Fatherhood Reflections LII - A Perfect Day Out

Yesterday was a Friday and the day after National Day. I took the chance to take the day off and bring the kids out on my own.

The day started bright and early with a trip to my favourite eating place - the coffee shop beside Siglap Centre. We shared a plate of Ampang Yong Tau Foo while both also enjoyed two eggs each. It was nice to just eat something simple on a weekday morning.

Thereafter we decided to move on to our first of three locations. The National Library. We came here really early and I parked in the basement. I kept telling them this was the largest library in Singapore, especially when the boy thought we were referring to the Marine Parade library. I was rather surprised in that the library's B1 was where all the children's books were. Then we walked up escalator by escalator up the different floors exploring the building. When we reached the fifth floor, I brought them into the study area to let them see all the teenagers studying there in the midst of those books and how quiet they were. What a sight to behold for them to see so many people, yet such a quiet setting.

After that we proceeded on to the National Museum of Singapore. The car park was full, so we had to park opposite at the YMCA instead. Even though the three of us had been there together before several years ago, it was still an interesting place to visit any time of the year. In fact I was glad that they didn't remember as much of the details of the previous visit and found this current visit very interesting. It started of with a forest adventure theme where we walked down a spiral slope simulating a tropical forest with tropical animals and at the bottom we could lie down and gaze at above which was a magical projection of floral patterns. Very nice. Then it was on to the History of Singapore, where a big part of where I came in was the segment about the Japanese Occupation. I think I was very informative and the kids kept asking all sorts of questions about the war. We also sat down to watch the touching moment when Lee Kuan Yew was live on TV crying after we got booted out of the Malaysian Federation. I love watching that. Then there were two separate exhibitions, one of war time in Singapore, and one of our playgrounds in Singapore.

The whole immersive experience was free for Singapore citizens. So nice to have :)

The last and final planned stop was the ArtScience Museum at Marina Bay Sands. There was a very long queue and a huge throng of post National Day crowd vibes. After queuing for half an hour for tickets, I got tickets for two exhibitions:
(1) Marvel Studios: 10 Years of Heroes
(2) Wind Walkers: Theo Jansen's Strandbeests
thankfully it was a Friday and they had this kids-enter-for-free deal. So I actually paid only $27 for everything. My big issue was that the Marvel exhibition was such a waste of money. It was so light on props and the whole trail was so short. Definitely would not have been worth the full entrance fee! The Wind walkers one was slightly more interesting, but only slightly. And after a while it got boring. Maybe I can't appreciate it as much.

All in all it was still a very fun experience but by this time, both the kids were very visably tired. I suggested that we get out of there and go have McDonalds at Siglap Centre (again!) and they both enthusiastically agreed.

So there we went for a good ol' Happy meal to end our tiring day.

We had the longest evening naps ever when we got home.

Days like this I really felt so genuinely happy.

It might be the norm some day but I definitely can get used to it.