Mom's 50th Birthday Party

It is a truism of course that you only turn fifty once (in fact that can be said for any particular age in your life), but celebrating a half century on earth is certainly a special occasion that calls for a huge celebration. Given my parents, and their ability to have fun, it was bound to be a memorable evening, as indeed it turned out to be.

The party was held at a small pub - Utopia 17 - near Chinatown which had been booked out specifically for the occasion. My dad had planned quite a few fun activities in advance, and among the festivities was a wonderfully creative lady that made balloon sculptures, a task where my mom had to find three people that matched her height, weight and waist size exactly, one where my dad has stuck five one thousand dollar bills in a glass bottle and my mom had to take them out, and finally a special salsa dance with a (supposedly) sexy dancer hired for the evening by Cat, a family friend.

The guests represented the diverse range of friends and acquaintances that my mom had accumulated over the years, including their current salsa group, a large group of clubbing buddies (both current and past), former students of my father's from way back (Jude, one of my dad's very first students), to the present (Grace and Luke), and indeed a former student that has since gone on to become a business professor as well (Brian). Some of my friends who have become well known to the family also came, notably Fergus, as well as Jasmine.

It turned out to be a very long evening indeed. After the club shut at 3am, the whole group ended up heading over to Dragonfly to continue in the revelry. We all ended up heading home at around 6am or so. The following afternoon was spent sorting through the gifts. Notable among them was the huge amount of alcohol - two bottles of whisky, one of martell, three bottles of champagne, and around eight bottles of wine. If we aren't already closet alcoholics we are well on are way to getting there given this haul! Grace and Luke were creative in giving my mom bird's nest (to be taken presumably the morning after big clubbing nights). So it was definitely a birthday to remember, even as 50th birthdays go.

Swinging Away

I attended my first Lindy Hop lesson today at Jitterbugs. It was a pretty brisk introductory lesson with a relatively large class (almost twenty people in total). I got a bit confused once they started combining the steps with actual movements. I also hope there will be more focus on individuals in later lessons, the sister agrees with me in that you sometimes feel you are doing everything wrong but nobody notices (except perhaps your partner).

On the plus side, the sister noted that in her opinion, a number of the girls in the class were "cute". Not that I'm actually looking, but I definitely concur. Hopefully more people from the class will stay for "Swing Fling" later on in the evening which would provide a useful way to get to know more people and get some much needed practice in.

After the class, we joined our parents for dinner (prior to their trip to New Zealand) and we ended up at Muthu's Curry at Suntec. They wanted to eat something spicy before subsisting on steak and potatoes for 2 weeks or so. We ordered the fish head curry, naturally, and I ended up eating more than half of it (dad isn't terribly keen on fish, the sister didn't have a lot). I teased the sister by leaving the eyeball on her plate (they actually are edible) and she proceeded to make a smiley face out of the two eyeballs, a ladyfinger and some naan bread.

Not on a Slow Boat to China

My parents left for Beijing today, with the girlfriend* driving them off to the airport. This was a matter of some irritation to me as my mother had broached this subject with the girlfriend earlier in the week, claiming that she had "only been joking" in asking her to give them a lift. I pointed out the fact that such a comment would be taken rather seriously and lead to the girlfriend feeling obliged to agree. Which is precisely what she intended.

I still remember what happened the last time we sent my parents off to the airport when they left on a trip to Montreal. On returning to the car, we found the engine wouldn't start due to battery problems, necessitating an instantaneous decision to join AA Singapore and a call for emergency help. To top it all off, when they returned from their trip, my mom called the girlfriend to get her to call the AA again as the car still couldn't start and it was determined that we had to change the battery.

On this occasion, we arrived at the airport to discover that my father had gotten the flight time wrong and they were due to depart an hour later - at 1.15am instead of 12.15am as previously thought. That meant a trip to Swensen's with one of my dad's students and his parents (and somewhat clingy girlfriend) in attendance. My mother, as she so often does, did her utmost to enliven the conversation with innumerable anecdotes from the 'family archive'. At least the ice cream helped to leaven the bitter aftertaste.

The person I feel for the most in this whole situation was my poor girlfriend. She had to drive everyone to the airport, waste an additional hour or so there, and then drive me and my sister home. To top it all off, she had to be up early the next morning to travel to Tampines JC to support her students at a public speaking competition. There is an old joke that asks what is the real punishment for polygamy. The punchline of course is having more than one mother-in-law. How true.

*Using the moniker 'the girlfriend' is not meant to be disrespectful. I have made a conscious decision not to reveal the identities of some individuals in this blog, unless they wish otherwise. In using this term, I also tip my hat to Colin Goh, the noted Singaporean filmaker, writer and humourist who calls his wife 'the wife' in his regular columns for the Straits Times.

(Free from) Labour Day

I decided to use the Labour Day public holiday to attempt to revive my blog. You soon come to realise that a public holiday is a very welcome respite once you enter the working world, even if its sole use is to catch up on sleep and catch up with old friends.

My entire holiday was spent at home. Some relatives (dad's side of the family) came over for lunch and that necessitated my physical presence, if not my actual involvement. My sister, on account of her no longer living at home, managed to exempt herself - though she did come back for dinner later that evening only to head to the doctor's and procure for herself a 3 day MC.

This holiday was a microcosm of my weekends/free time since starting work - nothing much getting accomplished in general. Not exactly a malaise - just the inevitability of sinking into a routine of staying in and not doing much of anything at all.

Books that ought to have been organised since the beginning of the year are still stacked in corners of the room. My piles of CDs have yet to be organised, although that is partly due to the fact that I haven't got round to purchasing a new CD player to replace the one that accompanied me back from Oxford, albeit in a state where it only works intermittently.

My attempts to blog regularly seems to have gone the same way. Let's hope that things will be different, now.