Dad's in hospital over Christmas this year

Dear All

Dad was unconscious for a while again on 16 Dec 2010. He's been in hospital since then till today.

Today is my parents' 53rd wedding anniversary. I had already ordered the cake before he went in the 2nd time. Our elder brother had already booked his hols overseas so couldn't celebrate christmas or our parents' anniversary this year. Dad is very understanding.

As mum cut the cake without dad this afternoon, she broke down and cried. This was the 1st time dad wasn't beside her. I consoled her that it's better he stays in the hospital till they know what's causing him to have fits and going unconscious. He recently was unconscious when he was in the hospital the day we returned from our hols (mum was told he was to be discharged that day..22 Dec) so has to stay on.

When I see my parents still so in love with each other still, I feel like they are a fairytale come true. Their love for each other is so inspiring and touching. Mum said when she was leaving him yesterday (christmas day), dad called her not to worry about the anniversary cake. What was more important is that he still loves her.

Mum asked me to ask a priest to anoint him. Their home communion ministers visited him on christmas day to give him communion, which he can't swallow (he's on semi-solids) and advised us to get the priest to give him anointing for healing. This is something I wish to share with you whenever you have a loved one who is sick whether at home or in hospital....get them anointed. Miracles can sometimes happen and they may be healed and get better. I managed to speak to Fr Albert of Holy Trinity Church and miraculously he'll be able to anoint him TODAY his wedding anniversary! God is really mercifully and almighty. My mum, to me, is like Mother Mary, a Godly woman, full of faith.

Please continue to pray for my dad.

Love

Theresa

Our Holiday in KL (19 - 22 Dec 2010)

Dear All

After Felicia's christmas party at the church where she also performed with the children's choir, we left immediately to catch the last coach to KL (the 8pm bus).

Journey from here to KL non-stop is 5h so we reached KL on 20 Dec @ 1a.m.

Guess what, the hotel made a boo-boo and gave us a room that was still occupied!! Bert & Feli got a shock to see shoes lined up when they opened the door. Tiff & I were behind them so didn't see a thing. Bert was quite freaked out and there I was saying maybe it was the hotel's bedroom slippers. But he insisted he saw some track shoes!

So we went down again to the hotel's reception. Needless to say, the guy didn't believe us as his system showed it was vacant. So he called the room (it was almost 2am!) and someone answered the call. He was so embarrassed that he gave us a FREE upgrade! 2 choices were given to us...honeymoon suite @ 2nd floor smoking area with king-sized bed facing the pool (similar to ours except ours was at 7th floor) or executive suite with 2 single beds @ 10th floor non-smoking and facing Petrona Twin Towers. Both are so good, so hard to choose. But non-smoking and the Towers won.

We later saw that the honey-moon suite had canopy bed posts and could walk down to the pool!! So cool right? However the drawback was people from the pool can see into your room and the passage outside is the only path to the spa and pool, so it's quite noisy actually. Makes you wonder why they placed the honey-moon suite there in the first place...no privacy!

Anyway, we only had 2 full days in KL as Bert don't have any leave left, so we had to leave by Wed morning. Since we booked this hol very last minute (Bert suddenly found that he was free and had leave to clear) the only return slot was 9am or else 4pm, so we went for 9am.

First day, we booked a half day country tour. It included the Royal Selangor factory, batik making factory, a look at a rubber tree, clock & Jewellery shop and lastly Batu Caves. We got a mini van all to ourselves with a driver.

Surprisingly, the tour of the Royal Selangor pewter factory was very interesting. We got to see the museum or pewter wares, a mini replica of the drenching machine and a full sized replica of the plough. The stages of moulding the mug handles, hand polishing the mug, machine polishing the mug and hammering of patterns on the mug were all demonstrated by different workers at each of these stations. We even had the chance to hammer the patterns on pewter and drank 100plus from the mugs. There was a workshop lasting an hour @ Rm50 per child to make their own pewter masterpiece. I was interested but this was our 1st stop on the tour and the entire tour was supposed to be 3h, so we had to move on.

(Bert & I at the world's largest tankard)

(Below: Felicia hammering patterns onto pewter)

The trip to Batu Caves was great. We had to climb 272 steps up the lime caves. There are supposed to be 3 caves but I only counted 2. The insides of the caves are huge. They are actually housing hindu temples. There were not many hindus around, mostly tourists. There's lots of pigeons and monkeys at the entrance and steps to the caves. If you have never seen the insides of a cave, then you should go to this place. God's creation is so beautiful! I think these could be man-made perhaps from the excavation of lime stones, but our driver is hindu and says the caves have been there for as long as he can remember, but he admitted there once were excavation on the mountains around it, but the govt stopped it.

(Entrance to Batu Caves with its 272 steps)

(Below are some photos showing insides of caves)

We had lunch at the hotel's Japanese restaurant which was so quaint. We had our own little paper/bamboo room all partitioned like a house with sliding windows and door! Outside our doorway is a pebbled path to other "houses". So cute right? The food portions and cooking were fantastic! The waitress and usher all wore kimonos with the full works! Only thing was, they looked funny as the usher was an Indian man, and the waitresses Malay women.

(Some photos at the Komura Japanese Restaurant)

That night we had dinner at a Thai restaurant at the shopping centre. They had a promo on the milkshake where you can bring home the mugs of santa claus, Mrs claus or the snowman. The girls chose Mrs claus and the snowman. They were supposed to serve the milkshake in the mugs but instead bubble wrapped them all up for us to takeaway! So sweet. Then we went shopping till the shops closed at 10pm and we were still making our last purchases at Isetan, so that when we walked out of the shop, all the sales people were in a row bowing to us and saying good-bye! Tiffy felt like a royalty and at the same time embarrassed!

(Christmas @ Suria KLCC)

(Above: Dinner @ Imperial Chakri Palace)

The next day, after hearing that we have to queue at 7am to get into Petrona towers which only opens at 9am, and still have to pay RM35 per person, we felt it was not worth our while. Personally, I prefer to sleep in a little later. Afterall, we already had quite a good view from Batu Caves! Since we wondered around Suria KLCC yesterday, we saw there was a science centre, so we visited it. Their system is interesting. They tell you your time slot...we were there @ 10+am and were given the 12noon slot and the centre closes at 4pm (it opens at 9am). After buying the tickets, we were given the 1130 slot...seems like the slots are at every half hour. With 1h, we decided to find where the aquarium was. After some time of hunting, we found it! It was at the bottom of the building next door (and the science centre was at the topmost floor of the building next to it!)...so by the time we found the aquarium, it was time to walk back to the science

centre! Quite funny actually.

We thought the science centre was going to be small even though they told us it'll take about 2h to complete it. We had to ride into it. We thought the ride would go through different stations and thought we'll skip the 1st one and ride on. Luckily Tiffy said she wanted to alight. Guess what? If we didn't alight, the next station was actually the exit!! It seems the entire exhibition centre was spread over 2 floors of the shopping centre...the 5th and 4th floors (the centre was at the 4th floor). Really, Bert and I were pretty impressed with the centre. There were lots of interactive exhibits. Gosh, makes me worry about our own Science Centre. However, the science life demo was a let-down.

(It's only a holographic car but looks real! Got fooled!)

(Below: Oil in different forms)

After that, we went to the Aquaria....the highlight was the feeding of the pirahnas at 4pm. Then the girls discovered they had a tank with 3 ELEPHANTNOSE fish! My little fairytale fish. They were much bigger than ours which were considered babies really. These were like 10cm long! (BTW our 2nd one died already). So both Bert and I were like taking lots of photos of them! The Aquaria also has a underwater world tunnel. I think it's longer than Singapore's but ours have more variety and quantity of sea creatures than KL. Strangely, Aquaria also has many exhibits of tarantula spiders, geckos, snakes and insects besides fishes. Queer combination, but nevertheless very educational and fun. There's a touch pool too, but no washing facilities! Had to use my wet ones to clean our hands.

(My elephantnose fish)

(See the rows of teeth of the great white!)

That night, we had buffet dinner at the hotel since as guests, we had 50% discount!! The spread was mostly malay cruisine with some western spread like hams, bread rolls and mushroom soup and cakes. The satay was nice with thick peanut sauce. The ox tail stew was delicious. The portions little as there were hardly any patrons as it was a weekday night and it was pouring cats and doors. Luckily we cancelled our free hotel trip to another shopping centre @ 630pm as the girls were exhausted and wanted to go back to the hotel to rest! If we had gone instead to China town, it would have been a letdown because of the rain.

We never expected the hol to be that fun, but it was. We actually wanted to go mines wonderland, but it is closed permanently. We saw the theme park when we went there the last time but didn't have time to visit it. We were disappointed of course, but found other fun things to do which made our hol memorable!

Love Theresa

Day Out with the Girls (15 Dec 10)

Dear All

This holiday is truly super bz! Can you believe it that today (15 Dec, Wed) is the only day the 2 girls and I are free of ANY activities? Tiffany was making noise that we haven't seen the Orchard Road Christmas lights yet, and I wanted to go to the Popular Bookfest @ Suntec, so I planned that we kill 2 birds with 1 stone today.

If you had not gone to the Popular Bookfest, you should go. Lots of things are quite cheap. What's more, they have a on-going "le-long" promo @ the stage, where already cheap items are going even cheaper! We got this coin purse that can be velcro taped over your upper arm when you are jogging. Usual price $4.90 now at $3.90 and at the stage promo special, it was going for only $2.90!

Then, since there was time, we squeezed in the movie "Rupunzel". At first, I didn't want to spend so much money on movie tickets...it was supposed to be only 1 show this hols, that that was Harry Potter. Then I saw the shots for Narnia, so thought it was going to be good. Then when we met up with my bro & his fam at our parents home, my nephew recommended that we watch Rupunzel as it was really good. So we went...and I must say, there's no regrets...it was really good & funny. It's another version of why she has long hair and the story line is simple & sweet. Length of film 1h 40min. Personally I think it is better than Narnia and possibly on par with HP cos HP leaves you hanging at the end as it's only Part 1.

The last part of our night was spent walking along Orchard Road. The deco at Ion was quite nice...it has musical instruments and a tent where you can enter to see the hanging lights. Nothing much in the tent actually.

Outside Taka there's a contortionist performance. We were across @ Paragon so couldn't see the performance clearly.

Personally, we found the lights this year quite boring and disappointing. It's too simple...basically just lights and christmas trees. From Tangs upwards to Tanglin, the overhanging street lights are red. Tangs to Taka are blue, Take to Plaza Sing are purple.

We tried taking the express bus directly home (it stops just outside our place). It's a 1.5h ride but at least we got to see more of the lights enroute as it passed by Suntec, Beach Road & Marina Sands.

We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves today. Spending quality time with family need not be expensive, especially when we need to save :)

Oh, BTW, we bought some DIY craft stuff from the Popular Bookfest to make things over the rest of the holidays. It's real fun stuff like glow in the dark fabric paints, decorating drawings of animals with gems, pasting layered foams to make a picture etc. They are not too expensive but I would think they are great things to do with the girls at home this hols.

Love

Theresa

Making Cupcakes with the Girls (13 Dec 10)

Dear All

We had bought a ready-made purple icing tube, we made cupcakes on Monday, just a couple of days after the LC Christmas party. Sorry we didn't have time to make cookies for you all this year. We made cupcakes cos' it's faster & easier for me! Feli helped in creaming the butter & sugar and in spooning in the flour. Tiffany had tuition & was kinda upset she didn't get to help out in making the cupcakes. However, both of them had a fun time decorating the cupcakes.

Here's the result of our joint effort! Only Matthew & our chinese tuition teacher got to try the cakes the next day. Hope it was nice.

I had cut down the sugar as I figured the icing & mini marshmellows (courtesy of

Pat's game) would be quite sweet already.

Here's the recipe if you are interested.

Vanilla Butter Cupcakes

(Make about 20 - 23 depending on size of papercups)

Ingredients:

- 250g butter

- 300g self-raising flour

- 250g sugar (I used about 210-220g sugar)

- 5 eggs

- 2 teaspoons vanilla essence

For decoration:

- 1 tube ready-made icing

- mini marshmellows

- sprinkles of various shapes (flowers, hearts, circles etc)

Method:

1) Cream butter & sugar till creamy

2) Add in vanilla essence and eggs 1 at a time, and stir them in.

3) Add in flour 2 tablespoons at a time and stir them in.

Pre-heat oven at 180 degrees celsius (my oven is manual, or I heat it up for about 5min before putting the cupcakes in)

Bake each batch of about 12 cupcakes at a time for about 18-20 minutes for each batch.

Once they are quite cooled (the girls are impatient & can't wait till they are fully cooled down), squeeze on your icing in whatever pattern you want. Then decorate with marshmellows and dash of sprinkles.

This is the first time I've used ready-made icing. They are great & easy to use. I got mine from Cold Storage. After exposure to air for some time, the icing hardens to a nice crunchy texture. For the marshmellows, I cut them in half cross-sectionally and then squeeze the 2 ends into petal shapes.

Surprisingly, we finished baking & decorating everything in about 2+hs only!

Love

Theresa

Status of Dad

Dear All

Dropped by mum's place with the groceries tonight. Dad did not know he fainted. He was very affected by the whole episode it seems. He couldn't sleep the whole night when he got home from the hospital and kept mum up till early morning. He was reminising his life in the younger days...like his childhood home with his parents in Serangoon and when he could dance.

What touched me most was when mum told me dad was gesturing with his eyes closed and murmuring something. He raised his arms over his head then opened his palms to receive something, then opened his mouth and put his finger into his mouth. Mum bent closer to hear what he was saying...he was reciting the rosary! I believe he must have seen the Lord and was receiving Him. Mum said he looked so happy after that, and after she placed the rosary in his hands as he rested them folded on his stomach. He now has the rosary around his neck.

I feel scared. I am so afraid his time will be up soon. I guess I am already feeling sad. It's such a sad fact that we all have to go one day. What makes it sadder is to leave this world feeling sad...I think my parents are sadden that we children don't have more time to spend with them...everyone is busy with their own lives. We try to visit them every weekend as they are so old and would not be with us for very long. It's hard to talk to dad as he can't hear well nor see or speak clearly. What I do is just touch him like hold his hands and stroke his head and kiss his cheeks. I think when other senses fail, the touch is most important. I see it in babies...how they respond with happiness at being fondled, like how we ladies feel loved when our husbands or children hug us....I believe dad feels loved when I "sayang" him. He would open his eyes to look at me and smile a little. I guess when I make my mum happy, she'll be happy and make dad happy too. A hope whatever love we can give them will spread within them rather than thinking about the negatives in life.

Love

Theresa

Egg-Bot Workshop & Snow City (9 Dec 10)

Dear All

I had signed the girls up for a half day "robotic" workshop at Science Centre last week. It's called Egg-Bot. Below is how this machine looks like.

What the machine does is it enables you to draw nicely on a spherical surface.

The workshop consist of how the machine came about and how freeware called inkscape was used to program it. There were templete patterns which you can call up in files but the girls decided to draw using the mouse on the screen and sent the design to the egg-bot to draw on christmas ornaments, light bulbs and ping pong balls. The calibration of fitting the spherical object onto the machine was quite tricky, according to Feli.

This is how the final product looks like.

Pretty impressive right? The above are image grabs from the workshop's website. The girls' freehand designs were much simpler.

Next, we visited Snow City. Don't laugh, OK, but this is our 1st time there. Feli went there once with the holiday excursion with Tien Hsia when she was in kindergarten so she don't remember much.

If you are member of AA, it's the cheapest deal @ $39 for a family of 4 for a 1h play. We personally felt that the place is small...the brochure made it look like it was very big. No cameras were allowed, so we were shepherded to all the photo-nice stations and photographed by their photographers and given the photos number for our orders. After being ushered around, when we were left alone, we found out there's nothing much to do except go tubing down the slope. The ice-shavings were difficult to compact into snowballs. Since it was christmas, santa claus made an appearance. He looked kinda bored when there was no one else to pose with and gave Bert a scare when he suddenly placed his arms over his shoulders!

Feli and Bert didn't go tobogganing. I went with Tiff twice. The first time was very scary for me. I screamed all the way down as I couldn't control the tube and went down backwards. 2nd time though, I knew what to expect and tried to enjoy the ride down...tried as I was nervous and having 2nd thoughts about going the 2nd time.

The ice was very numbing when it got into the lower part of my calves...it felt like a bad blue-black. It's best to use their boots rather than your own track shoes....it's better protected from the ice shavings that inevitably would enter your shoes as you walk around. Luckily we went for 1h play instead of 2h....we left the place after like 40 minutes? It was cold but mostly because it is boring, if you are not interested in tobogganing...anyway, how many times can you go down the slope anyway?

Currently, Science Centre has 3 mobile exhibitions - CSI, Dino Robots & Zoo Robots. We went for the Zoo Robots. It's very cheap at $1 per pax. Dino is at $2 pax but we didn't have time for the Dino. Also the Zoo Robots was at Omni-Theatre which is just next door to Snow City.

Zoo Robots has huge robot replicas of animals like the rhino, bat, grasshopper, chameleon and playtapus. Some robots are interactive i.e. you can push a button and move a toggle/joystick to make it move it's tongue or see how it's eyes move. It's a very small exhibition. Only about at most 20minutes tops is needed to try out everything. As it's something new, the girls like it.

All in, we had a wonderful time today. That's another family holiday item ticked off in our "Stay in Singapore" hols this year.

Here's the 2 pixs we bought @ package A of $30 for 2 6R photos.

Love

Theresa

Dad fainted at home today (8 Dec 10)

Dear All

Our parents wedding anniversary is coming soon, but this Christmas is an un-merry one for my mum. Her recent eye-op for cataracts had an infection. My dad also has been diagnosed with cataracts in both eyes & mind you, he is being monitored by the polyclinic, but his cataracts was discovered by the optician that my mum asked me & Bert to bring him too.

Then this morning around 1030am, my mum's maid called me frantically to come over quickly as my dad something happened.

I panicked. Then I thought...what can I do if I rush there? I'm not a doctor. So I called back to tell them I had called the ambulance. I was frightened as I heard my mum's wailing in the background for my dad not to leave her. Then when I called back, my brother told me mum managed to revive dad and dad refused to go to the hospital. He asked me to cancel the ambulance. I told my bro to persuade my mum to persuade dad to go for a checkup as I was afraid he had just suffered a mild stroke. He had fainted over breakfast with his head slumbed over his chest and his whites of his eyes were showing.

He was conscious when the paramedics arrived. They found his oxygen level low (93 whereas the normal level is 97) and gave him the oxygen gas mask. Seems his sugar level was low too.

You see, my dad had an episode where he was hospitalised, and due to his weakness of voice, muscles and bad hearing and eyesight, he was ignored by hospital staff. He can't ask for water as it is hard to understand him. He needs assistance to move about as the beds are very high at the hospitals than at home where he is more mobile. So he had a bad experienced. Hence, he is reluctant to go. Besides, most old people go in don't make it out.

Luckily, he was only sent to the Observation Room at the hospital, did a brain scan (all clear) a blood test and was diagnosed as having had a fit. Seems like fits are common in old people. He was discharged at 3:30pm and given an appointment to see the neurologist in 2 weeks time (21 Dec).

We thank God & Blessed Mother Mary for protecting my dad.

Tiffany was afraid she'll lose Ah Kong before she can say goodbye. Felicia was a little red-eyed but tried to be stoic by saying everyone has to go one day. Bless my little angels that they were with me today, to guide me, console me and support me as we three trooped down to the A&E today to see their beloved Ah Kong.

Please help pray for my parents to have a blessed Christmas this year although the joy & peace & hope of the Christ Child seem so far from them during this period.

Thanks for all your prayers.

Love

Theresa

Holy Trinity Christmas Concert 2010

Dear All

The Seraphim cum Children & Youth combined choir Christmas Concert was held tonight (4 Dec 10, Sat). After so many nights and Sunday afternoons practises, they had their grand finale.

(Below: Title of Christmas Concert)

(Below:Seraphim's band with drummer hidden)

(Below: Fr Edward singing with the children's choir)

(Below: Combined 3 choirs after the intermission, part of choir cut-off due of camera's limited range)

The Seraphim (adult choir) was fantastic. The program had 13 songs featuring 2 (Bridge over Troubled Waters & When We Believe from the movie Prince of Egypt) which they had sung at the Church of St Mary of the Angels World peace concert. It was a mixture of comtempory christmas songs and a Spanish song (Riu Riu Chiu) about God's blessings on Mary & the birth of Jesus.

(Below: Close-up of Felicia)

The concert lasted about 1h 30 min with a 15min intermission, and included a guest appearance by our very own parish priest Fr Edward Lim, singing Children Run Joyfully with the children's choir. I think I may have some of the song titles incorrect but the lyrics are something like that :)

The church generously provided refreshments after the concert (which started at 8pm and ended at 9:40pm) as the children were there since 6pm, but we didn't stay for it....too many people plus Felicia wanted McDonald's, so off we went to Loyang Point for a late night supper. What a nice way to end a family night, with Mcs at home surrounded with christmas tree and the nativity, and the joyful songs of christmas still ringing in our ears...this is the true meaning of christmas, which I know you'll agree :)

Love Theresa

Our Visit to Haw Par Villa

Dear All

After so many years, we didn't know that Haw Par Villa was still around! I think the last we went there was like 8 years ago at the least! Both girls don't remember ever visiting it!

The way to the place has changed alot! You have to drive along West Coast Road and look out for Pasar Panjang Road. The carpark is within the attraction and cost $5 per entry. It closes at 7pm and last entry time is 6pm. Entrance is free.

(Above : At Mdm White Snake)

(Below: The tiger and leopard statues when I was young are still there! Yay!)

(Below: the back view of the entrance to park)

(Below: Hey Bert, you shouldn't touch the ape's watermelon!)

(Below: Just thought this closeup shot & colours would look nice on camera!)

(Below: This car is new to me..don't recall seeing it before.)

The statues have not changed. The 10 courts of hell is still there and morbid like what I had remembered in my younger days. Needless to say, it had the same effect on the children.

(Below: didn't take many shots of the courts. This was at the back of the courts statues)

(Below: Every visit to the Park has to have this shot taken!)

All in, we had a memorable and fun day at the park. There's no food vendor, the day we went, that's a Saturday afternoon around 2.30pm. Luckily, we brought sandwiches and a bottle of water. Somehow, we didn't feel that hungry, but we were very thirsty. There are drink vending machines but the ones at the "restaurant" aren't working well. The ones at the entrance to the 10 courts were. We only took 1.5h at the park and left at almost 4pm.

(Below: saw 2 turtles, so threw in some bread and viola, so many appeared & some fish too!)

(Below: This was the bridge below which are the turtles)

We are not travelling this Dec hols, as we need to save. So we are going to explore the parts of Singapore that we had either not gone before or not for a long time. We shall share with you some of our visits which we find fun.

Love

Theresa

Harry Potter & Narnia Latest Shows (Nov/Dec 2010 Hols)

Dear All

If you must choose between the latest Harry Potter - the Deadly Hallows Part 1, and the latest Narnia show, go for the former.

We had caught both shows on the opening day. Harry Potter had a special edition popcorn combo that comes with a light & sound wand. The girls LOVE it! Can you imagine some folks were playing the wand during the show? It's really value for money as it runs for 2.5h and you don't really feel it. Only frustration is, it's only part 1, so you are left hanging in the air!

We bought Narnia in 3D last minute today (2 Dec) 9:30pm show. It lasted for 2h. I have not seen it in 2D so I can't really compare which format is better. However, we chose 3D because of the shots/teasers we saw in the cinema. There's no figures "popping" out of the screen effect, however there are some nice 3D images. I suppose with the extra cost, it's still better to save and go for the normal show.

Love

Theresa