Month: September 2005

My poor Vincie. The very first thing he said to me today was, “I have no friends.” And then in response to this statement, I said the most ridiculious thing and told him that Edda and I were his friends. AS IF that would help him out at all, as if that would help him out of his problem. He immediately replied, “I have no school friends.” which made my heart break right into the bowl of oatmeal I was feeding Edda. Then he crawled into my lap and curled himself up into a ball and stayed there for a while. So today we looked at a school called Appletree. It’s close to home, a 6 minute walk through the mall and they have classes 3 hours a day M-F and the classes start in January. We met Ms. Wendy and got an application form. So we’ll fill it our and sign up for it. If something better comes up sooner, we’ll do that instead. But at least we have a plan. Vince was clear he didn’t want to eat lunch or take a nap at school and at the Appletree he won’t have to. God, I hope we all find friends soon.

This weekend, as I walked Ruby in the evening after the kids went to bed, the park was filled with families celebrating Mid-Autumn Festival aka The Lantern Festival. The trees in the park were filled with paper lanterns glowing from inside with lit candles. You are suppose to take a box of candles and stick them to the concrete ground with a dab of melted wax. You should light all the candles that you have and then you light sparklers with the lit candles on the ground. Some kids go crazy and start trying to light 10 sparklers at once and then throwing them into an empty grassy area. I took a photo of the full moon overlooking our apartment complex.

It was a quiet day here at the Martin/Lee household. Vince was just bouncing off the walls. I think he got a sugar high from this grape drink that he loves, Ribena. Just yelling and screaming and having a lot of fun and just sucking the life out of me and Jeremy.

So tomorrow is Choon’s wedding. Today is prep day. rehersal and all that. I wrote my officiant’s speech this morning at about 11. ha. hopefully it’ll go well. i still need to pracdtice out lout. laff.

Donald out!

Testing. Testing. Testing. Testing. Testing. Testing. Testing. Testing.Testing. Testing. Testing. Testing.Testing. Testing. Testing. Testing.Testing. Testing. Testing. Testing.Testing. Testing. Testing. Testing.Testing. Testing. Testing. Testing.Testing. Testing. Testing. Testing.Testing. Testing. Testing. Testing.Testing. Testing. Testing. Testing.Testing. Testing. Testing. Testing.Testing. Testing. Testing. Testing.Testing. Testing. Testing. Testing.Testing. Testing. Testing. Testing.Testing. Testing. Testing. Testing.Testing. Testing. Testing. Testing.Testing. Testing. Testing. Testing.Testing. Testing. Testing. Testing.

Hello Noel and Rena. We bought you these mooncakes a few weeks ago, but apparently they are a danger to homeland security, and we could not send them. I hope you like them via the internet. If you zoom in (by clicking on the picture) you can read the note from Doris.

We tried to send you these mooncakes a couple weeks ago, but were told “mooncakes, US, cannot.” So I hope you enjoy them via cyberspace

My monthly grumpiness has settled into the house causing everyone else to be also pretty grumpy. Vince has been especially demanding this past week, just full of unspent energy and interminable questions that never stop coming. Edda has been struggling with walking and balancing and oftentimes ends up with a leg wedged uncomfortably under the rest of her body or she smacks her head into the marble floor, both resulting in wailing and crying.

Today we went to the pediatrician near our house to make sure the kids vaccinations were up to date and also to get vaccination recommendations for our trip to India this winter. This is the first shot Vince got that he was fully aware of what was happening and he screamed his head off, but got a gumdrop and a lollipop in return. Edda only screamed when the needle was actually in her leg, otherwise she was fine. She got 2 gumdrops, one for each shot. The doc seemed unconcerned about the walking and said to just give it more time which is what we thought anyways, although she is getting quite heavy to carry around.

We also went to the Singapore DMV to sign up for a driving test. We only have to take the written test to get a Singapore driver’s license, but they have a pretty high fail rate, I think you have to get 90 or 95 percent correct to pass. Anyways, the earliest test date is at the end of next month, so we have a month to study.

Our friend, Agnes, came over because she heard from Jeremy that I’ve been homesick and grumpy, she’s so sweet, she brought Vince those ice treats with red beans and weird toppings and lanterns and also this dragon lantern with batteries that lights up and the eyes blink and the ears twitch and Vince ran away from that lantern screaming his head off.

I also signed up for piano lessons which start on Wed evening. My teacher is Miss Chua. We will see how it is. We went there before the pediatrician’s office opened and there are a million little rooms with upright pianos and little tiny kids playing Old McDonald had a farm and such things. Hopefully I will like my teacher.

Poor Ruby, she gets attacked regularly by Edda, otherwise known as Jaws. Here we are on the balcony of our apartment and Edda goes in for the kill. I actually stopped her before she was able to nip Ruby, but shortly afterward, I wasn’t paying attention and Edda must have bitten Ruby’s tail and I heard a yelp from the Rubister who turned and glared at Edda. Edda just doesn’t get that we don’t like to be bitten! We got our wonderful digital non-metric scale yesterday in our sea shipment and weighed all of us and it turns out that Ruby isn’t as fat as we believed. She’s 60 pounds, up from 58 when we left New York. To celebrate that, tonight we made Lion’s Head meatballs and gave Ruby 1/2 of one. It reminded her of the delicious Lion’s Head meatball my mother made for her when she was a pup in Austin.

I know this picture looks like a palm tree, but if you look more closely, you can see the truck that is parked behind the frond… We got our sea shipment today, which means all our winter coats came today. Hooray! OK, even the movers were laughing at the winter coats, but I figure that we might be visiting Sweden from Singapore and I’d like to be prepared. But more importantly, I want to start taking piano lessons again and start rowing again on the rower that came today. Jeremy accidentally fried my CPU by plugging it in before he switched the switch on the switchable power supply. We heard a loud POP! and smoke came out of the computer. I think I’ll still be without a computer for at least another week while we get the trusty old AMD computer a kick in the rear end. Oh well.

I have the sweetest family – everybody wishing me a happy birthday from all over the world. Jeremy gave me the nicest birthday present ever – this nice digital camera that I’m using to share pictures with all the readers of this blog. Also, he came home early, which was also a really nice present because I’m a little bit homesick these days. Perhaps it’s because I realized that I haven’t celebrated my birthday in the same place 2 years running for many, many years now. We went out to eat and brought home a birthday cake, which is just a cylinder of mocha whipped cream.