The day of reckoning has arrived. After months of intensive preparation, M2 sits for her first UPSR paper today.
I know M2 has made tremendous progress since the beginning of the year; and knowing the fact that she has made a lot of effort to study hard and being very dedicated counts a lot. Getting good results will just be icing on the cake, not forgetting the incentives from ‘The Carrot Program’.
All the best to you!
Somewhat disillusioned with the recent discovery on Level 410 in Candy Crush and coupled with the frustration, I decided to pick up a book again to read. Of course it is a book by my favorite author.
The last book that I attempted to read, Pompeii by Robert Harris, just could not hold my attention. I didn’t go beyond ‘Hora duodecima’…
Maybe there’s still a chance for me to catch up in the reading race with this renewed reading mood.
Last night, I was going through my usual routine playing Candy Crush and then Zookeeper Battle, I decided to use the laptop to continue crushing candies for I had ran out of lives on the iPad.
Ever since arriving at Level 410, I have yet use the laptop to play the game. To my horror, I discovered that this level has a different and much easier layout in the app on Facebook compared to the app on the iPad! How could this be? I feel cheated!! Of my time, effort and energy, what more, lives wasted in my attempt to overcome this level.
The grid of the iPad app has four less squares on it, thus making it harder to conquer compared to the app on Facebook on the laptop.
iPad Mini: see the two left and right gaping spaces above the bombs?
MacBook Air: now see the same spots, not gaping but with candies over jellies!
With just that two extra squares on each side at the bottom, the playing field becomes totally different in strategies and moves to diffuse the bombs and eliminate the jellies. I have played the game long enough to know the level of difficulty and challenges thrown at us. So my level of authority on this is credible.
And for as long as I have been addicted to the game, this is the first time I am encountering a discrepancy in the grid on two different devices when it shouldn’t be. Hello… King.com Limited, you hear me? Fix it on the iPad so that my feeling cheated will not mar the love affair that I have with Candy Crush.
Holiday resorts are fun places to be. They are your temporary home for the next few days when you go on vacation.
A typical garden view room
Over the years, we’ve traveled to many and afar. And I noticed over the years, beach resorts have evolved from carpeted floors to tiled floors. I guess this makes sense for keeping the maintenance cost down. Imagine the wrath of an angry holiday maker the management has to deal with, if the carpet was stale smelling with salt/chlorine water or full of sand in its plush state to irritate the naked toes.
Last weekend, hubby and I decided to escape from the children and do what we enjoy most: play golf. We drove out of town to this beach resort that offered an attractive golf and spa package. So three rounds of golf we played and 2 spa sessions we enjoyed, besides the cheap seafood.
Thank goodness we didn’t have to cross the water on this Par 4.
We had steamed fish. Very fresh!
But the pleasant outing had an ugly accident by the second night. We came back from a great seafood dinner and hubby dropped his phone in the hotel room! It landed on the damn tiled floor and the screen of his Google Nexus smartphone cracked. Ouch. The damage was intense, the pain of the damage even more so.
My heart bled for the phone too….
Now, if there was carpet, the damage would be minimal and not so painful. But no, it was tiles, hard tiles that totally did the phone in.
So now, holiday resorts are not that fun anymore…
When M1 was a toddler, I used to call her “Miss Magoo” simply because when she smiled, her eyes would go all slity and it reminds me of the cartoon character, Mr Magoo.
Of course children of today’s era would not or may not know him but if you looked him up and compared the eye feature especially, you would agree with me that M1 has a somewhat uncanny resemblance to Mr Magoo and worthy to be called Miss Magoo, no?
Both girls are doing well in school I must proudly put on record. Sometimes it is moments like these that make the parents proud. I can vouch the hubby shares the same sentiments as me.
M2 is on a high with better results from the second trial exam before the BIG exam. She has another week of intensive studying before it all boils down to the three days of exams. Then, as she told me before, “I can throw away all my books and will do nothing but iPod-ding the whole day!” Well, she deserves it after all that dedication, hard work and effort.
M1’s high, on the other hand, is a ranking achievement rather than exam results. Recently, she was installed as the Head Librarian of the school library and promised to bring reading awareness to all the students. You can tell, reading is her passion.
It is heartwarming to share their high spirits and achievements. I am pretty sure the ‘Carrot Program’ played a role in this boosted morale.
The wedding anniversary is coming up soon and it reminds me of us bungling the numbers. The hubby and I have been married for donkey years and sometimes we lose track of it. Four years ago, when it was actually our 14th anniversary, he got the math wrong and thought it was our 15th anniversary; so he made plans for a great romantic escapade to Italy. In the midst of the excitement, I got my math wrong too and thought, yeah, 15 is a great milestone to celebrate, and in Italy…. Hmm. How sweet!
So off to Italy we went on just a two-to-go adventure covering Rome, Venice, Florence and back to Rome for a 12-day getaway. It was after we returned, blissed and happy that he realized that he got the math wrong on the anniversary milestone! Oops. But I wasn’t complaining!
The following year, 2010 was the actual 15th anniversary which I pointed out to him that year. It was definitely the correct anniversary milestone after the screw up the year before. As we can’t be celebrating the 14th again, we can celebrate the 15th, absurd as it sounds in the rationale.
So another trip to celebrate the occasion!
In less than 48 hours and on spontaneity once we decided where, he booked us on the (then) all new A380 SQ flight to Sydney and we spent 6 glorious days there. He made it all the more special with our stay at the Four Seasons Hotel with a fantastic view of the Sydney Opera House! We even climbed the Harbour Bridge to mark the momentous occasion. Best getaway ever.
I guess we will have to wait another two years to celebrate the significant 20th milestone. After all, like I told M1 and M2 before, any number other than significant numbers (5, 10, 15, etc) for birthdays does not qualify to be celebrated with a big party. So same applies to wedding anniversaries, unless of course, you get the math wrong unintentionally. Maybe it is safer to just say “Happy anniversary!” instead of “Happy 18th anniversary!”
Sometimes it’s not the destination but the journey, cliche as it may be, but we have so far made our journey amazing! So, hubby dearest, happy anniversary and let’s continue making amazing journeys together!
Another milestone!
YAY! Today I hit 2,500 views!!! Thank you, thank you, thank you for all your support and interest!
Last Saturday morning, I woke up early for my golf game, planned ages ago. And in my morning ritual, the iPad Mini is always whipped out to check mail, update FB status and play a few of my usual games. To my dismay, I discovered Candy Crush has an update (to Level 410)! Oh dear. I am still stuck at 394 and the much awaited update finally came.
But I can only update after I return from the golf course. Sigh. I guess I am still suckered in to continue and just cannot pull away from this candy addiction.
After the golf game where Candy Crush was also among the topics yakked by the other lady golfers during lunch, I was given some sound advice on how to tackle that frustrating level. Armed with a new determination, I went home and got down to business. I should thank my advisor and my lucky stars for I finally crossed that dastardly level! It’s always the same pattern: just when you want to give up, they allow you to cross and get suckered in to continue the game.
For the record, I have reached the end of this new update and there’s only two possibilities: I will most likely overcome the last level and wait for the update or be frustrated by it and bid my time to overcome it. Either scenario will have me contemplating (again) whether to move forth on the computer or just wait until another new update comes around for the iPad.
Sucker indeed.
“Michael Bublé again?! Arghh…… Noooo…..”
That’s what I get when I decide to drive. I love my car and my music, with the current choice being Michael Bublé. I don’t listen to the radio as I find it annoying with far too many advertisement jingles. And I certainly can’t tweak up Eminem when my girls are in my car!
Whenever we are getting ready to go out, both girls will ask, “Mummy’s car or Daddy’s car?” If given the choice, they’d rather go with the hubby’s mode of transport. And regardless of which car, they will bring their iPods and headphones along. Annoys me especially when I have to talk to them and they can’t hear.
Why can’t children nowadays appreciate our choice of music? Once I put on some oldies (from my iPod Shuffle) in the car and M2 voiced out, “Mummy! What music is this?”
“The 90s music. My kind of music,” I said and she went, “Oh. Sorry I wasn’t even born yet!” Ouch.
So headphones are allowed in my car for them to tune out when I listen to my kind of music – Michael Bublé, Jacky Cheung, Sam Cooke or otherwise.
Angieneering 
Remarks