From Singapore

Dear All, what's with knocking walls down, just paint them a quiet receding blue, put up some large mirrors, emphasise the window and the fantastic view and save your money, not unless Pete, you are thinking of moving into the adjacent unit. Other tips from a professional landlord available for a small fee.

Daniel is still poohing periodically on the floor. Mary, fed up of cleaning up the mess is advising him not to push, (we figure he has to push quite hard with pampers on!)

At some point in the last 9 months, Jen introduced Claire to Pokemon cards, we have quite a collection, having committed to buying her one packet if she gets her Chinese spelling test right on Tuesdays and another if she gets her english spelling right on Fridays. She has got 100% in English including spelling such words as opposite, interesting, jealous, knock, listen, mistake etc., so it's obviously worked. We have since reverted to coins for the piggy bank instead. I quite took to this Pokemon thing being the compulsive additive person I am, which is probably why the model trains have not gone as far as they should. In my Pokemon research, I discovered there was a pokemon centre not far from us, which organises competitions, so we went along a few times and Claire played the decks I had built, sometimes I sneaked in a game against one of the elder kids (mainly 10 yrs through to 15 yrs). We dropped in this Sunday only to end up enrolling Claire in the National Championships, (sounds grand but we don't have a population of 250,000,000 like the US). She did OK and won a number of games (3 rounds out of 4, with a little bit of coaching from me) and being as there were only 5 in her age group she made it (deservedly) through to the semi finals (of the National Championships), by then our 5 year old had been playing for about 5 hours (Cathy, can you imagine that, getting a 5 year old to participate in one singular activity for so long). In the semi, she played the 10 year old boy she had just beaten 2-1, but as the stakes were so high, I took to only shuffling her deck, she got beaten quite convincingly 2-0 but I think more to do with fatigue, in the 3rd place playoff, she also losing and I conceded for her, 6 hours after we started. First 3 places in each age group get an invitation to attend the world championships in California, plus there are scholarships too, Claire, for her efforts won a US$150 scholarship and of course about 3 months supply of pokemon cards. I think third place gets US$1500 scholarship, so really well worth entering. If we train her up, she could have Ten Grand set aside for her studies by the time she reaches secondary school.

The beauty of a small country.

If any of you kids out there want to know the details of the pokemon deck, I can post it here.

Now we are all back to school and work, we are moving office this week, a really terrible thing to have to do, occurs to me I have never done it before. Never mind, off to Bali for a swim in 2 weeks time.

Mum, lovely to read you on the Blog, Cathy too and Gema. Sorry we don't offer more praise, got used to living in a meritocratic society. Good luck with selling the house M&D, let me know if you're likely to end up homeless, us landlords have contacts.

Turrah luv's

Nic & family