My music maestro

Kai tinkling away at my uncle's house during Chinese New Year. Yes, he WILL charm girls with his beautiful piano music when he's older.

Doctors love the colour white. No?

For a short trip down Orchard on the third day of the Lunar New Year, I picked an all white outfit. If the weather was cooler, I would have thrown on a pair of black tights. The real doctor (i.e. Terence) initially opined that an all-white outfit would look strange. But changed his mind after I pulled on the boots.

Top: Gap

Shorts: A shop in People's Park, Chinatown

Boots: Dr. Martens, of course

Psyche-Doctor-delic

An outfit that I pulled together after spending just half an hour at Square 2.

Dress: $39

Stockings: $18.90

Dr. Martens: Priceless

Cheese!

Ask him to say: "Cheese!" to the camera, and this is what he does! Cracks us up all the time.

How do you wear 'em, let me count the ways

My black patent Dr. Martens. Mine. All mine. Finally

I have a love-hate relationship with Dr. Martens boots.

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I love them.

They were so hot in the 90s when I was studying, and the people I hang out with wore Dr. Martens. I couldn't afford Dr. Martens then.

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I 'hate' them.

I don't know what to wear them with. How do you look rocker chic without looking like a short-fart? A out of proportion carrot clomping up and down the stairs?

Then I found inspiration in this blog: Thriftstore Chic. In particular, I love how eighteeneleven pulls her outfit together.

Anymore ideas?

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Taken at the +9 Sprint/Summer '09 fashion show in Old School last year with Dr. Martens as one of the sponsors

Terence owned a pair of Dr. Martens too. He says no one laces them all the way up because it's uncomfortable. ("Hell no, cos it's cool babe," I thought. But what do I know.)

The return of the iconic boot has generated (once again) for itself quite a bit of flak over how tough and unforgiving the leather is. But I met a few more fans who swear they are the most comfortable shoes on earth.

Well, I'll find out. In good time. 

Cookies!

Baking cookies can be therapeutic for adults and fun for the kids.

The only major hiccups we faced were when:

- Terence thought "tsp" is tablespoon

- Our chocolate chips melted during mixing; so we had chocolate chip cookies without the chocolate chips

Melt down

Point Walter, Perth: Great place to fire up a barbie, and even catch sight of dolphins if you're lucky (we did!)

I was in total despair (almost daily) during the recent trip to Australia. Kai had the worst bout of tantrums ever which upon thinking back, could be because he was home sick.

We decided to do a BBQ at the picturesque Point Walter--a place that is popular among Perth urbanites. On the way there, Kai dropped his bag of Coco Krunch in the car and he went ballistic. He screamed for nearly a solid 30 minutes, and I had many bemused locals staring at me.

Nothing, not even the thought of playing sand on the lazy shores of the river could calm him down. Later Sharon shared how her friend executed "naughty corners" (time-out corners) even in public places. It works, to a certain extent.

Urgh. Toddlers and their tantrums.

My little artist

(One way to make photographs interesting is using the focal point to tell a story. Sometimes the subject need not be the main object of focus.)

I personally think Kai has got a good eye for colour (he painted a page with lime green, purple and black--a rather nice combi). But I'm biased; he's my son!

(I like my pictures a little more tightly framed. Sometimes it works to emphasis something. But sometimes Terence thinks the crop is too extreme.)

Here's Kai really concentrating on his art.

I spy

I looked out of my window yesterday, and guess what I saw perched on the leaves: another insect that's dropped by to say "hello". First thing I did was to grab my new 'baby' for shots of our latest guest.

Go to the beach, mama!

Every single day of the trip, Kai would say: "Go to the beach, mama."

It was incessantly repeated every single hour.

This is him scooping sand with his shoes at Fremantle after brunch.

My fat Smokie

From S&S Tan

Our poor cats haven't been receiving a lot of our attention since Kai was born. And so Smokie was suddenly delighted when she became the centre of my attention (again), while I refreshed my SLR camera skills.

Finally. My own digital SLR camera.

Playing with depth of field on my D40

Our two biggest 'windfall' during the latest Perth/Margaret River trip would be:

1. Picking up an AU$50 note in the bushes next to our car

2. Buying the Nikon D40 (which came highly recommended by budding pro-tographer U-Jin) at AU$498, which is about S$200 less than what is selling here

*Big sigh* I've been wanting, wanting, wanting a digital SLR for so long, and it felt great to grab this deal. Big thanks to:
- the Chows for spotting the Harvey Norman ad
- Terence for insisting that we go to a Harvey Norman store
- the Australian Tax Refund Scheme (TRS), which gave me a 10% rebate on my purchase, as this meant my camera really costs AU$448 (WAH! Lucky number some more.)