Happy birthday to Alice and Buddha

Alice turned nine today. She has thoroughly enjoyed the birthday celebrations. Cynthia and Alice made a pull-apart Turtle cake made out of cupcakes to take to school yesterday. Alice found it on you-tube about two months ago and has talked about it non-stop.

Today her actual birthday happily coincided with Buddha's birthday so we had a public holiday. As it was the non-party year for Alice she was just supposed to have a favourite friend over for the day but Alice wangled two - a favourite boy and a favourite girl. She wanted to visit the SPCA ( Society for prevention of cruelty to animals) so we did that with Harrison and Chloe and were able to pet quite a few dogs in their cages. We then went geocaching - successfully finding two caches and introducing two new geocachers to the world of treasure seeking!

Then back to our place for cake, an animal rescue treasure hunt, a swim and a BBQ with some more family friends and the spontaneous show by children with items titled "a good day to die" and "puffles attack". Our rather chatty three year old neighbour, Lil, is sleeping over tonight with the big girls and asking deep questions like "what's it like being 5?". The night is young... if she doesn't fall asleep she's heading back to level 20.

Vending Machines

Yesterday I flew from Shanghai to Tokyo.  It's my second visit here so I'm pretty confident getting around by train - still amazed at the sheer number and complexity of train and subway lines.  One of the features people notice about Tokyo is the number of vending machines.  They are at the station, outside shops and just on the street.  You can buy the usual things like water and soft drinks but also some extra things such as tinned meals (Ramen in a can), iced coffee, juices and toys.  One thing I like is that I can use my train card at many of the vending machines.  Cigarette vending machines are also more obvious here being out on the street in public.  In Shanghai I saw a vending machine for medicines which was a first.  For dinner tonight I had Ramen (noodle soup with pork and egg).  On entering the restaurant I had to put my money in a vending machine and then select which items from the menu I wanted.  I guess it's a good way of not having the staff handle (often dirty) money.

Shanghai Exposed

This week I've been in Shanghai.  On Monday when I arrived I caught the Maglev train from the airport.  It does 300km per hour and was very smooth and quiet.  Shanghai is a big city built around a very wide river.  Along the Bund there are many old stone buildings built in the late 1800's by European banks and companies.  Across the river the finance district is made up of ultra-modern skyscrapers.

While here I had some time to go and visit the Shanghai World Expo.  It brought back memories of attending Expo '88 in Brisbane.  The Expo site here is huge, covering two sides of the river, and today I walked a lot of it.  To get across the river you can catch a ferry, a subway train or take a bus through a tunnel.  I went into a few pavillions but the queues were just way too long for most of them.  I enjoyed seeing the different buildings but was feeling quite fatigued by the end and the thought of queuing for an hour or more was not at all appealing.

 

Hot Dog and Family

West Coast park was our destination this weekend. This time we took the dog and Matt as well. Buckley had a great time at the dog park. I loved the perfect picture of childhood as the girls ran around on the grass with Buckley. The girls also practiced their rollerblading skills by blading the length of the park which was about 1.5 km. We found two new caches and the girls and Matt also climbed a ridiculously tall spiders web play equipment. I declined - someone had to mind the dog and the bags. At this point we were very hot and extremely sweaty and almost at the point of spontaneous combustion. There was an occasional breeze but it was more like the hot blast you get when you pass an outdoor unit of an aircon. It was time to go back to our cool apartment and nice big swimming pool ...but we couldn't book a taxi.

When you have a dog, you need to ring for a taxi that will accept a small dog. It can be a problem. Occasionally we've had to wait quite a while for a taxi. This time the message came that there were no available taxis in the area. I was beginning to imagine an entire afternoon in the park as we slowly dehydrated and turned crunchy when Matt gallantly ran off and chased a taxi down that he had seen dropping a family off. The taxi driver was happy to have us, so this time we were saved the 20km walk home. It's times like this that one acknowledges that a car would be useful. And Melbourne weather has its good points!

How the other half live

On Thursday I did a tour of the Black and White Houses of Singapore. Colonial Black and White houses were built by the British for officials and give us a peak of yesteryear, and the extremely rich today. The cheapest Black and white house can be rented (they are all owned by the government) for about $20,000 a month!!!! And then you are required to maintain their upkeep which is quite high due to the tropical conditions.

Alice also had a big day Thursday. She received her Silver Award at assembly (which means that she has 10 merit awards - 5 of these in Mandarin). She also got another Merit certificate in music for getting her Black Belt in recorder. I can no longer help with recorder practice. She surpassed my abilities about 6 weeks ago on blue belt. She is very determined. She is about 4 belts in front of anyone else in Year 3.

All women need to stop reading this blog now. This is now only for the husbands:

This week I employed a full-time maid, Cynthia, and she is a delight. She cooks, cleans and does all the washing and is available to babysit at all times.. but all the male readers know exactly what that's like already so just wanted to say I can now you join in appreciating excellent domestic help.

Singapore Socialites

We've finally made it in Singapore.  Both Lucinda and I appear in the "scene around town" social pages of Expat Living - the glossy magazine for Singapore expats - and not even in the same photo. The occasion was the official opening of the new Avondale campus and we were obviously among the more photogenic parents there!

In other social news this week, on Monday night we enjoyed having dinner with Chris Wignall, Fiona Lane and Michelle Tan from HP.  Fiona has just moved here while Chris was visiting briefly to help Michelle and I deliver a training course.  We took them to No Signboard seafood restaurant in Geylang which is a much more "local" scene.  Michelle, being a local, ordered for us - chilli crab, cereal crayfish, spicy bbq prawns, tofu and kang kong (veges).

On Tuesday night we had number 4 of an 8-week beginners Salsa class.  We are doing it with our friends David and Jackie and it's been lots of fun.  After class the four of us generally go out for dinner together although last night it was just me and Lucinda.  We went to a new Italian restaurant which had a nice atmosphere and delicious pizza and salad.  Didn't see any Italians though...

Later on Tuesday night, Andrew was a welcome arrival for another visit.  He's here until Friday so we're enjoying being social with him (at home...and right now all three of us are working...but anyway, it's great to have him here).

The week that was

On Saturday we went to the Singapore Art Gallery with Hannah and then I took Felicity to a party while Matt and Alice showed Hannah Arab Street and Little India. Tricia and Geoff arrived on Saturday afternoon, and along with Hannah, we went to the Botannical Gardens for a lovely dinner outside surrounded by rainforest. Hannah flew out early Sunday morning and then we introduced geocaching to Tricia and Geoff. We found two caches at Kallang - so a successful hunt. We very much enjoyed our visitors and trust they had a good time and will spread the word...as the old chinese sayings goes "Make happy those who are near and those who are far will come"

Monday we all had the day off for Labour Day and went to Sentosa again. This time we went to Underwater World and Dolphin Lagoon which were both fun. We all touched a live shark which was surprisingly soft and rubbery and the girls got to feed sea turtles. We had pizza and mojitos at the beach - nice way to spend a holiday.

Tuesday we had our third Salsa dance class. Our friends Jackie and Dave are doing the class too so that makes it even more fun. We are not quite ready to audition for "So you think you can dance" but we are getting better.

Wednesday was drinks by pool to farewell one of our friends from the condo, Jodie,whose moving to another condo. Yep another farewell. I'm used to it now.

Today was a special celebration for Mothers at Avondale Grammar. We were treated to a lovely breakfast and the children had made cards and bookmarks and poems. Felicity's poem went like this

There once was a mother called Lucinda Kate

Everyone agrees she is really great

The dog she would walk

for hours she would talk

And still she would never be late.

After hearing some of the other poems I think I did quite well to be described as a talkative but punctual dog walker. It could have been much worse including rhymes about fat bellies and always yelling at kids to go to bed which some mothers were the victims of.

At the assembly they showed a video of the children telling us why they loved their mums. Apparently Alice loves me because I let her have pet turtles and I don't get cross when they all die.

Fleeting moments

After the super high of Trailwalker and a trip back to Oz, I was feeling a little flat early last week. It didn't last long. On Wednesday in the middle of Karate class, I got a call from the Australian High Commission offering me a six month position as Executive Assistant to the Deputy High Commissioner. It's part time, three days a week, which will hopefully suit me well and give me a taste of office life again. There's a bit of a paperwork to complete before I can begin but hopefully I'll start in June.

Last night Hannah arrived and we took her for a Singapore Sling at Raffles, a walk through Colonial Singapore and then a ride in the bumboat from the Merlion to Clarke Quay where we had Thai for dinner. Currently Aunty Hannah and the girls are doing "ephemeral" art on the windows with special textas. (Ephemeral meaning that mummy will wipe it off one day when you are at school.) Tonight Geoff and Tricia arrive for a short visit so we are having a lovely weekend of family. We'll enjoy the moment.