The Georgetown Art Festival

We were all set to go for the Georgetown art festival today & so excited too! But we watched the PSI levels in Penang quite closely till yesterday & finally decided not to make the trip. As luck would have it, this morning the winds have changed course & the haze has cleared almost completely from Penang!!! Aargh!

The Haze in Singapore

This whole week has been a trying time for mothers in Singapore as we watched the pollution index in Singapore go well above the "hazardous" levels and were not sure what to do while our little ones coughed and wheezed. While we stopped short of doing the rain-dance (because its traditionally performed outdoors & weren't sure whether the rain gods have x-ray vision to witness a dance performed indoors), it was a whole week of kids being trapped indoors. It sounded terrible (kids are genetically predisposed to be whiney when kept indoors for extended periods of time) but then when the universe hands out lemons to you, you gotto make some lemonade right? We did more jigsaw puzzles, reading, art work and pretend-play this week than we would in a whole month :) 

Of course my Curious George wanted to go out and "check what the haze smells like" every now & then! 

Bintan Weekend

It's been very stressful & draining few weeks at work. And sometimes all it takes to unwind & put things in perspective is a little weekend with H, little K & a few friends. I have never found a massage to be so valuable before. Much. Needed. 

The Visa Queue

The brown & yellow queue snaked long & far;

Letters, bank statements, testimonials (in duplicates of course) firmly clutched;

A job. A scholarship. A holiday perhaps?

Waited at the end of that never ending snake.

Impatience & light perspiration, gosh!

They filled the part of the room where the wall clock ticked behind the rude clerk.

On the other side though in that same room, there was only beautiful promise & anxious hope;

Of an escape to that first world country where dreams came true.

The Storm Story

Little K loves listening to stories & I love making up stories for him. But today I prodded him to write one of his own. He did a pretty good job for a first time author & even provided illustrations :) These are his own thoughts & vocabulary (and religious beliefs about resurrection!); I only jotted them down. He starts off with a warning that this is going to be a very scary story!

Once upon a time there was an old village. There were big mountains in the village. Suddenly a volcano erupted from a mountain & lava fell. Then it started raining & there was loud thunder. A storm started & all the water from the storm fell in the river. Even the crocodiles in the river got scared.

People in the house were scared because there were cracks in the house & it was breaking. There was more rain & thunder. The hot lava got extinguished by the water. But the storm broke the house & all the people were dead.

Then God came alive. He took the people from under the soil & called an ambulance. Suddenly the storm stopped & the sun came out.

An ambulance came & took people to the hospital. The doctor checked them & helped them & they got better. They sat in a taxi & went to the village to build their home again. It was still drizzling in the village.