Singapore celebrated her 50th birthday last Sunday. As any holiday which falls on a Sunday, the next day is declared a public holiday in lieu. Hence August 10 was also a public holiday. To add on the cheer and festivity, our government had also declared the Friday before our National Day, August 7, a SG50 Holiday. Therefore, altogether, to celebrate Singapore's 50 years of independence, our lil' island nation had a loooong weekend, which we also called the SG50 Golden Jubilee Weekend!!
Despite our ministers' call for our people to stay around for a celebratory weekend, many took the opportunity of a longer break for an overseas vacation. Many travel agencies sold out their packages and air tickets for this period. Last-minute attempts to book a holiday is either impossible or very expensive.
Well, we stayed around and had a most fulfilling weekend bonding with loved ones and catching up on lost time.
Thursday, 6 August 2015
En and I began to bask in the red-shirt craze on Thursday when she had to wear a red shirt for a school National Day celebration.
Somehow festivity has to come with some food.. Since I had not been cooking much lately, I thought the least I could do was to finish up my remaining frozen bananas to make a favourite snack!!
With the mainstream media's constant reminder to participate in the Jubilee weekend's many free or discounted family activities out there, surely I should not stay idle at home!! At the same time, do I really want to go out there with the crazy crowd under the crazy hot and wet weather to jostle one another so as to create memories of SG50 weekend celebration for the children? Yeeeks..
Ok, gotta create memories but not necessarily with those SG50 stuff; let's have familial fun instead!!
Friday, 7 August 2015
Juz the night before over the whatsapp group chat, we had decided to picnic at East Coast beach if the weather was good that morning. Heck the weather forecast, the sky was clear and the sun was out. We quickly packed our kopi, roti, canned tunas and baked beans and nutella (and my banana cake too!), and canvas and ourselves into the car, and by 9am, we were on the beach looking for a good spot to spread our canvas! We soon met Jiun and Keng there. Our big bag of food was matched with Keng's big bag of games!! Looked like we're in for a great time.. We found a huge pavilion to place all our belongings. The roof was a good and cool shield from the morning sun! Hong, Dor and Ally also arrived shortly together with Dor's mum. Despite not feeling so well, Ally turned up too! We were a lil' touched and so happy!!
The morning sun was juz fabulous for pictures, and Victor had an awesome time clicking away at everything and everybody. There were so much action with everybody, everywhere!! Softballs gloves and ball were out. Then the frisbee.. and did I see a boomerang? Hong and Ally's kick scooters were well utilized too. There was hardly anyone else at our spot that we even climbed trees and caught sea snails!!
En and Ally also had a makeshift tent put together by Keng and Dor! We had so much fun and expended so much energy that by the time we piled into the car to go home, everyone was exhausted and slipped into slumber except for the poor driver.. Ally even had 2 naps instead of her usual 1 nap that afternoon, and around 8+pm that evening, she asked to be put to bed!! Hey, that was most unusual for her.. Hahaa!!
After we recuperated from the morning sun, we heard our stomach rumble.. afterall, did we take our lunch? Or was it brunch this mornin?? Anyway we ventured out in search of dinner..
We had a very good one -- japanese steamboat!! Similar to what Victor had alone in Manila, juz that this time around, he had us all for company!!! (^_^) Our first time, and we had four different flavoured soup base including sukiyaki, miso, tom yum and pork broth. I thought the pork broth was good until I tasted the sukiyaki.. Mmmmm.. the sukiyaki was superb!! I drank so much of the soup that I became very thirsty that evening!! I must have drunk so much of MSG with the soup.. ) :
Saturday, 8 August 2015
National day eve. Technically speaking, this was juz an ordinary Saturday. So Xuan and En had their usual Saturday morning art classes. En's ballet however was cancelled and Qi's ballet timing was brought forward. Hence by late afternoon, everyone was back at home and mugging at our usual tasks. For me, I had two extraordinary ones -- to cook tau suan and make the fruit cake I had promised to make and bring over to Jiun the next day, National Day.
I thought my virgin attempt at our family's favourite warm dessert was a good attempt but obviously the rest didn't think so.. "Not sweet enough!", "How come the beans are all mashed up?!", "Taste juz like green bean soup..", "Overcooked, izzit?" were some of the feedback.. Well, at least I used up that pack of split mung beans I had bought so long ago because Xuan said she wanted to cook for us!! I even bought fritters from the Waterloo street coffeeshop for the tau suan!!
I cooked too much.. despite huge and/or multiple servings, I still had about half a pot of tau suan left by dinner time! ) :
By the time I hung up all our washed laundry and wanted to settle down in front of the TV to catch the remaining minutes of 中国好声音, Victor called out a strange name.. "Ally!!" Huh? How could that be, right? Well, it was really Ally!! And everybody else too, at my front door!!??
A-ha!! They were all here juz in time to help me finish up my pot of tau suan!!
For Ally, En had the chance to unearth all the toys we had been hiding and waiting for the right time to discard.. eg a tent with plastic balls, play kitchen food, cutlery and utensil.
Sunday, 9 August 2015
National day!! We caught up on lost sleep... at least I tried to. The highlight of the day should be to catch our 850 Soka WDs in their NDP performance in the early evening. The uncertainty factor was to watch the NDP at home or at pa's place.. By the way, pa was certainly not home as his BFF had tickets to catch some NDP action at the floating platform. When it was finally confirmed that we would all watch the NDP together with Jiun, Ally, Dor and Hong, Dor proposed to view this year's spectacular NDP fireworks at her office!! How unique and exciting... The slight challenge was how to make our way there in the midst of unimaginable city crowd and road closures..
In the end, all of us squeezed into Victor's car and drove into Raffles Place area. Maybe we could still be able to park into the office building, otherwise we would juz park at a nearest possible place and walk the rest.. Even the car ride was an eye-opener!! As we drove through the main roads and small lanes, there were throng of people on the pavements of every road and lane, even at places blocked by tall buildings where obviously you can't catch any glimpse of the fireworks. Most people were not moving but juz standing there waiting for some action. Policemen were seen everywhere to direct the traffic and keep the people off the roads.. Most of the people in Singapore must be in town!!?
