It's been a long while since I blogged. Been so busy with our life that I lost track of time too.
Ting Ting development
For the past 2 years, my gal celebrated her birthday differently. We celebrated her birthday at home, inviting her friends to celebrate. She came out with her invite list and activities to engage her friends during her home birthday party. As she is growing up, she likes the autonomy to go out and play with her friends. I think this is something align with her developmental needs and developing her social skills in building friendships too. Of course that is with some limits and boundaries in place such as she has to do her homework and chores first before playing with her friends and be home before dinner and etc.
She has grown much as well, now same height as me already. She's now wearing the same shoe size as me too! It's such an amazing journey that from a small tiny baby, to grow to becoming like a teenager. She now likes to wear teenage dressing already and no longer likes Disney princesses and any cartoon characters. Her self-identity is slowly evolving and wanting to see herself as a grown up, but then of course her mannerism and thinking is still childlike which is something I appreciate. I would consider her as a young pre-teen.
While she is still childish in some of her ways, such as throwing tantrums when she don't get what she wants, but generally, she is getting more sensible and able to listen more to reasons. Although struggling with her academics especially Maths, but after much fine-tuning and with extra practice efforts, she has shown good progress and did well for her year end exams for the past 2 years. I've signed her up for group tuition and individual private tuition, but none was suitable for her. The group tutor was too relax with the class that the students ended up playing and running around during lessons and of course there had been limited progress. The private tutor was too critical that she made some insensitive and hurtful remarks about my gal which I find it harsh and therefore find her unsuitable to continue, as her way of teaching was too old school and could impact to my gal's self-esteem, which is a crucial element to her mental and physical development. Ended up I tutored her myself, setting aside weekend morning time to drill her on her practice. Maths is after all about practice. Initially, it started with Maths and Chinese, thereafter, it included English and Science too. I would make sure a balance between learning and play, so that after the practice, she can go out play with her friends or we go out for family time.
She also participated in the yearly in house art competition in 2022 & 2023. She has been attending art lessons and her art school organised yearly in house art competition for the students to showcase their art pieces. Although she got the consolation prizes for both years , but it was a good attempt and she is motivated to join the art competition in 2024 again.
In 2023, she volunteered to be the emcee for her school national day event. Seeing her speak confidently in front of the crowd during the event made me so proud of her. Her teacher texted me after the event praising that she was very calm and steady! Another teacher also wrote her a note praising her of not giving up and showing resilience and determination!
Travel 2022-2023
At her current stage of life, learning is important and so is play and having fun too. Ever since the covid restrictions removed, we resumed back to travel during school holidays. In 2022, as some of the covid restrictions still in place, we mostly engaged more activities in SG, such as visiting cat cafes, picnic at beach, cycling trips in SG. We travelled to KL in June 2022, Sunway Lagoon, Kidzania, Genting for theme park and strawberry farm and went JB for staycation in Jul22. The KL trip was with much fun and adrenaline with the theme parks visiting!
In Sep22, we visited Hanoi, taking the Halong Bay cruise and stayed at a special hotel Legacy Yentu at the base of the Yentu Mountain. The hotel is highly recommended. It has complimentary lessons such as yoga and mindfulness practice. They also have spa and massage services which is top notch and surprisingly not too expensive too. The Vietnam trip was nice and fun too. It was a more relaxing trip and we all enjoyed! Through the trip to Yentu, I started my interest in mindfulness practice.
My hubby also changed job and while waiting for his new job to commence in Dec22, he went for a family bonding trip with his parents to Chiangmai in Nov22 which looks fun too. It was the first time he brought them for overseas trip. I'm sure my in-laws were very happy with their son's initiative!
We went Bali after he came back from Chiangmai. We stayed in Kuta and Ubud during the trip. While this is not the first time we went Bali, but I remembered Bali used to memerised us especially during our ROM honeymoon and subsequent trip before our gal was born. Everything was so charming back then. But this time when we went back to Bali after 10 over years and the first time with our gal, I felt the charm faded. The roads were jammed with cars with walking pavement in a dismay state. The infrastructure has not changed after all these years. Probably last time with no child, all these flaws can be overlooked, but now with a child, I would prefer to go to a place which is more clean, more safe with better infrastructure. I felt that Bali has lagged behind in terms of its development. While it still has its laid back feel, but it is no longer attractive to me. Probably after this visit, we may not go to Bali for a very long time. One new thing which my gal and hubby tried was surfing. Yes, they had a private surfing lesson at the kuta beach for 2 hours and at a very affordable price. Surprisingly, my gal able to surf well as compared to my hubby haha. After the lesson, my hubby got aches all over his body, probably a sign of aging too haha. My gal was doing well with no much aches reported. Travelling after all is about having new experiences and trying out something new!
Overall, 2022 was the restart of our wanderlust.
In 2023, we travelled to Bintan Club med in May23 and stayed there for 3 nights. We all enjoyed the activities and food over there. Although the prices were expensive, but considering the all-inclusive and high quality of its activities and services, it was very worth it and highly recommended! I got to try out aerial yoga, yoga lessons by my own, while my gal and hubby attended snorkelling lessons. It was great as we got to enjoy the activities we like. It was the first time my hubby and gal tried out snorkelling and they fell in love with it. Besides trying out lessons we liked, we also got to engage in activities as family such as playing golf, archery, squash, tennis, playing pool and etc. My gal liked it so much that she asking to go back to Clubmed again.
In Jun23, we went to M'sia again for a road trip. We went to JB, visiting dog cafes which was fun. We also went to Desaru, relaxing at the beach, water theme park and the firefly night cruise. Lastly we went to Legoland and the Legoland water park. The road trip was enjoyable, relaxing yet also fun too.
In Sep23, we went to HK for a 1 week trip which was during the super typhoon Saola period. We were so worried at the start but as we already bought the air tickets long ago, thus to go ahead with it since the airline didn't cancel the flight too. But when we reached HK, surprisingly not much impact from the typhoon. And during the rest of our trips, it was sunny days with no rain. We went to HK Disneyland, ocean park and ocean world, the tram peak and also did some trekking in the HK peak and in Lantau Island. It was quite refreshing that we experienced the nature side of HK. We went HK 10 over years ago before my gal was born and we focused mainly in the HK City area and we didn't enjoy it. But the Sep23 trip was more enjoyable, probably because we focused more on going theme parks and trekking in the nature which was something we enjoyed. The most memorable of this trip was during the last night in HK at about 10pm, it started raining heavily. We didn't thought much at first but the next day morning, we were shocked to see the whole street flooded with waters and cars were submerged into the waters too. Our flight back to SG was in the afternoon, but we thought of quickly going to the airport due to the flood situation and it continued to rain, thus the flood might get worse. The cars, buses and trams all stopped service, but luckily the MTR still operating. Thanks to the hotel staff, we managed to leave the hotel at the back street which was not so affected by the flood. We walked, dragging our luggage in the heavy rain to the MTR station, holding umbrellas and wearing raincoats (luckily I brought the raincoats. Just got some feeling before the trip that I must bring rain coat). When we safely reached the HK airport, we were so relieved. After back in SG, when reading the news, true enough the flood got worse and it was the worse flood in HK history for the past 100 years. We felt so thankful of being able to be back SG safely. It was also an eye opening experience for us to have had experienced the worse flood in HK history.
In early Nov23, I travelled to HK again but this time with my mom. My mom wanted to watch her idol Jackson Wan (Wan Kwong)'s concert in HK. It was very rare that my mom wanted to travel as usually she dislikes travel and would decline our invite for travel. Thinking that it is a gd opportunity to spend some time with my mom, thus I brought her to HK just me and her alone for 5 days 4 nights. We ate dim sum every day, took harbour cruise high tea, visited the peak, explored lantau island by taking the cable car, took a cruise at the Tai O village and we saw a pink dolphin! Besides her idol's concert, she also attended a cantonese opera concert. Such concerts are common in HK but very rare and seldom in SG. I accompanied her to the Wan Kwong's concert. She enjoyed the concert whereas for me, it was an experience although Wan Kwong's songs are not my cup of tea. While she attended the cantonese opera concert, I went to HK Palace Museum to attend the Sanxingdui exhibition. It was my interest and i got to have a taste of some solo travel overseas. It was a much relaxing trip as compared to the Sep23 one. I enjoyed the time we spent together. It was also during this trip i realised my mom's mobility issues got worse through the years. Thus probably in the next trip with her, it be better to have something even more relaxing with less walking.
After my HK trip, we went to Indonesia Bintan again in mid Nov23 to celebrate my hubby's birthday. This time we stayed at the Doulos Phos ship hotel. The hotel is very special as it was a real ship with rich historical meaning being refurnished into a hotel. We attended the tour conducted by the owner of the hotel and we were so fascinated by the history of the ship and the owner's determination and perseverance in setting up the ship as a hotel and the difficulties and challenges he faced in moving the ship to Bintan too. I was touched by his sharing of externalisation internalisation which means "using what has been placed in our hands to achieve what has been placed in our hearts". I was tearing as I heard this as it resonated with me much. Each of us are being born to this world with different circumstances such as our family of origins, environment and being given different resources. However, we can tap on what we are being given to pursue or realise our innate gifts/strengths/talents to ultimately achieve our potential. It reminded me of the love of God. We each have our journey to go through to get to learn more about ourselves, our connection to others and the meaning of our life too with God's guidance if we allow. We mostly swim and relax at the hotel enjoying its great sea view. My gal and hubby went snorkelling day trip too, and I get to spend some "me time" in the hotel having massage and also some journalling as well. It was a much rested trip nourishing my soul.
In Dec23, we went to Taiwan again together with my gal and hubby. Its been quite some time since we went Taiwan. We tried out something different this time. We took HSR to Tainan and rented a car to self-drive around southern Taiwan. The Tainan HSR area was very quiet and with not many cars so it is ideal for driving considering we are not so familiar with driving on the right side. Self-drive in Taiwan was a fun experience with more freedom and flexibility as compared to hire driver. We drove from Tainan HSR to Maolin national park area to see the purple butterfly migration as they tend to migrate to that area during winter period and nobody knows why till this date too. It was amazing to see the herds of butterly at the valley and we also got to do some trekking as well. After Maolin, we drove to Kenting. we stayed in Kenting for 3 nights and it was a very relaxing beach resort town, with fantastic scenery. we also did trekking at the Kenting national park which was very nice and easy trek too. After Kenting, we drove back to Tainan and took HSR to Taipei. We went to the Beitou hot spring as a day trip and it was a nice experience and shiok to enjoy the hot spring with the cold weather. Overall the Taiwan trip was great with a mixture of different new experiences.
2023 has been a year of new experiences and connection for me. The new experiences reminded of my spiritual beliefs and also gratitude for the opportunities and safety. I look forward to more new meaningful experiences in 2024 allowing us to grow and learn together!
