Goodnight, cable car!

We haven't ventured out much since we moved to BP. That was over two years ago! Used to head out to Vivo, Orchard or just Star Vista. I guess that's why none of us had any problem staying home all the time during the circuit breaker...

But that's over now! The kids should get more experiences than BP. So I suggested cable car. They were so excited! We were raring to go two Saturdays ago but it started raining heavily during nap time. So our trip was delayed for a week. Even though it was drizzling lightly yesterday, we went anyway.

The bus took 50 min. Kai rested with his eyes close towards the end of the trip. Yang dozed off. Yu started complaining that it was "so long" but otherwise remained seated and cheery. 

The last time we were there, we started at Mount Faber. This time, we started at Harbourfront. We went towards Sentosa and came back to Harbourfront. As it was close to dinner time, we decided to continue our trip after dinner.

We bought tickets on the spot - online :p So much cheaper! And there was no crowd. Love it.

The rain made this look like an old photo!

Taken by Yang :)

The cable cars are all black now. Last year when we were there, there were still colourful cable cars. Yang liked the colourful ones. But he was scared of glass-bottom ones - like the one he took in Taiwan.

Let them have their colouring while waiting for food

Can you guess where?

Morganfield's where kids eat free! Oops, Sito's eyes were closed :p

The younger ones had hotdog rolls plus some steak and ribs

Yang posed for me when he saw me with my camera

Kai had a big burger!

Then we went back to the cable car. This time, more cable cars were occupied and a number had diners - Sito and I had a dinner date there once long time ago :) So we waited a while for our turn, this time going towards Mount Faber and then to Sentosa and back.

Managed to catch the sunset, somewhat...

Thought they had torn down the Merlion but it was still there, with black head...!

That's the Sentosa Line cable car

The boys were quieter now...

Final shot as we left the ticket lobby

Just before we left the cable car, I told them it was time to say goodnight to the cable car! And Yang and Yu began a whole slew of goodnights to: cable car, moon, boat, fart ("coz I farted") etc...

We came home quite late. It was 8.40 pm when we climbed into bed. But they dozed off quite soon after I left. Must have been tired...

Sito and I were also tired!! Gosh! 

We thought that Yang likes the cable car ride more than the other two. Especially Kai who kept thinking about having no time for iPad and funny video *.* I think they are either too reliant on digital food or just too 宅 *.*

Hope to bring them out somewhere fun every week! But Sito has to OT alternate Saturdays so just nice - save more major trips like this for alternate weeks :p

A different National Day, still happy :)

I grew up watching the NDP before, during and after dinner. I remember being super taken with it as a child - the President waving, the incomprehensible parade commands, the parachutes and all flying objects. But all those marching took a damn long time for a child! Coz I was always waiting for all those floats!

Digress a bit. For a period of time in kindy, I was in some art class. I don't know why I was signed up for it. Anyway, I only remember drawing two things:

1. A dark red heart - as in the one with aorta and whatnot sticking out. And for some strange reason, it was on exhibition at my kindy graduation. I remember PM - he was my MP - laughing at it. Indeed, why did a kindergartener draw a bloody heart?! But I was strangely fond of that :p
2. NDP - with the President's chair in the middle and floats in front. This memory is more blurry - I remember only the colour of the chair (red, as always!) but not the colours of the float. I recall vaguely that I was struggling with the drawing coz I didn't know how to draw the amazing floats.

Over time, the floats stopped being so amazing to me. Attention was turned to the various formations - always better on TV than at the NDP itself unless the seat was super strategic. 

Watching NDP on TV from my 20s onwards was, sadly, not as exciting anymore. But I still tried my best to tune in faithfully, and read or do something with NDP in the background. 

Coz I like National Day :)

Two or three years ago, I learnt about the Gottman Sound Relationship House in the course of a project at work. At the top of the house was "create shared meaning". One way to do that is via rituals.

Watching NDP on TV with Mother's fried rice and teh C was a key childhood ritual of mine. So I have been thinking of having more rituals for our little family. 

In particular, I want to raise my kids as Singaporeans. Looking at them and looking at myself as a kid, I realise that they are very insular. We have been singing those lovely songs every year but more needs to be done.

Firstly, we would not leave Singapore over any long National Day weekend in future. We did it last year and spent more time travelling than on leisure. More importantly, we should celebrate National Day with and in our country.

I have been thinking about it on and off since last year. I had great plans to have a simple dinner at home so that we could eat and watch NDP on TV together, and even decided that they could go to bed slightly later so that we could catch the fireworks.

Big fail coz the NDP schedule today was different due to COVID-19. Both the morning segment and the evening segment didn't fall within our regular lunch and dinner time *.*

As every channel was showing NDP, the kids had no choice but to watch, haha! And they were quite patient about it mostly. We managed to catch both the flag and the jets (gone in five seconds :p) from our window! So happy to see that they were curious and happy to see them and the parachutes on TV :)

Kai standing to attention for the National Anthem - so proud of him!

His brothers didn't listen to me and were rolling about on our bed *.* Well, they will learn!

The flag floated by far away and we saw the reverse side - but "helicopter!"

Yu took this picture of a parachute on the TV :p

Of course they had a lot of questions:

• When is the flag coming?
• Where are jets?
• Can we see the parachutes too?
• What if they forgot to bring the parachutes?
• What if the parachutes don't open?
• Is it very high?
• Can we jump too?

It just so happened that we had a family dinner outside. That was when my 30GB data plan came in useful! Yu and I watched a little of the evening segment - we got to watch some over dinner after all, haha! But I couldn't turn up the volume so I saw only images...

Wanted a photo of me with this lovely mask from the fun pack but my koala stole the show totally!

The restaurant had people going around to take photos so I took too!

The restaurant kind of mixed up our order so the adults waited quite a while for dinner. I was quite pissed coz we could have caught the fireworks!!

We were in the car by about 8 pm but I drove s l o w l y - scared coz second time driving this car... Ya, I lousy :p We managed to catch the Pledge moment on radio at 8.20 pm - I was very happy we caught that coz Yang had been learning it the past week, from the song during dinner time and also from school. But there was no sound from behind me... Yang had dozed off! T.T

We turned into the carpark as the Anthem ended but I parked s l o w l y... By the time we rushed up, the fireworks were over!!! Our location should have sight of the Yew Tee one and maybe even a bit of the Woodlands one? Sighs...

Today, I was happy to watch the NDP segment re-run! The evening segment started just as we turned on the TV, phew!

And Yang got to recite the pledge, yeah!

Secondly, I decided I need to set up a small curriculum to teach them about Singapore, our people, our culture. 

There are plenty of homeschooling resources out there but much less on national education. Since this second idea came about just before National Day, I thought I'd start with how Singapore came about. I searched YouTube for videos on our history but it wasn't easy finding something suitable for kids - need to be fun and not too chim. Going to spend some time curating videos etc. Need different levels to engage the three of them too.

Hope to have some time this week to do this instead of doing OT!

Rediscovering 相声

Kel introduced me to 德云社 and gosh, what a gem!

I recall watching 相声 on TV when I was very young. Remember 马季 and  赵炎？For a while, I think I didn't watch TV too much - busy studying hoho! But in JC, I came across 相声 in CLDDS again；I think we had that in the variety show in the first year. I don't think I heard it again since then.

Over 20 years!!!

He sent me a few videos and I went on to find a few more, and read about the various 相声演员. I was laughing so hard at a show in Adelaide that the kids rushed over to ask why!

And even though I was expecting all talk, there was music too. And this 探清水河 was the first I heard. Also read the story behind it and heard a few versions of the song!

Attached this version: 看着、听着、看评论都有所感触，把人弄哭了！😭

And there are many more songs! I like #6 :) #3 is funny!

As I read more, I realised that I have seen 郭麒麟 in a drama previously - it was quite a memorable role. In fact, I'm now reading the novel on which the drama was based, and I always imagine his face whenever this character comes up!

But where are the 相声 videos?

Actually, they are mostly quite long so I watched a few minutes here and there every clip. Here's the clip where I laughed out out. 

Go to 16:50 - though whole thing is quite funny

This is a short clip - easy to watch and funny too

Hope to watch more!

Is CPF poorly misunderstood?

Caveat - busy working mama of three has no time to dig into policies in detail. Just agak agak google.

Most of my reading on current affairs happens on Facebook, thanks to friends sharing various articles. I also read comments to see what other people say about the articles. Often, I see people asking for CPF to be returned in full at age 55. I don’t agree with that, not before and most definitely not after a recent knowledge came to me.

Before

I was at first quite bo chup. Then hub and I were calculating our needs for retirement a couple of years ago, and read more about CPF life. 

Honestly, I’ve never bothered to find out more about it earlier coz hello, still young and far from CPF life age right?

I was glad I found out!

With CPF life and us being quite low maintenance, we only need to have enough money for the kids’ education, contingency and some discretionary spending before we can retire. Or at least retire from siong work. We don't mind working but the hours are really no good for family life. It's better for me now with part-time; I hope to never return to full-time work so that I can be with the kids after school. But there's still plenty room for improvement for Sito's hours.. 

The recent knowledge

On 8 June, my siblings and I each received a letter from the Commissioner for the Maintenance of Parents (CMP). Our father had made a claim against us.

We had a long whatsapp discussion during which I learnt that while I haven't seen him for maybe 15 years, my siblings had been giving him money to get him off their back, even paying off loan sharks a few years back so that he wouldn’t show up in front of Mother. 

I couldn’t help thinking of 房似锦 in 安家 hoho!

Long story short, we signed the maintenance agreement by 16 June. Chop chop formalise all our payments to him, divided equally among the three of us.

What's this got to do with CPF? Ah.... 

We were given a PDF of his bank book in the process. He had over $700 in deposit in the first 10 days of June. This included a sum of close to $400 from CPF. The CMP officer mentioned it had ended, which was an impetus for the claim, but it was still in the June statement so we supposed it was ending. $400 is not a lot of money but it is enough to feed one person - $4 each for lunch and dinner every day = $248 for a 31-day month, with enough left over for bread and spread for breakfast, 3-in-1 beverages, utilities for a rental flat and the occasional MRT/bus trip. My siblings have been paying rental and town council fees directly, and this arrangement would continue as part of the maintenance agreement - no chance for cash for rent to be drunk or smoked away! 

Digress a bit: Goodness knows what happened in eight days but he called on 18 June coz he ran out of money, i.e. $700 was gone in eight days! Now, my household of three adults and three kids spend about $600-$700 a month on regular groceries for all meals except weekend dinners. Regular groceries exclude the many pints of B&J ice cream which I fully intend to quit for health and waist *.*

Now back to CPF.

Retirement Sum Scheme

My father was in an old CPF scheme - the Retirement Sum Scheme, I think. Based on the website, he had to set aside some minimum in the Retirement Account before he could withdraw the remaining CPF money at age 55. 

Now, he withdrew all that he could at 55yo, just before the divorce. He gave each of his kids maybe $4k or so each - I can only vaguely remember the range now. The rest, he lost in no time - apparently he was cheated by some woman. I’m sure that’s not a trivial amount if he could give us that much - this is the same man who proposed to give a total of $200 a month in maintenance to his three children and ex-wife, which was thrown back by his own LAB lawyer. (Quite unfortunately, I was at the court hearing and out-of-court discussions...)

Mother later withdrew all the CPF money he gave us to pay him so that she could keep the flat. Of course that was gone swiftly coz the monthly maintenance was not forthcoming even from the beginning.

Anyway, the point is, I think his CPF would bring him far into retirement if he had been prudent, even though he did not earn much. He earned only about $1k a month in my primary school years before he was retrenched and started driving a taxi - I saw his payslips as I filled in the forms to apply for bursary awards. I don't think he was otherwise employed before age 55. Yet, the flat was fully paid up using CPF money. I don't know when though. But it was likely before he was 55yo coz there was no mention of that during the divorce.

And after he withdrew a significant amount at age 55, he had a monthly payout of almost $400 every month since age 65 at the latest - I don't know if it was 65 back then. He is now 77yo so at least 12 years.

It looks like a pretty good deal to me. Whatever is lacking after CPF payouts and any of the person's own retirement funds should be covered by the family. Those with no savings and no family support should be eligible for government support.

CPF Life

While the Retirement Sum Scheme will run out of money at some point, CPF Life is, as the name suggests, for life. Under the standard plan, someone aged 65 in 2030 will get $750-$810 a month until he dies. I think that's sufficient to get by, based on 10% yoy inflation and my $700 a month on groceries for 3A3C. I mean, retirement doesn't mean you go into enjoy mode and splurge on lifestyle and travel etc right?!

If we take out CPF in cash at 55yo, can the amount last until we die? I don't know, especially for those who use CPF for housing.

So, why do people complain about not being able to withdraw CPF in full at age 55? Why do you need a lump sum at age 55? If it's to splurge, see negative example above, and I worry for their retirement. If it's to pay back debts, I also worry for their retirement. If it's to alleviate hardship, I again worry for their retirement after alleviating current hardship for which there are support measures. If it's to just guai guai keep in the bank, kena scam how? If it's to invest, CPF interest rates are very good too.

What about people with no CPF? Then the debate of whether they can withdrew everything at age 55 does not apply to them. Like Mother but she has the three of us. There are programmes to help low-income with no savings and no family support.

***

Sito and I love to talk about retirement, be it planning for it or what we would do then (read whole day in bed!) and in between. Recent talks centre more on cash planning. CPF is, I guess, our insurance, and it looks like a darn good one :)