Sunday, May 25, 2008

sdc n army museum










last sunday, the whole family went to sdc n army museum. It was enjoyable n the ch are all happy.

explorer kids










remember promise marcus that if he pass his chinese, we'll bring him to explorer kids. So here are the pictures. Btw, we enter into some kind of lucky draw that day, n guess wat? We won a pair of tickets to watch dora live @expo. So yesterday, after collecting the tickets, we have to buy another two tickets so that the whole fam can go.

meeting old friends

last fri, an old friend's b day. Went down to celebrate. Everyone was surprise to see us as we have not kept in touch for at least 2 years or more. A lot of catching up was done. Well, i can def say that many things have changed. U can also say that some things dun change too. For example, some friends remain the same, the same mannerism, same way of talking. But their life has def changed a lot. For privacy, i shall not elaborate here. But i can feel that the group of friends that we hang out with, u can say that some people are no longer there. I dunno how to say the feeling. The feeling is strange. It's like familiar but not that familiar. I also dunno how to explain. But yes, will def continue to keep in touch
ok, where shall i start? On fri evening, i was piss. Know how i let off steam? I went bedok reservoir to jog. Well, i didn't jog the whole round, only abt three quarter then i walked the rest. It was very mentally challenging esp when others overtake u. So that was how i release my steam. Good exercise though.

Friday, May 23, 2008

ok, what is new? price of crude oil rise to a barrel of 135 per barrel on thursday. so the forecast that it would rise to above 200 per barrel is definitely coming true.
sigh.... diesel in sg is already $1.80 per litre. How are people working in the delivery industry and taxi driver going to survive? their income is all shaved off by the diesel.

inflation is at record high of 7.5 percent!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Singapore inflation rate hits 7.5 percent in April, new 26-year high
Food prices alone rose 8.5 percent, transportation and communication were 7.0 percent higher and housing costs became 11.8 percent more expensive, the statistics department said.
the $200 that the government gives, instantly became smoke.
The lower income family is going to be hardest hit. Who is going to help them? Who can do something to help them? Who can lower down the price of oil? (i mean in sg) actually i have the answers. i'm just phrasing it into questions to stay out of trouble. We all know the answers and we know that nothing much is done. It all boils down to making money.

it's not that i'm not compassionate towards the two disasters that happened recently. It's just that i can't even help myself, i can't even do anything for my own country, i so kpo go and help others for wat? now, keeping money with you is the most important.

i hate it when i can feel my heart hardened, especially when it comes to money issues. Being in the society has taught me a lot of lessons and my heart no longer feels pain nor compassion. I can feel my heart turning cold and hardening. I grieve for the loss of my faith and compassion.

i also learnt that utopia will always remain utopia. Nothing is fair in the world. if the world is fair, then the rich would distribute their money to the poor. If the world is fair, then people getting the same amount of pay will work equal amount of work.

yes, work... i shall not give details about frustrations with my work or my colleagues in case i kena checked and got disciplinary warning. so i shall be very brief. if you are smart and knows how to infer, then the last sentence in my previous paragraph could have given you a clue. as for some colleagues.... sigh, i dunno what to say. i dun believe that such people can exist on earth in the first place. i am perplexed by their behaviour, their irresponsibility or shall i truthfully put it, piss.

ok, much said, my anger is still there. i've been typing very hard on the keyboard. i've been munching on biscuits since i typed this. going home may be the best thing for me right now but i dun want to bring my anger home as my children are innocent and i'm afraid that i may unintentionally vent my anger on them. argh, i feel like punching someone.

Friday, May 16, 2008

trademark 'ah.. san'

i need to trademark my name 'ah san'. only my grandma can call me that.
really tired today. went out to fort canning. so tired, i dun even feel like moving my brain cells. i think i can sleep sitting down.
both of them look so perfect together. She still looks great while expecting and she's expecting twins!!! that will be number 5 and number 6.
this picture also looks great.

Tuesday, May 13, 2008







ok, last six pictures that i'm going to put up on my blog today. very tired putting up the pictures. If you are reading the blog, it should be the first six pictures.


In fact, i'm multi-tasking. I'm simultaneously putting up pictures in facebook.

even too tired to organise the photos.





Just some pictures of max, look at how he has grown:

































our trip to Singapore Flyer















These are just some of the pictures. More photos are in facebook.

ok, finally got some breathing space to look through the photos. so let me see... ok, i'll start with birthdays....

within a span of a year, max when he was just born: (2006)


Then one year later: (2007)






This is papa's birthday last year:


and his birthday this year:




This is mabel's birthday 2006:




mabel's birthday 2007:




marcus' birthday 2007 (cannot find his 2006 birthday)
and this is my grandma in the photo, my mum and my mil before her operation

Monday, May 12, 2008

taken from http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1739159,00.html?xid=rss-topstories

She told me how the torrent of water stole away her one-year-old daughter. With one child gone, all San San Khing could do was clasp her five-year old son to her chest and hope. By the time the tidal surge triggered by cyclone Nargis receded on May 3, San San Khing was still holding her son, but his body was lifeless. At least, she says, she chanted prayers and gave him a proper burial.

Sitting in a refugee camp in Kaw Hmu township, San San Khing showed little despair for her loss. Twice, her eyes welled up, but she blinked back her tears. Her children were gone. She had no money or food. But instead of grief she seemed terrified at both her urgent need to tell her story and her decision to tell it to a foreign journalist. Burma's ruling military junta could do terrible things to her for such disregard.

Disaster scenes, no matter where they are, tend to take on a terrible similarity. There is the keening for lost family members, the frantic jostling for relief supplies and mounting anger as diseases stalk refugee camps and medicine is in short supply. But Burma has been different. There are third-hand stories of food riots, but in four days of visiting villages in the affected Irrawaddy delta, the dominant emotional themes are fear and resignation. It is a remarkable accomplishment by the junta to have set the bar so low for competence that weariness reigns; few people express any frustration at all at the prospect of slow starvation.

But the junta excels at fear. Twenty minutes before meeting San San Khing, I was stopped at one of several checkpoints that have been set up in disaster-struck areas to keep foreign journalists and aid workers without the proper government permits out. A polite immigration officer took down my passport details, as well as the name and address of my local driver. His colleague told me that the cyclone had blown down his house. They didn't say it, but their demeanor was apologetic — a slight sense of embarrassment that their orders were to keep their wounded country closed.

Then an army jeep screeched up to the checkpoint. A major jumped out, screaming at the two guards. Apparently some foreign NGO workers had slipped past the checkpoint. How could the officers let that happen? The major turned to my driver and continued to rant: how could he bring foreigners to this disaster area? Doing so showed his utter disregard of patriotic duty. The major warned that he would be reporting the driver's serious violation back to military headquarters.

After this episode, my driver thought it prudent to avoid coming on a visit to several storm-ravaged villages. A boat was arranged and in my notebook, he wrote out basic questions in Burmese that I could at least point to when meeting cyclone victims: what is your village name, what is the death toll, have you gotten any government aid?

Luckily, in one village, a tall man walked up to me and said hello. He was the local teacher and could speak a little English. He showed me the rubble of his destroyed schoolhouse. Only two things had been salvaged from the building: a small, waterlogged globe used for geography lessons and a framed photograph of junta leader Than Shwe that normally hung at the front of the classroom. Asked if Than Shwe was a good person, the teacher laughed. 'No, very bad.' Asked why he had salvaged the picture the teacher struggled for the right English word and said, 'scared.' Then he brought his wrists together to mime handcuffs.

A week after the cyclone, no government officials have come to the teacher's village to assess the damage. But fear of the junta pervades. So just to be safe, the picture of General Than Shwe is propped up against one of the schoolhouse's few remaining pillars. As I walk back to my boat, the teacher asks where I come from. I tell him. He asks me whether in my country people can 'say government bad.' I say, yes, we can. He looks at me and shakes his head. Then the teacher makes another gesture. He points at the waterlogged earth and slashes a finger across his neck.

Friday, May 09, 2008

so cute, marcus just called me on my hp and complain to me that mabel won't lend him her hp.
then can hear mabel at the background, dunno saying wat.

marcus just want to ask me a chinese hanyu pinyin, so after i told him the answer, i can hear max at the background talking. marcus pass the phone to max and max said a whole string of baby talk, dunno wat he is trying to say. ask him to pass the phone back to 'duh duh' (that is how he call his gor gor) then he again dunno say what 'duh duh.... blah blah blah' then later he said bye.

Thursday, May 08, 2008

want to just put my two cents worth of comments on some issues:

HFMD: must be careful esp if you have young children. Even for pri 1 or 2 can still get HFMD. so marcus and mabel have been taking their temperature in school everyday.

seat belts on school bus: well, logically it's safer to belt up when on school bus. Who would want their children to meet with an accident on the way to school? used to recall, i used to take public bus home on my own since i was pri 3. i remembered taking the bus with two of my friends who live in the same neighbourhood. we survived.

oil price rising to record high: this is crazy. someone predicted that it will rose to $200 per barrel in two years time. if someone can predict this, then probably it would happen. last time, they also predicted that oil would rise above the $100 mark, well, it did happen and it's now a quarter past the $100. this is no good. maybe will ask my sister to smuggle some oil back from dubai. haha

cyclone hitting Myanmar: seriously, the junta should relax their rules and allow foreigners to come into their country to help them. i really cannot imagine the scale of devastation. 95% of buildings can be totally destroyed. They seriously should put their citizens above their own interests.
must be the sisterly feeling. really long time no update, from march 26 to may 8... almost six weeks.

ok, for the sake of updating my sis who will be working in dubai soon, i'll update my blog more often.
It's been a very long time since i update...

i was busy and thought that by end of april, things should ease up, but ha, i was wrong. when is work going to ease up? although exams are here, not that i'm free, what i dread is the period after exams. Students are excited with the whole lot of activities plan for them, definitely going to be excited for them, but then, activities need to be planned by someone, and that someone is none other than teachers. so amidst the marking, must plan for post exam activities. hmmm, feeling extreme stressed.

marcus is also having exam this week, probably that adds on to my stress. for him, i know where is standard, as long as he does his best, not careless. but children are children, they need some drilling and practice otherwise they forget. luckily over the weekends, revised with him his maths. but he really got it from me... all the gruelling questions.

mabel, although she is not having exams, she loves to do assessment books. so she will be sitting beside us, doing her assessment books. but priority is marcus, so i only answer her questions when i'm done revising with marcus. but she is the quietly scheming one... must keep an eye on her.

told marcus and mabel that only if marcus pass his chinese, then will bring them to explorer kids at downtown east. must dangle a carrot for him to work towards to.

max is getting more and more cheeky and kpo. he can say a few words. walk walk, no, eat, up, i want, xie xie. took a few of his videos recently. one shows him and marcus playing, the other one him singing. need to go and find my card reader so that i can upload videos and pictures here. and also find the time to do it. he loves to go out. when someone takes the key, he would run to the door and find his shoes to wear. just before dinner time, he would call everyone to go to the dining table to sit down and eat and he has got a loud voice. he is also very quick to copy actions. so marcus and mabel have been feeling the stress to do the 'right' thing and not to do the 'wrong' thing.

family side, sister is going to dubai soon to work. wow, dubai. well, this is part of globalisation. i guess it would be a good change for her.

on labour day, the whole family had a nice family gathering. mum and aunties seem to be still missing grandma. well, can understand cos no matter what, mother and daughter relationship and grandma used to be the moral support, the pillar for the family. it's easy for us to say 'let go, move forward, learn to live without her' well, nobody can replace grandma's role. sometimes, i also dunno what to say to them when they cried. Even on grandma's 49 days, when we went back to her grave, well, i was controlling my tears already, so i can understand how my mum and aunties felt. that day, when i look through the funeral photos, i cried too. but i didn't know that their grief was so deep. i've never really blog about my feelings over grandma's death. will be arranging the photos soon and prob put it up on youtube, but yes, got to find the time for grandma. whenever i'm going to NIE for course, i'll definitely drop by to visit grandma.

i haven't fulfil my promise to grandma. it was always her wish that i go back to church. hmm, i dunno what is stopping me. distance? or was it a church that i can feel comfortable to go to? i know praying every night doesn't lessen my guilt to grandma nor to God, i would still need to read the Bible every day, QT and of course not forgetting to listen to God's words every sunday. i know mum, auntie sally and even steff have asked me recently about choosing a church and going to church weekly.

ok, that's the problem with updating once a while, you got such a long list of things to write down. think i'll stop here.

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

ok, things are starting to pick up speed. Just looking forward to the end of april for a little break where things are not so hectic.

Having fun with children. Max is very talkative. although he doesn't speak words, but he's the noisiest. That evening, brought 3 children down to pick leaves. marcus need it for his art. It was a good time with them.

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Marcus - he only got 10 out of 100 for his Chinese test. but he did quite well for his Maths, over 90 marks. English only about over 80 marks. Based on some mathematics calculation, he needs both of his subjects to be 90 over marks in order to cushion his very poor chinese grades. Will see how to interest him to learn Chinese. Teacher's remarks said that Marcus did exceptionally well for his Maths, but he need to be more focus in order to strive better.
Btw, Marcus got a trophy back from school. He was in some spelling competition and he got fifth in his level. Am very proud of him.

Mabel - for her, no Chinese test. she also got 90 over marks for Maths and English about 85 marks. Not too bad. Teacher's remarks, she strives to excel in her studies. Which i totally agree with the teacher. If she were to ever feel stressed, trust me, it's she pressuring herself. not me pressuring her to do well.

Max - dunno where he learn this 'uh-oh' thing. When he did something bad, like he throw the ball and it hit the tv, he will go 'uh-oh'... juz like teletubby. and he is very sensitive. when he really did something wrong, before anyone can scold him, his eyes are already teary. If you raise your voice any louder, he will sure to cry. Very clever boy, cry first, then no one got the heart to scold him.

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

settled and back.... but i've lost all inspiration to write about grandma. There were many thoughts and memories that i wanted to share, but was afraid that sharing would bring back memories, so i've decided not to, maybe until one day, i'm comfortable with it, then maybe

pay day means spending money day. But this is due for my children. they have been cooped up at home for the past few days and finally, today, they got a chance to go out in the morning. We have a good breakfast. then to grocery shopping.

well, finally, Max can call me Mama... he is very cute, always trying to make people smile and laugh with his funny actions. He enjoyes playing with marcus and mabel. It is indeed peaceful and a great joy to see three of them playing together.

Oh yah, marcus got a trophy from school the other day, some spelling competition. am really proud of him.

really taking it easy now as i can feel the toll mentally. For the past few days, i've been feeling chest pain when i breathe, sometimes it's so bad that it hurts all the way to my shoulders and back. Then breathing becomes painful, cos with every breath, it hurts. have not been to see the doc.... i guess it's due to not enough sleep and stress. so i'm taking it easy this holiday and work will come next week

Monday, March 03, 2008

Won't be going krabi. funny, sometimes God has His plan. The more you wanted something, the more He doesn't give you. I dun blame Him, deep down i know that He knows best what is best for me, He has his plans for me.

so i'll take it in stride.

anyway, will be missing in action for this week. grandma pass away, after today, dun think i'll be free to log in to internet. Just back to school to settle some things and will be busy. When the funeral is over, everything is over, i'll dedicate a post and a video to my beloved grandma.