The Ugly Duckling.

Today the kids and I went downtown to a play – The Ugly Duckling. A million kids were there from the German International School and after I paid more than 50 bucks for three tickets, Vince started flipping out and he said he wanted to go home. But I managed to coax him, with the help of an usher who assured him that it wasn’t scary, to sit through a rather nice puppet rendition of the fairy tale. Sheez…. went all the way downtown on the subway and then retreated back on a taxi.

Jeremy got me a bouquet of yellow flowers for our anniversary and we wanted to invite our neighbors over for dessert, but at 8:30, everyone else was eating dinner and not yet ready for dessert. Oh well, eventually one of our neighbors came by at 9:45 pm or so. It was really nice talking to them.

Ruby, separation anxiety.

Ever since Ruby got back from quarantine, we’ve been splitting the walks, Jeremy give Ruby a 30 minute walk in the morning and I do 30 minutes before bed. All this is without the kids… The past few days Ruby has started out on the walk and after she pees/poops, she refuses to go any further and wants to go back home. She seems to be in good health and not too hot, tonight, I even brought a bottle of water with me. It seems like she doen’t want to be away from the kids and the other person who has been left in the apartment. Who knows…

Requests for my mother.

Mom,

When did Donald and I start walking? Vince started walking before his first birthday and Edda is now almost 18 months and hasn’t started walking yet, which is pretty late. But she has the characteristic Lee duck feet which Vince doesn’t have, so if you guy can remember, that would be a nice reference.

Also, I would like the recipe for making dumplings when you have the time.

Thanks for calling.

Yes, it’s our anniversary tomorrow. We celebrated today by making a nice chicken dinner with rock-shrimp sauce. Jeremy took a picture of the dinner, it was so impressive. Vince is getting to be handier around the kitchen. We let him pour ingredients and wash the vegetables, basically anything that doesn’t involve a sharp knife or an open flame. We had an amazing day, woke up early and went to Pasir Ris park all the way on the other side of the island. We took the subway and it took us 24 stops. We thought it might be a nice place to take Ruby and it is a very nice place for doggies, but it does take a while to get there and without a car it’s hard to imagine Ruby getting there. Vince got to play in the sand and in the water at the beach. Edda enjoyed her swing time at the park’s swing set. They have nice bike paths and a bike rental place with tandems and kiddie bikes, but it looks to be strictly BYOH (bring your own helmet). Then we took a taxi to the Takashimaya, the primo shopping stop for Jeremy and perhaps for the rest of Singapore as well. There sure are a lot of white people shopping there. There’s the Bulgari, the Tiffany’s, Cartier, etc, etc, etc. It’s pretty hilarious to see all these Asian people all done up with the fancy hair that’s so light, it’s almost blonde and wearing blue eyeshadow. We bought chopsticks, rice bowls and a spatula to flip our pancakes. Then we took a bus home, this was Vince’s call, I think Jeremy and I would have preferred a taxi, but V-man was keen on the bus. Vince really wanted to sit in the way back of the bus and was pretty determined to squirrel through people’s legs to get to the back, but it was standing room only and no way were we getting anywhere past the 3rd row of seats.

Now another work week, Vince is growing fast, eating a lot.