Author: Doris

Well, I’ve been moping around for a few days. There are many
reasons, but the one reason that frustrates me the most as I am
typing this blog entry is the fact that my computer is infected with
various viruses and spywear because I have not been vigilant. Jeremy
ran something or other to clean up my disk and they found 53 things
to kill off, but these things can’t be killed off so easily. So
everything is running veeeerrrryyy slowly and so it’s a pain to get
caught up on all the important celebrity gossip. Might just have to
reformat…

We went and picked up Jeremy from his work because it’s the
weekend (yah!) and went to Causeway point to a Korean BBQ place.

I left Edda’s school uniform on all day because I was lazy.

How dirty can one white shirt get?

Well, nothing like having two sick kids at home, watching TV all
day and surfing the Internet to make one feel like a bit of a loser
trapped in the house. I remember when I was little and had the cold
or the flu, it was great to bring all the blankets down from the
bedroom and set up on the couch and veg in front of the TV all day. I
fondly remember watching The Price is Right. So that’s what we did
today – except for the Price is Right, we didn’t watch that.
But we did set up a sick bed on the living room couch and hung out
there all day.

Even Ruby got in on the act.

Maybe she wants some sympathy as well. Or maybe she’s offering to
take care of the kids while I take the afternoon off to go to the
spa. Hmmm… I wish…
Oh yes, and since we don’t have a TV (American Idol? Huh?), we
watched DVDs on the computer until 10:30 am when Vince broke the DVD
player on our ancient desktop by forcing it open and close a
bazillion times (whoops!) and then there was no more Dora the
Explorer or Bob the Builder or Wiggles. He promptly called Jeremy at
work and told him that he needed to buy a DVD player as soon as
possible. And when Jeremy got home, he asked where the replacement
was because he thinks that Jeremy makes computers at his work which
is almost right, but not really.
On the subject of illness, we had purchased a very fancy
(otherwise known as expensive) thermometer that you stick in your ear
and takes a temperature in about 10 seconds and gives a digital
readout. Very handy for measuring temperatures of sick squirmy kids,
otherwise you have to do the temperature “in the butt” as
Vince calls it which is not fun or attractive for anyone involved.
Well, it’s lost and I spent a lot of time looking for it. I even
asked Rukia, our housekeeper, if she knew where it was because she
knows the organization of this house better than I do. But it is
nowhere to be found and I want to get another one, but I know as soon
as I buy it, I will find the first one. Argh….
By the end of the day, we were all getting grumpy at each other –
a bad case of HAG (House Aided Grumpyness), so Vince and Jeremy made
cookies.

The consumed amount was, Doris and Jeremy – 4 cookies each,
Vince – 1 cookie, Edda – 1 bite. The rest quickly given
away to our neighbor.

Nothing exciting happened today. Just the SOS. Same Old Stuff.
Vince was running a low fever today – probably acquired from the IKEA
petri dish. Not really enough to make him lie still/puke/stop asking
for food or anything, but he was definitely off his mark today. So he
stayed home from school. Edda went to school and after we dropped her
off, we walked to this nearby prata shop that I’ve taken to going to
regularly. This was Vince’s first time and he was being a pain, but
eventually he acquiesced and went in and had a prata which are these
delicious fried breads which can be plain (Vince) or stuffed with
cheese and tomato (Doris) and then you dip them in curry sauce.
Yummy!

OK, I know he’s eating a donut in this picture. He wouldn’t sit
down in the prata shop until I bought him a donut at the 7-11 and I
really, really wanted a prata since I hadn’t eaten any breakfast and
it was almost 9:30 already.
Here’s the prata picture:

Can you see the curry sauce? Yummy. Notice my plate is totally empty.
I eat very quickly. Vince eats very slowly.

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:

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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:

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.

We got gas. A full tank was:

Then we went to the zoo where Edda managed to catch a kangaroo.

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!

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

A wonderful day!

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!

  

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:

So today Jeremy made:

And Vince was:

(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.

While Vince played, Edda was on the lookout for new bedroom
furniture and the theme was PINK PINK PINK!

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!)