Happy Halloween

Tonight is Halloween and beginning at about 6:00 pm, they started ringing our door bell. I thought we had bought enough candies so encouraged them to help themselves. Most of them were quite shy, taking only one piece each. So through dinner and after, it was either Ryan or I running to and fro and up and down the stairs, opening the door to cries of trick or treating.

We just about ran out of candies after an hour and a half. So quietly, we turned off the porch and living room lights and the door bell immediately stopped ringing. Reminder to self: get more candies next year. On my request, the better half had bought some candies but it was, like, 2 packets of chocolate nuggets to my utter amazement. So last week at WalMart, Ryan and I threw a lot more bags of all kinds of candies in the trolley and even these were not enough. Amazing. But so fun to see the kids all dressed up and eagerly adding to their hauls. Wish I had taken some pictures, but alas, the thought did not enter my mind.

The young ones were really cute and there were some big kids. I could tell some of them were looking quizzically at Ryan, wondering why he was at the door handing out candies instead of being out with them getting candies. But the boy was shy about this and I suspect would not have objected if Nic was here to accompany him. Still he was happy handing out the goodies and enjoyed the experience. So as the big and small monsters and super-heros who were turning up in droves at our door not so many minutes ago would say:
Thank you and Happy Halloween.

Knick Knacks

The irony of it all. Went for a flu jab on Wednesday (free for employees). Came down with a head cold on Friday. The nose keeps trying to run away and the throat makes these dry raspy noises they call coughs. Better half went for the same jab (must pay for family members) and is fit as a fiddle. No fair. So I skipped today's tennis with our Mainland Chinese friends and had a 10 lap walk (actually one lap jog) around the Amador Valley High school tracks. Here are pictures of the tennis game:

We found a piano teacher for Ryan. Teacher came for trial yesterday and lessons will start this coming Wednesday. Costs like US$35 for 45 mins. Teacher seems to be of Eastern Europe origins, I cannot really tell. But he plays beautifully. I hope he will be able to motivate Ryan. I was surprised to learn they also follow ABRSM here so the boy will be picking up Grade 4 from where he left off in Singapore. We missed the September exams so wasted a year but never mind. I think the environment and style of teaching here will be quite different. Plus the teacher really plays well. Bean will be thrilled to hear him. He tested the piano and said it was a little out of tune but not worth fixing right now.

We signed Ryan up for golf lessons also yesterday. Today we bought him a golf set from Target and he and daddy went for some practice shots at the San Ramon golf club. But unfortunately, I was wheezing and sneezing in the slight wind so sat in the car instead and forgot to take some pictures. Next time...

Sun Shiny

And so I am now trying to get this family out of the house and into enjoying this vast land called America. Two months into arriving in a new country and all we usually do is sit in the apartment/house huddled around trying to keep warm and glued to the TV. Or getting mad at each other because we have no one else to work our energy off. Tried yesterday - the sun was out and the neighbour's kids were skating around but my boy could not bear to get up from the carpet where he laid prone, watching me sweep the garage and the backyard. It was a beautiful day but we stayed indoor. Me thinks oftentimes, men are much less adaptable than the fairer sex.

So wish me luck as I try to motivate the one and a half men to enjoy what's left of fall. Fall in California is a really nice season - sun's out most days yet it is not too hot. Temperatures' mostly in the low 80's. As soon as they have bathed, we are going to a driving range. Hopefully, maybe, find a coach for the boy so he can pick up where he left off in Singapore.

In one month, Nic will be here and I said I would bring the two to UC Berkeley to get a taste of a very unique campus culture.

D+L Delivers

Our plasma TV stand finally arrived, almost two weeks after we ordered it online. The promised delivery date on the website is 5 to 7 days. There was a small hitch - I have grown used to purchases in the US always running into hitches, big and small.

And D+L apparently arrived late yesterday morning, found no one home and just left the thing outside at the front door. We never use the front door, always entering the house through the garage and of course, we did not know. Until I decided to call the company and ask what happened to our order. The CSR was clueless but soon after a man called and said it was already delivered and probably at the front door.
Another cultural moment.
Anyway, the better half set it up this morning while I was cleaning all the bathrooms. Here is what it looks like:

So much better than having the TV leaning against the wall on the floor. It was impossible to watch lying down on the bed. Now we can. Yay.

We have not put up the speakers yet. Need a transformer to step up the voltage from 110 to 220. So many things to buy. Sigh!

So Singapura

A friend sent me this. It is very funny and I hope the garment will continue to loosen the ropes so we can continue to mature as a nation.

Undo Undo

There have been many times when I wish life has given us an undo button. How convenient that would be. I have often looked back in wonder at how relentless time can be, even microseconds of time. Imagine this: you are parking the car and you carelessly brush against something and that leaves a scratch. The pain in your heart cannot drown out the tiny voice that regrets that microsecond of mistake. Or you are biting into something like a crab shell from over-confidence or sheer laziness and ouch, a bit of a tooth came out. Oh oh oh, if only there is an undo button.

Some things are not in microseconds but the effects are commensurately more lasting and significant. How many times have we, years and years later as an adult, looking back on our youth, secretly wish that we can turn back the clock so we could have put much more effort into our O or A levels because we know deep in our hearts that we have the wherewithals to do so much better than we did. Life could have been so different. There are many forks and turns in the journey called life and how do we know which turn to take? Often it is a game of chance or blind faith or worse, nothingness because wedidnotplanorthinkfarenough.

There are those who says "no regrets". Life is too fleeting to live in regrets. That is but one view. Sometimes, it is about the quality of life - yours and the lives of those who depend on you - and the legacy of what you made of your life.

So what am I rambling on about? It is that life sometimes gives us but one chance. Waste it and there is no undo button to bring back that moment. The youthful sometimes has no concept of the temporal nature of opportunities and so the opportunities to really make something of themselves can quickly pass them by...

Buying Boo-Boo

Some things are just not the same. I place a computer order via the internet in Singapore and the machine arrives in days. I place an order here and the website gives no real indication of delivery, only that shipping would be 3 to 5 days so I naively thought it was like in Singapore. To my astonishment, I checked couple of days later and the estimated delivery date was a month away. I thought this can't be, maybe there is a mistake. So patiently waited a couple more days and this time, the delivery date was even later. Two weeks later and some internet chats and phone calls with what is obviously a call center in India, all I got was so sorry but we cannot build the computer because there is a shortage of parts and there is nothing we can do for you. To cut a long story short, I finally cancelled the order in frustration. We immediately went to Office Depot nearby and carried a good deal home, and in the process also got a multi-function printer, paper, ink, etc. And the costs all came to couple of hundred dollars less than what my online order amounted to just for the PC.

Getting a plasma TV stand also turned out to be fairly complicated and I had to make several calls to various parties to finally get things sorted out. Of course, this is all for security reasons and I have learned a valuable lesson about making sure ccard information and order information all tie. Identity thefts have made life a little more challenging for the ordinary folks.

Cultural shocks work both ways and even for someone who visited US of A as often as I did and spent 5 months here on an assignment a few short years ago. It is often the little things that catches you.

Melancholy Mood

11:34 am on a Saturday morning and I am feeling lonely. The one and a half men are just steps away, one downstairs and the other hopefully doing his homework, yet I am sitting here feeling more than a little wistful. The social circle is missing. We have not built any network and it can get pretty lonely. My children are scattered over two hemispheres and the stabilizing anchor of family and friends is far away.

I so look forward to Nic coming here. She seems to have found herself lately and that is the one glow that warms my heart. But the bean seems to have taken to drinking and it scares me. I had always secretly hoped they would all inherit my allergy to anything even remotely alcoholic but DNA has worked against me. And Buffalo is blanketed by a freakish snow storm so we worried that the C would be feeling colder than she already has been for the past two months, tropical creature that she is. But a phone call last night told us she is not as frozen as we had feared.

But these are momentary and will pass in time. The other one never does - about how I am ever going to live and stay employed long enough to see all four grown up and through college. The burden is heavy and I wonder who can share it...

Last Lot

Some more pictures to share with you folks. One of them shows my landlady carrying one of the twins.

Nothing Noteworthy

There are some very sick people who keeps spamming the shout box. So folks if you see a message with some very undesirable words and links, please do not touch them. I will delete them as they appear.

Life is settling down now to such a routine, it seems mundane, almost boring, after the frenzy of the first weeks. There is nothing much to do here - suburbia America is pretty dull. There is next to no night life and you cannot just pick your family up and go to a kopi tiam to have a night cuppa. It is quite expensive to eat out and unless you like just wandering around the malls, evenings are mostly spent watching the telly or blogging like I am doing now. We even go to sleep earlier than we did in Singapore. And dinners are a simple single dish affair, not the usual four to five different things that make up a dinner back home. Yet they taste better than the maid's labor- and ingredient-intensive cooking.

I am thinking we may be ready, now that we have a home and everything to start wandering a bit further afield on Saturdays. Most Saturdays so far have been spent at ... you guessed it - WalMart! or Target! or Home Depot! or Costco! At boring big box shops picking up household essentials. Sigh. There were all kinds of things we needed to build up a new home.

Sundays are a bit tougher for going anywhere because of Ryan's Chinese class. Plus now that we have tennis kakis, it is probably a good idea to get our already severely limited exercises at the same time. I am becoming a prime candidate for osteoporosis and Ryan has lost all his swimming muscles. He is getting quite limp but happy as a toad that he doesn't have to swim anymore. Sigh. But he is quite diligent about practising on the piano - the motivation is there. The US school system has its pluses. But of course, with no piano teacher, he is not learning anything new. We are trying to see if we can get lessons here so he can continue where he left off in Singapore.

Maybe we should drive somewhere this Saturday - that is, if the better half is in a better mood than he has been of late.

The siblings are planning to come in mid-December. It will be such a break from just the 3 of us circling each other every day.

Remembrance and Retrospection

Picture this. A blustery wind whipping up the fallen leaves on the ground, the first signs that autumn is slowly but determinedly pushing against the long days of summer. All is peaceful in the vast campus in the last quietude before the return of humanity in pursuit of scholarship and learning. All is quiet save for the wind and ... the sobs of despair and loneliness coming from a slight figure huddled on a short flight of steps in front of the Women's Office. She weeps for a long time, burying her wet face into her arms, oblivious to the beauty of the rugged mountain peaks facing off the long lights of the sinking sun reflecting off the deep blue Pacific. It took her a long time before she found the courage to get off the steps and make her way uncertainly towards words of comfort and encouragement. The journey ahead would be filled with trepidation, bouts of homesickness and nausea and eventually, heart wrenching separation but it was one that she was destined to take...

Almost two decades on, the germ that was the cause of all that agony is back in the same campus, oblivious and thriving where once her mother had to come to terms with her fears and the burdens of an uncharted course. Life has come full circle in a wondrous way.

Picture Pains

Man, posting pictures is like pulling teeth - grit and bear with the pain! It took so long to get the pictures lined up properly that last post. Had to go into HTML to try and figure out the codes and I was feeling good about it. But going through the tedium a second time is painful 3 hours of tests of patience. Why oh why is it so time- and labor-intensive to upload images? For all of you who have been clamoring for pics, I hope it is worth the eye and muscle strains. The freaking pictures and cursor don't like to stay still. So here is the tour of the house and Ryan's purple pillow-bolster.

Picture Perfect

Today, we played tennis at Amador Valley High while Ryan was at Chinese class. Just got back. We just joined some Chinese people who seem to play there every week while their kids attend class. It did Bert good to finally get some good tennis kaki and get the needed exercises. Good for me too although I was very apprehensive playing with strangers, knowing the kind of standard I am at. Anyway, here are some long awaited photos. Of us at Sierra Suites Hotel when we first arrived and at Promontory View.

Brainy Baby

MY BABY ROCKS! Nic's prelims are the best yet and we are all very very happy. Everyone, go visit her blog to see how well she did. Keep it up Nicky and we so look forward to when the three of us can all bundle up in the little Civic and go pick you up from SFO. Fly higher for the "O"s and shine like the sun at Cal High here.

Cold Comfort

We have our California driver's licences. They both came in the mail today. So we are now fully legit and can prove we are residents, not just visiting aliens. Muahahaha.

So we are all there now - school, SSN, house, ccards, car, auto insurance, driver's licences, medical and dental plans, ... Rough journey but look how much we have accomplished in just 6 weeks.

But we are cold. This house is much cooler than the apartment and we are not sure what the utilities bills are going to be like so turning up the heat does not seem to be a totally good idea yet until we know what to expect. And the heating system seems to work in mysterious ways - not as intuitive as in the apartment or all the hotels I have stayed in. And the bath too - water is not as hot as I would like. For tropical animals like us, this takes quite a toll on us. Except for Ryan - he seems to be quite unaffected. Guess the magic bullet is called Youth.