新的一年，更新了网页彩图，希望找到重新出发的动力。

如果2012年是世界末日，那必须在灾难来临前好好整理并记录生活中的杂七杂八。若大幸没遭到灭绝，更不能在2013年感叹又让小小博客荒凉了一年。

Not the most bloodied battle compared to other sacredly divine schools, but with 102 applicants fighting for 70 places in phase 2C for Bukit Panjang Primary School, and every single one of those 102 live within 1km, I was slightly regretting not registering Zeeyau with CHIJ, Our Lady Queen of Peace to secure a placement. Oh well, but that would mean I have to go through the same ordeal again 3 years later when it is Didi’s turn for P1 registration. I was hoping the extra ballot slip Singaporeans get will give us a higher chance.

Ok, the grandfather wasn’t keen to visit the school to check the balloting outcome. Having fulfilled his mission of handing in the registration forms 2 weeks ago, he just wanted to go sip kopi with his kakis and didn’t show any intention of checking the result. Anyway, after several failed attempts calling the school late on Friday and on Saturday morning, I finally got someone to pick up the phone on Monday.

Well, we were successful! MOE claimed that a letter will be sent to the parents informing them of the application outcome. We have not receive anything yet. I wonder where they have sent the letter to! I hope the school didn’t make any mistake and told me the wrong result since the phase 2C supplementary has just closed.

With a secure placement back home for Zeeyau, our retreat plan has been put in place should we decide to go back home.

Happy Birthday, Singapore! You start to miss Singapore when you are away from it. Even though the yearly NDP seems so uninteresting, I miss going through the ordeal of watching it on TV like what I always did.

Zeeyau is a great walker since she was a toddler and as we used to walk to and from the grandfather’s place almost everyday,. She was taught to read the traffic light signal to train her to cross the road safely (just in case she ran too fast ahead of me and I couldn’t catch up with her before the junction).

This was quite easy and straight forward in Singapore. Go at “green” man, stop at “red man” and “flashing man”. It is fairly safe as drivers observe traffic rules except for some reckless ones.

However, after coming here, our rules has changed to stop at “every man”. Drivers observed a different set of traffic rules here and motorists have priority over pedestrians. Back home, drivers have to give way to pedestrian at the crossing while negotiating a left or right turn at junctions. Here, pedestrians better 乖乖 wait for the cars to clear before attempting to cross. I have seen a few rare instances where drivers  stop to give way to the pedestrians, but they were greeted with loud honking from the impatient drivers behind them.

Taking a car ride here can be pretty exciting at times. There are traffic rules in place, but sometimes I felt the rules mean “no rule”. Every now and then, you see cars driving through red lights signal, stopping in the middle of the road (with the driver missing, weird) or even driving in opposite direction. The scariest incident we have met so far was a car in front of us suddenly decided to do a U-turn right ahead of us in the middle of a street.

It will take a while before we decide to get a car or even try to drive around.

Really, it is getting really funny, amusing, ridiculous, unbelievable!!!Oh whatever, it got to be hilarious.

I thought I was having a bad dream or maybe I was hallucinating (I have this exploding head syndrome and often experience sleep paralysis while drifting to sleep) when I heard strange noises two nights ago. The strange sound was gone once I regain full consciousness. I chose to believe that I was dreaming and not encountering some ghostly happenings.

And last night, I heard it again! I was fully awake and not imagining anything. Guess what! I could actually hear the sound made by the couple upstairs while they were having some intimate fun! OMG!!! I won’t touch on the content of the whole episode, except I could heard furniture shaking and lots of funny sound.

Confirm not scary sound made by ghost, however, there is no way I could verify. I can’t possibly go upstairs and knock on their door like what my neighbour did. The soundproofing of this place is really like…errr… 豆腐渣？我的天哪！

Everything about our rented apartment seems so perfect until our door bell goes “ding dong ding dong ding dong ding dong”. I am not exaggerating, it really goes “dingdong-ing” non stop for at least a minute or two if we decide not to answer the door.

Our neighbour downstairs has a serious problem with us. The very first day we arrived in Shanghai and stepped into this home, the two kids were very excited and started checking out the place. In less then 5min, our neighbour was at the door, asking us to lower our volume as we were disturbing them. Well, we were apologetic and got the kids to control themselves (which is an extremely difficult task). I was told that he had earlier paid James a visit too because James was walking about too loudly and had disturbed them. Oh man, maybe he thought we had an elephant kept in the house.

So that was the beginning of the daily complaints. He probably gotten tired of coming up to report to us after a few days and get the management office to dial us or had the security guards to visit us instead. Soon after, the resident committee member paid us a visit to try to mediate (whats there to mediate, we aren’t the complaining side). We were advised to carpet our place, buy those foam mats and wear slippers at home so as to reduce the noise. We were also advised to minimise the children running at home or bring them to the playground.

We had carpets, mats, rugs and slippers all geared up to reduce the sound. However, that didn’t stop our “friendly” neighbour from complaining again and again whenever didi did a little jog or run in the house. After a while of feeling paiseh for disturbing them, we begin to get irritated and annoyed.

Because of our neighbour’s super high sensitivity and ultra low tolerance level to sound, we became very paranoid of making any sound. We even lost our temper and reprimanded the children when they play around in the house. The kids were the ultimate victim as what they were just behaving like what they should be. Thanks goodness we realised that pretty soon and stopped getting angry with the children.

What the hell is wrong with children playing in the house? And how do I go about controlling the kids? Really, telling a toddler who is less then 2yrs old to stop running is impossible, unless I chop off his legs. So the other day, when our neighbour came visiting again (he was mad and furious), I showed him all the tonnes of (ugly) flooring items in the house. I told him I have done everything as suggested. I told him I have brought the boy to the playground to burn his energy but we can’t stay there all the time.  I also told him I have to cook, do my work, do housework and can’t carry 弟弟 in my arms all the time. I asked him to talk to 弟弟 himself. I also told him we are looking for a new place.

That probably knocked some sense into him as he cooled down after that and realised there isn’t anything else we could do.

I have spoken to many moms, grannies and ayis  and asked if their kids run about at home too. That seems to be the only normal behaviour, but only our household is getting all these crap from downstairs.

He is coming up less nowadays. Not because he has realised he has been redicoulous, but because 弟弟 has grown more sensible. Give 弟弟 a few more months, I am sure he will be like the other big kids and stop stomping around like a baby.

We are still looking for a ground floor unit in this estate, but no luck so far. Hopefully we can find one soon and the children can jump, hop, run, knock and do whatever they like. We just want them to play freely like a normal kid, and isn’t that what childhood is all about!?

It has been relatively easy and fuss free applying for a bank atm card. The bank is usually not as crowded compared to the banks back home and we don’t have to queue in line for counter banking service, queue numbers are issued instead.

That part was a breeze until we realised we can’t do anything using our internet banking account besides checking our balance. So we have to apply for a “sheild”, an additional piece of hardware probably for secruity purpose. There is an option for a USB key or a token, we chose the token, but that wasn’t available at all.

James had his passport renewed so he has to update his ID.  He also has to delete his previous useless internet banking account because of the change in passport ID. There was a huge confusion on the right procedure to follow in order to successfully change his ID and delete that account. After like 2 hours in the bank, he finally got it done. We wasted so much time there that our shopping trip has to be canceled, grrrrr….

Armed with the USB key, I followed the instruction booklet and it took me another hour of figuring out how to register before I was locked out of the system. The registering of a new account didn’t automatically popped out as indicated in the instruction booklet, I realised that I had to do it manually today. So after another hour of trying, I had the new account registered, but I still can’t do any internet transfer!

I called the help line and the lady on the other side checked and informed me that we had to make another trip back to the bank to activate our account because we had previously deleted an account. WHAT’S THE PROBLEM WITH THE BANK??? They told us to delete the old account at the branch (we did the deleting at the branch) and said we could just register a new one to start using the online internet service, and now WE HAVE TO MAKE ANOTHER TRIP BACK!!!!??????

Seriously, I have never encouter such tedious, unfriendly, full of obstacles, complicated system. I wonder if this is unique to 建设银行 or all the banks in China.

We shipped the minimum volume of stuff here since we have to bare the cost, and we could almost find everything we need here in Shanghai. It started of with only 1+cubic metre of items and I managed to load it to 3cubic metre adding lots of comfort items, which are really quite redundant, in order to meet the minimum volume allowed.

I called up a few shipping company. Quotation from those companies mostly range around $3000 for a 3cm volume. I wouldn’t spend $3000 for comfort stuff. My sis used this company which offer a really low price. I decided to give it a try and called Nicks, the manager in charged (seems like a one man company, he took care of everything). He gave an initial quote of $1500. That was almost like 50% cheaper then the rest! Decided to take the risk and took the offer, despite my sis’s warning of his bad attitude, cost increment and delay in arrival of shipment.

We have everything packed and loaded in less then an hour on 7th of December. I was told my things will arrive in about 3 weeks time.  Alright, I will give it another 2 weeks allowance since Nicks company is prone to delay. I have been waiting patiently….anxiously now.

I finally received a phone call last night. It was the looooonnnng anticipated call from the shipping company. Oh man, finally!. Not from Nicks, haven’t heard a word from him since, but from the China side. I thought my things are here,  until the lady on the phone clarified that the ship had just left Singapore. . Hhhaaaarrrrrr???? Just left Singapore??????????? The lady was equally baffled.

Sigh!!!! Anyway, she told me the shipment will probably arrive in 2-3 weeks time (that was as Nicks promised, wasn’t it). So it will probably take me 1.5 to 2 months for me to receive my items. Geez, we could have bring them on our own if we are returning for Lunar New Year holiday.  The consolation is, the shipment is still intact and we will be getting it later.

Can’t complain much I guess. Budget shipping probably will take time to group all crates into a sizeable volume. However, I would appreciate if Nicks explained to us about the delay. Luckily I didn’t packed the important documents or winter clothings into the shippment, else it might already be spring or summer time when I recieve them.

It is Sunday today. I was confused earlier when James told me “they” switched Sunday with Friday, so Friday will be a holiday. Didn’t understand what he was trying to tell me, didn’t bother to clarify and he didn’t bother to explain further too.

I was baffled when the school bus auntie said she will see us again on Sunday. Huh, what was going on which Sunday being a school day. I thought she had the dates mixed up until another parent explained to me that Sunday is a school day due to the “switch”.

I began to realise what it meant. So the government made Friday a public holiday and compensated it on Sunday so the public could have a longer weekend. Well, it is nice to have 3 rest days, but i guess for the next week, it would be a really long week of 7 work days if you don’t have Saturday off.

A bunch of Singapore bloggers has launched the Tomorrow, a mosaic of linkages to interesting blog entries that is related to Singapore. As we know too well, parents display certain abnormal behaviour when their children are concern. Parents do weird things too, like sucking mucus from their child’s blocked nose, or digging into the child’s poo looking for swallowed objects. There must be some interesting articles to point to.

There have been an ever increasing number blogging mommies (and also daddies) from Singapore, and I have been collecting their url for sometimes. So far, I have gotten about 70 of them, but I am sure there are much more. I don’t know what for I gather all the urls, I just feed them into bloglines and see if there are any useful tips to pick up or read about the happenings of some oddball parents/children. Hopefully I could sort them out this weekend, upload them, and let helpful readers point me to those blog sites that I missed out.