Disney On Ice

End of school holidays (Sunday 16/03/08), we decided to make full use of it by watching the last Disney On Ice show. Bought the cheapest tickets (at 20 bucks per person). As expected, we were thrown all the way back of the Indoor Stadium with a miniscule view of the show (plus some parts of the stage was blocked by the overhead props). 

But when I went to the front of the stadium to get a booster seat for Iffah, I realised how good the view at the premiere rinkside seats were... They were smack right in front of the action where the ice-skating rink is and a very good view of the show. Our seats however, were quite filled with dating couples... No wonder the premiere seats were sold out! Next time we'll get the premiere rink side seats. It'll be a bonus if we can get a show where they feature the Disney princesses (Cinderella, Snow White, etc)

And she did...

For those who don't know, that title phrase above comes from the kids story "Little Red Hen". We went for the Little Red Hen show at Alliance Francaise on 12/03/08 during the school holidays last week. Managed to catch the afternoon show (with many other kids from Kinderland ... presumably they're on a school 'excursion trip'). 

Having read the book to Iffah, I know how the story goes. To those who don't ... err please grab a kid's book and quickly browse through OK? But to watch it on a theatre / musical production, I'm pretty amazed at how a simple story can be very much entertaining. The production is good, stage setup is simple and the actors/actresses are top notch. A wonderful performance for both kids and adults.

Green or Red?

After some contemplation, I jumped ship from the green camp to the red camp! So far no complaints yet... Hope it'll be good for the next couple of years or so.

My fitness level

Fitness level is measured by IPPT test results nowadays... and if you happen to fail your 2.4km run, you fail the test. So does that mean that you're not fit?

This happened to me today when I did my IPPT. Passed with good results for the rest of the mini-tests but flunked the run by 20 seconds!!

I was quite ok previously (many years ago during my active NS years and early uni years). Went to the gym and did some cardio stuff. But I just slacked nowadays. Need to go back to the gym and start back my fitness regime. Plus need to shave off my diet habits too (especially snack cravings!)

Hang In There Iffah

Dear Iffah,

You are now 3 years old.
No 'sleep'.
It is 'bitter' now.
Only Popper Juice or Smoo Milk for you
You cried to ibu yesterday, trying to resist.
I know that it is going to be tough on you
But hang in there dear Iffah.
You'll soon overcome
Soon overcome
And you will become a 'big' girl.
Always will be Ayah's little girl.

Happy 3rd Birthday!

Wishing my daughter a happy 3rd birthday!

Daddy duties...

I was on leave since Friday onwards and tried to take care of Iffah alone at home Friday morning. It wasn't all that bad except for the glitch in the morning when she woke up and saw that ibu is not around and she's alone with me. Little Iffah cried for a couple of minutes before cooling down. We went to the playground downstairs around 7:30 am. It's fun and cooling too having the morning breeze tingling us. Then it's breakfast time and entertainment time with her. Managed to give her Blueberry Morning cereal with carrot juice (minus the hard-boiled egg she normally gets when ibu is around). She entertains herself by playing the mini-games in www.barbie.com and gets me to read to her some books. I tried to engage with her in playing the Barbie as The Island Princess game in our new Wii set. Found out that she's scared by some of the sounds which came out from the gameplay and hid in her room. After that it's clean-up and bathe time before finally we went to Atuk's house at around 10:30 am.

All in all, it's fun having her alone with me which gives me more confidence in performing my daddy duties alone next time. :)

I passed my DELF B2!!

After some months of intense preparations for this, I was simply delighted to know that "j'ai reussi l'examen DELF B2"!!! Even though I have not got the actual results yet, I don't care!!! Feeling top of the world last Saturday (after my last French class for the term) when I saw my name in the list as the "candidats qui sont l'admis l'examen DELF B2!"

The months leading to the preparations were simply intense and at times I thought of just giving up. But knowing that I had paid quite a sum for this exam (preparation courses in May and the exam fee as well), I just bulldozed through the preparations.. Buying French magazines, reading articles on the net, anything just to keep my feet wet.

The exam itself was slightly OK, with the exeption of the killer listening comprehension (an interview about GENEPI (Groupement Etudiant Nationale D'Enseignement Aux Personnes Incarcerees) of which I left out 3 questions blank. Also, I attempted the oral question "Que font nos enfants sur l'internet?" (What do our children do on the internet?)

Time to get the C1 and/or C2 certs next year.

Some shoutouts...

To my younger bro Naz who bought me the Megadeth Warchest boxset from the US...


You're the man dude!!! The stuff is not avail in SG yet and think I'm one of the few who have it in SG... Great to see you travelling around the globe...

Secondly to my ex-colleague Jeffridin (I'm not sure if he reads my blog)... who sent me a Hari Raya card... so old school dude!! Thanks for it!! Really appreciate it.. Hope to visit you soon for Raya festivities...

Salam Aidilfitri from us

Sorry for the late post...Wishing all Muslims out there a Selamat Hari Raya Aidilfitri.... Maaf zahir dan batin from us...

Hospital

No it's not the drum and bass label Hospital Records... but it's about my daughter being hospitalised for 4 days 3 nights at KKH due to Rotavirus

It had been an exhausting experience for all of us (including my in-laws especially Atuk who ferried us to an fro to KKH since last Monday). What was exasperating for us is to see our dear daughter being fed with IV to keep her hydrated as she looked pale and tired when she was admitted.

Staying in hospital can be a hit-and-miss experience in terms of comfort and service expectations. We should have admitted her straight to an A1 ward as both of us (especially my wife) need to sleep over to keep her company. However our NTUC Incomeshield policy for her covers only B1 ward charges. The B1 ward that we stayed is quite cramped for 2 staying over adults. More pictures can be seen in my flickr site here.

Well, at least our dear daughter is well now. Thank God

The Bangla That Got Away

Something happened today which caught me and my wife by surprise.

Our maid had been with us for quite some time and so far we've been quite happy with her services.. She had been a great help to our family and my in-laws too.

Until today... because of her silly act which tilted our judgement of her and also caused her deportation back to her homeland tomorrow..

Today is Iffah's Sunday Gymboree class and we left for Camden Medical Centre at around 10 am. We also told her to clean up our place and do the ironings. Due to the fasting month, instead of having lunch outside as what we normally do on non-fasting months period, we went back home immediately after that. As we got back to our doorstep, and opened the door, I was taken aback to see a Bangladeshi coming out hastily out of Iffah's room!!!! It took me around 5 seconds to register to my mind that something fishy is going on down there!! Then our maid also came out of Iffah's room looking panicky and started to adjust her clothes a bit... hmmm what goes on before we came in I don't want to know. I asked the Bangla who was he and the maid told us that he's just a 'friend'... come on lah... don't lie to us...

Immediately I asked my wife to call Atuk to come down to our place asap... Atuk scolded her for a while and decision was made to have her deported tomorrow. We're going to send her back to the agency and say sayonara ....

What was she doing all these while at our place alone when no one's around?? Using our flat as a temporary romping place?? This is something which I really cannot take it.. If our maid was found to be doing things like breaking glasses, spoiling our clothes, tasteless cooking or even minor theft, I can still forgive.. but using our place to bring in your Bangla beau for sneaky breaks... then sorry... out you go... no more second chance!!!

Didn't manage to take a pic of that Bangla... but he left his footwear at our place and ran out in a hurry... so here's the pic of his footwear


Those are not Cinderella's slippers.... they're CinderBangla's!!!

Some signs to show that I'm adapting into my new job

Here's some signs to show that I'm adapting to my new job

1) More acronyms to learn and know!! (much more than my previous job scope!)

2) My body clock is tuned to US and London local times... Sometimes I cannot sleep at night (local Singapore time)

3) I'm beginning to know more about financial markets terminology (forex, instrument codes, equities, spot, futures, options, yadayada...)

4) I need to know other countries' public holidays.

Corporate events

We had a couple of corporate events for the past 2 weeks with the first one being a team-building with members of the MTC department at Sentosa island on 31st August. It was facilitated by staff from Focus Adventures (www.focusadventure.com) but instead of rigourous outdoor activities we had some silly games and a team-based cooking competition instead. My team was last in the cooking competition though, don't know why...

Just today we had another corporate event. This time round it's a charity based event organised by both the MTC and Data Ops department. Location is at the Singapore National Museum and task is to accompany some old folks from the Kwong Wai Shiu Hospital (on wheelchairs!) to have a tour of the musuem. Come to think of it, I've not been to the National Museum for more than 20 years! And now, with the new renovations and exhibitions, going to the museum has become a really cool place to go (especially with family). You can spend more than 4 hours and yet you may not be able to cover every square inch of the exhibits... Definitely a must for me to visit the place again!

I'm beginning to feel more belonging to a bigger corporate organization since joining Reuters. Perhaps better than Thales.

My most viewed photo in Flickr

Just found out that one of my photos in Flickr had 188 views! It's the one which I took during the Singapore Arts Festival in 2001. Also it's been selected for a photo book project called "Treasures Of The Dragon" ... that's great news.

Trip to Batam during National Day Weekend

Just came back from a short weekend getaway to Batam. Stayed at Holiday Inn Resort (this is the second time I've been to Batam and both times stayed in the Holiday Inn Resort). Some pictures are uploaded to my flickr site.

It was fun indeed and there were funny and interesting moments too. Eg:

• Our luggage almost got lost. We alighted at Sekupang terminal instead of Waterfront City terminal. Also we thought the luggage handling process was similar to airports but we were wrong. As such we had to wait for our ferry to make its way back to Sekupang to get our luggage. Ironically Iffah sang impromptu a tune with the verses ".. jangan susah-susah kalau susah-susah tidak gunanya.." Translated: "Don't worry too much cos if you do it'll be of no use.." Speak of good timing! We had a laugh during that time..


• Iffah can do the handstand in the water!


• During a bus ride to Batam Centre, Iffah sang the kids song "Wheels of The Bus"! Hehe


• We noticed that in Batam you can have 4 people riding a small motorcycle!! I saw some people carrying babies and toddlers sandwiched between the adults. Quite scary I must say.


• Their hypermarts and huge! They have lots of stuff (eg imagine stocks of the same products from floor to ceiling!


• Iffah had so much fun playing in a kids area that her ibu almost got scared of heights! There was this kids play area where kids can crawl/walk/ etc and it is around 3 HDB storeys high! Iffah is not scared but ibu got scared!

July activities

It's been a month since my last post... had settled down in my new workplace. Now trying my very best to excel in the job to show that I'm very much capable. We just had a team dinner buffet at Carousel last Thursday(the newly refurbished restaurant at Royal Plaza on Scotts, formerly Cafe Vienna). Place looks chic and food tastes great. They had Japanese stuff but I'm not into it. My wife and Iffah would love it. Will definitely bring them there one day.

I'm currently trying to get myself into the reading of books again. Had not done much nowadays. Went to Kinokuniya recently to get 2 French paperback novels and an English war memoir book titled "My Battle of Algiers". I had an interest in French affairs during the before and after the 2 World Wars after watching the movie "Days Of Glory (Indigenes)" . Azlina also bought 2 books (Affluenza and Fast Food Nation (the movie is a must-watch !!) )

Azlina's birthday is coming up. Last year we went to stay for a night at Royal Plaza on Scotts. This year, I'm hoping that I can get a room at Raffles The Plaza on 27th July weekend. This coincides with the National Day preview so maybe we can get a good view of the fireworks on Marina Bay. It'll be fun for Iffah to view the lights et all..

Happy Belated Father's Day

To all father's out there... wishing a belated father's day. We had an open house at our place on that day and it was sure a busy day for us. Had father's day doorgifts for all fathers who came and also some special father's day cupcakes.. Details check out my wife's blog. Invited some of my friends along. Thanks for coming guys! Appreciate the atmosphere. Sorry if I could not attend to you guys fully as I was busy with guests management..

Au Revoir Thales!!

It's been slightly more than 4 years since I joined Thales and it's definitely time for me to move on to a new career. Will surely miss some good pals that I forged during these 4 years (including those that had left Thales and also those who had gone back to France!!)

I'm certainly looking forward to my new turning point in Reuters next week. Surely have some anxieties, good expectations and hopefully more good friends / colleagues down there.

Lastly, I hope that I can continue with my French studies until I can dream en francais!!

Dell Laptop back in action

Dell support came today morning to repair my laptop. Found that can boot up normally before he even replaced the motherboard and RAM.. urgh.. anyway he replaced the mobo and RAM for me just in case if it were to happen again. Thanks Dell!!!

Anyway the laptop won't be with me for long as I have around 1 week or so more with Thales before I join Reuters. Bought a new desktop PC last Friday so that at least I can do some stuff over last weekend. Configuration of my new desktop:

AMD 4600 processor
Asus M2NPV motherboard
Kingston DDR2 667 MHz RAM (2GB)
Hitachi 7200 rpm SATA2 Hardisk: 300GB
LG SATA DVD/Writer
CoolerMaster Extreme 430W power supply
CoolerMaster Centurion 5 W/Side Window
Samsung 931BW 19" widescreen

I'm not into the heavy PC gaming so an onboard graphics card suffice.

Also when I went to Sim Lim Sqaure last week, decided to buy a Shure M44-7 cartridge to replace the old Stantons 500s. Besides, I had Stanton's iTrack for some time but in terms of power output, the Shure simply blows the Stantons away...