Weekends in Singapore

We have been here for close to two years and a normal weekend would be a morning of either a trip to the zoo with ACK or go down to the pool for a while and come back, eat and nap. But most weekends we go to the Mustafa Centre. Many know Mustafa Centre to be the huge 24 hour superstore. Come saturday morning and we get dressed and set out to have a nice south indian breakfast ( to avoid hunger while shopping) and head to Mustafa Centre early to beat the big crowd. Visiting Mustafa means two things, one- we definitely land up buying more than the items listed and two - spend a minimum of two hours there.
Back home, have lunch, take a nap and play with ACK either at the playground or @ home and of course the evenings are devoted to Premiership football.

The roads leading to Mustafa Centre, by now is easily identified by ACK so when we turn into the Mustafa carpark, ACK happily says " we are here, lets go shop". It seems the next best thing to do other than visiting the zoo or swimming. We have had this idea for a while, the authorities must list the name of Mustafa Centre under "Places of Interest in Singapore".
Listed or not, people definitely go there.

Lesson learnt and still learning: either go without money or dont go to Mustafa Centre. ( Latter idea seems best)

A regular mommy morning@ home.

My almost 3 year old son came to me after he had finished his breakfast of my choice. It was his turn to choose now. He chose to kick the football and wanted me to double up as a goalie and ball woman. He was the Siddhu/ Saurav Ganguly when it came to feilding anything. He would tell us ie whoever was @ the other end to pick up the ball or the cars etc. No fielding by him. He kept kicking the light football which had the WC logo on it and i kept running all around the house to retrieve it. I was the " Mommy Retriever". That done, next came a set of lego and we kept building towers and crashing them, it was - Wow!!! and Boom!!. Next, we moved on to a set of wooden blocks and the shapes of squares and triangles formed pillars and walls similar to those we see in the hollywood movie sets, only the front side, nothing at the back. ACK will wait till the blocks are all balanced and then blow them like birthday candles and he would say " do it again". Next was the turn of a few hot wheels, which were all pushed under his bed and then he said, "get it". Finally we came back to our big living room which other than being the living room was also a mini football ground, mini mini putting range, a mini parking lot for all of ACK's two, three and four wheelers. He chose to ride his tricycle and said "com'on ma, follow me".

All these activities together lasted for about an hour and a half and i was ready to call it a day. But of course ACK felt it was just a teaser for what was to follow all during the day. ;)
Guess what - It's TGIF today. My husband will take over for the next two days. ha ha haha.. (am i having the last laugh or is this the last laugh for the day??)

Mumbai Airport October 05, 2006

The scare of flying with my two and half year old Toddler turned out to be just a scare. ACK was so well behaved that i had some post thoughts on my pre-flight scare. The 5 hour flight between Singapore and Mumbai passed without too much of noise from us and ACK was kind enough to fall asleep in the last one hour of the flight. Local time 11.00 pm meant that it was 1.30 am in singapore and i managed to carry my sleeping toddler and the hand bag for a while and then woke up my little guy when carrying myself, the bag and him got way too heavy. What a kind little guy he was, sportingly he held my finger and walked along sleepily. We passed immigration and i very thankfully got a trolley and put the bags on it and waited to go through the customs. No help was forthcoming to lift and put the suitcase into the scanner and so with the little guy holding on to me i put the bags through the scanner and back again on the trolley. Whew!!! Just when i sighed happily, i realised that the trolley had a tendency to go right. Whatever i did, it would go to the right. One hand was occupied by the tiny hand holding on to my finger and with the other hand i was trying desperately to get the trolley to go straight but no, it kept going to the right. I stopped and took a deep breath and started pushing again and it again went to the right side. Now i was desperate to come out so that i can see the familiar face and get some help and with the right hand, trying to control the trolley from going right, we finally came out and i saw my brother, i waved to him and thought that he will come forward and relieve me of the right sided trolley. But the security didnt let him come close and i had to walk a few more yards with that trolley and finally i crossed the (finish) line and handed over charge of the trolley.

Did i mention that i have the tennis elbow syndrome in my right hand and that effort to keep the trolley to go straight, got me some additional syndromes.

Lesson learnt: Use both hands to push the trolley at Mumbai airport.