Blogging to Live

How did everyone’s CNY go?

It was kinda depressing here. No red lanterns. No CNY songs which I lovvvee so much. No going home to BG and catching up with friends. But we did get together with some of Lokes’ Malaysian Chinese friends from MS yesterday night for a CNY dinner at a place called King’s. It was a typical eight-course Chinese dinner, but the portions were SO huge it might as well have fed three tables. Good? It was okay. The cold steamed chicken was a little odd, but otherwise, I enjoyed it. And it was the first time I ate REAL abalone too. Yea, lucky me.

So the crunch has officially begun. I am now in full school-finding mode for Raeven, my 3.5-year old. It feels good to finally be productive, somewhat.

I started emailing some private and co-ops (short for co-operative, where parents and teachers work together in a what is presumably a government-subsidised school) today and a few have rejected us since it’s already close to the start of some of the semesters, and all the classes are full up. Yea, it was alarming and I panic easily. Fortunately, I now have four on my list which did NOT reject us outright, not including a co-op which I understand is VERY hard to get into, but guess what? I just got an email from the registrar a minute ago, saying that they have a place for Raeven. And the school is just MINUTES away, so woohoo!

One of the potentials, called Cascadia, sounded a little expensive. How does a school SOUND expensive? The lady, who told me she’s a director, said that Cascadia Montessori is a school you consider only if you’re interested in sending your kid to private education throughout his/her primative years, right up to Grade 6 or something. She said something like, “If that is not the direction you have in mind, then Cascadia may not be the right school for you.” Well, *cough* exxxccuuusee me.

Back to the good news from the co-op. Basically, co-ops are the cheapest way to go ($65 a month for two days a week, versus $200+ for three days a week in a Montessori school) and even though I’m not an American, I have faith in the public school system since I am a product of public schooling back home in Malaysia. Also, I figured, this is the best way I can get out and make friends as well with other parents since I’m required to work one day a week at the school. Gosh, I feel brave!

I’m also going to see another school in a few hours’ time, called Bright Horizons, which is in Bellevue (much farther than the co-op), which has got some good reviews online. Wonder if it’s expensive though. Here’s hoping it’s not.

I also managed to find the girls a pediatrician, just to make sure their immunisations are up to speed. Going on Feb 8th.

Okay, gotta get ready for the appointment. Wish us luck!

I said it before and I’ll say it again: you can almost quite accurately judge a country’s social and economic status from the state of its public restrooms.

Where I come from, public restrooms are, nine out of ten, unsanitary. Ten times out of ten, the people who use them, aka the public, don’t care. We use and abuse with nary a thought because someone else is paid to clean up our mess. And if noone is, we avoid using these places as much as we can.

And scoot over to the hotel across the road.

In the US, with only two exceptions – the Asian market I mentioned called 99 Ranch, and a cinema we visited yesterday right between shows – every public toilet I’ve visited is so clean you can sleep on the floor. Even the toilet in a gas station. And this was the same in LA as well, which we visited a few years back. I was pleasantly surprised then, and I am still amazed at how conscientious Americans are when it comes to their public property. I know this may not apply in certain states, but I am willing to bet that the ratio of dirty, poorly maintained public restrooms in Malaysia outnumbers those in the US.

Which is why when I visited the toilet at 99 Ranch, I smiled and frowned at the same time. The floor was blackened with water and grime. Lighting was poor. Tissues were everywhere. And I don’t mean just in the restroom. Outside in the carpark, rampant littering was evident. Which was why I said it really was like Giant. And it felt like home.

Are Asians, with the exception of perhaps the Japanese and Koreans (and ABCs?), SO incapable of respecting public property?

When we visit a foreign country, such as the US, we leave evidence of our existence almost everywhere we go. The times you don’t notice it, are the times we struggle to keep our dirty habits in check. Like to drop or not to drop that piece of tissue paper on the floor when noone’s looking. Or to ‘forget’ cleaning our own trays after we eat at a fast food joint. Or to refuse someone leeway in traffic. Just the other day, someone did that to me, and guess what? He was an Asian (looked Malaysian too, but I’m biased).

Visit the public toilets in any Southeast Asian country, including China, and you will see what I mean. It’s like because we’re a developing country, we can’t be bothered to keep clean. I understand when you’re Cambodia or poor parts of India and the last thing on your mind is hygiene. But if we can build the tallest buildings in the world and the most modern airport in the universe, we sure as hell can keep our public property properly maintained!

More next time on my restroom ‘tour’.

That’s how people spell that here LOL.

Missing my family. Missing the Reunion Dinner food. Missing friends. Missing a LOT of ang pows (for my kids). Missing the CNY cookies.

Sigh. Have a good one, peeps.

Today’s big story on TV was this.

This brings up quite a few interesting points from my POV:

1. James Frey, the guy who conned Oprah and her book club, wanted to market his book as fiction, but noone was interested. He later changed it to non-fiction and Randomhouse, the publisher accepted and printed A Million Little Pieces . Question: What do publishers do to check if a book IS or isn’t non-fiction? Do they invest any money into checking if someone’s memoir is really one? Apparently not. Anyone can just invent a story and call it his own (albeit it being quite difficult to do so – have you ever written creatively? It isn’t easy). It’s said that Frey is quite the writer too. Too bad he had to also be an Ahole.
2. How will this affect Oprah’s book club? And basically everything she’s recommending on her show? Because not only did the book win a place on her famous book club, she even called up Larry King when he had Frey on his show discussing about The Smoking Gun’s reported allegations earlier this month (that the book was a hoax). I mean, before you defend someone on national TV, you should do some fact checking, right? This is the part that was a little irresponsible.
3. Oprah said in her interview today with Frey, that a memoir should be a true portrayal of actual events that happened to the author. What about Arthur Golden’s Memoirs of a Geisha? That’s a work of fiction. It’s got the word ‘Memoir’ in it. So does that mean Golden is a fraud? When I read Memoirs, I thought it was a true story, until I came to the end. And that book sold like nobody’s business (and even got made into a movie!). So why didn’t Randomhouse and Frey do that?
4. The book is probably continuing to fly off shelves thanks to this publicity. Who can resist a scandal? Makes me wanna go buy it. How DO you punish a fraud like Grey? He will probably write another non-fiction book called “Why I Lied in A Million Little Pieces” and sell another few million copies.
5. A website like The Smoking Gun (who has like THREE people working it) is able to devote the time and resources to break this story. What happened to the big boys like CNN and MSNBC (who are busy covering Oprah’s big apology now instead of breaking the actually story, probably kicking themselves in the head)? Internet-only media has definitely arrived.
6. Americans believe TV a lot more than I thought they did. I mean, I’ve never actually bought an Oprah-book-club recommended title but apparently her book club recommendations help sell millions of copies of books. But I am, for the most part, suckered by the bestseller lists, particularly the New York Times list. Perhaps this will be a lesson to all to not take anyone’s word – not even Oprah’s – totally.

Enough of this madness. Tomorrow, I test my spanking new Dyson.

I’ve never really appreciated how medicated Americans are until I came here. And watched TV.

Since we came (14/12), we’ve been seeing little more than pharmaceutical ads on the box. Painkillers, fatkillers, cholesterol killers. Sleep disorder and, of course, your ED treatments. All day long, you’re solicited by one chemical alternative or another to treat a slew of health predicaments, real or imagined.

I wonder if anyone here realises that this is just so…worrisome. I mean, back home, if you can’t sleep, you go to a mamak. And ironically, drink coffee or teh tarik or eat some nasi lemak or roti, and you go home and sleep like a baby. Nobody I know takes other stuff than Panadol or Paracetamol when they have an ache anywhere. And if we DO have a sex problem, we just stop having sex altogether. Or these days, buy Coke with tongkat ali or kacip Fatimah (for women on the go, it’s ok!).

Or do what I do. Read a book.

For the insomnia, not the erectile dysfunction.

Wait ’til I tell you about the nocturnal party-line ads.

How’s everyone back home?

A few things have happened since we’ve arrived in the rainy city of Redmond, Washington:

1. We’ve discovered that lots of international supermarkets exist. One, called 99 Ranch Market, is, like our friend Alex said, the closest to what a supermarket is like back in Malaysia. The people, the inventory, the SMELL. Really. Like Giant. And the odd thing is, the similarities are comforting, even though I never liked Giant when I was in Malaysia.

Anyway, so we are not exactly deprived of our creature comforts. As I am blogging this, I am enjoying a hot, peppery bowl of pig stomache soup (aka chue tou tong) in what is close to 5 degrees Celcius. Nice.

2. We had our first bite of football fever, just yesterday. As luck would have it, the Seattle Seahawks, our home team (owned and managed by none other than co-founder of Microsoft Paul Allen), played the Carolina Panthers right here in Seattle’s Qwest Field, which Lokes tells me, is built with screaming fans in mind. Apparently, home teams never lose at Qwest because of the way it is built architecturally, so much so fans become “the 12th man” (football teams have 11 players each side) as they cheer our team on.

Sure enough, the Seahawks won their first ever ticket to the Superbowl, happening early next month, in team history. Lokes and I got caught up in the euphoria, especially when we chose game day (last Sunday) to drive the kids and his parents downtown. The city was packed with cars (parking was US$20 per entry!) and everyone had on their Seahawks jerseys. You can’t help but be a part of football fever. We even went home to catch the second half of the game and cheered the Hawks on. Which was nice, particularly when Lokes and I aren’t even that into sports.

3. We visited with Alex and his wife Sharon, and their kids Janine and Shane. Alex is Lokes’ old colleague from MS Malaysia, and man, do they have a beaooootiful home up in the hills in this newly developed suburb called Issaquah Highlands. Their home sits on a street not unlike Wisteria Lane of that famous series Felicity Huffman’s (aka Lynette) mom calls “The Women”, and really, we did not need to visit a model home after that. Why see a fake home when you’ve visited a real one? They must’ve easily spent USD800k on everything. I, for one, felt the pressure when I saw their kids’ play room. I could see Raeven’s eyes light up ‘coz four-year old Janine had a My Little Pony dollhouse and a kid-size kitchen in there. I just thought to myself, “What if she asks for that? We can’t afford that! We don’t have a million dollars like Janine’s dad!”

Lokes isn’t worried. Don’t know if that is hopeful or scary.

4. Losing weight in US. Unbelievable, but maybe it’s the stress of moving. There’s a lovely trail by the river just a stone’s throw away from our home, which I intend to use for walks and jogs. Soon.

5. We bought our car! Finally settled on the Chevy Uplander, a minivan. We had it as a rental when we arrived, so since we really liked the room, we decided it over the HHR, which was narrower than we anticipated. A disappointment, but it’s ok. Got a great deal too. US19k (everything in) for a 2005 minivan is really not bad.

Again, look for pics at Lokes’ blog.

ps. I will be starting on my first ever novel once my PC arrives, hopefully this week. Got the plot all worked out. Just need to do some research. Wish me luck!

So Skyler, my one-year old, is STILL not sleeping through the night, and I am verily at the end of my tether. Add to the move the different time zone AND the fact that my in-laws like to cuddle her to sleep instead of putting her IN bed before she actually falls asleep, my troubles are JUST beginning.

But I did catch up on some sleep this morning. Woke up at lunch time. Decadent or what? Don’t care what my MIL thinks, although she didn’t look too happy when I came down the stairs. Welp, if I don’t sleep, I will most probably drop the baby, and that won’t help anyone.

Tomorrow is my theory exam for my driving licence. Gotta cram up. Wish me luck!

Ps. For pictures, please go to The Hubby’s. Too much work on mine.

How’s that for drama?

Yes, my lovelies, I am blogging now from my new home. My PC has not arrived yet so I’m using the Internet centre (should I be spelling it ‘center’ instead now? God no!) at the management office of our townhome here at Avignon. Lovely 19-inch LCD flat panels. Free access. But I still miss my big old fella.

Talking about my desktop.

It does feel a bit like I’ve died and gone to heaven. Redmond is as beautiful as ever, albeit a little wet these days. Forecasts promise a dry spell after today, which is nice. I don’t mind the cold but the rain can get just a leeeetle uncomfortable.

Spent the last five days just getting the house together. Nothing as arrived yet, not even our air freight, so we’ve been shopping like no tomorrow, so much so a few of the cashiers at our preferred supermarket, Fred Meyer, know that we’ve been moving in.

The kids are still adjusting to the time difference, although Raeven synced last night, thank God. Skyler is still not sleeping through the night, which is a pain since I really need my sleep after a full day of house work! Exhausting, but I am motivated to finally find a way to get SOME exercise in.

Hey, if you think chasing after two toddlers isn’t exercise, you can kiss my ass.

So, how’s everyone been? 

ps. Thanks to everyone who went to the airport to send us off: Francis and Asther, for taking over our home so readily and helping us move! Jr and Lilian, for helping us lug our 101 pieces of luggage; Hazel, Darren and Ian; my girls – Jo, Fen, Sandy; Adrian – what a surprise; our family members and relatives. We already miss you.

Jo, see you soon!

All my bags are packed
I’m ready to go
I’m standing here
outside my door
I hate to wake up
and say goodbye

But the dawn is breaking
it’s early morn’
The taxi’s waiting,
he’s blowing his horn
Already I’m so homesick
I could cry

So kiss me and smile for me
Tell me that you will miss me
Hug me one last time, and let me go

‘coz I’m leaving on a jetplane
I don’t know when I’ll be back again

Oh babe
I hate to go

Farewell, Malaysia. Don’t change too much.
 

Isn’t it weird how sometimes, some conversations that occured weeks or even months ago, can suddenly just show up in the middle of your brain?

Perhaps I have too much time now that I’m just sitting in a semi-empty house with just my PC, but a conversation I had with some of my girl friends the other day, about another girl friend, just popped up and I decided to blog about it.

Now my girl friend G, has been seeing this guy, A, for like eight years. They are planning to get married this year, but no date has been set. You know how it is when two people have been dating that long, and have been putting something away for so long, that before you know it, the year you say you’re going to get the knot tied, is here. And people start asking for specifics. And you realise you don’t have any, because you REALLY haven’t planned a wedding but at all.

Anyway, I never really liked A. Not when we first got to know him. But apparently, he’s changed. Still, he’s left many a bad influence on G. Apparently, G is now not working, and spends thousands of ringgit gambling. Yes. G gambles. On 4D, on horses. According to my friend F, she lost like over a thousand ringgit the last time they got in touch. It was truly shocking.

But you know how it is with telling your girl friends the truth about their men. I’ve been there and I nearly got beaten up physically for my trouble. You just don’t tell your friend that her guy sucks. First, she will NEVER believe you because no matter HOW long you’ve known her, the guy matters more since he’s seen her naked. Secondly, girls are mostly idealists. We like to believe someone can change for the better. We are also conceited, thinking we can help that change happen because – well, he loves me. He will change for me.

Oh please.

So now it’s eight years and wedding bells are supposed to be ringing, but they are, for the most part, silent. We ask our friend M, with genuine concern, why G is still with A?

“She says she prefers to fix the problems with him, since they’ve been together for so long, then to go through the same problems with a new guy,” says M.

Now that’s a reason I’ve never actually heard before. It’s both logical and illogical at the same time. Yes, all relationships have problems. And yes, many couples often encounter the same problems (or else we won’t have women’s magazines or – ahem – aunt agony columns): taking each other for granted, a lack of intimacy, a lack of commitment, a lack of knowledge where the clitoris REALLY is (and NOT admitting to it).

But to trudge on with the same fellow because if every relationship is GOING to have problems, might as well work on the one you’ve invested so much time and effort on?

Talk about old-fashioned.

What I found to be truly depressing is that for her philosophy to work, she must believe that all men are essentially the same. Or more like, the kind of men SHE likes.

That is a belief that is true to a good extent. Birds of a feather and all that. And if so, it DOES sound more practical to work on your problems instead of moving on. But that also means that there is no room for romance to surprise. For new experiences. For someone fresh to take her breath away.

I told you it was depressing.

And to think that A is the ONLY guy G has ever dated. For someone as beautiful as her to have lost such hope in men, is just tragic.

Then again, some might say that such dedication and perseverance are lost ideals in today’s love ‘em and leave ‘em world!