Our ex-neighbour

This is our cute little neighbour, Dénes (pronounced as 'Day-nesh').

My next-door neighbour is a Hungarian family who has been relocated here to work. His daddy works in Google...wooh, and his mummy will be looking for a job soon once they settled down in their new apt in Zurich, which is about 20 mins away from our place. Hope we could visit their place sometime soon.

They speak and understand English thou most of the time they converse in Hungarian and likewise little Dénes too.




He's fascinated with the lights and whenever he managed to turn on the lights, his eyes will go bigger followed by a smile that seems to tell us 'See, I can do it!' :)

He dropped by our apt one afternoon for a visit. He has such big eyes and chubby cheeks and I love to tickle his cheeks every time and he likes it too :)
His favourite words are 'akba akba', 'moomy'...

Went out one day to the playground with him and his mummy when it finally stopped raining, for a while...









He is always smiling and I call him the smiley baby :)









He likes to sit on the swing and he sat there for a pretty long while. If his mummy didn't distract him, he'd probably fall asleep on the swing ;p


He likes to do certain activities over and over and over again which I thought it's good for a kid as it means he can stay focussed on a task.

At another playground near our apt.

Isn't he cute? His 2 cheeks are so tempting hehe ;p

Hehe, changing his nappy before going to the beach. I couldn't join them cos I was still cooking my red bean soup which was like taking almost the whole day and yet still did turn turn into the texture that I wanted. Furthermore, it was almost 4pm when they wanted to go there which I would need to prepare dinner soon.

All set and ready! This Deuter bag is cool and it's light as well. There's even a shelter for the toddler even if it rains. Cool huh? :)

With them moving, the apt is left empty again and no more hearing his cries or his baby language in the day. Back to the quietness again which I have to get used to all over again. If only the next occupant is a family with kids as well, at least they add some life, and noise to the place =)

Oh, his daddy has a blog too, thou in Hungarian but lotsa cute photos of him, much better than the ones I have here :) Just click onto the links and get into each blog entry.
Ccurercajtung

Hungary is about 1.5hrs away from Zurich by flight and 12hrs away by train. So I guess they are still not too far away from home. Anna's parents had visited her last week and I guess they would be busy showing them the places around.

Personal thoughts...

When it comes to adaptation, they seem to be able to adjust pretty fast. I suppose it has got to do with their culture and environment. I've noticed that there are quite a number of asians from China, Vietnam, Philippines, Pakistan etc and Indians from India living here. And I came to the conclusion that countries with political instability are likely to have more of their people migrating out. I guess SG has spoilt me to a certain extent with the stability of the government (or monopoly as some might think), convenience with quick access to everything including healthcare, education etc, variety in terms of food and culture, safety (which is a huge plus point), proper healthcare, and economic stability.

I can understand why our govt does not encourage the pension scheme. Having this scheme may mean higher tax=higher cost of living=higher cost of doing business=lower appeal to foreign investments=less jobs=increased unemployment rate & the story goes on. And what I also think may not be workable is our mentality and culture. In supermarts, we ask for more plastic bags to keep in case next time plastic bags would be chargable. Over here, you need to buy your own garbage bags and the plastic bags they offer for free is those flimsy ones which are recyclable. In SG, if you leave your paper towels, packets of ketchups, chilli sauce, sugar, salt and pepper free for customers to take, you'll find that these items will have to be replenished very often. Over here, people take what is enough, over in SG, people take more than required for future use so as to save money. We're a thrifty lot :)

Asians (most) are known to be hardworking and perhaps that's why Asia is now developing rapidly. However, sometimes at a pace too fast that's beyond the pace for some. Hence, accidents happen. Perhaps it's greed, that success and money is never enough; perhaps it's a matter of face and ego, that one has to strive to achieve the goal at all cost; or perhaps it's an uncontrollable force that no one can stop.

Well, I'm not sure if I'm still in the rat race chasing after my piece of cheese, but I certainly hope I won't be the rat that realised that the cheese is not something that it desires ultimately after spending a whole life trying to get it.