Sec 2 going on Sec 3

Yesterday was Kai's last day of school. There was a learning showcase by the Sec 2s so Sito and I went to school.

We took our time getting there as the showcase was supposed to be from 11.30am to 1.30pm. But when we found his classroom at about noon, the kids were just randomly sitting around, doing nothing. And the boy pretended he didn't know us - he just shook his head a bit and turned back to his Chromebook.

死囡仔 - that's Hokkien "siginnah" :p

So wondering what was going on, we turned to PG. Voila, there was a rather late note with info on where to find your own kid. Kai was supposed to be in classroom 4E but eh, he was still at 2C leh... So we just sat outside until we saw him leave 2C. We went to 4E, saw Kai but the room was dark...

Some other rooms had teachers and the kids were starting to show their work to visiting parents. There was, needless to say, no teacher in 4E. 

Some other parents started showing up at 4E. Eventually another kid turned on the light. After a while, we decided to go in. Kai tried to pretend he didn't know us, calling me "madam"!

Again, darn you, naughty kid! 😂 

No chance this time. We pressed him for his showcase and he started reading a slide off his Chromebook. But it was a fully equipped classroom so we made him hook it up to the projector. It took Sito and me a while to finally figure out how to get it to work though - we went to support our kid and ended up being tech support!

ITD to the rescue!

The team took turns to present the slides about their values-in-action trip to AMKPS student care. Only one boy - not ours - looked properly at the audience when presenting. The rest were just reading off the slides.

Kai's turn to speak

Yikes, sloughing!!! :(

At the end of it, as everyone stood around not knowing what next, a parent next to me asked if Kai was mine. She said she was with the team at the dragon playground some time ago; the kids had to do a video for Chinese. She shared with me that Kai did a great job leading the team to film the thing as they were all rather distracted. So happy to hear that :)

Before the dragon playground, he also filmed another video for literature. Two boys came to our place - while the brothers were at AhMa's place so less chaotic - to do some prata thingy and I sacrificed two pratas for the filming. Yes, they were very slow and messy. But Kai shoved me into my room so I didn't see or hear them much. So I don't envy the mum at the dragon playground - must be quite sian out in the sun with them for so long!

Anyway, Kai dismissed us all so we went to the canteen. Sito and I were accosted by a boy as we passed by another classroom. He invited us to see their work so we did. It was an innovation room so quite fun. And yes, there was a teacher there. I seriously doubt Kai's team invited anyone else in to present their work again!

Sito and I waited at the canteen for the brothers. They had their lunch and disappeared! We eventually found them plus Kai at the other side of the canteen playing the piano. So hard to make them leave...

Non-stop chattering on our way to the bus stop

Took the bridge but went to Balmoral bus stop. We just missed 48 and Yu had to go back to revise so we pried him away from his brothers to take 960 to Stevens to change to MRT while his brothers waited for 48. He was very upset that he couldn't stay with his brothers - he wanted to watch Kai play games on his phone! But Yu got Sito's phone for two train stops - sheepishly happy this one...

Last night, Kai cleared out his school bag. Turned out he had a merit award - certificate and badge - for his NPCC participation! But he said almost everyone got it anyway. I guess it's a different level from the awards on stage but it's an award anyway! I was way more excited than he was, and happily took it to keep in his memorabilia box. The certificate was a bit giam cai coz it came out of his bag but well, still can keep.

The second thing from his school bag was his year-end report. After the whole Chinese WA thingy in term 1 for which he lost all 15% of the total grade, he managed to scrape through to an A2 overall, thanks to his impressive 170/200 showing at the year-end exams! And despite that behaviour (and another recent transgression 🤦‍♀️ ), he obtained "very good" for his overall conduct grade. Um, ok, lucky him!

Anyway, his L1R4 is a 10, an improvement from 11 last year. Hopefully he can continue to improve! The key is English. Despite two years of tuition, he had a B4 at year-end exams, bumped up to B3 overall thanks to WAs. We have stopped tuition as he wants more time for work in general so Sito taught him to use AI to help him improve his English.

The third thing, is the most important one - Sec 3 posting letter. He has qualified for seven subjects including pure science. So while chatting on our bed, he decided that he would submit his choice right away. Sito and I didn't review his submission but we assumed he keyed everything in correctly, hoho!

This morning, Kai met his team mates at the supermarket downstairs to spend a $10 voucher they won. Guess we're at a relatively central location.. Then they went to Bao-er for breakfast. Kai had two servings of kaya butter bread and came back very full - hence I'm still here typing away instead of preparing his lunch :p His friends, however, couldn't finish one serving! No wonder my younger boys very 壮 :p

Kai still has a CCA session in November, and then he will totally leave Sec 2 behind and soon move to Sec 3 and preparation for the Os. This has not been an easy year for him. He got quite a few scoldings from us and even a warning from school. Hope he will learn from it and be a better person than he is today!

A week with the kids home

PSLE marking days are (1) for PSLE kids to nua, and (2) for P3-5 to bia!

On day 1, we brought Yang and Yu to JEN Tanglin for breakfast. Both of them were so happy finding yummy food for themselves. Yang went for quantity and Yu for variety. So happy to see them enjoy themselves :)

The same couldn't be said for Kai when we brought him to Novetel Stevens back in July during his HBL week. He wasn't keen on the food at all! But when he heard about this JEN trip, he said it was better than his. Why? Coz the yoghurt was in individual servings, not in a big serving bowl *.*

Actually, I enjoyed Novetel as there were sausages and bacon, from of which were absent - even in their halal form - at JEN. So the main protein at JEN came from eggs, which the two boys and I like.

Hot food is the best!

Touching my rambutan

Yu spotted fishcake in Papa's noodle soup!

Coz Yang was so full, we took a walk to the bus stop at Orchard Boulevard, instead of going back straight from JEN. Along the way, we checked out Tanglin Mall and Forum - yes, Toys R Us. The boys also went into a 7-11 to find Pokemon cards, as Yu just bought a pack from the new card shop near our place the day before and was still keen to get more...

Yang was very tired and went home on his own after we alighted from the bus. Sito brought Yu for a pre-exams haircut while I grabbed some vege from the supermarket for the evening's dinner. The two boys were hungry enough to have lunch by 1pm. Sito and I had our next meal at dinner...

Yu started revision after lunch. And it was non-stop work! Yang also has work even after exams - he has to practise his handwriting - English, Chinese and numbers. He's getting better but really need to be consistent...

His past handwriting was horrible!

Also got Yang to clear out his desk cabinet and two shelves full of toys. Managed to dump quite a bit of stuff but this boy is also quite the hoarder... I just wait la...

Other than writing and packing, Yang spends all his free time playing Nintendo - fixed periods only - and reading library books both physical and on Libby.

Yu didn't do very well for science on day 2. Yang was having his lunch as Yu went through some heat processes with Papa at the dining table, and this happened:

Yang: Oh... I love this!

Papa: What? The burger?

Yang: Yes, the burger and also the science! I miss it!

Funny la, this boy...

We were lucky we went out on Monday coz the haze got worse after that. Sito had thought of bringing Yang to kayak but had to abort the idea. Wednesday was so hazy that we started closing all our windows except for the WC/bathrooms louvre windows and the kitchen window which has a gap to accommodate a hanging rack. 

We even bought an air purifier even though expected delivery would be in early November! Maybe - hopefully! - not hazy by then but we had delayed the purchase for years so just did it anyway :p

So day 3, we remained cooped in. Yang helped me make some chocolate chip cookies - browning the butter, making the dough. Yu joined in during the shaping as he just finished a paper. I packed away some cookies for Yang to bring to school for the next two days and next week; the rest were gone by Friday!

Yang's cookies on the left, Yu's on the right

That day, Kai had an external NPCC training at Queensway after school. The silly boy walked 15-20min to Queenstown MRT with his friends instead of taking a direct bus from right outside the fire station, amid the haze! Too late by the time I knew - only saw his route when he tapped out at HV MRT.

Thursday and Friday were Kai's days home while the brothers went back to school. We didn't do anything special. Got him to clear his desk cabinet and toy shelves. He doesn't have as much junk as his brothers, thankfully. Then Sito tasked him to use AI to help him understand how to improve in his English comprehension as he didn't do well for English exam - very sad coz he had tuition for the past two years :(

This morning, the haze didn't look as bad so we went out for breakfast at Toast Box. It's so expensive now! We always order the same thing and it cost over $30 today when it was in the mid $20s the last time we were there earlier this year or last year. Guess we won't go there anymore... Bao Er down the road offers a better deal.

The kids went home on their own after that while Sito and I went to the supermarket to get some vegetables for our usual Saturday porridge lunch. Youtiao stall at the hawker centre wasn't open today so Sito got some spring rolls and crispy from the vegetarian stall to add to the porridge as we ran out of our usual bah kwa topping.

House is quiet now. Kai is playing chess. Yang is practising handwriting next to me. Yu is doing a science paper in the study with Sito. Almost time for me to prepare lunch. 

The haze is looking bad again as I type in the dining room; view of D'Leedon is very blurry... Hope it clears up soon; I really would like to open our windows big big!

The last to turn 10

Yes, the baby of the family is now 10!

First celebration was five days before his birthday. He booked his cake and ordered his presents a month ago and had to bear with not opening the presents the last time we were there! 

Strawberry cake 

He requested for dinner at his new fave restaurant downstairs - he loves the tomato eggs there. And indeed, he ate a lot of those!

I don't think I have mentioned this before - when we go outside to eat with the grands, the kids will arrange the seating. Kai will sit with AhMa, Yang with AhYe and Yu with YeePo. Why? Play their phones before and after food 🤦‍♀️ 

Playing games on YeePo's phone

Second celebration was two days before his birthday. Yes, it was a Wednesday coz YQ wasn't in town during the weekend, and Mother insisted that birthdays could not be celebrated after the date! I roll my eyes la...

So that the kids could still go to bed early, we set the venue at the other Chinese restaurant downstairs which also serves tomato eggs. But it's very Chinese - we ate cake with soup spoons!!!

Chocolate cake - coz no strawberry cake at the MRT bakery

The 10yo and the 80yo

Nowadays, Yu likes to cut cake, especially his own slice :)

Interestingly, Kai decided to have some cake! Was it the flavour or the novelty of using soup spoon to eat cake? :p

It being Mother's 80th birthday, I bought her a bracelet of jade beads and a gold lotus flower instead of giving her a hongbao. I have more to say on this but maybe another time...

Finally, Yu's birthday arrived! I was busy with breakfast and forgot about it in the morning rush. But this boy said loudly, "I'm 10!" when he was changing into his school uniform. Oh yes, indeed you are!

He had been looking forward to this day for so long! But as usual, he grumbled quite a bit over why his birthday was always during exam period... Um, we didn't think about that when trying to conceive, did we?!

Later, Sito and I went to Star Vista for lunch and to buy a strawberry cake - yes, again. I didn't get those number candles and since Yu likes to blow candles, we decided on 10 small candles - 给他吹个够！

Happy birthday, not-so-little Yu! :)

We had a little mishap... After sticking in all the candles, we discovered that our cigarette lighter was spoilt! I bought it probably over 10y ago just for birthday candles and brought it along when we moved a few times... There was still lighter fluid in it but the ignition couldn't work. So Sito had to run out to get a kitchen gas lighter - much easier than a cigarette lighter to light candles!

He saw his birthday present - Yu-Gi-Oh cards - on the dining table when he got home from school. They didn't seem as good as Yang's but Papa has since shown Yu that he could build a deck good enough to defeat Yang! It also happened to be Yu's movie night so I think he kind of enjoyed his birthday? :)

The next day, we went to Swensen's after library for the usual birthday ice cream. He wanted Firehouse but that was available only on the actual day. We didn't do actual day this time as Kai had CCA.

He still got a lovely birthday sundae

Just like that, we have no more sub-10 at home! All growing up!

It was a bittersweet birthday. I couldn't wait for the kids to grow up but to see them growing less and less babyish through the years is a little sad... And turning 10, turning double-digit, that's a milestone. Next will be the short tween and teen years before they become adults. Adults!!

Yang's hilarious moments

Yang did three funny things recently. Must write it down so we can look back and smile in future :)

1) What's your foot size?

Yang has very big feet. His feet are about Sito's size but meatier. He's very proud of his big foot. He thinks he's Big Foot sometimes! So he loves to compare foot size, hence the question.

Yang's VS. mine

Nothing is wrong with that question - until a boy asks a girl he barely knows!

Yes, my boy made this faux pas. It was at his tuition class a couple of months ago. A girl from another class who was there for a makeup lesson happened to sit in front of him. He noticed she was quite tall and had biggish-looking feet. So he pointed to her feet and asked her his fave question.

"Piak!" She swatted his hand away and ignored him!

Yang told Sito over supper that night. Sito had to guide him in the way of, well, friendships with girls. And he used me as an example coz I was conscious of having big feet as a child with very limited shoe options - not pleased of course! We had a good laugh about it. 

2) The prude

Couple of nights ago, I had to change my pyjamas top after Yu put his sole to my back during bedtime chat - I leaned on my pillow while watching drama so ya, not transferring any dust to my face eventually!

After changing, I went to Yang's room. He looked at my mismatched PJs and asked whether I changed in front of Papa who was already in our room. And the following exchange took place:

Mama: Yes.

Yang: *eyes wide* Are you wearing a bra under that? *pointing to my top*

Mama: Um, no....

Yang: *eyes wider* How can you do that?!

Mama: Eh, you change in front of me all the time!

Yang: You're my mother!

Mama: But I don't want to see you change! ... And you change in front of your brothers all the time!

Yang: But it's different! Papa is a boy, you're a girl! *wagging finger in my face* Don't do that again ah... 

I didn't promise :p But this is the boy who said "shame shame" when I wore a tube dress so maybe I shouldn't be surprised!

3) Chinese swear word is funny?!

Ytd, we were at Japan Home at Star Vista. It's been revamped and carries more snacks! While I was checking out the batteries at the cashier, I overheard an exchange between a cashier and a PRC customer that went something like this:

Cashier: 只有 NETS 

Customer: 不收现金卡？

Cashier: 我们收现金，卡只有 NETS

Customer: 对，所以不收现金卡？

Cashier: 现金收！不收信用卡！

Then the customer went off to get something. When we were paying, the customer came back to scold the cashier, something about her being unreasonable, not speaking nicely etc. Cashier auntie said she tried to tell her nicely. Voices were raised but eventually, cashier auntie went back to her job, saying she wouldn't bother quarrelling with that customer.

When we left the store, the customer was standing outside with a bag and a basket of goods, complaining loudly to presumably her husband about the cashier. And Yang was laughing madly at the side, with the two smiling widely too. Turned out that he overheard the customer say 操你妈的！

He learnt about this swear word from his classmate and knew the English equivalent but he said this was the first time he heard it in use and he found it super funny! Sito and I found it super funny that Yang found it this funny lor, hoho!

Kai asked us about another phrase he heard though - 狗眼看人低 - so the quarrel became a mini Chinese lesson for the boys as Sito also told them about 有眼不识泰山！Chinese immersion continued that evening as we watched MTVs on YouTube, AI 仙 侠 style!

Anyway, I still can't get over it. At first, Yang said 操你妈 a few times while recounting it. I think it's in Chinese so it sounded funnier than rude to him, compare with the f word. Had to tell him that it's still a very rude swear word so please don't use it!

PS: We thought at first that the customer referred to debit card as 现金卡 and the cashier didn't get it. But now I think it's cash card? In any case, we don't use this term at all so it was a matter of 鸡同鸭讲 🤦‍♀️

PSLE, a rite of passage for both parents and child

And perhaps also nightmare.

This is the least consequential exams. No employer will ask to see your PSLE results. So why are parents (and some children) so gan cheong about it?

Perhaps coz it determines which school and stream you go to, and hence the company you fall in with. I didn't think much about this until R told me she decided on NA for her middle kid whose grades could go to either Express and NA, and regretted it years on.

Now that I think about it, even though my secondary school was (still is) a so-called good school, the kids were very varied, just that my class was rather homogeneous. I recall visiting my form teacher and she hardly stepped out of the classroom when a boy jumped onto a table top! We were so shocked but she assured us it was normal *.*

So we were concerned for Yang. His grades were inconsistent and could range from AL 1 to AL 6. AL 6 is effectively a fail grade. At the end of each year, he usually averaged out to AL 4-5 mostly, at the borderline. A careless mistake would easily pull him down one grade. He scored a total of AL 16 in P5. One grade down per subject is a tad too close to G2 for comfort.

Sito worked very very hard with Yang. Finally, Yang understood maths though that didn't stop him from making careless mistakes. English tuition did not seem to have helped much; he still has issues with spelling (which, honestly, tuition cannot help) but hopefully the practice helped somewhat... Yang likes science but the darn OEQs! 

Yang really worked very hard, and mostly with no complaints. Even Kai acknowledged that Yang worked harder than him! With exams coming up for everyone, we decided encouragement dinners were necessary!

Kai had two kaedama while Yang didn't have a hardboiled egg for once

Yu had a hardboiled egg and all the soup

Day one of study break - 必勝！

That was just before he went into his room for one of the last practice papers. And oh yes, we moved the keyboard out of Yu's room to the living room and finally to the space outside Yang's room. Had to shift the fridge a little..

Second encouragement dinner was during the PSLE weekend break. We chose Saturday coz Sunday before exams should be normal... Yang chose ramen again but we decided on a different shop. They preferred the first in the end.

Kai had two kaedama again; also ordered karaage

Topped up with kaya butter toast for the two older boys!

I think another reason for such high parental involvement at PSLE is that, this is the only level that parents could possibly help with. Sito and I together can cover all four primary school subjects but we had to learn new things in order to teach the kids. But we doubt we could help secondary school subjects very much - it's the kid, not us, who's doing O levels! And we're not redoing the Os!

So far, Kai could study on his own though he asked for help in maths a couple of times - mostly careless. So we haven't had to study secondary subjects yet. Now we're trying to guide Yang towards self learning like Kai. But I suspect I may still have to come in for Chinese...

I think what PSLE does for us - both parents and children - is that it lets us understand the kids' learning style and strengths and weaknesses, so that we could better support them in their self learning as they progress through the academic levels.

Anyway, it's over - for now. Yang came back feeling kind of meh about English and Maths, but he was all smiley for Chinese. For science, it was super wide smiles - last day! And also, he thought it was easy. So now we just enjoy ourselves :)

Happily opening his Yu-Gi-Oh! cards which are his birthday present withheld for three months!

Nintendo is all his until the school holidays

In the meantime, two piles of P5-6 stuff goes to Yu :p

PS: Yu's desk was super messy for a week coz of some craft making swords and shields etc. Just got him to clear it this morning.

PS2: We put together a very big bag of dead wood for the recycling bin too!

On Wednesday, Yang had no school as the HCL kids were taking their exams. So we went to Jurong East to eat and run errands. First was the library. There was a queue of over 10 people before opening time - I felt happy seeing that. Didn't know library staff would line up to welcome the first readers! Felt like in Japan, hoho!

Searching for books

Lunch at Jack's Place

We then went to Ikea to walk the showrooms - Yang loves to try all the furniture! Then we headed to Popular to get a present for Yu's friend's birthday, Scarlett for oyster sauce, Donki for curry roux and finally back to Ikea to pack hotdog buns and chicken wings.

Yang was very tired by then as he had the sniffles. I also had sniffles. So both of us fell ill together right after exams. Thank goodness it was after exams! We both recovered quickly enough. He's now very free every day while Kai and Yu are still studying for their exams...

This is the first weekend after PSLE. Finally, we don't have to hurry Yang through breakfast so that he could finish a paper before 9.30 am Doraemon, and we could have lengthy breakfast chats about random things that come up. That's nice :)