No we didn't...

Yes we did ... and then, no, we didn't. That's the problem doing business in VN. It's hard to get them to keep their word. So there goes Kindy No 3. The excuse - they need to complete the toilets and need another 6-12 months!!! 12 months to complete a toilet??? I must say they totally and completely have no imagination - can anyone help them come up with a creative excuse not to rent to us?

Rambutan and Durian Season

It's the rambutan season now over in HCMC - or chom chom as they are known here in Vietnamese. There seems to be two varieties - the cheaper, bigger ones going at 3,500 (30cents) to 5,000VND (40cents)/kg (or sometimes 3kg for 10,000VND) and the smaller, sweeter but more expensive cousin at 15,000VND/kg. Wonder how much is a kg of rambutans in Singapore now?

Durians are also in season now, the ones I buy are 25,000VND/kg and they're good.

Yes, we got it ...

Yes, we got our third kindergarten at a reasonable rent today. Unless the owners change their minds tomorrow (which is highly common here), we will start our new school year on 7 Sep 09. Seems like the preparation time gets shorter with each kindergarten that we have. This 3rd one will be a real rush. We have barely 6 weeks to get everything in place and ready. The good thing, like I said earlier, is that it is in a move-in condition. So we only need to equip the place and clean it up. More updates later.

Third kindergarten?

This is a location recommended by one of our students' parents and so we went to take a look. It's a nice place tucked between 2 blocks of apartments, and there's a swimming pool. It's quite self-contained with a kitchen, classrooms and offices and definitely in a move-in condition. Problem with the place is that there are only 4 classrooms which means a limited number of students - quite a waste of space.
















































Indoor swimming pool















View from 2nd floor of kindergarten

Bryan's New e-motorbike

Bryan "donated" his old e-bike to TAIK so that Huong can make his way to and from ASYC. So he got himself another bike for 6,500,000VND today. And had it blessed with showers of blessing - it just had to rain today. 

Ashima Mushroom Hotpot

Decided that we needed to have a good dinner tonight and hopped over to the Ashima Mushroom Hotpot Restaurant at 11 Tu Xuong in Dist 3. This mushroom specialty restaurant serves everything mushroom. We ordered a mushroom hotpot soup (what else??) with beef, and 4 dishes of different mushrooms. Turned out to be more than sufficient for the both of us - even had to cancel the order of noodles. There are so many varieties of mushrooms - prices range from 65k to 190k per dish of mushroom. Total damage for the night was 410k (including soft drinks and service charge) - which was a reasonable price to pay in view of the quality of food. Ashima has 5 branches in HCMC which speaks well of its reputation, I guess. The downside was that it was rather noisy in the restaurant - looks like Vietnamese are very affluent nowadays - the restaurant was quite packed and it looked like most were Vietnamese diners.

Opening of the Alpha-SYC International Kindergarten

Our 2nd kindergarten finally opened on my sister's birthday - 8 Jun 2009. The renovation works were delayed and could only be 90% complete on Saturday. We had to work through the weekend to get the place cleaned up and looking presentable for the opening. As usual Murphy never fail us - we could only get the aircon in the main room to start 15 min before opening time, the TAIK kids came early (what are we going to do with them??), the class furniture did not turn up until the afternoon, but we still survived the opening. Have a look at more photos here :

http://alpha-syc.blogspot.com/

Will you ever see a cow grazing outside a kindergarten in Singapore?