Bye bye, Smallville!!

Obssession update: Addendum

Obssession Three

I forgot to write about my other new obssession. If you haven’t read The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, do. I’m not into love stories, but this one’s good. It’s a love story, but with a scifi overlay. *two thumbs up*

Time travel is a great idea, but a difficult one to tackle in film and books. Niffenegger however does a good job. You do have to suspend your usual notions of time travel though – the whole space-time continuum ala Back to the Future, and the view that an action now impacts future events. Niffeneger takes a different approach, that there is no chaos – life unfolds exactly as it should. In other words, fate. Nothing you can do, even if you time travel back into the past, can change the outcome of a situation. By taking this notion, she effectively wraps the story up in a fairly watertight fashion. There are paradoxical loops, but at least with this view of time and space, you can actually believe it could happen.

Okay, so go read. It’s a lovely book, and I hope the movie they plan to make later this year does the book justice.

Chaos

This is it. Movers in the house and everything’s quite mad right now. I guess they’ll be coming round pretty soon to tell me they need to start work on my study corner.

So fare thee well, Hong Kong. I’ll miss Smallville and dim sum, but that’ll be about it. Hong Kong can keep the rest.

Prelude to the End

I stood in the MTR the other day, feeling the weight of the world on my shoulders. That morning, it was across all the papers, a broadcast message even came over the mobile phone. School is closed, they say. Easter vacation brought forward. We need to limit infection, is what they really mean.

First one child, and then another, and then another. All dead, in rapid succession. Reporting is patchy, some say it’s the flu virus, some say it’s not. And then it’s H1, no, H5? Or no, the “Brisbane Flu”? Or is it H3? If it wasn’t killing our children, I’d find it all funny. The chaos, the fear, the flip flopping almost daily in the papers. Do they know what’s going on? Do they? Really? The reporters have done a good job undermining public confidence. Or maybe the government’s doing it all on their own, no help needed.

I am almost relieved, thinking that our time here is almost up. As I stand in the crowded train, people going about their daily lives, I think about how it was during Sars. I wasn’t here, but I heard about it. And now I’m looking to see if anyone’s scared. I feel scared, but the people on the train don’t seem to care. Is this how it ends? People don’t see what’s coming? Or maybe everyone just knows, there’s not much you can do. We are like sitting ducks, waiting for our turn to be called.

The government now tells us not to worry. Yes, we had four children die in about three weeks, but really, don’t get your knickers in a knot. It’s really all usual stuff. This is the height of flu season after all. We really have less people sick this year than we did last year. And it really is a coincidence that these children died so rapidly, one after another. Really, it’s all okay.

It really is.

Obsession update

Obsession One 

Woo-hoo!!!!!

Instead of two more movies, we’ve got three more! And who cares if it’s all about making more money! Harry will be alive and kicking for another year longer!!!

Obsession Two

At the end of last year, I was dragged, not really kicking and screaming, but pretty close, to a Jay Chou concert. I have since become a convert. I am now almost a Jay Chou fan. I say almost because I’m not really into all that stuff celebrity watching entails, but I have since gone out to buy the DVD and CDs of his concert (ostensibly for D, but it’s looking more and more like it was for me). I am also working on the children – I make them watch the 听妈妈的话 music video on YouTube. This is ostensibly to get S and N into Mandarin, but we all know I’m really brainwashing them. 妈妈 is Number One, after all… 

My ride

I will miss our car.

So okay, it’s not REALLY a car, but it goes. Like the wind, I may add. Thanks to the fact that it’s been modified to go faster than a typical golf buggy on a green. Sure, I have to be careful going round the corners, so that the kids don’t go flying out, but after a while, they get the hang of it and really, they do learn to behave-otherwise-you’ll-fall-out-and-somone-will-roll-over-you.

I love the sparseness and the simplicity of the vehicle. Yes, it is a little hard to have a conversation while driving (it is very loud) and when it rains, it can be a real bummer (rain water still streams in despite the plastic cover), but there is great joy to be had driving it in early morning or late at night, on empty roads with the wind streaming through your hair. So okay, I could get that with a convertible, but this is infinitely more my style. Simple, basic and totally unglamourous.

I will miss our car.

New look, new title, new country

So I only just about realized that I never said where I was going. Then again, those who read this know me personally, either in the real world or in cyberspace, so this can hardly be news.

We are moving home. To Singapore. To the land of our fathers, but not our grandfathers.

At first, I thought to abandon this blog and start a new one. And then I realized that I couldn’t. I still like blogging the way I do, even if I don’t do it too often anymore. My original plan was to start a more esoteric, thougtful, artfully written, password-protected blog, but you know, it’s just not me. Not by a long shot.

So I decided to take the easy way out – change the look and change the name. It is after all appropriate, given the choice of title previously. This just carries on from where I started.

We still have less than a week here before the BIG MOVE. The packers are coming in a few days and I’ve been actively throwing out as much garbage as I can around the house. Despite best intentions, we have managed to accumulate ridiculous junk that doesn’t even warrant being brought home.

I have a little more to say about Hong Kong before we go, so there will be a few more posts before silence again. That will be because of the lack of internet connection and more importantly, the unpacking that needs to be done. And then, we will be begin our new life. Beyond the petridish.