31 Mar 2013 - Javier turns 4 today!

Javier is 4 years old today.  In the afternoon, we had a session at the KTV room where Jerlene and Javier started off with a medley.

In the evening, we had a little birthday celebration at my place.

HAPPY 4TH BIRTHDAY. JAVIER!

25 Mar 2013 - Play-Doh

Jerlene displayed her creativity today by making different objects with Play-Doh.  Referring to the photo below, she made a Sun, a Cloud, a Tree, a Flower and a Rabbit on a patch of Grass.  I think I should buy her more Play-Doh so that she can make more things and totally let her imagination runs wild.

For those who are about my age, you would probably remember plasticine, right?  The main difference between Play-Doh and Plasticine is that Plasticine is derived from clay and is oil based while Play doh is water based and is totally edible.

23 Mar 2013 - Jerlene's private property

This afternoon, a structure suddenly appeared in our living room.  After taking a closer look, I saw Jerlene actually slept inside the structure.  I asked her about it when she woke up, she said that's her private property......haha......  I remember when I was about her age, I did the same thing......except that mine was not so sophisticated as I only used a mattress and wrapped around myself.

21 Mar 2013 - Jerlene's tooth dropped for the very first time

One of Jerlene's milk tooth on her lower gum started to be shaky since few days back.  Today it finally dropped off.  This is her very first tooth to have fallen off.  Soon the rest of the milk teeth will start to fall off one after another to make room for her permanent teeth.  In fact, on her gum where the tooth had fallen, I can already see a new permanent tooth growing out.

Taken from Mayo Clinic website, below shows an image of baby's teeth.  Baby teeth typically fall out in the order they came in — the two bottom front teeth (lower central incisors) first, followed by the two top front teeth (upper central incisors), then the lateral incisors, first molars, canines and second molars

18 Mar 2013 - Off to Legoland

We had our breakfast at Mahkota Hotel before checking out.  And as promised to my two angels, I will drive them to Legoland today.  We reached Medini Mall, which is next to Legoland, at about 12:30pm and we decided to have our lunch there.  I had expected crowd today as this week is Singapore's school holiday.  But surprisingly, the place was not crowded at all, which was great!  In fact, I realized that the best time to visit Legoland is during Singapore's school holiday BUT NOT Malaysia's school holiday.  Not only will there be lesser crowd in the park, the park closure time will also be extended from 6pm to 8pm.

As usual, our first stop was the Junior Driving School, which is near to the park entrance.  There was absolutely no queue.  After the practice session on the electric mini car yesterday at Dataran Pahlawan, Javier was able to control his car much better today.

Next we went to the Boating School across the road.  Previously we did not manage to try this because of some technical faults.  Today's queue was much better though we still have to wait for about 30mins before it's our turn.  Jerlene really enjoyed this ride.  It was fun.

After the Boating School, Jerlene went over to the Driving School for older children while Javier returned to the Junior Driving School.  Jerlene is now at a good height and age where she can enjoy both Driving Schools.  They were given a certificate after every lesson.

We then spent quite a while at the Shipyard playground before heading to the Lego train station, where we boarded a train that brought us round the park.  Land of adventure is the next area that we went.  We manage to try Lost Kingdom Ride this time.  We did not try this previously because the queue for this ride is always terrible.  It was a fun ride whereby we were given a laser gun to shoot at various targets.  However, Jerlene ended up saying this ride had frightened her because there were monsters, mummies and coffins all over the place.  Across this ride is Pharaoh's Revenge, which is similar to a playground in Hello Kitty Town. They will never miss such playground.

After that, we decided to watch a 4D show at the Lego Studio.  There are 3 different shows at different times.  Previously we had watched the Lego Racers and this time, we watched Spellbreaker.  Jerlene started to enjoy such 4D shows where water, foam and wind will strike us at various part of the show.  Today, Javier also willing to put on the 3D glasses, which he had rejected previously.

Lego Build and Test creativity corner and Duplo Playtown were the next two stops that we went.  We spent about an hour there and by then, it was already 6pm.  As the kids need to go childcare the next day, we decided to leave early instead of till the park closure.

On our way out, Jerlene went for the Royal Joust ride as there was no queue once again.

The drive back home was pretty smooth.  This marked the end of our wonderful and enjoyable long weekend.

17 Mar 2013 - Dataran Pahlawan Melaka Megamall

Before this trip, I was told that there is now a Megamall in Melaka, which did not exist when we were here many years back.  It's called Dataran Pahlawan.  It's across the road from Mahkota Parade.  There is also a new hotel that has a connecting bridge to the Megamall called Hatten Hotel.  Tracy actually wanted to book this hotel but it was full.  Though it's more expensive, it is a lot more convenient and I assume cleaner as well.

Below is a map of Dataran Pahlawan and surrounding area.

After the tiring historical exploration earlier, we finally can cool ourselves down in the mall.  This mall is really really huge.  We entered the mall from the entrance nearest to A Famosa.  This part of the mall is single storey but it stretches out in all angles.  We then followed a sign that says Coral Wonderland, which we thought this probably would be some place that will interest the kids.  After walking for 20 mins, the sign still continue to lead us further.  Then we came to a few steps of stairs and from that point onwards, it seems to be another part of the mall that has at least 6-7 floors.  Here we saw posters of Coral Wonderland and it's actually an Underwater World located on the fourth floor.  As we reached the third floor, Jerlene and Javier refused to leave because they saw an indoor playground.  It was cheap, RM10 allows them to play there with no time limit.  We spent about an hour there before looking for a place to have our lunch.

After lunch we proceeded to Coral Wonderland and as we approached the entrance, Jerlene and Javier said they did not want to go in.  Instead they requested to go back to 3rd floor where there is an open area with mini electric cars.  So be it.  We went down one level and they spent 30mins driving those electric cars around the open area.  Javier looked like a drunk driver initially and kept knocking into things.  So funny.

After the car ride, Javier was so tired that he could hardly walk properly.  Jerlene also kept asking me to go back to our car.  So I walked back to my car alone and drove to the mall entrance to pick them up.  Once we reached our room, instead of resting, Jerlene and Javier asked to go for a swim.  Kids are really FULL of energy.

We stayed at the pool for about 45mins when the sky suddenly turned dark.  As soon as we felt a few rain drops, we quickly asked the children to come out of the pool and returned to our room for a shower.

In the evening, we walked back to Mahkota Parade for our dinner.  It was a tiring but fun and adventurous day.

17 Mar 2013 - Day 2: A Famosa and St. Paul's Church

Instead of searching for the revolving tower which cannot be found on my GPS, we decided to search for its actual name Menara Taming Sari.  And viola, it's found and we were routed to the place within 10 minutes.

The revolving tower brings tourists to a height of 80 metres and it offers a spectacular and panoramic view of Melaka.  We did not try because both Jerlene and Javier did not seem to be interested in it.

I vaguely remember there is an old fortress nearby.  So we started walking towards where the crowd was.  After 15 minutes of walking, we reached a place where there were several life-size model of various transportation, such as aircraft, fire truck and train.

Below is the interior of the train, and a good place to hide from the sun.......  :-)

When I looked up from here, I saw some stone structure on a small hill that seems to be the old fortress which I had in mind.  This is A Famosa, a fortress built by the Portuguese during their occupation in 1511.  It is among the oldest surviving European architectural remains in Asia.  Below shows the fortress gate, the only remaining part of the fortress still standing, called the Porta de Santiago.

Behind the gate up the hill, there is another historic structure, St. Paul's Church, originally built in 1521.  Tracy and I were totally exhausted after climbing up the stairs while the kids were still full of energy.

Below is the interior of the church, where you can see some old Portuguese tombstones by the church wall.

We had a superb view of Malacca Town from the top of St. Paul's Hill.  By this time, we were all very tired. So next, we walked down the hill and to a nearby shopping mall for lunch.

17 Mar 2013 - Day 2: Malacca Straits Mosque

Good morning Malacca!  Here's an early morning panoramic view from the balcony.

Our room rate comes with free breakfast at the hotel.  Javier was crazy over the muffins while Jerlene got her favourite "rectangle noodle" (猪肠粉).  We finished our breakfast at about 10am.  As we did not have any specific plan for the day, we decided to just drive around the area.  I turned on my GPS and tried to search for revolving tower.  Somehow it led me to a bridge across a stretch of water, which is visible from our room balcony.  I decided to drive over it and explore that area.  The place seems deserted.  Along the way, we saw many uncompleted building construction, which seemed to have been abandoned by the developers.  Driving further in, we came to a mosque, which we decided to go in to have a look.

Once we reached the mosque entrance, Jerlene suddenly showed me a card and said:"Hey, this is the mosque!".  Jerlene had taken some tourist attraction cards from the hotel lobby and one of them is this mosque.  She was excited and started running around with Javier.

This is the Malacca Straits Mosque and where we were standing was a man-made Malacca Island.  I remembered many years back when we were here, they were reclaiming this piece of land.  This mosque is also known as the Floating Mosque because it looks like a floating structure when the water level is high.  From here, we had a good view of the world's longest and busiest straits, the Straits of Melaka.

It was very sunny and we could all feel the heat.  As such, we quickly drove off after taking some photos.  We came back to the bridge which is the only way linking Malacca Island and Malacca Town.  From the bridge, we could see our hotel from afar.

16 Mar 2013 - Day 1: Trip to Malacca

By the time Jerlene finished her ballet exam, it was already 11:30am.  We quickly went home to have our lunch as we planned to go Malacca over the weekend.  We moved out at around 1:45pm.  Through the traffic webcam, we saw that there was heavy traffic at the causeway whereas traffic was smooth at Tuas 2nd link.  As such, we decided to enter Malaysia from Tuas checkpoint.  The drive was estimated to be about 3 hours and we reached Mahkota Hotel at around 5:15pm.  Below are views from our apartment's balcony.  We had a great view of the Straits of Melaka.

And here's the bedroom as well as the living/dining area.

We took a rest before walking across a highway to Mahkota Parade Shopping Mall for dinner.  We had Japanese/Taiwanese food for dinner.  The kids enjoyed it as well.  After dinner, we walked around the mall for a short while before heading back to our apartment.

Here's a night view of a nearby jetty, which is now occupied by restaurants and pubs.

16 Mar 2013 - Jerlene's Ballet Exam

Jerlene had her first ever exam today.  It's her ballet pre syllabus exam.  After watching her dance during the mock exam, I had full confidence in her that she will definitely do well this time round.  The examiner came from Australia, specially for this round of exams (various grades).  We were told to be there early just in case Jerlene's hair needs further touch up.  We did her hair bun pretty well this time and did not need much touch up from her teacher.  She was all ready and I do not see any nervousness from her.  Probably she still does not understand what exactly an examination is.

The result of the exam will not be out immediately.  However, as this is just a pre syllabus exam, all kids should have passed.  In fact, we were all given a fee slip for next term and on the slip, it indicates as pre-primary.  In other words, Jerlene will be "promoted" to the next grade starting next week.  Way to go, Jerlene!