election

It’s all so exciting I cannot help but abandon everything else to follow the election.

I am thrilled.

So thrilled I check the websites every minute every day, and I cycle down to the nomination centre at Tao Nan School to see a sea of white shirts and white hair.

It’s all I talk to people about.

The young and those my age, I know what they say.

The older, a 50-something teacher I meet on my volunteer run, tells me she can’t understand why her 20-something daughter is telling her she will “never know” unless she gives the opposition a chance: “But there’s nothing wrong, right? I like the way things are. It scares me, what my daughter is telling me. It scares me.”

Mine is only one vote. Two maybe (KK tells me “I’ll tick whatever you tick”).

What do I think?

Nothing clever, for sure. I’m not one for intellectual rumination.

But what makes the first vote I have ever held in my life so important, is that my three beloved children are growing up in this country.

And as always, I’ll do what I think is best for them.

7th birthday present

For his birthday this year, the boy makes a request and my face falls straight down to my knees.

Damn.

Not a book, not a toy, not food, not even a gadget.

He wanted bloody terrapins.

He wants something LIVE.

KK looks at me and states my greatest fear: You know you will end up doing the work, right?

At 36, I now know myself very well. Things – living and non-living - die under my care unless they are able to fend for themselves (like the kids).

Of course we can say no to the boy.

He goes online, trots out a whole lot of research about terrapin care and says very convincingly - while flashing his big peepers and fluttering the longest set of eyelashes in the family – that he is SURE he can and will look after the terrapins.

Oh, pui. Fine.

I put a little footnote in my big fat book of To Dos – remind Day to keep terrapins alive (because I WOULD have to remember to remind him every single day until the terrapins expire) – and KK brings him to the pet shop, whereupon they return with three critters in a plastic takeaway box and a whole load of accompanying paraphernalia.



The creatures costs $5 each and the extras, $60. I would have spent just $15 on three and dumped them in the kids’ bathtub with stones from the roadside.


* Turtle baggage

Day has christened them Chocolate, Caramel and Cinnamon. I don’t even know where he gets these ideas from.



I will report if the state of their health takes a downturn or if they flip over and die.

In the meantime, I’m thoroughly enjoying the sound of tricking water from the filter. Why spend hundreds on one of those rotating stone-ball fengshui-type water features when all you need is a fiter in a tub of water?

Jo argues: Please can I have a cat when I am seven years old, Mummy?

Lu asks: Can I have a wabbit?


* Day and his critter

birthday surprise

The boy wanted a BBQ party but we couldn’t get enough people.

The man wanted an iPad2 but it’s not out yet. And it's a little pricey.

I wanted to treat the man to a nice big 4-0 dinner, just him and me, but he says: Can we not? I prefer to spend time with my family.

In a strange mental fog of What Am I To Do’s, I suddenly seize upon a glimmer of an idea. I decide to spring a surprise.

Which will allow the man to spend time with his family, enjoy himself, do his work and study plus get a good rest, and which I am certain Day and the kids will love.

Friday after lunch I pile them all into the car.

Day asks: Where are we going, mum?

Jo: What is the surprise, mum? Can I eat it?

KK: (ominous silence)

We drive up the expressway toward the airport, the runway stretches away on our left, there is nothing but trees and blue sky.

I turn into Changi for the surprise: We’re staying the night at the Changi Village Hotel. (clothes secretly packed into the booth)



The kids scream and squeal, hop up and down in excitement.



KK is still ominously silent. And he stays that way for the remainder of the stay, where he mostly hangs around in the room (it’s got an Internet connection), sleeping while we play and studying while we sleep.

Which I take to mean: The man is stressed to the max. It's not a good time for a surprise.

Another birthday fail!

Good thing is, the other Birthday Boy has a blissful time.



RANDOM PHOTOS

What’s best about the hotel is outside, where it’s all suburban laidback Changi Village charm and good cheap food at the hawker centre and dim sum coffee shop.


* I enjoy International Nasi Lemak from the hawker centre. That's the queue.


* Changi Village jetty, to hitch a ride to Ubin, across the road


* Low HDB walk-ups with brick facades. Lovely.

We love the rooftop pool! By day..




* Spitting water bullets





By night…



And the next day when KK finally pops his head out of the sand.

sibling relationship

Sibling relationship transitions: Lu has now drifted outside the triumvirate as Day and Jo ally themselves, closer than before.

Big two prefer to sleep together in the same room, play together, talk.

In fact, it’s more Jo who has strategically moved closer to her brother: She knows he’s useful.

Mummy’s deputy, if you can call it.

She gets him to pour milk for her, take things from high shelves for her, cook instant noodles for her.

And Jo, who always has been of a particularly curious bent (she will ask “why is the sky blue”), riddles him with rapid streams of incessant questions.

In her (still ear-grinding) whine: “Gor gor, what is this word? Gor gor, how do you read this? Gor gor, what is the man doing? Gor gor, what are you drawing? Gor gor, see this! SEE THIS!”

Short-fused Day has come huffing and puffing to me on more than one occasion: MUMMY! WHY does she have to ask me so many questions? I HATE sisters! She keeps asking me! Grrrrr! (claps hands over his ears) SHUT UP JO!

And in a final act of rebuff, he spits: You’re so FAT!

But on good days he'll say: Jody is so chubby and nice to hug.

birthday boys!

Day: 7

KK: 40



In a nutshell, Day, at 7, is a cool-wannabe.

From coolly flinging away his sister's arm to dancing in the mall with smirk, Jo and I are laughing fit to die at his antics.


While KK – he reminds me twice on his birthday – now qualifies for ElderShield, an “an affordable severe disability insurance scheme which provides basic financial protection to those who need long-term care, especially during old age.”


* The old man and his family


* The old man and his wife

lift and extract

One of life’s most important lessons: How to remove clothes from a stack.

All their lives, it’s been Grab and Pull.

Because all MY life, it’s been Grab and Pull. The maid just puts it all back in order. Until I had to keep house.

After years of tidying and re-tidying their drawers, I make a quantum leap: I have to TRAIN the kids.

It’s like I’m running some corporation here. I can’t do everything myself. I’m the CEO and I have to delegate and train.

I tell them: Lift (whatever’s on top) and Extract (what you want). I demonstrate. I police.

It helps that they probably have all of about 15 shirts each and an equivalent number of bottoms.


* Two trays per kid

It seems to be working.

Day usually just takes what’s on top (he doesn’t care what he wears). But the girls take a great deal of pride in showing me just how they Lift and Extract.



I am fairly certain I will have to do another painful sit-and-fold exercise – whereby I diligently re-fold everything back into order – but I think it will be a longer time in coming.

Little steps.

the $40,000 violin

As a stay-home mother, there are a lot of things which I try out for the first time in my life. Having kids underfoot all day just makes me want to bust out and do nutty things. Someone I recently interviewed would diplomatically call this a “sense of wonder”.

The other day, though, I did a Life First without the kids.

I was called to turn up at some Godforsaken industrial estate in Ubi to play the violin.

I have done a few industrial estate gigs and the best thing about them is almost always the food (which the client has to provide because where else would we go to eat?)

I turn up. I realize it is an instrument viewing event for a music shop. Fewer than 10 violins are laid out on the tables, scrolls perched precariously on glass cups (the kind you drink Bourbon and Coke from).

“Pick one and play on it,” the young curly-haired Italian says.

With a dawning sense of wonder, I gently pick up one violin and peer inside the f-hole to read the label: Paolo Vettori, 2009.


* I didn't bring a camera to the gig. Peering into my own violin: Label says it's a 1960 reproduction of a Stradivarius.

I play on it. Good God. It sounds like coffee: Thick, robust, warm and very stimulating. And it’s so very, very easy to play. I actually sound good.

“Do pick a bow,” says curly hair, whose father had made the violin.

I wander to another table where bows are laid out in a briefcase. I pick one with a 3 on it. Maybe it stands for $300.

As it so happens, my own 51-year-old violin, and bow, is in terrible shape. It sounds like a whiny woman with a congested nose.

I wonder. I ask: “How much is this violin and bow?”

“Oh, the price list is on the table,” a lady says.

It turns out what I am holding is a $40,000 violin and bow #3 which costs $15,000. My grip tightens.

The most wonderful part? I am paid to play on it for the next three hours because the buyers want to hear the instruments in action.

Merrily, I go around trying out different five-figure violins and I find that the violins made by different members of the family (father, 2 sons and daughter, who are all there) have a distinct sound, so a practiced ear can tell who made which one.

I ask the patriarch, white-bearded Paolo, who is robust, impish and merrily dances to our rendition of The Blue Danube: “How is it that given the same wood, same techniques, same equipment, that the violins you make all sound uniquely different from what your children make?”

He peers at me over the top of his glasses: “It’s all in our hands. A different pair of hands make a different violin, even if everything else is the same.”

I love Paolo’s violins, which sound deep, masculine and full. Strangely, the ones made by his children – which are in the mid to late $20,000's - do not sound as mature. Like weak tea, perhaps. But that's just me.

I thank them all profusely, for allowing me to lay my hands on their works of art.

I think: What can I do to buy such a violin? Perhaps if I sold my house, I could.

Then again, I wouldn’t. It’s not in me to fondle and love such an expensive instrument. The violin, to me, remains a tool which I use and abuse.

And occasionally borrow to enjoy!


* Gramercy music shop boss Jimmy, cellist Zhiqi, violist Jonathan, me and violinist Yili

colouring manga

One of my greatest joys as a child was colouring Japanese giant-eyed Anime girls.

I frequently scrabbled for pieces of tracing paper which I would carefully copy the girls onto, and I still remember it’s three bubbles per pupil for super-shiny eyes.

Imagine my joy when I found these books in Kinokuniya.



I grabbed one. For Jo, of course.

But the rest of us, including the boy were clearly beguiled.

Day's piece. He zoomed straight for the head shot, spent a long time labouring away at the A4-sized sheet, declared - it's so tiring (because it is tiring having to colour large areas of the same colour) - but I made him finish it anyway.



Jo's pieces.



My one-and-only piece. I don't think I have the patience to labour over another.



And... Lu's effort!



We - excluding KK - still enjoy colouring a lot. When we have nothing to do, we whip out the colouring books, or a piece of paper to draw on.

It's family therapy.

lisp going

The sweetie’s got a little lisp which I have been trying to fix.

Not in a big way. But when she asks for a Tseez sandwich, I go “CHEESE, Lulu!”, when she points to the Booze Pig, I say “BUSH Pig, Lulu!” and when says “I want to was my hands” I say “WASH, Lulu!”

Suddenly, on Saturday 16th April at 10pm, her tongue and teeth click into place, producing exquisite SHs and CHs. Ah, such sweet hissing sounds.

And, she offers a very decent follow-up to the Worsink Morsink of a month ago.

bottle drug

On the rare instance, any one of the girls will come up to me and beg me: “Mummy can I have the milk bottle please? Please?”



Of course the other then follows suit.

Lu is particularly keen for since she started school, she has been begging me for diapers and bottles because she sees her friends using these things and she feels deprived.

I open the cupboard and take out the two plastic bottles which I keep for such momentous occasions.

I fill it up with water, they each take it away with them, find a horizontal place to lie down and proceed to slowly extract water from their milk bottles in bliss.

Their eyes are glazed, they are still, they are quiet. It’s such a happy moment for the rest of us.

kaypohs

The road just outside our house is an accident magnet.

It is a confluence of a slightly curved busy two-lane main road and two side streets from which cars are perpetually coming out from or going into.

So we have heard quite a few crash and bangs and squealing tires in our time here.

The other night, KK rushes into the kitchen where I am washing the dishes: “COME, COME! There’s something happening outside!”

The two girls, who are eating their mangoes, spring up from their seats and dash out to the balcony.

I dry my hands and take a look. It’s another accident, a group of about five people are standing right smack in the middle of the road next to two stationary cars, there is a bit of a jam as cars slowly drive past to see if they can see any blood and there’s a lot of shouting.

There is no blood. I shrug and go back to the washing. Day shrugs and goes back to his reading. KK shrugs and goes back watching TV.

Ten minutes later I’m done with the washing. I realize the house is strangely quiet. Where are the girls?

I find them both still at the balcony, craning their necks this way and that.

When they see me they leap. “Carry me, mummy! Carry me! I can’t see I can’t see! Tsk, mummy, I CAN’T SEE!”

There is real desperation in their voices, particularly Jo, like they are at the climax of a Korean drama serial and someone had just turned off the TV.

At this point, a man actually hangs on to and bangs his fist on the booth of one of the cars, falling onto the road as the car moves off. He gets to his feet and starts shaking his fist. I am assuming the two parties are quarrelling.

“WHY DID THAT MAN FALL OFF, MUMMY? IS HE HURT? WHY IS THE CAR DRIVING OFF, MUMMY? I CANT SEE THE CAR!”

It’s a cacophony. I wonder if the folks down on the road can hear the shouting up here.

Things eventually return back to normal. But wow, these girls. They are such suckers for real-life drama.

KK remarks: Is this a girl thing?

marina bay sands

The huge, glittering edifice rises out of Marina Bay, it’s officially opened but almost everyone I know has never been there.

I was dying to go, not to the casino but to the Shoppes. (don’t forget the P-E-S)

Except we had this bee in our brains about how slippers and shorts are not allowed and we just can’t bring ourselves to NOT wear slippers and shorts.

Saturday, I suddenly decide it’s time.

I make everyone wear decent clothes. I replace my shorts with jeans and my slippers with my sister-in-law’s hand-me-down clippety clogs, so I still look like Ah Soh from the waist up (and maybe from the waist down too) but at least no one can accuse me of flouting a dress code.

Reality?

ONE, there is no dress code, not for The Shoppes anyway.

TWO, the killer is in the parking. Two hours, $8. I turn pale at the carpark’s exit gantry. KK mumbles: Next time we’re cycling here.

THREE, it’s remarkably empty. Well, not empty, maybe a third or a quarter of Vivo’s throngs? Truthfully, it doesn’t look sustainable.

FOUR, it’s cavernous with a lovely skylight running along the entire mall.

FIVE, it’s for people with money. There is loads of walking space in all high-ceilinged shops, most of which we suburban bumpkins have never seen before.

SIX, it is a very nice place to hang out. Not to spend money, but just to hang out, see things, ooh and ah.

SEVEN, Day falls in love with the ice skating rink, which is actually made of plastic, not ice, but it’s authentically slippery without the cold and wetness.



He took one look at it, begged to have a go, it went at the fairly reasonable rate of $9 per hour per child (with extensions going at $3 per hour), he strapped on his groovy red skates and off he went.



I warned him - You have to go the full hour, OK? – but I need not have feared.

From tumbling and stumbling around the side he soon graduated to walking awkwardly across the rink without taking a spill, then managed to skate a bit.



Through the hour, Jo clung to the ledge, crab-walking her way left and right depending on where her beloved Gor-gor would end up so she can stretch out her (very short) helping hand to hoist him up whenever he fell.





The boy’s face turned black when I ordered him out, and begged for a return trip.

Well, as long as we don’t drive.

soccer

So, local soccer.

Apparently there is a scene here in Singapore.

The news in the press is all bad, but on the ground there are matches to be enjoyed, if one can be bothered.

KK brings Day and Lu for a match the other day.



The only reason he goes for the match is for the kids. “Exposure,” he says, in another of his one-word statements.

I would have charged to the stadium – I’m a sucker for anything new – but I had to bring Jo for music class.

It was a match at the Jalan Besar stadium between Tampines Rovers and Etoile. (eventually score: 2-1 in favour of Tampines)



Cost: $10 for adults, $2 for kids.



Post-match, I ask KK if the kids enjoyed it.

“OK lor.”

Hmmm.

I gather, between him and the kids, that there was a lot of eating of Twisties, there were people shouting “Goal!”, the teams were wearing yellow and blue, and people on the field fell down.



And that, is about it.

I suspect they had a lot of fun. But between two males and one little girl, no one could quite articulate it.

school library

Out of intense curiosity – and because I am a very free tai-tai – I devote three hours a week to playing librarian in Day’s school library.

Children of various ages, shapes, sizes and colours flit in and out trying to get their hands on the Geronimo Stiltons, all of which are slightly sticky and falling apart from over-use.



The girls mostly squeal over the Rainbow Fairy series which are in slightly better condition, but, like the Stiltons, are set aside in a special “hot” corner exempt from Dewey Decimal classification.



Mary, the stern librarian, barks from where she stands behind the harried parent volunteers, peering over the top of her spectacles: “Kids, you can only borrow one Geronimo Stilton each! ONE!”

Her eagle eye zooms in on recalcitrant pupils – she keeps records in her head – who have a history of losing books, stealing books or trying to sneak away more than one Stilton.

I have not seen a kid borrow anything which I read at their age: No Enid Blytons, Roald Dahls, Nancy Drews, Alfred Hitchcocks.

But I like that Geronimo, a “learned and brainy mouse” is a newspaper editor. Of The Rodent’s Gazette, no less!

The kids are all scrupulously polite, call me Teacher or Auntie, and are lightning quick with book choices. In and out.

Nobody stops to browse or sit on the mini knee-high retro sofas enjoying a book.



That may have something to do with Mary's loud reminders: “QUICK! Recess is ending! All of you quickly borrow your books and get out!”

Once the busy hour between 1015 and 1115 is up, the library is left to the adults, who conscientiously try to repair the returned Stiltons (those that haven’t been snapped up again) and shelve the rest of the books.

I love the mother tongue section: The Chinese, Malay and Tamil books are pristine, in beautiful order, untouched. It’s a museum display.



“Nobody borrows the mother tongue books,” a parent tells me.

family cycling

The both of us like cycling.

With Day, we cycled.

With Jo, we cycled less but we still cycled. One kid on one bicycle seat.

With Lu, we stopped.

The logistics were a little more onerous.

While Day could cycle on his own, we were no longer keen on ferrying dense, heavy Jo around. It’s like having a boulder in the back seat.

So we waited for her legs to come into their own.

Yes, she got a bike last year but we weren't convinced on how far she could go beyond the odd five-minute spin.

Last week we tried, at the beach.

I’m glad to report we managed to make it from Burger King to the former Big Splash and back.

Jo valiantly pedaled away on her training bike, keeping a straight course, swigging from her water bottle and posing whenever I turned around to snap a shot.



Day, who has cycled far longer distances, veered all over the road, venturing into the cycle track coming from the other direction, never drinking any water but spending a lot of time admiring the sea and the anglers.



Lu enjoyed the scenery from her throne on the tandem bike me and KK shared.



We would have gone longer. Only I said no because it was too hot and I had not put on my sunscreen. What a middle-aged auntie I have become.

day's dessert

While I put Lu to sleep, Day potters around on his own in the kitchen and comes up with this strawberry-longan-marshmallow masterpiece.



I have to fend off the girls. Jo likes it so much she wants to take a picture with it.



But I manage to hold them off until dinner. By the time KK gets back there are two strawberries left.