February 11, 2004

A few times people, before we left England, people asked me "When you're travelling, what do you do all day?" – I guess its difficult to believe that you can spend a year travelling around the world without getting bored, or spending all day on the beach. I'll use today as an example of how a day can go in a flash!

We went out to Jurong Bird Park today, but first that meant getting up, wandering down the street to a Chinese café for breakfast, and then down to the City Hall MRT (underground) station. It was about ten when we got there. We arrived at the station nearest the bird park at 10 to 11, and then waited until 11:20 to get our bus there (it was too far to walk from the underground to the entrance). That got us there about 20 to 12. The rest of the day was spent in the bird park, seeing all the different aviaries, and watching the bird shows (have you ever seen a macaw paint with a brush?), and drying the girls clothes after they played in the fountains at the water park. After a great time at the bird park, finally we left at 4 o'clock, and got back to our hotel at 5:30. Then, while the girls had a little play time, I went out to get coach tickets for our trip to Malaysia tomorrow – that took an hour because I had to walk a mile to the Golden Mile Complex to the agents. Then at 6:30 we rushed out to the Raffles City shopping centre, because there was a troupe of Chinese acrobats putting on a free show in the concourse at 7.00.

By this time the girls had walked miles, so they were delighted to sit down and watch the show for half an hour (have you ever seen a ballerina stand on the head of a standing man, and do a slow pirouette?). The acrobatics were amazing, and both girls loved the show. Then we went for dinner (chicken rice, rojak and wanton soup) and finally I got a haircut, while Sarah got some snacks for on the coach. Finally we got back to the hotel at 9:30, got the girls sorted and asleep by 10:30, and then checked our email and wrote a couple. Just before bed we packed all our rucksacks for an early start tomorrow, and then finally crashed out at midnight. There's a typical day!

Over the last few months, Emily has become a more fussy eater. This means that she describes herself as "full" whenever the food in front of her doesn't appeal, and then declares that she is "hungry" pretty soon afterwards. Typically that means she is "full" when she's half-way through a bowl of rice, and then "hungry" when we walk near an ice cream shop! And in Asia, she's also decided that there are lots of foods she doesn't like, and very few she does.

So at the moment we're in a battle of wills to try and break this down. What we're not sure about is whether the things she won't eat (like noodles) are because she doesn't like them, or because she wants something 'nicer'. Breakfast is the most difficult here - in Singapore the local breakfast speciality is either rice porridge (you couldn't even persuade me to want that at 8am in the morning!) or Kaya toast - which is toast with a coconut jam spread onto it. However, we have found that we can get French toast, which everybody likes. So breakfast has been solved as long as we can always get French toast.

Now to solve the rest of the day!