Raising Rockstar

This is with Rockstar’s Teacher Whom I Didn’t Like, let’s call her Ms N. I avoid conversations with Ms N because I don’t want to open mouth insert foot when my son will be in her class for a few more months. He’s starting at ESF in September anyway.

A little background history: my son was in love. Her name was Audrey. She had Suri Cruise’s bobbed haircut, only in a dark blonde shade, and enormous eyes fringed with thick lashes. But that wasn’t why for weeks any little girl or princess in his bedtime stories was by default “Audreee.” My son was sweet on Audreee because when he was the new toddler in school, she was the first to approach him.

Then it was time to start upgrading to an older class. Audreee and her twin brother George are 3 months younger, but they were upgraded markedly earlier than Rockstar was. In fact, they were the only ones – everyone else was kept back in the baby class without a word to their mums (hence my displeasure, mixed with my own guilt at thinking I had been distracted by a bumblebee, thereby failing to switch Rockstar’s class on time when he reached the right age.)

Another mum, who attended the baby class with her daughter every day, wrote a long complaint email at not being informed her daughter was held back, whereas yours truly initially thought she was supposed to do the upgrading herself and quickly booked Rockstar into a more advanced class (the person in charge of scheduling did the upgrade without comment, thereby perpetuating this belief) before then bumping into emailing mum and learning it was Ms N who did the upgrading when the toddler was deemed “ready”. Ok, so maybe this has a teeny tiny bit to do with why GlaMum doesn’t want to meet Ms N.

Ah, well. And I couldn’t get Rockstar into Audreee’s class either, poor excuse for a GlaMum that I am. I don’t even want to Go There, That Place where I observe Audreee and George were the only Caucasians of around the same age in our class, (save for Ms N  who is a tad older) – they were after all twins attending the same class and may have thus picked up much faster, having each other to lean on throughout.

I type this having just finished with Ms N. Kings and I sat side by side and across from her, having read How to Prepare for Parent-Teacher Conferences before showing up. We were 5 minutes late. She was waiting for us at the main entrance. Oops.

“He didn’t say much in the baby class, and then after he upgraded, my goodness, there were all these words,” she exclaims. Peering cautiously at her, I wonder if Rockstar has been cussing in her class – the one “grownup” phrase I never managed to exorcise from my vocabulary around him was “Oh, shit,” a knee-jerk when I drop something. Sometimes he deliberately drops things so he can use the phrase. Not GlaMum’s most shining moment, I know.

“Some children just do better in the more advanced classes when they realize they have to fend for themselves. Suddenly I find he’s got so many words,” she’s almost apologetic. Oh. As I say it is when I realize it myself, “I quit my job around the time I switched him to the more advanced class. We spend every morning together, usually on walks to the parks or playgrounds.” Wow, she looks relieved.

I should be absolutely delighted by the time I get to posting this. But right now all I can feel is a little unnerved – what if I hadn’t quit my job?

“Oh, and we shifted things around – Audrey and George are now in his class.” Yay.

Dear Rockstar,

We were all in the car going for our regular Saturday brunch today, when Mummy started at a banner we passed on the way up to Peak Lookout. There was a picture of a former investment banker both Mummy and Daddy have known casually in the market for some time- he would be running for public office, representing one of Hong Kong’s political parties.

Mummy does not claim to know much about Hong Kong politics, aside from the fact there are some interesting names like Long-Hair and Bow-Tie. (Then again, even before Mummy moved to Hong Kong, Mummy had already heard there are no people as interesting in their naming of things as Hongkies. Even Hongkie is a fun word to say. Hongkie, hongkie, hongkie. “Malaysian” doesn’t give one that much to work with.)

Anyway. While Mummy doesn’t know enough to comment on this former investment banker’s claim to a political career, Mummy and Daddy did hear some good things about him in the market and did like him all the times we dealt with him, however briefly, in the previous few years leading up to our revelation this morning. With all the horrible things going on in the world today, Mummy just wanted to write in somewhat ignorant bliss about how maybe, maybe, maybe this was a good man rolling up his sleeves and saying “What can I do?”

The laws of probability dictate there must be some good men out there. There is a game traders like to play, called Monte Carlo Simulation, to generate many, many possible outcomes for their trades. It is especially useful for knock-out options that can terminate suddenly if their knock-out is reached.

As surely as we know or believe there are Bad Men or monkeys in this world, we must surely believe there are a few Good Men too. (Mummy hopes it’s just that stories of Bad Men and monkeys sell more papers/ magazines.)

Mummy thinks if we played the Monte Carlo game to look for a few good men among the general population (this game being also able to take into account some who either quit and become farmers or well, expire like the options) we would all come out a bit more optimistic than how we have all been feeling after reading all the things in the papers. You see, grownups don’t know everything. It’s how phrases (and books) like Fooled By Randomness get coined – we see the proverbial elephants in clouds when we should have taken a step back and realize we are actually seeing clouds that our mind is telling us look like elephants.

Mummy always counts herself fortunate to have been thru 3 mergers in her banking career which blessed her with the opportunity to (surprise, surprise) meet some good men along with the bad ones. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed, but in Mummy’s case she didn’t even have to believe without seeing.

At a time when so many people believe demons are shouting down the better angels within us, it stands to reason in some cases the angels have at least a fair fight.

Ps: The author of Fooled By Randomness – The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets organized his business and career back when he was an options trader around profiting from rare events – given the number of rare events (Mummy couldn’t resist a chance to introduce you to the term oxymoron, since you are currently find big, funny sounding words hilarious) going on in the markets today, Mummy thinks he is probably doing well in his trading (even if he doesn’t talk about it.)

The person who writes these books also calls himself an “occasional activist” against bankers, economists, social scientists and the like who might make society more fragile against high-impact, hard-to-predict things that happen (which he calls Black Swans).

Pps: You just woke from your nap and laughed at “Oxymoron,” like Mummy knew you would. Mummy is therefore working at getting as many big words into your vocabulary as she can, until you tire of funny-sounding big words.

What We Did Last Rainy Day (And Then Some)

This has to be the most fabulous Wellcome (I remembered the 2 “L”s!) in all of Hong Kong: Car-friendly aisles in the superstore at nearby WestWood shopping center.

Who needs PlayTown (in same mall) when one can drive past live fish and crabs in air-conditioned comfort without wearing one’s seatbelt?

All that’s missing is the milk moustache…

When you’re 2 1/2, Escalator Fixing is a red-bean bun-worthy spectator sport

The one in the showroom is always more fun.

Then there are 100-year old Turkish carpets (yes, that really is) to be broken in

A good book to nap by is always appreciated

And maybe Mummy won’t notice it’s the end of the day when we tell her it’s time to go out and do it all again.

Maintaining my college Yahoo! Singapore email account has its privileges – I found this:

http://sg.yfittopostblog.com/2010/06/21/oliver-fricker-to-be-the-next-michael-fay/

The opinion I am about to express is based on what little I read here, and despite the risk of being judged an unfit parent, I say:

I’m with Singapore on this one.

There are signs. The whole “Low Crime Doesn’t Mean No Crime” bit. For goodness’ sake, this country banned gum (which we Malaysians are secretly pleased about – the day Singapore decided to ban the sale of chewing gum, sales in neighboring Johor Bahru probably shot up. Chewing gum became the gift for your colleagues if you took a long weekend in Malaysia.)

Did the highly publicized fate of a certain last-named Fay person escape this guy? What could possibly possess a person to choose to vandalize in a country like that? Maybe drugs. Oh wait, they throw the book at drug traffickers in Singapore too. It’s called the death penalty. So you should probably do your vandalizing in Hong Kong where, I think, they don’t cane you (please correct me on this one because I see much more graffiti and chewing gum marks here.)

It was raining heavily at Cyberport Kosmo. Those men with umbrellas are trying to get a teenaged gwailo boy out of the tree while his wrestling partner (barely visible in red tee) looks on. They’d been wrestling in the rain (including with large tree branches they seem to have ripped off the trees) just outside the Cyberport Management Office for some time…

Spot the potential vandals – they carried on their wrestling match in the rain until the Men With Umbrellas came back out to confiscate said tree branches.

I spent 10 years in Singapore, and am on my 6th in Hong Kong. I arguably did better career-wise here than there, though that might partially be discounted by work experience levels (since I was a  college student and then fresh grad when I was in Singapore.) I’ve heard some of the arguments for and against living there, BUT:

There is a reason people choose to live in Singapore. Some people happen to like living in a place with no gum, thanks very much. It’s not like Singapore ever hid how they feel about vandals or gum. Why should they now come under fire for well, being true to what they have always portrayed themselves to be? You don’t do the crime there, unless you can do the time there.

(Barring the wrongly-accused of course.)

Awhile ago when we lived in Grand Promenade, Sai Wan Ho, I drafted a heated email. When we bought the apartment in the (then) brand new development, it was dog heaven. The security staff knew JD (who is fully trained and has won Agility competitions) and she could run relatively freely in the quieter, unoccupied corners of the development. Years later, the dog-haters outnumbered dog-lovers and I found myself being refused entry into the lift lobby one evening because JD was with me – the guard didn’t even deign to speak to me, he simply spoke to the guard on my side of the door, announcing loudly that he would not be allowing me entry while there were people in the lobby who had a problem with sharing a lobby with a dog.

I wrote an angry email about how dog lovers can only stay in apartments that allow dogs whereas dog haters are free to stay anywhere and can choose a development that bans pets. How could you then penalize dog owners in a supposedly dog-friendly development?  The dog haters could have chosen not to live here if they hated animals too much to share a lobby with them. The other dog lovers in the building told me they had attended the building AGMs and even written in – it had been no use, the dog haters now outnumbered and outvoted the dog lovers.

We eventually sold the apartment.

If Rome decides on a complete overhaul, what happens to the Romans?

And in the meantime if people in Rome don’t vandalize, well, you know the drill. Do like they do or get thrown to the Merlions.

Warning…

Post intended to elicit sickeningly sweet “Awww” response…

Every once in awhile i have to do one of these in case this spot is mistaken for anything other than a Mummy blog… Rockstar got to go to PlayTown in Westwood shoppping center as a treat for having been good. He spent his time almost exclusively on the cars – and pursuing this beautiful little girl. (Claudia’s parents, hope it’s ok to post her pic as I didn’t get your contact details – please contact me and I will take this down ASAP if this is not ok.)

Leaning over the side of his car to get her attention

Seriously, he pedalled round and round following her everywhere in that car.

(Well, she is gorgeous.)

Playing it cool now he’s kind of got her attention by cornering her…

Rockstar, Daddy was a little like you in his day…

The local auntie’s scathing, judgmental look says it all. She doesn’t just give me a passing glare, she repeatedly turns around and glowers at me just so I know it’s me she wants to glower at.

We’re in Times Square, Causeway Bay, and Rockstar has done what he always does in shopping centers – insist on riding the escalator by himself. Now exactly 2 ½, he walked early and has insisted on getting onto escalators, lifts and taxis, and opening heavy doors without my help. He’ll even throw me a suspicious look if he pushes open a heavy swinging door too easily. He’s after that sense of achievement at accomplishing stuff on his own. My son is now a sense of achievement junkee.

Making sure he’s not being followed too closely down the escalator (if you get too close he starts running)

Not that my heart doesn’t flutter every time he steps on an escalator – but we have a deal. If he ever so much as stumbles near an escalator, his solo-riding privileges will be revoked. He’s so desperate to retain his freedom he does it all with infinite care and concentration. And has never given me any excuse to tighten the reins. Not to mention it’s improving his coordination by leaps and bounds because he’s trying so hard. In fact, he’s far more accident prone when he’s bent on keeping me from interfering. So GlaMum will just have to carry on digging her nails into her palms and shutting up.

But every time we hit Causeway Bay, we encounter The Judgmental Auntie. Sometimes she actually confronts me. Rudely, I might add. I bristle and get defensive, like I’ve been accused of being Britney Spears. Like I have to work extra hard to prove my parenting ability. Then I swallow it and pretend I don’t understand their Cantonese. It certainly shortens the encounter – today’s JA has overheard me speaking to him in English and doesn’t even attempt to engage me – but it doesn’t stop her clucking directly at Rockstar. Both GlaMum and Rockstar are getting pretty good at pretending we don’t understand what they’re saying.

Sorry – don’t speaka da language.

The JA really gets under my skin. The JA is often the advocate for old traditional confinement nanny practices (some of which are cavalier about sterilizing), over-the-top fear of dogs around babies and any other number of old beliefs and practices that never cease to annoy me. Don’t get me wrong – I had a confinement nanny, even when my gynea Dr Liang Shuk Tak doesn’t agree with them (she says they make her job harder because of said unsanitary practices), but we made her sterilize stuff and use hot water and baby-safe soaps (she was mildly offended). Fearing she was “out-of-touch,” my own mother took it into her head to enroll for refresher courses in childcare in the 6 months before taking her turn at caring for Rockstar.

“Starbucks run” at the end of our shopping trip – he ate only the chocolate chips. And not even that many of them.

Therein lies my true gripe with the JA. Her arrogance that her voice of experience is naturally the voice of wisdom and her refusal to be open to the possibility that maybe, maybe there has evolved a better way to bring up a child. Experience plus new discoveries adjusted to child’s personality should be the way to go. But try explaining that to your average JA.

Those who are arrogant will never go as far as those who are humble enough to be open to a better way of doing things. And that applies to pretty much anything.