Taipei holiday…

This is the second time we brought M out of the country and the 4-hour flight to Taipei proved too long for her. She was not very interested in the inflight entertainment, surprisingly. Perhaps it was because the headphones were too big for her. Anyway, I was happily enjoying myself one row behind as Matt & Mum ‘tackled’ her.

It’s my first time in Taipei and it reminded me of Hong Kong and Seoul but getting around was definitely easier as they spoke Mandarin. We were on our own so we took things at our own pace. Plus it’s not the peak season so we did not have to wrestle with other tourists. We had three days of good weather and had to braced rainy weather the other three days.

Here’s what we did during our 6D5N there.

Monday – PM – Arrival into Taipei 台北. Transfer to Beitou 北投 – Spring City Resort 春天酒店. Nice spacious room with everything we need. Went to Danshui 淡水 – Fisherman’s Wharf 漁人碼頭 and watched sunset. Proceeded to Danshui Old Street 淡水老街 for dinner and some shopping.

Tuesday – AM – Went to Yangmingshan 陽明山, walked around the park. Saw the first cherry blossom and reached a waterfall area. PM – Lunch at a local restaurant at Beitou. Back to hotel and tried the hot spring tub in the hotel room. Can’t stand the sulphur smell! Dinner at local eatery at Xin Beitou 新北投.

Wednesday – AM – Went to outdoor hot spring in hotel with Mum while Matt chilled in the room with M. Much better experience in the open and with the different treatment pools! PM – Checked out and transferred to Taipei – Hotel Royal 老爺大酒店. Smaller room but with luxurious bedding and a fully automated toilet bowl. Went to Shilin Night Market 士林夜市. Got lost getting there from the Shilin MRT station, realised we should have gotten off 1 station before – Jiantan 劍潭. Anyway, had some nice snacks and boy, it was crowded!

Thursday – AM – Stopped by Longshansi 龍山寺 and then quick lunch at the mall nearest to the hotel – Shin Kong Mitsukoshi 新光三越. PM – Booked a local tour to Jiufen 九份. On the way there, visited some rock formations. Was raining by the time we reached Jiufen and made walking along the steep old street 九份老街 difficult. Also, we did not have much time as the tour guide gave us around 50 minutes there only to bring us to a local jewellery store later where we were coerced to buy something Dinner at a local restaurant near the hotel. Matt brought M back to hotel while Mum and I shopped around longer.

Friday – AM – Lazy morning as we were all tired. After late breakfast, we were not sure whether to go to Yeliu 野柳 to see more rock formations or a sunflower farm – Sun and Green 向陽農場 – I had read about online. As the weather was forecast to be rainy, we thought it was perhaps not a good idea to go to Yeliu. But as we got on a taxi to go to the sunflower farm, the taxi driver explained that the sunflower farm was going towards to direction of the airport and after chatting for a while, he suggested that we go to Yeliu that day and go to the sunflower farm enroute to the airport the next day. On the way to Yeliu, it started to rain and when we reached, the strong coastal wind made it extra cold. Because of the rain, we did not stay long. Taxi driver brought us to buy our favourite Taiyangbing – Sun Buscuit 太陽餅 from 犁記 on our way back! Dinner was at a Hong Kong style restaurant, Matt couldn’t take any more local food, he wanted to go Mac’s!

Saturday – AM – Same taxi driver came to pick us up and brought us to the sunflower farm. It was raining and not exactly enjoyable. We saw only one plot of sunflowers as the peak is sometime in April. Headed to the airport for a quick lunch before boarding flight back.

Overall, we felt more tired than our previous R&R trip to Langkawi. Matt suffered aching arms as he had to carry M most of the time. We were lucky that M’s cough did not worsen there but neither did it get better. She threw up some milk two nights so we did not really sleep well. I wished we had more time for shopping, we hardly did any real shopping, which is always a challenge with M.

On the flight back, M was very engrossed with the inflight entertainment, watching Dora 4 times. She did not manage to nap and was grouchy. Mum was tired out so she sat between Matt and I.

And we’re definitely happy to be home and it’s time to nurse M back to health…

Clear for take-off…

M seemed to be suffering from the most common effect of starting childcare – falling sick more often. Perhaps she did not recover fully from the last time she fell sick in late December. She started coughing again on Thursday morning in the first week of 2010. Since we still had medicine, I self-medicated her and she stayed home for the day. She got better but still coughed infrequently.

The following Wednesday, she came down with a slight fever and her cough seemed to have gotten worse. I brought her to the GP who prescribed the exact same medicine as the last time. The fever went down pretty fast but the cough persisted. We decided to keep her home the rest of the week to get better before our holiday to Taipei the next week.

By Friday, we got really worried because her cough was not getting any better. We did not know whether it was advisable to bring her to Taipei because of the colder and drier weather there, not to mention the threat of the H1N1. We decided to consult her paediatrician but the though of the Saturday morning wait especially without appointment really put us off. Hence, we searched online for another paediatrician nearby and found a few around Bishan.

And so we brought M to The Children’s Medical Centre for the first time. We were the first patient of the day! The pd thought her condition was not serious enough to warrant pushing back the trip. She prescribed new medication for us to bring along. The clinic is open on Sunday mornings so the pd told us to bring her in if her condition worsens. She also said that if M’s condition worsens in Taipei, we should consult a doctor there.

It was assuring hearing that we could go on the trip as planned. We had been in quite a dilemma those few days whether to postpone the trip which would involve hassle and money.

Here we come, Taipei!

Little Neuro Tree and the law of diminishing marginal returns

Last Thursday was supposed to be M’s last class at Little Neuro Tree. We had to miss it because of a less-than-cooperative M and the lack of taxis in rainy weather. M kept refusing to get changed and when she finally did, I failed to get a taxi. It was difficult getting through phone lines and assignment of taxi took forever. After trying 2 taxi companies, I gave up to save us a wasted trip.

Thinking back just nine months ago when we first signed up for the course, she was always so excited to go for class. These days, I usually have to coerce her to get ready for the class. During class, she is fidgety during the flash card and counting sessions and tend to want to spend longer time in specific activities like pretend play. As a matter of fact, a few other kids who started around the same time as us also seemed to have been losing interest in class.

Hence, we decided we’ve discontinue classes after December because I think we’ve gotten enough out of the programme and probably reached “a point beyond which each additional unit of the variable input yields smaller and smaller increases in outputs”, to quote Wikipedia on the definition of the economics law of diminishing marginal returns.

Nonetheless, I think we’ve benefitted and enjoyed the nine months we’ve been there. I see how M can now concentrate during the memory games and get them more and more often. The activities in class also provided me ideas of what we can do together at home. As usual, it provided us a chance to learn together, like the Japanese songs.

Overall, I would say the programme has a bit of everything for everyone, from brain stimulation to phonics to math to music and movement etc. But because of this, the amount of time they can spend on each segment can be very short. Given that M now spends half-a-day five days a week in a pre-nursery programme, I feel there will be a fair amount of overlap in activities.

At the same time, M is approaching her 3rd birthday very soon and that is when the human brain starts shifting from being right-brain dominant to left-brain dominant, more details in my earlierpost. I suspect the methods of learning will also need to be more hands on, more exploration in nature. Getting them to sit behind a desk for an hour will likely get increasing challenging.

Well, in truth, there’re so many other interesting courses out there that I’ll like M to try out so it’s time to move on!