Raising Rockstar

#394/#83

Me: Quick, get off your scooters. I see one of the mall guards coming.
Rockstar: Its fine mum, he’s just playing Pokemon Go. (Guard walks by on his phone) …See?

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One day in the park…

Queen E: Mummy, I have good news. Gemma (her hamster) is not dead.
Me: That’s good to know.
<pause>
Queen E: But I have actually something very very important to tell you. There are monsters in Gemma’s cage.
Rockstar: Oh really. And what did these monsters do?
Queen E: They left the cage door open.

Me and Rockstar: !!!!!!!!!

Queen E: She’s probably still there, don’t worry.

Rockstar: <scolding> What if she gets lost? THEN what are you going to do… Hah? Hah?

Me: If she’s not there when we get home and she dies in the apartment we’re going to have to move. I’m not staying in a home with a decaying animal somewhere in our (built-in) furniture – and one that I used to know.

Queen E: <patiently> She’s not going anywhere, hamsters sleep in the day, you see.

Rockstar: Like we didn’t know that. How do you think she ended up in the SPCA, if she ends up back there they’re never going to let us get anything else.

(I’m like OMG what did he just say? What else are they going to adopt, a llama?)

Rockstar: …It’ll be all your fault. No more pets for you. 

Queen E: <patiently> She’ll still be there, Ko-ko.

Rockstar: HOW can you be so sure??

Queen E: <patiently> Because I forget to put her back all the time. 

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In the lift with random neighbour…

Neighbour: Hi.

Queen E: Hi.

Neighbour: You have a border collie, right? I’ve seen you walking your dog.

Queen E: I also have a hamster. Have you seen her?

Neighbour: No, what’s she like?

Queen E: Her name’s Gemma. And I can tell you a lot about hamsters.

Neighbour: Oh really, like what?

Queen E: If you squeeze them their eyes bug out.

(Neighbour exits the lift still laughing)

Me: That’s not really true is it, why did you tell him that?

Queen E: <calmly> Oh yeah, sometimes even when you don’t squeeze them their eyes bug out.   

(I really need to sedate these children… or myself…)

This is an old clip of Vietnamese-Chinese “mychonny” from Melbourne, parodying his mum and dad re grades and career choices. I don’t think they speak much English or he would be in SO much trouble ok… (Parents – HOW many of your Czechoslovakian as a second language-learning kids might be Youtube stars among the Czechoslovakian-speaking internet community at your expense <cringe>); Haha kidding and sorry about some of the language.. skip the first 30 seconds to get to the bit about grades and career choices:

So guess what he did after “B+ Again” went viral?

He made T-shirts! (pic from districtlines.com – yes he then put up an online store)

(Ok so I guess it’s his mum who is from China and dad is Vietnamese :P)

Also I think the dad really wore that shirt a lot, I remember an old clip somewhere where the dad actually opened the door to his bedroom while he was filming, seemingly unaware the camera was rolling and asking (in… Vietnamese?) whether he’d been doing his homework or something…

Here’s a parent-teacher one:

He started making those clips when he was 17 and got Youtube-famous not too long after. My Crazy (older) Sister got him tv interviews… (Yes I posted this before, way back when the Queen was born…)

…and standup comedian spots at film festivals… and a movie contract (Wait, what?)

There was an interview somewhere, where mychonny said his parents still wanted him to go the traditional career route despite all this so he figured eventually when it all died down…… “A” for “a dentist”..?  🙂 )

What’s my point?

1) Besides the ‘affirmation that Parents, Some Of It Does Stick Even If It Looks Horrendous On A T-Shirt (they’re doing all this in their own home without going out to Melbourne Lan Kwai Fong or something ok, can even see the family altar in the background – there’s another couple teen Youtubers who are quite obviously doing this in their own home)…

2) It illustrates the extent to which jobs and a career really don’t look all like they used to when we were growing up. In several school talks over the years they give parents the variation of the statistic whereby our kids are going to grow up to compete for jobs that haven’t been invented yet.

It’s not that this hasn’t happened before, though – a certain student of the Classics (Literature, History, Archaeology of Greek, Roman etc ancient histories… I suppose the stuff about mythical creatures that she has described studying would be thrown somewhere in there as well…) went on to write a certain children’s book series about a boy wizard. Before Harry Potter however, there were very few people who would have thought to turn an otherwise “useless” degree choice into a multi-million dollar franchise of book series, movies, and probably Mc Donald’s Happy Meal collectibles somewhere in the world.

One of Rockstar’s friends has an elder sister who studied….. Geography I think it was. During her thesis about Arctic sea ice melting (please forgive me the horrible way in which I can still barely reproduce her detailed explanation of her chosen vocation), she was inspired to make getting on the National Geographic and conservation teams her goal.

I have a close friend whose niece loves music and pursued a degree… So she convinced her niece to take a few modules in child care and her niece is now doing post graduate studies in music as therapy for special needs kids.

Passion, motivation and interest sometimes trumps simply results, in the sense that if you really love what you do, you are more likely to fight to find a way to make what you love your livelihood…

3) The cliche (but very true) “If you choose a job you love you will never have to work a day in your life”. Or rather, you have to be able to take the worst day in your job. My dad’s older brother is a heart surgeon, and staying in his house in Bishan during exam times over the years (was quieter to study there than in the student hostels) I would think omg your worst day at work is someone dying. How could I ever be able to do something like that for a living?

To. Be.. Continued….

…I walk by and pause…

Me: Uh….

Rockstar: What?

Queen E: Hi, Mummy.

They made a pillow and blanket fort and moved their breakfast into it. On the bed.

Also, Rockstar is growing a foot out of his chest.

When I pass them a couple minutes later…

Well… He has removed the foot from his chest. While still nonchalantly eating his breakfast with the other hand. All the while, that “arch” is vigorously pushing back and forth

Me: I didn’t even know what to say about that the first time.

Queen E: About what, Mummy?  

This mealtime Rockstar decided his outfit needed a little something extra.

A bit much? Nahhh…

We finally got up to showing Rockstar’s Weapons Wall…. When one kid in our household has a birthday big ticket item (as in: effort, not $$$ – the Queen’s was the Stuffed Animal High-rise and mid-height loft with slide), the other one gets a coupon too. Rockstar cashed his for…

Wait for it…

…there.

He’s got another bin of pieces collected over the years, for shame. There’s a US election year going on, there’s a little urban mummy legend going that you are not supposed to gift toy guns/ have toy guns at parties and playdates now…. And then there’s Rockstar Playing Space Cowboys Magnificent Seven. Again.

Like the Pokemon Go one, you know this is one of my Justification Posts right? To the. Max 😀 Might’ve been different if we didn’t have a computer nerd firstborn, but well, we kinda do. There’s semi-regular “Nerf Battles” around our large housing development (we know the places, but I’m not taking Rockstar because we don’t know any of the regulars well at all, and so I told Rockstar he’d have to get his own Dude Perfect Team…) Speaking of which, there is all this Dude Perfect footage where they burst balloons with Nerf pellet guns (and if you look at the background in their footage – it’s in the middle of freaking nowhere. No high rises, buildings, highways…. Bet they make those videos out of a barn somewhere :D) but nothing of Rockstar’s can burst a balloon even at close range (the ammunition is foam, and those orange ended “bullets” are a thin rubber membrane while the rest is hollow) – he actually tried it before – so I don’t know what those guys are doing on Youtube, maybe they put pins in the pellets when they shoot balloons.

Mostly however, Rockstar shoots a few darts and then spends the majority of the time at home taking these things apart and re-assembling them. Hence the bin of spare pieces and the house rule whereby he has to put these things back on the wall when he’s done. Because I go in there after a session and there’s a big pile of plastic pieces, much of which looking very little like what it did when I first put the guns on the wall and I have no idea how to put them back 😀

We umm, had run out of Lego that he likes and we have several boxes and cupboards full of this stuff – my next project is large Lego walls

When Rockstar has friends who like to shoot the things we used to try ski goggles until now there is an official Nerf mask and Rockstar being Rockstar wants his whole face covered). One family we know barricades the home with dining chairs and pillows in a point scoring system. And the boys get really sweaty. Another family we know uses plastic bottles or post-its for targets.

And here’s one with cans – pic from pinterest.com

We tried the different coloured post-its (scoring system – blue = 4points, pink = 7points, yellow = 2points – Hello skip counting/ times tables practice) but it was impossible to keep track of real scores once the boys got carried away and let fly or started wearing the post-its. We tried it with chalk once, but mostly just let them have a free for all in the end haha (For more Post-it learning ideas early learning has a whole page) …Doesn’t always work for us, those two have their own ideas – Rockstar likes rebuilding the actual guns and ends up making stuff for the Queen also (she rarely fires an actual Nerf pellet gun Rockstar always puts on a “sight”, those lights to show where you would aim, and she’s happy to aim the lights… Rockstar gave her his “laser sights” because he says when he “battles” his friends they can see the light and know he’s aiming at them. Being tiny (and crazy) however makes him very hard to hit when they’re outdoors. Oh and I finally worked some of the Queen’s learning environment in school here:

Really love this wall in her class during the Who We Are learning unit – polaroids, kids learning to write their names, and where they come from, on a world map

There are kids from so many countries, so many combinations of countries, in the two kids’ schools and time and again we always appreciate how they get to learn that way (and on the playground, and during crafts)  

This is so nice ok.. in Queen E’s Hillside classroom one day.. very zen… and not a Kumon practice book in sight… And – and – does that look like a mini congkak board on the left?!

#83

The Empire Strikes Back…

Queen E: D’you know why Ko-ko and I have almost the same size head? Because….. of the brain inside……..

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Queen E: I love you… When I’m angry, it just means I’m angry…

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Me: <reading to Queen E> “You can’t see your bones with a binoculars, but a radiologist can see them with an x-ray.” Radio, as in, music radio. But radiologist is not someone who works with radios. Isn’t that weird?

Rockstar: <not looking up from his own book> Histology is not the study of History either, it’s the study of skin pieces.

Me: I didn’t know that, is that true?

Rockstar: Google it.

Me: <after Googling> It’s the study of tissue, not necessarily only skin tissue.

Rockstar: <disappointed> Oh.

Queen E: I am a hamst-ologist. I study Gemma. (Her hamster).

PokeHam

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Rockstar: Oh. I’m going to fall down. I’m going to fall down.

Queen E: <not looking up> Yeah I’m not going to help you. 

(He doesn’t really fall)… And he does a lot of climbing too… Advantage of being small and light..

(No she doesn’t fall either, knock on wood – she’s working on climbing sideways back and forth at the top now)

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Watching some random boy at Ryze yelling at another kid to get off the swings so he can have his turn…

Rockstar: Well there’s a future Donald Trump

He’s one to talk… Can you imagine this is what these boys’ birthday parties look like nowadays…!

**Updated 29 Sept: Rockstar says the school is starting Play Buddies – where the older kids can volunteer to help out on the younger kids’ playgrounds, organising games and stuff. Naturally, he and one or two of his friends have volunteered. Some of his friends have cute stories about having their little sisters’ friends as bus buddies…

A minor Rite of Passage at Rockstar’s school is the coming of age to get assigned a Bus Buddy. When you are a year 5 child at Kennedy (about 8 or 9 years old), you get assigned a “freshman” bus buddy, a year 1 child whom you pick up from his/her classroom and escort to their school bus. Now, I would assume this is good for the 4-5 year olds who are just starting out at a 900-student primary school, but what I didn’t realise was the positive impression the Bus Buddy Experience is leaving on Rockstar as the older child assigned a young charge.

Somewhat predictably, since Rockstar often gets seated next to newer/younger/shyer kids on the bus, he gets assigned a very quiet little boy, whom he observes is “small (not unlike himself), and quite cute”. Over the weeks that followed, Bus Buddy experiences would work its way into conversations. Little Bus Buddy finally started talking today. Little Bus Buddy especially started speaking up when Rockstar read his Thomas the Train library books to him. “Read it again!”

Then, when friends were off sick, the older kids would occasionally get assigned their friends’ bus buddies as well. Is that hard, do they run off in different directions?

“No, I just ask each one to hold on to one of my bag straps and walk with me. Then they started talking to each other and didn’t stop the whole time so I didn’t even need to say anything.”

Most recently, saying Rockstar’s name right became a source of entertainment. Rockstar’s friends would ask Little Bus Buddy, “Say his name again?”

“Lion Rye.” <everyone melts>

Rockstar: You know Mum, I even drew it out for him. 

Me: You what?

Rockstar: I wrote it down and used arrows. “This is where the “R” goes. That’s where the “L” goes. They need to exchange places in my name.”

LBB: <nodding enthusiastically> Yes! Yes! I got it!

Rockstar: What’s my name again?

LBB: <triumphantly> Lion Rye!

Rockstar’s classmate: <calling over> Hey, did you get his name yet?

LBB: Yes! Lion Rye!!

Rockstar: It’s…. Ok, can you say “R”. Good, and can you say “L”. Yes, yes, and now my name.

LBB: Lion Rye!

Rockstar: <facepalms>

Rockstar’s classmate: It’s not a bad name. Why don’t you just get your mum to change your name.

Rockstar: Oh yah “Lion” is ok too. I could be a “Lion”.

LBB: <laughs delightedly><says Rockstar’s name correctly>

Which is how I came to hear about it. And about how Little Bus Buddy knows some really big words while still working on reading simpler ones (because Rockstar being Rockstar he took the Bus Buddies Are Also Reading Buddies bit really seriously and went on to do the homework readers after the library books – he says he had had Reading Buddy older kids come read with him during school hours when he was in the lower years too), how LBB is fairly newly from San Francisco and doesn’t speak much Chinese (despite looking fully Asian), how LBB assured him he knew “Malaysia (where Rockstar explained his parents were originally from) is a place on Earth”…..

Riding on the packed busy school bus is probably one of those things we don’t really notice…. Right until our kids tell us they really enjoy the little freshie kid they were assigned in the course of their regular Year 5 duties. One of those reminders that only a small part of education for our kids is about the books.

Oh, and this one’s getting there with the Ham in Pocket goal too..

Rockstar’s school dress-up for International Day of Peace today… They were trying these on last night… I love that the schools regularly celebrate awareness days and get kids talking. Batik shirt hopefully doesn’t look like he should be on a beach sipping a drink with little umbrellas coming out of it…

Her Highness is…… not on a dress-up day that coincides with Rockstar’s school’s, but when Rockstar tried that on she wanted to try on something as well and I’d all but forgotten about the little Nyonya kebaya we got her and squirrelled away for awhile…

Rockstar: I love this, can I sleep in it?

Umm… Ok, if you don’t think the starched shirt feels stiff… Ultimate compliment, from Mr Fusspot.

Queen E: I love this, can I wear it for Halloween?

Umm… What?

She’s uh… taken to Derpy Hamster Faces for poses… JD’s taken to the fine art of the photobomb

And so we get to declare an international day of peace that fuels Rockstar’s friends’ introductions of themselves amongst each other – “My mum’s Japanese, my dad is half Danish and half English, so I’m a quarter English…”

ps: I’ve been away… in a laptop sense, really… My trusty little laptop has been seriously tied up for awhile, I had some stuff to do and I could do almost nothing else tech-related while running and downloading the stuff… 

You knew it had to happen… My little OCD thing about learning opportunities…   

So the whole Pokemon Go phenomenon has been chafing for awhile –  a game that Rockstar says “all” the kids are playing in school – how can the Pokemon People waste such a teaching opportunity??? (I mean, look at Minecraft.edu and all the coding schools that have sprouted out – and which revolve around teaching coding via computer games.)

And then Rockstar went to point out some of these animals are real. Of course he did. So if you are one of the tens of thousands of parents out there who likely have lost your phone to your kid because of this game, let’s not totally waste that:
https://youtu.be/i6TXTp5bdX0

(This next one’s similar, but it’s got the theme song. Never heard the theme song before. It’s quite catchy <sorry> “Pokemon, gotta catch ’em all, gotta catch ’em all…”)

Thought that was all? NooOo.. There are also bragging rights involved. Apparently, some Pokemon can only be caught if you play this darn game in different continents.

These are the Bragging Rights 4 (some kind of buffalo from North America, Mime inspired by the European arts, Asian duck, mutant Aussie kangaroo). pic from www.ew.com

Rockstar argued this one – apparently you cannot catch these things anywhere but in the said continents, but you can potentially hatch them anywhere. Lord knows if this is true because somewhere in the conversation about chalking up mileage with your phone in order to hatch eggs, I stopped caring. 😛

But oh, what a marketing ploy. These things seem to serve no real purpose, but actually they do – downloads and advertising and otherwise blatant glue-ing of people to their phones.

All those articles on parenting sites after Pokemon came out – Why Pokemon Is Bad, blah blah. Try telling your kid this when his whole class are collecting these ridiculous things. Do you really want to be the only parent who tells your kid “No Pokey”? (NOT to be confused by any wimp-out to do with “No Smokey” for eg)

How ’bout How Many Pokey Can You Identify As Inspired By Real Animals? And Can Real Animals Evolve Such Defense Mechanisms? Because well, you know, Mums always have to suck the fun out of everything justify especially to themselves, letting their kids play computer games that the parenting websites say they shouldn’t

Queen E asked recently how the angler fish produces light (symbiotic bacteria) and whether in real life animals produce electrical shocks. I didn’t even get to do anything about that because Rockstar gleefully took over. But he balked at How Bones Move Except With Muscle Attached because one thing led to another and Queen E ended up avidly watching 3 full videos in this series of Youtubes where the skinless carcass of a dog is being dissected. Here’s one (if you are at all squeamish don’t click this but it’s here to illustrate why if Her Highness sidelined in Gangsta Rap she would go by Miss Hardcore):

No, I have in fact never watched the dissection of a dog carcass until now (though I have watched my pets operated on while I was in primary school in Sandakan – the vet had a daughter who was in my tuition class and she would spend a lot of time after school helping in her parents’ clinic. Today she kicks butt as a surgeon in real life.) Anyway Queen E asked repeatedly over the last few weeks and finally I watched this thing with her to satisfy the curiosity (this is my OCD talking again). And then throughout I kept reminding her myself “This dog is already dead. Doctors do this so they get better at saving the live ones.”

Ever think about that? It’s true of so many things, you cannot possibly get good at something without awful hard work.

I was once told this story, about med students who were preparing to examine a cadaver. The teaching doctor famously stuck one finger in, and then appeared to withdraw it and lick it. The students were instructed to follow his movements. Very, very reluctantly they did, after which the teacher asked, “How many of you noticed I stuck my second finger in, but licked my third?”

That lesson probably stayed.

And I’ll take Pokemon Go any day.

Nope, notta lofty post, this.

After a chapter of incidents over the last year culminating over the last few weeks in this home, we’re looking at a purging of…. baggage. The Big Clean. Nothing quite compares to throwing stuff out, or ……..rediscovering long lost treasurers.

These two are up early (very unusual on Rockstar’s part) to build domino mazes out of their old building blocks. The aim of this game is for Gemma to ring that bell. A lot of the time she just crashes off through the walls.

Gemma doesn’t comply easily – which brings me to the hamster. This animal is seriously lucky, classified as a “street stray” upon detainment at the SPCA rescued from wandering the street. She then goes about life and the kids’ weird forms of entertainment in assembling and redecorating cages for her (we now have 3), finding new and interesting foods, with an “Oh, You’re Doin This For Moi? Cool.” attitude.

Gemma chews the bars when she wants something. If you forget to refill her drinking water, or if she just wants another biscuit. If, at 4am, you figure out what this spunky little thing wants, you’re good to go. If you can’t tell what she wants, just snap at her to stop it. Sometimes it works.

Gemma fills her running ball with sunflower seed shells. It would appear she likes the swishing sound, while running. Empty that out, and you get a look from the rodent. One time I woke to the sound of carrot biscuits rattling around in there. It was too much baggage. So I took the cage apart and shook all the noisy bits out of the ball.

It’s our most recent metaphor of life. Just shake the hard bits out of your training ball when they make too much noise.

Then Run, Forrest, Run. Have a good week ahead, dears 🙂

ps: Queen E’s birthday is in early June ok, but I only just finally cleared one of their play areas enough to put her dressup carousel stuffed animal high-rise birthday gift in its rightful place… But oh what a pretty place, now…

(Those are recycled Ikea photo frames – threw out the glass (breaks too easily and I’m never having glass in the kids’ rooms again!))