life in singapore … with baby (and bump)
Posted in baby stuff, home on Mar 7th, 2010
Our tiny treehugger always wants to explore the forest around the house. “Livvy wants go jungle see baby tiger” is the usual request. We haven’t seen any tigers yet but we did find a discarded snake skin this afternoon:
Posted in home on Jan 18th, 2010
This morning I walked to Alexandra Hospital (taking a shortcut through the morgue, which is rather appropriate) to pick up my health screening report. Two weeks ago I’d spent a morning at the hospital doing blood tests (two rounds because the first nurse couldn’t find a vein), urine and stool tests (”please don’t go there” [...]
Posted in baby stuff, food, home on Dec 6th, 2009
My darling wife is three months pregnant! Olive will soon have a little brother or sister to play with! We’re so happy.
Olive’s granny was visiting from the UK last week and Olive’s two aunties were down from Kuala Lumpur so we celebrated with a Champagne breakfast in the Botanic Gardens. Croissants from Laurent Bernard Chocolatier [...]
If you’re suffering from Singapore island fever or tiring of Christmas shopping in featureless Singapore malls that all contain exactly the same shops, dim the lights, turn up the volume and enjoy this beautiful video of blue cranes learning to fly that was shot in South Africa by Christian Letruria with music by Sigur Ros [...]
Posted in home on Dec 5th, 2009
While clearing out the spare room this morning I found an old diary of mine from the early 1980s. I think Sue Townsend must have used this as inspiration for her Adrian Mole series of books:
Thursday 5 January 1984
[In London] After breakfast Mum took me shopping round Carnaby Street, we went by tube. It was [...]
Posted in home on Nov 9th, 2009
Where were you when the Berlin Wall came down twenty years ago today? I was selling ridiculously expensive Christmas trees and glass baubles in the Christmas Decorations department (or Xmas Decs, as we called it) of Harrods in Knightsbridge, London. I was 18 years old and just beginning my gap year between school and university. [...]
Posted in home on Oct 22nd, 2009
Since my dear wife and robot baby (I taught Olive to walk like a robot and she prefers this to regular walking) are out of town for ten days, I’m enjoying a rare holiday at home. On Tuesday evening I caught the New York Philharmonic at the Esplanade Concert Hall. With new conductor Alan Gilbert [...]
Posted in home on Oct 21st, 2009
LOL, I’ve been invited for cocktails with the President of Singapore at The Istana (the palace). I’ve lived here for nine years and this is my first invite; I was beginning to think they’d forgotten about me! The Istana does open its grounds to the public on most public holidays but I’ve never made it [...]
Wishing all readers a happy deepavali. We celebrated deepavali with Sri, Don and kids, Ritchel, Andy, Claudia, Christopher and Babs at Andhra Curry restaurant on Kerbau Road in Singapore’s Little India. This place specializes in food from Andhra Pradesh, in particular Hyderabadi biryani. We didn’t try the biryani so we’ll have to go back for [...]
Posted in home on Oct 4th, 2009
I love the Singapore Grand Prix weekend. I caught the first two days of racing from the track and the actual race from the stands. The weather was perfect, there were some great bands playing, plenty of beer tents and loads of unhealthy food. Add to that a private lunch hosted by Porsche with free [...]
Posted in home on Sep 21st, 2009
This evening Sandy and I went to the cinema for the first time since Olive was born … she’s 16 months old! We celebrated this happy event by watching a documentary about dolphin slaughter! “The Cove” is a powerful documentary – so well edited that it’s like watching a thriller – about dolphins being slaughtered [...]
Posted in home on Aug 18th, 2009
We’ve finally had window grilles installed on all our windows to stop Livvy from taking the quick way out of the flat. It’s only really been a worry in the bedrooms where Olive climbs on the beds and can open the windows — in the past we’ve kept the bedroom doors shut but she can [...]
Posted in home on Aug 10th, 2009
We were fortunate to have the use of a friend’s car for the national day long weekend so we packed maps, compass and survival gear and planned several long road trips. OK, Singapore is only 23 km north to south and 42 km east to west so we ain’t talkin’ USA coast to coast here. [...]
Wishlist: “Gurrumul”, debut album by Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu, an indigenous Australian musician, who sings in the Yolngu language.
Living in one of Singapore’s only neighbourhoods with no cable access means we rely on Starhub’s wireless network, the Digital Terrestrial Television (DTTV) system, for our viewing needs. We get a much more limited range of channels than regular cable subscribers but it’s better than nothing (also known as Singapore TV). We haven’t left the [...]
Posted in home on Feb 3rd, 2009
[click to enlarge photo] Look at the wonder in Oscar’s eyes! “Why is this white stuff falling out of the sky?”
We’re snow jealous! We had hoped for a white Christmas back in the UK but the snow arrived a month too late. We can only sit back in sweaty, equatorial Singapore and dream of fat, [...]
My dentist is a genius. I went back to Singapore’s National Dentist Centre yesterday to have my stitches removed and the dentist presented me with this evil-looking syringe. Apparently the hole left in my gum following my wisdom tooth extraction is so big that part of the bone is exposed. Worried that I might leave [...]
Posted in home on Dec 5th, 2008
Breakfast
(Continued from post below, scroll down for more.) I see from my blog stats that quite a few people have been directed here by Google having searched for “wisdom tooth extraction”. I did exactly the same thing: I read people’s experiences before I felt brave enough to go under the knife. I hate dental clinics [...]
Posted in baby stuff, home on Dec 4th, 2008
An hour ago my second lower wisdom tooth was removed at Singapore General Hospital’s National Dental Centre and I’m now back home in the care of Nurse Olive. When I dreamt of meeting a cute young SGH nurse I didn’t expect her to be only seven months old.
The procedure must have been pretty fast [...]
Posted in home on Nov 11th, 2008
Today I received an email from Guy Kawasaki—yes, the Guy Kawasaki (Mac users will know him)—saying that islandhippy is one of the 40 blogs featured on the Singapore page of Alltop, the online news site. According to Kawasaki, Alltop is an “online magazine rack of popular topics. We update the stories every hour. Pick a [...]
Posted in home on Oct 27th, 2008
From the left: Don, Ainsley (in white), Keisa (in red), Sandy and Olive; Olive, looking for guests in her playhouse; Joe.
Childhood friend Joe spent the weekend with us following a business trip to KL and Singapore. We took him out to some of Singapore’s more colourful neighbourhoods, where we ate and drank far too much [...]
Posted in home on Oct 27th, 2008
I attended all three days of the Singapore Grand Prix and loved it. With a walkabout ticket I had access to just over a half of the track so I wandered around looking for the best spot to catch the actual race. In the end I plumped for a spot on Esplanade Drive standing a [...]
Posted in home on Oct 1st, 2008
The magazine interview in the previous post (scroll down) quotes me as saying “the new system of park connectors means – in theory – that I could walk the 9 km from my house to my office entirely surrounded by nature, which is impressive for any city”. This morning I decided to put the theory [...]
Posted in home on Sep 22nd, 2008
Due to the ridiculously high number of lizards in our flat, and the resultant mountains of lizard poo, Sandy has been performing her annual lizard cull. Yes, I know lizards eat the mosquitoes and ants but they also poo everywhere and have a habit of killing themselves in electrical appliances and damaging the appliances at [...]
Posted in Uncategorized, home on May 5th, 2008
Phil was interviewed recently for the website Expat Interviews:
Phil is a UK expat who’s been living in Southeast Asia for more than a decade; the past eight years have seen him set up his residence and business in Singapore. Take a peek into his expat life in Singapore: his description of the area in which [...]
Posted in home on May 3rd, 2008
This is the first time in over five years that the Cheah family has had dinner with all family members present. Sandy lives in Singapore, her sisters and parents live in Malaysia and her brother stays in the UK.
Above [clockwise from the bottom]: Sandy, Hueh Hueh (Sandy’s elder sis), Ah Ngae (Sandy’s younger sis), Ah [...]
No, not Sandy’s babies. Our resident house mouse gave birth to triplets then left home. I was afraid I threw her out in the trash so I fed the babies Alpen (I wanted them to have a healthy start) until the mother found her way back. After three days the babies disappeared so either mother [...]
Posted in baby stuff, home on Apr 13th, 2008
This afternoon Phil helped me rearrange the bedroom to make space for Dumpling’s cot. The cot is so big he had to remove two chests of drawers, the tv and cable box. It looked so nice.
We thought we could survive without the TV in the bedroom for three months. Two hours later Phil was back [...]
Posted in home on Apr 12th, 2008
Today we’ve been vetting the new neighbours. The landlord held an open house downstairs to show the empty flat to potential tenants so Phil and I have been hanging out of the window saying hello to everybody. Well, we managed to say hello to all the Indians, Malays and Caucasians; we received only blank stares [...]
