Weekends

I had a busy work week last week and thus I found myself looking forward to the weekend. I was meeting up with the aunties on Saturday and that is always good. 

Auntie H finally 归队. 

I only brought Zaky, bcos T came while Nana went to meet her youths instead, telling me that Boo was not coming. Then this is who?

We had lunch at OC before moving for kopi and teh. I even got the chance to grab an Acai. Woohoo!

I was telling the ladies that ever since Zaky started secondary school, there had been weekends that I found myself alone with no plans - the kids had their own activities and Daddy Lim was working. I seriously need to do some planning. The more important point is that there will be more and more occasions where Daddy Lim and I would be without the kids and that is a new learning for us. Kids had been such an integrated part of our lives and we need to re-learn to do things without the kids. 

So, when Daddy Lim was finally not working on Sunday morning and Zaky was going to USS with his friend, he agreed to go cycling with me. Hohoho. I got my hubby back.

It was a mere 30km ride and we agreed that it would be a chill ride. He was on his gravel and I took Nana's hybrid. The ride was hard work bcos the bicycles are so heavy. 

We stopped at Ghim Moh for bfast. 

Before rolling back home. 

I thought I can nuah the afternoon away but was dragged to do car wash, luckily it is paid car wash and no laborious work on my part. Then to Army Market for a new backpack for Daddy Lim. I am so nice, going around accompany Daddy Lim on his errands. Hohoho. 

Mummy Lim

 

Japanese Classes Midway

In a wink of the eye, I have just completed the 7th lesson of the 13 weeks course. Woohoo! So fast!

While I leave the class feeling drained every Wed evening, I continue to also feel excited and enthusiastic about the class and language. Daddy Lim had been picking me from class every Wed and I never fail to excitedly rattle off some Japanese words and phrases. Lol. He doesn't understand but still are my moments of showing-off. 

I realised that I am enjoying the classes and learning a lot better as compared to my university years. Then, we were taught by a Japanese native speaker and my method was simply 死背, which was absolutely painful and probably not very effective. 

This time, the class was conducted by a Chinese uncle and in English, sprinkled with Chinese. Japanese sentence structure is alot closer to Chinese and the Kanji (Chinese charaters) are 繁体字. While the pronunciation is different and the same Chinese words don't always mean the same in Japanese, like how 素晴らしい means wonderful in Japanese, knowing Chinese absolutely helps and helps alot. 

A lot is being taught per lesson, from vocabs to sentence structure and also the use of particles, which would be like "to", "and", "or", "of" in English context. It is a lot of hard work and cannot escape memorisation work. 

I also realised that I can read and write Japanese but my listening sucks, just like many years ago. I am not sure if it is bcos of the speaking speed or the accent, it just takes me a lot of time to wrap my head around what I heard and many times, I couldn't make sense. Hohoho. I have attempted to watch some Japanese drama but I have to admit that K dramas are so much more interesting and Korean actors are 100x more yummy. Hohoho. 

Have I been hardworking enough? Of course not, I don't even revise daily, jumping onto it only when I realised how long it had been since my last revision. I should work harder. I am not sure if I would continue with the next level. Let's see if I am crazy enough. Hohoho. 

Mummy Lim

Batam! Day 3

I slept better bocs I had a "new bed". This was it.

I slept on the sofa. The foot rest kept slipping away but the heavy chair solved the issue. I had to tuck my legs onto the bed and shared part of the blanket but Zaky didn't mind. He was glad to have the whole bed. Looks like our family holidays will soon require 2 hotel rooms. Daddy Lim said that the solution would be to exclude the kids from holidays. Hoho. 

We were again up early and wanted to start the day early to maximise the not so warm morning. So 1st off to bfast. The same selection but we are easy food people. The crowd was visibly smaller. 

1st stop - frisbee and then more badminton. We skipped basketball this round, deterred by the mosquitoes.

I had to head back to the room for a call at 9.30am. The rest took a rest in teh room bcos the heat had turned up. Zaky got bored and Daddy Lim brought him for a swim. Nana and I came and we headed to the beach for the final time. 

We finally got down to kayaking. Despite being late morning, the heat was tolerable, thanks to the cloud that blocked the sun.

 

The kids did a great job. While we kayak within the man-made lagoon, sheltered by breakwater, it was still scary as the tide was climbing. No, we didn't attempt to get out to the open sea. Daddy Lim and I kayak for a while and I had the honor to take the front seat; very scary. The water was slighy choppy and I was worrying about capsizing. I don't want jellyfish. 

It was almost 12pm when we headed back to the room. We had a late checkout at 1pm and had enough time to shower and pack. Our ferry was at 4.30pm and the bus was picking us at 3pm. We had an expensive lunch at the hotel's only restaurant, waited a good 45 mins only for the food to be served either warm or room temperature. I didn't bother to complain bcos we are on a holiday (though ending) and I am not sure if the staff understood what I would be angry at. Saved it. The total bill chalked up to $220. This is for all the sea activities and meals (excluding bfast) we had in the resort. Not bad lah, I was expecting a bigger bill.

The last hour was spent nuahing in the lounge and time passed so quickly, thanks to powerful WiFi. We might have missed the bus if I hadn't look up from my HP, coincidentally at 2.57pm, and to find that everybody else had boarded the bus. Heng ah. 

It was more waiting at the ferry terminal. This time, there was no more special service and we had to queue for the immigration. We were the very last to board bcos immigration was so slow. In fact, the ferry was delayed for the same reason. 

On the way home!

I was dreading the unpacking and puffy's cage and mochi's litter were still waiting for us back home. Zaky wanted to go cycling with his friends the next day and we had to fixed up the bicycles too. Zzzzz. Our car smelled really funky bcos we had the sweaty socks, skates and clothes from the skating session still in the car and boot and steaming in the hot car for the past 3 days. Hohoho. 

It was a pleasant surprise when we came home to find that Popo had helped with the cage and litter. I was still grumpy though. Maybe it is the post holiday blues. 

That's it. The end of our short, over the weekend holiday that had flew by in a wink. I now have to keep my eyes on the next holiday.  Hoho. Did we enjoy the holiday? Definitely. It was good time spent together as a family and we got to do things with the kids and realised how much the kids had grown. They are so much more independent now. Awwww..... 

Mummy Lim

Batam! Day 2

It was a bad idea to try to squeeze in 1 single bed with Zaky. I woke up multiple times and sometimes, my aching bones woke me up,  after sleeping in one position for extended time. At 5am, I decided that it was enough and moved to the little sofa, disturbing Daddy Lim bcos I needed to keep my feet on his bed. The moment I moved off, I saw Zaky spread and conquered the whole bed. He had an equally bad night.

I had a little snooze before Daddy Lim declared that he was awake and that the restaurant was opened for bfast. It was 6am. Zzzzzz. 

I needed to do my morning exercise anyway. So he accompanied me to do whatever I was going to. I thought of heading for a run, but was worried that the monster or bad people would catch me. I was told that the gym is still under construction. I did my favourite kickboxing hiit, one that doesn't require any movement lying on the floor.

We woke the kids for bfast. It was pick and choose bfast! It had been a long while since we had that. 

The selection and food was meh though but our family is easy food people. Daddy Lim and the kids were happy so long as there is buffet bfast provided. 

The weather was great and we loaned badminton rackets and then basketball from the activities center. 

We didn't last very long with the basketball bcos it was getting hot and there were damn alot of mosquitoes. Only Daddy Lim didn't get bitten bcos he was perspiring so much and playing with his top off. There was no way any mosquito can land on him and not slip off. 

We headed back, changed and the kids jumped into the pool while Daddy Lim snoozed in the room. 

Then back onto the beach. The beach was a lot more crowded this time. There was some company's family day taking place. I remembered the same thing happened the last time we were at the resort. Are they the same company? Hmmm... 

The sun was super hot. The kids wanted to kayak, which was basically baking under the sun. They eventually opted for the knee boarding for 30 mins. 

This is knee boarding. You kneel on the board, hold on to a cable that is being pulled by a jet ski.

The kids said that it was super tiring and they took turns. When it was too tiring, they simply let go of the cable and slowly sunk into the water. Then the jet ski will come "rescue" them. They had to come back to shore to start again, thus earning them free jet ski ride too. 

The kids were happy to return to the room, to change and rest before we headed to part 2 of the activities. 

They were almost falling asleep when we dragged them out to go to Nagoya. We had to pay S$40 for round trip taxi. Both kids fell asleep in the 40 mins car ride. The driver was to pick us up at 4.30pm, which was barely 2.5 hours later. We had to pay him an extra S$20 to extend 2 hours. 

Daddy Lim was worried that there wasn't enough stuff to do to entertain us for 4.5 hours. In actual fact, time passed so quickly. We started with a drink and snack, then hit the arcade. The arcade is like a casino but they played with tokens. Maybe it is really gambling and they can exchange the tokens for cash? At the popular game machines, they even have staff helping the players to slot in the tokens. They played in such big quantity; we exchanged S$10 for 2 half cups of tokens while those players go on trays of tokens. I guessed easily S$100 per tray?

Arcade makes us hungry. Ramly burgers!

By then, we were only left with 2 hours and 1 hour went into massage!

Daddy Lim asked if 1 hour massage would be too long. Nonsense, the 1 hour few by so quickly and we had to rush for dinner. 

Korean food!

Then we had to rush to buy water and snacks from the supermarket to last us for the remaining night and day. 

We didn't even have time for shopping and was back at the carpark 准准 at 6.30pm. The sky was already dark and the uncle speed drive us back to the hotel, bashing through roads, even those without proper lighting. 

We got back safe and sound, rested and continued with another 2 games of pool. Nana didn't join us. She was tired and rather stayed in the room with her phone. 

This time, we heard the band. Pretty much oldies tunes unfortunately.

We were pleasantly surprised to catch the magic show. 

Zaky loves magic show, never too old.

We went back to the room after the show and called it a night. 

Mummy Lim