Things are going swimmingly..

One afternoon last week, I stole away from work to take my father swimming. His memory is starting to wane. It is important for him to stay active and interactive; to have highlights and digressions from his daily routine of walks and arguments with my mom. I asked Sean to come along and we walked to the pool nearby - a newly completed but poorly executed sports complex where my father swam lengths while ten year old children practiced diving from the high platform.

Sean does not know it yet but this is a subtle plan to show him filial piety at work - after all, I want to taken for swims and movies when I grow old and my memory too, starts to wane.

Visiting Sara

On Sunday, I traveled to Kuala Lumpur with Sam to visit Sara at her National Service Camp in Rembau. This involves a one hour drive from KL International Airport to Seremban and then some more to a small town of Rembau where her camp was located.

I felt happy and relieved; happy because I am going to see my favourite daughter and relieved because recent events at work have taken a load off my shoulders. I brought my ear-phones and my sketchbook - expecting to watch an in-flight movie and the latter to practice drawing people.

There wasn't an in-flight movie so much time for sketching my travel companions.

This guy was a easy target - seated across the aisle and dozing after his in-flight meal

A new father struggling with his ten-month daughter while a teenager struggles with phone puzzle

We arrived at 11:30 a.m. and found Selinna already waiting in her new Volvo, which made easy work of the hour long trip. At the camp, young cadets ushered us to our seats in the huge dining hall, one young cadet even carried the bag of books and goodies we brought for Sara. We watched Sara striding into the hall in her full uniform and perfect posture - which sagged a bit when she saw her mother. She still cries when we meet - the separation is hard for all of us.

teary eyed still when we meet

we met at the dining hall

on the way home, Sam sends a few final messages to Sara before she returns her phone to the camp warden

Another month to go before we have her all to ourselves again....

Scenes from a movie

Our Astro cable broke and we spent the past weeks re-watching our favourite movies, which we have many in common. One of my favourite is this French production of Dai Sijie's Balzac and the little seamstress.

The story is told by one of two young men who were sent to a rural mountain village to be re educated in the 1970's. The seamstress in the film's title is a girl from the next village with whom the boys   plot  to read outlawed books by Balzac and Dumas in a quest to 'educate' her and to reveal the world beyond the mountains to the young girl. Ultimately, the boys lose the girl they love to her quest for self discovery.
The scenes is beautifully filmed, I am especially fond of the ones showing man-made structures - a stone footpath obediently following the ridges of the hills; a mountain shack dwarfed by the backdrop of rocky outcrops.

My plans for the weekend

Another guerrilla carpentry project carried out with a few students and cohort, running coach and English teacher, Lim Eng Hooi. The client is a friend from our running group, he has seen some of our self build projects and started asking me about sourcing materials, construction methods, etc.

So, I offered to design and build one for him with the help of Joel (high school graduate) and Sean (Architecture student). I sketched out some ideas based on simple joints and off the shelf materials to achieve a departure from 'closed' boxes for the shelves, opting instead for one that snakes its way from top to bottom.

Sean and Joel what's app this image to the client - explaining to him that the heights of the shelves varied according to the user's height; the lower shelves are for their 3-year old Nicole to store her Jenga and Lego, and her hard cover story books. The middle shelves are for novels while the upper most are some important files to be kept out of reach by little fingers.

Approval was given, so we started sourcing for material - the shelves are 25 x 200 mm dressed medium light hardwood while the vertical supports (which double as book-ends) are cut from a single piece of 12mm plywood.

Jointing methods have to be simple when the carpenters are amateurs and the car porch is your workshop. We started at 10:30 a.m. one Saturday and finished at 3:30 p.m. which is not bad if you consider time out for lunch and to teach a lesson or two about counter-sinking screw heads and taking a plumb-line.

Eng Hooi (representing Malaysia) was instrumental after lunch when our energy waned. The other man in the photo is Kueh, our client

The finished product

National Service

We sent Sara off to serve her National Service duties on the 4th of January, she will be stationed at the Rembau Camp in West Malaysia for three months. For most of that time, we will not have contact with her as phone usage will be restricted. We spend a lot of time together as a family so not being able to 'chat' with her will be difficult for all of us.

True enough, her first week was quite stressful for her as she tried to get used to the hours, the routine and the monotony of endless seminars about patriotism. I told her that she will start enjoying it once the physical training starts.

Sara is far left

After the weekend visit from Mom and grandparents, she cheered up somewhat as can be seen from this photo with her dorm-mates.

Last night, we received this photo - it looks like the old Sara ("hiao-lok" *Hokkien slang) is back!

the trademark cheesy grin

So..it's a new year

I thought for some time before deciding which is the best topic for the first post of the new year
Resolutions? there are so many. Highlights of the previous year? there are even more and too self indulgent to list.

Except for one - a little cardboard model made by an architecture student. It is a model for an installation - he used it for discussions with his tutors. They liked his idea, so he made a larger final model and thought I might like to keep this little one.

He didn't say why he gave it to me, whether it was for Christmas or my birthday - but you know how it is when boys communicate with their fathers.

After the run

It was the 17th November. It was Sunday afternoon, after our Penang run. We had our naps, woke up hungry, went for a walk and found the Mugshot Cafe along Lebuh Chulia. I found the place irresistible because it sold bagels! The place was packed and we ended up sharing a long low table with a couple near the front shop window (this was the view from my seat)