End of the Holidays

This weekend was the end of the school holidays and the girls went back for Term 2 today.  Last week activities included an easter parade, two days of having friends over including Holly for a sleep-over, a day at the zoo and Gena took the girls to see Alice in Wonderland.  They were both very impressed by Alice cutting off the dragon's head with a sword - that was the first thing they wanted to tell me about. 

Friday night we had Andrew drop by for 90 minutes on his way through to Israel.  He had got off the Tasmania ferry that morning so was having a very very long day of travel.  It was great to catch up with him, even briefly.  Stress levels rose slightly when we couldn't book a taxi but we eventually got one and he presumably made his 1am flight.

Saturday morning we headed to the Chinese Garden, hoping to be the first to find (FTF) a new cache.  While we here hunting around the likely tree, the couple who had actually found it first walked up to replace it.  So close!  It was nice to meet some other goecachers and have a short chat.  After doing two caches at the gardens we walked to the Singapore Science Centre which is like Scienceworks.  The girls enjoyed all the hands on exhibits about sight, sound, robots, etc. and we'll need to go back again to do the areas we missed.  The visit wrapped up with a play in the waterworks area - we love that all the big attractions in Singapore have water play areas for the kids.

After picking Buckley up from doggy day-care, we all went into the K9 Cafe where we and our dog enjoyed afternoon tea with other people and their dogs.  Lucinda was in heaven.  We then dropped Buckley off and headed to a final farewell at a park for the Primmer family.  Leaving there we dropped the kids off with Gena and headed out for dinner to celebrate Claudi's 30th birthday.  It was an enjoyable evening of Thai food to complete what ended up a fairly long and enjoyable day.

This Wednesday night Lucinda heads to Australia to complete the Ofxam Trailwalker 100km event this weekend with Kim, Chrissy and Debbie. We're sure they and the support crew will do very well.

Hanging out in Hong Kong

We have just arrived back from a fabulous week in Hong Kong. For most of our holiday we stayed at a little guesthouse in Kowloon which was cheap, convenient, clean and well "cosy". On the first day we went to market - five to be exact - antiques, flowers, birds, the Ladies Market (but no ladies for sales just lots of handbags and scarves) and the Goldfish Market. Apparently fish are lucky (for people obviously, I don't think the hundreds of fish in the little plastic bags pinned to noticeboards felt particularly lucky). The second day we explored Ocean Park where we enjoyed close encounters with Pandas and, of course, lots of sea animals. The rides were also a big hit. Matt and I loved the skychair around the mountain while the girls liked the rattly old rollercoaster best so we went on it four times. The next morning we visited Kowloon Park and its sculpture garden where we added a few finishing touches to the artwork. We then headed to Disneyland..

We stayed the next three nights at the Disneyland Hotel and were immersed in all things Mickey Mouse. The windows on the train to the resort are mickey-shaped as are the pikelets for breakfast and the pizzas for dinner. The hotel was glorious fun with Disney characters dropping by for breakfast and dinner. Disneyland lived up to expectations of being the happiest place on earth - the rides, the characters, the shows, the parades, the kids and their parents. The streets were clean and neat and decorated with colourful flowers, shops everywhere and everyone behaved themselves - reminded us of Singapore. Our girls especially liked the fact that two families from Avondale Grammar were there at the same time as us and we managed to bump into them quite frequently and sit with them for shows. The girls and their fair hair proved popular once again and they were dragged into random tourist photos - at one point there was even a queue forming. Matt had to go to work in Hong Kong so the girls and I did the second day at Disneyland by ourselves with Matt joining us for the fireworks at the end of the day. On our last morning the girls and I spent a relaxed few hours by the pool where Alice made a friend with a boy called Hunter who she kept calling Danger or Killer by mistake - which just shows what she really thinks about hunters!

It was then back to reality at the Lee Gardens Guest House in Kowloon. The girls and I took an historic tram up to the top of The Peak for a great view of Hong Kong. We met Matt after he finished work and then went to the Symphony of Lights which is where skyscrapers participate in a lights and laser show to music for 20 minutes. Held our attention for about 5 minutes and we opted to look for a cache instead.

Hong Kong is known for its skyscrapers, shopping and neons lights but much of Hong Kong is mountains and islands and it even has some good beaches. On our last day we took a ferry to the countryside to visit Lamma Island and walked from a seasisde village to a fishing village, stopping along the way for a herbal tea in a little garden. We were once again grateful to our habit of geocaching which took us exploring a little off the beaten track to find two caches.

And now we are back in Singapore - our own Disneyland - where News Asia recently reported that there was a crackdown on crime....
http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/1043386/1/.html

After reading this story I was relieved to have those criminals off the streets, who knows what they may start doing next - j-walking? selling gum?

Some happy snaps...

Too many goodbyes

This week has been bittersweet. We had a wonderful time on Wednesday night at the official opening of Avondale's new campus and it was great to be a part of the celebration. The Australian High Commissioner was there to cut the ribbon and the children performed well-rehearsed songs, dances and plays. But as this is the last week of the school term we also had to say good-bye to three families who are moving back home or onto their next country. Earlier on it was easier to say goodbye to families moving on as we had known them only for a short time but these are people we have known quite well for a year. Alice was planning who she wanted at her party this year and I realised not one girl who went to her party last year would still be in Singapore. Since arriving only a year ago we have had to say good bye to:
Lily-rose
Josephine, Nic & Lulu
Rachel
The Primmer Family
The Wilson Family
The Lombard Family
The Milkeratis Family
The Wong Family
The Tait Family
The Harkin-Strain Family
And those are just the people leaving Singapore. It's all very transient here. People leave our Condo for another Condo or the school to go to a different school in Singapore. The movement is constant. Of course wonderful new people have arrived too. However if your life is like paper and every passerby leaves a mark I think my page has filled rather too quickly this past year.

Showtime

Last night I was at a party and people kept asking where Matt was. "He's at his tap rehearsal" was my reply -which I'm sure no one else had ever said about their husbands! This evening the girls and I finally got to see the results of all that toe-tapping hard work. We thought the show was fantastic and Matt's performance was great. He tells us he wasn't perfect but we suspect he's being humble because it looked faultless from where we were sitting. Of course the girls now want to take up tap dancing so in a few years there just may be a little Bertram trio. I'll happily sit in the audience and take the photos.

Running...sitting...and waiting...

Saturday morning was the inter-school athletics and Alice had made it into two events (100m and 800m).  We arrived on time at 8am and it was raining lightly.  In fact, it continued to rain all morning - not heavy rain but constant.  On the plus side it kept things quite cool for both the athletes and spectators.  On the down side there wasn't much more to do than sit in the stands.  By the time of Alice's first race, they were already 40 minutes behind schedule.  Alice ran well, coming in 6th in the 100m (9 year old age group, even though she is 8), 7th in the 800m and 6th in the 100m relay.  At 11:40 Felicity had well and truly had enough of sitting around so she and I left.  The events were now 70 minutes behind schedule.

After an hour or so at home, I headed off to my dress rehearsal for the Jitterbugs Swingapore dance recital (which is on this afternoon and evening).  The instructions were to be there at 2:30pm.  At 7:30pm our group of tired, hungry and somewhat disgruntled tap dancers finally got onto to the stage for our run-through! 

Geocaching - the next generation

Last week our most frequent visitor Funny Uncle Andrew dropped by again. We think he's visited us at least 6 times. Maybe 7. We have lost count. With Andrew always comes increased Geocaching activity. Over the few days he spent with us, we discovered quite a few new caches. We were inspired and finally on the weekend we planted our first cache in a treetops walk near Matt's work.

Alice had to write a factual report for school on a subject of her choice - these are her words.
Geocaching
"My family likes going Geocaching. It is a fun activity where you go and find little boxes with prizes. They are all over the world. You can find them easily if you have a GPS. Everyone can do it and there are muggles. They are people that do not know about geocaching and steal the prizes. That's what I like doing!"

On the weekend Matt also made use of the flight simulator voucher which I'd given him for our 14th Wedding Anniversary last month. He apparently flew to Hong Kong and back. The girls and I enjoyed another fish spa while Matt was on his flight experience. On Sunday Matt flew out of tropical Singapore to 0 degrees in Beijing. And who did he meet there? Andrew again. For some Geocaching in-between the work! Hope the work didn't interfere too much with the Geocaching.

Training heats up

Last week I began my Oxfam Trailwalker Training in earnest. (For those of you who don't know, I was asked to join my sister-in-law Kim's team late last year after a member of her team dropped out. On April 16-17th our team of four plan to walk 100km in about 25-30 hours.) The fact I'm here in Singapore means I don't get any training on the track or in the company of the other team members but I do get to see a lot of Singapore. I did a 25km walk by myself last Monday and a 20km with my friend Jackie on Friday. Unfortunately I missed out on the team 50km training walk through Olinda on Saturday although I was glad to have missed the golfball-sized hail stones that accompanied the walk. Apparently hiding under fern fronds doesn't offer a lot of protection.

Training in Melbourne vs Training in Singapore

In Melbourne you get wet. In Singapore you get wet with sweat and that's before you even start.

In Melbourne you may need to dodge massive hailstones. In Singapore you need to dodge traffic and construction workers.

In Melbourne there are a few mountains to tackle. In Singapore there is Mount Faber which I have since renamed Mound Faber.

In Melbourne you stop at cafes for coffee. In Singapore you stop at hawkers centres for coconut water.

In Melbourne if you walk too far you may end up bored. In Singapore if you walk too far you may end up, not only bored, but across the border.

In Melbourne you rely on friends to support you with childcare, donations and encouragement. Same goes for Singapore.

All donations of any size welcome! It's a great cause. Our team is the Wayward Wanderers. To donate click here