Missing Oliver again this Christmas

Christmas log cake and brandy soaked fruit cake, we have every year, specially made by Gina, the wonder baker. This year, she even made Durian log cake. Not much of a Durian fan and prefer to stick to the traditions, I choose chocolate over Durian.
The next day we left Oliver at his Grandma's place, I intended to eat the cake, but when I noticed there was a candle, I hesitated and decided to keep it because Oliver was not around to blow the candle. Sob! Poor Oliver cannot be with us last Christmas and now the Boxing Day. We are much luckier this Christmas, at least we can celebrate together on Christmas Eve.

Hello and Goodbye MV Doulos

We went to Vivocity this morning for breakfast and happened to chance upon MV Doulos, a vessel which was ran by volunteers from all over the world. They were having 25% discounts on books. We thought that it would be an interesting experience for Oliver to go onboard the ship.
Little did we know that the Doulos Ministry will be stopped by the end of this year, according to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Doulos. It also wrote that the MV Doulos is the world's oldest active ocean-faring passenger ship. She is now owned by the German charity Gute Bücher für Alle (English: Good Books for All), and is used as a floating bookshop. The ship has previously been known as the SS Medina, the SS Roma, and the MV Franca C. The Doulos Ministry will be stopped surprisingly by the end of 2009. Here a screenshot of their website, and I can share almost the emotions with Tirza and Nick when we had to close StarDuS Clubhouse early this year. Somehow, I felt that I had to be there with SDS colleagues when we finally shut the doors and said goodbye, and to witness that final moment.
It was such a pity that a mission so great will be decommissioned. I wondered how these volunteers felt. When we were onboard MV Doulos, the crew were busily themselves with various tasks at hand and there was not a single clue signalling the end of a journey. I should have at least do my bit by getting some books which I didn't.



Oliver and I taking a shot with the Lifeboat which Oliver kept saying that he wanted to take the boat.

Goodbye MV Doulos. I believe you will be remembered dearly.

Waiting for the Great Trolley Bus

Boon Heng said this shot reminded him of something. I was thinking the same when I took this shot. You have the same thought too?

December School Holidays

The month of December is school holidays for all schools in Singapore. But not for Afterschool Care Centres, life still goes on. Working parents like us count for them so that we can continue to work our head off. However, this December, Del-Care became a hot spot for the HFMD, as almost everyday, we would receive an sms from Jeanette informing of yet another kid down with HFMD. Some of these kids who caught the virus are Edison, Veron, Vivian, Vera, Sebastian, JiaEn, JiaJun, Cayden and Faith Wong. Every morning when I woke up, I would examine Oliver's hands and legs for red spots. We are now worrying our head off with Oliver catching the virus and worse, passing it to Heidi. If Heidi would to fall sick, it would mean that one of us have to take leave to look after her, unlike Oliver who could stay at his grandma's place. So we decide to declare school holiday for delcare today and tommorrow only for Oliver though. Away from HFMD, well at least for 2 days.

Splashing good time with Nate

Shot taken by Maye, Nate's mum

A pity that both are male. Otherwise, they could well be childhood lovers. Oliver and Nate having good time stepping on puddles of rainwater after watching Thomas Live.

Birdsong

The finale for the Botanic Gardens 150th Anniversary celebration was a concert at the Symphony Stage. Another attraction was the Christmas trees adopted by various organisations like embassies, schools, government, VWOs, etc that lined the path in the garden.

We made our way to the garden at about 4.30pm, as I feared that the car park would be packed. It was a mad rush for Sophia who had to prepare sushi in between fetching them from school and leaving for the garden. The weather always threatened to rain, but we had some time to look at some of the decorated trees while waiting for Jiajun's family to join us.

Some of the trees were very creatively decorated, while some were pretty boring and unimaginative.

Delcare also has a tree near the stage. In fact it was one of the first few trees after the obligatory ones from the embassies that lined the visitor centre entrance. It was quite well done up by the students of the after-school care, with hand prints from the kids from almost all the classes.

It wasn't long before we found the handprints of most of Oliver's classmates. And of course, we also found Oliver's yellow handprint hanging on the tree.

When the Pans arrived, we settled down for our picnic and soon we were busy feeding the kids and making sure that they don't mess us up too much.

Mah Bow Tan was the guest-of-honour, and the concert was supposed to start at 6.30pm.

But obviously, his watch was not working properly. By the time he arrived it was 7pm. The concert finally got underway, but by then we felt drizzle and had to make the call to pack up and go, after the first piece was played. So all the waiting was really in vain. But luckily it was quite enjoyable and luckily we decided to leave as it began to rain quite heavily after we drove off. I wondered if the rain would dispel the crowd. It really is a pity if the people who came all the way for the concert didn't get to enjoy it due to the organiser not being able to keep to schedule.

Thomas Live

I don't know when it started, but the Thomas the Train frenzy also got hold of Oliver. It's easy to understand why kids loveThomas & Friends, with its colourful trains and different characters, and of course the host of merchandise like t-shirts, train sets, books and videos, and catchy tunes.

And of course the musical. We had wanted to bring Oliver to watch the musical after learning that it would come to Singapore in early December, but didn't want to get the tickets early in case he falls sick on the day of the show, and also waiting for more discounts in case ticket sale is bad (it didn't happen).

So we booked the tickets on the morning of the Friday matinee show, picking up Oliver earlier than usual from Delcare. When we reached the indoor stadium, there are already a lot of kids and parents queueing to go in.

We got the very last row of the circus seat, lest Oliver is afraid of the loud noise or stage actors. The stage was pretty far away, but luckily Thomas, James, Percy and Gordon came on, we could all see clearly, as they, being trains, had to be big. I could see that Oliver was quietly excited during the whole show, and towards the end of the show, he was clapping along.

We had known that Nate and his mom would be there as well. After the show, we met up for dinner at Brewerkz at Stadium Cove. Oliver and Nate had a great time jumping on puddles of water and running about.

Nate's mom told us that Nate is quite a fanatic, he could recognise and name all the characters of the series. That's quite amazing as there could easily be more than 50 of them.