transposable element

these recent episodes with illnesses (mine, hubby’s, the kids’) make me want to pack up and escape. i’m starting to imagine that i’m breathing in stale air, stuck in a densely-populated city that sees many travelers from flu-infested cities in the northern hemisphere.

dominican republic vacations are out of the question, but i’ve been thinking hard if we should bite the expensive airfares to manila. with the thousands of OFWs going home for the holidays, december is the most expensive time to fly to manila, it seems. gawd, i so want to fly home, if just to catch up on sleep and not have anything kitchen-related to do for a couple of weeks.

but i’m foreseeing a number of major expenses when the new year comes in, and my left brain (purportedly the logical side) says that an unplanned trip right now is just not going to cut it. and my right brain (allegedly the imaginative side) can’t come up with a way to make it happen. sigh.

i’m running a fever. yet again. i can’t remember the last time i got sick before these last episodes. it’s been far too long since the last time i was starting to think i was invincible. and then this. three in a row.

well, the say bad things come in three’s, so i hope that’s already the end of it. sure, it helped burn fat, but i’ve also lost much more. it’s not so much the cost of medicines and doctor’s fees (thank zeus for health insurance!), but really, these bugs have already zapped away more than two weeks of my life!

when parts of metro manila went under flood water last month, it was difficult to explain to folks here why this was an abnormal phenomenon. “but typhoons always hit the philippines! isn’t flooding a normal thing over there?”

how can one explain that ondoy was extraordinary, dumping more water in a couple of hours than the already saturated soils of manila can possibly hold?

and a few days ago, it happened right here, too. flashfloods after a few hours of unabated rains.

this road shown here is lined with condominiums on one side, some of which have underground parking lots so you can imagine what happened to the cars when the waters rushed in. i’m sure car repair shops are now inundated with auto insurance quotes.

and this, in singapore. can hardly believe it.

even before halloween, the stores here in singapore, especially in the shopping districts, have already been decked in christmas decorations. malls have been handing out flyers of their christmas programs and promotions and the papers are already replete of gift ideas and offers of jewelry, designer fashion, techie toys, digital cameras, toys, and all sorts of bric-a-bracs!

i don’t know about you, but i think it’s too soon, though. i know that christmas is coming, and that one has to start early to avoid the rush, but… this early? i don’t know, but for me, there’s just something missing…

hm, i think i actually enjoy the christmas rush after all. the throng of people in the shops, the sparkly shopping bags, the frantic search for that one special gift, the piped in christmas carols, the mad cacophony in the toy stores… that’s what christmas shopping is all about!

no, it didn’t take me this long to recover from a bad bout of tonsilitis; the poor bugs have been flushed out of my system by the ueber-antibiotics i was prescribed with in just three days. however, hubby, who came down with the same symptoms at the same time i did seems to have either caught something else on top, or succumbed to some opportunistic bugs that have been til now laying dormant in his system. he’s still down as of writing

of course that also means that i’ve been carrying double parent duty most of last week. and i’m afraid there isn’t the end of the tunnel just yet. oh well, one’s gotta do what one’s gotta do.

ironically, i realized i’ve actually been enjoying the time i spend with jan these days. since mia was born, we somehow drifted apart a little, me taking care of mia and hubby taking care of jan. now we’ve kind of rediscovered each other, and it’s actually rather fun having him around. talk about blessings in disguise. he still drives me up the wall now and then, of course, but he wouldn’t be jan if he didn’t, eh?

but man, am i tired. wish i could take up one of those outer banks vacation rentals and whisk off the entire family for a rejuvenating holiday!

i think we need one of those plasma mounts to set out tv on the wall. mia has figured out the power button on our tv and she’s getting on jan’s nerves as she seems to have the knack of turning the tv off at the most exciting scenes. it would have been ok if she was playing with the remote, which has a lock, but the main buttons? no other way but to get the tv out of her little hands’ reach!

maybe nature thinks i’m still too heavy, so she gave me another dose of one of the best diet supplements there is: getting sick. it’s been ages since the last time i’ve had sick episodes, but now i’ve fallen sick twice in a span of less than two weeks!

is it a wonder my immune system is not holding up? this is one tired, sleep-deprived momma.

we just returned from a halloween party for toddlers. it’s one day late (the little ones don’t care) and it was at 4 in the afternoon (after naptime!). told ya, toddlers’ scene, hehe.

see that construction site and various industrial equipment at the background? that’s the marina bay sands integrated resort on the rise, slated to open next year. i don’t know why they call it a resort, when it’s really mainly a casino.

i probably should have dressed mia as a croupier instead of getting her the scratchy tulle fairy costume she absolutely wanted nothing to do with. ah kids!

will upload pics in flickr (hopefully before christmas, haha!)…