five-thirty

theson at 3.75yrs
Hes getting talkative but still needs his 15min warm up time with strangers

Typical theson responses:-
question: what did you do in school today?
Answer: Aishah, Nicolas, catherine, sana, yongying, two yongying, Sophia, afiz, elson,...
(starts naming his friends)

question: What did you do at auntie house?
Answer: Rice, soup, beans,
(starts naming what thebabysitter cooked for him)

question: how much love mimi/papa?
Answer: Five thirty.
(i have no idea...)

His “yes” response to a question is “haarh…!!”

And he actually said a simple prayer the other day,
”thank you god , for mimi, papa, etc…”


able to negotiate as well:
"five minutes more laah"
"after this, okay?"


things I’m learning to do carefully:
Have to be careful when cut his fingernails or toenails.
Bathing him.
Brushing his teeth (but not patiently).
making sure i dont give him too much junk food.
disciplining him.

home sweet home 2

We’ve done the unthinkable.
We saw a house.
We liked the house
We're buying the house.
And its freakin….. >half a million dollars….
(that like 200k more than our original estimate/budget)
It’s a real stretch on our budget but i know we can pull through it.

we just need to be "leaner" the next few years and sacrifice more.
Its a 3000sqft, 2storey semi detached, there are 3 rooms upstairs, 2 toilets and quite a big common area. there is a separate living room, dinign room , dry kitchen, wet kitchen and a guest bedroom with toilet attached. ther si also a garden of arounf 8 to 10ft wide.

bank and lawyer has been engaged and we are waiting to sign all the necessary documents.
as usual the lawyers "move" pretty slow and we are being patient.

are we truly free?

The state of the country is deplorable.
It’s a circus, really…Bloggers are getting arrested, getting called for interrogation by police for “revealing truths” abt those in power.

While, the true culprits, the ones who are sucking this country dry and driving a bigger wedge into the racial and religious divide is getting away scot-free.
Justice has been blindfolded.
The PM does not seem to get the nation confidence vote as no one knows if he cares about anything at all.The national paper is pro-government, the cops might be led by triads, the anti-bribery-unit’s integrity is questionable, parliament cant be depended on. The ministers are morons. Corruption is rampant.

So who do you listen to? Who do you trust?Who watches the watchmen?Sigh…
What a country i live in..

So why do I rant? Why don’t I leave the country?
Well, lets see….
The weathers not too bad,
The food is good..
there are no civil wars, or religious or race riots… (as of now)
We are supposedly allowed to practise whatever religion we want..
Crime rate is bearable.
am i in a comfort zone?
am i in denial?

we have thought abt migrating to OZ or NZ or Spore....

but, as much as I want to, I am and always will be an “island son”

maybe we'll move the next generation to another country

i still respect the flag and i still love my country but the people running it is just screwing it up.

i knew snape was a "good guy"....

took me 1 month but i finally finished harry potter and the deathly hallows.

managed to avoid most of the spoiler temptations. and i knew snape was a good guy after all.. we got thrown off the scent when he "killed" dumbledore but it looks like it was planned. good ending.

quite a good read and for me it still ranks no#2 after prizoner of azkaban.

seems JKR is now venturing into crime novels.hmm...... agatha cristie style??we just have to wait and see.

thewife@20wks

thewife is now close to 20weeks which is about 5months.
Her belly is showing already

We had to switch doctors as her gynae recommended we switch to the one at the other hospital where she sees the doc for her ITP.
The new doc charges a helluva lot more $$$$.
The baby is doing fine and the new doc is being more cautious as thewife has ITP and her placenta is low.
So he said “no intercourse”…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Well, what can I say , right?.... (anyway I’m still “bringing it on” for thesife though… )
I’m reading, watching movies and downloading stuff…

we both agree that we did not spend enough time talking to no2inthebelly as we did with theson.
we need to improve on that.

a pinch of regret

Durian season is over and I feel a bit of regret.
Did not eat as much durian as I wanted to.
but, at least I focused on the good stuff.
Only ate the D-24’s and Red prawn variety.
and i definitely ate more than thewife though.

"bear" is "the man"......

Currently following Man vs Wild on discovery channel. They drop this ex-SAS guy, named Bear, into the “wild” and he's got 4 days to find civilization and get saved. Each episode he shows you how to survive in each situation. pretty cool.

so far,
seen him jump into a frozen lake, jump into quicksand, eat grubs/worms raw, bite the head of a small water snake and eat that raw, catch fish and eat that raw.... well, you get the picture...
whatever it takes to survive, he'll show you how to do it.. no matter how gross...

pretty cool like i said..
managed to get theson and thewife hooked on it as well..

he's covered Rocky Mountains, Euro alps, Costa Rica rainforest, Moab desert and sierra Nevada and this week shud be in alaska..

compressed holiday..

Mysis was back last week and it was a real hectic trip for her.... and for me as well.
Was shuttling her from our house to our mums house (~40mins one way) and back, on thusday and Friday and Sunday.. pheeeew….
Couldn’t give her the car as thewife and me working at diff times.
She did manage to bring me 1 dozen donuts from big apple donuts. Very excellent.
She also bought a DIY pink plastic stool from IKEA. (Curse you IKEA for making me work…!!!)
We tried to leave theson with her to babysit on Friday night but he was all against it.

Had a disastrously dinner at Chillis with the family. Had the taco, bbq chicken, chips… bleeh……
Food was so-so, service sucked really, really bad (i waited >10mins and my drink was not refilled and i had to ask to get it topped up,, jeez..)
...and my mum was sick and should have been in bed at home.
At least we went managed to go shopping.

dad and optimus and satellite tv

Mydad called me up earlier asking for directions to the cinema in the new mall near my place. He’s actually riding his bike over here and it would take him around 40mins from where he’s at. He wants to watch transformers. :-) (the cinema nearer to him is not showing it anymore..)
....... and go buy ice cream from swensens to take home.
I suggested to eat dinner with him after the movie but he said he’s going to be leaving for home and buying back dinner for mymum.
Sometimes I wish I have time to go watch a movie with him or go eat lunch/dinner.
:-(

Finally getting my parents and my aunts satellite tv. Just the basic channels with sports and discovery. They main TV antenna in the apartment cant be counted on as everytime there is a storm, the TV goes out and it takes days for the maint guys to fix it.
well, they deserve it..

business trip to spore

i was in spore for a business trip a few weeks back. left the our island tuesday night and left spore thursday night. it was an extremely rushed trip. to make matters worse, i thought the flight was 1845 when it was actually 1805. i found this out at 1700. well, made it to the airport on time and was one of the last people to board. saw thewife's eldest sis on the same flight as well. she was going to spore for a training. Didn’t have time to talk to her though.the flight was ok and the hotel room was nice but i just could not sleep at all.was struggling everynight to fall asleep. was up til 3am on the 1st night.i even got calls from thewife and theson as well. they also could not sleep. i missed them a lot as well.


anyway, as soon as we touched down in spore, my 2 colleagues took me out to have a sri-lankan crab dinner, black pepper style at the east coast seafood centre.the crab was huge and very fresh. the flesh was very juicy and firm and not like the lil critters we have back here. the black pepper sauce was also excellent.i'm amazed that i have been to spore so many times and no one has ever taken me for that kind of crab. well, it was expensive. crab, prawns and asparagus which was $95 for the 3 of us.


woke up early the next day at 7am. Was picked up by a MPV cab and we stopped at another 2 more hotels to pickup another guy and the US folks. It was a 30min cab ride to the subcon office.The running joke was that it was 30min to get anywhere from wherever you were since spore was so small.was in the subcon house by 9am. meeting people, looking at ppt slideshows, getting updates and setting expectations. very hectic and mentally exhausting.


for dinner, we took a cab to the esplanade for another seafood dinner. this time it was chilli Crab, bamboo clams, prawns, stir fry kangkung, satay, fish stuffed eu char kuey & 2 bottles of wine.(note: didnt even touch a drop the wine. the crab was enough damage for me already. i'm already suffering the effects from the crab as I write this but it was all worth it.)Chilli crab was not so nice. The black pepper we had the day before was way much better.our table was directly in front of the merlion statue. i could even see my hotel from where i sat and it was an excellent and beautiful view.


after the crab dinner, we walked back the the hotel. well, i walked “towards” the hotel but detoured into the shopping mall next to the hotel.i looked and assessed. its was 830pm, there are 3 floors of shopping and i have 1.5 hours to walk and shop.so, there shud be enough time right?.. wrong!!spore shops start shutting down at 915pm.i walked into the"John little" and got the avent stuff for baby#2 and the thomas-train stuff for theson. then i sped off to “times” and spotted the 3rd part of the pendergast trilogy. so thats for thewife.mission accomplished.all done in 45mins. couldn’t decide on buying anything for myself though.then i loitered around and in the final closing moments was in a 7-11 to buy chocolates and a coke for later.walked back to the hotel and struggled with sleep til 1am.


woke up early again the next morning and checked out. It was Raining lightly.Had a few more meetings with my counterparts, mostly Filipinos. Hardly saw any Indians or malays actually.Took another cab to the burn-in house at 2pm and finished that tour in 3omin. By this time I was just pooped. Fell asleep in the cab actually. We left the burn in house and went to have a cuppa coffee and some crepes with the US folks before our flight at 1645.was at the airport by 1700. checked in and walked around terminal 2. Called thewife. Bought a bottle of baileys, some chocs for the folks back home and bought myself (finally…) an o’briens sandwich for dinner (which I only ate 3 hours later at home. Regret that I did not buy another sandwich.)Plane landed at 2000 and thewife and theson was there to pick me up. Yay…!!!! And back at home by 2030.


Observations:
Airplane food portions seems to be getting smaller and smaller.
Air stewardesses always seem to have the standard smile that I find so fake. (well, as long as no one bugs me..)
The people in the subcon were very efficient.
the sales people in the spore shopping malls were very polite and helpful.
I cant sleep comfortably away from home.

rejects? i dont think so.

Notice that the American Idol “dropouts” are making much better music than most of the recent winners.
The music of Chris Daughtry and Elliot Yamin are darn pretty good.

i'm currently listening to fergie, akon, rihanna and daughtry, of course.

potter

bought the last installment of harry potter a few Saturdays ago while we going for breakfast.
saw an ad in the papers that tesco was selling it $40 cheaper than the leading bookstores, so we went and got book 7.surprisingly, there was no crowd and we didnt have to wait in a long line.
in and out in 5minutes. just the way i like it.

anyway, we went for a good breakfast at subway after that. thewife had the tuna and i had the meats. then we went home to laze and read. i was still on archers false impressions.

thewife took around 3 days to finish 2 books:-
book of the dead by preston & child
harry potter and the deathly hallows by JKR
i'm amazed.
i dont think i can beat that.
i'll just read slowly like i always do.

I’m currently stuck on HP7 at page150.. cant seem to pick it up. Will try again tonight if I’m awake.Bought somemore new books though. (thewife has run out of stuff to read....)
Innocent man by grisham, contest by matt reilly and the road by mccormack.
Recommended Haroun and the sea of stories by rushdie for thewife to read.
I recall buying that book a long time ago and it was quite good. easy read and interesting eventhough it reads like a book of fables

i'm getting old..............

Sigh, I’m getting old.
Went for a haircut and I noticed that there were a few strands of white hair mixed in with my all-black.
Double sigh…

Been sleeping early quite a lot as well.. falling asleep at 930/1000pm when I’m putting theson to sleep.
Just really exhausted..

i'm home...

Wow, 2 months since my last entry..

Well, my usual excuse… I’ve been busy..
Busy with work, busy with thewife, busy with theson…

And i'm just physically tired... really... i need a vacation....

anyway, i'm back and i'm writing again...