Family pastimes

These families share similar hobbies, which allow them to spend quality time with one another.

Are you happy with the amount of quality time you have with your family? There is a good chance you are not.

About 50 per cent of Singaporeans were dissatisfied with the amount of quality family time they had, according to a recent poll conducted by non-profit organisation Families For Life.

Out of the 872 people polled, four in 10 here say they spend six hours or less of quality family time with their families each week, which works out to less than an hour daily.

Families For Life conducted the survey in August, and the poll results were released last month as part of the Families for Life Celebrations.

SundayLife! speaks to four families who are more than satisfied with the amount of quality family time they have because of unusual family passions that bind them together.

Wonderful Wans

Never in his wildest dreams did Mr Patrick Wan imagine that his entire family would be involved in the performing arts.

"I exposed them to things because I wanted them to learn new skills," says Mr Wan, 57.

Today, the wife and four children of this ventriloquist cum magician each has an artistic skill to call his or her own.

His wife Ellen, 57, is the costume seamstress, prop maker and make-up artist.

Daughters Joanna, 29, and Rachel, 24, can do acrobatic stunts, while son Aaron, 26, does "bian lian" (mask changing).

Youngest daughter Agnes, 21, is also trained in acrobatics but usually helps out as personal assistant to her siblings and father at their performances, and takes photographs of them in action.

It all began in the 1970s, when a teenage Mr Wan found himself interested in ventriloquy and magic tricks.

Although largely self-taught, he would also seek out visiting performers here to learn from them.

He began doing paid performances part-time when he was 16, and in 1988, he quit his job as an electronics supervisor to go into performing full-time.

By that time, he says, "I was making more money from my shows than from my full-time job".

When Joanna was a preschooler, Mr Wan got acrobats from China - who were then performing at the now-defunct Tang Dynasty City theme park - to train her to be a contortionist.

In return, he taught them ventriloquy and magic tricks.

The training eventually extended to the other children. When Aaron was five and Joanna, seven, they had their own contortionist act as a part of their father's shows.

The training sessions were so tough, Aaron recalls "clinging to the fan" and Joanna recalls "pretending to be asleep" each time the trainers came to their home, in a bid to escape training.

But they left a great sense of fulfilment.

Says Joanna, now a personal banker: "It's a wonderful feeling when the audience claps and thanks you in person."

Aaron, a real estate agent, adds: "You feel good being able to do something that many other people can't."

By 1999, Rachel, then nine, was a part of Mr Wan's shows too. She could spin 20 hula hoops on her body.

"I mastered that act when I was eight, by watching a video of a performer doing the act," says Rachel, a tax consultant.

Together, these three Wan siblings, known as the Wonder Kids, had a show with acts involving the balancing of 25 candles on one's head, hands and legs, and squeezing their bodies into barrels.

The Wan family performed together for more than 15 years, from 1994 to 2010. But they never considered performing full-time as a family. Mr Wan says having his children learn these skills was for them to have something to fall back on, should they not do well in school. But they all did fine academically.

As the Wonder Kids entered working life, however, it became increasingly hard to perform together. They now operate as three separate acts instead of one: Mr Wan's ventriloquy and magic show, Aaron's mask-changing show and Rachel's contortion and hula hoop show.

They get up to several bookings a month especially during Chinese New Year and the Mid-Autumn Festival, and also receive overseas bookings.

Joanna no longer performs, preferring to give moral support to her siblings instead, the way Agnes does.

On weekends, the whole family spends time together watching videos of their performances, which they say continue to keep them close-knit.

They also have dinner together almost every night, and say they support one another in their careers and personal lives. All the children are single.

For instance, the family helped to staple Aaron's property business card to flyers, and the children are now helping Mr Wan search for a warehouse to store his show props.

Says Mr Wan: "We have our own lives beyond performing together, but remain united as a family."

The Laus get roaring

Each time the Lau family get together, they have a roaring good time. All four of them are involved in Mr Eric Lau's lion dance school.

Mr Lau, 48, opened the school in 2010 after decades of pursuing it as a hobby. The technician in a cleaning services company started learning lion dance when he was 13 years old.

His wife Sharon, 43, joined the troupe that he was a part of when they were dating and has never looked back. "From the time we were dating and all the way into our years of marriage, his interest in this has never waned," says the sales manager in an automation company.

Their children Ivan, 21, and Iris, 18, say lion dance was an integral part of their growing-up years.

Ivan, who is waiting to enlist for national service, recalls his father buying him a small lion head when he was seven. By then, he had already watched his parents perform with their troupe many times.

"I knew how to play with the lion head, to make it 'eat' oranges, and use the oranges to form the Chinese character 'ji'," he says. Ji is the Chinese word for good luck.

From the age of five, he looked forward to every performance his parents were involved in. "Those outings were very fun," he says.

His sister Iris agrees, adding: "They made me feel that my family was very cool."

Using a blanket in lieu of actual lion dance paraphernalia, the two children used to pretend to be lion dance performers at home.

Says Iris: "Kor kor (elder brother) would be the head in front and I would be the tail. We would run around the house, shouting, 'dong chang dong chang' (the drum beats of a lion dance performance)."

Ivan now trains at least twice a week with his father's students at the school in Serangoon North, the name of which comes from Mr Lau's Chinese name Liu Yao Chang. He also helps to instruct some of the younger students.

The school has about 30 members, and a third of them are active members between the ages of 18 and 21. Most of them are male.

When they have performances - which can happen as often as three times a month during peak season - Mr Lau and Ivan are usually part of the performing troupe, while Iris is the designated official photographer and videographer.

Mrs Lau busies herself shuttling the students to and from the performance venues.

After dinner, the Lau family and troupe members review the videos of their day's performance.

"My father always asks us how he can improve," says Iris. "These performances are a common conversation topic for our family."

Mr Lau hopes to pass on the school's reins to his son.

Says Ivan: "I'll do it. If I don't, I'll lose touch with something that has been a big part of my family and my life."

One sporting family

More than 100 race medals hang proudly in a prominent corner of Mr Halimi Ramli's home.

About half of this haul belongs to Mr Halimi, 44, an army officer who won these medals at countless races and triathlons.

The other half are the sporting achievements of his two children, students Hakim, 18, and Siti Sarah, 15.

Mr Halimi has participated in sports since he was a member of his secondary school's track and field team. "I think I've played every sport save for golf," he says.

His wife, housewife Siti Sujiah, 45, was also an active runner and football player in her younger days.

So, when their children came along, the sports- loving couple naturally decided they would not only expose their children to sports, but also teach them what it means to train for a sporting event.

Siti Sarah took part in her first kids' race when she was five. "I can't remember anything about that race, apart from the fact that my brother ran ahead and left me behind," she says.

She has more vivid memories of the times her father took them swimming in the open waters off East Coast Park on Saturday afternoons when they were growing up. "Dad would push us out, and follow us with a paddle board if we needed support," she says.

Adds Mr Halimi: "I wanted them to experience what it was like to swim against the wind and the waves, and to not be able to feel the ground."

Siti Sarah took part in her first open-water swimming competition when she was 11. She recalls standing fearfully at the starting line as she could see many water bugs and jellyfish in the water.

Sensing her apprehension, her mother told her father that Siti Sarah looked like she would bail from the race. So Mr Halimi swam alongside Siti Sarah, forfeiting his chance to take part in his race category.

It did not matter that they suffered many bug bites, and were stung by jellyfish along the way. Mr Halimi says: "I wanted to show my children that sports is not about winning, but about completing your event. Dropping out halfway is pointless."

These days, the family continues to bond through sports, especially triathlons. Madam Siti has the task of keeping herself up-to-date with the latest races and is in charge of registering the family for them.

Mr Halimi trains with his children, and they usually load up on carbohydrates two to three days before a race. "Lots of baked potato, lasagna and spaghetti," says Hakim.

On the day of the competition, Madam Siti gets into the groove of being "official cheerleader and official logistics officer-in-charge", driving all her family members to the event and ensuring they are well-fed and well-hydrated.

Siti Sarah hopes to run with her father in a marathon when she is older.

Mr Halimi is pleased, saying: "It's great that our children enjoy sports as much as we do.

The Sias play dress up

Mr Skyy Sia shares a unusual hobby with his mother Shirley - cosplay. The 27-year old junior financial controller was the one who piqued his 67-year-old mother's interest in the hobby, in which participants wear costumes, make-up and accessories to transform themselves into characters from films, books, anime, manga and video games.

Mr Sia got into cosplay when he was 17, after a friend invited him to be a part of her cosplay group. "I found it very interesting and a good outlet to express my creativity.

"But my mother was never satisfied with how my tailor-made costumes looked," he says.

Says Mrs Sia: "The costume would either be too tight or too baggy. I decided I would make them for him instead."

In 2011, she accompanied her only child to a cosplay event and was amazed to see all the participants dressed to the nines. "It seemed so fun to dress up. I wanted to join them because I like dressing up and I like people to take photos of me," says Mrs Sia, a housewife.

Her son was somewhat hesitant initially, as he felt there were not many female characters that would suit her age. Then came an event which gave her the opportunity to dress as a grandmother from a manga series. During the parade segment of the event where Mrs Sia made her debut appearance as a cosplayer, she recalls: "Everyone screamed loudly for me when they realised I was an old woman instead of a young girl.

"It was so exciting. I don't think they expected that."

After that public thumbs-up, Mr Sia says the community's interest in his mother grew.

"She became a hit. Everyone thinks she's so cool," he says.

Event organisers began inviting her to events and she has since appeared as various characters, from the Red Queen in Tim Burton's Alice In Wonderland to X-Men's Storm to DC Comics' Superwoman.

She made all those costumes herself from scratch, but also asks her husband Arthur, 62, for help. "He thinks very quickly, and is an engineer by training. I just need to show him what I want and he will figure it out," she says proudly.

Mr Sia, who works as a senior manager in the food industry, has helped to make several props for both mother and son, including pieces of "body armour" and a belt buckle with "spikes" made of cardboard. He often drives his wife to her cosplay events.

"She's a housewife, so she has plenty of time to do this," he says in jest. "But honestly, I'm happy for her. This keeps her busy and it's better than staying at home feeling bored."

Mrs Sia says being involved in cosplay has helped keep her mind active, her eyes sharp and her fingers nimble.

Her son helped her set up a Facebook fan page in April, and her Aunty Shirley account now has more than 2,000 "likes".

Every evening, besides talking about current affairs, the Sias gather to update one another about their lives and to discuss Aunty Shirley's latest activities and upcoming cosplay events.

They say this shared interest has widened the scope of their daily common conversation topics. Remarks Skyy: "My mother is more active than me in the cosplay community, and I'm very happy that she is so popular.

"People have gone from knowing her as Skyy's mum to identifying me as Shirley's son."

This article was first published on Oct 5, 2014.
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