Ethan recently had fun at our neighbourhood playground with two older kids Shaun and Amu who are brothers. Watching them leaping and laughing, slipping and sliding, and generally having a great time was pretty therapeutic for me too. If only adults like us can learn how to completely let go and have fun, I believe that the world will be a better place.
Here’s a video of him with Shaun and Amu chasing each other around the playground.
A contender for SPRING’s Excellent Service Award?
Many of us would have heard about Singapore Airline’s legendary service. Or how every employee at Ritz Carlton, from GM down to housekeeping maid, is taught to resolve any guest complaint. Must quality service only exist in premium establishments?
The answer is no.
Ethan petting Coffee and Sugar, two absolutely adorable King Charles spaniels.
Two weeks ago, we visited our favourite outdoor haunt which is the Botanic Gardens. While I went jogging around the tranquil park, my wife and son met this friendly couple who allowed Ethan to walk and play with their two toy dogs “Sugar” and “Coffee”. From the word “Go”, it was obvious that kids and dogs have a natural bond with each other as you can see from the photograph above.
Cats are no exception too. Ethan has started to grow fond of a neighbourhood cat who lives downstairs near the lift landing area. He even gave her a name – “Patty” – and they seem to have a bond with each other from day one. Just today, he asked me to take a photograph of the cat too.
Crouching toddler and un-hidden cat.
I only hope that he doesn’t start clamouring for a pet of his own soon!
After visiting her regular TCM practitioner at Yishun last Saturday, my wife Tina and I decided to drive along Upper Thomson Road to have a late dinner at this cosy little porridge place located at Springleaf Estate. We ordered a couple of dishes to go with our bowls of steaming sweet potato porridge and had a pleasant meal.
… the shutters of this vacant shop outlet at Central ©, the spanking new Japanese themed shopping centre along Hill Street?
Hmmm, anybody want to guess? Is it…
Last Saturday (28th April) we celebrated my dad’s 67th birthday at Broth, a charming Australian style restaurant along stone-cobbled Duxton Hill. For the unitiated, Duxton is a charming little neighbourhood of clubs and restaurants sandwiched between the financial district and the more boisterous Chinatown area in Singapore.
Good things come in small packages, and this boutique restaurant never failed to live up to its promise. After reading several rave reviews here, here, and here, we decided to give it a try. I worked with its owner Steven Hansen before on an event at a museum and it went pretty well. A nice and friendly chap who came here from Melbourne a couple of years ago, Steve also runs River Cafe located at the Singapore Tyler Print Institute at Robertson Quay, another quality Aussie style dining joint.
The overall ambience and food quality was superb. We gave a thumbs up for most of the dishes, including the lamb loin, steak, pork chop, salmon and starters. Of course, the dessert of sticky date pudding literally took the cake!
Do you know that Singapore’s founding father Sir Stamford Raffles used to live up on Fort Canning? Or that this used to be called Bukit Larangan or “Forbidden Hill” in Malay?
With about 45 minutes to kill after breakfast and before Ethan’s Chinese enrichment classes, my family decided to frolick this hilly green oasis in the middle of our concrete jungle. It was a certainly a pleasant walk in the park even with the warm midday sun beating down upon us.
Our climb started with a peek at the map of Fort Canning located beside the stairs.
Spotted this funkily dolled up postbox just outside UE Square along Unity Road recently while waiting for my son and wife. Its a bid to add much needed colour, vibrancy and art to the city. Apparently, this is part of STAMP, a nation-wide competition organised by URA and Singpost which looks at making over 40 postboxes in the city.
Nice touch there which helps to rejuvenate the old and weary brand image of snail mail. After all, we do know that it is fighting a losing battle against email and other forms of online communications. These splashes of art certainly gives us more reasons to visit our mailboxes to pay our bills!
Now, if only they would do it for all the 800 postboxes around the island instead of just those in the city. That would definitely add a few notches in rebranding and repositioning Singpost as a creative and fun loving provider of an essential service.
Update: Saw that Sparklette also posted about this, albeit in a series!
OK folks, I thought that I should do something wacky, deposit some goodwill in emotional bank accounts and do the meme thing upon the advice of “Da Jie” and good friend eastcoastlife, an A-list blogger. For this I was tagged by environmentalist Pauline. I still owe tags by Oceanskies and Zeezee and will try to work on them soon.
Layer One:On The Outside
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Name : Walter Lim (aka coolinsider)
Birth Date : 24 August
We celebrated two birthdays by two dear nieces this month. As usual, it was a mixture of family fun and chaos when you have multiple kids in a restaurant. There were some uncanny similarities between the two celebrations, which I thought I should highlight.
1) Both the girls’ names start with A – Ariel & Alycia.
2) Both birthdays occur in April. Ariel’s birthday is on 10th April while Alycia’s birthday is on 22nd April.