December | 2019 | Nyan Thomas L's Blog

A Look Back at November 2019

28 Dec

What else did Nyan get up to in November 2019? Let’s look.

First, some random photos:

A video of Nyan being goofy. No, we mean *really* goofy:

More pics:

More goofiness, this time outside his taekwondo studio after class one night:

Here are a couple videos from the newish Italian resturant down the street, where the staff treat Nyan like their own child (and where Nyan treats the place like his second home!). He’s also very friendly with the chef’s wife, always chatting with her and sometimes giving her massages and whatnot.

And finally, more playtime after taekwondo class.

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Posted by Chris L. on December 28, 2019 in Uncategorized

One Magical, Monster-y Night

21 Dec

Sometimes the best evenings are the ones you don’t quite expect. That was a lesson our boy learned one late November evening.

To set the scene: he had been very much looking forward to a return visit to Monster Jam — the monster truck exhibition we had attended a couple years ago. (See our coverage of it here.) There was plenty of marketing, including giant print ads at bus stops, for the show, which was set for early December, a week or so from this particular evening.

So this one weekday evening in November, we decided on a quick visit to the beach for some digging in the sand at dusk. Always a fun time:

After dinner at a waterfront restaurant, we took a stroll home. Our route happened to take us by the Roxy Square hotel, a popular and good-sized mid-priced hotel in our neighborhood. And lo and behold, what was parked outside the hotel to drum up interest in Monster Jam?

Nyan’s favorite Monster Jam truck — Megalodon!

He was over the moon. It was a dream come true — the answer to his prayers, he said later (he clarified that, were he the praying type, this is exactly what he would have prayed for).

Okay, this wasn’t that big a deal in the grand scheme of things, but it made our boy very happy. What’s not to lover about that?

Stay tuned for more about Monster Jam itself in an upcoming post…

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Posted by Chris L. on December 21, 2019 in Uncategorized

Tags: outdoors, Singapore

Advancing in Taekwondo Again

16 Dec

Nyan goes to taekwondo class every Thursday evening. Every three months or so, they run a “grading” exercise where everyone shows off what they’ve learned and, if they do it well, they advance to the next level of training and get a new belt.

The grading is on a Sunday morning in an old shopping mall, and usually attracts hundreds of kids, grouped by the dozens. We show up, Nyan gets his gear on, and the kids wait for the call to go in and do their routines, waiting outside the grading classroom, across an interior courtyard area from where the parents wait. The kids practice their moves and goof around a bit, as Daddy takes photos and videos from across the way.

Those pics and video are from the November 2019 grading exercise. A couple weeks later, we got the call from the studio: he passed! He gets a new belt! The new belt comes at a brief ceremony before his weekly class.

And here he is with all his classmates, in his new belt.

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Posted by Chris L. on December 16, 2019 in Uncategorized

Tags: sports

Nyan’s Schoolmate Helena

11 Dec

Nyan’s a sociable creature, and he has good male friends and good female friends. Let’s take another look at one of the latter, Helena.

Helena, or Ellie, is a couple years younger and lives in the same apartment tower as us. (You’ve seen her in these pages before.) She also goes to the same school and rides the same bus to and fro as Nyan. So they spend a fair amount of time together, and are always goofing around and playing.

Here they are one afternoon, walking back toward the apartment after getting off the bus home:

Helena has a younger sister, Isabella or Izzy, who’s about 18 months. She’s a sweet kid, and Nyan treats her well, like an older brother. The goal is usually to get Izzy to give him a high five, which she usually does. Though sometimes, as you can see, he’ll do something like help her get her shoes back on or whatnot.

Finally, some more pics from various mornings while waiting for the bus. Both Nyan and Helena are into Pokemon cards, so they are often showing each other their collections.

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Posted by Chris L. on December 11, 2019 in Uncategorized

Tags: friends, school

Happy Birthday to Jayden!

06 Dec

Nyan’s bestie Jayden turned 9 years old in October. To celebrate, he hosted a bunch of friends at this treehouse obstacle course in a park not far from here in November. The kids would put on safety gear including helmets and harnesses, link in to the wire system that would keep them from falling, and do various climbing and ziplining activities at a range of heights.

Here’s Nyan getting geared up, and a shot of some of the climbing structures from the ground.