Sometimes, out of nowhere...

...in the middle of my day... I get a call from my daughter K...and we talk for three to five minutes. Just a little chat. "Whatcha doing?" she will ask. Or sometimes, "Where are you?" And I tell her. And I ask her how her day is going and tell her how mine is. Then she says, "OK, bye bye, Mom... love ya!"

It's a solid pick-me-up that glistens like a seashell does on a sandy shore of humdrum, banal moments. It also makes me profoundly grateful for the person she is, and doubly glad that I live in this age of mobile phones.

A conversation between a mother and her eight-year-old son

Mother: Do you think you want Mom to stay at home and take care of the two of you?
Son: What do you want?
Mother: That's it. I don't know.
Son: Think about what you want. That's what's important.

Life strategies we tend to forget

• SPELL IT OUT. Regarding what you want or expect from other people - be specific. No one is going to read your mind, after all.
• TALK ABOUT IT. I tend to go a little overboard on this, perhaps because I feel very strongly about it. But talking helps. Pretty much anything can be resolved with a 30 minute conversation.
• WRITE IT DOWN. If it's clear on paper, it will be clear in your mind.
• FIND OUT WHAT THE OTHER PERSON FEELS. We can get very caught up in our own feelings, never once thinking what it's like in another person's shoes
• GIVE IT AWAY. If it's occupied the same place for over a year - you haven't touched it, you don't use it, and you don't need it. Give it to someone who does.
• SAY NO. There's no point in doing something that you don't want to do. If you can't figure out why you're doing it or what good will come of it, then do yourself a favour and just say no.
• MAKE TIME FOR HAPPY. Take time off and do things that will make both you and the people you love happy. Life is short, after all.
• EXPRESS YOUR FEELINGS. People don't do this enough - especially when they're feeling good. Tell someone you love, you love them.
• READ. Don't ever stop using those muscles. They were meant to be used and often.
• GET PHYSICAL. Whether it's exercise or lovemaking or doing something really basic like walking from one place to another. Use your body.
  

I saw Gandalf play King Lear

I must give credit where credit is due. The above was a T-shirt line from our friend TS - unfortunately, there was no actual T-shirt with this line. If there were, am pretty sure our little theatre-afficionado troupe last night would have stood in line to buy it. As for the show itself, it was quite absorbing. One of a number of the Bard's works I knew only very loosely - not having read it nor studied it nor seen it, until last night. As the firstborn in a family of three daughters, I had always meant to read it. But the closest I got was Jane Smiley's Thousand Acres which is actually a very different thing indeed, what with the incest and all.

It was surprising though. Always though that Shakespeare explained as well as portrayed human nature - and yet, King Lear does not do that at all. It is actually like a gun that never goes off - in the line, "What force of nature makes such harsh hearts?" Lear asks. And there is no ready answer for it it seems.

And after all that, it is a rather frightening thought - as it is also a frightening story. Positively Greek is perhaps another way to describe it, but also...mythic.

Some neat things about the performance: seeing Ian McKellen of course. But it strikes me that we paid for the wrong play. That we should have seen him doing Chekhov in The Seagull as opposed to Lear. Lear seems to me, too simple a role in its broadstrokes - in the way that Chekhov is not. Not that he wasn't a great King Lear. He was. But of course, my point is, he would be.

The other neat thing was the sets - the production itself.

And how, when Lear's fool was hung just before intermission - his dead body was taken down by the props people, just as members of the audience were standing up to get their refreshments and stretch their legs.

Coolness.

It's amazing

...what one can do just out of sheer will.

The funny thing about writing

The more you do it, the easier it gets. Today sped by like quicksilver, and yet, I managed to finish all my work and leave promptly as well as guiltlessly at six. For this new post I'm at, it's all about volume apparently. Over the past two weeks, I've written six full-length articles as well as a rather challenging six page section on new products for the body. Apart from this, I reworked three pieces from the inhouse staff and three pieces from outside freelancers. I have discharged my editorial duties and now, the special project assignments are about to begin. It's hard not to feel smug and satisfied. But the question remains - how long will it be possible to do this? Unfortunately, only I can answer that...and the answer seems to change with every day that passes.

It was a pleasure to go home early and have nothing hanging over my head though. Instead, I changed and headed to the track for six rounds. It seems running is just like writing - and I know I'm not the first to discover this either. The more you do it, the easier it gets.

The Return of Badminton

I've been missing it so much. And despite my requests on various lists, there were no takers for forming a new group. And every group I do know of is completely full up. So I stuck my neck out and looked, as it were, in my own back yard. The office.

It was easier than I expected. Send an email. Get the numbers. Book the courts and voila! We played for an hour last Friday - and this evening, we played for two hours.

If you build it, they will come.

Flying By

It's a little bit frightening how the days are flying by. Wasn't it just Sunday, and now, here we are again? The kids have read three of the Harry Potter books (I haven't even read one). K is now on book 5 and C is on book 4. I am also the only one in my family not taking Tae Kwon Do. So that makes two things that everyone else has done but I haven't. I did manage to run six times this week and make it in to a Power 1 class, so not all was lost. Work is absorbing. Not just one but two new magazines, and another one in the works - specifically my works.

Wasted a lot of time this week finisheing up the 3rd season of Grey's Anatomy which for me has started getting completely bonga. As JZ says, bobo na, tanga pa. The worst episode was the one with the ferry accident - so many needing medical attention, and the heroine who is now just plain annoying, falls into the water and drowns and needs the entire surgical unit to attend to her. Good grief. I truly regret the time I spent.

Sigh. For a productive tomorrow. Mandarin. Getting into the new house and taking photos and measurements. Prepare for moving out. To look forward to? Badminton on Friday... hopefully, this week goes as quickly as last.

Fitting it all in

Exercise and eating right, especially when it's for the entire family, requires an almost hyper-awareness.

Or maybe, it's just hyper to begin with. Saturday, we got K and C up first thing in the morning, even before breakfast for a run on the track. The kids did two rounds, T did four and I ploughed through my six. But while I did that, they played dodge ball - and kept the movement. Interestingly, we tried something different at our usual Pepperoni pizza haunt dinner, cutting down our usual order to just two linguini vongoles, a salad that everyone shared - and not two but one pizza - with no apparent feelings of the lack. At Estivo, instead of each of us getting one serving, we shared two servings among the four.

Sunday, T didn't have the heart to wake them again - so it was just the two of us, doing the six - before breakfast and before an intensive Mandarin session. And at lunch, instead of parking right where we were going to eat - we parked two malls away - and walked through Raffles City and Citilink to Marina Square for lunch, and then walking back. C even reminded us to take the stairs instead of the escalators so we worked harder. And as all the books advise, we kept dinner light - just soups at the Kopitiam in VeloCity.

Onward ho.

What to do with kids on break

As a kid, I adored summer. I adored having nothing to do. Having the days stretch out endlessly before me. And even on days when the heat and the boredom got to be too much - even on a day that was merely, okay, not bad, not particularly good - just fine - I was glad to go to sleep that night and think of the possibilities of the next day.

These days, parents - and most especially parents who work - struggle to fill their kids summer days. It goes against their grain to think of their kids just whiling time away. And maybe there is a point to piano lessons, tae kwon do and kumon - but not every single hour of every single day needs to be filled to the brim. What parents don't realise, is the more they fill their children's summer days, the more their children will come to them on a day that you left empty on purpose and say the words you dread to hear -"Mom, we're bored."

So what are you going to do? Here's what K aged 9 and C aged 8 have been doing...

• Reading. After reading them the first chapter of the first Harry Potter book out loud - hoping to spend pleasant evenings reading them till we all finished the book together as, I am probably one of the last remaining adults who hasn't read JK Rowling. Guess what? I still am. When I got home from work two days later, they had each finished the book!
• Music. K and C can sing Beatles hits. They enjoy karaoke. And quite recently, we introduced them to Broadway soundtracks. First one song. Than another. Then they listen to the entire show and try to figure out the story, till they know the songs by heart. They started with Wicked. They like Fiddler on the Roof...and are now infatuated by Grease. Next up: Into the Woods.
  
• Technology. With some very basic knowledge K picked up from school on how to use Powerpoint, she taught her brother. Now they sit and make Powerpoint presentions together - mostly about the things they've been doing.
  
• Cooking. They found a recipe for a witches' spell in a book they have. They called me at work to ask me to bring home ..."...these four items...Mom, okay? Bring home, these four items" so they could whip up a magic potion made from fizzy lemonade, sherbet powder and food colouring.

There will be more great discoveries, I'm certain. And while formal lessons and extra curricular activities are all well and good, it's also good to leave some time open - truly open. This ought not time in which they can veg out in front of the TV or play video games, but free time. Real time. Because in real time, they can do..real things.

The way to go...

Here's the way you're supposed to do it. You're supposed to know yourself. And when you know yourself, you will discover what you want. And by the way, it's not enough to know what you don't want - because anyone knows that. You need to know what it is you want to do and what you want out of life. But also...what is it that you want to bring to life, to the people you love, and to the world at large.

And it may be that you have to start from absolute scratch. It may well be that you have to start getting to know yourself all over again.

Plans

It's always can't-go-to-sleep exciting to plot the hows and how-tos of a big plan. Plans are empowering and all personal projects are buouyed beautifully by an energy that seems as vast as the sky. And it is nice how everything else in life at once seems d0-able, manageable, and strangely enough, irresistible... in light of all that you imagine - no, that you plan will come to pass in the not all that faraway future.

Non-sequitur: my kasin J's gift of The Rhythm of Life by Matthew Kelly is surprisingly engaging. It's even made me go out and buy a copy to send home to L and M (why nath?) That's the thing about J. Packaged in rose-coloured sweetness that may seem to strangers like pure sap is an unmistakably steely, glinting coolness.

20 days

There's the flurry of preparing for a holiday - packing, shopping for pasalubong, and of course, clearing away work so that a block of time is created in which you can freely holiday. There's the holiday itself, which is always goes faster and seems shorter than you thought it would be. And finally there's the holiday aftermath - the mulling over of the things that you did and the things that you should have done as well as the new perspective that every trip home gives you. The holiday afermath also involves finally, grappling with the pile of work that accumulated in the time that you were away. All three stages which, in this particular case took the better part of 2o days, can impede even the things you consider important.

Like blogging for instance.

Realisation: It's a wondeful thing to take a trip home - but it's just as wonderful to come back...home.

Countdown to vacation: 10 days

Sometimes...

...you get into a cab and after a minute, you realise something's not quite right with the cabbie. Nothing you can put your finger on. Just something that's not quite right. Something unsettling that you can imagine may quite easily grow into something untoward, unseemly...something that, let's face it, you just don't want any part of.

Then again, you think maybe you're overreacting. Maybe you're wrong. Maybe it's just you and how you tend to be dramatic and jump to conclusions. Maybe...but what if it's not?

Do you get off? Even though you haven't reached your intended destination? Or do you ignore the feeling and hope it passes...because after all, you really do want to get where you want to go?

joke

Two cows are in a field. One says, "Moo."
The other cow says, "Hey - I was going to say that!"

Family Tip: 7 The Shouting Can

T and I strive to be contemporary and progressive in are parenting. The result is we have very raised unique individuals. They have a sense of humor. They feel free to share their point-of-view. In turn, we try to be honest with them. As much as we can, we explain the way things are. They are creative and expressive. Perhaps too expressive. With a flair for the dramatic, which I am afraid they have inherited from their mother. All this is good for the most part, but sometimes, it's not. Sometimes, when such children don't get their way, they go into histrionics - rabble-rousing rage at the top of their voices. And what's particularly discomfitting for parents who believe themselves contemporary and progressive - is hearing echoes of themselves in these temper tantrums.

So this evening, we came up with The Shouting Can. Essentially, we're talking about a receptacle for penalty tithes. Children who are caught shouting in anger or in an uncontrollable rage will (after they have calmed down sufficiently) be asked to give up 20 cents of their own pocket money. Adults will be tithed a dollar.

Yes, I will own: The Shouting Can - is as much for the mother as it is for the children.

JollyBBQ

There's no reason why this shouldn't work - the right location, across from Novena Church - to capture the throngs of yayas and indays looking for a good old Pinoy lunch. At the same time, it's got parking and is fairly close to the Newton MRT for those who don't have the time or the wherewithall to cook their own liempo, pork barbecue or salpicao. Why, when all it costs for a satisfying plate is $4.50? The name is genius - mining the brand recall and equity of the giant at home. And then there's the food itself. The serving of rice is more than generous, if a tad on the moist side. It's true though that I am of the extreme prediliction, preferring rice on the drier, more mabuhaghag side. Also, I found I would have preferred the pusit more inihaw than pusit -- drier -- more like Cafe Ilonggo, all blackened and toasty on the edges. But maybe that's just me. There also ought to be a fish dish - if not danggit or bangus, maybe inihaw na tilapia?

I wish the Atenean entreps more power and great success. It's clear that Pinoy cuisine must work it's way up, rather than down, at least in this particular market - but there's certainly no reason why JollyBBQ shouldn't be phenomenal.

Sunday night blues

The tummy feels nervy. Am not sure how to play this day, nor the next. And am hoping I'll be able to get up for the track. In the meantime, every fibre of my being is saying - can't I just stay home?

I may as well be in fifth grade again.

Where do they get it?

At last Sunday's picnic, I introduced K to M's mother.
K: Hello! (then under her breath almost as if to herself) The resemblance is amazing...

Today, at the Singapore Children's Choir concert, C settled down in his seat, leaned back and closed his eyes. Then he murmured:
C: Music soothes the savage beast...

These kids are just marvelous - and they're mine.