My side of the coin

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When I was a kid, Christmas was never an occasion for my family as my parents associate this holiday with the Religion and being aTaoist, they do not see the need to create a xmas atmosphere for their children……….which is why I had been dreaming about having Christmas feeling during Christmas.

Being “deprived”, I now want to make up for the lost time so I will try ways to give my son, Teddy, a xmas feeling and here’s what we did for this year……..

On 1 Dec09, Teddy and I went to Ikea to pick up our own tree, and we put up the tree with Steven on 3 Dec. 

4 Teddy Bears wishing you a Merry Xmas this year

A photo of Teddy in front of our live xmas tree is being printed as post cards and sent to our family members. Teddy had “hand-write” his wishes on the back of all the cards, I helped him by printing the address labels.

On 5 Dec 2009, 34 friends I met at Hamster Shelter @ SG (www.hamstershelter.org) had a xmas party at my place. Teddy was with us that day and he was in charged of distributing name tags. One of our guests has a nick name as “Bear”, when he told Teddy his nick name, Teddy said “Hi, I am your cousin.”  Teddy always like Buffet and that day was a pot luck session so it is almost like a Buffet, I think Teddy had at least 3 rounds!

On 17 Dec, we walked into Alan Bake at Pasir Panjang Village and returned with this,

While cutting this cake, Teddy asked if he can have a reindeer to keep. I am so happy cause that shows that the plan to create xmas for him is working.

Today is the beginnin of the cooking for the Annual Xmas Party for Steven’s family. Below is what Teddy and I made together.

Fresh from the Oven and now in the Cooling stage

All stacked up ready for next stage

Teddy's creation Part 1

Teddy's Creation Part 2

The "First Attempt" Tray

Teddy Bear! not sure who created this, Teddy or me?

Mummy's MonoTone Creation

When rolling out the dough to make the first GingerMan, Teddy picked the biggest size cutter and told me “This is the Father”. Then I passed him the middle size cutter and said to him, “Go make him a girl friend” and he replied immediately “No, the wife will be upset.” ~lol.

And then he started making 2 of the middle size Cookies, and a few smallest size cookies and he said this to me : ”Now that’s a Father, 2 Girl Friends and many children, they can now fight for custody”. ~lol

I laughed so loud as I am so happy to hear him joke about this.

I was separated when Teddy was not yet 2 years old, many people  told me he was still too young and that’s no good. I had doubts about that believe system. Teddy’s ability to joke about custody is a sign that it is not the age of the child but how the divorce is being handled by the Divorcees that matters most to the kids.

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On Sunday, 6 Dec 09, we were supposed to go for Lunch with my step daughter and her boyfriend’s family. Just as I was going into the shower at around 12.30pm, my phone rang. It was my Step-daughter’s boyfriend calling to let me know that she was admitted to SGH.

That morning, she had went for the 10km run (Standard Chartered Marathon), had heat stroke and collapsed so ambulance was called to send her to A&E of SGH at about 10am. Although my name and contact number were on her number tag given to her for the run, no one in the Marathon Committee or the Hospital called me to inform me of her admission.

Arriving at the hospital, we were told to wait as the doctors were resuscitating her. Whilst hydrating her, her lung had gathered fluid and stopped functioning, so she had to be put on Life Support.

After 30 odd hours in ICU, she was finally off the Life Support and transferred to the normal ward to recuperate. We were told her readings for some organs were still very bad and needed to do more test to ensure they have recovered to the acceptable reading before she can be discharged.

A few weeks before the run, I told my step daughter to make sure she is well trained under the correct training environment so as not to get heat stroke. She told me ok. When she was awake from the sedation, she asked me what happened to her, I told her she had heat stroke and she asked me why was she sent to hospital for heat stroke when she can just go to sleep to recover!!

On talking to various people, I realised not many people understand what is heat stroke. My step daughter for one does not before she went for the run and she is now paying for her ignorance.

Below is an extract from http://www.medicinenet.com/heat_stroke/article.htm

Heat stroke is a form of hyperthermia, an abnormally elevated body temperature with accompanying physical and neurological symptoms. Unlike heat cramps and heat exhaustion, two forms of hyperthermia that are less severe, heat stroke is a true medical emergency that can be fatal if not properly and promptly treated.

Ignorance is not always a bliss, certainly not for my step daughter.

The benefits of exercise is well known so I am not going to stop her from engaging into the next run. And she should know by now being well prepared and well trained is as important as wanting to lead a healthy life style.

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Teddy and I tried baking some cookies today. After an hour of hard work, the cookies finally came out of the oven however they did not smell right. Teddy tried one small piece after letting them cooled for 30 mins, his verdict was : The cookies tasted like bread.

About an hour later, I asked him to try again. When asked, his verdict was : Its an epic failure.

Both of us were tired after our adventure and we sat on the sofa to rest. 

A while later, he told me he would like to bring a DVD to his grandmother’s home to watch.

I asked him to sms his Uncle Steven (the owner of the DVDs) to ask for permission and he did. Uncle Steven replied ok and asked him which DVD did he take. His reply was : Let’s just say that it is a show which I have watched before and I am going to watch it again.

Steven thought I was the one who sent that reply via sms to disturb him so he called me. As I read  the reply, I could not help laughing.

Teddy is definitely one grown up boy now and he is making good progress in speaking and writing in English (instead of Singlish). I bet in no time his English will be better than mine.

A British friend asked me today how many years do I think Singaporean needs in order to speak English like the English and Chinese like the Chinese. I told them I don’t know the answer and I think we will never change as probably no one sees a need to.  

Why did I make such remarks?

Just look at Teddy as an example, when he talked to his classmates over the phone, he spoke Singlish to them. I guess that’s because they spoke Singlish to him as well. But when he speaks to Steven or I, he automatically uses English because he knows that we will correct him if he had used Singlish. So for him, he picked the appropriate langauge depending on the circumstances.  

Does he see the need to always speak English and discard Singlish completely, probably not!