Author: Doris

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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.

Annie is so sweet and invited our family to join her friends in the evening for a little little lantern parade in our apartment complex. They even provided a lantern for us, complete with little burning candle inside and also sparklers. It is a little freaky seeing 3-5 year olds with sparklers and a million candles around, but it was a lot of fun. Vince was a little bit scared at first, but got excited about it towards the end. Also, these night time celebrations are hard for him because he is so exhausted. I think today he got up at 6:30 in the morning and didn’t take a nap and didn’t eat anything except sugar since about 4 pm.

Back to WA this weekend.

This is my friend Kate, whose husband works for AMD with Jeremy. They moved from Austin, TX to Singapore pretty much the same time we did. Kate is pregnant and the baby girl is due in December. She came by in the afternoon and we chatted and had a nice time together. Edda was able to take a nap during her visit and Vince showed off his Bright Horizons craft book. Vince was facinated by her blue skirt which had beautiful beads sewn into the fabric and he kept wanting to touch and rub them. After a while, I had to make him stop because it was getting a little bit redundant.