After my children started primary school, all our vacation must be during school holidays. I wouldn’t want them to miss school. The disadvantage of this will be competing with others and it will be more expensive. Plus there will be traffic congestion for local attraction.

Take for example, Genting and Cameron Highlands will be packed with people. Every hotel will be added surcharges and prices for peaks will increase.

As parents, I will have to plan early. This year I planned my vacation for my children more than six months ahead. I managed to get good deals too. I already have plans for Raya and Dec holidays.

Planning ahead is good because you get the perfect hotel and location. The only risk will be if any emergency cases, I may lose my deposit. I am looking forward to Raya holidays! Have you plan for Dec holidays yet? By the way, you can also find lots of online deals if you book early.

Emily: Mummy, I want a thumb drive.

Me: *blur* Why do you need a thumb drive?

Emily: I want to save all the songs that I like into the thumb drive. Then I can play it over and over again.

Me: Ah!

She is getting to be more high tech. Her list of favorite songs:

Nobody But You
Waka Waka – This Time For Africa
I Believe I Can Fly

By the way, I used to record a few songs into a cassette and repeat it many times. I guess she takes after me in this.

Thank you all for leaving your birthday wishes on my FB page. It is great to see that I have so many virtual friends. Most of you know my girl and I have the same birthday. For many year since Emily started school, we didn’t throw any party because her birthday is always during school holidays. In fact, my boy’s birthday also fall on a school holiday.

Since we have a church family camp, I bought a cake to have a small celebration there. That way, there are warm bodies to finish the cakes. My girl is happy with that.

All she wants for her birthday is 1 cake and lots of presents for her birthday. Sure save me from planning a party! As for me, thank you God for his gift to me……

Here is what she has chosen for her cake, her favorite angry bird…

I saw this Kidzania building last year when I drove to Ikea. From the look of the building, I know that this is another new kids’ thing in town. My supplier told me about it as they were one of the sponsors for their program.

Basically your child can earn money by doing the job roles in Kidzania. You can be a firefighter, police officer, judge, post master, doctor and many more. Each job they do, they earn Kidzania money. They can use the money to buy stuff, play, learn certain skills, enter Kidzania University or rent a car.

For this holiday, I decided to let my kids try it. Emily was very enthusiastic but Tim was reluctant. I bought the tickets online. Tip number 1, if it is a school holiday, make sure you book the tickets online. You do not want to queue for ticket there. However, once sold there is no refund.

Next tip, plan what your child wants to do. There are those popular jobs that require long wait time like Firefighter, police officers, CSI agents and hospitals jobs. Most of them are 20 minutes per session. For firefighter, they only allow 8 children to go at one time because there are only 8 water hose. Here is something, Kidzania can improve. Although there are 8 water hose, they can arrange 8 child to hose for 5 minutes and next 8 to go for another 5 minutes. Now you can have 16 children to go at one time. It saves a lot of time!

My kids love the CSI and secret agents. My boy had to jump from a 3 storey building with secure ropes which frighten him a little. However he made it.

My girl tried many jobs like firefighter, CSI, secret agent, bank security officer and flight attendant. She got enough and told me now I want to drive a car. She went to car rental only to find out she needs a driving license. In order to get driving licenses, she needs to buy insurance and go for eye test. With the little time that we have, we just couldn’t do all that. Poor gal, she didn’t get a chance to use the money she made. However she banked it in and told me, next time she will use it.

Yeap, it was a great experience for them and me. However 5 hours definitely wasn’t enough as there were lots of children and long waiting time. There were lots of preschool and kindy children which I believe they were too young for it. Most of the time, they just do what they are told. I am not sure how much they understood.

At 11:30pm, a call for my girl. Wow at this hour, her friend call for her. My girl is already asleep. I told her friend that it is late to be calling your friend. Then she asked me what time my girl will be free tomorrow. *faint*

I wonder does her parent know she is calling at this hour. Fortunately she is not a boy, else there will be 101 questions from me.

It is really amazing how girls start boiling porridge with the phone at such a young age. First call received on May 15, 8pm and I must record this down.

Finally my free Note came. Yes, it is the Samsung Note. I gave it to my husband to use because his phone is acting funny lately. He used it for 1 night and gave it back to me, saying “It is too complicated and it cannot sync with the Mac Book”

Oh well, I will use it then as a tablet PC. I do not intent to give up my iPhone. I found that The Note is not very user friendly. First let me talk about the likes:

1. I can watch flash!!! Hooray.
2. Many Android games are free.
3. Many cool apps that came with the phone. However I still do not have time to play with them.

Now the not so good part:

1. Not easy to use especially for a beginner.
2. Icons all over the place, a little disorganized.
3. Cannot find delete function.
4. Design flaws between the volume and power off button. When I try to turn on the volume, often I turn off the power, due to the fact that it is placed side by side.

I am still figuring things out.

I took these pictures a while back when I was in KL. Every country has a bear and my children were picking the country they like to take a picture with. They are really cute but we cannot carry any home.

Emily was rewarded last year for her good exam results with a guinea pig called Dash. She was requesting for a girlfriend for Dash if she do well this year for her exams. Yesterday, we were at the pet store and found a bigger cage. We got it.

The new cage is so much easier to clean because I can separate the top and bottom. It is so much bigger for Dash to run around and do some exercise on his own. He doesn’t like to come out of his cage. Every time I changed his cage, he will like to crawl back inside.

This cage also has a bottom compartment for him to hide himself. He loves to be in the dark. I also can put a litter box for him to do his business. However I learnt that Guinea pig cannot be toilet train.
One more thing is that this cage does not have holes at the bottom. Bedding or poop will not fly outside of the cage when Dash jumps around. Yeap he jumps around when he is happy.

By the way, Dash greets me every morning when I walk down stairs with his squeaky sound.

I am happy and Dash is happy.

Old Cage:

After hearing so many tips from friends who has or hasn’t been to India, I got worried. First they tell me to avoid drinking any water except bottle water. Next they told me not to take food that is not from reputable restaurant. Next my mom called and asked me to pack some diarrhea medicine. Even my travel agent asked me to pack a few litters of water in my check-in baggage.

I am glad now that I am back. God really protected me from any mishap. Yeap, my God is still in control and he gave me a pleasant trip there.

The water in the hotel was pretty clean, meaning not brownish looking. Yes, there was some funny taste to the tap water. The hotel did provide 2 liters of bottled water every day. On top of that, at my office, they provide ample supply of bottled water for me. I must say, I was oversupplied with treated or mineral water.
Usually at many eatery places, bottled water is served. They are most popular brand is Kinsley from Coca-cola company and Aquafina from Pepsi which we seldom get here. It is pretty decent in Hyderabad. I had no bad experience and I am back without any problem.

I will tell you more once I get my pictures sorted out. For now I need some sleep. Last day of India was pretty tiring for me and I tell you why in the next post.

I got into playing this additive game called Draw Something. You draw and your friend will guess. You can invite your friend through email, username or Facebook. I started will playing with strangers but more of my FB friends join in.

This is the toughest picture I had to draw, guess what it is?

There are people who do not know the meaning of the game and kept putting up questions for me to guess. One stranger drew a girl with no clue and expected me to know the name of the girl. Hello! There are thousands of artist out there. Another one, typed out the whole song and asked me to guess the singer. I had to call Google for help. Now I will pass those who ask me questions. One person called me an idiot because I passed. Really funny people out there!

Well, now I just stick to playing with friends. It is much more fun. Like once I really played till very late, probably sleepy. I drew “wink” but the word was kangaroo. However my cousin could guess it and she SMS my picture to me. LOL.

If you are looking for a fun app, you should play this. My kids also love to help me draw.