Lazy Saturday...

This is to the chipping lady...

Goodness, if you are reading this, you deserve a treat of kuay teow from me liao...
(I let you choose ah, thin or thick noodles?)

I have been lazy putting up the photos from our Hong Kong trip.
Doing study projects with lovely team mates, having a discussion this Saturday afternoon.
(Kind of lazy...)

Hubby and I getting stress over Christopher's primary one studies...

Having a presentation in front of the whole class next Thursday and the presentation slides haven't even been done yet...

Week before my Holiday

Time flies, it's down to the week before our family flies off to Hong Kong for our 6 days' holiday. The kids are all excited and counting down to the date of our departure to Hong Kong. But the youngest Bryan is clueless about how to count the dates and has been asking everyday whether we are flying off tomorrow.

After much fickle minded moments and checking on the various hotels in Hong Kong, we have decided on one. That is Royal Plaza Hong Kong, it is located in Mongkok. As our groups comprises of my mum, Patrick hubby and the three young boys, we have decided to go ahead with 2 rooms. I have the almost confirmed feeling that the hotel sales manager really hate me since I have been making many requests. Pardon my irritating behaviour since I have no choice but to try to ensure comfortness for the 3 boys and my mum. My requests range from the non-smoking floor, interconnecting rooms, king size bed for one and double double beds for the other, to how do we get to the hotel since our flight is late arrival... Thankfully, he hasn't decide to blacklist me from his hotel.

Our itinerary comprises of Disneyland, Tai O, Big Buddha, Shenzhen, Ladies Market, The Peak, famous temples and so on... (I'm already worrying about how much we would be spending)! Hopefully the boys doesn't get too tired with all the walking and sightseeing.

One thing Patrick hubby and I are looking forward to, is the lovely cold weather in Hong Kong now! We love indulging ourselves in air con temperature places, it beats being all sweaty and sticky in warm places. I bet my kids and mum would love the cold temperature too, still, we are preparing warm jackets for the kids to keep them warm enough (what contradictions right!).

I hope I would have time to take loads of photos from the trip and post them here (that is if I am not busy looking after the 3 little imps).

Hear me offload...

Oh god, I seriously feel I have been bitten by the Laziness Bug.

I have been so out of touch with the following recently...
- Posting new entries in my blog
- Posting new photos in my blog
- Taking part in contests (that's why I haven't won anything for ages, it's becos I'm lazy)

Even I have been feeling so very happy just with the 1 week rest from my part time studies. Trust me, the test for my 1st module made me felt like a complete moron. Imagine the test was just a sheet of A4 paper and on it were 10 sentences. We need to spot the grammer mistakes and my mind went blank. I have wasted my life for the past 30 years... The 10 sentences look all fine to me!!! Oh dear... And the presentation test where 2 other group members and I had to present our report. We really sucks! Lecturer told the class beforehand that no one is to read from notes during the presentation, and we dutifully obey. We were given a chance to draw lots and ended up being the 1st group to present. The result, 3 of us panicking and forgetting what we were supposed to say. The rest of the other groups read from their notes in front of everyone. The lecturer said they were good. I learnt my lesson, for the next 9 modules, whoever told me I should never read from notes during a presentation, is deadmeat.

Tonight's going to be the start of Module 2's lessons. It's going to be 2 tiring days a week from now on again. I got to go for lessons twice a week after work and end up home only by 11pm.

Oh right, the past weekend was good. Saturday morning was spent with Christopher at school to take part in some handicraft session. Met with "ugly" parents, even doing handicrafts for the school community, people can get all kiasu. We are told to bring a pair of scissor, UHU glue and staples. I bought 3 pairs of scissors along and one by one were borrowed away by parents who don't bother to listen to instructions (they came empty handed). I ended up having to borrow from my neighbour parent who bought 2 pairs. Parents started to fight for seats, fight for things to do, fight for recognition... Christopher and I were early, we sat down and started to learn how to do the handicraft. Later, as parents started to crowd in, the teacher told us to divide into different stations for each stage.

I asked the teacher whether Christopher could stay with me and just do the weaving process of the ribbon since our station was in charge of cutting while another station is in charge of weaving. She is fine since he's young and other kids are running around. Another mother started to talk to Christopher and said since he can do it, so can she. If the teacher scold her for not following instruction, he should get scolded too. My goodness, I can't believe that a mature mother would say something like this to a kid. So, I told her I have checked with the teacher beforehand and got permission. She is unhappy and turn away. *sigh*

Finally, we finished our station's duties of cutting. I told Christopher we should be leaving as I saw other parents are fighting for a part in the last station of putting the ribbons on. This just shows how too many cooks can spoil the broth.

Returning home, we had a rest. Hubby was actually in a good mood, he actually brought Nicholas and Bryan out to the supermarket for grocery shopping. He returned with the 2 beaming boys, they actually bought some sweets too.

Around 2pm, we decided to go fishing for crayfish again and got my mum to go along. It was raining by the time we got there but we decided that it would be fine since it's drizzling. Heavy rain came and we ran for the shelter. Finally the rain stopped, we went all out and ended up with 50 crayfish! Haha! Really broke our record, it was a good catch, just took us about 3 hours. We were walking along the edge of the water and found a "giant" one on the grass, it is the largest we have seen, at about 25cm. Too bad it's dead, we wonder how it's landed on the grass, what a pity. But my catch wasn't too bad as I got a few of 13cm and one fat one at about 17cm with fairly big claws. We decided to release all the rest of the smaller ones back into the water. End up, we only kept 8 pieces of what we caught. We throw in one big netful and some Chinese students were surprised and ask whether they could have the rest. So, we gave the rest to them. We managed to get the newbies settled well into my tank and mum's tank.

The next day, Sunday, we decided to go in the afternoon at around the same time to see whether we could find any big ones. Mum got really lucky, she caught one huge mama and she's bursting with babies. There were hundreds of them. The babies were newly hatched and most of them dropped off and were crawling around in our container. We found some were clinging on to each other and were worried they might be biting each other. I told hubby I would keep a few of the babies and put all the rest back into the water near the seaweed patch. This way, there would always be crayfish for everyone. We did not manage to find any big one that day, hubby said that we should stop for a while to let the crayfish reproduce before I wipe them all out.

Hong Kong here we come....!!!!!

Yes, dearest Sis, I read your blog frequently and I miss you very very much!!!
(I know you will be reading this too, don't wipe that smile off your face, I can see!)

Long planned and delayed trip to Hong Kong, trust me, it's really really tough to be going on holidays nowadays. Let me list you the reasons why...

1. Economy downturn nowwwwww..... in case you haven't notice
2. I have 3 kids, a house, a maid, a car and many more expenses to watch out for
3. Travelling with 3 kids isn't funny, it's like lagging along 3 huge uncontrollable bombs
4. Travelling as a big family is costly, air tickets, accommodations, tickets to attractions,
transports, food and beverages...

After much pestering and brain washing from Patrick hubby that we deserve a holiday break, bring the kids to take their first aeroplane ride, I gave in. Alright, I admit I would love to go to Hong Kong for a trip too. I can shop and bargain, I enjoy the lovely cold temperature there and everything. So, I agreed with Patrick hubby that we should just go and worry about the future later. By the way, we managed to brain washed my mum into going with us for the trip. She hasn't been to Hong Kong before and I felt strongly she would love the place.

The trip would be taking place next month in March, it's partly thanks to the great promotion deal by Singapore Airlines too. We managed to grap the 2 to go deal which means each adult costs a nett price of S$398.00 for the round trip while the kid fare is nett S$295.00. Now, we are racking our heads off over the accommodation, wondering over which hotel to book. We need a hotel that is clean, good to accommodate 3 in a room as we are going to book 2 rooms since the kids will need someone to look after.

If you are reading this and you have good recommendation or good hotel rates, please please do share with me.

We will be going for 6 days, covering the Disneyland for the kids, the ladies night market for me, and many many other places for Patrick hubby and mum. So we will be taking it at a relaxing pace since we don't really want to be dragging the kids and my mum around too hard. But Shenzhen would definitely be one place we will be going too.

More updates soon...