It's just...work. And mundane, prosaic routines. We had mundane, prosaic routines in Paris, too, but they were rose-coloured, damnit. Here life is just too...clear. Nonetheless, Asia is just as exciting, engaging, scintillating as Europe, and I will see to it that the kids get to experience that. The challenge is to find enough time-off from work to do it. The good doctor is too noble to cancel his clinics for a long weekend jaunt with his vacation-starved family, and I am still nursing my wounds upon realising that my annual leave was slashed down to my original no-we-don't-need-vacations-we-are-Asians-thank-you levels since leaving la France.
In the last few weeks, besides spending a couple of weekends with family in Malaysia, we were essentially doing routine stuff in Singapore - grocery-shopping, doing school homework, visiting libraries, dipping in the pool in the condo. Here's what's left of our ho-hum days that's worth reporting:
Sophie learned to ride the bicycle!
This idyllic stretch of road is in the middle of the city. It is fringed by old, broad & tall trees and TWO open, albeit small fields - a rare thing indeed, in this part of the city. Someone even tied some ropes around the trees to make a crude swing, and kids were gathered around taking turns. But come end of the year, it will be another dusty, noisy, construction site. That is the only constant in this ever-changing, mad-for-modernising city.
Cycling outing at Pasir Ris park
Legoland over the border in Nusajaya, Johor
My trip-planning skills are a little rusty - we went to Legoland on a day during the Malaysian school holidays AND when there was a bank holiday in Singapore. We were stuck at the immigration for an hour, and finally entered the park a good two hours later than planned. More vacations and getaways needed to get back into the game...
Entrance to Legoland is pretty pricey for the average Malaysian. At RM 140 per adult and RM 88 per child, it would have to be a special outing for the family. However, as the park opened less than 6 months ago, you can find various ticket promotions in Singapore & Malaysia as part of their launch strategy. While queuing for tickets, patrons were comparing deals and coming up with strategies to save a few more RMs. A middle-class Chinese aunty was going to enter the park with an Indian blue-collar worker. Another Hokkien-spouting uncle was going to obtain tickets for the children of the aunty because his promotion allows him to get free tickets. It was all very convoluted but good fun. Maybe I should have got into the action and offer to trade my husband for something. Any takers? He cooks pretty well. He doesn't have much hair, but who needs that, right?
Park employees were generally friendly and seem to be very mindful of the safety of the children. There was a mini debacle at one of the rides because of queue-jumping, and the mothers in the queue yelled at the attendants to grab the offending child who was already happily seated on the ride and bring him back to the queue. At several rides, children queue on their own while parents wait at the side, so it was inevitable that the older kids would simply barge their way to the front. It happened at one of the rides that Sophie was queuing for, and fortunately they were issued tickets when the joined the queue, so park employees actually checked each child's ticket (which were numbered) to organise them in the order they entered the queue. And yes, there were some older, rotund boys who were taken to the back to the queue. During this time, parents were desperately peering through the barriers yelling at their kids to stake their spots. Amusing stuff.
Having an world-class outdoor theme park in Johor is a GREAT concept on paper. But let's face it, it does not make for a very pleasant family outing when the family is melting one-by-one under the merciless hot sun compounded with tropical humidity. Genting works because of the cool mountain air. The Singapore Zoo works because it has the mature trees, air-conditioned huts scattered around and park train. We hope the management will find ways to cool visitors down, because we do want to see it succeed. Malaysia boleh!!
Sophie at driving "school". Ju did the same in the junior school. I don't like to say this, but Disneyland is better. At the very least, they are better-staffed, AND visiting the park is not a visit to a blazing sauna.
Lots of interesting props around that makes for good photo ops, but we were too burned to care. The kids were just hopping around demanding their next ride.
I run the risk of ending this post without a single picture of any Lego construction, so here it is: parrots made from Lego. There are many more that are much more impressive, but my camera was having a meltdown from the heat.
Waiting to enter a 4D show. It was good fun for young children. Period.
Ju said this was his favourite ride but I'm pretty sure he was lying. How can this beat driving his own car around a race track? He did that twice, by the way.
The park featured miniature replicas of some famous Asian landmarks, including the Petronas Twin Towers, Beijing's Forbidden Palace, Cambodia's Angkor Wat, etc.
This one is of Boat Quay in Singapore. They got this right. The construction crane *IS* a landmark of Singapore.
1 comment:
That was hilarious, thanks for sharing. We're looking to do Singapore in the May June school hols so I expect Legoland will be an unavoidable pit stop. I've not been to Singers in more than 10 years though but the kids keep hearing about all the fun stuff in Spore from their friends so......ok.......I'd much prefer Paris any day!
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