The ImPerfect Mom

No, this isn't a new recipe, so rest easy.

Three of Rae's preschool moms and I went for our monthly Moms' Night Out yesterday night and it was just a blast. We went to a place called The Melting Pot which serves - you guessed it - fondue. It was my first time eating melted cheese and chocolate despite having seen the partaking of this sinful gourmet experience on TV many times and lets just say it's not going to be on any of those low-carb diets anytime soon!

Karli, the organiser, Caroline and Tracey are just lovely, lovely girls to hang with and I'm so glad I got the chance to know them better. What better way to know a place than by hanging out with the natives, right?

Of course, the conversation started with first our kids, and then the preschool, and since we were looking to buy, these fabulous girls also recommended some good places to live. And then, as with any good evening (and a little alcohol!), our conversation veered to the bizarre, when we started discussing the creepy-crawlies of this here rainy city, which is apparently, a smorgasbord of all kinds of many-legged 'friends'. And if that wasn't scary enough, we started to talk about The Blair Witch Project and other horror movies.

And then it hit me: Even here, when women get together for more than a couple of hours, we almost always end up talking about ghosts or horror movies or someone's friend's friend went somewhere and saw something?

Good to know women this side of the world are NOT that different after all!

Anyway, it was good to get out and the evening was a resounding success as far as my experience was concerned. Just four girls, fondue and fine conversation. Thanks Karli!!

BTW, fondue is da bomb. A melted pot of a variety of different cheeses with jalapeno and salsa, used as dip for bread, chips, apple. And then melted dark choc and marshmallows and pecans with fruit, and MORE marshmallows. I am SO going back there.

But no, I am not trying celery sticks with peanut butter!!

Seems there's a website out there for those in the service industry to gripe about bad tippers! LOL!

Beware you chiap people! Not only will you get DNA in your food, you can get on a black list if you're not careful!

I used to be a waitress for years during college and good tips meant I had better meals, so come on you cinapeks. Fork it out for the good of all malnutritioned working students!

Hey, apparently, those in the service industry are pre-taxed for the tips they will get for the rest of the year. So if you give them a shitty tip, they would've been overtaxed. Is this true?

Of course, if the service is crappy, do what you must.

The general rule is double the tax, or 15-20% of the pretax bill. Check out this useful article on tipping in the US.

And this article for laughs.

In my extreme eagerness to dive into this whole suburban American minivan-driving, organic-food-championing, camp-organising supermom experience, I decided to attend the quarterly board meeting of my daughter Raeven's preschool yesterday.

This is when the committee members elected by the preschool, and the people paid to run it, would sit and talk about things like the shape of our finances, protocol, syllabus and leaky faucets. I presume this is pretty standard admin stuff.

Anyway, so the big question on your mind, my dear reader, would be:

Am I one of the members?

Nope.

Then what in the name of all that is good and pure was I sticking my big nose in there for?

I don't know.

Our parent leader had invited everyone so I thought it would be good to go see what it was about. Turned out I was the only non-committee member who actually accepted the invitation.

Idiotic? I think so too.

I mean, it was Form One all over again. You walking into Interact/Drama club to discover a room full of seniors who give you that smile which seemed to say, "You're welcome so long as we can tolerate you". The friend who said she would go with you is nowhere to be seen and the only person you know is your class monitor everyone hates. You can't go home because your mom has driven off. More importantly, you know you HAVE to stay or suffer the label 'that weird new girl' the rest of the school year. And so you try to blend in with the furniture by choosing the most obscure seat at the BACK of the room by the stinky broom and dustpan, only to be dragged into the spotlight five minutes later to introduce yourself because you ARE the only strange face there. You stutter through like it's the first day you used your mouth to form actual words and then walk backwards while bowing apologetically for having ever presumed you were cool enough to intrude into this secret sacred cool kids club.  

Of course, I am 33 now. And acting 'cool' in the presence of tired mommies who'd spent the day chasing after toddlers isn't as bad. Or maybe I'm still covered by the "she's new to the country" policy, which is a Get Out of Ridicule Free card for all kinds of odd, unexplainable third-world behaviour (my unintelligible pseudo-British-Chinese gibberish, for one) and the asking of stupid questions such as "Why do you call it a lockdown?" (because we LOCK DOWN the doors?).

The culture shock is just non-stop! Anyone in my position would just sit quietly at home, act blur and hope there's enough food in the pantry to go through yet another month of never ever having to go out and actually interact with people, but no, not me! I say, bring it!

Anyway, the highlight of the evening wasn't me being grilled as to why I chose to enroll my child at the preschool (thank God!). The interesting bit began when the board started discussing what to do with a couple of parents who'd defaulted on their commitments to the preschool.

You must be wondering if I'd somehow enrolled Raeven into some sort of prep school cult but when you get your kid into a cooperative preschool, because of its very low fees (only 1/4 of the price of other private preschools in the county), you are signing up for many commitments that take your personal time and effort. You get not only school duties, but you must also attend monthly meetings, participate in school cleans, as well as organise activities such as fund raisers and so on.

Naturally, you get some parents who are just unwilling to do things like spend two hours to clean the school (even when it's only twice a year). You know how some ladies are, thinking this type of work is beneath them. I can just imagine back home, if our government schools were to start demanding that the parents of each child spend some time cleaning the school twice a year. We would take their kids to more expensive private schools so fast it would make the heads of headmasters/mistresses spin. That, or we'd hire an Indon maid to do the job for us.

Either way, we won't get our own hands dirty, that's for sure. Who cares if our kids learn in stinking rot!

So, all in all, it was an enlightening experience, to say the least. One thing's for sure: I'm gonna think twice before chickening out of any of my commitments. These committee ladies are scary.

Also, I cannot help but respect how initiatives such as this preschool started, and how the tradition has been passed on through the 30 or so years it has existed. Just a group of concerned mommies who pooled their resources together, hired some teachers, rented some space, so that kids of average-income families could also put their pre-kindergarten kids in school.

Just awesome.

Maybe some mommies in Malaysia can start!

Lia, you go!

I'm such a social idiot, I swear one day I'm just going to pack up and live in the mountains.

Went to the playground again today, the one just outside my house. Since Spring has managed to spread across our yards in generous dollops of green and gold (sun was still strong at 5pm!), children and their significant elders came to slowly rediscover the possibilities of the steel and wooden play structure.

So while Rae gleefully attacked the slides, I sat down for some well-deserved time in the sun while leaving Sky to miraculously tie her own shoelaces. Of course, what I was really doing was eyeing the four mommies seated at the far end of the playground, chatting happily while their kids played together.

I've never been very courageous when it came to walking up to total strangers and turning them into friends. I struggled with it when I started out as a journo, and now it's even worse since I can't use THAT excuse anymore to start a conversation.

I mean, how weird is it, walking up to total strangers at a playground and trying to ease in on the conversation? TOTALLY!

So I ended up just sitting by my lonesome on my little bench with my little girl, pretending I don't care, when all I can think about is, GOD I NEED TO START MAKING SOME FRIENDS SOON OR ELSE CAN DIE!

The other problem also is that we live in a rental home community. In the US, particularly in places like Seattle, companies like ING build lease-only homes so you know your neighbour's likely to move out in like a year, so there's no point really in getting to know them. As such, people here don't really mix around, despite the valiant efforts by the condo management to get some social mixes going.

Oh well. Guess we better find that perfect house quick!

“Women still may feel more responsible, even though men pitch in more than they did in the past." 

“…women have a hard time separating their free time from time spent with their children without feeling guilty.” 

“…women have more difficulty relaxing than men because of that mothering/nurture instinct that many, but not all, women possess…” 

“Such an instinct tends to drive women to take on and do more than I think an ordinary man would, because there is a sense that if they don't do it, it won't get done…” 

“…some women might feel rushed because they take on too much responsibility. They have trouble saying "no" because they think they might let someone down or because they don't want to give up control.” 

I can totally imagine Lokes going “UHUH!” and nodding his head so fast it might just finally drop. 

Read the full article here. 

Question: If we were not as ‘ken cheong’ and were AS blasé as our husbands, would they still have married us? 

Opposites attract, no? 

We, human beings of the 21st century, are finding it harder and harder to restrain ourselves. 

And what with things like blogs where all and sundry can read about what we do or think, the temptation of having one's voice resonate across the universe is just too darn difficult to resist.

Last weekend, the indefatigable Scoble got lynched by the Let Blogging be Free! mob for suggesting that all bloggers who link to non-credible media like The Register be derided. 

I cannot help but notice: 

1. Australia’s Smarthouse, which is said to be untrustworthy, publishes a story about 60% Windows Vista’s code having to be rewritten, and people jump on the hate wagon ever so readily
2. Microsoft’s famous corp blogger bitches about people who link to these sites and he ALSO gets mobbed

It’s like watching gazelle sweeping one way and then another. 

Or coyotes, rather. 

No doubt, Scoble might’ve over-reacted but the question he seems to ask is valid: Whatever happened to finding out the truth, and people's better sense of judgment when deciding to give (or not give) their support to a certain issue, even if it's just a link? It's not just that everyone's always so ready to deride Microsoft or Apple or Google simply because they're mega-gajillionaires. It's also because when they see something 'scoopalicious' and just jump on it because of the traffic it will bring to their blogs.

Never mind editorial truthfulness. What happened to plain INTEGRITY?

It’s as though everyone’s so intent on their right to free speech that they’ve forgotten that sometimes, it’s better to just keep quiet.

No, cannot. Must. Blog. Must. Grab. Traffic!!

Is NOT blogging about something you think might be iffy censorship? I call it good old-fashioned self-restraint, which is the mark of any mature, sensible person.

The Chinese have a saying: If you don't say anything, nobody will say you're mute. So the real challenge isn't in blogging intelligently.

It's in keeping mum.

Shutting up now!

Ps. For something truly ridiculous, read this.

Although I don't believe in the pretentiousness of stiff manners like having to sit straight at the table with your elbows off so that people will think you're well brought up, I do believe in fostering good habits, even when I was a kid.

Because both my parents were working, my sis and I rarely got to see them, so things like spending time together at the table for meals was an important ritual for me. I remember being the one who used to wake up early many mornings when I was a teenager, rousing the house while I tried to get breakfast together, or be the one setting the table so that my family members would get the hint and NOT eat at the TV. My father supported the idea too, and always insisted we ate together as a family so that we could talk about our day.

Yesterday, Lokes and I had a disgreement, one of many in our years together, usually about things such as this, which would usually be considered trivial, but when it happens enough, I start to wonder if he respects any of my ideals at all. As unimportant as they may seem, when someone spends the time to clean up the house nicely, cook a nice dinner (his mom, in this case), it's the least one can do, to sit down and enjoy it with the same amount of respect as one has given into making the meal, never mind the bonding part.

It is these times that I feel most alone, knowing that while this is all part and parcel of marriage, the wearing down of one's patience and respect of the little quirks and habits of one's spouse, I also wonder desperately if there is some way to fix it, make it slow down or better still, eliminate it once and for all. Am I asking too much, just to sit down for dinner? If it is so insignificant, why did we clash over it?

And it's not just this either. It's to do with how we agreed to raise our kids sometimes. More than once, he's allowed Rae to have ice cream right before meal time, even when he knows how hard it is to get her to eat. Ice cream was supposed to be the incentive to finish a meal, next to the gold star she gets. He seems to forget ever so often what these 'rules' are for, and how difficult it is for me to 'undo' the damage when his kid starts asking for ice cream at all times of the day, screaming "My daddy lets me have ice cream!".

Respect. It's what we need to afford each other after the fires of passion and the romance of marriage have been reduced to cosy embers so that they can still last a lifetime.

And that's all I need from you.

Just been reading up on Unknown White Male (link: http://www.unknownwhitemale.co.uk - something’s wrong with Wordpress, can’t embed links), a documentary on the story of Doug Bruce, a Brit who found himself on the subway in New York without a clue as to who he is or where he was going. The show documents his journey to rekindle the life he had and how he is experiencing the world all over again, from eating different types of food to the many human experiences such as finding love and friendship.

The interesting thing is, experts do not know if he’s faking it or is he the Real McCoy? And if he can be cured, would he WANT to be cured?

If you could forget your past, would you want to? It would be interesting, wouldn’t it, to sort of have a second chance to, say, fall in love again with your husband or wife? Your kids?

Chocolate?

Okay, so I have to go to New York and get on the tube…

 

Addendum: Let’s start a meme.

If there were four things/people you could forget in your life, what would they be?

• Leroy Chan, one of my ‘boyfriends’ from secondary school. He destroyed my respect of good-looking guys forever. I still don’t have a good opinion of them. I mean, look what happend to Jennifer Aniston! Long live the specky geeks!
• Richard Wong, my ex. Someone should lock him up. I’d also like to forget my five long years with him. I don’t know WHAT I was thinking.
• The torturous years before I got married when my mother would nag me to stay in shape! (yea, after you’re hitched and out of the house, how you look is your business).
• The rough times our family went through when my dad’s business partner bailed on the business.

Four things I want to re-experience

• Falling in love with my husband
• First time I saw and touched snow
• First time I learnt to skate
• First time I gave birth (minus the pain!)