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March Madness and Basketball fun

During my childhood I play the bingo game with my sister and my neighbours in Tatabanya. These days with the technological advancement, bingo is played online and simply with a Basketball bingo cards like this one

March Madness. I am kind of excited about March Madness. It is quite simple as I just fill out the brackets and pick my winning teams. For those of you who have not tried, you might wanna get a head start with some basketball fun. Watch the games and follow along. Pick your team, grab your buddies and choose words such as rebound and missed free throw and get the competition and betting started early.

Besides bingo, we also play a game called Beugró. It is similar to the American 'Whose line is it anyway'. We played it last week and it was great fun. First Caroline prepared the lines on strips of paper. Players picked three each and they have to imagine they are in a situation. Upon a clap, the player will have to read the first line at random, and act along with the written contents together with the set situation mentioned earlier. Players get to exercise their creativity and this is one great family fun too! I think it is a great ice-breaker as well.

In Singapore, Zannnie also plays game such as Boggles, Pictionary and Scrabbles. Her favourite is Pictionary and Bingo. Pictionary is like charade but it is drawn on papers and the other players has to guess what is expressed in the drawing. As for bingo, it is with numbers which is randomly picked from 1-100, on a tally sheet, the player with the most numbers covered in a straight line horizontally or vertically wins. Bingo can be such an all time favourite for everyone.

Joys of having a little baby

We read about several drugs relating to weight loss and we found one that is safe for pregnant women called xenical. When we visited our friends in July last year, one of Zannnie's friend was pregnant. Ruyi is an old friend of Zannnie from the elementary school and they knew each other for almost 30 years! Of course, we must meetup, for she is a very special and very helpful friend of Zannnie. So during the dinner, I remembered that she was sharing with us how well her little daughter will learn to swim. And she shares some joys she had for her pregnancies.

For the first time when she had her first pregnancy of little Louisa, she was always joyful of being pregnant. Now that Louisa will have a little brother, she is also spreading the joy of having a little baby. Addition of a boy to the new family nucleus is very important for a Chinese family. She loves having more children although child caring in Singapore is not easy for working parents. One of the joys of being pregnant as she said, she recalls the better treatment during pregnancy and even the childbirth went off smoothly. She could eat her favourite food despite the fact that she has some cravings. They regularly used a weight gain estimator. Andy, her husband, would always grant her wishes for her food cravings. As such, she felt the love by her husband MORE during this period of being a pregnant woman.

Besides, she savours each and every moment of how her body undergoes the transformation during the nine months of pregnancy. Ruyi is a petite woman and she has a beautiful tummy. For the first baby, she took a photo of herself each day, to capture the transformation of her body. Unfortunately towards the last few days before she gave birth to little Louisa, all the photos were accidentally deleted in one press of the button on the digital camera by her husband. She was totally annoyed but then now having little Aaron, she pampers herself with some makeover shots for pregnant ladies at a professional photography studio.

Spring is coming!

In the coming Spring and nearing to my birthday in mid-May, Zannnie would have been here for three years. It's how surprising she is able to adapt quite quickly to our four seasons here in Hungary. In cold winter like these days, we cover ourselves with more layers of clothings and at home, we normally switch on the central heater almost all the time. Most of the houses here are not equipped with underfloor heating which can be very essential when it is in the subzero temperatures for almost two thirds of the winter season.

Zannnie has serious allergy to the dust and the high humidity in the air. Initially it was also an important criteria before we have our dog, Momo. She chose the dog with care, because the fur of some dogs or even the 100% humidity level in Singapore is a problem for her. You can imagine how many times she needs to blow her nose in a day as on an average, she needs about 5 packets of tissue paper at least. Since Momo is a Havanese dog, his coat is hair and not fur. Hence, she is totally glad to be living here in Budapest.

The allergy season here in Hungary is mainly the pollen during the Spring. It does affect a lot of my working colleagues and students who attend the University. Some of them will have sore throats, sore eyes and runny noses. It can be a painful season for those with such allergies. It is inevitable if one has to commute to work or to the University/school by public transportation. The air will be full of pollens after the first bloom of the flowers in the spring season. I love spring, it is one of my favourite season because this is the best period of time when I can enjoy a good nap in the garden on our swing. It is usually cooling with fresh breeze that lightly touches your skin.

Little scene from the Irish Easter Rising

"So on the sunny Monday morning after Easter, as Irish Volunteers and troops of the Citizen Army assembled at Liberty Hall, Connolly's headquarters, Pearse ignored his sister's embarrassingly shrill plea: 'Come home Pat, and leave all this foolishness'! Instead he marched off with his men."

Piers Brendon: The decline and fall of the British Empire 1781-1997

Ski holidays

One of the things we spoke about these days was the ski holidays. It's been snowing quite a lot these days in Budapest. Everyone is discussing about where to go, such as where is the most romantic ski destinations, where in France is the worlds biggest ski areas and so on. Different friends around us chose different destinations. Some to France, some to Slovakia, while some to Switzerland.

Today, we met up with May and Peter for dinner at the Hong Kong Restaurant in Budapest. Wow, it was like a company chinese new year reunion because all the colleagues of May & Peter were invited. Coincidentally, this weekend on the 14th February which is the Chinese New Year is also the St. Valentine's Day.

May started to share with us about her ski trip experience in Slovenia. She said it was very good as it includes everything from meals, to ski tickets, ski gear rental and last but not the least, the accommodation for that weekend. They had a great time at 100 Euro per person, most importantly as she added, the accommodation was of good quality (as she expected something of lesser standards at this low price).

I suggested to Zannnie about going to take some snowy mountains photography last week. My Slovenian friend Alenka suggested some nice spots called Kranjska gora and Rogla. Just simply googling the photos online, it was really amazing!

Baby shopping

One of our Singaporean friends who used to be living in Budapest has moved back to Singapore. Partly they choose to return because our friend Evelyn was pregnant and for better and more professional medical services availability in Singapore, they decided to make the move. Her husband Mark was an expat and they were living in Budapest for about two years.

Now their baby is about 2 months old :) Very soon items such as strollers, jogging strollers, full featured strollers are going to be very important items. Since Evelyn is a petite, she will most probably go for the lightweight strollers.

Lightweight Strollers

Evelyn and Mark's baby girl Emma looks totally like Mark :) Her strong resemblance makes her look so adorable. Talking about babies, Zannnie's old friend Ruyi has given birth to a son. He is such a smiley baby and by the third month and he is already 7kg. It can be really be tough for a small-build mom to carry a big baby like Aaron. I guess the sling type baby carriers like this one will be a great choice to share out the load on Ruyi's shoulders.

It is a like a baby stuff online shopping day all at once for friends around you with all the young babies :) How can the family go without booster seats? When they become toddlers, they will need to be 'boosted' to the table level to sit together with the family for a meal together. Here, we can also find some practical car booster seats. Finally, I found some really useful tips about how to choose the best baby walkers for children who are learning to walk. From baby proofing your home to avoid accidents, to looking out for safety features such as gripping mechanisms, extra wide base for maximum stability to brakes! There are even those with height adjustments, wow, that's really some important information for the first timer parents.