Author: Doris

August 12

Should we change over? I’m tempted, but we’d have to get the super dooper package to have everyone be able to blog.

Why, sweetie?

Because I want to marry you. Can we go to a wedding tomorrow? A big wedding?

Vince told me this today after he woke up from his nap. So it seems as if we have completely given up on Learning Ladder nursery school. I went from a full day to a half day and finally today, after sleeping more than 13 hours from 5:30pm to 7am, he was adament about not going to school.

On Monday, he missed the bus and changed his mind about 30 minutes later and Jeremy took Vince to school in a taxi, but today, he did not want to go at all. I can’t get the straight story out of him, no surprise there. Either the kids scream at him or the teacher screams at him or else he was just so underslept and exhausted or everyone is speaking in Chinese and it throws him off or something, who knows what it is. Or maybe it’s because he loved his old school so much that nothing can compare to it. Who knows, all I know is that he spent the whole day flirting with me and making sure I know how much he likes staying at home with me. Sample phrases

I love you and I think you love me too.

I love staying home and want to do it forever.

I want to stay home night and day.

Let me give you a big, big hug.

I don’t want to go to school ever again.

Let’s do something? Can we go to the zoo?

Darling, why don’t you put your feet up and I’ll fix you a gin and tonic and finish washing the dishes.

OK, the last line wasn’t from Vince, but you get the picture. So tomorrow I have to call the silly school and tell them we aren’t enrolling. And the school bus company to just bill me for the 2 weeks. Bleh! And now I have both children full time again underfoot. Sigh.

Also, all these Chinese people are frustrating me. It has been quite a long time since I’ve lived in a Chinese-dense society:

Dense: Rockville, MIT, Caltech, SF Bay area, Taiwan, Singapore

Not dense: Texas, Upstate New York

and the weirdness is getting to me. All the things I find annoying about myself is apparent right in front of me. People cutting in line (usually an older Chinese lady who just dashes in front of you as you are about to checkout, she’s found that she can squeeze into the space left by the person who just paid and you aren’t moving fast enough to fill the space), people not helping with doors (I’m struggling with Edda in the stroller, usually up the stairs since there aren’t a lot of elevators or through a door, and instead of holding the door open or helping with the stroller, people just find the quickest way around me further impeding my forward progress), a particular way a parent addresses their children, blah, blah… I’m homesick.

On the good side, we heard from the quarentine people and Ruby is doing fine, and is due back home, not this Saturday, next Saturday. We’ve been looking at all the off-leash areas on the island and trying to figure out how to get to them. You aren’t allowed to bring dogs onto the subway, but taxis are suppose to take them, but not the Muslims because they can’t touch dogs, especially their tongues.

Tonight we ate at a sushi place that has the little conveyer belt going around the restaurant and Vince had a great time.

Jeremy and I spoke about where to go on vacation. He has 4 weeks saved up and now on assignment, he’s earning 6 weeks a year, a week every 2 months, isn’t that crazy? If I ever get a job again, I’ll never catch up.. But we are trying to figure out where to go, it’s just that southeast asia has never been such an appealing place for me to visit, I mean, it’s hot, you go to some beach resort, and they serve you mixed drinks. Or you go shopping because they have such great deals. But what happens when you already have everything you could possibly use and there is a kick ass pool right outside your front door? Hmmm… Kuala Lumpur (or KL as people say)… What I really want to do is go on some sort of “active” guide-led vacation eco-tour kind of thing where you hike, bike or paddle through relatively non-tourist places. But where to put the kids? If I put them in my backpack, how will I be able to carry the tent, sleeping bag and the water filter? Hmmm…

Well, Arif is now married. 🙂

It was a pretty good trip. Sometimes I think travelling is not quite my thing. Or maybe it’s just the way we travelled. Larry pretty much took the reins on this trip and he’s quite a go-go tourist. So we had to hit all the spots, etc… I think I’m more of a chill out tourist. I like to relax and do some stuff and then take a nap in the afternoon.

Somehow I didn’t expect jet lag to be that big of a problem for me, but it took me a long time to readjust to the time schedule. It didn’t help that we didn’t get much sleep to begin with..

We stopped in Dublin first, which was short but sweet. Jeremy might appreciate that we went to the Guiness Brewery, which, I’m sorry to report, was the most pompous display of self promotion that I’ve every seen in my life. It was either that or I was really really really tired that day. They had something like 7 levels of “exhibits” extolling how they brewed the beer, but the last line would inevitably be, “well that was cool, but now we do it differently. (aka the cheap methods)”

London was fun. People are a little jittery about the Underground. There are no trash cans in the stations, and we had an evacuation one day. Akil, Arif’s brother, got a lot of looks on the Tube holding a backpack.

Otherwise the wedding was different. It was a 2 night affair. The first night was at the mosque where the men and women were separate. The women veiwed the whole thing on 3 lcd panels. 🙂 Arif was his own representative and sweated thru some arabic, and sat thru I don’t know how many photos.

The second night was more of the banquet. Tho I think everyone decided that night that Arif was never to give a speech at any of our weddings in the future. He made some interesting comments… Here’s a sample

Arif thanking a woman who sorta arranged things behind his back.

Arif: I want to thank Big Tahera for setting me up with Little

Tahera. Tho I wasn’t happy about that.

Big Tahera: But you’re happy about it right now?

Arif: Ask me in 2 years.

😛 All the friends that knew Arif laughed about it. We know that he means well, it just was poorly formed. heh.

Hi, from Denver. We are gradually settling down. Tomorrow, we are going to invite our friend’s kid to have dinner together with us here. He was very helpful to find aparments for us. We plan to walk together every evening, doing exercise sort of.

Today we went to the Jurong Bird Park with Matilda and family. It was hot, hot, hot! The highlight of the day may have been the air conditioned McDonalds or the air conditioned monorail ride. Today was Singapore National Day, so Jeremy had the day off and we all dressed in red. Vince was more impressed with Singapore National Day than he was about the 4th of July.

The house is coming together, the landlord had bought a whole bunch of white furniture and we needed some more color in the rooms, so we got a bunch of crazy colored rugs from IKEA and moved them in. It’s feeling more and more like our house.

I’m having a hard time cooking here. In the US, I was getting more and more ambitious with my cooking, using exotic ingredients and different techniques. Here, I’m still familiarizing myself with the layout of the supermarket and all the weird stuff they sell there. I’ve been looking at local cookbooks, but the ingredients are strange. We’ve been having pretty simple dinners here and eating out a bit.

August 8

August 8

Got a 12″ Gary Fisher bike which we rode to the McDonalds for a late night snack. Ice cream which starts to melt and drip down your hand and arm even before you get to your table. Yum!

I woke up this morning with a pain in my bladder, I’ve been battling a mild UTI, but it had pretty much cleared up, but I got up to go to the bathroom and I could feel the blood rushing out of my head and I got really light headed, I hadn’t felt this bad in a while. But after a good time on the loo and a long hot bath, I feel fine, just peachy. I’m still a bit queasy, but otherwise, no fever, no more cramping, I even managed to eat some lunch. Could I be pregnant? Nooooo…. not a chance, well, hardly a chance.

Jeremy’s out with Vince buying the bike that he had his meltdown about almost 2 months ago. Vince has not for a minute forgotten our promise of getting a bike in Singapore and he ogles every bike he sees and whenever he sees any for sale, he’s there. He’s THERE! I pretty much opted to stay home as I like the security of a toilet less than 20 feet away from my body.

Vince is almost 100% better, so maybe 85% or 90%. That would be 9/10 better or 85/100 which could be simplified to by dividing the numerator and denominator by 5. He’s still coughing a little, but the fever has left for another world.