miyagi.sg
So Changi Airport has slipped a couple of notches. So what? We got Changi Airport Millionaire Game! You got or not? But seriously though, Shanghai Airport in our books is doing pretty well because when we got to immigration, an officer lifted a barricade for us and let us through without having to queue. Priority for families with young children. Win.
It’s been less than ten years since I made my first trips to China, and those first trips were full of me making fun of how backward China was, and how, once when I flew Air China overnight to Beijing without having dinner first, I starved all the way until I got to the hotel in Beijing because I turned down the plain porridge they served in-flight thinking there was going to be breakfast and refreshments before landing.
There was also the illogical security checks at Guangzhou Airport in 2004, where one could take out any illegal items from one’s check-in luggage before putting them into the x-ray machine, and then placing the same illegal items back into one’s luggage afterwards to be checked in.
It’s different these days, and the only thing they need to get up to speed with is sending people who smoke in the airport taxi queue to jail for life. Naomi counted 8 smokers who didn’t give a shit about there being children around, including one who chain-smoked (3 cigarettes) until he got to his taxi.
If they don’t die from smoking first, these folks here will be doing everything we do better than us. We had better buck up, or at least start doing something they haven’t done.
A month ago I was asked by this client if I wanted to be involved with a campaign for a retirement financial product. I was reluctant, until they told me of the story of Mr Leong, a former taxi driver and uni graduate.
Mr Leong’s former assumptions of life, health, family and retirement haven’t panned out. He’s widowed, in remission from a blood cancer that’s stopped him from driving a cab (his sole income), his son has flown the coop, and he’s relying on the charity of other family members to get by.
But Mr Leong’s isn’t a hard luck story — it’s turning out to be the average Singaporean’s story. He’s just telling it for the rest of us.
If you haven’t already read my friends’ accounts of their firsts, here are the links:
Melody Chen tells of her first bungy jump. It would already have been memorable before even considering the fact she is terribly acrophobic, and that her first jump was filmed for a reality tv show, later broadcast to homes across the region. Actually, it was her blood curdling screams that most people remember Mel’s first jump for.
Randall Tan’s first pair of football boots — the magical pair that kicks the ball further, curls it into the imaginary net behind the keeper guarding the goal made from a pair of slippers, which were worn before we got our boots. Every kid in the 80s knows how it was like playing soccer in our slippers — if you could kiap your slippers while taking a free kick, you could do anything.
What firsts jog your memory? Have a think and check back here, maybe after checking out the Volkswagen Polo 1.2 TSI — released this weekend, and hopefully becoming several people’s memorable first cars.
The thing about being first time parents that always tugs at the heartstrings is the number of firsts you experience in a short span of time. I remember vividly the first time I mistook another person’s baby for ours, tapping at the nursery window in the hospital, promising to be the best dad ever, vowing to be a better person for five whole minutes before the maternity ward staff nurse wheeled out another bassinet with our actual son who was crying his lungs out because he was hungry.
I must have looked quite daft as I wheeled him to my wife’s hospital room, all my steely eyed, firm jawed conviction evaporated, and all I could think of was the hint of a smirk on the staff nurse’s smile.
It has come in quick succession, our son’s first solid meal, the first word (“Dog”), first unaided steps, first Halloween, first Christmas, first New Year’s, first birthday, first flight, first unaided kick-scooter ride, first ski lesson (followed by nine mountain ski descents), first first nursery class, first school bus ride, the first time he said a rude word because he heard one of the songs Papa wrote for work (Kow Peh Kow Bu).
It’s all a blur, but somehow, each one’s as memorable as the other. There’s been the anticipation, excitement, joy and pride, over and over again in the last three years and a bit, and we’re looking forward to the first skateboard ride, even though that’s a little way away while we look for a board that’s small enough for him.
Miss World Singapore, the pageant that gave Singapore the Boomzbalicious Ris Low in 2009, is looking for contestants who are “pan-Asian looking” for their 2012 event in the hope they’ll do better at the world Miss World. Apparently, the organizers say that previous years’ editions favored girls who answered questions well, “but the formula hasn’t worked”.
Ris really did answer questions well, huh?
Kai is making it very difficult for me to leave his room when I tuck him in to bed:
Me: Do you want to hug your pillow Kai?
Kai: Are you a pillow Papa?
Me: No. Why?
Kai: Cos I want to hug you, Papa!
Naomi and I have not consumed shark fin for several years now (and it goes without saying that Kai doesn’t either), and we’re still trying to convince some older members of our families to do the same. Conscientiously refusing to eat the dish when it is served as part of a banquet may be considered rude and disrespectful to your hosts, but we think slicing off the sharks’ fins while they’re alive and letting them bleed out and drown is even ruder and more disrespectful.
Read more at GreenKampong.com
Friday’s clear blue skies took me out of the office and onto the streets (for a nasi lemak and a beer). I took quite a few deep breaths and quite a few photos, some of which I posted on Instagram.
I stopped on South Bridge Road to take this shot:
Apparently, either a few minutes earlier or later, someone else stood under the same tree and took the same shot:
There has to be several strains of flu going around, and there has to be an epidemic with one or all of them. I cannot possibly be sick for so many weeks — getting better then getting sick again. My upper respiratory tract is having its own Groundhog Day.
GP clinic waiting rooms are packed, and not just on Sunday evenings and Monday mornings. Something is seriously up. MOH (more health alerts, fewer Ministers’ speeches please), what say you?
While the following info graphic is based on statistics in the U.S. (I spent SGD $59.90 at the clinic yesterday) — just agak a bit and you’ll still find it quite staggering:
Source: FrugalDad.com
I was inspired by this video I saw on FB the other day about nursing home patients who reacted very positively to music from their era and decided to try it out on my father who is convalescing in hospital.
The trouble with doing that was that my father was never known to like music of any form. But last Saturday when we brought Kai to visit his Gong Gong, I suddenly recalled the only song I’ve ever heard my father sing in my whole life: Quando Quando Quando. I quickly downloaded the Engelbert Humperdinck version from iTunes and played it on my iPhone, waiting for the same excited reaction from my father.
He frowned, looked suspiciously at the phone, then at me, then around the ward. Then when the song ended and I asked if he liked the song, he mumbled as much as his Parkinson’s-gripped vocal chords could muster: “No”, three times.
