Buzzzzz...

When Xander first came back, my mom pointed out the tall tree next to my bedroom windows and said that it was flowering. "It's going to attract lots of bees.", she said.


True enough we woke up this morning to find plenty of buzzing bees busy around the clusters of yellow flowers... right out Xander's bedroom window! I had dropped an email to the Town Council the Sunday before to have someone trim the trees but this was danger right at my doorstep/window sills. Trying to get a good shot at the bees with my old digicam was difficult due to the limited zoom, so thank goodness for the video cam that I just bought.

35x optical zoom from the Panasonic HDC-SD60 should be sufficient:

The images went off along with a second email and a call.

I must say that the customer service officers at Pasir-Punggol Town Council were pretty efficient! Within 2 hours, a loud roar came up to the driveway and a man with his trusty chainsaw was cutting away. Seeing that they have started to go about their tasks, I settled down for lunch.

As I heard the truck moving away, I went out to check their handiwork. Oops.. they trimmed the wrong trees! Instead of the trees outside my unit, they were trimming the branches near my neighbour's instead.

Another call to the Town Council soon fixed that as the officer in charge apologised for the mistake. This time, I shouted out of my window to point to the workers where the tree was. I think they figured that while they're at it, they started to trim all the trees in the estate of the same species before they get more complaints. These trees are now probably at their height 2 years ago. Good riddance!

Now before you tree-huggers out there scream for my blood, I think it's better a few leaves and branches shorter than an infant's life right? After all, bee stings can be fatal to the very young.

Welcome home!

After another day's stay in the nursery due to jaundice, our little boy has finally come home! :)

Here's him settling down in his cot nicely and snoozing away..

Boo!

Just 2 days ago, our last appointment with the doctor showed that the baby's growth has slowed down. Perhaps due to concern with the little (or big) mishap with a 3 ton truck just a couple of days ago, the doctor scheduled an urgent detailed scan at TMC first thing on Thursday morning after the public holiday.

It then spiralled into a flurry of rapid activities: Scan -> Waiting for scan results -> Lunch -> Doctor review of scans -> Surprise* -> home -> packing -> hospital.


The marathon started with admission at 315pm. Into the delivery suite, at Observation Room 3.

Monitoring starts and we hear the rhythmic pulsations. Now is the time to catch up on sleep first before we start trotting for the uphill task ahead!

*Low amniotic fluid. Upon advice, to induce 3 weeks ahead of original date!

Room Prep

When we first did our renovations 2 years back, we had two spare bedrooms that we decided to use one as a study and the other as a guest room. There were painted with a blue and pink theme respectively. While the guest room has served its purpose well playing host to friends and family (as well as the "ironing" room), it was time to set it back on its path towards its true destiny..

Yes.. the room is to be used for... kids!

It may seem like all is going well according to plan...almost. Except that even in this modern day and time, pink is for girls and blue is for boys. And our first-born has every sign and intention to be a baby boy.

So something has to be done then.. Out came Plan B. More than a year ago, we got hold of some cute pictures to use as wall decor for our nursery to be while on a trip to Bangkok. This weekend, Barney stocked up on his supply of 3M picture hanging hooks and strips, and put them to good use:

Do these 4 pictures make the room more masculine now? :P

We also chanced upon this inexpensive wall decal at AMK Hub ($15.90 before 20% discount) that we put on. Being vinyl stickers, they can be peeled off easily next time. Of course, we chose a jungle team instead of the princess or dolly ones..


Hehe.. the first pic does look like the baby section in a department store with some of the stuff we bought. Thank goodness for Capitaland Mall and Robinsons vouchers ;)

New pets

Due to health reasons, our trusted housekeeper has hung up her cleaning brushes and called it a day. This news hit us badly.. How are we going to clean the toilets ourselves? How are we going to wipe the dust off the furniture? Who's going to vacuum, mop, scrub and clean?

It's Positive!

And so the faint double blue strokes herald the arrival of a new addition to the family.

Estimated Delivery Date: Mid December 2010

Winmo again! :)

I've always had an inclination towards PDA phones.
From the O2 Mini (HTC Magician) to Dopod D810 (HTC Trinity 100), they have been my steadfast media companion. The vast library of *ahem* easily accessible software made it very customisable and could play almost every media format out there.
The love affair started when I won a lucky draw in which a Cross pen was the first prize. It had a stylus as one of the options, and my friend made this passing remark, "Now you have to get yourself a PDA". Well, as I had just started working and wanted to reward myself (ok, I did get a Radeon 9800pro with my first paycheck..), I took the plunge.. and never looked back.
(well recently, that same friend also got himself a HTC Touch Diamond 2 too).
Why not the IPhone?
The price..and the fact that you the "3rd-party" library isn't that big. You'll also need to jailbreak it before being able to install anything outside of the Apple App Shop. But I must admit, the interface is way better than WinMo despite all the available shells..but my guess is that it'll catch up soon.
Upgrade
I gave myself some time up to the end of the year before I upgraded my phone, which was getting a little long in the tooth coming to 2.5 years, and the web browsing experience wasn't that great. All the new browsers were slow on this old geezer. Then came along the Samsung Omnia 2 pre-launch promotion which I signed up for.
The phone call came and to my pleasant surprise, was only going for $198! That's a new low for a PDA phone that's is brand new in the market.

So I've got this new toy now..Barney is a content little dino.. :)