this may be my first post of the year, but ain’t too late. after all, in this country, the lunar new year is more important than that dictated by the gregorian calendar. not that i’m a convert (lo hei isn’t enough of a converter), but after 5 chinese new years in this country, you already kinda get the drift.
well, whichever calendar you follow, here’s to a bountiful, successful, memorable year ahead!
christmas may be over, but the shops are still out to squeeze the last dollar from people’s pockets. now they’re offering further reductions to everything, from clothes, food, books to electronic gadgets and lcd tvs on sale. unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, most people have yet to receive their annual bonuses, typically given (if at all) in the first quarter of the year. this little red dot is a haven for shopaholics!
i thought we’d be done with christmas shopping early this year. the kids’ wishlists are very straightforward, and they were very consistent, no matter how many times we asked them. they knew what they wanted, and luckily they were easy wishes to fulfill. no need to go to extremeterrain for jeep parts or some such requests.
but there’s 9 days to go til christmas, just one weekend left, and there are still a few things to cross off the list. looks like i underestimated our santa duties, arrrgh!
geez, i can’t believe someone actually bothered to hack my blog. for at least two days, my url was unavailable and displayed a link to a sleazy pinoy site. i probably have to put a spoke in their wheels (with steel rims), but i wonder - why my blog? was it a random pick? was it something i wrote that put my blog on their radar?
if they were as smart as hackers ought to be, they should know that my blog is hardly worth their effort - it’s not like there are millions of daily pageviews to hijack. hello.
there have been a number of promos the last couple of weeks at cebupac, and you bet i was checking! of course i knew that there was a near-nil chance that there will ever be promo fares for december, but ey, one can hope, right?
oh well. christmas invitations to celebrate with friends are appreciated, but i wish we could spend the holidays in pinas this year instead. not gonna happen, though, for reasons that are not just budget-related. sigh.
my facebook status reads: would you rather be a big fish in a pond or a small fish in the sea?
it’s telling of the next life steps i’m pondering on. actually, i think i’ve pretty much decided what’s best for me even before i posed the question. i’m ready for more. i want more. and i’m willing to exchange being a driver to just being one of the spokes in the wheel, if that’s what it will take me far distances.
because like flowers in the wild, this fish needs more room to grow.
and so the -ber months have started. brace yourselves folks; for some reason, the last third of the year always goes so fast for us, what with all the holidays and school breaks in between. jan’s got a week of school break this month, and then his birthday is coming up. once he returns to school, his schedule is somewhat all over the place - shortened classes, off-schedule school hours due to PSLE, and barely two monts into the last term, the year-end exams. as for mia- she’ll be starting her ballet classes this month!
the next several months will be a flurry of activities, we’ll be sending out personal and business holiday cards before we know it. i hope this year i manage to actually send snail mail ones, at least to close friends and family. yeah, call me old-fashioned, but i proudly belong to the diminishing species that keep the postman going. to colleagues and work contacts, electronic greetings are good enough, but if if could spare the time, i’d rather make the personal effort to send real cards to friends and family, handwritten text and all. kinda makes it more personal, especially nowadays when most of the writing people do are done by tapping on keyboards and touch screens.
jan is turning 9 in a few weeks and frankly, we’re running out of ideas on what to do. of course, the options are endless if you have a deep pocket, but even if we were willing to spend serious money, personally i am not inclined to do so. been there, done that: big bashes, complete with entertainers, vinyl banners, generous goodie bags. but those were in the early years.
now, jan is already at an age when he is starting to understand the value of money. while we aren’t really frugal by any means, i’d like to think we are sensible folks when it comes to spending, and this are the same values we would like the kids to learn. what good would all our yakking about saving up and spending wisely if we would allow him to think that one is allowed to forget being money-wise on cetain occassions? besides, if you ask him, all he really wants is to have some good afternoon fun with his friends, that’s it. he couldn’t be bothered on what goes in the loot bags, much less on the table setups and deco and stuff like that.
and it looks like his friends think just the same way. so between him and his pals, they’ve done futsal, muddy army bootcamp, outdoor soccer, laser tags, go-karts, plus the good ol’ bbq-and-swim-at-the-condo. what other themes are there to do for nine year old birthday parties?
first and foremost, i probably should change my template. it’s dated, and it’s not me anymore. my tagline is inaccurate, and so is the ‘about me’ section. i’ve ceased to be a wahm about this time last year. i am technically no longer a trailing spouse, no longer my husband’s ‘dependent’, having since received an employment pass of my own, with the privilege to stay in this little red dot on my own rights. i no longer consider myself a scientist-on-hold; i’ve given up hopes on me ever returning to the experimental bench. i no longer have the interest nor the aptitude for it. i am no longer a medical writer-wannabe; my employment pass and business cards say i am a full-pledged one.
and yet, the very core of me remains true. i am still a proud pinay, as proud as ever, if that is even possible. i am still my children’s crazy mom, driven more crazy than ever before, juggling work and household responsibilities 5 days a week, leaving home in the morning with the feeling that i should be staying at home, coming home feeling i should never have left, but spending the entire day at work feeling fulfilled. crazy.
a template change is due. now if i could only remember my cpanel password…
it took a few failed attempts to remember my password… but alas, i am in. after exactly one year, my fingers tapping again, watching alphabets fill space.
i want to write everything. but i can’t write anything. arrgh.
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