Museum Fun!

Hello!! Can you guess what we are doing today? Yes, buying some red cha kiak!

Well no, not really. We were actually at the Philatelic Museum! "Philatelic" comes from the word "philately", which means the collection and study of postage stamps. Yeah I know -- they actually have a whole museum just for that! The wooden clogs seller was a display in the Heritage Room. They made it look like an old shophouse. In this picture, you can see me sitting in front of some dummies wearing traditional Peranakan nyonya kebaya. More about that later!

Isn't this cute! Thank you postage stamp!

Here, my little sister and I are standing in front of a talking Penny Black stamp. Yes, it really moves and smiles and talks! The Penny Black was made in 1840 and was the world's first adhesive postage stamp. It shows the profile of Queen Victoria when she was 15 years old.

Here I am looking at a whole bunch of different stamps in a display case.

Here we are in front of an elephant sculpture covered entirely in stamps! She was made by a local artist and her name is "Baby Emily".

Here we are at the "Spice is Nice" exhibition. It was made to look like an old boat, or junk. The exhibition is about the spice trade in the 19th century, and also the many uses of different spices.

Here we are working hard on the dock.

This picture shows another exhibition that was happening, called "Imagine Dragons".

There were a lot of interactive things for us to do. It was all about dragons and dinosaurs, which are sort of like dragons I guess.

A dragon boat!

A dragon stamp from Poland. Isn't he cute!

A dragon stamp from Jersey, which is near France.

Dragon stamps from Shqiperia, which my Mom says is Albania.

Harry Potter stamps from China!

And now off to our next stop -- the Peranakan Museum!

This is an old photograph of a Peranakan family. I think it is from the 1930s. In the museum brochure, it says, "For centuries, foreign merchants from countries like China and India were attracted to Southeast Asia's lucrative trades in fine products such as textiles, spices and more. Most returned home with the monsoon, but some remained behind, marrying local women. The descendants of their intermarriages are referred to as "Peranakans", which means "locally born" in Malay".

This picture shows a Peranakan bridal chamber.

This picture shows what a Peranakan bride would wear. Isn't it colourful!

This picture shows us looking at old Peranakan furniture. Peranakan furniture uses a lot of wood, gold gilt and marble. A lot of it is huge and has all kinds of carvings.

Here, my little sister and I are "talking" on old phones. They're really old. My Mom said that the one I'm on is called a rotary dial phone, from the 1930s, and the one my sister is on is a candlestick phone, which is even older. When you picked up a phone, someone would start talking to you in Baba Malay, which is what Peranakans speak. 

This is a portrait of a Peranakan lady, or nyonya. The whole thing was done in mosaic. Cool huh!

This picture shows an old kebaya. The kebaya is held together by three brooches called kerosang. Really nice ones are made of gold and diamonds or precious stones.

Here is another kebaya. See all the embroidery? Part of my family is Peranakan, so sometimes I can see my relatives wearing kebayas for important occasions like weddings. They wear a batik sarong at the bottom.

Here, my sister and I are making postcards with stamps.

This is the one I did!

And here we are taking a little rest before going home. We are sitting with the Asian Civilisations Museum cat, who is the museum's mascot. He looks just like a real cat! A curator at the ACM said he was sculpted by a local artist, and that one day the cat just disappeared. The little sign above him says, "In memory of the cat that adopted this building and became the museum's mascot, 1998-1999".

Hope you're having a great week! See you again soon!

Gardens by the Bay!

Hi there! Can you guess where we are? Yes, I know we are sitting in front of a fountain. The fountain is at the Gardens by the Bay! I had read that the aim of this place is "to raise the quality of life by enhancing greenery and flora in the city". It's funny that at the same time they are destroying the forests in my neighbourhood... But anyway, let me show you some pictures I took on our little excursion.

Here you can see the Supertree Grove from the ground. There are lots of different plants growing on the Supertrees. The Supertrees have electronic stuff inside them so they can pretend to be real trees.

I believe many real trees can grow to be that big and tall if people just left them alone!

Here is a big sculpture of a crocodile. Can you see what's on its back?

Yes! Lots of little baby crocodiles! Isn't it clever?

These are lion sculptures that they had all along the walls.

They are really quite big.

It felt like being a Christian in the Colosseum.

This is my little sister resting. It was a hot day and we did a lot of walking.

And now here's the view from the top of the Supertree Grove. This is about 50 metres or 160 feet above the ground. See how tiny the people down below are?

And here you can see the Skyway. It's like a long bridge at the top for people to walk on. You get to it by taking a lift. At night the Supertrees put on a light and music show, but we didn't stay for that.

There are a lot of things you can't do on the Skyway. That includes leaning, jumping, running, littering and wearing high heels. These three are my favourite though.

Here I am walking on the Skyway, holding on to my hand straps and belongings. My Mom was taking my picture so she didn't hold on to me.

And now here are some pictures of the plants I saw there. Some of them, like the little pink ones, were just part of the grass, but they were so pretty. Isn't nature wonderful!

My Sylvanian Chronicles

Hello everybody! How have you been? Let's see what's happening out at the Sylvanian school patio!

Today Mrs Seadog is taking the patio class. She is giving Lucy Polar Bear, Harland Sheepdog, Hester Honeyfox and Felix Renard extra tuition in fractions (Harland has gone over to Mrs Beagle's class just to listen to Ellis Elephant's presentation on yogurt. He still can't believe it is made with bacteria).

Mrs Seadog says that the word "fractions" comes from the Latin word "fractus", which means "broken". The kids were confused about all the different types of fractions and Mrs Seadog is trying to explain. She always uses the example of a pizza.

Here you can see the kids! Hester Honeyfox is starting to think she understands what a denominator is. Felix Renard is thinking that since he broke his arm last month, it is still only a fraction of how strong it used to be. Lucy Polar Bear is raising her paw to ask Mrs Seadog to use cakes to explain what mixed fractions are. Harland Sheepdog is thinking she should use real cakes.

Here are Jemima Kangaroo and Iris Smoky Cat having their late morning snack. They had had chess practice early in the morning and hadn't had time for breakfast (and you know breakfast is the most important meal of the day!). Iris is saying, "It's true, 'gnu' is pronounce 'noo'!" and Jemima is saying, "Really! I wonder what they have the 'g' there for then".

Tune in next time for the next part of my Sylvanian story!

Happy Birthday!

Today I wanted to share a few pictures from my friend's awesome 8th birthday party (happy birthday again Chloe!). It was actually about a week ago, but I didn't have time to sit down and write about it properly.

Chloe held her birthday party at a restaurant called Swensen's. I think Swensen's is most famous for its yummy ice-cream desserts. They have these really nice stained glass lamps which my Mom said are called Tiffany lamps. The restaurant is huge, and they set aside a big space at the end of the restaurant for us to have our party. Chloe had invited our whole class, and even though a few of our friends didn't turn up, there were still a lot of us!

That's Chloe, the birthday girl! She was wearing a really pretty party dress. Here she is calling all of us to get our balloons!

And here we are playing with our balloons! They were shaped like pirate swords. All of us made a ton of noise. Kirthi (in the pink top) won the sword-fighting contest!

Here's Kirthi telling me some funny new actions to add to our special handshake. We have to wobble and say "Jelly jelly". She's so funny.

Here we all are having lunch. I had fish and chips. There's Mandy doing the peace sign; she's lots of fun.

We played lots of games like Duck, Duck Goose and Ice And Freeze. Then we had an ice-cream contest to see whose ice-cream concoction was the best! These were the ice-creams...

And these were all the different toppings. Don't they look yummy?

And here we all are with the birthday girl and cake. What a fun day! See you again soon!

Happy Racial Harmony Day!

Hello! How are you? Here is a picture of me wearing my blue cheongsam! Everyone had to wear traditional costumes to celebrate Racial Harmony Day at school. A cheongsam is a dress Chinese women wear. It is also called a qi pao in Mandarin. On this day we celebrate our country's many cultures and racial harmony. It is so nice to see everyone in their different, colourful costumes, like cheongsams, baju kurung and saris.

One of the fun things we do on Racial Harmony Day is kebayarobics. This is a sort of exercise workout that we do to Malay music. There are a lot of arm and leg movements. It's almost like a dance. This year I was so happy to be given the Kebayarobics Queen badge.

Here is a picture of my hair! My Mom told me that in some parts of China, young unmarried girls would wear two buns in their hair. But I think she did this style for me just because she thinks it's neater.
See you super-duper soon!

Name Day!

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Hello!

Today is a beautiful day!

I am happy!

Can you see what I am wearing on my wrist?

Let's go closer!

Yup! My Mom made me a new bracelet! She had made some for some of her shop customers, and I said I wanted one too. She said okay! Isn't it cute? She calls them "Name Day" bracelets. I think I would like another one that says "Peace" or "Happy". Or maybe "Avenger"! If you would like one, you can find it in her shop here.

See you again soon!