sllɐqǝʎǝʎzznɟ

The Chinese New Year is about a week away and while I usually don’t bother much about any preparation (except for packing my bags to travel to Malaysia to celebrate with my folks) … this year I’m putting a bit of effort to get some stuffs done before I leave for Malaysia come next weekend. The childcare Fitzand is attending will be having a small ‘celebration’ for the kids and the kids are supposed to be dressed up for the ‘party’ in those ermmm … what do you call those? Anyway you can see from the following photos what I mean. Hahaha! If not for the childcare wanting the kids to ‘have a feel’ of what it’s all about, I don’t think I’ll ever want to buy him any of these clothings. Not only they look pretty weird … I think they are not that comfy (at least those for kids). I got Fitzand to pose (for perhaps 30 seconds) when he was trying on the clothes just now …

Apart from the clothes, we had to stock up on some yummies that he’ll be bringing to childcare this Wednesday to share with his buddies. We’ll be coming back to Singapore on the 18th February because his teachers will brining the kiddos to our place for Chinese New Year visiting. It’s so cute how they organize such short outings to let the kids have a feel of the festive season. Ermm … I personally do not like going around visiting relatives (since I was a kid) because I get real bored having to sit around hearing (and lots of Q&A) everyone yak stuffs that doesn’t interest me for too long. 😛 No … I am not anti-social! Anyway, I’m so excited to be able to play with all the kids when they come visiting.

It is also because of the kids’ visiting session that we … for the first time in history … are having some simple Chinese New Year decorations up in our home. 😀 We really do not want the kids to come visiting during Chinese New year … just to see some Diana cameras, film strips and film canisters scattered all over the house. 😀

It was really embarassing when I showed a friend some earlier photos of these cute tiger decorations. She saw the photos … paused for a long while before sending me a MSN message. ‘Hey, I think you’ve got it mixed up. The Chinese words are placed wrongly. The male tiger should be on the left!’. Hmm … I was confused for a while before realizing that those Chinese words on the decorations are supposed to be ermm … in a pair and in sequence. Not very sure but that’s what I was told. I can only recognize a handful of Chinese words (though I can speak fine) but little did I know that my first attempt at putting up Chinese New Year decorations almost ended up in a mess!

The first day of Chinese New Year this year falls on the 14th February, which is not only also Valentine’s Day … but also my wife’s birthday. Yeah I’m lucky to always be able to save money from not having to buy two separate presents every year. 😛 This year I got her a handbag and last night while I tried getting Fitzand to pass the present to her … he was already singing ‘Happy Birthday, Mommy!’. After handing the present to his mommy, he asked me for his present. Huh? His present? Thank God I was well prepared and had a little remote control car as a standby present for him. Phew!

I cooked dinner today while wifey went for a haircut. It was really funny that after dinner was ready … Fitzand asked me to go buy a cake for his mommy’s birthday. We actually planned to buy a cake the next couple of days and celebrate it earlier but Fitzand wanted it to be today. Oh … hmm. So we decided to just run downstairs and grab a small cake from those neighbourhood bakery and the biggest joke was when we were at the shop … seeing how small the cake was (we knew those cakes don’t taste good, so we grabbed the smallest one available) … we asked for only 1 candle. At that second … Fitzand suddenly said ‘Mommy 1 year old???!!’. Hahahaha! The guy behind the cashier was laughing his ass off! Then he continued to say ‘I am 3 years old!’. Gosh … there are times I don’t know how to explain things to him. Hahahaha! If I were to tell him it is because of the size of the cake … he’ll ask me to get a bigger cake instead. So I kept my big mouth shut and off we went … home to let Fitzand sing ‘Happy Birthday, Mommy~’. 😀

The cake wasn’t delicious (I’m trying hard not to use the word ‘lousy!’) but Fitzand wiped the top layer (ie. 1 strawberry, some peach slices and jelly looking thing) and didn’t wanna eat the cake. LOL! Well it wasn’t a big time celebration … there wasn’t any yummy cake … but I think this is probably the most memorable birthday I’ve celebrated with my wife and it’s all thanks to Fitzand. Come March, I’ll also want to spend my birthday this simple way with my family.

Finally finished two rolls of film that are part of a double exposure collaboration with a friend in France. Took me a little too long to finish them due to my hectic life. Also I’m sending 3 rolls to Japan for a separate collaboration and these 3 rolls were long overdue. I actually sent it out some time ago but due to some silly mistake, they were returned to me (by the postal service). Then I dumped them in my drawer and kept forgetting to send them. Guess I’ll drop by the post office tomorrow and send these out before I forget (again). I’m not very sure of any of these roll will turn out fine because I’ve not been spending much time shooting and they all contain some random stuffs I shoot … ermmm … randomly. 😛