Jacob Ballas Children's Garden

We have driven passed this place several times and never really found the chance to visit it, until today. After lunch at Relish, Mummy and Daddy brought me to the Jacob Ballas Children's Garden which is part of the Singapore Botanic Gardens. It was at the garden that we found out more about this person.

Jacob Ballas was a pillar of the Jewish community in Singapore, a successful stockbroker and well-known philanthropist. The only child of a poor orthodox Baghdadi family in Amara, Iraq, Jacob was moved from Iraq to Labuan and finally to Singapore in the late 1920s. He later attended school at St Andrew's School and even became the President of the St Andrew's Old Boys Association from 1957 to 1961.

Jacob's career started as a car salesman and later as an insurance agent with Sun Life Insurance. He made his money when he was introduced to stock broking and his company merged with Hong Kong-based Citicorp Vickers to become Vickers Ballas in the early 1990s and it went public in 1993.

We spent about 2 hours in the garden which has a playground and even a water play area. Mummy and Daddy decided we will skip the water play area today and come back another time for it. I had fun at the playground and impressed Mummy and Daddy when I came down the high and long slide, without any hesitation. We ended the visit with ice cream at the Kids Cafe which has pretty good chocolate ice cream. We will certainly be back soon.

Hungry Caterpillar

Thanks to the West Coast Park Playground, I get to have McDonald's breakfast today. Mummy and Daddy decided that we will have brunch at the McDonald's and then let me play at the very very big playground. I had my usual pancakes with lots of syrup and butter. I also got to eat the hash brown which according to Daddy is not healthy because it is deep fried.











We spent about an hour at the playground and after which we went back to McDonald's for some hot fudge sundae and fries with ketchup. Actually it was more like ketchup with fries. It is indeed a special day.


Mummy had booked tickets for the Hungry Caterpillar play at the Fusionopolis in the afternoon. I like the story very much and have been asking Mummy to read me the story many times. It was very interesting and had 3 stories packed into the 45 mins play. There was The Little Cloud, The Mixed Up Chameleon and The Very Hungry Caterpillar, all by Eric Carle. It was very well done and surprisingly there were only 2 persons behind the scene. Mummy and Daddy enjoyed the play too.

HFMD

I went to school today only to find out that it will be closed for the next 10 days because of 7 cases of Hand Foot Mouth Disease among my friends. Apparently HFMD usually affects infants and children and has been prevalent in most of the child care centres. It is moderately contagious and is spread through direct contact with the mucus, saliva, or feces of an infected person. I suppose one of my friends got it from somewhere else and passed it to the others.

Mummy and Daddy think I am ok and not infected although when they checked the inside of my mouth, they see some red dots but not blisters typical of HFMD. I also do not have high fever which is one of the symptoms of HFMD and finally, my appetite is as per normal so it is quite unlikely I have HFMD.

Apparently there is no specific treatment for HFMD so one just have to drink lots of water and get plenty of rest if infected.

We just got wind that my friend Asher is confirmed down with HFMD and has some pretty nasty blisters. I hope he gets well soon.

If all goes well, we will resume school on the 15th July. Meanwhile Nai Nai has to put up with me for the next 10 days.