It's 10a.m. and you are out with daddy cycling. Ko-ko who promised you that he'd take you at 9.00 a.m. is still sleeping in bed. He apparently changed his statement to "he will bring you on the weekend". We'll see how it goes on the weekend.
Ko-ko had plans to meet up with his friends in Straits Quay today. As it was so far and it was to finish at 6.30, daddy decided that we'd all go out and have dinner out tonight.
After dropping him off then picking up my contact lenses, we headed to Chapel Street Café to a little tea-time/dessert. For Mei-mei, it has been a long time since you last left the house (other than going to school). While Ko-ko would occasionally follow us out even for a car ride, Mei-mei did not want to go out much.
So today we decided to while some time away in the less crowded café and you were treated to ice-cream while daddy and I had a drink each and a shared a "biscuit". Then we headed to Gurney Paragon for grocery shopping and then another round in Cold Storage before heading to pick up Ko-ko.
Dinner was at The Barn for another round of Tomapork and ribs. As we were leaving, daddy remembered that we needed to get Mei-mei sandals and slippers. So we headed back up to buy her slippers (could not find nice sandals).
On our way down, Mei-mei asked to have a picture taken with the Christmas decorations.
*Daddy realized that this is the first time you got to see Christmas decorations other than what we have at home
It was a fun day out.
I'm glad you both got to get out of the house abit.
While we were shopping for presents, daddy and I spotted this and we bought it to play at home. So after our Christmas eve party, we were still not sleepy so the 4 of us had a good time fishing before bedtime.
Mei-mei said that her wish for this Christmas was to have family celebrating it with us. She told her teacher that during Chapel.
Tonight, her wish comes true. We have Chek Kong, Chim Poh and Kor Poh with us to celebrate. For this year's celebration, we opted to have take-away for all the food: Beef Wellington Au Jus from Rasa Sayang Hotel, Roast Duck from G Hotel and steaks and pork Tomahawk from The Barn. Luckily the places were along the way.
We left the house with instructions to Ko-ko to heat up the oven and place the potatoes and pumpkin to cook (he did a good job).
Daddy and I headed off to the Rasa Sayang which was our first stop. We had to wait a while as we had arrived a little earlier than the pickup time. Then we headed to G Hotel/Gurney Plaza. Daddy waited for the duck while I headed to The Barn to pick up our order. And off we headed home. We arrived before 6p.m. and our roasted veggies are all ready.
I received this story via WhatsApp and retold this story to Mei-mei as we were making our "chewy-chewy" tang yuen:
Today is Tang Yuen Festival or Winter Solistice. This marks the start of winter.
In olden agrarian society of China, this festival is an even more important festival than CNY, especially in families with aged parents or grandparents.
Winter is the most trying and health sapping of time. Many weak old people will not survive through. So there is a gathering of whole families on that night as it may be the final time for a few old timers.
As winter has onset, all harvesting has been done. Using the newly cropped rice, tang yuen is made and the round shape signifies the complete circle of family members on that day as it was partaken.
That's why there is also a saying that you are one year older after eating tang yuen. This is to promote the elders one more years in age to bring good karma to survive through the winter.
This festival is not religious, but cultural. Please remember each of your origin. Every civilised race with a history has many such significances. Your location or citizenship can never erase your DNA.
It's good to know a little more about our culture.
Today Ah Ma's legs were still not well, so we had a simple dinner of fried fish, steamed chicken and some vegetables. Of course, along with the tang yuen you made and with the fresh pandan leaves from our garden.
Took some pictures from the visit:
It seems like I am also busy helping the both of you with your school assignments. This round is a 5 minute video on sports. I initially suggested cycling, but you said that you didn't want to as you are still not able to ride on two wheels.
But as you managed to learn cycling on two wheels over the weekend, you decided not to do badminton and changed to cycling instead.
Then the weather decided to rain every evenings! Oh no! We finally decided to just record in the porch after a slight drizzle. Luckily too the rain stopped, so we managed to get some footage of you cycling on the field across the road.
This time we had prepared some speech cards, so you knew what to say and we didn't have to have too many takes. The one with the most takes was of you cycling out of the house as you were just like a drunken cyclist!
When I had combined the clips, the total time was just over 3 minutes. Oh dear.. so I got you to make slides/pictures as title for the video. Then it dragged to over 4 minutes. A check with the parents in your class group and they mentioned it could be 4-5 minutes. So we're done! Phew!
For this round, you had a major assignment to make a model studio apartment. I had to spend quite a lot of time in search for the materials needed to make it. Imagine making the model on an A4 sized paper. Ahem.. someone "accidentally" cut the base slightly larger.
As usual, Evan took his time to start and then for every night leading to Thursday last week, we stayed up to make the tiny items for the house.
You have been cycling quite often recently. Last Sunday, daddy tried to teach you to cycle on two wheels. But it wasn't easy. So subsequently, you cycled with the training wheels.
Today, you started off with the training wheels. We went around Jalan 15 twice then headed home to attempt the two wheels again. It took you a while as you kept pulling to the right. And you finally sort of figured out on how to go where the bicycle is pulling. So we moved on to the field across the road and voila! You were cycling on your own.
Initially, you needed daddy to help you balance to start cycling. But daddy just needed to give you instructions a couple of times on how to kick off to cycle and you were cycling so well.
Finally! You have learnt to cycle on two wheels. Great job!
We still needed to have a "celebratory" dinner. So in the end, we had a simple pasta dinner. Daddy cooked spaghetti carbonara. And you kids helped to make the garlic bread.
