First stop was the bookstore at Lido Place – Wayne dropped us both off before heading to the Bureau to get Rosabelle’s visa done (finally all a-ok and we’re just waiting to collect her two-year visa this week). I was afraid that the book store would not be open so early and thank goodness it was already opened. The nice lady let me exchange my duplicate book, and I went on to buy a book for Rachel (actually got one for her but Rosabelle loves the nursery & rhymes book so much, no matter how ‘cheem’ some may sound to me – like reading ‘A’-level literature – so I got a bigger one as Rachel’s Christmas present instead), and another Christmas book for Sandrine and Natalie (the twins from Mommy & Me whose house we are going for a playdate next week). Whilst I was browsing, Rosabelle would do her own choosing and say ‘这个买个XXX…那个买个YYY…’, until the lady commented that she is so sweet, always thinking about buying things for people. Then I thought to myself that it’s quite true, as I always ask her ‘What shall we get for XXX? Shall we buy this for YYY?’, so that she never takes it for granted that things are always all for, and about, her.
When we were done, I quickly took a taxi to Amcare as we were 20 minutes away from out 11:30am appointment and I sure did not want to risk walking there slowly and miss our slot. Surprisingly enough, when we got there at 11:20am, we could see the doctor within minutes and within another 20 minutes, our consultation and the jab were done. That’s her not looking very pleased with the prick on her thigh…
It’s a clean bill of health for our girl, with the next vaccination due at 3 years old, heh! So Wayne came around and fetched us, which was just nice as by the time we were settling the bill, he had just arrived. Next stop was the Choons’ house. As we were walking there, the attendant at the apartments asked if we were going to 6B, their unit, and told me a lot of kids had already arrived, hehe!Poor Rachel seemed grouchy and Vanessa was carrying her as we arrived, and everybody had just started the buffet lunch catered from Lau Pa Sat. Luckily Rachel was somewhat placated with the presents we brought of the book and an angel pen/bicycle I got for her in Yangshuo. Vanessa had also prepared a goody pack of Christmas stuff, as well as some Christmas books and a doodling pad gift for Rosabelle. It wasn’t long before Rosabelle warmed up to the rest of the many kids brought by Vanessa’s colleagues and friends. Gosh, the folks/team at Weber Shandwick has really changed, and Wayne and I don’t really know the majority of them already.
Our girl ate some rice with prawn/broccoli, then had some biscuits, as the catered foods were all spicy. Then she went on to pretend to scoop foods from the buffet line to feed some baby doll she was holding onto the whole day, heh!
There were friends, both young and old (here’s Jeremy from the tech team – he’s been there since I was there as well).
At one point, our ex-colleague Huanyu actually bumped into Rosabelle accidentally, not being used to looking out for beings below waist level, haha! At that point, she was holding a chocolate dessert and it flew out of her hand as she tumbled to the floor. It wasn’t a hard knock, but she bawled very loudly, so I knew immediately she wasn’t crying from any pain, but more from the fact that she thought that was the end of her dessert treat. True enough, as soon as I put it back in her hands and reassured her that it was ok to eat it, she stopped crying, hoho!Rachel was quite sticky to Vanessa at times, looking for Mummy when she went missing, maybe because it was way past her usual afternoon nap time. At other times, she was the gracious host and let the other kids play with all her toys – so sweet of her.
Rosabelle wasn’t in that gracious a mood – she snatched the dolls from older kids even, making them cry. There was once when she quickly got off the high chair and went to take a doll, then quickly run over to pass to the girl’s mummy who was holding onto another doll – she wanted to exchange the doll for theirs, but that made the poor older girl cry, heh!Think our girl wasn’t very filled up from the lunch, and kept wanting to eat the noodles (which were spicy), so Wayne and I soaked/washed the chili fishballs and she ate like at least 6 of them. I found the food exceptionally spicy – maybe it’s different when it’s catered, as it isn’t normally so spicy in the restaurant.
By around 3pm, most of the guests had left, leaving us and another family, the Choons’ neighbours in Shanghai who had also coincidentally just shifted to Beijing recently. Their two-year-old girl, Clara, is very independent, and liked to play with Rachel a lot. That’s Rosabelle and her in bed, pretending to sleep – our girl even patted/sang to Clara, heh!
We then had to quickly rush off as we collected tickets at our next stop – Wanda cinema at New City for our 5:20pm show (we had to collect tickets at least 35 minutes prior, and we did not want to have to rush later). Our girl was looking really sleepy, and I quickly carried her down from her high chair as we were going into our house carpark. Within minutes upon reaching home, she had fallen asleep as I was nursing her, so that we could rush out of the house by 4:45pm to get there in time for the show.让子弹飞 was highly recommended by Wayne, and I saw the shots/pictures and frankly, wasn’t very keen on watching it. Set in the 1900s, with Chow Yun Fatt and famous Chinese actors Ge You and Jiang Wen, there were horseback-riding/bullet-chasing/military-clothes scenes. Yawn…. So yawn for somebody like me who’s more into modern-day movies, mysteries, suspense or Harry Potter types. Certainly not some ching-chong movie, whether big-budget or not.
But as I watched, it was a really tense movie punctuated by very comic lines delivered by very good actors (love Ge You – he’s so funny!), and not once did I feel bored, though one must have quite a good grasp of Chinese to be able to catch the punchy and fast exchanges. Really recommend this movie to anyone looking for a good day at the cinema! However, I drank almost a whole bottle of mineral water and was really eager to go to the toilet. When the show was ending (Wayne said I did not miss anything much anyway), I quickly made my way out to avoid a long queue later… relief…
After the movie, we headed to Sanlitun Village, as I wanted to have Let’s Burger at Nali Patio. There was a jam getting into the carpark, so Wayne suggested I get off first and get my order. It took him 20 minutes to arrive, by which time I was almost half-way through my heavenly black pepper steak burger (their burgers are still the bestest around town!), and munched on their great, thick fries and chicken salad.
After that, we went shopping, where I spent more than RMB1,000 at Mango, getting two new pairs of shades (ya, to ‘console’ myself for having spoilt a few in recent times…), since they were at half-price, and got a down jacket at RMB300 off the listed price. Nice! Wayne was doing damage at Uniqlo, where I selected some 100% cotton turtlenecks for our girl as they were having discounts as well. Oh great, shopping for the gang!
By the time we got home close to 11pm, Rosabelle was already drinking milk. She woke up only at 8pm, close to 3.5 hours of nap – she must have been really tired out from the day! She then told me that when she woke up, ‘妈妈，玥玥哭了，哭一点点' – that’s what she told my mum too when the latter called looking for me, heh!
By the time we all got settled and ready for bed, it was already way past 12:30am, but hey, it’s the weekend, isn’t it? Heh!
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