First inkling of NS

来了！来了！Kai's notice of exit permit requirements arrived yesterday via registered mail, just under two months before his 13th birthday.

It's rare that we get a postman at our door, and imagine our surprise when the mail was for Kai. Sito took a look behind and viola - NS.

So from his 13th birthday onwards, he would have to apply for an exit permit if he's going overseas for three months or more. But this kind of travel is not happening :p

In any case, it's now super easy to apply for an exit permit with just a few clicks. Sito said that it used to be required for every overseas trip, and he used to have to go to CMPB - or was it ICA? He couldn't remember - all the time for his term break travels. 

I was like, huh then what about those who hop over to JB on weekends? Apparently, there used to be a blue passport for travel to Malaysia with no need for exit permit! 

I tried to search for the history of exit permits but my google search skills not powerful enough.

Anyway, Kai is now my height. Actually I last measured his height on 20 April so he might be taller than me now?? Guess it depends on how straight he stands...

Big boy!

School gatherings

Two unexpected gatherings took place recently.

I knew from Facebook that my secondary school would be celebrating its 65th anniversary on Saturday, 17 May, and saw that some old friends would be going back to meet and collect souvenirs they ordered. Well, I didn't enjoy my secondary school life much so I just read and no action.

Then maybe a day or two before that, SX texted me over Messenger to ask if I wanted to go back. From there, I realised that I created a WhatsApp group with her and two other friends from Girl Guides back in 2014 but exited in 2022 or 2023. I didn't remember either!

Anyway, she added me back in and four of us arranged to catch up in school. When my fellow Guides call, I'll respond!

Before I go into the visit, let me share my adventure...

I thought I would walk from AMK MRT station but I couldn't find the sheltered walkway - think it was no more due to the construction... The sky was getting greyer so I decided to take the bus.

And then I lost my way *.*

There were signs I was on the wrong bus:

1. For a route the plies a school, there was no students in the queue.
2. Berth signage says AMK Ave 9 - I thought 265 goes to Ave 5? Maybe Ave 5 was enroute.
3. I saw from the screen some 5m from the bus berth while waiting - there were two lines for bus 265; I thought I blur saw wrongly since it was quite far away.
4. When the bus arrived, there were already passengers on the bus though I boarded at the bus interchange.
5. Final straw was when the bus turned right instead of left at the MRT junction. I haven’t been to school for almost 30y but I lived in that neighbourhood for a long time so I knew the general direction was wrong. 

Asked driver and indeed, I was on the wrong 265! He kindly told me to alight, cross the road to take the same bus, and not to alight at the bus interchange. 

Why oh why can’t they have two numbers or label them 265A and 265B??!

Never been so glad to see the school when I finally got there, 20min later than expected!!

SX and JX were at the bus stop when I got there; LS couldn't make it at the last minute. Three of us went in, and stayed there for two hours!

It was Speech Day in the morning followed by carnival and stuff for the anniversary do. So SX actually saw our old principal who left shortly after the Speech Day ended.

Also bumped into many other old friends from Girl Guides and other classes. Quite nice to see one another in school after 30y! Some surprises too, like an ex-colleague and a couple of Girl Guides juniors who recognised me; Auntie was, after all, Company Leader of the 19th Company. 

And of course the teachers! Physics teacher and Sec 2 English teacher - yes, the one who called us back for oral on Saturday so I didn't attend a Girl Guides excursion but she never showed up... But it was nice to see them la. Felt almost like a student again.

Went around to see the classrooms - I don't remember where I was anymore except that I was in a corner room once coz I puked at the corner one day :(

The canteen is smaller now as the sides are now storage areas?? Number of stalls not as many but we know it's hard to get stallholders anyway... Still remember our canteen food last time - very lucky to have many options.

LC sent me pictures of a board with my name on it a few years back when she was at the open house with her children. But I couldn't find it...

It was very hot and we were getting hungry. A group of us left school together but split for lunch. It was like the group who used to eat at Macs, and the group who used to go home for lunch. No prize for guessing which group I'm in!

My fave room in the whole school - our Guides' Den!

We spent many happy hours in the Guides' Den. Probably between school hours and CCA hours as our CCA fell on Friday afternoon. Thank goodness for my CCA, which lit up my secondary school life.

So three of us continued at AMK Hub, chatting about life and children and future for quite a long while. Really so nice to catch up with them again :)

Oh, we passed through a small tunnel behind the MRT station when we were walking from school to town. It used to connect the two sides of the station but one side - the side I remembered - was closed. I had completely forgot about that tunnel linking to the other side or I could have walked to school. But I might still be lost, to be honest, haha!

Yesterday was my primary school class gathering. I was not lost but I was still late. Left Bishan a bit later than expected as I had a tummy ache. Did not expect bus 55 to take such a long time! The journey took only 15min faster than if I had started from HV *.*

Harder to talk more with a big group but it was still nice to see everyone after such a long time. CY and I have of course been meeting up but for the rest, I had not seen some for 30y?! The last time I met them was at HV - it was probably during Yang's maternity leave, and I hopped downstairs for a quick one. 

The highlight got to be Des and KP singing out school song. I'm glad that even though all that remains of our school is just the name - it moved (a little), changed motto, school, uniform - class 6A of 1992 is remains strong!

QW gave me a ride back to HV as she was off to her second do that night. Lucky me, no risk of getting lost! :p

That's a third of our class, not bad!

Actually, I find that I'm no longer used to heading out at night... Sito and I used to go out for date nights but we have been doing day time since he stopped working. If we go out at night, it's usually together and to familiar places. Last night, I was on my own, and the bus passed by so much construction that I felt really lost... Thank goodness for GPS!

Parents lie to kids...

Yes, we do. We lie about all sorts of things. We keep telling kids not to lie but hey, we've done our fair share...

40y ago, Singaporean parents relied on the good old "mata" who would catch kids who misbehaved. "Later mata catch you!" And the blur kids of yesteryears behaved.

The other side of the coin - carrot instead of stick - is saying Santa Claus would bring presents for only the good kids - still happening today but only the very young would believe it. Same for the present from the newborn baby brother or sister for the older sibling(s). 

Kids just love presents. Or money.

Just recently week, I lied again. 

Yu lost an incisor on Tuesday morning. At night, while he was sleeping, I took his tooth from under his pillow and placed a dollar coin in its place. He was very pleased when he found the coin in the morning.

Of course, he knew it was me, not the tooth fairy. Or he knew I was the tooth fairy. So I guess no need to do this anymore... Works mostly for the first kid coz the older ones would rat it out!

Anyway, I started the whole tooth fairy thing in a bid to get them to brush their teeth properly coz no tooth fairy would enjoy finding a yellow tooth!

But the kids never like brushing much, often doing a quick one just to get it over and done with. Worse, Yu came home from a school dental screening on 5 February and told me sheepishly that he had two decaying teeth! Luckily those were milk teeth... He had a fluoride application done and then missed his recess or little bites as he wasn't supposed to eat for a while after that.

And this is the boy whose toothbrush always go wild from brushing. I thought he brushed enough. Apparently not. Sighs...

Hope he has learnt his lesson... 

Yang fared better. He usually brushes very quickly but now after eating Oreos, he would brush his teeth even if it's the middle of the afternoon. He has also started using floss sticks recently.

Kai's teeth have miraculously turned white. Apparently, children's enamel is naturally yellow due to a more transparent enamel revealing the yellow dentine inside. The enamel will calcify eventually. It looks like that has happened with Kai. 

But wait, I was on lies...

What else have I done? Oh ya, tell kids to lie with me 🤦‍♀️ 

"Don't tell your brothers!" when one kid got, say, a Macs happy meal while out on his own with me, or when I folded one kid's clothes for him on his busy day. Avoid all the "That's not fair!" Ya, parenting fails...

But hey, I guess kids have to learn that sometimes, you just have to do certain things to keep the world moving and the family peaceful???

May Day / Elections weekend

We had such a long weekend that it felt like March/September term break *.*

It started with the kids coming home from school on Wednesday, and Yang announcing that he had left his bag containing his wet bag and school shorts - he wore sports shorts home - in the school auditorium after track and field. So there was a bag of stinky clothes somewhere in school for the past five days...!

Thursday was May Day. We did absolutely nothing but study and TV. Recently, the boys were into Harry Potter. We had already watched five of the eight movies. Yang and Yu are even doing selective reading of the books, and casting spells at each other! I have (un)fortunately started to reread the series...

I think Yu dropped a tooth this day - or the next? - when watching a movie before bedtime... He's getting very good at pulling out his own teeth!

Friday was HBL day as the school was a polling centre for Saturday. This time, Yang and Yu had a lot of work for HBL - yay! It was as if they were in school as usual, except for the later wake-up time and a good breakfast. 

Kai, on the other hand, did not have much work but he needed to prepare for a number of WA the following week. He took the whole morning and part of the afternoon to finish a geography assignment 🤦‍♀️ And then when it was time to revise for WA, he found that he did not bring two of three books home! I'd better close both eyes for the sake of my mental health...

Saturday was exciting. We woke to a thunderstorm. The wind was so strong that our bedroom window was wet all the way to the top, despite the bit of roof protruding out a metre or so. Luckily, we had the aircon on and the rain didn't bother us.

But it meant that we couldn't bring the boys out for breakfast. We had wanted to bring them to check out the polling station after breakfast. They had been seeing ads on how to vote on TV. 

The rain abated significantly after breakfast at home. Sito and I went to vote before grabbing some vege for our usual porridge lunch. We were in and out within five minutes - super efficient, the polling centre was.

Sorry, spoke like that one day too early :p

The election officers at our polling centre looked super young. Sito said maybe we started working before they were even born. Goodness... 

The guy checking my IC stared at me intensely. It felt rather freaky. I look so different from my photo meh? Meh? MEH? 

In the evening, Yang and Yu went to the playground while Kai was chillaxing at home after his studies. We went down to grab the kids earlier so that we could swing by the polling centre to check it out. But of course the kids checked out the playground first :p

In the end, only Yang was more interested. Sito showed him from outside - cannot anyhow go in...

After dinner at our new fave coffeeshop where the kids all had ban mian and Kai topped up with two pratas, we walked to OHV to grab a cake. And we bumped into the grands on their way to dinner! Just nice for the kids to wish their AhYe happy birthday on the actual day!

Taken some weeks before

When we also tried the dessert from the same named stall in the same block

Sito and I ate half the small cake while watching drama and was too full to snack while watching the elections results. In fact, we fell asleep after the sample counts :p Anyway, the sample counts were accurate enough...

Sunday was 4 May. Or May the Fourth in American English. Or Star Wars English? :p

Yang and Yu were very thoughtful - each spent some time on Saturday and Sunday to make birthday cards for AhYe :) 

Happy birthday, AhYe!

Monday was a school holiday in lieu of the public holiday / polling day on Saturday. We worked Yang really hard as he had more to study. Kai and Yu also did their bits. Must work hard coz we went out in the afternoon!

Queued maybe 15min for this, yay!

Yu was saying he didn't know how to cook but he ended cooking all of his shabu by himself. I just made sure it was all cooked. And nagged them to eat coz they could not stop talking.

Then, we went to check out Yu's eyes. He came back from eye screening in school to say that he needed glasses. But the letter only told us to check the details online - waste of paper!

Anyway, he had 6/9 for both eyes, better than Yang and same as Kai for their P3 eye screening. So I didn't bother following up until last week after Malay class, when he said he couldn't see in school. He sits near the back during Malay class.

Indeed, he is shortsighted, sighs... Without glasses, he couldn't read an ad in the shop while Kai could rattle off the words. When Yu came out with the test lenses, he could also rattle off the words. 100 deg in both eyes, vs. Yang's 50 deg in one eye.

Yu wanted black or blue frame. We couldn't find one that suited him (and our budget :p) so black it was. And a squarish one, which looks better on his round face compared to a round frame.

Second and probably the last of them to wear glasses for myopia

He said he looks like a nerd now. Papa told him nerds earn a lot of money coz this small guy wants to live in a condo so good luck, haha!

We went to the Westgate playground while waiting for the lenses to be ready. Kai was bigger than some parents at the playground but that didn't stop him from being the child that he is :)

Ok, not stuck :p

We sent Kai to the train station first as he had to got for tuition. Then we went to pick up the glasses before going home. Sito and I were ready to crash but the boys were still full of energy as usual.

Vagrants Not really tired though Yang felt sick from drinking too much water

Oh, and I forgot to hang up the koi streamers for the second year running. No space to hang properly - in our first home, streamers outside our corner unit wouldn't disturb passersby; in our previous home, we had a big foyer space outside the main door - pictures here and here. Maybe that's it already...

Today, Tuesday, all kids managed to wake up on time. Surprisingly, Yang and Yu were not as sleepy as usual. Got them to finish quickly to catch the earlier bus to school so that Yang could go find his bag.

I really don't know if I wanted him to find his bag... If he found it, it would be super gross by now. If he didn't, I would have to quickly go buy him a set of swim gear for his swimming PE tmr. I shall update...