SKYNI

Ever since I have been here, i have been doing a lot of shopping. The kids need a new wardrobe since their clothes in Singapore consists of largely T-shirt & shorts (Jon) and dresses (Linn). Most of their clothes cannot be worn in Sweden. Well, maybe for summer but their summer is mostly about 18-25 degrees.

The autumn weather has been quite kind to us. It has been about 10-15 degrees everyday. At night, it drops to below 10 degrees. Here’s a joke i heard. A man was asked for his opinion of the swedish weather. He commented that he only experienced 2 weather – the Green winter and the White winter. The green one is alot kinder and prettier.

The kids have been obediently putting on their clothes. We just keep layering them to keep them warm. It is not exactly fun buying all these kid’s summer,autumn,winter clothes as they can only wear them for THAT season and they will outgrow it in the next season. Poor Linn, i see that she will be wearing alot of hand me downs. And with my rigid ‘washing’ schedule in the service apartment, i have to buy even more clothes for now. Fortunately, swedish kids clothes are really colourful and nice.

As for me, that’s a different story.

Thank God for H&M!

Nicke organised our first family weekend trip last weekend to Mariehamn, the largest monolingual swedish municipality in Finland. We took one of those Viking cruise out on Saturday morning and came back on Sunday evening..The 8 hours cruise ride (to and fro) was interesting as most Finns and Swedes do this to get completely slosh on duty free alcohol and they are there mainly for duty free shopping. Our Singapore version is the Star Cruise where there is alcohol, entertainment and gambling.

Of course being responsible adults, Nicke and I hung around in the family restaurant area which has 2 good size playrooms for the kids. The kids had a great time whilst Nicke and I had really good views of the beautiful archipelago.

The city of Mariehamn is dead quiet. I don’t think I can live here. We were there on a Saturday afternoon and the streets were really empty. Maybe the 11,000 inhabitants were out in the bathhouse in Mariebad or at their casinos!

Jon and Linn loved the bathhouse although it was still cold at 22 degrees temperature. A bathhouse is actually like a ‘country club’ with good swimming facilities and nice water slides for the kids. It costs SGD10 per entry. The only thing is that they heat up the water (A LITTLE). The bathhouse was really crowded!

It was a nice getaway and and we really enjoyed it.