Even harder

than the packing itself is the deciding what book you are going to bring along on the trip.

Safe travels everyone, and see you in 2009.

Snippet from a conversation between two old friends at Christmas

"Why are you breathing so heavily? Are you pregnant?"

"Hahahah, you're so funny. I'm touching myself..."

"Hahahahahah..."

"I'm cooking the Christmas meal as I talk to you!"

"Oh...me I'm lying here digesting the Christmas meal."

What is it

about being on just this particular spot on the equator that makes it gray, cloudy and drizzly at Christmas?

Something to look forward to

Every Sunday, when I was growing up, my grandmother's children would bring their families back to her house on Espana Extension, the one with the green grilled gate under the large mango tree. After Sunday mass, we would flock together for at least two meals - lunch and merienda, and in the early days, even dinner. How she fed her clan including yayas and drivers is still a mind-boggling mystery to me. I like to think it was like the five loaves of bread and the three fishes, mixed in with the jugs of wedding wine. There was always, miraculously, more than enough. After lunch, the womenfolk would gather around the table for more conversation. The men would retire to the various corners of the large house for naps or chess. And the children? We cousins would run wild through the house, in the sala, in the porch, upstairs, downstairs, in the garden, in the garage, in Lola's own room even...playing hide-and-seek or ping-pong, climbing trees or exploring, talking, and just..."hanging"...before that word was even invented. Sometimes, we would put on plays. Sometimes, we would just play. And the end of the day would often take us by surprise.

"What? We're going na?"

And we would all think, sometimes even say it out loud. Where did the day go? We were having so much fun.

It's been years since those Sunday reunions, but each and every one of us looks back on those days with fond recollection.

This New Year's Eve, the clan will gather in Baguio City - we are much bigger clan now, with many of us cousins having families of our own. Still, right this very minute, we are all joyfully anticipating this two-day multiple family get-together, even though Lola is long gone, and the old house on Espana extension no longer stands where it used to. We know that for this brief time there will be laughter and reminscing amid the catching up and sharing of stories. We no longer know each other the way we used to, and will likely need some time to get our bearings. Nevertheless, all it will take is for eyes to meet and smiles to spread...and it will be like it was, ever so briefly, all over again. And from where she is, Lola will be laughing, too.

Holy holiday

Christmas is great, of course. I mean, it's the beginning of the whole story. It's got Santa Claus and gifts and Christmas trees, not to mention, my favorite these days, gingerbread and fruit salad. But I've always though Easter is where it's at - you have all that fasting and pain and hardship, and then you have feasting and merriment and joy. But I think the most underrated holiday is New Year's, even though it is clearly the holiday that can and should be the most meaningful for the individual. A new year is a new slate. The jump-off point for new plans, hopes, and resolutions. It is not an overtly religious holiday, and yet the spiritual overtones are comprehensively inherent. In many ways, I think New Year's Day is about personal commitment. It's about that silent determining in your own heart of the way you want to live, what it is you want to do, and how you are going to take things forward so your life has meaning and you are able to create joy - for the reason you are here, for yourself and for those you hold most dear.

The Christmas Lull

There is a frenzy that comes with every Christmas season - the mad malls, the crowded sidewalks and the traffic jams. People out and about, eating, drinking and making merry. But somehow, in Singapore, around the 19th or the 20th of December, the frenzy dissipates and there arrives a little lull. A spot of quiet. A subtle shift that sort of slows everything down and all of a sudden, you can focus on the cool of the morning breeze. You can find a spot to sit on the train. You can even get a table.

It's because about third (or possibly more) of the those who live here for the greater part of the year hie off to do the holidays some place else. Maybe they go home. Maybe they go away. But they don't stay in sunny Singapore. And those who are left here can enjoy a bit of peace and quiet, a bit of hush out of all the rush.

For the past three or four Christmases now, we've chosen to spend our own little family Christmas in this little lull, enjoying the ease of getting a table at our favorite brunch place or of thinner crowds in the parks, churches, and malls - even on our running trails. We make our way about the city and find it blessedly serene...and we say to each other...isn't this nice? Isn't this great? And we sleep in, and we eat well, and we rest up so we can greet the new year with energy and verve, until the third or fourth of January...when everyone returns, and it starts all over again.

More than half full

In the first hour of my birthday, I read on S' blog that her brain scans no longer show tumors. It was a splendid birthday gift...and it dictated the timbre not just of that day but of the entire week. I am happy and excited and feel very strongly that this is the beginning of her healing. This year has brought many unexpected gifts, and I am very grateful for them. I don't care to list all my blessings here; it is not necessary. I know in my heart I have more than I ever expected. Not only is my glass more than half full. It is a rather lovely glass, and I am thankful for it. That I have a glass to fill.

A meditation on faith

I guess a number of things have been bringing this to a head. First and foremost, more than just a couple of rather difficult questions issuing forth from the mouths of babes - specifically my babes. C has been on this topic on and off for a large part of 2008, asking things like, "Is Jesus really real?" , "Is God really real?" He turns 10 in February. As the Christmas season came underway, my K said, "How did Mama Mary give birth to Jesus if she didn't have sex?" These are simple, straightforward questions and worthy of simple, straightforward answers, and yet, such simplicity is nowhere to be found.

Then there was a recent dinner with a friend who out of the blue makes it known to us his doubt, even his non-belief. This, when we were always quite certain that his was as staunch a faith as any.

But perhaps most difficult to accept is the doubt from the people you love. How to confront the incredulity that tumbles out almost unbidden from those nearest and dearest whose opinion, regard and favor you value, above all else.

They ask, how is it that you can believe such and such? How is it that you can go through the charade beyond the guise of tradition, culture and ritual?

Of course, you understand what they mean. You see why they doubt. You know cognitively how they are compelled to say the things they say. You are all too aware of how your faith appears: cowering, naked, and yes, almost naive and even a little foolish. Like believing in fairy tales.

Yet you struggle to gather together the broken pieces of your belief and you just stand there because you have nothing to say. You cannot defend it with words or explanations. You have none, except the sheer, dogged pulsing spirit.

You belief is not a choice, something that you are able to control.

Your faith is a force.

Despite everything, you simply believe, because you cannot not believe.

The absence of faith - anyone's absence of faith, even your own - feels to you a bit like a void. Non-belief feels too much like self-righteousness and arrogance that after all, draws only upon the limits of a single life that is known, lived and led - their own. It is just one life that leads someone to this conclusion, one life that is a mere drop of water in a universal cascade.

But you feel and know with an inexplicably inner feeling and knowing that there is something more. You take comfort in what has existed for hundreds of years before you, and likely for hundreds of years after you are gone. Because it is there. Because of the way it offers truth and hope that speaks in your life. And your faith finds its strong yet wordless reason in the quiet of your own mind, to the beat of your own heart.

Facebook

Someone asked me recently, why aren't you blogging. I only have one answer. Facebook.

Facebook satisfies the blogging impulse and entails minimal effort. For the lone freelancer with no colleagues to socialise with and only kiddie interaction to sustain her, Facebook offers a semblance of adult company. Status reports keep you connected - not just to anyone under the sun but to actual individuals you know. Facebook has the added buzz from eavesdropping - which facebookers can do legitimately, glancing at the wall-to-wall conversations between friends of friends. The beauty of Facebook is that you don't have to be alone with your voice. There is satisfying exchange. There is interaction and your writing? Well, now, your writing can be preserved for the projects that pay.

Why blog, when you can facebook? I recommend it highly and only wish I thought of it myself. Youngest millionaire in the world, indeed. He deserves it.

Oh for Obamarama

All I can say is I am so very very glad.

My friend S

Ever since I discovered that someone I know, a woman I used to work for eight years ago for just four months, had a resurgence of the cancer she had previously battled so succesfully, I have been reading her blog religiously. She is 41. She has a husband, a daughter and a son. The children are under the age of six. And despite a mastectomy, the cancer has returned to her body - her liver, her lungs and her brain.

She is a master blogger - posting every day, Monday through Friday - despite her illness, the various combinations of medication, oxygen tank sessions and chemotherapy, not to mention the journals, recordings and scrapbooks she is preparing for her children, so they will have communication from her after she is gone.

It is possibly one of the most difficult blogs to read due and there are more than a few posts that have brought me to easy tears. S is a humanist in the traditional sense. She believes in the power and the goodness of human beings, but despite being the daughter of Christian pastor, she most emphatically, does not believe in God. God, she says is nice to have, but He is a fairy tale that human beings have created because they are simply not strong enough to accept the truth that life is just that, and when it ends, it ends, and there is nothing more.

I read this blog every day, and even post comments occasionally. I do not make the mistake, as other blog readers have done, of trying to get her to see God. I know her too well. She will not let me get away with that. I worked with the woman as my editor for four straight months, and the work part of it nearly drove me to my wits end. She was and remains incessantly intense in the putting forth of her opinions, demanding explanations in the manner of a human bulldozer. But there would be moments outside of work, when we would talk of my K and C or when we would have lunch, when she would have unexpected softness that would surprise me and win me over, if only for that moment.

I also read her blog to make sure she is alive, to read her impressions and opinions which are less bulldozing on the internet page than if verbalised face to face. I pray for S every day, for her healing and for her peace and for the continually amazing courage of the members of her family. S is one of the most courageous people I know. The fact that she can be like this despite her disease all the while believing in nothing eles but herself is amazing. It is true that death will come to all of us. But S lives with its grim reality every day, like bread and butter at breakfast. More than anyone else, she lives with its certainty and manages with grace and courage to keep it at bay with every passing day.

Yesterday, I read that she will no longer blog five days a week but reduce it to three. She says she can no longer get to it these days...and she apologises to her scores of readers. "You have all the time in the world, but I do not."

Vicky Christina Barcelona and Osbourne Cox

Of late, the truly entertaining, well-written movie has become somewhat scarce for us. But in the last two weeks, the tide has turned in Singapore as both Woody Allen's Vicky Christina Barcelona and the Coen brothers' Burn After Reading are playing at the same time.

As a Woody Allen fanatic, I will say that VCB ranks up there due to its novelty. After Matchpoint, we are now accustomed to a Woody Allen film without a Woody Allen character. But somehow VCB goes beyond that in its exploration of the various ways a woman searches for and responds to love and the idiosyncracies of the romantic relationship. Not since Hannah & Her Sisters has Allen delved so thoroughly into the feminine heart and the mysteries therein, and to such comic effect. Once again, casting director Juliet Taylor triumphed with Spanish actors Javier Bardem as Juan Antonio and Penelope Cruz as Maria Elena, characters that could have deteriorated on the page as mere cliches, but were so thoroughly developed by these artists into complex, flesh and blood beings who actually risk eclipsing the heroines completely. My only quibble, and it is a small one, is the use of the isolated narrator. Voice over is a tool Allen has used for decades, but it is frequently the voice-over of one of the characters of the movie. To my mind, this particular voice over tended to be disruptive and it would have been possible to let the film play out without some of the editorialising exposition, as well-written as it was - (..."and Christina...certain only of what she did not want". As a cheat, I would have made the narrative voice-over either Vicky as one of the more grounded characters or perhaps even the hostess ably portrayed by Patricia Clarkson.

Burn after Reading is not the triumph that Fargo was, in terms of writing, though of course, it has its own delightful ingenuity. But seeing the likes of Pitt and Clooney and McDormand and Malkovich play those pathetic characters was tremendously entertaining - even if the overall darkness of the plot in the end was a bit disturbing and didn't have the affectation of a moral centre that Fargo did. Yet the richness of the characters,their various mishaps and the mayhem that resulted all worked together so beautifully to express a most frightening message of random human stupidity and meaningless cruel chaos in a tragic world in which it is humorously and insistently clear, there is quite simply no justice.

A basketball game

Chalk it up to free tickets from C's basketball coach and to the fact that T and I were sorry to miss the two games that brought Ateneo their recent championship against La Salle. And because C has been such an enthusiastic junior player, we thought it would be good for him to see an exciting live game - the Singapore Slingers against the Purefoods Tender Juicy Giants seemed like the perfect opportunity. Even K was open to the new experience of driving to the stadium to cheer for the Philippine team against the Singapore team.

When we finally arrived, after having grabbed a tide-us-over snacks from Toast Box and Breadtalk, we noticed the masses of Filipinos in queues outside the stadium. For a second, it occured to me that this could have been Araneta or Loyola, for the crowd that had gathered.

"Everyone is Filipino," K observed.
"Filipinos love basketball." T said.
"When the Singapore Slingers fight against another country, then I'll cheer for them. But if they fight against the Philippines, I'll cheer for the Philippines." C said.

But I looked around and thought, with this crowd there would be no one cheering for the Singapore team.

By happenstance, T was able to score tickets from CLSA Asia Pacific Markets - so instead of the run-of-the-mill free tickets we had, we were going to sit in a box with a great view. Naturally, we were all very excited. When we got to our seats,
there was a Singaporean family sitting in our seats, but we showed them our tickets, which were numbered, and then they moved.

As we settled in, it was clear that the Philippine team had it's work cut out for them. This year's batch of Singapore Slingers all averaged six feet compared to the rather puny, ironically named Tender Juicy Giants. Even in the first few minutes, the Slingers took a quick and early lead, making a number of shots from the outside, while the Giants were playing a very physical, inside game. Let it be said now, that there was one Singaporean on the Slinger team and he was tall, and the rest were imports, mostly from Australia and a couple from the US. According to our pamphlet, there was also a Filipino on the Slingers team ("Traitor!" said C).

So there we were, sitting in our CLSA boxed sheets, when it soon became evident to those in the neighboring boxes that our family of four rather vocal fans were cheering for Purefoods. I began to notice that they were all cheering for the Slingers. In truth, about 90 percent of the spectators on all sides were cheering for the Philippines...with the exception of smatterings of Caucasian fans here and there.

One Caucasian lady in the next box looks up as I am shouting my head off, and says, "Excuse me, but does CLSA know you're sitting in their box and cheering for the Philippines?"

"I don't know." I said, shrugging. "Is it a problem."

"Not for me," She said, "But CLSA might have..." She said with a very definite tone.

The nerve, I thought.

But that's when I noticed while my children cheered and clapped and whistled conspicuously in our rather silent box every time Purefoods made a hard earned basket, that on the Slingers jerseys was the CLSA Pacific Markets logo. CLSA was the Singapore Slingers main sponsor! Sound of embarrassed music: Wenk wenk wenk wenk wenk...

In seconds, we hastily evacuated the box and left it for Singapore star Gurmit Singh to occupy, and we're happy to cheer our team in the comfort of the Pinoy crowds, who at the end of the day, took up the entire stadium, reacting to every referee ruling againt Purefoods with hoots and howls and boos. There were even a number of heated moments between the spectators and the officials resulting in items thrown in the air. The announcer had to warn the audience that people would be arrested, if caught.

But in the end, though Purefoods fought long and hard, they couldn't make a permanent dent in the Slingers lead. After all, they were not giants at all, not by a long shot.

Still it was a good game. And a good experience for the kids, who discovered that they were ardent basketball fans, even K who cheered herself hoarse. And though the Slngers did win, it was sad that they had so few supporters to cheer them on.

And at the end of the game, the announcer congratulated the team, and then he congratulated the fans, saying,

"By fans, I mean, the Filipino fans!"

A Tale Of C

A creature like no other, C is the by turns sweet and obliging, and yet also tooth-pullingly stubborn and unyielding. There is many a point when all reasoning is futile. He wants what he wants when he wants it. I think sometimes of how much he is like me, but even then, there are many forces at play in his personality that are simply alien to me.

Take yesterday. After a long, squirmy conversation with his homeroom teacher last week, I vow to stop nagging him, to stop picking up for him, to stop attempting to shepherd him and simply allow him to take responsibility, fend for himself and let the chips fall where they may, at whatever cost.

"Only then," says Mrs. B, "will her realise that his actions have consequences and that his situation is a result of his own choices."

So I pick them up from school, and C looks cleaner than he usually does. He washed his hands at school today, he told me. I praise him for his hygienic practices, knowing that my son thrives on positive affirmation, particularly in the few times that he is not shrewdly able to see through a fake ploy.

When we get home, he announces that he has a bit of homework, but that he also has to sell 10 cancer research tickets. He gets dressed and ready to do that instantly. Meanwhile his sister retires to her room to complete her homework.

"Let's go," he says.
"Where we going?"
"I have to go sell tickets for the Run for Hope."
"OK, let me call around and ask who might be interested."
"No, I don't want to do that. I want to sell them myself."
"How?" I asked.
"Door to door..."

And he proceeds to do exactly that. He rings doorbells and knocks on every door from our house to two streets down, and by dint of sheer bravado, manages to sell all his 10 tickets. Some people bought. Some people turned him down. Nothing fazed him. He just went on and on. I was amazed. I myself was never a shy child, but I am quite sure I wouldn't have been able to what he did with as much grace and game.

When he had finished, we walked home together.

"Wow, C, you did a phenomenal job. I'm truly amazed."
"At my courage?"
"Yes, at your courage..."

Of course, when we get home, he plops himself in front of the television, quite forgetting that he still has math homework. I remind him once and as non-naggingly as I can. He ignores me.

With great reluctance, I allow him to suffer the consequences of his own choices.
He does his homework at 10:30.

What is one to do. So be it.

In the last twelve days

I finished the book.
I moved house.
I got and gave up on the iPhone (this probably merits a separate blog entry, but I don't really feel like it).
I am learning to curb my natural parental nagging tendencies.
Oh and I resumed running, the object being first a 4K with the kiddies, and then another 10K earlier next month. The running has been causing a number of twinges in the knee and ankle area, which I'm told by veteran runners is all just part of the process.

All of a sudden, we're three months away from Christmas.
2008 is in a major rush.

The way things go

It wasn't easy writing this book, so unlike any book I ever dreamt of writing. In fact, it's a book I never thought I would ever write. But once I was done with it, and ready to move on to the next one, I didn't think I would ever have to go back to it. Of course, I did have to go back to it.

Not only go back to it but actually rewrite major parts of it.

That's just the way things go.

At Church

As we were walking out of the church after mass last Sunday, we were greeted by some students from one of the local schools, selling handicrafts for charity. We walked past them...and C says to me, "I thought Jesus didn't want his church to be a marketplace?"

It took a few seconds for me to answer, because Andrew Lloyd Webber's music from Norman Jewison's 1973 film was playing in my head via Ted Neeley screeching in rock and roll, "My temple should be a house of prayer! But you have made it a den of thieves. Get out! Get out!" I knew it was playing in C's head, too.

He went to ask his Dad, who quickly said that the people are selling things for the Church and for charity.

T says to me, "We may have to balance out our theology with less Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber.

The Power of Running

John Irving compared running to writing, and now that I've started running, I'm really starting to see that, and it's amazing and powerful.

Like running, with writing, when you do more, you want to do more. You want to do it everyday. While you're running, you get ideas. While you're writing, you get ideas. You are literally overflowing with ideas, and you feel like you can keep on going. At first, when you start running, it takes you awhile to build stamina. But running is the same.And you can just keep on pushing it and pushing it.

Back in graduate school, my friend Janette ran. She ran every single day - even in the rain and in the snow. As I think about that time which was very fruitful and rewarding, I think I should have been running as well.

It was a great time. It could have been even more so. No matter, it can be that again now.

A Rainy Weekend

For a time, there were all these questions that we didn't have answers to, problems with no solutions. And then, all of a sudden, like rsvp slips to invitations sent out in little envelopes, there were the answers. To be sure, the precise nature of those answers is surprising, satisfying but surprising, and not exactly in the shape or form that was hoped for or requested, but there is no mistaking they are good answers. Ultimately, good answers are of course, no matter how unexpected, are better than no answers.

And now we're at that point when we have to act upon those answers. Preparations need to be made. More plans drawn up based on an entirely new set of circumstances. And for us, specifically, this means another move - and only nine months from the last one.

But before that there were more pressing things. K and C's first piano recital - C played a simple single note variation of "It's a Small World" and "Camptown Races". K did a duet wtih her teacher - "Edelweiss" and "Home on the Range". They both did quite well, especially considering they only had a little more than a week to prepare for the performance.

And then we had lots and lots of rain - so we took a break and enjoyed it. Rain is a great thing - it is cooling and relaxing and easy and wonderful. After the rain, we can start getting things done.

New favourite thing

My breakfast today was scrumptious. Two heaping tablespoons of plain, low-fat yogurt into which I mixed 3 tablespoons raw oats, a handful of blueberries, 1 tablespoon walnuts, 1 tablespoon wheat germ and a teaspoon of honey. Yummy!

On the right reading material

For a few months now, I've been concerned about C's reading material. Not that he doesn't read, he does. But his choice of reading matter, to my mind, leaves much to be desired. It's either these deathly tedious Bionicle novelisations or he re-reads various books in the Harry Potter series.

But I finally weaned him away with a good "boy" book - one I had read myself at roughly that age. I led him to Judy Blume's Tales of A Fourth Grade Nothing, and quicker than even I expected, C was chuckling away at the antics of Fudge and Peter. Needless to say, I was triumphant.

"Judy Blume is 300 percent better than MAD Magazine," I told T. Although C has said he laughs louder at the MAD. Oh well.

Happiness is an empty house in the mornings...

School started last week. The children bounded into our room at 7am, yelling with excitement that this day, so fervently awaited at finally arrived. "School is starting! Hurrah!" They woke us gleefully. They leaped into their school uniforms. To say that they were eager to go back to school was an understatement. And then they had their breakfast.

"Did you hear them? Were you ever like that?" I said to T, my eyes still shut. He muttered under the covers, "They're wierd."

And it continues this week. Even C is docile and obliging about homework. His teacher is pleased. He has had two friends invite themselves over. K's friend has invited her. Both are fairly easy to wake for they don't want to be late ever.

And in the mornings, there is a blessed silence which has allowed me to work.
It's all good.

Jetlag

Sometime in the middle of last night, unable to sleep, I went to get a glass of water and noticed the light under the door of my son's room.

ME: What are you doing up?
C: I think I'm a nocturnal beast...

Once New Yorkers

I like New York in June...how about you? I like a Gershwin tune...how about you?

There was that temping summer, the summer of 1991. We were two students of life (and love) on a break to find work and make some money for the school year - playing house in the cramped quarters of a studio basement apartment on the Upper Westside with a garden view (and sometimes, the legs of the gardener landlord!). I made do with three "work" oufits and took the subway to various points in the city - at one point, the HBO building by Bryant Park, at one point SAKS Fifth Avenue, and for a good month and a half, the ANA office at Rockerfeller Centre. And in between, I wrote stories on a laptop computer and diskettes that we shared and sometimes quarrelled over. There we tasted prociutto for the first time and cherry cheese streudel from Zabar's and mostly window-shopped at Fairway and saw Shakespeare in the Park, and browsed at the now non-existent Shakespeare & Company bookstore. We had slices and hotdogs, dimsum in Chinatown, coffee in Greenwich village after movies at the Angelica, and three-berry pie whereever we could. And we borrowed books from the public library...

The summer ended when we packed our belongings into a U-Haul and made the drive, first to Ohio, then to Michigan. We left in the wee hours of the morning because the landlady said if we left our stuff in the truck overnight, there was a chance it would disappear by morning. And we stole away from the city we had grown to adore, driving in the dark. An hour or so into the journey, somehere in Pennsylvania, we were mystified by massive, towering dark shapes on either side of us. We stopped at a Howard Johnson's for what remained of the night, and in the morning, discovered that the frightening shapes were the Poconos mountains.

And then, there were the years of 1993-1995. We were husband and wife and chose again to make the Upper Westside our home, and found a studio apartment with a loft bed and an eat-in-kitchen two blocks from Central Park. We moved there with the proceeds of a bright red Nissan Sentra, and a whole lot of hope in a very tough job market. I followed the advice of a personnel agency to strike the graduate writing degree off my resume and step up my typing speed so as to be able to for an executive assistant job, instead of a true career-path publishing job which would have paid me very much less. We kept house and saw friends and found a great many not-so-expensive places to eat. I worked at 1 Dag Hammarskjold Plaza and the iconic Flatiron building, and in between, I tried to write.

Here we are, more than 13 years later, about to bring K and C back to the greatest city in the world. We will take them to all the old haunts. We will walk the streets and savour the flavors. And we will happily watch them fall in love with the city - how on earth can they not?

Kiddie recreation

With K and C lying under foot this summer, it is starting to be difficult to get any work done. Apart from their general clatter and clamour, I am also faced with the pressures of other super moms with no freelancing work who hie their spawn off to entertainment spots on the island - Wild, Wild Wet; West Coast Park and the go-carts, the Singapore Science Centre. It's true, there have been piano lessons and basketball, we did a jaunt to the National Museum for the Mozart Exhibit and the Singapore History Show, and managed two playdates, but apart from swimming and scootering, it's been pretty quiet. This is mostly to do with C's minor but still troublesome surgical procedure, which has kept us home. Still, I can't say that I have had that many complaints, perhaps because they are voracious readers. Another testimony to their resourcefulness is they are planning a garage sale for "Kids and Yayas" on Sunday at the function room...

But just as hard as it is to find good reading material for aged 8-11 in this day and age, it is perhaps even tougher to find great viewing material. In this over-aware, hyper-stimulated and still politically correct decade, the flicks of my own childhood do not easily translate. The situation is further complicated by the fact that both K and C have imaginations that work on overdrive - [they're nightly prayer is that they have 'no bad dreams'] - and are highly attuned to even the slightest possibility of being frightened. As such, we moved with success but not without struggle, mind you, through the Jurassic Park series, cushioned with comments like, "Spielberg doesn't allow children to die in his movies." We also went through a few James Bond movies which T and I both found to have slightly too much disturbing erotic imagery for our highly impressionables.

Last night, we went through our DVD collection and after dismissing too many films as being too "bastos for kids, we settled on either Men in Black or Mel Brook's Blazing Saddles - talk about bastos. Unfortunately, K balked at the scary alien faces in MIB, and despite some misgivings, we went in for Blazing Saddles, but not before explaining that some of the language they were going to hear was definitely not for school or their friends.

The verdict? Fart jokes transcend the decades. We are now looking for Silent Movie and Young Frankenstein.

Wisdom from Kung Fu Panda

"The past is history. The future is a mystery. Today is a gift - that's why it's called the present."
-Wu Gui

Conversation

Wife: My highschool classmate's father died. In his sleep.
Husband: How does one die in one's sleep.
Wife: I imagine it's very peaceful.It's like a dream or a nightmare, maybe.
Husband: And you can't wake up. That doesn't sound very peaceful.
Wife: Still, you're dead. No pain.
Husband: It's not good for the people at home, either. It would be kind of a shock.
Wife: It's like a heart attack in your sleep.
Husband: A heart attack in your sleep doesn't sound peaceful at all.

Beat.

Wife: You want to go running right now, don't you?

Odd realisation

Great writers are a dime a dozen. It's great storytellers that are rare. One isn't necessarily the other. A great storyteller who is a mediocre writer is just slightly better than a brilliant writer who tells a poor story.

In the meantime...

there were movies. Iron Man was a more than just your usual comic book hero romp. This is because of Robert Downey Junior who infused his Tony Stark with an iron fist full of real world sardonic wit, as well as smarts. And who knew Gwyneth could channel more heat as a red head?

And then there was the breathlessly and long awaited Sex & The City movie, which was intensely pleasurable, when while it was not without flaw. Its authentic moments surpassed its inauthentic ones which were both tolerable and excusable, at least to those well-acquainted with the characters. Noteworthy too is the "Philippines! Philippines!" moment - a small speaking role essayed by Ms Ching Valdes Aran as Big and Carrie's real estate broker.

Last night, we saw Caspian, which I felt surpassed the first Narnia film, particularly in terms of pacing and characterisation. It is also interesting to note the director's choice to make the Telmars Spanish. Why are they Spanish?

Last on the list is the Indiana Jones fourth...which pretty much everyone has panned. This weekend we will see that but take care to bring in our pockets plenty of managed expectations.

March 23 - June 8, 2008

During this period, I started and finished a book. I'm not sure it's a great book, but it is my first book, such as it is and due recognition must be paid, at least by me.

September 1 is the start date of the next full-length project, working title: "The Real Thing."

In the meantime, I dream the little dreams, note the little notes, plan the little plans and do the prep work.

More novel thoughts

I had been feeling disgruntled and discouraged in the process of writing this book. I treated it like another copywriting job. Big mistake. Because of that, I wasn't as emotionally invested as I should have been. So I chugged along and got it down, but I wasn't enthralled. Enthrallment is a great motivator.

Then came deadline week. And then the word was that I needed to turn this baby in...today. So I came home from a day of tennis, lunch with the ladies and half-a-dozen shopping errands, sat down at my computer and took a look. That's when I discovered that by just changing one thing...in the middle, I was able to heighten and energise the whole thing, and consequently, that inspired a more natural ending, I think. That was kind of neat - that I could just go in and tweak it, goddess-like - and have the whole thing change and get revitalised somehow.

It is by no means perfect. But I feel much better about it than I did. What's more, I know how to go about this process better next time. And there will be a next time, for sure.

For now...at least, I'm happy to say I'm 2000 words short, but I see more clearly what it is I have to make happen. Once that's done...well then, I can go and do the next one.

With a hell of a lot more emotional investment.

I used to think

as a writer, I could write anything.
I was wrong.

Ending Epiphany

I ought to have finished the book three days ago. But it is more difficult than I thought it would be. And the writing goes more slowly the fewer words I have left to spend, if that makes any sense. Am on page 158 and keep backtracking and rewriting and going round and round the same paragraphs, trying to determine the best way to end this. I am now realising why so many of the promising contemporary novels I have read go pretty much to pot from the climax onward, all the way to the end. And that's because it's very hard to pull off a convincing ending. But it has to end...and soon...
People are beginning to breathe down my neck...

Another novel thought

I am at pages 138. I figure I have to start wrapping things up. Perhaps about 60 to 70 pages to go. No more than that.

I also feel that things ought to be coming to a crescendo. And it's a little dismaying that they don't seem to be. Yes, circumstances are playing themselves out. Characters are moving, seem to be growing and they're talking a whole lot. But I am not sensing the kind of urgency that the later pages of a novel ought to be invested with. Am I stuck in a long novel? Qualm qualm qualm.

At Border's yesterday, I looked at the books in my "sector"...and came across only one that was something close to three inches thick ala War & Peace. The others were at a comfortable inch or inch and a half.

But it struck me as self-indulgent. I recall RS from 100 years ago saying to me, thin books don't sell. But still.Unless you're talking about an epic with a cast of thousands like, say War & Peace, I really have difficulty reconciling that kind of length in this kind of sector.

Call me a cynic. But one of the genuine charms of this genre resides in its brevity.

I think.

One more idle Idol thought

Neil Diamond was a fun night and all. But it occurs to me that there are other songwriters that deserve Idol nights. Off the top of my head, what about Kenny Rogers, Billy Joel, Abba, The Carpenters, Michael Jackson, Diane Reeves, Patti Austin. A Patti Austin night would be cool.

Is Idol COOKED?

As in...niluluto in Cook's favour?

Something funny happened on IDOL that made T and I think that maybe the show is pre-arranged. Paula made a boo-boo which cast today's show in a dubious light.

This evening, the final five had two chances to perform. All five sang their first songs, and then the judges were asked to weigh in. Except when Paula was asked to comment on the first contestant, Jason Castro, she commented on the both his songs - even though technically, he hadn't sang yet!

Now by itself,that wouldn't be much grounds for anything. What lent the proceeding even more suspicion was the reaction of both the judges as well as the final five themselves to Paula's blunder. They were tense and poker-faced as though hoping against hope that she would pull it together and recover by herself.

She didn't.

The funny thing was even the contestants looked blank. If I were Jason, it would have shown on my face - "Whaddya mean my second song? I haven't sung it!"

But it didn't show. It didn't show on anyone's faces.

Quickly Simon had to rein things in and jump in with his comments, thus keeping Abdul from giving her (literal) two-cents worth on Archuleta, Brooke White and Sayesha. Phew.

Now what was that about?
Wierd.

I am realising...

that when you write a novel, you live in a fictional world. And when real world work crops up, it is a torturous and frightfully difficult thing to drag yourself out of the world you have created and into the one that you actually exist in physically. The act causes you to experience a sensation that's akin to seasickness or the nausea of pregnancy.

It's interesting the things this is bringing to my surface.

Overwhelmed

In the dawn of this new year, I wished for bounty. Here we are on Month 5, and I continue to be surprised and overwhelmed by everything that has been falling my way. I am realising however that I need to stop being an open basket of possibilities. At a certain point, I need to make choices - accept some things, reject others, and confront what is always my difficulty - trusting my instinct about what I want, what I need, and what is right for me.

This of course means that I must also say no. Saying no is yet another way of doing what is right for me.

Good advice not just for would-be Idols

"I want you to do two things. First, open your eyes. Second, open your eyes."
Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber to David Archuleta

Archuleta says, 'Take That, Cook!'

Who doesn't like David Archuleta? What's not to like after all? He's cute. He's got appeal. He's disarmingly humble. (We should remember all the past idols have been humble, and this may be Cook's Achilles heel).

And no one can deny the Archuleta kid can sing.

But beside David Cook's vocal inventiveness, I had always thought Archuleta was the lesser David. Someone who is talented but at the end of the day, not ready. Not certain enough in the person that he is. Nice, yes. Cute, yes. As good as bubble gum pop or vanilla ice cream. OK...maybe even French vanilla...with a cutesy boyband twist. Nothing like the raw, edgy strength and confident energy that is the foundation of Cook's capable pipes.

But tonight on the Andrew Lloyd Webber show, Archuleta came back. He said, you want inventive? I'll give you inventive.

He sang Think Of Me. Think of me???!!!! WTF! Who would have thought? OK, edgy it was not, but it was new and different and pretty cool. Loved the acoustic sound! And really I think he has transformed a Broadway hit into pure pop for a new generation of listeners who wouldn't have ever heard this song their entire lives if he hadn't sung it. He made it sound like a Stephen Bishop song. Or a Rex Smith song. There were shades of Simply Jessie. Good, it was great. And although it was nice to see a different side of David Cook, his theatrical Music of the Night was solid enough, but it paled in comparison to the novelty of Archuleta's performance. Little David, as ALW called him, is not going to be taken down that easily. Or at least not without a fight. This David is taking on his Goliath. And the song was a clever slingshot.

Other idle Idol observations to nowhere...

*Why is Simon trying to slow the Archuleta tide? I thought his comment was way off.
*I am a fan of Brooke for making the most of what she has and working with her limitations, but come on. You can't mess up twice in the season. First with the restart in the Sting song. And then restarting the orchestra for You Must Love Me. That said, I thought it was a good song choice for her. It was written for Madonna after all...another one who has made the utmost of her vocal limitations.
*I also thought Carly Smithson got a very very unfair advantage. ALW steered her clear off her original choice of All I Ask Of You which would have been a certain disaster and would have gotten her kicked out tomorrow. As it is, she's safe just because she was saved from her song choice. Why didn't he steer my friend Jason off of Memory?

Who's coaching these kids? In Project Runway, you always have that designer guy on hand to steer them clear off bad mistakes. No one's doing that for them on Idol. What the contestants should understand is that Idol is about pop music and the broadway show show is about making a stage hit sound like it's coming through to you on the airwaves, ideally in a hit record.

That said, here are some pop-able ALW songs in no particular order that could have been attempted tonight...

Unexpected Song, Come Back with That Same Look In Your Eyes, as well as Tell Me On A Sunday Please - all from SONG AND DANCE. JESUS CHRIST SUPER STAR's I Don't Know How To Love Him was made pop in the 70s by Helen Reddy, and could have been done again. It would have been interesting to see someone do Simon Zealotes for kicks. Or maybe David Cook could have sung Heaven on My MindPr "Could We Start Again Please." Some of the other new songs written for the movie version of EVITA, also possible as well as Another Suitcase in Another Hall. Barbra Streisand did All I Ask Of You, so it didn't really make it as a pop hit...

Clearly I could go on...but there's been enough idle/idol time.

Another crack me up Castro quote

"I didn't know a cat sang it!"
(about Memory)

New addiction

There is a beautiful outdoor cafe by the river. Nestled in a quiet corner beneath the shadow of a bridge, it sits in the shade of large trees. Sitting there, you feel each and every breeze that comes off that green river and even though there is a roof over your head, you are soaking in the great outdoors even while the free wireless flows your way along with the sunshine. The staff are friendly and nice and don't mind wild cackling or if occasion warrants, impromptu dancing. They serve good coffee with lovely cookies, which I will sometimes succumb to. But most of the time, I will have my iced green tea and me and the swingapore sister will write write write away...and push that word count up up up to the heavyside layer. There it is easy to sink into that meditative, creative state. Just say Eehhhhhmmmmmmmm....

I call it river-writing. Heartfelt thanks to my chicklitclick master for discovering it and showing it to me. It rocks.

Meanings of dreams

When he asked me to marry him, T promised me he would love me, be faithful to me, and always always interpret my dreams. I thought that was very romantic, but I have come to understand why he said that. Very shortly after the wedding he confessed in truth my dreams are pathetically transparent, pose absolutely no challenge and get this, they never did. He said I have what is known as a very literal subconscious - the has no real reason for being because everything in me is right there for all to see, very very close to the surface and ultimately, out there.

Anyway, last night I dreamt that my friends are waiting for me and quickly getting very irritated. I cannot go with them because I have left my bag as well as my watch at the far end of this very long strip of sandy beach. I then try to hurry to get my things but walking quickly in sand is very difficult and slow-moving, and my things get further and further away the more quickly I try to walk. My friends begin to show their aggravation. Some start to laugh at me. I hear them in the distance, and start feeling desperate. I have no idea why I am so slow...like I am in a dream. And then I realise I am dreaming, and I wake up.

T says my dream is about me recognising that right now in my life, I am spacing out and I am realising that if I don't come out of it soon, I know I will face much ridicule even from those who are on my side. Although it may be an easy one, I must say he has always been one for the shrewd and snappy dream interpretation.

The way things work

At the their school, the students sometimes get awarded certificates for jobs done well, good behaviour or some kind of excellence in either academics or conduct. K has received one, and C has received something like five, much to her consternation. Today, he said he got another one for "enthusiasm in DEAR" - translated this means, when it is time to "Drop Everything And Read", C is first in line and last to put the book down. But of course he loves it. For us, his heavy-reading family, this is hardly a mark of excellence.

But C has explained to me how it works...

C: You see, K is a model student, right? And I am...
ME: You are not a bad student...you just need to behave better...
C: Yes, I am average...in behaviour...and so they give me these to inspire me to be even more good. But K is too good... she does not need to be inspired.

What do I do? He is too smart for his own good. Must mention this in next PTA meeting.

Quote for the day

...At the top of his voice, over the backdrop of LOVE SHACK playing at forte...

"Those of you who are new to Body Pump, take it easy. To the regulars, I say... welcome to the PLANET OF PAIN!"

-Andrew, the Body Pump gym instructor

Losing the plot

This expression always used to tickle my funny bone. Now it's not funny at all.

I am at the precipice of page 76 on a novel I need to deliver a draft of by May 1. Which means I have about 130 pages left, more or less. All of a sudden, I'm not sure what to do next. The outline I structured no longer fits and I am now at sea. There are a couple of directions I can take it, but once I take even one step forward, I must be committed as there is no turning back. That commitment is tough to find.

I must first see it...and then make it happen.
Not the other way around.

Brother and sister

Today was a bad day for C.

We went to see the opthalmologist who said that C could no longer play gameboy. He wasn't told to reduce the playing time per session. Nor was he told to play just two days a week. Dr. F said he should stop - full stop - until his eyes stabilised, in about four years. At first I thought C was taking it well. By the time we got to the car, he was weeping inconsolably. After all, a week to a nine-year-old is already an eternity. He simply could not conceive of four years. I tried to comfort him as best I could. I said that every child has something they have to bear. I talked to him about how K can't submerge her head in water when she swims because of her ears, and how she has made the best of it. He can too. We decided that he would give his gameboy away to M's son - a boy who is older, whose eyes are not weak, and who would not normally have access to a gameboy. That seemed to placate him, a little - the fact that there could be some happiness out of his pain. But when he got home, he continued to cry for a good long while.

I let him play one last time as a goodbye.

Now no more. The only thing that cheered him up was the thought that we could buy his favourite Gameboy game on the Wii platform, which our opthalmologist does allow. But still, it was a very tough day.

Driving K home from art camp, I told her about C's troubles. She was flabbergasted.

"Four years! Four years!??" She sighed with genuine sympathy and murmured softly to herself,"Poor C."

When she got home, she said, "I have something to cheer you up, Coby." She handed him one of the canvas paintings she did at art camp - a charming, rather deft picture of a vase of sunflowers against a navy background. I braced myself for a sarcastic comment or an angry, quick-witted retort. But he looked at it for a moment, then said,

"That's really nice, K. Thank you. Mom, can I hang it in my room?"

He brought it to his room, and we looked for a spot it could stay until we could manage to get it hung. He looked at it again, and smiled a little even though his eyes were still swollen and his cheeks still tear-stained.

K had made him feel better.

One thing you can count on...

...when you're in the supermarket and they start playing Peabo Bryson's Nothing's Gonna Change My Love You, at least one supermarket staff member will sing along. Very likely more.

Easter Sunday

Pushing my family to 8:15am Easter mass may have been difficult, but it was certainly worth it. It was also the children's mass which not only made it not just appropriate but actually shorter than the other masses today. The children were led out Pied Piper style to enjoy their liturgy separately from the adults and K and C willingly went, as these days they are wont to do. But when they came returned, K had a face.

"How was it?" I whispered.

"Not great," she whispered back, clearly underwhelmed by the experience.

Then she proceeded to deliver a hilarious impression, complete with accent, of the lady in charge of preaching the children's liturgy...

"Jesus rose from the dead to save us from sin - be quiet and sit down!... and the bunnies give us life because they multiply...Put that down or leave immediately!"

I swear I almost burst out laughing right in the middle of mass.

I guess you had to be there.

Where are all the great Beatles songs?

Christy Cook should have sung From Me To You. Amanda Overmier should have sung Hey Jude. David Archuleta chose well with The Long and Winding Road, but he could have also done The Fool On The Hill or Nowhere Man. Michael John should have sung All You Need Is Love, although I do like A Day In The Life. David Cook chose well with Day Tripper but I guess the judges were right. It was too much like last week. He could have sung Norwegian Wood.

I actually liked Carly, the tatooed Irish chick's choice of Blackbird but she could have also done justice to Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds. Brooke White should have sung Strawberry Fields like Sandy Farina or I Will. Jason Castro should have sung I Get By With A Little Help From My Friends like Peter Frampton did. He kind of has that goofy Peter Frampton quality.

Chikezie should have sung Get Back.
Sayesia was okay with Yesterday but Here, There, Everwhere would have also been a good choice. As for Ramielle Malubay, (who if I may say, doesn't seem to be hungry for this at all), if she really wanted to be upbeat, she should have sung any of the following: All My Loving or I Want To Hold Your Hand or She's Gotta Ticket To Ride or she should have stuck to her strengths with a meaningful ballad like For No One. Why has no one sung For No One?

Why aren't they picking them? I guess because they've never ever heard these songs before. Then again, who's coaching these kids? Why don't they have a Beatles mentor?

What about Nowhere Man? What about Golden Slumbers? What about Strawberry Fields or Penny Lane or You Never Give Me Your Money or my all-time favourite Paperback Writer?

Needless to say, I could go on and on and on.

Funniest IDOL quote for me

"I just found out that Ma belle is French. I thought it was English."
- Jason Castro

Sitting with the Amoy traders

Those who do not know Singapore tend to harbor all sorts of stereotypes about it. Some true, and some, just patently untrue. For instance too many people worry inordinately about chewing gum. Some will dismiss the city state unfairly as being a little on the sleepy side in terms of night life, something that may have been true when we first moved here in 2000, but is quickly changing, even as we speak. Other misconceptions? That it is a city with no sense of history or culture, that there is nothing to do here except shop, go to the zoo and the bird park, and eat. That it is a concrete, urban mall city devoid green.

And of course, that's not true at all. Back in 2002, at the height of SARS, we decided not to set foot in the malls for so long as the disease was at large. Instead we spent our leisure in the city's parks and reservoirs. With K and C just a wee age four and three respectively, we would pack our lunches and get them out in the fresh air, trekking or hanging out at the playgrounds. We would always eat at outdoor restaurants believing (and I still think rightly) that the better the air circulation, the safer we would be. Forget the Botanic Gardens, we traipsed around the nature reserves - Bukit Timah, Bedok, Lower Pierce and McRitchie as well as places like Sungei Buloh. But it was not just the parks. Unlike many cities in Asia, there are little pockets of green in unexpected corners of the city, as well as tiny slices of culture. Like the beautiful sculpture by the massive tree, suspended in mid-air of boys leaping into the river, right behind the Fullerton Hotel, for example.

Yesterday, I found myself arriving at my meeting in a shophouse on Amoy street much too early. And since I couldn't find an open coffee shop or eating house, I decided to sit on park bench and read my book under the trees beside the Amoy traders. Just another lovely sculpture in the city of Singapore.

Hanging in HK

Serendipity is one of my favourite words. M and I been planning this girls' mini-break to see C and her Vs, big and small, for months. It is a great break to enjoy such sustaining connections with two of a very small handful of female friends that I have who are constantly helping me defy, correct and outgrow my personal notions of female friendship, the result of too many imperfect experiences growing up.

It was going to be short but certainly sweet, as it always is. Just three days.

What I did not expect was to see J from the old days. But as fate has it, things worked out, and I was able to carve out some time. At the crack of dawn today, I snuck off to have a lovely breakfast and a very thorough catch up with J, all the while feeling that pleasurable rush of connection. As always, I am pleasantly surprised by how vital these kinds of friendships I have are. Despite not really having much time together, the few times we do get are always nourishing, always rewarding. It is such a satisfaction to talk shop and have our individual opinions, thoughts and insights confirmed by each other's mutual smarts and interpersonal acuity.

I am not the sort of 40-year-old wife and mother of two that builds vast numbers of friendships. So often, there is no time and truth be told, no real inclination. But every now and then, l am handed these tremendous gifts - people who don't need so much of you - just that slice of self I am able to give and it is, blessedly, just enough...and in some ways, even more than sustaining than the friendships I am able to tend to on a more regular basis.

The other gifts of this trip that is in itself already a great gift? Well, a great 55-minute hike up the hills of Hong Kong with C. Tremendous food. A visit (ok I'll be honest, two visits) to the fabulous H&M and HMV. A 15-minute visit to a city chapel and a truly beautiful Lenten prayers for just three HKD$. And finally the most adorable personality of little V.

And me being me, I feel at this point, amid all this blessed bounty, that I yearn to come home and share the largesse with my own T, K and C.

What every mom should hear...

C: "I wish every kid was like me...to have such a nice Mom like you."

[Am I a lucky mother, or what?]

Writing

In graduate school, the goal writers in the program had was to be able to make a living writing. That was the dream. I've achieved it to a certain extent. But there was also another dream - to write great fiction. I've written fiction - even good fiction. But great, full-length fiction? Not quite yet, I don't think.

Now it's time to make another dream come true.

"What would happen if I pricked this balloon...

...and it popped..."

Does anyone remember that priceless Sesame Street animated sketch? I'm finding it very useful as I talk to K and C about conscious decision-making. You know how it goes...

A little girl says in cause and effect steps, "What would happen if I pricked this balloon and it popped. That would scare my sister and she would drop the vase and then tell mother, and my mother would be mad and she would send me to bed without any supper...I would miss the chocolate pie Mother's making for dessert..." And there's this really funny audio "Pop! Whahahahah...Mommy!...tong tong tong tong tong Sally!" And then she ends..."Who wants to pop a nice balloon like this, anyway!"

I have told my kids about this as I come from an impulsive lot and while being impulsive has its joys and advantages, children need to be taught that an impulse is still very much in their control. Clearly, I have also spawned an impulsive lot.

We have been talking to K and C about impulses - about how there is in everyone a set of urges, triggers, knee-jerk reactions in the face of any specific set of circumstances. But as human beings, we must, in many cases, make the conscious act of choosing to follow the impulse or not. This means suspending the action for a moment and becoming aware, asking yourself - 'should I do this or not?'. It means thinking, 'If I do this, what would happen?', 'What would my mommy and daddy say?', 'What are the possible negatives that could happen and is there a chance that these would outwiegh the positives?'

I just wish I could actually show them the clip...maybe it's on YOUTUBE?

New favourite things

-Tennis lessons at night
-Reading non-fiction
-Recreating childhood comfort food
-Facials and massages
-Power walking first thing in the morning
-Doing weights in a class
-Staying home all day and not talking to anyone
-The Sun With Moon salad
-Ginger ale
-My new CD of assorted Woody Allen flick soundtracks
-Chopped cabbage,carrots, and beets mixed with dressed with olive oil and apple cider vinegar (don't knock it till you try it!)
-An apple, a pear, three dried apricots, a nectarine, all chopped up and dressed with lemon, a dollop of honey and grated ginger (ditto!)
-Magic miking after American Idol (a woman can dream, can't she?)
-Turning in early

Realisation

Not having seen any of the Oscar-nominated movies really takes the buzz out of watching the Oscars.

Bitten by the performance bug

Made my way to the school to watch the Arts performances the children put up for Arts' Week. K's class had put up a play about Mother Theresa and she was going to be the narrator. She had to memorise a long speech that included dates.Up until last night, she was worried about not being able to commit it to memory. There was also the fact that she left the speech in school. I suggested she rewrite it from memory on the computer and memorise that - which she did. I did not check up on her or test her or drill her. Whatever it was, she could handle it herself - I just said she should do her best.

And she did.

She was an excellent narrator - speaking slowly and clearly and making eye contact, when she could. Unlike the narrators in the other performances, she had no piece of paper. It was just her and the mike. She did a brilliant job.

Afterwards, she sat in the audience and I went to sit beside her. I hugged her and congratulated her and she hardly reacted. Her hands were cold. It seemed she didn't even see me. Could not even muster a hi for her Mom. In fact, she looked forlorn and woebegone.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

She didn't answer. Just stared straight ahead at the performers onstage.

"What's wrong, tell me." I persisted, feeling anxious.

She was silent. Then she turned to me...

"After play blues" she whispered.

I laughed in relief.

"What am I going to do now?" she said like it was the end of the world.

A star is born.

What's going on

*K and I have started reading Elizabeth Enright's The Saturdays, which I still vividly recall borrowing from the Maria Montessori School Library in Pasay when I was 11. It's a wonderful story about these brothers and sisters who live in a brownstone in New York city in the 1930s. They each only get 50 cents pocket money a week, but they have the idea of pooling all their money together and taking turns to have an independent Saturday afternoon adventure.

*C is doing well in his handwriting therapy. For some reason, his cursive is much more legible than his print. Having therapy after soccer works. He's tired and in the mood to do quiet work.

*After the glory that was Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach, I have allowed myself the guilty pleasure of Hotel Babylon by Anonymous and Imogen Edwards-Jones. It occurs to me if that much pilfering can happen in a luxury hotel, we should not be surprised that it happens in a government.

*Today I returned to hot yoga. This, after I tried (unsuccesfully) to get out of my still a year-to-go membership. It wasn't bad. Today's instructor was a far cry though from the instructors I had in 2005 who delved into the spiritual with their language, while facilitating the physical with their bodies. Today's instructor was all physical. There was no inspiring lecture about the spirit and the mind-body connection, which I sorely missed.

*We are planning for holidays and booking tickets. To my surprise there is a two week break in the last week of March and a gaping eight week hole for the kids in June. Perhaps it is time to go to the US.

*I am in a love-hate relationship with Facebook.

From a distance

After almost a decade of living outside the country in which you grew up, it is very easy to fall completely out of touch with what has been going on. Either that, or you slip into the pattern where recent political events serve merely as touchpoints in amusing cocktail conversations. It is sufficient merely to scan the headlines and
gather just enough of the facts to enable you to go through the motions of a debate that everyone acknowledges to be endless, even pointless. Eventually, you come to that predictably pat conclusion that things are "tough" or "complicated" or "not likely to be resolved in the near future." Living in Singapore, the distance is emotional and psychological and that breadth of space is so much more than the three and a half hours it takes to fly back to Manila.

It makes me wonder what people think...or if they think at all about the recent political problems in the Philippines (as opposed to thinking about those political problems that are not so recent). As a storyteller, I find it fascinating for its plot points - this story about a mouse ( a country mouse, by all accounts) caught in a trap that forces him to let his captors know where the bigger rats are. There are sexcapades in Hong Kong and "personal relations" and bribery at golf clubs, and more...

I am certainly far from the best person to explain what has been going on - for that, turn to The man with the mike under other Planes of Reality - who not only relates the situation more or less but also coolly comments on it, even while his reactive audience toss in their two-peso or two-hundred-peso views for all they're worth. She Rules also has a interesting take, an indictment on what people power has become. And this morning, I received a copy of the homily that was given at yesterday's mass for Lozada. Before reading it, I tried to predict its overall gist, and find I was not far off in my prediction. Once more, there is condemnation and a call to change. But from a distance, it sounds too familiar and unfortunately, rings as hollowly as a derivative pop song especially to someone who came of age during the first people power in 1986. It has made me ponder however. If I were at home now, would I have been at that mass? Very likely. Would I have been at that rally? It is possible. Would I be calling for change? And that is a question, to be sure.

Those in or out of the country who refuse to get drawn in, those who throw up their hands in exasperation or remain silent because they can propose no strategy or solution for what happens next, I feel give themeselves a convenient excuse. They say, it's a mess. What's the alternative? Who will take over? Corruption, especially excessive corruption, may make you feel outrage, but how can throwing out the regime be the plan, if the system itself is corrupt? How do we know that this won't happen again? And how are you sure that these tides of change the people are calling for won't be surfed upon or used and subverted by similarly corrupt elements?

All valid, to be sure, but these arguments ought not blind people from seeing the truth and condemning the wrong. It is very wrong. At the very least, shouldn't we be able to do that...condemn the wrong and uphold the truth?

Not to do so seems to me, to be just the same as saying, "It's complicated..." and letting those words trail off in silence. Some of us will refrain from taking a stance and leave it at that because we are fortunate enough to be in a position to do so, and from a distance to boot.

Mad wives

Every now and then, you get a chance to revive some long lost skill - it could be writing or scrapbooking or gardening or cooking. It might be badminton. Or tennis. But whatever it is, may you be so fortunate as to be able to find a small group of people who are already doing it. May they be vastly different from you in as many different ways as possible because difference spells excitement. May they have a measure of maturity as well as a measure of kindness, or at least sympathy. May they be funny and interesting and spirited in their achievements. They might be crazy but they are in a good way. They might hold this skill as important beyond all else or perhaps not that important in the larger scheme of things, but at least for that hour or morning or section of time, they focus and concentrate and the practice of that skill, whatever it is, is all that matters.

And may they accept your need and welcome you with open arms as I have been by my MWF mad wives...

Forgot to say

it was a happy valentine's day - an evening best spent at home with those you love - and if you're luck - great gifts!

More about reading

Growing up, I considered myself very fortunate to have at my relative disposal, the extensive girlhood library of my mother and her three sisters, assiduously maintained by my Tita G on the dark wood shelves in my grandmother's house on Espana extension. My Lola, so I've been told, would buy books by the boxful from school libraries and take them up to Baguio for her children's summer reading. (Something always struck me as wrong about that - why were libraries selling their books?). The books were like no books you can find today - Grosset & Dunlap editions of various series' - Nancy Drew, The Bobbsey Twins, The Dana Girls, Honey Bunch, and various one-off titles like Nobody's Girl and Understood Betsy and Family Shoes.

I recall spending Sunday afternoons among the dusty, yellowed volumes along with my cousins, trying to decide what I would "borrow" for the week. Sometimes, Tita G, who seemed to know her shelves like the back of her hand, would make a recommendation, sometimes she would leave us to our own devices. One of her most fervent recommendations was the Maida series.

She had three volumes in a dark blue green hardcover. Maida's Little Shop, Maida's Little House and Maida's Little School.

Despite their coy, cutesy titles, the novels were rich, graceful narrations about children who, it is very likely, no longer exist in this world. And that first story of the lonely little invalid rich girl, the daughter of a Wallstreet maverick, who decides that what will make her happy would be to keep a little shop and befriends the children of the town has lingered in my mind, even now that I am 40, as I am certain it lingers in Tita G's mind.

When it became evident that our K loved reading, we started doing what my cousins and I would do as girls led back then by Tita G. We started book hunts. What I found, however, was that many of today's books for girls, even little girls exhibit a certain precociousness and preciousness that I found myself resisting. I was uneasy about the inclusion of brands in the plots, the overly flippant, overly matter-of-fact characters and their excessively easy and accessible language. I also resented some of the characters themselves - seeming to be almost like imitations of characters on television. And I wanted K to experience the pleasures of rich, complex sentences. I wanted her to read about children who did not watch tv or play video games when they were bored. In fact, I wanted her to read about children who didn't get bored - whether it was because they worked or because they had so many activities of their own making, they had no time to be bored. I wanted her to learn about children who chose to be good, to be just, to be kind, to be generous not because it is right to be these things, but because these were the kind of children they were. So I thought back to the books I loved as a girl - and I remembered the Maida series.

We had already found reissues of Understood Betsy but Maida was more difficult to come by. Finally, I found it on Amazon under the imprint Biblio Bazaar, it was a 2007 reissue of a 1909 book. A month ago, we read it together, chapter by chapter. I would not let her go off and finish it by herself. I wanted us to savour it together. It still reads like a dream.

Now she has gone back to rereading Harry Potter and Anne of Green Gables, but I have already ordered Maida's Little House. I am also in the process of buying Maida's Little School second-hand. Perhaps it might even be that old grosset and dunlap edition that Tita G has. And we wait till we can once again escape into that lush, charming, innocent yet wise world of children who are able to spend their days occupied by nothing more than the green nature that surrounded them as well as the fertile fields of their own imagination.

First Sunday of Lent

The kids were especially good in mass today. Even C. Maybe it was the readings. The first reading in which the serpent tempts the woman and she succumbs - aren't children always fascinated by that? And then the gospel where the Devil tempts Jesus in the desert. C seemed absolutely rapt with attention. And then there was the music. Great songs were sung by the 12noon choir, one after another, in waves of comforting melody. The last song You are Mine by David Haas, always moves me. Today, it seemed that the children were also, similarly moved.

After all, who wouldn't be moved by the verse that reads, "Do not be afraid, I am with you. I have called you each by name. Come and follow me. I will bring you home. I love you and you are mine."

K's voice was soaring and while C didn't sing, he read every verse along with the music, quietly and it seemed to me, reflectively. I have to confess seeing him like that sent a joyful thrill down my spine.

After mass, he leaned toward me and whispered, "Mom...that last song..."
"Yes?" I half-said, half-asked, waiting for what, I don't know.

Some kind of insight? A thoughtful epiphany straight from the innocence of a child's heart?

"That last song...
...It sounded like the song sung by Kermit the Frog."

I must not complain

when a job that was supposed to last a week, lasts two. I should be thankful instead that I can make a living in this manner, fairly easy enough. And it's not like I missed a huge lunar new year family reunion the way the graphic designers did. Nor did I keep excessively late hours. But yes, I am glad it is finished. I am glad to have a free week to look forward to and that tomorrow, I can have a massage. I am thanful and I am grateful. It is all good.

All of a sudden...

both my children are at ages that I clearly remember myself being. It has been giving me long and drawn out moments of disquiet, which I guess is to be expected at the age of 40.

For K's 10th birthday, she had two school friends over one Saturday. She had us make special strawberry smoothies to serve by the pool. Afterwards, they sat talking, listening to CDs and giving each other French manicures.

French manicures.

Today, C turned 9. Today, the second day of the lunar new year of the rat. It was auspicious.

Nine.

We celebrated as a family and took both kids to the Forest Adventure course in Bedok. It was a beautiful morning, sunny but cool and breezy, and the park by the reservoir was invitingly green everywhere you looked. The Adventure course cost 1M to build, so its website claims. They strung a series of rope obstacles high above the ground, each one connecting two huge trees in a grove, so children could make their way, while safely chained to cables and do a triumphant finish on a flying fox to the ground. C was very game, lithe and sure-footed as a goat, with a very strange fearlessness...as though there was absolutely nothing wrong with being up that high, walking tightropes from tree to tree. K, unfortunately, backed out pretty much at the get-set go and was in tears more due to the embarrassment and humiliation of the experience rather than any actual discomfort. Poor thing. I could relate.

Afterwards we drove back to Holland Village for a Mexican lunch at El Patio and then shopping for what is ultimately a joint birthday present to both - a wii. Back at home, there was a Spongebob sponge Cake(ha) with chocolate frosting and 9 candles. There was also a screening of Singing in the Rain which the birthday boy opted out of. Dinner was late - Black pepper crab, steamed shrimp and fried noodles and the tossing of good fortune Chinese New Year salad.

All in all, it was a good day. C's actual celebration takes place next week - a combat skirmish involving 15 boys and laser guns.

Laser guns.

I saw Singing in the Rain when I was ten.

Nothing like the wisdom of a child

"Being an older sister is like being an amatuer parent, except you don't have the job and the bills."
-K

Less than ideal circumstances

I had not planned on working at all through the Chinese New Year break, let alone this intensively. But as this is how things fell, I am making the best of it. Apart from CNY, there's also C's birthday to see to. The hope is I will be able to clear everything from my plate by midnight later this evening to be free to do fun, outdoor activities tomorrow. The other hope is that said food and entertainment establishments are open. We shall see.

It occurs to me to reflect that while much is made of the flexibility of the freelance life, there remains something to be said for leaving your work at the office.

At last a movie in an actual theatre

After nearly six days of working 12 hours each, I finally allowed myself a movie with T, just because we hadn't seen one in two months. This, after a steady diet of boxed TV series rented from the nieghborhood store, including Aaron Sorkin's now defunct Sports Night (which is actually pretty good), JJ Abrams' Felicity and one night riveted to Notes on A Scandal - a film you don't think you want to see, but when you finally do, you're glad you did.

Unfortunately, I lost the coin toss, and instead of Atonement, we saw Cloverfield. Fortunately, it was pretty good.

Sudden memory that made me laugh out loud

It's funny what pops into your head when you're madly trying to meet a writing deadline. At around five o'clock this afternoon, I remembered the Christmas party we had thrown for the yayas last December. Before the games and festivities, all the guests-of-honour were asked to introduce themselves, say how long they've been working in Singapore, and tell something funny about their job, where they work or their amo (employer).

When our own M gets her turn, she says with a straight face but smiling eyes, "Ako si M, seven years na ako dito..."

(beat)

"Walang nakakatawa sa bahay ng amo ko."

[Translation: "I am M, I've been here 7 years. There is nothing funny about my employer's house."

A little girl

just turned 10 can still wail like a three-year-old if circumstances conspire against her. Which unfortunately, they did today for K, when she lost her first mobile phone.

You wouldn't think so

but picking up a badminton racquet and playing a game after a year and a half of not playing is much more difficult than picking a tennis racquet for the first time and playing...

Not that I was actually playing tennis.

What is going on?

Remember how the new year is a new born baby and the old year is a doddering old man? Not 2007. 2007 was a herculean in strength, a marathon runner making split second time. But forget 2007, where is 2008 flying off to? This little babe is running clear across the tracks, and his chubby legs are surprisingly fleet. Why such a hectic, frenetic pace? Where are you rushing off to, baby? Didn't we just finish Christmas? But now it's Chinese New Year, and immediately after that Lent. And then the first quarter will be over and done with.

It's getting to feel like there is no time to do the things I need to do. Scratch that.
I am doing all the things I want to do and need to do in 2008, and so much more, no matter how fast it's going.

Sharing Shakespeare Tales

Wild tales are essential reading, the stimulus of a developing imagination, a resource in the tedium of day-to-day existence, sparking lasting pleasure and keeping alive the crucial capacity to daydream."
- Charles Lamb, 1802

I ran into the greatest thing while I was shopping for Christmas gifts over the holidays, Tales from Shakespeare, a very old book by Charles & Mary Lamb, [an extraordinary brother and sister team - whose exploits actually deserve a separate entry]. As it always happens when I go shopping, I ended up buying this for the kids. It was days before our trip to Switzerland, and somehow, I had a vision of us reading Shakespeare and sipping hot chocolate in a log cabin while snow fell onto a gentle blanket outside.

Due to the fact that the Lauterbrunnen flat had not only cable but wireless, this did not happen as easily as I had hoped. Spongebob Squarepants, even in German, proved a mighty rival to the kiddies' attention, and the fact thaTt T and I had our own tomes in tow (Anne Enright's The Gathering and T's The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman by Louis de Bernieres). Still, we managed to wheedle them away with promises of great action and drama in MacBeth, which both K and C enjoyed much more than I thought they would.

I had fully intended to continue our family forays into these wild tales as Charles Lamb calls them, once we got home, but discovered, much to my dismay, that the already beloved book was nowhere to be found.

"You must have left it at the house in Lauterbrunnen," says K placidly. I was disappointed, naturally. It had been a 10$ Puffin edition with a bright, green child-pleasing colour.

Last week, I went back to that particular bookstore in Plaza Singapura to re-purchase the book, and found they had run out of the ten dollar edition. What they did have was a rather adult Penguin edition for a formidable 21 dollars. The cover was dark, both in colour and in tone due to a rather frightening artistic rendition of MacBeth, which I knew would disturb my children's sensitive sensibilities. But I bought it, nonetheless. We now plan to follow MacBeth up with Romeo and Juliet. T would have liked to do Julius Ceasar, recalling his own youthful foray under the guidance of the beloved teacher Pagsi, but for some strange reason, the Lambs did not choose to retell this particular one.

I wonder rather nigglingly though whether it matters that my children will not be starting with Shakespeare itself, rather with these retellings, but am reassured both by my own experience and by the Lambs themselves.

After all, the first I ever knew of Shakespeare was through the plays I saw as a child with my parents - in Rolando Tinio's Teatro Pilipino in CCP's Little Theatre in Manila in the 70s. I have a vivid memory of my Tita Ella as Lady MacBeth. These productions were my first experience of Shakespeare, my stepping stones, and they were Tagalog translation.

Charles Lamb says in his preface, these retellings are intended as stepping stones to the plays themselves, but the stories themselves have powerful "ethical effect." And in whatever form, they are to be "enrichers of the fancy, strengtheners of virtue, a withdrawing from all selfish and mercenary thoughts, a lesson of all sweet and honourable thoughts and actions, to teach (you) courtesy, benignity, gernosity, humanity, for of examples, teaching these virtues, Shakespeare's pages are full." It's hard to argue with that.

I am reminded of mine and the Quintosian all-time favourite novel, A Tree Grows In Brooklyn, where the heroine, Francie's mother, Katie is advised to read to her children from infancy every day without fail, two pages a day each from the two best books in the world - the Bible and the plays of Shakespeare. By the end of the book, Francie and her brother Neely make it to college. Neely who doesn't even want to go to college, finds they are doing Julius Ceasar in his freshman english class and he knows it "backwards, forwards and upside down."

And I don't wonder that this isn't what led me to the idea of reading the kids Shakespeare in the first place.

It's Funny...

the thoughts that occur to you when you find yourself doing something you've only read about or seen in the movies. Adjusting my winter hat so that it would look nice yet still cover my ears and warm most of my head, it occured to me to wonder whether I could ever possibly look as beguiling as Ali McGraw in her winter hat in the movie Love Story.

40 is the best time to see

The Way We Were. I think so, anyway. How is it possible that I had never seen this tremendous movie until now? It's mind boggling. Faced with a very broad array of film options the day we flew out of Zurich, I knew that the trick would be making the right decision. I had twelve hours during which I would not be able to sleep - and none of the current hits appealed. But then I saw it and I knew, this was the right time and the right place for this particular movie great by Sidney Pollack starring Robert Redford who looks uncannily like Brad Pitt, and Barbra Streisand in all her unconventional gorgeousness looking like no one else but the luscious goddess that she was, is and always will be. Five minutes into it, and I knew, it was not just my type of movie - it was my movie. How I had gone so long without having ever seen it?

And yet I feel certain that I would not have understood it and appreciated it as much as I have been able to do so now.

So afterwards, after Robert Redford says, "See Ya Katie," and the strains of Memories start to soar, I sigh and wipe my tears and blow my nose and think...what shall I see next?

And that's when I find Funny Girl.

Hello Gorgeous!

I must have been Jewish in a previous life.

The inventiveness of a child

There is a kind of creativity that belongs solely to children. It is deft and exact in its perfection. I never fail to be amazed when I am confronted with this kind of inventiveness and yes, I must say with more than a measure of pride, it never ceases to amaze me how inventive my children are.

Fairly quickly into their first experience of snow this past holiday in Switzerland, K and C discovered, much to their dismay, that it was not all that easy to make a snowman. More to the point, it was nowhere as easy as their favourite comic strip snowman and snowball-building characters Calvin (& Hobbes) or Charlie Brown (Peanuts)had led them to believe. The snow on Pilatus mountain was feathery fine and would not scrunch. The snow on Tetlis was in large hard chunks. And on Mt. Rigi, the snow was ice.

But the backyard behind the house in which we stayed in the alpine village of Lauterbrunnen offered a generous expanse of knee-high snow that seemed altogether different. Maybe it was because this snow got more sunshine, I don't know. The children were thrilled. The day we arrived there, they insisted we simply stay home and veg and play in the snow. And that's what we did.

As they began attempts to construct their first snowman - K and C honed in a certain kind of texture of snow without which a snowman would be impossible to create.

"It's just a bit wet but not a bit melted," K explained to me. "It's called 'Core'" she said with utter seriousnes.

"Core?" I repeated.

"Yes, that's what I call it... Core"

K and C found sheets of "core" resting on dashboards of cars in the parking lot and lumps of it on the branches of the surrounding pine trees. They found it aplenty and hauled it in to our chosen snowman spot.

"Get the core; get the core!" They called to each other, unmindful of the blocks of ice that would occasionally fall with a crash from the nearby mountain falls. And whenever they found a supply of fresh core, say on the steps by the front door or by the fence - they squealed with excitement and delight. "It's core! It's core!"

And sure enough, "core" was the perfect texture for molding a snowman with a firm foundation - just as K had said.

As the one in charge of smoothing down and patting the snowman's curves for her strong and erect foundation (we named her Roxy), I too soon started calling for them to bring me more "core."

What can I say? Core was precisely what it was.

My first glimpse of holly

 

After years in my youth of drawing holly leaves and red berries copied off of yuletide images seen and remembered for countless homemade Christmas cards, I experienced a small but definite thrill of joy when I saw actual holly for the first time - the plant, the tree, the leaves, the berries.

How wonderful to all of a sudden know with certainty that this really really is what it looks like and that I had been drawing the right thing...

C the Eskimo

A ball in the snow
Originally uploaded by writerinresidence

Scene from Winter Wonderland

Kaylee on Sled
Originally uploaded by writerinresidence

Swiss Family C - 2008

Family
Originally uploaded by writerinresidence

The holiday's eight days were each and all more than ably planned by our own personal travel expert T - such that we had a taste of city delights, and to paraphrase the Osmonds, a little bit country, a little bit rock and roll, and a lot of death-defying rides in cable cars and alpine mountain trains.

We flew into Zurich and hopped on the train for Lucerne - just 40 minutes away. That first day, we did a walking tour of the city, feeding the swans and mallards on the lake, and crossing the old bridge across the river, seeing the lion monument and climbing a hill to a castle that offered amazing views of the lake, the picturesque city and its breathtaking snow-capped alps.There we spent three nights, taking day trips to the mountains - Engleberg for Tetlis - an awesome 3000m above c-level and even a lake cruise to Viznau so we could climb Mt. Rigi. Day 4, we transferred to the tiny town of Lauterbrunnen via Interlacken. T found a very well-priced flat just next to glacial falls. There we spent another three nights - including new year's eve - and went up to the alpine villages of Murren and Wengen. At Murren, we even went all the way up to the peak of Mt. Schilthorn for spectacular views of the trio of alps - Monch, Eiger and Jungfrau. On January 2, we ran for the trains for a day trip in the beautiful medieval town of Bern to see two bear mascots in the pits, finally ending up once more in Zurich and catching our flight home at noon on the 3rd. In all, three cities and four mountain villages.

The other good thing was being stress - (strasse!) free with no driving at all. As T rightly pointed out, the Swiss train system is excellent - clean, well kept and run frighteningly on the dot. And as we packed with consummate skill (just one roller and one backpack each), moving from spot to spot was fairly easy, giving us only the very slightest difficulty.

Apart from all those alps, these were the high points, pun intended: there was a terrific sled ride on Mount Pilatus, a terrifyingly treacherous sled ride down the slopes of Tetlis' surrounding hills all the way down to the town of Engleberg, during which we actually opted to park the kids' sleds and take one each on ours. Finally, there was a nicely manageable ride down from the Allmend hills to the village Wengen. There were also the real pleasures of a lake cruise and a hardy snow mountain hike - in particular the 55 minute jaunt down Mt Rigi.

Now, it's onto the next adventure of the new year...