Our Next Adventure across Three Countries

Daddy's off for his work attachment again and this time we are off to Japan [again woo hoot!], USA and Canada for 3.5 months.  We were full with 100 kg of luggage carrying kids and food supplies. 

Our seasoned travelers:)

A New Year Ahead and Much to be Thankful

C.A 125 - 6.4 and a good mammogram

I have much to be thankful for. 

Sometimes when I put my kids to bed, the occasional thought of 'not being around for them' crosses my mind. And it makes me very grateful - to be around for the kids in all their growing, learning and mischief. I am grateful and so thankful for my family. 

Had a really enjoyable 36th birthday celebration in a quiet part of Singapore.

4 Years and Counting

Today is July 12 - 3 days short of July 15. Always an emotional time. Always a reflective time. Always a time of praise and thanksgiving. 

In a year fraught with many life threatening decisions to make, I was yet faced with another difficult situation in July 2008 [i think this is something that I have never blogged about]. I was about done with my fifth cycle of chemotherapy. My sixth and final cycle was another dilemma. There were two options. The first option: Should I go ahead with my sixth cycle of treatment? Doing so would mean that my body and bloods would have lesser time to recover before my scheduled caesarean and hysterectomy. That might bring about a host of complications during operation. The second option: Should I wait till Samuel is delivered before I resume my final cycle. A break in the cycle might render the previous cycles less effective and there may be a chance of recurrence. These options were really not the easiest to make and each option paved roads unknown. [Side note: It's stuff like these that reset my perspective and made me realize what are the essentials and non-essentials in life. Enables me to shrug my shoulders easily over trivial things]

Well..we eventually opted for the former - to go ahead with my final cycle. That was after deliberation and prayer and understanding why we did our chemotherapy in the first place. As we entered the month of July, my bloods fell dangerously low at one point of time. The implications could mean an inability for my blood to clot during the operation and it could mean serious blood loss. There were quick decisions for blood transfusion to be done. So, when I though my hospital days were over till July 15, it wasn't. I headed to the hospital for another two times to do my blood infusions. 

After close to 6 months of treatment, my body has taken a toil. Nurses were finding it hard to locate my veins. We could only pray that my body could withstand the long operation that was to happen on July 15.  Miraculously it did. And I know that it was the Lord who who carried me through this journey, and perhaps my family too. 

So, on July 15 2008, by the grace and to the glory of God, our dear Sammy was born [like a little lizard] - with legs and limbs as fragile as toothpicks. But he was a precious precious gift from God. In And so here we are now, 4 years and counting. 

Blessed birthday precious Sammy Boy - our emblem of God's grace, hope, faithfulness and power! To God be the glory. 

Samuel Tan Hsien Ern [Xian En] - The Lord has Heard

A Scrap Page by Auntie Chiao Chi

A special birthday drum cake from Godpa, Godma and Elliot:)

Hakone

Our stay at Hakone was lovely. We engaged a tour guide from www.toursbylocal.com again and we had an elderly man Hide-San bring us around Hakone. Hide-san is a learned and well travelled man who was a business man in his earlier days. His work brought him to many places [including Dubai, Singapore]. After he retired, he decided to put his multi cultural experience into good use as well as meet people and signed up as a tour guide. He was a joy to talk to and like Auntie Kaoru, it was kinda like having a Japanese friend bring you around. 

We spent a day travelling in his car and heading to beautiful spots, had lunch at a soba and ramen joint famous with locals, Hakone Gateway, a wood mosaic workshop and he was so accommodating to bring me to search for the famous chimoto at Hakone even though we have exceeded our allocated time with him.

Japan Trip: Part Two

We bade farewell to Tokyo and boarded a day trip towards Mount Fuji because we hope that the tour bus would alight us some near our next destination - Hakone. That is the rare few package trip we have ever done in our travels and Daniel absolutely completely hates them - where your guides ushers everyone up the bus like school children, brings them to a spot, hurries them off the bus and let them snap a million photos and ushers them up again onto the bus to the next stop. We were kinda puzzled why the rest of the busload of tourists - a family of Singaporeans, some Europeans and some Asians allow themselves to be treated as such. Well, it could just be us:)) 

I think our family trip only begun when we asked the tour guide to drop us at Hakone as their bus journeyed back to Tokyo. With only our backpacks [our luggage was safely deported to our next destination Tokyo Disneyland Sheraton thanks to the fantastic Taikuhaibin service that only Japan], we literally skipped our way down the narrow steps of the monstrous bus, wave goodbye to our fellow tourists who have now developed a sense of familiarity with our noisy family and headed to an unknown bus terminal. 

Coming down the steps of the bus was liberating. The air smelt fresher. The sky is bluer. Hahaha. I didn't truly understand Dan's frustration until I 'smelt' true liberty. [Don't worry if you do not understand our jubilation here]. Only our astute Sarah could sense some abnormality here, "Mommy, where is everyone in our bus?" 

We are on our own - on the way to our next adventure. Our Japan hour adventure resumes. 

So for the record, that's our family in the middle of nowhere and happily posing for our camera [hung from a signpost] as it happily snaps away in its auto mode. Note: Dan looks especially estatic. Hahah!!

Where I have been all this while

While this blog was sleeping, I was...

1) Taking stock and reading....

2) Experimenting with a little css

3) Busy with the home while Daniel made two trips to Korea

4) Getting the kids' learning program on the roll

4) Preparation of our next leg of travelling in Aug - Nov

5) Settling paperwork for our trips

6) Meeting up with ole frens, a long lost fren and a new found fren

Well, I am a little relief to say that the admin of our first part of our travelling leg is almost done and we are heading to Japan again for a month! Woohoot! *Double flip with a triple twist somersault* 

To the kids, they just can't wait and they prob think that Mommy is going to bring them to Disneyland everyday. Mommy, on the other hand is making sure that she packs enough necessities to help us survive through expensive Japan for an entire month. Well, but we are sure it would be adventurous, especially when we have experienced cold Tokyo in March, now we are going to experience the true Tokyo heat wave in August - at a cool 29/30 degree celsius with the occasional thunderstorm. 

I will try to update a little more before we head off to the Land of the Scorching Sun:)

Singapore Garden Festival 2012

Sammy couldn't stop talking about the rocks that shook violently and Sarah couldn't stop talking about the fantastic slide and honey sticks they were given to suck on - that is the Singapore Garden Festival 2012. Thanks to Jezialle [Auntie CC's friend] who invited us. 

I must say, the festival gets better every year. What fascinates me is how the art of flowers and plants and trees have evolved from the traditional development of a physical oasis for mankind into another kind of oasis - a channel for creative and innovative expression. It seems like the mastery of the knowledge of flora and trees has enabled much creative manipulation. And that we saw aplenty at the festival, some of which literally 'stumped' Sarah and Sammy. Haha!

Fascinated with the frog guards

The topsy turvy tree that got us 'stumped'

Trying my hand at those flower shots

Special up close view of the igloo [thanks to Jezialle]

An obviously delighted Sarah

Another interactive display

Sammy happily seated thinking that a show was going to come on.
But it was a talk on dragonfly that mommy was interested in. Haha

All in all, we had a great time. 

It's here!

Much to Dan and Sammy's delight, the good ones have finally arrived.

Sarah and Sammy have been Enjoying

The Cat in the Hat Knows a lot about That

Interesting how I found Dr Seuss too quirky for me when I was younger and I think I never ever read one of his books. But it seems like I have been reading lots of it to Sarah and Sammy. Especially Sammy. He loves Cat in the Hat and when I asked him what sort of decorations would he like for his 4th birthday, he said "Cat in the Hat". Haha....I think they will be hard to find.

The new series The Cat in the Hat Knows Alot About that DVD is great - educational, catchy and lots of fun. I have been discovering alot of these at our national library and they seem brand new much to my delight. It serves as a great platform for discussion about wildlife and their behavior. This morning, we started on two topics introduced in the DVD -  The Salmon's Journey and Hibernation. 

As an after lunch activity, we looked at some youtube videos to corroborate what we learnt about Salmons' Upstream Journey and Hibernation. I thought these were quite good. 

Life Cycle of a Salmon [Discovery Channel] http://www.safeshare.tv/v/5DqjsWsY8-g

Hibernation [Sesame Street] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92wRDZLcEs4

We are all enjoying this series. 

Japan - A Three Week Tour Crammed into One

Thanks to the highly unrealistic and ambitious me, our tour to Japan was unbelievably packed much to Daniel's horror. After his conference, he was imagining a relaxing week of exploration and soaking into the culture. Well, we all got more than we bargained for, thanks to me ;) It was great but a feat never to be repeated. Hahaha. 

Our trip to Japan saw us travelling through Tokyo, to Hakone [Mount Fuji] and Kyoto. We usually don't do tour packages because we like to stay at a location for at least 3 nights to a week before moving to another location and everyone knows that tour packages shoo you from one hotel to another. Another reason is that coordination with Dan's schedule that does not allow us to do a tour package...so I have to do it the tedious way. But as Dan always says - you learn more about a country doing the hard way.

I used www.japanican.com to do most of my hotel research and bookings as well as tripadvisor. For Japan, we realized that we needed a guide because we are really foreign to the language and the people. After some googling, I found a company that allows tourist to engage local guides in many parts of the world. www.toursbylocals.com was very useful to us during this trip. We engaged 3 guides for 3 locations. And my children developed a specially infinity towards a certain guide - Sarah loved Auntie Kaoru who brought us around Tokyo and Sammy loved Uncle Kenzo who brought us around Kyoto and our guide in HIde-San was a respectful retiree who brought mommy to a yummy popular store to buy a melt-in-the-mouth chimoto.

Tokyo
We stayed at Keio Plaza in Shinjuku for our days there. Keio is a beautiful hotel that is conveniently located, with surprisingly large rooms and it allows free rental of prams which was great. And there is a free daily shuttle that runs straight to Disneyland [although we had no use of it]. Kaoru, was our guide in Tokyo. I think she is about her early 50s and she is gentle and unassuming. I was initially quite doubtful if she could be an effective guide. But in her quiet and observant ways, she met our requirements and more.

Day One
Our Tokyo guide, Kaoru brought us to the  - International Origami Centre. I was intially puzzled as it  seemed a most unlikely tourist destination. Kaoru chose it because of Sarah and Samuel. But at the end of the trip, all of us enjoyed ourselves tremendously. We saw up close how paper was made and we met the Origami Master [or more aptly magician] who was aged 70 or so. With deft movements, he created many shapes much to the delight of everyone, at the same time maintaining a conversation with us. It was really great fun.

Later that morning, we headed to the famous Asakusa Temple, explored the temple streets that were teeming with souvenir shops and snack shops and we had lunch there. Kaoru overheard Sammy saying that he would like to have udon for lunch and before we knew it, she had us seated at one of the more popular restaurants that served good udon there. That ended our 4 hour tour. A really good day but it wasn't over yet *gulp*

We had a short rest at the hotel before heading to our next activity in the night. I was especially looking forward to this - our home visits. Through googling, I stumbled across a home visit program http://www.nagomikitchen.com/ where the host family would cook a meal and host guests. I thought this was such a wonderful program that would provide for us a quick immersion into the Japanese culture. So in a mouthful, I signed our family up for two home visits - on consecutive days. *double gulp*

Megumi and her family kindly hosted my family to a dinner at their place. Reaching their place was a challenge but we were glad we made it. It is such a comfort to be hosted in someone's home when you are in a foreign country. Megumi's sister and bro-in-law and mom were there to make us feel really welcome. By the time we headed home, it was about 10 pm or so. I think we saw and immersed enough to go home on Day One. Haha.

Day Two
Kaoru waited for us promptly at the hotel lobby for our second day of exploration of Tokyo. This time, we opted  for the Edo-Tokyo Museum to educate us about the history of Tokyo. Lunch was at an interesting restaurant just beside the Museum - it was the Sumo Wrestler Restaurant. And we headed to a Japanese garden after our lunch. I will the pictures do the talking here.

Our second home visit was the Suzuki Family. I was particularly keen as there are 3 kids in this family and I wanted Sarah and Sammy to see how the kids in Japan lived. I also thought that it would be interesting to observe how they would interact with one another. Sarah and Sammy were shy initially but the sight of toys soon open them up. And as the night proceeded, it was so heartwarming to watch the kids interact. Suzuki's kids were folding origami for our kids and the kids communicated using non-verbal cues. It seems like everyone in Japan knows basic origami, even the fathers:) Food was great and company was great too.

That wrapped up our tour in Tokyo. We headed to Mount Fuji/Hakone next. Updates to be continued.