my choice

It’s always there: The thought that I am not making the best choice.

Oh, it’s an old topic and one that I have written about before: How I sometimes feel like I’m wasting myself being a full-time mom. But like I said, the thought always crops up.

Every day, as I am a full-time mom for one more day, I am a little less marketable, a little less employable, a little less mentally agile.

As I am nursing a slight sprain to my left wrist, from carrying Dee for hours and lugging huge bags of shopping home, I can’t help but think that these hands of mine are better used (and better appreciated probably) for weaving stories on keyboards, drawing my bow over the violin and tinkling the ivories.

That my brain would be better used for snapping angles to stories, summarizing tons of information while under pressure and finding chords to music, instead of thinking about what to cook tomorrow or reminding myself to buy detergent.

What am I doing as a domestic drudge?

Of course I know why, but the other side always looks deceptively greener.

And I wonder too, if there is any point where I would feel that I have entrenched myself into the course that I chose for myself two years ago, that I would be too lazy or satisfied with my own domestic kingdom to forge a path back into the working world where I’d be … another working drudge.

toddler to boy

Why I no longer think of Day as a baby or a toddler, but a boy:

When he lies with his head on my tummy before he sleeps, his feet go past my knees and as I recall an ultrasound scan of him when he was still a tiny flippered creature flitting madly around my womb, I wonder how he got so tall.

I no longer inhale his out breaths the way I used to as his sweet baby’s breath has made way for musky adult odours, morning bad breath and all.

The chub has melted off, particularly so in the last six months, and he’s now all limbs and muscle.

Hardly anyone stops to comment on how cute he is.

I meet his trangressions not with patience or amusement, but with anger and sometimes aggression.

When he cries and whines, my first reaction is not to hug and kiss but to leave him to pick himself up.

I think twice about whether I should bathe with him.

The palms of his hands and the soles of his feet are rough, no longer baby soft.

He sends me away, barking instructions like this: “I’m using the laptop Mummy, go away” without even looking at me.

He changes all the settings on the laptop and we don’t know how to change them back.

funny bunny

humbling sea swim

So KK the ex-commando has been grousing about how he hasn’t exercised in two months.

This, despite walking up to an hour daily when he has to go to school (30 minutes one way), despite a long-ish walk to the Coogee Beach nearly every day, despite having to lug heavy kids around.

Walking is not good enough.

When I suggest dancing to Day’s Wiggles DVD, he snorts and says something to the effect of how he as a commando has reached a certain level of physical fitness and dancing to the Wiggles is beneath him.

So what better thing to do than to swim? Especially when we have the whole Tasman Sea at our doorstep.

And here, they have these incredible Ocean Pools, essentially swimming pools which are carved out of the sea, only without the waves, the tides and the sharks.

Today we tried the Wylie’s Baths, a 20-minute walk from our place.


And KK found out first-hand that Wylie’s Baths, despite its inviting appearance, is far from inviting for us delicate Singaporeans, and is the furthest thing from Bishan swimming pool where he used to go.

For despite the noontime sun (a shorts and T-shirts kind of day), the water was cold as a glass of water left in the fridge.


Day, dressed in his swimming suit and all eager to dip his head in, was full-blown crying by the time the water came up to his crotch, but ended up enjoying the day anyway munching chips on the overhanging verandah. Smart move.

His father persisted in going in. I admit that as I stood there madly gesturing away for him to jump in and start moving those muscles, I was thinking of the A$3 per adult admission fee.

After five rather slow laps, KK slowly walked out of the pool and mumbled: “I don’t feel so good.” He couldn’t talk, his lips were numb, he was shivering and he wanted to vomit.

When he could talk, quite a few minutes later, he said the water was so cold he was gasping throughout his laps. He spent just as much time outside the pool, just soaking in the sun and miserably gazing on the water, than in it.


I’m sure the fact that we left for the pool just after he woke up, which meant that he had not eaten or drunk anything prior to the chilly swim (no breakfast), did not help.

It certainly wasn't uplifting when the two old men who were placidly swimming laps around KK were hardly winded. When one of them turned to him to say "Nice!", KK wasn't sure what was supposed to be nice.

Still, it’s a freaking beautiful pool and apparently, people get married on the verandah. Wouldn’t that be some wedding.

virgin housewife deflowered

When I was in secondary school, I was asked what my ambition was and I said I wanted to be a housewife and mother.

I think I was joking then. So it’s funny how I have become exactly that.

Throughout my working life, however, the simple life was always at the back of my mind: That probably the best thing I could do with the fewest regrets when I die, is to be a full-time mom. For a while anyway.

Still, it’s only in the last two months that I became a true-blue housewife.

Before that, as I was staying with my folks who had a maid, I didn’t have to cook or clean a thing. My sole responsibility was mothering and I was completely inexperienced when it came to Household Management 101.

To my mortification (and some irritation I confess), I was also issued a dire warning by a well-meaning someone before I left for Sydney, that I would not be able to cope. That as I had effectively grown up with maids waiting on me, cooking, cleaning and looking after the kids would be too much for me to handle.

As he repeatedly asked, “Can you or not? Are you sure you can? It’s very difficult you know,” I looked away so he would not see how his belittling words had made me even more determined to prove otherwise. I’m stubborn that way.

The past two months of housewife-ing have been, well, I suppose what a virgin in the true-blue sense of the word would feel. Painful at first, but quite a joy with experience, though currently there really is too much of it for me to handle.

Ultimately, though, I suppose it’s all a matter of management and expectation. If I can’t manage, I expect less. Not so clean, not so neat, not so nice.

Here’s what I like and hate.

ENJOYABLE

Cooking. Unbelievable but true. I have come to enjoy cooking (even though I am still certain I will never be a great cook), I thoroughly enjoy the science of itt and I plan and cook nearly every meal.

Packing things. Every spare minute I have, I place things where they belong. I enjoy seeing things in their right places.

Washing, hanging out and folding clothes. Pure therapy, especially when the clothes are dried to a crisp in the grilling Australian sun.

SHIT WORK

For sure, cleaning scum, hands down. I abhor scum. I abhor mold. I abhor black goo in dark places. (the apartment, for the record, came with it. If it were clean to begin with, of course I wouldn’t let these things develop)

What makes it worse is that while I abhor trying to scrub away these vile things, I can turn a blind eye, pretend it doesn’t exist, live with them.

Yes, I can actually tune out the soap scum lining my kitchen basin, the hairs clogging up the toilet hole, the dental scum in the rinse-and-spit basin, and live life normally.

I just can’t bring myself to clean these things. I feel nauseous at the thought.

Solution: I make KK do it. He does all the mucky wet work.

drink of choice

Coca cola.

We’ve only drunk it twice since we came here, but the fizzy drink’s sure made an impression on Day.

He loves it. Nearly finished the entire glass. All those bubbles filling his tummy then meant that he couldn’t’ eat his lunch.

coogee ritual

If there is one place we will never forget of our Australian sojourn, it’s the Coogee Beach.

When we first saw it, we were gobsmacked and I whipped out my camera to snap a thousand pictures of the beach which looks nothing like East Coast Park. Now it's simply a place we go to every other day, a comfortable place of joy, fresh air and family ritual.

Typically, KK starts off wanting his small latte from the beachside café and we’re off.

Day hops, skips and jumps besides KK, sometimes wearing his shoes, sometimes wearing slippers and once barefoot, as I push Dee in her stroller.

As we move down Leeton Avenue, Day shouts out the numbers of the houses he passes. At number 16, he stops and waits for us to catch up so we can hold his hand to cross Alison Road.

If he sees a dandelion clock, he stops to blow the wispy filaments apart.

He runs on all the way to number 30, after which is the big green field flanked by red-flowered trees, where dogs run and men throw boomerangs.

Day stops to admire the pigeons and sometimes, he and papa fling off their shirts to run in the field, picking up branches to play “poke your backside”.

Two more roads later, we can see the sapphire blue sea. KK picks up his small latte.

We either “dabao” fish and chips for lunch, or if I have pizza vouchers, I take Dee with me, who has fallen asleep in the stroller, to the Domino’s Pizza outlet to get a large crispy pizza.

As I’m buying food, KK digs a hole in the bottom of his by-now-empty coffee cup and gives it to Day, who has removed his socks and shoes and is jumping in the sand, waiting for his sand shaker.

He plays for a good 10 minutes or so, filling the coffee cup with sand and watching it pour out, until I return with the food.

From the beach, we then go up to the cliff. We pass by a field of yellow and pink flowers.


Before we reach our favourite spot on a grassy tree-shaded slope overlooking the blue sea.


There’s the copse of trees on the left.


We sit down and savour our pizza, 3 slices each for KK and me, 2 slices for Day.


Here, Day is sharing fish and chips with his Uncle Choon when he visited.


Between bites, Day runs off, skipping and jumping about a memorial erected for victims of the Bali bomb blasts.


He runs down the slope, picking up “pretty flowers”, trying to get as close to the edge of the cliff as possible and getting blasted by KK for trying to get himself killed on the treacherous rocks below.


Dee wakes up the moment we sit down for pizza. I take her out and let her sit on the slope, where she tries to stuff grass into her mouth.

Sometimes, planes write words in white on the deep blue sky, sometimes, people fly kites.

After lunch, we all take a swig from the water bottle I brought out.

Then KK and Day go down a flight of steps to a smallish ocean pool, a pristine enclave of rocks perfect for climbing and shallow crystal-clear basins of salty water which seep in through the rocks.


Sometimes KK clambers up the rocks with Day in his arms, to watch the sea crash on the rocks.

There may be a sameness to it, but these are perfect days.

mucus drought

When my brother visited us last month, he brought with him reams and reams of tissue.

And I am now faced with the happy problem of not knowing what to do with all that tissue.

See, I haven't blown my nose ONCE since I stepped foot in Sydney.

Considering how my nose dribbled on a daily basis back in Singapore - has been the case since I was a child diagnosed with sinus - it's truly astounding to me that I can live without a box of tissue within pulling distance. Truly.

No more leaving wet globby trails of tissue behind me and no more of the horrible colds I used to get every month or so (when I my eyes would tear and I would have to sleep on one side with one tissue roll stuck up the nostril closer the ground, to soak up all the watery mucus dripping out).

It's dreadful being allergic to my home country.

Whenever I went on holiday I used to think perhaps it was just holiday adrenaline or euphoria which dammed the mucus floods.

Now I know better. It's definitely something in the air.

And I know for sure that Nasal Clearance is among the Top Three things I will miss when I leave Australia.

It could even be the Number One thing I'll miss. Being able to breath easily all the time is just too good for words.

* My eczema, and Day's eczema for the matter, is also well under control. What IS it about Singapore's air?

reaching 8.3 kg

We all knew she was getting heavier and when we dropped in at the doc today for her vaccination, the scales showed that she was 8.3 kg, meaning she's put on 1.5 kg in Sydney.

The good doctor also remarked that instead of slowing down, Dee is putting on weight at a faster rate. From being somewhat average (50th percentile) at three months, to the 97th percentile at six months.

Well and good. Must be all the chocolates I'm eating so she's getting high-fat breast milk.

Once again, however, what made my jaw drop was when I took out her brother's health book, and realized that she is nearly a kilo heavier than when Day was six months old.

She's putting on weight at a spectacular rate.

And this is completely out of character for me, but I'm completely chuffed that apart from one tiny meal a day of pureed something-or-other the past couple of weeks, it's all breast milk, my chubby tub doesn't even drink water.

Truly, my chest is swollen with pride.

train brain

Day looked at this picture and saw trains.

I was seriously puzzled when he said "It's like a train", until he pointed out that the big red spots on the butterfly's wings were like train's headlights.

OH.

Kids will have their obsessions. I don't know about girls (not until Dee grows up a bit) but for boys, it's usually cars or trucks or trains or some similarly macho pursuit.

For Day, it's always been trains. Always. He never really cast his eye on trucks or cars. He loves the way they link up and all the other bitty pieces among his play riff raff becomes part of his Big Train Story.

Lego blocks become cargo to transport, he builds engine sheds to house his trains, he uses his books to make slopes for the trains to run up and down, he cradles his trains in his arms and calls them his babies, and his favourite play activity is to lie stomach-down on the floor so he is literally face-to-face with his trains.


He is especially obssessed with Thomas the Train Engine. He's memorised the lyrics of the song, probably knows all the characters better than his grandparents (he can even tell the twin engines apart, I have no idea how), and pores over Thomas the Train toy pamphlets like his papa pores over his textbooks.

studying

I doubt if I would be able to do what KK is doing now: hit the books after leaving academia for 10 years.

It doesn’t help that by his own reckoning, he hasn’t actually studied hard for closer to 20 years. The last time he actually paid due diligence to his books was during his Chinese High days, after which he discovered women in college and everything went downhill.

Happily, he’s discovered all there is to discover, and nothing is going to sway him now.

He swots morning to night, sitting at the dining table (no study table unfortunately), obediently eating whatever I manage to churn out from the kitchen.

The tremendous amount of pressure he feels certainly helps: When he looks up from his books, I can imagine he feels fully responsible for dragging his entire family along with him and that he had better score damn well to justify the opportunity cost.

If I were him, I’d be stressed out of my head.

I’m glad I’m not the one studying but I'm glad he took up the challenge.

my eccentric little girl

Dee’s changed.

Seemingly overnight, she’s transformed into a queer little creature, an eccentric chubby tub with very fixed preferences and a tendency to snore.

I will remember the cold night all four of us squeezed onto the one queen-sized bed in the only bedroom with the heater, when I realized that the gentle snores we were hearing came from her.

Neither is she very sweet-smelling (nothing to do with the fact that we don’t bathe her every day). Most of the time she smells of nothing, saliva – which flows copiously nowadays – or shit.

Her papa calls her the British Bulldog because of her jowls. And because once she’s set her sights on something, she doesn’t let go.

He so described her just the other day: “She’s soft outside and hard inside.”

Meaning that she, compared to Day who was significantly more muscular and tougher, is actually very very nice to hug and carry because she is such a soft, fleshy, downy bundle.

But inside, man. She is still a tigress who goes into a feeding frenzy whenever she gets her hands on a plastic bag or paper. Meaning she frantically tears it apart, you can almost hear the growls, before trying to stuff it all into her mouth.


And her legendary night crying jags are still record-breaking. Yester night, she went on for nearly an hour because she wanted someone to hold her hands while she slept and we are certainly not going to do that the entire night.

Otherwise, the silly girl just makes us laugh because she’s so serious.

She regards life with a baleful intensity which has led us to conclude that she’s going to be a no-nonsense missy when she grows up. KK throws her in the air and she purses her lips.

She does have her moments, though. Wonderful smiley moments when she grunts (I say grunt because that is what it sounds like) nineteen-to-dozen, chattering away in her own language about whatever she is seeing, flashing her dimples at us and jerking her limbs about in joy.


And one thing I have to say: Unlike Day when he was at her age, she can sit quietly in the stroller for a long time, observing life around her with a most serious mien, before falling asleep.

In that regard, she is an “easy” baby.

bathing days

Sometime down the road when we’re back in Singapore, I want to remember the time when our entire family didn’t bathe every day. All four of us, including the bub.

The reason why I want to remember is because I have a subliminal dislike of bathing. Daily baths in Singapore were something I endured and I never could understand why anyone would want to bath twice a day.

So I like not having to bathe every day. Here, it’s practical not to. Things have evolved here so bathing is a special occasion which takes place every alternate day. (sometimes three haha)

For one, it’s too bloody cold. I don’t know about summer but now, after 2pm, it gets chilly and the nights still hover around 19 degrees Celcius.

As a result, we hardly perspire. The very dry air helps.

We save water.

And every time we have to bathe the kids, it’s a Herculean labour (clean the bathtub, fill the bathtub with the right-temperature water, heat the towels etc) that we’d rather not do daily.

So what always happens is, he looks at me, asks: Is it bathing day today? I say yes, and everybody sighs.

Except the kids of course, who love swimming in the bathtub.

hair gone

Today I decided to let my husband butcher my hair.

It all started when he decided to cut his.

In the nearly two months we have been here, we haven't done anything to our hair and we both had unruly mops on our heads.

Truth be told, I was a lot more bothered by my hair than he was.

Yes, I know I said I would just leave my hair to grow throughout my stay here in Sydney so I would not have to go to an expensive hairdresser.

My determination, however, wavered the moment a few days after we moved into our apartment here and I realized that my hair, which was dropping prodigously - due to the weather or diet, I don't know - was getting enmeshed into the carpet hairs and could not be picked up by our pathetic little poodle-sized vacuum cleaner.

Getting rid of my hair became a resolution when, in quick succession, KK showed me the hair balls stuck on the soles of his socks, I found hair after hair on my bed and the clincher: When I found hairs in Dee's shit.

No child of mine is going to eat my hair and clog up her insides.

Besides, my hair was looking increasingly awful: Dry and scrungy, and though I combed it only once every two days, it's always a bother combing tangled fine hair.

And if I'm wearing the same three grubby T-shirts day after day, I clearly don't care how I look.

Anyhow, like I said, KK did it first.

Last night, just before the kids' bedtime, he suddenly got up, ran a hand through his hair and said "It's really bothering me".

Then he plopped himself on a chair in the bathroom and handed me the hair shaver, the kind that barbers use.

I tried, I swear I did.

But after his nth "ouch" - I didn't know how to use the shaver properly so it kept getting caught in his hair - he stood up, grabbed it and did it himself.



All the way. He mowed his head all around to a level 7mm on the crown, and 3mm on the sides.

When he emerged from the bath triumphantly brandishing a brand new head which didn't have to be dried or combed, I was overwhelmed. My hair HAD to go. I couldn't stand one more day of bathing and picking up long hairs from the bathtub.

I seriously entertained thoughs of shaving it all off. I was bald in Mongolia and I thoroughly enjoyed being hairless. But I figured I would need some hair to protect my scalp from the Australian sun.

So for starters, I told KK to just lop off the ponytail.

I stripped down to my underwear, sat in the bathtub, let down my hair and handed him the scissors.

He grabbed my hair with one hand and with a couple of snips, accompanied by his mumbling: "so difficult" and "so crude", it was done.



At under a minute, my haircut was even speedier than his.

Now I have a brand new very blunt bob. Yes, the right side is a full inch longer than the left, but that's because he couldn't quite reach the right side of my head.

I will remember this hair cut though; not because it took under a minute in a bathtub under the hands of my husband, but because I don't think I will ever leave long hair again.

flinch reflex

Dee's reflexes seem to be working fine.

Whenever her brother gleefully barrels past, barging into her or knocking things around her left, right and centre - which happens pretty often - she recoils. Like so.

typical day

This is my life.

MORNING

Boil water
Prepare breakfast
Do the laundry
Tidy up the house, pick up stray clothes and stray toys
Remove Day's diaper and change Dee's diaper
Moisturise Day's scaly dry skin
Supervise Day's breakfast eating
Prepare food for lunch
Apply suntan lotion on Day and myself
Go out: For playgroup, to the beach, to wherever
When we return, feed Dee to sleep
Cook lunch while she is asleep

AFTERNOON

Dee wakes up at noontime after a very short nap
Eat lunch
Put both kids to sleep together
Wash the lunchtime dishes
Prepare food for dinner
Prepare Dee's food
Blog / surf the Net / read a book (if I'm lucky)
Kids wake up
Feed Dee her solid meal
Play with and entertain kids

EVENING

Cook dinner
Wash the dishes
Cut up fruits for dessert
Boil water for hot drinks
Bath the kids
Play with and entertain kids
Read books to Day
Feed Dee to sleep
Put Day to sleep
Feed Dee, who has woken up, to sleep .... again... and maybe again
Blog / surf the Net / read a book

Time for myself in bold.

Time for husband: Zero.

Time for family: No family here.

Time for friends: No friends here.

Reading about it is one thing, but ending my work day at 1130pm when Dee finally hits the sack is another.

And since I arrived in Sydney, I have not read a single newspaper (not ONE) and I don't watch TV.

I can't believe I'm smiling.

rip-roaring wind

When I woke up Thursday morning, something was different.

It wasn’t the usual crisp morning silence, punctuated by the occasional bird call. What I heard was howling wind, rattling the windows and seeping through the bricks of our apartment so we all felt chillier than usual.

For a while, it was a novelty.

KK, fresh out of bed and clad only in shirt, pants and slippers, carried barefoot Day out onto the street for a while to feel the howling gale. Day shrieked in delight.

Later we even went outdoors to the seaside to see the whitecaps and waves crashing on the rocks, throwing up metre-high sprays of white water.

Not surprisingly, Coogee Beach was, for once, deserted.

We were to find out later that the whole of Sydney was experiencing gale-force winds and record flooding rain, that killed one man in the Sydney Harbour and crippled the city’s transport system.

It was Sydney’s wettest September day in 123 years and news reports warned of wind gusts of up to 95km/h, which is freaking scary.

We had a taste of things to come at the beach when we, about the only idiots there, sat down in a sheltered pavilion to eat our dumplings lunch. It wasn’t raining yet.

The wind was so strong the sand which was stirred up hit our faces with a vengeance, when we walked past the beach.

The sea was beautiful, a roiling, boiling mass of bright blues, white fringes and furious spray, but we didn’t stay long.


KK, once he sensed that the situation didn’t look good, quickly ordered everyone back.

He carried Day, I carried Dee, we scuttled back. At one point, we were seriously watching out for falling branches from the trees we were walking under, which were swaying alarmingly.

The moment we reached home, it poured.

God bless, not a single drop of rain touched us and we were none the worse for wear.

The rest of the day, the chill wind wrapped itself around our apartment.

day's art

Nice?

Probably not in anyone's eyes but mine!

I realized recently, that Day respects sections when he colours.

While he used to cover a page in big messy slashes of one singular colour, regardless of what the picture was showing, he now uses different colours for different sections. So the picture will show ... many messy different-coloured slashes.

I also realized that he quite naturally (tries to) keeps within the lines.

When Day was born, I, fresh with dire stories of teachers who force kids to colour within the lines, had resolved that I will never tell him how to colour. And that he can jolly well colour well outside the lines for as long as he wishes to express his creativity.

Looks like even his teachers won't have to say anything.

And I think his naturally colouring within the lines is indicative of an inclination for order and method.


Anyhow, I feel compelled while I am here to give him some colouring and drawing practice since he's not in school. Something to do with the development of motor skills or some such thing.

Every other day I print out some pictures from the Net for him to fill in.

After which, as every family with kids will know, the picures get pinned up on the fridge.

aussie bbq

How our first Aussie BBQ was different from the BBQs we knew in Singapore:

* No sweat, literally. Despite it being spring, the air was pleasantly chill.
* No charcoal or firestarters. Everything was cooked on what appeared to be a hot plate. I say appeared because I didn't do any cooking (just like in Singapore!)
* Sausages were not skinny little preserved Valley Chefs, but big fat meaty tubes which expire a week later

Once again, thanks to Alan - who with his car brought us to parts of Sydney not covered by the 374 bus' pathetically limited route - we got to enjoy the BBQ at a spot an hour's drive away which we would otherwise never have seen: Bobbin Head.


It's a cosy picnic spot of wide open green spaces dotted with evergreens on the banks of a river, in a forested valley which is part of the Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park. This is a crap picture and doesn't do the place justice, but I was too busy eating.

The water was cool and clear, boats were parked in the river and people (who had to pay a New South Wales recreational fishing fee to get a licence, mind you) were fishing.


They'd have to be pretty careful what they brought back though, Australia is real anal about its wildlife and a sign put up at the park stipulates the bag and size limits for different species.

So if I caught a fish, I'd have to check the board, hope I get the species right, measure it, make sure it's more than X cm long (less and you have to throw it back so the ecosystem is not compromised), and not bring home more than Y number of the fish.

As my only memories of fishing are following my dad as he went traipsing around reservoirs late at night, with an electrocuted rod in hand to "zap" any fish unlucky enough to wander into his path, I'm clearly not going fishing anytime soon here.

day resembles mum?

Nobody has ever said that Day looked like me.

But there has to be a first time for everything!

KK’s ex-colleague Stella – who was in Sydney for a holiday to visit her boyfriend – holds the honour of being the first person who thinks Day clearly looks like his mom.


Does he?

Though Day looks less like KK now than when he was born, the both of us don’t agree with Stella. I still think Day looks a lot more like KK, especially when he laughs.

I’m still bearing in mind, though, what a friend of mind told me: Even if boys looks like their dads when they are born, most always end up looking more like mom.

Does this mean Dee will end up looking like her dad?


She certainly looks like she’s heading in that direction.

Holding her, by the way, is Stella, one of those effortlessly beautiful pure Chinese girls who don’t look Chinese.

And finally, a rare picture with me in it.

scavenging

It’s not like we go scrounging around in rubbish heaps or garbage bins for goodies.

But when KK spotted this navy blue denim sweetie of a sunhat on the ground as we were walking along the road, and it clearly didn’t belong to anyone in the vicinity (no one around), he couldn’t resist.

He picked it up and after a hygiene check, popped it onto Dee’s head, where it sat perfectly.

What made me stop in my tracks was when he said he’s seen a few other blown-off hats lying around on the roads, but they weren’t nice enough to pick up. Okaaay…

She’s also wearing Day’s fancy gay pants - if anyone remembers from oh-so-long-ago - which KK thoroughly disapproved of on Day but now heartily admires on Dee.

Good thing I kept it. She looks real spunky.

spring time

Prior to coming here, I always thought the seasons sort of merged into one another.

Imagine my surprise when I learnt that 1 September marks the Official Start of Spring here.

Nothing much happened on the day itself.

My laundry got wet as it was still drizzling, the night was still cold and I still wore my fleece.

But perhaps, for me, knowing that it’s officially Spring made me open my eyes a bit more and I realized that flowers were blooming. And if there’s one thing I love, it’s flowers.


Tiny bits of green were unfurling on trees which had been stripped bare.

And yesterday, unbelievably, was a Shorts Day. Meaning we could go out wearing shorts. It was the hottest day we have experienced since we came here (28 degrees Celcius), and KK very gleefully tossed off his shirt once he reached the beach.


The women drawing money at the ATMs were wearing bikinis under their shorts and singlets, and children were swimming at the beach.

Prior to experiencing a full seasons cycle, I have always imagined that Spring and Autumn, the in-between seasons, would be my favourites.

Spring looks promising.

dee sits

A few days ago I propped her up on the bed one day for fun and ta-dah! She sat there quite nicely, merrily bobbing away.

Sometimes she topples over but she never seems to mind and sadistic at it sounds, it always makes me laugh.

Once again, I am reminded of how much I take something as simple as sitting for granted.

It took Dee close to six months for her spine to develop enough steel to hold her up in a sitting position.

Next up: Crawling!

sick in oz

Not me.

Dee. She's got a fever hovering between 37.5 degrees and 38 degrees.


I should thank my lucky stars that sickness only struck 1 1/2 months after we arrived here, and that only one of them is sick.

Still, if I had thought dealing with a feverish kid back in Singapore was shit, it's much much worse when I am alone here with no one to help.

I don't even dare to do the usual sponging / ice-cold towel routine because unlike Singapore, it's COLD here and she might well catch a chill. I've just given her some meds.

At some point this morning, it struck me how ludicrous I was being, begging my two-year-old son to go and play by himself in another room because she screams the moment she hears his voice and I have to stay by her side to hold her hands.

I hope it's only a teething fever, though I know the offical medical line is that teething does NOT cause fever.

She certainly hasn't got any other symptoms apart from the fever, which I think would be considered low-grade.

Unfortunately, however, she, normally already fairly prissy, is ten times worse when feverish.

She literally jerks awake every five minutes and I have to rush over to:

a) Shove the breast into her mouth
b) Carry her (bad idea, too heavy)
c) Hold her hands and place my face next to hers for a l-o-n-g time, only for her to scream again five minutes after I leave her

KK is having one of his 9-5 days and is not around.

Clearly, I have no time for Day and to be fair, he's been a very good boy, keeping away and entertaining himself.

If I'm right, we can look forward to see her first tooth break gum. That would be fun.

* I also realize that of all the rotten luck, my insurance coverage, which covers 100 per cent of all medical bills, ends 31 August - YESTERDAY. She chooses to fall sick a day after. We might not have to bring her to the doc though, we'll see.