With Silver Bullet gone since Sunday morning for a trip back to The Netherlands, the force of having to be a single parent with two hyperactive kids for the week awakens. It’s the first work trip back home for him in the first working week of the year, and our first week all on our own in a brand new year.

It’s been a while since I was the one left behind as usually, it would be me abandoning my family to go on a business trip. This time, that’s not the case.

It’s a week of many firsts.

Apart from not having a car to get the kids and myself around, I do not mind it one bit.  I’m only hoping that work does not go on an overdrive in the first few days of the working week. 

After sending off Silver Bullet, instead of hauling the kids back home in a taxi, I decided that we take our first train ride from the airport to downtown Bangkok. The airport rail link has been running for several years now, and we have never bothered to ride it. I thought it would be a good opportunity to try that out. 

Besides, I was not too keen on taking the taxi back for the following reasons:

• High possibility of getting stuck in traffic
• The probability of getting a crazy-ass taxi driver who would Schumacher his way through the expressway if there is no traffic is very high
• And most importantly, there’s 90% chance of getting into a taxi with no working seat-belts on a rather long journey home

With 2 small kids, all of the above do not sound appealing to me. 

The kids were leaning towards their preferred taxi ride, but after a little cajoling, they relented. For the kids, it was a fun train ride adventure – new experience, new sights. For me, it was a case of trying to while away time as I was trying to figure out what we could do to keep these little imps at bay for the rest of the day. 

The airport rail link service was not all that bad despite having smaller seats and narrower space.  For 135 baht for the 3 of us (45 baht each or USD 1.24 each. No child prices.), we got to downtown Bangkok, including waiting time but excluding transfer to the BTS line, within 40 minutes and little hassle. It then took us another 10 minutes or so to get to our destination.

The only inconvenience was having to queue up for a ticket after realising that I had forgotten to bring Spud’s stored-value card for the BTS train. By then, I decided to bring the kids to the movies, and were in a little bit of a hurry as I was trying to secure us a mid-afternoon screening.  

It’s like the universe heard my bubble thoughts and tried very hard to screw up my well-intent plans.

Because when we started queuing up, I had the dumb luck of standing in a queue where the people in front of me stalled for a very long time as they could not figure out how to use the machine. When it was my turn, I realised that I did not have enough coins and sooooo had to turn back to get my notes exchanged for coins and re-queue again to get the ticket for Spud. Dumb.

While doing that, I got stalled again by 2 other people in front of me who were asking the lady behind the counter questions after questions. And all I wanted to do was exchange some damn coins that would take no more than 5 seconds! It always happens at the most impeccable timing, isn’t it!

We arrived at the theater slightly before noon and was in time to book for Star Wars Episode 7 screening that was scheduled at 12.30 pm. Going to the movies is still a novelty for the kids and since this was only their 2nd movie (in a theater) so far, I thought I’d make it novel for them and splurged on a sofa seat.

To keep the excitement going, I bought them a set of Star Wars popcorn to share. They both agreed on Kylo Ren. 

Technically, we were watching Star Wars because I wanted to see it. I was hoping the kids would like it too as me (I know I should use “I”, but I like using “me” in this context. Don’t go grieving me about grammar now. It’s not my best), a long time fan of Star Wars but without going crazy with all the costumes and memorabilia, been wanting to watch Episode 7.

The only thing I wasn’t so sure of, was, if they could last the entire movie. But I have my hopes up since they already knew of a few characters like the Storm Troopers, the Jedis and Queen Amidala to name a few and both were pretty excited about watching the movie.

The kids did me proud!

They were pretty much glued to the screen almost the entire time as they eat their popcorns from Kylo Ren’s head. Spud, however, was asking a lot of questions on each of the characters,  what their reasons for being were and the whys. Sometimes, they get a little loud asking questions. Good thing we were seated at the top farthest corner, too. *blush* 

While they both were so into the movie, they distracted me! I think a proper Star Wars education is in in order. 

The only other interruption was when they needed to go to the bathroom 1+ hours into the movie. One needed to pee and the other needed to poo. That took out a whole 10 minutes; luckily their urges came at the same time. When we got back to our seats and not 5 minutes later, Squirt announced that he needed to pee as he had forgotten to do so when he did his poo. Lordy.

He couldn’t wait and I was reluctant to take everything we have with us, haul the kids again down the flight of steps and miss another 10 minutes all over again. Besides, I wasn’t sure if we would make it to the bathroom in time. 

But you know what? He’s a guy and I have an empty cup. He’s a kid, he is a trooper and he aimed well. He did what he needed to do in little trickles. There was no mess and I made sure that nothing, and I mean NOTHING in that cup was spilled onto anywhere before bagging it. Yes, I made sure I brought it out of the theater with me, too. I don’t think anyone noticed. Shhhhhhssshhhh

The movie ended without further disturbances. I loved it that the kids loved it and truly glad that they both were so into the movie, with questions continuing on after the show. They got goofy-happy when they saw the life-size feature of Storm Trooper and BB-8 that they can’t help themselves with funny poses.  

Now, you didn’t think I was going to do a review on Star Wars Episode 7 by the title of this post, do you?

I wasn’t going to.

Boy! I was glad I refrained from reading ANY reviews at all before watching. All in all, I think it was a great movie but I will have to watch it again because I was distracted by all the questions throughout the movie. The experience with the kids being a temporary single parent though, was a blast!

We did more walk-about after that as the kids decided that they wanted to walk the distance from where we were to Central Chidlom. I would have thought that they would be knackered by then. But as tired as they were, they enjoyed the stroll before I took them to the indoor playground there. 

We then took a taxi home a short-ride away and in time for dinner. They have been little angels so far and I felt really good. It had been a nice day but just as I had that bubble thought in my head, all hell broke loose as they riled each other up. The floor was littered with the left-over popcorns out of Kyle Ren’s head and they were starting to hurt each other with their boisterous play. 

It went downhill after that. Soft has had no effect and I had to lose my cool before they quit their nonsense. My force was awaken with a stern reprimanding chat and they were promptly sent off to bed. It’s annoying that this has to happen all.the.damn.time. So not cool. 

After that, all was quiet. Both were asleep within seconds. It was bliss. It dawned on me I have 6 more days to go as a single-parent. Ahhh! Nothing like needing the force to get through these few last days. 

Annoying as they were towards the end of the day, we all had a good day. At least for a little while, the good force was with us.