Housewifing is my dream job. *Frowns and laughs. I hear it* Who says that housewifing wears those neurons away? How shallow! For me, being a housewife is the most difficult job in the world: no leave of absence, no overtime pay, on call 24/7, must be able to tolerate cooking burns, excellent management skills, must be proficient in languages and the arts and basic math and soothing words, must be able to love your spouse and kids under stressful circumstances, loads of E.Q., etc etc. Plus, you don't deal with theories and machines every minute of your waking hours. You mold lives of the young and innocent to make them assets, not liabilities, to society. My belief is, if all parents were familiar with Parenting 101, this could have been a better and more harmonious place to live. Social justice could have been preserved. Wait, that means less money for us. I take a shift of thoughts. Thank you, God, for those negligent and reckless parents. Really.*Pfffft*
A fancy in my brain.
I wake up at 4.30 a.m. Looking at the residential part of Singapore City from the 26th floor of the private condo gives me a sense of serenity. Idyllic. The birth of a new day. As if a temporary reprieve from the daily never-ending grind of work in the central business district. Later on, roads would be congested with overwhelming mixture of people. But for now, the city is all mine. I can almost hear my neighbors snore. I hear Myra getting ready for school. She doesn't take a shower in mornings. She's fine, her Eurasian features make her look neat. I wait at the bus stop, see children dozing off in school buses; rotund, helpless, nearly snoring. They look so... free from irregularities. Classes start. Off I go to the nearby church. I pray. I pray really hard I can feel myself drowning. Then, I return to the bus interchange, boarding onto a bus that takes me back home. At home, Kai and I both have pumpkin soup to our heart's content. In a little while, day care class starts. Kai still has lazy morning spells. He feels sick so he can't go to school. *Hmmm. I see this is something familiar from childhood* Shiftlessly, we play in the living room. As he can't watch t.v., we just play with Pucca and Sunshine in the stillness of time. There are days when he feels like learning and mingling with other kids, so, I wait for him in a nearby lake park. I watch the birds flying overhead, the turtles cool their shell in the shallow water. I see lovers kiss and tourists hike. I have late lunch. Usually, I just have wheat bread and milk and fruits. Kai can't eat junk and fast food, so, pumpkin soup has become his favorite. I read to him some child-friendly Mangga after lunch. In the process, I have learned that in order to let a Mangga come to life, you need to be creative with sounds like Swoosh. Kaboom. Clang dang sang. Splug splug splug. Croack croack. Makes me wonder if I am eligible to write an all-onomatopoeia book. Makes me smile. I check Kai's homework. I teach him Chinese as it is mandatory in their education system to have it in day care curriculum. I can still remember few basic words and phrases from my learning few years ago. Fills my heart with pleasant strings when he pays full attention. I devise the reward system so he is motivated to finish his homework. The answer: Timezone. When I tell him I am too tired to go to Timezone, he says I am a liar. How cute this baby is. Myra arrives. She teaches him a new nursery rhyme. They sing in unison. It melts my heart. Few minutes later, Myra wants to swim. She is very independent, doesn't need me to watch her. Water depth is safe for the children so I worry less. But Kai wants to tag along. I send the floaters in. I let them listen to Japanese music while the pool towel coiled around their fragile body. They giggle. Off to Timezone. I play with them. We just walk from the condo to the mall. What a pleasant thing to do in afternoons. We eat at hawkers on our way home. They can't eat anything, vegetarian kids, so I am very careful with what to order. I have rose cordial milk in afternoons like this. I love its taste. The flavor is like an embodiment of elegant beauty. Like the sight of the majestic horizon as the earth hoists the sun into place. Sundown. Home is where we all want to be.
In reality, those kids were of British-Japanese descent. They were not my own though I treated them like one. For some reason, their mom and dad can't stay together but they appeared to be well-adjusted kids. Courteous, warm, and cordial. We lived in the same condo. Though I "tended" to them for almost a month, those pumpkin soup we had was not made by me but by this very nice woman named Karol. And the rose cordial milk? It was an instant canned milk I bought from the store, it's called bandung. I could not make anything "tasty" with my own two hands just yet. But I will. *I know I will* The pumpkin soup and rose cordial milk subsume my summer. After a year, I can still smell the sweet scent of my nannyish afternoons in Bukit Batok. I want to be stuck in those afternoons. But life has a way of putting your desires on hold. So, let it be.
The tides bring me back to this little chamber of mine where I am meant to write about injustice and corruption. Not about housewifing and psychology and onomatopoeia. Not yet.
A fancy in my brain.
I wake up at 4.30 a.m. Looking at the residential part of Singapore City from the 26th floor of the private condo gives me a sense of serenity. Idyllic. The birth of a new day. As if a temporary reprieve from the daily never-ending grind of work in the central business district. Later on, roads would be congested with overwhelming mixture of people. But for now, the city is all mine. I can almost hear my neighbors snore. I hear Myra getting ready for school. She doesn't take a shower in mornings. She's fine, her Eurasian features make her look neat. I wait at the bus stop, see children dozing off in school buses; rotund, helpless, nearly snoring. They look so... free from irregularities. Classes start. Off I go to the nearby church. I pray. I pray really hard I can feel myself drowning. Then, I return to the bus interchange, boarding onto a bus that takes me back home. At home, Kai and I both have pumpkin soup to our heart's content. In a little while, day care class starts. Kai still has lazy morning spells. He feels sick so he can't go to school. *Hmmm. I see this is something familiar from childhood* Shiftlessly, we play in the living room. As he can't watch t.v., we just play with Pucca and Sunshine in the stillness of time. There are days when he feels like learning and mingling with other kids, so, I wait for him in a nearby lake park. I watch the birds flying overhead, the turtles cool their shell in the shallow water. I see lovers kiss and tourists hike. I have late lunch. Usually, I just have wheat bread and milk and fruits. Kai can't eat junk and fast food, so, pumpkin soup has become his favorite. I read to him some child-friendly Mangga after lunch. In the process, I have learned that in order to let a Mangga come to life, you need to be creative with sounds like Swoosh. Kaboom. Clang dang sang. Splug splug splug. Croack croack. Makes me wonder if I am eligible to write an all-onomatopoeia book. Makes me smile. I check Kai's homework. I teach him Chinese as it is mandatory in their education system to have it in day care curriculum. I can still remember few basic words and phrases from my learning few years ago. Fills my heart with pleasant strings when he pays full attention. I devise the reward system so he is motivated to finish his homework. The answer: Timezone. When I tell him I am too tired to go to Timezone, he says I am a liar. How cute this baby is. Myra arrives. She teaches him a new nursery rhyme. They sing in unison. It melts my heart. Few minutes later, Myra wants to swim. She is very independent, doesn't need me to watch her. Water depth is safe for the children so I worry less. But Kai wants to tag along. I send the floaters in. I let them listen to Japanese music while the pool towel coiled around their fragile body. They giggle. Off to Timezone. I play with them. We just walk from the condo to the mall. What a pleasant thing to do in afternoons. We eat at hawkers on our way home. They can't eat anything, vegetarian kids, so I am very careful with what to order. I have rose cordial milk in afternoons like this. I love its taste. The flavor is like an embodiment of elegant beauty. Like the sight of the majestic horizon as the earth hoists the sun into place. Sundown. Home is where we all want to be.
In reality, those kids were of British-Japanese descent. They were not my own though I treated them like one. For some reason, their mom and dad can't stay together but they appeared to be well-adjusted kids. Courteous, warm, and cordial. We lived in the same condo. Though I "tended" to them for almost a month, those pumpkin soup we had was not made by me but by this very nice woman named Karol. And the rose cordial milk? It was an instant canned milk I bought from the store, it's called bandung. I could not make anything "tasty" with my own two hands just yet. But I will. *I know I will* The pumpkin soup and rose cordial milk subsume my summer. After a year, I can still smell the sweet scent of my nannyish afternoons in Bukit Batok. I want to be stuck in those afternoons. But life has a way of putting your desires on hold. So, let it be.
The tides bring me back to this little chamber of mine where I am meant to write about injustice and corruption. Not about housewifing and psychology and onomatopoeia. Not yet.
