poorly defined

so my question is, 

if he were alive today would he be 220 years old or actually 880?

and don't cheat by googling the answer.

last day of feb

as far as i am concerned, i would like march to come in like a lamb get out lika a lamb and keep still in between. it's been a wonderful winter so far, let's keep it that way. 

leap day

the last time this toddled around it was:

• another place another school another life
• another olympic games
• one tv size ago

we are almost four years into this place now

anticipating another vicarious athletic bonanza

and some people would like to move up a tv size.

plus ça change...

but i'm grateful for the la meme chose.

next change

the memory of the mozza brand of al dente continues to haunt our dinner table discussions. the italian joints around here just don't seem to serve the same ambrosial bite.  the fresh pasta off the grocer's shelves lacks the elusive oomph. the dried pasta in boxes, a dollar a box on sale, which has hitherto served me perfectly, now tastes like falling-apart board. 

now that he has made his roll, HOM wants to conquer the 'umble pasta next. 

eureka

after an entire week of rolled cake in various stages of incarnation, HOM finally makes this.

all i say is, yesss. and yesss. thank you.

tally ho

some people write academic papers. some write poetry. or books. or climb mountains. and do groundbreaking research. it occurs to me that at the end of the day, my ouvre may pretty much be defined by a clutch of letters to the straits times forum page. that, my online diary, and perhaps a couple of living epistles.

idiot idealist

someone wants to use my photos. may i? she asks. how do you want to be credited? you can simply use the facebook shots without credit, i tell her. but i would like an attribution if you use my blog shots.

HOM laughs at me. you do know that the licence you publish under carries no legal weight, don't you? well yes, as a matter of fact i know that. but i am doing my bit for something i believe in. there is intellectual property that is protected, and i honor that. let us share what we can, if we wish, and let us honor that too.

is this familiar?

he had been instructed only in that innocent and ineffectual way by which the Catholic priests teach the aborigines, by which the pupil is never educated to the degree of consciousness, but only to the degree of trust  and reverence, and a child is not made a man, but kept a child.   

- walden, visitors, thoreau

authoritarianism in a nutshell.

matcha roll

HOM and J2 are on a quest to perfect their japanese green tea roll. one roll attempt per night is what they are limited to, no options. how is it coming? J1 asks. they are on the learning curve, i say. at this stage they are mainly just using up all my eggs.

eDelphi.com

i made scrambled eggs in the microwave! J1 tells me. who taught you? i ask, because it wasn't me. that's easy. it's in eHow.com. one day soon, we shall be able to eHow.com the steps to a self-appendectomy and then follow visual instructions on youtube. and there shall be an entire generation that believes them.

intercourse*

communication

conversation

confession

the one utilitarian, the other communal, and the last sacramental. a wise person would distinguish between them.

*letters & papers from prison, dietrich bonhoeffer.

dona nobis pacem

i have inscribed you on the palms of my hands;

- isa 49:16

i begin to realize, to my deep shame and great relief, that the God of the bible is gentler kinder and more forgiving than even my evangelical heritage has traditionally made him out to be, and that he blesses mine because of me. it is a wondrously joyful thing to have peace with God.

walden - thoreau

high-minded scrupulous ascetic minutely educated snidely humorous unexpectedly readable and really quite sharp, thoreau is at once compellingly lyrical and ploddingly verbose. 

it's amazing how you can imagine glimmerings of almost every recently fashionable organic mother-earth back-to-basics anti-big-business grow-your-own-vegetables trend in his book. perhaps that is why he comes across as being just the tiniest bit self righteous.

i'm not sure i can finish the book. there is only so much activism a modern girl who needs all her creature comforts can handle.

season's change

there is something in the air that makes you want to take deep breaths and smile at every one you meet.

even the robin looks beautiful when he first appears.

letters from prison (1953, 1970)

reading the correspondance between bonhoeffer and his parents i learn several things. i learn that one doesn't graduate from parenthood, as long as life is not done. i learn that it is no small gift to be able to participate in shaping my children's worldview, and a wise mother will not quickly resign such a gift. i learn that the heritage i impart can play a redeeming role in their lives, by the grace of God.

also, i learn that the path we travel may meander through almost unimaginable anguish, and that this is both a cross and a gateway to joy.

anakephalaiosis

that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times He might gather together in one all things in Christ,

- eph 1:10

the past and the present
the pains and the joys
the abject failures
the highest triumphs
the memories
the things
absolved, redeemed, exchanged

he restores my soul;

-ps 23:3

lest i forget.

taken (2008)

HOM and i watch this on a lazy sunday afternoon. 

all i say is, this is my kind of action movie. a near invincible hero (to quote J1) in ninety minutes of packed easy-to-follow plot with absolutely no nuance to the action except for a clear white-triumphs-over-black construct. all the bad guys die. the good guy wins thumpingly big. the nasty ex becomes satisfyingly grateful. even the stepfather is one of the good guys. you feel like you've had a good workout at the end of the movie.

they need to make more movies like this. and put the indiana jones guy in the title role.

i ♥ HOM

the internet comes back after a day out in the cold. no news. no books. no references. no contact with the world. how will you live? J1 asks incredulously over the 'phone.

it was a tough day indeed. 

restoration

our master bath shower stall is under assault. the man comes to dig out the old grout scrape off the caulk repair the treacherous leak and re-do it all. HOM and i are banished to J2's shower (which has problems of its own).

what i say is, the first key to making a good impression is to show up on time.

the second is to fix the shower stall doors back in the correct order.

uncle sam

the breakfast table is a warzone of overstuffed binders loose sheets laptops calculator and printer surrounding one irate fellow grappling with his taxes late into each night. 

should be seasoned by now, somebody says. what i want to know is, how does one get seasoned to novel demands for greater details of increasing intimacy questionable useability and complete unpredictability? as in, how was i supposed to know you would want me to keep this stuff at my fingertips for my husband to report to you? before i threw it away?  

the award for this year's bureaucrat's delight goes to: 

highest account balance recorded in reporting year 

i can't be totally sure, but i suspect a misguided young ideologue on the loose.

confession of a stiff upper lip

it occurs to me that there is a faintest whiff of smarminess in the out-gushing of lurve and other public domain statements on some facebook statuses today. i want to say, save the mush for face-to-face restricted audience voice communications, please. some of us joined a social network, not an aviary.

aphorisms

a watched pot never boils.

but i'm telling you, an unwatched pot runneth over to the next kingdom, that's what it does. 

tonight's washing up boggles the mind.

wanderer fantasie

i hear this on the car radio today. it brings me back to teenage days to a house on jalan bukit in p.j., to lazy saturday afternoons waiting for my piano lessons. the fantastic waves of notes would crash through from the little studio and we would sigh our adulation and dreams, me and M and E.

this one's for you, flavia. thanks for the glamor and the dreams, and the music.

merry go round

they should tell this to high school seniors:

as part of the college application process you will be expected to participate in a tour of the starbucks and barnes & nobles stores within a twenty mile radius of your home. good luck.

this week J2 tells me she has attended her final interview. it's about time.

pretty

it snowed in the night!

as HOM says, this is totally our kind of snowfall.

it gladdens the heart and spares the back.

fort knox

the aim of packaging, someone needs to tell the merchants, should not be to create a plastic citadel that only serves to inspire all manner of uncharitable thoughts in the customers when they try to get at the innards. for the record, this one is a perfectly sealed box of hard plastic to the inside of which the individually plastic encased components are attached by long strips of tape which also serve to attach the individual little baggies to each other.

cut the stuff, bro. save some fossils.

looking back

here are lessons that have taken me nineteen years to learn, and i'm still on the curve:

• there's a time to speak and a time to be silent. the latter happens more frequently than you would expect statistically. when in doubt, grit teeth bite tongue shut up. 
• trust God, surrender your dreams to Him is not something you say to your kids. it's what you say to yourself. your kids can say that to themselves subsequently but that's their lesson.

and here's what i've learnt from almost fifty years of observation:

• perseverance and nagging work. i finally have chinese script on my keyboard because my father refuses to communicate with me in english.

sobering thought

it occurs to me and HOM and to our children that opportunities make all the difference to options and achievements, and we are truly thankful for the opportunities we have had.

one bag today

of trash culled from my closet, that is. except, looking at the closet now, you wouldn't suspect it even after i told you exactly where i got the stuff from. things have a way of insidiously creeping into your space and growing surreptitiously until they could lay claim to their own corporate headquarters.

i hate preparing to move as much as i hate the move itself i think. and i hate the thinking before the preparing.

also, i sprain my shoulder lugging the bag out.

to my daughter

my offbeat resourceful creative doggedly obstinate too generously idealistic baby turns eighteen today, this strong capable opinionated young woman who has grown up with us and given us hours of pleasure and frustration. she has taught me that i am a steward, so help me God. she soaks up and spurns in equal measure and teaches me broken humility. she often shows me a richer way for stubbornly refusing to say yes. 

my life would have been a lot more pleasant and peaceful had you been a good obedient chinese daughter who didn't answer back, i want to tell her. instead i say, may you always know the hope that you have, child. may you know that you share in glorious riches with all the saints. may you know that an exceedingly great power is at work within you because you are his. these are the main things i want to tell you.

i also want to tell her, my life is infinitely complex and beautiful because God gave us you.

burapa thai

J2 and i have dinner out. the menu says, mildly spicy, thai spicy, john hot. we order thai spicy in memory of the real burapa that we know. it turns out to be sweat-worthy spicy.

in our thai years we had plenty of sweaty spicy, but the green curry never did have red flakes swimming in it. what i say is, there's thai spicy, and there is spicy knock-off.

zzzz'd

the jet lag is likely over. i know this because:

• my bedtimes have been creeping from eleven to ten to nine and back to eight p.m. 
• i no longer wake up in the mornings feeling energetic and ready to tackle the housework.

it wasn't too bad while it lasted i must say. apart from the missing kindle.

families & other non-returnable gifts - lazebnik (2011)

finally, chick lit where the heroine is more than primarily a pretty pair of boobs. why, she's actually smart; in fact i suspect she is capable of being downright intellectual too, without her brains in any way detracting from pure lightweight entertainment.

any one who grew up on a diet of mills & boons/barbara cartland romances will understand that it is a tremendous relief to meet a non-bimbo-wannabe some time.

also, that part when she wakes up with a slowly spreading horrible sinking feeling after sleeping with the wrong guy is a pretty accurate description of how i feel when i wake up from a really bad dream.

zzzz

the adrenaline that keeps the meals coming and the laundry processed wears off today and what remains is a bone softening case of jet lag.

casualty

fresh from our long haul flights to and from the tropics, a horrible realization is sinking in: the kindle is missing. on the bright side, fortunately the iPad is not. i hope it's due to the jet lag.

change of menu

everyone (HOM J2 and J1 who technically shouldn't count because he is absent) overrides my objections (the awful taste the difficulty cooking the logistics of procurement) so i find myself cooking my first pot of brown rice for dinner today.

if you are wondering how it turned out, i'd like to remind you there's this thing called the learning curve, and i'm still on it.

2.1.12

tempus fugit.