After polishing the last book off my reading plate, I was ready to dive in for more of Han Suyin.
I hunted this book up at the library… and can I just say how great the library system is here? when I requested the book on the online book search, it said they did not have it but offered the option to place a suggestion on their purchase list. A few weeks later, I received a notification that the book was now available!
This story was so different from the other one I read by the same author. I was really keen to read this one after learning about the author’s history of how she had to leave Hong Kong and relocate to Singapore. This story revolved around the British colonial period and Malayan Emergency of the 1940s and 1950s.
At the same time with the circus and drama going on in the Malaysian political scene, with old grievances being dragged from the grave and finger pointing games… the historical setting in the book really added some context and background to everything that was happening today.
It appears the same old issues really go back far and deep…
“…Sudden nausea seized me, as it did so often in these cruel and stupid days in Malaya… The muddles of ignorance, the suspicions based on race, the heavy hand of Emergency Regulations, condemning without trial, needing not evidence but plausible suspicion. And that was enough to detain anyone for a minimum of two years…”
Sounds exactly the same issues around race and the ISA happening today right? Yet this quote came straight out of Han Suyin’s own observations found in this novel.
One of the times I look forward to the most every week is Saturday mornings. Not just because I don’t have to go to work, but it’s generally the time hubby and I have our ‘just us’ time.
On Saturday mornings, instead of being jarred awake at the sound of the alarm before groggily reaching over to the bedside table to switch it off, my body clock nudges me awake gently and I let my eyes peek open to the glorious feeling of being able to snuggle under the covers as long as I want to. Then hubby and I exchange good mornings before we share some pillow talk… simply lying back in bed and just talking.
Sometimes we talk about ‘important’ stuff like about the changes that will happen when little boy blue arrives or things we need to get done around the house or career plans; sometimes it’s very deep and chim stuff like our thoughts on a sermon we heard, a book ‘we’ (read: I) read; or casual stuff like something we chatted about to someone we bumped into or a funny joke we heard, a movie we watched; sometimes it’s personal stuff like family concerns or personal worries; and sometimes we try and be clever and start trying to solve and debate over world problems… like the political issues in Malaysia, the current Australian election etc. (we usually don’t get very far with the latter)… pretty much anything and everything under the sun… “shoes and ships and sealing wax and cabbages and kings!”
Usually the ‘pillow talk’ continues on as we adjourn to breakfast. Which is why I always try and prepare something extra special for brekkie on Saturday mornings. This recent Saturday’s menu was french toast.
It’s not the fanciest of brekkie foods, but french toast always holds a special place in my heart because it was the first thing hubby ever cooked for me in our shared history back from our early pak tor days. I’ll always remember that one morning when I ventured down to Nedlands to meet up for a ‘study session’ at UWA. Hubs (then BF) met me at the bus stop with homemade french toast and jam. So sweet hor?
Sigh.
I really love this ‘just us’ time of the week so much that I felt bit sad thinking how this routine will change once pregnancy morphs into parenthood.
I remarked to hubby with a tone of regret: “I’m really going to miss ‘us’”
And hubs was all: “Huh? Why? What do you mean???”
After explaining what I meant, hubby tried to be as assuring as possible saying that we would always carve out time like this so we will always remember the original ‘just us’.
It was nice to know that he treasured this time too and was on the same page with me to continue to make it a priority. All the same, I think there is a part of this which will shift into history and we can only look back on with fond memories and nostalgia.
About time for a pregnancy update. I’m about 23 weeks along. Bump is definitely getting more pronounced and really feeling the stretch.
At 23 weeks baby is about 30cm long (head to toe) and weighs about 500g. Here’s a recent scan from a couple weeks back. Proof of baby’s blue status indicated by the arrow (courtesy of the ultrasound technician).
I’d like to take a slightly different route on my ramblings today. For the past few months everything’s been pretty much all about pregnancy and babies. We’ve been shopping around for baby stuff, reading books and articles on the subject (well I have at least) and talking to people about it. I’m enjoying the whole experience, but sometimes I feel like the ‘me’ underneath it all has been getting a little lost in the midst of all this. Even when talking to people, the first thing people always talk or ask about is the pregnancy… can’t blame them as it’s hard to ignore the bump staring straight at you… plus it IS the main thing on my mind anyway.
Pretty much most of what I do throughout the day works around ‘the bump’. From the moment I wake up I have to get out of bed a different way, to picking the clothes I wear, the food I eat, trying to stay comfortable in my office chair all day and so on. And the little fella really knows how to make his presence known… he’s quite a mover and shaker. I feel intermittent jerks and flips in my belly throughout the day.
This morning, I played some classic Don Moen tunes in the background while I grappled with some Excel worksheets. And you know what? Those oldies still rock! Well, maybe ‘rock’ is not the word to describe Don Moen’s style, but it was great! For a few minutes I had a mini argument with myself of whether this was simply a nostalgia kind of thing and how I should guard myself against falling into a worship tune simply because it was a familiar one as opposed to some of the less familiar tracks from the latest Hillsong album.
But it’s difficult to separate yourself from feelings that just surface unexpectedly. I am after all human. It can’t be that wrong to reflect back on a song that touched you, the same way one might journey back to the memory of a favourite song or place shared with one’s husband/wife/boyfriend/girlfriend etc.
So please indulge me for a bit as I talk about memories associated with songs from this album:
My memories of this album are always closely associated with images of me doing this:
Our creative efforts in those days are a far cry from the hip-hop and contemporary moves of the youths today. But we really put our heart and soul into the choreographing and making sure each thing we did was meaningful and worshipful. Back in '96 (or was it '97) we actually choreographed dance steps for almost every song in the 'God With Us' album as the BCCM Chinese Service at that time was organising a worship night based entirely on that album, and we were asked to accompany the music and singing with dance.
This is one of the songs I remember really putting thought into aligning the meanings of the words with the steps:
Some of the steps I remember...
All we like sheep = holding shepherd's crook in hand
Have gone astray = hand movement to show 'going astray'
Each of us turning our own separate way = turning our bodies in different directions
We were so earnest and serious at making sure we did a good job. But we had so much fun at each of those practice sessions too.
[Digressing a bit: Sometimes in the moments before I got pregnant, I used to wonder when our baby would come. I reconciled it to the fact that God already has set the time and places for each of us to be born. So I view it as God already ordaining the time in line with the people he will meet and friendships he will forge. And boy, I sure hope his friendships will be as great as the ones I've been privileged to have!]
After all that reminiscing over 'old songs', let me close with sharing the lyrics from this title track from Don Moen's latest 2008 album. I think the lyrics are a really good reflection of not only looking back, but also looking forward to believe God for more...
I’m just about at the halfway mark. 20 weeks down, about 20 more weeks to go.
Incidentally, I never used to get this whole tracking in terms of weeks thing. Every time I used to ask a preggy friend how far along she was, and she would say such and such number of weeks, I’d automatically convert it in my head and likely respond with “oh, so that would be about such and such number of months?”.
Sometimes I used to wonder “why not just say it in months?”. But now here I am doing the exact same thing. Apparently it’s some kind of pregnancy lingo thing, probably picked up along the way from all the doctor/midwife speak, reading pregnancy articles and talking to other friends who’ve been pregnant before. On top of that, after the first month or so, you realise what a snail’s pace you’d be moving at if you have to wait a whole month before you can tick off another milestone. I get it now.
I felt my first jiggle about a week ago. It was hard to tell at first as it was so faint that I thought maybe it was just gas or a stomach thing. Most articles I read said first time mums most likely can’t feel anything this early. But someone told me that his wife described the first movements like butterflies in her tummy.
I described mine to hubby as like a flutter of teeny tiny pinches from the inside of my belly. I remember first feeling it late last week around 4pm one afternoon while sitting at my desk in the office, while I was contemplating some figures on a spreadsheet at my computer, right there and then.
I’m starting to be more conscious of the movements as the days go by and as the flutterings become more distinct. Hubby was not able to share the experience at first because it was too tiny to feel from outside. But last night in bed while I was lying still on my side, I felt something and mentioned it to hubby, so of course he was like “I wanna feel it, I wanna feel it”. I wasn’t sure if he’d able to feel it, but I placed his hand on the spot where I last felt it and we waited quietly for a while until we felt a teeny tiny jerk. It was very very faint, but hubby said he did feel something.
Oh and we just went for our 20 week scan this week so we can finally answer the burning question… pink or blue?
