Saturday, December 27, 2008

1st Family Overseas Trip - Hong Kong (Part 2)


The children enjoyed themselves thoroughly in HK Disneyland. The theme park is a great place for children; also for adults especially during the December period - the entire place was fully decorated for X'mas with a 3 - 4 storey high X'mas Tree at the Main St, Road parades with carols and artificial snow, princess ball, brilliantly lit Castle with spectacular fireworks nightly, just to name a few. We were fully immersed in the X'mas mood :-)

This trip to Disneyland was meant to be "slow paced" i.e. we just want to let the children take their time to enjoy the place. Even though we spent 4 days there, we didn't really manage to walk and see all the highlights in the entire park. We were pretty much stuck at Fantasyland where Joann tried the carousel, musical tea cups and flying dumbo rides for numerous times. Fantasyland is also the place where you can catch Disney princesses such as Snow White, Cinderella, Aurora (Sleeping Beauty), Belle (remember Beauty and the Beast?), Alice, etc (see, I've been educated well by my daughter ;-)) We spent half a day with Joann, chasing to take pictures with the princesses :-P


As for Jayden, he was mesmerised from day 1 by the "bubble machine" and would spend his daily routine, catching his bubbles :-) He loved catching up with his favourite Disney characters and taking photos with them. He also enjoyed the daily road parades where he could see all his Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy all at one go.


The nightly fireworks is also a highlight not to be missed. The crowd was wooed by the spectacular fireworks and songs! All of us except Jayden enjoyed the fireworks. He was afraid of the fireworks :-( I didn't manage to capture the fireworks using my video cam as I was carrying Joann but you can check it out at the youtube video provided below.



We thoroughly enjoyed our short stay at HK Disneyland and this trip provided a great bonding time for us as a family :-) Looking forward to come back next year if possible!




P/S: More photos at my facebook :-)



Sunday, December 21, 2008

1st Family Overseas Trip - Hong Kong (Part 1)

Two weeks ago, we had our first family overseas trip :-) Aileen and I decided to bring the kids to Hong Kong Disneyland for four days.

Jayden had been asking for a trip to Disneyland since June 08 (Aileen and I made a trip to HK with Joann in June 08; we brought back lots of photo from Disneyland that got him excited). Thus in August, we started planning for a second trip back to HK Disneyland - this time, specially for him :-)

We had been talking to the children about this trip and they were all geared up for it - longing to meet their favourite characters from the Mickey Clubhouse in person.

We started our trip by trying out the new Crowne Plaza Hotel (at Changi Airport Terminal 3). We stayed there for a night prior to our flight. We thought that it might be more convenient for both of us and the children to check in for the early morning flight by staying near to Terminal 3.

The resort-style hotel boosts private gardens of tropical shrubs and is eco-friendly (the design of the hotel maximises the use of natural light to save energy). The hotel room was cosy and the children were excited to be able to see airplanes take off from a short distance away.

This is Jayden's first overseas trip by air. Apart from some slight fear during takeoff and landing, he generally enjoyed the 3.5 hours flight.


Saturday, December 13, 2008

SCSM 2008


My colleague and I went for the 10km run last Sunday. This is my first SCSM and decided to just start with 10km for the fun. Anyway, I have not ran 10km since my time in Officer Cadets School (OCS). My colleague and I originally targeted to train weekly but as usual, been very caught up with our daily work. So, we went for the run, totally "cold".

The run started at 7.30am at the Singapore Esplanade. The morning weather was clear, with slight breeze - a great start for the run. This year's SCSM registered a record number of 50,000 runners. The place was filled with both competitive and non-competitive runners, young and old.

The first 6 km was ok for me i.e. I jogged with ease. My legs started to ache for the last 4km. So I have to walk and run several times until the finishing point.

Overall, the SCSM was a great big group run in a scenic route. Will surely come back again next year - hopefully for the half-marathon :-P