A Brief Intermission

Lotsa stuff got done in the last couple weeks, and we seem to be perpetually tidying up after, so this is a quick Excuses Post catchup post…

The vandals look familiar. 

After our helper completed her contract, we cleared out her old room, and then the kids wanted to go to town spray painting the walls before a contractor eventually cleans out our rental. They also felt it was something they could do in their PJs. The… kids. Not the contractor.

This HN dabbing at the Malaysian Consulate office when Rockstar was getting his passport renewed

Took a cue from fellow proud Malaysians who selfie at this sign when they’re doing their immigration stuff… Independence (Merdeka) Day celebrations this year were something else, what with the recent election, shops initially ran out of flags back home, stuff like that

Oh look, giant ball pool free-for-all:

(As always, anyone doesn’t like their kid in this, just say the word and it’s gone. I assumed this party was ok to shout out re the Wellcome Paradise (no relation to the supermarket chain) in KITEC, a place we would otherwise never have known existed, because they had photographers for a magazine article during the party and were informing guests… The place was cleared out for Birthday Boy, but when open to the public they quickly hit full capacity on weekends. Or… what they consider full capacity, when it’s too crowded they limit entry. Which is pretty cool.)

The ball pool – or should I say ball room – and many climbing areas are pretty lavish – grownups find themselves knee deep in plastic balls, and older kids were “surfing” along the surface, building forts, etc… It’s like, the only public ball pool I’m comfy letting the kids in right now because I’m usually germ-freaky with them things (how d’you clean that many balls?!) – to the point we used to have our own at home, an idea I got from another mum who regularly moves her son’s mattress off the bed frame and fills it with their own plastic balls…. not too long ago we passed another family transporting two large sacks of balls on a trolley to place in storage.. no room in their apartment…

This place is fussy about cleanliness though, there’s always attendants with hand gels at the entrance making sure everyone washes their hands repeatedly in and out, they’re strict about shoes being kept well away…

Oh and someone left a child up here. Might be one of mine..

Ok next up – For The First Time In Many Years Our Front Door Is Now Locked (even as everyone goes You Haven’t Been Locking Your Door?!) Nope, not even when we worked 13 hour days, because for a couple years we had neighbours’ kids coming in for a dog fix after school (they’ve now left for college in the States). Plus, we had another neighbour whose son lost his little car ride one day. Now, Bel-air has 4 apartment developments with thousands of units, plus 2 housing developments to boot. This Singaporean-British family lost the plastic pedal car at the main chaotic clubhouse playroom accessible to all those families……. and on point of principle the mum sat down to check the CCTV tapes. Took 2 hours of recalling the footage based on the time they were at the playroom, and they traced the car from camera to camera all the way from the communal clubhouse to the exact apartment unit  another child had simply ridden it home to (yes across a busy main road!) whereupon security knocked on the door and asked for the car back. (Now there’s another parenting adventure, but anyways.)

That little CSI drama happened some years ago, but here’s another one that happened maybe last month at the Cyberport cinema – on playdate and buried under a tonne of snacks, I deliberately left my heavy bag of groceries outside in the waiting area, meaning to come back for it after everyone was settled to the movie. So I come outside and it’s gone, and in true HK fashion* I don’t think Darn! There Go My Groceries, I walk up to the cinema attendants and say, “I think you might have put a bag of groceries in your Lost and Found a little too soon, can I have it back please?”

*People keep warning us stuff does get stolen in HK, but we don’t encounter much petty theft where we live.. The level of gossip however.. I never mentioned why this bothers me that much – it’s because of the waste. If that amount of energy had been used positively, to help someone or do something constructive, even for themselves… but no, it’s not like that energy was ever used to help anyone. I am mildly obsessive compulsive about energy wastage, and whenever I think about that, and see the amount of energy expended to NOT help, it’s disappointing.

Then I go back in to watch the movie. Halfway through in the darkened cinema, I see a text from my mum friend sitting on the other end of the row of kids – Btw, (she’s) Got My Groceries. So I hurry out to tell the cinema attendants so they don’t keep looking for it, whereupon they look at me blandly as I approach and say, “Yeah, we know. We checked the cameras.“

More things that make ya go Hmmmmm.

These are “The Birbs” on our sofa.

Spot the Birbs on HN’s old collage art piece

(I was in the process of spray-painting and lacquering the “junk modelling sculpture” when the birds discovered it. They love to chew the paper, which deeply scandalizes HN when they get at her craft, she starts dancing around yelling at them – which just makes them do it more).. And now I have to put the spraying on hold in case they get sick.

And I will know when the hub next reads this because that is his tv they are sitting on (sorry husband!) (waves)

Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum staged a jailbreak one day when I was trying to fix one of their toys. They’d been restless and ready for more action for weeks, having concluded we probably didn’t adopt them from the SPCA to eat, and so it was only a matter of time. Those two get bolder each day, drowning out conversations with a wide variety of chirps and tweets (only when you are trying to speak), chewing our sleeves… one of ’em bites hard. Not out of fear, more I’m The Boss So You Will Take My Bid At World Domination Seriously. Her bites hurt. I have to keep from flicking her little bird tushy when she does it (it’s not like we can spoil kids now, can we?) I…. don’t know why we do these… Things With Animals. Makes us happy, I guess. Animals don’t care if you’re popular or smart, only that you’re not mean so they can be. Humph.

We leave em twittering about our apartment for an hour or two before trying to get them back in each day. So we have to lock the door now <shrugs>

End of bird update. (Oh, where were WordPress and Youtube when I was growing up with the 16 hamsters I let out all over my bedroom daily… that began as 2 hamsters the pet shop thought were both female… I learned to breed them when I was around Rockstar’s age because I got upset about losing the first litter because the cage wasn’t initially prepped for babies..)

Rockstar likes to watch cartoonist Jaiden Animations, who showcases her bird “Ari” a lot:

He found her through Odd Ones Out…

ps: Neither here nor there, but one day I remarked that these two popular Youtubers had this unique way of speaking which made them very easily identifiable… whereupon he said that both had mentioned somewhere in their videos that as kids they had “speech disabilities” (he says those were their exact words)…

Epilogue:

Don’t try this at home, kids…

She uh, scraped the two birds off the underside of the aircon above that map. Because… it was bedtime and she didnt want to wait for them to come down.

“Crocodile Dundee” has a thick sock on because “Savage Peach” is going for her fingers