+ Interior | Son's Aquarium

This is probably the most satisfying thing I have done all week.

Free my son's fish from a small confined plastic fish tank to a 2 by 1 Foot aquarium, complete with landscape consisting of pebbles, rocks and aquatic plants. The plants cost me less than S$9.00.

In addition, a new submerged Dolpin pump costing me S$14.00 that not only does the filtering but also blows out fine bubbles to oxygenate the water, as well as a S$20.00 Jalli light-UV lamp for the fish and the plants for simulated sunshine.

His breeding programme of guppies he brought home from school has yielded more guppies, combined with the initial Tetras we purchased for his room proved too small for all the fish tank in his room.

We set the big aquarium at the service balcony of our home and fit it with a timer to automatically turn on the light for daylight and off at 8:00pm. The autofeeder with timer is set to feed small amounts of fine grains 3 times in the day.

This should take care of accidentally left the fish unfed. Tablet CO2 for the plants was purchased too at S$9.00. Advised to place a tablet weekly to keep the aquatic plants last longer and even thrive.

These small fish and the plants should self-sustain the aquarium environment for months without the need to clean up the whole tank as compared to the weekly clean-up that most times ended-up to be his Mom's chore instead of him.

Once done in the late afternoon, both of us stood there for hours admiring our masterpiece and the sheer joy to see the fish to at least be like in their natural environment.

Watching the fish makes me calm down so much, especially from a hectic and stressful day at work. This is a wonderful win-win situation. The fish have a better living space and I have a therapeutic corner to destress for the day.

+ Garden | In Bloom

This is the second time that colours from the flowers captured by attention.

Was coming back in the afternoon today from being called to work for something urgent that was not my department's issues, but to find the root cause for them anyway. After a hectic fuss and done what could be done at work, I left accomplished, but was feeling kind of frustrated at the same time.

The bus number 72 journey I took from Ang Mo Kio Avenue 5 to Tampines Avenue 9 was relaxing. It was bright day, the ride was quiet with very few people on the second deck where I sat.

Along the way, I remembered the funny-looking double funnel structures along Old Tampines Road. Always wondered what it was from its building phase to until today.

Finally I got to read the signboard at its entrance when the bus passed by.

It is Tampines NeWater plant. I got to snap a photo of it when thankfully, somebody alighted off the bus stop opposite Golden Pagoda Temple.

The bus was stationary enough for me to snap a steady photo, which I could not several times with my Sony Ericsson s700i cellphone camera.

One urge to capture the unique structure in a photo done!

Got off the bus and walked home to my block. One my way, a beautiful sight captured my eye.

The whole neighbourhood was in bright vibrant green from the sunny Sunday, and splashes of violets and pink from the blooming bougeanvillas.

Here, yellow and red from the heliconias, but the one "wow" feeling I got was from these row of trees with bright purple flowers. Do not know the name of the species, but its blooming just splendidly.

From an initially thought a restful day that became a hectic and frustrating morning at work, the claming bus ride and these cheerful sight just made my day.

Now to clean the fish tank with my son this afternoon.

His guppies breeding experiment is spawing too many frys and we need to move these adult guppies to a bigger tank to protect the young ones from being eaten. Off to work at home. This time with pleasure.

+ Interior | PC Power

Went to COMEX with my son last Sunday, 4 September 05.

Though it was raining heavily for the whole lot of the island, both of us the gadgets buff had to be there. I had to see a few interesting stuff like the 64bit PC from Acer and HP's Media Centre PC to replace my existing one.

Since he achieved good results for his recent exam, my son was divided between GameBoy Advance and new XBox games that are always on offer only during these computer expos.

Two floors of computer stuff and jam-packed crowd left nothing much to see actually. Spent most of the time at Microsoft Booth on 4th floor waiting for my son to decide which games to pick. The offers were - buy one for 10% discount, two for 20% and three games for 30%. Some new games had a "50% on second purchase" green tags on them.

My son was served by two teenage boys who were defintely game buffs enthusiastically. He finally settled for Mech Assault 2, Price Of Persia 2 and XMen Legend. All three for S$146.75 instead of the usual S$209.70

I found myself unresistable to Microsoft's Wireless Keyboard and Mouse set that was formerly S$129.00 months back, now reduced to S$59.00 from the usual reduced price of S$79.00.

What a wonderful feeling for me to have the cluttered wires reduced while my articulation to use the keyboard and mouse is totally unrestricted now. Cool!

Next phase already on the way. I am beefing my PC up with another set of 1GB DDR total to 2GB RAM for greater and speedier computing power, especially when I edit movies with Microsoft's Movie Maker program downloaded free off its website.

I can hear my son's laughter from his room while he attempts to master the game before he goes online to battle with other online gamers. We are giving him the freedom to play as much as he wants, since this whole week is a school holiday.

+ Garden | In Bloom

After the hot and humid August weather we had to endure, intermittent rain in between days towards the end of the month brought much relief to us. With that came also flowers in blooming everywhere I saw.

I have been observing the trees planted along the centre of dividers of a two way road, while I ride SBS Bus number 72 from work in Ang Mo Kio Avenue 5 to Tampines.

They are in full bloom before with bright purple flowers on some trees and white flowers on others alternating between each one. Do not know what name of the trees are or the species.

Tried looking-up on the National Parks and Recreation website, but only names of trees were mentioned, but no photos accompanying each for me to know for sure. Guess I have to look for it somewhere else in the net.

Nonetheless, the blooms are also happening right in front of my block entrance. Striking yellow and red colours set amidst its bright green leaves as brackground of Heliconia Psittacorum or simply the Parrot Flower Heliconia is beautiful.

Good as wallpaper either as original or modified Al Fresco style, the flowers are simply wonderful to look at.