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We are back in the USA and what a special time we had in Malaysia with my family. We did not do much but just fell into my parents’ routine. They had also changed their routine somewhat to spend time with us but here are some of the highlights.

1. Cameron Line Dancing.

My dad teaches line dancing to senior citizens in church and one Friday, he took us all there. Cameron was shy at first but then he joined in the lessons!  After 10 minutes of dancing, he decided that he knew it all and proceeded to “teach” the ladies how to dance. It was hilarious because all his steps were out of sync! James thought it was kind of “weird” to dance so he preferred to watch!

2. Train Rides

I am so sick of train rides. It seems like every country we go to, we HAVE to take the public transport there. Sometimes, they just want to ride on it with no specific destination in mind. The boys just want to sit in the train, observe the stations and look at the mechanics of the train.

Fortunately, my dad was very patient, he took the boys many times on the different trains - there are like 4 to 5 different types of trains in Malaysia. They have the LRT, which is driverless, the Monorail which services the city, Starline (I don’t know where this leads to), KTM Komuter, which is a diesel line servicing the further cities and the interstate line, the ETS, which is the latest addition to the complicated Malaysian railway system.  It opened its services in June 2010, and it goes about 140 km/h.  James was very excited and wanted to go on it. My father went to check out the prices and it was about RM256 for all of us to Ipoh, a town about 4 hours away from Kuala Lumpur.  In the end, because it was so expensive, instead, Jo-Ann, my sister decided to surprise the  boys with a trip on the KLIA Express, the Airport Train. They were over the moon about it!

Here are some photos of the various trains from Singapore to Malaysia (I already had a separate post about the ones in Australia)

KLIA Express (the airport train)

With Aunty Jo-Ann

The Singapore Sentosa Monorail

Inside the Monorail.

The Sengkang LRT.

I haven’t even uploaded some of the other trains yet! That is a lot of trains!

3. Our Trip To Singapore.

This was a difficult trip for me.  It was so good to be back, and of all the places I visited during this trip, I felt that Singapore was “home”.   However, because we had nowhere to stay, and had to put up in a hotel, it felt weird, like we were home, but did not have a home in that place anymore.  I met up with old friends, caught up with our previous maid who I miss dearly. However because we had such a short time, I could only settle for quick snippets of time with people - another difficult thing for me to handle as I wanted to see more of them.

We caught up with some of my good friends, Christina (whose oldest, Lauren was off to a Starcruise trip for 4 days to shoot a TV advertisement for them and while she was away, ANZ Bank picked her up for another TV commercial. Her girls are just gorgeous!) Martha, Jenny, Cara, Sarmi and Sapiyah.

No trip to Singapore would be complete without a playdate by the pool!

It was great to see how my friends’ children had grown so much! Especially little Brandon, Martha’s youngest, he was such a cute little toddler. Also it was so sweet to see how James and Cameron bonded with Josh after such a long absence. All the girls in the photo above are Christina’s daughters. She is expecting her fifth child, a boy, which is a precious gift for her and hubby!

This has got to be my favourite picture of all. Christina took all the photos, aren’t they lovely?

Catching up with Jenny and Andrew at the American Club.  Cameron was not very interested in building a friendship with Alex, their son, the last time but this time, he was playing so well with him.  Jenny and I were so happy to see that.

We got to see Sarmi very briefly.  Sarmi lived with us for 3 years as our nanny and she and the boys share a closeness. We were very sad that we could not see her more because of our tight time frame. This picture was taken at our hotel room, which was cramped but in the ad, it was a “deluxe room”.

We were also privileged to break a Ramadan fast with our old neighbours. The boys were very close with their youngest, and it was so nice to be able to chat like old times. Oh Sapiyah! I miss your family so much!

The typical Singapore “suburbia” - full of HDB buildings, housing hundreds of thousands of people.

The boys at the Esplanade during one of our very long trips using the new Circle Line.

The boys love Phua Chu Kang, and so do I. He is one of Singapore’s most well known icons.

4. Korean Dramas

My mother is a big fan of Korean drama and during our stay, we ALL got hooked on some of the series, including the boys. It was so funny to see James requesting to watch, “Happiness In The Wind,” and Cameron asking for his favourite, “Bread, Love and Dreams.”  Now that I am back, I am considering getting Korean TV by cable or satellite.

5. My Family

It was a little different this time around.  My youngest sister Janice has moved to Singapore to work and we only got to see her for 2 days.  We also saw her in Singapore but she was working for the most part.

Cameron likes to pull faces. It is a phase that he is going through right now, to be the clown of photos.

One morning when my Dad was doing a quiet time with the boys. C was upset because he wanted to play. Notice how James is wearing the same shirt as Cameron in the above photo? I had underpacked that they did not have enough clothes so I was letting them wear each other’s clothes.

Cameron and James were very taken by my cousin, Li Ling.  They both do not have cousins so the idea of having a “cousin” was cool.  Li Ling came over 3 days and even took days off work so she could play with the boys. That is my Aunty Choon Yong in the photo.  Here, you can see that I have really run out of clothing options for Cameron because he is in his boxers.  Since we were at home, I told him to treat them like regular shorts.

My other sister, Jo had bought a house and was thick in the process of renovating it.  Renovating a house in Malaysia is very stressful.  The contractors make errors and you as a customer sometimes must foot the bill. Not only that, customer service is non existent there and there were times where a project was delayed and another service provider would get nasty to my sister about the delay. Hello, do you want us as customers or not? My Dad was undertaking a lot of the supervision for her as she was at work most of the time.  Cannot wait to see how her place turns out at the end of it all. It has been a long process for her.

It was a very relaxing time spent with my folks.  My parents are not going to recognise the silence in the house after the boys leave.  They complained that whenever the boys talked, it sounded like a Singaporean food court! Miss you all!!!

What a blast we had. It was short and so quick, I blinked my eyes and the trip to Australia was over. The children had such a great time seeing their grandparents whom they had not seen in 4 years.  Skype has really made it so easy for folks to connect all over the world, I think without it the children would have been more shy around them.

The weather was a lot colder than I expected but I had packed too little for the boys and myself,

I found myself wearing the same clothes for a week! Yikes, I wonder if I was a bit of a pong! 

Matt’s parents took the time to take them to the toy library which is such a great idea, it kept them both occupied with several board games, Mecanno toys, puzzles and scooters. I had my “fix” with a local craft market along a main street. Matt’s parents live in Mornington, a beach town about 1.5 hours away from Melbourne. It is a beautiful area. The houses are all so beautiful and modern, and I wish that Maryland could have homes like that!

The best thing was observing the interaction amongst the kids and the grandparents. Matt’s brother, David visited and both my boys were kind of starry eyed with hero worship for him, especially James. It was really important and great that the boys bonded so well with Matt’s family and it is times like this that I start questionning if it is worth staying so far away.

For me, the highlight of the trip was seeing my very good friends. I had not seen one of them for over 10 years and we were recently reconnected via Facebook.  Linda organised high tea up in the Dandenong Mountains, in a German restaurant called The Cuckoo.  Our children were there but as we only had 2 hours to catch up, it was over all too quickly. I was unsatisfied, you know, a bit like having a piece of chocolate but really wanting to eat the whole thing. I could not really catch up in depth with anyone too specifically and that was my only regret. 

The lovely ladies, Adeline, Elaine, me, Maria and Linda.

Our gorgeous husbands, doing the Aussie footy pose!

Our precious kids.

We managed to squeeze in one trip by train to Melbourne City. We sat on a tram too.

Off the train and onto the tram next!

We also spent some time with my brother. He took us to the boys’ very first yum char in one of Melbourne’s finest Chinese restaurants.  While we were staying with my brother, the boys unexpectedly became hooked on a very old British comedy, “Mind Your Language.” They watched about two seasons of it and continued watching it in Malaysia, where my sister Jo-Ann, has it on DVD too!

I also did catch up with another family but forgot to take their pictures, can you believe that? It was great to see them - I miss Australia so much and wish we could have stayed another few more days. Hopefully, we will get to stay a bit longer next time. On to Malaysia - will be writing about my stay there next, there is not much to report, we have been home the whole week, down with food poisoning! No trip to Asia is complete without an episode of purging! (Sad but true!)

It has been wonderful being back in Melbourne again, even though the weather has been very cold.  I had misjudged the cold because I thought after going through such a harsh winter in the USA, I thought this would be a walk in the park.  How wrong I was!

However, it has been so great, seeing Matt’s parents, the boys had not seen them for about almost four years.  When Matt’s dad came to pick us up at the bus stop, Cameron kept whispering to me, if that was really “Pop, from the computer,” as we Skype sometimes.  They been down to the toy library already and borrowed toys to keep themselves amused.  It has been pretty low key in terms of activities because it is a short trip and been too cold to do anything outdoors.

One of the things that we caught on was watching “Masterchef.” What a great program that is! I wish we had something like that in the USA.  There is a very down to earth feeling about the contestants and judges, which makes it “real” and it has been the most watched program locally.  I heard that the elections had to be moved a week later because most people would be staying home to watch the finale of Masterchef!

Of course, no trip would be complete without train rides. The boys wanted to sit on the train and tram, so yesterday, all of us, without the grandparents, took a train from Frankston to the city.  From there, we caught a tram to Victorian Market. Over there, we ate at the food court, and we were reminded how wonderful food is in Australia.  Even though DC is a melting pot of cutures, the food cannot be compared to the freshness and diversity that we get in Australia.  Totally amazing. I was thinking all the time that I should take a picture of the food we were eating but I just couldn’t stop eating and the food was finished before I could even think of bringing out my camera

I did not take many good photos because it is so dark and dreary and wet! Still, more photos to come when I get a chance to upload them somewhere.

I love Australia and it is so good to be back, even for a short while.

Leaving on vacation tomorrow, have mixed feelings about going.  On one hand, I cannot bear the thought of not going to see my family until another year but I am a lot worried about leaving the house unattended for so long.  We do not know the neighbours well enough to ask them to keep an eye on the place for us. So far, we have asked our cell group leader’s teenage son, Austin, who is 13, to check the house and water our plants for us. We agreed to pay him a nominal sum.  We are so grateful for this family. However, he is only coming twice a week which is not really enough, but I don’t want to over ask this family because as he is so young, his parents have to drive him to my place.

Pray that the house will be safe… am excited to catch up with my family in Australia, it has been about 4 years since the boys met their grandparents! Can’t wait to see my brother too!

Cameron taking a flying leap.

James on the diving board.

I am at my parents’place in Malaysia and poignantly aware this is the last trip I will be making this year. I will miss them, I will miss the easy convenience of travelling up to KL just by bus from Singapore. The boys will miss that they can just come up to see their kong kong and poh poh although they don’t really grasp it yet.

I have not been writing at all because I am spending most of my time going through all the videos of Michael Jackson - I cannot believe that he is gone from our lives, with his songs and his dances. I cannot believe how much his death has affected me.  Before then, I had not spared a thought for him, I was a fan when I was much younger but I have been crying at his songs, and when Paris Jackson made that heart rending farewell speech for her dad.

I said I was going to post some pictures on our trip to DC but my camera was so heavy that we only carried it around for one or two days.  The weight of the camera hurt my back and then I passed it on to Matt to help me - it hurt his back too. We thought of bringing the compact camera but in gloomy conditions, a DSLR is always the best. I took some photos in a subway as well but I did not have tripod so it was a little blurred.

My camera is moldy and I have to do extensive correction on photoshop to remove the ugly thing that has grown on my sensors. It looks like a spider.

We were rugged up because it was nearly 0 degrees celcius but the others did not seem to mind the cold.

See what I mean? Without photoshop, there is a huge “spider” in the photo.

Metro station.

A quaint American house…I would love to live in a place like that!

While we stopped in Tokyo on route to DC, I walked around the airport and visited the bathroom there. There was this armrest next to each toilet and curious, I played around with the buttons. Then I recalled somewhere that it is impolite in Japan to hear “undesirable noises” while toileting.  So there was a button for you to press while you were in “action”.  It was the recorded sound of running water from a tap and it was loud!

I do not have a clue what the “shower” button was for!  I did not dare press it because I was afraid I was going to be soaked! Fancy a shower in the toilet, anyone?

After a 27 hour flight to Washington DC, we are finally here. I have only flown to the US once before and I had forgotten how my bum started to hurt towards the end of the flight. I watched about five movies to kill the time.

It is beautiful here, spring is in the air and we faced a very chilly morning of 32 degrees farenheit. It took me a while to convert that to celcius and it was 0 degrees celcius! I don’t have the proper attire for the trip, ie, no gloves nor hats.

While Matt went to meet his new boss and look at his new office, I went to Target and later, met up with Matt to go to Potomac Mills, which has 250 outlets from Ralph Lauren to JC Penney. My favourite brands like Gap and Old Navy were there but alas!! They did not have my size! I did see something at Macy’s and it was going for 50% in a size 2. It fit me but I don’t have much of a chest -there was all this room in front of me which made the top sit awkwardly so I had to let it go. I can see that I have to take up sewing again here, which is something I look forward to!

Tomorrow we visit our first school and we will go do some sight seeing afterwards. We really like it here, the Metro transport system is very efficient, like Singapore. Trains come very often, about 6-8 mins apart. The railway system is newer than Melbourne’s so it is very clean and travels at a higher speed than the Singapore MRT.

Not too sure about the driving though. The roads are very confusing at the moment. There are road lanes designated for people who car pool only. Say you wanted to go to downtown to work and there were pickup points for you to collect total strangers to fill up your seats - then you could use the fast lane. Apparently it makes a big difference when you travel as you avoid most of the traffic on this lane.

I miss the boys and keep thinking about them and how they will enjoy it here. Am still weighing the plus points here against leaving my parents at home in Malaysia.

On Saturday night, when we were in Malaysia, I heard a lone, heart-rending howl nearby. It was the sad sound of a dog in distress. I thought it was my Dad’s neighbour’s dog but he was in his cage (yes, they keep their dog locked up 24/7 and there is no one living in that empty house, which is very cruel) We thought nothing more of it and then on Monday after we had returned from Sunway Hotel, we heard it again. Then my Dad’s other neighbour, who is quite peculiar in nature, alerted my Dad that a dog had fallen into the drain and it had been there for days. The sides were concrete and steep so it could not have climbed out. I guessed that the dog had been there for maybe over 4 days or more. It was hungry, tired, cold and wet, as it had been a torrential downpour before.

The neighbour’s maid had tried to go down the drain to lift the dog out of the drain but it had bitten her instead. So the neighbour had called the police. My first thought was horror that the neighbour had called the police. “They will shoot the dog!” I cried.

If you don’t know the police in Malaysia, they do not like dealing with dogs. When I was a girl in Alor Setar, the local town council had sent out a man carrying a rifle to shoot all the stray dogs in our area. He had heard our dog barking and entered our compound. I remember feeling terrified as he asked me, “Is this your dog? Does it have a license?” I had never seen a gun before and had heard the howling and gunshots outside.  It did not cross my mind that a stranger had entered our house carrying a gun. My parents were not home and I was all alone with my youger siblings.  In the end, he walked off, somewhat reluctantly.  

So back to the present, I thought that if the police arrived, they would shoot the dog.

“Good! I want them to kill it!” My Dad’s neighbour replied. I told you he was strange.

We learnt that the other neighbours had called the SPCA but they said it was the town council’s job and the town council said it was the firemen’s job to hoist it out. My Dad decided to take matters into his hands.

My Dad tied bits of chicken onto a makeshift rod and lowered it into the drain, where it wolfed the scraps quickly.  As it was late, we left the dog there for another night.  At least, the howling had stopped.  I worried about how the dog was going to rest as it could not lie down.

In the end my Dad had to call a vet.  Together they stuck a ladder into the drain (which was over 6 feet deep) and tried to tie a hose around it but it tried to bite the vet. In the end, the vet sedated the dog.  He charged my father RM 150 for the trip and sedation shot which was hard on my Dad financially. The dog slept in their garden and true to C’s prediction, it pooped all over their garden when it woke up. It did not want to leave but my Dad did not want a dog.  He turned him out of the house with a garden hose.

I was pleased though, that my boys got to witness a very compassionate act from their grandfather, to show humanity towards little creatures.