Mervyn Hoe: My Daily Happenings

On the fourth day of CNY, no one can imagine this! Both Eve and I prepared food for 18 people - 9 adults and 9 children. How can a couple do these by 10.30am? We cooked 4 cups of fried rice, boil Japanese green peas, oven bake potato wedges and oven bake seaweed chicken and soup. This is certainly record breaking because we managed to do all these by 10.30am! And our two children awoke at 9.30am. For fried rice, we woke up to cook the white rice at 4am. And I cooked together with bacon and corn. Luckily the fried rice turned out ok! Woohoo. I'm actually quite amazed that this time, we didn't even use a single paper plate and plastic spoons. They used our house bowls, plates and spoons. And the rubbish collected is not a lot, only used corn-based forks and cups. Children ------------ These 18 people are from Josh's school. There are his classmates and fellow parents and siblings. Really glad that everyone had their fair share of fun and the parents are really amazed ...

Ha! Today is Valentine's day. I went out for awhile and I saw many people with flowers. To me, it's a special day for new couples! Just joking. For Eve and I, I bought for her a special cupcake! The red velvet cupcake from Twelve cupcakes! Love this cupcake!  Actually I just want to have a taste of it again after a hiatus of around 4 months of not getting to try it:). We both shared it and we enjoyed the taste so much. :) For Valentine's day, I bought a cupcake for Eve. As a mutual exchange, Eve bought for me a new age carousel for our kitchen cabinet. And after fixing it, boy we have much more storage space for our kitchen! It's so beautiful!! Guess her nesting instinct in this pregnancy is giving her ideas how to improve the house. I'm indeed proud of her that despite she is pregnant, she went to IKEA all alone and bought such a big box home! Luckily the taxi driver helped her to carry to the void deck. I would say that IKEA done a very good job in...

Nowadays, when you have children, the topics conversed as well as activities revolving house visitation with relatives are kids, kids, kids... You play with kids, you eat with kids and you sit with kids. 24/7! It's fun and it's actually much easier when you have other kids with you because they will play with one another. And we leverage on it! Yes, we will need to supervise as well as see what other kids are playing! But I can see that Josh and Kate really enjoys playing with children slightly older than them! Best of all, they can learn from one another and SHARE! We went to Eve's aunt's place at Castle Green on second day of CNY and we enjoyed ourselves! Before that, I cooked about 50 pieces of nian gao! Who will ever done that!! Record breaking for myself and I'm glad that people love it! It's actually a pot-luck session and we brought nian gao, fruits and salad. Pot-luck is a fun way for gathering as we get to taste different people's cooking and ...

On the third day of Chinese New Year, we headed to our secondary school friends' house hopping! It has always been our tradition to meet up on Chinese New Year and to eat sotong ball as well as to play some card games and mahjong. It's actually during this time I will actually gamble with my friends. Quite enjoyable and we will joke about who is more adventurous and you can see who is the lucky one or unlucky one. This year we played an additional game called Texas poker. Glad that I manage to teach them and I lost quite a bit! Can't imagine that. Texas poker deals quite a bit on emotion and you can actually bluff your opponent on the amount of stake you put! Hence we can try to fake your opponents! We played mahjong and seriously, the east/west wind makes me quite hard to capture. And I managed to win around $12! And each set cost only $0.20! Amazing feat.. Probably I have luck with mahjong! What a proud statement. I would say that this year, it's quite differe...

What would you do if you see someone litter? What would you do if you see someone smoking in prohibited spaces? These are common questions that both Eve and I have been pondering about these days. I have seen people purposely throwing their used cigarettes on the floor, discard their unfinished KOI drink on chairs, throwing plastic bags down from their houses etc. My concern is, what can I do as a passerby? Watch and let the person get away with it? And feeling unhappy about the irresponsible act? Seriously, we are all humans and why do we want to dirty the very environment that we stay! I believe that most of us make a conscious effort not to litter, however there are still a handful of them which don't. I was thinking... 1. Should I quickly snap a picture? 2. Tell the person? 3. Forget about it. The cleaner will clear. I tried once for option 1. But in the end, I didn't because by lifting the iPhone and taking picture direct to him, it's so obvious. What if he...

Well, it's a festival that everyone is getting excited about! Getting the festive goodies, new clothes as well as spring cleaning! I really feel that it's a good time for us to clear quite a lot of stuff in our house. And honestly, it's not an easy thing to do. Recycling -------------- Instead of throwing away into the dustbin, example old clothes, extra containers etc, those usable stuff we actually place them at a large collection bin at Ground level. It's actually quite amazing that shortly one hour, your stuff will be gone! I believe this way of recycling is much more effective and pass to those who need them. We have things in the house which we didn't even touch for a year. Hence, it goes into the recycling bin. Do discard or give away stuff that you didn't use or touch for a year. If you don't, it will still be there next year. Festive goodies --------------------- We didn't really got any of the red container goodies as we find them q...

I just visited my cousin-in-law and so happy to see the new born child! It's really amazing to see how actually God can create lovely gifts for us! And to mix and match DNA from a father and mother. And have so much hair! Ha! Last week I also heard of another of my friend's brother, who had twins from their same sex marriage. It will be their second and third child! I'm not sure whose sperm was used, but it's just so amazing that how we can pro-create babies directly and indirectly. That's a great news for them and the family. One thing for sure is that my friend's mum is very happy for his son! Babies do bring a family closer as it actually takes everyone's love and actions to make it easier for new born parents. No one taught us to be parents. Come to think of it. We just learned about sexual organs in Secondary two and know that pre- martial sex is totally unacceptable in civic and moral lessons. And when we go Upper secondary school and tertiary educ...

Lately there have been news about parenthood in Singapore. People are commenting about it. And I feel that it's just the short term goal. We should aim to becoming grandparents, isn't it? Probably next time there will be grandparents bonus scheme! I feel that as we age and progress to parents, the success is somewhat measured by how well their children has grown and their careers. It's like their fruits of labour have bloomed. I feel it's quite a passé to measure the success by the degrees their children have. In today's society, you do not really require a degree to earn big bucks. There is no correlation at all. And also when we become grandparents, looking at your grandchildren is really an amazing feeling. It's like you have contributed a portion of your DNA to the grandchild. For me, both my paternal and maternal grandparents have already passed on. And only have Eve's grandmother to become my grandmother. She is indeed a successful testimony for al...

Night weaning for Kate started a week ago. And I can gladly say that the night feed has been 90% lifted from her. Ever since she was born, Eve has been breastfeeding her since 11 July 2011, and now she is 18 months, we have decided to wean her off the night feed. And now, I'm playing the role as a dad who brings her to sleep. Since Eve was pregnant, Kate's demand for night feed increased these three months, causing Eve to be hungry and physically tired. Hence we decided to night wean her. The first night ------------------ The first night we placed her at Eve's mum home and viola she slept through the night but woke up 3 times which my MIL had to feed her milk. We thought it's actually not a good idea to place her there because Kate was not used to sleeping overnight there. Following nights ---------------------- The second night we put Josh to sleep first and Eve pretended to go to work at night saying goodbye to Kate. Then secretly sneak back to a hiding...