love bites

Happy Birthday, Love

May 6, 2010

Alright now.

It’s Daphne’s birthday today.

Those of you that know me personally you know how I feel about being overtly mushy, particularly in front of people we know. I’m not one to blow kisses at her from a distance or call her sweety-pie names like muffin, cupcake, chee-cheong-fun and other saccharine sweet delicacies. We have this agreement that started from our NTU days that we won’t make the people around us feel uncomfortable, simply for practical reasons – we didn’t want to be ostracized and left without group partners for all our assignments. Just imagine doing a project in a group of four and two of them spend half their time cavorting with one another. Urgh.

I digress.

Remember the great Boyzone song – Love me for a Reason?

Don’t love me for fun girl

Let me be the one girl

Love me for a reason

Let the reason be love

It’s a nice idea but let the reason for love be…love? Nah, it doesn’t make sense even after a sixpack of beer.

There’re always reasons why you are drawn to a person, and I love Daf because of real reasons. Here are five of them. I’m not sure if this post qualifies as too much information but there, you’ve been warned.

1. She’s smoking hot.

I’m not sure what you can use to describe that except one word – NOSEBLEED.

2. She’s darn smart.

You know, I’m no half-wit myself (heh-heh).  So when I say she’s smart, believe me, she’s smart.

We had this competition in church called the Word Power which was basically a competition where you memorise bible verses – SIXTY of them, including punctuations, commas, full stops, the whole works – and recite them without reference. Daf, her sister and I formed a team and we topped the first two preliminary rounds before choking in the finals on a rather careless mistake.

The point here is that anyone who can memorise Habakkuk 3:17-19 practically backwards is no mean intellectual slob for sure. I’m not proselytizing but you might want to check that verse out.

3. She has a radio voice.

You’ve read her blog for sure, but did you know that Daphne was one half of NTU’s internet-radio DJ team called the Mad-Crappers? She actually hosted a public event at Scape Park, IMPROMPTU as well. Got the crowd worked up and all. Which was really impressive. Unfortunately I’m sorry I can’t find any old audio clips of her program. But she has one sexy voice I tell ya.

4. She’s sporty and fiercely competitive.

I know, I know. She doesn’t seem like the sort. But Daf was actually captain of her Anglican High School basketball team during her secondary school days and they were apparently really good.

I once played a pickup game with her against two ah bengs and me being a soccer guy I inevitably misplaced a pass to her.She came up to me real close, right in my face, gave me the most fearsome glare I have ever received in my life and said quietly,

“Are you serious about the game?”

I nodded furiously.

“Then make sure you don’t make another pass like that.”

I was left shivering in my pants and I didn’t misplace another pass for the game, nor for the rest of my life for that matter.  There, I confess it, I’m henpecked like that. We crushed the two ah-bengs and I didn’t make a single basket – true story. When you find someone like that, you just gotta marry her.

5. She loves me right back.

This is where it gets a little cheesy and emo here.

Having been together for almost ten years, we’ve been through some crazy, amazing times. Always crazy and mostly amazing. Even times when we were so broke all we had was a plate of char kway teow (plain) which we bought for 80cents and shared it while having a good laugh about our sorry plight.

But whether it was watching Serendipity for the 12864th time…

kissing in the rain at East Coast Park…

sharing a warm cup of toffee nut latte at Starbucks on a chilly nite…

trying to act young and hip at another Jason Mraz concert…

saying yes to me when I was a mere student with nary a single cent in the world…

Every moment is and will always be close to my heart.  You are the most beautiful and awesome person ever and five is really just a micro-milli-mini-fraction of the reasons why I love you. And thanks for loving me right back.

Ten years seems like an awfully long time but I know it’s just the beginning for us.

Happy birthday, love.

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not feeling so supermom

All the right answers

May 4, 2010

I used to hate it when my Literature lecturers told me that “there’s no such thing as a right answer, as long as you’re persuasive enough“. Because evidently there was. If there wasn’t, I’d be scoring an “A” for my thesis on why we need to set fire to Jane Eyre (the book, not the person). Along the way, I figured out the right answers by sneaking into the staff lounge and getting myself one of those model essays.

I blame it on my compulsive disorder. I need to do things right, whatever right means. I was the kind of kid that colors within the lines and follows all the rules, you know, the head prefect sort with my horn-rimmed spectacles and geeky hair. Freestyling, that’s just not my style.

I’ve learned to be a lot less anal retentive but the compulsiveness, it’s hard to shake off.

They told me it’s the same with parenting. “There’s no such thing as a right parenting style, just what’s right for your kid”. I didn’t buy that, so I was always searching for that elusive right answer. What to feed your child, where to get the best educational material, what toys to get, how to make them sleep and so on. Some answers were backed up by scientific data and others had raving testimonials from expert moms but a lot of it was confusing and contradictory and they all just messed with my head.

So we mostly learned through trial and error. Like one time I fed Truett some peanuts because he was screaming his head off during a wedding dinner and he almost choked and died until I stuck my fingers down his throat and dug it out. Lesson: always have baby bites on hand.

It doesn’t help that this time, I’m not graded by qualified teachers but by the army of perfect moms who always manage to look like they have it all together.

There’s something about being a mom that makes you terribly paranoid and competitive. You’re always peering over your shoulder to see what other moms are doing. Maybe it’s because an entire life is at stake here. Maybe because there really is no right answer and we are all desperately hoping that we didn’t mess up. Once in a while, I chance upon one of those stepford moms and it’s like I’m back to High School all over again.

Sometimes I bring Kirsten out for breakfast in the morning and in order to buy time while I eat, I feed her whatever I’m having, which includes McD’s or fried noodles (but no peanuts, I’m a fast learner). In between my mouthfuls of processed junk food, I turn to the table beside me and there she is, with her perfect hair and neatly arranged tiny boxes of organic celery sticks and hummus. Which is right about the point I start to pretend to search my bag, knowing full well that all I’ll find is a half-eaten hash brown.

Sometimes I put both my kids in the same stroller while I blitz from point to point without strapping them down.

Sometimes I put my kids in front of the telly while I prepare their meals.

Sometimes I say no way more times than I should because that’s the obvious answer to “can I lick the underside of my shoe?”

I’ve come to terms with the fact that I won’t have all the answers. In fact, most of the answers I have are likely to be wrong but that’s the fun of parenting. I’m the boss of them and there’s no one to tell me I suck. Well, except for the moms who do it without saying a word.

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how i pretend to be a cool mum, kids in motion

The next time I go for an event, I’m going to turn up in a Lady Gaga outfit

May 3, 2010

Always nice to have some photos to start off the week.

We’re really enjoying our weekly swimming sessions with friends. And by we, I mean Tru, who is thrilled to have someone else to shoot besides his sister because it’s no fun shooting water at someone who is completely defenseless. It’s like shooting at a creepy old dude with a walking stick. Oh wait, that’s actually quite fun.

Also, I turned up for the maybebaby.sg launch event on Saturday in my T-shirt and jeans thinking it was a casual, dress down affair. I figured that I’d just blend in with the crowd, clap a little and head off for a coffee. Then I reached and everyone else was looking a little more spiffy than I expected. It was a good thing I had Kirsten with me because babies are the best accessories. I was shifting uncomfortably in my seat until the guest of honor, MP Josephine Teo showed up also in a T-shirt and I felt a lot better.

Right in the middle, there was a fancypants ceremony where all the bloggers were introduced and we had to go onstage to hold hands and press a button. Except that I was carrying a baby in one hand and trying to hold hands with an actual guest of honor, which was probably more important than pressing the button. So obviously, I was the only one who didn’t get to press the button but I totally pressed it on my way down the stage so I guess it counts.

Besides that, it was a really nice affair where I got to sit beside Edmund, famous daddy blogger and his awesomely cute little girl. Although there was one awkward moment during the photo op where I had to explain that we were married but not to each other because it seemed like such a nice little family picture.

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