Life's Lessons

Some day when I have passed,and life takes it's toll on those I have spawned and worked all my life to sustain, a time for reflection will descend. Then, the heart will clench and regret floods the conscience. Yes, my voice is distasteful and my answers not what were wanted. The whine. Yes, I am the one. The guilt loader. The One with the f voice. Those who live off the b, s and t of the only one who have never stopped to catch a breathe so there is always a roof, bread and school, must always give. And give. And give. Or be befouled.

Both Birthdays

It's been a while.  Somehow, the urge to tell the www what's going on in our lives seem to have drop way down low in the scheme of things to do.

Much has happened.

Not the least of which have been two birthdays.  The big girl's 27th and the coming of age of my youngest girl.  Happy 21st Birthday, Nic!  Hope you will always treasure the gift of life and the little gift we got you for the special day.

And my boy has been summoned to register for the military.  The little red dot is relentless in its governance.  Tying up my life savings is not enough surety.  Two years before he could even graduate from high school, he must sign up for his national service.

And when he goes, the Man and I will relocate to a place just as hot and humid as the little red dot.  We will miss the balmy weather and rolling hills and mountains of California.  We will miss our friends here, friends who openly welcome us, strangers that we were, into their homes and heath just because we came from the same place.  Friends who have come to be a surrogate family when our own are so far away.  They have not been told.  Wonder what reactions we will get.

It will be a new adventure.  A new place to get to know and to enjoy.  And hopefully, enjoy with more financial freedom.  The change may come earlier than two years.  Must think of creative alternatives to pulling my boy in his last year of high school and transplanting into a new environment.  The rebellion will be brutal.

Note to self: call mom.

Fun Filled

Happy Birthday, America!

And in a seeming affirmation of residency, I am called up for jury duty.  But much as I would like to do my civic duty, I will have to politely and with a tinge of relief/regret, call to decline on account of not having yet taken a pledge of citizenship.

There are still lingering intermittent clashes over non-fulfillment of promises by a certain young man.  But inter-spaced with time spent out.  We had a fantastic evening out, just the two of us at the Pink Martini concert.  It was just the most thoroughly enjoyable show I have had in too long a time.  Note to self: keep applying for tickets.  Out first foray into Davies Hall will not be our last, I promised myself.  When YY come next time, we will make it a point to go to a concert there.

And an evening with the Man the next evening at the Rooster T Comedy Club.  The legacy of a trip down south by YY that never materialized.  Much to my surprise, each groupon is for two and I have another two groupons.  More dates with the Man await.  Hope his interest stays.

And then off Saturday morning to the Fillmore Jazz Festival in the city for some five hours of music, Americana street food and gazing at a whole street of arts, crafts and hats on hats on hats.  Not to mention escape from the heat wave in East Bay that suddenly descended after a highly unusual day of heavy rain during the week.  Smack in the heart of Japantown.  Where we also ended up exploring the East and West Malls and found a ton of restaurants and shops so dutifully, we stocked up on shampoos and cleansers, seaweed and knick knacks.  Things hard to find back home.

Tried to get to Golden Gate Park across from the Academy of Sciences and the Rose Garden but ended up at the Conservatory of Flowers except of course, it was closing so we loitered at the park in front just watching the picnickers enjoying a nice summer day.

Back to Japantown for dinner before dropping the girl off at Berkeley.

It has been hot hot hot these last two uneventful, relatively speaking but otherwise typical weekend days.  Except of course, today is not the weekend.  It is the Fourth of July and we are not going to Central Park to watch the fireworks.  Macy's fireworks on television is pretty spectacular too.

Dearth

This is one of those days where I wish I was no more.  Where there are no more dependents, no more tax surprises, no more worrying about falling grades and college fees and expenses, utilities bills, mortgage payments, clean clothes and neat beds, no more being held responsible for behaviors I cannot control, when people will wake up because the one who has always been in the middle balancing it all is gone and they would have to be responsible for themselves.

I cry silently in solitude.  The sky is crying with me but the tears and rain cannot ease the fear, pain and hurt.

My heart is broken in multiple pieces and my finances are in shambles.  Take me away and let me rest.  Please.

Solace

Looks like there were a few visitors - two virtual and one physical.  The one dropped in from Doha after a convention in Orlando.  The half man graciously yielded his room for 5 days to the uncle who spent days looking at houses with the Man and other days with a friend in a rented sports convertible to behold.

Work is killing me.  Slowly.  I feel out of my depth.  Drowning in topologies and extensibility and application pools that test my understanding and challenges my limited exposure to the stuff I am supposed to help architect.  There are those who understand the dilemma and try to overcome the limitations and others who I can feel are starting to write off any value from this rather hapless architect.  It was not of my choice and not of my doing but I think they underestimate what I can eventually deliver and know not my resilence in days past.  To them was allowed stability through the upheavals.  To me, this is the fifth change in as many years.  While they were learning and absorbing and finally able, to me was change on change of focus and disciplines.  Subject matter expertise needs time and nurture.  But my leaders must have known me as a change agent.  So that's what I must deliver.  I must not descend to the level of technicians.  They would not like that.

But I do need to step up fast.

Speckled

The bright sunlight only serves to remind me how dusty our windows are.  We have not washed them in a year.  But not till the rains stops.  Given how the weather has turned, it should be soon.  Wonder if the more than ample rains over the winter into spring will bring forth the famous wild flowers of Death Valley.  Almost 5 years into our sojourn have I grasped the meaning of ample rain.

Last year this time, methinks I was painting our white fences.

Rays

It is promising.  The ground is not wet with new prespitation and the sun is peeking through the somewhat cloudless sky. Swaths of sunlight sweep the lawn.  Maybe today, the small town shopkeepers will get a respite from mudslides and the hapless homeowners with red and yellow tagged houses will get some stability.  California is done (?) with the drench.

Dooms Day?

I don't believe in 2012 but the quick succession of natural disasters around the rim of fire is alarming.  Before the world can recover from one, the next strikes.  From Christchurch to Sendai to northeast Myanmar.  Is this a precusor to something more ominous?  Then a reality check.  Earthquakes are almost a daily occurrence - there is one just about everyday somewhere in the world.

And here in California, weeks of almost constant rain is wreaking havoc up and down the state.  Rock slides that cut off homes in the hills, mud slides and soil movements that render homes unsafe, trees that come crashing down on roofs, water from broken pipes cascading down hillsides and turning into mini tsunamis causing damages to shops unlucky enough to be in its path, and heavy snow shutting off major highways.  Californians are now officially weather weary.

Spring is eluding us.

Despair

I never thought I would see the day when my flesh and blood would use "f" on me.

Winter Wither

Last day of winter.  At long last.

Much rain, lots of high wind.  The cherry blossoms have all but faded leaving behnd the leaves that will soon enough start carpeting the land with patches of red that need to be blown and swept and carted out for the trashman.

Thank the heavens for the roses for they are starting to cheer us with their blooms.

It had been a hard winter personally.  Grappling with new and unfamiliar work responsibilities, coming to terms with new reporting structures, looking ahead to mediocrity.  Gotta wrap my head around what is given and give up that which can only create more unrest in the mind and soul.  Just deal with it.

The boy just turned 16 and it was un-nerving to hear him moan the loss of childhood.  At the ripe old age of 16 while my horizon is much more of a slipoery slope of sag and a haggardness staring back daily in the mirror.  I would gladly trade.  He spends his days playing Legend of the Legions when his peers back home would be sweating over "O".  He must find his own level and soon.  The passage of time is relentless and gentle persuasion has borne little.  One can only hope.

Spring, I pray, will lift the spirit and bring warmth into a body worn down by the months of cold.  Yes, it will.  It must.

Brrr

It has been so cold the last two days that the mountains around here - Diablo and Hamilton near San Jose - are snow capped.  Driving to the Lawrence Livermore Lab this morning for a tour of the new controlled nuclear fusion faciity that uses laser technology, the white on top of the mountains were clearly visible.  The cold and rain has translated to the white stuff at elevations around 2,000 ft.  In fact, even as I pen this, it is snowing at elevations as low as 1,600 ft at the East Bay Hills and people are actually driving up to build snow men and throw snow balls.

And I get to read in the train. Something I used to do with my precious copies of the Economist pregnant with Nic in the MRT between Lakepoint and Paya Lebar. Maybe that's why she is so clever.

Frisco

Travelling to the city daily for these past 4 days has been interesting.  I think I would like to work in the city if I have a future opportunity.  Yes, the commute is time intensive - takes me an hour one way - but it just gives a wholly different experience mingling with humanity of all shapes and sizes and hues - than driving through suburb roads to a plain office building.  Maybe cause I grew up in an urban setting, maybe cause it just imbues one with a different dynamics, maybe cause suddenly, there is more to life than moaning about glass ceilings.  You see the masses warpped up in layers scurrying to whereever they need to go, you see the girls who could be your daughters making up in the train because they got up late, you see the workaholics typing up email in the train cars using their laptops with their blinking aircards, you hear the music and know you will soon walk by the buskers, and your heart clutches uncomfortably as you pass by the unkempt and dirty homeless young woman sitting on the sidewalk begging and you wonder why...  The colors, sight and smell of humanity.  The numerous cafes and take out places.  The sirens of patrol cars racing to a crime scene, maybe.  And you look out the windows and gaze at the architectural details on the buildings thinking how beautiful they are even if the walls look like they can do with some scrubbing.  San Francisco.  Beautiful, bright and sunny one day and wet and gray and still beautiful the next.

Booyah

My boy made the school tennis team.  How cool is that?  Payoff.

But he needs exposure to competitive playing.  And practice, lots of practice.

Galore

Unbelievably, in the middle of winter, the blooms are already bursting out of the buds.  The sudden warm spell has fooled the foliage into thinking Spring has arrived.  Gorgeous weather bids us - need to get out and enjoy it.  While most of the country is swathed in blistering ice and snow storms and the Superbowl stadium in Dallas is raining snow and injuring people below.

The first flowers on our trees.  Must go take pictures.

Last night was a crowd at the Lai's.  Some thirty eight people with food galore, including a medium size piglet that can feed a platoon all by itself.  Somehow, the Lai's managed to fit everyone plus Max, the shitzu, into their home.  Chinese New Year celebration San Ramon style.

Gotta get out.  Too nice after the long months of cold.  More later.

CNY

Happy New Year to my Family and Friends!  We dearly miss the kinship and the bonding and the renewal of blood ties that happen at this time of the year.  Have a good time and a fabulous year ahead.

Chinese City

Just back from Chinatown in the City.  To soak up the CNY atmosphere and feel at least the mood so thoroughly absent in the burbs.  Crowded as expected with the innermost roads blocked for pedestrian traffic only.  Stage shows with dancing girls that would be so heckled back in Asia for the notable lack of slenderness and a curious mix of Cantonese and Americanese.

We went for the chi fen but ended up with curios for the home, 5 Chinese movie DVDs that we have no means of playing (as yet) and dried goods for the kitchen.  The trip messed up my well laid plans to get the laundry and docs in order for the all important tax filings.  But heck, I have contingency - time is still on my side for this.  And the Man would really have to let me get that PS3 or Blu-ray now - note to self: must display the DVDs conspiciously in front of the telly.

We were so bundled up for the expected rain and cold that we actually felt hot in the car.  But there was no rain in the city.  The blessings from heaven stopped before Bay Bridge.  In reverse, coming home, we emerged from the sunshine on the west end of Caldecott Tunnel into sudden darkness on the west end.  It was, we concluded, the FOG.

All in all, an enjoyable day of jostling with one's kind.

Whereforth

The sunny spell has ended.  You can actually hear the rain beating down on the house.  Rare.  But the Man is restless.  This would be the time he is out there with his racket and friends, beating the hell out of green round things (self censorhip applies) and generally having a good time working the aging muscles.

This has been a strange winter - lots of early rains followed by a couple of weeks of deep chill followed by a couple of weeks of spring weather and back to rains.

Three days of salmon sashimi has sated the three of us.  Time to tackle the saba and albacore.  People in the States don't eat enough fish but that generalization stops at our front door.  Well, at least for this week.

Lately, it has been hard coming to terms with settling down.  That trip back had woken a longing for the familiar and the kinship that defined much of my life.  Growing up surrounded by the smells, sound, congestion, gabble in many tongues and ties that bind heart and soul.  It is lonely here with the nearest kin a couple hours drive away and not a whole lot of contact.  Friends are wonderful but a poor substitute for bonds bound by blood.  So silently, in the deep areas of the soul, a tiny grain of thought made its way through layers of doubt and contemplation.  Two years.  An empty nest.  Loosened strings and ankle chains.  Feelings of guilt smothered and brushed away - it is almost time for me to have time for me.  The Man is playing leaving on a jet plane on his guitar.  How apt!

For the sake of the next generation, I have toiled and pulled my family into a place with space to roam and room to grow beyond the material.  It is enough.

Smooth Shave

Today marks a new chapter in the life of a certain half man.  Yesterday, after shearing off the unkempt locks, he asked for and got his first shaver - a Gilette Fusion 5.  Coming back from grocery shopping, we find a young man shorn of the fuzz on the upper lips and the wisps that had started sprouting on the chin.

On the whole, a smooth experience with mayhaps a tiny mark where the shave got too close.  Smiling shyly and obviously happy with the overall experience, he has graduated to the next level of his young life.  I am a proud mom.

Winter Weather?

Winter seems to have taken an early retreat, yielding to a glorious onset of sunshine and warmth.  Not too many days ago, that huge bank of fog claimed all of central valley up and down the length of CA bringing chills through the days and nights.  We were out to a law workshop and haircuts and folks were out in t-shirts and tank tops.  And it's gonna stay the same for at least the next two weeks.  Woohoo!

We had colleagues from Singapore over for dinner and it went better than I had expected.

And we have finally taken the steps of settling our legal affairs.  It has bothered me so long and my suspicions that using documents from the stores and cyberspace are not the way to go are confirmed.  Glad I waited.

Misery

Can someone tell me if I love or hate this new job?  I am so torn.  If I have no financial commitments, I would walk away and happily.  Love the challenges, not sure about the reporting structure and the feeling of abandonment.

Birthday "Bash" Berkeley

Happy Birthday, daddy!  Naan and curries in Berkeley is not gourmet dinner as we would have druthered if we had planned better but it was fun anyway.

And brought home from the shop across the road a bag of 3 day old donuts for a grand sum of $1.50.  Tomorrow's treat, probably all to myself, the half man having declared himself a non-donut person.

And driving home, my old, slow to boot up but still trusty GPS tells that our home is 485 feet above sea level.  Interesting...  just about 100 feet lower than Bukit Timah, highest point on a little tropical island we also call home.

Cold Chills

The Bay Area is having a big chill.  And watching Hannibal Rising on Spike is making the chill run up and down the spine.