Last Working Week

Our last Sunday of the year coincided with Helen's birthday and despite the early hour she appeared to be very happy with the addition to her Elephant Parade, a special one for the Singapore 50 celebrations called Raffles Landing.
The Parade was created in 2006 by Marc Spits and his son Mike. It was inspired by Marc Spits' visit to the elephant hospital in Thailand, the only one in the world, which constructs prosthetic legs for elephants that encounter landmines when logging in Myanmar. There he saw Mosha, a baby elephant who lost her foot when only seven months old and was the first elephant to receive a prosthetic limb. She is fitted with a new leg every year, and must then learn to walk all over again. 

At the end of the day we convened at Sque Bar at Clark Quay to celebrate the last full working week and to wish our work colleagues happy travelling as we will not see some of them again before we finish work on Thursday night. 

After a relatively quiet day on Monday, Kathy and I caught the bus to Tampines for an evening walk. By the time we arrived the skies had opened up but fortunately by the time we were ready to leave the McCafe the rain had stopped and we were able to complete a pleasant walk to Bedok Reservoir with a circuit of the Reservoir before finishing with dinner overlooking the water. 

Towards the end of dinner Helen and Jo were collected by their very obliging real estate agent to inspect a unit in the area for 2016. Shortly after we arrived home so did they, very happy to have found somewhere to live, after inspecting some very 'ínteresting' offerings over the last couple of weeks. So the "Lady Cave''  is officially no more! Unfortunately we celebrated their success with another bottle of wine, which made for a verrry slow Tuesday!
I did have to begin my day baking a pavlova to take to Robert and Maria's for dinner. We were joined by Craig and Melisa from Kovan Branch and it was a very convivial evening. What had begun as a sedate dinner ended hours later with an empty bottle of Limoncello...one which had been unopened at the start of the evening.

After meeting with Libby for a coffee it was off to work for the last 2 days. It was pretty quiet as many of the students have already started their holidays and there was a marked lack of enthusiasm...and not only on the children's side.
On Thursday morning I walked Bidadari with Libby and had a first sighting of a children's television program being filmed! The bank of photographers were a bit of a clue that perhaps there was an interesting bird in the vicinity, which turned out to be a mugimaki flycatcher (another first sighting)

We also saw both the female and male koel, the bird responsible for my wake up calls most mornings!

After farewelling Sally, who is returning to Australia after 12 months at Punggol I joined the Kovan staff, and Peter, at Joe's to round off our year at MAE. It felt rather flat finishing mid-week but I am ready for a relaxing holiday at home with Michael, family and friends.

Santa visits Punggol Plaza