Moments in My Life

Brandon: *crying*

Mommy: WHY are you crying?

Brandon: *giving mama a blank look*

Mommy: What happened? Why are you crying?

Brandon: *crying*

Mommy: Stop crying. TELL ME what happened? WHY are you crying?

Brandon: What happened? Why are you crying?

Ya, he repeated my sentence because I told him to TELL ME what happened? WHY are you crying?. He still doesn’t know the concept of WHY yet at this time. I am trying to teach him by starting his answer by ‘because … ‘. Hopefully he will get it soon.

Can you believe it is actually cheaper now to fly from New York to Kuala Lumpur than from LAX? You know me, I love to check around for good deal on flight tickets. I was looking at the Malaysia Airline website and currently they have promo. And then I saw the price flying from New York to KUL.

And I was so happy and was hoping that flying from LAX to KUL would be around $450-500 per person, usually around $100 lower. But I was so wrong when I saw this LAX to KUL fare.

Instead of being cheaper, it is almost $50 more flying from LAX to KUL. Do you know LA is nearer to KL than New York to KL? I still don’t understand why MAS has put up the fare like that. Could it be because there are less people flying off from NY to KL than from LA to KL?

I always not sure when my boy will start Kindy.  I have confusion because the school system here starts in September.  Today I found my answer.  I was looking at the LAUSD and found this information.

“Presently, a child may enroll in kindergarten if he or she will turn five on or before December 2 of the year of registration. “

This fall my son is 3, so he will be considered as a pre-schooler.

Next fall (2010), my son will be 4 and he will be in Pre-K.

In fall 2011, he should be 5 and starting Kindergarten. 

So only two more years away.  Two years is going to be fast and I should start checking out our local district public school (LAUSD).  It will be the same elementary school that my husband went to 30 something years ago.  But after so many years, the school changes and now they have many more out of city kids. 

My husband is not so keen on sending him there.  He told me to consider sending him to private school, unless if we moved to another city with better school district within the next two years.

Lollipop Pre-school at MacMaster Park is close for this term.  And there is only one other Lollipop class which is in Greenwood and that is already full before I came back to LA.  So instead of pre-school I signed up two other summer classes for Brandon this time. 

We have parents and me swimming at Torrance Plunge from June 22nd to July 3rd.  This is a daily class from 11:15am to 11:40am.  Fee for this is $33 for 10 classes.  It is not much learning to swim but just to get the kid to feel comfortable in the water.  Today was our first class and I estimate about 20 parents with 20 kids in the class. 

Beside swimming, I have the gymnastic parents and me for Brandon too.  It will be on every Saturday (except July 4th and Sept 5) from 9:45am to 10:35am.  For this class, I may have Daddy take him while I can go around to do some shopping.   Fee for this is $110 for about 10 classes.  This will be his first time in gym class.  Will see how it goes this Saturday.

These classes are offered by the city of Torrance which I signed up online at Torrance Season.  There are many other interesting classes too.  I am actually interested in the dance class for Brandon - Tiny Tot Hip Hop, but all the classes are full.  May be I will try that for next term.

I know I have been traveling a lot in the last few months.  Maui, Ketchikan, Juneau, Skagway, Brisbane, Adelaide, Sydney and Gold Coast were the places I visited in the past six months. A few days after I came back in Los Angeles, I went online to check for cheap air fare to Kuala Lumpur and I found Singapore Airlines offering an adult and a child round trip tickets to Kuala Lumpur for only $1602. My last trip back to Kuala Lumpur was in June 2008 and I paid $2150 for the two of us on Malaysia Airline.

But there is one catch with the low fare from Singapore Airlines - the traveling times are very odd and a long layover either in Singapore or in Narita. If you don’t mind the travel time, you can go ahead and check the special sale fare on SIA website. I think with this ticket, you can pay a little more for a stop over in Singapore for a few days. There are a lot of things you can do in Singapore. I haven’t been back there for the longest time but if I do, I want to visit Sentosa Island as well as going around the city hunting for good food. There is another thing that you must also do in Singapore - Shopping!

Singapore is heaven for shopping. Make sure your hotel is around the city area so you will be saving commuting time. You can look for a good rate for hotels from Accor Hotels City Super Sale. This website offers very competitive rate for hotels in 27 cities across 10 countries in Asia Pacific including Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore. Thought you should know that the current sale for savings up to 60% will end on June 29th for stays between July 10 and September 30, 2009. I’ll be sure to keep this link in my favorite travel folder for future bookings.

For now, there is no definite plan in traveling yet. We may be going back to KL or may be another visit down under again if Qantas is having another price slash on their round trip tickets. *wink*

Well, my vacation ended.  Now I am back in LA with the daily chores.  A lot of things to catch up, mostly with cleaning - laundry, kitchen sink, toilets and such.  Most of the things I brought back have been put away.  A few of them still sitting on the dining table and kitchen island to be sorted out.  Most of them are the Tupperwares I bought from my sister.  She is a Tupperware agent.  I need to find place in the kitchen to store them. 

Else I have things to follow up from the part time real estate.  Will have to meet up with Anthony, my ex-landlord, next week.  His wife, Kathleen whom I was very close to and also my ‘American mom’, has passed on right before my trip to Australia.  She was having a bone marrow transplant (BMT) at the City of Hope when things didn’t go right a few days after the surgery.  I was able to see her in ICU twice before I left LA but she was heavily sedated and wasn’t able to respond.  I feel very sad for her husband and family.  

Other things on my to-do list including:

1. Cleaning up the garage for more storage space.
2. Moving out some boxes to the garage.
3. Clean up the living room (now it is in a mess with so many things not organize).
4. Clean up some kitchen cabinets so I can store the Tupperwares.
5. Pull weeds and cut down the dried up roses.

Just got back to Brisbane from Gold Coast this evening.  We were in Gold Coast for 5 days 4 nights from June 10th till  14th.  Visited two theme parks - Dreamworld and Sea World Gold Coast.  We spent a full day at each theme park and found the Sea World to be better than Dreamworld.  We stayed until over the closing time when we were at Sea World.  The last 1 hour we were too busy shopping and buying gifts from the shops.  Me and my sister and our sons went on a 5 minutes helicopter ride which we paid extra for it.  It was fun, for all of us, especially our sons. 

We drove back to Brisbane after sending off my aunt and cousin to OOL (Coolangatta Airport).  They took the evening Air Asia flight back to Malaysia.  As I am typing this, they are probably sleeping on the plane already.  We had to drop them off at around 4pm (their flight at 9:xxpm) after driving down south to Byron Bay.  We had to return back to Brisbane before sundown.

My vacation is coming towards the end.  We will be leaving for LAX on Wednesdays and my sister will be leaving for ADL on Tuesday morning.  So far it has been fun and exhausting too.  I can’t wait to be back home to rest. 

We are back in Brisbane.  Flew back into BNE from SYD on the 6th on Jetstar.  It was a very nice vacation in Sydney.  The Harbor Cruise we went on Friday before we left was magnificient.  I will miss the rainy weather in Sydney.  And we did have a lot of fun meeting the Lee’s family on Thursday.   

Tomorrow we will be leaving for Gold Coast.  My aunt and my cousin will be flying back to KLIA this Sunday from OOL.  And guess what?  We went to Australia Zoo in Beerwah today.  It was about 2 hours drive north from Brisbane.  We left home around 715am and arrived at 915am.  We didn’t leave until the zoo was closing at 5pm.  We spent a FULL DAY at the beautiful zoo and love it so much.  We fed the kangaroos as well as patted some koalas too.  And before we left, we even met with Bindi, Steve Irwin’s daugther and took a picture with her.  Brandon had a lot of fun at the Zoo and he loved patting and feeding the animals.  The ticket for adult is AUD54 and children under 3 are free, so Brandon and Ethan were temporary under 3 for that moment we bought our tickets.  hehehe.  My dad went as well and we got a very nice family pictures with me carrying a koala. 

We are in Sydney now and will be here still Saturday morning.  Then we will fly up to Brisbane to meet up with my father and his wife.  Our flight arrived Sydney on Tuesday 11am.  By the time we reached the city, we were all very hungry.  We checked in with no problem at Meriton Serviced Apartment on Pitt Street.  We like the location a lot as we are very close to all the things - restaurants and groceries.  After checking in, our first goal is to get lunch.  We bought some bento boxes and noodle bowl from the Sakura restaurant next door.  The boxes are around AUD10 each.  Then we went back to our 37th floor 2 bedrooms apartment to eat.  After lunch, we put our toddlers to sleep and then me and my sister went back down to Woolworths to get some groceries.  We are not planning to eat out all the time, so mainly we were going to get some food to make for dinner. 

Most of the evening time that day we spent walking around the city area.  We walked down to Circular Quay (20 mins) and then took the train back.  The train ride cost $3.20 for a single way.  The Sydney Opera House was lighted up when we were there and it was magnificient. 

Yesterday, we walked to Darling Harbour and then to the Sydney Fish Market to have lunch.  After that we took the tram, train and bus to Bondi Beach.  During the trip to Bondi Beach, the kids napped.  It was nice weather when we arrived at Bondi Beach.  We were glad as this morning when we were walking to the Sydney Fish Market, it was raining very hard.  We spent about an hour in Bondi Beach and took the bus back to Bondi Junction Mall.  Later we took the train back to the city and had very simple dinner back in the apartment. 

Today, we will be meeting up with our blogger friend and family - Mommibee.  Can’t wait. 

Arrived Adelaide safe and sound.  Currently is staying at my sister’s house.  Been eating quite a bit here.  Weather is very cold and I didn’t bring enough warm clothing.  I didn’t expect the weather to be that cold as I checked the weather forecast before I left.  As I had limited space in my luggage, I didn’t bring any thick and warm jackets at all.  I only brought a raincoat/jacket. 

So far, we haven’t been doing much.  Went to the city’s Rundle Mall to walk a bit on Thursday morning.  And this morning, we went to Glenelg Beach just to walk around.  Had lunch (fish and chips) at the Oyster Bar and later enjoyed the soft serve ice cream at the Mac Donalds.  Before we went back home, we also stopped at the Haighs Chocolate Factory and went for the tour.  Bought some chocolates from there for gift to bring back home.

 Tonite, we will be cooking at home.  My kammo (aunt) will be making us some special noodles, yummy!  My son is napping now so I have some time to online a bit.  Next few days will be in Adelaide and on Tuesday, we will be heading out to Sydney.  I hope the weather there will not be this cold.  BRRRRR!