transposable element

jan won’t be winning anytime soon, but for someone who just learned to read a few months ago, he’s making big leaps. in fact, his teacher said that for someone who’s not attending supplementary classes, he’s pretty good in phonics i.e., breaking down a word into its component sounds to figure out how to correctly pronounce a written word. that means he’s not seeing the words as images and simply memorizing the spelling. rather he’s taking the more arduous method but that which uses logic.

the funny thing with phonics is that, a child will usually spell a word the way he speaks it… yielding very interesting results.

here’s a “shopping list” jan wrote entirely on his own on our new whiteboard (er…greyboard). can you figure out what he wants us to buy?

mamulad — marmalade
gamubers — gummy bears
avan — oven (we were looking for a table top oven last weekend)
a foun for jan wan he is abeut 10 or 19 or 9 — pretty clear, i think?
gusas — juices
pancack max — pancake mix
tustpast — hilarious, isn’t it?
spagate — almost
watereg glas — watering glass (no i don’t know what he refers to)
a instromant — an instrument (don’t know what specifically)
a shart for meha — sweet, eh? a shirt for mia (although she probably needs disposable diapers more urgently)

not a single one was spelled correctly. yet i feel so proud. weird.

i’m an escapist. in the past, whenever i’m under stress, i get sleepy. it’s probably my way of shutting out the stuff that troubles me. unfortunately, these days, i have no control on when i get to sleep, and for how long. but it doesn’t matter; i’ve found a new way to de-stress: surf the web for flight deals and cheap hotels. i get to escape, if just virtually, by being an armchair traveler.

so imagine my excitement when i chanced upon cebu pacific’s latest zero-fares promo (still ongoing as of writing). i immediately concurred with hubby and we decided i’d fly to manila with mia. click, click, click, type, type, type. input credit card details, and where i expected to see a confirmation page, there was another step asking me if i want my cc to be charged in euros instead. fine, proceed. and then….. payment declined!

huh? a gretchen barreto moment? well, i’ve been trying the last 2 days to book flights, and the system still rejecting my credit card. or is it perhaps my dsl connection? in the meantime, almost all promo fares are being snapped up. finally, i called the local booking office today and apparently, the system’s been that way for over a month now. ahhhh, so it’s not me, not my pc, and definitely not my visa. they proceed to tell me that the only way to book flights is thru them, but i need to pay additional S$30 service charge. plus my cab fare as i need to go to their office in person for them to make the booking. hello?!?

S$30 for something i could have done myself if their website was functional. what kind of crap is that?! to launch promo fares exactly at a time when your website does not permit travelers to make the booking themselves online?

stupid? or sneaky?

what do you call someone who has a german passport, wears the philippine national costume, and sings majulah singapura (the singaporean national anthem)?

a totally mixed-up kid.

these days, i feel like a Swiss Army knife. often, i do several tasks all at the same time.

1. having breakfast/lunch
2. doing laundry (thanks to the machine)
3. checking email
4. preparing mia’s bath
5. carrying mia on one shoulder
6. talking on the phone on the other

unfortunately, in this fast-paced times, if you can’t do a number of tasks at the same time, you’re lost. having the time to do one thing at a time is a luxury many, like me, just can’t afford. unfortunately there is a side effect: with attention spread out like this, i’m getting more and more scatterbrained.

i’m feel like starting a new blog from scratch. with its 4 years’ (!) worth of archives, this blog has chronicled a life that now seem so far removed from our life here in singapore. i’ve browsed through some of my earliest entries and they felt like they were someone else’s. what a different life, what a different ruth.

i know how lackluster my blogs have become of late. i suppose that’s what happens when real life goes at a roller-coaster pace — no time to write about life when you’re too busy living it.

as i’m duty bound to keep some links live for a certain period, i’m keeping transposable element online. so that i can continue to earn some diaper money, writing about mundane stuff such as acne skin care ad nauseum. but for more relevant, more personal musings, i need to come up with a suitable domain name for the all-new personal blog i have in mind. my brain’s come up with zilch so far.

i want to regain that zest for blogging i once had. i want to write from the heart again, rather than from the head.

soon…

when my arms get numb bearing her weight,
when my feet get sore from walking her to and fro,
when my ears begin ringing from the sound of her cries,
when i nurse her for the fourth time in as many hours,
when jan tells me “mom, can you help?” and i’ve no choice but to say “later” because mia is in yet another tantrum,
when i look at my feet and realize i’ve been wanting to have a pedi for the last half year,
when i encounter job descriptions on the saturday paper that match my qualifications,
when i see my husband in the kitchen, washing the dishes or cooking our dinner yet again,
when my friends bid me goodbye as they go for a holiday,
when i see the last three boxes yet to be unpacked,
when i see the layer of dust on top of the bookshelf,
and in many many more instances…

i wish mia would grow up faster. that she’d already be 6 months, 1 year, perhaps 3 years old. so that i could regain my life, and have the time to do the million other things i need to do but have put on hold because of her. so that life returns to normal.

and then i realize that this, this is normal life.

come to think of it, everyone has a “mia” in their lives. maybe not a new baby, literally. but something that’s up there in their list of priorities, something that keeps them from doing those that are less urgent, less pressing. something that has taken over their lives so much that leaves energy or time for little else.

what’s the “mia” in your life right now?

i think we’ve finally arrived at a school choice for jan, the third we’ve seen so far. it’s not our first choice, but considering the distance from the school, and moving is not an option until mid next year (i still have 3 moving boxes left to unpack, btw), plus the fact that the classes will be conducted in the afternoons, we just couldn’t see how we can make it work with tkps. even if i find a school bus that would be willing to bring jan to and fro, it will mean that he won’t make it home before 7pm. that leaves just enough time for dinner and some down time before it’s time for bed. home work and other activities will have to be in the mornings, and i will be the one who will supervise everything. which wouldn’t have been a problem, if there wasn’t mia to take care of, too. nah, it won’t work.

we’ve found a compromise in ptps. we’ve visited the school, and their facilites are topnotch, the best we’ve seen so far. the school also aims to provide a caring environment for its students, and we had a really good impression based on our talk with the principal. and unlike most schools which offer science only starting in the third grade, ptps offers a programme as early as the first grade to spark interest in science. seeing how jan enjoys and raves about his science class in kindergarten, i think it might just be what he needs. yes, i have a good feeling that jan will thrive in ptps quite well.

it’s now just a question of whether he gets a place when it’s our turn to register.