All junior and senior children in the school were invited to audition to take place in the annual concert, the Spring Soiree, and a small number of the Year 2 infants auditioned too. Much to our surprise, both Adam and Hannah decided to audition to sing a solo and, having seen Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat in London last December, they both chose songs from that.
Auditions were done and they were both told to practice at home. They learnt the words and practiced and finally, the big day arrived. To be honest, we never imaged that Hannah would actually have the courage to sing a solo in front of so many parents and children and even as she stood on the stage with the music teacher playing the introduction on the piano, we waited with baited breath to see if she would actually go through with it. She did, and what's more she later accompanied Adam in the harmonies to his song and we breathed a sigh of relief when they had both finished. Hannah was the youngest performer in the whole concert too.
Well, since then, our car had it's 3rd birthday in May. This was celebrated by the need for a new tax disc and its first safety inspection, much like an MOT. Needless to say,the system here is different which caused some confusion in trying to make arrangements. Finally, it became apparent that here the test is performed in a goverment testing centre, rather than the garage I'd been trying to book it into, so I drove off to our nearest centre. I drove in and paid cash for the test. I was given a bottle of water to drink and told to sit at the far end. The car was driven down a track, inspected over a pit, the wheels rolled on rollers, things checked and turned on and off and after about 10 minutes it arrived at the other end. I was told it had passed, given a print out of a certificate from a huge printer at the end of the track and that was it. Done. Quite impressive, less than 15 minutes from arrival to departure and nice that the mechanics doing the test have no vested interest in finding faults to repair!
This was all done in time for a long weekend over a public holiday when we drove into Malaysia and up to Melacca for the weekend. Driving in Malaysia stopped me complaining about drivers here for 4 whole weeks after we returned. It definitely comes under the heading "an experience".
Our first interesting encounter was as we drove through a toll booth and onto a 3 lane highway. The first thing we saw was a man strolling down the fast lane with a strimmer, cutting the grass down the centre. No warnings signs, no cones, no lights, he wasn't even wearing a brightly coloured jacket! Not a job I'd choose to do. We then encountered Malaysian lane discipline. It would appear that the speed limited of 110kph is treated my most drivers as a minimum speed limit and all lanes are available for overtaking - including the hard shoulder (that was a surprise, I can say). As for the idea of leaving a gap between cars - forget it. If you try and leave gap, somebody (or half a dozen people) just fill it, usually by weaving madly in and out of the traffic at break neck speed.
We finally arrived in Melacca and, as it's an old, small town and our hotel was tall, modern and in the centre, we hadn't invested in a map as, according to David's colleagues at work - "you can't get lost". We soon proved that wrong and found ourselves on the wrong side of a larger town than we expected. We tried to follow signs and and asked directions as we trailed slowly across the old centre which was never designed for large numbers of cars, eventually arriving at the hotel much later than expected.
Once there, we had an enjoyable couple of days although exploring the old China Town area was hardwork due to the lack of pavements and excess of traffic and large monsoon drains. Somehow it seemed even hotter than Singapore, but we managed to get to the main places of interest including a tour in a lovely cycle rickshaw. As you can see, we put Adam work!At least the return journey saw lighter traffic and we didn't get lost. Nor did we have a queue at the border crossing this time (outbound saw us queueing for 1½ hours to get into Malaysia), and all in all, this took about 3 hours off the journey time!
Somehow, the rest of last term seemed to whizz by. David has been very busy work but has been getting out to play tennis with an expat group most weeks. He's also started playing with the British Club as we've recently joined it. This was something we'd been discussing so we visited the club on its open day. They were doing a prize draw of a years membership and, to resolve our should we, shouldn't we join dilemna, we won the prize!!! We have since attended the new members cocktail evening and then won a prize for two adults to have a free Sunday Champagne Brunch. If they check their records, I fear that we may be banned from entering any other draws.
Other than that, we seem to have filled our time with a whole range of things. Adam was in the school's annual musical production, along with the other juniors and seniors which this year was Mary Poppins. There were school trips and parents evenings and I played tennis matches and trained with the team I'm a member of in a league here. There was also a trip to the UK for myself and the children to plan, book and organise.
Once term ended, after a few days the children and I headed for the UK and spent two weeks catching up with family and some friends. Unfortunately, the heatwave we'd seen whilst watching Wimbledon ended the day before we arrived. But the children saw many of their old school friends and relatives and I caught up with a few friends too. After a slow crawl round the M25 at rush hour with road works, followed by 1½ hours up the M1, I found British driving so considerate and good. Now what does that tell you about driving in Malaysia?
And - big news.......Adam is now 10! It was his birthday just after we got back and here he is blowing out the candles on his cake.
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