June Holidays

June Holidays is over. 

Not an exaggeration to say M&M each clock 10 hours of screen time daily. We squeeze in some leftover hours for other activities like:  

 

Patching

Register Mother and Daughter in a “How to Patch Holes in your Clothes” workshop at the National Gallery. Thought this is like Kintsugi, a broken object can be repaired with Gold and make useful again. Celebrate the cracks! Reality is more banal. Workshop is exactly what the name suggests, the practical skill of mending holes in garments instead of throwing them away! Oh… somehow this feels less cultural. But hey, we have no idea how to patch holes so let's do it. 

M&M wear hand me downs and my average garment is 10 years old so plenty of holes everywhere to patch. From where Megan is seated, she can even see a hole in the groin area of the jeans I am wearing!!! Is it bad? … Yah… You helping me mend it at home right?

 

Little do we realize, my jeans have two holes!!! 

It is a warm feeling walking by her room to see her mending my jeans. A typical scene should be this: 

Loving mother straining her eyes by the candlelight to mend clothes for her kids. Well done YY, I have completely reverse the scene to daughter laboring for the modesty of her mum. With Love. But tsk tsk, Megan sews really well in the class but obviously all skills forgotten once put into practical use at home. Refer the case to grandmaster and after inspecting the sewing skills of her granddaughter, declares this garment not worth saving.

Oh mum come on! Jeans are supposed to last forever and this is my third pair already!!! FINE, she says, she will take home to machine the whole area… In the meantime, buy a fourth pair! 

 

Staycation

Bought tickets for the Immersive Van Gogh Exhibition. Ally is gonna punch me for saying the exhibition is ok only… not spectacular…. But, anything to keep kids screen time within 300hrs a month. 

Ken tags a Staycation to the exhibition since “we travel such a long way to Sentosa already”.

Best Best Best pool fun ever. 

Universal Studios. Not easy to cater to a teenager who is starting to enjoy cool rides and a Morgan who needs to learn how to scream out loud in fear. I am too old. I cannot scream so I just cry. 

 

端午节 

Coax Mimi to make zongzi. 

Shopping with her for ingredients is super fun, especially seeing her call the old vegetable stall uncle “小弟”. Classic Act of the Grandmaster. 

So many things to prepare. She mulls over buying cotton strings vs twine as we are not skilled enough for bamboo strings. That is before she finds left over raffia in my storeroom. This woman hates nothing more than left over bits and pieces of stuff tucked in corners of the house. “If I buy new strings, you are going to have 2 ball of leftovers strings for the next 10 years! And what is this 7cm bit of ribbon doing here?

So raffia becomes the wrong but eventual string of choice. Mimi spends a dedicated day of boiling them to rid the chemicals and washing every blade of bamboo leaves (which allegedly is done by Morgi – so hard to believe).

Fast forward to THE WRAPPING DAY. Kids are excited. 

 

Megan, being her 2^nd or 3^rd time wrapping zongzi, is already a skilled labor.  Morgi does not need the figuring out process for his first time and goes straight for it. With courage and little hesitation, he does amazingly well, except for tying.  Amazingly well until… eating time when Ken bite into a zongzi with 90% rice. Where is the meat? Morgi did you wrap meat inside???

M&M make origami zongzi to distribute.

Meggie goes on a Dragonboat rowing trip during school camp! Morgi and me are totally left out so we can only draw with imagination. 

 

Then suddenly, June Holidays is over. Morgi says "Mummy, I am so depressed". I know he is certainly not referring to all the fun activities that are ending but that the internet hours are going to be severely cut! Back to the grind children!