Raising Rockstar

“To see the world in a grain of sand………..”

Here’s A Useful Thing To Do When All You Can Do Is Sit…

Ride a loop in a public bus.

As in, my answer to what to do if there’s not much else you can do cos you’re sick but not like, hospital or bed-ridden sick…. Learn a new bus route. I mean, I couldn’t even write, last couple posts, so I decided to go up to each driver of the different buses in the terminal and ask if they stopped along the way at any of the places I wanted to go (having heard preliminarily that nothing goes). I got various responses ranging from: a) “HAAA? NONO No go No go. <switch back to Cantonese> No bus from here has that stop on their route LAH.” b) Stoney S.T.A.R.E. <crickets chirping><sea of straight-faced locals continues to board all around you> (Erm.. erm… ok ok never mind <beat fast retreat before he drives off with me still on the bus>) c) “Hmm? You are sitting, right?”

Pop quiz for you guys: Which bus driver response is best ah?

(This is from, “Do you know the time?” As in, when you ask a question like “Do you know the time now”, you can get as an answer a) “yes” or b) “it’s 9.03am, this is not the bus route you want, and you have 10 seconds to clear out before I drive away with you still on board.” Both are working answers, only one is useful. (No, scratch that, answer a – “yes” also useful. For lighting a freaking fire up your butt to work harder. You see ah, answer b gives you everything you need. You need to buy the grouchy bus driver coffee haha. But once you realise you are getting answer a, you will maybe go and find Doraemon HKD 10 watch from 7-11 to take with you on the bus so you don’t need to keep asking this person.)

Welcome to the World of What Happens When Aileen Has Too Much Caffeine. O-or, in other words, FIRST CUPPA IN ALMOST A WEEK, BABY!!!

So anyway, armed with whole grain bread (in case I get hungry and can’t find something that won’t give me cramps) and unable to turn an elegant phrase, knowing it’ll blow over eventually but feeling like this is such a waste of space and time it SUCKS, I Sat On A BUS. Because unnecessary waste kinda really bothers me. Being sick is a waste of productive time. Excess food that may go bad is a waste. So I need to find a way for it not to be a waste. Find someone who needs it, to give it to. Because which would you rather have, rotten excess food or a friend?

Took me more than a decade living here before I recently started exploring bus and train routes. (And yes, I have Uber. Never used it because just so happened they’ve never been available where I needed them and the premium sometimes I find a bit much.) For me navigating public transport is this whole new very useful skill. HOLD that thought and revisit when you reach the asterisk at bottom of the post. And yeah, yeah, do the “L” on forehead thing. You have no idea how many things I find so new to me, and now I’m almost 40.

So anyway I took a Hong Kong bus all the way round! <bows> #feelsocan #MissSuaKuComesToCentral. Next stop: Starbucks. Barista. See, I never had one-a those jobs that most people did while they were schooling – my parents wanted me to study. And do all the extra curriculars. The rule was, I get the ECA I want after I do the one they want. This means….. LOTS of ECA 😀 (Obviously, like many typical children, you feel the need to veer sharply away from what your parents think. Doesn’t matter what it is. It’s Newton’s Law of Parenting: Even If Something Makes Perfect Sense And The Kid Knows It, The Kid Shalt Vigorously Opposeth It Because It Is The View Of – Yuck – A. Parent.)

How this makes post is There Are No Small Lessons (Or Small Work). Only Small People.

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ps: ** One thing I learned from being in all those bank mergers: the knowledge you gain is yours. And you can take it with you. No one can take away skills you acquire, make you unlearn knowledge you gained, or affect the character you choose to develop. Next time you leave a place, don’t take the stationery, take the lessons. Those are yours – to serve your next Boss better.

pic from dailymail.co.uk

May it not be an evil one, dears 😀

No skill is useless, no job beneath you, and there is always something to pick up. The day I learned that the wife of someone I know of (who is really successful today) once took a job during college clearing the garbage in the cafeteria was the day my impression of her skyrocketed. (Aha! Some of you already know who she is! Especially if you’re Malaysian :D)

My ex-colleagues one of the places I worked used to affectionately joke about how the big boss of that particular dealing room who was an older guy would wander out of his office,deep in a document he was reading, look up and see his secretary not there, and without batting an eyelid proceed to the photocopy room to do his own copying rather than have to wait for her to get back. I think one reason he did that was so he would always know how to work a photocopy machine, no matter how new-fangled they got 😀 (Have you seen how hi-tech some machines that used to do simple tasks are nowadays? Look at the smart phone. It’s uh, not a phone. It’s Everything Else That Btw Also Can Be Used As A Phone.)

I hated my accounting degree, I felt my parents forced me into that field and I simply couldn’t see myself an accountant or auditor for the rest of my life. But the audit skills would save my back countless times when I had to trace trades. (Oh, and especially if you hate something, make sure you learn it extra quick, do it extra well – and then RUNNNNNN!!! 😀 Because if you do it slipshod you may have to go back and spend even more time on it. And remember, you hated doing it first time round. That once almost happened to me. I will never forget, as an undergrad, how I felt when I (wrongly) thought I failed a most-hated core paper and would have to repeat it.) Back then I obviously never heard of Investment Product Pricing and Execution and never knew of all these wonderful Lego-y building of complicated derivatives via simple derivatives which eventually took up the large bulk of my working life and which I loved.

My first gofer bank job, because of said accounting degree, was to print out all the financial statements of the gadzillion listed companies on Bloomberg, then input them into a probability default calculator that has since been bought by the rating agency Moodys. Supposedly there are accounting items you have to translate into the financial statement format Bloomberg’s input screen uses, but mostly it’s very, very boring grunt work that no one else wants. It’s whole sheaves and sheaves of financial statements that you have to slowly key in. And because of inconsistent formatting and potential Garbage In Garbage Out to blindly importing everything into the calculators’ database, you can’t simply extract it, it has to be done manually. Do it happily, it’s not even clearing the garbage in the cafeteria in front of your college friends, and it really comes in useful after all.

The bosses then let me have all the superchim research papers behind the aforementioned probability default calculator. Because of my “lowly” accounting degree I didn’t have the skills to understand all the engineering math easily, but I came back to the empty office to read – a half a page a night was all I could manage to understand, sometimes – and j-ust barely enough to be able to learn a wealth of things when I was allowed to be a fly on the wall at meetings. Slowly, what the quants said in meetings started to make sense. It eventually became enough to be able to speak intelligently about the structure of CDOs or Asset-Backed Commercial Papers at future job interviews after maybe couple years. (NO non-disclosures violated hor.) So, don’t waste the gofer work 🙂

Now back to “bus skills”. Know why they’re more important than you think? Because someday you are frantic not to be late to pick your child from school after a meeting runs late and there will be no cabs but bus after bus will pull in and out of the stop near where you are frantically waving your arms up and down in an effort to fly to your child and you will be unable to procure that red and white automobile with comforting red “vacant” light in the windscreen. And then you will  look up at the sign in the bus stop and hopefully think: Hey. I know that route from that time 2 years ago when I sat the Chi Fu-Central-Aberdeen loop.

Good weekend, dears 🙂

#55

Miss: I can’t eat my strawberries, Mummy. There are no aliens here.

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Miss: My butt is real and my butt poops.

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Miss: (Friend)’s Mummy and Daddy were telling him not to break his (toy) gun. So I hit him. 

Me: What? No, no hitting.

Miss: Oh. <brightens> With swords? <enthusiastically making poking motion with both hands>

Oh, and the Miss has a “reading” place now, which Rockstar is quite jealous of. Because she needs one (“reading” place); she still barely sits still for one book, and he doesn’t really need (a particular place to read)

ps: You can tell I’m blogging lite, can’t you? Been sick about a week. Didn’t start of as anything that bad but boy is this tummy bug something else – the fatigue… Someone actually saw me sitting down catching my breath somewhere and messaged me… I went to a clinic and asked if they had anything for the tiredness and the doc said “Uh…. I can fix the bone pain or the nausea, but……. have you tried coffee?” NOT kidding…  

About the only similarity these two share is their affinity for stacking and building things with blocks. The Miss recently started doing this with the foam pits meant to cushion your fall at Ryze trampoline park (they watch us constantly to make sure we’re taking the blocks from less-populated areas, and immediately put everything back the moment we vacate).

This often attracts other kids for a time, and… of course… Rockstar.

(What else do we do but build towers around kid sisters?)

Why, put ourselves in one too!

1) How To Talk To Little Girls.

pic from article

“…I wanted to squeal, “Maya, you’re so cute! Look at you! Turn around and model that pretty ruffled gown, you gorgeous thing!” But I didn’t….”

“…Teaching girls that their appearance is the first thing you notice tells them that looks are more important than anything. It sets them up for dieting at age 5…”

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2) Tweets that tell you how much technology has changed, via – who else? Kids.

Like so…

Like so… (Also, too true)

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3) Lego Crime Rings, what’ll they think of next… For Master Thieves, Legos Are The New Uncut Diamonds.

Lego Crime

It says Legos are virtually untraceable, and while they’re bulkier than diamonds they’re fairly easy to unload on sites like eBay. The other day a mum friend saw Star Wars Lego being sold in Prince Building for HKD 5-6k… She said it wasn’t a collector’s set yet, but it was being sold in a collector’s store… Not stolen of course, but it occurred to me just how much people pay for their kids’ toys… There’s gotta be some blow-you-off-your-feet statistic somewhere about all the stuff the average parent buys for their kids nowadays… Then again it’s also not only kids that buy toys 🙂

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4) Move over, Godzilla, here’s GIANT DOGS.

And giant rubber chickens

I want one!

Oh wait, I have one. (Could’ve had the Miss “lying on JD’s head” but they were moving so much I had to take the pics quickly)

5) You knew it had to happen… Rockstar skit this week is “Hairpiece”. 

Say what? And are they done?

Ah so.

The Guinea Pig’s a wig, this weekend. Hope yours is goods….

ps: We bathe the Guinea Pig everytime he visits…

#373/#54

Eating out one day…

Rockstar: Eat your lunch, Miss. Otherwise I’m calling the aliens to finish your (jelly yoghurt) drink. <starts faking a phone call from his watch>

Miss: Mummy, the aliens ate my jelly.

Me: <peering into her glass> You want more jelly, don’t you?

Miss: No-o, it was aliens. You see, Ko-ko was calling the aliens. Now they’ve eaten my jelly <fake sulk> I need. My. Jelly.  

Me (to Rockstar): See what you did, this is your fault.

Rockstar: <impressed> Wow, she’s very naughty. <to Miss> You. Stop pretending ah. Otherwise I call the aliens and tell them you’re blaming them for eating your jelly. 

Me (to Rockstar): How come the aliens take your call, anyway?

Rockstar: I used to have imaginary alien friends. 

Overhead awhile later…

Miss: I want alien friends too, Ko-ko.

Rockstar: Mine were Zippety and Yeeka. And then we all went to big boy school and didn’t have time… What about yours? 

Miss: Sophie and… Juice!

Rockstar: Do you want to be an alien when you grow up too? 

Me (to Rockstar): You couldn’t feed her “astronaut” instead of “alien”? That was like, the perfect opportunity…

Rockstar: Oh yeah – d’you want to be an astronaut? <I facepalm>

Miss: No, I want to be a seahorse. <Rockstar facepalms>

ps: Notice anything interesting about these pics? When we were climbing up all those steps I realised Rockstar had taken the Miss’ bag from her – he’s wearing the “cute Safari Kid flappy elephant bag” and asking her to hurry up and climb the steps to go home, while she’s happily flaffing about…

pps: When Rockstar had a huge thing for space and planets and wanted to be an astronaut was roughly when he also had the imaginary alien friends… He stopped calling his imaginary friends right when he went to primary school – big class, lots more action on the playgrounds… When he got into serious Lego building he then wanted to build the next Mars Rover instead of having to explore the planets himself… Nowadays obviously what he wants is to build games and toys for other kids haha

1) Nope, it’s not a myth… Smiling Cats.

No Kidding

This one is not smiling though – it’s high.

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2) 15 year-old bench presses 165. A story about childhood bodybuilding…

Not to be confused with light weight training for other sports; I grew up with lotsa sporty kids who did strength training for swimming and taekwondo, and ran laps to keep their state team spots in hockey and netball. I had uncles who coached, and cousins and ex boyfriends who swam at state and commonwealth games levels and they all used light-in-comparison free weights.

“…Unlike kids who participate in elite tennis academies or practice at a young age for intense sports like tennis, gymnastics or soccer, these bodybuilders train not just for excellence or even to win a major athletic competition. There’s not even any prize money. Rather, bodybuilding is all about looks…”

Is this real??!! (Ok, maybe I don’t look at enough body builders)

So you probably guessed I don’t really approve. It’s hard enough raising kids in a social media world of selfies and Instagram where everything in their pictures is magnified, without adding the competitiveness of a sport to it.

Before I started taekwondo aged 9, I took ballet (and then Chinese dance) for 4-5 years. I didn’t get into trouble much because I was physically a skinny little girl with a small head who was just puppy-dog-eager to please, but I remember this other girl who had a little round tummy and the ballet teacher would keep singling her out in class to keep it in, hide it, etc. One day she whispered something and the teacher told the whole class that she’d said her tummy simply doesn’t go in because it’s too big. I still remember the girl in my ballet class from when I was about 5.

Then I’ve had male senior RMs – brilliant at work, generally very down-to-earth – who complain their 8 year old’s tummy is bigger than their own and they really need to enforce a diet. So, in general I don’t like stuff that increases kids’ awareness of how they look – I think things are tough enough as is… You eat right and exercise right because it’s good for you – healthy, physically as well as mentally, right? Well at some point the preoccupation with eating right/ exercise for appearances sake starts to become less healthy, doesn’t it…

Oh look, 2015 Body Ideal Is More Unattainable Than Ever (in this one, “ideal” = pretty face, tiny waist, big butt. Uh, whatever…)

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3) What If Everything You Knew About Disciplining Kids Was Wrong?

“…Children with learning and behavior disabilities are suspended at about twice the rate of their peers and incarcerated at nearly three times the rate of the overall youth population…” 

This is something that has always struck a chord with me – when I was younger, I thought having kids was too big a responsibility – bringing another human being, another soul into the world. One of the reasons is because of a… “capacity for evil,” that everyone has. (Sorry ah, don’t mean for it to sound so melodramatic.) Some special needs kids I’ve met don’t – maybe can’t – do that, get other kids in trouble, play nasty pranks (worse, on social media, when they get older)… They’re also the ones more likely to get picked on, blamed for stuff and simply misunderstood.

“…The children at risk of falling into the school-to-prison pipeline… include not only the 5.2 million with ADHD, the 5 million with a learning disability, and the 2.2 million with anxiety disorders, but also the 16 million who have experienced repeated trauma or abuse, the 1.4 million with depression, the 1.2 million on the autism spectrum, and the 1.2 million who are homeless. “Behaviorally challenging kids are still poorly understood…”

In fact, smarter, creative kids are arguably better at finding smart, creative ways of getting others in trouble – possibly if they’re also excessively competitive in nature. Many years ago I read Daughter of a Yakuza – The author mentioned at one point how growing up in very proper Japanese society and schools, she “never stood a chance”. The first time she was up against another kid with erm, “better breeding” in some dispute requiring adult mediation, the teachers simply assumed it was her fault. (The other kid was also pretty convincing.)

That Malcolm Gladwell-esque thing again comes to mind – how privilege and perception of “better breeding” is an underestimated disadvantage… I like to think you can have a slow start in life, but the benefits from the strength of character that this builds can carry you further than someone who didn’t get that chance to build that resilience into their personality…

Also, when you’re down is a really good time to take note who your real friends are – you will never have that chance again when you’ve pulled yourself out of that hole 🙂

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Caveat: Skip past this next one if you’re not ready…

4) Knowing How Doctors Die Can Change Our End-Of-life Decisions. One of those things you never think about and then a random curious click gets you reading…

“…performing CPR on elderly, terminally ill patients. …It looks nothing like what we see on TV. In real life, ribs often break and few survive the ordeal.

“I felt like I was beating up people at the end of their life,” she says. “I would be doing the CPR with tears coming down… Because I knew that it very likely (was) not going to be successful. It just seemed a terrible way to end someone’s life.”…”

“…Stanford study shows almost 90% of doctors would forego resuscitation or aggressive treatment if facing terminal illness…”

Several former bosses of mine (3 mergers, restructuring – in one bank I had 5 changes in reporting line in 3 years – you do the math, how many people I’ve worked for) ranging in age from early 30s to mid-60s were diagnosed with cancer in various stages, prompting conversations. I went to work sobbing, the day a beloved 60-something ex-boss (who was overdue for retirement but loved to wake at 5am each day to write rousing emails to his RMs) was diagnosed with Stage 3. He proceeded to refuse to tell wife and family, because he intended to eschew the most invasive procedures and didn’t want anyone to give him grief over it. “If time is all I have left, then quality is of utmost importance…” That was maybe 8, 9 years ago. Yes he’s still around now, on Facebook, and by now has told wife and family 🙂

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5) Blooberg’s Archie And Gang’s new look.

Before.

After.

Feel old?

You’re welcome 🙂

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6) The animals have the skit this week, titled Dodged A Bullet.

JD: “SO happy that’s not me. Dodged a bullet!”

Guinea: “No kidding.”

NB: No Border Collies or Guinea Pigs were harmed in this photo op.

Good week ahead, dears…

Move over, Ugly Duckling Story… 

Beaded Lacewing

This is a Beaded Lacewing from Udzungwa Tanzania.  Beautiful and delicate when it grows up, Lomamyia latipennis while still in larvae form prey on termites by toxic-farting on them and then digesting the paralysed bugs from the inside.

You’d think it’s the older male child that gets the most mileage of this but….. my younger one loves “butterflies”.

It’s funny and a little disconcerting to watch my little girl-child bounding about mimicking butterflies flitting back and forth in the summer heat, pretending to catch prey by………. yup, you guessed it. And I thought the preoccupation with spiders was bad. Oh, HK has giant praying mantises too – I’m going to type that the female often chews off the head of the smaller males which she eats indiscriminately to the rest of her food supply – while I still can. (Before the Miss can read.) Rockstar is on strict instructions not to tell her these bits – under threat of no Youtube for a week. Because it’s too hot now to stand around explaining to other mummies we meet while scooting back and forth for summer classes that my gorgeous little girlie is mimicking praying mantises or yes, the toxic-farting Lomamyia latipennis.

So you know what this one’s gonna do, during the awkward “ugly duckling years”. Hint: It’s not going to be to slink away and cry quietly…

“I have giant bughead-eating mandibles. Or toxic farts. Hear. Me.

RRRRRRRRRRRRROOOAAARRRRR!!!

Things that make ya go “Awwwwwwwww…”

We recently attended our first ever Korean baby 100 day birthday party, and it was beautiful and very tasteful to be sure, but what I especially wanted to write home about was how guest attendance was “staggered”. In other words, we checked with the hostess throughout the afternoon as to whether it was too crowded in her home, and waited for a quieter time to show up, so the baby wouldn’t be over-stimulated/ over-tired.

At one point, I was even told very nicely that the baby had gone down for a nap and so it would be awhile more. Respect. Because we’ve all heard about the friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend’s party where the baby is passed about all through the evening (and then people wonder why the baby is being “naughty,” i.e. crying a lot) – I’ve even read blogs where frustrated parents retrospectively wrote that if you are sick it should be a no-brainer NOT to carry the baby. (One furious dad spelled out the extent to which when baby is sick it’s really tough on the whole household and how he had then gotten so ill he couldn’t go to work – and missed some important meetings.)

This was the most super-respectful-of-the-baby’s-feelings party we’d been to, where that also added to the very tasteful ambience. The place was beautifully decorated, there was lots of specially catered food, expensive imported fresh flowers, new serve ware bought specially for the occasion……….. and a blissfully rested baby who took everything in with keen interest – in a markedly peaceful environment. I mean, you can see the Rockstars horsing about in some of the pictures so it’s not even like the other kids had to be robots – they got to be kids – but well, the baby got to be a baby. 

It was, after all, his 100-day party 🙂

This is the Korean rice cake they give out in celebration… And baby will live to 100 years…

Steiff Bear to be handed down someday to baby’s own baby at his/her 100 day party (that’s what Steiff dolls are for, right? 🙂

(It was a lot grander when they started, we were one of the pre-arranged later-arriving guests… That didn’t stop the kids having lotsa fun though – just like all the other kids before them 🙂

(Rockstar got beat at chess by Birthday Baby’s big sis too 😀 after he lost his queen in a momentary lapse of patience – he agreed it was a good learning opportunity for him as well… That’s the best I could hope for – because I prefer kids not to win all the time, at this young age… Things always going their way I believe to not afford that many chances to learn from mistakes, from experiences… There are so many more things we can learn, and so I love not-too-painful failures… (Ok fine, lessons from painful failures might stick even more but I’m of course still a big wuss over my kids :D))

Happy 100-Day, Daniel, you much-blessed baby. May you live to be the other 100 as well 🙂

1) Mum Gives Best Explanation Ever, How Life Changes After Pregnancy.

“…I want to tell (my daughter) that the physical wounds of child bearing will heal, but… she will forever be vulnerable.”

Y’know, like the the evil king El-Carim from the 1963 Captain Sindbad, whose heart beats encased in magic crystal atop a bell tower protected by a giant disembodied hand, except well, yours trips off to school each day with nary an idea how terrified you are, of well, everything. And – get this – they will roll their eyes at you about it. 

Giant disembodied hand – you will wish you had one of these – for boyfriends, and Facebook accounts, and “mean little other kids” you will never forgive if they so much as hurt a hair on your heart’s head (now THERE’s an image) – pic from monsterkidclassichorrorforum.yuku.com

“…no matter how sophisticated she is, becoming a mother will reduce her to the primitive level of a bear protecting her cub…”

“…However decisive she is in the office, she will second-guess herself as a mother…”

All that is true. I’ve said often that my priorities changed completely, the day before and the day after I had a child. I became evil king El-Carim (except for the evil bit, the being royalty bit, and the having a giant disembodied hand to bash the living daylights out of anyone foolish enough to trespass too close to your heart.)

You’ll never regret it. …”

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2) Extraordinary People From The 1900s.

Ella Harper had a rare orthopaedic condition that caused her knees to bend backwards

More extraordinary was how, making $200 a week (USD? GBP) in a travelling circus, she then announced, “this is 1886 and I intend to quit the show business and go to school and fit myself for another occupation.”

In David and Goliath – Underdogs, Misfits And The Art Of Battling Giants Malcolm Gladwell talks about desirable difficulty. This is both to do with 1) our perception (strengths and weaknesses, as illustrated in the Biblical story of David and Goliath where David is in fact not disadvantaged – a way of looking at things that btw I love when it comes to evaluating investment opportunities), and 2) actual disabilities that we turn into strengths.

Mr Gladwell might’ve had dyslexia in particular in mind (the number of high-achieving dyslexics), but it’s an inspiring story of doing your sincerest best with the hand you are dealt in life. 

Know what’s a Gladwell-esque “disadvantage” that appears to most people to be an “advantage”? Being born privileged. Because of Refiner’s Fire, because we never know our true convictions until they’re tested, because knowing you have a golden safety net makes other desirable attributes in your personality that much harder to form. Sad truth about human nature and taking things for granted (“everyone” does this, not value things that come too easy be they of the material or emotional etc sort, and one of the best lessons in human nature is from kids of various ages, as their characters and personalities continue to develop…)

3) Hence, America’s Wealthiest Don’t Tell Their Kids How Much They’re Worth 🙂

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4) British Schindler. He filled 8 trains with 669 children, thereby saving their lives.

“It was only nine months out of 92 years, yet this book makes it seem it was my whole life.” …I like to think that means you don’t need 92 years to do something extraordinary, just need 9 months 😉

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5) Phones can have extraordinary senses of humour… Funny Siri Responses.

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6) Rockstar Skit this week is Tandem Scooting: How Is This Not Already An Olympic Sport?

(Oh yeah, and Rockstar’s also working on breaking his current record for the number of wheels he travels on:

He’s got 4 wheels in his Heelys, and usually also his regular 2-wheel scooter, but this day has added the Miss’ 3-wheeler…)

A-and so Thought Of The Week is…. <drrrrrrum rollllllll>

Do Something Extraordinary 😀

Have a good week ahead, dears.

Re-enacting a little-known but highly effective form of medieval torture involving a live guinea pig, tickly claws, and one’s baby sister. (Oh, and rewriting history along the way 😉

(Can you hear the screams? 🙂 I wouldn’t do this on bare skin though…)

Partners in Guinea Crime…