Anthony & His Dream Plant

Anthony’s been asking me for awhile now to buy him a Venus Flytrap plant. It was love at first sight – how apt it had to be Venus - the Roman goddess of love, haha! He was first captivated watching them in a documentary on Okto featuring unusual plants.

The Venus Flytrap is a truly fascinating plant. A carnivorous plant that catches and digests insects - and I learnt later, small animals too, such as frogs! It traps using its leaves which have tiny hairs as triggers. To prevent it from unnecessarily wasting energy or trapping things that have no nutritional value, a trap will only close when a different hair is contacted within twenty seconds of the first contact.

When he saw Chompers at work in Plants vs Zombies (fourth row from the left, behind the walnuts), it just reinforced his desire to have one. 

We finally took a trip to Far East Flora today after lunch and, lo and behold, they were in stock. He was ecstatic! He peered into each little pot and started talking about what it can and will do if we bought it. There will be no more ants, no more mosquitoes, no more bugs… He promised to take care of it even, somehow feeding it with insects and such! It became pretty obvious that we were not going to leave the shop without buying one…

So we got down to choosing what looks like a healthy plant.

Now we have to make sure this lasts… not because there are so many creepy crawlies at home that need eradicating but this little plant doesn’t come cheap - $16.80 for the little pot! Seeing the glow and grin on Ant though…Priceless!

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Passports & the Passing of Time

We received a reminder in the mail a month back that Anthony’s passport would be expiring soon. We applied for a new one and it took just over a week for the application to be processed. 

We collected his spanking new passport today and I couldn’t help but compare the two passport photos. Four years ago and now.

He doesn’t even recognise himself in his earlier photo – “That’s ME? No… I don’t think so.”. *LOL*.

How time flies!

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From Zombie… to CC Ninja

“I-P”.. that’s short for iPhone… can be extended to refer to iPad. And no, it has nothing to do with Intellectual Property.

This code name was coined by our friends’ child and it rolls off the tongues of the little ones whenever we meet up with this group of friends, which is most Sundays. That’s when Anthony & Audrey and their friends get together to swop and play iPhone/iPad games.

So Anthony’s very active imagination continues to project I-P virtual reality to the real world. First it was Plants vs Zombies.

More recently, he decided that there’s more use for his green dinousaur belt than just to hold up his favourite jeans. The belt holds – unbeknownst to most of us especially adults - the secret power to transform its wearer into CC Ninja. That’s short for Chop Chop Ninja. I was given a quick introduction to this interesting character - yup, that’s him on the right. Ant is the green version, for most part because he loves green but also because of this green belt. 

 

………………What will he think of next, we wonder!!!!

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Princess Jewellery Collection: A game the whole family can play!

When you have a 7yo daughter and a 4yo son, there are many moments when they don’t play together. It’s usually just a matter of preference and interest. There are of course a few common ‘spaces’, like Lego – though she tends to want to make gardens and houses while he prefers trucks and construction sites. Playing ‘masak-masak’ or restaurant/kitchen/home is another – again, she’s older and prefers more structured play from providing menus and customer service to cooking elaborate dishes, while he just wants to stack cups and plates and potter around the kitchen doing stuff randomly. You can imagine the bossing around that happens with these scenario. And then, of course, there are board games – which isn’t always ideal since the 3+ year age gap creates some chaos that game rules do not cater for. 

That’s why today was extra special. After dinner, when I suggested to them to pick out something they could play together, for some inexplicable reason, they decided to settle for this: Audrey’s Princess Jewellery Collection game!

It’s a simple little game. Players spin the wheel and move their tokens around the board and collect the specified piece of jewellery in their own colour. There are some penalties as with any game. The winner is the one who completes their set first.

 

They must have played at least 10 rounds, having a good laugh with each and adding variations to the game to keep it roaringly funny. And they each had their turns winning. They were game to put everything on… and let me take pictures!!! Here are their Crowning Victory photos with the works: crown, earrings, bracelet, necklace, ring… I think I got them all?

It was just precious seeing them have such a fun together over such an unlikely game!

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Politics, Plain & Simple…..

General Elections is no laughing business, we are told. Well, there certainly wasn’t much to laugh at for my kids, though I had a good chuckle over this. I’m tempted to call it POLITICS 101: Why Politicians need to listen to The Little People…..

ME, listening to news radio in the car and the Big Announcement of the day: "Oh, May 7 is Polling Day!"

DAUGHTER: "What does that mean?"

ME: "We vote for a new government..blah blah blah."

DAUGHTER (very excited): "So teachers have to vote too? Is it a holiday?"

ME: "Yes, it should be a holiday.. but it may be a Saturday, so I guess it really doesn't matter."

DAUGHTER: "(WAIL) So bad! Why did they choose Saturday... the government is so bad, I hope no one votes for them!"

SON (who was listening intently and is in the echo-whatever-Big-Sister-says stage of life): "Yes, no one will vote for them, so bad!"

Now I can’t wait for Polling Day and the GE2011 results...!!!

 

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Concentrate!

So I’ve been trying to get Anthony who’s in K1 into some regular routine of writing daily (I hope my experience with this 4yo isn’t anything too different from most other parents with 4yos!). Anyway, there are good days when he cooperates with me willingly and then there are those ‘other days’ when the only things that seem to work are threats and more threats…

I had one of the best days yesterday – at least from a laugh-o-meter perspective…

Me: (The usual prelude to “time to sit down now”) Anthony, you’re a big boy now. All big boys must learn to read… Must practice writing so you can write neatly…

Anthony: OK, Mommy… (sits down, chooses his favourite coloured pencil, starts putting pen to paper, erases something, writes/scrawls/scribble, occasionally asks for something to eat/drink, writes/scribbles/erases some more, stands up & walk arounds, ... repeat…)

When he was finally done, he brought his book to show me.

Me: This is good. Well some good, some you need to try and do more neatly?

Anthony: OK, Mommy. You know I *always* *really* try (SIGH)… I’m really very concentrated you know.

Concentrated. Wow. Nevermind that he didn’t use the work quite correctly, the thing is I didn’t even know he had an inkling what “concentrate” means. He must’ve been listening in and concentrating quietly during my conversations about focus & concentration with his big sister.

Alright, very concentrated accepted. You are learning lots at your own pace. Keep at it, you’ll master lots soon enough. Especially if you concentrate. Mommy loves every little concentrated bit of you! 

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Help! There’s a Zombie on my bed !!!

Last night, we heard strange Chomp-Chomp-Chomping noises and squeals of laughter coming from the bedroom. We looked in only to find this scene… right out of Plants vs Zombies! 

Anthony had made a funny discovery: His plastic toy pail fit perfectly on his head and this would turn him into one of the creepy Buckethead Zombies from the game (see the resemblance to the ‘real’ thing on the right!?!). He even took pains to ensure that the pail-handle fell in front of his face!

Audrey very gamely grabbed a bunch of flowers and became the sunflower that the Zombie would chomp up greedily!!

 Guess that’s probably a much better ending than this….

!!!!!!!!

 

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“Do women have ‘more voice’ than men?”

 

Anthony & Lorraine @ Robertson Quay (2010)

Last evening, whilst Husband, Grandma, Grandpa, and I were having a nice chat over dinner, Anthony who was playing quietly around the dinner table perked up suddenly and threw this question my way…

Ant: Mummy, why do women have more voice than men?

Me (Quite puzzled): What do you mean by ‘more voice’… Do you mean speak louder?

Ant: No, not louder! More voice means women have a lot more words…

Me: A lot more words? So we say a lot more?

Ant:  Yes. A lot a lot more. That’s why I said a lot more voice… Women say a lot more things.

Me: And the men?

Ant: The men have less voice lah…..

Me: (Speechless)

Is it true women talk more than men? The debate rages on……

 

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The Making Of Our Very Own Junior CSI Team !

 

 

Meet our Junior CSIs: Audrey, Rachel, Jared, Aaron & Anthony (L-R)

Audrey and her schoolmates had an extra day of holiday today to celebrate the school’s 2010 PSLE and ‘O’ Level results. We decided, together with our friend Pei Hua, to bring the kids to the CSI exhibition at the Singapore Science Centre. As fans of the CSI TV series, we were pretty excited to see what was in store!

As we entered the exhibition, we were handed clipboards with our assignments. We were Level 1 CSIs, with our own unique Agent IDs. Our CSI experience started with a briefing from none other than Gil Grissom himself (via video!). We received instructions and a run-down of what to expect.

We would be investigating 3 cases. Case 1 was a car that crashed through a house; Case 2 was a dead woman in an alley; and Case 3 was a human skeleton found in the desert. The forms on the clipboard (pic on left) served as guides to help us with the investigations. Each case had its own task list and lab work to complete.

It followed a fairly straightforward process. Like every CSI episode, we started with a close scrutin of the crime scene. The case forms have a basic diagram of the crime scene and it was our job to observe and jot down notes of what we saw. 

When this was done, just like on TV, we headed to the lab. There were various lab stations, covering ballistics, blood splatter analysis, toxicology, forensics, fingerprinting and so on. We got to look through microscopes, check out real bullets and analyse DNA, tyre striation marks etc.

The exhibition had informative videos featuring CSIs from the TV series as well real-life CSIs. We continued to make notes on our forms as we examined the evidence and uncovered the identities of the victim and the suspects. The final stage was the autopsy by Dr. Robbins - he gave a concise summary of the injuries and cause of death for each case. With that, we completed our reports and got ready to hand them to Supervisor Grissom!

At the end of the entire experience, we received our CSI diplomas - signed by Grissom of course!

Overall, the CSI Experience was entertaining – good fun for an outing with the kids. As it targets a broad range of participants including younger school kids, most of the information was presented in a rather simplified manner and did not require much actual analysis to arrive at the correct answers. It would have been much more interesting for adults and older kids to have had at least one case that was challenging to work on. The crime scenes, while generally well thought through and assembled, were not quite as realistic as some of us who are used to the TV series would have expected or liked. For example, the dead bodies were obviously cloth dummies - we guessed this was probably needed so as to not scare off the kids!

After all, it was Grissom who said: “Amazing how the sight of blood can clear a room.” …The organisers wouldn’t have wanted that scenario for sure!

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Musings on The Art Stage

 

What a nice coincidence to be handed complimentary VIP passes to Art Stage on a weekend when we had some extra time on our hands!

We decided to bring our kids and make it a family outing to view this “exhibition of contemporary art galleries”. It promised “the best and most interesting from the Asia Pacific juxtaposed against and in a dialogue with carefully selected Western positions”. …. Hmmm..

Like its event description, the exhibits stretched our imaginations and gave use much to think about… and decipher.  Some installations seemed readily understood and appreciated. Others were plain puzzling, quite intriguing…. and somewhat bizarre. Audrey and Anthony’s reactions to the art we saw garnered many a chuckle. They were so full of curiousity and had no qualms getting up close and personal with some of the art pieces (sometimes too close for comfort though they managed for most part to keep their fingers off the art pieces!).

They asked gallery managers “How did the artist do this?”, “Why did they make it like this?”, “What does this mean?” and of course my all-time favourite: “What’s this?” Some gallery staff tried to explain, others just looked stumped, embarrassed. Quite hilarious. That’s art a for you.

Blend of Food & Art: Sushi?? Look closely, they’re vehicles – lorries, garbage trucks, cement mixers,….

 

Life Transformations: Pile of Dried Chilies meet Giant Chili Grinder…. From Girl to Old Woman (Anthony was trying to convince Audrey where she fits, just too funny!)

Art imitating life… or vice versa? ….Yes, the art installation on the right is a Mamak store… Audrey reading Life Stories in Letters & scrutinising “Singapore’s DNA”!

Green Art: Saving Our World… from Fish to Forests… Monster Machine…

  

Modern and whimsical Multimedia Art (L-R): Multi-screens depicting Echoes in the Mind… A video capturing Life in Motion… Crystal City – a marvellous display created by a moving light source against structures of transparent plastic boxes. 

 

Icons Intertwined : Portraits of LKY, Warhol, Marilyn – each made up of small prints of other icons…

 

Art of War & Terrorism: SIA kebayas meet Soldier’s camouflage… Holy Wars...  Boy & Machines…

 

Picasso was there too!

I saved these random few for last….Robot Mickeys, Humongous Knife, Backstabbing Chair….

 

….and finally, some Art that FLOORED us…

……and left lots for the Arty-Farty to think about!

Finally, it was time to sit back and reflect on it all… over a nice long drink !

 

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