Grandma's Birthday

Happy 92nd Birthday Grandmama (93rd according to Chinese reckoning)

Long overdue post – pictures of Grandma’s birthday in March as promised to all at home. As a bonus (or more like to make up for the long delay), I’ve thrown in last year’s birthday pictures as well. And I WILL get down to doing something on Facebook for me and Anu …soon. Lazy, and am becoming …err resistant to change and new technology, yet another sign of aging shite!


Dad and Mom


Gary, Granny, Auntie Choo and 3rd Auntie (Sanh-Ko) Lucy


Jane, Anu and Granny


Jason, Mark, Kim, Granny, Jamie and Hazel


2nd Uncle (Jipek), Jamie, Rachel, Kim and Ben


Anu, Daphne and Jack

Well, here’s a lunar-solar calendar I found in the net of the Year 1917, Year of the Snake, Grandmother’s supposedly birth sign and therefore birth year. This was a leap year in the Chinese Calendar and it had 2 Second Months. Taking the Chinese birth date of Granny as the 15th day of the 2nd Month of the Chinese Calendar as what we’ve been using so far, the Western Calendar equivalent would be 8th March 1917 (same birth date as yours truly) or 6th April 1917 (if she’s born on the repeated 2nd Month). By that reckoning, she’d be 92 years old now according to the Western Calendar.



Granny’s Birthday 2008 – Big Auntie (Tua-Ko), Kok Seng, Granny, Small Auntie (Seihan-Cim) and Small Uncle (Seihan-Ceik)


Granny’s Birthday 2008 – Kim, Mom, Gary, Anu, Dad, Hazel and Granny


Granny’s Birthday 2008 – 2nd Auntie (Jiko), Mark, June, Granny and Jamie (front); Patrick, Rachel, Jane and Chee Kan (back)

A Little Bit of Darjeeling

The Druk Sangak Choling Gompa in Darjeeling

For the time being, here’re some pictures of Darjeeling taken 2 years back… Darjeeling was at the centre of a protest movement to create a separate state called Gorkhaland (the majority of the people in Darjeeling are of Nepali decent, and Nepali, or Gurkhali, the Indian version of Nepali, is the main language in Darjeeling).


Somewhere in the heart of Darjeeling


The Japanese Peace Pagoda, Darjeeling


In contemplation, at the Peace Pagoda


Darjeeling in the monsoon


A lama manning the prayer wheel in the Gompa (Tibetan monastery)


Anu and her Guardian Monks


Prayer flags at Observatory Hill, Darjeeling


Making an artwork out of roofing


A protest on water supply in the streets of Darjeeling

For Quantity or for Quality?

This (blog update) is what you resort to when you run out of ideas, or time. Actually it’s time that’s killing the imagination nowadays. I’ve been a perfectionist my entire adult life (can’t recall much of my childhood times), a trait that’s both advantageous and disadvantageous I find. On one hand you strive to produce good quality work. On the other, because you want to produce only good quality work, if you can’t, you’d choose to produce nothing at all. Which is bad for your friggin working life, and so for a long time I’ve been fighting against my perfectionist tendencies. At work, the boss looks for output. If you sit around daydreaming for three days with no output just because you can’t kick-start your friggin inspiration, you’d better have some super excuse up your sleeve. My quest against perfectionism seems to finally be producing some results; I’ve been churning out blog entries more than I care for the quality of ‘em, just to keep up with my ‘New Blogging Strategy’ for example (see previous entry Sep 2007).

But I find that there is a price to pay for this – the birth of practicality and the slow death of the nonsensical. Is this how the child in you begins to disappear, how the practical aspects of life start to replace the imagination, how the fairies and elves start to be replaced by the pretty girls and the parties, how the Orcs start to be replaced by the annoying wife of your boss, how your humour start to give way to sensitivities where you never knew existed? I have no answers.