Wednesday, May 25, 2005
The Week, in a nutshell
The last time I blogged was last Thursday. From then till now, I've been up to my eyeballs in stuff, much of it blog worthy but the busy-ness has inadvertently resulted in great, incoherent exhaustion. So let's try to go through the last week, hopefully more painlessly than it actually was.
Friday
My first experience being at a National Schools final. Two observations- where ever adolescents congregate in the thousands, your olfactory sense work overtime and for the wrong reasons. And these kids, they smell the same, whatever the uniform they wear. They just smell bad. Another thing, sweat of 18 year old males make you itch. I got hugged by dripping wet kids, I was happy enough to allow them to hug me, but not delirious enough to realise that it itched severly after that. Dettol was to the rescue.
Wedding dinner at night and for the first time, I think I was actually at a dinner where it meant something to both the parents of the bride and groom that they could actually afford such a big do. It was nice to see that, instead of filling tables with faceless seatwarmers, the people who were there seemed to genuinely want to be there and having a good time. The bride's grandma was my nanny and for a long time, I was more attached to her than I was to my own parents.
I felt old though, the girl I played with was getting married and the nanny that I loved so dearly didn't recognise neither me nor my brother nor my mom anymore. That's the sort of thing that really breaks your heart.
Saturday
Spent most of the day in school and proceeded to attend a 'tea-party' for my little niece and 7 little girls. They poured Ribena out of plastic, Cinderella tea cups and ate
ice cream cake made by her Mom. Remarkable. I don't think I'd have the energy to organise such a party, but then again, I'm lucky because I married the world's greatest party planner- the only guy I know who actually did most of the planning for our wedding. I consider myself extremely lucky. Anyway, another observation. This came from a comment I made, post sugar-shock, food overload and all in all sensory overload. I remarked that boys didn't seem to grow up, regardless of their age. This I discovered when Dan started chatting with a 9 year old about computer games and they got on grandly. I wondered why girls grew up and boys didn't. The conclusion we came to is the childhood games we played. Girls played dress up (preparation for the long hours of shopping and the ultimate importance we would place on our clothes),
masak-masak* (imitating our mothers or maids at work round the house- something we only willingly did then and never again), baby dolls (I am not explaining this one) and a whole host of other things that implied we couldn't wait to grow up. Boys on the other hand, had their toys grow up with them. Oh well.
SundayWe met up with two pregnant friends, for lunch and dinner respectively. So, it is true that women pregnant with boys don't seem to show from the back. Our lunch mom-to-be friend is due for a boy baby and she REALLY doesn't look it from the back. Our dinner mom-to-be friend is still not obviously pregnant so I can't draw conclusions from that except pregnant women tend to cook as if everyone is pregnant. I'm still full and today's Wednesday. In between that was an appearance at
the LOtR marathon.Monday
I ws reminded that there were not one, but TWO clubhouses for the
Singapore Island Country Club. This was taught to me the hard way since I was waiting for the in laws at
WRONG clubhouse. No doubt, they're only about 10 minutes apart from one another, when one is already short fused, it doesn't take much for the top to blow. On top of that, I only had that 10 minutes to be pissed off and swear like a sailor because it wasn't only lunch with the in laws, it was lunch with the in laws and one entire side of the extended family, so being nice wasn't an option, it was a requirement.
Tuesday
Wow! That was yesterday. School as usual. Exhausted as usual. No wise observations for the day except that even at this point, I am still more flexible that most of my student athletes.
Wednesday
Struggled to finish my marking. Not yet done, have a headache. Spent the afternoon listening to a career diplomat and our former representative to the UN talk about Middle Eastern affairs. One we concluded was a government school product and the other a mission school and no prizes for guessing which was more inspiring. When I was in uni, I went to one such talk and I remember walking away from it wanting to join the foreign service. I remember when I had just finished fourth year and was waiting for Dan to finish his year, I came up with a "
How well do you know me?" test. One of the questions was
What is my dream profession?
a) Dancer
b) A diplomat
c) A shrink that charges $380 per hour (I think I got that number from watching far too much Mad About you)
d) A Tai Tai
Everyone answered (d) and was most outraged to find out that it was actually (b). My explanation was that (b) encapsulated (d). I could throw parties, dress up real nice, get lots of perks and shop all I wanted, but didn't have to have the IQ of one of those big permed hair, shoulder padded women in gold stillettos and three-quarter capri pants.
So there. It's just shy of Thursday and I'm too exhausted to do this for another day. So I'm off to the dreams of a better tomorrow.
-Argh- Too much civil service talk today.
Ondine tossed this thought in at 19:01
0 thoughts...
0 thoughts...
" Far in the stillness, a cat languishes loudly"