When you're young and in love

My first born, Michael turned 13 last Monday and hence he is officially a teenager. That makes me feel extremely proud, wary and more importantly.....old! One of the benefits of having your kids early is that you get to hang around people your age and hear of them doing things that you already did with their 9 year olds or 10 year olds. You get to tell them, "Hey I already did that!".

We threw him a Lok-Lok party last Sunday with his friends from primary school and also his new secondary school. For those behind the times, Lok-Lok is prepared by skewering uncooked fishballs, beancurd skins, prawns, bacon, sausages and anything you can think of. You then put them into pots of boiling water to cook them and then eat them with sauces. That's called steamboat if it's in a restaurant but if it's mobile and you eat behind a van, it's called Lok-Lok. Lok it up...HAHAHA!

On Sunday morning, they hung out at the mall, watched a movie, played video games, ate junk food and read comics until it was time for the party. Melissa and I sent them to the mall and then like good parents, we tried to be invisible. Of course being a dad, I can be cool around my son so I had to literally drag Melissa away from peeking at them and allowed them their freedom.

After dragging her away with a forklift, we went our way to prepare for the party. I picked them up later and they have bought stuff, had more junk food on them and were just going on about the movie the watched. The party was a hit as we had our XBox which was always a teenage boy magnet.

This year though, we bought Mikey a pool table which was SUPER COOL! It was almost tournament size and was very solid. The kids....on excuse me...the boys had a wonderful time. Only drawback was that my kitchen was that big to make shots from all angles but we made do.

Being a teenager means you outgrow certain things. One of them was a fancy cake. Last year we had the cake with Iron Man on it. This year, he just wanted a plain chocolate cake. Signs of being cool! As a teen, he has also noticed the opposite sex and he told me that he had this crush on one of his old class mates. But as with all teenage boys, they will show that affection by totally ignoring the girl.

I remember my first crush. I was 12 and she was a Chindian from another school. We were in the same school bus and her name was Linda Teh. She was gorgeous and I had the biggest crush on her. Being me though, I showered her with a lot attention and made her laugh a lot. We were great friends but I didn't think of keeping in touch and email or mobile phones were not invented yet. Sad to say I have not seen her since we were 12. I doubt I would even recognize her.

Ahhh....to be young and in...err...crush?! Anyway, like all things when you are young, they will pass and new and better experiences take their places. I will ensure he enjoys his childhood and his teen years. And I will make sure he enjoys going out, having fun with good friends and not be too attached to home. That's because I want him out my house when he goes to college so that I don't have to kick his butt out!!

Man's best friend is not all that's cracked up to be

After much pestering and persistent begging, we finally got our kids a dog. You see, kids love dogs because dogs are loyal, bring unconditional love, not shy to show you their love and tell (or bark) as it is. But primarily, like all things that influence a kid, the main reason is TV.

You see, TV takes you to a magical world where all is possible. You put on glasses and immediately people won't recognize you from being the strongest man in the world. You get bitten by a radioactive spider, you don't die but you have super powers! It's a world where dogs are smart, loving, pulls you from under the falling tractor or quicksand. It's a world where dogs have this really cool and intelligent and funny expressions when you interact with it.

While I really love dogs, 90% of dogs are stupid! It's that simple. You can call a dog by its name 3000 times and it won't recognize you calling it. Everything in the world to a dog is about one magical thing and it's something they have in abundant. The world to a dog is all about PEE. The moment they are born, they immediately start engaging in a pee fest with the rest of the dogs. Everything is about peeing and peeing is ON everything. Trees, cars, your shoes and you inhaler. The PEE is their way of communicating with the other dogs. Every PEE signifies some world event to them.

My sis-in-law in Kuantan had some mix-breed stray dogs that she adopted and the pair had a litter of 4 pups. She was giving them away and I thought it was a great way (and cheap) way for the kids to learn about higher responsibility in taking care of a dog. So I chose the best looking mutt and took him home. We put 3 month old Boomer in a box at the back of the car and it was probably the poor dog's worst day in his short life.

The trip must have been nauseating for him as he threw up the bread into the box. The bread looked like mashed potatoes. Now that's an image for you!

So good ol' Boomer lives outside now and almost every evening we will take him for a walk and he immediately starts some kind of PEE fest of the universe. Sniff, sniff, PEE. Sniff, sniff, PEE. The same goes for every dog and the more amorous ones will sniff each other's butt.

Boomer is a lot more weird. He sniffs EVERYTHING! Including poop. He even licks his own poop!! I have been having a hard time toilet training the little mutt. He just PEES everywhere. I tie him on a leash on the porch where there are water hoses, flower pots, contraptions for drying our clothes, etc. and he manages to get himself entangled around the porch items!

He doesn't answer to his name. He doesn't know where he should be PEEing, he doesn't know he is not supposed to eat rocks and SHIT! He barks whenever I leave the house and it's not like a dogly bark like a German Shepherd or a Retriever but this little whiny, wimpy, wuss kinda squeal that makes you wanna walk over and drop kick the guy.

So to all those movie shows like Lassie, Rin Tin Tin (Gen Y going "What the heck are those?"), Bolt, Dr Dolittle and all those love stories where the dog is sympathetic, funny and comforting, TO HELL WITH YOU! You have given us dog owners VERY, VERY false hopes.

The next time I see a dog looking forlorn and sympathetic towards their owners and have wonderful sense of humour timing, I am putting an axe through the TV!

Day 2 of Oz

Day 2 began very lazily. We stayed at a nice motel where we just dropped into a deep sleep the moment we touched our pillows. Today we were driving up to the Grampiens National Park to a small village called Halls Gap. So after a quick breakfast, we drove up to Warnambool to see what a small quaint Australian looks like. The answer compared to a Malaysian town? A LOT CLEANER! Though the people were not exactly very friendly towards foreigners.




The quaint town has some small roundabouts that were decorated with very colourful flowers. So naturally the 2 ladies got all "flower-crazy" and made us stop the van right there in the middle of the street so that they can jump out of the van "Starsky and Hutch" style to take a few pictures of the flowers. Coz goodness knows we can find flowers back home! I find that endearing but somehow the Aussies didn't think that stopping in the middle of the street to snap pics of their beautiful town was. I wonder.








Thank goodness they didn't have Jackie Chan type of husbands, so we parked our car by the side and then we got out to stop traffic to get the pics. They were lovely and was worth the embarrassment. We drove past some really nice coastal towns and came to a place called Cape Bridgewater. There was supposed to be a seal colony offshore and we were to take this speed boat that looked like it the puke machine from hell for 45mins to this colony. Of course we HAD to see it but when we got there, the boat had left and we were would have been late getting to Halls Gap. (soft YEAH)





So we had stopped by Cape Bridgewater and decided to have lunch here. The burger WAS EXCELLENT!! It was called "The Lot" which meant it had EVERYTHING! Juicy beef patties, crispy bacon, soft sliced ham and salad on it. Let's not forget this is Australia so definitely there are FRIES! Enough to feed a small village in Rwanda.




The trip to Halls Gap was extremely boring. Being a flat country, the country side was nothing but flatness and miles and miles of sheep grazing grass. It's like God came down with a giant lawn mower and just mowed the whole damn country side. So we slept a lot and nothing much happened until Grampiens except for a slight detour to a Lavender Farm. It was Lavender everything. Lavender flowers, lavender scent, lavender perfume, lavender grass, lavender tea and we had to pay AUD2 to get in, take pics and use the bathroom.






When we finally got into Grampiens, we saw wild kangaroos and wallabies by the side and OF COURSE we HAD to stop and take pics. Truth be told, it was a pretty cool experience. Halls Gap was a really nice and tourisy (read expensive) village. At least things weren't cheap. But we got here before dark seeing that the country side of Australia is devoid of streetlights so best to get anywhere before dark.




When night came, we could see billions of stars from our motel and had wild kangaroos grazing by our motel lawn. So another tiring but fun filled day. Today we learnt about the "The Lot" which was going to be KLY's and my diet for the many days in Australia.