I went along with Vanessa for her school excursion a couple of days ago. Mummy did not come along this time. I think Vanessa quite enjoyed herself. I asked her at the end if she liked the trip, and she said yes. I asked if she would like to come to the same place again, and surprisingly, her answer was no. Hmm. I asked if she didn’t like the place? No, she didn’t. Okay, so she enjoyed the trip because I went along with her? Yes. Happy daddy 
Oh no, someone’s kid knows how to boot up a PC and use a mouse at the age of two. Vanessa is already three. It seems we are a little behind time. But she’s quite the expert using Nokia touchscreen smart phones, navigating to the music player, and listening to her favourite “Nobody, nobody but you” song. Quite impressive, I think. I’m not clear what exactly “running software” means, but it does sound like a significant achievement. Or, maybe it just means to launch Internet Explorer.
Yes, it’s ICT time again. This year with a slightly older Vanessa who can ask intelligent questions. Questions like: “Papa, you go army again?” Or: “Why need to go army?” On day one, she was amused that my No. 4 uniform is green like her child care centre’s uniform. She commented, “Green, green, same!” Yah, but army is so unlike going to child care centre eh. But anyway, on day two, I think she wasn’t very pleased that I had to go army, again. I told her it will be for many more days. She asked, “Why?”
I recently visited the Jurong Bird Park. Yah, such an unlikely place for anyone to visit. Isn’t there like the new IR at Sentosa to visit eh? Well, it’s an excursion organized by Vanessa’s child care centre. It’s for the kids. That’s why I was there, and that’s probably going to be the only reason for a long time that I would ever be going to the bird park. I cannot remember when was the last time I set foot inside the bird park, but it must be a really really long time ago.
See what I mean about Vanessa being a gym kind of person? I went to the “fitness corner” (it really is in a corner…) with Vanessa. There was a proper pull-up bar for me, and while I was doing my own pull-ups, Vanessa copied. No need for coaxing or any prompting. She just pulled up on some other bar that she could reach. Alright, she isn’t pulling yet, but she can hang from the bar and swing quite well.
Vanessa had her last dance class today. At least for now. We’re not continuing her class because she doesn’t seem very keen about it. In fact, most of the time, she simply doesn’t follow the class at all, except for the one or two activities which involve something that she likes. Running, and jumping, for example. Stomping her feet with her tap shoes too. But even then, she makes up her own variations of the routines. It’s a difficult time accompanying her for the class when she doesn’t want to listen.
After twelve days in Honolulu, it’s time for us to return home. Our flight is at 8am in the morning, which means we’ve to get to the airport pretty early that morning, and that means getting up and starting the day even earlier to get to the airport on time. Traveling with kids means everything takes a lot more than time than adults alone would have taken. What more, with the “enhanced security” measures being introduced after the NW253 bomb scare, we were a little apprehensive about additional delays that might occur at the airport.
Today’s the last full day we have in Honolulu, because we leave for our flight back to Singapore early tomorrow morning. We decided to all have lunch together at a nearby Chinese restaurant called Happy Days. Easy to find, thanks to GPS navigation again. We had dim sum and ordered a few other dishes. I found myself liking the chilli particularly. Then I realized that I haven’t had any chilli since stepping foot in the US. I don’t know if the chilli at Happy Days was really that good, or that I was simply missing the taste of chilli.
Our previous drive eastward on the Kalanianaole Highway brought us past Hanauma Bay, but it was closed (every Tuesday). Today, we made a trip just to see this place. Unfortunately, the car park was full, and we weren’t let in. In the end, we stopped at another nearby sightseeing point, and walked to Hanauma Bay. The place is awfully crowded. You have to pay to get to the beach. There is a public bus route whose main purpose is to serve beach users, so it doesn’t operate on Tuesdays (when Hanauma Bay closes). I couldn’t understand all the fuss over Hanauma Bay. But when you get there, you will appreciate it.
We did a few things today: Visit to Diamond Head Crater, the Waikiki Aquarium, and then shopping at the Waikele Premium Outlets. We didn’t actually plan to go up Diamond Head Crater initially, but since we were going to be driving past it, we thought why not just stop for a few moments. It does cost $5 per car to go in, according to a sign post at the bottom on the trail doing up. It turned out that the car park at the top was full, so we couldn’t go in anyway. We turned back and stopped somewhere along the way to look around and take some photos.
I think we had 11 oysters each, from The Line restaurant at Shangri-la Hotel. It's a big buffet with plenty of food.
Lunch at Lerk Thai some weekends ago.
