Qinzhi is a young lady already, taller than me now.

The holidays saw us at home mostly this time due to the Heightened Alert phase the authorities are imposing trying to keep us safe.

So stay at home we did.

To spice things up, we ordered in on weekends, according to what the kids like, burgers, pizza, tze char, satay!

And in my time typing these thoughts down, we are going to move yet again. Last October, we moved out of our flat of 12 years, out of Redhill to Marine Crescent, living just beside grandpa and ah mei ayi

Qinzhi and Huaihao walked in and out straight into grandpa’s and ah yi’s house. Each time I needed eggs, or a pot, Qinzhi would help me race through the door into grandpa’s house. Sometimes we ran out of bread and Qinzhi or Huaihao would have to go next door to ask from Ah Yi. Saturdays after her runs, she would always ask you two if you wanted breakfast, once she waited for 35minutes for breakfast of rice flour rolls for you and Hao.

Though this is a smaller flat and we all had to squeeze into 1 small room, which was where Mommy and Ah yi slept in before I got married—–i told you and Hao little tidbits of my younger days.

In what used to be my room, we had to sleep on a mattress on the floor. And even if we did not have the luxury of space and 2 toilets like we used to, we did not even have TV in the last 9 months, but we had a lot of fun (and our fair share of heated arguments) here

Every night when grandpa is about to sleep, he would come and say to you and Huaihao, gong gong is going to bed.
You picked up lots of chinese here, and you picked up manners here, learning to say, grandpa, eat before you started eating, you enjoyed watching tv and chinese dramas grandpa asking him lots of qns

Every weekend, we ordered in and had lots of food.

Sometimes, we had great deliveries from chefs, like this giant dumpling that descended.

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But most of all, mommy cooked.

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And I tried to get Qinzhi and Huaihao to help too

The beautiful thing is that the durian season is upon us again, these wonderful biodynamic durians from Baosheng Durian Plantation in Penang! So we did durian flights!

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But we still found it so hard to motivate Qinzhi to study. Qinzhi is easily angry and explodes. With wifi and computer, Qinzhi is happy, but without it, Qinzhi is not motivated to study or manage time. I guess its a deeper down thing of not knowing what she wants yet in life.

I have been nagging Qinzhi, but it doesn’t work.

We gave Qinzhi what she wanted, 4 hours of computer time each day, at the time she wants, and we just ask for a proper management of time, but still it does not work and she goes beyond and still gets angry.

Why does one not get motivated to wake up? I find myself asking?

I began to find quotes to motivate her and shared with her.

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I sent her what John said

“You have the power to shift the reality
She’s alright, different pple have different way when handling stress
She sometimes will go into this but this is part of growing up and learning to manage
finding out what is your strengths, reinforce it and downplay weaknesses: Minimise silly mistake, Play up your strength
its about knowing more abt yourself

eg some pple cannot get too tired

Drink rose water
Calm down n manage stress
She’s much more developed n can mentally handle difficult situations
Breathe slowly

DOME every night for 15min— 3min on 3 min off, Dome at 50% vapour
Blend
Vetiver 2 ml
Valor 5ml
Rose 1ml
Ylang ylang 2ml

Raindrop every alternate nite
Use dome blend + Northern Light Black Spruce + Joy + White Angelica

Fun in maths
To pass psle well, ten years series
Find out answer first then practise 3 times

Feeling others’ emotions:
The way to handle: Focus on yourself
Practice practice practice focussing on yourself: How I feel abt myself is most important
You will only be happy when u live like that
Do things that make u happy

QinZhi : Shower joy or WA or NLBS valor
Psle: nxr , if too tired: nxr nitro after food not empty stomach”

One weekend, Qinzhi and Huaihao went to ah mei ayi’s house for a staycay

ah yi spoilt them with popcorn and cartoons and the breakfast next morning is eggs on toast, quite a signature of ah yi’s style.

One night we all had a talk and daddy say, “Qinzhi, do you know how beautiful you were when you were young? Go and look at the pictures!”

And then he got emotional.

I looked back at the photo I always had on my desktop

Where did Qinzhi go?