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Just shy of her 7th month old birthday, wifey and I brought Ashley back to Kuching to visit my parents, especially my dad who had yet to see her. At the rate Ashley is growing, I thought it would be important for dad to see her before she outgrew her “babyhood”. In addition, I was really looking forward to taking a short break after an extremely hectic past few months at work! Oh yes, and lest I forget, it had actually been years before I last went back to Kuching (that was when I brought Zhiyi’s family with me for a parent-meet-parent session right before our wedding). Yeah, it was that long ago.

A few nights before we were due to fly back, my mum called with news that Kuching was blanketed with haze thanks to mass “slash-and-burn” activities being conducted illegally by plantation owners in Sarawak and Kalimantan. Zhiyi and I were very worried as we didn’t want Ashley to develop any respiratory problems during the trip. If I recall, the last time Kuching was so severely affected by haze, people could barely see beyond a distance of a few meters and everyone except emergency personnel was ordered to stay at home. However, we really praise God that the night before the flight, it finally rained (and pretty heavily too!), and as a result the haze was gone the next day!

The Kwok family at Changi Terminal 2 getting ready to head towards the boarding lounge.

Ashley trying to wear her seat belts without much success.

I’m leaving on a jet plane, don’t know when I’ll be back again… (anyone don’t know this song? heh)

After a pretty uneventful one and a half hour flight, we finally touched down at Kuching International Airport. My first impression was “Wow!”. Compared to the last time I was in Kuching, the airport had transformed into a full-blown muti-story fully air-conditioned airport with glass walls giving it a very modern look. It’s encouraging to see that Kuching is modernizing its infrastructure!

We have arrived!

Home sweet home! Ashley with my dad in the living room.

We spent the remainder of the afternoon shopping for baby food and another teether for Ashley. Her favourite flower-shaped teether was accidentally destroyed when we tried to sterilize it with water that was too hot. We ended up visiting many many department stores and supermarkets but many didn’t stock Ashley’s favourite Gerber brand. When we finally found a supermarket (Parkson) that carried this brand, we loaded up with more bottles than we needed to take back to Singapore since the price was rather cheap. Ah, kiasu-ism… Haha!

After dinner, Uncle Wilfred came over with a huge bag of durians (it was durian season apparently) and mum and daughter just went crazy with them. I swore not to get anywhere near Ashley’s diapers the next morning after seeing how much durian she ate (at least it seemed quite substantial for a baby!).

Till this day, I’m still amazed at how quickly Ashley took to liking the taste of durians. Definitely not due to my genes!!!

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This entry was posted on Friday, August 18th, 2006 at 12:00 am and is filed under Family, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.