The last day of 2009 and here are the questions I posed to myself with no answers.. as yet

Dear all,

Today is the last day of 2009 and very soon it will be 2010. Along the way in 2009 despite of the streesful that we have encountered, some questions came to my mind but still with no answers yet....yet..

Here are some:

If God have chosen not be among one of us i.e. God is God, and human is human, where would I be today? Would I be a human wondering around without knowing God, Himself.

How is heaven like....this morning as I travelled on bus 39 along the TPE, I come across a greenery patch filled with trees and a river, it was a peaceful sight indeed. Is heaven going to be like this? I figure out if it is so, heaven should be a happy place.

When I was still in primary school, a close friend of mine told me that our planet is indeed a very old planet - millions of years. But our human race is just only a few thousands of years that exist on this planet. How can this be and this is what he told me...human existed many times around on this planet and after each human existence on this planet, God destroys it entirely and recreate another human generation from scratch (perhaps due to our sinfulness?) and so we have many cycles of human existence but always the same planet - earth. It is just thought - a contemplative one on the marvel of God.

Happy New Year1

AlbertY

Handover Day!!

Dear All

Our contractor told us change of locks and handover is delayed by half day to Wed afternoon. So we decide to go see the place.....horrors of horrors....not much was done since Fri! The promised kitchen cornices, splashback and installation of taps weren't in! We were only there tonight around 8+pm and Bert was really mad. There was debris everywhere. I was very disappointed. We couldn't even clean the place. I told the contractor general cleaning was part of the contract so why was it not done? Know what was his reply? The cleaners say after unpacking there'll be rubbish so after we unpack is the best time to clear! What utter rubbish! I was so blabberghasted!! I told him how am I to place my sofa and beds which are coming tomorrow morning if there is rubbish everywhere and not clean? Bert was unhappy indeed. The contractor will be getting his cleaners and personally supervise them tomorrow morning. Bert ticked him off for not coming down personally to see what's happening.

I feel so stressed now. 1st priority is to get the house cleaned before the furniture shifts in. Thur is the major move of our barang of 9 years to our new home. I don't know how I'm able to wash and prepare my chicken if my tap isn't even installed nor gas-stove ordered! Perhaps this christmas we'll be getting something off the rack rather than cooked for our LC party. If so, sorry guys :(

Love Theresa

A prayer before house moving...

This morning as I stepped out of the house, I was feeling kind of a bit stress...stress from the thought of move out form our current place after a long period of almost 9 years. I told myself all this happens because I am doing this for the family..as the family is really in need of a bigger space from the current 990 sf. Making money in this property boom is certainly the last thing on this plan. So, in that sense, I believe God will help me out in this coz I have align my plans to that of God's plan for me to see to the family's needs.

So, I decided to say a special prayer to Our Lady of Perpetual Help and to my best spiritual friend, St Therese of Lisieux. My senses sort of come a calm and I know that Mary and St Therese is behind me, supporting me. On the train, I have the opportunity to squeeze myself to a corner and with some music on, I continue to think about St Therese in what she has written in her autobiography. Her thoughts and feelings as written in her book sort of have some peaceful effect on me.

Mother Mary, calm my fears and drive away all my stress and be with me in this period of house moving.

St Therese, please guide us and be with us. Pray for us!

ALbertY

Countdown...only 2 more days!!

Dear All

Today (Mon) is just about 2 days left to the big move! Scary leh! We are hardly completely packed! I forgot to call SPH to change our delivery address! Bert is soooooo very sweet and a non-procastinator like me :( With my bro down, he is doing the maid renewal for my parents and practically taken over those duties. Makes me feel that he's a better son than I am as a daughter, but no complaints, just praises for my dear, caring hubby :)

Today, I made the girls clear more of their stuff, and I 2 more bookshelves...and horrors...we are running out of boxes!! Boxes are like NEVER enough! It's amazing how fast they are gone!

Since our chinese tutor can't make it for lessons this afternoon, we decided to make it a day out instead of just lunch.

Tiffany wanted to see the Orchard Road lightup. I wasn't sure if it is totally up yet. We took shots of the deco in the day and in the night. It's much nicer at night, but you can't see the details like in the day. I need Tiffany to upload her pixs before I can upload on the LC blog as I can't find my cable or whatever is needed to upload stuff from my camera and hp! (Yes, I AM that techy illiterate, so don't laugh!).

My other objective is to replace our 8 year old christmas tree. You can imagine how worn out it is after 8 years. Bought it from Carrfour with my mum when she are healthier at $19.90 . Saw the ad that Carrfour was having a sale on its 240mm tree from original price of $170+ to $39.90 so after roaming the streets from Tangs to the new 313 sommerset, we headed for Cityhall for the tree!! Yes, the 3 of us, from 2.30pm till 9 at night!! Told the girls no fancy restaurant meals and no buying unnecessary stuff, and they were pretty good. The only expensive stuff was the drinks from Orange Julius....2 drinks for $10.90!! I gave Felicia $10 and she came running back to me for another $1!! But after tasting the drinks, gosh, they are really good stuff and quality ingredients, so I think they were worth it. Felicia's was 3 kinds of berries and Tiffany's was some kind of vanilla and they were both so good. I think the vanilla can have a good fight with Starbucks, in fact I think it's better and more value for money.

Anyway, back to the main objective of the outing, was to get the christmas tree. This was strategically orchestrated by Tiffany to be at the very end of the trip, so that we can take a cab home. There were 210mm trees with either metal or plastic stands for $29.90 or $19.90 respectively. Tiffany says the 240mm would be too tall for AzP so we looked for the $19.90 one. But since the ad was out on Sat, this cheaper one was sold out! We then went for the 210mm for $29.90. The metal stand made the packaging heavy, so the 2 girls sweetly carried the package between them, for me! It was embarrassing seeing families looking at them as I carried the other carrier bags behind them, like I was a slave-driver or something. They lugged it down the escalator and to the taxi stand. So sweet of them, yah?

Bert was fortunately early home, so I called him to wait for us at the lobby to carry the tree up. Just imagine, if I had gotten it just 1 week back, I would have been $100+ poorer!! And now, I have a much bigger tree for an extra $10 more than what I had paid for 8 years ago for a 4 ft tall tree!! I was so worried the trees would be expensive (which they were last week) that I thought we'll have to do with the old tree which I had promised the girls we'll replace last christmas!!

Love Theresa

BBQ & Our new haunt - T3

Dear All

Yesterday (Sat) was raining. McDonald now follows Delifrance...they do not deliver if it is raining :( As I usually don't cook over the weekends plus my freezer is low on food (done on purpose cos of moving), we decided to park at Expo and take MRT to our new haunt - T3! I thought of saving some $ by eating at the foodcourt there, but Bert decided to give ourselves a little treat - 1st time eating at Sweet Recipe. I'm a bit mountain tortoise and thought this was last time a cake shop...and felt foolish when Bert told me that cake shop was named Sweet Secrets lah! Aiyoh!

Anyway, Bert was introduced to Sweet Recipe when he was on course. He says the mutton soup is great. As we are getting on with age, we decided to go for chicken. Bert ate the grilled and Feli and I each took the breaded chicken chop rolled inside with ham and cheese.....sinful right? But well, don't know when I'll be eating my next yum yum food, so better get it while I can, hee hee.

Tiffany ordered her garlic and butter fish. Gosh, hers was the best! So yummy! The soup is good and so was the toffee smoothie.

Actually, an unusual soup that the girls and I had tasted recently (the day of the pony ride) was from Manhanttan Fish Market at WhiteSands Mall. It was cream of asparagus with sotong rings. That's the first time I've tried it...usually soups are topped with crotons (toasted bread) or with cream sauce, but this was different and tasted great.

Anyway, back to T3...word must have gotten out! The place is now sooooo crowded. What's more, they now have car boot sale/flea market at the carpark too!! If this place gets too crowded, we may have to change our haunt to somewhere else :(

Today (Sun) Tiff best friend invited her and Feli to Escape Theme Park followed by a BBQ at Aranda Country Club at DownTown East. We've been to their BBQ before, and they sure have lots of delicious homemade BBQ food!! Needless to say, the girls had lots of fun, the BBQ was fantastic (sting ray - sedup and shiok that Tiff and another friend were like rushing to eat the next piece as it came off the grill!!). Instead of the usual sausage, they grilled cheese sausages, very salty and the kids love it! They also made great pasta with guess what...mayonaise...seems like it's some philoppino recipe. Needless to say, I asked for the recipes, but it's all just oral and only the ingredients were given. So I'll need to try it later and see how. And do you know who are the people who prepared and did all the cooking? It's the HUSBANDS! Yes, 2 men!!

Tomorrow, more packing to do to burn off some of the fats accummulated from all those yummy meals done this week!

Love Theresa

The Coming is near!! Azalea that is!

Dear All

We are soooo excited about the coming move...excited and apprehensive. You all should know us by now, that we are a very "worrying" couple...we worry about the "what ifs" that we think until our brain hurts. We are worried about the mounting costs, the headache of moving, the worry of if we can pack everything in time, if the contractor can complete in time as our moving deadline of 10 Dec draws near.

We finally got our aircon guy to fixed up our aircon at a much reduced price...about half the quoted price, after much haggling! He's coming tomorrow to do the job, so we hope it'll solve our leaking aircon problem and cover our hole in the ceiling.

Bert has already passed our MP housekeys to the housing agent to source a tenant for us.

This evening, after Felicia's choir practice, we went to see the reno at AP. It should be completed today. Tiffany, who disliked the house at first, cause it looked old and dilapidated was now pleasantly pleased with the reno and repainted house. She commented that it looked like a hotel from the entrance. That's a nice comment from her. We were SOOOO worried she'll still dislike the house. Afterall, the main reason why we are moving is for the girls' sake...more space.

The new kitchen is in...looked pretty good though smaller than MP :(

The walls are painted in the colours that each of us selected but tampered by the reno guys to keep the rooms bright still. The kitchen basin, cooker hob and hoods are installed...by-fold doors to 3rd toilet and store-room installed, now left with Tiffany's room lights, kitchen and backyard lights to be installed. Backsplash will be installed next week and all door knobs and locksets will also be changed. We are quering about replacing the WCs as we can't afford to renovate the toilets. Let's hope the plumber can do that. That should please the girls :) Now our worry is if the girls dare to sleep in their own rooms! Otherwise, it defeats the main purpose of moving in the first place!!

My mum says Dec is a busy time for priests, and also, we need time to unpack...hence, the house blessing would be postponed to next year, hopefully by Jan. Need to check when's CNY though :(

Love Theresa

Today (3 Dec 09) Fun time at Pasir Ris with my Girls

Dear All

If you recall, we recently went to the Turf Club to pat the horses and watch them race. Tiffany told us that Pasir Ris Park has a white horse, so today (Thur) we ventured there. There was not only a white horse, but there were several horses and 2 miniature horses too! In fact, it is a horse-riding stable/school.

Firstly, we booked 3 bikes for 2 hours at only $5 per bike! Pasir Ris park is a much smaller park than the East Coast (EC), however, it has so many interesting things there, like:

- a big playground with rope tunnels and looonnng slides

- a small garden maze

- a steep slope to zoom down

best of all, it's not jammed-pack crowded like EC.

We also investigated a pool of water on the beach on which a family were excitedly scooping up things from. It turned out to be a low-tide pool filled with tiny sea-snails, tiny fish and very very tiny hermit crabs. Our brave Tiffany held one up to show us and was pinched on her nails...she quickly dropped it into the pail of the little girl who was scooping things with her mum.

We cycled the entire park and returned our bikes about 1.5 hours later. The girls wanted to see the horses. As we were not allowed to pat the miniature horses, we each took a pony ride at $10 per person....a bit ex but I guess if we travel abroad, we probably would have paid more to ride a horse!! I rode one in NZ before I knew Bert, and remembered it to be an exhilarating but scary ride as I almost rolled off the horse's neck when it picked to nibble a flower at the cliff's edge then (in NZ that is!!). So when I rode the pony/horse, the same feeling like I could roll off the horse's neck came back. It was a new and fun experience for the girls.

The highlight for Tiffany today was the hermit crabs. For Felicia, it was the pony ride. For me, I liked both. In all, the girls and I enjoyed our little family (minus dady) out...a relatively "cheap" holiday without leaving Singapore :) Actually, there are fun things to do in Singapore without need to go overseas especially when the kids are still young.

For those who are interested to know where this place is, ask me at the LC Xmas gathering.

Love Theresa

Moving from one park to another park…

Dear all,

As I have I have shared with you in our previous LC gathering, it has been a stressful year for us in our little family looking for a house.

The year kicks off for us looking for a bigger house as our family is feeling the pinch of lack of space although we have been conscious in our efforts not to accumulate things more than is necessary.
And when we finally managed to decide on a particular house, our stressed begins when some problems encountered along the way and after many stressful nights and deep thoughts and some advice from the legal professionals, the transaction was finally completed but not without after a much delay.....and finally are moving in a week’s time.
We are moving from our current Melville Park to another park nearby, Azalea Park..
Through this little experience, I have recollect a list of good things that comes out from this stressful experience and here is the list:

1. We prayed to Our Lady and dedicated 9 novena sessions to ask her to intercede for us – she hears our prayers and granted our petition on the 7 th novena session.
2. We started going to Divine Mercy devotion on Friday evenings at Holy Trinity.
3. Now that is over, I still do continue to go for novena at the Holy Trinity.
4. Our family has come closer and especially Theresa and I where we see oursleves dialogue more than ever thru this experience…

This experience has certainly drawn me closer to God for sure and this house will always reminds me of the presence of God and that this house is given to us through our fervent prayers to Our Lady of Perpetual Help.
We are now almost done with packing and what is left for us now is the feeling of nostalgia of Melville Park….I just confirmed with movers this morning on the date of shifting and it has been a good 9 years here and I hope life will continue to be peaceful in our next chapter in our lives in azalea park and that the Holy presence of God will continue in our lives. This is what I wanted to share with you all…that God is real…Our Lady is real...12 Dec will be the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
You have a blessed evening!
AlbertY