T is for...

... Tanjong Pagar.


Not my first choice but the boy was free for lunch so we just met at the hawker centre above the market. The tonkotsu ramen I wanted to eat had too long a queue.

He came in his Trafalgar shirt (that’s T!), and I deviated from my usual Lucky Wanton Mee to try prawn mee from a stall called The Old Stall. They had newspaper clippings and reviews plastered around the stall and I had high hopes but it turned out to be disappointment.



The broth was very ‘prawny’ and the prawns weren’t even fresh and a tad mushy.


Remind me never to eat at this stall again!

Nick was feeling flu-ish in the evening but had promised to bring the kids to Vivo for the giant Xmas tree, so I brought Nat instead. There were some elephant statues on parade which Nat and Gigi couldn’t keep their hands off.



We got to see the laser lights and fireworks on Sentosa, the girls were thrilled. I love fireworks!

By the way, it was the 11th of November 2011 today, hence 11/11/11. This kind of thing only happens once in a lifetime, next year it will be 12/12/12 and then there's no 13th month. But it just occurred to me my 10th wedding anniversary will be 1/3/13 and when Sasha turns 4, it will be 1/4/14...must buy 4-D on those dates!

Hari Raya Zoo

I don’t know what we were thinking to attempt the zoo on a public holiday but it was rather impromptu, after Kaelash said he was going.



Thankfully the weather held up, it was gloriously sunny but the zoo, was well, a zoo! It was crammed with people and we decided to go anti-clockwise and start with the African side.

There was Kaelash, Jeanette, Riley, Reagan, Tse Nar, Khin, Ananya, ourselves and the Gomezs.



Kids had a ball as usual, I missed Sasha’s first visit and am glad to be around for her second. She could name the animals she saw and was tickled by the giraffes we saw peeing and has been re-enacting it since!


We saw monkeys, rhinos, giraffes, zebras, lions, cheetahs, leopards, giant tortoises, komodo dragons, flamingos, snakes, impalas, parrots etc. Didn’t cover the other end with the tigers and polar bears but bumped into Mischa and co at the lion enclosure.


Had lunch at Ah Meng cafe, Kaelash actually brought pasta for all the kids and when Sasha saw the pasta spirals, she didn’t want her mee sua and kept asking for ‘doonles’ (noodles).



We popped by Children’s World for a bit but our kids were tired and bored by then so we left first and they promptly crashed in the car.

Headed back to the north for dinner at AMK, Mildred had lots of leftovers from the day before. Aunty Susan and Aunty Darrell were around and were entertained by the kids.

Kids R Us

Went to AMK for dinner where Mildred was hosting her friend Regina as well as Sylvia, Cato and Cara. I think we last met at Sasha’s party but Nat and Cara seemed to have forgotten each other.



Mildred made popiah, it was not too bad, I think we don’t need to order from shops anymore!

Cara is so chubby, Sylvia passed on some swimsuits she could not fit into.

Yesterday Joanne came over to Membina where we hung out for the day.

Brought the kids to the playground, there was a brother and sister duo who were quite rough and bratty, and another China kid who peed in his pants while on a rocking rhino but continued playing in his wet shorts plus left the ride wet...don’t know what his grandparents were thinking!


Ray and Sasha interacted more as they are closer in age plus Nat and Gigi had each other. After dinner, Joanne followed us back to Spottiswoode to chill some more before Nick sent her and Ray back.

Farewell Judy!

Man, I feel like a nangka busuk, fell down some steps at No.5 last night and went boing, boing, boing on my bum...there’ll be a big bruise soon. Kavi fell too, but at a different spot and sprained her hand.

Judy departs for Sydney in a couple of weeks and this was meant to be a farewell. At first we were all cramped on the second floor till Jeanette found a booth seat on the first level. Music was good, too bad they don’t have a proper dance floor...didn’t stop us from boogie-ing towards the end though.



Nick arrived very late, he was supposed to come after Nat slept but he fell asleep himself!



Another fun night, though I had very little to drink, no mood after falling. We all went to Newton for supper when we were done, where we had a feast of sambal stingray, sotong, kangkung, egg foo yong, ohluak, char tow kway and chicken wings! Slurp!



Kavi ordered from her favourite tout, a lady with a beehive who answers to her ‘Simran’. Can’t miss her when you’re at Newton, she has 4 pens in her hair!

Fishy Thursday

Had two fishy/seafoody meals today, am stuffed!

For lunch, a few of us went to Boat Quay to check out the latest outlet of Smith's, who claim to serve authentic British fish and chips. Phil has tried their Katong outlet and has been raving about how good their fish and chips are. I've been meaning to check them out for a while too ever since spotting them from a bus ride to Katong back in Feb.


Went with Phil, Aaron, Gerry and Austin - 2 Brits and 2 Aussies and they all concurred the fish and chips were good and authentic, down to the curry sauce, malt vinegar and mushy peas. Even came wrapped in paper.



I thought it was pretty good, but oily. I liked the peas and curry sauce, the batter tasted a little like Long John Silver's but I think I like my Skinny Pizza fish and chips best at the moment, with the truffle fries and less oily batter.

Dinner was seafood at Jumbo to eat with Nick's boss Gavin, who had requested to meet me. He's the CEO of Trafalgar and was very friendly and down to earth. He was asking me all sorts of questions about the kids and how Nick and I met, and how he proposed etc. He regaled us with some stories from his travels, he's bumped into George Clooney in Como. Swoon.


He mentioned that he's told Nick he has to try out his own product by going on a Trafalgar tour next year, I'm so going to try and make that happen and tag along! Hmm, Spain, Northern Italy or France? Heh heh. He's also invited us to watch any Chelsea home game, he has box seats. Cool!

Verve Pizza

Met the SingTel folks for dinner this evening. There was supposed to have been 8 of us, but Richard and Max cancelled so it was just me, Desmond, Michael, Crispian, Hong Wei and Juliana.

Since I organized it, I had dibs on picking the venue and went with Verve at Marina Bay. It's just a bit before the MBS convention centre and faces the CBD so there was a relatively good view, though it would have been better to be closer to the water.





This is the same Verve that used to be at Gilman Village, the food still tastes good especially the pizzas and appetizer like calamari and fish cakes but am not a fan of the homemade pasta noodle texture, the linguine looked just like mee pok!





Juliana was late and though her growing belly is not obvious (yes, she's preggers and I've known for a while, heh heh), Crispian asked if she was expecting and she confirmed it. The rest of the guys were surprised but happy for her, she's almost 6mths along but her tummy is quite compact. And I had guessed right, it's a girl. Yay!

By 9-ish, we all started heading home but not before I had a chocolate cointreau ice cream to end the meal, yummy!

Sasha is 19 months

I know all moms think their child is the cutest or smartest but I am wondering if I have a potential genius in the house?


Sasha can name all the different basic shapes now and differentiate between them – she’s an expert at her shape sorter plus she can name colours like pink, blue, green, red, yellow, purple, orange, red, rainbow etc.

She can sing the whole alphabet from A-Z and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, which I think is quite advanced for her age but that’s just me! We have peg puzzles for alphabets and numbers which she can put back all the letters/numbers quite quickly.

She does 3-word sentences, i.e. ‘Mummy cammy (carry) me’, ‘I put back’, ‘Nat-nat wake up’, ‘I don’t want’, ‘Korek belt’. Recently when she met Nya Nya and Baba after a long while, she would keep repeating their names to herself long after the meeting, going ‘Uncle Baba’, ‘Uncle Ri-shed’. She calls Wendy ‘Ah wenny’.



She jumps on the bed like a wrestler, 2-3 bounces before flopping on her back or butt, doesn’t pay attention to how close she is to the edge of the bed or the wall, such a daredevil!

She does like to put on Nat’s Adidas shoes and walk around the house, I don’t know why that particular pair. Over the weekend we were at Centrepoint and a pair of shoes caught her eye at Bata. She insisted on buying it, repeating ‘Mummy buy’, ‘Mummy buy’ in the store and when I took the shoe away from her to pay, she screamed and brought the house down thinking I wasn’t buying it! There are signs she could be the next Imelda Marcos!



At night I have started reading stories to her before bed, she gets one or two each night but she picks the same stories over and over again. Her current favourite is ‘The Fish That Talked’, “Circus Under The Sea” and ‘Gingerbread Man’ which she can listen to 10 times a day and even complete the last word on each page.


In the first week of October, she was down with a viral fever that hit a peak of 41deg celcius, Nat had it before her. There was a trip to KK in the middle of the night at 4am when she was burning up and shivering, we didn’t know what fits looked like but Nick didn’t want to take any chances. She had fever suppositories inserted a couple of times during that period, poor bub.



Nat is really starting to mature, she goes to the big potty on her own, refusing the padded seat or a stool, just hoists herself up. She brushes her own teeth and is more adept at writing alphabets, including her name ‘Nat’. She can draw caterpillars and funny faces and colour within lines...yay.



She’s starting to display a sense of humour, trying her hand at cracking jokes. Well, at least I find them funny. For example, we have a storybook called ‘Adam Goes To Italy’ and one of the characters had a comment about his leaning tower of ice-cream after visiting Pisa.

When she saw a fallen mushroom on a documentary one night, she called it the ‘Leaning Tower of Mushroom’ and ever since, she’ll just say out that line to make me laugh. Plus she doesn’t pronounce ‘mushroom’ properly so it sounds like ‘mahroom’. And when she knows she’s said something funny, she’ll laugh and go, “I joke you”.



I have new names for the girls...Nat is always digging my bag or drawers so I’ve dubbed her Little Miss Korek. Sasha is Little Miss Puting for the constant pacifier usage and when I asked Nat what should we call Gigi who likes to hide, she exclaimed, ‘Tikus” and so we have Little Miss Tikus as well. LOL!