my addiction mounts.

(loving julian.barnes’ writing, it’s so… english.)

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the kids’ centre had an xmas party, and i thought since it would be aniq’s final party there…

last chance to feed his friends in school with junk ha ha.

(for some reason i couldn’t find xmas stickers anywhere, so i slapped on some last-minute printed-out ones, though i don’t know why i obsessed over it in the first place, kids’ll just rip open the bag and only care for the contents. i had to resist the urge to add tinsel and glitter and tags. srsly.)

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we thought the bar was set pretty high when we brought them to gold coast last year.
then club med surpassed it earlier this year.
but now, my friends, it looks like Disneyland has topped the list.

of course, you can blame it on the recency effect.
or, it really could have been that all the hype leading up to the trip matched their actual experience of it…

i’d wished i could have brought them to the disneyland in anaheim where i first went when i was 7 (out of sentimental reasons, obviously), and even considered bringing them to the one in orlando… but having weighed the cost and travel time, especially with two very young, very active kids, hong kong disneyland was simply the most rational choice at this point. AND, seriously, the kids wouldn’t/didn’t even know the difference.

so yeah, there were mostly asians roaming around, and all the performances were translated to cantonese, but hey, mickey is still mickey. the only question the boy raised was, “how come got so many old people here?”, referring to the hordes of senior citizen tour groups from mainland china, practically taking up entire queues in front of us each time. “i thought disneyland is for children?” i too asked the husband. apparently, disneyland is also for old people with a lot of retirement money and a desire for some heart-pumping excitement. “they should come up with a theme park for old people only, and no children allowed in,” the age-ist me brainstormed, after being elbowed by silver-haired elderly women in a 30-minute queue.

speaking of age, the kids (3+ and 6) were truly in the perfect age range to thoroughly enjoy and appreciate all the (mild) rides and shows and wonderment that disneyland offers.

there’s a new Toy Story land that just opened up, and it successfully fired up the kids’ (consumerist) obsession with all things Toy Story. and that’s the thing about disneyland – you know it’s a mega huge consumerist ‘mouse’ trap, so to speak, and yet you can’t help but be sucked into the world when you’re in it – the irresistible lovableness of the stories, the songs, the characters, right down to the merchandise OMG SO SO CUTE I WANT THAT AND THAT AND…. yeah, you see? sigh.

here’s another example how you can unwittingly get sucked into this… world. i mean, it could have been stirred by a deep, unconscious nostalgia, or PMS, but i involuntarily teared up every time a rendition of ‘A Whole New World’ by Aladdin and Princess Jasmine came up. I JUST DON’T UNDERSTAND, DAMMIT.

and of course, there had to be fireworks at the end of the evening, to punctuate my already-overwhelmed senses. spectacular, dramatic, grand. finally, a guilt-free fireworks display we can enjoy without people grumbling about taxpayers’ money! ha ha!

and what’s a trip to disneyland without a pair of mouse ears, ey?

oh wait. there’s Day 2. it was sunny.

the disneyland MTR trains even adheres to the theme. SO cute. (i’m sorry, i told you i can’t help it. i mean, look at those mouse-ear handles!)

ok, last thoughts. see, there are 2 hotels within shuttling distance to disneyland – Hollywood Hotel, and Disneyland Hotel. since we went through an agency at the travel fair, they picked the Hollywood Hotel by proxy, and we didn’t really bother checking on it. only when the shuttle bus dropped off passengers at the two hotels did we realise there was a difference. the former, where we stayed in, is more ‘cost-effective’/value-for-money than the latter, which admittedly looks more posh and expensive (which it is). which made me question (to who else, but the husband), “why should there be two hotels with a difference in price, why can’t there just be ONE very nice hotel and everyone gets the same disney experience? this is discrimination!”

but it was fine anyway, because we did spend the whole two days at disneyland park itself and only came back to the hotel to wash up and sleep, and didn’t even bother with the restaurants (we had cup noodles one night and went out to HK island the next night).

the kids are still pleading with us to go to disneyland again.
cannn. but mummy has to work and earn more money first, ok?

unless….

you can find a magic carpet…

and a big blue genie in a lamp who can grant you wishes!

*cue song* A WHOLE NEW WORRRRRRRLLLLLDDDD…

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“mummy, what is ‘facebook’?”

hmm.

“Facebook.. it’s like, a place on the internet – you know, internet? on the computer? – you can tell people what you are doing, where you are, put up pictures to show your friends… Daddy has a Facebook. Aunty Nur has one too.”

“wah, Daddy also got? some more, who else? you got also?”

“i used to have one, but i closed it down.”

“why??”

hmm.

“because i didn’t like it, so i closed it down. why, you want a Facebook? but your friends must also be on it, then you can add them. your friends have or not?”

“have! i think they have! I want, I want also!” [i seriously doubt they do.]

“you sure? then you must know how to spell, you know. but who told you about Facebook? your teacher, is it?”

“nooo. i saw, you know, that one… the man, the *PRESIDENT*, that one, came to our school… then we take picture with him… i saw, he say ‘join me on Facebook’….”

“OHHH, that one not *PRESIDENT* lah! that’s our MP! Mr B/a/e/y! Hahahahahaaahahaha”

(well, at least we know he attempts to read what he sees in his surroundings.)

speaking of which, come, guess who else has a FB account?

our domestic helper.

!!!

she’d acquired a mobile in secret, we discovered it, and decided to give concession for use only on weekends. during one of her (naive/foolish?) over-enthusiastic ‘sharing of information’ about other maids, she SHOWED mum their FB pages from her mobile, and also revealed how she found her old boyfriend’s Facebook, leaving him a message, etc.

!!!

i mean, i know FB has become so ubiquitous and universal, any literate person with net access can easily open up an account and start sharing, expressing, interacting, trolling. and it really shouldn’t surprise me that our domestic workers too have jumped on the social network bandwagon.

and yet, i still find it… kinda disturbing. my domestic employee, active on FB. sure, it’s somewhat an accepted norm now for any employee, especially those in an office, to access FB in the course of their work day. so how is it different for maids? how exactly does it cross the line? should i stop her, would it be hypocritical of me?

anyway, i’m letting it go. for now. i can’t justify why she shouldn’t have a social life, albeit a virtual one, while under my employment.

perhaps I should even warn her how social networks can be scarily addictive and detrimental to one’s health and well-being.

or maybe I should just tell it to aniq. and hopefully quell his curiosity all together. (and that’s another issue to ponder – young children on FB: yes/no? i bet you can guess my answer to that…)

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“…and at once i knew
i was not
magnificent”
<3
#currentobsession

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awww cute cat action alert. namaste!

already feeling all hunched back after only two days back in the office. need to hit that Esc button and click Refresh on my body’s browser soon…

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i happened to catch these trailers earlier today at Funan mall while waiting for the husband to do some shopping i had no womanly interest in whatsoever…

Snow White and The Huntsman

(it’s Thor! it’s Bella! whee!)

vs.

Mirror, Mirror

(it’s, erm, Julia Roberts.)

incidentally, i’d just read to the kids the whole set of classic Disney stories (with a pink book cover, no less), that included Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Beauty & The Beast, The Little Mermaid, and yes, Snow White (call it post-Disneyland syndrome, gah!), so it’s a refreshing change to see less conventional female protagonists after the deluge of frilly, demure, perfectly-poised, saccharine-sweet feminine characters that the Disney machine has so successfully typified.

introducing (yes, i am well-versed in identifying them all now, post-Disneyland):

Cinderella

Belle and Aurora (aka Briar Rose, aka Sleeping Beauty)

Snow White (actual name)

and since it was SO HARD to hunt down these live characters around Disneyland to take pictures with (they made special celebrity-like appearances at designated times and places and if you’re a second late to join the queue, there’s no negotiating/pleading/begging their ‘minders’), here’s the full line-up (‘pirated’ figurines courtesy from a hong kong night market stall). (YES I BOUGHT THIS SET FOR AUNI HA HA.)

from left to right:
Cinderella (in blue, for the ball); Cinderella (in white, for the wedding); Belle (that’s french for Beauty, you know); Aurora (aka Briar Rose, aka Sleeping Beauty – she was under a kind of CIA witness protection programme, thus the many aliases); Aurora again (different dress colour because her godmothers Flora, Fauna & Merryweather couldn’t make up their minds); Snow White; Ariel (as mermaid, with tail); Ariel (as human, with legs); and Pocahontas.

and since we were on the topic of Snow White, it seems that she has travelled through time looking exactly the same, while i… err…

(Disneyland, LA – 1984)
(Disneyland, LA – 1997)

(no wonder the Queen wants her dead.)

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notes from our recent trip:

1) hong kong is almost like singapore. except, the weather’s much nicer there. it’s the beginning of winter, so it’s not too cold; exactly like the air-con temperature we’re so used to in malls and my infamous Greyville office. no humid sweating, although some days were very sunny.

2) our MRT is an almost exact replica of their MTR, right down to the clock at the platforms, it’s almost like being in a parallel dimension. we don’t take the MRT much back home, but from the incessant complaints we’ve heard about the waiting time, the frequent breakdowns, the crowd, the smells, our MTR experience was a pleasant one – efficient, clean, convenient, civil. no complaints here.

3) a lot has been said about how tiny hotel rooms generally are in hong kong that you hardly have space to navigate in, but at L’Hotel Nina where we stayed for two nights, we had two queen-sized beds, a bathtub, and a coffee table for eating, so it was as comfortable as you can get. the only thing was, it’s about 25mins away from hong kong island and kowloon area by MTR, but the station’s a nice 5-minute walk away, slightly longer if we meandered through the well-kept park in between. (see, there were even cleaners scrubbing the signposts with soapy water.)

4) their pasar malam or night markets may not have greasy ramly burgers or japanese balls, but they have a variety of counterfeit toys, bags, tees, knick knacks, kinda like hmm, petaling street in KL?

5) the Big Bus was convenient since we only had 2 days to do a sweeping ‘tour’, and alighted at popular stops, like The Peak Tram. unfortunately, it started raining when we went to The Peak so we decided not to spend money going up the sky terrace since the view would be foggy. but we did have some silly fun at Madame Tussauds wax museum and lunch at Bubba Gump.

AND I MET RPATTZ OMG. (ok fine, a wax rpattz.)

HYUUUK!

no, these are not wax figures. they’re blond, cute and norwegian. i almost asked the daddy if he knew Morten Harket of A-ha, my favourite 80s band (and the only famous norwegian i know ha ha).

6) the husband asked me to write about the hong kong-ers’ fashion sense but i told him i’m no sartorialist. he found it fascinating to see nyonyas wearing knee-high boots and leather jackets going to the wet market. ok lah, quite fashionable what. we also didn’t manage to go to any branded outlets, so we settled for the normal retail fares of H&M, etc, where price-wise, things were more or less the same as in singapore..

7) food. the one thing we were quite worried about, initially. because pork is in almost everything, apparently.

we weren’t very adventurous in hunting for halal dimsums and other local foods, because the kids simply weren’t interested in eating. and frankly, err, neither was i. (i’m not really a fan of chinese food. sorry!) so we subsisted on snacks, bread, cup noodles (which the kids considered a tasty treat, since they don’t get much of it at home), and then while we were walking around Queen’s Road at Central, aniq paused to snap some pictures of a halal sign (he’s perpetually asking if the food is halal). turned out to be a halal kebab and pizza chain, Ebeneezer’s. kids were pretty happy with the food, so we stuck to it.

ouh, xmas lights… wait, are we at Orchard Road…?

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… was what they proclaimed at the end of the first day in The Happiest Place On Earth (at least in this part of Asia).

well, that’s mummy’s birthday treat to you accomplished, then.

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1) everyone wears them here. (well, almost everyone.)
2) there are a lot of elderly people. (they too wear boots.)
3) i’ve clocked in more time on the public train system here than i have the entire year in sg.

blogging from hk, to be continued…

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hoping it won’t be rainy where we’re flying off to tonight….

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a cousin held his lovely wedding reception at parkroyal hotel last weekend. the food was delicious (indian fare, a refreshing change), and we didn’t break a single drop of sweat (literally and figuratively). yes, his relatives are quite a spoilt lot. :p

while the bride & groom had a costume change, the little ones were quite busy themselves…

angels…

… demons?

here comes the bride…

… here come the little boy monsters.

(they were actually pinching their noses because they thought the fog from the dry-ice smelled like smoke, only here it looks like they were pinching their noses due to ‘gases’ emitting from under the gown. i could just PINCH their ears for spoiling this otherwise lovely scene of innocent flower girls carrying out the honourable duty of holding the princess bride’s wedding train!) (so sorry, bride.)

angels again, thankfully.

selamat pengantin baru, adib & hafiza…

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originally uploaded by izadd.

2 saturdays ago. a storytelling session of ‘We’re Going On A Bearhunt’, then everyone got to decorate a muffin, courtesy of Bookaburra, with cream cheese, candies and chocs.

it was yums. (i reckon she should start a Bakery-burra too…!)

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