My darlings… I so need to take more photos of them and blog more about them. I shall… I shall…
Klutz
I’m simply disappointed in myself. I lost things two days in a row.
First, on saturday, I brought the kids to see Smurfs and after the 7:30pm movie, we went to do groceries. Only when we got home at 11pm, I found out that my wallet is missing. The last I remembered of my wallet was that I put the movie tickets in them when I was in the cinema.
So after a long tiring day, Pearl and I went back to the cinema in the hope that its there…
The guy tearing ticket stubs for the midnight crowd was busy, but he got his colleague to help. They took out a lost and found file and… :) they had my Montblanc present from wife wrapped in a nice zip lock bag. Thank God… It had a few hundred dollars in it, all my cards, IC and all and not to mention the wallet itself. We got home way past midnight…
The very next day, we had to run some errands at Takashimaya. After getting what we needed to get, I went back to the car to get the cash card to redeem some parking thing. I put the cash card in my pocket and while walking back to the customer service counter, I stopped by Pass The Juice to get a Banana Orange Juice. When I got to the customer service counter, the cash card was not in my pocket!
I was super disappointed with myself. How can this happen again! My wife did not know what to say…
I tracked back where I came from and was sure that the cash card fell out of my pocket when I pulled my wallet out… *sigh* My wife told me that her September transport claims for ERP / parking were not done yet… this meant a few hundred dollars just went up in smokes.
All we could really do was to report lost.
AMAZINGLY, they said someone just reported finding a cash card and they pulled out a form to ask us a few questions. At the back of my mind, its like how can this person find and report this so quickly? It could not be…
But it was. The cash card came back. A lady from Customer Service from another level brought the cash card up and we were sure it was the one.
They got the particulars of the person who went out of her way to make this report. I gave this honest person a call to thank her. And commended her for her honestly and just being so nice.
Thanks Farah. Thank you so much.
What a klutzy weekend. I feel like i’m slowly turning into a Homer.
Happy 1st Birthday Clara and 7th Birthday Cleo
At 1 years old, Clara is already running around in the house. She is a lovely kid and has full of facial expressions.
She can give you the surprise look, the LOL look and can even make a loud “TOK” sound with her tongue with the roof of her mouth.
For this birthday party, mommy combined both Cleo and Clara’s birthday together. She made party hats and you can clearly see who is who.
We catered Nasi Lemak which was really well received by all the guests.
Mommy also ordered 150 ballons in all colours. It was really beautiful.
As usual, the kids would try to jump up to get the ballons and it will always end up in one big mess of fun.
We had a Pinata this time and you can clearly see the shorter ones did not have an advantage in the forest of legs.
Happy 1st Birthday Clara and 7th Birthday Cleo. :)
India 2.0
I’ve been to India once in my life so far and it was in Feb 2010 with a few of my colleagues for work. After visiting the country and seeing first hand for myself what Mumbai was about (in my short few days), I felt that there was so much the country had to offer. The land is huge, the people are plenty, resources are abundant and did it ever occurred to you that India is the most populous democracy in our world currently?
To me India is like a battery, stored energy… sooner or later It will become one of the superpowers and i’m sure i’ll get to see it in my lifetime. But now, it still has its challenges, its still considered an emerging economy, a developing country.
Our company recently launched SparkTheRise.com. Its a platform to drive positive change in India. Its like Kickstarter, but for a country. Imagine the possibilities, imagine what can be achieved. Backed by one of India’s largest conglomerates Mahindra and Mahindra, there is funding on the table for good ideas. And its great to see an influx of interests by the general public.
Within a week, 1960 projects have been submitted to the site and this is only the first week. I really hope this initiative will start the momentum for greater things to happen in India. Its possible, very possible. All it needs is a spark.
NDP 2011
We balloted for the NDP tickets like every other year and this year we got it! We basically punched in ALL the available NRICs into the NDP website from our household and opted for 4 tickets each. I did not know the odds, but yay! we got them. Green Zone! Which meant we would have the city skyline as the backdrop for any photos we take.
The ushers did a fantastic job. They calmly guided people to their seats systematically. You could see from their perspiration and volume of their instructions that they must be super tired. They still did it with a smile. Kudos to them.
The motivators at the venue were all very enthusiastic, they tried their very best to do all the dance moves and encouraged the audience, but the chilled out crowd was not really in the party mood just yet.
Out came the emcees and they got us on our feet. We waved our flags, shouted MAHJULAH! did the wave and shouted lots. Instagram version of this photo here.
As with tradition, the parade displayed our country’s military might. All services were showcased. Army, Navy, Airforce, Civil Defense, etc.
Then came the marching contingents. They moved in quickly and when the country leaders arrived, we all sang the National Anthem with the flag fly pass like every other year.
This year’s performance was like a huge musical with In A Heartbeat as the theme. As far as musicals go, I do feel that it was nicely arranged. The musical score and different renditions worked well with the overall storyline. Kinda emo in the end where the mom died. However there were also cringing moments in the performance that seemed like a hard sell effort to relate to the general commuting public. No matter what people say, I still think overall it was a good musical and it brought out the essence of the theme song.
After the pledge moment at 8:11pm where the whole nation recited the pledge, the fireworks started.
BOOMZ! BOOMZ! BOOMZ!
The best pop song that they played that night to me was LMFAO’s Party Rock Anthem. Hearing it really makes me wanna PaRtY!
Kids were tired and hungry, so we went to Marina for dinner and talked about how the parade was put together using the booklet that was given out. We explained to the kids who the different people were and their roles in the parade.
My daughter Clié then out of the blue said “daddy, can I not do PSLE and just go to Secondary School?” I was like huh… Apparently the mammoth task of putting the parade together was to her like the mammoth task of doing well in School.
Anyway… we wish Singapore a very Happy Birthday and hope to come to the Parade again with our baby Clara next year.