Zen Hoflich

Today I woke up at 8:00, took a quick shower, brushed my teeth, combed my hair, dried my hair, ate breakfast, wore my softball uniform, and we went off at 9:00 to Ayer Rajah Sports Centre where my team, the Coconuts, took part in a tournament.

In the first game, we won 7-0, I contributed one point to that. The pitcher on the other team wasn’t really that good. I helped the team to get a point because I walked to first. In the second game, we won 7-4. The team we were playing against was the second-strongest team in the junior softball division, but they lost because they were probably over-confident. At first we were behind, but then in one inning we got seven points. I played third base, and my fielding was quite good – I threw one laser beam to first base and got one runner out. In the third game, that’s when I started going out, because we were already in the top four, so hit a double, getting two runs in (I couldn’t get home, because there were three outs soon after that). As third baseman, I also was part of a double play, that was the first double play I have ever seen in this league. Another time I caught a batter’s direct hit.

In the final game – that is when we were battling the strongest team in the junior division, the Gold Tigers – they were extremely strong and I thought we couldn’t get close enough to beating them, but we actually got very close. We had the lead for a while, but they caught up to us and we were tied. In the final battle, they got one extra point and we couldn’t, so we got second place, and they got first place.

I felt kind of sad that we couldn’t go all the way, but I’m sure that was good enough. We had never ever gotten a medal or trophy before, but this time we got a nice medal. It was too bad that the other teams couldn’t get a medal or a trophy, because it was actually quite mice and I’m sure it is made of medal instead of just plain plastic. The other Coconuts felt very very happy when they received that medal. At the end of the evening we actually had a mini celebration and then we came back home, I took a shower – very, very refreshing – and then I went to bed.

Bye!

Here are some pictures of this day:

Today we went to the Singapore Air Show. Here are my photos:

Here are my papa’s photos:

September 14^th, 2011

Today was the big day, my father and I were going to Canada to visit my grandparents for two weeks. I woke with a start, I ate breakfast, took a shower, changed into my clothes, brushed my teeth and combed my hair and hopped in a taxi. The taxi driver was fast and in no time we were at the airport. From the taxi, we saw a huge flash of something in the sky, can you guess what it was? When we were taking off from Changi Airport, I looked out the window and saw a rainbow floating in the sky, and also the full moon, pretty isn’t it? The breakfast was very yummy for an airplane, what I had was a German sausage which was very good and a few mini pancakes. In the airplane, I was watching Kung Fu Panda 2 two times and watched the Simpsons. Around 2:30 PM, when we were close to Japan, I looked out the window and I saw a shadow on the water, at first I thought it was a whale coming up. We watched it for a long time, and it didn’t come up. Papa suggested that it was a submarine, but when we passed over land me and Papa finally realised that it was the shadow of our airplane. A few minutes later we landed safely, we got out of the airplane and called my grandparents in Japan. Shortly after we arrived in Narita International Airport we ate some lunch, I had a meatball sauce pasta while papa had pizza. One hour later, we boarded the plane, when I looked on the right hand side I saw a humongous Singapore Airlines A380. At first I thought it was just a normal plane with one deck, but as I looked closely I saw that it was fat and long and tall and the wings were gigantic and it had two decks. The span of the whole wing must have been longer than the whole plane itself, and I saw two big turbo engines, so I said wow. In the plane, the food wasn’t yummy. I watched Diary of a Wimpy Kid 2 and looked at the map. When we arrived in Canada, it was warm… in the airport, but it was cold outside, only 10 degrees Celsius. In the airport, we saw two dinosaur models made of bones, it was exciting. Papa and I hopped into my grandparents’ car and drove off to my grandparents house, on the way we saw farms and lakes. We finally arrived at my grandparents’ house, they showed me the whole house and the basement, which was cool.

September 15^th, 2011

We went shopping today. First we went to West Marine boat shop, then Home Depot, the name says it all, then Walmart. After lunch we went to another shopping centre. After that I went to see the harbour, which was awesome. I saw my grandparents’ sailboat. I got a haircut and went to a bookstore and a toy shop. I saw Lego Star Wars and I saw a Lego Star Wars book. After that I came back home and ate pizza dinner and went to bed.

September 16^th, 2011

Today I went to do catch ball, studying and made a nice birthday card for my grandfather. I also went to a Canadian school and met the principal of the school, he gave us a tour. First we went to the library, they had about six computers and even more books. After that we went to the gym, they had floor hockey, which is something like floorball. They also had soccer, baseball, football (American), basketball and netball. We went to several classrooms, each classroom had 20 children and at least two computers. We went to a room called the snoezelen room, children who have autism go to this room where nothing will bother them. There are nine grades in all: kindergarten, the six primary school classes and two grades for secondary. The school has 370 students and 13 classes, there are about 20-25 kids in each class. The school also has one portable outside, but it was not in use. On the day that we were there they had a Terry Fox Run, to raise money for cancer research. After that we went to the Martyrs’ Shrine, which is a big church. This place is big and the church had many beautiful stained glass windows inside. Outside, there was a beautiful garden with a souvenir shop and many statues. On the top of the hill there was a lookout tower, we could see Georgian Bay and the forests and the town.

Now I’m going to tell you the story about Terry Fox and the Terry Fox Run. Terry Fox was a great athlete who had cancer in his leg. The doctor cut off his leg and gave him an artificial leg. Still, he had pity to the other people who had died of cancer and wanted to raise money for cancer research. Cancer is a disease that an be very harmful if it spreads, it can cause death, lung disease, heart disease and several other diseases. So he began a voyage to run from one end of Canada to the other end of Canada. In order to do this he ran 41 kilometres every day, that’s a full marathon. When he was running he had lots of support from politicians, businessmen and athletes and the common people as well. But after 143 days, when he had run 5,373 kilometres, the cancer spread again into his lungs and he was forced to go to the hospital. He died nine months later. Now, the Terry Fox Run is held worldwide and is an international legacy to honour him and to raise money for cancer research. There is also a Terry Fox Run every year in Singapore, and 59 other countries in the world (it could be more).

September 17^th, 2011

Today we did catchball, then we went to try fishing. We saw the downtown part of my grandparents’ town, which is called Midland. Then we went to see the bowling alley, but it was small and all of the lanes were full, so we couldn’t book any. We went to a book store and I bought a wook. We watched major league baseball (the Toronto Blue Jays versus the New York Yankees) and went to my grandparents’ friends’ house and had dinner. After a wonderful night we went back home and I slept.

PS – fishing is exciting.

September 18^th, 2011

I woke up with a start. Today we took a trip to Toronto (by the way, we are not leaving Canada yet, so don’t ask me a question like that – it was just a one-day visit to Toronto). We drove in my grandparents’ car for approximately two hours and 30 minutes to get to Toronto. In Toronto, we passed by the starting point of Yonge Street, which is the longest road in the whole wide world, it is 1,896 kilometres long. Then we went to Toronto Island, to get there we had to take a ferry boat. On Toronto Island we ate lunch and did catchball, which is my favourite thing to do. We saw lots of Canada geese, whose main hobby is to poo a lot. Then I went to an amusement park, I rode the haunted barrel works, the bumper car, the log flume, the swan ride and the antique car ride. The haunted barrel works was a haunted house, the log flume was one were you ride on a boat that is shaped like a log, and there was a hill and you come rushing down into some water. SPLASH!! The bumper car is used to bump everybody, I think everyone knows what it is. The swan ride is a ride where you go around a part of a lake. The antique car ride was one where you can control the car. An hour later, we came back to he mainland. Oh yeah the lake has an island, Toronto Island, which is in Lake Ontario, one of the five Great Lakes. We said goodbye to papa, because he had some business to attend to in Toronto for five days, and I went home to Midland with my grandparents. Again, we passed by farms and went back home and I slept for 12 hours.

September 19^th, 2011

Today was a boring day, it was raining all day and I couldn’t do anything outside, so I did homework, watched TV, did computer games and played Monopoly for the rest of the day with my grandmother.

September 20^th, 2011

Today I went to Zeller’s and bought a Lego Star Wars snow trooper battle pack. I came back, did my homework and watched TV until dinnertime. Then I slept.

PS – we did Monopoly again.

September 21^st, 2011

Today I went to my grandparents’ sailboat to go sailing with them, although the weather report said it would rain at 4:00 PM. The boat has a cabin, a cockpit, a sail and a mast, it was about 12 metres long. I got onto the boat, but I didn’t go inside the cabin so much because Oma (a name for my grandmother, it is German) told me that if I go in there too long I will get seasick, which is disgusting. We went sailing to one of the nearby islands, the island we were heading to is called Beausoleil, it is a national park. On the way, we saw a building that had a painting on it that was at least 50 metres tall and 50 metres wide. It was a Native American talking to a European. It was very beautiful. We got to the island and dropped an anchor, which was cool. We stayed there for three hours. First we ate lunch, the lunch was bread, cheese, smoked bacon, salami and a sausage, I did fishing a couple of times but had no luck. Then my grandfather launched a dingy. Then Opa (a German name for my grandpa) went real fast, the boat must gone up 45° when Opa used the fastest speed. After that Oma and I went to the dinghy boat and we rowed (oh yeah we had to pull up the motor) to the island and walked along the beach. But it was about to rain, so we only stayed there for three minutes and then we went back fast. A normal trip between Midland town and Beausoleil Island takes about two hours, but we used the motor and went back in 30 minutes. We reached the dock at 4:00 PM exactly, that’s when it started to rain. The weatherman was correct and he predicted the most accurate time too. I came back, had dinner, ate a piece of cake for dessert and went to bed.

September 22^nd, 2011

Today we went bicycle riding. We biked for one and a half hour. We ate a picnic lunch while we were there. On our way back, I saw a snake and four chipmunks. I saw a large field. At first, I thought it was a baseball field, but as I got closer I saw that it was a parking lot – silly me! On the way back, I saw two trucks with two trailers behind them. The trucks used the trailers to pull boats out of the water. We asked one of the guys how many horsepower the boats had, as they were both motorboats (horsepower is a measure of a motor’s power). Oma suggested that one of them had 150 horsepower, but I asked the sailor how many horsepower it had, and he said it had 350 horsepower. Lots of power for a boat, isn’t it? Imagine 350 horses pulling a boat like that. We went back home. In the evening I slept.

September 24^th, 2011

Today we went to Toronto again, but this time we went to pick up papa. On the way, we stopped at a donut shop and gas station where we got fuel and doughnuts. There, I saw several antique cars, which was cool. I think those cars were probably about 80 years old. I also saw my name on a road, Zenway Boulevard, and also a company called ZZEN. In Toronto I saw a streetcar, I hope I can ride something like that next time I go to Toronto. After we picked up papa we went to the Royal Ontario Museum. We ate a picnic lunch there, then I saw dinosaur bones, especially the Tyrannosaurus rex, but also Greek stuff, Egyptian stuff and Roman stuff. We went to the gift shop and bought a present for mama. We then went back to the car and then went to a guitar shop, picked up my father’s new guitar and went off back to Midland. On the way home, we stopped at a train crossing because there was a long train passing by. It was not a passenger train, it was a cargo train. I don’t know where it came from, but it was very long. It had approximately 100 carriages, maybe more. Long train, huh? I wonder if that kind of train tipped over before. We also saw the Midland airport, it is not an international airport because it is a small town. My parents know one guy who has a plane that he keeps at that airport. He must be really rich.

PS – I can show you the visitor’s guide to the museum.

September 25^th, 2011

Today we went sailing again. The weather was very beautiful. This time I steered the big sailboat by myself. It felt cool, I felt like I was the skipper or captain of a big cargo ship. Opa showed me how to sail and how to use the computer map and how to read the status of the ship, like how deep the water is beneath the keel, and other things. We anchored at Beausoleil Island again, I wish we went to a different island like Snake Island or Present Island, which were a bit closer. We ate lunch, then went dinghy riding, we also walked on the beach for 20 minutes since the weather didn’t look so bad. When we were there we saw inuksusk, a traditional native American statue made out of stone that helps people to understand where they are when there are no other landmarks. Inuksuk were used by Inuit (these people are also called Eskimo), a clan of native Americans who live in the Arctic, but it is popular in other parts of Canada now too. We also saw huge smooth rocks, which are part of the Canadian Shield. The Canadian Shield is a giant rock that was there from over 540 million years, and it is 8 million square kilometers large and covers most of Canada. After that we went off home. When we got back to the harbour in Midland, we still had some work to do. Opa had to climb up to the top of the boat’s mast, and we had to help pull him up with ropes. It was very tiring. I don’t want to do that ever again in my entire life. After that we went home and had dinner, we were very tired so we slept early.

September 26^th, 2011

Today we went to the bicycle trail again because papa wanted to go there, this time we drove the car for a while and started our biking from another place. This time we didn’t see any snakes or chipmunks, but we saw squirrels. We also saw an old piece of train track, an old train trolley, and an old telegraph wire post.

September 27^th and 28^th, 2011

Today we drove to the airport again because it was time to return home to Singapore. We said goodbye to Oma and Opa and went to the check-in counter. We got our flight tickets, checked in and we went onto the plane. I did homework and watched Kid vs Kat, a Canadian cartoon, I also watched the movie Rio, which was nice and cool. I couldn’t find any other things to watch. We finally arrived in Tokyo Narita airport after 12 hours, and we saw another A380. Then we boarded the second plane and went to Singapore. In the second plane, I watched X-Men: First Class and slept for four hours. We finally arrived in Singapore and we said hello again to mama, we went home and I slept from 4:00 AM to 9:00 AM.

PS. On this trip we made many jokes. We are going to tell them to you now:

-        How many ants can you describe, I bet you don’t even know one type of ant, so I will describe them to you now. You all know what are the basic ants, there is a fire ant, which is poisonous, there are black ants, red ants, army ants, sand ants, and p-ants… PANTS!

-        We sang the song “Tonight’s Gonna Be A Good Night”, except we changed the lyrics to “tonight’s gonna be a good night, tonight’s gonna be a good good good good good good good good good good good good good good nighhhhht.”

-        In Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Fregley calls pee “juice”, so we said that a toilet is a “juice station”. We also said that poo is “fruit”, so if someone has to do both poo and pee, we say “fruit juice”…

-        Papa saw a sign that says “No Wake”. That means that boats shouldn’t use the engine at a high power that will produce waves that will bounce the boats, but papa pronounced “wake” as if were a Japanese word – no wa-ke.

This is me entering Canada for the second time in my whole life.

YIKES!!  This is a dinosaur skeleton with my father, at the airport.

Looking for worms.

Martyrs’ Shrine – beautiful, isn’t it?

Trying fishing.

A trumpeter swan with a seagull on top of it.

Downtown Midland.

Hooray for Yonge Street

Beautiful view of the CN Tower and Toronto.

Scared emotion.

Say SCREAM!!!

Antique car ride

Fun on the bumper cars.

Beautiful weather.

Nice day, isn’t it?

The Poop Squad.

Someone left something behind.

A bigger version of the Poop Squad.

Are you kidding me?  350 horsepower, dude!

Antique cars are awesome.

Double Zen.

The streetcar.

Crazy structure.

“Hey, what are you doing on my back?”

War armour from the 1500s.

Oh my GOD!!!

Armour for the Greek warriors.

Nice guitar!

On the trail.

Beausoleil Island, here we come!

Why, a sea plane!

Good job, Opa.

Ancient statues.

Lichen growing on a rock.

You look like a monkey, Opa.

Old time train trolley.

This week, I broke my glasses because they were very weak at the nose part and the nose pads snapped off. So, me and mama went to buy new glasses. After one hour of travellng in the bus, we finally came to Orchard Road, Wheelock Place, Singapore. I tried on about 10 pairs of glasses, the person in the shop said that “if you’re doing softball or any other sports, you should put on hooks and glasses that won’t easily break”, so I knew what he said and chose glasses without hooks or with hooks, but if it’s a metal frame you can’t put on the hooks. The glasses we’ve bought are red in the frame and blue on the nose pads and all those things. Also, we added hooks. The person in the shop said that my left eye got worse than before. After spending a lot of money on the glasses, we went to Toys “R” Us, I bought Lego with my money. It cost $72.90, it’s called “Battle For Geonosis”.  After buying that we went home.

This week, I was unlucky, because my glasses’ nosepad broke, I got hit by a soccer ball onto my face. But other good things happened: I bought Lego Star Wars, and I also finished reading the last Harry Potter book. I read the The Philiosopher’s Stone in three days, I read The Chamber of Secrets in two days, I read The Prisoner of Azhkaban in four days, The Goblet of Fire in four days, Order of the Phoenix one week, Half-Blood Prince three days, and Deathly Hallows two days. I read the last one quickly because it was very very exciting and I could not put the book down. And, on Friday night we watched Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone movie.

This week, two evenings my papa came back from work early, and we could go swimming together, even though it was quite late, like 7:00 PM.

Recently, I’ve been stuck in reading Harry Potter.  I’ve read the first six books, and I am going to get the seventh one soon. I love Harry Potter because it is exciting. The moral of the story is determination, courage, power. After I read the six books, I finally found out that there was something fishy going on about Professor Snape, so I am going to tell you everything in the first six stories. Well, part of it.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone – I forgot how the battle was going on, I remember the two-headed mirror. When Harry was one year old, his father and mother, James and Lilly Potter, got killed by the most powerful evil wizard in this century, Lord Voldemort. They were killed by Voldemort because he had a very powerful spell, called Avada Kadavra, a power that could kill a person instantly. After Lilly and James Potter died, Harry was brought to his aunt and uncle’s house, Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia, along with his cousin Dudley.

Dudley was a very cheeky boy and wanted almost anything. He would receive about 30 presents on his birthday, and would get more I am sure at Christmas. Meanwhile Harry, on the other hand, got nothing on his birthday and Christmas. He didn’t even get a birthday card or anything. But this one person named Hagrid came to look for him, and he was twice the size of a normal man. When Hagrid found him, Harry was told to go to this magical school named Hogwart’s. When they arrived at Hogwart’s School, Harry went to the ceremony as they always do at Hogwart’s school, and he went to the sorting hat and he was put in Griffindor. The houses are Griffendor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw and Slytherin, all named after the great wizards and witches.  Afteer that Harry met Ron and Hermione. Hermione is a clever girl who has a lot of knowledge about magic. Ron is also quite clever, but I will think that Hermione is more clever. Also, Harry had a great inspiration in defense of the dark arts. The dark arts is about Voldemort and those things, but I don’t really think it’s necessary when I first read the book because Voldemort died, or so I thought in the beginning. When he was in Griffindor, he met a Slytherin boy named Draco Malfoy, along with his friends Crabbe and Goyle. They both disliked Harry, Ron and Hermione because, I don’t know but they hated them for one reason. I guess they disliked Hermione because she is a Mudblood. That is when a witch or wizard marries to a Muggle, which is a mortal or a person who cannot do any magic. Several days later, during a feast, Hermione was not at the feast, so Harry and Ron Weasley went to look for her.  Then suddenly Quirrell, the Defense against the Dark Arts teacher, came in and complained “blah blah blah escaped from the blah blah blah.” Just read the book or watch the movie and you will know. Then the so-called blah blah blah got Hermione in the girl’s bathroom, and Harry and Ron did a magical spell, and after that the troll’s club went off of its hand and it wanted to strike Harry, so Ron did some magic and the troll’s club went above the troll’s head and banged him on the head and he fainted. Harry’s want went into one of the troll’s nostrils, it was disgusting. Ever since that attack, Hermione finally understands what it was that you’re talking about, just watch the movie or read the book and you will understand. In the end, Harry went and his friends HErmione and Ron, just in case you don’t know, went to this dungeon where they faced a three-headed gigantic dog. After escaping, they faced a gajillion snakes, but they got out. I think that the snakes were trying to tell them to relax and the snakes would let go of them, but ROn did no relax. So after escaping the gajillion snakes, Harry found that there was a chessboard. After the chess game, Ron got hurt and asked Hermione to take him to the hospital wing. After that, Harry went on and he found the Philosopher’s Stone, but also Quirrel, the Defense of the Dark Arts teacher. After he took off his turban, he found out that Quirrell had two faces, one was his own and one was Lord Voldemort’s which explains who was drinking the unicorn blood. So when Harry put his hands on Quirrell’s body, he began to dissolve, and after he dissolved Lord Voldemort’s soul came out and he escaped. After seeing what happened, Harry fainted and then Ron and Hermione came back.

This story is very exciting, but not as good as The Prisoner of Azkhaban and the Goblet of Fire.

Oh yeah, I will be writing on my blog after I see The Chamber of Secrets, bye!

When we were going to Japan, the flight was at about 1:30 AM when we took off.  By the time we were flying, it was very dark. I did a bit of game in the morning, and got some sleep, about three hours sleep. Then when we arrived in Japan, we took a limousine bus all the way to Himeji, it took about two hours. When we got there, my grandmother and grandfather were there waiting with their car. Then we got to our grandparents’ house and we ate lunch. Because the next day was a public holiday, my parent took me to River City, a shopping mall in Japan, a big one, and my grandfather and grandmother bought me a toy. It was a Lego fighter from the Star Wars series. The day after that was my first day in school. It was very cold. I did not remember my teacher’s name, so I was very embarrassed. Her name is Mrs Murakami. When my friends saw me outside of the staff room, they were shouting with joy, and I made new friends at that time too. On that day it was 18 degrees Celsius. On the next day we had exercise class and we did all sorts of things. Mostly we did relays with the class and we tried our very best. On December 1st there was a “marathon” held for the whole school, but of course some people didn’t take part because they were sick, or they got some injuries. It is called a “marathon”, but it means about running long distances, we ran about 1.5 kilometers. When the marathon ended, I ended up being 48th position out of 100 kids. I informed my mother and my grandmother and grandfather that I was 48th position, they were very proud of me, I won a big bag of potato chips, I was very happy.

Today I want to write about The Lightning Thief.  I recently read the book and saw the movie.

The Lightning Thief, by Rick Riordan – Last month my father’s friend Margaret gave me a book called The Lightning Thief. I had a feeling that it would be very adventurous. The story is something like fantasy.

After I got the book, I was excited to read a new book with no pictures. The book is about Percy Jackson, Annabeth and Grover going around the USA to retrieve the Master Bolt of Zeus, the king of the Olympians, who are the ancient Greek gods. The Olympians are Zeus, Hera, Posseidon, Hades, Ares, Apollo, Hermes, Aphrodite, Artemis, Athena, Hephaestus, Demeter and Dionysus. When I read this book I learned a lot about the gods of Greek mythology, and also about Greek mythological creatures such as the Medusa, centaurs, satyrs, Procrustes, the Minotaur, the Furies (they are also called “the Kindly Ones”), Echidna and Chimera, and Chiron and Charon.

The book is too adventurous. They fought a lot of creatures and went to interesting places such as The Lotus Casino in Las Vegas, and also to the Gateway Arch in St Louis. They also went to Los Angeles, and to Denver. In the Greek mythology world, they also went to Hades and Mount Olympus.

I enjoyed this book a lot because it has some funny parts also, and when Percy Jackson fought various creatures it was very exciting. Percy Jackson is a brave and strong boy. He has a secret, that is his father is actually one of the Greek Olympian gods. At first we don’t know about this, then we also don’t know which of the god is his father – is it Zeus, Hades, Posseidon (the Big Three), Dionysus, Apollo, Hermes, Ares or Hephaestus.

Some of the chapters have very funny titles, such as “We Get Advice From a Poodle”, “I Become Supreme Lord of the Bathroom”, “I Battle my Jerk Relative”, and “A God Buys us Cheeseburgers.”

I read this book twice, the first time I didn’t really understand, but when I read it the second time I understood it much better.

Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief – Last night I watched the movie called The LIghtning Thief with my mama and my papa.  It is quite different from the book that I read a few weeks ago.

The difference in this movie is that there was no Tartarus, no Ares, no Clarice (daughter of Ares), we didn’t see the two other Furies, Nancy Bobofit in Yancy Academy, there was not zebra or lion or antelope (from the chapter “We Take a Zebra to Vegas”), there was no Procrustes (from the chapter “We Shop for Water Beds”), no Echidna or Chimera (from the chapter “I Plunge to My Death”), no Fates (from the chapter “Three Old Ladies Knit the Socks of Death”), no Chronos or Dionysus or the Helm of Darkness, which is Hades’ symbol of power. There was also no poodle (from the chapter “We Get Advice from a Poodle”), and they travelled by car and not by train. Percy also didn’t speak to the Oracle.

There were some new characters in the movie that weren’t in the book, they were the Hydra and Persephone.

I think that this movie is very different from the book, but I feel like it’s better than the book because there was one funny part when Grover showed the Hydra Medusa’s head, and when Hydra looked directly into Medusa’s eyes, Hydra was turned into a statue, and I said to my father and mother “I won’t be surprised when the visitors come the next morning and see Hydra, I hope they say ‘where did this dragon statue come from’?” In the movie I liked the part when they were in The Lotus Casino, Grover met some beautiful ladies and they were polishing Grover’s hooves.

I am looking forward to reading the book and seeing the next Percy Jackson story, that is called The Sea of Monsters.

Last Saturday, it was Fun Day in my school, and an open house. I didn’t win many prizes, but it was very interesting. After that, we met our friends Margaret and Larry and their three daughters, Katie, Emily and Ally. We played together for a while. Margaret bought me two exciting books, one was Big Nate – In A Class By Himself and The Lightning Thief. After we said goodbye to each other, we left and I ate rocket thosai at the Ah-men restaurant. After we finished our lunch, we were so full that we could hardly walk. After that I studied and had a good rest.

On Sunday, our guest from Taiwan, Yuping, came to Singapore to visit us for one day. Then we went together to my softball team gathering for a softball competition. In that competition, we made three team that mixed juniors, seniors, and the parents. My and mama’s team won once and lost once. Papa’s team lost twice. The other team won twice. I got a lot of hits, although all of them were near the first base, so I was out. I didn’t really hit very well. For fielding, I did quite well – I was a catcher. After that, we went home and had a good rest, and in the evening we ate together with Yuping, our guest. After dinner, we played a few games – Uno and monkey game by the poolside.

On Monday I went to school again, it was a rainy day. I had math, English, science, health education, and Chinese. When I got back from school, there was a surprise: Yuping came back again because she was late for her plane, so she had to stay for one more day.

Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, nothing special happened, but on Friday there were lots of surprises. When I went to school that day, I did art, English and Chinese. When it became art, it became so interesting I could hardly believe my eyes. We made a mini-house. This boy Julian made a cannon house, which can shoot to make the enemy retreat. After school, mama told me that we should go and see if the aquarium shop has fish. Because my father told me that new fish had arrived on Friday, so we went to check it out, and sure enough there was a maroon clownfish, but there was only one. We also picked a few other marine fish which live in the ocean, and the shop boss put them into a plastic bag for us. We bought some food for the fish, bought Red Sea salt, and a hydrometer to see how much salt there is. We prepared the fish tank, and when papa came back we prepared the water, and let the fish come out of the bag.

Papa also brought some surprises: one was a Fantastic Mister Fox DVD, the other was muffins! After that, another friend from Taiwan came to visit us for dinner – Peggy! After dinner we played Monkey Game with Peggy. There was this very funny part: we all pulled several sticks, but only Peggy and mama and I had monkeys fall, papa didn’t have any, even after he pulled one more stick. Than, when I said “I wonder why papa doesn’t have any monkeys”, then about 13 monkeys suddenly fell. We all laughed so hard that we couldn’t even believe it. It was amazing that there will be two Taiwanese people coming in a week.

Today, Saturday, we went by taxi to Changi Village to take a ferry to Pulau Ubin, which is a small island in the north part of Singapore. We rented three bicycles and we cycled around Pulau Ubin. Pulau Ubin was very interesting, we saw a monitor lizard when we were coming back. We went up the viewing tower and we saw lots of airplanes coming in for landing at Changi Airport, which is nearby Pulau Ubin. There was this big mudskipper, it was eating a dragonfly or a shrimp or something. We sat at a nice shop and ate some food, and I drank root beer. Then we went home. When we returned to Singapore island from Pulau Ubin island, we had to pass through security, and there was a security cat too! Tonight we will watch Fantastic Mister Fox.

I woke up at 7:15 sharp. I did my Chinese Kumon homework, ate breakfast, brushed my teeth, wore my clothes, combed my hair, and went to Toh Tuck Road at 9:40 to catch a taxi to go to West Mall to see “Despicable Me”. I was thinking that we missed one bus, but then my father remembered this – if we go by bus, we will find a long queue at the movie theatre when we arrive, so we should take a taxi. When we got to the cinema, I was surprised that there wasn’t a long queue, plus we were too early. We had to kill time for about 40 minutes, so we walked around in the fourth and fifth and third floors of West Mall. Our seat numbers were in row I, seats 7 and 8.

When we got inside the theatre, my father told me this joke:

“What number is your seat?”
“I-8.”
“Really, what did you eat?”

It was joke, because my seat number was I-8 – it sounds like “I ate”.

In Despicable Me, there were the minions, the professor Dr Nefario, Gru, and Vector, the number one villain, and three little girls. When I saw the beginning, there was a boy called Justin, he ran into the entrance and stole the pyramid On the news it said that he almost stole everything, but luckily they protected the ancient great buildings. It was very interesting. That was just the prologue. The first chapter, Gru found a boy who had dropped his ice cream and he looked very sad. Then Gru came up with an idea, he took a balloon, he pumped it and made it into a dog shape. He gave it to the boy, but then took a pin and poked the balloon and it burst on the boy’s mouth. Gru went to a fast food restaurant, he saw that everyone was queueing up, so he took an ice ray and shot all the people and they became ice so that he could become the first. After that, we saw a small car, a bigger car, and a gigantic car, the gigantic car was Gru’s car, but the other two belonged to strangers. After that, he found that his pet was on the couch and it was sleeping, it was a very funny type of dog because its lower jaw was in front and it was very scary, I would not think of having that type of dog. Gru met the three small girls I mentioned just now and he said that he wasn’t at home, but actually he was. Then he set off to the Bank of Evil, where there is a secret passage in the toilet. I hope that in the future there won’t be a secret passage bank. Then he showed the final idea to the boss, but then the boss said that he needs a shrinking ray to steal it. But then some testers had the shrinking ray, so Gru had to take it away, but then the testers were already trying some tests on a gigantic elephant that became small and had to eat the bananas. When Gru snatched the shrinking ray, Vector, the number one villain was also on the target of stealing the shrinking ray. Gru was able to take the shrinking ray and escape, but their troubles were not over yet. Vector, the number one villain, had his vehicle on top of Gru and landed on the top and stole the shrinking ray. Vector, the number one villain, managed to steal it, but Gru didn’t really give up that easily. He took all of his missiles and launched them at once, but but Vector used some guns to destroy the missiles, so he managed to escape and he took the shrinking ray and shank Gru’s vehicle, so the vehicle became very very small.

Vector had a mansion that was so big and had cameras sticking over it. Gru wanted to take the shrinking ray, but then Vector took some boxing gloves and punched his butt until he went to the ground, and then he took some missiles and shot him all over, and then there was a big cloud of smoke coming out from it. When he went back, the three little girl orphans who came to Gru’s mansion asked if they could stay with him. When he let them in, he made some rules: Rule number one, don’t touch anything. The eldest one asked “Can we touch the floor?” Yes, you can. “Can we touch the air?” Yes, you can. Then the youngest one said “can we touch this?” She touched the disintegrator ray. Then the second-youngest one used the disintegrator ray to destroy the youngest girl’s unicorn doll. Then the second-youngest said “oh oh.” The youngest one was holding her breath until she got a new one. The father had to work a lot, so he said that he won’t be there until six hours later.

Gru was very mean to the girls, but later he became nicer, and he loved them. But one day the orphanage’s head came and gave back the Spanish dictionary and in return he had to give back the three little girls. So they had to go back. In the end, Gru went to the moon and used the shrinking ray to steal the moon. He succeeded and went back to the Earth. When he looked at his clock, he saw that it was already 4:12, and the orphans’ dance recital would already begin. When he came back, he saw that it was already finished and he saw a note, and when he turned it over it said “Vector.” So he knew that they were kidnapped by Vector, so he rushed to Vector’s home and and gave the moon to Vector. Finally, he saved the orphans and Vector was on the moon and he wore a helmet.

My feeling about this movie is that it was very funny because the Minions were so stupid in the movie.

After the movie, we went to Botak Jones American food restaurant in Clementi. I ate a hamburger called Botak Burger, and some French fries. It didn’t taste as good as Bar Bar’s burger, but it was okay. After that we wanted to go buy clown fish, but they didn’t have any. I was so disappointed. We went to the wet market, but the fish shop there also didn’t sell any. We will try again next Saturday.