Zit Seng's Superwall

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.

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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?”

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Day one in Hawaii was spent doing nothing touristy. Not unless recovering from a long trip is considered a touristy activity. When traveling with kids, especially infants, I think everyone, adults and the children, all get very tired. So the entire day was just spent recovering from the trip. I took about a 1.5 hour nap in the afternoon. I’ve travelled much longer distances before, but I think this time is definitely most tiring. When I woke up, I was like in a daze. Suddenly all the muscles in the body remembered they were tired and overworked.

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As with most air travel to any distant destination, the first day is essentially spent on the plane or in the airport. So that’s basically how we spent day zero on our holiday trip to Hawaii. The flying time itself probably totaled not a lot more than 12 hours, but including the transit time, the early check-in at Changi Airport, it all adds up pretty quickly.

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Just a simple MacDonald’s vanilla ice cream cone will make her really happy. There’s the more expensive Island Creamery next door, but Vanessa’s not really interested. Given the choice, she chose to go to MacDonald. Then in MacDonald, there are a variety of other ice cream choices like the sundaes or McFlurry. But all Vanessa wants is the simple 70 cent vanilla ice cream cone. Save the parents a lot of money huh.

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The little brother Ian doesn’t join us very often, that is, playing around on the bed with Papa, Mama and baby Vanessa. We’re slowly trying to make some time for everyone to play together. Of course, the little brother Ian just watches most of the time since he’s still too little.

I noticed we’re (or at least I am) still referring to Vanessa as the baby, and Ian usually as “didi” (little brother), only occasionally also as baby. The “didi” probably came about because it was easier for us to refer to Ian as “didi” rather than baby when we talk to Vanessa, otherwise she would be wondering if she’s the baby, how come there’s another baby now in the house. I imagine it was probably easier for her to understand and say “didi” than “Ian”. But actually, now she can say “Ian” too. So maybe the “baby” and “didi” stuffs can slowly be deprecated (hehe must use a IT terminology).

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Baby Ian is like 3 and a half months old by now, but actually he hasn’t gotten a lot of attention from Papa and Mama. It’s because there are people around to look after him, and Vanessa has been running around getting our attention and keeping us occupied. Some day when Ian grows up and starts reading this blog, he might notice and sulk that he is being featured less than Vanessa. So let’s write some nice things about baby Ian for today.

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We went out to United Square a few days ago for some ice cream. The very budget conscious Vanessa chose McDonald’s over Ben and Jerry’s. After that, while baby Ian went to have his diaper changed, Vanessa and me waited outside. We were just at the corner where there is a Flexa shop located, which sells children’s beds. Vanessa noticed and was attracted to it. She strolled over to admire the beds. She turned back to look at me, I did not move.

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The two kids now have their own Facebook account. They don’t quite yet have their own email accounts though. Their email addresses are currently aliases that simply forward to my email account. It’s too bad that my preferred Facebook usernames for them have already been taken. Even my preferred usernames for them on Gmail have also been taken up. Yeah, it can never be too early to sign up for these things.

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For the last few weeks, someone or other has been sick. In fact, at one point in time, everyone was all sick together. It started with Vanessa, then to Mummy, then to Papa, Ian, and our maid. Our medicine chart started to become very complicated, particularly when both Vanessa and Ian each had a handful of medicine to take at many different times of the day. It was becoming a little difficult to remember who had taken what and when.

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