iPhones and iPods for 3 children: US$800
Tuition at Chinese International School the last 14 years: More than I care to contemplate
Barreling down Deep Water Bay Road on a sunny Sunday afternoon with your three teenagers, the music blaring in the minivan and everyone singing Bon Jovi’s ‘You Give Love A Bad Name’ at the top of their lungs:
PRICELESS.
This morning we bundled the kids into the car, some of us more awake than others, to meet Samantha’s god-family for brunch in Stanley. It was a beautiful, sunny morning, bright, but not too hot.
On our way there, Joey woke up enough to ask, “Where are we having brunch?”
Andrew: “Classified.”
There was a momentary silence. Then I heard Joey say, “No really. Where are we going?”
Andrew got it first. With a grin in his voice, “It’s Classified!”
Joey, slowly. “No, it’s not. Why can’t you just tell me?”
Andrew, trying again: “The restaurant is Classified!”
By now, George and I, in the front seats are cracking up. George adds, “It’s on a need-to-know basis, Joey, and you don’t need to know.”
Taking pity on my groggy first-born, I try to clear things up. “The restaurant’s name is Classified.”
Joey starts laughing at himself.
And then he says. “Hu is the leader of China.”
*****
After we park, we walk over to the restaurant and as it comes into view, I nudge Joey and point to the sign. “Get it? ‘Classified.'”
Joey shoots back. “Where? I can’t see it. Guess I don’t have the clearance level for access.”
Never a dull moment at the House of Koo. We’re sometimes slow, but never dull.
According to Wikipedia:
Non-Newtonian fluid is a type of fluid whose flow properties differ in any way from those of Newtonian fluids. Most commonly the viscosity (resistance to deformation or other forces) of non-Newtonian fluids is dependent on shear rate or shear rate history. However, there are some non-Newtonian fluids with shear-independent viscosity, that nonetheless exhibit normal stress-differences or other non-Newtonian behaviour. Many salt solutions and molten polymers are non-Newtonian fluids, as are many commonly found substances such as ketchup, custard, toothpaste, starch suspensions, paint, blood, and shampoo. In a Newtonian fluid, the relation between the shear stress and the shear rate is linear, passing through the origin, the constant of proportionality being the coefficient of viscosity. In a non-Newtonian fluid, the relation between the shear stress and the shear rate is different, and can even be time-dependent. Therefore, a constant coefficient of viscosity cannot be defined.
Did any of you get that? I didn’t.
This was a snippet from our dinner conversation last night:
Don’t ask me how we got on the topic of non-Newtonian liquids. I have no idea, but there was a discussion about them (my only contribution, “I have no idea what a non-Newtonian liquid is.”) before it all degenerated into mayhem.
Joey: “Well, liquid water also has some non-Newtonian characteristics. From a certain distance, it doesn’t behave as a liquid, but as a solid.”
Andrew: “That’s right. If you fall into it from really high up, it’s like landing on cement.”
Me: “Yup.”
Sam: “You don’t want to bellyflop. That would hurt!”
Me: “That’s right. If you fell into water from a high altitude, you’d probably turn yourself into an exploded bag of guts. You’d be dead.”
Sam: “What if you make a perfect dive into it? Could you break the surface tension and survive?”
Joey: “Hmm. Yes, I think so.”
Me: “If you dove into water from a distant height in a classic diver’s pose, would you break your fingertips?”
Joey: “You might. But at least you wouldn’t break your head. You would survive.”
Sam: “Not if you landed in a shark’s mouth.”
The preposterousness of that image cracked us all up.
Andrew and Joey come to the same conclusion almost simultaneously: “If you dove into a shark’s open mouth from that distance, you would go through him like a bullet and come out the other end! The shark wouldn’t kill you; you would kill the shark!”
(I’m thinking, actually, there’d probably be mutual killing happening, but I keep quiet.)
Sam: “Ewww! That would be disgusting! You’d get all dirty with shark guts.”
Joey: “Nope. You’d shoot right through him and end up in the water.”
Me: “At a certain distance, would water be more solid than shark?”
Joey: “Come to think of it, you would shoot right through him, but you’d probably have to go through his shark genitals. You’d probably get shark semen all over you.”
Sam: “EWWW, JOEY!!! I’m eating!” She pushes her plate of pasta away from her. Not anymore.
Me: “Who wants cupcakes for dessert?”
This poor guy did a bellyflop off a 10m board into some non-Newtonian fluid.
Open wide! I’m coming through!
In the world of parenting, you have to go with what works.
This morning during breakfast as we were enjoying a bit of family time, Joey glanced at the headlines in the SCMP (South China Morning Post) and cracked up. He quoted a front page headline: “Japan a Party Pooper, Says China Leader“. The article goes on to talk about how a Chinese official was complaining that Japan spoiled the soiree originally planned to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Sino-Japanese relations by engaging in the territorial dispute.
I started laughing too. “Wouldn’t it be fun if you could have a job making up funny headlines for serious news articles?”
Joey nodded with a grin. A split-second later, in the style of a TV newscaster, he deadpanned: “BP Says BGone — Attempts Oil Spill Cleanup“.
He bounded up the stairs to go start his day as Samantha grabbed the paper and asked, “Where does it say that?”
Funny guy — and I don’t mean his face!
Last week, Thursday, I got back from a trip to Hangzhou. I’d gotten up early on Wednesday at 5 to meet Nancy at Airport Express at 6:15 for an 8 am flight, and we’d arrived back in Hong Kong Thursday evening late, after two full days of being in China, which just in itself is somehow, exhausting.
Hauling my roller bag over the threshold of our entryway at 10:30 pm weary to the bone, I heard a ‘Mom! You’re back!’, and the sound of footsteps. I look up in a fog of utter fatigue to see Andrew, trotting down the stairs with arms outstretched, ready to enfold me in his teddybear’s hug.
At that moment, there could not possibly be a nicer, more homecoming feeling in the world than the sweetness of a ‘welcome home’ hug from your child. Except, maybe, for what came next.
“Let me get that for you”, said my adult-sized son in his newly deep voice, and he leaned over, grabbed my bag and easily trotted upstairs with it to deposit it neatly in my room.
What a guy.
Hard to believe he was once even smaller than DT. But still he remains just as sweet.
The weekend before school started, my mom invited us all to Macau for some family fun. And wouldn’t you know it, that’s just what we had. While the best fun was had fantasizing about the most inspired ways to exterminate the maddening swarms of Chinese tourists in the Venetian, the funniest photos were taken when we went, utterly unprepared attire-wise, to see the ice-carving exhibit, which is held in an exhibition space chilled to a glacial minus 8 degrees Celsius.
Having ceded my sneakers to my daughter who had only brought sandals, I wore flip-flops and capri length exercise pants. Hypothermia be damned!
Dressed in the warmest clothing we’d all brought to Macau for a short weekend in the middle of the tropical summer heat, we happily set off across the Venetian continent, to find the ice-carving show, located in Exhibit Hall F. To get there, we had to traverse this:
Vavavavoom!
We couldn’t quite figure out why they would march throngs of families with young (and not-so-young) children past the ‘Asia Adult Expo’. Did they think we would think to nip inside the Adult Expo exhibits and fortify ourselves against the impending arctic temperatures with the hotness of the attractions within? Or, were they hoping that we would emerge so frostbitten from the tundra-like conditions of the ice carving exhibit that we would be unable to resist the allure of even the skimpiest of extra layers?
It’s a mystery.
We Koos and Tsiens marched intrepidly and with eyes averted, straight past the Adult Expo and into the minus-8-degree Celsius ice show.
It’s clear to me that the subzero conditions immediately froze my kids’ brains into solid chunks of useless matter because the first photo I took was this:
Dumb and Dumber.
Gayle and Philip still retained some neural function because at least they thought to share body heat.
“Baby, it’s cold outside…”
The East is Red… like National Education would even make a dent in these noggins.
Cool cousins!
Just grateful no one’s licking anything.
“Mom! Take a picture of me with this mushroom!” (Ours is not to reason why, ours is but to freeze our butts off, taking weird pictures of green kids.)
Have they just summitted Everest? Crossed the Delaware? Reached the South Pole? It’s anyone’s guess.
Grace, thy name is Joey.
The latest in robotic arm replacements. Almost life-like.
Proof the apples don’t fall far from the tree.
Definitely explains the Dumb and Dumber thing. Not my side of the family.
Nicky chapping his butt on the ice slide.
For once, Joey is the straight man. The bratty kid sister strikes again.
An actual nice photo!
By now, my bare feet feel as though they might snap off without me even realizing. Joey, realizing that I’m hitting a danger point, gallantly takes off his shoes and forces me to put them on; he continues on in his stockinged feet. His shoes feel like lifeboats — both in the life-saving and boat-like aspects.
Joey prevents his mother from becoming an amputee.
Ice fishing — it really is warmer in the igloo.
Andrew, feeling the heat.
Mush! Mush!
Meet the Eskoomos.
Sorry, I couldn’t help myself.
Note: This post is not for the faint of heart.
Pop Quiz:
Q1: What do Andrew and Usain Bolt have in common?
Q2: What does Andrew not have in common with Saddam Hussein? (Besides the fact that Saddam is dead. And had a mustache.)
Q3: In what way is Andrew a technical improvement on Linda Blair?
(Answers at end of post.)
Last night was witness to the genesis of family legend. At approximately 12:06 am, we were awakened by our bedroom door being unceremoniously flung open and Joey’s terse statement: “Andrew’s thrown up.”
Caught in a deep and dreamy stupor, I was slow to ascend to wakefulness. George reacted faster, immediately springing out of bed and going to investigate. At that point, I was tempted to turn over and go back to sleep, feeling justified by the well-known and universally acknowledged principle that after midnight, anything short of (and frequently, up to and including) a severed artery is the sole responsibility of the parent not canny enough to feign coma. However, and this is testimony to just the kind of caring and conscientious mother I am, I reluctantly dragged myself from bed to go see.
The stench of vomit hit me before I was even down the half-flight of stairs. Flinching from the impact, I continued, intrepidly down the steps, as George announced to me from Andrew’s doorway, “He launched off the top of his loft bed. It’s everywhere.” Joey stood in the hallway, gagging quietly.
As I rounded the corner to get my first glimpse into their room, I stopped short. Not even George’s statement “It’s everywhere” could prepare me for how Andrew had defied the laws of physics and the limitations of human anatomy. Of all the ways I could have hoped for Andrew to exceed our expectations, this would have been at the very bottom of the list.
Not even the film industry has dreamed up such a scene of utter carnage. Unimaginatively, Hollywood has only ever shown the forward propulsion of vomit, hence the term, projectile vomiting. Mr. Creosote of Monty Python fame, Lard-Ass from the famous blueberry pie eating contest in ‘Stand By Me’, Paul Rudd in ‘I Love You, Man’, all managed impressive distance and propulsive force — but only in one concentrated direction. But not even the best, most creatively and cinematically revolting minds in Hollywood have ever conceived of a 270 degree blast radius from a singular launch point. Not only that, he managed to shoot his barf to a distance of greater than 8 ft.
Dark puddles and speckles of vomit had been sprayed the entire span of the soft white woollen carpeting in the boys room, from Andrew’s loft bed in the far corner of the room, to the doorway. This must sound preposterous to you, because as I write this, I personally think it sounds ridiculous. But I swear, I am not exaggerating.
Like I said, Andrew Koo, exceeding expectations.
It was clear, even at first glance, that there was no way that the boys would be able to continue to sleep in that room last night. By now, Andrew has shut himself up in his bathroom to get cleaned up and George has gone downstairs to rouse an unlucky maid, and I step around Joey (who has now recovered enough to start cracking jokes, but not enough to venture back into the room), to collect their comforters off their beds, so they can sleep in our room. Joey asks me to collect his phone which is plugged in next to the futon that he was sleeping on — as I step into the room, attempting to avoid the dark speckles, I realize there is no clean bedding to be collected. (“Everywhere” means everywhere.) There is also no way to avoid stepping in vomit, as I plant my foot on what looks to be relatively unsullied surface only to pull away with it wet with gastric spume. This, on the corner of the futon at least 8 feet from where Andrew’s mouth must have been when his digestive tract blew. (The polo shirt Joey had laid out to wear the next day to school, on the far side of his futon was unwearable.)
I once wrote a blog post about Andrew as a toddler, not having the common sense to vomit away from his body, and managing to throw up so thoroughly upon himself at a Park N Shop that he ended up standing with his little baby Tevas having filled up with puke like wading pools.
Let me state for the record, this was NOT what I meant, when I said I wished Andrew knew how to throw up away from himself.
By now, George, Joey and I, punchy from being so rudely yanked out of sleep, are overwhelmed by the amplitude of what Andrew has achieved. None of us has ever seen anything remotely this impressive in the entire oeuvre of noteworthy feats of vomiting. We are convulsed in helpless laughter, even as we are fearful that Andrew will take offense at our cackling, but we cannot help ourselves. Joey does not help matters by throwing in one-liners as they occur to him.
“Andrew Koo, a one-man ‘Apocalypse Now’.
“I love the smell of vomit in the morning.”
“Oh my god, it’s like he set off an aerosolized bio-weapon in there.”
“There must be military applications to what he’s done here.”
“There’s nothing like being woken up by having someone vomit on your foot.”
Armed with a fusillade of disinfectants and carpet cleaners, Joycie valiantly sets about cleaning up the mess as I get the kids re-settled into their makeshift beds and make sure that Andrew has a bucket by the sofa, just in case. Joey is still throwing out his one-liners (“We need to register Andrew as a Lethal Weapon.”) when Joycie’s voice floats out of the boy’s room: “How many times have I told you boys to shut the closet doors!”
The implications of this sink in. Andrew has not only managed to disseminate the contents of his stomach across a seriously mind-blowing expanse of his room, he’s found a way to blow chunks over his and Joey’s entire wardrobe. He turned his entire room into a kill zone. Everything would need to be laundered.
This sets us off afresh and we are, by now, practically crying from laughter.
This morning, after a very truncated night’s sleep, we were still, bizarrely jazzed by the previous night’s incident. Joey was surprisingly good-natured about his rude awakening and the knock-on effects of Andrew’s gastric episode, probably because we are all still awe-struck by its impressive and unparalled magnitude. The stuff of legend.
He put it this way. “Imagine if Andrew had not puked straight ahead, but instead, leaned over his side rail and thrown up on me.”
Holy sh!t. Doesn’t even bear thinking about.
Pop Quiz Answers —
A1: They have both accomplished amazing feats previously considered physically impossible.
A2: Andrew actually has Weapons of Mass Destruction.
A3: Andrew doesn’t have to wind his head up.
P.S. Samantha would like everyone to know, she is responsible for the title of this post.
Here’s one from the archives that I forgot about.
Last November when I was driving Joey into Central over Thanksgiving break, I found myself following a Porsche Panamera, a beast of a car. Broad and powerful-looking, it’s a Porsche on steroids, amped up on testosterone and machismo. Still, I thought, as a drove along behind it, it’s a handsome car, especially in that steely metallic brown. I have to admit, I was finding it a little sexy.
And then, I looked at the license plate.
Because 'O-B-N-O-X-I-O-U-S' wouldn't fit.
It occurs to me that the owner must be using this car to weed out any thinking women who might be tempted to date him. Bimbos are, of course, much easier to manage. So smart of him!
I guess what’s so offensive about this car/plate combo is its ham-handedness. I mean, it’s just so obvious. Wanna-be playboys around the world, take note. A car of this bling-factor requires a little subtlety or humor with a plate. How about ‘BANKRPTD’, (or ‘COMPENS8NG’) or, how about just abort the vanity plates altogether? Although, a keychain that says “My other car is a Chevy Vega” would not be amiss.
On the other hand, come to think of it, if you drive a Chevy Vega or Ford Pinto, held together with baling wire and rust and chewing gum, ‘PLAYA’ would be a great plate.
The Hanoi Metropole Hotel is a gorgeous French colonial style hotel run by the Sofitel chain. Painted all in creamy whites, it exudes old-world glamour and modern luxury so you can imagine my pleasure when we pulled up to it a few hours after departing the somewhat lacking Ha Long Bay Novotel and told, this was where we were having lunch.
The evocatively named, if slightly grammatically challenged, Spices Garden offers a beautiful lunch buffet of appetizingly presented regional delicacies. I was especially taken with the green mango salad and the tiny bowls of personally prepared beef pho. The young woman, Qiu Xiang (also evocatively named, as her name means Autumn Fragrance) who had been capably accompanying us and making up for the hapless Dong’s gaffes, joined us for lunch and had been seated next to me. I imagine that it’s a real treat for a local young woman on an office girl salary to eat at the Metropole, and she was happily making her way through plate after plate of food with a great deal of gusto. She was just starting to dig into a small bowl of something, upon which she had heaped various sprigs of fresh herbs and she noticed me watching her. She looked at me and asked, “Have you tried this before?”
“What is it?”
Obligingly, she pushed aside the greenery in her bowl to expose what looked like a miniature brain. “It’s a boiled duck egg, with an embryo. Very nutritous.”
Hoping I wasn’t blanching visibly, I watched her mash it up and dig in. Too late, I realized, I should have taken a photo, and I said as much. Qiu Xiang offered to make up another bowl for me to photograph. I was hesitant, as I didn’t want it to go to waste, and she even offered to eat it for me after I’d taken the picture. Happily, I acquiesced.
Looking harmless as a boiled egg.
See what I mean about a resemblance to a boiled brain?
How it's meant to be eaten. A.k.a. all the gory bits, covered.
The condiments that are meant to go with 'Half Hatched Duck Egg'.
Getting a little hairy. I mean, feathery.
Close-up. Here, you can see the beak of the embryo.
I am certain that some of you are gagging. Those of you who know me are probably reading with a horrified fascination and thinking, ‘No, she didn’t…!”
I will admit, I have known about people eating balut, or fertilized duck eggs for quite some time now, and I have always found the thought of it repulsive. I mean, my reaction has always been “EWWW, NO WAY!”
According to Wikipedia, balut is eaten as street food in the Philippines and is also very common in Southeast Asian nations like Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia and Vietnam. It is thought to have been introduced to these areas by Chinese traders and migrants. Different regions prefer different condiments, but the entire contents of the egg are normally eaten, and in the Philippines, balut have recently entered into haute cuisine, even being baked into pastries. In China, they are known as mao dan, or literally, ‘feathered egg’.
My mom’s friends, including my godmother had been watching the photography process with some interest, and had whipped out their own cameras. My godmother mentioned that she was definitely going to show the photos of the duck egg to my godbrothers. “Daniel is going to say, ‘Disgusting!‘”, she predicted happily.
“No kidding!” I thought to myself.
Somehow, though, the thought of my brawny, macho godbrothers being too chicken to try it, egged me on. (No puns intended. Yeah, right!) Years of good-natured, competitive teasing between us made having something to hold over them, and the thought of being able to freak them out, too tempting to pass up.
And thus, as Pavlov’s bell to a dog, as dumb as any canine, (but definitely not salivating) in response to my godmother’s words, I found myself, much to my own chagrin, saying, “Why not? I’m going to try it.”
A ripple of approval went through our table. No backing down now.
I don’t like Thai basil and ginger and mint on my food and so I picked it all off, leaving me with woefully nothing to mask the taste of what was, admittedly, a disgusting looking sight. What was I thinking?
On the sidelines, Qiu Xiang continued to provide commentary about the dish. “Some people like the yolk,and others like the egg white. Try them with a little pepper salt.”
I took a deep breath. Egg yolk, egg white. I know what those are, I can do this. Using chopsticks, I picked up the yolk and took a tiny bite. And then, I took a bite of white. A little stringier than normal, but okay.
Why I should never play poker.
Got my game face on.
In the end, it really wasn’t that bad. I didn’t take more than two or three small bites, but I can say that I tried it. And honestly, it wasn’t awful. It looks far worse than it tastes. In fact, it tastes like egg that has been steeped in the flavor of duck meat. This is, of course, completely logical, and I don’t know why I was surprised at that.
As I chewed, I bit down on something that resisted my teeth and I reached in and pulled it out. It was a tiny little bone, about the size of a fake eyelash. Carefully, I discarded it on my plate, looked at Qiu Xiang, who was watching me intently, and gave her a big smile.
After a long, exhausting day of travel which included leaving for Taipei Airport at 6:30 am to catch a 3 hour flight, another 3 1/2 hour, 40 km/hour ride along Vietnamese roads, of uneven quality, in a van no doubt assembled in a Communist nation (“Mercedes Benz — bringing you vehicles built by Socialist labor — and definitely free of German-engineering, too.”), to directly board a 3 hour boat tour of scenic Ha Long Bay, we arrived at our home away from home, the local Novotel, to find a bath tub, rising gracefully from the floor of the bath room. I looked for the shower stall. Sometimes, they’re separate.
No shower. Whaat?
There was, thoughtfully, a shower attachment, which was stored in the side of the bathtub. And, thoughtfully again, a surrounding shower rod and curtain, hanging beautifully nearly a foot away from the edges of the tub, designed in such a way as to in no way hinder shower water from flowing directly onto the bathroom floor. That probably explains why the designer had intelligently omitted to provide a way to attach the shower head anywhere above the level of the tub.
Always a good idea to leave lots of space between shower curtain and tub to allow the free flow of water onto the floor.
The only way to have a shower was to kneel, hunched over in a tub, knee cartilage crackling against the cold, unforgiving porcelain, with the handheld shower held, well, in one hand. Which left but one other hand with which to hold the soap, lather up and attempt to get oneself clean. One couldn’t place the handheld shower attachment back in its place to have both hands handy, as it was stored in an upright position in the side of the tub — meaning, if the water was running, and you put it in its cradle, you would potentially shoot the water directly out of the tub, or straight into your face. That is, unless you adjusted the water pressure to a mere trickle, to minimize rinsing efficacy and maximize the amount of time one’s kneecaps were in agony.
When it came time to shampoo, in order to unscrew the shampoo bottle, one had to clench the shower attachment between one’s knees unless it didn’t bother you to leave it writhing at the bottom of the tub, randomly spraying gushes of water at you and around the room.
On top of all that, it took two of us to figure out which of the bottles was actually shampoo. While the ‘Novotel’ name was emblazoned identically on the bottles, the distinguishing labels of ‘shampoo’ and ‘shower gel’ were craftily placed on neither the front or back of the bottle, but rather, the side, running up and down the bottle, in font-size that requires anyone over the age of 40 to have their reading glasses ready in order to bathe.
When we complained about the lack of shower facilities in our room, it was matter-of-factly explained to us that only half of the rooms in the Ha Long Bay Novotel offered showers. As if that was an explanation. Did the hotel people think that only 50% of hotel guests would want to shower?
Yes, I know that Novotel is a French chain. Am working very hard to refrain from making any snarky comments about the French and bathing — it would just be too easy.
In my 46+ years of international traveling, I have, if memory serves, only once encountered a hotel room which didn’t have a shower. And that was in, uhh… Paris.
Never mind.
Zoo Koo 