Nigel Ng

It has been a month since we are back from our summer holiday in Perth (31 Dec 09 to 9 Jan 10). This trip was kind of last minute and trust me most of the destinations were sold out for peak period! We had a number of destinations in mind… Canberra, Japan and Perth. After doing some research and homework, we finally decided Perth to be our holiday destination. We booked our air tickets online on 29 October 2009.

Instead of blogging on where we went and what we did on a daily basis, I decided to break them down into categories and the reason being… a couple of days were really R&R and I took no photos at all… haha. I managed to come up with 10 categories for the 10 days we spent in Perth.
- Singapore to Perth
- Food Glorious Food
- Swan Valley
- Markets
- Cottesloe Beach
- Perth Zoo
- Shopping
- Kings Park & Botanic Garden
- Northbridge
- Excuse Me, Are You a Model?

I betcha it will take me a while before I finished all the posts. Do bear with me while I try to finish them asap.

Two more back-dated posts for December 2009 and I will soon be right on track!
On Top of The World
BYKTW

As the title of my previous post… LAST CHRISTMAS infer… YEP, WE SOLD OUR FLAT! Yesterday is the last night we spent in our abode and it happened to be Christmas Day.

We did not expect to move so soon, not the very least. From our first meet-up with agents Jesslyn and Randy on 20/11/09 to HDB Valuation on 26/11/09. Our first open house fell on 29/11/09 and the second viewing on 02/12/09. We closed the deal on 02/12/09 itself. The valuation report is only out on 03/12/09.

We will reside temporarily at Ah Ma’s house until we found a place to stay. Here are some photos of our old abode - a place we lived for the past seven years. A photo of the living room is missing here. I did not manage to take a photo of it as the place is in a mess.

Goodness gracious… it’s been almost two months since I last update Nigel’s blog. A layer of dust can be seen. I better do some updates before it turned mouldy.

GEM in my nose
LOGICO (Chinese Version)
Artwork - Crab
My first Play Mobil
OCC Family Carnival cum Bazaar
Wisdom, Entertainment, Adventure in a day

Oh yes… It’s Christmas. Here wishing all a very Merry Christmas. May it be filled with Joy, Peace and Love. Enjoy your holidays!

*STAY TUNE TO MORE POST-DATED ENTRIES*

I brought Nigel to work today and am glad that I did. Our Rec Club organised the inaugural Bring-Your-Kids-To-Work. 170 children and grandchildren of staff turned up for the event. My only regret is that I actually did not take a single photo *SIGH*

Anyway or anyhow, it was really an eye-opener for Nigel and a great experience for me - to cope with work and at the same time take care of Nigel. Of course, I had a little help from the Gor Gors and Jie Jies and a great help from his PSP (which kept him seated and still for most of the time).

I am praying that the batch job completes with only a handful of alerts to check but I guess God did not answer my prayer. Lots to check with SLA to meet and with a kid around, I tell you it was not easy. On one hand, I am busy checking the data. On the other, this little fella wanted to go toilet (not once but thrice). On one occasion, Kathy (our cleaning lady) brought him instead.

In between my checks, I had to bring Nigel to the 38th floor to register him for the Rec Club programme and to collect his breakfast. Then again to the 40th floor to register him for our department’s programme. Every kid was given a goody pack each (compliments from all the Senior Managers). Awww… that is really very sweet and thoughtful of them.

Shortly after, they proceeded with the first programme of the day - tour of 40th floor. I managed to coax Nigel to follow my colleague’s son. But after the tour and magic show, he was brought up by another colleague as he refused to stay for the story telling, art & craft session, tattoo & nail painting (which ran concurrently).

Nigel played with his PSP while I finished as much work as possible. About 30 minutes later, I brought him down to the 40th floor for some snacks.

Thereafter, it was back to the 38th floor for a specially put together Rec Club programme which consists of a Guided Tour, Cartoon Screening and My Day@GIC (Express the theme ‘My Day@GIC’ through a drawing, poem, essay, photo, etc).

Our little guests-of-honour took a peek at the following:
- Mailroom operations & video conference experience (37th floor)
- Heritage Centre (38th Floor)
- Staff Lounge, Gym, Games Room (39th Floor)
- Traders’ Room (32th Floor)

After the tour, Nigel caught 20 minutes of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen which was screened at the 38th floor auditorium. Daddy picked us up at at 1pm and we had lunch at Raffles City Shopping Centre.

Here are some photos which were taken off the intranet photo gallery.

Quoted:

Location: Orchard Road
Date: 24 Dec 2009 (Thursday)
Time: Please have your child arrive in school not later than 8:15am
Transportation: School Bus
Snack: Snacks, lunch and beverages will be provided
Notes: We will dismiss at Plaza Singapura Taxi Stand @3pm

Note: No sandal, slipper, clogs, roller skating shoes, shoes with heels, toy, candies, are allowed on this field trip. Any item of this kind will be taken away by the teacher and returned at the end of the day.

Nigel will not be attending this outing. Mummy will be bringing him to her office for Bring-Your-Kids-To-Work.

We finally boarded the Singapore Flyer after two futile attempts. On both the occasions, it was raining cats and dogs.

We picked Ah Ma up from her workplace and arranged to meet Gong Gong, Ah Yi and Yi Zhang at the Flyer. This is our first ride on board the Singapore Flyer since it was officially opened to the public on 1 March 2008.

The Singapore Flyer is Asia’s first giant observation wheel. It is currently the tallest Ferris wheel in the world which reaches 42 stories high, with a total height of 165 metres. It is 5 metres taller than the Star of Nanchang and 30 metres taller than the London Eye.

Each of the 28 air-conditioned capsules is capable of holding 28 passengers. A complete rotation of the wheel takes approximately 37 minutes. Initially rotating in a counter-clockwise direction when viewed from Marina Centre, its direction was changed on 4 August 2008 under the advice of Feng Shui masters.

Time for us to soak up the panoramic views and let the pictures do the talking. Enjoy!

Quoted:

Timing:
10:00am to 14:00pm: Greentree Forest Fair
10:30am to 11:30am: Children Dance Performance

We are going to miss this Forest Fair. We will be going Perth for a holiday and Nigel is going to miss two sessions of his fencing class and it is really cumbersome for us to arrange for an additional make-up class.

After the long wait, the day is finally here for us to catch Ben 10 Power of the Omnitrix Live on Stage at the Singapore Expo. Mummy did a quick check to see what other events are held at the Expo and she is delighted that there is an ongoing Penguin Books Warehouse Sales.

The books at the warehouse sales is REALLY CHEAP… from $1 per book. I finally got not one but two Harry and the Bucketful of Dinosaurs books - Harry and the Dinosaurs Say “Raahh!” which comes with an audio CD and Harry and the Robots and many more!

Therafter, we walked down to Hall 3 where Ben 10 Power of the Omnitrix is shown. Booths were setup outside the hall selling hand-held fans, t-shirts, badges, water tumblers and popcorn.

We went into the hall and get ourselves seated comfortably. The show starts promptly at 2:00pm and I am really thrilled to see Ben Tennyson, Gwen Tennyson and Grandpa Max. The stunts are awesome and the alien characters are really TALL and BIG (Mummy thought they look hideous though). Hahahaha… During the break, Daddy bought me a bucket of popcorn to munch. TOTALLY SWEET!

After the show, we went IKEA Tampines for an early dinner as we did not have our lunch. We did not have anything in mind to buy, just purely window shopping. On our way to the car park at Level 2, I joined the Health Exploration Adventure where I participated in games, interactive booths and exciting workshops (Make your own skipping rope).

They took a photo of me playing basketball (on a green backdrop) and had my image superimposed onto a postcard.

Ah Yi, Yi Zhang and myself set up our first bazaar stall at the OCC Family Carnival. Since Ah Ma is a staff at OCC, she has the privilege of renting a stall at $10.00 (as per what an OCC member would pay). What we get for $10.00 - an IBM table (estimated 6ft by 1.5ft) and one chair.

Ah Ma got for us another two chairs and a clothes rack. We arrived at 11:00am to unload the goods from our car. We took an hour and a half to sort out and arrange our stuff. This being our first attempt as entrepreneurial stall owners, I would say we did a great job in displaying our stuff for sale.

We made a total of $200 selling our second-hand items. GREAT!