Father's Day weekend with Bubbles and Owls

I booked tickets to the Fan Yang Gazillion Bubble Show for the Saturday show without realising it's the Father's Day weekend. Thought any kids would love the bubble show, I mean, we are talking about bubbles here, heaps and heaps of it.

It's an interesting show. Seeing how Fan Yang makes bubbles within bubble with ease, how he combined and split bubbles with a flip of his hand, and even saw a square bubble. Xavier seems to enjoy it too, though there were some section of the show where we have to highlight to him what Fan Yang was trying to showcase.

My only regret was I should have gotten the stall seats instead of the circles seats. There were activities like passing and pushing giant balls around during the interval and the flooding of the whole stall area with what else but bubbles. Sadly there were none for us, as we are at the circle seats and its too high up. And Xavier keeps asking why we do not have bubbles at our area.

Took a bubble photo for memory sake. Pretty unique experiences of what is life like inside a bubble.

On Sunday, I brought Xavier to an English play.

It's call Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark. Danny recommended it saying how his son enjoyed it and its a must watch since they extended the show days.

The venue is a pain as we can't park at the place itself and cisco were hardworking at the lane outside. So I had to park at Balmort Plaza which is a 10mins walk.

The play fortunately was very delightful and enjoyable, even for adults. There were many interactions with the crowd , like throwing soft toys (supposingly baby owl's poo) at them, spraying water at them, teaching them how to make sounds and actions to resemble the different fireworks.

In fact I dare say its one of the best kid's play I have been to. The three artists from the Blunderbus Theatre Company are a real fun bunch. I hope they come to Singapore again. It's a father's day treat to myself.

Braun BET1000

One of the most essential tool for parents with babies and young children is a thermometer. You have to have at least one at home in the event the young ones run a temperature.

Back in our time, the most common thermometer widely used is the mercury thermometer. You know, the versatile thermometer that can be used under your tongue or under your armpit? Well it has come a long way.

We been using the Braun ThermoScan 6022 ever since Xavier was born. Its an in-ear thermometer that give you the reading in a matter of seconds. It can be a pain to use especially when you are trying to get a reading from a sleeping child. Imagine someone trying to poke something into your ear while you are sleeping. And I find it annoying when it gives you a reading of 37.5 degrees which is mild fever and the PD would say "Oh the in-ear thermometer? its a +- 0.5 degree so he's not really having a fever." It's almost like the device is only giving a ballpark figure.

Given that it recently started to give us some issues, we decided to get another thermometer. We were considering the forehead scanners but those are pretty expensive. Then I came across the Braun BET1000.

BET stands for Behind Ear Thermometer. And that's basically where position it to take the temperature. Press for 1 sec and the reading appears in the LCD screen complete with coloured backlight. So it's almost fool proof as the colour will indicate to you if you are not having a fever (green), having mild fever (orange) or having fever (red). As you only need to position it behind the ear, it would be able to take an accurate reading without the thermometer touching the sleeping child.

The thermometer is manufactured by Kaz USA Inc. Strangely when I tried to Google for more information via the Braun sites, I could only find it under Braun Korea. Braun USA does not seem to carry it. Kaz.com has a similar product on their website but its marketed as another brand Vick, the company behind the famous VapoRub.

Anyway from the site, it explains that "the measurement site in the hollow behind the ear is very close to the carotid artery, which carries blood to the brain. This is an ideal external site to measure temperature."

I seen these for sale at Robinson and heard that Courts also carries this. For us, we are just happy we found this lovely thermometer.

NDP 2012 - Building a LovingSG

This year we will be celebrating Singapore's 47th birthday. I'm sure many of you have balloted for the NDP  or preview tickets. Congratulations to lucky ones who go the tickets.

This year's celebration also has an interesting component call Building a LovingSG. Its a project to recreate the Marina Bay Floating Platform using Lego bricks under the leadership of Architect Eugene Tan. Measuring 12m by 9m, this massive Lego structure will use about 200,000 Lego bricks to build. It will have the exact same number of seats as the real Marina Bay Floating Platform, all 27,000 of it in the exact same colour setup.

I came to know of this project from two forums (Hardwarezone EDMW and Lego Users Group Singapore). I was keen to join and be part of it. But like the Chinese saying, 心有余而力不足 (got heart but no energy). The project was completed yesterday and after reading horizonsky's forum post on her experience on this 13 days project, I really kudos to all the people who made it possible with their perseverance and sacrifices.

There were people who took their annual leave to help in this project, people who came after work and build till midnight, and even people who brought their kids along and everyone take turns to babysit them. And although the AFOL (short for Adult Fan of Lego) volunteers from forum were only needed for the first two days to kickstart the project, they stayed throughout the whole 13 days when the going gets rough and things do not go as intended.

Now you too can be a part of this project. With a donation of $5, you will get two Lego minifigures of which one will be put onto the Lego Floating Platform to represent you, and the other to be kept by you as souvenir. There is a limit of 10 pairs of minifigures donations per NRIC but you are welcome to donate more. All money will be going to The Straits Times School Pocket Money Fund.

Below are some photos from Hardwarezone EDMW forum, Lego Users Group Singapore forum and PlaytimeSG flickr. They are not my photos and all credits goes out to them.

This photo should give you a sense of how big the whole project is.

Fixing each of the 27,000 seats, one seat at a time.

Will one of your minifigures you donated be seating here?

Lights


VIP Box

Group photos of some of the AFOL volunteers.

Fun shot of minifigures on the platform.

I have reserved a seat at the Lego Floating Platform. Have you?

Updated on 16th June 2012:
HWZ EDMW has its own section on the platform, special thanks to horizonsky for organising this. Below are some photos of the "unique area".

"EDMW assemble!"

My Lizardman sitting beside Spiderman.

Parade Commander "Sedi Ya!!"