Housewife Journal

Lots of work to be done. Ironing, cooking, cleaning, shop for groceries, sending and picking up kids... the list can go on. Now I have to arrange that list in order of priorities to make it work. Enjoyed the moment with helper around. Really appreiciate their hard work. They are just a lot better at housework than I do.

I am back. I gave myself 3 weeks' annual leave 'out of blogging'. It seemed quite a long time however the days just flew away like that to me.

Today was the first day of my new partime helper. I don't know if she will last or not. It is very difficult to hire someone right now especially the Chinese New Year is just around the corner. The first thing she told me was she spent an hour in traffic. I feel bad for her because she needs to spend 2 hours for both way. However she has already negotiated this during her phone conversation with me to raise her hourly pay. Well... let's just see if everything turns out OK.

We have been going to McDonald 4 times in one week because of the school break. Next week will be the exam week. So, this is the battery charge week. The food is excellent, simple, fast, fun, clean. We have actually just found out that McDonald was established since 1955. Within the 5 decades, it became such a popular brand among all ages of eating group.

This lunch time, just before going to school, we went to McDonald close by. While we were enjoying food, a mother and a son came in. The mother had no smiles on her face and kept scolding the son. The son was reading a comic book and the mother was trying to get him eat his lunch first. The scene had attracted me and also freaked me out. It was quite familiar because sometimes I was just like that mother. 'please CHANGE immediately !' I said to myself. Look at that poor boy he had no idea what had irritated his fussy mother.

A girl called Alaster graduated from university 5 years ago.
Luckily, she got her very first job very quickly,
she was happy and worked really hard, well,
everyone else was working hard including her boss.

Today, her salary is way up high,
she takes housing allowance,
she gives the company's apartment for her sister to stay in
without telling her boss.
She takes 1 month's leave, the company pays for her flight ticket back home.
Now she holds all back and forth emails with customers,
yeh, she is reluctant to hand over to anyone else in the company
before she leaves for a holiday.
She wants a KAOS.

What would happen in 5 years' time ?

Finally it is boxing day, my two boys had been so excited to open up their presents and had kept asking if they could open them earlier. Of course the answer is no to most of the presents, they only get to open up the presents from their grandparents and one special friend who has come very far to visit us.

So, you could guess how excited they are. Last night, they wanted me to wake them up at 6:00am this morning. I have put the smaller gifts into the Christmas socks that they prepared for themselves, the big ones in another packing. My old boy got up at sometime around 4am when he went to the bathroom and put his gift at my bedside, how sweet ! I pretended that I did not know.

The moment of opening wrappers came ! I opened up mine, it is a book that my old boy chose for me, a story book called "The Dowry Bride". My little one gave me a little book called "To a lovely Mother" by Helen Exley. I love the presents they chose.

They have opened up theirs. They love the electronic toothbrushes the best.

It is the 1st year that we did this presents exchange program and it turned out to be very fun. It is also the 1st time that everyone obeyed the rule of "open gifts only on boxing day". We usually open up presents very early.

It is not even boxing day, but I already received a Christmas 'bomb' from our helper. She is resigning from the job. And, she seems very determined about that. Now I really have to check if there is anything wrong with me, I might have mistreated her without even realising it.

Well, this is life. Now the 'float' is gone and we are on our own. We will just have to go on and start a new page.

After lunch, I made my son wash up all the dishes. He is extremely reluctant to do it. The look on his face seemed that it is a very unpleasant job. I have decided, need to let him wash the dishes once every week or bi-weekly. To make him getting comfortable of helping with the housework, firstly I need to get myself started.

We have a helper at home I guess that is a very good excuse of not doing housework. Everything comes so easily, all of us start to take things for granted. At the same time of things are taken for granted, we also forgot how to appreciate what we have.

"Don't worry that children never listen to you. Worry that they are always watching you."
- Robert Fulghum

As a parent, we always tend to place ourselves in a higher position that we end up in a power struggle with our kids. "no, you should do that first" What have they learnt from us ?
"we are never equal.. you do not respect me...I cannot tolerate..." these ideas usually occur in their little heads. Day after day, the power struggle becomes a routine work and it creates a DEPDENDENT, INDECISIVE, STUBBORN,IRRESPONSIBLE kid.

Having a child is a lot of responsibilities, now I understand why people refuse to have kids.

Today I finally had some time sitting down looking at the fish swim. Those fish who is in charge of cleaning are really amazing. Last week, all the leaves were going yellowish with black spots on them and all the areas were covered in moss. I was really worried by then.

However, just within 2 days after 6 'cleaners' had been added in, all the leaves have turned bright green, all moss have been eaten up. These fish are really hard working and they are wonderful !!

On Dec 11, 2007, a respectable man called Father Gau Shi Qian passed away in his sleep. He was born on Jan 15, 1897 Qing dynasty (the last dynasty before name of People's Republic of China given in 1949). He lived in a temple on Lantau Island for 30 years. His daily routine was : pray, work in fields. He started every day at 3:30am and went to bed at 8:30pm. He seldom spoke, this was what he said : "When people speak, we usually speak bad things or gossip. What is there to say ?"

Sometimes we might have hurt other's feelings just by speaking things that was not meant, however, it was heard and already hurt others.
Sometimes we gossip about others that somehow gave us the pleasure of doing so, however, time was wasted and could have helped someone in need with that time.
Sometimes we speak of our prouds showing off to our friends how superior we are, however, what we speak are meaningless.
Lot of the times, our wealth, valuable assets, how good we look is a vague identity we carry them on our shoulders like a heavy stone.
Speaking is what we were given for communication, not for other purposes, we should never abuse.