Year: 2007

Some photo’s from this weekend’s XC skiing trip to Yosemite.

I was not the only one to miss a series of piano lessons. Vince also missed weeks and weeks of his Yamaha group piano lessons. These group lessons have parent participation, Jeremy goes with him on Thursday nights after dinner. We signed him up last year and at first it was a lot of fun, lots of clapping, singing and rhythm. Vince loved it.

However, now the pieces involve all 5 fingers on the right hand and have rests and we are starting to have chords. It all happened so quickly (it seemed to me). We hadn’t really practiced earlier in the class because it was just for fun and it didn’t seem so serious. But now we are behind and it’s harder now, so there is no getting around practicing every day. It can be a struggle when Vince isn’t up for practicing. It’s hard to learn something new and he has to work at this to make his fingers do what he wants them to do.

Practicing music brings back lots of memories for both Jeremy and me. We both played musical instruments as kids and we both have memories about practicing or not practicing.

Mom made it safely to GEDI (Guangdong Electric Design Institute). She is in the office in Guangzhou, China. And I came back to Aiken, SC yesterday afternoon.

She will let me know the contact phone numbers and apartment address later.

We all went to the dog park this morning. It’s the rainy season now and the park has poor drainage. It was a swamp.

Jeremy and I went to eat Korean food for lunch. We couldn’t get a table until 2 pm so we were starving. The food was amazing! So amazing and so satisfying that we had a super light dinner.

I packed the car full of stuff and drove home on Friday. Today, I setup the bunkbed and Mahjon table. I also kept most of the glass bottles that Mom collected. I found out the bunkbed fit well and it also could be used as the storage area for 3 mattresses and some additional stuff. Good for the un-intentional usage.

Mom is the Hong Kong and will head to Quangzhou on Monday morning. I told to her several times over the phone already. She was fine and ready to be on her new job.

Tomorrow, I am going to drive back to Aiken, SC. I just have few things left. I keep cake mixer and baking utensiles and stuff. I like to bake cakes. I also keep a Chinese Wak for vegetable cooking. Well, I am progressing from one pot to other things – a progress for me indeed.

I also filled a bottle of Granddad’s rice wine. I am ready to take to Taiwan for the son of Mom
s brother. The wine has been with us for a long, long time. I tasted it, very delicious 🙂

Today we took the kids to Singapore’s newest mall, Vivocity. The island’s first GAP store opened there a few months ago.

The kids loved the playground.

Also, this boat (which at first we thought was a pirate ship) is actually from Sweden and was parked right outside the mall. Pretty cool, but the ship wasn’t open to the public today so we didn’t get to board.

Well. I did it. After a week of playing Guitar Hero 2, I have conquered Medium difficulty, and gotten 5 stars on all songs. I know I know. You all are very impressed. I can tell. But now Hard awaits me, and so does Expert.

On a random note, on Match, I find it funny when people are like, “Hey, Thanks for the email, but I was about to take my profile down. You sound like such a nice a funny guy, I had to respond. I’m sure you’ll do fine here.” Um… you’re still single right? Erg!!

It poured all day today. I went running anyway, hooray for me. My running partner didn’t really want to run in the rain, but she hadn’t pooped in 2 days and really needed to go.

In Singapore, the new school year starts in January and Vince is starting K1 which is the first year they start really drilling skills in preparation for Primary 1 (there is another year, K2, in between). One is expected to read and write pretty well by the time you get to Primary 1.

Anyhow, Vince just got a new teacher who is pretty strict and who makes you stand up at the board to write things (like the word “Wednesday”) in front of the whole class and if you don’t do it right, you get scolded. (This is a pretty standard approach in Singapore.) This, understandably is driving Vince crazy. He just clung to me in fear this morning. He has been going to this school for a year and there are only 2 classrooms, so all the teachers know him and know how uncharacteristic this is for him to be sobbing before class.

I did speak to the teacher and she says that he is doing fine. Anyways, he didn’t get much sleep last night and didn’t have a good breakfast and when I picked him up after school, he said he had had a good day at school and seemed happy to be with his friends. So we’ll see how it goes…

Jeremy and I were feeling pretty smug last year when Vince loved his Nursery 2 experience at the same school and we said, ha ha, no need to send him to the American School (which easily costs 10x as much moola), he’s doing fine! He was learning Chinese, science, reading and math and having a blast. This year the Asian system is biting us in the ass, well at least for today. Jeremy mentioned this anxiety issue to his Chinese co-workers today during lunch and they all laughed and said that there is a saying in Chinese about being “hung at the chalkboard” – that feeling that you get when you are standing in front of the whole class and you don’t know the answer to the question the teacher is asking. Hmmm, sweet and encouraging system, eh?

The day got better and better after a rough start and ended with a bath and a family viewing of the Wizard of Oz.

Thursday is piano lesson day. I have missed the last seven weeks of lessons. I have not practiced for the same amount of time. I sat down at the piano today at 10am next to my teacher, Ms. Wen, and struggled to remember what pieces I was suppose to be playing. Not a good scenario.

Earlier this week, I did think about quitting my lessons, mainly because of my embarrassment of not practicing at all for the past two months, but I didn’t because I finally like my piano teacher. Today at my lesson, she did make me feel bad about not practicing, but not so humiliated that I didn’t want to come back next week. Since I started taking piano lessons as an adult, I’ve had 4 teachers…

#1. Didn’t take me seriously at all and wanted to chat about gardening and would often call an hour before my lesson to switch the time.

#2. Very serious teacher who taught me pieces that were a bit of a stretch for me and so I struggled to use the pedal correctly for the first 8 measures of a piece for 10 weeks! I swear, I couldn’t really hear the differences in pedaling that I was suppose to do.

#3. Very young teacher, right out of music school. Pointed out the already known fact that I have no rhythm.

#4. My teacher now, pretty relaxed but also corrects my mistakes and technique in a way that I can manage.

I’m not a very good musician, I hope someday to find other people who are the same not-as-good to play with. I always have a problem finding this level of person. So I soldier on, maybe this will come to something.

Hi all

My medical clearance was granted and ready to go. They did lots of tests and shots. I got my flight upgraded.

My laptop works fine. I am writing this in my room. Food here is good too. Talk to you later.