Titanic Exhibition

We took the kids to the Titanic Exhibition at the Art Science Musuem today. We joined the Tuckers and another SAS family.
The recreation of the Titanic’s Grand Staircase was pretty amazing. It’s amazing that so many items remained intact and are so well preserved. As much as we all enjoyed the exhibition, it was pretty poignant and eerie too.

USS George Washington

Sophie got to visit the USS George Washington today. It was a great experience for her to see the nuclear-powered Nimitz class carrier up close. She and Joe were invited by Mr Fogarty. I’m glad they had a nice day out.

 

SJVF 2011

It’s hard to believe it’s been 4 years since Joe and I were drafted as “tour guides” during the inaugural St Jude Viva Foundation Forum on Pediatric Oncology… I still remember our hammy and rather embarrassing attempt at trying to show off Singapore and some local attractions to the gathering of what was probably some of the biggest rock starts of the medical world in pediatric oncology. We obviously left some kind of impression since the doctor we sat across had to problem remembering us (oh dear). They are a very nice group – Sarah would probably have gotten a lot out of meeting some of these folks. They are back in town for the 4th forum and we were invited to join them for dinner and a cabaret show. I must say that I rather preferred the dinner conversation over the evening’s entertainment! I enjoyed leaning about the latest breakthrough treatments for childhood leukemia. These doctors are doing amazing and truly profound work.

New/Nex/Naughty

We decided to be brave and check out a new mall in the suburbs to try “Freshness Burger” a Japanese burger chain that’s supposed to be good. NEX mall in Serangoon proved to be a little too challenging for us. We were taken aback at the amount of people crammed into the mall! There were queues for everything… except Freshness Burger which got us a little worried. Turns out, the $71.20 bill for the 4 of us must have been the deterrent for the hordes of teenagers. That’s quite a bill for fast food! The burgers were good, but definitely not worth the journey. I loved their chai tea (but not enough to return). We stopped by at SCAPE to show the kids the new Art Outreach office. The girls caught the tail end of a flea market and managed to pick up some cute rings. We also spied some publications from the Social Development Unit that tickled the girls. We read aloud from “Dating 101″ and the girls goofed it up. Naughty.

We Get It – Finally

I was invited to attend the opening of The Lion King yesterday evening. I was dragging my feet a little about going to the event. I’m glad we went (Joe joined me). After all the years and many times we’ve been in NY and London, we’ve not taken the girls to see the musical. We now feel really guilty! It’s quite a spectacular. I’d recommend it just for the costumes, puppetry and sets. I was seated next to the aisle  - and as most Singaporeans do whenever they get the chance, I was busy texting (it was legitimate texting! I was giving J directions on where I left his ticket!). It was a funny moment when I thought someone bumped my elbow, and had the shock of my life when it turned out to be a huge “elephant”. We considered being “cool” and hanging out at the gala party after the show, but we gave up after about 20 minutes. Pretty pathetic. Anyway – we have to get S&S to the show. That’s our resolution!

Southeast Asia- Overview « Learning Across Borders

Joe and I enjoyed a pleasant an interesting evening meeting Dwight Clark and about 30 foreign students from the programme he founded: Learning Across Borders.Southeast Asia- Overview « Learning Across Borders. Dwight founded the Volunteers In Asia programme at Stanford. He has led the Learning across Borders programme since 90, and we enjoyed the opportunity to meet the Japanese and Burmese students on this year’s programme. I found the college aged kids to be terribly bright and engaged. It was such a pleasure discussing a wide range of topics with them. We even had a chat about consumer electronics. It’s hard to beat Japanese youngsters when it comes to the latest gizmos.

Opening of the ArtScience Museum at Marina Bay Sands

It’s outdoors and extremely hot! Help!

Practice for India

We decided to help Sarah practice for India today by taking her out to dine at an Indian restaurant. We ordered mostly South Indian food and the spiciness was challenging for her. Sophie ordered “cheese naan” (I guess she figured she didn’t have to suffer any spiciness as she wasn’t going to India!). I was amused that the well known Indian restaurant on Race Course road featured a Chinese god of fortune statue and Chinese New Year decorations! Guess we’re truly multi-cultural here.

18 hours

I’ve been out for 18 hours, and am exhausted. The day started in the loveliest way with Sophie’s recital. It was not just great to watch Sophie play a duet with her friend Chloe, but also fun to watch the other performances. While a few were quite accomplished, most were a rather frightful cacophony of discordant toots and screeches. The happy start to my day was followed by a 4 hour meeting with school administrators, an excellent talk entitled ” The Evolving Social Innovation Agenda” by John Elkington at SMU, and a hilarious play, “The Guru of Chai”. I’m fried. Another marathon day tomorrow.

Skating & Shopping with S&S

Spent the day out with S&S. We explored the new mall at Marina Bay Sands, and they had fun ice-skating. Sophie is definitely more comfortable on the ice… she was skating while Sarah, true to her cautious self, was “ice-strolling”. I treasure these times when we can be together and watch the kids goof around. They are the loveliest girls.