Having my iPhone for a month now, I must say, I’m absolutely in love with it. I’ll admit, I was one of those who was cynical about it when it first came out. One of the reasons why I “hated” it was the inability to easily replace the battery. But now that I have it, the fun features it has makes its shortcomings a little more bearable.

Here’s what I like:
Speakers!
What sets this “iPod” apart from the others is the ability to play music and not having the need to use headphones! Although the sound quality from those speakers leave much to be desired, it still is more convenient, especially when playing those kiddy videos for my two year old daughter Rebecca, who is not allowed to listen through headphones till she’s a little older. Why can’t Apple put speakers on all iPods?

Google Maps
With EDGE and Wifi, I feel a little safer when I’m driving. It helps a little when I get lost on the road, but I still believe it doesn’t replace the functions provided by a real GPS system.

Photos and Camera
I take a lot of photos, and I mean, a lot. Most of them are of my daughter. Though not a real fan of the picture quality of the tiny iPhone lens, it sure is much more convenient when I just want to snap a picture and email to whoever. It does it so much better than other phones. And I know the sync feature with iPhoto is not new, but the UI and screen size on the iPhone is much better. Only complaint is not being able to take video, but unless they improve the lens, the video output quality wouldn’t be that great either to matter.

Web Browsing
By far the BEST web browsing experience on a phone, especially those optimized for mobile viewing. Although you can still pinch or zoom the screen, it can be frustrating to view large wordy sites and having to constantly scroll left and right just to read one sentence.

Clock
I’m very amazed at how often I use this app. I check time zones a lot since I have friends and family in Singapore, and I love the Alarm feature. On my previous phones you can only set one alarm at a time, this one you can set multiple alarms, and for each one you specify which days you want it to occur. So now I have two main alarms, one for weekdays, and one for weekends. Pretty cool.

iTunes Store
It’s so great to be able to listen to 30 second samples of songs when I’m just trying to kill time.

I’m not much of an apps person, so what Apple offers so far is good enough for me, but I’d definitely like to see what the developers can come up with if and when the iPhone SDK comes out. Right now accessing apps via Safari is not doing much for me. I prefer lightweight apps that I can access locally without being connected to the Internet.

I love this gal!

Doug drove us to the airport Friday afternoon for our plane ride home to the the US. Since he could only leave a week later, it was just Rebecca and I. After a little snack at the Toast Box cafe, we made our way to the departure hall.

The journey was pretty smooth I must say. For the first part of it there was a nice girl who sat by the window next to us. Rebecca sat the aisle seat, and I in the middle. But after the stopover in Hong Kong the flight wasn’t full, so she moved to a row by herself. This allowed Rebecca to sleep more comfortably on the 14 hour flight home. She slept most of the time, which was good, but I didn’t really get much sleep because I had the fear of her rolling off the seat. So I was dozing in and out of sleep the whole time.

K was there to pick us up at the airport, and we drove home. I cooke for Rebecca dinner, and I was so tired that I fell asleep while feeding her. After dinner we headed off to bed.

I’m glad I came back on a Friday, so I could have two whole days to rest before work starts.

Time for some more sleep.

Didn’t do much today. I’m trying to get mentally prepared for the end of our vacation, and going back to the U.S., so today we spent the day at my parents’ house, watching TV, and going downstairs for a little snack. The good thing about Singapore is there are food stalls virtually everywhere you turn, and some are even open 24 hours, so you can literally walk down and grab something to eat any time of the day.

Cool huh?

We took a fun train ride today with Rebecca. Another first for the little one. First we took the MRT, the bigger of the two trains, to the LRT station, then switched to the LRT, made a loop around, then got back on the MRT. It was my first time taking the LRT as well.

One innovative feature of the LRT train is the side windows. They are made of special glass with proximity sensors that switches from opaque to transparent depending on where the train travels. At areas where the train goes apartment buildings, the windows turn opaque to keep the privacy for the residents, and back to transparent at the stations. Pretty cool in my opinion.

It sure was a little risky doing two exhausting outings back to back, since we were still recovering from the Sentosa trip the day before. However, Rebecca seemed all energetic when she woke up this morning, so we decided to do it.

The Singapore Zoo isn’t a very big zoo, but I really like the “open zoo” concept. Since my last visit to the zoo, I’ve been to the zoos in Hawaii, San Francisco, and even the San Diego Zoo, I just didn’t feel the openness in the other zoos compared to Singapore. I might be a little biased, but you definitely need to visit to make your own judgement.

The elephants might have been Rebecca’s favorite animal, as she was so excited when she saw them. We saw lots of primates, watched a sealion show, visited the Australian Outback, and saw the White Tigers. I think we missed the otters and the lemurs, maybe next time.

Click to see pictures of our Zoo Day.

The sun, the sand, and the sea. It was a beautiful day, perfect for an trip to the island of Sentosa. There are many ways to get there, by bus, train, cable car, or car. We chose to drive.

We spent most of our time along the beach, where Rebecca played with the sand and the dipped her legs in the water as it rushed ashore. There was a bird show too, but that was pretty boring. After the show we walked across a narrow suspended bridge towards a smaller islet said to be Asia’s closest point to the equator.

There were so many attractions there that you couldn’t possibly see it all in one day, especially with a demanding toddler, so we’ll just have to leave the Luge, and the Merlion for another visit.

For dinner we drove back to Vivocity and met up with Rebecca’s cousin Charlotte for some Peranakan food. We then let the kids run wild in the toy store, and playground, and then headed home.

Whew this had definitely been one of the most tiring days of our trip.

Click to see all our Sentosa trip pictures.

Another first for Rebecca - meeting someone younger than her. I’m glad that she was friendly to baby Tricia and even shared her Thomas the Train toy with her.

I just love this picture. They both had their cheeky smiles on.

In her two years, Rebecca has never sat in a bus. We have always driven. So today was special - she got to take public transport! Check out the look on her face in this picture. I would say its a mixture of awe, curiosity, excitement, and cautiousness. When we got off the bus she even said “Bye, Bus!”

With the number of times I’ve had Yusheng on this trip so far, you must think that I’ll get sick of it. Let me tell you now that threshold has not been reached. Still loving it!

The weird thing is that Rebecca loves to “Lou” (pronounced “Low”) - lifting the stuff up with your chopsticks to mix the ingredients. The higher you lift, the higher likelihood that what you wish for will come true. People generally wish for good health, prosperity, good school results, and good luck in lottery.

Maybe it makes her feel like a big girl.

We went to a nearby mall called IMM, where we had Hong Kong style lunch, and took Rebecca to the park that was located on the 3rd floor.

I don’t like putting cases over my gadgets, but when I put my iPhone into my handbag, I worry about the screen getting scratched by my wallet. So what I needed was a pouch-like bag to put my iPhone in while in my handbag. This pouch by Animob looked pretty cool, and it fits my iPhone like a glove. Only S$3.95.

Happy Valentine’s Day! Doug and I were trying to figure put where to go for dinner. One of our first choices was a restaurant located on the 60th floor in downtown Shenton Way, but it was fully booked for tonight. So we decided to go to Vivocity and just see what they have there. There were lines at every restaurant, some longer than others, we just had to pick one. After moving from line to line, we settled on the restaurant called Dian Xiao Er, a Chinese restaurant serving roast duck. The line moved pretty fast, and the food was good. We had duck, pork, fish, soup, and bread. I liked the place.

Delicious curry and spices at Samy’s Curry at Dempsey Road. Loved the Curry Fish Head. Squid’s good too.