Drive Day

Sundays are for driving Ryan around. He is a busy fella on Sundays. Morning is calligraphy at Ubi, afternoon is for golf coaching at Mundai, and evening is for swimming lessons at Hwa Chong Institution. Today daddy is still in Vietnam so mom gets to be the chauffeur. How a little man of 11 gets to have such a busy schedule on what should be a rest day is somewhat ridiculous. All manner of coaches and teachers who make money off parents' paranoia about giving the little progenies a head start in life, make full use of Sundays so busy working parents can be busier still.

Not that we wanted this for Ryan - he chose to have calligraphy and would not agree when I suggested dropping the classes. Through some quirks of nature, my son prefers the gentler things in life while my girls tend to be more boisterous (except maybe for Brynn whose passion was her school symphonic band). He enjoys calligraphy even though his Chinese grades in school are heading south year after year. Such irony. And golf is daddy's dream of having one of his own shares his passion, maybe in the hope that when he is old and retired, he will still have someone to play with. That person certainly is not going to be moi. I tried golf and just cannot seem to find anything to hold me to it. It is way too complicated and I cannot contort the different parts of the body the way Bert tells me I need to to get that correct swing. Too technical for the likes of me :-).

But swimming - ah, that's a different story. Ryan would drop swimming at the drop of a hint. We are the holdbacks because given his leanings towards relative inactivity and bookishness, the exercises will ensure his health builds up. His natural inclination is to hole up somewhere with a book that he has read for the umpteenth time and not move any muscles not needed to hold up the book and turn the pages. Fortunately, though it was tortuous at the start, Ryan seems to have taken to golf. In fact, he has a very nice swing and can use my driver which I cannot for the life of me, handle. He can drive over 100 meters now, sometimes about 130 meters.

We dropped by Peter's new house on the way back from Mundai to see how the renovations were coming along. Peter and Kris were there so we actually got to go inside and upstairs. House coming along very nicely. As usual, they have good taste so although they are not spending a huge amount of money, the house will look quite good. They extended the back garden to cover the drain - hmmm, not sure if it is common property but apparently, the neighbour had cleared with the powers to be and said it is OK to do with certain caveats about providing passage when required.

Tonight is the final in the 2006 World Cup. I am tempted to stay up but I know I probably will fail the battle with my brain and eyes. Plus tomorow is house moving for Doris. May need to keep up my energy level if I am to be of any use to her.

Got to get ready to drive to swimming class. It is still raining which is a washout for my usual jog at the Hwa Chong tracks. While Ryan swims, I get to jog 10 or 13 laps around the tracks and 5 or so laps walking forward and backward to round off the day. Hope the rain stops soon.