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.