Sat 27 Sep

Today was a lively day. Four of my wife's aunts came over to see Jadon, and they hung around to watch tv and chit-chat. My mum won some money in today's 4D with one of the numbers she 'deduced' from the baby's full month. Now this was a landmark event, although the winnings were meagre, because she very rarely wins anything at all. Hence she attributed good fortune with Jadon, so baby got himself another ang pow. There is a good reason why we named him Jadon, which is hebrew for thankful, because he sure is blessed. As a spillover benefit, my mum sponsored Ben & Jerry's ice cream for everybody, so that was great. Hehe.

Sun 28 Sep

It was back to church today. We were ushered, oddly enough, one big round and ended up not able to find seats till much later. That was a peculiar experience. After that, I had a combined cell with Collin's boys. We had something else planned originally, but it ended up as a disciplining talk eventually when the teachable moment occured. I came home and settled the eInvite for Jadon's full month birthday after fiddling with eVite for a while, with some frustrations.

I revamped the Living Room interface, which is the main page of my website. The previous version came from an idea that I wanted no text on the screen, with different icons being different links, and they were all some items one could find in the house, and put them all on a 'cupboard'. Eventually, the cupboard arrangement became cluttered as I spawned more and more mini-sites, each with a separate link. I finally squeezed out the time and effort, and reorganized the interface to be a cleaner one with sub-menus (still clickable icons, of course). I think now it looks more zen, and I always prefer more "white space" (borrowing a term from curriculum planning) on my webdesigns. If you do check it out, please give me some comments on whether it is an improvement to the appearance. The previous version should still be found here, but I think my friend will purge the files from the server pretty soon.

After hearing my colleague mentioned a cheap server hosting that is available, I decided to finally take the plunge. I subscribed to the server hosting, and got myself a domain name. I had always felt uncomfortable borrowing server space from my friend on his benruth.com, and furthermore, my website had gradually evolved to a sprawl of many mini-sites. If I wanted room for further expansion, I guess it was only inevitable that I did this. Now I have 10 Gb to play with! It is way more than enough, since I won't want to make the individual files too big and slow to load.

So now I present to you: www.kianseh.net

I had just migrated the existing pages and files over, and I doubt I would have time to update the respective mini-sites. Perhaps in the upcoming holidays I would, in case I am tasked once again to present on weblogging and web design for some mass civics.

I went home as early as I could, getting a ride back from my colleague who stays in Pasir Ris as well. A couple of friends who had vanished for a while, Junhao and Charmine, came over to visit when they heard about the baby. After a long chat with them, I think I got a clearer idea why they were busy enough to have disappeared. Still, it was good to meet up with them again, and to see that they were doing well. I guess nowadays it is really competitive in the universities, and it is shocking what one has to slog for to distinguish himself from the rest of the cohort and stand out. Even that is insufficient apparently, since it is also against foreign talent that one competes against in already saturated industries. America's woes make the climate doubly foreboding.

I am so grateful to have a job, especially one that I enjoy.

Time for a few pictures!

Here's Jadon posing as a kissing fish! I think he really likes mouthing the letter "O"...

This shot has him looking like he's in really serious contemplation.

The last one is yet another contented-smiling-in-sleep shot.

Wed 24 Sep

Today was nothing short of utterly exhausting. I only had one lesson in the morning, but following that was one long meeting on a big project, a quick lunch followed by the usual staff conference. Immediately following that, there was another meeting with this guy who we pilot-tested a new LMS for the TA programme. The software was not bad, but most importantly they were willing to totally customize it according to our feedback, so feedback we gave. And that stretched till nearly 5 pm. I think my brain was burning out from excessive meetings.

Jadon was supposedly cooperative in the daytime, but when I was feeding him, he decided to be a merlion and spewed milk halfway. He was then irascible in the wee hours, waking up wailing at 3 am in the morning. I think being in the Armour unit before was a good thing. There I learnt how to sleep despite high decibel noise. I applied the same technique and plastered one ear to the pillow and a cushion to the other ear, and voided my mind of the crying after summoning my mother-in-law for help. Don't misunderstand; I only shirk my fatherly duties when I have work the next day, for now, while my wife is still on maternity leave.

Thu 25 Sep

I had lessons in the morning, and was clearing some long-due marking. Today, I was finally able to go once again to the weekly pilgrimage to Old Airport Road. What was unique was that while one of our staple pilgrims fell sick, suddenly a horde of seven other colleagues joined the remaining two of us and made up a motley crew of nine. I was sad to find that the sliced fish bee hoon that I wanted to eat (since last week) was closed! So was the excellent lor mee. In the end, I went for the safe choice of Whitley Road Prawn Mee, and made up for my disappointment with nice red ruby from Blanco Court dessert stall, and topped it with one fried durian fritter. Man, I missed coming here. For the past two weeks, I had depended on my colleagues to pack for me, but in such a circumstance, I have only one dish to eat. At Old Airport Road, I think I must order at least two or three different things to justify the visit. Bwahaha.

I returned in time to do invigilation to cover for the said sick pilgrim. In the late afternoon after the invigilation was done, I was about to leave for Bugis to eat dinner with my G12 brother Collin and then for cell, when my wife requested for my presence at home. Apparently, Jadon just sprayed shit all over the cot, and then hosed himself with pee, and my wife was fighting a sudden toothache and a nagging headache.

Poor baby was sick today. Yesterday he was regurgitating his milk, and today he ran a fever. My wife and mother-in-law brought him to the pediatrician for a checkup, but by the time he reached the clinic, his fever had subsided from 37.7 degrees Celsius to 37.2. The doctor said that it was probably colic, which seems to be a very common ailment for infants. Only when I was home did I see Jadon vomit his milk. At least with medication he was more manageable. Yesternight he was absolutely inconsolable, crying almost non-stop. Today his crying was more subdued, and he smiled fairly often from contentment.

I was waylaid by many students on my way back from class, so I left school later than I intended, but I made it all the same to the Town Council in time to book the pavilion near my place to hold a buffet to celebrate Jadon's full month with relatives and friends.

I finally added a link to the comic that I did for my wedding last year. What I showed in church was a video, but it was made from the jpeg images that I had just strung into a short comic book online. This website was done eons ago, but I keep forgetting to add the link. Or rather, I did not initially want to add the link because I didn't have time to update the main website to have a link to this minisite. Anyway, time is a luxury these days, so I guess I had better break down and itemize the things I want to do.

I have been talking with some students, and a couple of friends, and I realized something. Many people seem to slog for inappropriate reasons.

I have been asking the students I teach what they plan to do in the future - job, career, aspirations - and most were clueless. So many replied that they will try to do well for the exams first, and then see where they can go. To me, that is quite sad, because it should always be the other way round. A person must know where he is heading towards first, because that will set everything else in place. The reason why a student wants to score straight 'A's should be so that he has the power to choose where to go, but first he must know where he is going. The power to choose is essential, because otherwise a person will be left with what the university assigns him. Straight 'A's are but a means to an end, and that end is definitely not so that parents can go boast to their relatives about how smart their son or daughter is.

That perspective has not changed, but I have just recognized another aspect related to the concept of the power to choose. I realize from my own experience that my initial choice of chemical engineering was driven primarily by circumstance, and an initial desire to acquire a higher salary so that I could support myself and more importantly, my mother. The new aspect is this:

I want to be rich enough.

But not in a materialistic, self-satisfying way. I just need to be rich enough to not need any form of financial support, however meagre, from my child/children in the future. I need to be rich enough to save enough to provide my child/children the opportunity, should a scholarship or other options be out of reach, to pursue whatever they want. The power to choose their own course must first come with a financial freedom and liberation from any responsibility to support the family. I saw this when I was talking to a dear friend who is considering become a full time photographer, and he acknowledged that this route was possible only because his family is sufficiently well-to-do. I saw this looking at myself, feeling initially entrapped by a tuition-fee loan and a study loan in the university after turning down a scholarship offer from MOE because I had the misinformed perspective that becoming a teacher (then) didn't earn enough for me to do what I need to do.

I must become better at managing my finances so that in the future when Jadon decides on a path less travelled, I can say, "Go for it, son", and can provide not just moral support, but also the financial backing. That is my dream - that my children can live theirs freely.

Sat 20 Sep

I stayed at home the whole day to help out with the baby here and there, and made my way down to Suntec Convention Centre to take a look at the Gaming Convention Asia. Actually I have a colleague's wedding dinner at Marina Mandarin in the evening, so I deliberately set off about an hour earlier to go check it out.

It was quite disappointing. I think the main purpose of the GCA must be merely for showcasing, because most of the games featured there were existing games, with only one booth having preorder for an upcoming game. There were booths for Wii, PS3, Xbox 360, PC and online games. I saw quite a few cosplayers there too, although I wasn't sure whether they were invited there, paid to be there, or they deliberately showed up there in costume. It was quite interesting to see a Malay guy dressed up as Abarai Renji (from Bleach) though, to know how far the reach of anime is. The odd thing I found was that in all these conventions, there are always skimpily-clad girls around. Computer/IT fair, car show, gaming convention - it seems like there is always a market for girls dressed in slightly more than underwear. Is it because the target crowd of all the above-mentioned is men? I wonder if women are offended whenever they are at such events. At least the ones I see at IT fairs look adult; the ones I saw at the GCA look like teenagers no older than the students I teach. Does this count as exploitation?

Today's experience at Marina Mandarin was weird. The food was great as usual, as I have come to associate with the hotel. I think this is one of the rare times I see hotels employ Indians as banquet waiters for Chinese wedding dinners though; usually I see PRCs being employed for this purpose. The weird experience was that the dinner was surprisingly hurried. We started at 8.30 pm, and the whole thing ended by 10.30 pm! Everytime a dish was served, the waiter returned, wanting to clear the plate, when we were only about three-quarter way through. By the time this happened for the fourth dish, one colleague called for the manager to tell them to slow down. Not that I wanted to go home any later, but I think one female colleague summarized it pretty well when she exclaimed, "I can't even find a chance to go to the ladies!"

I think the waiter serving my table was quite inexperienced as well, which added to the frustration at times, until it became comical. He spilled quite a bit of the sharks' fin and dessert (one person's share of ice cream worth) when serving, and he mashed up the fish pretty awkwardly. He didn't manage to cut the fish meat apart properly, and he couldn't remove the centre bone (spine?) of the fish cleanly. The worst part was when he was serving the fried bee hoon, and for ten bowls he scooped for, for nine bowls the bee hoon touched the back of his hand near his thumb. The second bowl he was preparing, a strand of bee hoon stuck to his hand, and he was trying to shake it into the bowl! He was unsuccessful for a few seconds, whereupon he (perhaps realized it was unhygenic) then wiped it off on the edge of the lazy susan. It was so bad it became amusing to watch actually.

Sun 21 Sep

I went to service as usual, and Ps Khong was on the hyper side today. After service, I went with one of my boys to Daily Fresh at Eastpoint to have some ice cream, before heading back to White Sands to buy a whole load of heavy stuff, namely cartons of fresh milk (not from China) and a 5 kg sack of rice. Last time usually my wife paid for the groceries, and I pay for the daily meals, but now that she was confined, I did the grocery-shopping (with the aid of shopping lists from her, of course) so I felt the pinch. Especially topping up all the baby stuff like diapers and milk powder. Fwah. GST offset package for October is not bad; it can help me cover about two to three weeks' worth of baby stuff. In all honesty, I think one thing that works against the government's advocation of having more kids is just the same old inflation.

Mon 22 Sep

It was back to school. The next round of marking had not come in yet, so I had a little bit of breathing space, which one project conveniently suffocated away soon. Fortunately, I could bring that back home to do, so I called it a day early, and went with three colleagues to have a good lunch at Waraku because they were coming over to my place to visit my wife and baby. I think the Waraku at Katong should be better than the Marina Square one I went to. Today's food was of the right taste and not too salty as my prior experience at the other outlet. I ate a huge portion and topped it off with dessert before we headed to my place. My colleagues hung around for a while and chatted quite a bit before they left. I think seeing the baby had started to surface some maternal instincts in them.

Thu 18 Sep

I went back to school and marked in my typical flurry, and finished all the marking by 9+ am, way ahead of everyone. My colleague called my marking speed "abnormal" and "obscene", which I take to be compliments. Bwahaha. I settled some administrative tasks, and met two groups of TA1 students for consultations.

In the afternoon, I went to meet a Zaobao journalist for an interview with my colleague and my principal. Apparently they were having an article on innovation and enterprise in education, and they caught wind of my card game. I always found it odd to pose for pictures because it feels very unnatural, and the poor students who were roped in to be calefare mistakenly thought it was for Temasek Times, our internal publication. By now, I guess I no longer think much of appearing on the papers. The first time I saw my name on the newspapers, I felt so excited. The next few times, the enthusiasm had waned. Presently, I think this should be the sixth time already, so it felt rather routine. Still, it is good publicity for the school and the game, if only we can settle the commercialization process soon. Sigh.

Anyway, I am glad that the two grandmothers (my mother and mother-in-law) work quite well together in the kitchen and around the house. So far, there hadn't been major conflicts, and as I had mentioned earlier, the presence of the baby seemed to have invigorated both of them. I guess everyone still has plenty of love to give.

Fri 19 Sep

Today was again a bustle of administrative work, and tallying of marks of scripts already marked. I met a couple of TA1 students for consultation, and after their questions were answered, we hung around to chat for quite some time. For lunch, a group of us made our way to Vivocity to eat at the Crystal Jade Dining In there. The food selection was of course different from the commonplace Crystal Jade Kitchen, but the dim sum was fabulous. There was this hot stone pot rice dish that was delicious as well, and the desserts were definitely superior to the other Crystal Jade restaurants I had been to, especially the durian pudding.

After that, we rushed back to college (for my sake) so that I was in time for invigilation of the Chemistry MCQ paper, which was the last paper for the students. The whole chemistry team stayed a while more after that to use the optical scanner to mark all the MCQ scripts, and I finally got back all the various sections for my classes. I tallied the marks, and was glad to see many students who improved, although I was expecting them to do better still, based on my estimates of their progress. Anyway, this would be their finest hour, and the final lap of the race. I know that they will prove their worth in the time of reckoning.

Mon 15 Sep

I was so glad I completed my marking on Friday, so today I could concentrate on my TA1 lessons. I think I finally see more of the TA1 students getting serious (and anxious) about the upcoming Promotional Exams, and it ought to be a good sign. In fact, they were so concerned that many separate groups booked me for this week for consultation. I met one group after class today actually, before I went off to Hair De Vogue to get my hair cut.

I think Calvin (my hairdresser, the boss of the salon) is a really nice guy. Last year when I was getting married to my wife and she went over to get her hair done, Calvin gave her a free treatment as a 'present'. If I'm not wrong, a treatment session like that should cost at least $100. Today, when we were talking and he found out that my wife gave birth already, he gave me an ang pow on my way out. I thought the gesture alone already showed generosity and a nice human touch, but man, he actually put $40 in there! Well, based on his skills alone, even if he didn't do any of these things, my wife and I would still be going to him anyway, so I seriously doubt it was about customer retention. In any case, I think he really does value longstanding customer relationships.

I picked up some groceries at Sheng Shiong before heading home. Nowadays, groceries seem to bite a big chunk off my wallet.

Tue 16 Sep

Since I finished my marking, I took a day off today to stay at home to help out. I spent a couple of hours cleaning the hamster cages, and managed to sneak in little bouts of gaming on the Wii and Xbox 360 here and there at some lull periods. It is good to be home the full day, because I can catch all the funny sounds that Jadon makes, and see his funny expressions. Now we really recognize his sounds when he communicates. He cries sounds of "eh heh" when he wants milk, for instance. When he cries longer, drawn-out sounds, it's likely he pooped or peed.

Wed 17 Sep

Well, it was back to marking today. The structured paper was coming in today, so I took the chance to quickly settle some other administrative tasks before the onslaught of marking. I couldn't mark much before a group of TA1 students came by to find me at 1 plus. Right after they were done with their questions, I had to go for the staff conference. Immediately after that, I had a briefing with my vice-principal. By the time I was back in the staff room, it was 4.30 pm. I marked furiously till about 6.15 pm, and cleared 18 classes for my question before calling it a day.

I dropped by White Sands to buy a champagne-coloured rose for my wife. Usually we sort of celebrate our monthly anniversary by having a good meal on the 17th of every month. Since now she is confined for this month, I thought I'd give her a little surprise to brighten her day a bit. Next month then I bring her to eat good stuff. I wonder when she can eat sashimi again, because she had restricted her diet since she knew about her pregnancy.

Mothers are noblest of creatures indeed. Across species.

Time for some pictures! This one's taken on Day 7 when he was smiling and trying to play.

The next one's taken on Day 10 when he was sound asleep (as babies tend to be).

This one was when he was wide awake after being bathed.

The last one was when he was smiling to himself in his sleep. He must be dreaming of milk or something.

Thu 11 Sep

It's also a good thing that I took leave today. I managed to change Jadon's diapers all by myself today! Usually, it is a team effort with my wife, or my mother-in-law does it single-handedly. After helping out with the baby in the morning, I brought Jadon down to East Shore Hospital with my mother-in-law to the pediatrician for his first checkup. Thank God his mild jaundice disappeared by itself, so there was no more need for us to bring him out to the sun. The doctor said baby was healthy and everything was normal. The nurse outside, when she was weighing him, commented that he really could twist. I think Jadon inherited his father's strong back. Haha.

After the checkup, I went to register his birth. I didn't know now the Singapore IC numbers start with "T" instead of "S"! I waited very long at the counter, for stupid reasons. I was there early, and the receptionist told me to drop off the form at the in-tray of the birth registration counter, and I did so. The guy in charge came later, and did not see my form! Then this guy just went up to him and passed him his form directly. I went over, and the guy in charge gave me a curt "Yes?" and I was quite pissed off. So I asked him if I was supposed to leave my form in the tray, and he nodded. So I actually got penalized for following procedures. Great. What was worse was that the guy who butted in had not filled in any of the three forms (two were for the baby package stuff), so he took almost half an hour for his turn. I was seething with anger at one point until God asked me gently, "Why are you so angry?" I finally calmed down, and eventually when it was my turn, I could chat with the guy at the counter even. Sometimes we get worked up over rather trivial things huh? I suppose it was the fact that my baby was asleep in my mother-in-law's arms all this while, and I just want to hurry back home to put him back in his cot.

Anyway, now my son is officially a Singaporean, with the name Low Zung Heng Jadon, or Liu Junxuan (in Hanyu Pinyin), or 刘俊轩. Great! Now there is yet another person to go through the agony of correcting everyone who mispronounces the surname.

Fri 12 Sep

I went back to school today to face a ton of work. The prelim paper came in yesterday morning, so I was lagging by one day of marking time. Sometimes I really think that God wired me for teaching right from the start, because I am able to read scripts and process them rather quickly. Now I can't say that I don't make any mistakes, but for the past four years, considering that I always mark at an astronomical speed, I have fewer students coming to me to claim marks for my marking mistakes relatively. So the speed came with some good degree of accuracy still. Anyway, I marked for an hour from 8 to 9, and then went off to meet some vendors to condemn some PCs.

That was when everything went wrong. The vendor was fussy about the CRT monitors, and refused to accept some at first. Then I realized that the monitors in the computer lab were actually bolted down by screws that required a special Allen key to remove, which none of the set of Allen keys I borrowed could fit. In the end, I borrowed a pair of pliers and painstakingly unscrewed twenty-five monitors, i.e. fifty tight screws, with poor leverage and grip. Other things also went wrong, and in the end, after much negotiation, finally the whole thing was settled only at 12.30 pm. That was frustrating on two counts. First, I was dying to get back to marking. You see, I'm really not used to not finishing marking first. Lately though, circumstances force me otherwise. Sigh. Second, this condemnation task that had befallen me I personally feel was the worst piece of work I had done since I entered the school. Although my HOD IT kept telling me that the mess was due to a variety of reasons and largely due to handing over issues between Technical Assistants, I think my personal convictions about professionalism made me feel like I botched it.

I returned to marking after lunch at 1 pm, and marked for three hours, and I finished for my part of the question for the whole cohort! Bwahaha. Thank God that when I was away and the rest of the team drew lots, the last one that was not picked (which would become mine) was a 8-mark part (most of the other lots were 10-mark worth), for a question that my colleagues said was not heavily attempted. Of course, that may be a grass-is-greener-on-the-other-side perspective, since it always felt like the question someone else was marking had fewer attempts. In any case, I finished in four hours what my colleagues spread over two days to do. I rushed like mad just so that I could finish early, and take an off day next week to help out at home and spend more time with Jadon. That was sufficient motivation to make me chiong like mad.

According to my wife, I missed out the exciting events of the day: Jadon squirted urine on his own face, squirted a ray of shit onto the bed, and squirted a jet of milk when fed. I think there is nothing left to squirt already...

Sat 13 Sep

I stayed at home the whole day, spending time with the baby, and squeezing out pockets of time to play a few rounds of combat in Soul Calibur IV on the Xbox 360, and to wave the Wii remote around in a few rounds of combat in Bleach Shattered Blade on the Wii. Now I couldn't afford to play RPGs and the like, since I no longer have long stretches of free time at my disposal. So it's a fifteen minute bout and then I'm off the console.

My wife's third and fourth aunt came by to visit the baby, so it was a rowdy time in the bedroom. Tonight Jadon was wide awake again, so it took us two hours to get him tired enough to fall asleep and that was about 2 am in the morning.

Sun 14 Sep

I went off to church service and had cell group after that, leaving my wife and mother-in-law to handle the baby. Today's sermon was powerful, and I still am processing the thoughts left from it.

I don't know why, but the alignment of the blog post always becomes weird when pictures are uploaded. So I guess I'll blog all the text separately, and the pictures in a separate post perhaps. Hmmm.

It was a splendid choice to take leave today, because I really made myself useful today around the house, and managed to escort my wife to the gynae for a checkup. Nowadays there are quite a few indirect costs incurred, especially cabfare. I wonder if increasing the baby bonus would have much of an effect. I blogged earlier that it may help tip the balance of those already wavering on the decision to have kids. $4000 is not a small sum indeed. However, compared to the potential costs for the next many years, $4000 seems paltry suddenly. I estimate the current expenditure on items such as the cot, pram, and etc, to gynae checkups and all, to have built up past $4000 already, and baby is only five days old! I think the only implication this has is really to tighten the belts, and spend less on ourselves.

Anyway, there shouldn't be much time and opportunity to spend on ourselves. Heh.

I think babies must have healing powers! Haha. My mother and mother-in-law, who previously complained of bad knees and legs, now climb upstairs at home on a daily basis when they struggled before this. Guess the desire to see and take care of Jadon is sufficient to help them overcome physical difficulties. In the morning when they took him out to sun him (fight against jaundice), they were actually squatting around him. It is really heartening to see both grandmothers working hand-in-hand to take care of him.

He smiled a few times today, but the camera wasn't quick enough to capture that. We did however get some peculiar faces. Here he is, trying to stick his tongue out at us.

And here he is, looking like he was going to say, "ooooooooh".

I'd always held the view that sorrow made a far better muse than joy, and hence most of my poems written in the past were not joyous ones. But I think poems are inspired by experiences, just that most of the time the bad ones are usually more striking than the good ones.

I suppose it takes one huge experience like childbirth to awake this poet's slumbering writing streak once more. Here are two sonnets written inbetween feeding and changing diapers that baby Jadon will get to read. Eventually...when he learns to read. Haha.


SURREAL

The recent years were merciless in pace;
I had witnessed new vicissitudes
In accelerated magnitude –
Too astonishing were I to retrace.
It was amazing how my life could change
So drastically in so short a span,
Resulting in, despite the best-laid plans,
A reality both surreal and strange.
Three years ago, I still had yet to meet
That special someone who surpassed all others;
The next, I was fiancé of a sweet
Young lady; wedded husband in another,
And without the missing of a beat,
This year I had become a fledgling father!


A FATHER'S PRIDE

You were always in my prayers, since
The moment that I knew you were conceived.
And I at once was thoroughly convinced
This was from God the best gift I’d received
I was constantly surprised how thrilled
I felt to hear your tiny heartbeat drum
At every doctor’s visit, and how filled
With joy I was to see your growing form.
Now there I was, in the delivery room,
And with excitement inexplicable
I witnessed your exodus from the womb
To emerge triumphant to this world;
At that instant, two sentiments collided –
A mother’s pleasure and a father’s pride.

Now I know why my male colleagues whose wives just gave birth all returned to school looking like pandas and semi-zonked out. I hit the bed essentially at 1.45 am, after settling the laundry (since I was the most able person in the house to run up and down) and helping to settle the baby down, but most of the hard work was done by my mother-in-law and my wife. At 3 am I woke up to help with the milk bottle. At this point, Jadon isn't getting enough milk from my wife yet so we are supplementing with some formula first. That took close to an hour, plus coaxing and all. So counting the time, I had about 3 hours of sleep. I was technically still functional, since I am used to nocturnal hours after all. But not sleeping early because of anime and because of a baby are worlds apart in the scale of mental and physical exhaustion.

I tried to settle some work in the morning, but some critical things cropped up, so I found myself running all over the college for quite a while. Anyway, since I had no official duties tomorrow and on Thu, I decided to take leave to spend more time with baby. Anyway, some of the work that I need to do can be done from home, so why not? Don't waste the days of leave that I can take.

I was home in time for his first official bath! Actually, I forgot to take a picture of the process, but my mother-in-law said that he didn't cry much, compared to her nephews. I did catch a picture of the cleaned-up and fresh Jadon though.

Today I decided to try feeding him the formula by myself. Maybe baby is light enough so he was quite easy to hold. But even then, after a while, the forearms will ache still. Haha. Here's a shot of me feeding him, taken by my wife. I think I've really put on weight at my cheeks, but everyone will be looking at the baby and wouldn't notice right?

Before I went out of the house to go and buy some other baby necessities, I managed to snap a few shots of him in odd poses. Here's a 'hear no evil' pose.

Here's little superman, minus the invincibility. Up, up and away!

The last one's a muscleman pose, minus the biceps.

Now I know why they call babies little bundles of joy. They are really wrapped up in tight little bundles, and are joyful to watch. It is amazing that I don't feel the least bit annoyed to hear Jadon crying, even in the middle of the night, while other babies' wails generally sound nerve-grating. If that is not paternal/maternal love, I don't know what else that could be.

It's amazing how babies reflect absolute serenity and innocence when they sleep.

Not so when they start crying though. Haha.

The most focused time during a human being's life must be when he is a baby. There are only three things in his lifestyle: eat (drink milk), poop (and pee), and sleep. It is easy to appear serene when these are the only things you are concerned about, isn't it? When we grow older, we have so many distractions like the PC, Xbox, Wii, and etc that deprive us of sleep, and work that reduces our time to eat (properly).

I think deep down inside, everyone has the innate desire to return to this state. Enigma got it right by naming their song "Return to Innocence". I mean, isn't it so? Almost everyone hopes for early retirement, and for what purpose? To live a peaceful and serene life, which more or less entails a lifestyle of eating, pooping and sleeping. Essentially. See? Babies live enviable lives.

Today we take on official responsibility. Yesterday, much of the shitty work (literally) was handled by the nursery nurses. I salute them. It's not easy to handle one baby, and they take care of so many, day in day out. We had a first hand experience changing the diapers of Jadon, and it was tough. Not the smell, but the fact that he hates being changed, and he was kicking all over. It took me, my wife, and my mother-in-law to clean, change the diapers and settle the baby down. I've got a long, long way to go. Like my pastor says, the biggest problem with parenting is that by the time you learnt enough to get it right, your kid is all grown up, and you can't apply the same knowledge to the next kid.

Mother and child returned home today at noon. My mother-in-law and my wife's aunt came as a helpful entourage. After that, it was a hectic afternoon and evening. I think my wife spent half the time as a milk dispenser. Anyway, at the hospital, a lady came to talk to us about breastfeeding. It's amazing how the body is tailored to sustain a new life. God's engineering is extraordinary indeed. I must once again return to the efficient old self when I did not bring any work home to do, because it is practically impossible to do anything else.

Originally I had thought of creating a separate blog for baby, as many friends of mine had done. But after much consideration, I think it is a dumb idea. Firstly, it doesn't make sense to blog about baby separately. After all, he is now the most happening event of my life. Secondly, it looks like a good part of my day, and probably night inclusive of sleeping hours, will revolve around the little one, so it would leave very little to talk about, unless it was a heck of a day at work.

Jadon is now three days old! Eats more, poops more. Takes after the dad apparently. Bwahaha.

A new chapter of my life has been unveiled, and his name is Jadon. As of 10.08 am on 6th September 2008, I have crossed the threshold into fatherhood.

The whole process was quite inconspicuous at first. On Friday, my wife and I were still going around shopping for some last few items that we need for the baby. She had been getting some passing cramps since yesterday, and today it had yet to subside. We weren't sure whether they were contractions, and so my wife still insisted on finishing our shopping before going back to rest. The cramps came more frequently, but didn't last very long. According to most websites, contractions were supposed to last about a minute, and hers was maybe half a minute at most. She tried to go to sleep, but was kept awake by the pain. Of course, so was I.

By 3 am in the morning, this was still continuing, so I told her we should go to the hospital to check. She was afraid of wasting money should it be a false alarm, but I insisted. At a time like this, money seemed to be of the absolute lowest priority. Her dad came by to fetch us to Eastshore, and I settled the registration process. The nurse did a check, and confirmed that the cramps were contractions! I called the family to inform them, and messaged all my brothers and sisters in Christ to uphold us in prayer. (Thanks to all who were alongside us in prayer!) That was at about 4 am in the morning already, and I was shocked to have one colleague actually reply me at that kind of hour. Anyway, the nurse said that the cervix was only 1.5 cm dilated, and told us we had a long way to go. The cervix had to be about 10 cm dilated for the baby to be able to come out. Apparently, the average rate was about 1 cm dilation per hour, so the estimated time should be 12 noon.

I dozed off here and there inbetween helping my wife get water, shift herself and etc. At about 7.30 am our gynae came by, and seeing that the water bag had not burst, he manually bursted it. Apparently I have no aversion or fear of seeing blood, so I was there throughout the whole delivery. By then the nurse was up and about, and I caught some shut-eye.

The next thing I knew, it was about 9 am in the morning, and I suddenly awoke to see my wife grabbing her thighs with both hands, pushing like mad, under the nurse's coach-like instructions. I quickly got up and went to hold her and encourage her. My wife is impressively determined. She tried to withstand the pain using the 'laughing gas', and only when she really couldn't take it anymore, she succumbed to taking a pain-relieving injection, but refused to have an epidural, which is a pregnant woman's easy way out. In actual fact, this process took quite a long time, because she had to push the baby all the way till his head was at the vaginal opening. The nurse called the gynae halfway, and asked him to come over to use the vacuum pump to aid the delivery.

He came by, and cracked a few light jokes, and then started making all the preparations. He took a syringe for local anaesthesia and injected into the vagina area. He then snipped away to enlarge the opening to push in the vacuum pump head. I saw plenty of blood there, but I could still stomach the sight. Actually I was quite curious, so I kept sticking my head out to see whether baby was coming out yet. Still, the sight of the bloodied mess made me feel a gush of overwhelming love for my wife, and respect for all mothers. Finally, the gynae managed to fix the pump onto baby's head, and with one great push from my wife, I finally saw the head appear!

The gynae then detached the pump, and placed one hand under baby's head, and the other was ready to catch baby's body when he came out. When one final push, in one swift moment, the whole baby emerged, with a whole rush of blood and other tissue accompanying. I still could stomach that part, but what made me cringe was when I saw the gynae stitching up the part he snipped open, oddly enough. And then he pulled out the whole placenta, which was a grey and red monstrous-looking life-sustaining tisssue. Anyway, the feeling I had when I saw baby being delivered was simply indescribable. It was perhaps a mixture of awe, love, excitement and relief all at the same instant.

Here is a picture of the triumphant, radiant mother with our newborn son, Liu Junxuan Jadon.

















The next shot is a nice little family portrait.

















The last one's a closeup shot of the baby.

Ooops, a 14-day post. I guess I couldn't find the time to blog this week because of incessant gaming. Bwahaha.

Fri 22 Aug

After school, I met my wife and we went down to Ikea together. We had to do some shopping for some odds and ends for the house and for baby. We had dinner there, and even went to Giant to search for some things that we needed.

Sat 23 Aug

Today was massive housecleaning plus packing day to make room for baby, and to clean up many things that baby would use/sleep in. Simple sounding, but extremely tiring.

Sun 24 Aug

My wife and I went to first service today because we were expecting visitors in the afternoon, and we headed out to Eastpoint to have lunch after service. I brought her to Eighteen Chefs, which had excellent baked rice. I tried their new dish, which was a root beer battered fish, and that was delicious too. So far, the food there had not disappointed once. On our way home, we went to Japan Home and bought a cheap but nice shoe rack for the house.

In the afternoon, our pregnant colleague and her husband (who happened to be my friend from JC days...small world) came over, and my wife's good friend and husband also dropped by, and the most important person of all was this representative from the Breastfeeding Association (not sure what the actual name was) who was the cousin of my wife's good friend. She came down to talk to my wife and our pregnant colleague about breastfeeding and other stuff related to pregnancy and infants. As for me, I was spending most of the time catching up with my JC friend. Amazingly that representative still breastfeeds her boy of 34 months! And carries him in a sling sometimes. A case of over-coddling? Hmm.

Our colleague and husband then drove my wife and I to Downtown East and we had dinner at Nihon Mura. I had gone there for buffet on several occasions, and I like the food there. Today was the first time I ate the ala carte stuff, and it was excellent fare as well. E!Hub is a good place for food. In deprived Pasir Ris, that is.

Mon 25 Aug

The year 2s are away on study break! That sounded like it should herald in rest and relaxation, but on the contrary, I had one meeting that lasted from 8 am to 3 pm with only an hour gap inbetween for lunch. That was the rigour we go through when we set our Prelim papers. Haha. We vet, and we vet, and we vet. Long discussions to weed out errors as far as possible.

Professionalism indeed, but man, that was waaaaay too long a meeting for one day.

Tue 26 Aug

After a long meeting and clearing a lot of work, I went down with my colleague to Shangri-La hotel for a buffet lunch. My colleague ZH was treating another colleague and me in celebration of our efforts in a project to update the school's corporate video. I went straight for the good stuff, whacking loads of sashimi (salmon belly!), oysters and crab. Of course, I filled my stomach with carbohydrates too, in the form of pasta, and had lots of meat before settling for dessert. The food there was generally excellent, but it was way above budget for me if it weren't a treat, i.e. on my own, I wouldn't go there. I think $35 is the maximum I would spend on a buffet meal (I'm using Ikoi ala carte Japanese buffet as a point of reference).

Wed 27 Aug

Today was simple. Meetings after meetings till the afternoon, and I went to my in-laws' place for dinner. Apparently, despite the fact that the year 2s are away on study break, and my TA1s were having their electives, I find myself having significantly less free time due to Prelim discussions and other meetings.

Thu 28 Aug

I had a series of meetings in the morning till lunch time, and after grabbing lunch, I headed down to the gynae with my wife. We didn't want to waste the trip in a way, so we wandered down to Suntec to check out the Comex. My wife just wanted to find out what goodies there were for renewing the Maxonline subscription, but there wasn't anything interesting. I went there looking for a good deal for Wii, but thought that it was only so-so, and ended up buying only one Xbox 360 game Soul Calibur IV. We had dinner at Bakerz Inn, and the food there turned out to be quite good. The pumpkin soup was thick and rich, and I liked it despite not liking pumpkin particularly. The mushroom pasta I had was delicious as well.

Since we were in town, we went over to Marina Square to have a walk, and finally bought a lava lamp. Apparently both my wife and I had separately thought of having one in the house, so this was the perfect opportunity.

Fri 29 Aug

Today was staff day celebrations! I received some presents and cards from my students, and it was especially heartwarming to see the year 2 students come back despite the fact that it was their study break to give presents to their teachers. Anyway the whole celebrations lasted only a short while. I had meetings before and after the celebrations, disrupting my original plan of going over to my colleague's place where we had a massive gathering. I went there late with other colleagues, and I was in time to play some mahjong, winning a little bit, and sing one song at the karaoke room, but didn't manage to try out the Wii set. The Wii games looked fun, and had a low learning curve, so it was good to entertain guests.

I went back home to change and rest, and then headed over to White Sands to get a cab. We detoured a little to play the Sports Fiesta at the shopping centre, and I had to go through the bowling, golf, soccer and basketball sections. Interestingly enough, I cleared everything except the golf station. When I was at the soccer station where I was supposed to lob the ball through a small hole one foot off the ground, there were TJC students who happened to be there! I thought to myself that I must not malu and did kick the ball in on the first try, to the surprise of the people at the station. (Over the next few days, whenever I passed by, I noted that nobody managed to get it in...) Hmm.

After that we took a cab down to Changi Village hotel where the college was having a Staff Day Dinner. For the price per table, the food was pretty decent. The cold plate was not bad, but the sharks' fin was a bit too starchy. The chicken tasted a little too sweet, but the remaining dishes were all alright. The most important takeaway from the dinner was that I managed to consult my colleague on the teochew translation of my son's name 俊轩, and it turned out to be Zung Hiang.

Sat 30 Aug

There was the Ed Silvoso conference today in the afternoon, and I went for it after finishing some chores. The whole thing was quite interesting, but the third session was essentially a 'rerun' of some content from last year's conference, so I left halfway to get dinner for my now-very-hungry wife because the third session grossly overshot. Apparently the session ended one hour later than stipulated, so I made the right strategic move.

Sun 31 Aug

I went to service as usual, and it was Ps Ed Silvoso preaching today. He was losing his voice, so he played the video recording of his sermon during first service instead. It felt pretty strange to be doing things that Ps Ed in the video instructed us to, like holding hands across the isle to pray, and etc. After service, I had a combined cell with Collin's boys, and for today, we got our G12 leader down to share and spend time with all the boys. After the cell, some of them hung around to play Soul Calibur IV, and they were hooked.

Mon 1 Sep

I had to wake up early in the morning to make my way down to Bukit Merah. It's the annual Teachers' Day Conference held by my church. Today was the third time I was seeing Ps Ed Silvoso preach, but it was a good session. He shared many interesting things, although he seemed to advertise his books a little too much. Originally, I had thought that he would be showing the same old video and talk about the same old things, so I played games till very late last night, leaving me with less than four hours of sleep, but it turned out that the video he showed was an update on Hawaii, made recently to discuss the revival happening in the entire state. For my lack of sleep, there wasn't a point in time I was sleepy, so it was a good session indeed. I toyed with the idea of going down to Ang Mo Kio hub to buy the Wii I'd been itching to get, but dismissed it and went home for some needed sleep.

Tue 2 Sep

I had a dental appointment early in the morning, and thank God, no other cavities! So it was a mere routine cleaning. I grabbed a quick (sucky) lunch at the food court in Raffles City, and then decided that I would not resist temptation anymore, and set off for Ang Mo Kio hub where my colleague mentioned that he got his modified Wii at a good price. The shop that I spotted first ran out of stock, and I almost took it as a sign that I should not buy the Wii, but I recalled that there seemed to be another shop, and it turned out that the latter shop was the correct one. So I went there, took my own sweet time to check out the games and set, and eventually bought the Wii, one extra set of controller with nunchuk, a zapper and a perfect shot, and a charger for the remotes. Ouch. That didn't come cheap, but at least the Wii games are family/guest/female-friendly, and I know my wife enjoys racing and shooting games, so we can finally have fun playing cooperatively together.

And had fun we did. I think whoever thought of putting the motion sensor in the remote and making the games relatively simple was a genius.

Wed 3 Sep

My wife was feeling uneasy about seeing the traces of blood she found, even after checking the internet and finding information that it is a normal sign of pregnancy. We set off for the gynae early in the morning after a good breakfast at Yakun to beat the crowds. The doctor said everything was fine, so that was good news indeed. We went back to my in-laws' place to rest for a while before going about to buy some odds and ends. We dropped by Comics Connection, and bought two more Wii games to add to the collection, but I think I'd better stop the purchases for a while. The rest of the day was filled with Wii and Xbox 360 gaming!

Thu 4 Sep

I woke up early today again because I needed to go back to school for a meeting. I settled some loose ends, and bought lunch back for my wife. I did massive vacuuming of most of the house. Her mum and sister came by in the afternoon, and we entertained ourselves on the Wii. For some reason, my sister-in-law seemed hooked on the table tennis game in the Mario & Sonic at the Olympics and wouldn't give up till she got the gold medal. We also ended up watching lots of television as well, so it was a relaxing day.