Grubbs n Critters

April 28, 2015

My First Interview Featured on Expat Blog!

A few weeks ago, Yuliya from Tiny Expats posed a few questions for me to answer and since them, I have promptly forgotten all about it the moment I hit sent in reply to her questions.

Last weekend, however, I was pleasantly surprised when I discovered that Yuliya has tagged me in one of her tweets in her latest article. Here’s an excerpt from her blog:

Expat parents already have quite a lot to worry about when it comes to their kids – new friends, new country, new language. At the same time, you don’t want your kids to forget where they are coming from as well. But what if you add to that parents with different backgrounds, coming from different countries? How do you help your children stay in touch with their multicultural heritage?

Awesome questions right! And definitely some food for thought there. And it’s so cool that I’ve been featured in an interview for an Expat Blog! How cool is that! 😀

Here are my answers to some of the questions which Yuliya posted:

What languages do you use at home?
Primarily English. My husband speaks mostly Dutch to the kids and I’m picking up the language along the way. Although, I also try to speak Malay to them …smattering – it’s so broken, it’s embarrassing!

If asked, where they are from or about their nationality, what would you usually say?
Hmmm…this one usually comes out as a mouthful. Nationality-wise going by their passports, they are officially Dutch, although my daughter is Singaporean too. My son is not – and that requires a whole lot of explanation!

How do you balance different cultures in your childrens’ lives? Do you try to invlove their heritage on the daily basis? (Languages, traditions, fairy tales, etc.)
Culture and heritage to us means family time. Doing things together as a family comes first above anything else. A big part of my culture revolves around food – that’s huge from where I come from and my husband’s family are also enthusiastic foodies so we have a good blend of food culture going on. We always make an occasion with food out of nothing!

Hop over to this link here to read the rest of the interview! Thank you Tiny Expats!

Writing 101: Your Voice Will Find You

Category: Blogging Courses

Today’s Prompt: Think about an event you’ve attended and loved. Imagine you’re told it will be cancelled forever or taken over by an evil corporate force. How does that make you feel?

It was the biggest 2-day rock festival in Southeast Asia, held in Bangkok for the first time ever back in 2006. It was jointly organised by 100 Piper and its partners, in association with a local radio station and Coca Cola Thailand to experience the World Class Rock Festival one could ever imagined.

I was there! Along with Silver Bullet and several other friends who flew in specifically for the festival, we spent 2 solid evenings rocking out to renowned big names in the music world such as Placebo, Snow Patrol, Fran Ferdinandz, Stereophonics and Oasis LIVE!

100082793_294b4b5a07_m — Source: Google Image

We made sure we got the 2-day pass with the most expensive tickets to get as close to the stage as possible. And what an amazing festival that was! I still recall the festival with so much fondness and even though Oasis behaved like a total dick (which was to be expected given their reputation) where they were fashionably late and Liam literally gave the middle finger to the audience and showing no interest in his performance whatsoever, ( I walked out halfway through his act), it was still a load of fun.

It was supposed to be an annual event and given its success, they had planned for another big gig for 2008. We bought the tickets in advance and we were so looking forward to that. Unfortunately, the political turmoil in Thailand at that time resulted in the festival being cancelled for that year. Bummer! We got our tickets refunded.

There was an attempt to somewhat revive it, and 100 Piper had organised something of a smaller scale later that year. It was not advertised extensively and was held at a different venue. Tickets were limited and I could not have gotten the tickets if not for a corporate contact I had.

I don’t remember much of that really. It wasn’t as exciting as the one they did 2 years ago, and the only band which I remembered that gave a good performance was by Stereophonics.

That was the last I heard of it.

Like a flash, the 100 Rock Festival came with a big bang and then disappeared into thin air. Almost 10 years on, we haven’t heard of another attempt to revive the World Class Rock Festival in Bangkok. The unstable political climate in Thailand probably had a lot to do with it. I can also imagine that bringing such big acts could have easily cost the organisers tons of money, and in the long run, deemed unsustainable.

To say that I was disappointed was an understatement. I have always been a fan of concerts, and quite the chronic concert goer. I feel alive being in the moment when watching a band live, singing my hearts out to the music I knew and liked.

The Annual 100 Rock Festival was cancelled forever. I felt such void in my heart and it really was such a shame to have such great thing going completely canned.

Who was to blame? Was it the lack of funds? Was there nobody interested to bring good music back? Was it too complicated and too complex to organise again? Were the artistes being assholes? Was it really the political climate or was that just the convenient excuse? Would no one else be interested to bring back awesome music culture back?

Oh! What a shame. Whatever it was, it was good while it lasted. Another festival like that in Bangkok would definitely have been fun to go to.

Sunday Humour: Parenting 101 – Flying with Kids

Category: Critter Stories

To their credit, the kids behaved very well in the long 11+ hours plane journey from Bangkok to Amsterdam a few days ago. The in-flight movies kept them at bay for a few hours, and when they got bored, we distracted them with not-so-healthy snacks, allowed to play with games which we have downloaded on my tablet and kept them occupied with a set of Aqua-Doodle.

Sure there were the occasional fuss about stuff which was annoying, but none too difficult to handle. Sleep was obviously not their priority and I thought that I wasn’t going to be fussing too much if they didn’t, trusting that they would eventually crash when they were flat-out spent. Squirt did better with catching some winks, all in all, close to 5 hours of the total journey. I even managed to watch 3 movies in-flight!

About 3 hours prior to landing, they both fell asleep – the first for Spud in all that flying time – and we had to wake them up before the plane had to land.

I thought I was quite prepared to face anything should the kids conjure up their temper -tantrums mid-air, especially after having to wake them up from their deep sleep. To my relief, both woke up hyper, happy and full of smiles; obviously glad that they were just minutes away from being cooped up in the plane, not a frown in sight.

But! What I wasn’t expecting to react to was when Squirt, with a big smile on his face, started screaming in excitement at the top of his lungs and innocently said out loud, “Mama! We are going doowwwwwnnnn!”

Oooops! Not the thing anyone would want to hear when on the plane; certainly not me especially since I have been jittery about flying of late!

Oooh! I could feel the red flush appearing on my face as soon as he said it, and I managed a smile as I gave an alternative to what he could have meant instead. He looked at me funny and then questioned several times over, “No? Plane not going down?” I had to say No, dear Squirt. The plane’s NOT “going down”, it never will, and it was going to land and descend at the airport’s landing strip.

I’m not sure how many people heard his enthusiastic screams of “the plane going down”, but I assure you that it was just an almost 3 YO chap talking. And that my friends, had been my humble Parenting 101 lesson on teaching my kids of what NOT to say when we were still in mid-air.