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...

Intrepid travellers

Zurich Airport
Originally uploaded by writerinresidence

Just got back from taking the kiddies on their first trip to Europe - more specifically, three cities in Switzerland,including daytrips to four villages in the alps. Lots of sightseeing, running for trains, and trudging about in snow - all in minus degree weather. And they were about as hardy as we were...troupers on the trip, with hardly any complaints.

Guess it's true that the apples don't fall far from the tree.