lifeonplanetmum.com

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!)

We are so happy to be at our new home. We love it and the boys have been running around, hiding in spots and empty wardrobes. I am slowly unpacking but we have unpacked most of the kitchen.

As I unpacked, I realised that I have a lot of things which I do not use anymore and will have to start getting brutal. I have been putting things aside to donate, the kids’ toys and books…we are just running out of space. Next, I will start donating my fabrics to charity. But what I might do is start having giveaway fabrics on my craft blog, just to increase readership.

This is very short because I have to unpack and go back to the previous home to clean it before returning the keys to the landlord.

We go on holidays Sunday and I am so looking forward to seeing everyone I missed.

We signed the boys up for swimming last week and it is conducted everyday for half an hour. We can either choose a morning or evening session.  As the pool is just behind our house, it is a nice activity during these hot days.

After less than a week, the teacher said James was ready for the B Meets. I was like, “What is that?” and here they have a very neat community thing going (this is what I mean when I find Americans very community based, which builds strong relations with your neighbours)   It is an event almost like a competition with your neighbourhood kids, and it is very relaxed.  In the B Meets, or the B team, the kids have no pressure of winning, they are trying to swim to their fastest ability. (Their personal best times) The A meets is more competitive, and you must win the event to let your team win.  In order to enter the A Meets, you have to qualify first in the B Meets.

It is so well organised and planned. There is a website where parents can sign up for the meet and it is expected that once your kids are in it, you must volunteer to make the event successful.  Parents can opt to go for training because they need judges, so they need to know the technicalities of strokes.  Parents are called to bring pizza, bagels, muffins, etc.  There is a head timer, then about 9 other parents who time each swimming lane. There is a singer - someone must sing the national anthem at each meet and read the pledge of allegience.  A parent must do the ribbons (this is more for the A Meets, which is competitive, unlike the B Meets) as prizes.  There is an announcer, announcing each event and the child’s name.  It is only a neighbourhood thing but the amount of thought and preparation that goes into it is amazing. This is run twice a week, on Wednesday evenings and Saturday mornings.  For Independence Day, there is a parade that starts at the top of our road, with a fire engine. We are all meant to wear the colours of the flag and I have already purchased some T shirts with the US flag on it.  We walk about 1 mile down and end at the pool where there will be a party.  Again, parents are called to contribute food and kids and adults are meant to sell the food we provide in order to raise funds for the swim team.  I am bringing a broccoli salad.

Back to the B Meet, James met with Rockshire on Wed.  Rockshire is just up the road and it was nice that many of the boys in the opposition team were from his class.

James completed the 25m freestyle in 32.52 secs.  He said he was nervous.  Can you hear Cameron’s voice, cheering James on?  Also, see the amount of parents involved? I did not even film the other side of the pool, where parents were selling ice cream, packets of chips and pizza.  This was on a Wednesday evening at 6.00pm.  There are usually more than 50 parents each time. Totally amazing.

What was surprising was yesterday, his coach came up and said that he qualified for the A Meet this Saturday! Yikes. I hope he doesn’t freak out.  He is such a perfectionist and when he feels that he has lost or let the team down, he gets very upset. This time, they are meeting students from another school.

We hit the pool at 7.30am at the pool tomorrow!!!

Behind our house is the community pool.  Part of the HOA (remember I talked about that before?) that the homeowners here pay for goes towards the pool and it is one huge social opportunity to meet everyone in the neighbourhood!

There was a notice posted out in May about forming a swim team for this area, where all the children would take lessons everyday and meet once a week for a “Swim Meet.”  The kids from our area would compete with kids from another area.

As we thought we were going back to Malaysia, I did not bother about signing them up for any sort of camps or classes.  However, as we unexpectedly found a house and the settlement of the house in the early part of July, we find that we have about 3 to 4 weeks here and not much to do.

The children have gone down to the pool everyday and I asked someone if it was too late for the boys to join in the swimming lessons.  It was not too late, and the boys started swimming lessons a few days ago.

I was really scared the first time Cameron went into the pool.  He is very fearless and he wants to copy whatever James does.  When we left Singapore, Cameron was just learning how to float in the child’s pool, using his kickboard.

During the assessment, the coach lined up some children to assess them and made them all dive into the deepest end of the pool.  There is a diving board at that end - which meant it was about 12-15feet deep. I was not worried about James but Cameron has NEVER been in the deep end before.

I informed the teacher but she said to let him try.  When Cameron jumped in,  she stood close by.  He totally shocked and surprised me.  He swam, although there were moments when he was struggling because he got tired and did not know any strokes yet.  The teacher thought he was fine and I was worrying for nothing.  The lessons are 30 mins long and she only allows one student at a time in the lane and she walks with them all the way until they reach the other end. So everyday, twice a day, they are at the pool doing these half hour lessons. He has been doing great but I would not say he is a confident swimmer like James yet.

I am hoping these lessons will help build his strength and confidence in the water by the end of the swim season.  They LOVE their lessons and are having so much fun!

Today is Father’s Day in America, Canada and UK, but for NZ and Australia, it is in September.  I saw an idea on the Better Homes and Garden website for a personalised apron for Matt so unknown to him, we ordered a white apron from ebay.

We got some felt and the boys started designing their own pictures on a piece of paper, pining the paper to the felt and cutting them out. They did not get pricked by a pin even once! Good job, boys!

Since I had packed up all the craft glue, I used a hot glue gun, which was a mistake because it did not adhere well to fabric. I had to sew them all on and the hot glue had hardened, making it difficult for the needle to pass through.  Sewing it when Matt was around was a challenge, I had to sew in the toilet several times and maybe he was wondering why I was there so long!

This morning, he is not awake yet and we are preparing him a breakfast in bed. Making him this dish.

Matt, you are a wonderful father to our boys, I love how you spend so much time with them, how you are always looking at parenting courses or books or ways to improve yourself with them.  You are a selfless Dad, you put yourself before the boys - your “Me Time” is basically always spent with the boys and I, sometimes doing things that I don’t really like doing, like physical activities - swimming, basketball, etc. You encourage them to go farther than I could ever do so because I am always so terrified of them hurting themselves by falling. They gain so much confidence with you and their eyes are always happy and dancing when they play with you.

I would also like to remember my own father who lives in Malaysia. My Dad is the cornerstone of our family, he is so wise and taught us many values from young. The one that stands out the most is,   family comes first, no matter what.  I have always valued his advice and when we had to leave for the USA, we turned to him for direction.  He has the most practical of minds and I think it comes with experience from being a General Manager of a tyre company for so many years.  He has always provided for us all as a family. My fondest memories of my Dad is when we, as young children, would travel in the car to Malacca to see my cousins. He would take us to the Klebang Besar Beach, sometimes every weekend and in those days, without highways, it was a 60 mile drive there.

The boys have really benefitted from staying so close to them while we lived in Singapore, they got to develop a strong bond with him and my mother. Skype really helps to bridge the distance between us now and I am blessed that the boys can continue their bond with them.

I want to start some of the traditions for the boys, just like my father started for us. Weekend getaways that the boys can enjoy, but building lifelong memories and relationships with each other.

Happy Father’s Day!

As Matt had a Friday off and the boys were on holidays, we went down to Lake Needwood, which is about 5 mins away from our new place.

It was the boys’ first time on a paddle boat and I did not want to paddle with Cameron because I thought he would get tired very quickly and I would end up paddling alone.  How wrong I was! Cameron was paddling non stop, and James got very tired. Maybe it was because I did not know how to steer the boat and we kept going off course. It was very fun though. Some geese flew up to us, thinking we were going to offer food.

We paddled only for 30 mins. Man! It was so tiring, as you can see, James was worn out, trying to recover.

As I was trying to take a scenic picture of James resting (without him knowing that I was taking his picture) out of nowhere, Cameron pops up like a Jack in the Box! He has such a funny personality and sometimes cracks us all up.

Here, I had to beg him to take a good photo because he kept ruining it by running towards the camera each time Matt tried to take a shot.  Even then, he could not help the comical expression!

Here he is, running towards the camera very suddenly.  Coincidentally, James was crossed eyed while looking at his hat. This is a very funny photo indeed!

Matt’s director wrote an email to say that they were not going to go ahead with the outsourcing after all.  I don’t know what happened, but his job is safe and he will not have to look for another role outside.  We think it is very strange because everything seemed so certain at first.  However, the rumours are that the plan was all a proposal in the first place and it had not even reached the approval stage of the senior management yet, when the documents were leaked out. Because it was leaked out prematurely,  I feel it makes it difficult to implement such a plan when there is so much opposition to it.

We are very grateful. Imagine if we had given up the house and found out it was for nothing!

Method:

1. Cut the blueberry.

2. Pick a grape

3. Cut the grape

4. Mix them.

5. Cut the avocado

6. Cut an apple

7. Cut the MSG

8. Pour it

9. Cut the Ripall (some ingredient he made up)

10. Cut a caterpillar and smash

11.  Get the meat of the caterpillar

12. Pour it and mix

13. Set the oven and bake it.

14. Use the hair of caterpillar and glue them to make a circle

15. Pour it in (after bringing it out of the oven)

Eat!

The director, let’s call her C, met up with Matt yesterday and told him to go ahead with purchasing a house.  C vowed that she would try to help Matt relocate to another department, and with his skill set and strong performance, she said that she had no doubt he would be snapped up quickly.  If he was not adamant about staying in audit, C said that placing him in another department would not be a problem at all.  She was 90% confident but added quickly that nothing was guaranteed.

The other option was that the organisation was going to pay out at least 10 months salary if people did not want to move to other departments or could not find a job.

I was suddenly faced with the wonderful thought of going home.  I know that America has always been where I wanted to live, at least for a while but I had not counted on missing the family support so much. However, if Matt returned to Singapore, it meant the boys could not return as the country does not allow the boys to go back. We would live in Malaysia and that meant the boys would only see Matt on the weekends.  Not great for our family.

We toyed with the idea of going back to Australia because Matt’s parents are also there and Melbourne is only a 7 hour flight from Asia.  However, there is more uncertainty for Matt there than here because there was no guarantee of a job back there too.

Whenever I have to make a big decision, I like to call my father. He has always been so level headed and is able to make things very clear, from my role as a wife to Matt, supporting my husband, being a mother to the boys, to handling missing Malaysia/Singapore.  He reminded me that we came all this way for a purpose and it had to be fulfilled, just because some hardship came along, I thought of fleeing. I actually saw it more of an opportunity to go home but in retrospect, it has been like a minor hardship, this adjusting to USA.  And I was trying to flee.  We also called Matt’s parents and it was like, double confirmation, that we stay and make it work.  I am so grateful that we have such wonderful parents that can still impart into our lives.

So, this morning, we will lay out the fleece and test the Lord! We have decided to go ahead with the purchase of the property and pray that God will find Matt a job soon.