My dad’s talked about this since the early 90’s: Of bringing the whole extended family for a visit to his hometown (more like village).

Not that we minded the idea. Back then we only loathed about what the likely quality of basic amenities would be like. After all, there were stories of toilets with no doors, toilets with no toilets but a hole in the ground. Somehow it never eventuated.

Through the years, the kids (my nephews and nieces) grew, and my parents have also continued keeping in contact with his relatives (well, they are mine too). They too have made visit(s?) here (but I was away studying/living in Adelaide at the time). A recent idea my dad had was to contribute toward a memorial of his ancestors, to keep the roots alive.

Recently, that idea came to fruition. And what better timing to also time the visit to the completed site with bringing the family there as well.

We had spent the week leading to, and including Christmas Day 2009, in Xiamen China. Xiamen city is only about 2-3 hours bus ride to the village, so it isn’t like a real trek too deep into China (please mind my poor knowledge of Chinese geography). That has worked out quite well all this time for my parents, making it easy for them to visit our relatives all these years.

My dad organised a tour group for this visit- which was actually just us, the whole 29 of us! It was a fun time for all as there were no outsiders and we were as our usual silly-carefree selves

I can’t say there was a sense of belonging, personally. After all, we were all born in and grew up in Malaysia. As a father I reckon my dad feels some form of achievement in finally bringing his own children together to see his birthplace, to see where we are from, his and our roots, connect with some distant blood relatives, and his contribution back to the community when he left with his father to seek, and found, a better life in distant shores. He had done well for himself with very humble beginnings, and by extension my generation (and later) are now a lot better off comparatively.

Take away the brick houses beside and behind this structure, and you have the house in which my father was born.

My grandfather built this house in the ’60’s apparently after the ethnic unrest in Indonesia, fearing the same for Malaya/Malaysia, with intention to bring everyone back to China to live in this bigger house.

This is (almost) everyone, infront of the “shrine” cum community hall that my dad funded and built

For Caitlin, at 5 years old I don’t think this will be a lasting impression. Ideologies of family ties is too mature for her. She will remember the some of the places we visited, and the fun with the cousins. She probably won’t remember how cold it was; she may remember what she wore; but she’s worn that same jacket before elsewhere.

One thing I’ve been saying to people who asked what I thought about my first visit to China is: “We were on the bus, driving through very long tunnels, to emerge to drive on long bridges.” I was rather awed by the landscape- it’s one thing to read about it and watch it on tv, but it’s another to see the natural landscape: mountains and valleys. Also, the technology deployed in this developing country is actually also more advanced than Malaysia. Tunnels bored through these mountains; long tunnels, and impressive world class bridges to carry you further. The highways are also multi-tiered, criss-crossing each other at higher and higher levels.

It is a big big country, there are uneven developments everywhere. I personally only saw 3 beggars on the street, only in Xiamen city; 2 of whom are disabled, the 3rd looked able-bodied but with a toddler probably 2-3 years old.

More pictures here:

• My brother’s photo collection on flickr
• Mine

For the end of Ramadhan month here in Malaysia, we had a really long weekend off work. Caitlin’s school, in fact, had the whole week off (they had a couple of Saturdays of school to make up for closing the whole week).

It was also Hot Mummee’s birthday on the 21st Also, Yee yee (HM’s younger sister) is also back from Hawaii for a month; and it’s also going to be HM’s cousin’s wedding this weekend!

So we had quite a few activities lined up in the last 2 weeks or so!

As a nice little “cheap” treat, I brought Caitlin for a swim in our pool downstairs (of the condo building). Off and on I have been taking her floats out of her swimgear the last few times we went for a dip- she is tall enough already and can stand at the shallow end. She really surprised me by “going under” (as she calls it) and even remembering that one time I tried to teach her to exhale through her nose. I was watching her submerging and blowing bubbles out of her nose and really enjoy exploring this new skill and sensations!

The other highlight was also the rare times that we as a family ventured outdoors together! HM’s not really an outdoorsy person, and with Caleb being still somewhat waddling, we don’t venture outdoors much. But being somewhat bored with the days-off, we contacted Moomykin and Cuddlyfamily to see what they were doing.

We ended up planning a picnic!

The kids had the most fun, whilst I enjoyed (not enough of!) Moomykin’s decadent potato and egg salad and Cuddlyfamily’s homemade cookies! Most of my time was spent watching over the kids; more so with Caleb and (possibly?) his first visit to a playground.

Oh, we had also bumped into See Ming (aka xmocha) and Sim and Max!

The picnic wasn’t as scary as we had feared (okay we are city folks after all). The dreaded rain held off just for us, where it had been raining every 12 hours or so the previous umpteen days regardless of day or night, and also the kids weren’t too much of a handful.

After the picnic morning HM, Yee yee and I, and their brother and some friends went for karaoke (don’t laugh- all are quite good singers and it’s also good stress relief!), followed by seafood dinner- it was after all HM’s day, and she got to choose which crab, and the cooking style to eat!

Caitlin likes to go shopping. Make the slightest inkling that we are going shopping and her adrenalin gets pumping.

Typical female I guess. But at least for now she is not keen on checking out shoes….

However, I gotta be fair. I do like to go check out gadget shops too. When we passed the Machines store (Apple and accessory store) Caitlin actually recognised it. “Daddee you wanna go in there?” I didn’t have to, so we didn’t. Much as I’d like to repeat the ritual of making at least 1 round and probably see the same stuff as the last visit.

Hee hee.

I can’t say this shoppaholic gene runs through the whole family though. The little man was actually already asleep in the car on the way even though his big sister was all the chatterbox that she is (even more of since we were going shopping).

Nice way to spend the public holiday that we had this week, I reckon

It’s school holidays next week, and I have kinda made promises of more mini adventures with her…. Only that now I don’t think I can get days off work anymore- looks like this Daddee may have to break some promises, or only do them on weekends and cram the shopping malls and carparks with the rest of the city folk …. Yikes.

The Bureau of Met says there is a dust storm coming tonight.

The sky has been like this all day today, and the wind was very strong outdoors; little ones like Caitlin may actually literally be blown off her feet!

I’d hate to see what it’s be like when this storm does hit.

One thing though- just as well I didn’t bring the kids.

It’s not always that we get to eat like kings.

But one doesn’t have to be kings to be able to eat like this in mostly all Australian cafes…..

Okay okay, this may not be a big deal for some of you guys, but it is for me; cos it’s not always that we get real bacon at home… You could find them in Malaysian supermarkets, but I don’t think I’d be able to get a “complete” meal like this!

And this is only for breakfast

Heh….

Those of you invited, or know people who are invited, please don’t disclose this.

It is my parents’ 50th anniversary this year, and also a joint celebration for my mum’s birthday.

But my dad doesn’t want people to know these.

He is kinda shy about it, you see.

Also, both my parents just want friends and family to come empty handed. That’s right. No gifts, no ang pows.

They have insisted that the dinner event, some 18 tables I hear, to just be a sit-down happy joy joy dinner with close friends and relatives. No stage, no mics, no hoo-ha.

But the grandkids are up to something…..

Some parts of their grand-plan are finalised, others still need the Committee’s approval and budgetary sign-offs

* Photo courtesy of my brother’s Flickr site

When Caitlin had her 4th birthday party, I had invited these particular two friends of hers.

The first is a friend over a year older than her. Their Mummees have known each other before they knew their respective husbands, and naturally when both had daughters, they play when the adults get together. The second is a classmate she gets along well- she talks about her all the time after school; at parent teacher meetings the teachers have even complained that these two chatterboxes had to be separated!

If I can categorise these 2 friends- one is while in school-mode, the other is outside of school-mode; if you know what I mean. It’s not that Caitlin is or acts differently in and out of school, but she only sees these friends in respective surroundings and circumstances.

So this party was held in an indoor kids’ gym, you know- steps and rubber balls and slides. And these two friends were present.

Being host we arrived early. Caitlin was off to the gym. Her friends started arriving, and quickly joined in the fun. This was also the first time I watched Caitlin playing host, unprompted. Let me rephrase that: This was the first time I had to prompt her to be a host. But it was all good; after all, in a place like that, one (kid) would not really need much urging to join in!

Soon, both of these friends were present. And since both didn’t know each other, they were demanding the attention of Caitlin.

While Caitlin was quite happy following either one of them, the other was starting to feel neglected in that Caitlin either didn’t heed her plea to “come over here..” or didn’t hear her at all. When she played with school friend, the other was feeling left out and cried. So when we asked Caitlin to also include the other, somehow the first one then became somewhat left out too. Caitlin, in all this time, was busy accommodating one or the other!

So the tears were flowing, complaints being raised with the mummies, and Caitlin seemingly needed coaching.

But even I was at a loss somewhat. Naturally I was thinking in adult-mode: Can’t we all just join in and (learn to) get along? Hot Mummee and I were saying things to all 3 girls to try and pacify and solve the “issue”. “Why don’t you include the other…”, “Why don’t all 3 of you play together…”, “.. they don’t know each other, so you (Caitlin) have to try and get them to play together….”

While it is somewhat amusing to see this little dilemma, how would you have settled this triangle??

Clips and memories from recent events…

As you know, it’s regulations in Australia to have your child seated in a proper car seat while in the car.

So since my friends in Adelaide either don’t have a spare one to loan me, or that their kids are already grown, I had to bring my own on this trip (I also had to bring Caitlin’s child toilet seat too, but that’s another story!)

Going there was ok. After all we checked in at KL Sentral where there was a rather menacing looking guy offering a plastic-wrapping service for your luggage: RM10 for “large” bags. It’s not regulations to have your luggage wrapped; as I was explaining to the passenger in front of me at the check in queue. it’s really only a matter of preference. Plus, it makes it harder for would-be thieves to break into your luggage. With the plastic wrap I also thought it would give the seat some level of protection.

It was on the way back that got me. Adelaide airport; and dare i say most Australian airports, do not have this service available. So I checked it in “naked”.

After arrival, my fears were confirmed when I saw it come around the carousel in a tray. From a distance I could see black where there shouldn’t be, and white where there also shouldn’t be.

So, I picked up the pieces, literally, and got our belongings onto the trolley to board the express train. Generally, damaged baggage ought to be reported on the spot. However, there is actually a 7 day window where you can still lodge your report. Not wanting to hang around the airport too long with a hungry toddler, I decided to lodge the report at another time.

I did make sure that I had proof of the damage though, so I took this, and a few more shots of the damage, whilst on the express train.

Before this post, I had already sent the photos plus a note to the relevant authorities, as my official report of baggage damage.

There.

So here we are in Adelaide, Australia. Daddee had promised me that he’d bring me to a beach, since I have never been to one before, ever.

I have asked Uncle Al again if he can take us to the beach again, and because he also had so much fun, he just might!

So some of you know that I had been planning this trip for a while. After all, when you have an annual privilege like this from work, it’d be a waste not to use it, wouldn’t it?

So a few months ago I asked Hot Mummee where we should go with these free tickets. “Gotta save money lah, impending recession, you know..”

The long and short of it? I went ahead with the planning without her. I decided to bring Caitlin along to Adelaide, where I went to uni, where Hot Mummee wouldn’t be interested in coming anyway, and where (thus, since it was only going to be an adult and a half) I was able to crash at a uni friend’s house. Yes recession may be coming, but this trip is looking pretty cheap!

So, last night we set out for the flight. This was all quite familiar to Caitlin already, after having flown to Australia twice before already, within weeks of her 2nd and 3rd birthdays, and now her 4th birthday!

The train ride was fun, as expected. We didn’t have that much time in the terminal to run around like the last time, due to pretty-ok-thus-little-buffer-time planning during that evening.

As soon as we got on the plane Caitlin was asking for the headphones already! “I wanna watch Bob the Builder!” She was quite right, Bob the Builder was listed as one of the program on the kids channel. But it was only 1 episode. In the end, she ended up watching Finding Nemo, twice.

Which also means that she didn’t actually sleep that much. I guess a little like her Daddee, she was trying to savour every moment of the holiday by staying awake as much as possible. But being an overnight flight, this wasn’t something I had wanted, because it will mean that we’d be wasting the following fullday trying to recuperate from the lack of sleep. And I had forgotten to ensure that she didn’t have her afternoon nap the afternoon of the overnight flight.

Which was what we ended up doing, because Caitlin only managed about 3 hours sleep, and I even less. But you wouldn’t know it if you saw her in the Adelaide international airport. She was jumping and running and giggling all the way!

Just as well for the time difference. She knocked out at her usual Malaysian afternoon nap time, which was around late morning Adelaide time. So, come night time, she’d be adjusted to sane local sleeping times.

Which she is now asleep soundly as I type…

Tonight, with my uni friend we went to Fasta Pasta. Those of you who thought this sounds familiar is because these are the same guys who ventured into Malaysia at Ikano years ago. It’s quite a big franchise here in South Australia, and the menu is still the way I liked it when I was at uni here over a decade ago….

So, after spending a day here, these are the things I forgot to bring! (ie, as of today!)

• Caitlin’s hairbrush!
• Clothes for ME to sleep in!
• Malaysian driver’s license! I am so used to the fact that it’s incorporated into our MyKad that I forgot to bring the “actual” one..

As you know Caitlin enjoys being picked up from school by her favourite human on Earth (ahem).

So since I had the day off work (actually I had taken the whole week off since I have a load of annual leave left), and also that our department had organised a lunch party, I thought to pick Caitlin up from school and head on over to the office party with her in tow, to show her the place where I work.

The party was a combined Raya celebrations as well as farewell for a staff. But little did I know that there was also gonna be performances by my peers. Some singing, some dancing, some fashion show parade.

We arrived about 50 minutes after the party started- Caitlin’s school day only ended 30min after the scheduled start of the party. By then there were thank-you speeches already by my unit head, and soon followed by performances.

The ladies in the unit danced, sang self-written rhymes to tease the farewell staff. Staff were also requested to come “dressed up”, so there were also fashion / catwalk parades. In good sportsmanship, when my peers saw me walking in with Caitlin, I was also requested to parade under the “Daddy with daughter” category. Caitlin wasn’t too appreciative of that, but she obliged since I was holding her hand. We did a walk, I wanted to twirl her but she wasn’t really in the mood, and we walked back to where we were hiding.

Soon after, lunch was served. It was only then that she started coming out of her shell, starting to respond and then started talking to the adults in my office. It was afterwards that I found out that she even volunteered info- that she spoke first instead of just responding, about her day in school, with one of the ladies here…

Hmm I wonder if it was ‘cos food was being served that she opened up….

So now she has seen “Daddee’s office”. Complete with dancing ladies, singing ladies, ladies winning (small) awards for being best-dressed, a big table full of food with tomato rice, not-spicy curry dishes, cakes, “crackers” (she didn’t know they were called papadums), and Playhouse Disney (website) on Daddee’s work laptop.

Talk about misconceptions about the adult working life from an early age!

I couldn’t think of a better description the right description / title for this topic. I will let the event explain where I am coming from.

… I mean, after all, Caitlin’s had the whole week off school because of Hari Raya, and it was already the Saturday night before school reopens. We (I take all the blame as the father) hadn’t really done anything with her or for her in such an opportune time for fun and togetherness.

So since it looked like it’s been a fairly dull week-off for her, after a fairly early dinner on Saturday night I told Hot Mummee that I feel I should bring Caitlin out to do something. Hot Mummee and I had plans to meet up with my brother that night to discuss somethings, and she herself had a business plan to complete, so she suggested I bring Caitlin out for a drive (only, since it was too late for anything else and I had to be home for this meeting) to, maybe, Bintang Walk and “see the lights”…

How boring I thought. But when I got into the car with a very excited Caitlin, I actually didn’t know where else to go. KLCC (Twin Towers) may not be all that far away from my parents house (where we were that weekend) but given it’s a Saturday night, I may actually waste more time looking for a spot in their basement carpark than the actual window shopping / walkabout. I found myself heading towards Bintang Walk and the (boring-but-ok-gimme-an-alternative-then-smart-arse!) “bright lights”.

I come to a traffic light. Stop. Green. Go. Another 200m. Another lights. Stop. Green. Join the crawl. Ooh look- wow man bright lights, woop-dee-doo. Then I saw it. Brightly lit also, to the right of the one-way street Walk. Fringing the new posh Pavillion shopping centre.

Blue background, white bold typeface. “P”, for parking.

Do I bore her with the bright lights “Huh, that’s all you are bringing me out for, Daddee the hero in my eyes?” Or risk being late for the appointment at home but yet meet the expectations of my daughter and maintain the hero standing?

The choice was obvious. After all, I had to maintain my reputation: I am known for my punctuality and keeping to my word on appointments, for I myself would not tolerate my attendees to be late either.

I turned into the carpark.

Inside, father and daughter were running chasing around hee-hee ha-ha, playing and bonding and creating new memories of and with each other being the envy of other pram-pushing parents and yet other solemn-faced parents of butt-crack-exposed multi-coloured hair teenagers.

Oh, how time flew and stood still and in slo-mo at the same time, images of wide grins and a running little girl looking back at you; momentarily forgetting that I still needed to leave soon much to the disappointment of the apple of my eye.

So what is the parenting lesson here?

Never run around a shopping centre with a toddler, even if it is in as grand and as spacious a place as The Pavillion, white marbled flooring lit by high ceiling spotlights with Beverly Hills retailers and halogen bulbs.

Because they puke from running too much. Especially so soon after dinner. Of steamed fish and (a bit of) crab meat.

I had actually wanted to put this in the Random Quotes section of this blog (there, on the right), but thought it to be too significant.

I don’t know if she learnt it from school, or from Sesame Street’s podcast’s – this particular episode, but somewhere along the line Caitlin’s grasped the concept of family.

It’s a short work week this week. In fact, Caitlin’s school is closed this week as most of the parents had wanted it so, so that their family could get away and be with loved ones during this festivity.

Last night as I was putting her to bed, I was apologising for not being able to bring her shopping during the day as I had implied earlier in the day (she loves to walk about in shopping centres). I had suggested that perhaps Grandma can bring her along during the following days of supermarket-shopping; since starting school she’s not been able to tag along on these trips as her grandparents do these rounds in the morning, and picks her up from school afterwards.

Yay, she exclaimed.

Then I mentioned that Wednesday and Thursday are public holidays for all, and maybe then we could go out and do something.

“Mummee too?” she asked.

“Yes Mummee too..”

“YAY! Then Daddee, Mummee, Di-di (Mandarin for younger brother) and Caitlin can go out as my family !!

Wooo… this Daddee thought….

She understands the concept. She appreciates the opportunity. She looks forward to the outing as a family unit.

It’s just great!

Got me tagged for another, err, tag; by Moomykin

Rules:
1. Link to the person who tagged you.
2. List 5 things that could make your life very different should it come true.
3. Tag 5 other people.

1. If I didn’t play dead, I would have drowned that day at the rapids, at Kuala Kubu Baru.
See, since I was young free and single I joined various activities to get to know people. One of them was the outdoor adventure group that rock-climbs (they (used to?) run the indoor climbing gym at The Summit) and also white water rafting. On one of the trips to the river, the water was quite high and fast due to rain the previous few days. Story short: My raft tipped over. My buddy managed to get to the shore, I was caught in a “washing machine” tumble of water behind a big boulder (water physics: this is the resulting turbulence when the water meets back together after going around and above the boulder). I couldn’t get out of it. I couldn’t get up for air easily. Because of the life vest, I couldn’t get down low enough. For a while, I was doing how I used to play in the pool when I was a young’un: Sink, kick / jump up, gasp, sink, repeat. I did that for a while while trying to escape the turbulence, buying time, thinking what to do next. And then I couldn’t anymore. I didn’t know where was up and down anymore. I can swim, but I couldn’t swim out of this one. Kicked, and still no air.

I don’t recall thinking I was gonna die. I don’t recall having the proverbial life flash before my eyes. I also don’t recall panicking. Only Hey, I can’t seem to get out of this shit, man.

After a while, I thought Since I am not getting anywhere struggling, why not not struggle. I played dead.

Turns out that was almost the right thing to do. Then I “came back to life” and tried kicking again, and found myself standing in water only knee high (river bed not always the same depth, okay! It was deep at the boulder!)

One of the guys there is a keen kayaker, from Sydney. Brought his own single-seater too. He was saying that with all this turbulence going on, there is a layer of water that’s passing through underneath all this quite happily. If this happened to anyone, to remember to make like a ball and try to get deeper into the water to let this “layer” take you out.

I was apparently involuntarily dragged out by this layer of water.

The guys afterwards said I may have been under for over 5 minutes. I wouldn’t know. They seemed more scared than I, what with my limp body! I was just busy burping all the water I swallowed.

2. If I didn’t go to this club that I didn’t usually go (likewise with Hot Mummee) we wouldn’t have met!
I went with some work mates. Since I was their boss / supervisor, I thought I should also join in some after work partying. Just that I don’t like the crowd there nor the music (it was Viva- now you know what I mean!). I spotted my cousin, went to say hi. Turns out he and friends were celebrating his wife’s birthday. I went over to meet them, and there she was……

3. If I didn’t leave Australia when we separated, we might still be together and I might be living there now
But… I wouldn’t have (re)connected as well as I have with my family here. I wouldn’t have had the break in my career. I wouldn’t have met Hot Mummee, and wouldn’t have these two adorable kids.

4. If I wasn’t lured by advertising money, I wouldn’t have started this blog!
But it’s all good, if I wasn’t passionate about parenting, I wouldn’t have started it anyway!

5. If I had more time for myself, I would actually be making money with this blog!
I would be spending more time researching and tweaking this blog to go further than what it is now, and probably more mental energy to write better stuff and better writing than the current useless fluff…

Hope this doesn’t drive readers away!

PS: Oops, this is just like me to not follow rules, or not reading instructions (take your pick!)- Anyone reading this is free to pick up this tag; ‘cos I don’t even have as many as 5 friends!