jody's interview

Word-for-word.

Her stock phrase seems to be "and all that"!



What kind of food do you like to eat?

Sweets and strawberries. I like sweet things because it’s very sweet and I like sugary and salty and all that. But I don’t like pepper because it’s very spicy like that. Salty things I like is like the salt you have, I like to eat that salt by itself, you know? But not so much.

Do you like junk food?

Of course. My favourites are French Fries and sweets. And lollipops and chips and all that and all that and all that and all, that!

What kind of music do you like to listen to?

I think I like the Samba Kings, the music, and I like the words too. From my Primary 3 book. I like music that sings but I don’t like to sing. I like the piano sometimes, but I don’t like it so much.

What’s your favourite activity?

I like teaching Lulu sometimes and also drawing. Also I like cycling and swimming, sometimes. My favourite is swimming. Cycling is very tiring and there’s hot sun and all that.

What are your favourite places to go to?

Can I tell the worsest thing I ever go into? The trash bin. The worst thing is the sea. Because if I can’t see and it’s very deep and then if there’s sharks, will eat me and whales! I like to go home. No no. I’m thinking really hard… (a minute of silence) I think I can say go Parkway Parade or cycling or we can go swimming or we can go to Little Red Bookshop to eat ice cream or breakfast.

Where do you like to go outside of Singapore?

My favourite is the cruise ship but I don’t like it so much. What if tomorrow is the first time I go on the cruise ship, what if it’s not the same as last time? What if the boat won’t float? It will sink. But I like it inside cos’ the boat has a lot of food and swimming pools and all that, but I don’t like the salty water.

What do you like to do with your siblings?

My favourite thing to play with Lulu is Rainbow Jody Catty. When we play that, I’m a cat and my name is Rainbow Jody Catty and Lulu is a small girl called Keiji Ida and she takes care of me and always brings me to school and all that, and all her imaginary friends that no one can see except me and Lulu. I like my brother because sometimes we go out by ourselves and we go out to buy some sweeties.

Do you like your mama and papa?

YES!

What do you like to do with your mama and papa?

I like my mummy to bring me to parties and all that. And I like my papa to … just now he shared ice-cream with me.

What do you want to do when you grow up?

I think I want to be a teacher. Because I want to teach children because if children don’t learn, they don’t know when they grow up.

What do you want to do in life?

Don’t know.

Why are you the only one to switch off the lights, the fans and lock doors?

Because when I lock the car and house door it’s because strangers will open the doors and steal our things. And I switch off the fan and all that, I try to remember to do that, and switch off the organ and all that, because it’s wasting electricity when no one is there and playing.

Why do you always say “Haiya never mind I’ll do it myself”?

Because I don’t want to give you so much work.

david's interview

Interviews are what I do all day long.

So I decide to interview my kids. Why not?

Sometimes, in the humdrum of daily life, the important questions are not asked. Not that I ask them any earth-shattering questions at this stage.

I start with Day.



He has suddenly become rather voluble and answers very properly. When I ask "What is your favourite activity?" he starts the sentence with "My favourite activity is..."

He's been well-trained. By the school. Presumably for oral tests.

I take down their answers, word-for-word, in shorthand, the most important takeaway from my short-lived journalist career.



So this is a peek into Day's head, as he's on the cusp of turning eight.

What’s your favourite activity?

My favourite activity is playing soccer. I don’t play too much but in school I play with my school friends, Marcus and Gordon. Sometimes the teacher allows me to take the ball from the PE cupboard. Sometimes, we play catching. I like soccer because we get to kick the ball, run and pass to other players. It’s also quite fun.

What’s your favourite food?

My favourite foods are spicy tanghoon, home-made beehoon soup and laksa. I like spicy foods because it gives me a lot of nice tastes. I also like food that is not spicy.

What is your favourite music?

I like the waltz, Waves of the Danube and I also like pop music like “Moves like Jagger” by Maroon 5. I like Black and White by Michael Jackson.

What is your ambition?

I think I will be a doctor. If not, I will be a famous chef or a businessman then I can have a lot of money. But money is not the most important thing to me. Cooking is like making beautiful stuff that people can eat and if there are VIPs who come to my shop and if they say nice things, I can paste it on the magazine or something.

Do you like your home?

Yah, I like my home. Because I have a table, lots of books and the bed is also very comfortable and the fan is pointing straight down at me.

What is your favourite hang-out?

Basically I like to go to the Science Centre. On my birthday I’d like to go on the cable car. I also like to go on cruises.

Where do you like to travel?

I like to go to Australia to visit Kaofu Choon in Darwin. I also miss Sydney. I remember the slanted houses and I remember Coogee Beach. The water is cold and the sand is warm. I forgot what we did on Coogee Beach.

What do you think of your sisters?

I like Lulu because I can hug her. She is very cute. I don’t’ like Jody because every time she wakes up late. If I am in P3 and she is in P1 I will shout at her. I fight with her and she fights with me.

What do you think of your mama and papa?

I like them because they have money to buy food and nice things on my birthday and they can bring me to my friend’s house.

How do you think your mama and papa can do a better job?

I wish… (10 second pause) they could be just the same. Have money to buy car and buy a house.

Is money the thing you like most about them?

No! It’s luuuurrrve!!

What do you want to do in life?

I want to get my Maths, English and Chinese all good, all my tests and exams, so I can be a doctor.

jessie goes home

This is Jo and her best girl friend in school, Jessie.

When Jessie – or Rui Ting as I always remember her – first came, she was a gangly thing from China who could not speak a word of English.

Jo refused to be friendly, even though I said Rui Ting was probably feeling lonely and scared and wouldn’t she be friends with the new girl?

Three years on, the girls have become besties, one tall, one short, both Pisceans.

They bonded over colouring. And Jessie now writes the most beautiful English characters.

Today was Jessie’s last day at school. She returns to China for good.

The girls kiss goodbye on the lips, and exchange drawings.

Jessie is sad. But Jo is all happy and consolatory. She says: We’ll see each other again, Jessie.

one big site

Singapore is one big construction site.

Which is nothing new, really, except these days there seems to be a whole lot more tearing-down and building-up going on. Really, a whole lot more.

The row of single-storey cottages behind the mall we most often frequent (half are morphing into two or three storey blocks on a tiny footprint of land), at friend’s houses, at mum’s place.

I feel like I am surrounded by construction sites. The noise of piling and drilling is never far. The kids don’t seem to notice it, perhaps they are used to it.

The giant zinc-roofed house behind my place, which gave off a kampong vibe, just got razed.



KK loves it: It’s good for civil engineers like me, he says.

Well, OK.

One of my favourite things to do is to just walk up and down the street where my folk’s place is, to see houses.



I took in the evolution, ooh-ing at the four-storey monolith with the lift (pictured above with the neighbour), the pretty glass-walled mansion which replaced an old friend’s house, but most of all just appreciating the old folks. The vintage houses.

Not shophouses, which now enjoy a sort of mass appeal, but the sort of boxy straight-forward houses which were first built on that street, with the curly iron grilles and folding front doors.

The kids are well aware of my preferences. I think they are quite sick of my going on and on about the vintage beauty at the end of the street sitting right on top of a hill, which gets the best of the evening breezes. It’s got the wind, the view, the mosaic tiles, the old-style air vents. They know it’s my dream house.



They also know the most pristine old house on the street is the one on the left in this picture:



The grills - which are matched from window to balcony door to main gate - are not rusty and it almost looks new, kudos to the very elderly owners.



I really hope, if these houses ever change hands, it goes to young people who think like me.

If not, at least these houses will be remembered here.

a little younger

I am sure I am not the only one who has tried to pass off a child as younger than her real age in order to qualify for free meals, free entry or discounted anything.

In my mother’s day, she had no qualms. We all merrily went along with it.

In these days of political correctness and where parents strive to be models of perfection in front of their kids – I just read somewhere about a mum who would not pick up money from the road if her child was with her, I confess: I say their real age, very loudly, when they are within earshot and when they are not, I lie.

I say it with the same flair and confidence which used to get me MCs on demand.

It’s particularly easy since my trio are small.

The other day, we get a kick in the butt.

At a buffet which is free for children under 4, we tell the waitress who asks that Lu is three.

Lu pipes up: But I’m four!

balloon twister

That big old bag of long balloons from long-ago Sydney days still sits in the kid’s toy cupboard.

My balloon twisting turned out to be a one-trick affair and I, shame-faced, retired into balloon phobia.

However, Lu has taken over.

She is not an adept twister of strange animals and exotic figures, but she can at least fearlessly twist the damn things.



While she’s at it, I cower. It takes me a lot of courage to uncover my ears and take a video as her balloon squeaks away.



Jo is the very vocal cheerleader in the background. But she can only talk and air-twist. Like me, she can't do the real thing.

roaches in the car

It’s dangerous sitting in our car.

You never know what living thing you might find.

In recent times, we had roaches.

Because we don’t wash it very regularly and there’s a whole load of eating going on in the backseat.

More to the point, we still don’t really care about car hygiene.

It sounds yuck on paper and I don’t really understand how we can abide a score of baby cockroaches making their way over the seats and under the mats.

But we do.

At least, I do, and I think that is the core of it because everything comes down to me.

The kids squeal and scream when the cockroaches – babies, I think they get away by the time they are adults – periodically come out for the little biscuit crumbs or sweet droppings which are inevitably scattered all over.

When that happens, I sigh. If I am driving and if the girls are standing and running all over the seats, seatbelts unfastened in a panicky tizzy, I yell.

Or maybe I try to squash it if I weren’t driving.

KK complains. Everytime the roaches appear he intones: See why you all should not eat in the car? But it ends with the complaint. No action is taken.

Which is why I think the kids are very very keen on the occasions when I decide to wash the car, at my mum’s, after the roaches have made appearances for, say, several weeks. (they disappear for a while after the cleanings)

It is almost an explosion of relief.

“GIVE ME A CLOTH!” all three of them scream, completely ignoring the TV.



They delegate – Lu on the doors as she can reach them, Jo on the seats, Day on the dashboard – while I shake out the mats then merrily disappear into the house to read the newspapers. After I snatch a few shots.


* That's a very wet seat

bus mirror incident

The other day, we take a double-deck bus. Of course the kids head straight up and they choose to sit right in front, where there is one of those round mirrors on the ceiling which cleverly allow the bus driver to see what’s happening upstairs.

A young couple is occupying seats in the first row. Day and Jo seat themselves in the second row, where they have a good view of the mirror and therefore, a fish-eye view of what the couple are doing.

I see the couple kissing but that’s not why Day and Jo are giggling.

In the mirror, they see the man fondling the lady’s hand, in what I reckon they deem as a very unusual manner. So unusual it makes them laugh.

How I know is when Jo later pulls me aside and, barely able to suppress her laughter, says to me: Mummy, this is the man’s hand (holding up her left hand) and this is the woman’s hand (holding up her right hand) and he was doing this to her hand (Jo enthusiastically demonstrates).

I didn’t know what to say. I felt like puking.

jo's 6

The little lady has been counting down the months, weeks and then days to her birthday since… last year.

She can’t wait to grow up.

And she has, grown up, to be a wonderful jae-jae who takes care of her parents - like she brings me water when I cough - and siblings.



I can hardly remember the terrible days. Yes, they do pass!

lu's 4

She is effusive in thanking us for the cake, the hotel stay, the present.

“Thank you, mummy and papa, for my cake and present,” she says, several times, unsolicited.

As her por-por says, she has grown to be the warmest of the three, a very nice, grateful, kind little person who doesn’t forget what others do for her.


* Lulu (in bottom left hand corner) and friends

the big cake

The big fancy birthday cakes which some kids get to enjoy on their birthdays are utterly fascinating.

I don’t know if they taste good, but they sure look great.

Just once, I thought, the girls had to have one.

It would be their dream cake in every way, a manifestation of their fantasies in 3D.

It would be the highlight of the family female birthday party this year.

The mushroom house which Lu so loves to draw, the two little girls standing outside, one in red (Jo) and one in blue (Lu).

It so happened that a friend had also started a home business making these labours of love.

The stars were aligned. The mushroom fantasy took shape.

The day we collected it, the girls saw it for the first time as I carted it into the car, arms spread around a mega cake box housing what felt like a couple of kilos of cake.

Actually, two cakes. A vanilla cake roof and a chocolate cake house.

They squealed!



They saw the two little girls togged in their favourite colours and Jo, all agog, whispered: But how did she (the cake maker) know?



Now I know the incredible power of fondant.

We cut it at the hotel which KK insists we check into despite my protests of excessive expenditure, by way of celebration.



It’s the same one I checked him into for his magnificent failure of a birthday do last year but he says he really liked the hotel and adds: Wrong timing last year lah.

The kids can’t stop grazing on the bright green grass.



But post-party, we manage only to make a small dent in the huge cake.



This cake needs a big party.

37

* The three birthday girls

Again, I am grateful to have happily made it this far.

First time in a pool in a year. My skin has finally forgiven me. As with any illness which one recovers from, it's like a re-birth.

Oh and in the last two months, I have finally reached my 29-year-old weight. Possibly going beyond!

friends catch-up

These March hols, Day (and I too) catches up with old friends. (rather, I do the catching up for him by arranging all sorts of play dates so we won’t both be sitting at our computers, me at work and him on his games and Youtube vids, the entire day)

MATTHEW



For all his loutishness in the past, Matt has become an incredibly likeable, warm fellow whom, well, I really like.

Apparently he always asks for Day, clamouring to visit whenever his mum drives past our home, and proudly declares Day to be his “childhood friend”. He talks about how he has never forgotten some of the things he used to do with Day and clearly, he holds his memories dearly.

We have not seen him in, oh, over a year or more.

Day, when I tell him he is meeting Matt, turns to me puzzled: Why? I haven’t seen him for so long.

Sigh. Precisely that, my unsentimental son.

KIERAN

In between computer games at their respective houses, Day's other childhood friend, Kieran, and him, vote for lunch at MacDonalds.



In between the two beach MacDonalds outlets – the old one which is closing this Sunday and the new one which has just opened at the Seafood Centre at a prime spot with a view of ships and sea – they both shoot their hands up for the latter.



Which makes me feel very old because it is only old fogeys like me who want to go back to and say a proper goodbye to the past.

KAINING

Day knows these outings as the ones where the six females head into one toilet and he the solo male heads into the other.


* PK's two girls, Kaiqin and Kaining


* PK with Kaiqin and Lu

He however, has a real tendre for hanging out with tall tomboys like Kaining (the other being cousin Janine).


* In the aftermath of police and thief. KN has been chasing Day the thief. The stripes are a coincidence.



He really likes running and chasing around these girls, who are younger than him but who are about a head taller.


* Day, Jo, Lu, Kaining and Kaiqin with the fat man outside the Kiseki Japanese Buffet Restaurant

ALEX

The thing about our home now is that there are no friendly neighbours to speak of.

The only neighbor-friend Day still has, is the one living next to my mum’s, Alex, whom we get to see more of this holiday.


* Everyone's favourite, the vintage swing


* Thaddeus, Alex's bro, in the middle of ... something, I'm not sure what


* Playing catch at Alex's

Me, I like these catch-ups. It's wonderful seeing the kids grow.

snapshot

It is a dawning realization. That every time I write, it’s like writing a song.

A song that should resonate, for myself at least.

Sometimes the songs write themselves. Most times, after observing a particularly interesting person, place or event.

As I write, I listen out for rhythm. For harmony. For cadence. In giving examples, for instance, I like to give it in groups of three. Three is completeness, three is resolution, three is a tonic (chord).

And like the fast rhythmic songs I like, my writing is short and sharp. I write in fast bursts.

I cannot endure writers who write like Pachelbel’s Kanon in D: Slow, indulgent and ponderous. Those on the other side of the fence, however, would find such prose deep, insightful and complete.

When I read my own writing, I read it back aloud.

The blog is really my song and where it is easiest to sing.

Now I’m stuck on a hard one. Times like these, I wait. I surf the Net, I blog, I do housework. It’s been 90 minutes of waiting for inspiration to strike.

This song will write itself, sooner or later.

lu says...

Day says the most realistic, pragmatic, cynical things these days.

If it’s not a complaint (it’s too hot!) it’s a negative opinion (what’s so great?).

He’s getting into the realm where responses are limited to “I don’t know”, “anything”, “later” and “so what”?

I’m glad I captured some of the cutesy things he used to say.

In anticipation of the fact that Lu might well go the same way (even though she’s a girl and I am told girls are quite different from monosyllabic boys), I’d better record some of her cutesy speak.



Context: She sees people getting married on TV.
Lu: Mummy, can I marry a terrapin?

Context: She draws circles on the cupboard and refuses to confess.
Lu: (pouting and teary) I didn’t draw anything, mummy. Maybe it was a ghost.
(Day and Jo start laughing very loudly)
Lu: (even more teary than before) Maybe it was a germ?

viet rice paper rolls

Day and I share a similar palate.

Amongst the things we both love to eat include bruschetta, tomatoes, minestrone soup, soup kambing, Caesar’s salad with minimal dressing.

We both eschew paste-like sauces (like mayo, tartar, mustard) and overly sweet things.

One of our all-time favs is Vietnamese rice paper rolls, not the sort with peanut sauce but with the fish sauce/lime juice/sugar combo.

It doesn’t do anything for KK or the girls, but Day and I can go on and on.

It’s one of those crazy easy, cheap dishes to make which cost a bomb at a restaurant.

It’s so easy Day can make probably make it on his own, though I have never tested him.

It just calls for loads of “julienne”-ing of vegetables. Which I have just found out is a fancy word for skinny vegetable sticks.



And a good bowl of sauce.

Day and I let out an orgasmic “mmmm”, with eyes closed, on our first bite for lunch just now. We have five rolls each, full of crunchy raw vegetables and noodle.



The bad thing is, I ate about 15 minutes ago and I’m hungry already.

In fact I'm REALLY hungry! I suppose that's why it's meant to be an appetizer and not a main course!

library trip

I escort fourteen boys and 12 girls to the toilet at the National Library, shh-ing all the way as they leap and prance their way there.

And this is my conclusion: It’s slightly easier bringing eight-year-olds out for a school outing than pre-schoolers.

But only slightly. Because they can feed, pee and poo themselves.

But otherwise, there's still a lot of running, jumping, shouting.

On Day’s recent school excursion to the National Library, the teacher sighs: We HATE bringing them out. It’s very stressful.

The poor pregnant librarian who has to show them around the reference library to demonstrate the microfiche thingy looks to me in panic as the lift doors close on her and 15 boys: Can you please come up with me?


* Kids in lift

The kids, however, have the time of their lives.


* The librarian tells a Chinese story

back to music

Three full nights of rehearsals and one long eight-hour day on Sentosa playing for a bank.

The orchestra members are fed truffle mashed potato – my first taste of truffle anything in my life, ossobuco and delicate slivers of cheesecake on square porcelain platters.

Apart from the fact that I am seriously hoping at least one of my kids will end up working in a bank, the gig is a guilty pleasure; guilty because KK has to hold the fort.

In return, I sneak back stalks of purple anthurium, air-flown from Holland, which are liberally arranged in architecturally-pleasing arrangements all over the place.



This is the year I (hope to) throw myself back into music. Paid or otherwise. My soul misses it.

work site

The idea of “work” and what it means, I think, comes from watching our parents.

Sometimes I think my trio get a little confused about what work means.

They see papa come and go at regular hours, and they have been to his office. It probably makes more sense.

They see me and that’s where the gray comes in.

They know I work nocturnal – I always rush through their bedtime stories and sometimes, I beg them to let me off because I am in no frame of mind to make up a tale - but I also sometimes drop them in the middle of the day.

(On that note, I notice that they are much more willing to let me go in the day, than at night, which leads me to conclude that my kids need me more at night? At bed time? Or are they extra clingy because they know I am rushing off to "work"?)

They know I do “interviews”. And that when I lug my violin along, put on a black dress and some paint on my face, that it’s a “gig”.

But overall, I don’t think they actually think I work.

I think they think I am enjoying myself. Which, most times, I am despite the occasional whinge.

In any case, if any of them – or any one – is ever in doubt, I have finally put up simple work site.

Just because I get tired of having to send pdfs to every other client who asks for samples.

And because I am so ashamed of not having had name cards or a worksite in eight years of freelancing. (no time is always an excuse, isn’t it?)

It's rather a lot of work, it's not complete, and I am sick of having to scan and go through two separate websites to produce one document, but I'm glad I figured it out.

I think the push came when Tony Buzan – the incredibly sharp-minded English gentleman of mind-mapping fame – pinned me with his penetrating blue eyes after I mumbled (lied) that I had run out of namecards and said:

You are a writer and you have no namecard or website?

So. Anyway, this is what I do when I am not chaffeuring or washing or scolding or reading or cooking...

pouting

It doesn't seem very HER, but the happy one pouts rather a lot.



And we always fall for it!

Oh, poor baby dear Lulu! Are you OK? Why are you sad?

Another pout: A naughty one.

no to #4

Of late, there has been a sudden tide of sentiment in support of my having a fourth child.

Not on my part.

It comes from friends, acquaintances and even clients who are strangely infected with a virus who makes them see me with an imaginary tummy.

You should have a fourth child, they squeal.

At home, too, there has been a push. Adding to KK’s solo voice is now Jo and Lu’s fervent chorus for a sibling.

We want another baby, mummy!

KK and the girls all want a boy. Says Jo: It’s not fair now because there are two girls and one boy. We need one more boy.

(They want to name him Friedrich, as in, Free-Drick.)

The girls, so into playing baby, fuss and fawn over every newborn they see.


* Jo with gorgeous baby Asha with the BIG eyes!

Why now?

There is probably an awareness that my reproductive expiry date is nearing.

Having gone past the difficult sleep-deprived and breastfeeding years, I look happier and healthier (I have finally put on enough kilos to inch back up to the weight I was when I was 29) and perhaps ready for another baby bomb.

People think I am a very free mother who, being so efficient, relaxed and clearly happy with child-rearing, should add another deliverable to my output.

But this is my definitive and final reply: No.

Sorry, girls (and KK): Really, no more.

I may look like I am in love with babies but that’s only if it’s someone else’s baby which I can return when it starts to bawl.

Standing with feet braced behind me is Day, who is the only one on my side.

He fully knows the consequences of a bundle of a joy.

moments in bed

One afternoon in bed, the girls maul me.


We want to be close, close, close to mummy.


I love you, mummy!


Sorry, mum.


I love mum.


Does mum still have milk?


Let's go for an airplane ride!

On hindsight it's kind of nice and sweet.

In the moment, I think my face says it all.