The Story Of Edwina

Sometime last week as I was making my way home after parking my car at about 3 am, I was stunned to see the usually dimly lighted playground that is exactly opposite our apartment all lit up in colours. Half alseep from being tired after work, I wracked my brain trying to figure out a reason for the "light up". No festivals or holidays came to mind. Then, my eyes started to focus... and the words "EDWINA" with a red heart at the end became clear.

Here's a shot taken from our apartment's kitchen window by Mrs Premster, who was tickled at the gesture of the young man who was hard at work putting the finishing touches to his masterpiece, made out of cyalume sticks, for a special girl named Edwina who apparently lives in our apartment block too.

"A proposal!", my dear romantic wife declared. "Lets hope so", I replied. "It'll be interesting if Edwina shows up from her late night out with another guy in tow", the pessimist in me continued.

So, from 3 am onwards, we stayed up in our apartment with this young man on the playground hoping to catch fireworks from the romantic gesture. By 6 am, no fireworks, no Edwina. Our domestic helper emerged from her room to ask if we had seen the set-up. She too had been following the saga from her window, which faced the same direction!

My wife and I had to leave home at about 7 am and as we stepped out of the house, we caught a clearer glimpse of the young man clad in a white t-shirt, white shorts and a white hat fumbling with his mobile phone desperately trying to call someone repeatedly. "Looks like Edwina was a no show. Not a proposal but what appears to be an apology and a desperate attempt to win his dear Edwina back", I told the Mrs, the pessimist in me gloating from being right.

As the young man's hopes diminished, so did the glow of his cyalume sticks, unable to keep up with the bright rays of the rising sun. Edwina was not to be. I made my own declaration of love to my wife. "If the cyalume sticks were still there and illuminated tonight, I'd re-arrange them to spell your name".

What can I say, I can be quite the romantic myself.

Size Doesn't Matter

Exactly a year ago today, my wife, our then 1 month old boy and I moved from our 1463 sq feet private apartment to our current public housing of approximately 1000 sq feet. It was purely circumstances that led us to move to smaller and simpler accomodation.

Although it was my idea to sacrifice another bigger apartment to be paid for over the next 20 odd years versus a smaller one that we can own immediately, I was extremely worried about my decision, one that would impact all of us, on moving day. All my life, I've lived in private housing. So did my wife. This is the first time either of us was to experience life in a Government-subsidised apartment. I remember begging under my breath "Please God, let this be a good decision" as I locked our former home for the very last time.

A year down the road, I'd have to say that the decision was not a bad one after all. Thank God. Although smaller, my wife has made it very cosy and comfortable for all of us. It is easier to clean and manage and for the first time in my life, I have everything (my home theatre and sound systems) set up the way I like. My wife has a kitchen she loves and The Devster has his very own playzone.

Aside from the comforts within our home, everything appears to be a stone's throw away. My wife takes the MRT to work everyday and it takes her a total of 25 minutes from the time she steps out the door to the time she sits at her desk. Although I drive to work (due to my late and long hours), it would actually take me less than 20 minutes to walk to my office!

The neighbourhood is fantastic too! There's a 24 hour food place about 10 minutes away by foot, a 24 hour clinic 5 minutes away, a regular wet-market about 5 minutes away and our block is surrounded by lots of playgrounds which I'd expect The Devster to be hanging out at when he's older. If we don't get our groceries from the wet-market, there is a major shopping mall which is about a 10 minute walk down the road and has a huge supermarket. This is the same mall where I bought my "Moses phone" recently. I love this mall because it has practically everything!

Aside from the tangible comforts, what makes this place immensely significant is the fact that this is really my very own family's home - where I am fully responsible for everyone's well-being. It is a huge responsibility where my every decision will fully affect everyone living under the same roof. Fortunately for me, I am blessed with a life-partner who is herself blessed with level-headedness and the ability to remaining calm under pressure - two traits I am sorely lacking in. Oh, and she's an excellent cook to boot!

All in all, we're very happy here. Recently, my wife and I were talking about the future and one thing was apparent - even if we could afford to move to more luxurious accomodations, it would be remarkably hard for us to leave our present home. Many lovely memories have been made here and I am sure there's more to come.

Home, sweet home.

Extreme Makeover - Home Edition

I mentioned sometime in July that Mrs Premster and I were putting together a dedicated playzone for The Devster. The playzone, imported from America, is up and running and our "ster" junior spends a good part of the day in it, playing with his toys, having lunch, a little TV entertainment and catching up on some leisure reading. Actually, he's into tearing the pages for now.

Anyway, I thought I'd post a picture of Dev's playzone. Here it is....

And here's our resident structural engineer checking to see if it is safe for occupation. (oops... no pants!)

As you can probably see, a large chunk of our living room is "gone". Thankfully, our ever-efficient domestic helper takes the playzone apart at the end of the day so that I get to stretch my legs out in front of the tele when I get home after a hard day's work.

This is how our place looked like just before we moved in.

Speaking of our home, look out for my upcoming post.

Jinxed - The Sequel

For the long time followers of the aptly titled "Things That Fill My Head" blog, you would have read my entry last year titled Jinxed.

Here's my latest annual report.

• Our relatively new washing machine has conked out. On its first cycle, water flows into the machine normally. But on the second and subsequent cycles, the machine decides to take it easy and water just trickles in. So, it officially takes almost two hours to complete a load of laundry.
• My car refused to start this afternoon. Got the boys in yellow (AA) to come by and replace the battery. Car started but now, one of my electronic gauges says that the engine's oil pressure is too low. "A leaking oil line or a faulty oil pump", declared the technician. *sigh*
• The water pipe from the water heater in the bathroom near the kitchen is leaking badly. This is, of course, a new water heater with a new pipe.
• My bluetooth headset has decided, for some reason or other, not to work with my mobile phone anymore. Resetting and re-pairing it doesn't help. Talk about miscommunication!

It is still early in the month. I'm sure the list will get longer. *sigh*

Rotten Apple

Did anyone hear of the new iPods launched last week? No? Then you've missed out on some earth-shattering news.

I've become quite the Apple fanboy in recent years. Last week when I heard that Apple was due to announce a slew of new iPods, I almost pee'd my pants. I found a website (Gizmodo, you guys rock!!) that was doing a live blog from the event and stayed with them as they blogged about buying coffee and bagels on the way to the Moscone Centre (where the event was held) till they announced new new iPod line up. Boy was it an exciting morning. Here in Singapore, the event started at about 1 am and I tracked it till about 3 am. Then, I waited some more till the Apple online stores updated their webpages with the new devices. I eventually retired to bed close to 6 am, tired but smiling.

I am in love with the new iPod Touch. It looks exactly like the Jesus phone (which I got to play with a few weeks ago) but without the phone features. It has a full touch screen interface except the home button at the bottom of the device. To watch videos in landscape mode, just turn the device from portrait position to landscape and the screen switches automatically. It comes with wifi so that you can connect to the Internet at any public wifi hotspot. It also has iTunes built-in and from any wifi hotspot, you can buy your tunes then and there. And for the Java (coffee, not the programming languange) junkies, there is even a tie up with Starbucks such that a Starbucks icon pops up if you're in the vicinity of one. You can then check out what tracks Starbucks is playing, listen and buy them on the spot. But I believe this feature is available only in the States for the moment.

Here's where things go very wrong and I truly hate Apple for it. The iPod Touch has a built-in calender that allows you to enter your appointments and alarms via its virtual keyboard. But a recent report said that Apple has intentionally disabled this feature on the iPod Touch, even though it shares the same software architecture as the iPhone. I think this is what they call "artificial product segmentation". So, its there, it works, but Apple won't let you use it. Its like I go to work and my boss ties one of my arms to intentionally make my job harder.

My usually high opinion of the Cupertino-based company has dropped more than a couple of notches.

Nevertheless, the new line up of portable music / video players from Apple is still impressive. I've got the Apple store open in another window and I'm just itching to click "Buy Now".

What else is new, right?

I Felt The Earth Move

At about 7:10 pm today, I was sitting at my office reading about the latest gadgets being announced and launched - to decide the best way to blow my hard-earned paycheck - when one of my Engineers turned to me and said "the building is shaking". "Nonsense! Its all in your head", came my immediate response. Another Engineer, also not feeling anything, nodded his head violently in approval.

A few minutes later, I felt it in my head - a dizzy feeling. Then I felt it physically - our office building was actually swaying!

Being employed in a major news and media company, I called the newsroom to enquire if there were reports of earth tremors around Singapore. A friend in the newsroom said "We're swampped with calls from all over Singapore!" and hung up in a rush. As I hung up, my wife called me to say that she could feel major tremors at her office!

Looking through the major news websites, I found out that there was a major undersea earthquake of magnitude 8 in Jakarta. Jakarta authorities has since issued a Tsunami warning.

If we could feel the tremors here in Singapore, I can't imagine how it would be like in Jakarta. I hope everyone is alright.

More on the news and a video can be found here.

Little Boy Blues

Our little boy was ill over the last couple of days.

It was a very worrying time for us. The Devster (I'm calling him that from now on) has fallen ill before but he never had a fever spike at close to 39 degrees celsius. I was asleep when our domestic help called my wife at work (instead of waking me!) to say that our boy had a fever. My wife tried calling me on my mobile phone but having had only two hours of sleep, I was in too deep to hear. By the time I noticed the missed call and text message, our help was just about to step out the door with our boy to meet my wife at the clinic. Still in a daze from lack of sleep, it took me awhile to put the pieces together.

Later in the day as I was getting ready to leave for work, I checked on The Devster and found that his fever had not improved even after two doses of medication. Popped a ear thermometer in his ear and found that the stupid batteries were dead. As if on cue, Murphy decides to rear his ugly head when I found that our usually well-stocked battery drawer had no batteries! As I started tearing through my 10 remote controls to find a usable set of batteries to get at least one temperature reading, I called my boss to say that I needed half a day's leave. As I got off the phone, I found a set of batteries from my TV remote and popped it into the thermometer. Reading - 38.5 degrees. "To the doctors, we go", I told The Devster. He seemed excited about the prospect of a mid-week outing. Oh, and so was our domestic help. She quickly slipped in "Shall I come?", trying hard to sound helpful. I told her to get ready and called my wife, who was already on the way back from work.

We brought him to the hospital. After the routine checks, the doctor requested that he be given a suppository. About an hour after, his fever came down. We've heard horror stories about how high fevers can cause seizures and brain damage so we were definitely heaving a sigh of relief when his fever dropped below the 38 degrees mark.

It was a harrowing experience for the both of us, but more for our little fella as he has no way of communicating how he is feeling. I am glad to report that he is much better today and he's back to putting my remote controls in his mouth and fondling my sound systems.

Have a good weekend, everyone!

Beach Boy

Last Saturday, I decided to bring the whole family out. Usually, its my wife, our litle boy and I or my wife, Eddie, Casey and I or my wife, our little boy and our domestic help. I was feeling a little down last week and thought getting everyone out of the house for some fresh air would be fun and would do me some good. So, we did. I can't believe that we managed to squeeze my wife, Dev, our domestic help, Eddie, Casey and I into our sports sedan.

At least I now understand why sports cars are not for family men. *wink*

Where did we go? To the beach at East Coast Park. We've regularly brought Dev to the beach when he was comfortably resting in his Mummy's tummy but not after. So, we thought it would be the best place to go.

We got there at about 4:30 pm and the place was packed. We took a walk and after about 20 minutes, found ourselves at the jetty. We walked on to the jetty and stopped at a nice cool location. Dev was overwhelmed at the sight of the sea. As the waves hit the shores, he smiled and suddenly found the need to "wave" back!

Casey was extremely well-behaved but not Eddie. A little girl, about 3 - 4 years old, saw him and decided to pull her Daddy along to meet the cute small white and brown "puppy". As she approached, Eddie suddely barked loudly at her, sending her running back to Daddy. My wife had to apologise as I voiced my disapproval with Eddie. "Bad dog!", something that works wonders at home, fell on deaf (and pointy) ears. Eddie was more interested in luring people to him with his charming good looks and then scaring them away.

We ended the evening by walking to a nearby food centre where I went to all my usual favourites and ordered their specials to go. We would have liked to stay on for dinner there but alas, dogs are not allowed in food establishments - even the open air ones like the food centre at East Coast Park.

Here are some pictures.

Eddie - Waiting for his next victim

The Beach - At East Coast Park

Hmmm... wonder where we'll find ourselves this weekend. Have a great week ahead!