Vale 7021

The 5 years old Fujitsu laptop finally gave up the ghost this morning. Not bad in terms of computing lifespan where 1 year is roughly 25 for the hardware. Considering that I've never had to repair it for the whole time I've used it. The RAM and HDD upgrades don't count. The original HDD is still stashed away in an external case somewhere.

I will miss it...

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PT Log:
20 minutes on the treadmill

Conversations with Wifey

Wifey and Faith were baking chocolate muffins when I got home. Being the woman that she is, she looked at the bake pan and asked me, "How large is the pan?"

"Which side?" I replied.

"The pan, how large is it?"

Exasperated I traced along the sides of the pan and asked again, "Is it _this_ side? Or this?"

"This lah!" Now it's her turn to be exasperated.

"Okay, let me get the measuring tape," I muttered.

"The whole point of asking you is to I don't have to look for the measuring tape."

Hmmm...

PT log

30 minutes of slow jogging on the treadmill.

15 minutes of stretching out.

First of a million steps...

Becoming overweight

It begins insidiously...gram by gram...at first, your favourite pants feels a little tight but you ignore it, then the belt doesn't clip at the usual hole and you move it to the next one...soon you can't fit into the pants after a meal...the next thing you know, hey, the pants suddenly fit again and seems roomier than ever.

That's when you realize your wife has kindly replaced that 30-inch pants with a 34-inch of the same brand, texture and colour without telling you to avoid hurting your ego...

The passing of time

You know that something significant in life has taken place when your former students on Facebook start reminiscing about their youth.



I'm so glad I have a family. It's paradoxical. Faith is like a reflection of time passing, yet she keeps me young.

Go figure...

The Big Picture?

So Hillary Clinton visited Haiti.

And the security cordon prevented any humanitarian work for 3 days.

Bigwigs should just get out of the way and let the little people do effective work...

The space-time paradox

Woke up 15 minutes earlier today to fix and eat breakfast. It's part of a wider attempt to improve overall health.

Ended up rushing out the door with the toast in my mouth, hoping that the company bus hasn't left.

Somehow the time equation doesn't add up. It felt like I had woken up 15 minutes *later*.

Perhaps Einstein has an explanation...

Fitness programme

I need to get fit.

Not Ironman fit, just to feel my age and not like I'm some 60-year-old after climbing up two flights of stairs at work.

By the way, there IS a 60-year-old at my work place who climbs stairs with me. He doesn't seem breathless...

Time to get that pair of Adidas off the shoe rack.

Of black boxes and candies

Had an interesting session with the kids on the fundamentals of Science. I constructed a black box with some candies inside. They had to guess what's in the box without opening it. Some were indifferent, some showed enthusiasm and all had different methods.

What we think of as high school science is not Science. Science isn't listing down a set of facts. Knowing that Jupiter is the largest planet of the Solar System or that the human heart has four chambers isn't Science.

Science is the process of discovering the world around us through the use of a set of rules and procedure. So now you know, Science is a verb.

The epistle of James

It's time for a meditative study. Please read with me.

Open my heart, Lord.

If we knew better

Kids are a blessing to their parents in more ways than we can count.

Faith was whining for chocolates earlier today while I was frying some Indonesia fish keropok for her. I told her to be patient, to wait for something better but she kept crying for the chocolates.

Her tears turned to the widest smile ever when I finally handed her the keropok.

It's very similar to how we relate to God. Many times we think we know what's the best for us but God has something far better down the road. And we're too impatient to wait on Him. The amazing thing is, He still loves us through all our nonsense. Maybe it's because He sees us for who we are: weak, helpless and ignorant.

I'm amazed that I still love Faith for all the frustrating times. Maybe it's because I see her the way God sees me?

Earthquake in Haiti

A 7.0-magnitude earthquake has struck the island of Haiti. Thousands have died and infrastructure, including Parliament and the island's main prison have collapsed. The UN office was also struck, with scores of UN peacekeepers and workers expected dead or injured. It seems civilisation has ended in Haiti.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8455629.stm

Keep praying for them.

Rex Muscidae

The traffic in Shanghai is a mirror of the human condition here. Nobody waits, obeys traffic rules or gives way. A two-lane road has four lines of vehicles. A chicken can't cross the road unless it jaywalks.

The only time when some semblance of order is restored is when a traffic police arrives on scene.

With 5000 years of civilization behind them, you'd expect the Chinese to do better. Maybe the ruling class was right. You can't expect the ignorant to govern themselves. You can take the peasant out of the village but you can't take the village out of him.

OK, enough of my rants...

Showing some spine?

So maybe Google has decided to show some spine and walk away from a potentially lucrative market?

Read this article.

Everyone's talking China these days.

Censored search engine is an oxymoron anyway. So maybe Google might just salvage some pride with this move.

Evil ogre at home

I'm so tired of myself screaming at Faith whenever she does something that upsets me. My resolution this year will be to not scream at her. And I'm starting the count of the number of times I do so for the rest of the year.



Faith woke up at 3am this morning, crying because the night light was switched off. And I scolded her for that. So the count begins...

Evil ogre manifestations: 01

Cup of Nations Day 1

Angola 4 Mali 0 after 80 minutes of play. Then, all of a sudden, everything lit up and 4 goals in the last 10 minutes, including the final 2 within a minute of the final whistle.

Full-time score: Angola 4 Mali 4

What a game. What a way to come back for both Mali and football in Africa.

An African dance

Get ready to witness football at its purest. Forget about the over-commercialised World Cup and European Championship with over-paid, under-performing stars.

This is what it's all about. The African Cup of Nations. Free flow attacking football and passion. Why do you think the biggest clubs in Europe send their scouts here?

Let the festival begin.

Raising kids

Everyone's an amateur when it comes to raising one's own kids.

Faith suddenly burst out crying while playing at the playground. No one bullied her. She didn't fall down from height. And I couldn't get her to tell me what's wrong. So she wept all the way home.

A hug from Wifey settled it.

So much for being a sensitive dad...

Running

This article is not a surprise:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B8JHF-4XX36D1-2&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=0bea7b09825dec6d17d30e7ec502b545

Barefoot running produces less stress on the joints than running with shoes. And be spontaneous.

What did I say? Forget about the slogans and just run, darn it!

Kids and pizza

Made pizza with Faith last night. She was most enthusiastic about piling the pineapples on the dough. Looks like she's going through a pineapple phase. How I wish she'd go through a vegetable phase.

Seeing her do things, I realised Faith is no longer the toddler she used to be. I'm beginning to miss her baby days. She now looks out for her younger sister, even giving up TV time so that Joy can get to watch her favourite musical DVD.

Wifey has done a tremendous job of inculcating manners and a spirit of giving in her.

I love the girls in my life.

Decent folks along the way

It's always the nice people that made things memorable at work.

I've been thinking about all the jobs that I've done. Then I realised that it's not the job per se but the people.

You can have either the most coveted or undesirable job in town but it doesn't matter. It's the nice folks that made things good.

I miss research days for the beer and makan sessions with a crazy gang who chased after the weirdest of things on Earth.

I miss the civil service for the nice aunty who always had good words in tough situations.

I miss hospital days for the guys who could play computer games all day, pass the finals AND shared tips with me on how to beat the level monster.

I miss teaching in Singapore for the department which never called a meeting unless absolutely necessary.

I miss giving private tuition to the kids who couldn't solve a simple equation but wrote side-splitting commentaries about life.

It's the nice people. Always.

Exit plan

We will be in Shanghai until 2012 if plans are not changed. I'll need to work on an exit plan soon, not just from the company but also from this line. It's been an interesting 4 years as a teacher. By 2012, I will have done the same thing for 6 years. That is a long time by my standard. I'm looking for a new direction at work, please pray with me.

Thinking of working in a library or in a line that handles information. Archival, retrieval, classification, dissemination, transformation, search engines. We process information on a daily basis without giving it much thought. I think of all the data banks in the world and wonder. How does it get organized? How do I find anything of use? I first encountered this problem of getting useful information during my research days. Getting all that relevant references for a simple paper took a lot of effort. You'll appreciate the complexities involved in selecting data if you've done any sort of referencing.

Maybe all the browsing through WIkipedia is getting to me.

For now, that old Queen song "I Want To Break Free" is ringing in my head...

Dealing with the weather

So the forecast from last week turned out totally wrong. It's been a colder-than-expected week so far, with temperatures fluctuating on both sides of freezing both outdoors and in the office. Yup, the powers that be have decided to save on the heating bill.



I'm wondering...if it's minus 3 degrees now, how's it going to be come Chinese New Year, the coldest time of the year in Shanghai? The thought of it makes my brain freeze.

The good news is that the kids are enjoying the frosty weather. Never mind the adults shivering away...

First work day of 2010

The heating broke down this morning. Office is freezing with single-digit weather on the outside.

Good thing I'm back to work. It's not something that I'm proud of, work. It's something that puts the bacon on the table. No, I'm not being cynical either. I'm glad to be back in the office because it gets more difficult to start with longer holidays. The end of summer is worse. I'm grateful for the dough.

Work is just something incidental, for now. I'm still looking for work that will become part of my belief. That's different from simply something that provides a salary.

The cold is getting to my brain. Better do something else...

School for Faith

We're starting the ACES curriculum for Faith tomorrow. Wifey has taken the step of faith in starting this journey of home school. It's something we talked about and prayed about ever since Faith was born. We know it's the right step but having a formal starting day still makes us anxious. I guess it's human nature to be afraid of the unknown. Three words to comfort us though: go with God.

How anxious it must be for parents with kids starting K or P1 tomorrow? Lots of parents back in Singapore are having a sleepless night tonight. I bet even the ST will run a coverage about the first day of school on its front page on Tuesday.

I'm not going to write anything about why we think home school is better than public school. I just want to wish all parents peace tonight. Don't worry about it. Go with God.

Moving out, moving in

So we completed the move to the new apartment today.

Fourth time in a year.

It's tiring just thinking about it. Not all expatriates enjoy the glamorous lifestyle. No limos, no villas with a pool in the backyard. No permanence either.

Thankfully the landlords we've encountered have been kind. The Shanghainese may be known for their prickly and tough personality. But beneath that, most are just folks who've had a tough life. They're always glad when we show kindness and understanding. Even reciprocating to the point of being charitable at times.

The lesson we learned over the past year? ...all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them

The things I want for my kids in the 10s

Spent the day breathing in the air on the first day of the 10s.

Sounds strange. The 10s...

Faith is four. She will be 14 by the time 2020 rolls around. I wonder how the world will be like for her? I wonder how it will be like being a teenager in 2020? Wifey will begin "formal" home school with her from next week. We're talking about things like teaching her to sit down and pay attention. Being polite. Expressing her wishes through speech instead of snatching or raising her voice. Never mind the academics. I'm thinking, those are things we've been trying to model for her as parents. It always warms my heart to see her clasp her hands and hear her say "amen" at the end of a prayer.

It's going to be a radically different world, the 10s. But some things never change...