Shiva's and Metta's Mother's Sutra

All aboard the steamer... In the engine where the furnace is being stoked. Suitably scary reading to pass the time to Whitehead... Self portriat with baby at the Apartment. Ghin entertains himself with the mobile phone. Jago and Oisin (Spaceman warrior and Dr Who) spar on our front steps. It is Halloween. Peter and Oisin are on the Ghost Train. Ghin and i decided to forsake the steamer and take to the Apartment where we repaired for a lunch of bangers and mash with a glass of wine. It was very civilised. Prior to this, i had gone running - one full hour's worth. And then Peter went for his meditation. They plan to go to W5 after this. Such is the timbre of our Sunday this week. The clocks went back today at 2 am. Both of us forgot that they had to be put back, although i had reminded myself of this yesterday evening. Oisin had gone for Shirelle's Halloween party and i came home. Ghin has gotten over the fever and his appetite is slowly returning. It really is a different baby -...

I practice.. With the fear, the pain the uncertainty, i practice. I practice with doubt and heartache I practice with silence - and tears. I practice, because, there is nothing else. With laughter, kindness, pleasure, integrity, with the washing up, the laundry, the falling leaves, the memory of mountain streams - and, at traffic lights, I practice. And most especially, best of all, in equal parts, reminded by my rising sons, i practice, with love.

I can't decide if i've slept too little or too much. It's been difficult over the past nine months... Ghin wakes almost every two hours and i have to feed him. But as a result sleep is something i no longer have control over. Sometimes i will fall asleep at sensible times. Most often than not i'm off at 8 in the evening and then awake at one or two or three...like now. Sometimes i fall asleep in the most inconvinient poses. A combination of exhaustion and breastfeeding. And then i wake with weird cramps. Like a couple of days ago, i woke with this weird pain in my left wrist. It was a sharp jobbing pain just under my thumb and for the life of me i couldn't remember why it was such a familiar pain. Then it came back to me. Sometime ago, i think when i had mumps for the second time, i was hospitalised, and they decided to put a needle in my wrist, so they could administer the medicine IV with conveninence. I don't even understand why this was necessary. But it was...

Peter and Ghin asleep on the bed - how i found them after i got back from the office. It went well today. I got the career break i had been dreaming about. One more year with the boys - looking after the family, getting things sorted on this end. It feels very right and good. It was also weird being back at work. Somethings don't change and smoethings get worse. For instance, there were three rats eating out of the squirrel feeders on the second floor. That's certainly one down from the grey squirrels, which were already one down from the red ones. Then in one of the rooms a mouse had died and because they couldn't recover the body they gave the person some very strong smelling synthetic roses potpourri. She said, she had gotten used to the smell. Being someone who would think that a job in Lush would be like the most impossible thing - not on the same levels as impossible as developing nuclear weapons though - it was unbelieveable that you would stay in a room with the sce...

I actually don't remember the last time this place was so untidy. The good news is that it now is the only untidy room in the house. The bad news is it does need to be tidy. Hoave you ever had those days when you think that the house might just explode with all the stuff you have in it? The weird thing is that we dont have much stuff but the stuff that we do have is much to big for the house. How's that for a bit of quantum physics - or even straight forward physics? You see the thing is when Peter and i bought this house it was the largest house we had bought/lived in thus far. We were delighted with it and begun to fill it with furniture that was too large for the rooms. E.g. eight seater dinig room set. Double bed that folds for guests. Large computer table. A few filing cabinets. Bookcase that takes up most of the dining room. Piano in tiny living room. Yes, it was a case of the eyes being larger than the room. Anyways, we need to unload/offload. So....Also had reality chec...

We are now making our way through the post that had arrived ages ago and had never been opened. It's annoying stuff. Stuff that needs paid, stuff that needs seen to...stuff i detest. Anyways, i'm going through it. It's real learning, real attempts at unravelling knots. Here's pictures from our weekend. The one with Ghin and his hat is from St George's market. The I heart Greens is from the Pizza Place, Greens. Can't do much by way of verbal updates now, admin things while Ghin sleeps. So signing off...

Here's Ghin, the most photographed baby in history - apart from Jim Carrey in the Truman Show, beginning to do proper stands. It all happens gradually. First they start pulling themselves up and wobbling like an eathquake struck building and then they start holding themselves up with one hand and then they stand sans support momentarily and then they start standing. He still staggers about clutching onto furniture like a geriatric after a night out, but he is getting there.

The Katong Laksa which is everywhere Home is where the gerrymandering is - Aljunied GRC Been on facebook now for a few weeks. What's with the vampire bites, werewolf dubs and tickles. I don't understand this. Is this some kind of attempt to communicate without words? Vitual proddings??? Was feeling low this morning. I think it was homesickness and just doing too damn bloody much. Let's see what have i done since i got back. Put away six weeks worth of laundry, put away all the trash in the hall and threw out half of all the shoes there (mostly mine which were all more than five years old!!!), recycled at least six months worth of glass (mostly Leffe bottles and Tiger beer - ok, a few white wine bottles too), reorganised the friend (that didn't take too long, if truth be told), cooked all the food that was going out of date - hmmm - also changed the sheets, refolded all the clothes in my cupboard - and tried most of them on for size and cheap gratification (can get back ...

Ghin explores the green green grass of Stormont. New carpets...and wait 4 it... new washing machine. Oisin and i made a very big deal about the inaugural load of laundry... we did the washing machine dance when we loaded it in and started it. We have decided that it's actually related to the TARDIS because it glows and flashes beautifully when you switch it on. Oisin enjoying a spot of Batman and Frubes Hi there, sorree about the absence and mundane post...but these are our new things...carpets and washing machine and it's a great way for Ma to see them too. It's a beautiful bright October day in Belfast and although it's a little cold, it's also incredible that we have had such a mild autumn so far. Yesterday Lara came over for dinner and i made Pa's garlic prok ball soup with udon. She weren't so hot on the udon, but most of the poek balls were gone when she left. She had spent the afternoon getting her tatoos touched up and skinning a rabbit in her bath. ...

Baby food here. Green with envy is my sister, as Yoda would say. Me after three days of being here... I was going to call this blog entry Jacq would be mad or Tell me what was business class like... which is only because i was shopping at Tescos at 1.30 am the other day and saw that really they have much better packaging for baby food. In Singapore baby food is EXTREMELY boring and called things like sausages for toddlers or vegetables and chicken. Here it's all wrapped up nice like and called Chicken Palella, Carribean vegetable with pineapple, cottage pie. Now this would normally not interest me EXCEPT that i KNOW that Jacq would not only buy all of this for Aurelia, but some for herself as well. Where is the fairness in life? She has three extra pairs of hands to help her - if you count my mom - and i have carribean chicken. So lets get this in perspective. So i'm cyberteasing Jacq - even from 10.000 miles away. Previleges of chey-chey hodd i'm afraid. For most of our fi...

Goodbye at Changi. Everyone looking siuitably morose. Conference delegates confer at the NCT AGM. Gill and Susan, who organised the thing. Lisa and Jan scheme... Ghin, Peter, Oisin and Finn admire Oisin's gift to Ghin of a cow pillow. Yes, we're back in B'fast. It was the WORST flight back - with a four hours delay at HEathrow. Hooray for Heathrow. Possibly redefining what hell must be like. It's interesting how the whole situation has been normalised as well. We were all made to remove our shoes at the check in. Yes, remove our shoes. It's gotten so bad. And everyone was saying, yes, yes, we'd rather be safe than sorry. You could see how the Holocaust took place. People going yes, yes those nasty Jews. They should be all gassed because we'd rather be safe than sorry. Ugh!!! It's enough to make you start a riot. We spent no time at all recovering, ending up at Tescos at 1.30 am today. The night beofre last i don't remember waking up at all. In fact t...

It is official. The number of people in Singapore who are citizens numbers just over 63%. Everyone else is either a PR or a foreigner. Here are the stats from an article in The Star a Malaysian newspaper. (Singapore and Malaysia love attacking each other in each other's press. The result is that you can only read the truth about what's going on in each other's newspapers i.e. what's going on in Malaysia in the ST and vice versa. Yes, it's that insane.) Here is an excerpt: The programme to attract foreign PRs has gone into high gear. During the last 10 years, a total of 360,000 PR were offered mostly to people from Malaysia, China, India and a dozen other countries. In the past two years alone, there were more than 110,000. The total number has never been announced but is believed to number more than 700,000. --- Population composition – 2007 Population = 4.68m. Foreigners = 1.0m Singaporean residents 3.68m, comprising: * Citizens (est) = 2.98m * PRs (est) = 700,000 ...

This is Prem's birthday present. Lianne and i hooked up on it together. I had said that i wanted to do drawing of something for Prem and at first it was going to be an accompaniment to some text by Layman Pang, a zen poet. The shop water and draw wood one...you know the one i mean. But then, the picture just wouldn't come and after a week i wasn't getting anywhere when i told Oisin the legend of Puteri Gunung Ledang and then it came to me, i would do a piece on the spirit of Singapura/Prema. and this was the result. It's a female naga spirit holding symbols that remind us of Prem, including a hill mynah (for her love of Singapore), an iPod (music), book with E Dickinson quote (poetry), cooking ladel (cooking)...the red oval over the womb is a placeholder for Ammu. I also included things that reminded me most of Singapore - HDB flats, the olive backed sunbird and the ubiqitious hibiscus, ixora and allamanda. The tree to the right is supposed to be a tembusu tree based on...

Better results of the photo session. I should post some of the real bad ones on Facebook, for a laugh. Picnic at Upper Pierce on our last Sunday here. Ghin finds Ma's stolen supermarket trolley-cum-cookware hanger most amusing, as do most people. Auntie V with the kids. Sunset. With sunset filter on. I have discovered Facebook. Like all these web thingys, it's a bit of a ?? for me...anyway...i've gone into it, like put my pix on and all and now people are contacting me from all places. It's interesting. I have in fact begun to take it a bit seriously, finally getting down to do a photosession of myself in my old bedroom. It looks a bit sad and weird. But that's ok, i think i might do sad and weird quite well. Today Lianne came over and we coloured in Prema's present. She said that she had sent me an article on the possibility that foreigners number about 62% of the Singaporean population. That's amazing!!! About two or three weeks ago, there was this article...

Yati carried Ghin in gendung while he sleeps. It was so gorgeous i HAD to take yet another shot Ghin's first painting session Oisin in frenzied photo session with macaw Results of photo session We went to Jurong Bird Park yesterday. It was really really hot, but we caught every show between the time we arrived and departed. Oisin really enjoyed himself. He also got to volunteer, which is what he really wanted, since he arrived.