Scenes in Singapore

Feeding Baba
A walk along the tiny stretch of beach that is Sentosa

Strolling through the National Museum of Singapore

A dip in the wading pool in Vivocity (it's a shopping mall)

A dip in another sort of pool at the National Museum of Singapore

HFMD restrictions over!

Over the last few months, Singapore experienced its highest incidents of the Hand Foot Mouth Disease (HFMD). Sophie's nursery have been off-limits to parents since early April because they had 2 cases there. Sophie herself was a victim of the paranoia when she was not allowed to attend nursery for a week because of the tiny faint blister on the palm of her hand (probably due to too much time at the monkey bars).

Long story short, yesterday the nursery finally lifted its restrictions because they have been free of cases for more than 2 weeks. They organised a lunch for parents and I finally got to see what she's been up to in school.

Lunch of fried rice

Playing in the closet

Naptime

Poster girl

Masterpiece: Worm

Introducing my Yi Cheong

My Yiyi (aunt) decided that Keon Kor Kor (brother) has been a good enough boy for the last 5 years so she promoted him to become Yi Cheong (Chinese title for aunt's husband) last weekend.

Look at how happy they are...

Little Monkey

Sophie is a regular at the monkey bars at the playground near our house.

Quips

1. YL usually takes Sophie to the toilet before we turn in for the night to avoid her wetting her bed in the middle of the night. She would be groggy with sleep by that time, eyes closed and body limp.

Once, YL switched on the toilet lights and Sophie protested immediately, "Aaaa...switch off the lights! It's too sunny!"


2. Yiyi was trying to take a photo of Sophie with her new iPhone, and the whole family coerced her to look up from her toys in her hands to pose for the camera.

"Look at the camera, look at the camera!" She looked everywhere except the camera, fidgeted with her hands and squirmed around.

"Look at the camera, look at the camera, look at the camera, Sophie!"

"But it's a phone!"


3. To be continued...She's bugging me to change into my uniform to go to school now and later she will put me to nap...

Walked the Mountains, Chased the Dragons

I have just returned from a 10-day excursion to the south of China with a group of....feng shui fanatics. I certainly do not qualify as one yet; in fact, I stuck out like a sore thumb being a newbie and therefore the most blur one of the group.


But it was definitely interesting catching snippets of feng shui tips and wisdom from a very eclectic group. There was a Taiqi master from Slovenia, a yogi, a few practicing Daoists, a wushu champion, and an ex-Indian astrologer, among others. Then there's me, a plain old HR practitioner. :)


As the purpose of this particular trip was to understand the "works" of the Grandmasters, we descended into the rural areas with feng shui associations. For many villagers, we were probably the only foreigners they have ever met. My Caucasian classmates were usually followed by a small gaggle of locals gawking at them, especially when they whipped out their luopans (feng shui compass) to take measurements of the directions and locations of the various water and mountain features.

View from the one of the mountains near the cave where the founder of the Daoist Zhen sect successfully created his immortality elixir. The landforms in the area are supposed to encourage spirituality and help him to achieve his goals.

P/S In feng shui terms, mountains are referred to as "dragons", hence the title of this post. Mel, I swear I have nothing to do with opium...

Sunny day

Ready for a walk on a sunny Saturday