Exploring Our Children’s Potentials

WHAT DO YOU KNOW.

Our Everyday Things made it to the top ten finalists in the Best Photography Blog Category!

Chosen out of some 1500 blogs!

WOW! I’m SO excited!

[The Singapore Blog Awards is organised by the Singapore Press Holdings, and the winners will be announced at the end of July, and prize presentations to be held in August!]

But. But.

This is just the beginning, because from now until 31 July, members of the public (yes, you!) are invited to VOTE!

And, this is the part where I’ll (err … shamelessly) ask for you to VOTE VOTE VOTE for me!

Please please. Thank you. Thank you.

Click HERE to read about the Awards’ judging criteria.

You’d need to login before you can vote (a really quick process, btw).

(if you don’t live in Singapore, simply enter your passport no. or other ID number when filling out your ‘FIN no.’ – which simply stands for ‘Foreign Identification Number’)

Click HERE to sign up for free before you vote.

And click HERE to see the ten award categories (To find mine, simply click ‘Best Photography Blog’)

And oh btw, even voters can stand to win something!

A total of 5 Creative Vado (worth S$169) and 5 ST701 Portable External Hard Disk (250GB) are up for grabs!

And last but not least, here’s the one-page media coverage of the Awards in today’s My Paper!

Click the newspaper image to see the larger version.

Thanks everyone!!!

People ask me, ‘Do your two kids ALWAYS get along with each other?’

And I’d be like, ‘Noooo … of course they don’t ALWAYS hug and cuddle each other lovingly.’

They’re after all individuals who have unique characters, and not to mention selfish needs and wants.

Anya would want what Vai has (and complain about WHY he has it and she doesn’t).

Vai would be impatient with Anya and give her a ‘push’ so she’d walk ‘faster’.

Anya would refuse to share her favourite food and Vai would in the end try to grab and snatch it anyway.

Really. The list can go on and on.

…

But then again, kids – in any family – are like that, aren’t they?

I mean, it is almost impossible to have siblings who NEVER bicker nor make each other cry.

If you ask me though, I think the focus shouldn’t really be about HOW MUCH they don’t get along with each other (or how drained we parents sometimes feel when dealing with our kids and their little ‘conflicts’)

I think the focus should be more on HOW we as parents need to be actively involved in encouraging good and healthy relationships amongst siblings in the family, from day one.

Because loving relationships amongst siblings ARE possible to have.

A little something for us to think about.

Everyone lives and does their day to day activities.

But not everyone makes a difference in other people’s lives. A positive difference.

Everyone has 24 hours in a day.

But not everyone achieves the maximum (ie. to their best capability) within the same time limit. Some people achieve more. Some people achieve less.

…

Sometimes I look at myself and think, I’ll be 33 in less than two weeks, but I feel I haven’t achieved much. I haven’t ‘maximised’, ‘explored’ and ‘worked on’ what God has given to me.

And so today I’d like to ask everyone, including myself.

How old are we today?
What have we achieved?
Have we made a positive difference in other people’s lives?
Have we ‘maximised’ our lives, our potentials?

…

There’ll be a time when we all will be held accountable for the kinds of lives we’ve been living.

Let’s be ready for THAT time, by making a change, a positive change, today.

Madaboutkids.com – a parenting portal – will be having a photography workshop at the end of this month (at the same time they’ll also be giving out the prizes for the photo contest that ended last week).

And, I’ve been invited to conduct the workshop for them where I’ll be sharing quite a bit of practical photography tips (on taking photos of kids) with fellow parents who’ve signed up for the session.

Here’s more info:

Date: 28 June 09 (Sunday)
Time: 2 – 5 pm
Venue: TCC – The Coffee Connoisseur @ SMU (near City Hall MRT)
Registration Fee applies.

Click HERE to read more about it on their website and to register!

The last time we wanted to check out the Singapore Flyer was when Singapore Tourism Board did a campaign earlier this year and allowed some 2009 people get on the capsules for free over some weekends.

[People queued up from ‘the night before’ to get their free tickets! And so we obviously didn’t get any freebies when we reached there at 12.30pm!]

But then again, what do you know.

On the day we went to the Family Day Out event last month where I was part of a discussion panel, we got four complimentary tickets from the Asia PR Werkz ladies! (Thanks Julie and Sabrina!)

And so we went to the Singapore Flyer straight after!

The kids loved the view from the top!

They were like, “Look! The cars look so little. Smaller than my toy cars! Look! Look! I can see a tiny little man!’

And err, … we did the extended arm self portrait too of course. Haha.

It was a nice and different kind of experience for us all, that’s for sure!

Especially since we were all so high up in the sky!

…

Anyway.

Here are some quick interesting facts about the Singapore Flyer that I’d like to share with you :

– The Singapore Flyer is 150m in diameter. And that’s approximately the length of some 87 Singaporean men lying down from head-to-toe.

– It is 165 metres in height, which roughly is about the height of a 42-storey building (or the height of some 31 male giraffes stacked on top of one another! Hehe)

– Each capsule is about the size of a city bus (4m x 7m). And there are a total of 28 capsules.

– If the Singapore Flyer is at its full capacity, there will about 784 passengers altogether (per revolution).

…

Click HERE to read its online Visitor Guide.

Anya and Vai signed up for VVIP International‘s Summer Holiday Tennis Camp, where they’ll attend 5 sessions of tennis lessons altogether, held over a period of 2 weeks (twice this week and three times next week).

Each session lasts for 3 hours (9am – 12pm). And their main coach is Wynne Prakusya.

[They both never held kids’ tennis rackets before and these sessions are their very first tennis lessons, ever]

I’ll share more about how it all went in another post later.

For now, here’s a video clip of Vai (the youngest kid in the group, at 2years 9months) and his very first tennis lesson! Hehe.

Click HERE to watch it on youtube.

Enjoy!

PS: Oh btw, if you notice, before Vai hits the ball, he needs to get into the ‘ready position’. Over there, the kids are taught to get into the position while saying ‘Hello Mr. Tennis Racket, how are you today?’ (read: an easier way for little ones to remember the ready position, as it’s like ‘shaking hands’ with the racket)

Oh I’ve been SO busy these days. Especially now that the school holiday is here. It’s amazing how it feels like we have so much more things to do NOW compared to when Anya is at school.

I’ve got so much things to share with you too (sadly, too little time to write ‘everything’)

For now, I’ll start with this activity the four of us checked out last week at Plaza Singapura.

It’s ‘Science in The Mall‘, conducted by the Singapore Science Centre.

The one held at Plaza Singapura is already over. If you’d like to check it out, you should head to Tampines Mall.

Here’s more info for everyone.

Date: 12 – 21 June 2009
Venue: Tampines Mall, Level 4 Open Plaza
Time: 11am – 8pm

There are Stage Shows, quizzes and games (which basically is a way for them to share more with the kids in a fun way)

Note: More for the bigger kids, I think. Vai wasn’t that interested in ‘non-singing and dancing’ stage show after a while

There are big-sized dinosaur displays (Anya felt so uncomfortable being near them that she asked Daddy to carry her as we looked around the displays. She felt okay with them after a while)

And they have quite a few workshops too throughout the day!

[On-the-spot registration for workshops are on a first-come-first-served basis. You can try and wait till 5 minutes before the start of the workshop, and if some registrants did not turn up, your kids can replace them instead. More suitable for kids age 5 to 12, they say]

And Vai, being 2-something years old, wanted to join the workshop too but is too young. And so he kind of joined Anya at a ‘different location’ hehe.

And before we left, the kids managed to ‘replace’ some other kids who didn’t turn up, and both Anya and Vai tried ‘finding fossils’ (by digging their hands into a sand pit) and ‘cleaning them up’ with chisels and brushes.

An interesting hands-on activity, I reckon!

Vai : ‘Mommy! Check this out! Weeeeee …’

Anya : ‘Wait Vai, waittt!  …  urghhhh … I wanted to go first!’

…

There are times when the kids are already in their pajamas and it’s close to bedtime, BUT they’re still bursting with so much energy.

And so what did they wish to do?

Well.

THIS was what they did.

Jump off, from one bed to another!

Pre-bedtime madness.

oh well.

At least they get to practise the art of ‘landing-successfully-on-both-feet-after-jumping-off-the-cliff’!