#growingup #sillyparents

.. as I near my fourth birthday :)

Time line :  Dec'18. Letter tracing and lego duplo building completely by herself

 

 

 

Towards Canadian PR - Part 2

Part-1 covered the process of entering the Express Entry pool till getting the Invitation to Apply. Once we get the ITA, we have 60 days (as of Oct-2018) to submit the application of PR after completing the personalized checklist from CIC. A general idea of checklist is given below. 

• Checklist for making the application to Permanent Residence (All scanned documents MUST be of original document and NOT of photocopied documents)
• Marriage license/Certificate
• Scanned copy of the original of marriage license certificate) -only for the principal applicant.
• Passport
• Scanned copy of the front and back pages with all the stamped pages
• Required for all the applicants
• Medical checkup (Click the link to know more about Medical checkup requirement)
• To be done at a clinic designated by CIC, locally.
• The provisional medical certificates can be collected the same day, which must be scanned(originals) and uploaded later, during the application process.
• Police Clearance Certificates (Click the link to know more about PCC) 
• Indian PCC - We chose to get the Indian PCC from India itself and not through Indian embassy in Singapore. The PCC was issues by the Passport Seva Kendra (PSK) in my hometown in India. If you have renewed the passport in the last 10 years or so at the PSK (and not abroad),  they would have your record and the PCC will be issued in the first visit itself. If not, the process has to go via a manual police verification followed by the PCC issuance (need to be collected in person at the PSK), which can take almost a month. The originals need to be scanned and uploaded during the application process.
• Singapore PCC - As mentioned by CIC, the Certificate of Clearance need not be obtained upfront, from Singapore Police Force, at this stage. As and when the application review proceeds, a few months after we submit the final application, CIC sends a letter requesting the PCC from Singapore. We need to provide this letter (mandatory) to appeal to Singapore Police to provide PCC. However, we found that if you're a single applicant you can get the Singapore PCC upfront by just providing the ITA letter, but require this request letter from CIC for your dependents.
• Employement Records
• For all the past jobs, we presented a scanned copy of the original relieving letter bearing HR Head's signature, on company's letter head, citing our full name, designation, duration in the company etc. In addition, we also scanned our last salary slips in each job with the last drawn salary details. For the present job, we got a letter from the company's letter head citing our employement status with the currently drawn salary. Its a good idea to prepare this before the ITA itself, as this good be time consuming depending on your career path.
• Educational Records
• We provided scanned copies of the original degree certificates, original transcripts and the ECA report from WES.
• Proof of funds
• As Proof of the funds that we have claimed in the application to enter the pool, we showed both of ours savings bank account details in Singapore, for the last six months. The monthly account summary, with each page stamped had to be requested at the bank. Since this fund covered the claimed amount, we did not show any other source of income. A guideline to the fund requirement is mentioned here.
• Digital Photo
• The requirement for the digital photo and the hardcopy (required later, while stamping the visa in the passport) is provided here. Sticking to specifications is highly suggested to avoid any delays while processing.
• Birth certificate
• This was required only for the child. Scanned copy of the original document was uploaded.
• Cover Letters
• Whenever we felt that a little description is needed to explain the uploaded documents, we always wrote section-wise cover letters(as a first page of the scanned document(s) pdf), which we felt will help the reviewing officer overcome any confusion.
• Finally, in the cover letter section at the top level, we wrote a letter citing our application giving a brief introduction to who we are and what we are and why we think obtaining a Permanent Residence in Canada is important to us.
• Submitting the application and AoR
• We submitted our completed PR application in February'17 and received the Acknowledgement of Receipt (AoR) on the same day. And the wait began.... In part-3, we'll cover the different steps from getting the AoR till we got the PR card.

Towards Canadian PR - Part 1

This series of posts, written over three months, aim to capture the step by step procedure of our journey to obtaining the Canadian Permanent Residence (PR) through Federal Skilled Worker (FSW) category. I try to cover as-much-details-as-possible-yet-being-precise, in the hope that someone somewhere might find it informative, just the way we benefited from reading a lot of forums, blogs etc, back during our application time and also as a log book for future reference. We will cover the process in three parts - first part will cover the process summary till Invitation to Apply (ITA), second part covers the process of subsequent submission of Application of Permanent Residence, the third part will cover the phase between submission of PR application till getting the PR card and the final part will cover a brief summary of the expenses incurred at all the phases.

• Category
• First and foremost, the category of our application  - Federal Skilled Worker (Express Entry). 
• Eligibility assessment:
• Create a log in under CIC and assess the score and eligibility under the Comprehensive Ranking System. A few of the criteria include age (of the primary applicant), educational level (of both primary applicant and spouse), experience level as well as proving language proficiency (English and/or French).
• Once the eligibility is ascertained, the previous draws of application give an idea of the points statistics in the past rounds, to understand the chances. To fetch the maximum points, we had to provide all credentials and supporting documents for all three of us.
• Language Proficiency test:
• As part of the language proficiency test, we both appeared for IELTS. The results are valid for two years. (The IELTS results must be valid while receiving the ITA). The results were available in three weeks time. It is important to retain the hardcopy of the results mailed from IELTS, as the number mentioned in this document is needed while filling the application at CIC.
• Education Credential Assessment (ECA):
• In parallel, apply for educational credential assessment to claim points for the highest level of completed education. We used World Educational Service (WES). This was required as both of our degrees were not awarded by any Canadian institution. We had to provide
• sealed transcripts from the university, in stamped envelopes 
• copies of the degree certificates, for the highest education level. 
• cover letter explaining the documents. 
• Again, the reference numbers in the WES report (which cites the Canadian equivalent of the highest degree that we have claimed) are required while filling the application page at CIC. 
• We opted normal post for the results to be sent back to us. This is okay as WES also sends the soft copy of the report via email much ahead. The whole process of us sending the transcripts to getting the ECA report took around two months. 
• Entering the Express Entry Pool:
• With the IELTS results and the WES results at hand, we created our profile and officially joined the Express Entry pool. 
• Invitation to Apply
• At our time of application, the CRS ranking from the past round of draws were all above 450 and the recent draws were in and around 480-490. We got our Invitation to Apply (ITA) for Permanent Residence in Jan'17. Once we got ITA, we had 90 (update: as of Oct'18 it is 60) days to apply for the Permanent Residence with lot of documents and a pretty long set of checklist, which is personalized by CIC, for each application. Part-2 will cover this checklist and the process of submitting the application for PR.

Review #3 - 24 piece (set of two) Jigsaw puzzle from Ravensburger (Finding Dory)

After trying out smaller piece-and-size puzzles, we decided to try gradually higher number puzzle pieces and searched a few book stores in Singapore. Most of the higher size puzzles for  an age group of 4-6 were roughly in the size of 25cm X 15cm. To our dismay, we found that most of the choices did not have a good picture quality. Moreover, the texture of the solved puzzle/ individual puzzle piece was not even plain; they appeared a little bit curvy to the extent that you have to skew your eyes ( atleast ours) a bit to see the picture properly. May be they have a reason behind it, but did not appeal to us. We further researched and went to some exclusive jigsaw puzzle shops and found some great jigsaw puzzle for the toddler group with amazing quality and decent piece size, but had higher number of pieces (50+). We liked a few of the brands we saw there and decided to browse Amazon.

So, in April'18, we purchased a 24 piece jigsaw puzzle themed on "Finding Dory"( set of two puzzles) from Ravensburger through Amazon Prime. The product comes with an age group recommendation of 4+. This has two puzzle sets and apart from the puzzles, carry two colour-printed papers corresponding to each solved puzzle. We placed each of them in plastic protectors for better longevity in our home. The pieces of the two puzzles are combined in the box, with their back sides coded to identify them. Nevertheless, we used two zip pouches to separate them. The product box can be used as the storage container for both the puzzle sets. The colour and the contrast (we are very particular about this as we realized that contrast between pieces is very important for Anouk to differentiate the pieces) were great and the solved puzzle gave a very smooth textured feeling. It was both interesting and challenging for the 3 year old Anouk. We liked the fact that her perseverance is really showing up and inspite of the increased difficulty, she was not giving up with initial trials. The size of each piece is quite comfortable for the three year old Anouk to handle well. The size of the solved puzzle is ideal for her to solve it on the table top. The pieces are quite sturdy and after been played out multiple times on most days, have not met with a single mishap over the last two months. Overall we really liked the jigsaw puzzle and feel it as a good product for 3-4 year olds or even as an introductory puzzle for 5 year old, depending upon the child's interest and ability to sit 10-15 min+ at a stretch.

Below is the snap of the product box and the printouts of the solved puzzles that come along with the product. We have also captured the videos of Anouk solving the two puzzles. These videos were taken two months after the purchase, by which time she was already solving 49-piece puzzles by herself. So she appears to be solving each 24-piece puzzle under 2.5 minutes (Initially she took around 10-13 minutes to solve it).

24 piece puzzles (set of 2) from Ravensberger
Left : Box cover (top) and box (below)
Right: Colour printouts of the two puzzles that comes with the product

                                       

Review Summary

Product : 24 piece jigsaw puzzles (set of 2) from Ravensburger

Theme : Finding Dory

Purchased from : Amazon Prime

Price : S$ 12.40 (including all taxes)

Puzzle dimension : 26cm X 18 cm (approximate)

Age group : Product specifies 4+. We used for our 3 years 2 months child.

Highlights : Excellent picture quality, puzzle piece quality, colour contrast, puzzle shape, puzzle size, texture. Comes with a colour printout of the solved puzzle. The product box can be used as a storage container

Low light : Though the back side of the puzzles are coded to easily identify between two puzzles, we found it rather tedious to sort every time we took them out to play. We used two zip pouches to keep them separate. Would have been nice if there were sub-packages inside to separately carry each puzzle set's pieces.

Review # 2 Jigsaw puzzles (set of 4) from My Greatest Child

We had written a review of the beginner jigsaw puzzles from My Greatest Child here. Following the first set, we had purchased two more similar puzzle sets, as Anouk seemed quite interested in the activity. Each puzzle box had a set a four, just like the previous. All the three sets were really good choices as an introduction to jigsaw puzzles. Each of the puzzle set had pieces varying from 9, 12, 15 and 20. Like the previous, had really good picture quality and contrast, which were very important for a 3-year old to solve it all by herself. We had purchased these two puzzles in February'18, a week after the first purchase. These three puzzle sets gave Anouk a very good idea about jigsaw puzzle solving and made her interested to solve more. In following months we graduated to 28 piece floor puzzles and 24, 35 piece puzzles from Ravensburger, which Anouk was able to solve all by herself. On that front, the beginner jigsaw puzzles were really worth it, for the sheer interest it has developed in the kid and makes up for a great hand-down stuff to her younger cousins.

Below is the snap of the jigsaw puzzle boxes and all the solved puzzles. One of them had transportation theme and the other used wild animals. All the four puzzles per set are shown and have pieces varying from 9, 12, 15 and 20.

Set of 4 puzzles: Box and the solved puzzles
 Theme : transportation (top) & wild animals (bottom)

Below are the videos of 3 year old Anouk solving these puzzles. Each video captures her solving all the four puzzles in a set. The videos are taken 3 months after we introduced these puzzles to her. By this time, she was already solving 35 piece puzzles and had just started 49 piece jigsaw puzzles. Hence she appears to be solving these simple puzzles decently fast (which was not the case when these puzzles were introduced).

Review Summary

Product :  Jigsaw puzzles ( set of 4) from My Greatest Child
Theme : Transportation, Wild animals

Bought from  : My Greatest Child, # 03-91, Plaza Singapura

Price : S$ 6.90 per box (of 4 puzzles)
Dimension of each solved puzzle : 15cm X 10.5 cm

Customer age group : We used for our 3 year old ( Product does not specify any age)

Highlights : Excellent introduction to jigsaw puzzles for 2-4 year olds, budget option, sturdy and toddler friendly pieces, gradually increasing complexity from 9 to 20 piece puzzles, attractive packaging, good picture quality

Lowlights : Nothing in particular; the basic puzzles ( 9, 12 pieces) might be too simple for 4+ kids.

DIY #10 - Indoor Colouring Corner for Toddlers

Archiving this DIY activity 2 years after the beginning of the project which is still running.. 

We thought of creating a colouring/drawing/painting space when we realized that the then-16-month-old-Anouk likes to do her painting activities with partners(read, parents) and not much by herself. We introduced colouring crayons and colouring books to her when she was 15 months old and she did not appear very keen to sit by herself and well, colour J So we thought about creating a colouring space in the wall, big enough so that no one feels too cramped about hovering over a colouring book. The store room door looked perfect and we simply pasted a big white Mahjong paper (each sized ~58cm X 58cm). It really made the drawing/ colouring sessions so fun.. We never had these sessions on a daily basis, still there will be so much strokes/ drawing over it, that we had to change to a clean sheet every 2-3 weeks.. 

Materials required

• A plain door/ wall - In our case the store room door in the living room
• White paper - We used Mahjong paper (58cm X 58cm)
• Cellotape - to paste the paper to the door.
• Colouring equipments - of your choice - we used colouring pencils, crayons and water colours

Evolution : We started this activity in July'16 when Anouk was 16 months old. Anouk started with simple irregular and random strokes(?). There were coloured endless suns, moons, babies, tigers, cats, dogs, birds, houses, balloons, her parents and what not.. which all looked.. the same J This was an easy platform for us to teach her standing lines, sleeping lines, circles, curves, shapes as we would draw once and if she is interested she would eagerly try to repeat or would simply ask us to draw again by ourselves J We used to scribble enough to replace the sheet every 2-3 weeks, though there were times, we'll forget to do any of these sessions for weeks at a stretch. At the time when she was around 2.5 years, we added water colouring to these sessions. This seriously elevated the fun part in the colouring activity.. It still makes for a great indoor activity for us. 

Progress : From our experience, we liked colouring on the wall-pasted-paper (with its pseudo-easel feeling), a better activity than colouring on books (at this age), as it was easier for us to join her in the activity. Over time she mastered her standing lines and sleeping lines decently enough to write alphabets E,F,H,I,L,O,T etc quite fluently before her 3rd birthday. We later purchased a white board, where she continued her alphabet writing practices, but still continues to carry on her painting fun in this wall-paper corner. On the parents side, we found that this activity (involuntarily) gave her the idea that any colouring has to be done in this corner and she has thankfully spared the living room white walls from her colouring pencils, crayons and water colours. From once quite-disinterested with colouring books (the notion of colouring within boundaries did not gel with her J), now at 3 years 3 months, she is showing interest in colouring books where she is trying to stick to colouring within boundaries. We still keep up this activity and just dawned on me to archive this as a good DIY idea for colouring corner. 

I have snapped the latest wall paper that I pasted last night with her evening's colour splashing on it. And I managed to retrieve the previously coloured and removed paper, crumbled and in the trash bin, to get a sample snap of our fun J

The fresh paper (58cm X 58cm) pasted on the store room door, snapped after first evening's work, May'18 

The finished paper, which I had removed prior
to the fresh paper - to show a sample 2-week's work
Timeline - May'18

Update : I managed to dig around our photo archives and got a picture of our wall colouring work, captured in July 2016, when Anouk was around 17 months old.. all crayons and very random scribbling and pasted low in the door fit for a little toddler.. J

Sample artwork - Timeline July'16, when Anouk was 17 months old.

Cuppy cake song

Here's 3 year old Anouk singing Cuppy cake song, pronunciation errors notwithstanding J
Recorded on April 5, 2018.

Lyrics
You're my Honeybunch, Sugarplum
Pumpy-umpy-umpkin, You're my Sweetie Pie
You're my Cuppycake, Gumdrop
Snoogums-Boogums, You're the Apple of my Eye
And I love you so and I want you to know
That I'll always be right here
And I love to sing sweet songs to you
Because you are so dear

Review # 1 Jigsaw puzzles (set of 4) from "My Greatest Child" Store

Jigsaw puzzles ( set of 4) from My Greatest Child

There are 4 puzzles that come in a box, with increasing level of difficulty and number of pieces varying from 9,12,15 and 20. The dimension of each solved puzzle is 15cm X 10.5cm. This particular box had an animal(s) theme and all the pictures are shown at the back of the box (Fig. 1). The pieces are sturdy and pasted on ~2-3mm thick cardboard and are easier to handle especially for toddlers. The puzzle pieces are almost uniform in size  and big enough not to pose a choking hazard. The picture quality is very good and has a uniform matte finish to the picture, when it is solved. The puzzle pieces have an excellent fit and the  texture is perfectly plain and has no bumps, whatsoever. The pictures have good contrast and is easy to distinguish between different puzzle pieces. I feel the design was carefully chosen to give just sufficient clues for young minds to identify the puzzle pieces. What I liked most about the product is the increasing level of complexity it offered in terms of the number of piece, which helped me to introduce one puzzle at a time. So, when the kid became fluent at solving the 9 piece-puzzle, I could easily introduce the 12 piece puzzle, knowing that the kid is motivated and yet finds it challenging enough to attempt it. At S$ 6.90 per box, I really consider it a valuable buy for a single puzzle at under S$ 2.00.

Shown below are the snaps of the puzzle box and the videos of a 3 year old attempting the 20 piece puzzle in this set. Edit : We have changed the video to a recent one, where she is solving all the puzzles in this set, which was taken 3 months after she got introduced to the jigsaw puzzles. By this time, she had already graduated to 49 pieces and hence appears to be doing these puzzles decently fast.

Fig. 1 Top : Front view of the box Bottom : Back view
4 sets of puzzles in a box - lion (9 pieces), bambies (12), elephants (15), leopards (20)  -
each solved puzzle size 15 cm X 10.5 cm

Review Summary

Product :  Jigsaw puzzles ( set of 4) from My Greatest Child
Theme : Animals

Bought from  : My Greatest Child, # B2-03, City Square mall, Singapore

Price : S$ 6.90 per box (of 4 puzzles)

Customer age group : We used for our 3 year old ( Product does not specify any age)

Highlights : Excellent introduction to jigsaw puzzles for 2-4 year olds, budget option, sturdy and toddler friendly pieces, gradually increasing complexity from 9 to 20 piece puzzles, attractive packaging, good picture quality

Lowlights : Nothing in particular; our kid being a restless one, managed to tear the cardboard layers (after innumerable bends and twists) for one piece, and I glued it back and works well.

Jigsaw puzzle fun

Timeline : February 2018

Our few attempts of introducing Jigsaw puzzles when Anouk turned 2 years ended up in she biting off the edges of the jigsaw pieces, rather than solving the puzzle J So we had shelved it for a while and had kind of forgotten about it.

On a junior basket ball shopping trip to Decathlon at City Square mall, early February, we chanced upon a children's shop "My Greatest Child" with such an attractive line of Anouk's favourite Julia Donaldson (Axel Scheffler combo, in particular) collection. We were just browsing through the books when Arun saw some interesting looking jigsaw puzzles - the attractive features (for us) were (1) number - there were 4 puzzles in a box (2) size - each puzzle was roughly around 15cm x 10cm (3) number of pieces - varying from 9, 12, 15 and 20 piece puzzles, in a single box (4) sturdiness - the pieces looked quite sturdy and durable (might withstand a bit of Anouk's biting and chewing, we thought J). So we brought home one box, as below and decided to give her one puzzle at a time, starting with the smallest number of pieces.

4 sets of puzzles in a box - lion (9 pieces), bambies (12), elephants (15), leopards (20)  -
 each puzzle size : 15cm X 10.5cm

Anouk took to the puzzles quite instantly and we showed her a couple of times how to solve from an edge, any edge that seems easy for her and was eager to follow instructions and solving. After a week, we found that her dexterity has greatly improved and could make good sense of the piece shape and the fitting pattern. Slowly and steadily, she made her way through all the four puzzles.. One thing we found a bit perplexing, was she actually spends time to look at the original photograph initially, by slowly solving it by herself 2-3 times and then we see her solving the puzzle without looking at the original picture much. Both the parent creatures have difficulty remembering such random picture's jigsaw puzzle position and can not solve fast without looking at original picture, but may be kids are wired like that. J Anyways, turned out to be a great introduction and motivation for Anouk to continue with puzzle solving. Below are couple of videos of her solving the 9 piece and the 12 piece puzzles.
Update : 1 Mar 2018 - Added the 15 piece puzzle solving video.

Periodic table fun

Timeline : January 2018 (Anouk is almost 3)

We had made a wall-hogging periodic table sometime in April 2017. And from time to time we used to read out the complete table to Anouk in the order, just for fun and because she was ready to sit through the whole thing. J And though she never repeated with us, ( we never insisted, just read it out, without asking her to repeat), we were quite surprised to see her reciting the elements, 10-20 of them in a stretch. It was quite fun to name the elements in the order.. After a while she started showing a bit of correspondance between symols and actual names.. She started a routine of going through the periodic table after dinner time and we tried to record her recitation, but she'd rarely complete the list - either due to waning interest towards the end or digress to a variety of reasons - to say good night to her nanny or spotting a bug somewhere.. :D
And finally on 28th January night, we could record her Periodic table of elements "reading"(mostly reciting the by-hearted list) completely in the first and only go, for the night :) I sometimes listen to the recording on the days I feel low, and the whole elements list in 3 year old baby voice surely perks my mood and day J

Voice recording on 28/01/2018 

Image : Our DIY periodic table (1.22 m X 0.72 m)

Canada - Oct '17

Lap 1 : Singapore to Vancouver

Top left clockwise : 1. Changi Airport 14 Oct'17 2. Onboard the China
Southern airlines  SIN-Guangzhou 3. Guangzhou to Vancouver 

32 month old Anouk and her parents set off for the 2017 vacation from Changi airport on the morning of 14 Oct’17. Anouk slept off her way to airport from our Jurong West home and seemed all set for the first stretch of the 18 hour journey with China Southern Airlines flight to Vancouver - the 4 hr flight to Guangzhou. Bade goodbye to Princy at the airport, who was boarding her flight back to Trivandrum, couple of hours after ours. Anouk was all excited to have the first official flight journey with a seat of her own. A warm Indian meal, very polite flight attendants and a quiet nap for Anouk made the first stretch a pleasure. Reached Guangzhou and the 2 hr transit time was easily filled with security check, finding the boarding gate and Anouk getting refreshed and changed for the next stretch of flight to Vancouver. “Amma, thats a TV in front of Scout’s seat !!” and “Amma, there is Andy-going-to-college-Toy-story in the TV!!” were some pleasing comments that the parents set gleefully listened to in the first 10 minutes which guaranteed a peaceful stretch of travel. Anouk was super co-operative to eat her meals, to make regular trips to loo and to stretch her feet in the pantry area whenever asked to. Surprisingly we also managed to catch up with movies and reading.

Lap 2 : Arrival @ Vancouver and travel to Toronto the next day

From left bottom (clock wise) - 1. Settled @ Hotel YWCA on 14th
2. All set for the trip to Toronto 15th early morning
3. At the Vancouver airport (domestic terminal) for the trip
 to Toronto

Reached Vancouver the morning of 14th local time.. Yay, the beauty of gaining almost a day :D Completed all the PR formalities and out took all the Down jackets and toques, for the chilly and windy short walk from the airport to the Skytrain station outside. Caught the Sky train from the Airport to Stadium-Chinatown and checked in at the YWCA for a day’s stay before going to Toronto, for a week’s travel. Settled into the cozy room, had warm showers and Arun went out to get a local sim and grocery for dinner and next day breakfast before setting out to airport again. The room was equipped with a small refrigerator and the pantry was just outside our room. So fixing a small breakfast the next day before setting out to airport was painless.

Lap 3 : Toronto 15 Oct -22 Oct

Reached Vancouver airport from the YWCA via train. The Air Transat flight to Toronto was at 11 in the morning and was expected to arrive around 6 pm at Toronto. Because we had a long flight the previous day, all three of us were barely awake through the flight. Things that I previously believed “only happened to others” like the flight not getting a slot in Toronto to land, but low on fuel, hence re-routed to Hamilton airport, getting re-fueled and reaching Toronto, around 3 hours late, while not getting any meals in the airlines- were happening and tiredness really was taking new dimensions. Took a taxi from the airport to the apartment at Vaughan. Our AirBnB host was very and commendably polite and showed us around the place before he handed off the keys and we literally crashed in to the bed.

Top row L-R 1. Inside Real Canadian Superstore 2. Some veggie purchase 3. Getting ready to go out
2nd row L-R 4. A quick nap in bus 5. Snack time in front of Service Ontario 6. @ Service Ontario after medical insurance
3rd row L-R 7. Anouk's paradise J ToysRUs 8. Ämma, Look at Thomas" 9. @ SBI Toronto

Come next day morning, and it was grocery time. We three set to the nearby Real Canadian Superstore by foot. Purchased the supplies for a week and the rest of the morning was spent in cooking the lunch - rice, moru curry, french beans and fried fish. Tummies happy, we all set out to finish the various admin tasks we needed to finish in Toronto. Our daily trips included those to Service Canada, Service Ontario, State Bank of India, CIBC Bank, Driving license tests and little Anouk’s Paradise.. ToysRUs (multiple times).. We also bought an ultra light travel stroller from ToysRUs, which really helped the now-not-so-little Anouk’s stroll and day time naps, during our trip. We travelled mostly through subways, public bus (GO and TTC) (one of the questions Anouk had when we came back to SG was whether the SG bus was a GO bus or TTC J) and a fair share of Uber. We found the people very warm, polite, cooperative and happy to help. We really have nice memories of the chats with the cab drivers and the warm greetings of the people we met on the sidewalk, as we set out for the day. On 20th Oct, we made a full day visit to the Royal Ontario Musuem. This turned out to be a spectacular treat for all of us, with the dinosaur fossil exhibits in particular. Anouk was super excited to see her “Rex” and flying dinosaurs..

L-R 1. Royal Ontario Museum  Row 1 L-R 1. Looking up at a Dinosaur 2. Triceratops  Row 2: L-R 3. Another fossil
4. In front a Tyrannosaurus Rex  Bottom Row : 5. "Ämma, look more and more Dinosaurs :) 

From top left clockwise - 1. View of apartment living room and kitchen 

2. Anouk lobbying to eat some "Neyy" :)  3. Outside the apartment 

 4. View from the Vaughan apartment

The apartment we stayed at Vaughan, Toronto was a fully furnished one, with fully accessorized kitchen. Apart from the pressure cooker that we carried with us, I didnt have to use any of the emergency kitchen accessories I had brought along. The apartment proved to be a real value for money in terms of the staying comfort. Anouk started to define new meanings to the word “vacation” as the time in life where you are allowed to watch one movie every single day, while her parents finished stuff around the place, before setting out everyday to tour the city. Our weekly routine pretty much was - finish preparing all the meals, including dinner by 11 am, getting ready and finishing lunch by 12 pm and setting out to explore and return by 7:30-8 pm to have dinner and off to sleep.

Lap 4 : Vancouver 22 Oct -29 Oct

From Top Left Clockwise : 1. Set to leave the Toronto apartment 22 Oct
2. At Toronto Pearson airport (domestic terminal) 3. Some reading at the
boarding gate 4. Indian grocery aisle @ Walmart, Surrey 5. Anouk inspecting
all the leaves on carrot @ Walmart :)

We packed our bags from the Toronto apartment on 22 Oct noon to catch the evening Air Transat flight back to Vancouver. We reached Vancouver by around 9:30 pm, took a taxi (with a very friendly driver who lives in Surrey) to the AirBnB apartment in Surrey. The AirBnB host was quite warm and friendly and after taking us on an apartment tour, he handed over the keys. Next day morning, after the breakfast, we again set out to buy the week''s groceries. Our apartment was a minute's walk from the Gateway sky train station. We caught the train to the next station (Surrey Central) to go to the nearest Walmart. Stashed the groceries for the week and came back, prepared lunch. Anouk surprised us with a nap that prolonged all the way to the night and we decided to call off any roaming plans for the day.

Next day, after finishing off breakfast and packing lunch and snacks, we set off for a day long picnic at Queen Elizabeth park, in the sky train. The park was a further 15 minutes walk from the train station. Anouk had her more than fair share of running around on the grass, splash-sploshing all puddles along the park and more running around. The park was an ideal place to spent all day for a toddler and was picturesquely beautiful in the late fall colours. After so much running around, Anouk immediately went to a nap when we started our way back and napped peacefully in her stroller.

At Queen Elizabeth park : Bottom left - view from the top of the Queen Elizabeth park - distant view of Vancouver city

View from the Surrey, Vancouver apartment in the mornings

The weather was nicely cool (9-14 C) and the landscape was really new for someone like us, who had been living in the sunny coastal towns for so long. The simple view from the apartment living room itself was so amazing and soul pacifying and we always looked forward to looking out through our apartment windows in the morning -to see the mist and the mountains and the beautiful falling leaves. This city is truly gifted by nature.

Over the course of next few days, we made day trips to Simon Fraser University campus at Burnaby, Univ. of British Columbia in Vancouver and also went to the stunning Stanley park with the 9km seaside walk (we didnt walk all that far J). The stroll along the sea-walk was so humbly beautiful and even little Anouk with her shouts of "Seagull !" & "Maple leaf !" thoroughly enjoyed the light stroll.

From right bottom ( clock wise) - 1. In front of Academic Complex (SFU) 2, 3 : At SFU  4,5 : At Metrotown Skytrain station

At Stanley park and the seaside-walk

At Univ. of British Columbia Vancouver campus

Lap 5 : 29 Oct - Back to SG home !

Finally we were all packed for the return travel to Singapore on 29th noon (local time) flight. Finished off breakfast, packed lunch, handed over the keys back to our host and set out in the skytrain for our trip back to the airport. The long queues and the boarding time occupied the rest of the time till we were finally seated in the China Southern flight to Guangzhou (14 hour). Anouk  was all easy to deal with in the flight back too, and again the parents set enjoyed some movie time :) The transit time at Guangzhou was around 4 hours before the last leg to Singapore. We finally reached Changi at 4am on 31 Oct (SG time) and was back home by 5:30. One set of relaxed parents and happy child.