent others from driving into us.
2. Sit properly. If the children were moving around, they would have been thrown, even with this light impact.
3. Don’t drive when too sleepy. The taxi driver later told YowCH over the phone that he was sleepy after night shift.
4. Don’t turn into the next lane too early, wait for the car in front to clear more space in case of any sudden brakes.
