Hari Raya Haji

This morning we headed to Sentosa beach with the boys and bullet. The last time I took bullet there, he was a puppy, well maybe a year old and he ran straight into the water, paddled and swam about happily while Jake and Pistol sat on the shore looking at him.

I thought I'd take him back, well he was alot more apprehensive of the water, only until I was in did he swim in, only to want to be near me, he felt rather unsafe or uncomfortable otherwise. Maybe because there were alot of other dogs, he was also very cautious. At the beginning even a small dog chasing and sniffing him got him nervous and at one point he even rolled on his belly!!

The boys enjoyed the beach very much, even olivia got all wet. We got home, I fell asleep watching TV while we rested before the next activity... Sarah's birthday party. Its the longest one I have been to, form 130 to 530... As you can see from the schedule, the boys had a lot of activities and it was a drop off party!! yay, I came home to nap longer, I realise now that from next year onwards, the boys will have alot of drop off parties... they, well at least nate has hit the independant stage! woo hoo.

When I was gone though, apparently the kids gorged on sweeties, they had about 5 lollipops and 3 mini candyfloss things (which nate could even describe how they are made) and a coca cola... With no nap and so much sweeties, we could actually watch Ike go high and then come crashing... with meltdowns. Both passed out quickly at bedtime too. Nate has made it to age 5 without cavities, lets see if Ike would too....

End of term assessment

I went to the parent teacher meetings today...

Ike is doing well for his group, apparently he has gone from being quite aggressive (pushing and biting) in the beginning of the semester, not knowing the new teachers to a boy that understands he won't have friends if he is hostile. He's talking alot more and so I think not only can he express himself better, his teachers have learnt "ike-speak".

He is ambidextrous and uses both hands to color and the samples of his coloring have greatly improved. When he is doing art and craft, on the stuff he likes, he really excels. I think he has gotten alot of one on one attention and that has improved his growth. He is starting to gain lots of vocabulary including chinese but his pronounciation is still off. LIke he says Chinese as Kainese. We just need to correct him before it becomes a habit.

Nate's strengths were reiterated, he has a superb memory, very good math skills, able to put together words and soon sentences. He is gotten over his reluctance to write or make mistakes writing, he seems to fear making mistakes in writing in the past but has gotten over that hump. He also likes to please but seems to have a very black or white view of life so good and bad are black and white to him and not shades of grey. The combination results in him "blaming" others as he wants so much to be good but as a 5 year old he is also cheeky and playful.

Both classes do not emphasize homework at all but learning thru play and they seem to play all day, I think they will like the Finnish school system! New literature on writing and reading apparently do not require rote copying. Hmmm... wonder how that would work for chinese.

I feel like Ike is ok where he is, in fact the school and small classes are beneficial for him, whereas Nate may not be challenged enough as I think he could do more but I guess as children they should be playing, so play they shall...

While waiting between the meetings... I spotted that the school is building a pool, maybe there will be swim lessons in school? I got to spend 30 mins with both teachers per class, ie and hour in total, was told by my cousin that they only get allocated 5 mins per child and if their report card says they are doing well for their grade, the parents don't even come in to see the teachers.

Moving library

Ah... its peace and quiet now as both boys have passed out. Nate is enjoying his jewish school as he has a new friend called Elliot. We've decided to hold a midday hanukka party on the 19th of dec.

This is a picture of the moving library, I usually take ike to the library when nate is in jewish school, this week we were particularly productive, I was able to pick up some auction catalogues, walk to the library, he checked out the moving library which is actually a bus (his yellow shirt makes him blend into the library), he was happy to find a thomas book and borrowed it (its nice also that we can return the book at any library and there is one near our home, on top of that they send me an sms when the book is almost due).

We then went to a chinese bookstore and bought "danao tiankong" (big chaos in heaven), a chinese classic cartoon movie, I think it was done in the 1940s? and apparently was the 3rd full length cartoon film released after Disney's two earlier ones, these were done by my granddad's friends, the Wan brothers (animation directors) and the the Zhang brother (artists). I watched it with the boys tonight before bedtime (the last time I saw this was in 1977), its still quite good! Guess what everyone is getting for hannuka!!!

What a week...

I think I sometimes don't realise what we have done in the week till I do the blog posting and see all the different pictures... So if I haven't said this, Uncle Peter is in town and has been a great help with the kids, he takes them on Thursdays, "uncle peter day" and a week ago I think the went to the discovery center and last week to the science center. The boys also got big presents... (their lucky month!). Here is Nate with his star wars vehicle. He even brought this to school for show and tell as their module is to talk about transportation.

Its been raining tonnes here that there was even a flash flood (apparently a once in 50 years occurance), that bukit timah was flooded, even some basements of luxury apartments and a ferrari and a porsche were totally submerged. Wonder if insurance covers these "acts of god".

Then we took the (south african zippy) bikes yesterday to the botanical gardens, the boys had a good time going down the slopes but then ike didn't make a turn and crashed out. A bit in shock, a scraped forehead, elbow and knee but overall quite brave. Then I had to subject them to a dentist appointment, which wasn't bad at all as they have not been traumatised by a dentist yet, both have shiny shiny teeth now... loren had a conference so we also did the science museum and then sushi and they got to see the orchard road christmas lights, well actually only the tanglin mall Xmas display, with fake foam as snow...

Sunday Brunch

I think the brits here really like their champagne brunches! Not only was the St. Regis full, we could barely get into the Fullerton. We did however manage to find a car park spot across the road at the museum which was free vs probably S$10 bucks.

Then I took the boys to watch Astroboy the movie and yesterday, the boys were at the american club terrorizing the bowling alley and the games room.

I have now set up another blog called http://niubizi.blogspot.com. Its my prelim attempts to document the adventure of discovering things about my granddad... today after having a session talking about how we are going to do the Niubizi traveling exhibition in China, I get in my in box.... an email from the son of a famous cartoonist who was also a friend of my granddad. Very nice! also that they are building a China Museum of Cartoons... he will link us up... woo hoo. I will stop hijacking this blog...

Bollywood - Kranji

Finally took the boys up to the Kranji farms on the weekend. Its like the countryside of Singapore, lots of farms, from organic farms to a goat farm to fish farms, we managed to only go to two...

The pink stuff is eggs of some creature am not sure what but they look poisonous. Ike got bitten by mosquitoes and wanted to be carried but nate was quite gung ho. At the fish farm he even tossed the water snails back into the pond.

Will take Ter and the boys there when they are in Singapore, reminds me of the places dad used to bring us.

Cartoon of cartoonists

So I have seen this image many times in black and white, this image was passed on to me by the British Museum, they have just acquired a large amount of works of China in the 1930s and 1940s from a well known cartoonist, hope more interesting stuff with regards to my granddad will pop up.

Am rebuilding my granddad's website and my mom and I will have a blog on our adventure of finding out about my granddad and the quest / mission to bring him back to China... I will then stop hijacking this blog...

Happy Happy

Very happy today, mom found a picture of yehyeh in his friend's website. We are starting to notice that he is always placed in the front and the middle position of a photo. hmmm...

Here is a very green pandan (from our garden) flavoured sponge cake that olivia made. Although it looks like the cake was baked in a radioactive plant, there is not food coloring in it.

I have not been spending so much time with the kids as I have been "pounding the pavement" with all sorts of meetings. At the animation studio meeting, I found that one of my favourite cartoons (an all time chinese classic produced in the 1960s) was made by the oldest and most established of animation studios in china and the director and artists were all friends of my granddad, I guess that door will not be too hard to knock on when we are ready to go in.

A meeting with a publisher that distributed widely in this region also went well, they will test some of the education material and if it works then maybe some licensing revenue. The meeting with the lawyer to figure out what kind of entities we should have and that the rights etc are properly in place also went well, a few dud meetings too but next week another web designer, publisher and animation studio, oh and a billionaire's wife too! Breakfast at Raffles...

Nate had a school field trip to the stamp museum... its been raining alot here and its been great run with the kids, no fevers or colds.

ABCD...

Ike did a full ABCD song, then I pulled out my camera and he started from EFG on the secon round...

Scary Picture

I saw this picture at one of the cartoon scholar's archives. It sent shivers up my spine as these are all friends of my granddad during the cultural revolution. He too would not have escaped and would have been humiliated and tortured, likely not to survive that and worse end up with a broken spirit or killed off...

Xitang

So while we went to visit the ancient village of Xitang, the rest of the cultural bureau was reading up on the material we left them with on my granddad and by dinner time it was apparent they had done their homework and were swimming in the information.

Overall the trip to China I think was a success, we had very good meetings with museums, the art academies, no one slammed the door in our face, all wanted to work with us in some way and so now to digest all that as well.

In Shanghai, Mom was too exhausted to face another library and so she slept the whole morning. Her trip involved transportation of all types! They even took a "bread van" from the train station of Jiashan to Xitang before I got there. The van took all the side mud roads to avoid having to pay tolls and they got to see real village life. I think I'll rent a place there and take the kids! We could do day trip outings to Hangzhou and Suzhou, Shanghai seemed way to hectic, maybe we'll just park ourselves there for a week. Or maybe 5 days in each spot...

My impressions of the ancestral home, well its bigger than I thought and the people not as unsophisticated as I thought too. It was a very nice warm welcome, they even gave us the local produce like silk pajama's and a nice thick wool scarf. They are v realistic people and showed the same "can do attitude" that we encountered throughout the trip.

Jiashan

My granddad was born in Shanghai in 1917, his father was born in Jiashan, in one of the articles written by my grandfather, he talks about his father's home in Jiashan, located in a street immediately after crossing "Maiyu" bridge (bridge to sell fish), take a right and walk to the end to a large home.

Well the road now leads straight through, the old houses there have been torn down now and a new development would be put up. The government officials said if we had come 3 years earlier and, they could have at least saved it for a memorial or a building.

Jiashan is situated about an hour from Shanghai, Hangzhou and Suzhou, they have abundant veges and fish and now also factories. The population is about 700,000 people and there is an old city called Xitang just 15 mins away, where they have preserved the lifestyle of the inhabitants.

The government has been trying to promote culture and has built 2 other facilities for 2 other famous people from the area. They are keen to do something with us but I think they are now in shock as to the amount of work he has done and the amount of possibilities...

Our welcome started with a banquet... a big breakfast, a lunch banquet at Xitang and a dinner banquet with the vice mayor (who is in charge of culture). After our meeting which took alot more time than they thought, they cancelled the sightseeing at the economic zone. We did see 2 museums there, the chinese grave is of the famous artist from the Yuan dynasty. The other is of a famous actor. Their first thoughts were to maybe build a research center for my granddad, but they also wanted time to think and digest.

Beijing

Beijing started snowing on saturday about a month earlier than scheduled. The heaters in Beijing are usually switched on on the 15th of November this year the central controlled heating started about 2 weeks earlier. About 3 days after the snow storm (5 inches of snow fall from a cold front and moist front), the energy generating plants started kicking up and the smog also started appearing. Not bad that for the 6 days I was in Beijing we did have 3 days of sunshine.

Luckily I was staying with Sharon and was able to borrow real winter gear, a big coat that I used for several days. Sharon and I also hit the Thai restaurant for hot hot Tom Yam soup twice during this trip.

The one thing I felt about Beijing this time round is how big everything is, the buildings are truly big... One night when we were there, my friend sharon bit into a rock and broke her tooth, there is a mouth hospital emergency room that we headed to around midnight... it was clean and professional and the cost was was only US$ 5 for the consultation.

The picture of the buildings are of the Beijing central library... the cab driver told me its halfway across the city and the subway would be faster so I tried it, the fare is only RMB 2 (less than US$ 0.50) and 20+ stops later I got there. Needless to say the library is humongous.

The stairway has a side ramp for people to push their bicycles up and down the overhead bridge.

Here is the boys at a halloween party with dada who played Mr. mom for 10 days.

Chiffon Cake

We baked a really yummy lemon orange chiffon cake the day before my trip to China. It was so delicious I did not get a chance to take a picture of the finished cake. I didn't get a piece the next morning and have been craving a piece since.