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 |  The misadventures of a full-time working/ housekeeping parent! Quill nominee. |
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** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** So that's the Wife and the Kid in the photo. Not the Better Wife -- that's me. Or at least who I'm forced to be, and try to keep being, most of the time. I've never blogged before, and never felt inclined to do so. Before I got married, I was too busy gaming.  World of Warcraft demands a great deal of your time, devotion, and sanity, especially if you're in an end-game raiding guild. After I got married, I was too busy being married. It turns out that being a husband, a father, a homemaker, and a professional rent-maker is even more demanding than being a guildmaster! Now who could have imagined that? Well, certainly not me.  When I started this blog a few months ago, I had kind of reached a boiling point. I was stressed out juggling all my commitments and responsibilities, and had hit the Mariana Trench in my career. I'm still mired in the deeps, and during this period I needed something else in my life to haul me out. It turned out that poverty is not conducive to creating a healthy and supportive home environment. To add to my depressing financial straits, Lynx's (the Kid) health started deteriorating. From one epileptic fit a month, he started suffering up to three times, sometimes within a single day. Numerous hospital visits and specialist consultations ensued, forcing me to take unpaid leave from a minimum wage job that paid me less than half of what I made as a fresh graduate -- twenty years ago. Silent blame from the Wife began to seep out through resentful tones and then blatant accusations. In this era of 'empowered females', somehow men are expected to earn more and do more at home as well. Ironic, isn't it? What I'm going through is similar to what many women go through every day, and only a tiny fraction of what my mother and the working women of her generation endured. But one thing I am denied which most women enjoy is a group of confidantes they can open up to. Most men I know aren't comfortable talking about, or listening to another guy talk about their emotions and struggles. Maybe it's an ego thing, or machismo speaking. Maybe I need to grow out my hair and a pair of boobs, slap on some makeup before a guy would at least pretend to listen and commiserate. Anyway that's when the blog started, and I started pouring out bits and pieces of my frustrations and elations into the nether of digital space. Beyond the Cloud9   was one of my first few readers, and I enjoyed chatting with her through blog comments tremendously. She's helped me so much by providing perspective and sharing her own stories and experiences with her own family and children.That's what this is -- a little space where I occasionally come in and rant or share odd, interesting, or exciting events in my never-mundane life. A space I hope will attract a few others to come in sometimes, look around and share some words. Enjoy sharing my life with me! ![Merit Badge in Music
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Thank you for your participation in the 48-HOUR CHALLENGE: "Return To Innocence by Enigma" Media Prompt hosted by [Link To User support] ! We appreciate that you tackled this challenge... *^*Smile*^* *^*Thumbsupl*^*](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/genre-Music-1050.gif) ![Merit Badge in Queen of Comedy
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I wanted to send you a little something to thank you for your humor! Your blog entry: [Link to Book Entry #936771] made me laugh so much that I spit my coffee everywhere, so thank you very much! *^*Laugh*^* ~Lornda A.K.A. The Queen of Comedy *^*Crown*^* Refer to for more details on how hard it is to make me laugh. *^*Wink*^*](https://images.Writing.Com/imgs/writing.com/writers/badges/group-Queen_of_Comedy-1875103_14.gif) A big thanks to Lornda  for the magnificent merit badge above! ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** Nominated for Best Family/ Parenting ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** Nominated for Best Blog Featured in "Comedy Newsletter (August 1, 2018)"  |
| There're just two more days before 2017 gets booted out by 2018. I wish I could kick out the words and stories clogged up inside me as easily as watching digital numbers change on a display. Part of the writing quagmire I find myself in stems from the increased household commitments I find myself bogged down with. The wife just started a new job that requires her to commute 45 minutes up to an hour one way, which is the same as my daily commute time. However this is a huge increase from her previous commute time of 15 minutes, and she's not as hardened to driving through rush-hour traffic as I am. She needs to leave the house earlier, and arrives home about an hour after I get home after picking up Lynx from daycare. What this means is that I am now responsible for preparing breakfast and dinner pretty much every day, unless I throw my hands up and demand to eat out. Previously I only did two dinners a week. The bright side is that Youtube is making me a better cook every day, and it's always nice to have new recipes under your belt. My parmesan chicken last night turned out beautifully, and I'm looking forward to whipping up another batch with all the leftover ingredients. Whenever I sit down with the laptop, I see another mess that needs to be cleaned up. Despite my constant nagging, Lynx still throws his toys about everywhere, and the wife has her usual path of destruction -- uncapped bottles and containers, open cabinets and drawers, milk and half-eaten desserts sitting on the counter waiting for flies and cockroaches to find them before I do, clothes and accessories lying about wherever she happens to not want them on her... Picking up after the two of them continues to be a full-time occupation, and if I just leave things be, I'm the one most bothered by the mess and not them -- the culprits. By the time the place is in a presentable condition more conducive to creative pursuits, I'm all out of fuel. Another reason is that I need more love. The wife finds it hard to read my stories since they're not written in her native language. I suppose I'd find it a slog to read stories in my non-native languages as well. I still remember going through Rainer Maria Rilke's Elegies in German, and Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's Le Petit Prince in French. Both endeavours required a lot of contextual guesswork, and references to a dictionary. Each page took a lot of time and effort, and that's certainly not how I'd choose to relax after a hard day at work, I suppose. Still I need a die-hard fan who's not me, for the dark days when I simply can't muster up the motivation and energy to write. I don't celebrate birthdays or Christmas, or any other occasion really, although I allow myself to join in other people's celebrations. This year, the wife insisted on making Christmas and birthdays, and other special days, well, special. "Do it for Lynx," she ordered. "If he wishes to buy into your ascetic lifestyle and philosophy when he gets old enough to choose, then fine. Until then, he gets cake and candles, presents under the tree and all the things other kids grow up with. Don't push your weirdness onto him." So this year we got a second-hand tree with beautiful ornaments that Lynx hung up mostly by himself. He proudly shows off the tree to every visitor, and runs to light it up the first thing when we get home in the evening. His grandparents sent him a fantastic set of classic Lego blocks, and he delights in making designs and creations that are either perfectly symmetrical or colour coded in some way. They're often food items like burgers or fantastic, futuristic vehicles that are some sort of train-car-plane hybrid. The wife's got a new job at a pretty swanky establishment. So that leaves me. I just want my sanity back. I need it to write. To find a way out of this rut I'm in. To chart a path out of this darkness. Half-crazed is not a healthy way to live. Here's hoping that I get my present. 2017 hasn't been all bad, not by a long shot. I got quite a lot of writing done. I nearly died in a horrific car crash, but escaped unhurt miraculously. I lost my job, but the karma came back to bite the person who schemed for that to happen by giving her a stroke that lost her hers as well, and also gave her several months of bed rest. The incompetent principal who was swayed by baseless untruths suffered the ignominy of being demoted by the board. I got published, and found a new family here at Writing.com. I may be surviving pay check to pay check, but at least I'm not on the streets like during my teenage years. Lynx's health is improving, and his bilingual abilities are growing. Just two more days, and I can say I survived the year. Hopefully I'll get to this time next year in much better shape than this year. So my questions for today's blog are: How has 2017 treated you? What are some significant ups and downs you've gone through? |
| At least once every couple of weeks, I take 3-year old Lynx out on a date -- just the two of us. His school runs on the Japanese calendar, while mine runs on the American calendar. On days when his school is closed and the wife needs to work, I take the day off to be with Lynx. On my off days, I like to let him sleep in and just potter around the house with me, instead of packing him off to school. Then of course, there are the days when his health requires that he stays home (his school has a very strict policy requiring that any child with a temperature of 37.5 degrees Celsius stays home), and more often than not, I'm the one on sick duty. Our favorite and most common date is a trip to the zoo that's just a five-minute drive away, for which we have annual passes. Lynx loves leading me to all his favorite exhibits and rattles off all the names flawlessly, even the less common ones -- anteater, raccoon dog, ostrich, gorilla etc. After that we always stop by our favorite ramen noodle shop. His appetite is now large enough to finish three-quarters of an adult portion by himself, so I usually order a side order of char siew (stewed pork) rice for myself, which is rather like a kid-sized portion. I always find it amusing to see him with a bowl of savory soup noodles in front of him, so large it would swallow half his head if he put it on as a helmet, and me -- six-foot-one with a tiny bowl of rice that fits inside the palm of one hand. He likes to prepare everything while waiting for our orders to arrive. The pitcher of iced water is too heavy for him to lift, but he takes out the chopsticks and hands them to me, followed by a toothpick. He introduces all the additional spices and toppings to me, and warns me always, "Karaii yo!" which means spicy. Lately I find that he's been mimicking me at home -- once while waiting for me to watch a movie with him, he actually got on his stool and started washing the dishes! I can tell he's trying his best to be as grown-up as he can be. Which is why it was really amusing when halfway through our noodles last Wednesday evening, he suddenly told me he had to go poo-poo. "Do you have to go now, or do you want to do it when we get home?" I asked, eyeing his half-finished bowl of noodles. "Now." And he clambered down from his child seat. The toilet did not have a special kid-sized seat, so I had to stay and hold on to him to prevent him from falling into the commode. Usually he would insist on privacy and say "bye bye", which was his signal for us to get out of the bathroom and let him do his business in peaceful solitude. On this occasion, however, he was grateful for my help balancing him on the edge of the seat. "Done." I checked inside but the bowl was clean, although my nose told me he had indeed done something. "Are you sure?" He nodded emphatically, pulled up his pants, and ran back to his noodles. Five minutes, he again solemnly informed me, "Oh, poo-poo. Let's go." Once again we went through the same thing, and this time I told him, "Go ahead, push it out. We'll stay here as long as you need to." He let out a silent but deadly fart. "Okay, done." A check of the bowl showed that it was clean, just like before. This went on two more times! Each time we'd hurry to the toilet, balance him carefully on the seat, and he would scrunch up his face and push... a smelly fart out. And there I was, holding him under the armpits and squatting right in front of him -- a wonderful position, really. Neither of us were embarrassed about it at all, although I'm sure when Lynx gets older he would probably not appreciate me digging up this particular anecdote to share. It reminds me of an unforgettable experience I had once on a stormy mountaintop, when I had a sudden bout of diarrhea and simply had to go. The peak we were camped on was tiny, with space for only two tents and nothing else. The designated toilet point was down a steep ravine but with the crazy, powerful winds trying to tear us off the mountain, I was too terrified to risk the trip down. Instead I descended as much as I dared and begged a hiking mate to hold on to me while I did my business. There we were -- two grown men: one holding on to a small tree and looking away, and the other squatting down and clinging desperately to his hand, yelling, "Don't let go!" If he did, I would have been blown off that steep path and off the mountain with my pants around my ankles and poop in my face. Now he enjoys bringing that up every time we meet up, and we always have a good laugh re-enacting the entire scene for our friends. So my questions for today's blog are: What embarrassing anecdote do you like to tell? Who do you like to share them with? |
| While doing laundry today, I decided on a lark to prove/disprove a theory I had about the proportion of clothes each of us in the family went through. The theory was that Lynx went through the most and his clothes would make up 50% of the load, the Wife's 40%, and mine would be 10%. So I counted each and every item I hung up to dry. The tally for Lynx was 34, the Wife 14, and me 3. Converting that to percentages, that meant approximately 70% for Lynx, 27% for the Wife, and a measly 3% for me. Basically the Wife goes through clothes about ten times faster than me, and Lynx 23 times. I find this statistic quite accurately reflects the proportion of mess we each produce as well. When it comes to cleaning up, however, the proportion is completely reversed -- I do about 70% of the cleaning up around the house, with the Wife contributing most of the remaining effort, while the terrible tike simply makes a token gesture, such as pulling out all the tissues to cover something he spilled. Perhaps this explains why I always feel that on top of my day job, and my writing, one of my jobs is a housemaid. There are many extenuating reasons for why he goes through clothes so quickly, but one is that he's a fashionista, just like his mother was. He insists on choosing all his own clothes, and carefully matches his outfits, usually topping off each ensemble with a hat or a pair of sunglasses. Another is that he's crazy messy, just like his mother still is. While thinking about that, I decided to do a post about the best and worst traits he inherited from the contributors to his gene pool. From his mum, he got a quirky sense of aesthetics (positive?), tenacity (positive), and messiness (negative). From me, he got an infallible sense of geography (positive). This means that at barely 3 years of age, he already knows the way to his school, and every landmark within a 3 km radius from our house. If I make a wrong turn, he is quick to point it out. It's impossible to trick him by lying about taking him to MacDonald's when we simply make a beeline for home ("No, that way! Turn left, not right!"). It takes only 2 times taking a new route somewhere for him to memorise it. His food tastes are a mix of both of us. He chews up bones for the marrow, just like I do, as well as every dog in the world. He detests vegetables of every sort, just as I did as a kid. He loves coffee and cake, from his mother, and abhors durian. He binges on chocolate, chips and junk food, which he gets from both his parents! Then there're the traits he either developed or acquired all by himself -- he's ambidextrous, which is amazing since both the Wife and I are right-handed. He uses two pairs of chopsticks at the same time with both hands, and neither the Wife nor I can replicate the feat. He possesses more energy than both of us old bodies combined, and would gladly keep bouncing on us long after we collapse from exhaustion. So my questions for today's blog are: How do your children take after their parents? How do you take after yours? |
| What's the opposite of helicopter parenting? Submarine parenting? Perhaps that's the best descriptor for the Wife and I when it comes to Lynx. Which other parents allow their child to drink coffee at six months, whiskey at one, and cola at two? In our defence, none of that was quite intended. Neither of us believed that Lynx would actually like the taste of coffee when he snatched a cup of Starbucks out of the Wife's hands, but he did. In fact, he even takes it black without sugar! The whiskey was an accident. We were having a house party, and the tumbler of golden liquid was sitting on the table naughtily pretending to be a tempting glass of apple juice. I didn't even realise what had happened until a friend pointed out the terrible face Lynx was making, and then I noticed that my whiskey was missing! The Wife insists that the cola addiction was entirely my fault, since no one else drank it in the house. My only defence is that Lynx's older cousin hates fizzy drinks, and so I quite erroneously assumed that all kids shared the aversion. When I allowed Lynx a taste of my favourite soda drink, I never expected that he would take to it like a cheap drunkard to gin. The Wife eventually cured him of his addiction to cola by slyly adding chilli oil into a glass, and sternly warning him that cola was spicy. Now every time we pass the drinks aisle at the supermarket, Lynx bursts out in imitation and warns me with great concern, "Coke karaii (Japanese for spicy)! Don't drink!" Last Sunday, the Wife and Lynx spent the day with a family friend and played with firecrackers. They've done this several times before, and both Lynx and his best friend A-kun enjoy this very much. This time, however, Lynx ended up at the hospital with a second-degree burn on the sole of his right foot. "What kind of parent lets their kid run around barefoot with burning sparklers around?" the Wife castigated herself. "How is he going to run during the Sports Festival this Friday?" "It was an accident," I tried to reassure her. "I'm sure he'll be fine by Friday." He wasn't, of course. He was healing well, but a second-degree burn takes weeks, not days, to recover fully from. That wasn't the reason why he threw a fit on Friday morning and refused to attend the Sports Festival, however. You see, whenever he wakes up and sees not just one, but both of us around, he knows it's the weekend or a special day, and that there'd be no school. So when he found out that we were attending the school Sports Festival, well, he wasn't having any of it. First, he refused to put on the school sports uniform, and insisted on his favourite Cars t-shirt and jeans. When we arrived at the sports complex and he noticed all his schoolmates and teachers bustling abut, he stuck on a pair of sunglasses and pretended to be just an accidental spectator. No way he was going to be robbed of a rare day out with both his parents, even though we kept plying him with assurance that we'd both be watching from the stands. His teacher had to wrestle him away from us, kicking and screaming. Good thing she was built like a retired sumo wrestler, since Lynx is incredibly strong for his age, towering over almost everyone up to two grades higher than him. Throughout the welcome speech and ceremonial dance, we spied him in the arms of the teacher, crying his little heart out while searching for us in the direction of the exit. When his first event came up, he was listless and disinterested. His heat stumbled forward quickly on spindly legs to the obstacle course while he dragged his feet and exaggerated his limp, pouting all the way. Since he attends a special school specialising in gymnastics and swimming, everyone is required to clear several apparatus with the level of difficulty increasing with the grade. The 2-year olds like him only need to do two consecutive forward rolls, walk down the length of a balance beam, and then jump off a trampoline. 3-year olds had to duck through a hoop on the balance beam, and do two consecutive cartwheels, in addition to the previous routine. 4-year olds had to vault over an obstacle taller than them, jump over a block on the beam while remaining on it, and cartwheel off as a dismount. 5-year olds add a high bar they have to swing up on and dismount from. It was a most entertaining spectacle, but Lynx didn't care at all. He's way ahead of his class since he's not only bigger and taller, but he also gets plenty of freedom to climb, run, and jump around in the house, and thus has a little more practice than his classmates. It was clear from his straight rolls where he recovered smoothly and moved on to the next roll, while his classmates all flopped unsteadily to the side and then lay disoriented on their backs, trying to figure out what had happened when they got up facing a different direction than they expected. He cleared the balance beam and trampoline easily, since these apparatus were available for him to practice on at the nearby playground we visited twice or thrice a week. However he dragged his feet through it all. It was the same for the race. He started brightly at the pistol, then seemed to remember that we weren't with him and slowed to a jog. Sigh. Only when the Wife went down to join him for the parent-child dance did he perk up and start smiling again. In fact, he was transformed. On the dance floor, he danced like the spirit of Dance Dance Revolution had possessed him, kicking and thrusting and shaking and twirling himself with more gusto than ten others around him combined. Watching the video for the tenth time still warms both our hearts. "Still feel guilty about spoiling his Sports Festival?" I ask the Wife. She shakes her head and smiles as she swipes through all the photos and videos we took, sometimes giggling or tearing up. "He'll do better next year, and I won't be letting him play with fireworks a week before." "I'm sure he'll remember to put on shoes the next time he plays with them." I know he will. So my questions for today's blog are: What mishap have you suffered just before a big event? How did things turn out in the end? |
| As a working dad, my biggest guilt is not spending as much time with my son as he needs. I'm off to school an hour before he even wakes up, and don't get to see him for the next twelve hours until I pick him up at 6 p.m. from the nursery after I clock out. The feeling that I don't spend a single minute of the day with him is exacerbated by the season, when the autumnal sun sets just before six. The moon is high in the sky when he happily trots out with me, glad to see his favourite person in the world. Perhaps he thinks I'm a vampire, since he only sees me when the sun is down. When we get home, I have to prepare dinner half the days of the week so off he goes to his playroom, alone. I finish cleaning up around 8 p.m. or sometimes later, and simply plop down beside him on the couch, exhausted, for about half to an hour watching a Pixar, Disney or Ghibli movie before getting him to poo, shower, and change for bed. During movie time, I waver between zoning out, trying to write, and roughhousing with him, which he loves. Months earlier, I would write till midnight or even later, irritated by his intrusions on my attention while feeling somewhat guilty that he would insist on staying up with me, until I came to bed. His health suffered greatly, and after I nearly killed myself as well falling asleep at the wheel while driving, I made it a point to go to bed between 9 and 10 p.m., so that Lynx would get enough rest as well. He hasn't had a seizure for a few months now, so I'm of the opinion that this is a healthier habit. We sometimes play soothing music, and simply cuddle him until he falls asleep. I almost always hit the snore button before he starts drooling contentedly on my chest. Several times I forced myself to wake up at 3 or 4 a.m. and write until time to leave for school. However, my constitution isn't quite up to it lately, and even though I can still make myself wake up at unearthly hours, I find myself doing very little productive work during this time. This brings me to my second great guilt -- not writing as much as I want to be doing. Practically the only time I get to write is that hour after clean-up and before bed, which is also the only time I get to spend anything vaguely resembling quality time with my son. So I used to just hammer away at the keyboard next to Lynx, while he enacted every scene and mimicked every mannerism from whatever movie was playing. All to get my attention. I'd sneak away sometimes when I thought he was too engrossed to notice my absence, and steal some minutes in my cubby-of-a-study but he would hunt me down and whine, "Papa, watch!" "Just a minute. Papa's busy," I'd demur. Five, maybe ten or more minutes would pass. And he'd sit patiently beside me, watching me with his overweighted red backpack on his tiny shoulders, and just wait without a sound. That only irritated me more then. I wanted him to give up and return alone, but like his Cancer mother, he's tenacious (their birthdays are one day apart). I'd suggest he go bug his mother, who's always on her phone. Meanwhile the guilt grape would grow, a circling vine slowly squeezing around my heart. Two nights ago, I badly needed to blow off some work-stress and gain some inspiration for my writing. Sitting down to a grown-up movie, I hoped that Lynx would either curl up quietly beside me, or lose interest and trot off to his room for a dose of silly Minions entertainment. Fifteen minutes in, he started acting up. He walked in front of the projector beam, climbed up on the coffee table and crashed the sliding glass panels hard against each other. Our warnings to stop only made him pout and act out even more. Three months ago, I would probably get really mad at him and give him a time-out, but this time I had one of those parenting-eureka moments. He just wants my attention. I've barely spent a minute with him the whole day, and by the time this movie finishes, he'll be asleep. The wife wasn't really watching the movie, but was on the phone as usual and getting pissed with his behaviour. Another minute and she would probably drag him screaming and crying to a corner for some time alone to reflect. That was when I got up and hit the spacebar to pause the movie. "Would you like to go for a walk with Papa? Maybe you want to go to the playground?" I asked, even though it was dark out and the playgrounds here have no lights. He shook his head, and said, "No, drive. Let's go zoo." The zoo was closed, of course, but I knew he simply wanted to go to his favourite place in the world, which I took him to whenever I had the chance. "Hug, please." As I walked down the stairs to the car with him in my arms, I felt a small sense of something approaching pride, but not quite. Lynx has been so patient with me for so long, while I've been, frankly, quite terrible. That night, though, I was acting like the dad he wanted, needed, and deserved. We drove to the zoo, marvelling at the moon on the way. Pulling into the dark and deserted zoo carpark, I asked if he wanted to get out and walk to the locked gates. "No, the zoo's closed. Animals sleeping. It's sad," he said solemnly. "Let's go home." And so we did. I didn't manage to do much writing that night when we returned, but when we curled up together in bed to sleep with his head resting contentedly on my arm, I didn't feel the usual nibbles of guilt eating away at me at all. So my questions for today's blog are: What do you feel guilty about doing or not doing? What lesson has a child helped you learn? |
| We get them every once in a while -- a day when everything goes well, and the little surprises thrown up are pleasant instead of the opposite. Ah, the perfect day. Last Sunday was one of those rare ones. It began with a test drive to the Wife's potential next working place to map out the shortest and fastest route, take note of the traffic choke-points and find go-arounds for them. Google Maps had the distance at 18 kilometers with a projected 34 minutes of driving time. During rush hour, such projections tend to balloon to twice or even thrice. The Wife did not relish the prospect of spending 3 hours commuting daily, and it was my job to save her from that. The idea was to try out two different routes and identify the number of potential choke-points that would cause traffic to snarl during rush hour. We set off in our spacious, cream-yellow Tanto just before noon, aiming to reach our destination and find some pizzeria nearby to satisfy our lunch cravings. After the first twenty minutes or so just trying to get out of the city, we hit the country roads and then wound our way down to the west coast. With only a two-lane main street running through the resort town of Onna, the last stretch took way longer than Google estimated. However my pathfinding instincts took over and I quickly found a backlane that would cut past most of that stretch. One objective achieved. Piece of cake. The first pizza place Yelp! recommended was close to the beach at Cape Maeda, with swanky vibes and matching prices. Since our wallets can't survive posh pizza, we decided to drive south along the coast in hope of finding a wallet-friendly establishment. The Kid fell asleep at this point, and we started to wonder if we should just give up on the pizza and go on home. "Maybe he'll wake up when he smells the cheese?" "Or maybe he'll sleep right through lunch and let us eat in peace?" Google Maps is pretty bad with the smaller streets and older establishments on this island, so instead of a pizzeria we found ourselves near a bakery we'd tried visiting several weeks ago, but which was unfortunately closed on the day. It was open this time round. Hugging and lugging a snoring, drooling kid on my shoulder, I huffed my way in the noonday heat to a cosy shop that managed to squeeze three tables inside, with everything wood and old-world charm. Outside stood a rather remarkable grove of seven or eight trees, with all their crowns intertwined to give the impression of a monstrous arboreal marvel. It looked like something out of a Miyazaki story. We managed to find the pizza place after that, and what do you know? The Kid actually did wake up to the smell of the cheese! Perched on the side of a hill, we took in postcard views of the Okinawa sea through the two-storeyed floor-to-ceiling windows, as we gossiped about the only other customers in the stylish restaurant laid with Mediterranean mosaic tiles -- an oddly-matched couple of a model-pretty woman in her early thirties dressed for Instagram, and a man almost twice her age dressed for the living room on a guys' night in. "Look at the way she's giggling and pouring his tea for him -- that's not a father-daughter date." "I guess the guy's either divorced, or has a clueless wife back on the mainland." The pizzas were perfect -- both dripping with hot, melted cheese, with one swimming with pepperoni and the other with sweet honey. We found out that the Kid hates pepperoni but loves crust. Perfect pairing for the Wife, who now has someone else to eat all her discarded crusts for her. Time to check out a new beach after that, and boy did we find the most amazing place ever. A resort's private beach but with open access to outsiders who bother to drive all the way out to the remote location, there were small caves and tidal pools aplenty to explore. The Kid and I hopped from rock to rock, pointing out scuttling crabs and their home-hugging hermit cousins. We waded in small rocky pools with colorful fishes and tried to catch those camouflaged in the sand with our bare hands. The Kid got behind the wheel of a speedboat, a floating bicycle, a tractor and happily posed for pictures on all of them. And it wasn't even four o'clock yet! We wrapped up the day early and headed home. Ten minutes after we got in the car, the heavens cried to see us go for all of five minutes. Just as we were about to turn onto the coastal highway, we saw the cherry on the icing. A full rainbow spanned the entire sky from one end to the other. Sounds like a story? Well, that was our perfect Sunday. Oh, the traffic on the way back was smooth too. So my questions for today's blog are: What was the last perfect day you had like? What never fails to make a day better, or even perfect for you? |
| Being sick's a b***h. Your nose won't stop leaking brain juice. Your throat's dry and scratchy, cos there's a phlegm-dam plugged upstream. Every time you sneeze, it's like a mini-reenaction of the puking scene from The Exorcist. It's much much worse when you're in a family of three who shares the same bed. You pass the germs back and forth, so another falls sick just as one's about to recover, and the cycle of infection never ends. For more than two weeks, my son and I kept playing this deadly game of tag with germs. Miraculously, the Wife didn't catch whatever it was we were tossing around at all. I guess an organic diet and daily health smoothies really does wonders, or butterfingers have other effects I never knew about. For the first time in my entire working life (spanning 18 years if you only count full-time employment since graduation), I actually took sick leave on consecutive weeks, instead of working through it. Lynx stayed home from school, of course, since his nursery has a strict policy forbidding any student with a temperature of 37.5 degrees Celsius or higher from attending. We were both debilitated enough to spend a fair amount of time just resting, instead of taking mini field trips to the zoo or exploring some new park nearby as we usually do when we stay home together. Neither of us enjoy visiting the doctor, or taking medication. I'm of the belief that the body can produce anything that's needed to fight off any foreign invaders, given enough rest and a booster diet high in vitamins. Lynx is simply fussy and suspicious of anything that doesn't fall into his narrow category of favourite foods, that basically comprises rice, noodles, chicken nuggets and chocolate ice cream. He subjects every single morsel of food to a rigorous smell test, to make sure that we don't mix medicine into any of his food. Or maybe he's already training for a career as an imperial food-tester. Yet despite our vehement resistance against yucky stuff that will make us better, we somehow managed to recover. How? Well, I subject myself to the blanket treatment. Essentially, I mummify myself by using a thick blanket to cover every part of my body, especially the head. This makes me sweat up a storm and is exceedingly uncomfortable, but somehow helps to clear my sinuses. I always feel much better after I wake up. This is something I've been doing for as long as I can remember falling sick. Lynx hates the blanket. He kicks it away whether he's awake or asleep, so it's impossible for me to try this treatment on him. Moreover, he might suffocate. However he does something else that might be the cause of his recovery, or not -- he eats his boogers, every single morsel he manages to dig out, and with great relish, I might add. It delights him so much to see the looks of disgust I give him, and the loud cries of "Ewww!" he manages to elicit every time he licks his mined treasure off his tiny fingertip. So my questions for today's blog are: What homemade remedy do you have for when you get sick? When do kids stop eating their boogers?? |
| So one morning a few weeks ago, something happened that made me decide to stop being a non-confrontational pushover, and start putting my foot down more often. It was just a typical morning drive to work. I'd spent several weeks exploring and timing different routes to and from school, in various traffic conditions experienced at morning and afternoon rush hours, and finally discovered an optimised route that replaced half the journey with deserted suburban roads instead of city thoroughfares. It shaved ten to fifteen minutes off a trip that normally took up to an hour. However the tradeoff was that the roads were poorly maintained, and had several long stretches too narrow to accommodate two-way traffic. It was in the middle of one of these stretches that I had my epiphany. Now there are no signs or signals regulating the traffic here, so typically cars would simply wait for the fifty-meter stretch to be clear before going through. Since the road is quite deserted, there are usually no more than one or two vehicles going through at any time, even during rush hours. This morning, I was more than halfway through with only twenty meters to go when a delivery van drove right in from the opposite direction. Unbelievable. There was no way the driver didn't see me, since it's a straight stretch of road you can see for several hundred meters down either way. I stopped, and so did he -- I at the thirty meter mark, and he at the ten. I assumed that he would back out and allow me to pass, but he didn't. Instead he edged his van over to the side, giving the clear message 'Go on then, you can squeeze past.' Both sides of the road were overgrown with thick, impenetrable foliage. I eyed the gap very 'generously' afforded me by the driver. It might just be wide enough, provided I drove into the bushes and pushed past them. I looked back at the van driver again, who wore an impatient get-on-with-it-already look. Well, a few bush scratches on this old scrap heap of a car could only make it look better, I figured. Very slowly, I eased my 2004 Honda Life with more worn out, bald grey splotches than metallic blue paint on it to the very edge of the road on my side. The truth was, I couldn't really tell where the road ended because of all the bushes. However there was a two-meter high wire fence that kept most of the unruly, tropical forest from spilling onto the road and taking over the asphalt completely. I would simply steer well clear of that, and it would probably be fine. Ha. As one side of my car disappeared partially into the brush, I felt a sudden lurch and drop, and heart-deadening thunk! There was a drainage ditch buried beneath all the foliage on my side of the road, that had just swallowed my front left tire. The car was stuck. I couldn't believe it. In twenty-five years of driving, I had never once driven into a drain or ditch before. Now I'm not the type who screams with frustration and starts moaning or pulling out hair or slamming the dashboard. I go into problem-solving mode immediately, and very calmly stepped out of my car to assess the situation. Only one tire was stuck, and if the car could be hauled back onto the road, I might be able to continue driving if the axle wasn't damaged or broken. Unfortunately I'm built more like Jim Carrey than Arnold Schwarzenegger, so my chances of lifting the car up by myself were somewhat slimmer than Arnie miraculously turning up at my side with a smile and offering me his gallant assistance. It would probably be a three-man job, unless a pickup truck with a winch happened by. Two cars had made their way onto the stretch by this time and were now pulled up behind my stranded vehicle. I looked in their windows -- one had a youngish woman behind the wheel, and the other also a woman but in her late thirties or early forties. Not exactly the big, strapping Arnie-types I was hoping for. I looked the other way. The van driver had slyly backed out from the narrow stretch and was now pulled over at a T-junction, with another car behind him. Since his inconsideration was what had gotten me into this mess in the first place, I figured that the least he could do was to offer to help. However he didn't even bother to get out of his vehicle. A sense of impatience grew in the air. My stranded vehicle was blocking the road, holding everyone up, but no one was willing to help do anything about it, not even the one responsible for it in the first place. It was so completely typical of Japanese corporate culture I had experienced so far -- no one likes to acknowledge or point out problems that stare at them in the face, because they don't want to take on the responsibility of fixing it. I glared down both ends of the road again, adding unhealthy doses of disgust and hapless frustration, realising that there would be no help forthcoming. Perhaps I would have to call for a tow truck, which I couldn't afford and didn't have a mobile phone to make the call with anyway. s***. Walking over to the edge, I crouched down and inspected the stuck tire. The axle looked fine -- not even bent. The drain was only slightly wider than the tire, and suddenly an idea occured to me. It might make things worse, and I could end up damaging my axle, but it was also my best shot at the moment. Getting back into the car, I put the gear in reverse and angled the tire such that it gripped both sides of the drain. If I could just get enough friction, it might just work... I stepped on the accelerator, and Hail Obscure-Bits-of-Science-101-Knowledge, the car heaved, hiccuped and bounced back onto the road -- free! I couldn't believe it. Within seconds, I drove out, parked next to the van, and rolled down my window. My Japanese was more than adequate for conversations, but woefully unequipped for accusations. Still, I expected at least an apology for causing me such trouble. Nothing. He didn't even look abashed in the slightest, with his baseball cap pulled low over his face. This is where Okinawans differed in culture from mainlander Japanese -- the average Japanese is unfailingly polite, but Okinawans exhibit a brusqueness more commonly associated with Chinese and Koreans. I gave him a stern look of disgust, which he conveniently ignored by staring straight ahead. I wanted an apology, but did not want to kick up a fuss about it, especially when there were three other vehicles being held up. So I simply drove off, fuming. I should have simply insisted that the van driver give way by backing out in the first place, which would have prevented the whole incident from ever happening. Instead, by trying to be nice, I ended with nothing but a whole lot of woe. The incident made me think about how I badly and unfairly I was treated at my former school, also run by an Okinawan (an incompetent one at that, but those experiences are getting turned into novel chapters). There I had also tried to be be nice, and ended up getting backstabbed repeatedly by a younger, jealous, and ambitious colleague who eventually got her way by getting me 'fired' (she recently got her karmic comeuppance, but that's for another blog post). During that last ten minutes of the drive to school, I decided -- no more Mr Nice Guy. From now on, if someone tried to force me into an uncomfortable situation, I would put my foot down, pull myself up to my full six-foot-one height, and stick my chin out. So my questions for today's blog are: What kind of unpleasant situation or trouble have you been forced into by circumstance, or someone's inconsideration? What are some examples of bad road etiquette you have experienced before? |
| So Linus has a blanket, and Agnes has her unicorn soft toy. Most kids go through a phase when they can't go anywhere without lugging around their 'security blanket', something that makes them feel safe and happy. Lynx just happens to choose a red knapsack that weighs five kilograms. Just what can it possibly contain to weigh so much? The answer is: his entire collection of Tomicars. Mea culpa -- when he showed an early interest in cars and machines of every sort, I started buying him these die-cast mini-collectibles, scouring thrift stores for secondhand toys or getting them on discount during sales. Sometimes I let him choose, most times I got him a type or color of vehicle that's missing in his collection. He learnt all their names -- police car, excavator, crane, bulldozer, truck, ambulance -- if it's on wheels and you can find it on the road, he can name it. There're probably about thirty different kinds of vehicles in there. I knew he loved his mini cars, but I underestimated just how much. For the last month or so, he's been stuffing every single one of them into a tiny red knapsack, strapping it on, buckling it up by himself, and going everywhere with it. And I do mean everywhere. To school. Sitting in his room watching cartoons. At the table eating his dinner. Even when he sleeps, he refuses to take it off. We have to sneak it off him only after he falls sound asleep. It's a wonder he manages to sleep at all, since all that metal makes the bag really lumpy and hard. The worst is the weight. I can't believe he lugs all that around. A few times he couldn't climb up by himself into the car because the bag was too heavy. When he falls on his back, he really becomes an overturned turtle, unable to get up by himself. The wife and I don't know whether to laugh or to cry, so we usually do both. She worries it'll hurt his back; whereas I'm of the opinion that kids are resilient and this is good conditioning for him, plus he'll grow out of it soon enough anyway. Last night, for the first time, I managed to convince him to remove it before going to bed. Whew. He still sleeps in between us, so whenever he tosses and turns, five kilograms of metal smash into our face. The mother-in-law suggests sneaking a few cars out of the bag every night while he's asleep, so as to lessen the burden. I know he's gonna find out. He takes them out every day and arranges them nicely, inventing stories and adventures for each of them before placing them all back into his precious red bag. A week ago, it kind of got worse. He has another bag, this one green. Into this one he stuffs the Thomas trains that he got from his cousin, and then he makes me put it on and buckles it up for me. This past Sunday, I spent five whole hours with him at the zoo lugging around that teeny tiny green backpack full of trains, looking utterly ridiculous. My wife finds my torture hilarious. I'm six-foot-one, and carrying a teensy kiddie backpack around... Oh well, I love that he has a passion for something, and would rather that he has a somewhat unhealthy obsession with something than be completely unmoved by everything. So my questions for today's blog are: What was your (or your kid's) security blanket when you were young, and how long did it last? What's the weirdest fixation you're ever heard of a kid having? |
| I was considering griping about Parent-Teacher conferences this week, or perhaps our latest AirBnB episode, or simply skipping the blog altogether because I've been feeling rather drained. Then just as I was doing some research into Bulgaria for my usual one short story/one poem for Around The World In 52 Weeks, something creepy happened that nearly stopped my heart (it certainly stopped me breathing!). You see I slept early last night at around 10 p.m. and woke up at 1 a.m. to write. Before my son woke up crying for me at about 3 a.m. I managed to almost complete my Bulgaria short story "Invalid Entry" , which I finished off at work. I don't know why I took the story in a strange scifi direction (always obey the muse!) and ended up with having aliens discussing Bulgarian culture and eventually deciding to send the Bulgarians a message in the year 2025 (go read the story!). I thought it was a bit of a laugh, and figured that unless the judges appreciated my wacky sense of humour, the story was a dark horse at best for the podium. Still I had a bit of fun writing it.Then today I thought I'd write a poem about Varga and the necropolis full of the world's greatest buried gold treasures. Instead I found myself nudged in a different direction, and started reading about Baba Vanga, the great Bulgarian prophetess. I found her life story and prophecies intriguing, and just kept reading. Mostly I wanted to find the actual words she used (or close English translations of what she actually said), rather than interpreted summaries. She predicted so many things accurately, it was uncanny (World War 2, 9/11 attacks, Barack Obama's presidency etc, and she did all this before she died in 1996!). I then read an interview in which she described how she makes her predictions through some ethereal presence (read it for yourself here http://www.baba-vanga.com/2015/05/23/baba-vanga-predictions-and-are-they-phenome...). It reminded me of my own spiritual/otherworldly encounters over 20 years ago, when I peeked into another realm. I'll probably share that in a blog post another time. Continuing with my research, I then came across one prediction that froze me and stopped my breath. Baba Vanga predicted that Bulgarians would be the first people on Earth contacted by aliens, in the year 2025. If I were a comic book character, you would literally see my eyes bug out at that. In that short story I wrote, I suggested that the aliens have been watching us for a long time, which is also something Baba Vanga predicted/shared. (This, however, is something I've believed quietly for a long time, and NO! I'm not a Scientologist, or UFOphile -- I explain this in my novel 'Was Eternal', and it's complicated) Now I'm not suggesting that I'm clairvoyant, although sometimes I feel that I am being given answers and peeks into the future (I had certain vivid apocalyptic dreams in my youth I strongly believed were prophetic lol) and led down certain paths by God. But the coincidences were just too unreal. Okay, please do not bug me for lottery numbers or divining into your love life because I am not clairvoyant!  I'm simply sharing a very uncanny experience I had today, and cheekily entertaining the fantasy of having divining and mind-reading powers. Wahahahaha -- I'm going to rule the world! *cue evil laughter*So my questions for today's blog are: Have you ever had an uncanny spiritual or clairvoyant experience, when something you couldn't possibly have known but wrote or thought about somehow happens? What's the closest you've ever come to having a spiritual or extra-terrestrial encounter? |
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It's actually quite humorous if I think about it. 
