JD crawled out of bed at 5 and went back to KL to pick up our passports from the hotel. He returned at around 9.20; hit some traffic in the city, he said. The kids and I were up at 9 and immediately the Disney Channel came on. Then we got dressed and went to the cafe for breakfast. The swallows had all left except for the babies in one corner. The courtyard is lovely. I stayed on to read my book after we had eaten, while the others went on up.

Isabel came down shortly afterwards and I agreed to go out for a walk. Alexis also wanted to come along, so we went down Jln Tun Tan Cheng Lock, which was difficult because there is no sidewalk and a steady stream of traffic along the road. Poked in a few shops and turned the corner to go down Jonkers but eventually they clamoured to come back so we returned to the hotel after about 45 mins. It was time to check out anyway so we woke JD from his sleep, threw all our things together and vamoosed. I'd come back if we ever returned to Melaka. It's a charming little hotel.

No one seemed to be hungry so Nancy's Kitchen and the chicken rice balls flew by outside the window, and then as we headed into Ayer Keroh, the children announced they were famished after all. We stopped at a suburban mall for Macdees and KFC, when we could have had Peranakan popiah! Arrrgh.

It was close to 2 when we left and we abandoned the idea of stopping at Riders Lodge since the children had to be at Danielle Charmian's sleepover at 4.30. Arrived in Singapore at 4, unpacked and packed again for the party. We arrived at Danielle's at about 5.20. They have a full night ahead of them with the Night safari and camping in D's living room!

JD appears to have some kind of food poisoning -- perhaps a bad oyster at Teo Soon Loong's -- so I ate dinner alone. Panfried cod, spinach and miso soup with meatballs. Then got on the phone with Serene and yakked for three hours while JD, suffering, went to bed.

Last day in KL. JD left early to go out to Sepang and KLIA. Kids and I slept in, then ordered room service -- one big American breakfast for us all to share. We couldn't even finish it. Did most of the packing and Isabel wrote a story for JD for Father's Day.

Jun came for us at 12.15. As we were waiting for her at the entrance, this woman got out of a Lexus she had just parked by the side of the hotel. It was Goh Lek Ee, who was also in MGS, a year our senior. It turns out she is married to Charles's brother, Donald! My goodness, what a small world.

Charles had managed to get a table at El Cerdo (the concierge tried in the morning but was told it was full), so I got my pork knuckle after all! The crackling wasn't the crispiest but the panfried herb sprinkled on the pork were heavenly. Though a walk would have done us good, I could not persuade the girls not to get in the car afterwards, so we got a ride back with the Lims.

I did manage to persuade them to leave the room for a quick jaunt to KLCC. We had some 30 minutes in which we managed to buy a present for Danielle Charmian, whose sleepover they have to attend tomorrow, and a pair of jeans for Alexis. JD picked us up on his way back from Putrajaya.

We quickly packed up our stuff and checked out of the hotel. By 5 we were on the road to Melaka and pleased with ourselves. It was only on the outskirts that JD made the horrible realisation that in our haste to get out of the Equatorial, we had forgotten to empty the contents of our safe... and hence our passports, a small amount of cash and a lens were still in Kayel...

Frantic calls to the hotel and Jun yielded no joy -- no courier could be found to convey the items to us in Melaka. JD would have to go back for them tomorrow. I wished I could take his place but I didn't think I would find my way back to Jalan Sultan Ismail. Trying to push the burden from our minds, we checked into the charming Hotel Puri and went to Teo Soon Loong for dinner.

As before the food was good, and who should we run into but Paul and Olivia Jacob, with her brother and his family. Her brother looked awfully familiar and after an hour it came to me -- he had been a mature student at NUS when I was there. At first Olivia pooh-poohed the idea, then it turned out that I was right. Apparently he was by then a colonel in the military but his promotion prospects were dim without a degree. They sent him and a couple of others to uni to get their bachelor's. His colleague later became chief of air force, apparently, and he himself made general.

Well, after dinner we had a pleasant saunter through the Jonkers night market, then stopped for a drink at the Geographer's Cafe (the kids plonked themselves on the bar stools) before returning to Hotel Puri.

In one of the anterooms off the main lobby, dozens of swallows have made their nests. It's quite a sight. Apparently the house used to belong to Tan Kim Seng. I wish I could have seen it in those days.

Today JD was up bright and early to go to the KL Railway Station. I dragged the children out of bed to come along, as I did not want to spend another day in the hotel. They came, most reluctantly, and only with JD helping to coerce them!

Navigating KL roads is a nightmare and predictably we got lost on the way! In fact, we made the same wrong turn we had the first night getting here and then another time we found ourselves on the road to Bangsar Jun had taken us last night! Luckily this highway has a rare U-turn which allowed us to make right our mistake.

Needless to say, by the time we got to the station, JD's nerves were frayed and he was in no mood to negotiate. So we left him and went to the station to get some roti canai (RM5.70 for three, plus ice milo and coffee). Eventually the kids stopped sulking (Alexis before Isabel) so things were a little more relaxed by the time we paid the bill. I even got them some chewing gum.

We wandered through the station with me trying to recreate for them how we had met Granny Pam and Jan Jan here when we put them on the E&O five years ago for Jan's birthday. The girls have no memory of course of driving up that time. We stayed a night then at the Ritz Carlton. They couldn't remember any of this and were barely interested. Eventually, I figured my way out of the station in the right direction of the Central Market. By then it was 11.30 and HOT. But the market is not far away, just north over the Klang River.

We wandered through it, blessing it for the airconditioning. The girls liked the stalls and we ended up buying a bird kite, and a pair of earrings for grandma. Leaving the market we discovered that Jack Neo and Mark Lee were filming in the alley next door. Mark is rake thin and was wearing a long sleeved clinging white tee shirt and bright red pants. Aiyoh. He has a nice easy grace about him but the LOOK! Anyway we stayed for a few minutes, watching with interest this stray kitten which was unfazed by the crowd. Then we headed north to Chinatown.

Didn't make it far cos Alex had a blister on her toe. We ducked into this modest clothing and shoe shop and bought her some very decent sneakers and socks for RM12. JD smsed that he was coming to meet us and, most bizarrely, just as we stepped out of the side door onto the street, he was pulling up to that exact point! Is that weird or what...

More predictably, we got confounded by an unmarked one-way road on the way back to the hotel and ended up heading to Parliament House, so we accompanied JD on a detour to the National Monument, which has a cenotaph dedicated to the war dead and an enormous statue of valiant soldiers, both dead and alive, desperately holding onto the malaysian flag.

It turned out to be a rather pleasant diversion, even though JD was raging a bit. I bought Isabel an ice cream. The monument reminded me of parks I had been to as a young child -- manicured, artificial, almost as though it had been dropped on earth by aliens and the only life left to it was from visits by curious onlookers. It had a real retro feel in that sense.

The noon heat got a bit much after a while. We left and this time, the girls and I took a taxi back to the Equatorial, where we grabbed lunch at the coffee house before Jun and Charles came for us, sans Becky this time.

They took us to the Royal Selangor Pewter Factory, which was a lot of fun. We got to see a bit of how they work the pewter (the production operators each get one little task to do and some of them have been there for years... for example, there is a lady whose job is to hammer the pewter with a small mallet to make a pattern. She has been hammering that pewter, day in and day out for 25 years...) and then we got to make our own bowls at the School of Hard Knocks. Each of us got a small pewter disc on which we chiselled our initials and then we hammered the disc into a bowl using a wooden mould. Isabel hammered her finger, but soldiered on. It was lots of fun. Then we had tea with Datin Chen, whom Jun and Charles and met two weeks ago, before we went back.

JD was at the hotel, driven back by the torrential rain. We had dinner at the bistro.

Weather is awful, we have left behind the sunny blue skies. Here the sky is the colour of dishwater. At least it's dry. JD made his way out while the kids and I took our time to get up. We had breakfast at the bistro. Alexis had the omelette (which she didn't touch) and sausages, while Isabel and I had the roti kaya set.

Jun Leng arrived with her daughter, Becky, who might have been chiselled from her, they are so alike. She said that she'd just found out she's pregnant again. Great news! Afterwards she took us to the KL Craft Complex where the kids had fun painting batik. Alexis painted a unicorn, Isabel a bear and Becky a butterfly. JD eventually made his way to us. We had lunch at a lovely Italian restaurant nearby. I had rabbit, to the great horror and disgust of my daughter born in the same year.

After lunch, JD continued working while the kids and I went back to the hotel and swam in the pool there. The hotel is rather old but in a great location. I had a glass of wine and Alexis a watermelon juice. The RM1OO food credits we are getting each day are proving useful!

For dinner, Jun took us to Cafe Delicious in Bangsar. It did live up to its name though traffic on the way there was just horrendous. Going back though, we had a treat, a fabulous view of the Petronas Towers shrouded in cloud. The lights reflected on the low lying clouds made a fantastic effect. Beautiful.

Day 4 of leave.

Finally used that voucher Dom gave us and spent the day at Spa Botanica after dropping the girls off at Science Camp.

It's a lovely setting but I tend to feel like a bit of a fraud at these lush places. I'm just an average nobody, making an average salary. What makes me so special that I get to be pampered? I'm neither lady who lunches nor tourist! But I must say it was pretty special, and perhaps we should take up the kids' suggestion to make June 5 spa day every year.

It was a 3.5 hour long indulgence. I started with the mud wrap. First time ever, and probably the last too. Does that mud stink ever! Besides it was icy cold when she slathered it on. That wasn't the problem though. The problem is that they wrap you in a thermal blankie and expect you to stay cocooned for 30 minutes. The moment she told me to relax I knew I had to wiggle my foot, rotate my ankle, move my arm -- worse, get up to pee!! That was not psychosomatic, I swear. I left a trail of mud to the toilet *eternal shame* Luckily I got her to cut short the worm time and I got to hop (had to cos was wrapped up in a plastic sheet) to the shower in 15 mins.

Next up was the scrub and vichy shower, which has seven shower heads on a horizontal boom-like thing that the therapist rotates over you so that you have the bliss of warm water from seven heads drumming on your entire body from right to left. This lasted for 25 minutes and was sheer heaven though I did feel bad about the amount of water we wasted when so many places on earth are experiencing drought...I don't think we'll get one for the house.

Then it was to lunch at the hotel coffee house before we walked back for our final massage. Very nice, and the flotation and lap pools afterwards were the just the icing on our cake of indulgence. I don't know that I care all that much for the spa thing but once in a while it really is a treat. I could imagine we were on holiday in Bali or Phuket or some place exotic with legendary service.

The one way I could tell we were in Singapore was by how most everyone was obsessed with the time. After our morning session, the therapists could hardly wait to bundle us off to lunch, and the driver who dropped us off at the restaurant in a golf cart repeated twice that the shuttle back was at ONE FIFTEEN (we didn't make it) so we could make our ONE FORTY FIVE PEE EM massage. When we finally got back and I was ready for my East West the changing room receptionist said to me severely, "It's 1.50". I dunno what she expected me to do, apologise profusely? but it has to be Singapore if we are all slave to the Schedule.

Talk about the tyranny of the schedule. Had to wrap up by 4.30 to pick up our dear children, who begged to go off with Danielle and Althea upon being picked up. D's dad very calmly agreed to take them (and feed them AND drop them off later), to the joy of all. J and I went home and got in a 4km run AND dinner with mum and dad before we hared off to our first Arts fest performance.

Which was the Vilnius City Theatre performing Romeo and Juliet. It seemed like a good idea at the time to go watch Shakespeare in Lithuanian. And it was. This one was set in a pizzeria (and what do you know, flour plays a significant role) and was of course in contemporary times. It was very good actually. The actors were convincing and the expressive language conveyed the passion and poetry without the audience needing to actually understand it (but there were subtitles, projected via powerpoint). The director said later that he was apprehensive about the reticent Singapore audience but was relieved to discover that people are all the same and will respond to what they can sympathise with. It's Shakespeare after all. Is there a playwright more universal and timeless? I doubt it. J and I discussed the play the whole way home afterwards and through my makeshift supper.

Day 3 of leave.

Not having to go to work is wonderful. I like my job but I think I generally don't like to work, if that makes sense. Girls are at Discovery science camp, so there was a wee bit of stress getting them there on time (we didn't).

Then there was the pleasure of playing Peggle and watching An Inconvenient Truth in the afternoon while having a lunch of crab cakes and spaghetti with asparagus in a cream sauce. J was enormously hung over but managed to watch the film too.

At 5 we picked up the girls (protesting because they wanted to go to Danielle Charmian's) and headed to Vivo City for Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. Pretty godawful movie but I'd watch Johnny Depp recite the phonebook. Serene too, which is why she talked me into going to the movie. Next up, Ocean's Thirteen.