transposable element

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!

Futsal is a variant of association football that is mainly played indoors. Its name is derived from the Portuguese futebol de salão and the Spanish fútbol sala/de salón, which can be translated as ’salon football’. In Madrid 1985 the name fútbol de saló and all other names the game was called were changed officially and internationally into FUTSAL.

that was the theme of jan’s 7th birthday party. technically, it was not futsal, just indoor football, having played on grass turf (artificial, i think, not unlike some of those bushy car mats) using a normal soccer ball. we booked an indoor soccer pitch at turf city, and it was just as well because it was rainy that day and the outdoor fields would have been muddy. and if it hadn’t been raining, it could have been scorching hot even at 4pm. we also booked a coach (and we were given two) from the little league to facilitate the warm up drills for the kids and referee a friendly match. i think the coaches did a fabulous job, introducing soccer basics to kids who were mostly beginners at the game. i wouldn’t be surprised if jan asks to enroll in soccer training soon (ka-ching!).

after almost two hours in the pitch, it was obvious that the kids had a whopping good time. they came out of the pitch sweaty, tired and hungry. we ordered a halal (at least one of jan’ buddies doesn’t eat pork) high tea mini buffet from delihub and a soccer-themed birthday cake from smiling orchid, which looked fantastic and tasted great, as always. in addition tothe ice tea we ordered, the pitch also provided ice-cold mineral water bottles and 100plus (a kind of isotonic drink for athletes) as part of the package, so we no longer had to cart most of the drinks to the venue; just added a couple of bottle of sodas and that was it.

it was a good thing that we were given the seating area at the back of the office. it was directly overlooking the pitch were the kids played so it was easy for parents to keep an eye on the game without having to appear like cheerleaders, hehe. the guests also naturally overflowed to the open veranda for extra seating and elbow room, especially after the game when the kids joined the parents to jostle for food at the buffet. after a “tea break”, the boys retreated from the buffet, chose the table farthest from the parents, and played a game of trump cards (or at least that was what they were called during my time) while the girls entertained themselves with song and dance. it was a good wind down after an energy-sapping toggle with the soccer ball.

it was really a great party, if i may say so myself. it didn’t take much to organize but jan really enjoyed it. most of the planning and booking were done online and a couple of trips for the party supplies (invitations, birthday candles, serviettes, etc). the lootbags were probably the one that took most effort, small toys having been bought all the way from manila! they couldn’t fit in a regular lootbag, so i just bought clear plastic lootbags and printed a thank you note using some soccer clipart. c’mon, you think kids this age pay any attention at all to the wrapping? all together, i think it took us just about a week to organize everything, though if i had the time, it probably could have been even better– more theme-related lootbag fillers, balloons, additional games, prizes. photos(!)– but honestly, in hindsight, i’m not sure jan would have really cared.

jan had a fabulous time, spending his birthday with his pals. as far as he’s concerned, it was a score! goooooaaaalllll!!!!

last weekend we had the opportunity to see the da vinci exhibition at the science centre. yes, the science centre, not at an art museum.

the exhibition focused on da vinci’s life as a scientist and engineer, and the works of pascal cotte who made high-resolution photographs of his paintings. cotte’s studies of the mona lisa in particular, revealed the true pigments da vinci used and other details such as her eyebrows and lashes (she did have some!). da vinci’s machine inventions were amazing, considering the industrial supplies available to him at the time. his anatomical drawings looked like they were taken straight out of some medical textbook. and though i knew that he could write backwards, i didn’t realize that he wrote all his notes this way!

it was a small exhibit, wouldn’t have taken a couple of hours (especially if you do not have antsy kids with you who’d rather go to the water playground within the centre), but one which left me in awe of da vinci. he’s well known as an art maestro, but he’s more, so much more than that.

if you’ve read the da vinci code, and would like to read another fiction of such genre featuring da vinci and his work, i can recommend Painting Mona Lisa and The Secret Supper: A Novel.

a few days before we were set to fly to thailand for a week’s holiday, i was so close to canceling the trip. not only is thailand included in the list of countries with community spread of swine flu, it was also jan’s last week of school holidays, so if he does fall sick, he would have to miss the first few days of classes, which i consider very important in setting students off to a good start. i was chastising myself for not having considered these before i made the bookings, but then, at the time, there wasn’t a single case of swine flu in southeast asia. how was i supposed to know it will spread like fire, and from zero, the number of cases here in singapore has ballooned to about 700 in a span of just a month!

and although we were armed with hand sanitizers and N95 face masks, i felt so heavy about the decision to push thru with the trip, knowingly putting my children at risk, for a reason as frivolous as having a vacation. it was an unnecessary travel we could have easily skipped.

it’s been a week since we’re back, and i think i can now safely say that we have made it unscathed. both hubby and jan have been ordered to stay away from their office and school though, as a form of quarantine. jan has been receiving lessons and worksheets from school which we work on at home sans the classroom desks. it helps to at least keep him busy, instead of just whiling away the week.

we are scheduled to fly to the philippines in september. but if the swine flu alert does not ease up until then, we might just have to skip it altogether. good thing we got those flight tickets dirt cheap, so it’s not a lot of money thrown away!

two years ago today, we arrived in singapore. and, what a colorful and eventful couple of years it has been. somehow, i have found it to be fairly easier to integrate here than in germany — no language barrier, easier to make friends, easier to navigate even for a novice expat, and being an asian myself, the culture shock hasn’t been too much. although we still sometimes feel like tourists, and there are still a lot of places in this little island that we haven’t explored, i think we’ve come to the point of calling singapore home, however temporary we might feel it to be. in fact, living among the locals and jan going to a local school make us feel like we’ve successfully integrated ourselves into the local society.

naturally, the past two years did not pass without any challenges or misgivings, but nothing that probably wouldn’t have happened were we living elsewhere.

two years. not that long, actually, but so far it’s proving to be an educational and entertaining experience.

i was already in college when i learned the utility of “old exams”. valuable sheets of questionnaires in higher chemistry, virology and statistics, passed clandestinely amongst students frantically trying to absorb information during the last week of the semester, aka hell week. the old exams, which may have been from the last semester or the last decade, were difficult to get hold of (either that, or i just wasn’t “resourceful” enough), and for some subjects, possession of a copy made the difference between a pass or a “5.0″. or at least, that’s how it felt.

of course, now that i’m older, have already earned my degrees and no longer need to sit out exams, i can put on my righteous cap and say, what an utter load of crap!

an exam is an assessment tool, with the aim of measuring how much a student has understood of the lessons and how effective the teacher (and his approach, methodology and materials) has been in tackling the subject matter. if you scored high(er) on an exam because you benefited from having seen and reviewed old exams, then you are defeating its purpose, cheating the system, the teacher, and most importantly, yourself.

so imagine my consternation as jan brought home copies of old english semestral exams from 2007 and 2008, distributed by his teacher as reviewers for the upcoming tests next week! what the…?!? oh and yes, may i reiterate: jan is in first grade.

to date, there is not a single case of swine flu reported here in singapore. but that doesn’t mean the infrastructure hasn’t been laid, ready to spring into action should it become necessary. as it is, mexicans are now required a visa for entry to the country. people are advised to cancel travel plans (forget those Argentina travel plans!) and travelers returning from countries where there have been reported cases are held on a quarantine and are requested to work from home. temperature checks are now mandatory in schools, most offices and other public places. i’ve seen a few people walking around with face masks. seriously. i thought it was a bit OA and until this weekend, i simply brushed the whole thing off as some sort of post-SARS paranoia.

come monday, jan went home with several memos from the school, one of which details an action plan should students need to be quarantined at home. today, i went to the library and they were performing temperature and identity checks as well. a few hours later, i received an sms-reminder from the clinic regarding mia’s doctor appointment, telling me that as a safety precaution, only one visitor is allowed now to accompany a patient. hubby tells me that even the taxi waiting areas have now been moved away from the hospital, probably to reduce the number of people in the premises. gee, they really don’t take anything for granted!

paranoia? perhaps. but totally understandable considering that this country has been ground zero for the havoc that SARS wielded. but hopefully, these precautionary measures are for nothing.

it’s been more than a month since our short trip to desaru malaysia, and have not found time to upload some pics til now, aarrgh! i thought of writing a review, but then again, i don’t have time so i’ll keep it short:

the beach was fantastic, the hotel was standard, the food was forgettable. great for a short getaway , maybe a weekender, but not longer.

the kids had a fantastic time, though, and isn’t that what counts?

it feels like jan just started school last week and yet, there’s just three weeks left to the first term! the slow pace at the beginning gathered speed phenomenally over the last few weeks. the list of words for their weekly spelling tests are getting more challenging, and this week’s now include words such as frightened, favourite, and February. to think it wasn’t so long ago that he learned to read phonetically! they also now conjugating simple sentences, and solving one-step math problems with addition and subtraction. so far, jan’s coping well, enjoying maths even, but often needs to be nudged to do homework (well, would be strange if he didn’t). the one area he needs help, though, is with chinese. ack! i think we need to really find a tutor, fast!

with a one-week holiday looming, i’m scouring the web for short weekend getaways. while there are many possibilities, i personally don’t want to travel far with mia in tow. she’s starting to get mobile now, and a long travel time would just be a pain. we’ve done desaru over chinese new year and the it was fab arriving at the hotel within an hour or so of leaving singapore. so where to this time? abangan.