This school term has barely ended, and already tuition teachers are asking me to confirm my kids’ spots in next year’s classes. Yes, they do start early and they’re making a kiasu (scaredy cat) out of me! Seriously !

Unlike many parents, I say blek to tutors with proven A track records because some use the wicked stepmother approach which I’m so against.

A’s are nice and a great bragging point for parents but not when they’re forced out of the poor kid!

Personally I prefer tutors who create an active interest in the subject and take the trouble to explain things through simply and clearly. I’d be crazy to pay someone to kill my child’s interest in learning, won’t I?

My kids have done okay so far with minimal tuition. One or two classes, that’s all. Like I always say, no point cramming their growing years with tuition and more stress after school. If they can manage or if I can help them, there’s no need for tuition. I find kids try harder on their own and when they’re not just wait to be spoonfed.

Our rationale for tuition is based on how the subjects are taught at school, and how confident the kids are about doing well. I use their grades and their feedback to assess their tuition needs.

Come to think of it, I hardly had any tuition in my time and I turned out okay. See? But I know some of you will jump on me and say, yeah but things were different then, it’s so much more competitive now.

True, but at least we got childhood memories to share with our kids and their kids from our rocking chairs. I wonder what our over-scheduled kids these days will remember of their childhoods? Childhood? What childhood?

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Raine’s classmate is working at McDonald’s. If it were any other guy, I’d have said so what? But this is the young man who is sorta Raine’s unofficial ‘brother’ at school as he shares the same last name as us.

He likes to ‘bully’ Raine and the other girls at school, splashing water on them, snatching their food, pulling their hair, stuff like that. And he’s also the one who says I’m one hot mama.

Naturally I was curious. This cheeky 15-year-old, I have to see!! So when Raine suggested we go to McDonald’s to ’stalk’ him and give him a hard time with our order, I happily played along. Hey, I’m a sporting mom .

Turned out he was the guy making the french fries, not the guy at the counter so things didn’t go as we planned. Still we had lunch and spied on him from our corner table.

His seriously over-salted fries aside, he didn’t look like a bully to me at all. Maybe his behavior has to do with his parents being divorced. He lives with his dad and sister, and is pretty much left to his own devices. I can’t imagine how his dad could let him cycle on a major highway to/from school every day.

Not having a mom also means no homecooked food, I guess. Maybe that’s why he likes to pinch the girls’ food. There I go playing shrink again ! The more I looked at him, the more I felt a soft spot for him. Coming from a broken home myself, I can see myself in him.

Anyhow, he finished his shift shortly afterwards and the girls suggested we follow him as he set off at a deadly speed on his bicycle. We spotted him at the traffic lights way ahead of us.

Since I had to turn off to pick up Steev from college, Raine wound down the window and shouted to him while I leaned on the horn. Whee, that was fun! Poor guy probably didn’t have a clue who he was waving back at. We laughed all the way to Steev’s college. That was such fun!!

Today I made two big pans of pasta bake. Yeah, when you have 3 teens, you think B-I-G! Figure we’d bring French Fry Guy a slice over to McDonald’s. But Raine was too shy to give it to him as there was another guy from school working there.

Last week was definitely my kind of hyperactive. I met a lady at the Jusco Sale grocery checkout as we were both complaining about the long lines and who later turned out to be the mom of Skye’s classmate. So that made for a morning of interesting chit-chat.

Right after I got home from the sale, I started feeling warm and achy-breaky all over. It couldn’t have been over-exercise because I’m so conditioned I don’t feel the muscle aches after my workouts any more.

As the afternoon wore on, my temperature rose and rose… till over 100 degrees. Between OD’ing on vitamin Cs, I drank a cup of hor yan hor in between, plonked an ice-pack on my head and went to sleep.

I jumped out of bed next morning, chirpy as the birds outside my bedroom window. The fever was completely gone and I was off on my taxi runs.

Friday morning, my girl friend from California was in town and I met her for a coffee and a two-hour chat. DH had promised to pick Skye up from school but he was stuck in a meeting so I had to cut short our visit and rush back. Duh!

Saturday morning, the girls convinced me to go to a book sale. Frankly I’m not keen on MPH book sales because their discounts are pretty miserable. We ended up with just a few books, enough to keep my bookworms off the computer for a few hours.

We were constantly out over the long weekend because we had so many free food coupons to finish up before they expire today. Free burgers, donuts, pizza, fruit juice, latte… no purchase necessary so what the heck!

Last weekend’s grocery shopping was so stressful. I really didn’t know what to buy, or rather, what is safe to buy that isn’t tainted with melamine, and which reports to believe. Dang!

So I wandered around like a Food Inspector checking the labels of fresh produce with a fine-toothed comb. Have to be kiasu (chicken, afraid to lose out) when it’s the blind leading the blind, what to do ?

After walking round and round, these are what I got - celery from California, russet potatoes from the US, carrots and baby carrots from Australia, sweet corn and a bag of fresh salad from Cameron Highlands.

I’ve asked my neighbor to stop buying veggies for me from the wet market until further notice. Probably the veggie seller will say their stuff is not from China, either knowingly or unknowingly.

Most times, they’ve also repackaged their stuff into smaller bags so there’s no way to even check the labels. Headache !

I don’t take kindly to people saying that moms who stay at home have nothing better to do than paint their nails or go shopping all day.

To all the friends, ex-colleagues, even family members who think, and sometimes even say it out loud to my face, yes, you guys piss me off.

But I’m too tired to pick a fight today. Instead, I’m going to list out what I did yesterday to give you a taste of what a typical Friday for a mom of 3 teens is like.

Warning: Do not try this at home. This is extremely hazardous to your mental and physical health and may mess up your simple mind.

5:00AM - Alarm clock goes off. My mistake, I clicked the wrong alarm setting on my PDA phone. Try to get back to sleep. Couldn’t. My mind just keeps going through my schedule for the day.

6:00AM - The usual breakfast rush. DH drops off the kids, then comes back to pick up his luggage for a business trip.

7:40AM - Work out at gym for 1.5 hours.

9:15AM - Home to change out of my gym shorts and pick up some stuff to go to the bank. Banks are what I consider hostile zones, gotta cover up. I don’t want the men at the bank to drop dead from heart failure seeing me in my gym shorts.

10:05AM - Wait in line at the bank, only to realize I’m at the wrong branch. OMG, what a waste of time!!

10:40AM - Second in line at the right bank but just how long does it take to withdraw a few measly dollars and update a savings book?

11:15AM - Do some quick shopping at Tesco while waiting to pick up Skye. Tummy growling like crazy since I didn’t have time for my second breakfast after gym.

11:45AM - Wait at Skye’s school, munching muruku to keep from fainting from hunger .

12:10PM - Set Skye to make her own ham sandwiches while I have a quick shower. Been stinky since gym .

12:30PM - Rush out to pick up Raine from school.

12:50PM - Finally get to have my two ham sandwiches and a cup of tea. Then go online to quickly check my emails and read a bit of news.

2:30PM - Rush to pick up Steev from college and then head straight for DH’s office downtown to pick up something. Luckily I packed two curry puffs and a bottle of iced water for Steev because he has irregular lunch times depending on class breaks. Reach home at 4:00PM.

5:00PM - Send Raine to tuition in the pouring rain. By the time I drop her off, it’s storming so badly I decide to wait outside her tutor’s house instead of driving all the way home.

I spend the time crunching almonds in the car and making phone calls home to get Steev and Skye to turn off the modem and to look in the fridge for something to eat if they’re hungry.

8:00PM - Finally we’re home after one whole hour in the massive traffic jams everywhere. I needed to go to the bathroom badly and had been holding my poor bladder till I was going to burst!

I have not prepared dinner. Earlier I’d promised the kids we’d go out for a quick burger for dinner. But by the time I get home, I swear nothing was going to make me go out again. So we end up eating sandwiches again since it was too late to cook!

This has been a long post just as it had been a long day yesterday. But I still say this beats working in some cushy office getting paid to do practically nothing all day except drink coffee, socialize and surf the net in air-conditioned comfort!

You know how when we run into friends we haven’t seen in a while, they always look at our kids and marvel at how much they’ve grown. It’s strange how we never seem to notice how our own kids have grown but it takes someone else to see it.

This morning, as I watched Steev get ready to attend a launch, I was suddenly struck by what a handsome young man he’s grown into. Okay, maybe I’m a little biased here but… wasn’t he that little baby in my arms just yesterday?

Today my 17-year-old is wearing a long-sleeved dark-colored shirt and pants with his spiky hair all gel’d up and looking for all the world like a grown man, and I had to swallow hard and blink back a few tears (of joy).

Steev runs his own business. Today’s the first time he’s been invited to a product launch by a multinational at a five-star hotel. And they said he could bring along a staff member.

That really cracked me and his Dad up! Staff? Since one of us would have to chauffeur our CEO downtown, Dad decided to tag along as his ’staff’! The things we do for our kids!! I guess in many ways, we’re growing up with them.

I ran into a whole bunch of my tai-tai (aka ladies of leisure) friends while out at breakfast with my girl friend (who is not a tai-tai).

I love my tai-tai friends. They’re the ones who can tell me where to get the freshest veggies, how to brew herbal soups,  how to spy on my hubby (think I’ll wait for the book) and they can make the darnest traditional Chinese stuff like bachang (glutinous rice dumplings) and mooncakes, all from scratch.

The thing that really scares me though are their organized home invasions visits when they go through my home inch by inch, flipping every drawer and cupboard, inspecting everything that’s inside, from my crockpot to my underwear, all without a search warrant.

Back to me bumping into them at breakfast. A few of them instantly pounced on me and started interrogating me as to how I’ve managed to stay so slim even after I quit dancing (I used to be in the same dance class). As if I was ever fat before ?

But never mind that, the machine gun fire of questions has started and they’ll never let me off without answers. So I’d better start coughing some up, pronto.

So how come you’re still so slim? Um, exercise. What kind of exercise? Um, I walk. Where? Morning or evening? How many kilometers? With your kids or alone? Bang, bang, bang *shielding my head*

Gimme a break, is this the Spanish Inquisition? So many questions, so much rhetoric! *squirm* Think I should take up jogging or kungfu instead.

When I was living overseas, my nose was on its best behavior. Not a beep sneeze from me. I was strangely quiet.

Unlike when I was working here. Every morning when I walked into the office, everyone knew I’d ‘arrived’. My unstoppable series of sneezes were most effective in announcing what time I got to the office.

The temperature change from getting out of my air-conditioned car into the stifling heat of the basement parking lot and then again into the whirring air-condition of the office was enough to send my poor nose into a frenzy.

What was puzzling was that I never had such problems in all my years living overseas. My friends suggested I saw a specialist to find out if mine was a case of Acute Sinusitis.

Haha, very funny, the doc said the air quality here is bad for me, too much dust and fine particles in the air, and that I should get out of town the country. Hee ha! Thanks a lot, doc!

This announcement was paid for by Epocrates.

Wendy wrote this comment on my previous post, “Your kids are the quiet type? ALL of them? How did you manage that?”

Um, I’m not sure really but yes, I can honestly say my three kids never ran around the store or threw tantrums if they didn’t get what they wanted.

They never asked to buy anything. In fact, it was always DH and me who’d ask if they liked a certain toy or book and offer to buy it for them.

They never fought over things. Maybe it’s because we never told them this is your book or this is your toy, so it’s understood that whatever we buy is meant to be shared.

I’m not a particularly strict disciplinarian, at least not in the sense of brandishing the cane. Practically every Asian household with kids has a cane though.

I had one too, kindly provided by a well-meaning aunt who says if I’m ever to raise good kids, I must have a cane. Well, don’t tell her but I’ve never used it and I can’t even find it now .

I’m not sure how it all worked out so well and I wish I had tips to share. Thing is I didn’t consciously set out to ‘tame’ them but along the way, I probably did something right .

Whoa, this must be the quietest weekend in a long while. True, my kids are the quiet type, even when they were little, they never run around the shopping mall or jump on the furniture or scream and fight with each other.

Still, this is a very quiet weekend even by our standards. All my three kids are in exam mode which means everyone is supposed to be doing their own revision with minimum social interaction. I check in on them periodically but for the most part, they’re on their own.

Kids these days are very different from us in our time. I used to get more panicky as the exam date drew near. But these kids, they’re counting down the days, they just can’t wait for the exams to come and be over and done with.

But just between you and me, I’m the most nervous one of all. My two older ones tell me I’m such a worrier and that it’s all going to be a breeze. Yeah, if I can honestly believe that because when I was preparing for my exams during my time, I was nervous as heck!