Author: charlestess

i was hesitant about posting about entertainment for two days straight, fearing that my flakiness might be overly apparent, but if you haven’t picked up on it by now, then really, i need to be a bit more obvious or you are being too kind and giving me credit i do NOT deserve. so without further ado, can i tell you how excited i am about this summers BOUND to be smash hit

MAMMA MIA?

i mean REALLY. let’s list the reasons.

1) abba music

2) filmed in greece

3) colin firth

4) meryl streep

5) pierce brosnan

these are big reasons people. i am very pleased.

there are three groups of people i have started making plans to see this flick with. can’t wait can’t wait can’t wait..

when tv was good for you

although there are great advantages to being on the cusp of young adulthood in this no longer brand new millenium era – i do feel sorry that young adults have missed out on great television. not to diminish what HBO has brought to our screens the last few years and the magic that is 30 rock – but here are some shows that kids today can still see on re-runs, but really, remember their heyday?

in no particular order…

10. LAW & ORDER – yes, still ongoing, but those early years were something else.

9. NYPD BLUE bobby’s death scene? big sniff.

8. ER – see number 10.

7. MASH. not so much the later years, but the earlier years.  it was on at 6.30pm.

6. CHEERS. absolutely brilliant dialogue. heck, i’m going to add FRASIER in the mix as well.

5. NORTHERN EXPOSURE. it made our southern friends stop laughing at us for living north of sixty. for a while, anyway.

4. SEINFELD. there’s a little bit of george in all of us, and that’s what kept us watching.

3. the x-files. cannot be duplicated. goodness knows there have been many attempts.

2. MAD ABOUT YOU/SPIN CITY/FRIENDS – is everyone in new york good looking and witty?

1. PICKET FENCES. brilliant.

thank goodness that television networks had the avarice to know that people like me would jump to buy boxed sets of erstwhile series. the other day charles and i were nearly an hour late getting to bed because we were engrossed in an episode of THE PRACTISE. (which also could be on this list).

what is there today for young peeps to watch? thank goodness for hbo and reruns.

what shows am i missing and should i add? the simpsons? the tracey ullman show? saturday night live?

young and old

brangelina having twins! and the always subtle jack black breaking the news to the world — i love that part.

our book club discussed WATER FOR ELEPHANTS last night – a book by canadian sara gruen. the opening sentence of the book is, "i am either 90 or 93. I forget". compounded by the fact that i recently saw THE SAVAGES (yay laura linney and philip seymour hoffman) – these past couple of weeks have made me very aware that one day, God willing, i am going to be very old. and the indignities that come with it. people thinking that they know better than you do what is better for you. (and they might, but still, that is frustrating also).

if a young, gorgeous, confident girl with flashy hair and mac lip glass announces, "the scent of poison and obsession perfume makes me ill. those heavy topnotes." people accept it. i drink coke but hate pepsi. oh i understand., mee tooo!! i thought i was the only one….

if a senior were to declare that, what is to say that they would be written off as truculent? overly particular?

truthfully, i loved the research & historical aspect of the book, but i felt the characters were poorly developed. everything but the story was great. the others seemed to agree, but we did talk alot about aging, how it is so tough unless you have the money to do it right. we also discussed why wages are so low for health care providers working in senior citizens homes.

in the character, protagonist jacob is upset that one of his children didn’t take him in. we discussed how we would feel. all of us living so far away from our parents, if we were asked to come home and care for a remaining parent. oh, it was a tough discussion at times.

one thing i did have a clear conscience about is that i have always been interested in my grandparents lives. my gran is the only remaining grandparent i have, and she is blessed with a clear memory. she lived in challenging times, she was a war bride, but has wonderful stories of life before the war, living with sisters and a lovely younger brother, my adorable uncle miles, how she and grandad met, courted and wed, life during those lonely and uncertain war years, and then the homecoming. and the following years, which are always good for blackmail purposes. so i do listen to her stories, unless she starts talking about how nice my sister pam is, and then i have to change the subject, because really, who needs to hear about how great pam is !!! it’s not like she’s a neuro surgery nurse or anything.

(i digress).

one day i hope i will be very old. when i imagine myself as very old, i don’t imagine any of the indignities. i just imagine no children asking me to wipe their bottoms and charles and i living somewhere near the water so he can make boats and i can read near it. it is unrealistic.

final statement: i recommend water for elephants. next month we’re reading the handmaid’s tale. anyone with insight into that, please send intelligent questions and answers.

we had a fantastic time.

(some of us more fantastic than others).

charles and dale had taken care of everything. i literally just had to decide which books i would bring and which clothes and we were off.

we travelled first class by hydrafoil to macau. all eight kids were so well behaved. stephanie assigned her two oldest boys to hold hands with our girls, and carys was just fine with that but sela decided she was going to be a cow. so poor cade is trailing her, sela with her little bum wig-wagging back and forth, hands tucked under her armpits, looking at his mother imploringly, "muumm???" but eventually sela thawed. jasper and grant chatted and all was well. dale and steph brought their brilliant helper as well. her name is sonia. she has known all our kids since they were tiny, as she is the manager of the creche at church. needless to say, we have COMPLETE confidence in her.

on the hydrafoil, sonia got a seat to herself, charles, sebastian and ian (steph and dale’s 6y.o.) in one row, then sela, carys and grant, steph, me, jasper, and cade, tre, and dale. perfect.

steph and i are much better with things if we don’t know the price. i loved travelling first class on the hydrafoil, but 266 per ticket? i liked it more before i knew the cost.

our rooms were fantastic, but the beds were twins! gah! sonia was to share a room with two boys and have one on the floor, charles and i were to have three kids in with us, and steph and dale were meant to have jasper and grant in their room.

but first we swam, and played in the hottub, and then had a fantastic massage.

but of course, being me, i had to get tetchy about something. here’s this. most resorts have a lending library of sorts. you know, you leave what you’re reading, and can pick up a book to read and return it. believe me, i can read a book in 24 hours. to be on the safe side, when i found their lending library, i selected a danielle steel. cut that down to 4 hours. max.

our room was on the top floor, furthest from the lift. and this lending library was UNDER LOCK AND KEY. seriously. i have never experienced that before. and when i told the girl i wanted to get a book, she agreed and asked for a 100hkd deposit, which would be returned with the book. seriously!

this is a lending library, not the thicker than my duvet bathrobe!

so i told her forget it, and walked away. but i mean really.

at dinner time, carys announced she was tired and wanted to put on her pajamas and go to sleep. sela said, "me too!". easy enough. the boys (6) went into sonia’s room to watch a dvd. "underdog". steph and i had baths to calm down our massage oils in hair head and apparently, as steph was coming up from a rise, she opened her eyes to find all six boys in the bathroom staring down at her.

tragedy! the dvd wasn’t working.

steph hustled them out of there, but not before sebastian could ask, "where’s my dad?" and steph, being angelic, didn’t answer any of the things i would have, just said, "he’s not in here!"

she got the dvd working (she is v. handy), the men smoked cigars, we ordered dessert, the dvd finished, seb came to our room and we put him down for the night. jasper fell asleep in sonia’s bed, after happily announcing, "i’m wearing pullups!".

at sparrow’s fart and song, sebastian awoke. he was sleeping right next to the terrace, so first light hit him strong. and suddenly charles and i heard, "mummy, daddy, i’m hungry." we threw a granola bar at him and an apple but the damage was done. it was 5.20am.

by 6am sela was awake. 6.30, carys. at 6.45 my husband took the kids for breakfast. (i had moved sebastian on to the bed by this point in hopes he would fall back asleep. i slept on the floor until around 8am. went to find my family. learned that jasper had woken up at 6am, and had said to sonia, "where’s grant?" and then when she said, "jj, it is still bed time!" he had gone back to sleep. glad that it worked for her.

more sun, more pool, lots of splashing, torpedos, submarines, and then it was time to come home. it felt like we were gone for much longer than 24 hours. it was fantastico!

MACAU!

i wsa just awakened by the wonderful news that we are going to macau today to spend the night at the westin family resort.

i am very thrilled.

all the family is going, and why not. it is mother’s day, not couple’s day.

in going, sela and jasper will have to miss radhika’s birthday party tomorrow. i explained this news to them and they reacted with rather stony faces, and i think a "hmmpn!" from sela. jasper was preoccupied with spinning around and looking at himself in the full length mirror. i promised to make them both party bags and they were appeased.

dale and stephanie are going as well and steph and i have spa appointments today at 4.

it’s a great gift. i am very pleased with my thoughtful husband. and children.

it is the night before mother’s day and all is well in our world.

mother’s day celebrations have started early. thursday, jasper and sela presented to me chocolate chip cookies they had made for me. friday afternoon, after i returned from tromping around wanchai markets with dresses, shoes, socks and a few other items for the household, carys presented me with a small cupcake that had "carys" written on it, and then a much larger, much more ornately decorated one that said "mummy".

there was also a card, that featured a photo of carys stirring what i presume to be cupcake batter, and the words, "i love you mummy because "you buy me beautiful dresses". and amazingly, just that day i had bought a dress for my little blue eyed girl.

last night charles and i went out for dinner with dale and stephanie, then later the boys went out and stephanie and i went for foot massages. oh, it was dreamy. the fellow was very abusive with my feet, but he did a great job.

there were a few years where mother’s day was extremely painful for me. years where mothers stood up in church and i stayed seated, red in the face and wishing it was me, rising, smoothing skirts, holding a child, or hand on swelling stomach.

tomorrow is going to be a very painful time for someone. their pain may be pubic, or private.  please, take a moment to send an email, to call, to take someone aside and let them know you are thinking of them. that you know this day is an especially difficult one. you’re smart enough not to mention "relax" "just" "if you had more faith" and other such platitudes. you don’t have to be a close friend to reach out to them. if you fear of embarassment, then send an email. infertility is so isolating, it is such a relief when someone reaches out to you. whether it is to say, "i don’t understand, but i am so sorry." or "i am thinking of you today" . 

on a day meant for mothers, i hope you have the opportunity to reach out to a woman who is yearning to be a mother, but is not yet.

Messers tai chi and mahjong are a bit like your boyfriends single rugger pals. rugger boys have no desire to have a girlfriend, but are thrilled and compliment you no end when you prepare them massive fry-ups following a long game. dedicated bachelors, they, with heartbreaking smiles, bring you sewing, ironing, always complimenting you while they empty out your fridge. "careful with the ham, that’s charles’ dinner you’re eating."

"lucky charles!"

taichi and mahjong aren’t eating me out of house and home, although their output suggests there is definite input..but they are disconcerting. and everywhere. i go into the kitchen and flick on the light, and innocently head towards the chocolate.

and suddently there is a flurry of motion. i only see this out of the corner of my eye, and i jump. because, just like there are endearing rugger friends, there are also those leech like friends that you despise. in my case, they’re not potential leeches, they’re cockroaches. and the fear of having to wake magnificent, my poor hardworking magnificent, to breathe in cockroachbegone fumes, and to kill the little hard shelled things, makes me very sad. and it is very hot at night in hong kong right now, and i am cool and showered by this point, and the sighting and panic makes me sweat a little bit.

theyre just around all the time.

but they’re very cute. mr taichi is very pale. he needs feeding up. mr mahjong, who spends a lot of time by the sink, (cleanliness next to Godliness, etc) is thicker and a bit pinker. he must be getting all the mossies.

i’m on an increase of va!pro ates …it’s an interesting time in my life. probably more interesting for those around me!!! i wish i knew when i was being a cow.

moo-re later.

multitasking is not so easy on the computer

(names have been protected to protect the innocent)

i made a mammoth error on the computer today. i was talking on the phone, and carrying on an msn chat to three people. one chat had two people.

the second chat had one person.

chat one was longer.

i am good enough friends with person two that i can leave the conversation abruptly, and it wasn’t like she was being overly attentive to the chat, so after asking, "are you there?" once, i went back to our original topic and summarised before signing off, "i think they should break up". young love is so exciting.

and then i got back to my phone conversation.

an hour or so later i went back to my computer and saw the train wreck that i had left behind me.

person number two was fine except for a very polite WTF by my "he’s giving space but showing love/support" … and a reminder of how emotionally distant he can be.

however i had written on person number one’s chat "i think they should break up". not so pleasant for person one to hear. especially since the above lines were counselling of the exact opposite sort.

it is a stupid enough error that happens often enough in the computer age, but how hurtful is it? it has happened to me a couple of times, and it makes me feel very very bad.

it’s not like i wanted not to pay attention, i just got confused. i was listening to everyone, but i got overwhelmed for a minute.

so now i get to start with the apologies. and the internet as an excuse is so trite. bla.

today i miss the days when fax machines were the newest coolest forms of communication.

so it has come to this

you think you know your husband.

you talk with your girlfriends, listen to them list their husbands shortcomings or little habits and you say, "oh, mine would never do that, he’s too busy doing this…" and you are confident in your answer.

i was pretty confident too, until the other day, when was checking through old sites, and i found a carefully concealed one.

stands and mounts

stands and mounts

stands and mounts?

i didn’t click on it, i couldn’t, because my hands were paralysed while my brain raced along pounding thoughts into my heart. i waited for emotion to come through me, "here i am, a statistic, my husband surfing porn sites…how do i feel? how am i going to handle this? will i tell anyone? should he be ashamed? does this mean i have been a bad wife? not as "active" as i should have been? "

thoughts flowed through my veins, where emotions didn’t go and where blood was pumping freely.

apparently surfing for porn is a very common thing, but i never imagined my husband would do it. surfing for ways that you can hide junk so your wife can’t hide it, ordering new shirts with cool Biblical sayings on them, that’s his sort of thing…and while the man has a libido, i didn’t think porn was his thing.

yet here was stands and mounts telling me that quite obviously, it was.

i decided insulting him was a better way to go. if i was going to start feeling emotion (guilt had already struck) i would insult him. who on earth would visit a place called stands and mounts. surely there were better, classier sites than that?

and finally, my fingers unclenched themselves and i got enough heat in them to coordinate the mouse and move them. to click on the site.

i shut my eyes, again cursing myself for not getting net nanny and wondering if this is why charles hadn’t wanted to get net nanny.

and opened my eyes, and found myself looking at six wooden television stands.

yes, www.standsandmounts.com is a site for television stands.

of course, then i got furious. i am trying to downsize the junk in our house and he is trying to bring more in? does he not listen to me at all?

it wasn’t a porn site !!!!!

junked and joyfilled

we spent today on our friend’s sheri and mike’s junk.

the weater was perfect, no one is seriously burnt although we are all sun kissed. (at left, jj poses with miss gail from small world.)

we headed out to soko islands, the southwestern most islands of hong kong’s 262 islands. the islands surrounding are owned by china.

we tossed out the anchor, and everyone put on their bathers, and swam to the shore. we made the kids eat a sandwich (pb of course) before leaving the boat. they loved being in the water. charles made a boat. (at left, the junk in the background, seb and a new friend tubing, jj and the boston whaler captain in the foreground.)

at one point, jasper pushed in pierre (no worries, he is an excellent swimmer, his brother would have been on the south african olympic team if they were not residents of hong kong during his swimming years), and because he was so close to the edge, the movement caused him to fall in as well. (pierre had encouraged jasper to push him in). he went splashing into the water, and under. an armband slipped off (oh am i so glad i insisted on those bloody armbands). pierre saw what was happening, and as jasper was surfacing, he pulled him up. that was the drama for the day. (close up of seb and his new friend having a fun time tubing.)

the kids all went in the motorboat and were pulled in innertubes, oh they had fun. (at left, carys & sela talk to each other while tubing at a relatively quick speed! jasper in the foreground.)

but oh they were loud on the boat. after lunch, when most of us were surrenduring to the waves relaxing slap against the side of the boat and it’s rocking rhythm, only carys fell asleep, while jasper and sela and seb played around. oh they were loud. really really loud it seemed. are other people’s kids this loud? were mine a problem? was everyone criticising my parenting skills? hard to say. thankfully, i didn’t spend a lot of time guessing on that topic, i was too busy eating, talking and laughing. it was a great day. i used to hate junk trips, on a boat all day and you never knew if you were going to get trapped by boring business associates who got even worse when under the influence…but these days, junks are great. we love them. LOVE THEM LOVE THEM LOVE THEM.

here are some pictures courtesy of magnificent. he is very tired, this is a very nice thing for him to do. (carys & sela wave to their adoring fans aboard the junk!)