Edda likes school.

Just a little Edda update. She’s doing so well, I’m so happy for
her. When we first came back from the US, she hated school. Every day
when I picked her up, the teachers would tell me that she had wanted
to nap during class or that she was just upset and crying the whole
time. We left her there only for 90 minutes or so, not the full three
hours, but she was not happy most of the time. Then came the week of
illness and then again another week of crying at school. It was very
disheartening to me. I hate hearing Edda cry, I just want to pick her
up and take her home. On the wall, there are pictures of each kid in
the class and their schedules velcroed underneath and this is Edda’s
picture from the first weeks of school:
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How sad is that? – that was the best picture they could get!
Poor girl.
But last week something happened, she finally got used to
everybody, got used to the schedule and got healthy! She loves school
now. When I pick her up (the full 3 hours) she’s so hyped up from
school, I have a hard time putting her down for a nap.
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This is the scene when I pick up Edda. Vince joins in to sing the
goodbye song. He’s in the back plugging his ears because someone in
the class is screaming. But you can see Edda (the only face you can
see besides Ms. Joyce) and she’s so excited about singing! It’s
really great. Also the teachers today insisted to me that Edda said a word. I guess during circle time, they say the word “STOP!” and she apparently said “top!” in response. !?!!! Who knows, she may be verbal yet. I hope she isn’t like Vince and his Chinese and that she’ll use some of the words she learns at school at home. We will see, we will see.

Swimming starts today

Weather was a bit cool this time of the year in SC. It is getting warmmer and hotter now. This morning, the temperature in office was in the 90’s since they turned off the air during weekend to save the energy.

I tested the water last night, it was ok to swim. After super, I swimed 300 strokes and daddy was walking along the pool to watch me just in case. I was the only one in the pool. Normally, I do 500 strokes. Today, I did only 300. I will give myself a week to catch up.

Apartment living is not that bad except I miss my garden. We did lots of work in the garden last couple time when we were at home. We planted a rose and a dark red peonis. The white peonis are doing well. All most all plants and flowers survied without proper care in the past four years. Our pessiman (?) tree has lost of fruits this year. We had just two last year. Our fig tree will have fruits too this year.

I also planted two cherry tomato plants and some bitter mallon plants. My friend Mrs. Ling helped me to water them when it is too dry.

Life in Aiken is peacefull and routine. We learned to down load Chinese songs from Yahoo China. There are many old song which I like.

Our friend has lung cancer has a wonderful response of his new treatment. His tumors are disapearing gradually. That was a good news.

Art and parking. It’s not all about parking. There is art too.

I went to Vince’s parent/teacher conference today because this is
the last week of class before summer break. All is well with Vincent.
His sharing is better this term than last and he still can’t stay in
the lines while coloring or follow dotted lines – which is OK
by me. His comprehension of Chinese is vastly improving. He has no
trouble understanding the teacher – whatever question she asks,
he understands and answers in a mix of Chinese and English. He likes
Chinese class and sits and listens carefully and seems to take in
most of it. That’s great to hear since he still won’t speak a word to
us. I think improved understanding of Chinese is allowing him to
interact better on the playground. All good stuffs.
I was a little worried when Vince started his nursery school that
he might get his originality squashed a bit. In Singapore, they place
a lot of emphasis on doing what the teacher says to do and following
by example. But one look at Vince’s art and also comments from his
teachers confirm that his creative juices are still flowing.

In one painting, the kids were suppose to used paints and sponges
to make a painting of a house. Every painting that was hung up showed
a sun and a house in bright, bold primary colors. However, Vince’s
had a blue circle in the sky and when the teacher asked him if the
sun was blue, he just replied that it wasn’t the sun, it was the moon
and proceeded to mix paints and colors to make a swirly night scene.
For another lesson, they were learning the names of shapes in
Chinese, so they used cut up rectangles/squares/circles to make
another scene. The teacher again encouraged a sunny day/house scene
and you can see that all the kids followed her instructions except
Vince who made this jumble of shapes depicting, rather abstractly, a
jungle gym where all the pieces are flying everywhere.
My strengths and talents are so different from Vince’s –
it’s interesting to see how he does things so differently than me. I
definitely would have followed the teacher’s instructions, but I
would have tried to make the “best” picture in the class
– perhaps unoriginal, but I would have made sure the sun was
placed in exactly the right place and the roof and door on the house
would be perfectly centered. Jeremy says that he’s more like Vince.
How much of the teacher’s instructions can you disregard and still be
within the bounds of the assignment?

Oh, and if you can stand more parking problems…
Today I had to drive downtown to get a prescription filled. The
doctor’s office is right on Orchard Rd, the main street in Singapore,
where everyone goes every weekend to shop and eat. I was filled with
trepidation, even thinking that I’d take a cab from Edda’s school
instead of driving, but I figured I need to slay this fear by facing
it. So I studied the map and prepared myself for battle.
Everything was fine until I got to the parking structure. I got to
the entrance OK and I saw a sign that said car lift this way!
Jeremy and I had talked the night before that there was probably
valet parking I should take advantage of that and so when I saw the
sign for the car lift I figured, Hooray!, someone’s going to park my
car for me. Yah! So I pulled into the garage slowly and I saw the
elevators and a guy standing next to the car elevators and I’m
driving towards him in a friendly manner and he’s gesturing wildly
pointing – go the other way! But how could I be going the wrong
way? Aren’t you suppose to park my car? Then I slowly realize there
is a line to get on the car elevator, so I maneuver my big car to get
in the back of the line and I realize with a huge sinking feeling
that I’m suppose to drive the car onto the freaking elevator myself.
Ack! I don’t want to get on the elevator. I want someone else to park
my car! Please help me.
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So it’s my turn to get on the elevator. I pull in. I turn off the
engine so I don’t gas myself. I see the buttons on the wall. OK,
floors 4-8 are parking. Floor 4 is full, so I push floor 5. Doors
close, we rise to the 5th floor. Doors open. I drive out,
there is one parking space left near the car lift, but I don’t
realize that it’s the last parking space on the floor so I drive into
the garage. Behind me a Mercedes comes up the lift and takes the last
space!!! Arg. Now I’m stuck on this tiny floor with 20 parking
spaces, all full and I have to figure how to get to another floor.
Turns out, you have to back into a space in front of the lift to call
the elevator back to the floor. So after about eleventeen attempts, I
back into the space, I wait for the elevator to come, I’m hoping I
can push the button to the 8th floor, but of course, the
elevator takes me straight out to the first floor exit. Sigh.
I exit (at least my first parking attempt is free! Free! Free!)
and I circle the block and try again. No problem this time, I press
the 8th floor and the floor is relatively empty, so I
park. That’s pretty much the end of the story. I got to pay $6 to
have the privilege of parking my car in the nerve wracking manner and
when I told Jeremy about it he said, “Oh cool! I’ve always
wanted to park in a lot like that.” Sigh, almost gave me a
heart attack. Needless to say, I got enough medication to last me for
months so hopefully I’ll never have to park there again.

Not too bad.

Okay, dinner at P’ng and Judy’s went about as well as could expected. Jocelyn was there of course, and our interaction was kept at a minimum. I feel good about it. I didn’t freak out or anything and kept a level head. Maybe a bit too excited at times, but possibly nothing out of the ordinary. Anywyas, yeah.

Also, I’m beginning to think that my camera is not as sharp as the on that you have Doris. I don’t know why. Night shots in particular are very very soft. sigh. Do I really have to get an SLR now?

OK, OK, the last one about the car. Maybe.

B.C. (before car), I hated taking extra taxi rides because each
time you took a ride, it was 10 – 15 dollars each way. Did I
really want to do whatever stupid thing I wanted to do and then tack
another 30 dollars onto to price tag? Usually not. But now that I’ve
spent all that money upfront, we are driving all over the lovely
island of Singapore without any thought to additional cost. It’s like
it’s free, but it’s not really. So what did we do on our first full
day of having a car? Well the first thing we did was go through a
McDonald’s drive-thru:
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Then we took Ruby to the dog park. She has been desperate for
doggie companionship for a whole freaking year and she did great! Not
too much barking at other dogs. Lots of butt sniffing and tail
wagging and running, running, running.
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We got gas. A full tank was:
gas prices

Then we went to the zoo where Edda managed to catch a kangaroo.
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Also at the zoo, Vince found a friend that he held hands with for
a good part of the afternoon. Something has really happened to Vince
in the past 2 weeks or so. He has finally figured it out. For the
first year we were here, where ever we went, Vince would just have
the hardest time getting any kid to say anything to him. He’d say hi,
he’d try to get involved with their games, he tried to fit in.
Nothing worked, the kids would all ignore him and go play with other
people. It made me quite sad because he had so many friends in the
States, I despaired that Singapore was going to be a lonely by
comparison. Now we are still going to the same places, seeing the
same people and he’s able to make friends quickly and in almost every
public situation. I don’t know what he’s doing differently, but it’s
working. It’s great!
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Then we went to the grocery store where we bought every damn heavy
thing we ever wanted. Mainly lots of bottled water and laundry
detergent
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A wonderful day!

Congratulations Xin and Shwe!

Well, exciting day, as Xin and Shwe tied the civil knot of marriage in a lovely Half Moon Bay! (Their real wedding will be in India in November.) The exciting thing was that I finally got to sign my first offical marriage license today, since, after all, I am a minister of the Universal Life Church.

This was my second time as officiant, and since it was a small group of friends, and Shwe and Xin are/were pretty secretive about how they got together, We all told stories about the first time we suspected that something was up. It was a very fun exchange, and embarrassing mostly for Shwe, since he doesn’t like to talk about this sort of lovey-dovey stuff.

We also went to the tide pools in Half Moon Bay, where we ran into my ex-gf Jocelyn, and her new-to-me bf, Mike. That was interesting, considering that I’m not talking to her right now, and don’t really want to talk to her. Of course, she sorta forced herself upon me as usual. Whatever.

The rest of the day was lovely. We had a wonderful italian dinner, where the actual license was signed. Also we checked out the Ritz-Carlton in HMB situated on the lovely coast. I scouted out the spa, since I believe it’s a potential place for the spa day that Joy owes me and Fenney for getting married first of the 3 of us! hahah. not too bad. It’s $150-200 for the standard massages and treatments. I’m going to enjoy that!

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The pancake saga continues.

So I got the pancake story all wrong. I was asleep! Remember Vince
wanted 3 pancakes just like the picture on the box? And then I was
confused because it looked like 4 pancakes to me? Well, he wasn’t
looking at the front of the box, he was looking at the instructions
on the back of the box and they clearly state:
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So today Jeremy made:
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And Vince was:
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(He still didn’t eat all the pancakes, he ate about half without
whining which I consider a good thing).
Vince planned our weekend for us. We asked him what he wanted to
do and he said today I want to go to IKEA for lunch and then tomorrow
I want to go to the zoo. So today we went to IKEA via the free IKEA
bus shuttle from the Woodlands MRT stop. They decorated the inside of
the bus to look like the inside of IKEA. Pretty nifty. Vince played
in the ball room a.k.a. the petri dish because you can just imagine
all the bacteria and viruses just kicking back and having the time of
their lives just jumping from one kid to the other spreading their
ilk all over Singapore from this one room.

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While Vince played, Edda was on the lookout for new bedroom
furniture and the theme was PINK PINK PINK!
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It was a good adventure, the last adventure on a bus because (da
da da tum!) we are now the proud renters of a Toyota Picnic! (Car
pictures tomorrow!)

lala

Well, in the quest of more music, I’m trying out this CD trading service that allows people to trade their CDs for other people’s CDs. I think it’s a great idea since, well, I’m looking for lossless music that I can only rip from CDs and it’s cheap – only $1 per trade. The only problem I have is giving up my own CDs that I really love to other people. I mean, There’s a reason that I bought them. But I figure if I can let go of this concept of a CD being mine, then I’ll get a whole lot more out of this service.

It’s interesting psychologically to see if people are willing to give up their possessions.

Things that happened before 8:00 am today.

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Look at this picture. I look at it and think, hey, that’s pretty good for a weekday breakfast – I guess I usually think that pancakes are too much trouble for Monday-Friday, but I don’t know why – they really aren’t any more trouble than scrambled eggs which I can whip out in 30 seconds. Pancakes just seem like a Sunday
morning thing to me and I also think that syrup is was too messy for
a weekday morning. All that stickiness makes me uncomfortable.
Breakfast for me is usually cereal or toast or even just a glass of
juice while I get a load of laundry in the washer or while I check to
see if anyone sent me email (nope!). Vince and Edda both get hot
breakfasts, Edda gets oatmeal and Vince’s selection changes everyday,
but lately it has centered around pancakes. Today, while I was still
asleep with Edda, he asked for three pancakes. Earlier this week, he
requested two pancakes and I thought he would only eat one, so I made
2 really small pancakes, equivalent to 1 regular pancake and he was
so pissed at me, breakfast was very unpleasant, but both pancakes
were eaten eventually. So today, Jeremy made two beautiful
(full-sized) pancakes, because he knew no way was Vince going to eat
three, and placed them in front of Vince. He was not happy and and he
protested very loudly and I awoke to wails and tears and unhappy
Vince who apparently really, really wanted three pancakes,
just like the picture on the package (but now that I look at the box,
I see that there are actually 4 pancakes…) He wailed for a good 15
minutes before deciding to eat half of Edda’s oatmeal. The pancakes
remained untouched.
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Look, unhappy pancake boy.

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I have always believed that Ruby loves to live with us, that she
would not prefer to live anywhere else. She loved living with us in
Austin where we took her to the swimming hole every weekend. She
loved living with us in New York, where her corgi pal Trudi lived
with my in-laws and we would go and see her at least once a week and
where there was snow and big fields to run around in and lots of
family around. She loved the kids even though sometimes they bit her.
She just loved being our dog daughter, even when we made her heel
or sit or wait for her food, even when we put her on a diet, even
when we made her ride 6 hours in the foot well of a Honda Accord to
drive to my parents’ house in Maryland. I saw how much she loved
being with us every time we left her with a sitter or kennel or
walker because when we returned from our trip, she would run up to us
and lick us and jump on us and say please don’t leave me ever again,
ever again, I missed you sooooo much. But now I don’t believe
that Ruby would not prefer to live anywhere else. I have to say that
Singapore has been tough on Ruby. A lot of people here are afraid of
big dogs, so when we take her on a walk, a lot of people go out of
their way to avoid her, there are a lot of screams of terror as
little children run away from Ruby and I know she’s a bit discouraged
by all this. The poor girl – she has never before experienced this
sort of reaction from people. Also, since we don’t have a car, we
can’t take her anywhere she can run off leash, so she’s stuck with the
same neighborhood park where we walk her held tightly next to us. No other doggies,
no new sights. While we were back in the States, she stayed in Singapore with
Elaine, our dog sitter (who is amazing, kind and exceedingly
competent) and when we got back, I got the distinct feeling that Ruby
did not want to stay with us, she wanted to stay with Elaine (who has
a car and a corgi – Tosh). I have to say, that with all of
Edda’s issues this year, I haven’t been devoting that much time to
Ruby and I know she is depressed about being so isolated from other
people and dogs. This morning during the 2 vs 3 pancake fiasco, my suspicious were confirmed when Jeremy
pulled out the traveling crate that we use in cars and was most
recently used to go to Elaine’s house and Ruby immediately went to
pick up the squeaky toy that Elaine gave her and ran to stand patiently by
the door with tail wagging and more eager than I’ve seen her in a long time as if to say – I’m ready to go to Elaine’s, you guys go have
your fun, don’t rush back or anything, I’m going to be just fine.