I'm Leaving on a Jetplane....

This is it. The bag is packed (in singular form because the husband's isn't) and I am just sitting down to gather my thoughts and pray before we set off to Washington. J's graduation is on Sun 17th and I hope I am not too jetlagged and fall asleep during the ceremony!

This trip has been a time of pre-departure anxiety. I hope, even as I am writing this, that J has booked a car to pick us up from the airport. She has promised to make all the necessary arrangements and it is nice to be on the receiving end of arrangements than the one making them. One of the benefits of having your children grow up on you :) But my anxiety has stemmed more from the uncertainty that surrounds my return. With this spate of H1N1 flu, I almost was not given permission to leave for the US and it was truly a prayer answered that the alert was downgraded from orange to yellow, thus allowing me to travel, but with the dire threat that I will have to "exercise social responsibility" and might have to self-quarantine if the situation worsens between now and my return. I have just committed this to the Lord and focused on finishing my work and getting packed. What is the use of worrying and why worry anyway when God reigns!

I am looking forward very much to seeing J again. It has been a long time and though she isn't thrilled about it, I am looking forward to having her home again. It will also be a time of meeting many new people - people who have loved my daughter and blessed her in many ways and been a part of her life these past 4 years. I am a little bit anxious - it would be a lie if I said I wasn't - largely because I think J has made me out to be this larger-than-life person and I know I am not. Just because my daughters love me, it doesn't mean everyone else would, right? So well, I hope I just relax and enjoy myself, because I know that one thing I struggle with is this deep desire to be liked. It has been an area God has grown me in, especially this last year - just being myself, just a child of God and accepting that.

Well, I didn't set out to write a reflective piece, so I'll stop. My great desire to visit New York has been thwarted by H1N1, because then surely I would be quarantined! and we have changed our plans to visit Chicago instead after we go to Madison. I suppose that is another source of anxiety - meeting my brother and sister-in-law again after more than 15 years. But at the same time I'm also looking forward to it as my brother has gotten on in years and I do want to meet him now that I will be in the US as he does not travel.

Well, there will be silence from me for a while as I set off to the US. Please keep me in your prayers.

My Mother's Days

This is the first Mothers' Day that I have not had either one of my daughters with me. Last year I was in Melbourne and I remember how R made me scrambled eggs for breakfast :) Well, this year, both J and R are away so it didn't feel much like Mothers' Day.

However, today I thought about my own mother a great deal. I confess I have not really thought much about her. Somehow, my dad figured more in my childhood memories than my mum did. And my memory of her has always been that she had an air of resignation and sadness around her. It is strange how I seem to have picked up a number of vibes, whether these were justified or not I don't know. I suppose the inner life of our parents will always be hidden from us. But I felt she was somehow unhappy with what life had dealt her, that my dad could never do enough to please her. I felt that she always wanted me to take her side and I didn't understand what it was that I could do to please her. When I grew older I also felt like a pawn sometimes - especially if I was allowed to go out with my sisters - because when I came back she would ask me to repeat conversations to her. Which I did. And which did not endear me to my sisters. So they would accuse me of snitching on them and I remember not knowing what it was that I was supposed to do - tell and incur my sisters' wrath or not tell and endure my mum's silent anger.

But she was my mother and I loved her. I knew that she loved me in some fashion, shown mostly by letting me sleep with her, by excessive feeding and protection from my sisters and my dad especially when the report cards were not good! That she loved me I have no doubt. But she did not always have time for me.

This morning, I was in KL and my 2 sisters got talking about our relatives in India and the conversation got round to my mother. And somehow, this morning, my mother began to come to life for me as a real person. I heard how her mother (my grandmother) died giving birth to her. So my mother grew up motherless, brought up by her eldest step-brother and his wife. My sister told a story that brought a lump to my throat - how my mum's sister-in-law once gave all the children in the household a cup of milk before bedtime but did not give my mother any. She cried and ran downstairs to her brother who then took her on to his lap and made his wife give her some milk too. And I thought of that little child, being shut out of family life, overlooked among other children and felt sadness. Then I heard that my mother was brought to Malaya to marry my father when she was 14. She had her first child, my sister Rajam, before she turned 15. Then came 8 other children.

What would she have known about raising children when she was a child herself? What would she have known about being a mother when she had not been mothered? And then 25 years of child-bearing! Her first child born in 1931 and her last one (me) born in 1957! No wonder she was tired! I can still see her in my mind's eye now, lying down on the easy chair in the hall with her eyes closed. I used to wish she would get up and talk or do something. But now I think, would I have had the energy if it were me? What did she feel, coming to a strange country at 14 to marry a 23-year old man she had not met? Who helped her - to learn to cook? look after her child? What did she dream of and did any of her dreams come true? What happened that made her suspicious of almost everyone? Did she feel loved?

I wish, now, I had spent more time with my mum.

Where has the time gone?

Here I am again. I have missed writing on my blog. But I have a number of things that keep me occupied in the evenings and I find I don’t have as many hours after work as I seemed to have before….

One new activity I have begun is watching the show ‘The Biggest Loser’ on the Hallmark channel from 7pm to 8pm. I started watching it as I thought it would motivate me to lose weight and that I would learn some tips on how to eat right and exercise. But after a month of watching it I realize I have not been motivated even an iota by the programme. In fact, yesterday, I ate 4 Mark & Spencer’s raspberry tart biscuits while I watched the programme. Hahahaha… The absurdity of it struck me when I was on my second biscuit but the remaining 2 biscuits looked so forlorn in the box that I fnished them off anyway :) And anyway I also realized that the programme is like any other reality show and focuses on who messes up and how they mess up instead of telling us what to eat etc. So, has this realization made me stop watching the programme? Nope. There is something fascinating about waiting to see the contestants stand on the huge weighing scales and see how much weight they lost that week. Weird.

Well anyway, this fat-watching happens only on Mondays and Tuesdays because I am at church on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday evenings - CYAN cell on Wed and my own cell on Fri. And on Thurs evenings, I am in a 10-week course called ‘Search for Life’. So that is about half my week taken up. And now there is a kind of pattern to my week. Wednesdays to Fridays I am at work and then at church. Mondays and Tuesdays are my free evenings when I either catch up on reading or preparing for my Thurs classes or preparing for my cell discussions. Saturday is my ME day – long walk, leisurely breakfast, QT, meet friends, do my facial, get a massage, watch a movie etc. Sundays – I go to church then basically keep D company. I try hard to cook on Sundays so he has some lunch at home and then basically leave space in the day to see what he wants to do. Most times he wants to eat then sleep in the afternoon, and that works great for me too. Hahaha…

I am looking forward now to my trip to the US. D and I will be leaving in mid-May to attend J’s graduation. I wish R could be with us too. We are planning to some traveling while we are there but my niece tells me my planned itinerary is too ambitious so I will need to re-think... :)

What I've Been Up To

Wow It's been a long time since I blogged. And I am disappointed that I have not been missed more! Hey is no one reading my blog anymore????

So since I last moaned about my weight gain, I have not done anything to rectify the situation. I think I am having low-grade depression. Because all I want to do is eat thereally bad stuff - like chocolate, ice-cream and biscuits and drink coffee.

Speaking of coffee, that is what defined my last trip to Melbourne for me - COFFEE! I have officially declared Melbourne the coffee capital of the world. I drank coffee every morning I was there and the best part was I didn't have to look for a particular shop or anything. I could walk into any cafe and the coffee would be gooood! How do they manage that?

Well, anyway, here is a quick update of the months that have passed... R went to the US for 2 weeks in Dec (of what a generous mother she has...) and by all accounts the 2 sisters had a good time - except when they almost froze to death in Times Square because the mother persuaded them to go to the Count-down on New Year's Eve. Then in Feb, R and I went to Melbourne. R has decided to read Behavioural Science & Social Work in Monash. The campus is not as pretty as Melbourne Uni's and had a number of students from India (who without fail asked R "Are you IT?") but I had a good vibe about the Social Work Faculty.

We flew to Sydney over a weekend as D's niece got married. It was a beautiful wedding and the pictures are on Flickr if anyone is interested. I'm quite upset because my Blogger account makes the photos smaller for some reason I have not bee able to figure out - so am not posting them here. Also caught up with my friends Bee Leng & Neena and the newly migrated Pushpa & Ganesh. It's funny how I miss them - after all when they were in KL we only met once or twice a year but now it seems sad.

I've watched a number of movies I quite liked - 2 of them in Melbourne at the exorbitant price of AUD16. I liked Slumdog Millionaire but I feel it is overrated and not really worthy of an Oscar. I think it had the same effect on the West as Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon did - people who have never watched an Indian movie before and then go gaga over it when they finally do. There are a number of excellent Hindi movies that deserve an Oscar but never did get one. Also watched He's Just Not That Into You - and you know what, I think there were quite a few truths in there :)

Also watched the musical 'Menopause' with my friends from JI - we had a great time! The musical dragged a bit in the middle - I guess there are only so many laughs you can wring out of hot flushes - but I think the fun was in watching it with a bunch of other women. Funny thing is none of us had any of what the musical was laughing about :) We are going to watch The Winter's Tale next Fri - we are becoming quite the theatre crowd...

Currently reading an extremely consoling book called 'What's So Amazing About Grace'. And not looking forward to going to work tomorrow.....

My Oprah Confession

So I too, like Oprah, have "fallen off the wagon". But THANKFULLY, unlike her 19kg, I only have 3 kgs to rue. And here are the reasons for this...


Meeting up with my 95E students over pizza and KFC..

Celebrating with my CYAN cell

Ice cream at Swensen's with my 95A students...

One too many BOWALA sessions with my kakis from office...

Ben's wedding dinner...

And our office farewell lunch...

And in case Maya thinks she got away from the blame game, here it is too...

Wow. Considering all this, it is a MIRACLE It's only 3 kgs.... Hahahaha...

First Entry for 2009

Just 2 days after my last post I have to admit failure. Already I have 3 makan dates set up - a lunch on Sunday with my CYAN youth leaders, a dinner on Monday with my student who is in town on holiday from Hawaii and a dinner probably on Friday with my mami kakis from JI and dinner with Neen who has not accepted an offer of a hike in lieu. Sigh.... so much for the Battle of the Bulge. It didn't have a chance....

So it was a pretty good New Year celebration for my family. We went to D's brother's place for New Year's Eve. My bil organised an Ox-themed party as 2009 would be the Year of the Ox according to the Chinese calendar. It caused me a lot of grief in terms of finding appropriate wear and in the end D brought a ridiculous looking headwear which was essentially pom-poms mounted on a hair-band which I tried to make into horns and ended up looking the Statue of Liberty. My niece had better success with it by fashioning a pair of horns out of foil. But after all the groans before the event, we had fun as my BIL had put in quite a bit of effort and set up games along the Ox theme with the evening culminating in a 'treasure hunt' that ended in Clarke Quay where we could watch the fireworks.

R and J are in New York for the new year. Apparently it is an unimaginable -14 degrees celsius. They gamely went to Times Square to watch the ball descend largely because their mother was trying to do some vicarious living but then the cold and the crowds got the better of them so they came home to watch it online instead :) I am glad though that they are spending some time together. With both of them away in university in different countries with a 15 hour time difference it has been hard to keep in touch. And I think as they both enter new phases of life - work, study, dating.... - they will have to make time for each other or risk losing chunks of each other's lives. It has been interesting even to me to realise there are now larger and larger parts of their lives that I do not know about. Of course they strenously deny it and claim to tell me EVERYTHING but I know they can't really do that. I guess that's part of our children growing up and becoming adults in their own right.

Well, here's to a new year - of possibilities, promise and potential. Despite the gloomy economic prognosis for 2009, I am looking forward to it. I read somewhere that when you hit middle age you begin thinking of time as "time left" instead of "time ahead" and I realised that was true of myself. So I am choosing to continue to think of "time ahead" and I have been surprised at the change in attitude this simple re-framing has resulted in. So yes, I am looking forward to 2009. May it be a blessed year for you too. "The Lord is God and he has made his light shine upon us." (Psalm 118:27)

The Battle Begins Tomorrow

AAAAGH!!!! I have put on 3 kgs!!!!! Aaaaaagh!!! This is the result of birthday dinners + trips to KL + Christmas + Ben & Jerry since R came home. I just caught sight of my paunch in a Christmas photo of me. The horror! The horror!

Hear ye! Hear ye! on 1 Jan 2009, the diet begins. The exercise begins! The 3 kgs will be conquered! I have made this public declaration to make myself get started and to warn - no, beg - all my friends not to tempt me with all manner of chocolates, ice creams, cakes and cookies. And anyone who wants to meet me will have to make an exercise date with me. No more coffee dates, no more dinner dates and no more dessert sessions until those 3 kgs are wiped out, vanquished! Neen - we have to walk around Botanic Garden when you come or climb Bt Timah ok :) Aaaaaaagh!!!!! :)

Talk

Wow much has happened since my last blog. Can't believe it's been 3 weeks! Got my first bout of the flu bug for this year sometime after I last blogged so I guess that's why I haven't been updating. I also went up to KL for a weekend after that as my niece M had come down from London. It was a real pleasure to be able to spend time with her again. It was an interesting weekend as we were also on a mad shopping spree in preparation for my niece V's wedding next year. I also spent a day with a very dear friend of mine and it was nice to just chill out and talk. I wish I could make a career out of this like Oprah - you know, sit with different people and ask them stuff and listen and tell your own stories and make memories...

Strange, I didn't use to be like this. I used to really dread meeting new people and I used to keep a lot of my thoughts and feelings close to myself. I don't really remember when I started telling people about me. Hmmm... come to think of it, even blogging is quite unlike me :) But I think I like this new me more. The old me was darker I think :) And last night I had a really great conversation at a wedding dinner I attended. One of my colleagues got married and I went because my old gang at the office were all leaving and I thought the dinner would be a good time for us all to meet and chat but the place turned out to be quite noisy and we were all seated at different tables, so what with one thing and another, I ended up making conversation with the couple seated next to me and wow, was it some conversation! I had never met such an interesting man before! He was a doctor who had moved to Singapore from Canada because his wife was a little homesick for Asia. And he had really great stories to tell of the times he had spent in Sabah, Hong Kong, Manila and Ottawa. It was honestly the first wedding dinner I had attended where I didn't realise how late it was! I do hope our paths cross again. I learnt so much!

Coming back to conversations - the long and short of it is - I love them. I like meeting friends and talking over coffee, I like walking with my daughters and talking, I like lying in bed with my daughters and my niece and talking, I like sitting in the youth room with my CYAN kids and talking, I like meeeting my ex-students for dinner and talking, I especially love sitting on the beach and talking. Oh, how much there is to hear! Everybody has a story. I just wish more people would tell them. Especially to me :)

Globe-trotting Plans

OK, I have decided to suspend my looking backwards and decided to look forwards. As of now, 2009 looks set to be a year of much travelling! I can't believe how much of travelling I'm going to be doing! Here are my travel plans for next year -

• Feb 2009 - I'm going to Melbourne to settle R in and then to Sydney to attend D's niece's wedding. Yay!
• May 2009 - D and I are going to the US to attend J's graduation. Another Yay! I am also planning to visit my niece in Florida and my brother in Wisconsin. Also hoping to see New York and Washington.
• June 2009 - weekend trip to Bangkok to use up my credit card rewards before they expire in Aug!
• July 2009 - 2 weeks in London to celebrate my sister Su's 60th birthday + my niece Vid is getting married! I get to see Maya and Rohan again too!
• Aug 2009 - a short trip to Siem Reap to see Angkor Wat if J's friend is visiting :)
• Sept 2009 - Hong Kong during the Hari Raya weekend with my BOWALA gang to visit our dear Carol with the express purpose of crashing at her pad to drive her nuts :)
• Oct 2009 - to KL for Vid's Indian wedding ceremony.
• Nov 2009 - my long awaited, much hoped for tour of Israel. My friend Dot and I have put our names on the tour list and we are waiting for the pastor organising it to confirm the tour.

So there you go, my long list of to-dos in 2009. I'm so excited just thinking about these plans. The BIG question is, where oh where am I going to find the money???? Anyone interested in contributing to the kitty??? :)

A Mood Piece

Is it just me or do other people get melancholic towards the end of a year too? Well, melancholic, reflective, you know the kind of feeling that leaves you feeling a little sad, but not weepy or bawl-your-eyes out kind of sad. I have had my mid-life crisis so I know it's not that :) But the weather also turns wet and grey at this time of the year and then I begin to mentally tote up the year into my pluses and my minuses and me being me of course my minuses seem to outweigh my pluses... It's at times like this that I wish God would give me a peek into the next year :) But even as I write this I am reminded of someone who told me a few months ago that she did not think there was anything for her to look forward to. She only saw for herself an escalation of problems with little end in sight. I felt sad then and I feel sad now thinking of what she said. But melancholic though I am now I have a quiet peace inside me that my tomorrows are in God's hands. I may chafe now, I am restless, wanting I know not what. But I also know that despite all the ways I have messed up my life, despite all the wrong choices I have made and all the times I have failed to live up to His expecatations, God has forgiven me, God loves me and even if every friend I depend on leaves me, He will not let me go.