Home Sweet Home

What went through your mind when you come home after a vacation. Is it "home sweet home" or "back to reality?" How about what your children are thinking? A number of my friends went pulkam (pulang kampung 0r back home) during the last 2 weeks of the holiday season. I wonder whether going back to their childhood home is really as good as they describe it.

It's not very difficult to make a home sweet home for young children. Fewer harsh words, more praises, cookies, hugs, and Wii should do it. How about for your adult children? When they come home, do they feel accepted, warm, safe, secure and nurtured? Or do they feel the impending judgment where they feel compelled to make an accounting of their accomplishments and justify the life they are leading now?

I hope my children, when they are grown ups, will find my home, wherever that may be, a safe heaven where they can relax, and recharge. Like a spa maybe. An emotional spa. A place where they can find solace, reassurance, and rest from the turmoil of life.

Spot the Indonesians

How to spot an Indonesian vacationing in Singapore? Look for the following signs:

1. Chubby children in tow. Usually more than three of them.
2. Cheerful and lively children.
3. Bling blings on both men and women.
   
4. Big Prada handbag with the "Prada" facing front.
5. Big hand phones on the hip of the men.
6. Men clad in boldly patterned shirt.
7. Women with big hair.
8. Shinny bright belt buckle on men.
9. Unabashed curiosity on people. And when caught staring, they look shy.
10. Quick to say, "I'm sorry."
11. Tendency to be overdressed (for Singapore at least).
    

How was your Christmas?

"Are you ready for Christmas? How was your Christmas preparation going? You must be busy preparing for Christmas. " These are some of the questions/statements I heard over the week leading up to Christmas. Why do you need to get ready at all? Isn't Jesus in our hearts at all times? What does it mean: to be ready for Christmas? Here are according to my imagination.

1. To the Tai-Tais in my church back home, it means that you have bought a new dress for each Christmas event in the church that you are attending: the Christmas Eve service, the Christmas Day service, the Christmas celebration of each division (there is women ministry Christmas, Sunday school Christmas, church activist Christmas, and many more). And you have made your appointment with your hairdresser secured for that special occasion.
   
2. To the church activist, to be ready for Christmas means that your troupe (dance, choir, nativity pageant, skit) are ready for the big Christmas show (I'm not sure if they still do that, having children perform a dance number on Christmas Day), that the church is decorated, and that the souvenier calendars are printed, and many more.
   
3. In the US, it means to have all the Christmas presents for friends and relatives bought, wrapped and delivered to the recipients. It also means to have your refrigerator is filled up with the food you are going to serve for Christmas dinner. It is essential to prepare to the minutest detail because on Christmas Eve, at 5:00 0'clock pm, everything closes down. The only place still open is the fire station, the police station, and the hospitals. If you are out of salt, that's it.
   
4. In Singapore, it means that you have bought presents for all your colleague and your significant other, and made reservation at the restaurant for that decadent Christmas Eve dinner or Christmas morning brunch in a chic restaurant, preferably in a place sky high, with your current significant other. Or if you are celebrating at home, the turkey, ham and leg of lamb are ordered.

For some people, it can be burdensome. Others are plagued with guilt when they don't deliver "Christmas." How did Christmas become so burdensome? Why things has to be just so, or otherwise its not Christmas? Don't get me wrong. There is nothing wrong with making an effort to plan a memorable Christmas for your friends and family. But I dare you all to do something dramatically un-Christmas next year while still keep the spirit of Christmas, which is Jesus himself, alive in our hearts. May be have an up-side-down tree? Stuffing-out turkey?

Keeping Family Tradition Alive - Part 2

Keeping Family Tradition Alive-Part 1

Since the December holiday of 2004, every year my children and I bake Christmas cookies, especially the gingerbread boys, and decorate them with royal icing. The picture on the left is the very first Christmas cookies baking we did. We often invited their friends to add in to the fun, and share the cookies with our neighbors and friends. My children consider such time precious. I enjoyed how they applied themselves in the process. We had gingerbread boys and girls in swim wears, ties, dresses, and sun-glasses. We had one legged gingerbread boy, Pochahanta gingerbread girl, Tarzan and many more. When my daughter was asked to submit a story about her family tradition for a competition, she chose to write about the Christmas cookie baking tradition.

In the years past, we usually had people in mind who we want to give the cookies too. The first year it was the teachers at Pat's Schoolhouse, Claymore, where I used to work and also their former kindergarten. By then, I had stopped working for one year, and they had not been there since. This year, I intend to give out the cookies to the children who sing in the choir at GKY Singapore. There are nine of them, and I thought the rest could be shared with other children who come. Sadly, for the first time after fours year of cookies making, they are not interested anymore. As with the day of Christmas tree trimming, they were busy playing games or chatting with friends. I ended up decorating all the cookies myself.

I believe it is not the last family tradition that they want to shun occasionally -at least I am still hoping that this year is just an exception. I promise myself to keep my cool. At least for now, I can still take comfort that they value having family dinner together. They are so riled when their father is still on the phone after I make the final call for dinner, and he said, "You guys go ahead and eat first." They'd much rather that we are all at the table from the start.

How to Attached Value to Someone's Hospitality?

Recently, a friend has inquired, how much it cost to rent an apartment during the holiday season. You see, I have two mutual friends, one in Indonesia, and one in Singapore. The one in Singapore is going to visit her in-laws in Budapest, Hungary for two weeks. The one in Indonesia, would really like to rent her place while she was away. The friend in Indonesia asked me, what is a fair amount of rent. My friend's condo in Singapore is a 1200 square feet, 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms unit located near MRT and only 1 MRT stops from the Central Business District.

These are some number crunches I did:

• Rental value: $5,000/month (for a 2 years lease)
• Utility: $300/month
• Cleaning: $500/month
• Management fee: $400/month
• Service and maintenance: $50/month
• Total: $6,300/month

So I told my friend in Indonesia, the place at cost to the owner is $210/day, therefore offering $250/day will be sufficient. Considering during peak season, hotel charges upward of $300/night, $250 for a 3-bedroom condo is a good deal indeed. In the end, he decided to stay in a hotel around Orchard. He got a good deal of $250/night for his family of four.

The question remains, how do you bring something like this up? In my friend's case, both are aware of the possibility but neither is willing to be the first one to open up the subject. I guess between friends/relatives, it is difficult to quantify the value of hospitality. Undervaluing or overvaluing it can cause strain in the relationship and change it for good.

No Room at the Inn

When I first moved to Singapore, I was so upbeat and happy to play the host. However, after a couple of unfortunate visit by rude relatives, I got really fed up.

The holiday season is the time when relatives will be looking for a place to stay in Singapore. Some of them just want to safe money and get a free accommodation. Some genuinely want to spend time with my family and to know us at a deeper level. I am always delighted to have these relatives staying with us. The worst were those who asked us to let them know when we're going on vacation so they could make use of our home for free. Well, actually that was not a bad idea either, but when we did let them stay while we were away, instead of a family of 4 staying in our place, they brought in 6 more people whom we don't know, without telling us.

I am always reminded of the story how Mary and Joseph couldn't find a place at the inn. It's peak season in Singapore. It was peak season in Bethlehem. Mary and Joseph really couldn't find a place they can afford. Whether or not you could afford a holiday in Singapore, here is my advice for those of you intending to stay with relatives:

1. If you have lost contact with your relatives for more than a year, it's probably better to get in touch and have a couple of exchanges via email or phone call first before you even brought up the notion of staying with them.
   
2. Be clear for yourself, what the purpose of the visit is: visiting relative and/or vacation. Spend your time accordingly. If you are doing both, make sure you spent ample time with your relative. If you just want to sight see, stay in the hotel, and make a short half hour visit to your relative or arrange to meet for lunch.
   
3. Inquire if the dates you selected is convenient for your relatives. Better yet, before choosing a date, ask your host what is a good time for a visit, and choose the date together. After all, you are putting them at a great inconvenience.
4. If you are not direct relatives, accept the fact that your prospective host must give priority to their siblings and parents first.
   
5. If you are visiting during a holiday season, try to stick with the agreed plan. After all, your host is banking on spending their holiday time with you, if you cancel, then you'll screw up their plan as well.

Have a pleasant holiday, and be a good guest whether you are staying in a hotel or in a relatives' home.

My Little Angel

The latest addition to our Christmas tree is this angel. This is to remember what an angel my daughter has been this year. This is what she did to deserve angel-hood:

• She shows a lot of forbearance in dealing with her pesky little brother.
• She helped out here and there especially when I am busy with work and school.
• She is a good listener.
• She shows appreciation to what others did for her.
• She bought me a bar of dark chocolate on the way to school for my birthday.
  
• She shows different opinions without being nasty. We can finally agree to disagree, and still be friendly to one another.
• She has learned the value of money, and she is very mindful about spending her parent's money.

The list can go on and on. Basically, the angel is to commemorate the year my little brat become an angel.

Confusion at the zebra crossing

I finally figure out what's the cause of confusion at the zebra crossings in Singapore. Click here for previous entry on the same topic. Look at these two pictures. The first picture is a picture of a zebra crossing in Singapore, while the other one is from a city in the US. Can you find the difference? That's right,it's the stop sign. In the US, it's mandatory for all motorists to stop first before driving over the zebra crossing. Pedestrian right of way is made clear by the presence of the stop sign. While in Singapore, it's not clear who has the right of way. I am sure traffic law states that pedestrian has right of way. However, the lack of street signs bring about major confusion on the street.

Keeping Family Tradition Alive-Part 1

Keeping family tradition alive is especially an uphill battle when you have tweens and teens in the house because they tend to want to do their own activities and resent being brow beaten into do anything that distract them from their preferred activities such as keeping up with facebook, watching favorite TV series, x-box games, chatting and etc.

I have a 13-year-old, and an 11-year-old. Putting up the Christmas tree had always been something both my children look forward to. Our tree is 14 years old, and 7 feet tall. It has moved with us from Colorado, Florida, Indonesia and Singapore. It has stood in all the 6 homes we lived in during those years. Our Christmas ornaments also bear the marks of history. Except for the colored balls, each has its own unique story which bring back lots of cherished memory of good friends we have cross path with in the past. Some ornaments are also reminders of difficult times passed through. Some ornaments are the kids' kindergarten projects. Each year, they are both delighted that I still kept them.

In the past, the moment I took out the boxes from the storage, my children could not wait to attack them. In fact, I had to restrained them so I could get the items organized to avoid breakage. Last year, my cleaner, thinking that I would appreciate her help, put up the tree for us while we went out and left the boxes sitting in the living room. It outraged my daughter. She thought it's sacrilegious that this cleaner were handling the precious ornaments. I calmed her down, and reminded her none were broken and that there would be more Christmases to come.

Yesterday was the first Advent Sunday and also the day my 13-year-old daughter returned from an 8-days overseas trip. I took out the boxes with all our Christmas decorations. They are now strewn all over the living room. I was hoping that this morning they would be eager to get started. Well, my daughter is busy catching up with friends online after 8 days without her hand phone or laptop. My son is busy making sure that his quota of game time is met. I was tempted to either brow beat them or do the decorating on my own. Then I thought, hm... let me see how long they will let the boxes sit around without doing anything.

It certainly remind me of the book On Strike For Christmas I read back in July.

I certainly would not want to engage them in any battle over keeping tradition. It does not do to get them to develop resistance. They have to want to keep the tradition, or otherwise it's a lost cause and every year, in the years to come, it will become an issue. We'll see how it turn out.