2008 SC Marathon

My 1st Marathon. Prior to the run, i kena Iliotibial Band Syndrome (IBS).it is a stinging sensation just outside of my left knee. I rested 4 weeks to the race, hoping it will be alright.. who am i kdding? I felt the pull at 2km! at 13km(East coast), i almost gave up cause the pain was getting worst. Then i decided to walk and see if it will get better.(again, who am i kidding!) by the time i hit 20km(after numberous start stop and applying deep heat on my knee) I got my 2nd wind and walked non stop for 8km. the worst part of the race must be the 30-37km. limping, resting, wondering what the heck am i doing this for. see pics for yourself..


walking funny liao... as i need to compensate for my left knee, my right foot started to hurt!


after awhile i was switching walking positions(as if there are many) to lesser the pain on my left knee and right foot! And once u get "that painless walking position", u want to keep walking as long as u can....


by this time, i was at 40km. almost there....stilling wondering what the heck am i here....


pain...


even with 25METERS to go, i cant walk properly! actually i was getting emotional. i knew ppl were taking pics, didnt want them to see me teary(wondering what the heck am i doing here!)


finally! i tried jogging, cannot!


YES! took me 8hrs and 3mins! walked more than 30km!


good thing about finishing late is, they take good pics of you! and many solo shots!

Book Game from Facebook

Rules:
* Grab the book nearest you. Right now.
* Turn to page 57.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post that sentence along with these instructions in a note to your wall, and post your sentence in a comment here as well. Include the title of book and author.


My book:

"Calloway vowed,"because the next time i get the chance, i'm going to mess you up so bad your own mama wouldn,t know you. "

from Change of Heart by Jodi Picoult.

HOPE Outreach on National Day

It is National Day,our family volunteered for the church's HOPE outreach programme. We started at 10am and ended at about 1pm. It is good to teach the kids to be giving and feel for the needy when they are young. The biggest joke I heard on that day was; a member of the public questioned one of the parents' motives in "using" our children to collect contribution! child labour! You could imagine what would have happened if it was said to me...... look, the money collected is not for us! We dun get a cent for it! Back off, if interested, you give, if not just walk away. We want our kids to grow up to be like Jesus. He loves the poor, he never rejected the sick and needy. Jesus wept(John11:35) for Lazarus and those around him. We want our kids to be Man and Woman of God when they grow up. No, they dun have to be man and woman of wall street(anyway, WS is in a mess.) No, they dun have to buy us houses and villas(actually i dun mind if they could!hahaha). We just want them to be disciples of Jesus and live a godly life. Kayzia and Kieran(when both of u are old enough to understand), remember this, Mummy and Daddy pray everyday(alomst) that one day you both will love Jesus more than anything on earth. That is the gift we want to give the both of you.(well since your daddy is poor anyway...hahahha.) Anyway, we ahd a great time as a family collecting money!


The kids are getting ready.... or are they?


On a closer look, Kayzia is alomst there....


Aiyoh, Kieran, what are you doing? looking for money at the wrong place lah...



Kayzia is ready.


Thank you very much!


You! give money! give money!


No people give money leh.....


Kevin teaching Keiran how to "get money". Yes, like that people will give mah.


Or like that also can....


Siew and family. Plus Desmond's son, Lucas.


Light moments....


I found my twin brother!




Dun tell Nike....

help is here! part 3 (getting a helper) (end) HOW TO GET A GOOD HELPER/MAID

Havent wrote anything recently as we were busy with a few things.

1.Getting Kayzia into Pri 1 next year. A brain damaging exercise, which school, the distance, which phase is available for us and so on. Maybe I will blog abt this later on.

2.Preparing myself for WAST(squash) in Dublin in 3 days time which was sadly cancelled 2weeks ago due to poor respond. It was also thru competition, that i picked up running (which i hate doing as long as i can rem). I have being running since May, 2-3 times a week.

3.Having a new helper(maid) and eventually sending her back home!
Modesta was barely with us for the past 2 months. She is honest and sincere and she cares for the kids. She is a believer and reads her bible often.(er, but sometime at the wrong time, like at 8plus 9ish, when we actually need her help with the kids or housework.) We felt we could leave the house to her by herself and not worrying about anything else.

Problem started when her pastor husband could not handle the stress of caring for their 4 kids,(9,8,4,3) and not have her around. He called her often. Said he is sick, something to do with his brain(which i agrred), got cancer. We offered financial assistance for him to go for the required scans which of course he rejected. However the doctor did give him a M.C. that indicated, "complete rest needed" without any other explanations. I thought what the doctor said was this "completely healthy, nothing wrong, wife needed thou". We asked if their slibings could help. Mod's couldn't as they are far off from her place and her other sister nearby has 2 kids and one more popping out anytime soon. Hubby not in good terms with his slibings. In fact they wanted to charge Mod $$$ for taking care of their kids in his period of rest. We offered Mod financial help if she needs to get a helper to take care of her kids as she take cares of us as our helper(make sense?). We left the decision entirely to her. We went thru all the possibilities but I know we are fighting a losing battle. As stories of husband crying and laughing in the room by himself, trying to walk to the main road to get himself killed surfaced.... We know it is time for her to go.

We felt sorry for her cause she has spent her saving to get to Manila and so on. She also has a $600 debt with us. Thank God for the church and MaFoo who signed her up for the Western Union grant, which she got it!($500). She could pay us back a portion of her debt as we forgive her of the remaining amount. At least she has a bit of money to bring back home. (and gifts from us to the kids, not the husband thou....)

We realised a few things. Modesta was introed to us from our frd's helper who had good intention to help us. Seem like getting a helper directly and not thru maid agency may not be the wise thing to do.

They are not obligated to finish the contract as they do not owe any money to the maid agency. So the bad thing is, they can leave anytime. But got contract leh! er, do u want to force them to force u to send them back home at the expense of your kids?

I realised MaFoo has to instruct her every morning on what to cook for dinner before she leaves for work. At times, we had to tell her what to do at home, she was not well-trained as a helper. when my parents and friends came to my place, she didnt serve them anything to drink. Once I was busy with the kids, as i came out of my room, she was reading the newspaper in the LIVING ROOM, and many times, she read the bible in her room at night. I am like, u got the whole day at home right? cant u read it in the afternoon? Of course, i didnt blast it out. I wont go into more details as I have sent her back home on the 2nd Aug. But somehow i felt, she was here on holidays than to work. But dun get me wrong, I still think she is a nice person, but not a good helper.

So MaFoo and me had interviewed different helpers. We met one that said the agent threaten her with a gun(we got to know from Mod as she helped to interview her privately in another room as we are talking to the agent), when we asked her some basic questions, she kept saying, "hm, hm, hm, i nervous." I almost said, "quick say, or i take out the gun!". Another said she likes to care for young kids but her agent told us that her ex-employer fired her cause she dunno how to care for young kids. We asked her what went wrong, she cant answer us but insisted she is good with young kids. Sure! We called another (phi)who used to work in Jordan, she sounded confident and we thought she is the one. All this happened in the week Mod was leaving us. Our good friend Mable also introed this good helper to us but she is only free from Oct. Then another agent, Doris called, said there is a transfer helper(Tini) availble anytime, asked if we have time to "view" her. (i asked MaFoo, were we getting a flat or helper?". We got auntie Lisa( MaFoo's auntie) to come along for "viewing". We all had a good 1st impression, but how can we know from just one "viewing"? Mabe we should wait for the Oct one? We told Doris we will "reserved" her first, will decide in a few days. I know this story sibei long and boring,going to finish soon.

3 days later, Auntie Jen called MaFoo, "Ah Mel, wa wu ji ye maid tay wa ye chun(Mel, i have a maid at my place),ji ye ho(this one good), hardworking, well mannered. lai tek!,(come take!)"

MaFoo asked " Simi name, ok, will tek her"

A. Jen went "called Tini, quick called Doris"

MaFoo "Tini?!?!"

Doris and A. Jennifer(my best friend, Gin Kai's Mother) are good friends. A. Jen helps Doris to train her maids at A.Jen's home. Turned out that tini stayed with her for the past 3 days. We decided to take her as A. Jen has years of experience in this field. She has a better "view" than us.

Tini came right after Mod left on Sat.
The house is much much cleaner. She dun read the newspapers, she is very hardworking. Single mum,Indo, speak english, can cook very well (MaFoo and I have been looking forward for dinner everyday! and MaFoo dun have to tell her what to cook everyday.) and the kids like her...

O lord let her be the one......
How to get a good helper/maid?
I dunno also... pray loh......



help help


Hi Aunty Tini

Mel got promoted recently and I told the kids about it.

Kayzia went, "what is promoted huh?"

How do I exprain this to a 6 years old kid.

I went, "well, mummy's position in the company just got higher"

Kayzia was beaming with joy and excitement as she went

"WAH!"
"I want to see mummy now"
"I want to see mummy taller!"

hm.... bad explanation.....
And well done mafoo! keep it up!

Ball Ball Rash

Yesterday the school called(3pm plus), said kieran got rashes all over his body, ask if someone could come and bring him back home.(i tempted to ask:" is he turning green green?" just saw the trailer of Edward Norton's Incredible Hulk, ROCKS MAN!) Then we realised we had not teach our helper, Modesta, what to do when the kids fall sick in school. Thank God for Mel's mother, she was able to help. I found out later that, even with my MIL, kieran refused to go back home. He only wants daddy and mummy. Teacher called Mel, Mel talked to kieran,(no used one, cannot talk to a 2 and half years old kid lah) finally with Kayzia's help, who was willing to scarifice her playing time in school, they got Kieran back home.

When I came back home(6pm), I expected to see a cranky boy, crying in pain with rashes all over. Nope, he was happily jumping and dancing with Barney's music! When he saw me, he went, "see, see, ball-ball, ball-ball, so many ball-ball " like he had a new toy! I brought him to the Simei GP, Doc Chua, who also specialised in treating skin problems. On the way, Kieran kept looking at the ball-balls and kept asking me to look at them. I asked, "you like ball-ball?" pointing at the rashes. I could see it was a very complicated and confusing question. On one hand he loves playing with ball but on the other hand, he felt the itch of the rashes growing all over his body. Finally he went, "dun like ball-ball, ball-ball go home". Even then he kept laughing at himself for having so many ball-balls on his body. Normally he is quite cam shy,(not a problem with Kayzia thou!) but in this case, he was like a proud kid showing off his new toy!

Dr chua confirmed he had Urticuria, (dun ask me is simi, i only know rash), can happened to anyone, anytime, anywhere. No cause, wont spread, just need to take med(Zyrtec oral drop) and will be fine in 24hrs. By 9pm, after dinner, med and bath, the rash is 99% gone. Thank God!



Look daddy look, ball-ball on my hand.


Ball-ball on my face.



Doc Chua gave him a sticker book. Look at how shy he is with the cam.... He didnt cry at all when Doc Chua was checking him. In fact, he was proudly showing Doc Chua where all the ball-balls were!

Andrea's birthday party and Kieran's happy pics

Last Sunday was Andrea's birthday (Chee Wan and Yoke Ling's daughter). We were invited to Jacob Ballas Children Garden. It is opp the old NIE school at Bt Timah Road


It is on the same road going into the old NIE school. On the left u can see the NIE running track. Look out on the right now.....





Please note,
1. Close on Mon, unless Mon is holiday.
2. Opens from 8am - 7pm.
3. Got car park but no ferry bus. Can take SBS bus, 48,66,151,154,170,186, SMRT 67,171. Stop after Old NIE school, 5mins walk.
4. Only children aged 12 and below will be admitted and must be accompanied by adult(s).
5. For adults not accompanied by children, please contact a staff to arrange for a viewing.
6. No pets allowed.
7. FREE.


Not much food at this cafe, so better pack own food.


Chee Wan and family















I realised many of Kieran's pics in our blog tends to be moody or gloomy.
So these are some rare happy pics of him!

Help is here! part 2 (getting a helper)

My good friend Christina asked me, "you not afraid the kids will be close to the maid?" First of all, Mel and I prefered to use the word helper than maid. My answer is, yes, they will be close to the helper, as she will become a part of our family. I am not worry about that. But the kids will never ever be closer to the helper than to the both of us. We are very clear about this issue. Personally, we think many parents leave the task of raising the kids to the helpers.

When the kids have fun in the park or playground, who is there with them? Helper. When they whine and cry, what do parents do? They half expectingly wait for the helper to bring the kids aside so that both the parents and kids can cool off. which to me, is the worst thing to do. So in good and bad times, the helper is with the kids. They go to school together, play together, they bath the kids, sayang them when the parents scold them, talk to them about anything under the sun, cook for them their fav food, make their hairdo, etc.... And the parents wondered "why my kids not close to me?" It is not the helper's fault but we have forgotten the reason we hried a helper for.

I dun think, any parents want the kids to be closer to the helper than themselves. Most got lazy, find it hard to deal with their kid's character issues, let their work and career take out more time than it should. This is especially true for fathers. They are the most adsent firgure in most family outings. You seldom see fathers bringing their kids out by himself, but you will see lots of mother doing that, or worst still, helper. I am not refering to non working mums bringing the kids out on working hours. I talking about weekdays night and the weekends. Where are the fathers?

In the last posting, part 1, I stated the 3 main reasons for us hired a helper. I am not going to compromise with my time with the kids. I will still cycle them to school and back home daily. I will bring them to the playground how ever tired I am. I will read the bible and pray with them. I will discipline them myself and never let them go crying to the arms of the helper. When they cry I want to be there to feel their pain. When they laugh, I will be the one laughing the loudest and when they sleep, I will be the one carrying them (but seriously they are getting heavy for the both of us...), protecting them from all dangers.

I know I do sound very self rightous, I am saying this so that people can hold me accountable if I fail to be a good father to my kids. We love them more than our very lives.

So will they be close to my helper? yes. Will they be closer to my helper than us? Never! They are our kids, not the helper's.



"You talking about me??????"




"I have a bad feeling about this....."

Help is here! part 1 (getting a helper)

Mel and I had being talking about having a helper for a long while. I had alway not being keen about having someone we do not know well in our place. On the other hand, I also know we do need help in our house. 6 years on, the time is right for us to have a helper. As Kayzia will be studying pri 1 next year, her classes will start at around noon time and being working parents,we cant send her to school. Yes, we had went thru many times about Mel not working or working part-time(even worst!), they are not the best solutions. Having a helper earlier will help the kids to get used to her.

We also very kiasi(afraid bad things will happen), what if we get the time bomb one, how? We read so many nasty stories about helpers ill-treating the kids when the adults are not around. Well, also many inhuman stories of horrible sir/mdm torturing the helpers. We prayed for the right helper and determine to be good masters. Our church friends, Siew Hee and Joyce have a wonderful helper. She is a committed disciple in our church. She told us that her cousin wants to work in Singapore to ease the family financial difficulties. We prayed and asked God to show us if there is any reason why we should not take her.

Before i go further, I will list the 3 reasons why we wanted a helper.
1. As stated above, Kayzia is going to pri 1 next year, someone needs to be at home.
2. We need help with our house chores. Someone to help with all our daily cleaning so that we wont be burden and tired by all these unimportant yet necessary responibilities.
3. When the kids are sick, we cannot always take leave to be with them, or get our parents to come down to look after them.

How about getting our parents to stay with us? Without even praying or having any sort of discussion, we knew the answer is no. Not that our parents are not willing to help, they had in many ocassions, even on last minutes notice, came over our place to take care of the kids. They deserved a break, they had it hard raising us(especially me), should we burden them even more with our own kids?

So with that in mind, our help came last Sat. Her name is Modesta, she is 40 years old, married to a pastor back home in Philippines, and they have 4 kids. The youngest is Kieran's age. It must be hard for her to leave them behind. She called back on Sunday, the kids were crying for her. Mel took Monday to Wednesday leave to be with her and teach her the routine of our home. She used to work in Taiwan in 1999, but have forgotten most of the Chinese she had learnt back then. O, her pastor husband dun get paid in church for preaching, voluntary work. They sell veg to get by monthly. How much a month? 1000 peso, which is about SGD30! O mine! I almost fainted when i heard that. Then we told her why we needed a helper (the 3 reasons), her pay, the kids, and so on. We had a good talk. Both of us think she is a good person in nature. We prayed sincerely that she will care for the kids like she will care for hers.

For the past few days, both Mel and I felt physically less tired. After the talk with Modesta, we had time to go for a jog. The last time we did that was just before we found our Mel was pregnant with Kieran. Hm, is this a sign? Help is here. We are grateful for her.

Labour Day outing

My mum called us to go makan(Whampoo market) and walk walk(Lower Peirce) on Labour Day. Her friend(school bus driver) was going to pick us up from my place. Free transport, good breakfast and most of all, the kids are excited about it... what else can i asked for? the only problem is this. I stayed up on wed morning(230am till 5am) watching Man U beat Barcelona(COME ON!) and then caught Ironman on wed night, 11pm show. Reach home at 2am with Bruce in my house watching Liverpool vs Chelsea till 530am(they went into extra time!). What time is the uncle coming to pick us up? 730pm? no, what time? 730am... I am dead.

Mum's frd came with one of those non seat belt school bus(which is a hot topic in Singapore). Pick us and the parents up. The brealfast at whampoo was nice! But i was feeling sleepy and falling sick(sore throat).The weather was good, too good, infact it was hot. Er, this morning the aircon was running cold but by now, it seems a little warm. But free transport, better dun complain. wait uncle tell me go take bus. Found out from mum later on, that the aircon has not being working fine recently.

Mel and I had not come to Lower Peirce before. No transport mah. Once I stepped into the place, I actually felt much better! The air was fresh, it wasnt hot, infact it was cooling. I felt refreshed n recharged! We had a good 45 mins walk and the kids love ths place.

Since i havent update for awhile, i will load more pics this time.


"where is uncle?" as usual, kieran is sleepy.


Yeah!


Even with food, kieran looks sleepy.




Whampoo market.


Lower Perice.


entrance to the serect garden?














This is where they shot 臥虎藏龍, Chow Yun-Fatt and Zhang Ziyi fought here.....


Mafoo n Kafoo.


I think Kieran still not fired up that we woke him up early.....(Kifoo with my mum).


Kafoo and Kifoo.


My dad with 2 little foos.


Group photo minus me.




where is everyone?


Kayzia, queen of the jungle?


Singapore Tarzen.




Going home. Note, this car kena fine but not ours. Cause he/she parked in the grass. NEA fined him/her. Next time make sure you park nicely....