Quiet

I have been rather silent these last two weeks due to much excitement.

Firstly, a lovely weekend in one of the Singaporeshore islands.  A bit like Geordie and Jersey Shore but without the Geordies and Jerseys.  The island is called Bintan and ridiculously, is bigger than Singapore.  It was a wonderful break with the family, much needed and enjoyed. Plus, the visa takes up a whole page in ones passport.  I think that is capital, given it only took 45 minutes to get there.  A few more weekends on Bintan and my passport could be mistaken for Michael Palin's.

Secondly, our sea freight arrived the Monday after we returned.  Needless to say, I was in seventh heaven and spent the rest of the week unpacking, arranging, shifting, manipulating, building and tweaking.  I have a handy gentleman coming over on Thursday to hang our numerous mirrors and pictures and then we will be complete and the apartment that has so far been the preserve of two adults and two children, quite a lot of spiders and every trades person in Singapore, courtesy of the resident idiot developer, (see Singaportrait A Week) will feel like home.

I do expect the handy guy whose name is Ricky to hate me as I am rather pernickity about how pictures are spaced on a wall.  I have not decided if I am going to call him RI_IY from Eastenders parlance or roll my "R" in the Spanish form a la Rrrrrricky.  I might just call him Ricky.

Thirdly, the Thursday and Friday of the same week were public holidays in Singapore.  Thursday was Hari Raya Puasa which I believe is the end of Ramadan and Friday was National Day in Singapore.  Due to my ignorance I didn't even know who Singapore were celebrating their independence from.  I asked my husband if it was from the Mongols, then the British, as everyone in the world has celebrated that at some point or perhaps Mauritius?  No, apparently they are celebrating independence from Malaysia.  Need to do a bit of work on my south east Asian history.

Since we arrived in Singapore we have witnessed a daily fly by of chinooks, various helicopters carrying giant flags, tornado jets blasting past, all we assumed in rehearsal for the big celebration on Friday.  The country has looked great with flags being hung out of windows across entire blocks.  A veritable sea of white and red.

We were contemplating attending the ceremony but my little boy came down with a fever and tummy bug and we decided dragging ourselves down amongst the crowds was probably unwise.  After watching about twenty minutes of the broadcast on TV I was very glad I did not go to the trouble.  We turned on about half an hour into the official show and were watching a demonstration of how the police deal with hostage situations, many of the police going into the crowd and mock shooting the "terrorists" down as families in the audience watched on.

There was then a huge amount of tankery, gunnery, shootery and blastery going on which I found rather odd.  Singapore is a very small nation, multicultural, successful, peaceful, safe and I apologise for saying this, a fairly minor player in the global scheme of things. I was therefore confused as to the need for such a chest beating army dominated performance.  We came to the conclusion it was small man syndrome.  I talk too much and have a loud voice because I am short.  Same principle with Singapore.  Anyway, we stopped watching shortly after the military eight year olds stepped up to do some sort of hip hop dance in uniform.  Bless them, they would not have won Britain's Got Talent.

Well, now that I have insulted a nation and no doubt the Singaporean Big Brother satellites who are watching me as I type this heresy will be stamping a big black mark next to my name and having some ganglord plant a bag of heroin in my luggage for my future trip to Thailand, I can lead on to the fourth reason I have been quiet.

The kids and I have been stuck in Monday and Tuesday of this week because my nail biting son, who no doubt got his stomach bug from the bus bogeys he injested by chewing his fingers, making the fact he is very vigilant about washing his hands when he comes home utterly pointless, has now passed his bug on to me.  I foolishly shared his drink as most stupid parents do because they are still our little darlings even if unwell.  So I have been in the last two days with stomach cramps and a headache. On the plus side the kids are having such a boring week so far, they will be gagging to hit school on Monday morning.

You might have gathered from my last few posts that I am rather excited about the children starting school having being alone in the water with them since early May.  Yet, I know come Monday I am going to feel pretty choked up.  Mainly because I am not taking them to school, but they are being collected by a school bus at 7.45am and will be deposited back at our apartment at 4pm.  Between those two hours, I will have no idea what they are doing.  I do plan to hop a taxi and hide out at the school peeking through door cracks and hopefully blending into the surroundings like one of the X-Men and making sure they are not unhappy, not that there is much I can do about it.

Anyway, watch this space and think of me next Monday as I stand in the road wearing my slippers, nicotine stained pink flannel dressing gown, ratty hair and a vodka tonic in my hand at 7:45am waving my children away, the youngest for his very first day at big school and know that I will be missing home and specifically the convivial school drop off at that precise moment, I will be wondering what the hell I am going to do with my future now both my children are in full time school, but will probably start this new stage of my life by watching the Ice Age movies back to back without childish interruption, just to get me through my first morning alone.

I will probably go dress shopping after that as my Singapore uniform of shorts and vest top combo is not working as I continue to be mistaken for domestic help.  Not that I mind being mistaken for domestic help.  I just do not like the indifference that is afforded me because I am thought of as domestic help.  Fairly poor show by Singaporeans and Westerners alike to treat these young ladies with such disregard.  I guess sweating around with a trolley and a couple of latte coloured children does not help me much in looking the expat missus.

Anyway, I have had enough and I intend to buy some nice floaty dresses and will no doubt attempt to do my best impression of Madonna trying to pass for an English rose.  I am sure I will fail, as did Madonna and as my dear friend back home said, with a tone of disappointment that I was no longer going to be an expat undercover maid, will instead end up looking like Hyacinth Bouquet.