JESUS LOVES PEBBLES: Three's not a crowd

My brother (LG) and his girlfriend (ZT) are currently in Bangkok, Thailand on a short vacation. They will be back in Singapore tomorrow night.

In the meantime, my mother has been "home alone". Well, not really. She has been on leave since the afternoon of Thursday, 2 April 2009. However, Boy-Boy has been keeping her company.

This morning, I contacted my mother and arranged to fetch her for lunch. While waiting for lunchtime, I decided to bake two loaves of wholemeal bread, one of which I gave my mother. Wholemeal bread tends to be more dense than normal white bread and it complements a bowl of piping hot stew.

Before we left the house, there was a sudden downpour. The rain got very heavy and there was thunder and lightning. I commented to Da that Boy-Boy is afraid of thunder and he was probably barking as we spoke.

We fetched my mother from her home and proceeded to Katong Shopping Centre for lunch. If you are wondering why this venue sounds familiar, it is because we ate there for lunch yesterday as well! Today, the three of us decided to be healthy and we all ordered mini hot pot.

After lunch, we dropped my mother off at her home before proceeding to church. When we arrived at the car park, it was extremely full. I said a quick prayer to the Lord to let us locate a car park lot quickly as we were already running late for church. All of a sudden, several people approached their cars around us and started to drive off. From a situation where we had no available car park lot, we were flooded with a choice of car park lots. Best of all, these lots were all near our usual entrance to the building! How coincidental is that? Praise the Lord for He is good and His mercies endure forever!

After a grace-filled service in church, Da and I went grocery shopping at Carrefour Hypermarket. I decided to use my POSB Everday Card to pay for the purchase. I was not sure whether the card could be used because I was instructed to activate the card within a certain period of receiving the card and that period had long passed. I waited with bated breath while the cashier swiped my card in the machine. When I heard the sound of the docket being printed, I heaved a sigh of relief. It works! Otherwise, it would have been quite embarrassing had the cashier informed me that my card was invalid. Phew!

As it was almost 7 pm by the time we left the shopping mall, Da and I decided to proceed to my mother's home instead of going home first to unload the groceries. When we arrived, we saw that my mother had already sliced her loaf of wholemeal bread. Hi Ma, wholemeal bread is healthy, so you should eat it more often.

Boy-Boy had beef rice for dinner tonight. It smelt delicious!

The three of us had dinner at Kallang Airport hawker centre. This hawker centre underwent renovation not that long ago and we were pleased to discover that many of the hawkers had returned to their stalls.

When we approached the car park at the hawker centre, it was like deja vu. The car park was very full and there were many drivers in their cars waiting in the car park for available car park lots. However, as we turned into the car park and followed behind another car, suddenly the drivers of two cars (that were parked near each other) got into their cars and drove off, leaving two available car park lots for the other driver (in front of us) and us. Furthermore, there were no waiting cars near these two cars! As such, we managed to park our car easily and ahead of other drivers who had arrived at the car park earlier and were waiting for available car park lots.

After a heavy dinner, we decided to take short walk to the nearby supermarket to "walk off the dinner". At the supermarket, a China national approached me and asked me whether I knew where the "nai la" was displayed. Goodness me! What is that? I asked him whether it was a brand. He shook his head. I regretfully told him that I was unable to assist him. He approached another gentleman and repeated his question. This gentleman pointed him to a packet of Kraft sliced cheese. Is "nai la" the Chinese translation for cheese?

Eeks! I have just checked the translation tool in my blog. The Chinese translation for cheese is 奶酪 (nǎi lào). Oops... this is embarrassing. Actually, I really did not know this. It just goes to show that I should have paid more attention during Chinese class in school.

As we made our way back to our car, we passed by a coin phone. I have not seen a coin phone in years and I could not resist taking a photograph of it.