near-accident

Driver of SBP 333 G.

If I see your car again I'm going to scratch it.

OK I won't.

Honestly though, the man ran a red light and almost killed me and Dee. We were cycling across the road and if I had not stopped in time, there could have been three lives lost.

Upper East Coast isn't even the snarly sort of road. It's a nice, quiet, two-lane road with traffic lights scattered here and there for the pram-pushing mummies, students going home from school and little old ladies.

As usual, while road cycling with her, I was careful to the max.

Waited for the green man, even waited for the oncoming cars to stop before pushing off.

Nearly halfway across, this idiot - who was coming from a long way off and hence I did not wait for him to stop - was approaching the white line.

Probably going at 30 to 40km/hr, I fully expected him to stop. A split second later, I realized he wasn't going to.

In the next split second, I glanced up at the traffic light to check if I was deluded (I was not), glanced at the idiot (a middle-aged bespectacled man, he was less than 10 metres away and he actually dared to look me in the eye), before I slammed on the brakes.

He whizzed past me, less than a metre away. The lights were still red.

At that moment, I was so furious I thought #3 was going to drop out of me.

All I could manage was a strangled expletive before I straggled safely to the other side. I only felt slightly better when I saw the horrified looks on the other driver's faces.

#3: new doc

I have a new gynae.



That’s Dee sitting in the doc’s chair, holding an anatomically correct baby she had plucked from the plastic womb.

New gynae is a slim young thing who is about my age, wears jewellery to work and has tinted streaks in her chin-length hair. A mother of two, she is sweetly pretty in a bookish sort of way (bookish because she still wears her spectacles)

A far cry from my old gynae, who was truly old and who exemplifies the Government’s rallying call for us to work till we die for she is probably near 70. Never made-up and always dressed in a white doctor’s coat, she is now delivering babies from women whom she delivered three decades ago.

There was nothing actually wrong with the old one. She did a fine job of pulling Day and Dee out from me very quickly (she always snips) and then stitching me up very nicely (she’s known for her first-class stitching).

But the thought of having to spend over two hours traveling to and from her clinic (by public transport of course), then waiting another two hours on average to see her, was repulsive.

So I just popped my head into a clinic I passed by at Katong, and found my new doc.

Apart from the fact that it’s five minutes there by bus and I hardly ever have to wait more than 10 minutes, I have honestly never felt so involved with my baby, pre-birth.

Perhaps because she is young and has much less of a I’ve-seen-everything attitude, doc is genuinely excited when she sees #3 onscreen, much more than me I must say.

“Oh there’s the little darling! Look, her hands are cupping her face and oooh, the sweetie’s just given you a little wave!”

I spend a far longer amount of time in her consultation room – about 20 minutes compared to 5 minutes with my old gynae – and we talk a lot more. It could be because she’s more my age. I don’t feel like my grandmother is lecturing me, but more like my sister is advising me.

And for the first time, I saw my ovaries. “Ah, there they are! Baby came from the right ovary, see how it’s denser?”

Doc seemed a little surprised when I said I didn’t even know the scan could access the ovaries, as throughout my first two pregnancies, old doc had never shown them to me.

Bottomline: In terms of ante-natal care, I am enjoying myself far more with new doc than with old doc. And she’s cheaper too.

Lesson learnt: The most expensive and the best by reputation may not be the best for me.

* Coincidentally, old doc was new doc’s gynaecologist!



On another note, Dee has this thing for babies, particularly that baby in the doc’s office. She was particularly pre-occupied with it’s penis.

gone

One week. In just one week our flat’s been sold.

Two property agents and our buyer, a big man with a booming voice, just left my place where I was handed a cheque deposit.

What I found most astounding, however, was not that our three-roomer was sold in a week.

What made my jaw drop, was that the man, clearly a property player who has two or three other properties in his pocket and is now living in a private house, had only bought our flat so his daughter would have a listed address within the 1 km radius of Tao Nan Primary where his wife desperately hopes to place her.

His daughter is at the moment all of 20 months, just slightly older than Dee. He repeatedly blustered: “I told my agent I didn’t care which unit, I don’t even care if it’s three or four room, any one will do as long as it’s near the school.”

At that moment, said agent cut in with his own tale of how he had to move house when his child was a wee mite so he could study at Maha Bodhi.

Oh. My. God.

Am I missing something here?

Once again, I wonder if I am colossally stupid in a society where everyone seems to have very specific long-term plans, or if they are just outrageously monumentally unnecessarily kiasu.

Of course I know such people exist, but when my own flat becomes a pawn in the game, I am just left gasping in indignation. Well, I really shouldn’t care why he is buying my flat as long as he pays me the good price he is paying me.

Then I made a call to my Indonesian bachelor tenant to inform him, that it is possible the new owner will not chase him out since he just wants the address. The man could not contain his euphoria as he repeatedly gushed, “Oh it’s such a beautiful place! I love staying here!”

Between my current tenant and the new buyer, no prizes for guessing who I prefer.

#3: the first trimester

Right after taking this photo of my beautiful pregnancy multi-vitamins, I dry-heaved.

It’s not the tiny round folic acid pill, the pristine white calcium or even the (my favourite actually) soft squishy gold fish oil capsule.

It’s that evil red iron pill that kills me, that makes me want to vomit and go lie down somewhere to recover from that spectre of a thought of its foul metallic taste.

As a consequence, I often end up not taking the entire lot and perhaps that’s why I have been looking particularly white-lipped of late.

Why would I taste them if I swallow them? Well, I. Can’t. Swallow. Pills. Nothing bigger than that folic pill anyway, which is probably half a centimeter across. So I bite everything.

For those who are interested, the calcium pill is a tasteless chalk-like powder. The fish oil, very fishy, like cod liver oil (but I love how the oil squishes out when I bite down on the capsule! I then spit out the case). The evil iron, is hard as hell and doesn’t crumble easily.

And for the record, the normal me would not react to the taste of the pills, would just unblinkingly bite and swallow the lot. But the pregnant me, well.

They say every woman’s pregnancy is different. One can breeze through the first and puke through the second.

NAUSEA?

Very very very very very fortunately, I have still have had an incredibly easy time of the normally trying first trimester.

Like with Day and Dee, I never actually vomit anything (well I did puke once with Day during lunchtime at my office, and that was probably because I was also work-stressed) and while there is nausea, it only strikes a couple of hours a day and is a completely controllable urge which I can and do forget about.

However, what makes me puke each time is different.

With #3, only two things make me want to dry-heave:

A: The Dreadful Iron Pill
B: Taxi rides

Time of Mild Nausea: Same as with Dee, around dinner time which is why I have not been eating much at dinner, with rice being the last thing I want, which is why I have hit a new weight low of 44kg. With each pregnancy, I start out at a lower weight than before. HORRORS!

FATIGUE?

Strikes at dinner time, between 6 and 8pm. Otherwise, I am sprite as an elf. I still manage to cycle out with her for breakfasts, get some interviews or writing work done in the afternoons and then bring the kids out after their naps.

I think it helps if I don’t feel too sorry for myself and get going.

CRAVINGS?

Apart from the occasional request for a lemon-flavoured sweetie when nausea strikes, particularly when I’m in a taxi, nothing.

Life is exactly the same. I do exactly the same things. And it's funny how nobody fusses over me. I carry Dee for ages and everyone lets me! Nobody tells me: Oh, you can't carry such HEAVY things! And to be frank, of course I can carry her. It's just nice to be pitied once in a while.

Anyway, I am feeling better and better every day. The Dinnertime Nausea and Fatigue seems to be going.

On to Trimester 2!!!

dee the food lover

How we know food is her number one passion (for now anyway):

* Of all the baby developmental skills she is picking up, the one thing she excels in is self-feeding. Noodles, rice and even soups travel relatively safely from bowl to mouth as she carefully makes sure everything goes into her mouth and nowhere else. Barring minimal mess, she hardly needs supervision and she has never worn a bib.

* Should stray grains adhere to the sides of her mouth, she somehow knows and her tongue meticulously makes a clean sweep. Her fingers then make a second-round check, feeling around the lips and pushing in whatever she finds. Unless she is eating something like ice cream or something with gravy, her mouth is pristinely clean after the meal.

* She eats more than Day, in half the time he takes (he needs pushing). In fact, during dinner (both kids eat our adult food), she finishes before everyone else including the adults and watching her, my father was prompted to exclaim: “Wah, li hai!”

* She goes after whatever food anyone is eating. And if you were to offer her a small portion of your food, she will scream for she wants the bigger half. Or better still, the entire portion.

* She drinks soup very loudly. Every slurp is audible (like a loud kiss) and her chin moves up and down most vigorously.

* At a time when most babies are thinning out because of all the activity, she is not. I am quite certain, in fact, that she got fatter in the two months since we came back. She is most incredibly gluttonous.

* Even pictures of food turn her on and for some strange reason, pictures of food that doesn’t look like food and which I do not expect her to correctly identify as food (like brown mush), she knows is food. Here she is with her prized copy of "Life!eats", something she spends far more time perusing than her Ladybird readers. She gets incredibly excited whenever she sees the Hokkien mee on the cover.

#3

Ah yes. My womb has got its third resident.

Ten weeks old, two inches long, and probably looking very much like the picture above, #3 is well on her way.

I now have the ignominious honour of having a boy made in Spain, a girl made in Singapore and one unknown made in Sydney. I shall try not to holiday in a country starting with “S” from now.

Planned?

I’d be crazy to plan for a child now, when our family is at ground zero.

I was in fact most pissed (that is the mildest word I can think of) when I discovered, two weeks upon our return, that I was unwittingly knocked up once more.

Those glorious two weeks were to have been the start of my Life Reclamation Plan. I slept at 10, woke up at 6, exercised for an hour every morning – jogged long distances, cycled, did 30 sit-ups, all before the kids woke up.

I threw out all my old grubby clothes, clothes which our helper hastily stuffed into the boxes she was planning to send back to the Philippines, secure in the knowledge that once I got working I would buy a few pieces of nice expensive clothes to wear.

I slowly but surely pried the kids loose from my life, sending Day to school, leaving Dee with the helper or my dad for the occasional afternoon out with friends.

All in all, I felt mighty glad to slowly banish the lingering vestiges of the yellow-faced housewife from my persona.

And then, KK thought my tummy looked slightly distended. I insisted it was the product of the sit-ups, building up all that muscle mass.

He asked me when my last period was. I thought it must have been over two months ago, but as they came with that sort of frequency – I was still breastfeeding – I didn’t think too much of it.

That very day, between 4 and 6pm, I had the sickeningly familiar sensation of my saliva suddenly tasting so distasteful I wanted to puke.

KK came home with a test kit, a kit which I honestly did not take very seriously. Instead of waiting till the morning, which is what all the test kit instructions tell you, I went straight to the toilet and cursorily pissed on it. All ready to bin the stick, which I was holding up like a bored smoker with a cigarette, I can only say I felt like a randy teenager when the two lines appeared.

I felt like I had done something horribly wrong and that my parents were going to screw me upside down. The thee words which came to mind at that moment: KA NA SAI.

For at this moment, we are in the very unenviable position of having nothing (well OK we do have a flat). Because we are in the process of building up our lives once more, of owning possessions and enslaving ourselves to work like the average Singaporean. Because we need to take stock and stabilize ourselves.

KK, who must have been feeling like an overly-horny army boy, whispered: Oh no, how?

Like a rural farmer’s wife, I seem to have developed the knack of popping rather effortlessly and with alarming regularity once every two years around the months of March and April.

And if there is a God, he sure must have a fine plan for us, for we now have been blessed with two accidents. Either one of us needs to get something cut after this is over so NOTHING MORE CAN HAPPEN.

Now, of course, we are quite happy that there will be another cutie to join our humble little family. All that negativity lasted, perhaps, a week?

malady

When I quit my job I promised KK that I would earn my own keep.

To this day I have kept my word. Pre-Sydney, I never asked him for a single cent and paid mostly for the kid’s expenses. School fees, medical bills and all my ante-natal pregnancy bills excluding the delivery expenses which he footed.

Now as my bank balance dips alarmingly, probably for the first time in two decades from four figures to three, I am panicking. I have never been so financially f%$ked.

Post-Sydney, the comfortable cushion I had sitting in the bank since I was a teen, which never went down very much and only went up because I scrupulously replaced whatever I used, is long gone, spent at Coogee Beach. It is no longer enough that I desperately scrimp and save, it is imperative that I top up.

Post-Sydney, having been a year out of Singapore, I am finding it harder to get back into my writing and music gig-ging. It’s been a while. Contacts are rusty, skills are mouldy.

Post-Sydney, I am horrified to find that all my writing experience counts for a measly $21 per hour wage. Effectively, a part-time three-days-a-week job which I had been straining to start at for over a month, has just delivered me a stinging slap in the face.

Post-Sydney, with the impending sale of the flat and the loss of our rental income which used to go entirely to my folks, I have to somehow scrimp enough from my earnings to give my folks their allowance.

Post-Sydney, I am realizing, with two kids searching for me all day long, how challenging it is for me to even find 20 minutes in a day to conduct a phone interview. On average, I grab 20 minutes per morning to bathe, an hour during their naps and another hour or two when KK comes home, to work.

And work I must, even if my perceived value is progressively lower by the year and I get progressively chastened by how little people are willing to pay me.

KK, who has not yet received his first pay cheque, is unbelievably even worse off than me at the moment. When it comes, I’m confident every cent of it will be parceled out within the first week.

Dollar signs are stamped all over my brain and today, at least, it’s turned me into a snippy stressed-out bitch. I can’t believe how, at a time when the economy is booming and the whole world is out rejoicing and spending cash, I am awake at 5am thinking about whether our little family can make it – and here is the qualifier – the way we want to.

See, logically speaking, the best option for me now is to get a full-time job with a decent pay, hire a maid, pay my folks their allowance, have more than enough left to pamper myself, get a decent standard of living and just let go of the kids. Trust in the hands of the maid. Trust in the hands of the school. Just let go.

Yet, I still refuse to. I can’t bring myself to. For one, two and then three reasons.

I remain stubbornly optimistic.

that tube and caleb

Will it stay or will it slide? Will she wear it or will she tear it? Will she love it or will she hate it?

Subject in question: A gorgeous pink-and-purple tube which doubles up as a skirt from Lifebaby, courtesy of Auntie Josephine. It’s one of those beautiful items of clothing which makes you so happy to have a daughter, and yet; I had a feeling that it’s one of those things moms love but daughters hate.

See, I think most kids (like me when I was young) love to wear nothing and if they have to wear something, the rattier the better. Cotton singlets with holes, frayed pants. Kids just want to be comfy.

I swore I wouldn’t do to her what my mom did to me, which was to stuff me in very pretty dresses I hated with a passion. But I DID! I couldn’t WAIT for an opportunity to bare her fleshy arms in that flirty little tube and so, at first chance – Caleb’s first month party – I swiftly tore off her ratty shirt, distracted her with a bird, and pulled the chiffony layers over her head.

Quickly, quickly, quickly, in the four seconds she was still looking at the bird, I tied the matching string around her neck so she would not be able to yank the entire top off.

The moment my hands came off, her hands came up. Tug tug TUG! Nipples showing, material straining, string cutting into her neck, she screamed!

Oh my, we tried to distract her with everything but nothing worked. I, most frustrated, was about to consign the tube to being a skirt sometime in future when KK very astutely observed that it wasn’t the tube she was objecting to but the damned string.

And so I pulled it off and here she is, sitting pretty in her clever papa’s arms.



Clearly, with no boobs and no string, Dee’s tube was bound to slide. Happily, the ruched elastic meant that if she stayed relatively sedentary and didn’t try to get at her belly button, we only had to adjust it for her once in a while.

Ah, the price of vanity.

The occasion in question: Caleb, my cousin Dawn’s offspring, the newborn with the nice profile (not flat), is a month old.



In the miraculous way in which newborns (especially those fully breastfed) put on weight, Caleb is developing a nice set of chipmunk cheeks and his nose no longer looks as prominent as it did because of the expanding surrounds. From looking like an old man a month ago, he now looks like a chubby babe.

going... going...

Today, I had reason to look at the Classifieds.

I searched, up and down the columns, until I found it.



And so it's come to this.

Our beloved Marine Parade three-room flat, owned for five years, lived in for 1 1/2, about to go to someone else who will hopefully appreciate what we've done with it and not hack away everything. Perhaps a bachelor. A spinster. A childless couple with a taste for the the different.

Admittedly I scarcely feel an attachment to a place which has not been home for years. I know it will probably never be, what with the two kids.

Hopefully what will happen is that we can use the money, hang on to it for a couple of years until property prices are not what they are now, and buy a family pad.

ikea tampines

Afternoons I like to bring the kids out together.

Not always far away; often we just pop by the neighbour’s.

But when I feel up to it (about the same frequency as Dee’s morning jaunts – two to three times a week!) I brave public transport (mostly their barreling all over the taxi) and bring them a little farther away.

Their firm favourite: Ikea Tampines.

Like Macs, these folks have got it right: Hook the kids and reel in the parents.



They love the food: The creamy soups, hard buns and crispy chicken wings.

They love the mock children’s bedrooms, crawling into proper kid-size beds and marveling at all the things they don’t have.



They love the play corner where dirty cushions and toys abound, and where once I saw a teenaged girl sitting in the tent talking to herself, surrounded by brand-new soft toys she had collected from the shelves.

They love it when I chuck them in the big trolley and wheel them to the exit.

And they love my last stop: The Ikea food shop where I end up buying something chocolatey and which they munch on while waiting for the taxi home.



I used to bring Day to the old Ikea. Two years on, he still hasn't got a nice room of his own. Sorry boy, we're still working on it!

sleep demon

If there is one thing about mothering that truly kills me, it’s got to be sleep.

Fussy eating, whining, screaming, bad behaviour, violence, all I can take.

Sleep – or rather, the way that little children want to be put to sleep - I can’t.

I’ve said it before: How I hate with a passion the lying in bed, faking sleep every night for up to 1 ½ hours each time, before the baby drops off into a sleep deep enough for me to creep out unhindered.

For a while, after our return, we thought we had nailed it with Dee.

We’d just read her a book, sing her a song, give her some love, turn off the lights and walk out shortly after. Two to three minutes of squalling and she’d be out, by herself, a short while later.

Perfect.

She probably wasn’t feeling as ecstatic as I was, but honestly, without the prospect of having to suffer to put her to sleep, I was seriously happy.

Then, as with babies, it all changed a few days ago.

The afternoon naps were still fine, still easy. But not the nights.

Suddenly she refused to go to sleep on her own. She needed me as her bolster.

Rocking doesn’t hasten her sleeping process. Neither does patting.

Worse, sometimes my presence seems to act as a stimulant and she stays up for an hour or more chatting to her still mummy, looking out the window and generally making a nuisance of herself.

Tonight was the pits.

Having woken up from her afternoon nap at 2pm, I was dead certain she would be tired by 830pm, her official bed time.

KK stayed with her for an hour. I stayed with her for another 30 minutes.

10pm I walked out in a huff and she screamed herself hoarse until 1030.

My dad kept commanding me to go in and silence her. Problem is, what she’s grown to expect over the last few nights is that the longer and harder she cries, someone will come.

So we just shuttered our ears and ignored her.

She’s got to learn. I absolutely cannot live with Fake Sleeping anymore.

And truth be told, I think we have managed her entire sleeping regime, from the time she was born, deplorably. At times our hearts go soft and when we are driven to desperation, we turn military. Very inconsistent.

We should probably let her scream herself blue in the face for as long as it takes.

breakfasts with dee

We have breakfasts outside together, my girl and I.

Not every day; just two or three times a week, when I feel fit.

It’s something she loves, for I reckon she’s never had so much undivided attention from me (no brother around to compete, he’s in school).

What I do is, I put her in the new bicycle seat we installed for her – the one with the pink padding – stuff Day’s old Pikachu helmet on her head, and we’re off.



We don’t go far; I don’t want to risk overly long rides during which she might get cranky and start arching her back whilst on the road.

Just to nearby Siglap or Bedok or places I have never eaten before.



Once I brought her to a deserted little coffeeshop hidden behind lots of foliage at the start of Parbury Avenue. Just $2 bought us a simple bowl of chicken macaroni soup which Dee, in between casting coy smiles and waving at the construction workers who dropped in, slurped up.



The good thing about the girl is she can self-feed pretty neatly so that leaves me alone to read or eat my own food. Until she finishes, that is.



I used to do this with Day.

I think spending time alone with each child – despite the number of children we have – is always a good thing.

home = family

What better way to celebrate Singapore than by being with the people who make it home?

OK that sounded real cheesy but honestly. I have to say it again: What a blessing it is to be surrounded by the family we grow up with.

To be able to call, at a moment’s notice, a retinue of uncles, aunties and cousins for a family BBQ; to have everyone contribute their much-loved signature dishes for the potluck (kueh pie tee from my mom, konnyaku jelly from Auntie Rosalind, and while not for the BBQ, a loaf of delicious home-made bread chock full of raisins and apricots from Auntie Margaret); to be able to hang around with people whom you don’t really need to say very much to, to want to be with.



The BBQ was held in honour of my “no-chicken-wings-for-BBQ-please” brother, Choon, who is flying back to Darwin on Sunday. He’s the chin-chow scooper.

Next to him is my younger-than-me-by-ten-years-brother Teng, the only one amongst the three of us whose eyeballs (shame!) succumbed to myopia.



I wish I could say more on the rest of the family but without the photos (I was too busy enjoying myself to take more than two shots), I am uninspired. For more on the kids, particularly on the newest addition to the family, see Dawn’s blog.

Next day was Family Day again: Just my folks and two brothers together with me and the kids, to lunch at the Raffles Hotel’s Empire Café, where we pay $10 for a popiah just so that a nice waitress will come and top up our water.



Dee in red and white; a particularly nice and inadvertently nationalistic hand-me-down from an Aussie mom.



Singapore citizen. Taking the pledge.

singapore river kiddy trip

It was a mistake: Me volunteering to tag along on Day’s school’s National Day field trip to the Singapore River for a cruise, to be the official photographer.



The group pix (yes the principal actually got NDP red shirts and white shorts for everyone) and a close up of my son.



He was the picture of misery; sticking by mummy’s side the entire time, refusing to sit with his friends, resolutely keeping his mouth shut when it came to singing national songs, perpetually hugging my forearm with both hands and kissing my elbow and bursting into tears if he lost sight of me.

I am certain that my presence spoilt the entire trip for him, certain that had I not been there he would have been cheerfully waving his flag and running around with his hyper classmates instead of being a limp noodle.

The teachers, one by one, gave me their sympathetic reassurances: Oh when the mummies are around, they all become like that, clingy as hell.

But man, did I enjoy myself!

I was skipping with joy when the principal cheerfully accepted my offer to take photographs, and the most excited I have been in months, thinking about the big day.

Tons and tons of beautiful kids to photograph! Me, an Official Photographer! No pressure because no one is paying me so heck if I take lousy pics! What could possibly be cooler than that?

Random photos. It’s a sea of red!



Lots of non-Singaporeans at this school, especially Japanese. Regardless, they all sang the Majulah.



Waiting for the bus. The girl has got the cheekiest grimace.



Boy on the boat. Rope be damned and to hell with predictable photos. I just like it when foregrounds and backgrounds are blur and this happens to be my favourite shot amongst the 100 I took. The boy also looks (in my opinion) rather handsome in photographs and not surprisingly, he inadvertently appeared in many of my shots. Bias!



Day and his friends waving their flags from the boat. The loudest moment of the entire boat ride came when they saw the Merlion. Somehow all the kids were incredibly turned on by the ugly creature. Or it could be its fountain of spit.



This is French Fry girl. She apparently refuses to eat anything but French Fries from Macs and because her mother was with her, principal had to oblige and ordered the Macs folks to bring one bag of fries along with the rest of their lunch delivery.



Some crazy tourists squealed when they saw the kids all dressed up in their National Day finery, randomly grabbed the ones they thought were cutest (funnily enough all the tourists went for the blonde kids) and snapped away. The boy in the photo looked like he wanted to whack the China woman with his flag.



As multi-cultural as it can get.



Kids being kids, all suffered from itchy backsides while waiting for the Macs folks who were late. Very-generous-principal hailed the nearest trishaw man, who then kept the kids entertained for another 20 minutes.



When there were no more National Day songs to sing and no more trishaw rides, kids started running up and down the slopes, to the chagrin of the teachers.



Finally! Macs burgers, cup corn and apple juice followed by cups of old-fashioned ice cream (the attap chee kind) from the ice cream vendor nearby. More than one kid asked in very plaintitive tones: “I want fries!” But of course, only French Fry girl got her share.

What wouldn’t I give to follow the school along again on their excursion with camera in tow! Unfortunately, it would probably spoil the day for Day. So this river cruise will probably be it.

back to school

Not KK. Day.

He’s been in nursery school three weeks now.

THE SEARCH

My school of choice, coincidentally, happens to be the one nearest to where we are living – probably about 25 houses away.

Cycling around, I checked out five schools.

It was heavily suggested by more than one neighbour, that for pragmatic reasons, I send him to the all-Chinese church kindergarten, where he will only hear 30 minutes of spoken English in a three-hour day.

I didn’t, however, think I would want to sit in the school’s air-conditioned cubicles and do worksheets all day long, which is what the kids appeared to be doing.

Another was dark, dingy and seemingly overcrowded with children lying helter skelter underfoot, taking their naps, when I visited. A third was a tad too far for walking. A fourth - his old school - had had two changes of management in a year.

The fifth, and the only Montessori school, was the tiniest one of all. A little house with a tiny playground and just slightly over 30 kids which I had not even considered because it was so small, but decided to pop into since it was on my way home.

I think I made up my mind the moment I walked in and the principal, unlike all the pamphlet-wielding fact-sprouting principals I had talked to before, asked me very nicely: “What do you want your son to get out of school?”

And I just blurted: “I want him to enjoy it.”

The furniture was wooden, the toys and games were minimal but (in my opinion) well chosen, the teachers were likeable, the children present were effusively vocal, the school circulars were written in grammatically-correct English and most of all, it seemed the only place among the five where I would want to be if I were a kid. I was sold.

So he went for the trial a few days later and that trial became the first day of school because he never stopped.

THE REACTION

It’s not the first time he’s been to school – he attended half-day childcare from 20 to 26 months – but it might as well be.

First day of school for Day at 39 months might as well be the first day of school for Day at 20 months. The screaming, the throughout-the-day crying, the sprint into my arms at noontime when I collected him as if he had just been freed from torture.

What also, unfortunately, remains the same is how the morning crying does not stop.

As if his head and his heart are pulling him in different directions, he goes through the right motions of saying goodbye and pulling off his slippers, but what’s all wrong are the teary hiccups and wet red eyes. He’s basically miserable to leave home.



I am convinced, however, that soon after I turn my back he’s a completely different creature. Convinced because I peeped.

He becomes a happy sociable creature who actually makes friends, sings the songs, plays the games and enjoys himself.

genital discovery

exam results

We’ve been holding our breaths: Did KK fail any of his exams? Does he get his Masters or not? Will we have to (Gasp! Nooooo!) return to Australia for him to study for more credits?

Good news good news good news! Here are his results:

PASSED: Six (3 high distinctions, 1 distinction, 1 credit, 1 pass)

FAILED: None

Even better than last semester!

He also had the (in my opinion) rather dubious honour of scoring a perfect 100 for one of his papers.

He asked: “Huh? How come like that?” but of course, whoever looked a gift horse in the mouth?

All that’s pending is the actual awarding of the Masters degree.

Good thing he cleared everything; he had dumped all his notes in Sydney, didn’t take a page back.



On another note, today is exactly a month since we left Sydney.

Do we miss it?

The kids don’t seem to. And for us, not quite.

Only in three instances.

One, when we went to the East Coast Park and KK mourned. I didn’t have a problem and pointed out that the ECP, unlike Coogee, has shady trees all along the beach and its balmy stickiness has its own tropical appeal. He grumpily begged to differ.


* The view of Coogee beach from Coogee Bay Road, the main shopping street and where we used to walk down virtually every day

Two, after an exhausted KK packed the kids off to bed after a cursory bath and a cursory story-time and we were silently viewing the videos we filmed in Sydney, I felt teary-eyed. For we would probably never ever again have the same luxury of an unstructured excess of family time. Weekdays are, well, tiring and weekends are packed to the brim with Family Activities and are sometimes even more tiring.

Three, whilst disappearing into the throng of Singaporeans including families who materialize for days out on weekends, I felt slightly panicky for lack of breathing space, and resentful that so few people can bring their families out on weekdays because they are all working. Hence the squeeze on weekends.

But that’s about it.

The sheer fact that I can finally enjoy my meals in peace with KK (because there is always someone to help with the kids) is more than enough to make up for every other horrible thing.

runned dog

Right outside our house today, on the quiet tree-lined street where ironically the one and only road hump on the entire street sits, our neighbour’s beloved dog of 11 years was run over.

Several loud cracks, like the car had gone over a sharp boulder, and it was all over.

Spot, a friendly beagle-like white and brown neighbourhood fixture who had fascinated both Day and Dee, quivered with four legs in the air like he had been electrocuted before he stilled. His urine ran out on the road but there was no blood. Yet.

Jomi, the domestic helper who usually kept an eye on Spot and who had just today neglected to see him dashing out of the house across the road when she opened the gate, managed to keep her composure as she quietly carried Spot and laid his limp body on the grass.

Teenaged Kimberly, one of the daughters of the house, forgot sobriety and screamed, again and again, long and hard and loud enough for the entire street to hear, when she discovered that her childhood pet was probably dead.

The car driver, a placid grandmother living up the road whom I never knew drove like a racecar driver, strode back to the scene and, walking up to Kimberly’s mother, yelled a string of accusations along the line of: “How can you let the dog out without a leash! How can you leave the gate open and let the dog run out!” before she walked over to Kimberly and gave her a few cursory uncertain pats on her back, which were ignored by the girl for why would she care for her dog’s inadvertent killer?

Gina, the key witness and our domestic helper, who was sitting outside the house for a breather, was literally metres from the scene and was struck dumb.

Our six-year-old neighbour ran up to us and pronounced in the enthusiastic high-pitched screams of a boy who finds death exciting: “Spot is dead! Spot is dead! I’m not kidding!”

His mother quickly moved on from empathy to opportunity and, grabbing her son by the arm and looking in the eye, said very sternly: “You know what lesson you can learn from this? Do you know? Tell me! That’s right, you should never run out on the road!”

Then she gave me her necessary words of advice: “That’s why I don’t think you should go out with the kids by yourself if you are carrying Jody and David is not holding your hand. He may run on to the road. You should go out with a maid at least.”

She is absolutely right. But right now, I’m still shocked at how quickly and brutally Spot left and I wonder how Kimberly and her sisters are faring.

return of uncle choon

It is almost always the case nowadays that the smiles, kisses and attention is lavished on Dee.

Baby versus toddler - the fatter cuter one always wins out.

Three-year-old Day is neglected, left on his own, because relatively speaking he’s almost-adult in his ways; awkward, self-conscious, unchildish and very un-entertaining.

So it was a bit of a surprise, upon the kid’s Uncle Choon’s arrival from Darwin on Monday (where he works as a dietitian) to find that he is truly and fully Day’s man. Or perhaps he’s a boy’s man.

Choon popped straight into Day’s bedroom at 7am after very early morning flight. Day opened his eyes, saw Uncle Choon sitting on his bed and sat straight up before beaming: “Kaofu Choon!”

The rest of the day was a blur of their usual rough-and-tumble WWF, chase-and-catch, tickling games. They just click.



Day was even more ecstatic than usual and went round the whole day declaring to everyone how much he liked Choon Choon; and even as we tsk-ed at how he shouldn’t be disrespectfully calling Choon Choon but Kaofu Choon as a mark of respect, he was over the top with having been re-united with his playmate.

Dee, she regarded this strange man, whom she last saw in December but whom she won’t remember, with some suspicion and her lacklustre very gu-niang wiggles in reaction to his tickles were somewhat of anti-climax for Choon, who much preferred Day’s over-the-top squeals and who very naturally ended up not playing much with Dee.

Anyway here's Choon with his niece and his nephew on his first morning back.