While half-watching BBC News Tonight the other day, an interview on climate change by one of BBC’s reporter, Jeremy Paxman caught my ears. I was also only half-listening, but I thought the entire conversation sounded intellectually interesting that I essentially forced myself to look up the telly to see what was on TV.
What I saw was a personality whom I don’t even know about, but one who exudes a very humble demeanour.His speech was slow, but deliberate. I thought that he radiated so much wisdom that I did not even just stopped with what I was doing (I was on my laptop, working), I actually stopped to listen and waited for a name to show up on the screen – right after he quoted this:
What he said stuck to my head. His thoughts on the human race is so spot on, and I thought it is something very reflective of our current society where arrogance could (and does!) breed ignorance. I am curious about his book and I think I might find it to be a very good read for my not-so-intellectual mind.
Click here for the transcript I found from that interview on BBC.
Six years ago, in 2008, Silver Bullet and I officially tied the knot in Singapore. And as I remembered it, it was an unnecessarily exorbitant wedding with way too many people and a whole lot of “must-haves” as dictated by culture and tradition. Interestingly, by the virtue of our wedding with a guest list of almost 250 people -, our affair was actually considered “smallish” if we were to compare that to most weddings in Singapore. Although I’ll be just happy, if not happier if I get to keep the number to just 25.
It took us a whole year to save for that wedding. Almost every single penny we saved specifically for the wedding was wiped out , with not much spare change left after that. We split up the expenses 50-50 between the both of us, making sure that we budgeted the expenses carefully. leaving no room for screw-ups that potentially could land us in debts after the entire wedding camaraderie. We also made sure that both of our parents contributed very minimal or zero percent to our wedding expenses. Most important of all, we made sure that we remain debt-free.
Six years on, we still sometimes speculate what we could have done with all that money if we hadn’t “splurge”. It wasn’t as if our wedding was really lavish, too! For us, having the wedding proper was just something we needed to do, and given our nonchalance about the whole thing, it is of no surprise that we both don’t really care about weddings, let alone wedding anniversaries…
…which brings me to now…
As year, after year, after year, we keep forgetting our own wedding anniversary. We never have consciously thought about it and we usually treat it just like any other days.
The only reason I remembered this time round and actually writing a post on this is because of a conversation I had with Silver Bullet a few days prior to our actual anniversary while I was viciously typing away on my laptop, working:
Silver Bullet: Do you remember what day X is?
Me: No. What? I have a meeting. I think. Why?
Silver Bullet: No?
Me: (Proceeding to check outlook calendar). No, not really. Do we have something? Dinner with anyone planned that I forget? I have an important afternoon meeting though.
Silver Bullet: Well, babes…..six years ago….
And then it clicked. Oh crap! There we go again and I immediately started guffawing, realizing what a silly thing to be forgetting about.
I was actually surprised that Silver Bullet remembered (then forgetting again within a few hours) and it turned out the only reason he remembered was because one of his friends has actually initiated an advance wedding anniversary congratulations to him earlier in the day. How sweet!
So now that we both are being reminded about our imminent Anniversary celebration, guess what did we do? We laughed about it, did not proceed to make any immediate plans (although I did make a small note to remind myself to publish a post about it) and promptly went back to our laptops to finish our work as quickly as we can.
Us being big, fat useless romantics is not a big surprise. We do this all the time, year after year and birthdays after birthdays. Luckily for Silver Bullet though, I am not one to make a big fuss about forgetting to celebrate wedding anniversaries; just because I just don’t see the need to.
We both still forgot about our wedding anniversary on the day itself, but was reminded again when we received a congratulatory message from my in-laws on the morning of our anniversary. It still feels little nostalgic, though!
Our hand-made invitation card done in 3 languages created by moir and my BFFOne of our many wedding shots courtesy of JC Bridal
Six years of marriage, 3 cats and 2 kids later, we remain the practical couple we have always, pivoting our relationship on 4 key factors:
Honesty
Trust
Commitment
and Communication
Years of several failed, wasted relationships taught me wisdom. Those then became my very personal 4 main ingredients to successful relationships and, for me, if either one of those ingredients is missing, the relationship spells disaster. While I do belief that we have, to a certain extend, work hard on our relationship, we also don’t have to try too hard to make it work- because for me (again my personal belief), if you do have to work really,really hard to keep your relationship with your other half such that you feel eaten up inside every single day of your life, then that relationship is questionable.
While Silver Bullet and I are worlds apart when it comes to our individual personality, we both do share very same values in life and have very similar beliefs on parenting. Those foundation brought us even closer and despite the stark difference in our personalities, believe it or not, they actually bring out the best out of us.
We may have lack the enthusiasm about celebrating our 6th Anniversary on a “grander” scale, but that certainly does not equate to the lack of love or respect for each other. Au contraire.
We are in this for the long run, and I see us as that old, crazy, but loving couple who still kiss, hug and continue to stride hand-in-hand or arm-in-arm as we walk the streets of our home, still enjoying each other’s company in our twilight years with many stories to tell for our kids and our grandchildren.
Happy 6th Anniversary, Love. Here’s to many, many more great years to come.
Last Thursday marked the last day of the school term for Spud, and besides the fact that it is usually a timely holiday for Songkran, it also signifies something much bigger than that: It was the end of Term 2 and Spud has one more semester to go before she graduates to K2 in September.
As with the end of every semester, we attended the regular Parent-Teacher session where we get to discuss her progress with her Homeroom teacher. Her progress report indicated that she has made a lot of improvements this time round.
The conversation with her teacher has been rather enlightening for us as she commended Spud for her ability to write her abcs and 123 free-hand as well as being able to spell and write her name without any help; a progress we don’t really think about as we still think she is in a play school and thus, spends her entire day just playing.
I am clearly under the impression that this is now a norm for every 3.5 year old kid, and given that I have actually seen some kids who can already recognise words (and they are at least 6 months younger than Spud), I thought Spud may have just been a little behind in her development. Either way, for a parent like me who is not too focused on my kids being too academically inclined, I guess the school has been doing a very good job with her and her progress.
Here are some of her handiwork which I thought I’d capture for her benefit (amusement) in the near future:
What is also comforting to know from her teacher is that Spud is a well adjusted kid and makes friends easily. It turns out that she and the same boy whom she befriended from 2 years ago are still as attached as ever to each other. In the words of her teacher, “These two are really best friends. I have never really seen kids that age being so close. They play together, they talk all the time and while they also fight a lot, they get together again quite quickly. They would always ask for each other. They are so close that I have to keep them apart – one on my left, the other on my right or, one at one end of the room, the other on the other end, or otherwise, they never will pay attention or get things done.”
Such sweetness of innocence.
As with the end of each term, the school would usually send a bagful of materials to us parents as a way of letting us know the kind of activities the kids have been doing in school. While flipping through the materials, I came across some of her handiwork from school and was pretty impressed with what I saw. They were written free-hand, and some which she apparently did it all on her own.
Looking back just a few weeks ago, I remember that she has been asking A LOT about how to spell things. And, because I have been pretty consistent in casually spelling out her name for her every once in a while since about 3 months back, I did not think that spelling AND writing it would be something she would accomplished so quick.
One morning, Spud ambled to our room while we were still sleeping and asked her father, “Papa, how do you spell your name?” Silver Bullet, I assumed still groggy, did not think much of the question and started spelling out his name. She quickly dismissed it, frowned and asked him again; to which he re-spelled the same way. Spud, for some reason, would not take his answer and then went,“Nooooo. How to spell Papa’s name? It’s ppppp…”P”. Pa-Pa.”
The mind of a child amazes me. Both Silver Bullet and me could only look at each other and started laughing.
From what I have seen, I really don’t know for sure if such developmental milestones of a 3.5 year old is to be expected – and as I said earlier, it would be easy for me to assume it is; particularly because I have seen toddlers younger than her being able to read words. For Spud, she seems to enjoy writing her letters and numbers.
She is currently particularly proud of herself that she not only can spell her name (as well as her BFF’s name!), and she is able to write it freehand as well.
