I dreamt of Mich

I dreamt of mich last night. I can't remember exactly what it was about. In the dream, she was healthy and fine but I can recall a sense of franticness. I woke up feeling groggy and uneasy.

Mich, we are all rallying around you. I hope you can sense our support and use your will power to pull through this.

Heavy heart

We will be leaving to catch the coach to Malaysia in about 15 minutes' time. We had all been anticipating this trip with excitement. The girls were looking forward to sitting in a bus with personal TV while I was just looking forward to the yummy food and seeing Ben's family again. However, as at this point, I am leaving with a heavy heart. My friend is still in a critical condition. I can't shake off the image of her lying in a coma on the hospital bed.

I hope that when we return in 4 days' time, we will be told some good news. Any good news. So that we may have hope again.

脆弱的人生

当你的好友，刚动完脑部手术，卧病在床，随时有生命危险。而一天前，这位朋友，才刚刚和你见面，聊天，玩牌吃饭。你不得不感慨，生命实在太无常，太脆弱了。

我们必须珍惜眼前人，当下事。

我的朋友，你要加油。

The party of 5 families

I have been receiving "complaints" that I update my blog too infrequently. So here it goes, 3 posts in a day!

The usual party of 5 families met up on Monday at Aunt V's place. We had good old steamboat for lunch, followed by sticky date pudding. Aunt V has always been a great and competent cook and hostess so all of us had a yummy good time.

The men, sans Ben and KL, then adjourned for their badminton session. They are hooked on the sport and nothing can tear them away from it. The rest of us stayed on, gossiped, chatted and played CHOR TAI TEE. Ben provided the most laughs as he was clueless with the game. We lost count of the number of times he proclaimed that he had the "best cards" and was "definitely going to win" but then eventually not winning. When the "baddies" came back from their badminton session, they hijacked our chor table.

All this while, the children played happily amongst themselves.

What a relaxing way to spend the holiday.

Rui can Read!

The Gastronomer

Yan has quite different tastes in food from Rui. She loves her sweets, chocolates and cakes, whereas Rui is not big fan of those. The other interesting thing Yan LOVES to eat are the Heong Bang, or, "circle biscuits" as she calls them. She packs one in her schoolbag everyday and nobody can take that away from her for her snack. She relishes each "circle biscuit" with the same delight as any gastronomer would have when savouring ,say, foie gras or escargots.

The Gatecrasher

Rui's chinese enrichment class held its last lesson on Saturday and the parents were all invited to witness how the class was conducted. The lesson typically started with a drama section, where the students and teachers re-enacted a scene out of a story. Along the way, they had to learn chinese characters that were depicted in the story. These characters would be familiar to the students as they had learnt them through the 10-week term. By acting out the story, students got to revise the chinese characters in a fun and engaging way. Having been brought up to learn chinese through memorising and drilling, we all thought this was a very innovatinve way to learn the otherwise tough language. Yan, in her enthusiasm, decided to join her big sis in class. She insisted on playing a part in the story drama. The teacher had to let her play the role of a fox. She cooperated well and had loads of fun.

妈妈死后，我会想念妈妈（下段）

We found out the reason for Rui's emotional thoughts about death.

They have been learning about life cycle in school. About how, every living creature on earth starts off as baby, grows up to be adult, finally ages and dies. She learnt that all human beings will come to earth as little babies, grow up to be in N1, N2, K1 , K2, go off to primary school and eventually die of old age. All that knowledge, made her wonder about the impending death of her mommy and daddy.

Rui is a thinker.