Closest thing to the Eclipse

On Wednesday, I set out to try for an Eclipse shot, or people looking out into the sky. You know, something to contribute from Singapore since the rest of the bureaus in Asia were working hard at it. Unfortunately, heavy rain stopped any chance of this happening. Later on in the evening, while i was covering the Kobe Bryant assignment, this was pretty much the closest thing that I got to the Eclipse. Funny. Har. Har.

Occupational Hazards

I've always wondered how movie directors ever enjoy watching a movie anymore. They will start to disect every part of it til it cannot be watched as a whole anymore. Photographers have it bad too. The moment my colleague who's in charge of text calls me and tells me that the Ministry is going to announce GDP numbers which means he's about to do an economy story, my radars go on alert. I become sensitive to every construction going on... man scaling building, man washing the facade of the building, with singapore financial district in the background... something which shows growth and development which can reflect the country's growing economy... Or not. I find myself milking every situation i can find because there's only so many ways you can illustrate GDP figures. It's painful and almost funny in a pathetic way.

Pacing oneself

Life is exciting because it's so dynamic. We need to go with the flow of things and roll with the momentum of dialectics which revolves around life. I'm certainly not giving up the things I love doing. No one stuck a gun to my head and told me to give up everything but it's about finding that fundamental balance. That constant search...

Phwa my mind is on overdrive recently. I've not stopped thinking and wondering and re-thinking. I can sway from one thought to another and back again to the original thought all in one sentence. scary.

Winds of change

When you pray and ask God to show you the way, be prepared for him to answer because you'd sure wanna listen....

I've been very blessed to have God guide me and nudge me through my life journeys. Recently i've been still struggling a lot when it came to having a child and dying to self. I'm very protective over my freedom and independant as a person. I love doing outdoor sports and aiming high and achieving my goals in new skills that I learn. I've always been able to achieve what I set out to do. I'm mentally strong enough to channel my energy and resources to achive my goals. So when I had Nate, I tried to change my life-style to "suit" the responsibilities of being a mother. I believed that I was doing my best but I was too quick to give myself a pat on the back and justify my actions and schedule around being a mother, photographer, wife and daughter.

It's amazing how the mind can sway to the most convenient flow of the currents that run deep in the mind to justify one's feelings. There are so many things I want to do and try still but my life was pretty much put on hold (literally) when my car stalled down that busy highway and suddenly reality hit. For the past month, i've been quiet from this blog because i've been digesting life and the responsibilities that come with it... mine at least. And for that past week, Terence and I have taken big steps to move forward, as a family and well, to put it simply, it's time to grow up. The changes have been all good, in fact, i've never felt so clear headed in years.

For the past couple of months, well, since the beginning of the year, i've been spending more time with my sister-in-law, Evelyn. She's a role model of a mother. Not over parenting her son but she shows me how she loves her son. How her parenting skills marries both a disciplinarian, and a mother. She pretty much centers her life around her son, which demonstrates the self control and sensibility of a retired lawyer. Offer him a reward for doing well in his exams and he chooses the smallest of transformers because he will play with that. He rejects the offer of the huge collector's series. And he's only 8. Something must have been done right. She gave up a huge apartment to plan for her son's future and education. She's done so many things. I don't aim to replicate every move that she's made but she's like an angel that God had sent me to present the reality of being a mother. The amount of attention and care that I had given Nate, if I were to continue the way I did with my life-style, was not sufficient. Everyone would end up unhappy and insercure.

Anyways, watching her parent made me think and reflect and instead of scaring me, I was inspired.

So this goes on for a while and I'm starting to think of the road ahead of me.

Being as selfish as I am, i'm still feel torn between my responsibilities and wanting to train for the full Ironman race in Busselton in December. It's tough but its possible. I give myself excuses about how i'm on form physically, and i've got family support and how nate is young... like i said... the mind reasons with the heart according to our human wants. Thing that was holding me back from signing up for this big race of my life was money. .... then another reality check comes. Already i'm kinda struggling with spending time with Nate and training hours and clocking in the mileage...

My car broke down and it was going to set me back 10k if i were to fix it.

I've never owned 10k in my life.

Then it hit me that if i couldn't even upkeep a machine, what more another human being, plus nate is not something I could scrap and get money back for. It just became so clear to me.

But God is great.

At this point where I thought I was just being emotional and impulsive about things, I get little signs from little places giving me big reminders about what I was doing was right and I am more assured now than ever. Especially having Terence around... I would never be able to do the mind over heart negotiations. Terence has been brilliant with that. Thank God for him.

When i first decided to put the tri training on hold, I then met up with Ben Tan, ex national sailor and my team mate who told me out of the blue that he had stopped running seriously because of the time and stress. Like me, he identified our problem of taking up a sport and training so hard to achieve a personal best in a race. We were simply applying what we've been doing almost all our life which was to train by a certain time for a certain race. The sports that we were doing now was all leisure.. So honestly, there's no deadline. Simple and clear. Why didn't I think of that right?

Then as i'm still doubting my own actions and reactions, my mother pulls out her daily bread all of a sudden and shares with me the writings (which is different every day) about how the biggest investment of your time and energy should be in your children because those investments will live on forever through them and their children and their children's children. Not in material possesions so it was not smart to tire yourself out in other avenues.

That was the turning point for me or rather, i've never looked back since then.

To date, we've been hard at work in making sure our future as a family is secure, and have even gone on to taking our first step in securing our own home which we will build on the rock instead of sand. This place was also a blessing because it fit so many pros on our checklist and it's near (hopefully) the school in which i hope Nate will get to study in. Some may say that it's still early to think about Primary One but hey, i'm not cash rich and will not be able to buy a place at my whim and fancy so I kinda need to buffer big ticket items...This is just one tiny step in God's greater plan and i'm sure I have heaps to learn and many more trials to come but i'm gonna continue looking forward because God is in control.

The day had come

So the day had come when my beloved car broke down. This is prolly back-dated news from a month back.

And of all places and timings, it had to be on the first day of work for my sister-in-law, (she was in my car at that point otherwise this would have been useless information) and while I was just getting onto the highway. My car was travelling fine early in the morning. Later on the highway, nothing seem to happen when I stepped onto the accelerator. The gears weren't engaging... I kept to the left lane and thought that if anything were to happen, it would be good to stick to the left cause cars wouldn't be travelling too fast on that lane. At this point, my car would travel at a comfortable speed of 60km/hr still (slow but at least it was still moving)... until we came to the climb up benjamin shears bridge.. I found myself slowing down and worrying that we'd start rolling backwards due to the lack of power. I started picturing myself cycling up that bridge during the 70.3 ironman race a couple of months ago and would prolly be moving faster when I couldn't help but start to giggle. Cars were passing me and looking at me as if I were some typical silly woman driver who didn't know how to step on it. You can only imagine the kind of relief I had when we reached the top of the bridge and started rolling DOWN. At the bottom of the hill, my car had lost all power to accelerate and all i could think off was to get off the highway. Lucky thing for me, the first exit was to Marina South. At least if i crawled there, my sis-in-law would have higher chances of grabbing a taxi and I would be out of harms way. We got off and the moment we did, the car stalled altogether.

Thank God for AA.

They managed to get me a tow truck but it had to be an hour later, so for that hour, I had to direct traffic which consisted of heavy vehicles making their way to the IR construction site.

I even had policemen on petrol come by later and set up road diversions for me. They said that they wanted to ensure my safety, and I don't doubt that but I also strongly believe that they didn't want to take the risk of having a stalled vehicle "hang around" in a high-risk, sensitive area where the casinos and integrated resorts were being built. I appreciate the help and their attitude towards assisting me otherwise. Anyways, my car is dead. And it's been scrapped. I miss it dearly but it's about time I get something a little more practical with more trunk space and a couple more doors with the kid and all in tow nowadays. It would have cost me close to $10 000 to fix. I've never owned $10 000 in my life.. Thank god the scrap value for my car was enough to pay off the remainding bank loan and still left me a little more to place as downpayment for the new car. Now for the wait of my new family-friendly car. But i'm still staying away from being a soccer-mom.

Young and Trendy

These two had fun with their accidental coincidental similar polo shirt looks the other day...

If they weren't struggling artists, they would have been rich yuppies driving the beemers with their collars tucked up and big sunnies that covered half their faces...

Classic case of "I shoddave listen'd to ma momma' when she told me to be a lawyer or and engineer..." snort snort.. heee hee hee.

The wheels on the bus go round and round

We decided to take the bus last night, and the journey was l.o.n.g.
three quarters of the way through, a very tired and bored nate looks
at me and asks : where's mommy's car?
So i told him my car was sick.

About a year ago.

He still looked out of proportion.. big head, short hands... very babyish. I kinda miss that fat fat short short little person look. sigh.. Photo by Joyce.

Someone's growing up

heh