Tue 16 Jun

My wife and I spent the whole day at my in-laws' place. There at least is some free time during the holidays for us to spend quality time with Jadon, and for that, I am extremely grateful.

Wed 17 Jun

I had breakfast with my wife at 216 market and ate my usual you mian before heading down for my driving lessons. My instructor made me end the lesson opposite the driving centre so that I could go apply for a practical test day, and I ended up with 6 October! It was a lot later than I would have wanted. So let's just see how much bigger my wife's belly will grow, and hope that she can still drive till that date at least.

I came back to Bedok and bought some stuff before going to my in-laws' place. My wife and I had dinner at the Botak Jones coffeeshop nearby, and I ordered baked rice from Piilcolo (can't remember the spelling, since the sign looks terribly misleading), which turned out to be really good. I definitely like it a lot more than the pasta. We also shared a fish and chips, and after that, we headed down to Expo for our church's prayer meeting.

Thu 18 Jun

Today was spent on some housework, and then Remedial Training at Bedok Camp. To my horror, the training now seemed tougher than the last time I was there, and dragged longer. I remember it used to end by about 8.30, but now it ended at about 9 pm. So I bought my dinner from Bedok Food Centre (I think that's the name), and went to my in-laws' place to see Jadon. Hmm, I think it's more appropriate to call it supper since I reached there only around 9.50 pm.

Fri 19 Jun

My wife and I went to White Sands to buy some stuff we need at home, and we had lunch at Lerk Thai after much deliberation. We used to really like the food there, but there were two occasions we went there and the food was terrible. I guess they must had changed the chef at that point. We gave it another chance, and today's food was fabulous. So Lerk Thai has regained its status as 'possible food joint in White Sands'.

I went back home and was saddened to discover my hamster Beckham had died. Recently he showed sudden signs of debilitation, and I thought it was a bad sign, but I didn't expect it to be so soon. He suddenly looked extremely scrawny, and couldn't open his eyes much. Then I discovered two days ago that his rear was stained with urine, like he couldn't control his bladder or something. His body was still warm when I found him, so I suppose he died a short while ago. In an odd way his paws were clasped together like he was praying.

So ironically, the murderer hamster remained the last surviving one.

At night, J, Collin and Alvin came over to play mahjong overnight. We played for two rounds, and got too hungry so we ordered in McDonalds for supper, and played another round. Alvin was the big winner tonight, almost clearing out J's drawer, and mine was on the way to emptiness. His luck was so ridiculously good it was demoralizing to play because he just kept winning. Fast. And big. When your luck is that incredible, you don't even need your brains to play. We finished at about 4+ to 5 am, and I eventually slept at 6.

Sat 20 Jun

Although I was dead tired from the mahjong, I went over as early as I could to my in-laws' place. It was perfect timing that my wife decided to stay over at her parents' place as she didn't want my mahjong to disturb her and that she wanted to spend more time with Jadon, because Jadon fell ill and was running a fever.

Finally, Kah Motors' garage side called me, and told me the car was repaired, so my wife and I headed there to collect our car in the afternoon. We went home to take some stuff, and then headed down to Ikea. We wanted to replace the dining chairs in our living room for quite a while already. Apparently the PVC leather had started cracking and flaking quite badly, so we wanted to buy something that had no cushion. We shortlisted one dark brown wooden chair with chrome legs originally, but I still didn't like them much. In the end, we bought a totally plastic orange chair, which I guess could still loosely fit the colour scheme, but I think I need some other accessories to blend them in the decor fully.

After dropping off the purchases at home, we went down to my in-laws' place to check on Jadon. He was running a fever of 38.2 degrees Celsius quite consistently, so at night when the fever still didn't recede after we fed him some medicine we had from before for him, we brought him to the GP we usually go to. At the clinic entrance, the nurse took Jadon's aural temperature, and it was 39.4! Straightaway we drove down to KK Hospital to the Child Emergency section. Only two were allowed in, so I waited outside and played some games on my ipod to kill time. After a long while, my wife called to tell me that they were waiting for Jadon's blood test result. Eventually, the diagnosis was that he had a bacterial infection, so had to be prescribed antibiotics. Now this was the point when things cocked up. The doctor prescribed syrup based antibiotics, which made sense since Jadon was only ten months old. The pharmacy nurses said they no longer had such stock as there was no supply. What the heck??? Then the nurse gave my wife antibiotic tablets. For goodness' sake, how is a ten month old baby going to swallow a full sized tablet? My wife, now irritated, went back to the doctor and asked for an alternative prescription. The nurse at the pharmacy also said she would go consult the medical books. After wasting a whole lot of time, finally we got a different medicine. My wife wanted to write this down on a feedback form, and to her shock, she found only one form left, and it had scribblings on it.

Suddenly we had a lower opinion of KK Hospital.

By the time we got back to my in-laws' place it was about 2 am. By the time I helped wash the milk bottles and stuff, I took a cab and reached home only near 3 am. Hmm. Recent weekends were all sleep-deprived, I realized.

Sun 21 Jun

I skipped church service today and went straight to my in-laws' place to help them out. Apparently last night Jadon was crying most of the time and my wife and mother-in-law hardly got any sleep, so I spent Fathers' Day doing a father's job, which I guess was pretty apt. Thank God his fever completely subsided today, but he was still crying (and drooling) frequently probably because he was teething.

In the afternoon, after trying to catch a few power naps when Jadon was momentarily asleep, I headed down to Bedok Camp for my Remedial Training. Although this is certainly not a good thing for a man to get, at least it forces me to exercise when I don't have the time nor discipline to. Today's training had so much running my legs were really feeling it. Anyway, no surprise, since the army style of training is focused on overloading.

I bought dinner back for everyone, including my aunt-in-law and cousin-in-law (sounds odd), and spent the time either helping out with taking care of Jadon or in the meantime, watching the longlasting Taiwanese soap. Incidentally, I just realized from the trailers of The Ultimatum that I had missed quite a few episodes. Mediacorp certainly doesn't disappoint my claim that there is a rape in every serial. This one has two! One happened in the past apparently perpetrated by Ye Songnian, and the other one (I think Mediacorp is taking it up one notch) is a gang rape I think (I didn't watch it, but from the previews before the serial started showing, I think it is). I really think that the scriptwriters must have some devious scheme to screen-rape every single popular Mediacorp actress.