My daughter, the savvy fashion shopper

Sunday night inside a fitting room at Bebe in Vivo City...

ME: Does your Dad know you're with me.
K: Yes, I told him I was going to go to you. He said, 'You're going to Beh Beh,' - (Laughs). He doesn't know it's Beebe
(I laugh and try on a dress that's 70% off)

ME: Well?
K: I like it, but how much is it.
ME: It's $XX...
K: (shocked) What?!>!
ME: (sheepishly) But it used to be $XXX!
K: Hmmm, but how do you know they're not just saying that it used to be $XXX?

[Beat in which I think about this]

ME: Because they're not allowed to do that.
K: But what if it's just marketing?

[Beat in which I think about this]

ME: The first question is does it look good.
K: (Looks at me thoughtfully] It looks good.
ME: OK then. It's 70% off and it fts and it looks good and I need a Christmas dress...
K: It's your money...

My nine-year-old daughter walks away. I pause in the fitting room, wondering if it really is Beebe as I have no idea...

Mom & Son Run

We awoke early this Sunday to bond and run as only a mother and son can. Since I got a new pedometer, I gave him my old one. And that gadget was enough to get him excited about the exercise. woke him at 7:30, and we hit the road, walking over to the connector park by the creek, five minutes away.

The day was cool and bright and lots of people were out, which surprised me, considering it was Sunday. It was green and breezy and we managed to spot a number of colourful birds - one was blue with an orange bill, and there were a couple of cranes. "This is nice," my son murmured as though to himself.

At first, C was reluctant to do more than walk. "I can't run," he said, "I get tired..." So we broke it up into manageable bites. I told him, "Let's just sprint for 10 counts, and then walk, and then sprint again for ten..." He was amenable, and by the time we reached the end, we were running for 15 counts. We also managed three sets of 10 squats. He clocked in 5780 steps - about 3.5 km - 40 minutes of walking. I was very proud of him and he was very proud of himself. So much so that he's game to do it again tomorrow...

What can happen at 40

I'll admit, I was up late last night working and didn't turn in till 2am, so it could be that, too. But I awoke easy and fresh as a daisy to my daughter's bday greeting and a number of sms messages wishing me a happy day. Needless to say, I had to drag a greeting out of C - he who tried three times before he got it right (Goodmorning, Mama, I love you Mama, oh...Happy Birthday Mama). After doing the suburban wife thing and dropping T off at the train, I popped over to M's house where she made me her own version of the Popover Cafe breakfast and we hung out till eleven.

Drove back home to change as T was taking me to lunch. Decided on a white blouse and proceeded to have a rather happy afternoon - a festive birthday lunch, Christmas shopping on Orchard Road, various errands and coffee with a friend outside Borders Bookshop. Last but most important thing on the agenda before dinner out with the kids was to attend 6pm birthday mass at St. Ignatius. I was even early. When I knelt down on the pew before communion, I happened to look down at myself and noticed something odd with my sleeves, in fact, with my entire top.

All of a sudden, the blood rushed to my head and I was flushed with the most embarrassing realisation. Pretty much the entire afternoon, I had been wearing my nifty white blouse - inside out.

This does not bode well...but it was a happy day, anyway...

I've learned my lesson...or have I?

Three weeks. A total of 46 periods.
And now it's over, and I have learned that teaching just isn't my thing.

The other day, an administrator from a business school asked me if I would be interested in teaching Business Communications. "This would be different," he said. "Your students won't be in high school. They'll be motivated adults. And it would be just one class a week."

Hmmmm.

Not so kiddie observation

Upon hearing Carly Simon's You're so Vain for the first time, K pipes up from the backseat:

"This is a dumb song. Of course, the song is about him - she's singing to him!"

Speaking of which, K also proved her pipes and got selected to be part of the Singapore Children's Choir. Her audition piece was "Happiness" from You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown

From the canteen uncle

As I was buying my daily bottle of green tea, I fell into conversation with the canteen uncle. He asked me how I was doing. I told him.

"You know I was a teacher, also. In 1962. They paid me $350 a month. I gave up after three months."

Lessons at School

I accepted a spot of school relief teaching, substituting as instructor for as yet, unhired English teachers. There is a 7th grade class of Japanese and Korean non-English speakers reading 2nd grade English. There is a 9th grade class whose members shuffle in to the classroom but whose eyes glaze over at my every utterance. And there is an angry eleventh grade class who insist on delving into their own irrelevant opinions when they are asked specific questions about an assigned text that they have not really paid attention to. It is thankless and exhausting work, and while I am able to do it, every fibre of my being reacts against it.

It is fitting also that during this period, what is is playing in my DVD player are episodes from Seasons 1 and 2 of Beverly Hills 90210.

It will be over soon.

Easy like Sunday morning - not!

After a late 3am night, we roused ourselves early as we needed to have the kids at the church for the Christmas pageant rehearsal. Trust K and C to actually want to be in the church Christmas pageant.

Unfortunately, even after more than three reminders and a goodly number of threats, C was being stubborn and moving on his own personal time. So what did we do? We left him. And when he realised it, he wailed at the top of his lungs loud and long - and we heard it in the lift on our way down, and even when we landed. In fact, a number of neighbors looked up wondering what was going on. Big sis K took pity on her brother and rode back up to pick him up.

He whimpered throughout the car ride. And in unspoken agreeement that I suppose comes with 15 years, T and I spent the trip talking as though he wasn't there, relating anecdotes about all the people we know who were left behind - on vacations, at school, etc...just because.

These are the lessons that have to be taught.

-o-

For the first time, we had ourselves a spot of brunch at Jones Grocers in the new, hip complex on Dempsey Road, enjoying eggs and sour dough toast alongside our chosen sides of bacon, sausage and sauteed mushrooms. To drink, we had fresh apple juice, iced chocolate for the kids and flat whites for us. Couldn't resist the grocery and bought German salami, Australian back bacon and a loaf of the sour dough. Unbeknownst to me, T also got us a batch of rocky road marshmallow nougat. I resisted the temptation to make purchases from "the largest fromagerie in Singapore" - as we just stocked our cheese section the day prior. But the whole time, I kept thinking about how this kind of approximated our long ago forays at Zabar's and that fateful day in 1991 when I first tasted prociutto and cherry cheese struedel.

-o-

The other high point was dropping in at the Red Sea Gallery next door and finding a gathering of large and beautiful Dao Hai Phongs - my absolute favourite Vietnamese painter. While I was disappointed to learn that he had actually had an exhibition there in September and I missed it (goodness knows my head was buried in work), I was happy to pick up the book so now, I have it to go alongside my "New Town"...

What can I say; it made me very happy.

Making a good home

As we are going through the stress and mayhem of setting up a new household in new premises, this idea keeps running through my mind; the idea and the way the idea is most often associated with being an exemplary woman. An exemplary woman is a nurturing wife and mother who makes a good home for her family.

I know many exemplary women in this way. But I do not see myself as one of them - not in this particular way. Nevertheless, I believe I do "make a good home" for my family. I am not Martha Stewart or Nate Berkus. I am not a domestic goddess. I don't know my carpets from my drapes, but I know what I like when I see it. I do not have all the right kitchen cutlery or flatware, but I know my way around a kitchen and can devise pretty good eats when I choose. I am not obsessive about the house and its accessories - but I do enjoy my home. Is it possible then to make a good home, without actually making a good home? I like to think so.

- o -

The lights guys came yesterday, and we were talking about changing the fixtures. We wanted to change our living and dining room lights to energy saving, but we were told we couldn't with the existing mechanism.

"You can, but you have to call the company in to reprogramme the light switches. But then you'd have to kill the dimmer function, which many people like. It's good for setting a scene..."

I told him. "I don't need a dimmer to set a scene. I can make scenes without it..."

What's happening in the village

Is it me, or have prices gone up at Holland Village?

Last night, we popped in for a Mexican dinner and ice cream only to find that our long-ago favourite Chachacha was serving dishes that were significantly reduced in size, almost by a third, T and I estimated. Plus, gone were the generous sidings of salad, refried beans and salsa that usually accompanied each entree. The food was still of acceptable quality though it was hard to focus on that because the service was definitely spotty in places. We were disappointed as it had always been a family haunt. I guess it's true; you can't go home again.

For dessert, we braved a new ice cream spot - COLD ROCK - which essentially involves you paying somebody to painstakingly smush various toppings into two scoops of ice cream - at a hefty dollar per topping. That racks up to about 5 dollars for the smallest "kiddie" serving, and includes only one topping. In my case, as I chose peanut M&Ms;I got exactly eight.

Sigh.

When we tell K that it's her bedtime...

...and she hasn't yet done all she wants to do, or perhaps she still feels there is more that she wants to do, though she doesn't quite know what, she says:

"What? But I don't feel fulfilled yet!"

How early the search begins...

Make sure this is not you

Someone who looks in the mirror and sees the person that she never ever wanted to be.

Let the chorva begin

I am inspired. Thanks to the swingiest sister in town, I have the push I need to do what it is I am certain I am meant to do for the rest of my life.

Idea for fiction

There's absolutely nothing wrong with a man having madonna-whore complex, for so long as he is able to find a woman who is perfectly happy being a madonna and would never deign to be a whore. There are, after all, such women.

Is it reasonable to believe a well-adjusted man with the madonna-whore complex would recognise that his whoring days are over and be quite able to live all his days making chaste and honourable love to his pristine princess?

Finding Halloween

K and C are big fans and I'm not sure how they got hooked on it so intensely. They are a distant cry, it seems to me, from D, M and E who decided this year that they would sit Halloween out and just go out and buy their favourite candy.

K was one and a half and C was six months old when they first donned identical pumpkin costumes and we all hopped into a car to do trick or treating within the walls of the Corinthian Gardens subdivision - that's Manila-style.

We then moved to Singapore - and that year, they had two Halloween events. At the first K was a rabbit and C was a cat. At another, they were Woody and Buzz from Toy Story. The following year, Snow White and a Power Ranger. Then Superman and Wonder Woman. But it takes certain cunning to find Halloween in Singapore, a country which is decidedly un-American. You have to find it in pockets.

For years, we relied on a rather large American enclave in one of the posh multi-towered condominium complexes on the East Coast. Due to the fact that we had friends in the building, we lucked into that party bringing food to a potlock supper that would culminate a mad rush and tearing up and downstairs or via the elevator to the various apartment units that were taking part. I imagined it to be the kind of hi-rise halloween that you might have in cities like Manhattan.

And then we hit the motherload in Woodlands, the neighborhood that surrounds the Singapore American School. As it's close to the border of Malaysia, it's a major trek from our part of the city. But for so long as you have company, it's worth it once you get there.

This year, we dragged the M's from the kids school. Now here was a family as unconventionally American as we are. Mother M grew up in Montana and left the US for Paris as soon as she finished college. Her children are French American - though they haven't lived in the US for any extended period of time. After spending the last five years in South Africa, they were starved for Halloween. So we went together. My Halloween-hungry kids and hers to the strangely surreal Woodlands neighborhood that is practically a scene from ET. The roads were dense with trickortreaters of every age. In the spookily dressed houses, the candy givers were sometimes Filipino maids, sometimes Chinese owners but most of the time, they were American expats all dressed up in costume, complete with cocktail or wine glass in hand - offering up their measured amounts of candy, lest there be nothing left by 7pm.

We made good time and had a good run, filling our plastic pumpkins with sweets and then chowing down on KFC at the community centre. Needless to say the two witches and the two black goblins were happy Halloween campers.

Their mothers were happy too.

Stay in the room

Marital troubles. It appears we have come to that age where this is more the norm than the exception. I am hearing more and more stories of surprising break-ups, infidelities or just plain old vanilla disillusionment. I guess I understand. Nobody tells you how hard it is - and really, they should. That way, at the very least, you're prepared.

In a recent Oprah episode, Jennifer Aniston showed a clip of a short film she had directed for a series sponsored by Glamour based on real women's stories. In the scene, an elderly man sat in a hospital room,holding the hand of his wife who was in a coma. A nurse on duty marvelled at the longevity of this couple's marriage.

"45 years. We should all be so lucky."

The old man replied, "Luck had nothing to do with it."

"Excuse me?"

"Making a marriage last has nothing to do with luck. It has to do with just staying in the room."

It's a heartening thought. But it does take a lot of work - and sometimes, you need more than just sheer, dogged will.

For my part, I like to rely on two very simple things: sex and laughter - preferably in simultaneous doses.

Both are good focusing distractions that serve to remind you in small but powerful ways that life and the world are so much bigger than your problems.

Making a move

I can't believe I'm going through this again.

As we approach our eighth year in Singapore, we have come to another moving point. Blame it on the volatile and rather unique real estate market and the en bloc phenomenon. All things considered, I guess I can't really complain.

And yet the whole tedioous business of weeding and throwing things out, packing, sorting and arranging I find, not surprisingly, exceedingly stressful. Combine this with the even more detail-oriented fixing up and deciding on tile and paint and drapes and shelving, and I'd just as soon walk away from the whole situation.

Most women are not like me. Most women love it; they even thrive on it. They relish the choices - vacillate, ruminate, visualise and strategise. They consult, research and make detail-oriented decisions. Most women get a kick out of all of it.

As it turns out, here as well as in other situations, I am afraid I am once again simply not like most women.

Are you still the person you were in highschool?

Or perhaps a better way of putting it would be: how much of the person that you were in highschool remains in you today? I hazard a guess that the average adult still carries about 60 percent of her highschool self, personal baggage and all, whether or not she even realises it. And much of that dynamic continues to guide her present actions.

Which in itself wouldn't be so bad assuming that you liked yourself when you in highshool. I did. Did you?

One way to do it...

All the years T had of schooling were at the Ateneo, with the exception of his MBA. As for me, I never had formal instruction in catechism until I started high school at St. Theresa's college and of course, the Ateneo which requires its students to take 18 units of theology, apart from its hefty 16 units of philosophy - which includes Philosophy of Religion. But my children, K and C aren't likely to have that chance. Now that they've both received the sacraments of reconciliation and commmunion, we are opting to ease them out of the formal catechism classes. Instead, T and I are undertaking to homeschool them every Sunday. Between the two of us, we felt pretty confident we would be able to give them a solid religious foundation.

Today, we tackled the Sunday gospel - the parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector at the same time we gave them a brief on structure of the Liturgy of the Word. The kids were attentive and had much to say. In just over 30 minutes, we did a lecture, discussion and quiz, and finished in time for dinner of tuna burgers.

It sure beats dragging them to Saturday class.

Reconnections

Once again, I must marvel at the miracle of the internet, if only for the wonderful way it brings me back in touch with people from many lives ago, as far back as the first grade. It seems fitting that all this reconnecting takes place just a few weeks after seeing New York-based C and her kids after not having seen each other for
six years.

First, despite the fact that FACEBOOK irritates me, I am grateful that my gradeschool classmate M was able to find me. She, who I had not seen since we all graduated in the 7th grade at good old Maria Montessori Cooperative School. M is/was/is one of those children who look ageless - at age 10. Back then, she already had a womanly face as well as a good measure of womanly wisdom. She had a great spray of black hair, every strand of it sprang out in finely coiled kinks and her eyebrows were already arched in perfect parentheticals.

Today, she has a blog to keep her folks back in the Philippines updated on her own little family - a husband and an adorable daughter - now living in Seattle. I was heartened to see her familiar face - seemingly ageless - and enchanted to see her baby girl who looks very much like her, and yet not.

Like me, she turns 40 at the end of the year. We have exchanged emails - summarising our life stories, which are still intensely and mutually fascinating, even in their very broadest strokes. And as I read between her lines, I still have a very strong sense of the person that she is - how she still has so much of the girl I used to know, the one who could braid her hair in a manner of seconds, sew like a goddess of domesticity and sing along to Air Supply, and look, even at age 13, disapproving and school-marmish at many of my childish antics. It is good that she found me. One of the little gifts this month has had to offer.

But that isn't even the end of my story. Just days away from our mini-online reunion, I was sitting at the PC and who should pop in to IM-chat with me but D. The story of D is also an amazing one. When I was in the first grade, D was in kindergarten and was "best friends" with my cousin J. Then she got moved up to first grade, and we became fast friends. She was very fair and sandy-haired due to Caucasian grandparents, and we were such good friends that I even invited her to spend my birthday with me and my family at my house. Interesting that I don't recall specific conversations, though I remember quite clearly the spirit and the authenticity of our friendship - how we always had so much to talk about, so much to share. Our friendship lasted just one year, as she soon moved to the US, and we lost touch completely.

In 2003, I found her through her architect cousin, and after the initial thrill of reconnection, we have maintained "chatting" contact. Anyway, D now lives in Sunnyvale - she is a scientist in Silicon Valley. She too has a husband and a daughter.

When she popped up, I told her about M, whom she also remembers. Perhaps they will get together soon. But D also wanted to tell me something. How she had been thinking about me recently. I asked her why.

She asked me if I recalled the movie Sky Riders. "Don't you remember that movie?" D asked me. I had to admit I was drawing a blank. She continued, "It's about these hang gliders, who save these kidnapped kids held for hostage in a cave?" The description stirred a very faint bell. I told her it sounded vaguely familiar.

"You told me to watch that movie."
"I did?"
"You told me it was a great movie and at the time, it was showing at Rizal Theatre, and you told me to ask my folks to watch it."
"Back in first grade?"
"Yes. It is a great movie. The hang-gliders make a daring rescue."

I waited, not quite sure what the point was.

"I saw that movie because you said it was great, and it got me interested in hang gliding. It's the reason I took hang-gliding lessons."

"You took hang-gliding lessons? You mean as an adult?"

"Yes.

"And have you rescued anybody?"

"No, but I did marry somebody. I married my instructor and we went flying in the Andes mountains, and that's why our daughter is named Andes."

I started to get it.

"Marrying someone is a kind of rescuing," I said.

"I just wanted to tell you that. And that I had thought of you. Because we just got a copy of Sky Riders"

I makes no real difference in the world to know this, not really. But I was glad D told me. It was yet another unexpected gift.