Serangoon Playdate

Pictures -



Brandon and Ollie



Ollie, Brandon, Thomas, Daniel, and Cheng-Hoon

This week's Friday playgroup was moved to Thursday due to Friday being a public holiday. My Chinese friend, Jasmine, hosted the playgroup at her house this week.

Jasmine's house is located in the town Serangoon. Serangoon is in the North-East Region of the central part of Singapore. It was about a 20 minute cab ride to Jasmine's house from where we live.

Jasmine was such a generous hostess! She made Chinese noodles (lo mein), chicken wings with potatoes and carrots, and congee (rice porridge). She had grapes, oranges, and dragon fruit, as well as fish crackers, cookies and chrysanthemum tea. Everything was so delicious! (Well, I wasn't a fan of the fish crackers, although Brandon and I both tried them. Brandon even gave it a few bites more than me.)

As I might have mentioned before, Jasmine has lived in Singapore for twenty years. Her husband is Singaporean, but she met her husband when he was working in Hong Kong. He now works in Taiwan, while she and her three boys live here in Sinapore. Jasmine became a citizen of Singapore soon after she moved here. Jasmine told me that her husband will retire to Singapore in ten years. Now, he just travels to Singapore one weekend each month.

Jasmine told me something interested about real estate in Singapore. If you are not a citizen of Singapore, you can buy a home, but not the land. Only Singaporeans can buy land. Jasmine did say that Sentosa is an exception to this. Sentosa is an island just off the south coast of the main island of Singapore. The two are connected by a bridge for cars and a monorail. Jasmine said that you don't have to be Singaporean to buy land there, but she said that it is outrageously expensive.

Jasmine has a lovely home, and Brandon and I had such a nice time there.

When Brandon and I took a cab home, the traffic was horrible. Not sure if the traffice was due to the time of day or the fact that it was a holiday eve. Since it took about thirty minutes to get back home, Brandon fell asleep in the cab. He was exhausted since he had been up since 5:30 am. I made it up to our apartment without waking Brandon, and he took a three hour nap. Wow!

After Brandon's nap, we walked to our friend Amanda's apartment. It had been awhile since we had seen her and Kate. It was great catching up with Amanda. We let Brandon and Kate play for about an hour, and then we walked to Somerset 313 for dinner. Amanda introduced me to a great sandwich place there. Yummy!

On our way back home, Brandon and I stopped in to see Jo, Jessie, and Jake. We only intended to stay for ten minutes, but we ended up staying for almost two hours! Steven called while we were there and said that he would make it home from work earlier tonight. I thought that it would be nice to delay Brandon's bedtime a bit tonight, so that he could spend some time with Daddy. Steven stopped at Jo's on his way in. He was in awe at how large their three bedroom apartment is. It was the first time he had been there. Steven enjoyed an Anchor beer before we headed up to our apartment.

As Brandon was still awake, he was able to say goodnight to Grandma D on Skype before heading to bed.

What a busy day!!!