A family Wedding : Sep-15

Finally after Dor and Hong got married for several years, Dor’s brother, finally decided to tie the knot too.  The entire family was invited to share the joy and attended the wedding registration and lunch.  In such occasion where everyone would be well dressed, how would I miss the opportunity to capture some beautiful moments, right?

Australia Trip photos : Sep-15

In September, Shin Yang joined me at Australia during my business trip where we enjoyed the place where we had spent our honeymoon 18 years ago.

En Attended Birthday Party @Kidz Amaze Safra Toa Payoh : Sep-15

This was En's second invitation to a birthday celebration at Toa Payoh SAFRA in a month. Much as I would like to refuse, i could not. It's En's good friend, Maegan Koh's birthday this time. Hence we rushed down to the party after En's ballet class. 

Honeymoon Destination Sydney, Arrival : Sep-2015

Victor and I had our short honeymoon in Gold Coast and Sydney, Australia almost 18 years ago. We had such a fun and memorable time in Gold Coast that we both agreed that we must surely bring our children for a holiday in Australia in the future!! Hahaa.. 18 years flew by and that future had yet to come. In September this year, Victor presented me a chance to visit Australia again! He needed to travel to Sydney and Melbourne for work for 2 weeks, and asked if I would like to accompany him..

Frankly, I was rather steeped in the hustle bustle of everyday life that despite the obvious monotony and tedium, I find little motivation and no energy to do anything different, even if it's a holiday away from the children!! I kept procrastinating to make a firm decision.. Deep down I know I love to go, but things like hefty additional expenses, the children, what am I going to do there whilst Victor is at work, and so on kept pulling me back. In the end, I told myself, "Let's go meet Sreya!", and announced my intention to both Victor and Sreya. Only then did I seal my decision.

Victor left for Sydney on a Sunday night, actually Monday early morning technically. Before he left, he left me very specific instructions, "When you reach Sydney airport, go and buy a SIM card, then you can text me to inform me that you've reached. Take a cab to the hotel. I'll ask the reception to get ready a room key for you." Hmmm.. when he gave such explicit words of what to do, it began to make me nervous and worried.  It was like he had expected me to get lost and not reached the hotel as expected..  Over the days, his initial instructions began to modify, "Wait for me at the hotel lobby..". The most reassuring one so far was, "Maybe I can come to pick you from the airport?"  Hahaa.. that would be the best scenario but not wanting to be at a loss in case that did not happen, I asked Uncle Google how to get out of Sydney airport.  Apparently there is a train that goes from the airport to within walking distance of the hotel, and this mode of transport costs only half of what a cab would cost.  Maybe I would just take the train, I told Victor.

I was to leave for the airport on a Thursday morning. Pa and Ma had already agreed to take over all duties from that day onwards.  Although I had planned to sleep early the night before, that of course did not happen and I was packing my luggage until the wee hours of the morning, and only crawled into bed before 4am. "Gotta wake up by 5am and get the girls ready for school!"  It was strange how tedious and tough a simple everyday task seemed to me..

Woke up on time and got the girls ready for school--checked.
Completed my tasks of packing and locking up of my luggage---checked.
Changed and dialed for a cab to go airport--checked.
About 8am, I checked in at the airport and before long, I was walking around the airport in my lightest ever bag and attire!!

No hiccups, I boarded the plane and headed for Sydney.  Sitting at an aisle seat in the centre column of a 3-seats block, two lovely old but energetic Australian ladies were sitting in my row.  They looked like seasoned travellers, and indeed they were!! This pair of sisters were returning to Sydney after their vacation alone in Europe.  I wish I will be able to travel in a similar manner with Jiun too.. Of the two full meals they served during the 7 hours 40 minutes flight, I only took the first, then tried to remain well and happy for the remaining of the flight.. ie not to feel dizzy or nauseous or throw up.  Well, I barely made it.  I did not throw up!!

Our flight arrived slightly before scheduled time but the wait to clear customs at the Sydney airport was rather long. Even with our biometric Singapore passport, I could not clear the customs any faster because the camera could not recognize my face from the passport photo!  Lesson learnt: wear my contact lens for faster customs clearance with my biometric passport!!

Half expecting to see Victor waiting for me at the arrival hall, I was NOT disappointed!! (^_^) He came!! Although I was the one who spotted him. He took the train to the airport after he returned from office, and he said it was easy! (^_-) Well, we did together what he had instructed me to to.. Bought my SIM card, put it into my phone, then made our way to the hotel!! Easy peasy, I'm sure I could do the same without him.. and got onto the same train to make my way to the hotel! However after we came out of the station near the hotel, I was quite lost.. Sky was dark and I wouldn't have know which way to go!!??

From Singapore airport, I had travelled too light.  I thought a thin cardigan would suffice on the plane and even after I reached Sydney.  Well, I was so wrong!!! It was so cold that I was thankful that the walk from train station to hotel was a rather short one.. it was ten over degrees celsius that night, i think.

Sydney is almost a dead city at night; there are only people in restaurants and bars. Hardly anyone is one the streets, especially on a cold night I guess. After leaving my luggage in the hotel and taking a thicker and my only jacket out, we roamed the streets in search for dinner!!

This everything-platter dinner had us both very full, surprisingly!

Mid-Autumn Festival Celebration : Sep-15

While Papa’s kitchen would be undergoing massive makeover for at least a month, the entire Ho clan came over to our place for dinner on a Saturday evening.  Mama was kind enough to cook dinner for everyone, relieving Ling’s stressful moments.  Ling managed the “drinks section”, making juice, coffee, tea along with the mooncakes to celebrate the Mid-Autumn festival.  To complete the celebration, we went downstairs to bring lantern for a walk.  Ally was now old enough to enjoy everyone’s company and have good fun. A simple and yet heart warming gathering.

Swing her magical wand

Drama at Home : Sep-15

This year Singapore International Festival of Arts (SIFA) was piloting an Open Homes Drama where dramas would be held at various home locations in Singapore.  The intention was to promote a warmth experience while watching the drama at home, with close interactions with the actors/actresses.

Hong and Papa participated in one of such plays at their house under director, Jalyn Han.  It was titled "Gentle Men, Sturdy Home" which mainly based on Mummy and Papa life stories as well as Mummy's strong fighting spirit in her life which had influenced the family, particularly Hong.  Hong had also invited En'en and myself to play the ukulele during the drama.  There were four sessions in total over a weekend and each session was attended by less than a dozen of people lasting about 45 minutes.  The fun part was, everyone in the family was contributing in a way or another to make this drama a success.  While Hong and Papa were the main actors, Dor had prepared the desserts for the audiences, Ling was the camerman, Jiun was the one introducing the family members via the photos, En'en and myself were the ukulele performers and Qi and Xuan were the proud granddaughters  presented.

For En'en and myself, these were our first 'public' ukulele performance and the audience seemed pretty impressed with her music talent.  It was indeed enjoyable to be part of the 'cast', and probably our one and only drama experience together with the entire family at home.

Dessert from Dor

Browsing thru Mummy article from Newspaper

Our ukulele performance

Short Retreat with Extended Family : Sep-15

After discussing for several weeks about a possible extended-family retreat, we finally decided on a place and date.  A resort at Mersing was chosen, due to it's proximity and also weak Malaysian currency.  Jiun, Dor and Keng were the key people making this trip possible, booking the resort and organizing the itinerary and logistics.  I was barely involved in the arrangement due to the heavy workload before another hectic schedule lining ahead.  Right after this trip, it would be the Singapore General Election day, then the weekend would be filled with Hong's home drama performance, friendship meeting and on that very Sunday night, I would be off to Australia for 2 week on business. Anyway, we were confident that the planning was in good hands.  Pitifully, Qi and QQ could join us in this trip due to Qi's exams and QQ's home renovation work, otherwise it would be more fun.

On the day of departure, three cars set off from separate locations to meet up for breakfast in Johor Bahru.  Hong and Jiun had arrived unexpectedly early and when we finally reached, they had almost finished their food.  Anyway, we settled our breakfast as well and started our journey to Mersing right after.  It was almost 2 hours before we reached our Mersing jetty.  The drive was pretty smooth apart from En'en suffering a bit of motion sickness.  We settled our registration and were ready to board our boat to the resort.

Reaching Mersing Jetty

It was En'en first boat ride experience.  I did not realize how scare she was until I captured her sitting quietly and holding her life jacket tightly with red teary eyes.  While En'en normally had a cheerful and carefree character, she had this funny tenancy to be fearful about disasters while aboard. It must be due to the fact that Singapore is free of natural disasters, and she had imagined natural disasters, like earthquakes and tsunami always happened around the world frequently.  We stayed beside her throughout the ride, and she finally felt much better.

Boat ride to Resort

The boat ride took about 45 mins, we were welcomed by the resort staffs who help us with our luggage. Ally and En'en took advantage of the luggage trolley and save some walking to the resort.

 

Ally feeling ecstatic

We did not waste much time after we checked into our rooms. Immediately, we met up for lunch and then head off to the beach to have some fun, building sand castle, swimming, collecting seashells, swings... it was also a nice moment for me to indulge into my photography.

Lunch together

 

Swinging time

From the salt water sea, the next destination was the nice fresh water swimming pool in the resort.  We performed so much stunts there and I also did several front somersaults which I had not done in many many years.  The after-effect was a super blocked nose while I was sleeping later that night.

Stunt after stunt

While relaxing in such beautiful place, how would I possibly missed out the golden photography timing of the day. The sunset moments was captivating.

Right after dinner was another set of activities consisting of ukulele sing-along, papa talent show and coconut breaking and drinking before we all agreed to retire and call it the day.

Following morning was short after breakfast, where we need to return back to Mersing and then Singapore.  En'en was also much better in her second boat ride. 

It was such a short and sweet trip indeed.

Relax one corner

Group photo