"Gan Chang"

My friend inspired me with regards to this post's title. LOL. Not because my girls are already trained to perform on the "getai", but simply because of the mall shows that we were trying to catch this fine Saturday.

I knew that I would make it to Dora and Hi-5 sometime during this school holiday season. Never did I expect it to be today! A simple message from Serene this morning and lo and behold! We were scheduled to watch 2 shows today. Intricate planning was required because we had to contend with (1) long queues at the malls for entry to watch the shows (2) navigating through traffic and looking for parking lots between 3 shopping malls (Dora @ Raffles City, Hi-5 @ Marina Square) (3) bringing the girls to their art lesson at Clay Cove in time.

So, this is where the Daddies come in handy. With PapaKim out of town, I really had to rely on the other 2 couples to help out. Boy, what teamwork! Thanks lots for standing in the queues and ferrying us between the malls! You know who you are!

With all this planning, our objective of course, was for the kids to be happy. Were they? Absolutely! I believe all 4 girls really had a ball of a time. Dora and Boots were pretty much entertaining by bringing them to the Carnival. Seo Yeon, she enjoyed herself the most at the Dora show! *big smile*

Hi-5 was definitely the bigger crowd magnet. We could easily have been the 20th in the queue, considering that Shannyce's Papa started queueing almost 2 hours before the show started! The group was on stage for about 20 minutes, a little short of the 30 minutes we were hoping for. But hey, we got passes to take photos with Hi-5! That was a very good consolation.

Shannyce was really happy to see her idol AGAIN! She practically flew into Stevie's arms! Wowee! En Bi shared the same idol but a tad bit shy. Luckily, she managed to make a u-turn after taking the photo and get a nice, big hug from Stevie dearest. Awwwww....

And we all got nice souvenirs from the show. A 6R picture and a double-sided keychain with pictures that we took with Hi-5 (one on stage and the other super-imposed). $25. Steep? You tell me.

Of course, we managed to bring the girls to Clay Cove in between the 2 shows. Phew! Hectic, hectic.

All in a day of a mommy bringing her girls to "gan chang".

All Day Breakfast On His Birthday

Had breakfast with Aslene this morning at "Hatched" (cute site with inverted "3"s that takes time to load. Be patient.). Always wanted to go there for breakfast on the Mondays when I used to bring Seo Yeon for classes at Julia Gabriels @ Evans Road. Pity they were always closed on Mondays. I wanted to go there even more when Aslene told me about this restaurant "Hatched" that she wanted to go to too because she heard that the food there was yum. So what better place to meet her at for brunch? Why, at "Hatched", where they serve "egg-inspired all-day breakfast"!

Service there gets 6-stars (out of 10), maybe they just aren't "morning people"? Haha... Food? Well... All I can say that maybe Aslene and I weren't very good at choosing good stuff from the menu. The food that others ordered looked gastronomical. Ours just looked at tasted like.... normal breakfast? Despite the fancy name 'Hitch Me Up'.

Brunch at Hatched

Ok, now, to catch some celebration lunch (or breakfast?) with PapaKim at "Wild Honey". Another all-day breakfast concept restaurant, this time situated in bustling Orchard Road, was my breakfast-theme eatery of the day. This was recommended by Aslene, whose opinion I did trust a lot especially when it comes to food, because her husband is a chef. LOL.

Caliornian (Left) & Italian (Right)

I think "Californian" beats "Italian" hands down. A pity that it totally slipped my mind to order the dish that Aslene recommended....

Back in Changwon

One of the must-see for this trip was the "House of Changwon", where I got married 5 years ago on a cold, rainy day. I had always wanted to go back to take a look and see whether the place "evolved" or not, and most importantly, eat at the restaurant where we served the wedding lunch. Yum!

It really felt like a much-needed excursion for my girls to be brought to see the place where Appa and Omma got married so that they would, hopefully, be able to relate to it when I showed them our wedding photos.

House of Changwon

Garden in House of Changwon

Here we are, the spread, and this is not all! We stuffed our guts full by just paying KRW10,000 per person! That's why I wanted to go back there so much. But the kids, gosh, they were a handful without the high chair to strap them in. (Basically, most eating places we liked to go to in Korea was quite difficult because the children tend to run around the place when they are not strapped in their high chair.)

Herb Garden in Changwon

We drove about another 20 minutes to Changwon "City 7", a lodging and shopping complex that is situated next to the Changwon Exhibition Convention Centre (CECO). While we were there, we wanted to check out SHREK 3D, unfortunately, seats for the next available showing were not very ideal. So, we had to take a rain check and took a break in "Angel In Us", a new coffee chain.

KTX

Tata Seoul! A last shot at the lobby while PapaKim was checking out.

We arrived at the Seoul Station very much in time despite the helter-skelter between checking out and arriving at the station! This allowed me to take a few shots of the girls before catching a quick meal to line the stomach.

PapaKim really wanted the girls to try riding on the high-speed train, so, he booked KTX tickets for our journey to Changwon. KTX is to Korea what Shinkansen is to Japan. We were to take the KTX from Seoul station to Miryang station at Gyeongsan-do. That would take us about 2.5 hours for the train ride. Can you find Miryang station in the route map below? (Hint: Orange words near the bottom)

A trip from Seoul to Busan used to take about 4h 10min on the old "Saemaeul". With the introduction of KTX in 2004, the duration of the journey is now almost halved. The table below shows the "then" and "now" time needed to travel  from Seoul to Busan and Mok-Po with the existence of KTX.

We sat in the train enjoying the scenery and the snacks that were sold on the snack trolley. PapaKim bought us braised quail eggs for our snack. The thought of having quail eggs as a snack seemed mind boggling initially, but it  was really tasty. Convenient as well because I didn't have to peel off the egg shells!

We arrived at GrandparentsKim home at 8ish in the evening. Luckily, UncleKim picked us up from the train station. The drive from the station to home took about an hour. Boy! Were GrandparentsKim happy to see the kids again!

Kids Cafe & Beer Time

Oh no, please don't misunderstand. LOL. I didn't bring my gals to the Kids Cafe for beer. My girlfriend met me at the department store and after a short while, we got tired lugging the girls around. She then exclaimed, "Hey, there's a kids cafe here!". I was baffled, "What's that?", even then, I already found myself heading towards this place because I really needed to take a breather.

Apparently, there are many kids cafes dotting the city. Most Korean stay-at-home mommies often take a breather from looking after the kids and housework by meeting up with other mommies or friends at kids cafe. It's a very simple concept, eat, drink, chat, while your children enjoy themselves at the playpad within sight. Why can't we have more of this in Singapore? Then I wouldn't need to limit myself to eating at places that have high chairs....

Dinner appointment with my ex-colleagues at our place. Junghwa bought braised pork knuckle, steamed kimchi dumplings and bottles of soju and rice wine! Reliving the days when we often drank the night away after work. Then, PapaKim came back from work and offered to bring us for beer. On lah! No way the girls wanted to sleep with all the commotion, and having a late afternoon nap didn't help, so we all made our way to the hof downstairs for a drink. This also marked the end of our stay in Seoul.

Day 2 in Seoul

A bit of "Dibo" fresh milk to line the tummy before we head off for breakfast... Remember? No cooking while I'm on holiday.. hiak hiak.

I didn't want to venture off too far with "1 Big and 1 Small", so I went to the restaurant opposite the residence. We visited this restaurant the last time we were in Seoul. Awesome shabu shabu beef noodles! So, don't get deceived by that plate of salad in the picture, that's just the appetiser. When the noodles came, it was slip slurp time, mouth overtook the hands that were supposed to take pictures.

Now, for the gals to exercise off the breakfast in the playroom.

And then off to the supermarket ^.^

Day 1 in Seoul

Surviving the night flight without much fussing, we arrived in Seoul in the early morning. Greeted by the crisp air as soon as we stepped out of the airport, we were all really excited and feeling happy to be in Korea.

We hopped on the "Airport Limousine" to our residence in Seoul and arrived a "wee bit" early to check-in. At 7 a.m., we had 7 hours to kill before check-in time at 2 p.m. Ok, that was the "urgh" part. Alright, no whining. We left our bags with the reception, and took a walk in search for breakfast.

I was in familiar territory. This was very near where I used to work. Just as I was pointing out this famous Kalguksu (knife-sliced noodles) eating place to PapaKim, we noticed that it might be open. We made our way there and "Yay", breakfast seemed to be in the line for us. There you go, 칼국수!

Now, to walk out the breakfast. We happened to chance upon this pretty garden just beside the building that we went to "visit the toilet" at. Beautiful weather just makes simple things seem nicer.

Finally, we ended up at the shooting location of "Iris" (the Korean hit drama of 2010) - Gwanghwamun Square 광화문 광장. The girls had a ball taking photos with "Haechi" (the mascot of Seoul) and life-sized posters of Lee Byung-Hun (scream "AHHH!"), the lead actor in "Iris". That would be a place to visit if you happen to be in this part of Seoul, on your way to visit Gyeongbuk Palace.

That was all done before we checked-in.... after that, zzzzzz......

Batmobile

Just wanted to post a picture of En Bi on the Batmobile ride... Haha...