Our gal loves to sing and so for her 16th birthday, we got her a beautiful microphone to record music with.

We made this video together one afternoon. Over mugs of hot Milo. At least 15 re-takes. And in between baking cinnamon rolls.

It’s a good one. Check it out!

I am bursting with pride. *beams*

If you like it, please click on the video above or click here and go to Youtube and click on LIKE and give our little girl some encouragement. Thanks!
 

I mentioned in my earlier post, that we were in a slightly dodgey location when we did our painting with light. It was called Newtown and although it wasn’t necessary an unsafe neighbourhood to walk about in, it wasn’t a place that we would roam about on our own.

We were there in January 2011 and I had loved the walk because of the graffiti walls. See Graffiti Photo Walk. I was excited to go back to do painting with light because it was such a privilege for our gal to be able to see all this graffiti art of Joburg city.

What a pleasant surprise it turned out to be when I discovered that all the walls that we had seen in January have been painted over! I didn’t know they “changed” the art so quickly. The old paintings were all gone and beautiful new ones have replaced them. Oh gosh, that made all the shots I took in January even more precious now.

More drawings with sparklers.

And a superhero was born! This was done by outlining the person with a torchlight while the shutter is open.

And yeah, we love Joburg city.

It’s been 8.5 months now and I still marvel at the kind of stuff we get to do in South Africa. This place may not be the safest place on earth. But it is surely an exciting one.

Here’s a stop motion video clip of our entire evening. Shot by a fellow photowalker, Bianca Bothma. It is freaking cool. We appeared in the video at 0:22 and 0:41. Our gal was drawing with sparklers.

It was a very cold evening. But we were very excited.

A small group of photography enthusiasts were meeting up and we were going to make some “light art”.

We came to.. of all places.. a large trash dumping ground.

It was too dark for me to see what was around. Which was good for me, I guess. I could then focus on setting up my camera, remote trigger and tripod.

We had a huge bunch of sparklers and a laser light for this experiment. The last time we tried painting with light was at home – see Playing With Light, and it was really fun. But being in a huge open space with abandoned buidings as the setting was simply amazing.

Here was our first try with sparklers. A giant mess.

Our girl tried to draw a sun and a tree.

And then a house. We realised, Hey, this is not easy!

So we practised and practised.. and finally got it!

It really wasn’t easy writing words like this because we had to imagine how the letters would look like inverted and then write them in the air. It was difficult to gauge the distance between each letter, and write and physically move at the same time.

Making sure lines don’t cross when you don’t want them too was even harder.

But it was fun.. way fun..

And only got better as we got crazier and we had more quirky ideas..

Oops! There were ghosts!

And then there were angels.. haha!

We had heaps of fun. And decided to shoot a picture in the darkness with our friend doing angel hoops above our heads. Try standing completely still for 20 seconds. With a frozen smile and eyes wide open. Keeping still was very important because any movement would cause blurriness.

This was one of our best nights in Johannesburg. Very cool!
 

If you’ve been following this blog, you would know that I support the Kliptown Youth Programme.

The last time I visited the kids, I noticed that a bunch of them were playing a game similar to a game that we call “Zero Point” in Singapore. I grew up playing this game with my friends. Those were my glorious days, I could jump so high!

See a sample video of the game here -

The kids in Kliptown were playing with a thin elastic band thingy and it was rather old looking.

We’re planning to visit them again soon. So we decided to make some really good solid zero point ropes to give to them. It’s basically making a rope by looping rubber bands together. We made our ropes extra thick and strong with 3 bands per loop!

Our gal happily got into the act. Actually, she did most of the work. Haha..

Just our family’s way of giving back. =)

[Postscript - Our little girl read this post and insisted that I add on to explain why she only had one sock on and looked so funny. It was because she took off her sock so that she could hook the zero point to her toe while she strung it. =)]

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For all posts on Kliptown Youth Programme, go to the archive here.
 

We went to get our yellow fever vaccination shots today.

Major drama. I bet the Dr thought we were nuts. Take injection also must take picture? Haha!

Now we’re set for some major adventure ahead. Woohoo!
 

Family time is a privilege for us.

Our kids are based in different countries, one for school and one for military service. And we are based in South Africa. Spending time together is something like – 60% Skype, 20% in real life and 20% in our dreams.

We like to think that we spend whatever time together in real life wisely. If you are my follower, you would know that I’ve risked my sanity on top of giant rollercoasters in the name of love for my family. Okay, that wasn’t very wise. But then, we like to think we are weird extraordinary parents.

We encourage our kids to bring their friends along for family time.

They think we are being nice and their friends think we are cool. Actually, it’s just our evil way of hogging every minute of their time. Haha!

If I had a choice, I would like us to eat at Crystal Jade every day. But the kids like to take us to eat their favourite food. And that means greasy, yummy, hearty food. Sigh, my poor waistline.

Sometimes we insist on doing some.. err.. fun-filled activities.

Except that the kids always have their own idea on what’s fun. And we always end up doing something they are passionate about. Which is very often something dangerous. To me, it is!

But seriously, no matter what we do, it’s spending time together that matters. The activities are not important. One of the best moments we’ve shared together involved just a Jenga game set and bowls of ice cream.

Err.. did I mention we also made alot of noise and terrorised our neighbours?
 

So many of us work so hard for our families, only to end up being away from them all the time.

When was the last time you spent good quality time with your family?

We want to spend time with our family, but we can’t. *sob* So if your family is by your side, make an effort to spend quality time together this weekend!

The National Family Celebrations’ annual Family Day Out is on this Saturday, 25 June 2011. They have organised activities at the Waterfront Promenade at Marina Bay, Singapore. Go check them out! For more information, go to their website HERE.

You don’t have to be restricted to Marina Bay. On this Family Day, just gather your family and do something together. Make it a special day to remember for everyone at home!
 

Our boy loves longboarding (see earlier post on it here).

He has convinced the hubby to try it the last time. And this time, he insisted I try it too.

Me. Longboarding? GULP.

We’re talking about a gal old lady who has never successfully roller-bladed, roller-skated, rip-sticked or snowboarded. I highly doubt I have any sense of balance at all.

But our boy was insistent and the hubby was encouraging. So off came my platform shoes and I went on the board.

Slowly at first.. and I always held on to our boy as I moved.

I glided along VERY slowly.

And with a bit of confidence, I went WEEEEEEEE!

Heehee.. don’t be fooled. That was just a few seconds of gentle careful gliding before I fell off.

Oh well, just our weekend family bonding time. =)