to the next tenant

Dear Sir,

Sometime in the next month, you will log on to domain to search for a place to stay, and if you are somebody who really likes the beach and doesn’t mind paying top dollar for a dinky dump which is a 10 minutes walk from the beach, then you’re our man.

You will read the advertisement which has already been posted online and think: Wow, this sounds good.



QUIET AND COSY!
Move straight into this quiet and cosy fully furnished two bedroom unit located minutes to Coogee beach and all transport and shops, the property features two generous sized rooms, combined lounge/dining, both rooms with built in, internal laundry with washing machine, modern kitchen and bathroom, under cover car space, security building.
Bond: A$1360
Price per week: A$340

What they don’t tell you, is that the full furnishing in this cosy (another word for small) pad, from the carpet to the sofa to the wardrobes, hark back to the 70s when this apartment was built, and was all happily left behind by the landlord when she decided to have a child away from all the junk.

Many times you will walk along the street and you will see, piled along the roadside, rubbish furniture which other households throw out which you will be itching to pick up, because it’s all better than what you have to live with.



Can you tell by this photograph which accompanies the ad that the sofas are damp and stained and underneath the cushions the seats are about to give way? And about that telephone on the sidetable, yes, it comes with the house, but it crackles so bad you might as well forgo a land line.



Can you tell by this photograph that this is our Most Hated part of the apartment? That I have sprained my wrist trying to wrestle water out of the stiffest kitchen tap in the world? That it is impossible to clean the taps without water running out all over the kitchen counter and dripping onto the floor? That the entire place is a mould magnet?

And good luck, too, with cleaning a toilet which has a floor higher than the carpet outside so no matter how you clean, water will spill out.

How dare they call this a MODERN kitchen and bathroom. Modern my ass.

Oh and one more thing. The bar fridge. Once every couple of months, the freezer gets smaller and smaller and you’ll then have to switch off the fridge and collect all that melted ice. Even at its best though, one tub of ice cream and one pack of peas is all it can take.

Love and luck, from the woman who has to clean it all

* I really shouldn't be such a whingy bitch. I really should be thankful for this wonderful place that has weathered us through the past year. It really could have been much worse. Ack, I'm really trying very hard to be a Good Grateful Girl about this but man, this place just drives us nuts.

awkward threes

Between two and three is the time Day lost his cuteness.

When nobody stopped to say: So cute! (like they are doing right now with his sister) and either look through him (because they are not kid-friendly) or try to talk to him to their detriment.

I say detriment because he will frown, shake his head and look the other way or run away.

If I were asked two years ago to predict how my then one-year-old son would turn out, I would never in a million years have imagined Day to be the way he is now.

Cheerful, secure and immensely likeable, he was the boy who stole the heart of his school auntie, the boy who would stand with hands on his hips and bellow fearlessly for “Teacher Pammy!”, the boy who yelled out to the neighbours on his evening walks, the boy who didn’t fear a thing.

He was exactly the way I wanted him to be, and in my mind I pictured a still-fearless voluble three-year-old who can carry on adult conversations with an envious maturity.

Somewhere along the line, Day, the boy he was genetically programmed to be, took over the social engineering from me.

And so he slithered into the awkward threes.

Uncomfortable, angry and fearful.

I know for a fact that not every three-year-old boy is like that. The beauty of toddlerhood is that unlike babyhood, they all develop differently and there are tons of angelic little men out there.

But for Day, even a third-party friend here in Sydney has noticed how he is getting progressively darker and in a sentence which struck horror in my heart, said: “I’m a little worried. Could it be autism?”

As his mom, I don’t think it’s that serious.

Yes, his favourite emotion is anger (“I’m angry!” he always says to me, with a ferocious frown on his face). Yes, he doesn’t like speaking to strangers. Yes, he stutters.

But by and large, the boy that we see at home is not someone who is socially paralysed. Just awkward and angsty and suddenly blindingly aware of his place in the big world. And maybe, he just doesn’t want to do what he doesn’t want to do.

cheeky monkey

I remember when Dee was born, my friend Theresa asked me: Eh how come you keep writing about David but not about the poor girl?

At the time I really wasn’t very fond of my red-faced snout-nosed screaming girl. And I told Theresa: Her time will come.

It has.

Whilst her brother followed a rather straightforward path of evolution until the time he was two – basically a likeable cheery outgoing boy who laughed all the time – the girl has changed. And changed. And changed.

As her father would say, she was hell in the first six months. I might well have happily gone back to work after three months of maternity leave if she had been my first child.

Then the Grumpy Gnome became a Serious Eccentric, then a Fat Fairy who learnt how to laugh. (See how it gets better and better?)

Now she’s a cheeky monkey who likes to laugh AT us.



It amuses her no end when I command her to call “mama” and she throws back “papa” in my face, going back and forth until I am blue with shouting but she is slit-eyed with laughter.

She’s still a funny girl, and it’s not just me who says it. A baby shop salesgirl who took one look at her, burst out laughing and said: She’s such a funny girl!” People just smile when they see her.



For record’s sake, here’s what makes 14-month-old Dee so funny.

* She’s got a thing for body orifices, her own and that of other people. She is always lifting up her shirt to stick a finger in her own deep-set (and already cleaned out) belly button or sticking a finger into her nostril. Whenever she spots our belly buttons she also dives straight in.

* She abhors clothes but long sleeves are her pet hate. Put a jacket on her and she sits down with a thump on the floor to pull and tug and scream and wail until jacket comes off.

* She likes stepping on ants and bugs. OK that a cruel act which doesn’t sound the least bit funny, but watching her trying to stand on one very short leg is.

* She loves boy's toys and likes to get down on hands and knees to roll cars around, her favourite being Lofty the Crane, but first I have to remove the crane arm because otherwise she will yank it off, to Lofty's detriment.

* She doesn't sit down nicely for books like Day did. Sometimes she only likes Page 10 of this book or Page 20 of another and she attempts to tear off the preceding pages if I'm too slow. So I speed read to her. Or she might grab the whole book and fling it on the ground before giving me a look that says very clearly: So. There.

* She is no graceful gymnast. She is infinitely clumsy, baby-elephant style, still falling over and landing on her ass with a loud “whoosh” of air from the diaper. At this stage, her brain is telling her “climb climb climb!” but as the flesh is weak, it’s unforgivingly funny watching her grunt her way up some piece of furniture.

* She dances to this little ditty called the “Music Box Dancer” by following the pretty toddler ballerina onscreen, arms going up and down by the sides. What’s funny is when she raises her arms and tucks her chin into her chest and suddenly there’s a triple chin.

* She’s got the speaking voice of a fish-market seller. Low, coarse and loud. A far cry from Day’s sweet baby voice. Her favourite word, hot, comes out like a German word spoken with a guttural grunt: Aht. Aht.

Despite of (or because of?) all the funni-ness, however, we absolutely adore her.

All her father can say all day is how downright beautiful she is and how her eyelashes are curling up and how her eyebrows are unbelievable and how cute she is.

All I can say is, she drives me up the wall with her cheekiness, but I’m sure glad I’m not a mum who (till this moment at least) has to go to work or I'll miss my little comedian.

the long kang

The first of many places we will have to say goodbye to.

The Coogee long kang, which was hospitable even up till last week, now feels like water from the fridge. On contact, it’s ball-shrivelling nipple-hardening cold. I doubt we will have many more chances to enjoy it.

The kids have no qualms though. Once the adrenaline takes over, they forget their toes are turning blue.

For the record, we are always the only idiots who want to freeze our feet off and get itchy sunburn on our necks. Nobody hangs around the long kang nowadays, certainly not kids.

We brought along plastic containers, they type you dabao food in, several days ago and to our delight, the long kang (which changes shape every time) was merrily flowing in the shape of a perfect S complete with cliffs - the kind I used to draw during Geography lessons to illustrate a Meander.



Kids went crazy.

Off went shoes, socks, pants and underwear in twenty degree weather. That’s my bare-bottomed boy.



Up and down the S they ran, squealing, gasping, chasing the plastic, sparkling ice-cold droplets raining on what little clothes they were wearing (to my horror).

When they were done being wet, they climbed up the marble-cold sandy cliffs flanking their river, which had presumably formed overnight.



Us boring parents, as much as we, or at least I, tried to join in the fun, all I could think of was cleaning out the sand in Day’s butt crack and oh God what if they got pneumonia?

clearing out unsw asia

There used to be an entire glass-walled room in the UNSW Sydney campus, located right at the entrance of the library where anyone who is doing some research or a little study (and who doesn’t?) is bound to see, dedicated to its UNSW campus in Singapore.

Containing a scale model of the campus in Changi, walls lined with posters exhorting the UNSW presence in Asia, it was a right pretty picture for a Singaporean to see; and when I was in the library with KK some weeks ago clutching Dee in one arm and holding Day with the other, I said it would have been nice if he could have studied at what appeared to be a much nicer campus than UNSW Sydney.

Only he couldn’t have because the Singapore campus doesn’t offer the Masters programme he is interested in.

Funnily enough, first thing I thought of when the news broke about the abrupt closure of the Singapore campus was not about wasted taxpayer’s money or bereft students or busted reputations.

All I thought of was: Would the ode to what the university probably now regards as a royal pain in the ass still be there?

It was gone.

Which leads me to conclude that while Australians generally take their own sweet time, they are quick when it comes to removing the detritus of this major embarrassment.

However, my heart goes out to the 148 students left stranded.

Studying in Sydney, if they had ruled out that option in favour of Singapore in the first place, would not be attractive at all, scholarship or not.

And while the model was easily cleared, I wonder what the uncompleted UNSW building in Changi will be turned into.

Anyway, here's UNSW Sydney, still standing tall. Dee is seven months old in the picture.

wildlife

Spotted in a tree next to the tennis courts.

Makes our day.

Especially KK, who, I have only realized in the past year, has a thing for plants and animals, especially those which we spot in the course of daily living.

But I must say that while we have seen spectacular birds and some huge-ass spiders, the cockroaches (at least those in our home) are pathetically small. A centimetre or two at most. They never fly and I can - and do - squash them with a piece of tissue. Easy peasy considering how sluggishly they move.

Mosquitoes are also nothing like Singapore's monsters.

And still on the topic of animals, I've never seen a stray dog or a cat.

cheezus

I take wicked pleasure in seeing my son sing plaintitively “Dear Cheezuz, Dear Cheezus” with his hands cupped around his face – his version of prayer - while his dear papa frowns unobtrusively from the sidelines.

It’s knowledge, I say. The song is lovely, by the way.

It’s something he picked up from a new playgroup I’ve been bringing the kids to at the St Nic’s Anglican Church, the other playgroup in the Coogee vicinity which I had always found daunting because of the steep uphill climb up the long road, but once I overcame the resistance of the flesh, we found the fruit was sweet.



Why? Because I don’t’ have to lift a finger to carry tables or pack toys. The church volunteers do everything and oh my goodness, there’s even tea and biscuits to be had.

Clearly other parents like me see the same advantages and despite the fact that it’s A$4 per child instead of A$4 per family, throng the church grounds. There are probably 50 kids plus parents or carers each time I go. It’s chaos.

There are a gazillion more toys, courtesy once again of church volunteers who pack up lovingly after the kids and sort through the mess to make sure the cars don’t end up in the sand pit pails. And sorting toys, as any mom would know, is a crucial albeit time-consuming skill which is best outsourced.



Day’s favourite is a set of 30 or so toys cars which he sends spinning down spiral slopes and for that alone, the church playgroup has won him over.



Then there are the song, story and craft times.

Unlike at the Coogee Dolphins, where the designated music session has floundered and died due to lack of parental inspiration, my jaw dropped when I saw the stage, microphone and sound system in what appeared to be a prayer hall.

Then follows jaunty Christian songs and a Godly story time.



Christian songs being Christian songs – they are almost always nice – I like to sit through the sessions, though for some strange reason, most of the mums I’ve talked to, clearly not church-goers, would not go within sniffing distance of the hall.

This, then, is where Day first learnt about any sort of religion (not counting the little food prayer he used to recite in school).

making friends

Ironic that 43 days away from leaving Coogee behind forever, we, or rather Day, has been making friends.

He’s gotten into the rather odd habit of running away from us until he’s out of sight and picking people up. (It is less odd, however, than what he used to do which was to stand with both feet wide apart, point a finger at offensive kids and shout "NO!" before running away)

Without his parents around, and without the benefit of a school environment, I’m actually rather proud that he can make friends solo, because I don’t think I ever managed it until I was in my teens.

How he does it: He stands around the kid or kids, watching. If they are running, he joins in the race uninvited.

If they are kicking balls, he runs after the ball but never gets hold of it, so he is not seen as a threat and consequently joins in the game.

If they are making sandcastles, he sits nearby and helps out but never gets hold of the sandcastle-making equipment. Same reason, so he is not seen as a threat.

He laughs when they laugh, squeal when they squeal, run when they run. Sometimes he does a little wiggly dance to crack them up.

Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.

Usually he clicks with obedient well-behaved boys, gentlemen whose mamas are nearby barking at them to “be nice to the little boy”.

Like one-night stands, however, he loves them and leaves them. One-time play and it’s all over. Out of sight, out of mind.

If we are around, and we see that he’s getting along with a particular little boy, however, we bring him back for more.

Right now, he’s got two sort-of playmates, familiar faces whom, if we spot around Coogee, he’d stop to play with.

ONE: Sporty Ben from the playground

This boy, son of kid-friendly soccer mom, would win any kiddie sprint. He flies on his feet and outruns kids twice his age.



He’s also exactly the sort of boy I wish I was capable of bringing up. He runs up to give his younger brother hugs and kisses when the latter is hurt and is full of sporting spirit.

TWO: Mop-top Orlando from the beach

By the time we found Day (he had run off on his own), he had already picked up Orlando and the two were merrily kicking away at Orlando’s soccer balls. Nowadays they also make sandcastles together.



Day and Dee both have a tendre for Orlando’s grandma, an Iraq-born woman who laments the devastation of her country while enjoying a leisurely cigarette or two by the beach, and keeping an eye out on her “habibi”.



Funny though: He never talks about them the way he used to talk about his school classmates a year ago. I reckon he's figured they're temporary.

stick men

This one is imaginatively titled “Mum walking towards Jody”.

He has, in recent weeks, added bodies and limbs to his faces and this is KK’s favourite.

I must say he’s got my black face right down pat.

He's also gone past his schizophrenic colouring phase, which I sort of miss.

coogee corners

Funny how we never get bored of Coogee.

In the past 10 months we have milked every possible corner of this beach, hanging out for a few months at one spot before moving on to a new one.

At this point in time, KK, who wakes up every day at noon having studied till 3am or so the night before, shudders to expend any unnecessary energy on bus trips or tiresome outings, and he is particularly averse to trying anything new.

Thus, our Coogee ritual still remains our Coogee ritual, day after day after day, albeit with some variation.

From hanging out at the Northern end most of last year (picnics under the green trees, setting up a tent, playing Frisbee), we now stick around the Central part of the beach.


There, Day and Dee play catch on wide green fields, romp down to the beach to make sandcastles, run up and down the ramp meant for prams and wheelchairs.


Sometimes their papa brings them to the long kang.


Essentially a channel of water from a drain, I have no idea about the source. But as I see plenty of finger-sized fishes swimming around, and seagulls drinking from it without dropping dead, I reckon it’s OK.

The kids adore the long kang. I suppose it’s the Australian version of kids catching guppies in the monsoon drains.

narnian wardrobe

What wonders are to be had, venturing into the cool musty darkness of a wardrobe, warding off hanging shadowy clothes to reveal hidden surprises, I suppose only a child can fathom.

The ugly wardrobe in our bedroom, in a shade which I vaguely recall as Vandyke brown from my colouring primary school days, has thin plywood walls and two keyholes for a rusty brass key which really serves no purpose because even I can bring down this wardrobe.

Doesn’t matter.

The kids see magic in it.

It’s become an after-dinner activity for us to venture into the room (lights off) with only a torch. Squealing kids fling open left wardrobe door, pounce onto my clothes willy nilly and thereafter it’s just a lot of thumping and shrieking.

Then Day emerges from right wardrobe door after banging it open, crawling on the ground like the long-haired ghost from The Ring. I train my spotlight on him.


Screaming Dee, who presumably has been trying to get away from her brother the entire time and who is still in the wardrobe, goes to the left door where Day now tries to keep it shut.


Eventually he backs off, she steps down onto the carpet and gives herself a round of applause for having successfully walked down a step (see, it’s a new skill).


Then it starts all over again.

I like it. I get a good 20-minute break with nothing to do except hold the torch and contemplate.

Messed-up clothes? I just throw them back into the wardrobe. Of course I don’t fold them up again.

performance evaluation

I’ve been three years on the job and it’s about time for an appraisal. The day, after all, is about me as a mom.

Here goes.

PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL FORM

Clients: Three kids (Day, Dee, KK)
Position: Downtrodden housewife
Length of servitude: Three long years
Job description: To keep all her clients happy

Why is she an asset?
* Generally nice and very easy for all the clients to step all over.
* From KK’s point of view, an ideal low-maintenance wife who does not tax his resources, can make intelligent comments on his studies and edit his assignments.
* Remembers tunes, lyrics and dance steps to Wiggles songs.
* Can get the kids and herself ready for an outing (inclusive of food, drink and toys) in five minutes and sometimes less.

Why is she a liability?
* Temper sucks big time. Left psychological scars when she exploded while bathing with the clients (not including the old one) in the bathtub and screamed the house down, swear words (f*&k) and all.
* Cooking skills, while much improved over the past year, leave much to be desired.
* Cleaning skills suck as she has a high tolerance for dirt. Thus she doesn’t clean.
* Not much of a fun mum.

Awards / accolades / anything to show on paper?
* Birth certificates, colouring books.
* Friends seem to think she is a good mother.

Client feedback
“I love mum b-b-b-because she c-c-c-c-c-c-colours with me a-a-a-and she loves mei mei and she plays toys.” – Day.

Overall rating
Satisfactory. We’ll keep her.

To all the moms who are faring better or worse than me out there, hope you got to spend a nice day with your kids on Mother’s Day.

I did!


* Oh that pink chicken is Dee's new darling, something she plucked off a shelf in a toy shop, hugged to her chest, and which her father could not bear to rip off because "we never buy anything for her". It's taking Winnie's place.

lassie

It was always a possibility: That we would find Australian grass greener and sweeter and decide to stay on for good.

That we would find true, what so many young couples our age in Singapore are lamenting about: Singapore is a comparatively soul-less, sterile, overcrowded nation filled to the brim with horrible rude people, and Australia is a civilized mecca of clean air, beautiful scenery and where humans actually have rights.

And as my neighbour, a career woman who had hired two Filipino maids to look after her two boys (on a side note, she would probably drop dead in Australia looking after two boys on her own), would say to me over the fence: How I would love to move to Australia! It would be a much better place for my kids! They would not be pressured!

She would love to be where I am now. We are in a prime position to stay on.

With no obligations in Singapore (no employers to return to, no army duties left to fulfill), KK, armed with a Masters degree from a credible Australian university and having studied all about Australian soil and rocks and what not, is well poised for a job here.

His is, what I think can be accurately termed, a hot job. They need geotechnical engineers here. And over here they pay well, much more so than what he can get in Singapore even after the deduction of astronomical taxes.

And while cost of living is high, cars and houses (not necessarily in Sydney but in the rest of Australia) are a dime.

I can well imagine a life where KK brings back the dough, comes home at 530pm every day (because everybody here knocks off here before 5), we send the kids to day-care three days a week, I take care of them the rest of the time, if I’m lucky get my hands on some writing gigs, KK can play golf or do triathlons in his free time, I can do my music, we chuck them to nannies when we want to do our own thing. We slowly make new friends along the way.

To me, it’s a pretty window. And I am open to the possibility.

But not for KK. He’s keeping that window firmly closed, for two reasons: The kid’s grandparents, and Chinese.

He fervently wants his children to be close to their grandparents, especially his own parents, simple folk whose weekly highlight used to be the Saturday visits from their grandkids and who are counting down the days till we return. I like to say, these kids KK made are the best thing he’s ever done for them!

Chinese, well, doesn’t need explaining.

He is further driven from Australia by the fact that our entire experience here has been absolutely downright horrible for him. Despite my desire that he will smell the roses more, his exact words on our "camping trip" here, accompanied by growls of frustration, are: “I am a non-entity. I can’t wait to get my life back. Get a job, get the kids to school, get fit. This entire year might have been a complete waste of time.”

So eager is he to get off the block that he would probably pay an extra A$270 to change our date of return to a week earlier, so he can jet back home right after he writes the last word on his exam script.

And unlike so many online ranters who seem to have all their bags packed and ready to leave Singapore at the drop of a hat, we don’t find it all that repulsive, high ministerial salaries and NS be damned.

As my very wise dietitian-now-based-in-Darwin younger brother (and very eligible bachelor) puts it: "If you want (the grass) to be greener, you just water it."

So. We are headed home to our loved ones and that is where we will be. Forever probably.

In this, my husband’s voice is by far the stronger.

Mine is not dissenting. Just silent. As with most things, I don’t really have an opinion.

going... gone

This, by the way, is how she typically walks.

Not naked. With finger digging her belly button. She digs her belly button the way some of us dig our noses, with lots of relish.

her friend

Is it a girl thing, to form attachments to objects and then sayang them?

Day has never had the remotest interest in soft toys and has never shown any hint of a nurturing spirit (only towards his sister and even that is usually expressed in effusive pinching of her cheeks and arms).

She is markedly different. And she has recently developed what I can only term a “mothering” spirit toward a particular soft toy.

These are all the soft toys available to her.


I can’t quite figure out why her eye lighted on just one, could be because it squeaks, and because I made it talk and dance for her on some occasions.

She isn’t so attached to the point that she goes around actively seeking it out. But once it’s in her line of vision, she goes straight for it and hugs it to her very ample bosom with both arms.

When I make it squeak, she very violently smothers it’s face with kisses. Sometimes she bites its nose.

She appears to call it “ba ba”.

Here she is, with her beloved Winnie.


I, for one, am mighty pleased that she is attached to something other than me. We actively encourage her growing affections, by constantly asking her where Winnie is and throwing it into her path when we’re free.

Amazingly, she seems to sleep better on her own now, hugging Winnie.

For sure the bear makes her feel secure. While she was wading at the beach today, she bawled when KK wrestled the bear away. I suppose she felt better with a friend on hand.

magical mum

Kid-friendly adults. Either you are one, or you are not.

These are the remarkable and very rare folk who don’t have to try at all to get kids to like them.

Who are just the same talking to a two-year-old as they are talking to a twenty-year-old, who can hunker down with the kids and make them laugh at their first meeting with the least bit of shyness or awkwardness or hostility, and most importantly, can get kids to do their bidding with no pain.

I have two kids but I am not one. I know for sure the day I grinned at a kid and she bawled. I also never know what to do or say when faced with a kid who is not biologically mine.

My husband is a little better. Men in general, I would say, are more kid-friendly than women, who have a tendency to over-coo and squeal which is probably scary. And by and large, kids would rather play with a man than talk to a woman.

Today we met a mum at the playground who plays more than she talks, and our short excursion turned into a 90-minute session simply because she was there.

She strode in, in sneakers and a blue cap, leading two boys togged out in England soccer jerseys and red socks, arms full of a football and rugby ball.


The magic started when she caught Dee’s eye, smiled, and my daughter’s face lit up, like she saw something funny.

As we said our hellos, Dee, in my arms, yabbered away to the lady and that’s something she only does to the very very very few people she really likes.

Next thing I knew, magical mum had drawn an imaginary starting line on the ground and had drawn Day into running round-the-playground races with her four-year-old.

Each time they panted their way back at the starting line, she would give a little cheer and ask in a Scottish accent: “Dee-avid, wot collar do ye want to be?”

See, she made the boys pick colours and race numbers for each round, which Day was absolutely thrilled to do.


I haven’t seen him this happy with an adult (apart from us) since we came here. He was laughing his head off, rolling all over the ground and hopping round the slides in ecstasy.

I hope we meet her again.

shoe blues

Hello toes.

Most unfortuitously, Dee’s first pair of shoes – a flown-from-Singapore present from my buddy Jason - has decided to call it quits today after three months of tramping on beer bottle shards (found all over Coogee) and dog shit.

As it remains her only pair of shoes, I am torn between trying to stitch up the gash and buying her a new pair.

However, seeing as this shoe has gone through war (the pink flower in the middle used to hang on bravely by a thread which can still be seen in the photo, but has since perished, and each side of the strap took turns to detach before I re-attached them), I think it’s a wiser decision to put it in retirement.

In fact, in the bigger scheme of things, we all need new shoes.


Day has two pairs.

The swanky Pumas, he wore on our flight here in July last year. It’s showing the signs of being used and abused on a daily basis and more seriously, it’s seriously tight. Rightly so or I would be concerned if the boy isn’t growing.

That a three-year-old can wear the same pair of shoes for ten months, however, tells me he isn’t growing MUCH.

That other shoe from his uncle Choon is just as tight. So at the moment he runs all day long with corsets on his feet.


Me and KK, ah. New Balance and Nike has served us well. One pair of track shoes each, and we share a pair of slippers.

He’s happy.

Me, while I am (fortunately for KK) not of the shoe-hoarding temperament, no sane person with ovaries would be content with just one pair of track shoes.

The good thing is, all our footwear, lined side by side, fits into the tiny one-metre space between the couch and the door jamb.

So that’s good. Really.

autumn

Autumn. Spanning start March to end May, it’s been a bit of a non-event. Over here, there are no carpets of red gold leaves on the ground, just a lot of dried brown ones as the trees get progressively naked.

And we were still hot hot hot through March and half of April. It’s only in the last few weeks that we have noticed a chilly nip in the air.

At the moment, the most insulated member of our family can still trot around the house in nothing but a diaper at 15 degrees , dodging and squealing while I try to shove a sweater on her, but for the rest of us, we’ve had to shake out the fleeces and turn on the heater.

It’s a lot better than frying summer but in anticipation of bone-cold winter, not as nice as spring.

So, after having lived through an almost-full cycle, here’s my seasons countdown starting with my favourite: Spring, autumn, summer, winter.

day's lens

This then, is the very first photograph Day shoots in his life. With the wonky Canon Ixus which I relegated to the dusty corner, but which Day revived.


I said: Point, don’t move your hands and press this button real hard.

I never thought he would actually capture his mama looking stupid as stupid gets.

At this stage he grabs the camera and spins round in a shooting frenzy, taking 100 shots in 10 minutes, mainly of stationary objects in the apartment which mean something to him, and sometimes of people if they are still.


He also somehow knows how to focus on the subject (well sometimes) by pressing on the button halfway, which is weird, because it’s one of those things where, nine out of ten times you ask a passerby to take a photo, they don’t know how to focus. Or it takes a lot of explaining and the photo is still blur.

This one he took while he was probably getting ready to kick his sister. It’s a remarkably good fluke shot, I think.


The rest mostly look like this. (It’s his all-time favourite Thomas Wonderful Word Book)


Oh and he’s very sensitive about his photos, like it’s a stash of porno which he needs to hide from his parents. He absolutely refuses to let us see what he’s taken.