Archive for September, 2003

Tower of Song

Monday, September 15th, 2003

Hey Hey Ho Ho. Today was a good, long day. Started off hot, and I wished Naoko a happy birthday. Zen gave her our present – a bottle of massage oil, massages to be provided by me, and a card. And a gift certificate for an hour massage, just the thing she wants and needs! I also made a funky poster from a newspaper ad. After breakfast we went to the Hollandse Club because they had a charity sale there. Nice place – good restaurant, good pool, cool Dutch people hanging around, great coffee, tons of clothing and toys and Dutch books and other stuff there. Bought various things:

a short bicycle for Zen – he loves it
5 toy cars for a buck
a Talk Talk tape – the Color of Spring on one side, It’s My Life on the other.
dishes and a basket and place mats
clothes for Naoko

Zen napped in the afternoon, I played around with PhotoShop some, we made Chinese dumplings – yummy. Chinese dumplings for dinner, banana cake with whipped cream for dessert, and then a play in the park with Sean and Mihoko and the kids. Zen sure plays well with Hana and Kai!

Thought for the day: What color are your socks?

Arias hit a home run!!!

lantern festival part 3

Sunday, September 14th, 2003

Another full day. We went to Bukit Timah nature park in the morning – a long walk with Zen. It was very nice, cool, clouded over, Zen played more on the wiggly jiggly obstacle course and seems to be enjoying it and getting better at it. I hope this will help him have better balance.

Took a nap and then I went out to meet Lawrence to talk about a workbook I am writing for him and also to – shhhh! – get a birthday present for Naoko.

Went off to the Chinese Garden by bus to see the lanterns. We had been warned that it would be packed with people if we went in the evening, when the lanterns can be seen best, so we arrived there just after 5, wandered around until 6:45, then took the bus back home to eat out – Indian food. The lanterns were OK, but all the Hello Kitty themed lanterns were kind of lame. Big and bold, though, and quite surreal at times – a turtle orchestra, a panda forest, things like that. They had Chinese cymbols and drums to play around with, as well as lion masks to dance around with and try on.

Thought for the day: Eat your favorite food three times a day, every day, for a year.

You know that it's all happening at the zoo...

daipers

Saturday, September 13th, 2003

What a hectic two days this has been! Wednesday afternoon I wiped the monitor screen with a wet rag, that night if went blinky, then yesterday morning it died on me. 10:30 I set forth to get a new one and rode around on the bike for two hours before I found a nice 17 inch display model for a great price – 200 bucks – just near where we live. Took it home ont he bike – ughhhh – then set it up and it’s nice.

In the evening Ailing came over and so did Ogawa-san and her husband Raymond and we had a poolside dinner with wine while everybody lit latnerns for lantern festival. Ailing brought moon cakes and lanterns and sparklers and all sorts of other fun stuff. Thanks Ailing.

This morning I dropped Zen off at school, then right away went off to Tampines to check out a mailer/distributor for Hamish’s book project that I am working on. Caramba, it took me nearly two hours to get there as I had trouble finding the place. Then I spent an hour there in a meeting, sorted out prices and things, then an hour to get back and just in time to pick Zen up from school. Two busy mornings in a row with late lunches. Luckily tomorrow is Saturday.

The headcheese.hoflich.com site is nearly all sorted out now, thank God. Hope it will be fine. Found out today that Johnny Cash and John Ritter are dead.

Thought for the day: Change your own daiper

...I do believe it, I do believe it's true

lantern festival

Wednesday, September 10th, 2003

Here are some pics from the poolside pot luck party we had on Saturday night. The kids held up lanterns in anticipation of the Thursday night Chinese Lantern Festival celebration.

Thought for the day: sleep before you are dead

kids and moms having lantern fun

this is what it looks like up close

busy day!!

Wednesday, September 10th, 2003

Busy day, I took care of so many little things, I don’t even remember them all. Phoned people in companies, sent several emails, printed out a bunch of t-shirt designs and tab sheets (Love and Rockets, Pop Will Eat Itself, R.E.M.) and a cover letter for a good job at Oxford University Press in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia! Got Naoko’s watch fixed, bought groceries, did the laundry, finished fixing the Head Cheese site, filled out an application to Nodo Jiman singing competition on Japanese TV to be broadcast from Singapore, and took care of Zen.

Whew!!

Late afternoon we went for a bike ride to the Bukit Timah Nature Reserve near here. There was a steep hill so we parked the bike and walked to the summit, which is 160 m. above sea level. A really pretty walk through the tall trees and jungle. We saw a squirrel, heard many strange animal sounds, and then later saw a family of monkies. I have probably seen over 100 monkies by now, they are to be seen in any forested area. The same park has a mountain bike trail around it, I will have to take that one day. Maybe I will see a heffalump or a snark if I don’t make too much noise.

Got the bad news that the children’s book publishers will not be using my material after all. To go from 7 potential book projects, because that is what they were talking about at one point, to zero is a bit of a bummer. I knew they would flake out…

Thought for the day: How long can something stay new?

Zen and Bachan

dull day

Tuesday, September 9th, 2003

Naoko and Zen fell asleep together at 10 PM, only lonely me up reading through my old poems to select a few of the better ones to send off to literary journals. Dull day, mostly spent taking care of many small errands, although phoning around was productive and I talked to interesting people who gave me good advice – the job at Oxford University Press in KL would be g ood to get even though it is in Malaysia and a contract, Shanghai is a nice town, Murakami Ryu might be good for translations, things like that.

Zen is funny. He looks at the pic of Angela Jolie as Lara Croft and says “Mama,” I say “No, Zen, your real mama is much prettier than AJ.” The other day he said “Mamba,” probably a combination of “mama” and “baba,” but also a deadly poisonous snake. His 6 new teeth have nearly all come through, another 2 are poking through already. By mid-month he should have 12 teeth! He likes to say “1, 2, 3″ “nose, ear, hair, chin, mouth, eye.” “Car, bus” are old ones, he can say “wan wan” for doggy, and “nyan nyan” for cat. He says “baitchi” when he wants to watch a video, no idea why.

Thought for the day: You can’t think a typo.

Big head

poolside party

Monday, September 8th, 2003

Sunday again, we went to the Rail Mall, peered in pet shops, heard Jesus music in the toy store, discovered two more pubs and a Turkish restaurant, but basically the Rail Mall is not very interesting.

Napped all afternoon, made Chinese dumpling and took them to the poolside and ate pot luck dinner with Sean and Mihoko, Lin and Kevin, and Else and Michael. The kids played, and Zen looked like he wanted to elope with young Kai – yoiks!

Thought for the day: Even your brain sometimes needs to sunbathe.

Try to remember your childhood...

MacRitchie Reservoir

Sunday, September 7th, 2003

Went to Macritchie Reservoir this morning – a nice park with water-side boardwalk and gorgeous greenery. Jungle is Singapore’s greatest resource, and we still really dig seeing it all the time. Besides the trees and the water, we saw nice birds, turtles and fish, monkeys, a squirrel, and two big grey lizards scaling a tree trunk. In Singapore you really do see lizards of all colors and sizes, which is cool. At the zoo they have komodo dragons, even, from Indonesia. We went on a Sunday just at their weekly feeding time and saw them lay into goat carcasses – a grisly sight, to be sure.

Zen usually naps from 1 to 4 in the afternoons, but today for some reason he fell asleep at 10, slept to 11. He stayed up until nearly 4, then napped until after 6 with Naoko. I napped a bit, but did some reading. Zen was up, we went for a quick swim, out for Indian food for dinner (prata and curry – yum!) like we have been doing once every weekend for a few weeks now, and came home and Zen was asleep by 9!! He has a fever and didn’t eat much dinner, I hope he will be OK tomorrow.

Drinking beer tonight – sure tastes good. Very thirsty…

Thought For The Day: When does soap get dirty?

Zen and I at MacRitchie Reservoir today

crap on the knuckles

Saturday, September 6th, 2003

Went for another cycle with Zen today. We live in a pretty amazing part of town, but unfortunately cycling in this area really is basically pretty crap. Oh well.

Also went to a birthday party for friendly local socialite Shiday (or Side – like Sade?), Stefanie, and one other woman. Met a lot of people, the kids played, and we saw a belly dancer perform! This is how Signature Park family people have fun on a Friday night. Great food!!! We made Vietnamese spring rolls with small Thai spring roll paper, it was OK. The quiche and brownies were amazing, and someone even brought Grolsch beer. Yummy.

I spent a lot of time these 2 days revising and simplifying my guitar cords in a little handy dandy notebook, so that is all under control. I have put a revised set list of songs I could probably play if I practiced a little more. Go back down for another look.

I worked on fixing up my webpages. They look OK in Mozilla and all the links are there, but when I see them in IE they look like hell. What happened? All that work straightening things out and all I did was make it worse.

Thought For The Day: When did you first notice your third nipple? And when was the last time you saw it before it disappeared?

Zen watering Ba-chan's flowers

cycling in the city

Friday, September 5th, 2003

Nice day today – not too hot, breezy, cloudy, nice sun later on too. Did a bunch of computer stuff, fixed up the things on the homepage finally with Mozilla – it works! Took Zen for a 2 hour bicycle ride down towards Clementi MRT where they have a gorgeous path following the path. Might be the nicest place in Singapore, too bad it is such a pain in the butt to get to. But once you are finally there it is nice. Have esplored the areas north, south, and east of us, next I will try the west.

Saw 24 on TV, episode 7. It is getting intense, and there are still 15 episodes to go!

Rubbed Naoko’s back with Tiger Balm, now my whole left hand is numb!

Thought for the day: what is the sound of one executive networking?

Zen Haruka Nanaka blowing bubbles, Himeji April 2003