Shiva's and Metta's Mother's Sutra

So... i ve completed the housework. Delighted... it began yesterday and completed it this morning. I do still need to wash the kitchen floor, but you know what...working later today as well, no rest for the wicked. So terribly excitied i'm going to London for FUN at the end of this week. Raq, Ruth and Julie will be there and we'll catch up for a bit. It's been such a long time since we last saw each other. So many lives have occurred, so many tears split, laughs shared, children had in between. I am 41, i don't know what that means anymore. I do really enjoy being 40. I can so highly recommend it to anyone. I don't know why it gets such bad press. The kids are downstairs Xboxing and want me to do something about ships with them. I will when i finish this. But in the meantime... I have an essay to write this week. And i need to complete it before i leave for London. So i'm going to spend three days reading and two days writing. I have started reading though...

So this has been a week to remember... i got home, um yesterday, and celebrated with a bottle of Macon Villges Chardonnay... yes i was so delighted at how it ended that i didn't even notice i had bought a Chardonnay... but it was alright and i just sat and giggled and laughed and did the FB thing, and it was good, soooo good. The kids came home and i cuddled with Ghin before we went to bed and is there anything nicer than cuddling with baby before he goes to bed? Except he is not baby any more is he? Right i thought i was going to be able to write more but i'm far too distracted with all sorts. I have to start reading for my essay...

OMG this January just seems to go on and on and on and yet it is just crammed with all sorts of shite. From essays that need to be done, to exhilirations and abbysmalisms, it just seems to go on and on. The only thing that will now need to occur to top everything off will be sort of a terrible plague followed by fire and brimstone and then the end of the world. In between, we do manage to lead reasonable civilised lives... so here are the bits in between... So here we are at Skinners again... lunch time I am an angel REALLY.... Don't you believe me? Why not? Ah, a REAL angel... I'm getting more and more beautiful everyday... and then soon i will be a teenager and it'll be over. International Food Day at the RSPB  To celebrate all the work the RSPB does around the world, we had an international food day. This was sort of suggested by me, and of course people brought loadsa food... and we had a great time. The eating went on for a full hour...

So Jago AND Cash turned up, with Marie for the steamboat. It was really excellent. Here are the photies!!! At the start... Say cheese After some very prelimenary examples of how to do steamboat, we dug in!!! It was such fun! I forgot how fun steamboat is... Fun fun fun... That's right, everyone dig in! Made our own chilli with lengquas.... So sweet Marie got me serving the food!! No one ever offers to take my pix in our family, so this was great. Can't imagine i'm a mom of two sons, my own family!!! How weird is that??? I am so going to do this every year. Everyone has such a great time. But the next time i might get two steamboats cos poor Peter couldn't help himself because he was at the end of the table. Still though, the boys had a blast... HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!!!! Here's to the dragon....

I decided that we would celebrate CNY this year since we didn't celebrate Christmas properly. So i've been working like a fiend since the five am today. Cleaning the house, and then going to the Asian market to get the ingredients for a steamboat, including the fishing nets for the food we put into the steamboat. Then back home... to cook and prep and now after this i'm gonna get the table ready for five. Not bad if you think i only started all this at five am!!! Oisin puts some lotus seed and persimmon sweets onto a plate, so that our new year will be sweet and we'll all live long lives... Ghin wanted a job so i gave him the arrangement of oranges and with the ang pows Steiner meets chai kis Intense concentration! Fatt choy with mushrooms and chicken... Bee hoon for long life! Steam boat mix! Ta da! Oisin drew a dragon that he'll colour later

When i was about, oh god knows how old was i, maybe in my very early 20s, i went to the The Trail, a film with Kyle McLauchan, whatever his name is, by more importantly, based on the book by Franz Kafka. That wonderful Czech writer whom i have loved for so long but never really read his stuff as often as i should. Anyway, after that i decided to read the book, because i didn't understand the film. So i didn't understand the book either, not completely, not then. I have sort of since then come of a hazy understanding of the book, but what really struck me then, as now, is about how people get caught up in inhumane processes which are used by regimes to legitimise their behaviour. So i was thinking about this recently because i was listening to a news piece about Sadaam Hussein. Two of the people who suffered under his regime were detained illegally, well legally under his rule/system, and then tortured. They were a father and son. And the son said, they humiliated my father,...

Maggi mee Assam Laksa... blissssss.... Today was much better than yesterday. Not at work, at work... well, there's no point talking about work. But today when i got home, i remembered that Anita was feeding the kids, so i just had to cook for myself. Got out the Maggie Assam Laksa which we can get at the publically provided service called the Asian Market, and then just indulged in childhood comfort eating. Assm laksa reminds me, not just of Singapore, but the camping trips that Uncle Gab used to take us for in Macritche Reservoir. I was ten, around Oisin's age, maybe i was older, but i can safely say that my love for the great outdoors was kindled on those few trips that we made. I think they only took place once a year for three years, and yet... they made such a big impression on me. We trekked the jungles and it was probably only two hours of a trek, but it felt like we were on the set of Apocalypse Now. I looked forward to those camping trips... but one of the funne...

Today i managed to catch up with most of the housework. All the laundry, the kitchen, the fridge, hoovering, the dining area. It's not showroom standards, by no means, but at least its not a slobbering mess. The whole thing got slightly out of control when i was doing the essay. It's all getting quite a lot and with work i am getting slightly snowed under. When i got home today i felt quite depressed. I mean it was the first day of that red moon and so yes, i was feeling arrrgghhh!!! But then i had some dinner and listened to Bowie and then started to do some bathroom tidying up and felt a bit better and then just pushed through the curtain of lethargy and awfulness and, then i soon found i was doing the housework and felt a thousand times better, getting all that shit sorted... and then i was dancing to Absolute Beginners and Cat People and soon it was 9 o clock. Ghin then wanted something to eat, so we get into a jammies and i made him some pizza, cut up and apple and we sa...

So that is January... it's half way there and i can't believe how the time has flown. I am APPALLED that Chinese New Year is less than a week away. I am determined to celebrate it this year so the rest of this week will be engaged in as many CNY things to do. I am thinking of celebrating it on Sunday with friends and Monday with the family. I think that's what i'll do. I have also booked a flight to London yay! to go and see Julie, Raq and Ruth, and i have also planned a weekend walk somewhere. This Thursday i'm heading to the movies and of course there is all the reading and writing for the course.... in between that is work and friends and all the boring stuff of accounts and things. It's an utterly full life. I do need to take some time off ALREADY to try and plan things. So, that's all the news from this front i guess. I'm now reading this article about Agrippa and magic, or occult philosophy. Something to do with sacred geometry which i am bec...

Some photos of the boys taken on Ghin's birthday. We have spent the better part of the year in pajamaz. Given the opportunity Ghin would go from pajama to pajama... Oi, kwa seemik? Talk about buay song boy... Oisin has started drawing Naruto cartoons, and they are amazing. He has inherited my ability to copy anything.  Hopefully he'll progress, but you know what, i've done ok outta copying drawings... Yes we use the tubigrip on the eyes Oisin chipped a bone in his ankle two weeks ago and so had to tubigrip it. Of course being Oisin this didn't last long and soon he was wearing it on anywhere but his ankle. My lovely crazy silly son. As wonderful as the winds and mercurial as the smoky clouds that shimmer across the plains of sky.

One of my many guilty pleasures is listening to Enya. Not everyday, just once in a while. And today i found an old CD i bought more than twenty years ago, and put that on. We then took off for work. It was a frosty night and it felt like we were projections on panes of clear unbroken glass. The sky so far off and bright, the birds, in single numbers and flocks, taking off and settling, going elsewhere too. What do they make of us driving from A to B, what do they think of us human beings and our tarmaced arteries along which metal and glass and rubberised blood flows? The boys played with a new App that Peter had put on his iPhone and i decided that there was no longer any point making them feel guilty about belonging to the 21st century. I just needed to provide a healthy balance of other things to do for them. There is no point cursing the dark; lighting candles are far more useful. And Enya played in the background. The light has, of course, been returning, and even though...

It is Epiphany, so it must be Ghin's birthday. I think JEsus couldn#'t have been more delighted with the booty he got. From Finn McMissile to TWO lightsabers, to a bunch of other things. It was like having a second Christmas. Except this was for HIM. He was all delighted when everyone sang happy birthday to him, cos my son loves being the centre of attention. Wonder where he gets it from??? So here are the highlights... Ghin poses with the unopened stash Here we go, present one, from Oisin Blue lightsaber...! Transformer that doesn't transform, of course Finn McMissile Money from Mama and Kong Kong!!! At Pizza Hut I have some cracking shots of the party, but i can't use them because i just don't feel comfy having photos of kids in the blog anymore. Isn't that sad? Oisin was childcare assistant.... The main childcarers Peter got a group discount for the kids to go on the bouncy slide They had a blast Lo...