The Rare Visitor

Val having a "conversation" with Uncle J about his rock

It was very serendipitous I must say. Sometime in May or June 2009, I interviewed an architect on their ION Orchard project and that guy passed me a small booklet that had mug shots of his staff. I looked and did a double take when I saw a familiar face - a friend from JC whom I had not seen in 16 years! My interviewee was equally surprised and hooked us both up via email. So i wrote to say hi to J who is now based in Shanghai, and an intermittent conversation started from there on.

When J was back in Singapore briefly, I brought Val out to meet Uncle J, who really really lived up to his self-professed reputation for having a knack for kids. Of course, it helped that there was some ice-cream to break the ice! But I must say the pair got on roaringly well. I think it helped that I had shown Val Uncle J's picture before they met cos I was afraid that his beard might scare the lil boy. I think that early picture introduction worked really well - so well, that by the end of our outing, Val even dared to touch the scraggly beard and give the uncle a peck on his cheek! So Kudos to you, Uncle J!

Since this guy is a rare visitor I thought I shd commemorate the occasion with some (crappy iPhone) pictures here of our sweltering hot afternoon out at Pasir Ris Park - which in my opinion is an absolutely fab place to bring an energetic 2 year old!

Where else do we start but at Val's favourite fire engine???


The driver and his over-sized passenger

Wasn't before long that Val ventured into the murky Pasir Ris waters. Urgg...

Contemplation...Hmm... shd we dash in?

Dippy toes and fingers! But Val still got incredibly sandy and wet! We sure weren't prepared to swim, not in Pasir Ris waters!


Never easy to say goodbye to the sea when you're having a great time! But lil fella, it's time to get out!

tong tong chiang

Up at the rooftop of Orchard Central. :-) Handsome boy...

Val was intrigued yet scared of the Lion... see how he was cowering when the friendly Leo came up close.


**Photos by Uncle CW
Thanks!

Ben is our best friend, Jerry is his pal

Photos by Auntie See Yiing

We had lunch with a small bunch of friends today at Victoria Peak (in Singapore!), at the relatively new Orchard Central. It was a great location - 11th Floor - affording us a birds eye view of the Orchard area - things sure looked different from atop! There was also the requisite Tong Tong Chiang - Lion Dance troupe - that made an auspicious ruckus. I gave the lion an angbao and they came close up to us, but the lil un was so afraid, we didn't get a good pic together with the furry thang. Val's still fascinated by Lions and Dragons though. everytime he hears the drums and cymbals anywhere, he would urge me to bring him to see the uniquely Chinese dance. After a sumptuous Dimsum lunch, we went on the 12th floor for a walk - nice flowers and open garden - and then to Heaven's Loft for ice cream. This picture says it all: he heart ice cream! It was Ben & Jerry's Macadamia Nut and Vanilla... the same flavours he had when we celebrated his first birthday at the zoo in December 2008. :-) Anyhow, this guy is easy. He doesn't need expensive B&J to buy him over. When Uncle J came visiting few weeks ago, the lil chap became best friends with his bearded friend over a cup of $1 ice cream too.. :-)

Snowball's death

Our office once had a pet rat. She was a colleague's rat but he was going to national service and couldn't care for her anymore so the office adopted her. Snowball was, well, white. Fat. And getting fatter each day.

We didn't know why. I didn't care too much because her tail - that long, pink tail with coils going round in circles - gave me the extreme heebie-jeebies. I couldn't bear to carry her, not with that long thing touching me. Anyways, i digress. So as she got progressively dormant, a kind-hearted colleague, B, our senior manager, brought Snowball to the vet. The diagnosis? She was constipated and would die soon. She was too old for surgery and the medication wasn't able to help her purge all the toxic stuff in her. So within a week, she passed.

Since then i have always wanted to blog about constipation but never found the guts to do so. And also to find time, and perhaps, that inspired moment. Tonight, i found myself inspired to write about constipation.

Not mine. Oh No. I, thank the Lord, have been blessed most of my life with an easy time in the loo. But increasingly i have been been hearing, apart from Snowball's case of immovable bowel, many friends and colleagues suffering from the same affliction.

I have had only TWO cases of extreme constipation my entire life - once, during my Kota Kinabalu climb, and the second, was when I was pregnant. The first occasion was triggered by a monotonous diet of Oreo cookies while gunning for the peak. Being a "heaty" person, it doesn't really take much heaty stuff to clog me up. Suffice to say, the day after the summit, it wasn't the weak knees and legs that i suffered from, but a very constipated ass that endured a painfully long session in the loo. The second time was when I naively took the iron pills prescribed by a kind UN doctor for my pregnancy. See, iron pills are good for women who don't get enough nutrition, but for women like me, it was just waaaay too much iron in the diet. I had horrible horrible constipation and swore off those awful pills right after.

anyways, that's about it. I hardly ever constipate. instead, i am the kind who goes in and out of the loo, done under five minutes flat. I never dawdle, i never read, i never ever wait out a shit. I go when i feel the urge and i leave immediately. I have been told by doctors that i have a great toilet habit. And dare i say, during my treks in the wilderness of Tibet, i used to make "perfect" looking shit like those you see in the cartoons. I kid you not!

But it seems that many other people (family, friends, colleagues) suffer from constipation much more than they deserve. I hear of colleagues who can go ONCE a week. Imagine, all that excreta stuck inside the turns and corners of your guts.

The reasons? Here are the two most bizarre: One of them can't bear to use public toilets so she would keep things in until she's home or on rare occasions, telephones a friend who lives nearby and uses her home loo; the other can't bear the embarrassment of others knowing she's in the loo because our tiny office only has TWO cubicles and it's painfully obvious who's in the loo emitting strange sounds and smells, so this colleague moves her bowels every Saturday morning, in the peace and quiet of her home.

But there are others more: I hear how they try to lubricate their insides, drinking tea, honey, and vinegar, eating prunes, salads, and Chinese medication. Anything, and everything under the sun. Sometimes, the remedies work for a brief period and there's happiness all around. But always, it seems, the remedies stop working soon after. I have tried recommending morning yoga because i know how effective it can be but no one has taken that up yet.

I had a relative who once did an endoscope for another problem, and was told by the doctor that the scope was not long enough for his intestines because years of constipation had stretched his guts tooo long. Incredible.

And so, on a daily basis, i see these people struggle with a problem that literally makes them go green in the face. A colleague was recently down with severe stomach aches cos of her accumulated shit. Imagine that. So constipation is really nothing to kid about. It can get lethal.

I sometimes wonder is it because of our diet that we have become so congested? Is it too much meat in our food? Is it the lack of exercise? Or is it the work stress that's causing the blockage? I do know that the constant struggle to shit and the aim to get a "smooth one" can get depressing for some. It seems futile and also such a deep dark secret. At least in my office, there are enough constipated people around to make it no longer a secret struggle. A small group of them have banded together, in good humour, to share their recipes and antidotes. I admire their efforts and wish them the best of luck and hope someone would try the yoga. For me, I just keep reminding myself to eat healthily and never take my good shit for granted.

Because, you never know when you might just do a Snowball.

Roar like a tiger... whimper like a cat

@ the old seletar airbase - can you see the defiance in him? urggg...


phew.........what can i say? the past four days have been INTENSE. not so much intense the visiting of relatives for the lunar new year festivities but the intense mother-son bonding that went on.

I approach each and every one of these long weekends with much trepidation - don't get me wrong, i love my son to bits but boy, oh boy, four straight days of being together 24/7 can take its toll! It was all going quite well until tonight, the last night, when i lost it quite completely.

He was cranky, and trying, and being in the "terrible-twos" stage, become quite a competent negotiator. He won over his grandparents but couldn't get past scary mommy in his attempts to secure a candy at night, an ice cube to suck on, a cold drink, another yoghurt etc etc etc. His requests just seemed endless and all so wrong. I am not the Nazi mom who doesn't allow my son to touch ice, cold drinks or sweets, but i have my limits too - - nothing sweet after dinner for sure, and nothing cold especially when the lil fella has a runny nose and loose stools today! So i stood firm, and was greeted with terrific howls of protests... he clearly knew that his grandparents would accede to his requests so he placated them but i am proud to announce that the oldies have enough respect to stay on my side. But i am not so sure they would have stuck to their guns, if i weren't home... i am quite sure my mom would have given him a sweet at the very least. Grandparents are like that - they're hard wired to spoil the kid, cos they can. I remember my mom being the strictest mommy ever, and here she is, a complete softie at val's manipulations.

At that point, he was in a meltdown, screaming, crying, and kicking, completely irrational. My parents couldn't handle him anymore and I was getting super frustrated. So what did i do? I hauled him back to the room, shut it, and for a v v v v v brief moment went berserk. I am quite sure profanities slipped through my gap in those nanoseconds and i was terribly sorry for what i did. The eruption was fast and furious, but over in seconds, and I very quickly gave him a hug once he too quietened down. I think he was shocked to see me go nuts. But come on, i am human, okay..... i mean, which mommy doesn't go nuts once in a while right?

perhaps there's a latent fear that i spoil him, being the only child. i don't want that to happen. perhaps because of that, i guard myself even more. i always try to explain to him that loving him does not equate acceding to his every request. i don't know if he can understand that but i still tell him. I tell him i love him so much but i cannot give him everything he wants. i tell him, he can cry if he wants, and i'll be glad to hug him whenever he needs me.


Parenting is so tough.

books are me

I did a very tiny spot of spring cleaning yesterday, grounded at home on MC.

sometimes you get inspired like that - you pick up something, and the next thing you know, you're on a spring cleaning warpath. So it happened with my bookshelf.

It's not any old bookshelf - but a handmade bookshelf that my mom's student, a carpenter, had crafted following an Ikea catalogue from the early 1990s. It's a Billy Bookcase lookalike but tonnes more sturdy. No sagging at any spots despite all the tomes it has had to carry.

My bookshelf defines me. And this is why I have increasingly found it difficult to move things away from it. But alas, as Val grows, his collection of books are also increasing. I have had to clear out a spot here and there for him. Yesterday, I took the plunge and cleared out the entire second shelf for him. I have formally relegated a part of my bookshelf with my scion. such is the nobility of motherhood - and the idea of sacrifice, and giving up, as well as merging of two to one, came through ever so clearly. This boy has now become an irreplaceable part of me.

Even before Val's arrival, i would do a yearly cleaning of this bookshelf. I would plough through the boxes, the files, and the rows of books - play musical chairs with them essentially cos i could not bear to junk anything. After all, i have always been a careful book buyer. I buy books that i really want to keep. So how could i bear to part with any?

Every book and every author signified a special period of my life

The Murakami novels and non-fiction are proudly placed together. I think I read my first Murakami in the New Jersey house of an ex-love. I had visited him and his family, and stayed there for 10 days. I was given a room that had many of Murakami's novels. I picked up the Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and finished it before i left. I was told that Murakami had stayed in the same house as I - albeit decades earlier. My ex-love's mom was close friends with him and when he needed to escape the fan frenzy in Japan, he came to America for a sabbatical. Here, he wrote a number of books, one of them, an autobiography in Japanese. My ex-love's sister's picture is in it.

There on the shelf are also some Salman Rushdie books. My sis had begun reading them before me but none had piqued my interest. Not until the Satanic Verses. I bought my copy in the States during my six-months Hawaii study trip. Rani was a great help, "translating" many of the Quranic references that helped me gain a richer understanding of the book. Thereafter I was hooked. I chanced upon Rushdie's Haroun and the Sea of Stories and loved it. I was so in love that I went around looking for it at second hand book stores because I loved the original illustrations. I found a copy at Far East Plaza.

The English Patient was a book I read multiple times. Of course it had everything to do with the beautiful film - I first saw it in Toronto, while on a break during my six months at Ithaca College.But the real reason is because I had met Ondaatje in person, later on, during my internship at In Conversation. I had researched him for Sonny Lim, and in the process read six of his books including his poems. Bought them out of my own expenses too! When we finally met, he gave me a big hug and a kiss on my cheek.

Then there's that Milan Kundera book, The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Here's one book that I read ONCE - - on a cargo ship (that used to carry cattle), down the south of Chile towards the ice bergs of Punta Arenas. It was during my 3-month trip with Raleigh International. Soon Heong had lent me the book, and I devoured it. Somehow, the book had so much resonance for me, with everything that was happening to me then (the isolation, the crush i had, the entirely foreign surroundings). I loved the book, I thought I could understand that unbearable lightness of being. When I returned to Singapore, I bought the book, but found that I could never bring back that moment. The new book remains unthumbed, but whatever Kundera meant to convey had already been embedded in my heart.

There are two sets of books that took me years to finish reading. The first set was the Lord Of the Rings trilogy. I bought them during my JC days but never got past the first book. The imagery was too rich, too complex to imagine. I am limited that way! But when the films came out, everything made sense. I went back to the books and finished them very quickly this time. Here's a real case of how movies can boost book sales!

The second book was Vikram Seth's A Suitable Boy which i took seven long years to finish. It didn't belong to me. Elaine had loaned it to me and then it just got stuck there on my shelf. It was horrible seeing it cos i would feel this strong guilt for not returning to her. But i knew, just knew, that someday I would conquer it. So when I was posted to East Timor, this was the first book i packed. And I remember that day when I finally finished it. I was sitting on the verandah of my boss' house - I was staying with her for a few months - it was a Sunday afternoon. The waves were breaking in front of me, and then, a slight breeze touched my skin. I reached the last page, it took me by surprise, and i re-read the last chapter a couple of times, almost stunned that it had finally ended. I was just beginning to know the families in the book, their web of complex relationships, and the political milestones of the times. With much reluctance, I finally clapped the heavy tome closed and declared it finished. The book was returned to its owner in 2008.

100 Years of Solitude, A Fine Balance, God of Small Things; Karen Armstrong, Germaine Greer, Shakespeare. So many books, so many memories. Many books still left unread, and strategically placed in the front row so i won't miss them. My new year's resolution was to read at least six of these books. :-) Hope I will accomplish that.

Thank you books for bringing me worlds I could never have lived in. I do hope Val will come to love books as much as I do. For a person who loves to read, will never be lonely.

Kite flying and the state of Zen

*correction: all photos thanks to auntie May's hubba Ian!!

Was a strange outing cos the kite flying took all of 5 minutes, before the strings got majorly tangled up, no thanks to Mr Valente SmellyBottom Lay! He had joy, oh boy, getting me in a tizzy, as i struggled to stop the mess from worsening. But the boy was like in the cartoons, running circles round my ankles, creating a kite chaos out there. very malu i tell you. While YM sat down on the grass with vera laughing at the escapade, Ian was kindly helping me to sort out the mess. In the end, we had to resort to distracting val - getting him to run far away - in order for one adult to have the time to disentangle the kites! Thanks to Ian, we ended up with three clumps of kites with a bunch horribly still in knots. Last night, i finally had the peace and quiet, after the boy had fallen asleep, to slowly pick through the strings. I had fallen asleep with him and woken up at 12midnight to face this task.

In the still of the night, the knotty problem became a good opportunity to meditate upon my current state of affairs. I got all contemplative - how can you not! All those knots, so complicated, yet they were only created by simple twists - no one actually went to great lengths to mess them up - but yet they just seem so indomitable if you are in a hurry to sort them out.

But when it's quiet, when time kinda stood still, when the mind's at peace, the problem didn't seem so daunting. Complex yet totally can be fixed.

Slowly, by observing the way the strands were twisted, and by quietening my heart, I was able to tease the kites in and out, loop-a-loop, and before long, had restored the entire string of kites to their complete, unentangled state.

I think I had a brief encounter with Zen last night. :-)

**Additional pix - Val caught in the act!

@Henderson Waves

A couple of good friends brought Val and I to Henderson Waves for a nice Sunday afternoon walk (or lots of running in Val's case). It was hilarious cos he was so thrilled racing down the downhill slope of the bridge while I was busy running ahead of him (facing him!) fearful that he would go kersplatz on his face. He really did fall a number of times which was okay, as long as he didn't roll down the slope - - my biggest paranoia! But yeah, a simple bridge like that gave him a good hour of entertainment - running up and down, splaying on the nice wooden flooring, peering through the wired fencing, hunting for "Totoro" in the nooks and crannies (have i mentioned that he is currently obsessed with Miyazaki's Totoro?). We ended the walk with slurpy chocolate chip ice cream from a hawker. :-) Nice. I really love such active outings and thank SY and CW for spending their afternoon with us. Arigato! Mahalo!

Who Would Want a Child Like That

Deeply touched by this blog link on my oldest friend (26 years we have known each other!)YM's blog site (www.mylittlevera.blogspot.com) and so i am reBlogging it here.

http://severedisabilitykid.blogspot.com/2010/01/who-would-want-child-like-that.html

We heart Mandarin

Increasingly, we have been getting all sorts of nice compliments from people - taxi drivers, strangers, friends, relatives, etc - who are pleasantly surprised by how fluent Val is in Mandarin. We are thankful for his current propensity to yammer away in Mandarin, and hope that this affinity to his mother tongue will help stir up interest in his heritage as he grows older.

My mom was a Chinese language teacher so I never had much problem speaking or studying it in school - but i was never stellar at it. In fact, i only scored an A2 for CL2 and B3 (gasp*) for CL1. but my mom was always cool about it. In fact, i believe her greater worry back then was that my sister and I would not pick up English properly since she and my dad were Chinese-educated. So she went through much pain (and drama) to get my sis and I transferred from Red Swastika to Haig Girls when we were about 8 years old. She said that she pulled all kinds of strings then to persuade Mrs Bandara to get my sister into the school, then when it came to my turn, she turned on the emotional tap by dressing me up in my sis' oversized pinafores (Haig Girls' uniform) and got me to see the principal. That emo-card certainly trumped Mrs Bandara's resolve not to admit another student. So voila! I entered Haig Girls in Primary 2.

School was really a shock for me then cos I could hardly string a sentence in English together. I only knew how to write my name in English. For years i had "please see me" scribbled on all my English essays for my atrocious grammar. Thankfully, a horde of hand-me-down Enid Blytons saved my future - i got hooked on the Five Find Outers and Dog, Nancy Drew, Three Investigators, etc - and my English got better too. Those "please see me"s finally disapparated in Primary 6, and I even won second spot in a writing essay the next year when I was in high school.

At Dunman High, the Chinese teachers (except my mom! haha) who taught me were very unimaginative. They were traditional, and unexciting. They hardly aspired anyone to find out more about the language. In contrast, i had Alan Watkins, our crazy gwailou English lit teacher, who had an earring in his left ear, a deep jolly laugh, and a wicked sense of humour. A few of us were so inspired that we would stay back with him after school for our own "Dead poets society" kinda meetings. We studied poetry and texts that were not part of our curriculum. While my classmates were ploughing through "Much Ado about nothing" i was reading "Merchant of venice" and other Shakespeare originals. We studied literature so widely that during my GCE o levels, I was able to take on the additional poetry questions that the rest of my classmates weren't able to.

Meeting Alan Watkins was a watershed period for me. He showed me what being different was about, and that a genuine passion for something can lead one to do so much more. Since then, I took it upon myself to pursue subjects that i could only truly love.

But i digress, what i meant to say, was that i had gone, in a space of years, from a Chinese-speaking and reading 8 year old, to a teenager who was a lot more comfortable in English literature.

But the saving grace is that, no matter what, I have remained bilingual. My respect for the Chinese language and my ability to converse in it have stayed with me despite my nefarious affair with English. During my extended travels in China, i was able to conduct all my conversations purely in Chinese. Thought to be a local, I would get away with local prices and entrance fees. Muahaha. that truly came in handy.

Now, as a parent, I am also able to speak with Val in complete Chinese sentences if i so wish. It's good training for me. I have learnt many new Chinese terms in the past 2 years; oddly I have observed that my Chinese-speaking parents themselves are struggling to speak in complete Chinese sentences. The pervasiveness of English have corrupted their conversations; more often than not, my parents are the ones resorting to using English terms and not me. I am still trying to "de-bug" that, but it really shows how English has crept into everyone's lives.

I tell my parents that I would rather they speak great Chinese then attempt half-baked English. Let's take pride in our mother tongue, for goodness sake! I know many grandparents feel pressured to speak English to their grandkids because these kids simply don't respond to Chinese at all. It's a tough situation to be in. I am just glad that for now, we don't have that issue. And when the time comes for val to fall in love with English, I hope that his Chinese roots would have sunk deep enough to keep him in touch with one of the oldest languages on earth.

my growing boy

Photo captured using MoreLomo, a free iPhone app, that gives that cool lomo edge to all your blurry iphone pix! :-)

random sketches

On my right, I see half of the Singapore Flyer, still and stagnant, while a tiny helicopter whirs overhead. The dark clouds are looming, and the full length windows of the library gives a panoramic view of the city skyline. So many cranes in the far distance where the casino is being constructed - the scene is surreal and perilous looking, as a mothership-like structure straddles the three pillars, and six cranes perch on top, their arms raised up in salute. it is like they are building a giant ark in the sky, except that it's for Mammon and not God.

i have been enmeshing myself in the mobile tech world ever since i laid hands on the iPhone. The incredible ease of internet surfing, facebooking and tweeting has made more reluctant to power up a pc (it now seems to take forever to get it on, dial up the modem etc), when the phone is there. Except the battery sucks, literally.

The boy is speaking loads and making me laugh with his remarks. Every weekend is an intense mother-son bonding period, when he koala himself onto me, as if hungry for more mommy time. It can be sapping how much he takes from me but also satisfying. He now enjoys taking words from songs and mashing them up to make new ditties. I think he got that from me.

I don't like how the boy is growing up to like ALL the foods that i love. Mushrooms, fishballs, chicken wings, noodles. It just means that we will be fighting over our food in the future.

Is it obvious that this blog is all about distraction? I am supposed to get on with my book review of The Strategic Drucker and all i have been doing is reading up more and more about the old man (who should have been 100 if he didn't die 5 years ago), and not getting a start on the essay. Arggh.

how did 2009 pass me by?? (my life remembered)

and so it's gone. 2009. bye bye. how did 10 entire years slip by like that? what's there to show for the decade?

* lots more white hair
* lots of jiggly and highly loyal fats
* lots more lines on the face
* lots more stubborn freckles
* 9 credits of a Masters programme that's W.I.P
* a 2-year old whirlwind of a typhoon named Val

I was listening to a podcast by The Guardian - their last of the decade, entitled "the Noughties" and was suddenly compelled to think through each year that passed.

Here's what i remember of each year (upon writing it all, i then realised, SHIT! i did a lot! AND am so glad i did it, cos i am now on another journey of a totally different kind!)

1999 into 2000: I distinctly remember sitting on a boat in Inle Lake (Burma) with E & R, freezing our butts and noses off in the sub-zero (Yess! in Burma!) temperatures, hailing in the new millennium. Singing with Burmese boys and then narrowly escaping a crazy boy who was in love with R. Hilarious. We cycled furiously uphill, aided by a chivalrous Briton, while pursued by the madly infatuated Burmese man who tried v hard to snog R. He fell, got into a bloody mess, and we just left him there cos we were too terrified to help him. Next morning, he came and tried to win some sympathy points from R, offering to show his blood-stained shirt. PSFFFFFT! but yes, that was an epic 60 days i spent in Burma. learnt to speak Burmese and appreciate the wonderful grace of the Burmese people.

2000: joined CNA in February and began my 4-year career there. First major story: SQ006 Taipei crash. Too rookie to be sent to Taipei. could only look on with much envy. Volunteered to cover stories of victims' families. Spent many days solemnly attending funerals and memorials, getting the heart-felt stories, getting connected with families, and also crying my heart and eyes out while attending the funerals. esp. Subhash Anandan's brother's funeral, where i really quite lost it, having interviewed them extensively. *Sob* also had to cover a friend's brother's funeral. was chased away, and put in difficult position by a boss who didn't care if i was uenthical getting the story. This friend, who was very angry with me, later apologised to me some 5 years later when he saw me again. He said he later wished that he had allowed me to do a proper story of his pilot brother,how he died so heroically saving others.

2001: 9-11 of course. who can forget that? I remember sitting in the living room, watching this most surreal piece of breaking news on CNN. I texted my sis who was in a taxi, and then when the second plane crashed right into the WTC IN FRONT OF MY TWO ALREADY WIDE WIDE OPEN EYES, i really saw history unfolding right infront of me. the exhilaration. the amazement. the incredulity of the whole situation. epic.

oh, and i went to Tibet earlier in June for Raleigh's Operation Tashi Deleg, my second Singapore expedition (after Burma) and my third extensive community service trip.


2002: i went to Hawaii. the rest i can't remember. i was a surfer gal for six months. i learnt hawaii from a kumu hula who was an activist, using dance and hawaiian language to reclaim their lost culture, that was oppressed by missionaries who thought hawaiians were heathen. 'nuff said.

2003: strangely can't recall much of what happened here.

After some thinking, i remember that this was the year the navy ship collided into a huge container ship. I had my passport with me the day the crash happened, took off immediately for Bintan for reporting and stayed there for 6 days.

2004: watershed year. quit my job! had planned this for two years (after returning from hawaii). left without a job, much to colleagues' amazement. Felt the adrenalin rush of not knowing where the $ will come next. Finally dipped my toes into magazine writing - something I don't regret.

A simple 10-day trip to Cambodia with T had me falling, tumbling, hurtling into my Khmer affair. I went to Cambodia FIVE times in the space of 12 months - - as a tour guide for a friend's trekking business and the last time as the oldest participant of a YEP project. I visited Tuol Sleng and Killing Fields five times. Lived in villages countless times. Learnt to speak Khmer.

Capped off the year with a four-month trip from Yunnan to Laos, to Cambodia, and back to Singapore ending January 2005. Had one backpack with the entire time. V proud of it. Made good friends - my clients on the trips I led as a tour guide - and we're still in contact today.

2005: As Tsunami of Xmas 2004 hit, I was in Siem Reap, oblivious of what had happened. We had no internet in the vilage. Upon returning to Singapore, was roped into a flurry of post-tsunami volunteer work that took me to Nias, Medan for Raleigh recce work. Worked fulltime as a volunteer to coordinate things in Singapore. When the second earthquake hit, i remember that i was in Siem Reap (yes again) and people were texting me non-stop thinking i might be in Nias. All the places i had stayed in Nias were flattened. Kaput. Kerplazts. Ker-plunk.

Out of the blue, SIF offers me an assignment in East Timor starting in July 2005. I take it up, cos my parents didn't want me back in earthquake zone. So i left for war zone instead. Met two wonderful women - my UNICEF bosses- who will be inspiration for my life forever. Also met my husband there.

2006: In May 2006, just days before the first stint of my ten-month volunteer period was up, Timor fell into civil war. Bullets zinged overhead, tended to the wounded etc etc etc (it's all documented in this blog), and i was evacuated via a JICA ISOS plane back home. I returned in a month to take up a consultancy with UNICEF again. Saw first hand what it means to live in a displacement camp. heart breaks seeing children living in the open, susceptible to the elements, malnourished and ravaged by hungry mosquitoes. I grow up a lot.

2007: Became pregnant and had the unique experience of being preggers in a third world country. I appreciate that opportunity. It gave me plenty of insights into what it means to be pregnant in the two worlds i was straddling - the privileges that modern women have and what village women lack. suddenly the numbers oft cited for mortality rates made a lot of sense. I saw child survival in a totally different light - - as a mother, not as an aid worker.

returned to Sg Nov 2007 to await Val's delivery. Dec 2007 the typhoon arrives and i am stil being tossed about in his fury. Gosh.

2008: disappeared into the deep dark hole of motherhood. Will i ever find it? :-) perhaps only in blog entries and my scribblings in my journal. memories of sore nipples, breastfeeding at night, and lots of photo taking dominate my life.

2009: er... hello world. i finally begin working again full time at Tuber. another rollercoaster ride as i learn how to negotiate the corporate jungle as a custom publishing animal. ROAR!!!!! lots to learn, and also lots of "idealism" to put aside as i become the pragmatic mom who is now most concerned about earning a stable income for my son's varsity fees.

Dec 31, 2009: I watch the countdown on TV - it is muted as Val slumbers on our bed. I hear the faint boom, boom, boom of fireworks as they are set off to usher in the new year. i can't help but recall how similar they sounded to the boom, boom, boom of mortar firing off in the mountains of Dili in May 2006.


Happy New Year.

Tech dino LOVES this! Mobile Art Lab Combines iPhone and Children's Books

Mobile Art Lab Combines iPhone and Children's Books



It truly combines print (my first love) with the inevitable - interactive.digital.mobile stizzuf that's taking the world by storm. NICEEEEEEE.....
I like it so much! Trust a Jap company to be the brains behind it!

Would you drink raw milk?

Interesting issue. But I don't think Singapore's AVA would ever permit raw milk, not even if we have live cows here.
I told a friend looking for raw milk locally that raw human milk is available here and da best!

2 year old iphone addict: the tech dino mulls on the issue

Razor TV has two stories on the iphone craze, centred around a 2-year-old girl Inez who is apparently "addicted" to the phone. It's really exaggerated cos I don't see that she is an addict since she only spends an hour on it a day but okay our standards may differ.

Apart from the bad voice over (the reporter needs better voice training!), the stories do raise the issue of the extent to which parents should allow their kids access to the iPhone or any other kinds of tech gadgets. My cousin's kids were, for a while, hooked to the PSP - same difference. I think it's all about moderation, with everything we do. And realising that as parents, we have the moral responsibility to control what our children get to see, touch, hear, and say. The debate is not about the iPhone at all. It's about how much effort parents put in to communicate with their children, and whether we spend quality time with them, engaging them in their games. For me, the Ipod Touch or Iphone will always be a "good-to-have", but never a "must-have". More importantly, I crack my head each weekend to think of where to bring Val to instead of cracking my head over which new app to download. He asks for it occasionally, "Where's the ipooot?" (LOL) but is always easily distracted to do something else. And even when he plays on it, I am always watching over his shoulder, playing with him. That's the point of downloading those apps, and even wanting to develop my own kiddy apps for other children (that's a post for another day!).

Go the middle way, the tech dino says. While keeping up with techy stuff, make sure too that the kids sweat it out on the beach - I know of kids who think that sand is ickieee cos their parents say so! Help your kids get used to being in the sun. Too many children these days are kept away from the great outdoors. A few mossie bites are okay la! Slap on the bug repellent and traipse the trails. Catch some butterflies and tadpoles. If need be, bring the iphone to snap pix! Make a video of the trail. Even going to a playground beats being cooped up at home. Surf the net for great ideas from other parents. IMHO, if parents blame it all on the gadgets, it means they have been a bit lazy in trying to figure out what's exciting out there. We need to realise that gone are the days that staying at home means you're nurturing a bookworm. It means you could be bringing up a 宅男 or otaku!

Val turns 2!

Yeah, he turned 2 yesterday and all we did was to attend his school concert which, unfortunately coincided with it! But it was great seeing him in action on stage - he didn't fret, didn't cry, didn't run off stage, didn't do much either! haha, just shaking his bells, and his bum to "Lemon Tree" - he's been showing off his moves for about 2 months now at home, especially from the day we took a cab and heard the song on radio. I was quite a proud mommy, seeing my handsome little boy (with sparkly hair gel which i had a lot of trouble getting off!) behave so well, and looking absolutely charming. Took videos for Grandpa so had no time to snap pictures!

We celebrated his birthday on Saturday morning instead with a yummy cake from Choc.A.Bloc, which is just a few blocks away from our place. Auntie Connie and Uncle Max came along, tooting the party whistles, wearing cheerful party hats, and a huge helium-filled Thomas the Train balloon! Val promptly used it as a bunching bag, and sang his "不倒翁" song. Anyone knows what is 不倒翁 in English??? Then we finally gave him Auntie Shuhui's present, a Thomas the Train & Big Loader set, which he saw 2 weeks ago but i managed to persuade the good boy to be patient and only open it on his birthday. Set up the complicated tracks and all with Uncle Max's help and we were chugging along! It's also my first motorised train set, so i was quite thrilled seeing the trains deliver the ball bearings from place to place.

I got Val a Little Tike pedal/ push bike but that he saw 2 weeks ago, accidentally, as I had set it up while he was at school and hid it in a spare room. When i went into the room one day, he followed me, spotted the bike, and the rest is history....

After the cake and prezzies, we trooped down to Jacob Ballas Children's Garden when he had a swell time playing at the water feature, and then hugging calabashes and other fruits he saw at the garden. Got too hot to bear, and escaped to Plaza Singapura for lunch at Lao Beijing. Sumptuous, albeit, expensive lunch later (the tiny plate of pickles cost $5!!!), we got home and all snoozed.

That was it, another year's passed and my boy is growing older, more sensible, yet also more prone to tantrums! The terrible twos are officially upon us but i'm loving every moment - especially when he throws himself upon me and smother me with kisses.

Oh, and we deliberately did not celebrate his birthday in school last Friday. I've decided that there's no need to go OTT for birthdays. IF his bd falls on a weekday next year, we will celebrate in school, and might even do the whole goodie bag shebang. BUT, as long as it's not on a weekday, I will not succumb to the double-triple celebrations that some kids get. I can't afford it anyways, and since I grew up fine, without much fanfare on my bds, i shd think Val will be fine. I'll just wait for him to request for a celebration before thinking what's next. This seems like a straight forward opinion, but trust me, i spent DAYS pondering on this OKAY!

Lift Up(down)grading

So you are all familiar with LUP (Lift Upgrading Programme) on this lil red dot. Recently our block of flats joined in the frenzy (not that it was our choice) because, apparently, when the architects designed our block (which has 13 floors), they decided to let the lifts stop at ALL the levels, except Storey 13. Why? Beats me? Perhaps the technology then didn't allow it? Anyways, presumably in anticipation of the ageing population, and to make people on Storey 13 happy, upgrading came along.

Upgrading is a misnomer for us because no one - NO ONE - feels uplifted by the new lifts. They are s...l..o..w.., s..l..o..w..e..r... than the OLD lifts, so it takes forever for the lifts to come, especially when one was sealed off for works, leaving only one lift available for the entire block of residents. Not only are they slow, they no longer have those screens up above that tells you which floor the lift is at! Gasp! And... sometimes, when you press your floor, e.g. 8, and someone comes in, and press, say, 6, your floor number disappears but you're probably not aware, and then suddenly, 'bing' you realise, oh %^&&**, you're on the 11th floor and have missed your stop!. arggghh....

The frustration is clear...the sucky lifts have become the most popular conversation starter for all the residents here. Formerly, we would step in and step out, nary a smile or hello, but these days.........things are different! We have a common enemy - we all grouse in chorus about the sucky lifts - shake our heads in unison - and then let out sighs in symphony. Oh, our lives, damned by these lifts...oh how LUP has raised the quotient on social capital in our block. Perhaps, LUP does have some merits then?

Wait, and then we find out something from one of the PRC workers. They heard us venting as usual, and told us that the new lifts cost a third of the old lifts (Fujitec from Japan). AHHH....the truth emerges. We now know why LUP is really LDP.

But you know wat? I can deal with that. At least i now know WHY. It's the austerity drive, la. Economy not good so better bite the bullet too. I'm all for saving $, if the $ saved can benefit more people from having lifts that stop at their floors. All I ask is that whoever is sourcing these lifts make sure that they are SAFE for us. Yup, that's it. Nothing more. I can get myself to adapt to the slowness (I mean, we city rats do need to relax a tad!.

Just as long as those lifts never shudder and drop kerplunk into the shaft. Join me in prayer...

First magazine undertaking with Yulian

Some work from my past life with Unicef , in partnership with Yulian