Letters from Grandma and Grandpa

This Sunday morning, Jae didn't attend her usual BJG lessons in the morning. Instead, she joined 爷爷 and 奶奶 at the Asians Civilisation Museum and Empress Place, for the launching of the book "Letters from Grandma and Grandpa", which is a compilation of, well, letters from grandmas and grandpas for their grandchildren, a project spearheaded by the NLB. 奶奶's submission was among the contributions selected, so the family got an invitation to attend the launching event, which was to coincide with the Grandparents' Day Gentle Walk event.

Even though we deliberately set off earlier, parking (the 5 of us car-pooled - 爷爷 drove) proved to be difficult. All the road-side carpark lots along Old Parliament Lane, which were nearest to the event venue, were unavailable. While 爷爷 drove off to locate alternative parking spaces (eventually found them at the Parliament House public carpark), the rest of us alighted to take for some photo opportunity along the Singapore River.

The book launching event started at around 9:15am, when the GOH Minister Lim Boon Heng showed up. There was the usual routine of opening address, ribbon cutting, photo-taking, presentation of tokens of appreciation, more photo-taking, before the GOH and his entourage was ushered to tour the Asian Civilisation Museum, which incidentally was having an open house today - free admission for all members of the public.

It was only after the GOH entourage had left for the museum tour, at around 10am, that they started distributing the complimentary books (and goodie bags) to the contributors and invited guests. The counter set up at the basement of the museum was really packed with people, some of them old folks (the grandmas and grandpas) and their family members (such as myself) who went ahead to collect the stuff on behalf. After a bit of shoving and getting shoved at, I managed to pick up the complimentary package, which included two deluxe edition copies of the book (one in English and the other Chinese, handsomely gift-wrapped) as well as other cha-pa-lung items from the Gentle Walk event (floormat - which would come in handy at the next BayB gathering, bottle of New Water, disposable poncho, post-its, assorted discount vouchers, advertisement brochures etc.).

奶奶 also went ahead to the sales counter to purchase 2 extra copies of the regular-print, chinese edition "给孙儿的信", of which a copy was given to us.

It is indeed endearing to read the article that 奶奶 wrote to her dear granddaughter 媛媛 featured in a publication. This book certainly will be a treasured addition to the Time Capsule that we have prepared for Jae. Oh, the accompanying photograph is courtesy of yours truly (claim a bit of credit here :P).



Added on 12 Dec 07