Well, there was nothing so memorable about last week, but the weekend has been pretty good so far. Yesterday Zen and Naoko and I took the 77 bus heading downtown. Naoko was going to work, but Zen and I got out at the post office to check out a package that we got from Naoko’s mum. It had a bunch of clothes in it for Naoko and Zen, including a cute summer outfit for Zen. Of course, in Singapore he can wear summer outfits all year round… Then we went off to the nearby soccer field (i.e. football pitch) to see the kids practice. Found the local kids league dude and gave him my email address, hopefully we can get Zen involved in that sport. Then we took the bus back home and went for a swim. Zen tried swimming without an inflatable jacket for the first time, so he went with a board for a lot, but seemed to have trouble managing that. I got him to try swimming one or two metres on his own, which was fun – he did it without fear and had a big smile on his face, but he can’t do it without going under. Still, he’s trying. I find his kicks are not very good, so I’ve been working on that. I can swim armless, just using my legs to kick and holding my arms behind my back, or legless by keeping my lungs filled with air and just using my arms to propel myself, but he struggles with all four limbs. But he’ll figure it out some day – soon, probably. He still has fear of jumping into even shallow water by himself, but we’ll work on that too. After that we were exhausted, so we went home for a nap. I took care of a bunch of chores, mosly on the computer, and when Zen woke up we watched a bit of TV. Naoko came home by taxi at around 6:15 and we all jumped in and kept going on to the Singapore Zoo, where Naoko had tickets to see the sneak preview of a new kid’s film called “Barnyard.” It was our first outdoor film viewing, so it was pretty fun. They had some grassy pavilion on the reservoir, and there were hundreds of families gathered. They brought out a pony and a collie for petting, and then they had some games. We munched on sandwiches that Naoko had brought with her, and then the movie started. The film, which is about a happy barnyard full of animals on a farm owned by a vegan farmer, was thoroughly bizarre (see review below), but it was a fun experience nonetheless, especially since the night was cool and breezy and the weather next to the reservoir was so nice. After the film, we wandered off to the Night Safari, where we hung out in the restaurant/shops area drinking beer and wine and orange juice (to be precise – Naoko had the wine, I had the beer, Zen had the orange juice), and when the fire dancers of Borneo show started we had prime seats. Zen took my digital camera and began wandering around snapping shots, very funny. He got a few good ones! Took a cab home, fully satisfied that we’d had a great day.
Sunday we woke up not-so-early, had a banana, then headed off to the bus stop for a foray to see the new Botanical Garden. The weather was cool and breezy, but the sky was dark and borebidding, we wondered if we should stay home. Sure enough, when we got to the bus stop it was raining heavily, but when we got to the Botanical Garden itself there was barely any rain at all, hooray. Went to the hawker centre there for food, then wandered around the botanical garden checking things out. The new visitor centre there is really classy – big, airy space with gorgeous wooden benches that are cut out of huge slabs of wood, huge cieling fans keep it nice. Great, better than any air conditioned place I know of in Singapore for spaciousness and airiness. Saw a few new huge trees around the area. It isn’t very big, but it was exciting for us because we’ve never seen the Tanglin Gate open since we first came to Singapore nearly four years ago. After that, we took a bus to Ngee Ann City and checked out shoes. One shop sold Asics and another sold Mizuno, but I went for a pair of Asics and Naoko bought some New Balance. Great, we can feel better about doing sports now. Went home, munched on some bread that we had bought from Takashimaya and then took naps. I slept for 15 minutes, Zen slept for over 2 hours, Naoko slept for maybe 90 minutes. Great Sunday afternoon, although I ran into a SNAFU when I tried renaming my picture files… and they would no longer display. I shouldn’t have been so surprised, but it took a while to fix. Bummer. Zen woke up and after a while we went to the pool for his swimming lessons. This time he was swimming powerfully, and would go for swims in the shallow pool where he could either dogpaddle along or walk if he got tired after 10 seconds of dogpaddling. Not great, but a great improvement, and he didn’t want to leave the pool, even to go see the Malaysia train. But away we went regardless. Found out that the regular 6:40 couldn’t come because it had been cancelled due to a derailment (?!?) in Malaysia. But we still waited for the 7:10 and saw that one pass. Said bon voyage to the station master, who goes off to Mecca for his pilgrimage soon. Nice guy, I hope everything is fine for him. Saw the nice new crescent moon on the way home, the start of a holy month I guess. Got home, ate dinner, did some work, Zen slept, and here we are.
Things Zen does: Zen is getting better at reading. His English is best, but his Chinese is OK too. He doesn’t do too well in Japanese, but for the words that he’s learned to read in Chinese, he’ll recognize them in Japanese (for example, the Chinese teacher teaches him “yue,” the word for moon, but when he sees it in a Japanese context he’ll know it’s “o-tsuki-sama). He also really loves drawing now, and will ask me to draw something he likes, like airplaines or air control towers or airports or bullet trains, and then he’ll colour them, or he’ll draw the same things and ask me to colour them. He loves swimming now, and wants me to buy him a rubber raft or pool toy to tool around in. He likes singing, and has recently been singing songs that he’s learned for Singapore national day. I think some of them are in Malay. He’ll come out with a Chinese sentence from time to time. He’s been watching the Mandarin version of Doraemon recently and is learning a lot from that. He doesn’t watch so many Japanese cartoons these days so I wonder if his Japanese language ability will go down, but probably not. At least his Chinese ability will go up, and he’ll learn the Chinese names of the Doraemon characters, for example Gian is called Ji-Shang in Chinese, etc. Ha ha…
Zen in the bath
Crap parking – at a 45 degree angle just before a bus stop area
Zen wearing his new summer kimono. Check out the handsign he’s flashing…
Borneo fire dancers. Zen took this pic. Check out the other photographer squeezing in on the left side. It was that kind of a performance…
The Borneo fire dancers climb a pole. Picture by Zen.
Peter and Naoko by Zen
Zen and Naoko chilled out at the botanic gardens
Meet you at the botanic gates
Peter Naoko and Zen at the botanic garden gates
Peter and Zen in front of a cool tree/wall
Recent purchases: Zen is wearing his new baseball cap as he fingers his new F-16 toy while sitting on my new chair in front of our new bookshelf.
Peter’s new Asics shoe, Naoko’s new New Balance show
Zen sitting on the back of my bicycle
Movie Review: Barnyard. This is a computer animated film about zany barnyard animals on the farm of a kindly vegan farmer (which is why the cows don’t get turned into steaks and the pigs don’t become salamis). The premise is that when humans aren’t looking, animals go wild and have crazy parties. Kind of like Toy Story, Chicken Story, and the new Flushed Away film. The plot of the film is that crazy twenty-something Otis (voiced by Ben Affleck) shirks the responsibility that his dad Ben (voiced by Sam Elliot!) wants him to live up to. Oddly, both Ben and Otis have udders, so they’re male milk cows. Weird. They use words like “the barnyard needs a strong man to lead it.” So cows are men? Otis falls for a pregnant cow who teaches him to take life seriously, and not spend each night drinking and singing. Oddly, this children’s film has many mature themes, such as parenting and responsibility, and death and dying, so it clearly doesn’t know what audience it wants to have. It’s also incredibly bizarre as they pull out some sort of prehistoric wild thing that looks like Captain Caveman, and the local slack-jawed yokels are also strange indeed. Sure, there’s a funny scene about how the cows get their revenge on a weasly cow-tipping teen, by doing some tit-for-tat “boy tipping”, but it really isn’t like any kid’s film I can think of. The cows on bikes scene was good, but I missed “Born To Be Wild.” Very very very strange, but still not weird enough to fall into the category of unintentionally humorous bad, or even campy cult.
If this review doesn’t make sense to you, check out the trailer…