Our our recent trip to Singapore, we ended up bringing along Miss 10’s netbook and I brought along my iPhone.  OK – two Wifi enabled devices, but how were we going to get connected?

It turns out that there is FREE wireless internet in most public areas in Singapore!  What a great initiative!  OK, it’s a little “slow” being 1Mbps only and it’s usually only available in public areas like shopping centres, but it was extremely useful for us.   We could check our email, do some research on prices and products, use Google Maps to find places, and I even found out that Miss 10 was MSN’ing friends back home!

So how do you get it?

First, you need to register to get a free account.  You can do this on the actual Wireless@SG login page, calling the number on the login screen or visiting one of the 3 companies that run the wireless network – SingTel, QMax and iCell.   Since I had a Singapore SIM card there, I was able to register online and get my password sent to me via SMS.  

Then all you need to do is connect to the Wireless@SG network when it’s available, login, and then you’re done!  I found I could access mail, Google maps, Facebook and Twitter on my iPhone with no problems.  The only hiccup I had was in Wisma Atria one day when it seems their Wireless hotspot was not working.

If you know you’re going to Singapore, you should try to get account before you arrive so that you can use the Wireless as soon as you land in the airport – http://www.infocomm123.sg/wireless_at_sg, although I’m not sure if you need a Singapore mobile number to get the password. 

For more information, refer to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless@SG and http://www.ida.gov.sg/Programmes/20061027174147.aspx?getPagetype=36.

Here’s a secret for travellers to/from Singapore – there is a large food court with really cheap food in the B1 Basement of the Airport.   It’s the “staff canteen”, but it’s actually open to the public too. 

It’s a bit hard to find (before you go through the departure gates, try to find a lift in the far corner that goes down to B1 in Terminal 1).   You can’t take luggage trolleys down there but rolling hand luggage is fine.  The good news – the prices of the dishes are really cheap, the range is massive compared to the food stalls/restaurants in the main part of the airport and it serves all the local foods!

Like any holiday to Singapore, eating is a highlight.   So what better way to end our recent trip than to go down to the food court and have our “last supper”!!  We stuffed ourselves with as many local delights as possible before boarding our cheap Jetstar flight.

Good local prawn mee, local chicken rice, burbur chacha, chendol, rojak, coconut juice and many desserts with names I could not pronounce…   until next time.

Singapore train station - clean but no bins

One thing that you may notice on a trip to Singapore is that it’s fairly clean.  On our recent trip, I was glad to not see any graffiti on walls, buses or trains and I didn’t notice much rubbish lying around on the streets.  Heavy fines and punishments are good deterrants.

But the irony is that there were a few times when I had some food wrappings that I wanted to get rid of before going on the MRT (underground train).. and each time, I just couldn’t find a bin!

There seems to be a major lack of rubbish bins in, at and near MRT stations.  Maybe it’s a security precaution, but it doesn’t seem to make much sense:

* You’re not allowed to eat or drink inside MRT stations or on the train
* You’ll get fined if you litter
* But they won’t provide bins for you to dispose of your litter/unwanted food/etc!

Tip of the day – be prepared to hold onto your rubbish…

Here’s a musical I’ve been waiting to see for a while!  We couldn’t go in New York because we had the kids with us, I think we just missed out when we took our last trip to Melbourne, and Wifey raved about it when she saw it in London earlier this year and then progressed to show me all these YouTube videos when she came back.

Well, I finally had my turn to see it on the weekend here in Perth – and even going in with high expectations I loved it!  It’s just so… wrong and funny!  The songs and story were rude, naughty and hilarious!  Just think – Sesame Street for adults.  Do not go if you get offended easily!

The performers were really top notch, the sets and puppetry were excellent, the band was tight.. and the sound, which I usually have problems with at the Regal, was clear!  The Regal, even though old, suits this musical perfectly – as my Wifey says, it is not a “mega musical” – Avenue Q requires a small intimate venue like an off Broadway theatre. 

There was a mini drama on Saturday night – the girl playing Kate Monster and Lucy T Slut, Michala Banas, started playing the role, but within 15 minutes or so, Natalie Alexopoulos, the understudy took over and other people took over her role.  It was so seemless I wondered whether people were actually just going to change playing characters all throughout the show!   A real credit to the performers who could change parts during a show that easily.  

I was really impressed with Luke Joslin who plays Nicky and Trekkie monster – he has that Sesame Street Ernie voice down so well!  And I just loved how Josie Lane, who was involved with some puppets that required 2 operators at once, was so into the acting even though she might have just been operating one hand only.  Actually, with all the performers, who acted it so much in their body and face.  And then were able to make their puppets mimic them.   Great work!

Good news is that Wifey was definitely impressed, rating some of the performers even better than the West End show she saw.

And we enjoyed it so much that we’ve bought tickets to see it again!

More info here:  http://avenueqthemusical.com.au/

It’s all happening for our Miss 10.  A couple of weekends ago she had her first WAYMA audition.  Today is her first AMEB cello exam.

It’s really quite hard!  She’s struggled to get her head around the different scales, harmonic and melodic minors as well as get all the exercises and pieces up to exam standard.   Her hands and fingers are still relatively tiny so shifting and extensions are even harder on the cello.   And there’s so much exam work that to get through that it takes over an hour to get through it in a practice session!

But the hardest thing I’ve noticed is trying to get her to not stop playing when she makes mistakes.  When she makes a mistake, Miss 10 will repeat the couple of notes again.  In an exam or performance situation, you just have to keep on going.  Sounds easy, but it’s something that has to be learnt and to get used to.

I know she can’t wait until it’s over so she can have a small break from cello.  Unfortunately, she’ll be diving straight into a school production performance, then her dance school concerts next weekend.

Wish her good luck!

Coming back home one day, we noticed a large strange looking orange insect on our front door step.  Miss 8 was fascinated but scared and Miss 10 didn’t care.  My first thought was to grab my camera and decide which lens to use.  Not knowing exactly what it was, I stayed my distance. 

I’ve since figured out that it’s a spider wasp, and they’re probably quite harmless so I could’ve gone a bit closer for better close ups.

Here’s Mr Wasp scoping me out.  Its snack, Mr Spider, already comatose in the background.

After Mr Wasp was satisfied that I wasn’t going to steal his lunch, he thought he’d give Mr Spider some tail action.

Mr Spider, now definitely drugged out and not being much fun, just lay around.   Mr Wasp took advantage of the situation and started preparing? eating? sucking?  Who knows.

I left the two of them to chill out together, and when I checked them after a few hours, they had left.  Or maybe, more correctly, Mr Wasp took Mr Spider to home for tea.

Pool on Saturday

First I checked the whole filtration system.  Yep, the Klever Kleena hadn’t been doing its job.  It seems that it was stuck on the incline down to the bottom of the pool.  I cleaned out the filter baskets and did a backwash.  Checked the timer settings on the automatic filter and seems that it was set to run for only 4 hours a day – my winter setting.  I bumped it up to 7 hours a day.   OK – that bit done.    Unfortunately I didn’t take a “before” photo, but just picture the pool above BEFORE the cleaner went through it – gross!

My home water test kit seemed to think the levels were all fine, but I took a sample to my pool shop just in case and the guy said the same thing.  I bought a container of Chlorine to shock the pool anyway.  So in theory, any algae that’s floating around should be killed and then sink to the bottom of the pool, and then the Klever Kleena should suck it up.

So, back home, poured in the Chlorine, then turned on the filter to run for the rest of the day.

By Monday morning, the pool was starting to look better.

Pool on Monday morning

And this morning, it was looking much better.  Visibility was great, but there’s stil a bit of sediment at the bottom of the pool in sections – might need to do a manual vac.   Chemical levels still seem OK with chlorine on the high side.  

Now the challenge is for me to keep it this way so the kids can swim through summer!

Pool on Tuesday morning (today)

No blog updates for over a week!

No late night TV for over a week!

Wifey and I have been working madly to finish our first Blurb book for our Round the World trip in the summer of 07-08.  We were nearly able to finish 1 city per night, but then we hit Paris and found we had over 1,000 photos to prioritise there alone!

And then came the borders and page backgrounds.  Wifey got really excited and nearly went crazy with them, but I tried to hold her back.  There’s something I really like about clean white crisp pages with photos on them, but Wifey wanted to pull out certain colours from the photo onto the page background. 

We weren’t quite sure what to do about the text though.  On our trip, we did keep a travel diary which started off quite detailed, but started to thin out at the end.  Should we go back and complete the diary now?  Should we include days of activities with the photos for those cities?  Should we just use bullet points?

In the end, we wanted our book to be primarily a photobook/photojournal – the emphasis on photos and some captions if required and we felt 1-2 pages of text might break up the flow.  But I did condense the activities of each day into a 3-4 line paragraph, and we put these at the end of the book for reference.  Each paragraph is a summary of the day’s events.  The full travel diary exists only in electronic form for now.

(By the way, I found it much easier to edit text in Microsoft Word and then copy and paste the whole lot in once done.)

Once the whole book was complete last night, we did a final spell check which picked up a few embarrassing typos.  And then it was upload time to Blurb.  With over 300 pages and roughly 860 photos, we had to leave this overnight.  And then this morning, I checked it and it was all done!  I hope all pages and photos are there without corruption – unfortunately I can’t seem to find a way to check.

So what now?   We have to do the final touches to the Italy trip book, then place our orders!

This Saturday, Miss 10 has her first audition to join a WAYMA orchestra.  Her cello playing has improved in leaps and bounds in the last 2 years, but so far, she’s really only been playing by herself. 

Playing in an orchestra or ensemble is such a different and enlightening experience that I really cherish from my youth.  Just mixing with other like minded kids, meeting new people, working towards that concert, going on fun tours/camps…   although there were obviously times when I thought orchestra was drab, boring, why did I have wake up to go orchestra every Saturday morning, why am I doing this instead of some sport…

I think Miss 10 has reached a stage where she needs exposure to other people who play the cello, playing in time and in tune with each other, and really, the joy of playing with other people making a bloody big sound!  There’s nothing like everyone playing some symphonic fortissimo passage together…

I hope she goes OK with her audition!  (and also the many other hundred kids auditioning tomorrow!)

Did you get out to Northbridge on the weekend?  We went for dimsum and stumbled across the Northbridge Festival.   And towards the Art Gallery end of James Street, PICA held an Artist Car Boot Sale!

It was a great atmosphere with lots of interesting sculptures, paintings and craft mixed with street performers and activities for the kids, melding into the normal Cultural Centre weekend markets.

More info here:  http://www.pica.org.au/events

I wish I had brought along my SLR, but here are some iPhone snaps.

Tango dancing outdoors – looks like a lot of fun, but I do wish we had swing dancers there!

The Artist Car Boot Sale in full swing!

Graffiti’ing the pavement!

Free popcorn, but only as much as your hat or hands can hold.  Note to self – bring a large container next time!