Dad and I met our classmate Frank and his wife Linda over the Mother’s day weekend. Linda was my dormitory neighbor in room 307 during the Tai Dai years. Lee Pei and I were in Room 308. We had Mother’s Day dinner togehter at Golden Bull restaurant in Gaithersburg with their daughter. She is very nice and is my alumni at JHU, majoring International Studies right now. She was a graduate of the Wharton Business School, UPenn several years back.
The left handside picture was our high school class 61 mini-reunion. Our seatings were fixed for any subject and were 33, 34 & 35. The picture was taken in Stevens, Washington State along the Columbia River.
The right hand side picture was a happy Mom with beautiful flowers from her wonderful son-in-law, daughter, son, grandson and grand daughter.
OK guys, nobody laugh. I scratched the car today. I ran into a
pole in our parking garage and scraped the paint on the rear right
wheel-hub thing. I knew it was going to happen sooner or later. I was
just hoping it would be later rather than sooner. It’s not too bad
and Jeremy says it looks worse in this picture than it does in real
life. I hope they can just buff it out. Boo for Doris.
But the good news is that I got to go over to someone’s house
today! I know it doesn’t sound like much, but I don’t get invited
often and since we’ve been on this whole Edda saga thing, I’ve been
isolating myself from people which – I know, I know – isn’t
good for anyone. She’s another mom from Edda’s school, so we always
run into each other (hopefully I will never literally run into
her, sheeze – one fender bender at a time) at pickup/drop off.
Tomorrow, we will gather our NT kids (NeuroTypically developing kids
– formerly known as “normal” kids) and go to
McDonald’s and swimming, while the NU (NeuroUntypically) developing
kids are at school. Hooray for Doris!
Vince took many, many photos today, here’s one of them:
Notice the 2 bottles of Ranch Dressing. Vince will pretty much
eat anything if it has ranch dressing on it. Today he ate a whole
bowl of salad of the weediest plants I’ve ever seen without stopping
because it was covered in Ranch. Hooray for Hidden Valley!
Jeremy tells me that he has an admirer at work. Apparently, the
lady who prepares the fruit at the cafeteria has a “thing”
for Jeremy. She’ll see him walk up to the counter and she’ll ignore
the ten people waiting in line to serve Jeremy first. Everyday,
Jeremy always gets a mango and a papaya. Today, the fruit lady saw
him coming and even though there were 10 plates of sliced papaya out
on the counter, she told Jeremy to wait and she ran to the fridge to
get a special papaya. “The best one!” she said. I
asked Jeremy if he was the only white guy who got fruit and if that
was why he got preferential treatment. Jeremy replied that he was her
best customer (he goes everyday and gets the most expensive fruits)
and that’s why she likes him.
I’m glad that Edda’s in school these days while Vince is out on
break. I don’t often get to spend time with just him. Today we went
to the science museum (again! Didnt’ we just go yesterday?) to play
in the newly opened water park. Yesterday we didn’t bring our suits
because we didn’t know about it. Today we were prepared. The little
boy at the bottom of the picture was a little troublesome for Vince,
just your regular playground/waterpark politics, nothing too serious.
Oh yes, I also cut off Vince’s head and served it with some fruit.
Alas, the 4th gen iPod that was free courtesy of Jeremy and Vince (I remember the little people involved) has finally bit it. The hard drive was making weird clicking noises and it wouldn’t resync about 1 in 4 times. Of course, when it didn’t resync, that would mean reformatting the damn thing and installing all my music again. So today, I bit it and bought a 60gig white iPod. I am officially hip now.
Something
evil’s watching over you
Comin’ from the sky above
And there’s
nothing you can do
Prepare to strike
There’ll be no place
to run
When your caught within the grip
Of the evil
Unicron
Transformers
More than meets the
eye
Transformers
Robots in Disguise
Strong enough to
break the bravest heart
So we have to pull together
We can’t
stay worlds apart
To stand divided we will surely fall
Until
our darkest hour
When the light will save us
all
Transformers
More than meets the
eye
Transformers
Robots in Disguise
Transformers
Autobots
wage their Battle
To destroy the evil forces
Of the
Decepticons
It’s judgment day and now we’ve made our stand
And
now the powers of darkness
Have been driven from our land
The
Battle’s over but the war has just begun
And this way it will
remain til the day when all are
one
Transformers
Transformers
Transformers
Transformers
More
than meets the eye
Today Vince and I went to the Singapore Science Museum
while Edda was at school. Vince is a little afraid of the place
because it’s dark and there are strange noises and weird things
flashing. He spent most of the time watching a loop of the cartoon
“The Transformers”. He was so excited! Donald, he’s going
to raid your collection. The theme song really sent me back to our
childhood, hey look at these old friends:
On a side note, I’ve been really emotional for the past
few days, I think a mix of the labwork being messed up and my monthy
hormones kicking in. But there is nothing like crying in the middle
of a special needs school to make you feel like you aren’t alone, I
won’t go into the stories that I heard from the teachers and the
other moms, it’s not my place to tell them here, but they all made me
feel better and this afternoon, my crazy mood seems to have lifted. A
good thing.
Went biking on Angel Island today. It was seriously, perfect weather, clear skies – The works. Funny being the mechanic of the group. I was busy setting everyone up, borrowing bikes from Arif and Hasnain. And we only went 5 miles! hahahah. oh well. it was fun anyways. Never had been to Angel Island before. It seems like quite a romatic place. We had to take the ferry from Tiburon in. It capped an end to a great weekend.
From left to right: Jack, Choon, Lynn, Ghim-Hong, Pei-Sun, James…
Well, went to Emilie and Ben’s Wedding on Sunday. It was a really realyl nice affair. They had it in Memorial Park in Pescadero, outside. It was a wonderful ceremony and I have to say, it’s the wedding that I think would be the closest to how I would envision mine being. There was a good moment where they passed their rings around to everyone in the audience to “bless” them. I thought it was a great way to involve everyone.
I drove one of Li Pei Jean’s friends from Palo Alto, Theresa Chang, who was married to the late Richard(?) Chang who was a classmate of Mom and Dad. Have you guys met her before? She sorta seemed to recall meeting you, tho it was hazy. Also, what year did you guys graduate from Tai Da? Anyways, we had a good time on the drive over and talked about a lot of things. She’s heavily involved in church, and actaully knows Pei-Sun, Choon’s wife, from a vocal choir that they both sing in. Small World. She of course, inviited me to church, which was expected. I think I managed to deftly manouver out of that one. 😛
Dinner was interesting also. I got put at the very last table in the list – table 22! haha. Table 22 happened to be the table of all the Mech E Tai Da alums. Everyone was sitting down, so when I arrived, all of them were wondering who the hell this young guy was. Some people knew right away that I was Dad’s son. They said I looked more like Dad than Mom. One friend, some dude with an eye patch – they never said their names of course – thought I was someone else’s son until everyone set them straight. Another guy, i think, has a daughter, Lorraine that lives in Oregon. I think we suposedly had dinner with her at MIT, but I don’t remember. They seemed keen on the idea of setting me up when Mom and Dad come in July. I also talked a long time to this guy, KT Wang, who sat next to me. He was from Chattanooga and came to retire in the Bay Area. We had a good talk, he mentioned how the young generation doesn’t like to listen to what the older generation has to say. I agreed for the most part, but I think it’s defnitely easier to talk to people who are not your parents.
When Li Pei Jean came around to do a toast, she made r obligatory speech of how was single and of how mom promised her 2000 bucks to set me up. She also mentioned how I was like a son to her, and honestly it was really touching.
The other thing that I found out was that Emilie and Ben had been dating for 10 years before being engaged, and 12 up until now. crazy!
So there has been some administrative screwup with Edda’s blood
work. They had ordered a bazillion tests and the one test that we are
anxious about has been screwed up somehow. We know the test had been
ordered and that the blood sample needed to be sent to Texas, but
somehow we don’t have the results yet. Our neurologist is talking to
the director of the lab and trying to straighten stuff out.
Meanwhile, we just wait. I get mopey and pessimistic and Jeremy tries
to bolster my spirits up which results in Jeremy being a little bit
more snappish at the children which results in all of us being a bit
on edge.
We went to the dog park again today. Now that we have experienced
minivan, I don’t know how we are manage without one in the US, look
how well we fill this one up:
The most exciting news of the day is that Jeremy and I went on a 4
hour date! Edda’s aide from school, Gowri was up for babysitting so
she and her daughter came over and Jeremy and I went out! Don’t we
look cute? Can you see the 2 enormous zits on my face?
And the kids had a blast with Gowri and her daughter Vino.
So I’m sick today. Not to bad, mainly a stuffy nose and sneezing. Jeremy’s on the lookout for a new video camera.. Any suggestions? I want to post movies to this blog, how cool would that be?