Diary of a New Daddy: Meet Up With An Old Friend

Last week, I met up with an old friend, Jennifer and her daughter, Clara. My friendship with Jennifer dates back to the time when we were both in Sec 1. We were in the same class for 2 years and in the same ECA group for 4 years. (Ya you can tell my age when I use the term ECA and not CCA).

We formed our own clique in class and there were 5 of us - me, Jen, Mei, Mag and Jace. And we called ourselves J²AM², using our initials. I was "A" based on my chinese initial. (Ya, I went to cheena school so they used to call me by my cheena name.) The name that we gave ourselves may sound rather silly but hey, from what I remember, we were rather popular in school and we all had our fair share of crushes and suitors. Those days, (though we did many silly, geeky stuff that I wouldn't really want to elaborate), filled my growing up years with lots of fond memories and also gave me a band of sisterhood whom I appreciate and love.

Jennifer moved to Melbourne about 15 years back and she comes back to Spore occasionally to visit. The last time that we met up was when Caleb was only a few months old. This time round, she came back with her 1 yr old daughter Clara, and we took the opportunity to meet up, together with Mei and Jude. I think it would have been a riot if Mag and Jace were also back in Spore but I guess it's easier said than done considering that everybody's now living in different cities across the globe.

Anyway, for our mini reunion, we arranged to meet at Parkway for lunch. Parkway's an old haunt of ours during our secondary school days and we spent many hours there doing lots of "unproductive" things other than studying

. Since we each had a kid in tow and it was raining cats and dogs, we decided to eat at Crystal Jade for better service and food, that would be more agreeable with the kids. I think we all had a very enjoyable time of catching up, chatting about random things and exchanging tips on motherhood. Though we now have kids in tow and the things that we talk about is very different from what we would have talked about 20 years ago, but still the mood and the atmosphere felt quite like the old times.

Our little spread for lunch.

We were too busy eating. I only remembered to take a photo halfway through our meal.

Jude feeding himself.

Mei specifically asked me to take a photo of him feeding himself so that she could show it to her mum!

Clara, playing with her noodles!

She's such a cutie that she looks adorable even when she's spitting out noodles!

After our lunch we walked round Parkway for a while to run some errands.

Clara posing for me in the middle of the Mothercare shop. When I asked her whether she wanted her photo taken, she prompted squatted down to smile for me. After that, I had to pass her the camera so that she could inspect the photo to see it was well taken or not.