Monday, August 30, 2010

Nature, nature, nature






Now that we know we are staying in Singapore, the last week has been an intense round of househunting. We had figured out everything and even places to buy, then the government introduced new measures to curb the rise in property prices... it is to our favour, ie prices should come down but then its a clear signal but maybe a gradual down... I have now lowered all bids and will see if the sellers are realistic or want to wait as well... the waiting game...

Here is a BIG tree from the walks we take in Fort Canning Park with the dogs. A sunflower that just flowered in our garden, its tiny compared to the commercial ones but at least its flowering. This is a tiger orchid, it rarely flowers and is doing well at my friends place in goldhill, need to remind her to give me a cutting!

This guy is the owner of the seedling place we went to, he is very humble, speaks well in several languages, probably has a degree in biology or horticulture, he is showing us how they "drop" seeds into every tray, to date there seems to be a high wastage on the baby greens that he has to toss out and I took a lot back for loren's salad but there must be a way to monetize that.

Garden Dinosaur






Before we moved back from S. Africa, I was contemplating buying a large steel giraffe, esp. if we moved into a black and white, I am quite glad we didn't as the rust would have overtaken the whole giraffe, I guess I would have had to paint it. I went with my gardening buddies from Goldhill to the "armpits" of singapore to buy vegetable seedlings (so far I have had low success with seeds)... and came across this garden dinosaur. This landscape company won gold in this year's garden show (when we were in Guilin) and I am hoping they will let go of the dino at a good rate for the school, wouldn't that be cool to have a grass dino?

Loren got a shot of a hornbill that flew into our garden, its nice that singapore is repopulating the birds, at nate's school we sometimes see cockatoos.

This tiny bead on the spoon, is my failed potato growing experiment in a sack. The big potato I put in did not grow into a big and leafy plant and instead grew one teeny tiny potato for me, wonder if I will try this in school.

Here is Nate making a shofar for rosh shana (which we will be celebrating a week early as loren is going on gardening leave and doing the Hoffman process).

Thursday, August 26, 2010

Nate the Red Nose Reindeer






ok so that is a really strange sight right? Loren and Matthew each got a nose "bionette", apparenlty works for 50% of the cases of hay fever. Seems to work for nate's runny nose.

The boys with part of the birthday booty from bubbi and zeda, star wars lego that dada had to spend 2 hours building.

Ike is hitting a strange 4 year old funk also.... been very stubborn and defiant, I think nate went through a similar stage but my memory fails me. Their formal school starts again soon!

Monday, August 16, 2010

My China trip






was rather intense. Here's a mask from Guiyang, where there are many indigenous hill tribes, similar to Guilin called the Miao people, I think they are similar to the Hmong that live in Vietnam and Laos and the Hmong that fought with the US troops during the Vietnam war who migrated to the US (I watched the Clint Eastwood movie where he was a Korean veteran encountering the Hmong people in the US).

The old house... well its still standing in Beijing, half of it, or rather 50 rooms used to belong to my g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g grandfather, who lived in Beijing for 10 years around 1810 to 1820 and later became the Governor of Canton. The guy who sold the house to him is more famous and so this house is named after that guy. The statue of the owner however is only about 5'2" and the doorways were also quite tiny. Only rooms of the 100 original rooms are left, the rest of the land has been converted to commercial use like a restaurant.

The stage is where the conference had its annual award giving for animation contest. Luckily my speaking stage was alot smaller though I think I did audience size like this once in Jakarta. Guiyang is quite a small town but very clean and the weather is very nice and they have national parks. I think its so far the nicest city I have been to in China.

The guy with the big mango drink at Haagen Daz is Uncle Zhang, whose father is Zhang Leping and the creator of one of the most successful cartoon characters in China today. Zhang Leping and my grandfather were very good friends and Uncle Zhang has been very helpful with our cause. He is a super nice guy.

Aunty Li, is the daughter of Wang Zimei, also a friend of my granddad though he refused to do anymore cartoons after the cultural revolution. I also visited a number of other friends of my granddad, it was an interesting pilgrimage. Fang Cheng is now 93 and Huang Miaozi is now 97. Ding Cong died earlier this year and I visited his widow.

Singapore Summers






are actually not that hot, well this year there has been alot of rain and the sunshine is actually quite welcome. At worse case, it gets up to about 35 degrees, but it sure is cooler than Shanghai which gets up to 40 sometimes and Beijing this time of the year was just muggy and the mugginess seemed to trap alot of heat as well.

Here are some odd shots of Ike. I took Nate and Ike to Edward's place, a new pool for them to try out. Edward will be doing his national service in 4 months time. How time flies! I used to babysit him when he was the same age as Nate. I am quite happy he comes over when he can to hang with the boys. We used to live very close by and he would walk the dogs. We saw Ian as well last month, can't believe he is already in uni.

Summer plods along






I am just back from a good trip to Guiyang where I spoke at a conference and then Shanghai and Beijing, where we have the ok to move ahead with the two museums, all in all a successful but tiring trip. Guiyang's summer weather is really nice, I think next year I will take the boys there as it straddles the larger exhibition of my granddad's "Guiyang Cartoons" that he did in 1942.

In the meantime, my mom was in Singapore with the boys. I signed them up for a month at Patschoolhouse again. Loren has bought nate a Star Wars monopoly set which he likes to play with everyday. He doesn't like losing though but I think I convinced him that his brain actually grows bigger when he loses. They also borrowed some games from Lilin, like snake and ladders but Ike just hates getting eaten by the snake and sliding downwards.

I took them to the school garden in the morning, where they caught ants for Caden's and home thing (but the ants are still not burrowing) and then in the afternoon we headed to the marine barrage, it is really crowded on the weekends with many kite flyers, here are the boys playing hide and seek at the water park part.

Yesterday after school, we went to the east coast and nate got to show me that he can now ride a bike, I am so glad that balance thing must just kick in at a certain age. I was talking to other parents who said they had to spend time behind the kids bike while they tried to balance and the back aches they would get. Now to get the back tire fixed as the air seems to be leaking.

Nate starts Jewish Sunday school this weekend. Ike is not yet eligible!