Skate with me, my friend!

"Don't walk in front of me; I might not follow. Don't walk behind me; I might not lead. Just walk beside me and be my friend."  ---Albert Camus

Whilst we were staycationing at Marina Bay Sands Hotel earlier this week, Audrey and her best friend Rachel decided they wanted to try out skating. “It’s the same as rollerblading. We want to try it!” they insisted. I was frankly quite surprised that they were so eager… and fearless! 

Before they could get started though, we had to go on a little scavenger hunt… for socks (yes, they’re mandatory). The ones sold at the rink were too big for Audrey’s dainty feet. Fortunately,  we didn’t have to go far. We managed to find them just upstairs at the Poney shop. We got the skates, which the girls quickly donned and off they went, onto the rink!

They started rather tentatively, holding on to the side rails and taking small steps. Balance came quite easily to them but they liked the security of having the rails well within reach. They skated maybe three rounds around the rink, keeping close to the side.

It wasn’t long before they ventured into the centre. They made it look all quite easy really even though they weren’t exactly whizzing around the rink. A few stumbles here and there, but they were just fine. 

They were moving, gliding around carefully but confidently. They even managed to fool around a little and had a very animated discussion and conversation balancing on their skates in the middle of the rink. We were too far away to know what they were chatting about, but they looked like they were having fun… and that’s all that mattered really!

Well done, you two – we’re so proud of you. We’ll be back again soon!

 

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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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“New Friends Picnic”

As we near the end of the long November/December holidays, it gets harder to plan activities for the kids as they’ve done so much of the “usual holiday activities”. Well, the good thing though is, sometimes, all it takes is a little novelty and the same old thing is suddenly new and fun again.

Which was the case when our dear friend Elaine decided to bring together a few “stranger moms” and our kids by organising a nice morning picnic at the Botanic Gardens on 23 December. The novelty factor: Most of us haven’t really had the opportunity to get to know each other, even though our 4-year olds all attend the same school and are in the classrooms which are next to each other! So thanks to Elaine, we all made new friends that morning - kids and moms alike – over a simple brunch of home-prepared snacks.

Such a lot of fun it was!  Here are some picnic pictures - Scootering and running up and down the slopes.. mini-badminton….

Playing “What’s the time, Mr Wolf?” …

And then “London Bridge is Falling Down”…

…And The Left/Right Present Exchange – to celebrate Christmas!

At the end of the morning, it seemed apt to borrow a line from William Butler Yeats: “There are no strangers here; Only friends you haven't yet met.”!

Closing Shot: My favourite picnic shots of Anthony – a reminder of how quickly he’s growing up when he offered to carry our picnic cooler and also made his very own star bubble!