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

The excursion was to a place called Garden Asia Kids. It’s so far away you could accidentally fall into the Straits of Johor. Okay, not really that near. But to get there we had to travel along the Kranji dam, which separates Kranji Reservoir from the Straits of Johor. Also, my phone decided to roam to Celcom. Apparently Celcom signal was so much stronger than SingTel’s, because even after I set my phone to lock on to SingTel, I still couldn’t get data working.

Garden Asia Kids was mostly about plants. Perhaps Vanessa wasn’t too fascinated about plants at this time. There was one hands-on activity: potting a plant. Vanessa was quite alright with that activity. Maybe it was early enough in the morning’s programme so she wasn’t tired out yet. She potted a money plant. Money plant to help daddy earn more money.

As the morning wore on, she became less interested and eventually, wanted me to carry her. Apart from the hands-on, the rest of the morning was mostly of a see and touch experience. I suppose kids slightly older would be able to better appreciate the programme.

For Vanessa, she just wanted to have fun, and walking around listening about the various variety of plants, feeling and smelling them… that wasn’t much fun. Hmm and particularly not touching frogs.

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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.

Then… nine programming languages at age seven? Hmm.

Let me see. I am proficient in C and Perl. I used to be proficient in a variety of machine/assembler languages, BASIC, and Pascal. I can also get by with PHP and Java. Oh dear, seven only. Okay, in school, I had to do COBOL, Lisp, Prolog, LOGO, and goodness knows how many more. Then I dabbled with C++, Ruby, Python, REXX, etc.

Nine programming languages at age seven seems a little too impressive.

Vanessa’s already watching Barney and Sesame Street on the PC. She only knows how to watch though. I have to fight with her over the keyboard and mouse though, because she doesn’t know what to do with them and inevitably switches webpages, shuts down the browser, to activates some other program.

Ian… well, still too young. He can pay attention to the TV. But he likes to muck up the hubstation and DVD player, so I imagine he’ll mess up the keyboard and mouse just like Vanessa.

At the rate technology evolves, maybe I’ll find myself a bit “sua ku” when Vanessa and Ian grows up. Then, I’ll be mucking up the controls of something and they’ll be screaming… “Papa, don’t touch anything.”

Oh, perhaps not. By then, technology ought to be so advanced and idiot-proof. They’ll just work.

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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?”

It’s a little sad to think how National Service is upsetting kids. Yeah, I know, work can also separate the kids from their father. But National Service is yet another thing. For a family with young children, it also upsets logistics at home.

It’s going to be many more years before she, and Ian, figures out the army thing. Then, Ian also has to do his National Service. I wonder how he would like it. Yah, he hasn’t even started child care, let alone school, so National Service is still a long way to go to think about now.

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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.

I think, the Jurong Bird Park has somewhat failed to keep themselves exciting and relevant. Maybe there isn’t plenty of things you could show and do with birds. But try. Otherwise, they might as well merge into the Singapore Zoo. Our zoo, on the other hand (yeah I’ve been visiting it a couple of times in recent years because of Vanessa), seems to have done a better job maintaining their attractiveness.

A simple point of comparison: The children’s water play area. The one at the zoo is so much bigger, more features, and better maintained than the one at the bird park. The one at the zoo even has food outlets adjacent to the play area for parents to fill their tummies while their kids play, and I suppose also for the kids to refuel when they’re done playing. The one at the bird park is just standing on its own. The one at the zoo draws crowds, even on a weekday. When we were at the bird park, which was on weekday, there were no more than 3 kids in total.

The weather on that day at the bird park was so scorchingly hot. Within a few steps into the park, I was like feeling half ready to go home. By half-time, I was so hot and sweaty I had to have an iced cold drink. I don’t understand how come when we were little kids, we were oblivious to the heat, the sweat, the exhaustion. I remember about picnics, family days, excursions and such to the zoo that typically are nearly whole day events. Right now, I think the absolutely maximum tolerable time is half a day.

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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.

I’m learning to do pull-ups again. Yes. Finally, I’m trying to do it the over-graft method. The way that Vanessa was very naturally grasping the bar on her own without any instruction from me. But it’s not easy to switch, particularly after having been pulling the under-graft method all the time and still not being very good about it. The theory is that the over-graft method has more muscles to use, so it should be easier. I suppose that’s provided the muscles have been developed to begin with. So, well, they aren’t yet. It’s going to be IPPT time soon. I hope the over-graft will work out in time.

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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.

But Vanessa is quite okay about going to the dance class. She doesn’t protest about going to dance class, unlike how she did about going to child care at the start of this year. I suppose it’s still an outing. She gets time to play with me. She gets to order iced milo, Yakun soft-boiled egg, ham and cheese sandwich, XXL fried chicken, etc. Oh and the last week, M&M chocolates from a dispenser. Maybe, the dance class is just too serious for her. The other kids generally seem to be quite serious about the class too.

Seeing her fondness in running and jumping, I think she might be a gym kind of person. But right now, she’s not terribly confident with playground contraptions. Shallow slides are okay, but the other day at a more complicated playground, she avoided anything that was just slightly challenging. I suppose it’s a good thing to be cautious. At least she wouldn’t be attempting dangerous stunts when we’re not looking.

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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.

I still had to return our rental car. It was too early in the morning to return to the regular rental office. The after-hours return location was at a hotel near the airport. It’s fortunate that I researched the route to get to the hotel myself, because I got played out by the GPS navigation. What happened was that the GPS navigation directed me to a lower level of a two-tier road. That means no clear view of the sky, so there was no GPS signal, and without GPS signal, the navigation stopped working. I suppose it isn’t really the fault of the GPS navigation system… this was in fact the way to get to the hotel drop off. But it was so early in the morning, the streets are not as well lit as in Singapore, it was difficult to make out the street names. Nevertheless, I found the hotel without too much hassle.

Check-in took a really long time. I think checking-in in several smaller groups will probably work out faster than doing it in a single large group.

We did encounter something interesting on our flight segment from Tokyo Narita Airport to Singapore. We were upgraded to Business Class! Actually, I’m not sure if it was truly a class upgrade, because they never told us it was (wouldn’t they want you to know if they upgraded your seat?), and the boarding ticket did not reflect the business class either. But the seats we had was clearly of a business class configuration. Yet, there were curtains separating us from the real business class in front of our section, but no curtains between us and the real economy class behind. It’s sort of like the business class seats had been re-designated as economy.

The seats were so comfortable that all the kids slept practically all the way home to Singapore. Including most of the adults, and at least for most of the way too. Except for me. It’s the first time I’m flying in a business class seat that I kept awake to watch the in-flight movies. Finally, the movies were on-demand, something that I had not enjoyed on any of the other JAL flights.

We arrived back in Singapore early on New Year’s Day. Midnight of 1 Jan 2010 was on the plane. I was kind of expecting some sort of New Year’s Day special on the flight, but we didn’t even get so much as a simple greeting.

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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.

The food at Happy Days was quite good anyway, with chilli or not. It was far better than the disappointing Panda Express I had earlier at Kahala Mall. We ate our fill and had to pack some remainder to go.

After lunch, we decided to make a stop for some last minute shopping. Apart from the Premium Outlets, we were told that Ross also had good clothing bargains. So that’s where we headed for, the Ross store at Keahole Street. It’s not a very biggish place, but it’s a no frills store, no fancy displays, no mannequins. All the merchandize were compactly racked. Clothes were not sorted by brand sections, but by type and size. E.g. men’s jeans, then by size. So you have a mixture of all sort of jeans brands together. It makes sense, I suppose, because they don’t really have all sizes for any particular type. So, just focus your shopping around the sizes that fit you.

The prices at Ross were competitive for some types of clothing, but not for everything. I found, for example, the Addidas apparels not differently priced from those at the Premium Outlets. But CK tees at US$7.49 and Levi’s jeans at US$19 were a steal.

If I were to ever come to the US again, I should probably make it a point to drop by a Ross store.

I also dropped by a storage company to buy some boxes. We need extra packing space to bring back all our shopping. There’s no way we could pack them back into the luggages we came here with, despite various consumables having been expended. In fact, when we spent the rest of the evening and night packing, we were almost unable to fit everything in. Although we had an extra box to spare, we tried to make do with just one of the storage boxes we bought (18″ x 18″ x 16″ size), and it was bursting at its seams.

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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.

The entrance to Hanauma Bay from the highway is at the top of the cliffs. The views from up there is beautiful. From the top, you can look down to the beach (in the photo), and it looks really magnificent too. You can see how clear the waters are, and the corals show through pretty well. It’s no wonder that so many people are queuing to get down there (or were they queuing for something else…?).

I made a trip down to Kahala Mall in the afternoon with Vanessa. We were just going to browse around, and pick up some chocolates and other stuffs to bring back to Singapore to give to friends. I had to make a stop at the Apple Store just to look around. Vanessa went into the store as well, of course, and I found out how quickly she became an Apple fan. There was an iMac at the far end set on a low table that she can reach. It was running some kids program on it. She was so attracted to it that she couldn’t care that I wanted to move on elsewhere. In the end, I had to carry her out of the store, and she was protesting all the way out!

Then, when we were out, she kept wanting to go back. We shopped around other parts of the mall, then eventually I had to backtrack to our starting point (I have to get back to our car after all). To get back to our starting point, I had to pass near the Apple Store again. Vanessa told me she wanted to go to the “white shop”. Yup, the Apple Store was referred to as the “white shop”. She’s really attracted to the Apple Store, and I suppose, the iMac in there. So now we have two Apple fans in this family.

Which reminds me, when I’m back home, I should have a new MacBook Pro waiting for me. That means the existing MacBook will be permanently at home, and perhaps Vanessa will get to use it at some point. Her first computer is going to be an Apple. Just like my first computer was an Apple (albeit a clone one…).

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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.

We were high enough to get pretty good views of the city below. I don’t know exactly what we might get to see had we actually paid the $5, parked the car, and explored the crater. But it was good where we were without having to pay anything. ($5 isn’t much anyway.)

Next stop was the Waikiki Aquarium. It’s really small and unimpressive if you compare it to something like the Underwater World we have at Sentosa. But like the many other things we did, I guess this is for the kids. There are a few outdoor exhibits, the largest being the Hawaiin monk seals. Most of the exhibits are indoors. They had giant clams here, so huge that I couldn’t recognize them as clams initially. The jellyfish were pretty too. But many of them had their super long tentacles all tangled up. I wonder if they know how to undo the mess on their own, or if anyone (i.e. the aquarium staff) helps to untangle them.

I’m wondering if the Sea Life Park Hawaii might have been a more interesting visit, but we were told the Waikiki Aquarium was better. Perhaps it depends on that you want to see or do.

In the afternoon, we headed over to the Waikele Premium Outlets. This is probably the main adult activity for me. For those of you who haven’t been to the US to shop, this is where you get all the branded goods at discounted prices. I’ve learnt that sometimes the prices aren’t a whole lot cheaper than those you get in the regular downtown shopping malls, but there are other items that are really cheap. At any rate, they are a whole lot better than in Singapore. Take Levi’s jeans for example. The same pair that lists at over S$200 here, and which probably gets discounted to S$130 or so during Great Singapore Sales or other promotions, goes for something like US$25. Really cool. I bought some Levi’s tees at 2 for US$20, so that’s just S$14 per tee. The Wife got plenty of clothes for the kids. The kid’s clothes at Carter’s start at US$3.99. It’s a pity we didn’t have more time to browse though all the shops there.

I think, new clothes for the coming CNY should be quite settled.

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