Let’s see what our hero got up to in the month of May 2016, shall we?
There were playdates, and field trips, and a visit to the Singapore Air Force’s open house. There was lots of reading, and homework-doing. And hanging out with a visiting Uncle Jeff. Pretty good month! (click to enlarge)
And finally: some fun play-fighting with good friend Jayden:
Long-time readers may know that Mommy was born in Burma, a.k.a. Myanmar. She hadn’t been back since 2003, and Daddy had never been there. So when we moved to Singapore a couple years ago — Singapore being just two hours or so by plane from the Yangon, the capital — we put Burma high on our list of places to visit.
Or rather, places to visit eventually, since Nyan was not yet three years old, and we thought he was still too young to subject him to a very, very developing country.
By earlier this year, we decided it was time. Phwa Phwa was visiting Myanmar for a few weeks, so Nyan, Mommy and Daddy popped over for five days. It was a pretty amazing place. (Editor’s note: the names Burma and Myanmar are used fairly interchangeably. There’s a deep history behind what each particular name means, which we won’t try to go into here. For sake of consistency, we’ll call it Myanmar from here on out.)
Let’s start off with a look at random scenery from around Yangon. We should note that it’s a fascinating place, filled with gorgeous old buildings and friendly and helpful locals, but it was also run by a military junta for many decades. A lot of urban amenities — like closed sewers and organized traffic flows — just don’t exist. Keep that in mind as you look at this first batch of pictures, which, yes, does include a shot of several layers of crumbling sidewalk with open sewer beneath.
Myanmar is home to a tremendous number of Buddhist temples, and Yangon is sort of built up around Shwedagon Pagoda, one of the biggest and most opulent temples you’ll see. We went there one evening:
Another night we visited Sule Pagoda, which is in the heart of downtown Yangon. Part of it features a wooden model ship in which you put offerings; then you turn this hand crank and it drags the boat up to a pagoda. Nyan dug it. Read the rest of this entry »
Continuing our look back at the first part of 2016, here we have a bit of what Nyan got up to in April. Plenty of action this month – birthday parties, playdates, Phwa Phwa visiting, and we even got a visit from Uncle Jeff at the end of the month. Not bad at all.
Yes, we have seasons here in Singapore, sort of. It’s slightly less hot at certain times of the year, and the wind blows more strongly some months than others. But no, there are no seasons as they’re known in the temperate parts of the world. Which suits us just fine.
Regardless, we’re taking a look back at the month of March (to be followed soon by a look back at the month of April). Like most months, March was full of fun, play, goofing around, being outside, reading, and so on. In no particular order, then, we give you: Nyan Thomas in March 2016.
We signed Nyan up for some taekwondo classes. We did this with a little trepidation; long-time readers may recall how we signed on for some kung fu classes two years ago; after some initial interest, Nyan quickly grew bored with listening to the instructor. He became a bit of a distraction to the class, and the whole thing was far more stress than fun, so we dropped it. (For a trip down memory lane, click here.)
But then, he was not yet three years old then – now he’s almost five. And he expressed interest himself in taekwondo. So we bit the bullet and signed up at a studio near our apartment – in the same building as his school, it so happens.
First up was a half hour trial session, one on one with one of the instructors to do a few basic moves and stretches. And Nyan was great! He was engaged, he listened and showed proper respect to the instructor; in short, he thoroughly enjoyed it. Some photos from that session:
And videos:
Clearly he was into it. So we signed up for a month’s worth of classes. The first one was this past Monday evening. Daddy picked him up early from school; teachers and fellow students wanted to see his uniform (yes, we know it’s about a dozen sizes too large), so we changed there at school. After Nyan got done vamping for the camera, he showed off to his friends and teachers; all were suitably impressed.
Then to the class. It was Nyan and four other little boys. It was an absolute success. Nyan had a blast; he listened to the instructor; he made pals with the other boys. He doesn’t have all the moves down pat just yet, of course, but that’ll come quickly.
Daddy peeked through the glass door from time to time and stole some little videos. He definitely doesn’t have the moves down yet, but he’s really into it. And notice how he’s always sneaking peeks at the other boys and mimicking what they do. He’s learning, and so long as his interest level stays high, he’ll get pretty good in short order, we think.
Stay tuned for more on Nyan’s taekwondo career!
Back over the Christmas holidays, we took a family trip to Bali for five days or so. This Indonesian island is, in a lot of ways, the quintessential tropical island vacation spots, with beaches, hotels, nightlife, watersports, mountains and other beautiful scenery. And it’s only a two hour flight from Singapore! We were, to be honest, a little put off by the rampant over-development and traffic in some parts of the island – typical, of course, of any popular tourist destination, sadly – but other parts of the island were just stunningly beautiful.
Plus we had a nice hotel on the beach, with lush grounds and a great pool. Let’s check out a bit of what Nyan (and Mommy and Daddy) got up to. With lots of photos and videos!
Nyan played his first ever game of ping pong. Let’s just say that he needs a bit of practice.
We spent a lot of time away from the resort too. Ain’t Bali beautiful? (click on any photo to enlarge)
Mommy’s Aunt Jessica used to live on Bali. She lives in Japan now with her family, but they still own property in Bali, and happened to be on the island at the same time as us. So we got to hang out with them, including Nyan’s cousin Grace. They got along great.
They had fun drawing and coloring together:
More photos from around the island (and one from Changi Airport in Singapore on our way out):
Maybe the highlight of the trip was all the time Nyan got to spend in the resort swimming pool. And Daddy had borrowed a waterproof GoPro camera for the trip, so there’s plenty of video footage.
Goofing in the pool with Mommy and Daddy:
Doing something he called the ‘alligator slap’ and ‘whale swim’:
More splashing, plus making friends with a random woman:
Whale song:
Bali is known for its art and design, though we didn’t take too many pictures. Here are a few:
Music and dancing are also important parts of Balinese culture. Our resort put on a dance show one night. Nyan was suitably impressed:
Here are some shots from around the resort. Plenty of koi ponds, which gave Nyan plenty of chances to feed the fish:
Another night, they had a cocktail reception for guests, with live music. Nyan enjoyed it:
And finally, we leave you with this bit of brilliant nonsense. I think he wanted to send a video message to Grandma. Instead, we got this.
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They say the ladies love a guy who can dance, right? If that’s true, then look out, ladies, ’cause Nyan Thomas is on the dance floor!
Er, yeah. Maybe not so much. That’s Nyan at a friend’s birthday party the other day. The look that his friend Valentina gives him pretty much says it all. Oh well.
While we’re at it, here are a couple of photos from the same party.
We’re gonna come a bit unstuck in time here at Nyan Thomas World HQ: We’ve got plans to post photos and stories from recent months, as far back as December (including travel and birthday parties and much more). But today, we’re gonna take a quick look at what our boy got up to in January and February. We had a visit from Grandma and Grandpa, we had swimming, we had being goofy. A lot of being goofy. All in all, not a bad couple of months.
Without further ado, and in no particular order, here you go: selected shots from the first two months of 2016. (Click on any photo to make it bigger.)
Every year, the kids at Nyan’s preschool put on a big concert/recital/show at an auditorium, along with kids from a few other schools. Our boy has lots of personality, so we were very excited to see how he’d do on the big stage! Sure, a couple months prior, as rehearsals ramped up, he had expressed some reluctance to perform — but that reluctance had disappeared, and we had little reason to suspect he wouldn’t be one of the stars of the show.
Oh, how wrong we were.
It started off well. The auditorium was packed, the kids were decked out in their costumes, everyone – Nyan included – seemed in high spirits. Here’s some shots from before the show:
Then it was show time. Nyan, along with three of his classmates — Sander, Ning Ning and Kyra — had been selected to come out and warm up the crowd before his class’s performance. Here they are – a bit shy, sure, but good enough:
Then came the, shall we say, issues. The problem, we figured out later, was that the lights were off in the auditorium, of course – so anyone on stage couldn’t see anyone in the crowd. Just a sea of black. So our poor boy, in the very front row, looked out and saw nothing – least of all, he didn’t see Mommy and Daddy. He was not happy about this. How did he respond? He sulked through the entire performance. Oops. Mommy and Daddy were a wee bit embarrassed, but mostly we just thought it was hilarious. There’s always one in every crowd – and this one happened to be ours! Eh, what are you gonna do.
Check out these pics and videos (with apologies for the poor quality and shakiness):
Oh dear. At the end of the show, all the kids from all the schools came out for one big finale. The house lights were on at this point, so he could see us sitting about 20 rows back – and that seemed to make all the difference.
Afterwards, Nyan was all smiles and silliness. He goofed around with pals Adrianna and Nathaniel:
He held hands with Ning Ning as we walked out of the auditorium:
And we joined another classmate, Tanya, and her family for lunch at a nearby restaurant. More goofing around ensued.
So, all’s well that ends well and all that. The kid doesn’t like to perform in front of a huge crowd, or even a small crowd – he’s hardly alone in that. There’ll be another school concert later this year. How will he do? Eh, we’re not expecting much. But it’s all good.
A few months back, Phwa Phwa (aka Mommy’s Mommy) was visiting for a few weeks. We decided a weekend get-away was in order, so we hopped a cheap plane for the 45-minute flight to Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia. Mommy’s cousin Molly lives there and promised to show us around a bit.
In a lot of ways, KL is everything that Singapore is not. It’s chaotic, it’s dirty, it’s noisy, it’s run-down in spots, and it’s got plenty of urban energy. It wouldn’t be a place we’d want to live at this point in our lives, but after a half day of adjusting to a ‘real’ city – as opposed to the somewhat sanitized city that Singapore can be – we really started to enjoy it.
Here’s our boy posing at the airport on the way out, and hanging out waiting for the elevator at the hotel in KL, and at the airport on the way home:
KL is known for the Petronas Towers – a pair of ornate skyscrapers that were, when they were built in 1998, the tallest towers in the world. (Now they’re something like 8th tallest.) They’re gorgeous from outside, and well worth a trip up – you walk across the ‘skybridge’ that connects the towers at the 43rd floor, then head to the top of one of the towers for some great views across KL, even when it’s hazy like the day we were there.
Some random shots of KL in all its gritty urban glory:
Here we are hanging out in a tree, and in Chinatown:
And more random shots, including Nyan drawing at dinner, Nyan inside an electric car on display at a fancy shopping mall, and the family at dinner.
That’s KL in a nutshell. Dirty, gritty, urban, and frankly a great change of pace from Singapore. Still, no offense to KL, but we’ll take Singapore for now.
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