Canberra Through The Eyes Of The Rockstars – A Chapter Of Incidents

Family selfie outside Castle

1) One day earlier on at Castle as we are preparing dinner, we suddenly realized the place is now boiling hot. Since we all flop around in slippers and crocs because of JD being out a lot back home, it takes us awhile longer to discover the floor heater was registering a whopping 49 degrees celsius. By some stroke of luck Little Miss had not crawled on the bare floor at all, for all her toddling about.

This a clearer one without the rest of us blocking the shot

And here…

And here…

Which the study overlooks and which I hadn’t previously posted a pic of…

2) Taking a short detour to a scenic route for pictures, Kings and Rockstar exit the car while I put on the baby’s warmer clothes. That’s when I realize the car door no longer opens from the inside. What ensues is a (funny now, not so funny then) frustrating time trying to get Kings’ attention to let us out of the car while watching him smiling and playing with Rockstar on the swings and taking pictures not 20 feet away. I finally bellow my freaking lungs out for him to Let Us. The Hell. Out. Of. The. Bloody Car.

It was funnier when Rowan Atkinson wrote it. Door has not worked from the inside since. As part of our getting-to-know-everyone-in-the-family trip Kings and I are working on him remembering he has to open the door from the outside each time we have to get out of the car. The “half-full glass” part of me thinks it’s mildly interesting to see how far away Kings gets before remembering he has to double back and let us all out. All of me thinks “half-full glass” me would have a better chance shouting down the other half if there was free public government wifi here, like in the HK, so I can check my email while waiting (though our 4th and current dwelling place does have pretty darn awesome wifi.)

That would be here. That would also be an attempt at an arty pic.

This was an attempt to not fall head over heels for Little Miss’ cuteness

3) One freezing rainy day after a restless night with the baby at Castle, Kings enters our room and remarks Rockstar might not have ski class, what with the rain. It takes me a good 45 mins to realize The Mens have left for lessons anyway. CASTLE IS TOO BIG. It’s not a real house! Me no right for castle dwelling, I didn’t even realize The Mens had left the building. How do people live this way? The rich must have GPS in their own homes.

When we’re on the way to pick Rockstar from a full day on the slopes is when I discover his fleece in the car and that he has by now spent an entire day on a rainy 3 degree Celsius-ish ski mountain in nothing but a summer-weight cotton tee under his ski jacket. The last 30 minutes to get to him are some of the most panicky I’ve had in a long time, especially when all the grownups and kids including his instructor are all bundled up. Somehow “But Rockstar/I was not feeling cold” did not fly with me from either Mens.

(Rockstar turned out fine but the moment he stopped skiing he was freezing, his hat, gloves, socks and ski boots soaked through – we bought new warm wool socks right there and then.. I can imagine some of my mum friends freaking about this one – it’s not that uncommon to complain about stuff like standard PE gear being too light for outdoor cooler days and some have their kids’ standard issue track pants properly tailored so the school won’t raise concerns about them possibly tripping on poorly fitting warmer PE-wear.)

4) After settling both kids to bed, we emerge from Rockstar’s room to the smell of something burning. It’s Rockstar’s ski boots, placed too near an over-zealous heater at Castle. (There were so many heaters in the super big place, and some after being switched off and back on appeared to have some crazy high default settings – being unaccustomed to having that many thermostats and rooms and things to check, we uh, had a learning curve. Well since he ski-ed in said boots for 2 more days I guess no harm done.)

Coincidentally our bedtime prayer that night was for the Lord to watch over and protect us from harm (more often our prayers are of Thanksgiving)…

5) Arriving back at our 4th place of abode during our trip, we find the front door wide open. It would appear after a whirlwind of getting ready and repacking baby meals that were helpfully unpacked by said baby, we forgot to close the front door. 8 hours later, nothing was taken, which is why we totally recommend you stay there too (more later).

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It takes us 2 days. Well, about 36 hours. Before it gets less painful, I mean. But no less exhausting. Kings is often away at work, so we need to schedule family time where we’re erm, “forced” to spend time together just the 4 of us.

Little Miss mixed her own smoothie-and-cereal breakfast that morning

The first morning in the castle, the sun is shining, the grass is greening – until I take too long to feed Little Miss her entire breakfast (was SO proud of getting all that into her, unlike when our helper back home whines about it) and then was tearing around the house packing her lunch, diaper bag, getting Rockstar’s clothes so Kings could dress him, getting the baby’s clothes… We on HK time throughout the trip, that is to say the baby in particular is 2 hours behind Aussie time. Rockstar adjusts quite easily to even say, San Francisco time, but Little Miss however is quite the creature of habit. (Though by the time we leave she has discovered a new passion for climbing Stairs, bouncing on Giant Sofa and walking back and forth between Kitchen Chairs.)

Laundry, the endless piles of. Wash the grownups’ clothes first, every new apartment/machine we get to, before doing the baby’s. We have 3 suitcases – one for the baby, the other two me and The Mens share. Straight out the drier, sort the armful right away to facilitate finding stuff. Learnt the lesson after I bought beautiful ski socks for Rockstar, washed em, never saw em again. They will probably turn up when we completely unpack back in HK. It’s Murphy’s Law of Ski Socks.

By night Little Miss is the relatively easier child; by day it’s Rockstar – because he’s away most hours at ski camp/ lessons. I don’t know how those mums of kids at boarding school do it – even though Rockstar is gone for similar hours (plus extra Chinese) at school back in Hong Kong, somehow flying 10 hours to drop him off for whole days feels…. different, albeit illogically so.

Rockstar has always been fiercely independent for a child his age and size. Yet both Kings and I feel… something, as we drop our eldest off – without expecting any drama. 

Enjoy your little ones. They grow real fast and it ain’t just Half Empty sayin’ it. 

Epilogue: On our last day at Jindabyne we discover the yummiest grilled chicken sandwiches. We observe with some amusement two other groups of Asians who come in after us. Long before we overhear the Putonghua, we have guessed where the first group is from. I recognize Burberry plaid and the only fur jackets I’ve seen this trip – I once tried to find that look in faux fur, and was told at Lane Crawford it was much easier (and cheaper) to find the real thing than good quality faux.

The mum of the little boy toddler has meticulously changed his outfit as it got a bit warmer while we were sitting there. I remark to Kings this is the difference between having one child and two – I used to be like that about Rockstar’s outfits when we had just one. We don’t have that kind of stamina now. Just find a few favorites 

The other group of Asians….. They are dressed in hoodies and ski pants and beanies and…. something in the way they hang out at that table which I can’t put my finger on, like they kinda belong here – we’re not in the least surprised to find they are speaking in heavily Aussie-accented English.

Sometimes we can’t tell all the other Asians apart, it’s not always we see quite such clearly diverse groups of Asians – the Beijing Putonghua bunch, the ABCs…. and us 🙂