trippingdifferently

March 14, 2025March 14, 2025

Happenings in Feb 2025

There has been another 6 weeks of no posts on this blog… not back on usual schedule yet… LOL…

It’s been a busy February. The week after Chinese New Year was filled with packing. No, we are not moving again. Hahaha.

There was a need to rewire my mum’s flat so that we could change new water heaters (the old one in my mum’s room broke) and we decided to do a few other things as well; such as put in air-conditioning in the rooms, new kitchen lights and bathroom lights (they were just naked bulbs before), new CAT6 cables (Hubby’s request for faster internet cables and points in each room) and to finish off painting the kitchen and living room.

Initially, we were just going to live with the mess, taking refuge at my Godma’s during the day and coming back to sleep among the mess. But Hubby decided it’s best to get out completely so the Son and my mum moved to my Godma’s. Hubby, my brother and I moved to a serviced apartment for a week. It’s easier for Hubby and my brother to get to work from the serviced apartment location.

Next was the move back in and clean up. I am still slowly getting all the stuff we moved out back from storage.

Soon after all that was my mum’s and Hubby’s birthday – we had a nice celebration in a nice DimSum restaurant. Thanks to the staff at Chao Yun Xuan Dim Sum (Capitol) for their efforts in making such a lovely presentation piece for the birthday celebration.

The next weekend, the Son and Hubby were off to Japan for a ski trip – all very last minute , but they had fun, even if it was a completely new country for both of them and they had to find their way around.

My brother and I attended a career fair, both of us, looking to give our careers a little boost. It was helpful to have gone but now I need to decide what areas I wanna upskill in. I am not yet looking for a job, but since the government has given upskilling grants, I thought I should take the opportunity. Let’s see what happens.

And now here we are – the middle of March already! April is shaping up to be a busy time too… looking forward to friends from Switzerland visiting and maybe a big family get together, plus our shipment arrives (so more packing – sigh, my life for now).

Hope your days are filled with joy, even in the busyness of life.

syc

February 6, 2025February 6, 2025

Celebrating Chinese New Year 2025

It has been so very many years since we have been in Singapore, in person, to celebrate the Chinese New Year (CNY) with family. So it’s been really good to be able to do so this year.

It’s the year of the snake and lots of snake puns have been included in the CNY greetings in social media. Here is one example: the Chinese character for snake 蛇 reads as “She (2nd tone)”, phonetically “sir/sur”…

Of course, food also has a starring role in our celebrations, one of the big ones being the Reunion Dinner on the eve of Chinese New Year. People generally go back to their parents’ or close relatives’ homes to celebrate. In the years after my mum stopped cooking big meals, my older cousin usually hosts this dinner. This year, we co-hosted at my mum’s, each family cooking a few dishes to contribute. It was lovely and yummy 😋

Then on the first day of the Chinese New Year, we go visit our relatives, usually the younger ones visit the elders. Many of our relatives have passed on so there are only a few people we visited this year. But still it was nice to see them and catch up because a couple we don’t get to meet them often.

Lexi wasn’t left out, she couldn’t visit with us but enjoyed people coming to my mum’s. And thanks to our dog groomer (Poochylandd) she was dressed for the occasion for a lovely impromptu photo shoot. So here’s Lexi wishing you a Happy, Blessed Chinese New Year.

If you do celebrate CNY, hope you had a good celebration. If you don’t, we hope you had a good week.

SYC

January 8, 2025

The Big Move Happened…

Radio silence on this blog for almost 6 weeks… We were very busy getting settled into this new chapter of our lives.

One last walk through our beloved Old Town Solothurn

We arrived in Singapore (SG) and had to squeeze 3 persons into one bedroom because our plan A for accommodation was not yet ready. It took more than 2 weeks of lots of packing things up and organising but we are in now and getting things together.

Lexi, our Schanuzer, is doing well. Actually, she was not doing well in her 2nd week here – diarrhoea and vomiting – it was a good thing we already had a general checkup lined up with the vet. Her pancreas was inflamed, not sure of the cause but it took almost a week on meds and low-fat diet (which she disliked greatly) to get her back to normal. She is still adjusting to the heat. We hope to install air-conditioning soon (for Lexi’s sake – hehehe 😉 )

We have been exploring the various dog-friendly options in SG. In Switzerland, Lexi could come with us almost everywhere but not here in SG. No dogs on public transport, only some eating places, not allowed in shopping centers and lots of other places. But we have found a few places we like and will be exploring more. Maybe I will write about these places in a separate blog post.

Now our daily living is divided between my mum’s where our son and Lexi lives and where we stay at my Godma’s (just a block away). We are still testing out routines and will see how things go before deciding if this living arrangement would work in the long term.

We are grateful to have family around again and are looking forward to reconnecting with old friends and building our lives here once more. We know that God has the best plan for us and this is it at this time.

We look forward to sharing more adventures with you – this time it will be our adventures getting re-acquinted with our home country after so many years away.

Wishing everyone a fulfilling 2025!

syc