Stephen Chow and Dreams

I love Stephen Chow - he's an absolute genius as far as I'm concerned. I've probably watched his movies a dozen times each (my wife and mom would say that's an under-estimation.) Wife loves his second-latest movie: Shaolin soccer - its about a group of losers, people who have spent years practising Shalin, only to find that its useless in today's society. one is a rubbish collector, another lives in a shack, another one works in a 7-11: you get the idea.
Stephen Chow plays a character who's still holding on to the dream - how to make in spread Shaolin's glory. Its one of those things martial artists want to do - how to spread the art. In one scene, one of his disciple, now working at a pub, tells him to give it up. To get a real job.
He says: everybody must have a dream, or else you're not much better than salted fish (yea, it sounds funny, but it goes back to an chinese saying.)
His fellow disciple points out that Chow didn't even have a pair of shoes on, making it worse than salted fish in any case.
It's not a new message, but it took a rather unusual premise and turn it into a comedy cum social satire about the plight of working class people reduced to the margins of society.

I hope Siyuan loves Stephen Chow as well :)

3 Months

Some pictures of Siyuan in this 3rd month. He's weighing at 6.2 kg now, the nurse tells us :) And now when you put him on his belly, he can stay up for a while, look around and even try to grasp toys. The other day, he was sleeping in bed with wife, and he turned himself so he can try and wake wife up to feed him. :)

They Went Over to the Dark Side

Had to go to Sydney over the weekend for a business meeting, and made the mistake of taking a 9 pm flight out on Friday nite. Well, I had wanted to have dinner at home and spend a bit more time with Siyuan and wife before heading out. In typical Melbourne-Sydney fashion, the landing was delayed and by the time the plane landed, it was closer to 11 p.m., than the 10:20 p.m. scheduled landing time. The taxi queue was long, to say the least. But it had looked manageable with staff controlling the queue. Sure, the taxis came in spurts and we might have to wait a while, but at least there was order. This was a crowd of businessmen, holiday-goers returning home, some teenagers, retirees and families. Nobody seem drunk or on drugs. At 11 p.m., the queue controllers (for want of a better phrase) went home. A fellow directed a cab heading his way to a more deserving passenger ahead of him in the queue, and civility seems to prevail. 2 minutes later, he changed his mind, and he jumped in front of the road and stopped a cab heading to the front of the queue. He jumped in and forced the cab to drive off despite protests. You could hear the thoughts that went through all the minds - its everybody for themselves.
An Asian cab driver asked if there were other passengers heading the same way as his existing passenger. He was told off (for unknown reasons) by a man in his 40s, looking serious in his suit and suitcase (strangely, or perhaps not strangely, when two other cab drivers did the same thing a minute later, there were no protests.)
The tension in the crowd snapped, and people began to curse and swear. And some at the front ran for the cabs.

At that point I was already at the front of the queue, and then got shoved further down the road...where I managed to get a cab because it became rather chaotic up front. Lucky, I guess. In the cab, the driver told me that long queues past 11 was a common problem. I wonder if the ugly scenes were just as common then?

Holiday

Suffering from a flu bug, and with me on few days break, we decided we would head out to the Dandedong for a nite. We thought some fresh air would do us some good. We asked friends, who had kids, if they wanted to come along. They declined saying they needed more time to prepare for such trips. We got an idea of what they meant when we started packing. Instead of two haversacks, we found ourselves debating bringing along a pram, Siyuan's sleeping basket, how many toys and dappers. We ended up with at least three bags of Siyuan's stuff, and that's excluding his bed and toy.
We woke up late, struggled to fix a regulated traveling basket into the car, and headed out near noon in hot summer weather. We started to realize this was a bad idea. Never mind, let's press on. We then found that our accomodation was rather more way out than we thought, and worse still couldn't find any restaurants nearby. By the time we got there, wife (who's the driver) was exhausted. It was a beautiful place, but the prospect of having bread and instant noodles for dinner was discouraging.
Worse was to come. Siyuan, who was also down with the flu, decided he didn't quite like the new environment. His stuffed nose also meant he struggled to sleep continuously. And both of us forgot to bring medicine for wife, who also struggled to sleep with her nose.
To comfort him, I slept on the floor with his sleeping basket. At about 1 a.m. realized it was a very very bad mistake. Prepared for a hot day, I didn't realize it was chilling in the Dandedongs at nite. No more short breaks of this nature, we decided after this. We're better off, giving each other a couple of hours off by taking turns with the baby on weekend, we realized :)

Are you looking at me?

Who are you looking at punk?

Every Little Thing

A friend of ours was telling us about her baby, how she has learned to roll over at just a little past 3 months. Siyuan is now just past 3 months, and I can't wait for him to start learning to do that. He hasn't shown any inclinations though. If we leave him alone, we do come back to find him having shifted his position sideways sometimes, but no hint he can roll over yet. Mom called to stress how important it was to watch him since he's still got fragile muscles. He's also supposed to be at the age when he would discover his hands. Wife caught him doing that just once the weekend. Apparently he can spend as long as 30 minutes been fascinated by it as he realize what he has been sucking on are his hands :)
As my friend say, every little thing thrills us.

The one thing this period has taught me though is new respect for my mother. Far away that she is, she has always called up with timely advice throughout the pregnancy and as Siyuan develops - from food to eat, postures for sleeping, importance of wife not squatting after birth to carry weights, how to wrap the baby to what to watch out for each week, she's just been absolutely spot on.
That's pretty amazing considering how it's been more than 30 years since she cared for a baby. She might not be able to explain the reasons well (with only 3 years formal education), but she's been absolutely spot on. Often we find that the nurses would repeat the same thing my mom said, except with better explanations, or as my wife said, explanations that us Western-educated people can understand.
As they say, when you have your own kids, u appreciate your parents more.
Cliche, but true.

Too sweet

Struggling with opening a can of condense milk, I did my usual clumsy thing and spilled it over half the kitchen sink. I was trying to clean the mess when wife called.
`Check out Siyuan now,he looks so sweet.' To which I quipped, I'm rather sweet enough now.
Siyuan is almost 3 months old now, and we're trying to make sure he learns the proper sleep association - ie to sleep by been relaxed and not needing to be rocked or held. That's probably the hardest thing to do!

He Finally Pooed!

We woke up this morning, resigned to another day of smelly farts and worries about his pooing. We checked at a pharmacy the previous night, and they decided he was really too young to have anything to help with that. And then this morning, after a kickabout with me, he finally pooed. Not a lot, like he used to. But at least it was something. We were both quite happy. Unfortunately, his smelly farts continue!
maybe i can persuade dear wife to have more greenies :)

Smelly!

Nowadays I always turn my head to look at other kids, and smile when I see parents chiding, holding or laughing at their babies. It makes me think of Siyuan, who is very cute most days. Obviously that's parental bias :) I'm sure if I was still single, I won't have paid any attention to Siyuan. I guess it's also a guy thing. Wife brought Siyuan to the office one day, and the women gushed all over Siyuan. My single male colleague struggled to say a word.
Siyuan can now hold his head up for a period if we hold him up. He is most curious during those times, looking all around him from an elevated view. A friend sent a video of her baby, about 6 weeks ahead of Siyuan, turning onto her belly. I can't wait for that happen for Siyuan!
Anyway, Siyuan went one week without pooing, and my goodness, his fart increased in frequency and potency! Poor wife would get a bellyful from Siyuan everytime she feed him. And his fart can now make us from the room. So we called the nurses, who told us
breastfed babies can go for 2 weeks without poing!