Wireless is Great.

I’m sitting here waiting for the bus by the Stanford Quad. It’ great to have wireless all over campus. It’s great to actually have a computer that has a battery that lasts long enough to be somewhat useful. I’m not starting to play around with ripping DVDs. I’ve gotten 300 gig hard drive, and i’m going to try to fill it up with something. 😛

Other than that it’s going to be a pretty busy week. I’ve got so many things on my agenda this week. Plus I’m trying to not go out to eat this week to pay for that 300 gig hard drive. sigh.

I realize that a lot of my time these days is taken up thinking and researching what stuff i ought to buy. It’s somewhat depressing, but somewhat it’s great cause I couldnt’ afford these things for so long! So I’m consumed with consumerism. nice.

Hopefully I’ll get together with Choon this week. His wedding is coming up. I suppose I ought to shopping for a suit too since i didn’t manage to get one for Arif’s wedding.

Friday will be poker tournament 4. Hopefulyl this time i’ll come out with the top prize. muahhahaha.

where is that dang bus?

Just loving’ it.

In order to ward off feelings of lameness and stuck-at-homeness and encouraged by a quickie call to my brother, Vince, Edda and I went out on the town and spent money like crazy. OK, really just semi-crazy. I went all over to the other side of the island in search of a 3-story indoor (air conditioned) playground and I didn’t find it. It was pretty lame looking around a mall and asking a bunch of people with kids where the indoor playground is and have them all look at me real funny. Vince was not convinced today’s 3 different cab rides were worth the effort.

We went to the Tampines Mall, the Suntec City mall and then home. We ate at McD at the Suntec City mall and Vince declared that he missed the McDonald’s in New York.

Vince is kind of hard to manage these days, he won’t go down for a nap easily. I can spend two hours in a darkened room with him and he just won’t nap, my usual rule is no napping after 4 pm which results in an 11:30pm bed time. Without a nap, he’s flipping out at 5pm. I really should get on top of the food as well, I have to get back into feeding them every 3 hours or so. I’m still not familiar enough with the grocery store to get them the things that they’ll eat, I’m usually rushing though trying to get dinner together and not concentrating on what is actually on the shelves. I’ve been here almost 3 week and I’ve gone grocery shopping at least every other day and I just realized tonight that there is no pasta in my grocery store.

On a good note, I met a potential friend! I’m so excited! She has two girls, ages 4 and 2 and she lives in my apartment complex and within 5 minutes of meeting us, she invited us over tomorrow. And tomorrow we have a playdate with Matilda!

Flipping out.

I’m slowly flipping out. Enough about me…

I just finished Aloft by Chang Rae Lee. Thumbs up!

From the review section on Amazon (Debbie Lee Wesselmann – author of the review):

Chang-Rae Lee’s third novel brilliantly evokes the angst of a man stunted by his own passivity. Jerry Battle, by his own account, is not a fighter. He flies his airplane in only the fairest weather, and usually does so solo since from that height, with no one making demands on him, “everything looks perfect.” On the ground, though, his life is less than perfect. He would rather let the woman he loves live with another man than express his true feelings for her. He turns from the implications of his son’s extravagance in running the family landscape business, and he prefers to keep his distance from his gruff father. If Jerry sees the signs of imminent destruction, he keeps them to himself, for to bring them to the fore would be to require action on his part. In fact, the last time in his life when he took charge of his personal life, he pushed his wife and the mother of his children to her early death. All in all, he’d rather not know about the crises embroiling his family. However, when his adult daughter breaks some distressing news, all his carefully constructed aloofness begins to crumble.

With wit and insight, Lee has created not only a memorable character, but an unforgettable novel. The interior nature of the first person narrative might disappoint readers looking for more pizzazz to the plot, but the intimacy created as Jerry leads the reader through his thoughts – on everything from his young wife’s death to his father’s “years of being a pigheaded domineering irascible bull in the china shop of life” to his tender. confused feelings for his son and daughter – makes up for the lack of action. The emotional depth Lee provides is stunningly full. Although the imagery can be heavy-handed with its references to flight and being grounded, Jerry’s wry acknowledgment of these elements rescue them. The decadence of contemporary culture and the melting pot of Long Island provide strong foils to this novel essentially about a fifty-nine year old man coming of age.

Admittedly, this excellent novel is not for everyone. Its detailed examination of mundane but revelatory moments might get tedious for some. However, for those who like the quiet realism and intimacy of a man’s struggle against his own nature, this will be one of the best novels of 2004.

Mama, are you falling out of love with daddy yet?

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…

Back from the UK.

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.