We don’t think we are being ridiculous.

Succumbing to the pressure of Singapore education system, spends all energy on stretching the kid, making sure the kid scores the highest possible marks, questioning the teacher professionalism when homework is scarce and when teacher doesn’t comply to the teaching norms (ie, more homework, more challenging syllabus, more notes, more worksheets and never try to go experimental about new teaching methods, more is always good). Ace the exam, gets into top school, becomes a scholar.

Or returning to Singapore every winter and summer vacation, put the child back into the primary school here for immersion before heading back to Beijing when school reopens for the new semester. No month long extended holidays, no academic stress, hoping the kid can excel too, somehow.

We certainly think the other person is ridiculous.

还没真正搞清楚何谓 zakka。但是能感觉到，如果再用“手工”二字，就是意图给自己贴上老土的标签。在淘宝，当当或胡乱search一下，“手工”条目所列，几乎都是一些无精打采的玩意儿。输入“手作”，“杂货”，却是另一番令人振奋，富有个性的创意作品。

嘿嘿，尽管落后了几年，亡羊补牢的工作还是是要地。就算不能成为什么手作杂货达人，也可以学学一些应时的潮流新语。在纪伊国屋书店买了夏米的《初学橡皮章的12堂课》和小间敬子的《橡皮章生活杂货》，芷遥也挑了一本《用纸粘土做超可爱娃娃屋》，回来后上网查了一下，发现实在是付了许多冤枉钱。算了，要我等上3个星期后回北京再上当当订购，我打死忍不住。先忍痛解解馋，稍后再回北京扫货。

手作－生活，随兴，情趣，创意。

真的是超可爱。

最后买了一本《乌龟饲养方法》，准备回北京后，好好为家里两只可怜的小乌龟打造一给优质的生活环境，希望它们能长命百岁。

Finally visited the Universal Studios Singapore! It was crowded, even though it is a normal weekday. We hit straight to the Lost World once we arrived while tourists still crowded around the entrance area busy taking photos or figuring where to go first.

Being kiasu helped, we managed to catch the Canopy Flyer with minimal queuing. It was such a short ride! But the shortest ride award has to go to the carousal at Madagascar, I have never rode a carousal that stops after 4 rounds.

The queue time was still tolerable in the late morning. The Treasure Hunter took us only 15 minutes. It was a 30-50min (estimated) queue time for that ride in the afternoon. It is such a children directed and thrill-less ride, why would grown-ups even want to spend that amount of time queuing up for it!? I reckoned they weren’t aware that ride is designed for children. I would have cursed and swear if I queued 30minutes and realised it is meant for babies.

I absolutely loved the river boat ride. It was the longest ride we had in the park, shaded, cool and safe on the lazy river, perfect for lazy parents to rest while the kids got entertained by the cartoons. We also took the junior roller coaster twice to enjoy some mini thrill as I believe I would have died mid air if I try the Battlestar Galactica.

Having survived so many carnival rides in various countries, I can’t help but feel overly protected, as they require an adult to accompany the kids, even on kiddy kiddy stuff like the Dino-soarin and Treasure Hunters.

It was an enjoyable day. Would have been better if we have a cooler weather + more attractions.

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

RE: Accident at Fang Cao Di Primary School on 15th November 2010

A letter which I have written to post on the PTA website, but later realised that I don’t have the access to post new messages, except comments not more then 200 words.

http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_6e64d4830100mkl6.html

意外还是发生了！据了解，孩子寰枢椎脱臼，那是重伤，而且往往是致命的。所幸孩子奇迹般的生存，并在康复中！

事故的来龙去脉，我们能在上述的文章中了解。但是日坛校区的校园停车问题，还是需要我们的关注。

当我获悉这桩意外之后，也问了问就读一年级的女儿他们做操或上体育课的情形。她居然说在操场活动时，常常有车子开来开去！小孩子的话，可能夸张了点，但孩子们在做操时，偶有车子在附近行驶的事实确实不容置疑。

当然，女儿也解释，有车子开动时，老师会召集大伙儿站队。我们身为家长，也要时时灌输孩子们安全教育。但是，意外总是防不胜防，尤其是低年级的小朋友，可能因为一时贪玩，大意，紧张或害怕，而无法应对突发的险境。

若不是因为认识受伤小朋友的同班同学的家长，恐怕就不知道这桩意外，更不知道校园内竟潜伏着如此危机。事情发生后，也没见学校给予家长们什么交代。难道，学校就希望把事情掩盖起来，把我们家长都蒙在鼓里吗？学校本因该是个安全的地方，因此我希望学校能向家长们解释什么上课时间会有车子进出校园，也希望学校将如何加强安全措施，避免意外再度发生。

The injury could have been a fatal one if not for a miracle!

As a concern parent, I am shocked to learn about this accident. I was appalled when I found out from my Primary 1 daughter that cars have been moving in and out of the campus while they were having outdoor activities in the exercise area (which has been converted into a temporary car park due to the ongoing school reconstruction project). Despite great effort from the PE teacher to gather the children to a safe location when cars are about to move, it is nevertheless a compromise to the safety of the children in the area.

The school has taken great measures to prevent unauthorised visitors from entering the school, but it seems the children’s safety are comprised from within!

Despite frequent warnings and reminders to keep away from cars, I am still very worried about the lurking danger, especially with the lower primary kids.

There has been no communication about this accident with the other parents, and of course, no reassurance made as to how they are going to step up the safety procedure.

While praying for a speedy recovery for Julien, I hope that the school could address our concerns and this incident in a more transparent way.