Here’s Nyan, playing with his bulldozer behind a small breakwater at East Coast Park, a great big green space about a 10 minute walk from our apartment. Love it.
Category Archives: Photos
Photo of the Day: Ice Cream
We were out and about the other day and we all got some bowls of ice cream. Here’s Nyan, making a mess with his (moments before he dropped the whole thing on the ground, of course).
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Photo of the Day: Scootin’
Nyan Thomas, out for a ride on his bike (a.k.a. scooter) on a recent weekend afternoon, as a Singapore flag flaps proudly in the breeze.
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Balloons, Fish, and Much More: Nyan’s Third Birthday
Our boy, and the star of this here blog, turned three years young on July 26. We were far away from friends and family, but Mommy and Daddy were determined to make it a special day, and we dare say it was a success.
The fun actually began on Friday the 25th, when Mommy — fresh off a long overnight flight from San Francisco — and Daddy stopped by Nyan’s school in the late afternoon with candy, balloons and cupcakes for Nyan’s classmates and teachers. The balloons were a big hit:
As were the cupcakes. And so was Mommy as she read books to Kyle and other friends of Nyan.
That evening, we went out to dinner down the road. The Thai BBQ place we had our eye on was going to be too long of a wait, so we ended up at this odd little place called Fluffy Butter Flaps. Felt like being in a Japanese cartoon, somehow, which is not a complaint. The food was good, the place was friendly, and they gave Nyan a big mug full of milk, which he happily drank while sitting on a couch with some stuffed sheep.
Daddy’s grand plan for the birthday day itself was to get an early-ish start to avoid the crush of crowds at the aquarium, but after all the Friday fun — and all the flying — Mommy and Nyan wanted a lie-in. So we changed our plans and let them snooze:
So the morning plans instead became opening presents, playing with presents, Skyping and talking on the phone with grandparents in Iowa and England, and eventually a leisurely stroll to a nearby restaurant for some lunch. Then we caught a bus into town, hopped on a subway train, navigated our way through a shopping mall, and squeezed onto a monorail that took us on a short ride to the small island of Sentosa. It’s just off shore from Singapore itself, and it’s pretty much completely resorts, amusement parks and the like. Several hotels, some upscale housing, casinos, a water park, bars and restaurants, and a big ol’ aquarium. It was even more packed than Daddy had feared it would be by mid-afternoon, but aside from a few places where it was heaving, it wasn’t bad at all. And the aquarium overall was very good. Some good displays, touch pools, and some absolutely HUGE tanks filled with the usual suspects — octopi, jellyfish, stingrays and manta rays, tropical fish of all shapes, sizes and colors, and lots of sharks in one of those tanks that has a tunnel running through it, so they’re right above your head. Nyan was pretty fascinated by most of it. His attention and energy started to wane after 90 minutes in there, so we rushed a little bit through the last quarter of the place, but that’s pretty good for a three year old.
To get off of Sentosa, we decided to skip the monorail and take a ride on a cable car that soars over the bay. Tremendous views, particularly right at sunset. We could see most of Sentosa, the Singapore skyline off in the distance, the massive container port of Singapore, and military helicopters carrying giant Singaporean flags, practicing for the National Day celebrations in a couple weeks. Best of all, maybe: the cable car had some sort of comic book superhero promotion going on, so our birthday boy got a superhero mask to wear. He hardly took it off the rest of the night.
Back on the mainland of Singapore, we looked around a mall called Vivo City — said to be the biggest shopping mall in Singapore, which is no small feat, if you’ve seen the number and size of shopping malls here — for a place for dinner. Unfortunately for us, it was 7pm on a Saturday, so every place was packed. We quickly decided to just put our name down at Jamie Oliver’s Italian place, and only had to wait about 20 minutes. Really good food, albeit with rather lackluster service; both are, in our experience, very much standard at most Singaporean restaurants. The restaurant is right on the water looking out to Sentosa, so we had a view of the nightly fireworks show going on across the bay. We pretended they were doing it in honor of Nyan’s birthday.
Yes, it was quite a day – and no nap either. We got in a taxi at about 8:45pm and the birthday boy was zonked out by 8:48. Didn’t stir when we undressed him and put him in bed, and slept until 9 the next morning. Happy birthday, little guy!
Photo of the Day: Dessert
We went out to dinner the other night at a nice-ish Italian restaurant. It was surprisingly good, and Nyan surprised us by behaving almost 100% the entire time. Here he is, enjoying a taste of mango sorbet for dessert.
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Photo of the Day: Chair
We stopped in at a Peranakan* store the other day. They had a lot of really nice old Malaysian furniture, including some ornate chairs that Nyan wanted to sit in. Daddy managed to get him to sit still just long enough for a couple of quick shots.
*Peranakan refers, broadly, to people in the Malay peninsula who are descendants of Chinese immigrants several centuries ago. It’s sort of a combination of Malaysian, Singaporean and Chinese culture. Sort of.
Photo of the Day: Climbing
Nyan Thomas shows off his mountaineering skills as he rapidly scales the slopes of Mount Playground Equipment.
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Photo of the Day: New Pajamas
Here’s Nyan Thomas, modeling the latest in sleepwear for the modern toddler (a birthday gift from Grandma and Grandpa L., in fact).
Racial Harmony Day at School
The other day, Nyan’s Montessori school celebrated Racial Harmony Day. All the kids were to wear some sort of national or ethnic clothing for the day. We wanted to somehow honor his dual heritages, so we had a couple of choices for outfits. Oh, sure, we considered his standard Iowa Hawkeyes t-shirt, but decided we’d class it up a little bit (no offense to Iowans, of course!) by putting him in traditional Burmese garb. So we popped by Peninsula Plaza – the local shopping mall that’s home to dozens and scores of Burmese grocers, clothing stories, travel agencies and more – and got him a lon-gyi (the long piece of fabric that Burmese men wear in lieu of pants) and a traditional Burman shirt, the kind Nyan’s great-grandfather wore when he was a lawyer back in Colonial Burma.
He looked pretty good, if we do say so ourselves. And he got numerous approving looks from passers-by on the way to school.
Here is is on the way to school, asking questions about whatever he sees on the way, of course (note his toy helicopter. He has to bring one truck, plane or other vehicle to school each day to share with his friend Oregon (yes that’s his friend’s name)):
Photo of the Day: Tractor
Nyan keeps his riding tractor on our balcony. Here it is.
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