Nara Park

Rey and I went to Nara Park (just 45 minutes away from Kyoto) yesterday. We bought senbei to feed the deers roaming about freely in the park.

Rey helped bake a cake for his dad. It was edible.

Rey likes Charlie Chaplin

I was looking for Narnia dvd to at a rental shop with Rey when he spotted 1 dvd. It was a black and white Charlie Chaplin movie (City Lights), made in 1931. He knew who Chaplin was as I had told him about it some time ago and wanted to rent it. I tried to dissuade him by telling him it might be 'too boring', 'just black and white movie with no sound', 'Mr. Bean will be more interesting for you lah' etc. At the end, we came home with just the CC movie anyway. To my surprise, he watched all of the movie and even 'suan' me midway, "Mummy, is it too boring for you?" Actually I enjoyed the show too. hmm...never thought I'd enjoy watching a movie older than Audrey Hepburn's Roman Holiday. btw, Charlie Chaplin looked much better offscreen.

yamaha otsukare!

It was an informal gathering to say Ostukaresama! (thanks for your hard work!) to the mothers who attended Yamaha with their kids. Ok, it was an excuse for the mothers to drink and chatter, and just dump their children at the corner for a wild time. 6 mothers and 8 kids. Anyway, all of them are quitting yamaha (except for Rey). Rey doesn't want to stop so I can't be so heartless as to deprive him of what he wants right? So this time, I got a veteran teacher. Maybe she'll teach in a more interesting style than the act-cute young teacher (she's actually very sweet, not to be mean). We have gone through times of having kids falling asleep, ok, only Rey fell asleep with fingers still on the keyboard during the lesson, controlling kids crawling under the electone, and preventing ourselves from yawning. The other mothers ordered beers, Japanese wine and drank to their hearts content while I was busy taking photos and stuffing myself with the wide spread of food. Rey behaved his best and really enjoyed himself alot.

you don't wash lollipops dear

Rey showed me how silly he can be one day. He has been playing with the water and detergent after washing his bowl...I only knew he did something stupid when he asked me very sheepishly, "Mummy, can detergent be washed away?" I knew something was wrong.

Silly boy! He has washed his precious collection of lollipops (with detergent!) that Nana has bought for him when she was in Japan. I never buy lollipops for him so you can imagine how heart-broken he was. He was close to tears as he watched all of his 9 lollipops go into the bin. He grabbed my shirt and buried his face. very pitiful. He went shopping for a new lollipop soon after that.

just close one eye

My fish laid eggs again! "This isn't true!" is what I thought when I saw the eggs at the bottom of the tank. The mother fish's belly looks like it was going to explode. Maybe these are the leftovers from the previous batch? I donno lah. No energy to adopt any more fish liao. I shall leave the eggs to fate, the unlucky ones will go into the adults stomach. Maybe those lucky ones hidden behind the stones will successfully hatch into fry (not too many tolong!).

the future good hubby

Now that Rey is 4 .5 years old, he is often assigned some tasks at home. Yesterday, he helped to take out peas from the pod. The daily tasks are: hanging up his uniform and putting on home clothes when back from school, cutting up vegetables, putting the bowls into the sink after eating, feeding the fish, watering the plants, pegging his socks and towels to dry, answering the phone, tidying up his own toys if not he'd hurt himself. He actually really hurt himself 2 days ago when he fell from the sofa hitting his face on the toy train. He cried like a baby. There is a bruise now. Anyway, with all these training, I'm sure he'll make a helpful husband in future. any takers?

changing water

Got backache, neckache, shoulderache....All because of changing the dirty fish water which took me 2 hours. Could have used a small container instead but I wanted to minimise the amount of filthy water I take in. So I chose a baby milk powder scoop. Rey helped me record down the number of fish I catch each time and the total number reached 350 and more! 1st I thought I had only 100 fry, then 200... now the number is 350! It freaks me out thinking that these tiny lives are in my hands!! And can you imagine scooping 350 fry, each time catching an average of only 2, it means I have scooped like 175 times. Then, more times than that for scooping off the dirt in the water. It is so tiring that I secretly hoped half of them will die 'naturally' due to the competition for food, being bullied by other fry, not strong enough to swim upwards to eat the food...please just don't die because of me, bad karma leh.

Anyway, I showed my hubby the fry, all concentrated in a smaller tank. He wasn't really interested in looking at them before this actually.

(in Japanese)

I: See the fry? I changed the water. It took me 2 hours. 2 hours! Now got backache liao (hinting for a massage).

H: (blur) huh? where?

I: nor, there lah! the smaller tank! (quite pissed off with his usual blur self)

H: oh,...wow!! WOOOOW!! (suddenly brightens up and began studying the fry).

I: guess how many? 300 and more you know. (and I talked about the cleaning process)

H: ...(still visibly impressed, shaking his head) You're superb! I don't think anyone would want to work this way to earn a living, too tedious. Only LOVE (for the fish) can motivate one to do this. Just like teaching my students. You don't teach for money, you teach because you want to spread the love for your subjects...

I: ...(fades away from the topic. forget about the massage, returned to my youtube watching)

another funny Thai CM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRc-Sr7Qh1c

little fry (goldfish babies)

Remember me talking about my heavily pregnant goldfish? Well, it laid eggs 3 weeks ago! I discovered the eggs just in time before I began pouring out the dirty water. Half of them were white rotten bad eggs and the rest transparent ones. Then 1 week later, little black dots started appearing in the middle of the transparent eggs. Somehow the father fish had successfully fertilised the eggs before I separate the 4 adult fish. And since then little fry began swimming out of their eggs. At first they were so transparent you have to put your head near the water to spot them. Initially, I thought there were only about 50. But now, to my horror, there are 200 and more!! Some fry hide in between the stones and others simply sink to the bottom beause their heads are too heavy. They are so small at 5mm. To feed them, I simply hammer the food for the adult goldfish into powder and sprinkle them into the water. After that will be 15 minutes of watching how the small fry swim up to take their tiny bites, sink down again and swim up again for a second round. I don't know why but I feel calm sometimes watching these little fry and yet other times I get goose pimples because of the vast numbers. Oh yah, and also my friend and I agreed that they look like male sperms, which make it more eerie! Now I have difficulty changing the water because I can't avoid scooping up the water without any fry in it. And I need a new big fish tank as the home for my 4 big goldfish has been downsized from a 5-room flat to a 2-room one.

SOME SIMPLE FACTS
*Goldfish originated in China.
*Goldfish are intelligent and will recognize the person who feeds them. They will show by swimming rapidly back and forth when you are near the tank or splashing.
*Goldfish like to play. (I know they like playing catching.)
*From my experience, my goldfish love cleanliness. You always find their poop behind the stones.
*The average life span of goldfish is about 25 years or more! Some are said to grow till 45 years old! That means if everything goes well, the fish can live with Rey and his future wife.
*Just know my goldfish are 4 years old now because they start to mate when around 3 years.
*'Fry' is the name for baby goldfish.
*You can feed the small fry hard boiled egg yolk! I didn't know that. Great, I like eating egg white anyway.

AND as I read the sites on goldfish, I realised I am quite lucky, or maybe the lucky ones are the fry...

*I should have removed the rotten bad eggs at first, which I didn't. It is said that the fungus will spread to the good eggs and damage them. But luckily they hatched anyway.
*My common sense told me to lower the water level when I saw how much of a struggle it was for the fry to swim upwards to eat their food. And this move actually help to reduce the water pressure for the fry to live healthily.
*I don't have any filter in the tank for the adult ones. Somehow they just lived until now.
*My fish live in a concrete world with no plants but still grow strong anyway.

Now the future for the fry are uncertain. Some will be given away. Hmm, that will be after 1 year when they are recognisable as goldfish. It shudders me whenever I imagine having 400 or more goldfish 1 year later. Should I let the hatching process go smoothly, or simply let the adult fish have their eggs for lunch and dinner? what to do?

very active fry, looking for food.

The big fish have to bear with the little room space for the time being. Lookig for the same plastic tank.

travelling everywhere the bicycle can take us in the nice warm weather.

picnic in Arashiyama under the sakura tree.


I'm back! Rey starts school today (yipee!). We had a nice weekend looking at the beautiful sakura in Arashiyama and Kamo River. Another thing is, the dirty yellowish old wallpaper in the living room has finally been changed to a white one. Now I'm scouting for new white long low cabinet to match the room.

huh? li gong xi mi?

The other day Rey knocked the pillars (see above) of a outdoor playgym with a stone and discovered each gives out different pitch. Somehow, the longer pillar gave out a higher pitch while the shorter one gave out a lower pitch. huh? I thought it should be the opposite? Rey asked me why?? I can't explain so I threw the question to my hubby beside me. He thought for a while (I immediately regretted), said something which sounded scientifically logical but too cheeem for me to understand. What's worse, he finished his short speech some 3 minutes later with an alien formula (above 2nd). I gave him the garfield stare. He knew what I meant and blurted out, "I'm not trying to show off but this is 'strength' of sound...." Having learnt from past experiences, my mind switched to the "OFF" mode before it suffers further damage. Ok, maybe you'd say I'm bad but you see, he teaches JC students maths and science at a prep school and can spend 2 hours talking about his love for these subjects. I have tried a few times before in the nights. Once was when he came back feeling so touched that his once hopeless student scored 2nd out of 4000. He talked about how motivated his students are and even posed me some JC maths questions for me to solve (of cuz forgot how to do lah!). Then he went on teaching me like I'm his student, die die must get into top schools. It took 2 hours. That's like 1/4 of my daily sleeping time. Now, before he goes deep into the subject, I always ask him, "how long is this going to take me (to listen).

zoo

A visit to the zoo in spring was a good choice. Sakura trees are everywhere. All the animals were bright and awake. The sleeping lion I saw in summer was finally alive. What surprised me most was the peacock. For the 1st time in my life I saw 2 peacocks, spreading out their tails right before my eyes after I said the magic words, " peacock peacock, show me your beautiful tails!" Rey thought I was amazing!