19 November 2009

Forgot to put these up.  This was one morning walking back from school after dropping JW off.  We walk through The Greens to get to and from the school. 

 
This is what happens when I ask him to smile!! 

Jia Xiang loves ramps and slopes.  He’ll try to go up and down all the ramps that he comes across.  A 10 minute walk takes us about half an hour to 45 minutes with Jia Xiang making his “stops”.  

It is nice walking through some greens!  

Jumeirah Beach Residence / Walk

Yesterday, SW, JX and I went to have lunch at Da Shi Dai for lunch afterwhich we decided to walk up and down Jumeirah Beach Residence (JBR) along “The Walk”.  JBR is basically a huge huge cluster of apartment buildings, hotels and shops.  It is a township on its own and it reminds me very much of Singapore.  It overlooks the Arabian Gulf and has a stunning view of the blue blue sea!!  Its beautiful there. 

The weather is very nice now so there’s a lot of al-fresco dining.  There are many restaurants lined along The Walk where you can sit outside and enjoy the beach view. 

It overlooks The Palm’s Atlantis Hotel. 

Jia Xiang enjoying the wind!! 

It was a long walk but I totally enjoyed the weather. 

My First Rain in DXB

22 November 2009 – It rained for the very first time since I got to Dubai.  Of course it wasn’t a pour like it would in Malaysia but it was enough to get us all excited and some kids playing with puddles outside the apartment!

 
Proof that it rained in Dubai.  Wet roads!!!  I wasn’t bluffing!

A Day at Dubai Mall

After my dental appointment this morning, we decided to turn into Dubai Mall and we ended up spending the entire day there.

 

We got there at lunch time so we had our lunch at one of their food courts.  I had caesar salad from Sumo Salad bar which I thought not too bad but a little pricy. 

After walking about a little, we came about this Lebanese food court called Wafi Gourmet.  As you can see, this is a high-end food court with exquisite food presentation. 

 

 

 

 
Their candy and nougat section.  Simply beautiful.  You can actually feel the sugar on the teeth!!

 
Sweet cakes!

Please click on the picture to enlarge so that you can see how beautiful these handmade sweets are!!

 
Fruit section

Dips section.  

 
Salad bar.  The second on from the left is the famous Tabouleh which is actually just chopped up parsley!!

Their kebab section.  Beautiful and looks damn delicious!!  

More sweet cakes. 

 
Nuts counter.  One day we will try this place out. 

Shien Wei had wanted to check KidZania out.  He had heard about this place and wanted to bring the kids there but sadly it was not yet opened. 

KidZania is the ultimate role-play fantasy for every child.  The centre recreates a real-life city scaled down to children’s proportions.  Kids can act out over 75 different real life professions and roles such as a policeman, TV cameraman, fashion designer and earn KidZania’s own currency, Kidzos a the same time.  KidZania is all about learning while having fun.  In Kidzania, kids learn real life skills as well as the value and importance of each role and profession all while having the time of their lives. 

http://www.kidzania.com/dubai/

Although it wasn’t opened yet, there were some sales people there promoting the place and we got to buy introductory tickets at a cheaper price to use when it opens in January.  I thought this was so cool and a fantastic idea.  As you can see,  Emirates Airlines has sponsored quite a substantial amount to this concept.  I can’t wait to bring the kids there!!

We had also wanted to bring the kids to the world’s largest candy shop – Candylicious.  Thankfully my kids aren’t into candies so we brought them there without any fear that they might just go on a sugar-high.  Haha.  I wanted to go there to just look at how massive and colourful it is and indeed it was huge and colourful!!!  It was a perfect place to take photos but stupid people do not allow photography inside the store!!! 

They had every type of candy you can think of!!  Different types of candies from all over the world.  Lucky for us, we aren’t into candies so the candies weren’t appealing to us but I loved the concept, the colour, the variety.  I think you can get a toothache just by looking at all the candies and chocolates. 

Jia Wen and Jia Xiang had a good time in there.  Jia Xiang was busy playing with M&Ms figuring and Jia Wen had a “vanity-fair” at a make-up for kids counter.  There was this stall with free make-up for kids to put on.  So for the fun of it, I put some on her and it was like a dream come true for her!!!  It would make any girl happy!!  The had the works – eye shadow, mascara, eyeliner, blusher, glitter, lipstick!!  The result:

 

They said you can’t take pictures inside the store, no one said I couldn’t take pictures from outside!!

 

 

You can roughly see how it is like inside. 

Candylicious store is located directly opposite the Dubai Mall Aquarium.  You can see the reflection of the Candylicious store on the glass and thats Jia Xiang fascinated with the divers in the aquarium. 

After quite some walk inside the Mall, we decided to step outside the Mall and have something to munch.  So we bought a small packet of Garrett Popcorn from Candylicious store to eat.  We got the Chicago Mix which is one of Oprah’s Favourite Things.  It wasn’t too bad but luckily we bought the smallest packet!!  Jelak after a while. 

 

And because Jia Wen had some make up on her face, she was so willing to take pictures hence the camwhoring!! 

 

 
I love these two pictures of her.  Doesn’t she look so pro in her pose?!?!  She looked like she was posing for some ad or some professional photo session or something! 

 
She was literally going “Mummy, take picture of me, take picture of me!”

Well we did come out of the Candylicious store with something.  We came out with Pucker Powder. 

 

These apartments are directly across from Dubai Mall.  It is beautiful with spectacular view of the Burj Dubai and what could be better than living 30 seconds away from Bloomingdales, Marks & Spencer, Waitrose, Louis Vuitton, Tiffany, Hemley’s?!?! 

We ended our day at the Mall with Subway sandwhich which was on promotion, buy one foot get one foot for free!!! 

RIS Open Day

Jia Wen’s school had an Open Day last week where parents get a chance to walk around the school freely, sit-in in classes and observe.  I thought it was a good idea and a great opportunity to see how Jia Wen and the rest of the kids are in class.  Sadly, Jia Wen was sick that day and couldn’t go to school.  Nonetheless, I went to school myself leaving her and JX at home with SW.  I really wanted to sit-in the lesson even though Jia Wen wasn’t there. 

I enjoyed sitting-in and I got to know the children better too.  It wasn’t just a chance to see and observe the teacher but I was more interested in the children and how they are in class. 

 
Each class is assigned a teacher-assistant.  Jia Wen’s class has Miss Elvie. 

 
The day before, the teacher had told them a story about The Ginger Breadman so now they are recalling the story.  The teacher was asking questions about the story and the students could put their hands up and answer.  Ms McLaren gave chance to everyone and would give a chance to the quieter ones too. 

After recalling the story, Ms McLaren divided the class into groups and gave each student a character from the story and they were to act it out.  The teacher gave the groups a few minutes to discuss and “practice” their characters before acting them out in front of the class.

Left Pic:  That is Johan taking the lead in the group.  He was the Ginger Breadman.  Lisa was the “woman” and Batuhan was the “man” from the story.

Right Pic:  Rosalie & Mehmet playing out their characters. 

 

Time for a show!!  The parents who were there including me enjoyed the “skit” they put up.  It was funny and we got to see the characters of the students in the class. 

L-R = Rosalie, Isabelle, Hazuki, Tomislav, Umar, Mehmet & Batuhan

Isabelle as the Ginger Breadman, Hazuki as “woman” and Tomislav as “man”. 

Nawab, Benjamin & Ibraheem


Maths time.  They were revising “counting in twos”.  They were writing answers on the white board.  Selected students were given white boards and the rest were supposed to give their answers to write on the white board.  Thats Johan and Zaynah. 

Students are encourage to participate. 

Open day over.  Time for playtime!! 

I know that Open Days can be a fabricated affair but the children are natural. 

My Poor JX

Am too tired to blog about what happened today but pics below are pretty self explanatory.  I’ll blog later. 

OK, these are actually his “smiling” face, not his “ouch” face.

He felt so so so much better after a few hours of sleep and drip!!

 

 

All better… for now. 

Our Student of the Week

Spot my darling daughter from the Student of the Week Board!! 

I know every child gets a chance to be on the board from time to time but I still have the right to gloat about it and I don’t care!!!  She got Student of the Week for “Excellent Language Work”. 

(psst, I am so glad that it is this picture they used)

GOOD JOB JIA WEN!!! 

SF & SW Down

Shien Wei and I had the worst tummy upset ever yesterday!  We were both “down”.  It started with myself vomitting in the middle of the night and having tummy ache.  I couldn’t sleep and I was restless.  While all this was happening, SW was snoring away oblivious to the fact that his wife was vomitting her guts out in the toilet!!

Shien Wei went off to work leaving poor sick wife behind with 2 kids (JW didn’t have school yesterday).  I could not even get out of bed at that time.  My whole body was aching like hell and I was so weak and restless.  I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t move and my whole back was in pain.  I was commanding the kids from the bed.  I could only have 5 minutes sleep at a time.  I was miserable!!  Luckily the kids were behaving and wasn’t getting into too much fights.

SW called me at about 8 am telling me that he too had gone to the toilet twice and his body was beginning to say that there’s something wrong.  By 10 am, he had gone to the toilet 4 times and decided to come home from work.  By this time, I had vomitted again but felt a little better after a shower. 

Shien Wei came back, vomitted a few times and we decided to try to rest for a while and re-assess the situation later.  Shien Wei and I slept for a bit (JX napped and JW was watching TV) but didn’t feel any better so we decided that we had to go the hospital.  Our bodies were aching, we were feeling nausea, tummy aching.  So, for the second time in exactly a week, we rushed to the ER at Med Care hospital.  It was again a Friday so the Emirates Airlines Clinic isn’t open so we had to go to an affiliated hospital. 

We registered and was attended to immediately (because there wasn’t anyone else waiting, and not because we were in critical condition).  We were both attended to by 2 different doctors (male for him an female for me) and both decided to put us on drips for rehydration.  The drip also had nausea and pain medication too.  The only difference was that SW got 2 pain jabs from the male doctor!! 

The kids were with us the whole time.  Jia Wen was an angel and was a little worried about her mummy and daddy.  Jia Xiang refused to go into the ER with us (he had his reasons) and stayed outside for a while before he decided to join us.  Since we were put on drips, we were in the ER for about 45 minutes.  The kids behaved well and we both felt so much better after the medication.  By this time, it was already about 6 pm. 

We got home feeling better but after a few hours, we could feel our body slowly weakening and we went to bed early.

This morning we woke up feeling so so much better.  We woke up terribly hungry so we had “Milo O Panas” and had noodle soup for lunch.  I haven’t gone to the toilet at all today. 

Till now there are two possibilities to what caused our “episode”:

1.  Steamed fish we had at a restaurant nearby the night before
2.  Overdue cut pineapple from the fridge the night before
3.  Stomach virus / flu

Hmmmm… your guess is as good as ours.  But one thing that is quite certain is that the drips were a tad over the top although it did make us feel better.  Private hospital mah!

DXB’s Chrysler Building

SW took these photos yesterday.  He calls it his “masterpiece”.  This building which looks like NY’s Chrysler building is a good landmark to where apartment is.  They are called Al Kazim Towers. 

He took these photos from the car while I was driving.  These buildings are on Sheikh Zayed Road.  The line running across the picture is the Dubai Metro line.