Things we always do when we touched down.

Go straight to the food court at B2 in Changi Terminal 3, order fishball noodle, kaya butter toast and extra cups of ice milo. Even though we landed at T1 today, we still took the skytrain over there for breakfast

Drive the car back as the grandpa is probably too tired having to fetch us so early in the morning (we always take the red-eye flight, reaching Singapore at 6am).

Read as many news paper as I can.

Head towards Bt Panjang Plaza to buy slippers and sandals  for everyone (the kids always outgrow their previous pair we left behind), buy the multi flavour Yakult (strangly, only original flavour is available in China, and straws aren’t provided), buy tidbits then buy fishball and curry puffs at Old Chang Kee.

Send the kids back to the grandparents so I can get a hair cut from my favourite hairdresser, who always insist that I need a scalp treatment.

Always the same ritual for our first day back home!

I have stopped sending Didi to school by bicycle ever since temperature dip below 0C a month ago with the harsh north-westerly wind constantly blowing hell onto our face. Its not only freezing cold, but I couldn’t even inch forward without using all my strength to pedal the bike. Totally exhausting and torturous.

I decided to give the bike another chance of braving through the cold with me again this morning, as I really have to draw some money from the ATM to pay for Zeeyau school bus fees and our supplies in the fridge is running very low. I wrapped myself in extra layers - super warm merino thermal, a fleece pull over, another fleece jacket, with a final protection from my thick windbreaker, snow hat (though there is no snow), fleece leggings, gloves and a thick scarf that I wrap around my face, leaving only my eyes to be seen.

I definitely wore enough, but the wind was still as unforgiving. Leaving the two kids alone at home made me trying hard to pedal faster. I told Zeeyau to give me a call immediately if anything happen. Sure enough, she called me, though nothing happened, they just wanted to find out where I was. Damn iphone touch pad, I couldn’t receive the call wearing gloves. Got to pull off my glove. Answering that phone call in -10C windchill totally numbed my 5 fingers in less then 30 sec.

Looking forward to the lovely sunshine back in Singapore come Wednesday.

Beijing has started distributing mobile phone equipped with GPS tracking devices at the beginning of the year so as to curb the problem of campus violence and missing children.

There are so much things to worry about ever since we moved to China two years ago. Water and food safety, air pollution, crazy traffic junctions, unsafe vaccination …. and there is this thing that constantly nagging in our head, what happens if we lost our kids in a busy street or shopping mall?

When I briefly lost Didi for 2min in a shopping mall in Shanghai 2 years ago, it felt like thunder and windchill struck me all at once. This country is huge and children are precious. If the kid got abducted and the baddie contact us for a ransom, that would actually be lucky. Most of the lost kids will not be found. There are also instances where the abductor got frightened, got desperate then killed and disposed the kid.

Couldn’t help feeling frighten, so we bought Zeeyau a mobile phone with a GPS tracking device last year (not the one distributed by Beijing Red Cross Foundation). Its a cool gadget, smaller then the size of our palm, weighing only 58g, and we could track her location from an online platform which will register her locations every now and then. We could also define a certain safe movement radius, if she moves out of the radius, an SMS will be automatically sent to warn the parents.

While I admit I have been over paranoid, its good to have such a gadget just in case the kid got lost somewhere so we can call her and find her as quickly as we can.

Today is the final day of exam and also final day of school as well! The teachers here are super efficient in terms of marking papers, well, at least for the primary 1 classes. They have all been issued their result slips showing their grades in all the subjects as well as grades in music, art, PE and social skills, plus their attendance rate and teacher’s comment within an hour of their final paper!

School holiday officially starts on the 22nd of January, but they children have been gently reminded that they don’t have to attend school anymore until the new semester reopens on the 22nd of February! Now I know school holiday begins right after the last paper ends for public school here!

That makes me remembered the happy days we spent in school after exam playing Uno, five stones, watching movies, non-stop chatting or having extended PE lessons and recess time. Well, not as enjoyable when I became teacher and had to deal with the chaotic classroom atmosphere, crack our heads to create original and positive comments to 40 students, counting the attendance of those kids as well as feeling the heartache when the kid couldn’t make the grade to be promoted to the next level. As much as I wish the kids would just stay at home so I could wrap up my work in peace, they are expected to attend school except for the 2 precious marking days after the final exam. Wouldn’t even think of trying to hint the students not to appear in school, and schools definitely couldn’t simply declare that the school will not be in session.

I finally made up my mind to asked Sophia (babysitter of one of Didi’s classmate) the name of her boy, because I couldn’t suppress my curiosity ever since I first overheard her calling the boy “Lee-der”.

“So, Sophia, your boy’s name is Lee-der?”

“Yes, Lee-der.”

“Lee-der, as in l-e-a-d-e-r, ‘Leader’ ?”

“Yes.”

“Wow…”

Though it wasn’t anything surprising since names like Banana, Juciy, Spring, Pinky, Super, etc have been spotted. There is also a Handsome somewhere out there. Wouldn’t it be great to be able to have everybody calling your child “leader” every now and then!

The Chinese Language paper begins the 3 days semestrial exam for Zeeyau. First real school exam she is gonna take!

The pressure and stress level we felt is really minimal compared to the local stream students or peers back in Singapore. My urge to get her engine properly lubricated only started like a week ago when her classroom teacher began to distribute revision papers for them to complete and also issued a very stern reminder to parents that the children need to be able to recognise 400 and write 100 Chinese characters.

So I began testing her on the 400 words by reading the school text with her. Easy as pie, she could read everything without problem, which temporarily set me thinking that she is going to take after me…lol. However, when I tested her on individual words without the text, she could only get 2/3 of them correct. That got me a bit panicky and I decided to make word cards so I could drill her until she got all 400 words perfectly.

400 word cards is overwhelmingly too much cutting and pasting for me and I gave up after getting 2/3 of them done. Damn it, what is the fuss after all, they aren’t going to test all those 400 words and the sample revision papers given by the teacher look really easy. I also realised there wasn’t much I could revise with her except testing her writing ability of those 100 characters. So we ended up spending 2 hours learning the piano new score I printed from the net last night.

For those who are intested, below is the word list for semester 1

List in PDF format