transposable element

jan is on a week’s schoolbreak. but as this is singapore, of course he has with homework to do for the 5 days he is off from school. and though it appears like it, am not sure if the school’s intention is really to keep the children working during the holidays. i am starting to suspect that the school feels they are doing the parents a favor by giving homework to keep the kids occupied and productive, instead of simply bunking in front of their home entertainment centers for lack of something more productive to do. after all, children nowadays are so used to receiving instructions to stave off boredom, rather than coming up with ideas on how to keep themselves busy. during the term, they are kept busy after school hours by countless extra-curricular activities and programs, if not tv. so when school breaks come, parents are also at a loss on how to keep their kids busy.

and that includes me. last year, we’ve gone on overseas trips for each of jan’s school holidays. this time, i was close to booking another trip, but eventually decided to ditch the idea. surely we can manage to stay put for a week? after all, jan has friends in the neighborhood he plays with everyday, and when he’s not out, i manage to find simple activities he, mia, and i can do together. and for those times i run out of ideas, or the weather isn’t cooperating, surely, it’s ok to be “bored” every now and then?

i see crow’s feet starting to form. age spots here and there. a white hair every now and then. but if there’s something that undeniably tells me that i’m getting old, it’s the various diseases and ailments friends my age are starting to complain about. perhaps i’m one of the fortunate few whose organs are so far asymptomatic of disease, but lately, i’ve had a few friends going under medical procedures for varied reasons. gall bladder removal, kidney radiation, chemo treatment for cancer, surgery for abdominal hernia, diabetes, thyroid problems, hypertension. it sounds as if life is starting to take its toll on our bodies. sometimes, it scares me when i realize that these are people in my age group, living a lifestyle approximately similar to mine. when will it be my turn? and it scares me even more that apart from a private health insurance from a german provider, i have no health savings account to speak of. ouch.

name that song! hehe…

mia got this t-shirt from a friend who just got back from paris and it does look chic, but paired with a baseball cap worn backwards (mia’s preference) and a crummy look? mia looks like a gangsta in the making! or a trailer park girl? let it be a modern motorhome at least, haha!

it’s already march and i still haven’t put up the blog for my project 52. giving up is getting very very attractive. and very very possible. the only eason why i’m not throwing in the towel is that i see it as an opportunity to start a new blog. an honest-to-goodness personal blog. no ads. no sponsors. no seo optimization software. it’ll probably have no visitors, too, haha!

it’s been almost two years since mia was born and yet i haven’t lost my jelly belly. oh, i’ve lost weight, even without any of those diets for quick weight loss. all i need was portion control. i’m not sure, but i think i’m back to my pre-pregnancy weight, but sadly, i can’t say that i’m back in shape.

my jelly belly, which has never been firm anyways, now needs a lot of work. i’ve been procrastinating for so long, but i really need to do something about it now. although i was off to a good start with the power yoga classes i took last year, the venue was just too far from my place and the commute was getting onerous. if i’m to stick to a fitness regimen, it has to be convenient. otherwise, i’ll just come up with all sorts of excuses, haha!

on and off i’ve been entertaining the idea of going back to school. not a phd (i already gave up on that a long time ago) but something more technical, more skill-based. if one can earn an online degree on nursing, i would be interested, as i’m not keen on studying here in singapore. and much as i would have preferred to study in the philippines instead, i couldn’t very well leave the rest of the family here in singapore, huh? so distance learning would have been a good alternative, except that nursing isn’t exactly cut out for distance learning, eh?

oh well, perhaps i’m better off building on what i already have instead of pursuing something altogether different. i know i enjoyed teaching at the university, both in the philippines and in germany, so i could probably aim for an online teaching degree. or i could build up on my laboratory research experience and attend a refresher course on the advances in biotechnology. or perhaps i could further my writing and specialize in scientific and medical writing? ahhhh, that’s the quandary of being a jill of too many trades. it’s a struggle to choose!

um, valentine’s day? what valentine’s day? sorry, but in this part of the world, cupid had to step aside and make way for the silver tiger.

oh and yeah, ‘wan shi ru yi’ loosely translates to ‘may everything work out as you wish’. i know that you must be getting inundated with the other more popular greeting ‘gong xi fa cai’ which doesn’t mean ‘happy new year’, by the way, but something more in the likes of ‘may your prosperity grow’ (enlarge your wealth doesn’t sound too smooth, eh?). in practical terms, may you have a greater cash flow, hehe, like water from a non-stop Kohler faucet.

anyways… take your pick of greeting, and welcome the first lunar year of the decade with a big roar! most of the forecasts i’ve been reading advise prudence and caution, suggesting volatile, unpredictable, even adverse times during the year of the white tiger. matters not. remember, YOU are the master of your own destiny (kinda talking to myself here)!

i thought that having fishies as pets was the simplest, but well, it turns out that maintaining an aquarium isn’t that simple after all. barely a week after we’ve installed the tank and all paraphernalia, the water already turned a bit murky and obviously had to be changed. fortunately, we just have a small tank and we didn’t need water softeners, so replacing water (we just replaced half of it) wasn’t too much of an effort. we had to use chemical dechlorinators, though.

we need to empty the entire tank, though, clean it, and put entirely fresh water. how often this exercise needs to be done, am not too sure. oh well, not my problem. hehe.

when we first moved into our current flat, i loved the shine of the newly polished marble flooring. see, we had large ceramic tiles in the common areas of our previous flat, and while it was really low-maintenance, it kinda gives you the feeling you’re lounging and watching tv in your bathroom. so the marble floors (and parquet in the bedrooms) came as a pleasant change.

until i realized how difficult it was to maintain that polished shine. it was too late when i learned that spills and splatters from fruit juices and anything remotely acidic can easily leave etch marks on marble that apparently can only be removed by professional grinding and polishing. just two months after we moved in and our living areas are a nice mottled, speckled marble. ack!

any ideas for quick (and cheap) fixes?