M: auni, tadi makan apa? (what did you eat today?)
A: asi! (nasi = rice)
M: lagi? (some more?)
A: eeken! (chicken, obviously, duh) ayam! (she has, as at last check, on 3 feb 2000hrs, decided to answer this instead of ‘eeken’.)
M: lagi?
A: opok! (keropok = fish cracker)
M: eh? sedap? (nice?)
A: dap!
M: pandai! (clever)

and when asked the various body parts in malay, she will obligingly twitch or point accordingly. yesterday, she saw her oma half-undressed and went, “eh, tak alu!” (no shame!).

ah. there is hope yet for you, my young padawan.

=========

M: aniq, ‘fish’ dalam melayu apa? (what is ‘fish’ in malay?)
A: …
M: (prompting with first syllable of ‘ikan’) eeee…?
A: eeee… er san!
M: O-O <--- (talk about culture shock.)

=========

in any case, they're both smitten by upin & ipin, you know, identical twin pre-schoolers who are the cutest cartoon characters, like EVUH, hailing from a fictional kampung in malaysia. (well, there was Lat the Kampung Boy back in the days - remember him? - but upin & ipin are so... arrrgh, DEM CUTE, and there are two of 'em!) the husband and i totally approve of the series, more so since the dialogue's so chuckle-worthy and in malay, and, i mean, WHO NEEDS TO LEARN SPANISH LAH, RIGHT?

so smitten by the characters and their antics, that even the little one has taken to mimicking the dialogue. a particular one that stuck to her was where the token effeminate youth in the kampung insists that his name's not Salleh but Sally, and attempts to spell it out: "S-I-L-L-Y", dismissing his misspelling with a flick of his limp wrist, "apa jer lah, tak kuasa aku." ("whatever!" - another thing about the beauty of localised humour - the english version simply does not translate sufficiently. right? betul betul betul?)

maybe i should send them to a kampung in malaysia, if anything, to brush up on their malay.

speaking of kampungs, the other night, in one of my meandering discussions with the little boy after an episode of upin & ipin, i described to him how in kampungs, they have no toilets with a flushing system, and potty business had to be done in an outhouse or behind bushes in the forest. (AS IF i know anything about rural life, hah! but mothers being mothers, must sound convincing and knowledgeable lah, right? betul betul betul?)

M: ingat tak, citer upin ipin, kawan cucu tok dalang sakit perut, nak pegi toilet tapi dia takut pasal dah malam abih tempat dia jauh? ahhh.
A: why??
M: ye laaah. kat kampung takde toilet.
A: why??
M: ye laaah. macam gitu. abih ingat tak, kawan cucu tok dalang nak berak, dia sembunyi belakang semak-samun? (at this point, even i can’t believe i just said ’semak-samun’, an almost archaic word for thicket/undergrowth.)
A: why??
M: ye lah. pasal takde toilet!!

you can imagine how this conversation went on – endlessly.

like this bridge we trekked last weekend, in our attempt to bring the children close to nature.

well, as close as we could get to the semak-semak, anyway. no potty business going on here, though. it’s as sterile as everything typically singaporean is.

and mummy – again, ever-convincing and knowledgeable – explained away the many whys. sometimes with more than a “ye laah”.

yes. trees and branches may fall. take care.

berhati-hati di semak-samun, kenak-kanak.

it was really hard getting the twins in the same picture – either one was asleep while the other was awake.

so we had fun watching the older kids instead. boy-chasing starts early for some girls, apparently! so much for our warning on aniq zohan’s t-shirt – lock up your daughters. ;p

dear diddy,

for all the diapers you’ve changed…
for all the psp games you downloaded for me…
for all the silly things you put in my head…
for all the scolding you rarely did…

i present to you, a little card i (sorta) made myself in school!

(ok fine, so teacher helped me.)

they say i take after your “naughtiness” when you were small.

i wonder if it’s true.

sometimes, i oblige mummy’s request to sit still and take peekture. sigh. susah jadi model.

*dump-truck, train, motorbike, and tiny cars not included.

hmm, not a bad collection, seeing that mummy & daddy didn’t buy a SINGLE one of them for me.

now mum, get off my bed – you’re making a huge dent in it! (i know this was just an excuse for you to lie in it, ok.)

have a good weekend, everibodeeee… remember: don’t drink and drive!

*****

(heh. i *do* get out and head straight to mummy & daddy’s even BIGGER bed when i wake up in the morning before them, and climb in to squeeeeze in between. freedom indeed! :p)

like finally.

our host server fan was malfunctioned or something, thus the downtime.

time for a change, ya think? hmm…

* * * * *

anyway, while it was quite, er, liberating for a while not to blog, the compulsion is still there (fortunately, or unfortunately for some of you, ha ha).

exciting things have been happening, in particular one project rini and i have gotten ourselves involved with. but more on that later, maybe end of this week. (if the server doesn’t go kaput again.) :p

anyway, perhaps i’ve neglected Aniqspeak for a while lately, so let’s hear from him, shall we?

* * * * *

mummy’s asked if i want to go to the Dentist. i’m not sure who this person is, but i’ve agreed anyway, so she went ahead and booked an appointment for next month. because my paranoid of a mother found out from the Dentist’s office that she should have brought me there upon my first birthday, so she’s like, ohhh, a whole year late. *come, let’s all roll our eyes*

i think she’s now trying to look for books about visiting Mr Dentist to prepare me, and even managed to borrow from her friend an elmo vcd to educate little children like me on proper dental care. (she’s weird like that – mummy, not her friend).

what? no spidey vcd instead??

and here, i don’t know why mum finds it amusing, but she said my penmanship has changed quite dramatically without her realising it. where i used to draw wide lines and large circles with much force and flourish, is now replaced with tiny little scribbles.

she thinks i’m trying to either: a) write mandarin characters, b) forge daddy’s signature, c) draw the various species of ants i’ve discovered so far, or d) all of the above.

on other news, mummy is getting fatter by the day, and even one of my damdil brudders think so, coz he kept lifting up his shirt and touching his tummy when he stares at her. (either that or he’s a right perv.) ha ha!

ok, back to you, fatty mummy.

* * * * *

pfft. :p

something to bring back a smile on the face after what seems like a gloomy week for us.

it’s gonna be a super day today, i hope…

who knows, maybe i’ll save the world!

then again, being a villain and causing mayhem and destruction is kinda cool too.

hey, they don’t call my newly-acquired age the Terrible Twos for nuthin, right? MUAHAHAHA! *evil mirthless laughter*

to be continued…

hola!

first and foremost, thank you to the uncle for the airwave offer, but the parents already parted with babycolt (and some $) on this new baby some time back.

i’d wave my hand in the air to you, like my parents had suggested i do, but that’d just be too corny, like them.

anyway, did daddy mention that he’s been running? yeah, he’s grown a little obsessed with it. so much so that he’s going to run in the standard chartered singapore marathon on the 2nd of december.

it’s funny listening to the parents’ conversation as we went to suntec to collect the race entry pack. it goes something like this:

M: “you mean, you have to PAY to run?”
D: “yaaaah.”
M: “but whyy?? THEY should pay YOU to run, what.”
D: “aiyah, you don’t understand. you’re not a sports person…”
M: “ah, you don’t exert yourself eh. aniq still needs a father ok.”
D: “no lah, i’m not there to win, i just want to complete the run.”
etc.

needless to say, mummy won’t be cheerleading at the sidelines again, however scenic the route, coz the run starts at 6.15am, which is not her best time to look remotely alive. but i know she secretly wishes daddy the best, and that daddy’s looking fitter these days… (don’t ask how i know what she secretly thinks!)

i also heard that there’s a Kids Dash, which is for kids (duh!) aged 13 and below, with, get this, no minimum age limit! which means *i* can run my own marathon as well. the parents reckon i’d do well, and i don’t think it’s just coz i look ‘dashing’, ha ha. (sorry, i got the corny genes from them.)

ohh but i think i’d much rather go for THIS sport – Combat Skirmish! GUNS!!! now THIS is my kinda thang, i tell ya…

*rat-a-tat-a-tat-tat-tat!!*

let’s hope the parents will bring me to esplanade park on 22nd dec, coz there’s an event there that day and i can get to play with more guns. but daddy isn’t keen though, he thinks we shouldn’t encourage violence and killing. and i thought mummy was bad, hmph. but reaaallly, i dunno, there’s just SOMETHING about guns that brings excitement to little boys like me, i can’t explain it. and i also don’t know why i keep wanting the BIGGER guns. (now don’t start with the mambo-jumbo about ‘phallic symbols’ and ‘fixations’, eh.)

the last stop for the day was my own doing, coz i wandered into the hair salon while mummy was in another shop.

the barber didn’t want to take any more customers, but seeing how shaggy my hair was, he propped me onto a chair before mummy even stepped into the salon and turned on Power Rangers on vcd after consulting with me on the various choices available for viewing – COOL! i didn’t even notice what was going on with my hair, like, whatever dude.

ok. that’s all. ended the day with me sleeping in the car, as usual.

so, have a good week ahead, all you old people who have to work! ttfn.

*waves hand in the air*

(sorry, deluge of videos for now.)

the little parrot picked up the magic word – “please” – quickly enough. of course, it helped that the ‘bait’ i used was yummy-but-probably-full-of-msg stuff, ie. crackers.

oh well… whatever works to teach ‘em the Ps & Qs!

pleesh?

it’s nice (and pretty amusing, to us, his parents, anyway) having a ‘conversation’ with him, however brief and simple it is. getting the right response from him is surreal. for example, after returning home this evening:

mimmy: what happened just now?
aniq: *makes pretend-crying face*
mimmy: aniq cry? mimmy left the car, then aniq cry?
aniq: ahhh!
mimmy: then, where did you go with diddy?
aniq: *thinks* shop!
mimmy: ohh, shop. what did you buy?
aniq: pok! *gets off sofa and runs over to table where bits of chips were scattered*
(well, anything that’s remotely crispy is ‘keropok’ to him.)

now to get him to stop asking for those damn ‘poks’ and other equally bad stuff with his saccharine-sweet “pleesh?”… gah!