1. Week 15 promises to be full of fun and has F-A-M-I-L-Y written all over it. Our very first official house guests in Singapore - my parents arrive mid-week. They will be here until next weekend, so the next week and a half will most certainly fly - exactly something that I would'nt want it to do!
2. As we all are well aware, Asians are infamous for having been blessed with lustruous albeit thin, poker straight manes. Since Singapore has Asians/ Indians alike among its diaspora, at some point it seems like there is a desire to covet the grass on the other side. Naturally as its always greener (straighter in this case) although I have no idea what's wrong with sporting a mop of curls? Curls = Character, I thought. I guess the Indians/ Tamilians living here disagree with me!
Brazilian/ Japanese Bonding techniques are common terms most have heard of in the past few years, if you even ventured outside a hair salon. When those with naturally non-straight tresses resort to such unnatural techniques to straighten their hair, Mother Nature, it seems, gets mighty pissed. Why else would then one see walking examples of her anger around, in women with mops of spaghetti, curling at its roots and ironed straight at the ends? Surely hair was meant to do the opposite - that is grow straighter at the roots and curl at the ends, if at all, right? Naturally, the hair growing from the roots does not get the memo that the rest of the mane has been chemically bonded/ treated to be unnaturally poker straight. So it grows like it should - natural, without a care and with utmost honesty. Until it sprouts out, making the person look like a head of curly-maggi-gone-on-to-becoming-straight angel hair!
Straighten and iron you hair if you must O' brown women of Singapore, but then make sure you take all the efforts to keep it looking that way. Or just keep it simple and keep it honest!
3. The baby's school teacher has been sending back her art-work home with her, each day. The wall space to display it, in our home, is now shrinking and soon we're going to have to rent storage boxes for the same, the silly memory-stasher that I am. The effort is going to be, to stash all her works underground and hopefully curate it so I can hang just some of it off the walls/ ceiling in her room. It's funny how the most important brief in creating this artwork display is to make sure its kept out of reach of the artist who created it, in the first place.
4. TV in Singapore is quite boring honestly. (Not if you understand a few Asian languages, enjoy K-Pop and Filipino Soap Operas though.) But once in a while one pines for the real CNN, not the Asian one being telecast from HongKong or the real FOOD TV, not FOOD TV Asia which telecasts re-runs of shows you've watched whilst living in The States. Clearly, English television is not that great here, BBC and British channels being the only exception. We've figured out tricks to watch our Thursday NBC funnies & other American shows that we love, yet its not the same as switching to your fave channel/ TiVo to do that.
Throughout all this TV trauma, what remains consistent are the Desi TV channels - the shows of which do not change whichever country one lives in. So for now our solace lies in the fact that we get to see all the Bollywood Filmy Awards shows throughout the months of January-February. Yet that cannot make up for the fact that we miss out on the SuperBowl, Obama's SOTU speech, the Emmys/Grammys/Oscars (all of which can be watched if one does not mind waking up in the wee hous of the morning). After having lived in America for this long, to have to readjust one's sleep to watch these, just does not seem fair anymore!
5. The highlight of the baby's life at 18 months of age is the amount she talks! And to think Hubster thought I was the chatter-box in the family. Take that Hubster!
The baby's been quite the babbler ever since we can remember (Her first nanny would always say she would talk early). But offlate its as if a switch just got turned on somewhere, especially with respect to her communication and comprehension abilities. As most parents would, we too are enjoying this phase of her life, although not as much the 'control' aspect of it.
It's like a self-enforced regimen around her - anything you say or do stands a 100% chance of being duplicated/ mimicked/ repeated. So it seems like, it's time for Hubster and me to behave ourselves and mind our language, more specifically our grammar when we speak.
6. The parents landed mid-week. It was my first ever time taking the train to the airport, to pick them up this Wednesday evening. While deja-vu's of being on the NYC Subway flashed before my eyes, especially as the train wound its way from being underground to coming above land, my mind played games with me, making me think for a minute that I was entering Queens instead, enroute to JFK. Except this 'Queens' was spotless; as was the train compartment I was traveling in. Gosh! No this could'nt be my Queens, I said to myself, immediately causing my thought bubble to burst. My Queens was beautiful and too full of chaos to look this plain and ordered! Reality check!
7. The parents naturally loved everything about Singapore, in a way that most Indian's always do (Dad has been here before but Mom has'nt). With an Airport like Changi to welcome you in, what's not to like? Besides they were with their daughter a mere 5 hours after having taken a flight from Mumbai, as against the 15 hours they had to fly earlier, into Newark.
Distances have shrunk which means we see more of each other now than before. It's funny then, when Mom starts narrating an event/ episode to me, like I dont know about it and I go all "You've already told me that Mom last month when I was in Mumbai..." on her. Pat comes her reply - "So what? I am not used to having you live so close to me anymore, so hear it again!" Oh well, the flipside of living too close!
The next week will be spent among much family madness, as stated above - pampering and getting pampered by the parents and most importantly seeing my next generation bond with my previous one!
See you soon!
Love,
Shweyta
2. As we all are well aware, Asians are infamous for having been blessed with lustruous albeit thin, poker straight manes. Since Singapore has Asians/ Indians alike among its diaspora, at some point it seems like there is a desire to covet the grass on the other side. Naturally as its always greener (straighter in this case) although I have no idea what's wrong with sporting a mop of curls? Curls = Character, I thought. I guess the Indians/ Tamilians living here disagree with me!
Brazilian/ Japanese Bonding techniques are common terms most have heard of in the past few years, if you even ventured outside a hair salon. When those with naturally non-straight tresses resort to such unnatural techniques to straighten their hair, Mother Nature, it seems, gets mighty pissed. Why else would then one see walking examples of her anger around, in women with mops of spaghetti, curling at its roots and ironed straight at the ends? Surely hair was meant to do the opposite - that is grow straighter at the roots and curl at the ends, if at all, right? Naturally, the hair growing from the roots does not get the memo that the rest of the mane has been chemically bonded/ treated to be unnaturally poker straight. So it grows like it should - natural, without a care and with utmost honesty. Until it sprouts out, making the person look like a head of curly-maggi-gone-on-to-becoming-straight angel hair!
Straighten and iron you hair if you must O' brown women of Singapore, but then make sure you take all the efforts to keep it looking that way. Or just keep it simple and keep it honest!
3. The baby's school teacher has been sending back her art-work home with her, each day. The wall space to display it, in our home, is now shrinking and soon we're going to have to rent storage boxes for the same, the silly memory-stasher that I am. The effort is going to be, to stash all her works underground and hopefully curate it so I can hang just some of it off the walls/ ceiling in her room. It's funny how the most important brief in creating this artwork display is to make sure its kept out of reach of the artist who created it, in the first place.
4. TV in Singapore is quite boring honestly. (Not if you understand a few Asian languages, enjoy K-Pop and Filipino Soap Operas though.) But once in a while one pines for the real CNN, not the Asian one being telecast from HongKong or the real FOOD TV, not FOOD TV Asia which telecasts re-runs of shows you've watched whilst living in The States. Clearly, English television is not that great here, BBC and British channels being the only exception. We've figured out tricks to watch our Thursday NBC funnies & other American shows that we love, yet its not the same as switching to your fave channel/ TiVo to do that.
Throughout all this TV trauma, what remains consistent are the Desi TV channels - the shows of which do not change whichever country one lives in. So for now our solace lies in the fact that we get to see all the Bollywood Filmy Awards shows throughout the months of January-February. Yet that cannot make up for the fact that we miss out on the SuperBowl, Obama's SOTU speech, the Emmys/Grammys/Oscars (all of which can be watched if one does not mind waking up in the wee hous of the morning). After having lived in America for this long, to have to readjust one's sleep to watch these, just does not seem fair anymore!
5. The highlight of the baby's life at 18 months of age is the amount she talks! And to think Hubster thought I was the chatter-box in the family. Take that Hubster!
The baby's been quite the babbler ever since we can remember (Her first nanny would always say she would talk early). But offlate its as if a switch just got turned on somewhere, especially with respect to her communication and comprehension abilities. As most parents would, we too are enjoying this phase of her life, although not as much the 'control' aspect of it.
It's like a self-enforced regimen around her - anything you say or do stands a 100% chance of being duplicated/ mimicked/ repeated. So it seems like, it's time for Hubster and me to behave ourselves and mind our language, more specifically our grammar when we speak.
6. The parents landed mid-week. It was my first ever time taking the train to the airport, to pick them up this Wednesday evening. While deja-vu's of being on the NYC Subway flashed before my eyes, especially as the train wound its way from being underground to coming above land, my mind played games with me, making me think for a minute that I was entering Queens instead, enroute to JFK. Except this 'Queens' was spotless; as was the train compartment I was traveling in. Gosh! No this could'nt be my Queens, I said to myself, immediately causing my thought bubble to burst. My Queens was beautiful and too full of chaos to look this plain and ordered! Reality check!
7. The parents naturally loved everything about Singapore, in a way that most Indian's always do (Dad has been here before but Mom has'nt). With an Airport like Changi to welcome you in, what's not to like? Besides they were with their daughter a mere 5 hours after having taken a flight from Mumbai, as against the 15 hours they had to fly earlier, into Newark.
Distances have shrunk which means we see more of each other now than before. It's funny then, when Mom starts narrating an event/ episode to me, like I dont know about it and I go all "You've already told me that Mom last month when I was in Mumbai..." on her. Pat comes her reply - "So what? I am not used to having you live so close to me anymore, so hear it again!" Oh well, the flipside of living too close!
The next week will be spent among much family madness, as stated above - pampering and getting pampered by the parents and most importantly seeing my next generation bond with my previous one!
See you soon!
Love,
Shweyta
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