And one day that journey will end when my dream becomes a reality.

I’m baaaaaaaaaaaack!

Ok…now that we’ve got that out of the way…let’s talk about the thing that made me want to blog again. Parenthood.

I’ve read about Ridj having a baby (congrats again!) and I can’t help smiling as I read about him being sleepless and all that. Brings back such happy memories. I’ll be the first to admit that my wife takes most of the burden of waking up in the wee hours of the morning as my baby breastfeeds throughout most of her current life. She only stopped at 1 1/2 years old. So…it was my wife who had to wake up whenever my baby needed some fuel. However, since my baby enjoys a cocktail of breast milk and formula milk, I make the formula milk (sometimes hehe).

A little sidetrack…

A friend of mine (A fellow father. I really can’t remember who) was having a conversation with me about his baby. It went something like this…

Me: So do you get sleepless nights?

Friend (the father): No. My baby’s great! She never wakes up in the middle of the night!

Me: Really?! No way! So damn lucky sia! 

Friend (the Mummy): Excuse me! She wakes up at least TWICE every night. Its you who never wakes up!

Friend (the father): Huh? Really?

I couldn’t stop laughing back then. His baby was at four months old!

Well anyway…back to my story. Being a parent is seriously the most wonderful event in my life (apart from being married and having a wonderful wife). It gives you something to look forward to. You are given a very important responsibility. This little bundle of joy depends on you. Really, really depends on you. She needs you there to feed her. To clothe her. To make her laugh (this one I’m really good at!). To hug. To kiss. To talk baby talk to. To smile at. To smile with. Unrequited love cannot completely exist between a woman and a man. That stuff is just for fantasies. It can only exist between a father/mother and his/her baby.

You give her everything you’ve got. You buy her clothes even though you need to buy new ones yourselves. You buy her toys just to see wide eyed appreciation. You show her new things / animals just to see her stare at it in amazement. You go out of the way to bring her to a playground just to see her light up and shout "Play! Play! Play!". You carry her in your arms even though you’re so damn tired after a hard day’s work. You feed her and she sometimes spits it out, but you still do it. You clean her up after she soils her diapers (I really do it, ok). You do silly dances (till you’re out of breath. Sometimes I end up hurting myself when I trip or knock onto something). You make silly faces. You make funny sounds. You discipline her. Then you feel bad for disciplining her. I remembered my cikgu telling me that it hurts our parents more than it hurt us when they hit us. I didn’t understand what he meant back then. But I do now.

You feel so happy whenever she learns something new. A new word. A new bodypart. Head. Hair (She will say haaair whenever she is asked to point to her hair). Shoulders. Eyes. Nose (crinkles her nose). Ears. Teeth. Tongue (sticks out her tongue repeatedly). Chin (chhhh…). Stomach. Hands. Fingers (wiggle her fingers). Elbows. Knees. Toes. She can smile on demand now. She can wave to others. She can blank kiss. She can jump (without jumping). All numbers are two. Draw any number and she’ll say two. When she wants to fall onto her bed she’ll say two…two…two and then jump. She knows cat. Dog. Bird. Fish (fffshh…spitting saliva all over the place). She goes all soft and loving whenever we sing "I love you" as in the Barney (I HATE BARNEY!) song. She actually pulls us (me and my wife) together close to her and hugs us as we sing the song.

Well…if I’m going to write about every single enjoyable thing that a parent feels watching his/her baby grow up then this post will never end. So I’ll wrap it up now.

Having a child is a blessing, a gift from God. It brings more happiness and meaning to our relationship. We truly feel that we share our lives together. Nothing in this world compares to the joy that a child brings. Sure…everything is getting more and more expensive as time goes by. Life can be difficult at times. But this little bundle of energy and joy makes living a whole lot better

This message was brought to you by: MCYS (haha…just kidding!) 

Why did I start doing this? Well…its all because of HEROES! My father-in-law bought some HEROES dvds, but they weren’t the complete set. I was still missing about 6 episodes. I’m not going to wait till Channel 5 finally shows these last 6 episodes. My daughter’d probably be able to talk by then! So I decided to find out whether I’d be able to get them from iTunes. It was! So the next step was to find out if it is possible to buy the shows off iTunes. After abit of prodding around, I realised that it was possible! I downloaded these movies at $1.99 US an episode. Spent about 12 US dollars on them. Its a whole goddamn lot cheaper than buying them off the shelves. Yeah sure, you’ve got the subtitles and all the other stuff with the boxed set, but what happens after you watch them? You keep them in your drawers where they gather dust. Might as well buy them without all the frills. Even if they gather dust, it doesn’t hurt that much

Now that I’ve got the six episodes, the only thing left to do is to WATCH them. Yeah…haven’t had the time to do that over the weekend. We had a quick tour of Geylang bazaar last Saturday, where we saw a girl who looked like she was drunk when she got her hair coloured. It was as if somebody just splashed different coloured paint onto her head! I would rather shave off my head than go out with hair like that! Then there’s this guy who had his hair all bleached out and he had black spots all over his head. He looked like a ladybird. Some people are freaking…freaks.

Can’t wait for tomorrow. We’d go all out on our shopping cos it’d be payday!  

Nowadays, other Star World, HBO and many other channels are showing movies and series far earlier than Channel 5. One good example is the series "Heroes". I can’t believe that Channel 5 is having trailers for "Heroes". And they’re proudly announcing the fact that they’ll be showing "Heroes" in November. By the time November comes, I’d have watched the entire series.

For people who have been catching "Heroes" on Star World, the series would have been well in advance by now. As for me, I managed to watch it on DVD. My father-in-law got the whole series on DVD. Don’t ask me how he got them.

I knew he bought them a while back. But I never got around to watch them. I saw some parts of the series on Star World, but I never really watched them cos I didn’t really take note of the time slot that the show was in.

So yesterday…I found the DVD set while I was waiting for time to break fast. I popped the first DVD in and watched. We ended up watching the show till about eleven! It was that good. It was that riveting!

I can’t imagine having to wait from one week to another waiting for the series. I can’t imagine having to put up with stupid advertisements. I’m just glad that F-I-L bought these DVDs! I don’t have to put up with all that nonsense. And, unlike the Hikmah series, I didn’t even fast forward any scenes cos I just wanted to absorb every single storyline and every single character in full detail.

The series was really, really that good. If I were Channel 5, I’d bump off whatever other stupid late night shows I have just to play "Heroes" NOW! Ditch the Desperate Housewives. Enough of Ugly Betty. Its just a long-winded "The Devil Wears Prada". Lost can get lost. Ok maybe CSI can stay. But everything else must go NOW. Not in November. No.

I can’t wait to get home to continue watching the series tonight!

And so it happened yet again yesterday. The newscaster (Neena Mairata) talked about it. And there were the interviews. Yes…the interviews about how the "victims" felt the giddiness and how everything was swaying all around them. I mean…is this so important that you need to put it up on the news? Yes we know there’s tremors, and what do tremors do? They make you feel giddy and things start shaking all over. What do you expect? Tell me something I don’t know!

Then they proceeded to show the various videos showing the effects of the tremors. Cutlery shaking. Chandeliers shaking. Even keys on the window grilles shaking. For added effect, they overlayed a blowup of the keys at the bottom right of the video, just in case you couldn’t see the shaking keys! And finally, there’s the customary fish tank with mini waves caused by the tremors (Fish: Hey look Ma! I’m on TV yet again!).

Do we really need to see this? Do we really need to know yet again about how some housewife felt when there’s tremors? Do we really really need to see the blow up of the keys on the window grilles? Do the home owners realise that potential robbers now know that they leave their window grille keys on the window grilles?

Fascinating stuff.

As for my baby, she’s more interested in the Weather. Somehow or other, she’d stop what she’s doing immediately and focus on the TV whenever she hears the weather jingle. I think she’s hypnotised by it! Or maybe she has friends in Dubai or Taiwan? 

On another note, I was pleasantly surprised when I realised that the mosque I went to for Zuhur (afternoon) prayers had started giving out porridge after the Zuhur prayers. Usually they’d give out porridge after the Asar (late afternoon) prayers. I never thought I’d be able to get the porridge as I normally perform Asar prayers at home. That’s nice :) 

I’ve finally been released from the shackles of having trainees with me. At one point, I actually had up to THREE trainees with me. What a handful. I can’t squeeze them all inside the staffroom, so I had to hole up in the lab. Personally, I prefer hanging out in the staffroom as I get to talk to the teachers around me.

And as a result of me having trainees, I really wasn’t able to blog. One of them has this irritating habit of popping up to me and asking me questions on every single thing imaginable. Really, really lacking in initiative. I just wish her all the best in whichever school she’s in now.

Anyway, enough of all that talk about trainees. I’m back and I will blog more often from now on!

The Lucky Draw
So what’s been happening lately? Well…for one thing…for the first time in my entire life, I won in a lucky draw. Yeah and its the FIRST PRIZE too! I spent three years working as a teacher in my previous school. Three years…didn’t win a lucky draw prize during Teacher’s Day dinners. And every other time. Entered so many competitions, didn’t even manage to win a consolation prize. But in my first year as an IT Trainer, I ended up winning the first prize hahaha….

How I wish I had that kind of luck during my wife’s D ‘N’ D many months back. The first time was an LCD TV! What I won was nothing as significant as that, but to me, getting the first prize was just thrilling! Just imagine…out over 80 people, I won the first prize! Freaking wow! I’ve actually gotten over it by now, but just typing this out makes me feel blessed once again

Baby Blessings
Speaking of blessings, my baby’s making huge progress in life. She’s had her first steps and she’s been starting to babble. The babbling’s just nonsense, but its a precursor to continous speech. In addition, she’s able to point out at certain things such as CAT, BIRD and FAN to us. I made sure that she’s pronouncing the words right. No meow-meow for cat. Its just CAT.

Hikmah 3
On another note, we’ve finished watching HIKMAH 3. Yes…not HIKMAH 2 which is trundling along on Suria. All 40 CDs cleared within the space of two weeks. How did I manage that? Well…I’d fast forward the parts where I deem irrelevant to the storylines that matter. I can’t stand having to sit through the ramblings of all these bit part actors on TV. Sometimes the segments can be so insanely boring. However, when you rent the VCDs you have the pleasure of not caring about whatever is happening to whoever that person is. I don’t know and I don’t care. I only need to know about what’s happening to Adrian, Arman, Adit, Bu Ratna, Ana, Marla and Amanda. And let me tell you…there’s lots of eye candy in HIKMAH 3

Ramadhan
And finally, its Ramadhan once again. My aim is to be more proper with my fasting. Fasting is not just about abstinence from food. Its about controlling yourself as well. I’m ok with not eating or drinking. But I have to be more careful of what I say. Sometimes swear words come out from my mouth without even me realising it. I hope that I’d be able to stop this bad habit. And I’d like to perform my terawih prayers with my wife too.

Selamat Berpuasa kepada semua Kaum Muslim serata dunia!

Anyway, the weekend that passed was a wonderful, wonderful one. We did so many things as a family. I’ve been feeling kind of detached from my in-laws. I guessed its because I usually feel useless when I’m around them. They’ve helped me out a lot, but I can’t seem to find anything to do for them. Not until now.

My sister-in-law got engaged on Sunday. So…since last Friday, I’ve been helping out at the house. Cleaning up the house. Fixing up broken things. Running errands. Moving around furniture. I even got to drive my father-in-law’s car for a few times. He’s kind of protective over it cos he just bought it. However, he handed me the card thingie (the car has no keys!) and asked me to pick up some relatives. I was kind of nervous driving the car cos I really didn’t want to scratch it or anything. I half expected him to go down to inspect his car the moment I returned. But he didn’t hehehe…

On Friday night, I checked my email and realised that a secondary school friend of mine was getting married on Saturday. He wasn’t able to call me up as he only had an outdated number of mine. Luckily there’s Friendster. I saw his message and called him up. Told my wife about it and we slipped out of the house for a while on Saturday to see the last of my secondary school guy friends getting married. 

Then there’s the engagement ceremony itself. My wife made up my sister-in-law. My mother-in-law sewed her engagement clothes. I was the photographer. We can actually open up a business here!

It was actually an engagement for my sister-in-law cum birthday party for my daughter. So after all the engagement festivities were over, I used my dad’s car to drive over to Swensen’s to get my baby’s birthday cake. It had all the Disney character’s, Mickey, Minnie, Donald and Goofy on it. It looked soooo pretty! We brought it back home and got everything ready. Plopped my baby in front of the cake. Everyone who was there sang "Happy Birthday" to her. She actually giggled at all the attention she was getting. Everyone was so delighted to see her smile that they actually sang the birthday song again hahaha…so funny! We bought a big cake so everyone got a taste. It was Cookies N Cream (my favourite) and Sticky Chewy Chocolate (my wife’s favourite). So delicious. That was money well-spent.

We both took leave on Monday to recuperate from the festivities the day before. Woke up late and then had breakfast at Long John Silver’s. Then we opened up a bank account for our daughter and put in all the money she got from her birthday plus her Baby Bonus.  Then we went off to Underwater World at Sentosa. We figured that it would be nearly empty since its a weekday.

How wrong we were! The place was packed with tourists! And if we thought that Singaporeans were ugly, wait till you see PRCs in full force! They’re already irritating individually…but when they are together as a group, all hell broke loose. My wife wanted to change my baby’s diapers and she was queueing in front of one of the cubicles. When its her turn, she picked up my baby from the pram and as she wanted to get into the cubicle, this PRC just pushed her way in! Unbelievable huh? I think they ate too much White Rabbit candies. That’s why…

Anyway, we enjoyed ourselves, with or without PRCs. My baby was in awe of all the fish she saw. I even carried her flat on her back so that she could see the fish above her. We even let her put her hands in the pool so she could touch some of the fish there.

And just in case you didnt know…you don’t have to go to the Maldives anymore to feed stingrays! Yes! There is a place for you to feed stingrays. I touched them. But I didn’t feed them. Must pay $3 to feed them. Maybe when my daughter grows up…

After that, we went back to have dinner at the Seah Imm hawker centre. Then we went back home. What a jam packed but wonderful weekend

Still waiting for new posts huh? Wow. Thank you.

I’ve been so busy lately. My company sent me two trainees to learn on the job. I’d teach…they’d observe. Then they teach and I observe them. In the end, I’d tell them where they could improve in their teaching and classroom management.

It would take at least 5 years for mainstream teachers to end up training new teachers. I get to teach new trainees within 5 months working as an IT trainer. Either I’m very good or my company just wants me to do more things.

So for the past month, I’ve been teaching, discussing and planning lessons with my two trainees. The good thing is that there’s less teaching on my part. However, I’m not able to blog. Must set good example ok…

Today, my trainees are teaching somewhere else. So I get to finally blog about something. I get to blog about the fact that I can now blog. How interesting hehehe…

Now let’s see…what can we blog about? Hmmm…my baby’s going to be 1 year old soon. How time flies. She was born premature. 1 and a half months premature. She was so tiny when she first appeared. But that tiny baby is now a healthy bouncy baby girl. She’s starting to stand on her own now. Well…sort of. She’d stand up and hold onto something. Then she’d let her hands go and sway to the left and right before she’d fall on her butt and giggle her way into my heart.

You can be fabulous at what you do. And that can make you happy. But nothing in the world can make you happier than when your baby smiles at you. She’d light up the moment she sees me. She’d smile the widest smile she could muster. 4 cute little teeth peeking out at me.

No matter how tired I am, that smile of hers makes my day.

We bought her the most beautiful birthday cake that we could afford. I can’t wait to celebrate her first birthday! Happy Birthday baby

But poor, old Starhub. They’ve been holding out on raising prices all these years and they have no choice but to do so now. I don’t see the reason though. They’ve been posting profits, so what’s the deal with that? How do they get away with raising prices when they are already making money? Are they monopolising their trade?

"How dare you say that!"  says Starhub. They’re not the only ones in Singapore providing such services anymore. They’re NOT a monopoly! Subscribers are free to move to other scintillating companies such as MobTV and Singtel’s IPTV (coming soon) if they don’t like Starhub. So…nope Starhub is not a monopoly!

I’m very amused by Starhub’s PR exercises. They’ve been repeating these words on various newspapers. Its like a cut and paste job. Same words all the time. But some questions remain unanswered. Such as:

Currently there are no other alternatives to watch EPL, La Liga or Serie A unless we watch them on Starhub. So to me….and to all the subscribers, that constitutes a monopoly. We don’t have a choice. We have to subscribe to Starhub if we want to watch these leagues. And if Starhub wants to raise prices, we have no choice but to pay for it. That’s a monopoly. No way you can say that its not.

Maybe I should sign up with Malaysia’s Astro and hook it up at my parent’s house at JB. Then we’ll go watch the matches on weekends there.

Starhub is pure rubbish. I’m cancelling my subscription unless the hooha that the New Paper has been creating causes them to backtrack. This is no mild threat. I’ve already cancelled my cable modem subscription with them. I’m using M1’s broadband nowadays. Its cheaper and it still gets the job done. So I don’t mind cancelling the tv subscriptions as well. Luckily I didn’t sign a contract with them… 

But the reason why I blog is not because I want to get comments from people. No offence to my readers (if there’s any out there haha), but I’m not interested in your comments. If you have a comment, go write about it in your blog.

Most of the times, there’ll be people who write in useful comments. But there’ll always be someone out there who gets a thrill out of flaming others. They’d stalk your blog. Pick on your entries. Criticize your thoughts. Make fun of you. Insult you. All under the warmth and safety of anonymity.

If you don’t like me…just say it to me to my face. Writing comments on my blog won’t change things. I won’t know who you are. If I did something wrong to you and you’re so angry with me that you can’t sleep at night, tell me who you are. I’ll try to work things out. I promise. But if you’re not going to tell me who you are…then there’s nothing I can do.

I don’t pine for comments. Some people do. Not me. I used to write for the crowd in the past. But that’s not why I started blogging in the first place. That’s why I decided to stop blogging for awhile. 

The truth is…these are my thoughts. I didn’t write them down to please others. I wrote them down because this is how I feel. There’d be some anger, some happiness and sometimes, there’d be nonsense. I’m not out to impress anyone with my knowledge, creativity or wittiness. If you happen to read them and enjoy my entries…then I’m happy to know that. If you don’t like my thoughts, then just go to other blogs. There’s so many blogs out there. I’m sure there’s going to be others that you’d like.

I’m an introvert. I keep my thoughts to myself. But I still need an outlet for my thoughts. I need some place to vent my anger and frustrations. I also want a place to store my memories. I’d like to look back at this blog one day and laugh and cry at the good and bad times in my life. I’d like to reflect back on the things that were important back then.

So what if I look back and realise that my entries are not the award winning kind? Who cares? I just want a place to call my own. I take this blog as an extension of my thoughts. When you think or talk to yourself…you do not have people commenting right?  

So that’s why there’s no comment box.