Just in time for goodbye

The Little Madam's naps are sooo irregular. Just when I was getting comfortable with her taking 1-hour naps at around 9am and 1pm most days (and one or none on the other days), she goes and changes again. This morning, only a couple of hours after getting up, she whined and whined until it became clear to me that she really wanted to go back to bed.

So she napped from 8am-9am. Which wouldn't have been a problem, except on Thursdays she always has swim class at 9am.

As soon as she woke, I threw on her fleecy coat, grabbed the nappy bag which was bursting full with snacks and swimming gear, and headed to the pool.

We got there just five minutes away from the end of the class. They were doing underwater swims (i.e. ducking the bubs into the water and hoping they don't swallow any), and obviously TLM couldn't go straight from being completely dry to getting a good dunking.

So the only class activity she got to do was the bye-bye song.


(We stayed on afterwards and did our own thing, but it's hardly the same thing).

reading about fertility rites

Did you think I'm doing it to improve my own fertility? Not likely.

During The Little Madam's afternoon nap today, I did my exercises (despite soreness from yesterday's) and still had a little time left over.

It's about time I read something that wasn't about parenting, so I pulled The New Golden Bough from my bookshelf and settled down on the couch for some mythology-anthropology.

Did you know that only around a hundred years ago, European villagers were getting their young and nubile to get jiggy amongst the crops, in order to ensure a good harvest? And I used to think that the penis-worshippers in The Wicker Man were a bit over-the-top...

An unfit mother

Don't call the Social Welfare dudes yet - this isn't anything to do with some of the less savoury items on my previous post's list. This is about physical fitness, or in my case, the lack of it.

All of my adult life, right from my teens when I got fat, when on stupid diets, got fat again and then discovered exercise, I've been a fitness junkie. Right up until my last term of pregancy, that is. At the peak of my physical fitness I had the oxygen capacity of a woman ten years younger, and could do a Tae Bo class and still breathe through my nose.

I know there are women who ran marathons when they were eight months pregnant, or who launched into a fitness program as soon as their respective babies popped out. But I wasn't one of them (pushing The Little Madam around in th buggy used to be great, but now that she's so mobile I hate to keep her harnessed up for long). And because breastfeeding helped me lose all my maternity fat, I didn't quite have the motivation that some new mothers did.

But things are going to have to change. I'm sick of looking at my belly in the mirror and seeing a ripe candidate for liposuction. I'm sick of getting out of breath pushing the buggy up the hill to my house (though to be fair, it's a very steep hill). And soon (I hope), I won't have breastfeeding to use up all those cake'n'biscuit calories I've been consuming for the last 18 months.

So today I started a modest fitness programme; just seven exercises which I can do at home while The Little Madam is napping, and the whole thing can be finished before she wakes up, even if she's decided to treat me with a 45-minuter. It's just a few lunges, ladies' pushups etc, but it's a start. And perhaps in the weekends I can use my baby-free time to do some laps at the local pool (not that I haven't been unsuccessfully meaning to for the last six months).

Today's workout:
supermans - 2 sets of 8
leg lifts, inner and outer thighs - 2 sets of 15
twist crunches - 2 sets of 15
ladies' pushups (the ones you do on your knees) - 2 sets of 15
shoulder blade squeezes - 2 sets of 15
lunges (no weights) - 2 sets of 15

Obviously if I keep this up, I'm going to need weights in the near future - not to mention a wider range of exercises and some cardio work. I'll worry about that in a couple of weeks.

150 things to do before you die

I stole this off Scholiast.

What I've achieved is in bold -

01. Bought everyone in the bar a drink
02. Swam with wild dolphins
03. Climbed a mountain (Mt Egmont in NZ)
04. Taken a Ferrari for a test drive
05. Been inside the Great Pyramid
06. Held a tarantula
07. Taken a candlelit bath with someone
08. Said "I love you" and meant it
09. Hugged a tree
10. Bungee jumped (and I live in the bungee capital of the world)
11. Visited Paris (twice)
12. Watched a lightning storm at sea
13. Stayed up all night long and saw the sun rise (but didn't really appreciate it because I was a little drunk and a lot tired)
14. Seen the Northern Lights
15. Gone to a huge sports game (It would be too boring)
16. Walked the stairs to the top of the leaning Tower of Pisa (even though I've been to Pisa)
17. Grown and eaten your own vegetables
18. Touched an iceberg
19. Slept under the stars (does it count if I was under a tent?)
20. Changed a baby's diaper (just a few times)
21. Taken a trip in a hot air balloon
22. Watched a meteor shower
23. Gotten drunk on champagne(yeah, but it only took half a glass)
24. Given more than you can afford to charity
25. Looked up at the night sky through a telescope (and found Scorpio and a meteor)
26. Had an uncontrollable giggling fit at the worst possible moment
27. Had a food fight (it was at a medieval banquet. Those potatoes are HARD).
28. Bet on a winning horse
29. Asked out a stranger
30. Had a snowball fight
31. Screamed as loudly as you possibly can
32. Held a lamb
33. Seen a total eclipse of the moon
34. Ridden a roller coaster (just a mini-version)
35. Hit a home run
36. Danced like a fool and not cared who was looking (That's how I always used to dance)
37. Adopted an accent for an entire day (that's so tacky)
38. Actually felt happy about your life, even for just a moment
39. Had two hard drives for your computer
40. Visited all 50 states
41. Taken care of someone who was shit-faced(you know who you are...unless you were so shit-faced you don't remember...)
42. Had amazing friends
43. Danced with a stranger in a foreign country (even when I danced like a fool)
44. Watched wild whales (at Kaikoura)
45. Stolen a sign
46. Backpacked in Europe (...and Africa, and South America, and Thailand)
47. Taken a road-trip
48. Gone rock climbing
49. Midnight walk on the beach (what about midnight skinny dipping?!)
50. Gone sky diving
51. Visited Ireland (if you include Northern Ireland)
52. Been heartbroken longer than you were actually in love (oh, the embarrassment)
53. In a restaurant, sat at a stranger's table and had a meal with them (it's the kind of thing you do when you're travelling, eh?)
54. Visited Japan
55. Milked a cow
56. Alphabetized your CDs
57. Pretended to be a superhero
58. Sung karaoke(Once my singing team won a prize, another time I was booed off stage)
59. Lounged around in bed all day
60. Posed nude in front of strangers
61. Gone scuba diving
62. Kissed in the rain
63. Played in the mud
64. Played in the rain
65. Gone to a drive-in theater
66. Visited the Great Wall of China
67. Started a business
68. Fallen in love and not had your heart broken
69. Toured ancient sites
70. Taken a martial arts class(I used to be a brown belt in karate)
71. Played D&D for more than 6 hours straight
72. Gotten married
73. Been in a movie
74. Crashed a party (a really good Christmas party held by a very large advertising agency. The food and band were wonderful).
75. Gotten divorced
76. Gone without food for 5 days
77. Made cookies from scratch
78. Won first prize in a costume contest
79. Ridden a gondola in Venice
80. Gotten a tattoo
81. Rafted the Snake River (but I have rafted the Zambezi River)
82. Been on television news programs as an expert
83. Got flowers for no reason (from the boy)
84. Performed on stage (but only at school)
85. Been to Las Vegas
86. Recorded music
87. Eaten shark (that's just fish'n'chips, isn't it?)
88. Had a one-night stand
89. Gone to Thailand(twice, and didn't like it either time)
90. Bought a house
91. Been in a combat zone
92. Buried one/both of your parents
93. Been on a cruise ship
94. Spoken more than one language fluently (-ish. Cantonese.)
95. Performed in Rocky Horror
96. Raised children (wel, I haven't quite finished yet)
97. Followed your favorite band/singer on tour
99. Taken an exotic bicycle tour in a foreign country (I would, but I can't ride a bike)
100. Picked up and moved to another city to just start over (does a year in Edinburgh count?)
101. Walked the Golden Gate Bridge
102. Sang loudly in the car, and didn't stop when you knew someone was looking
103. Had plastic surgery
104. Survived an accident that you shouldn't have survived
105. Wrote articles for a large publication
106. Lost over 100 pounds (how about the same 4-5 pounds over and over again?)
107. Held someone while they were having a flashback
108. Piloted an airplane
109. Petted a stingray
110. Broken someone's heart (I think so, but he'd never admit to it)
111. Helped an animal give birth
112. Won money on a T.V. game show
113. Broken a bone
114. Gone on an African photo safari(just a short one; most of the time I was backpacking/hitchhiking)
115. Had a body part of yours below the neck pierced
116. Fired a rifle, shotgun, or pistol (just in a shooting club on open day)
117. Eaten mushrooms that were gathered in the wild
118. Ridden a horse (and it made me itch and sneeze like crazy)
119. Had major surgery
120. Had a snake as a pet
121. Hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon
122. Slept for more than 30 hours over the course of 48 hours (only when I had terrible food poisoning)
123. Visited more foreign countries than U.S. states (but that would be obvious!)
124. Visited all 7 continents (but 6 out of 7 ain't bad, right?)
125. Taken a canoe trip that lasted more than 2 days (on the Wanganui River)
126. Eaten kangaroo meat
127. Eaten sushi
128. Had your picture in the newspaper (it was a local freebie newspaper, and about a badly-made chicane on our street)
129. Changed someone's mind about something you care deeply about
130. Gone back to school (art school and library school, but couldn't commit to either)
131. Parasailed (in Bali)
132. Petted a cockroach
133. Eaten fried green tomatoes
134. Read The Iliad - and the Odyssey
135. Selected one important author who you missed in school, and read
136. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
137. Skipped all your school reunions so far (it's hardly a difficult thing to do)
138. Communicated with someone without sharing a common spoken language (amazing how you can get buy on phrases like "Coca Cola", "Rolling Stones", "Bruce Springsteen" and "fast motorbike")
139. Been elected to public office
140. Written your own computer language
141. Thought to yourself that you're living your dream (for about nine months, when I was an "artist")
142. Had to put someone you love into hospice care
143. Built your own PC from parts
144. Sold your own artwork to someone who didn't know you (oh c'mon...just selling one's artwork to someone who does know you is a big achievement!)
145. Had a booth at a street fair
146. Dyed your hair (blue and red, on separate occasions)
147. Been a DJ
148. Shaved your head
149. Caused a car accident
150. Saved someone's life

A new best friend every day

The Little Madam has never had a lovey, or special toy. We keep a little chimp stuffed toy in her cot, but really her alliances seem to change daily. One day it's the chimp, the next it's a mini-Eyore doll. Cose to bath time it's her little toothbrush decorated with ducks and during pajama time she'll clutch likely a closed jar of bum cream like it's the most fascinating thing in the room. Or, as this photo illustrates, it might be a sock she's been wearing all day.

Dim sum, an obvious choice?

I don't know why I never thought of it before, but surely Yum Char must be the best choice for eating out with a half-Chinese finger-food fanatic?

The only thing I can think of as a possible problem would be if The Little Madam reacts to the prawns or soy sauce, of which the latter is of course a mainstay of Cantonese cooking. Oh, and MSG of course. And having to check for egg. Well, no cuisine is perfect.

But really, little bits of meat and veges wrapped up in little bitty parcels? We already know that TLM likes deep-fried wontons; I'd be shocked (and stunned) if she didn't take to at least one or two of the many dishes which are paraded around the tables. Though perhaps not the chickens feet.

On the home-cooking front, I've just tried her out on asparagus rolls. She didn't take to them (so, more for me), but on the other hand she did like the avocado open sandwich I was eating.

Food for allergic kids

My sister-in-law has been a treasure trove of knowledge as regards the feeding of little'uns who need to avoid the Evil Five. She was the one who gave me the recipe for egg-free, dairy-free chocolate cake, and told me how to make egg-free and gluten-free meatballs. I've tried to note down everything she's told me, but now I don't have to because it's all published on the Itchy Kids website.

Tomorrow The Little Madam gets to try lamb French cutlets. They're kind of expensive, so if she ends up throwing hers on the floor I might just retrieve it (without breaking the 5-second rule) and eat it myself.

I had another chat with our GP today, as a prelude to our up-coming visit to the hospital's pediatric dietician. There seems to be a lot of conflicting advice about when fish, eggs, dairy, wheat and nuts should be introduced when the child's got allergic family. However, I've got the go-ahead to give TLM yoghurt again, because she's had it a few times in the past without any problems. It may be quite some time before she's offered peanut butter sandwiches, omelette or smoked salmon sushi though, because some of the literature advises waiting until 3-4 years old.

Comfy evenings in front of the telly

The upside to having a child who sleeps more or less from 6pm to 6am is that we usually have time to ourselves in the evening. Perhaps this is why the boy has always ensured that our collection of unwatched television and film DVDs is never allowed to remain low.

Currently we're enjoying Season Two of Battlestar Galactica. Who'd have thought that a remake of a silly-sounding Seventies sci-fi show, starring an actor whose previous role was as a cowboy (Lorne Green, Bonanza), could be so watchable? Well it is. The good guys aren't all good, the bad guys aren't all bad, and one of the main characters is despicably amoral.

The 4400 is also turning out to be quite good. It's about a group of people who've disappeared over a period of about fifty years, seemingly into thin air, only to re-emerge by a lake somewhere outside of Seattle. Slowly, it becomes obvious that these people have all come back with enhancements e.g. super-strength, the ability to suck the life out of a fellow human, or gestating an embryo that wasn't in her womb before her disappearance. Sounds a little like a serious-fied version of X-Men, I know - but it isn't.

And last but not least, I finally got around to watching Extras, Ricky Gervais' follow-up to the cringingly funny The Office. It's damned funny. Quite apart from the star-spotting (Samuel L Jackson was in the last episode I watched), Gervais and his female co-star play movie extras who have a special talent for putting their feet in their respective mouths. I'm not going to try to give an example though; you should just watch it.

That's all folks. My mum is currently staying at my brother's house and soon I have to go help her use their shower-over-bath.

What to get for Fathers Day

I've only just found out that there's a new Bill Bryson book out, The Life and Times of the Thunderbold Kid. And if I hadn't been perusing Dymocks' Fathers Day junk mail, I would still be ignorant of it today.

Buying it for the boy, for Fathers Day, wouldn't be appreciated though; I'm the Bryson fanatic, not him.

And so we come to the same problem I have at least twice a year - what the hell to get the boy who buys himself everything.

As soon as The Little Madam starts drawing with crayons (rather than eating them), his presents are going to be framed baby-art.

The clock that lied

I've noticed lately that The Little Madam has started waking quite a bit earlier than usual. She's gone from calling for milk and a Baby Einstein DVD anytime between 6am and 7am, to calling desperately for milk at around 5am. This isn't so surprising to me, since she's sleeping lots better now and getting very little - if any - milk during the night. But I was starting to wonder whether 5am was going to be the new 6am.

This morning, her yelling was so loud and insistent that, even though I usually try to wait until 6am before going to get her, I ended up struggling out of bed at 5.30.

TLM seemed pretty glad to see me, and the idea of putting her straight back to bed after nursing her didn't pan out because she got upset when I started to veer off the normal get-her-dressed-and-put-on-a-baby-DVD routine. So I brought her out into the lounge.

And that's when I noticed that the clock in the bedroom is a whole hour behind.

Hospital drama, the sequel

The Little Madam and I went to visit my mum in hospital this morning (and not an hour too soon, because as soon as we got home it started pissing down like you wouldn't believe), and The Chinese Patient is feeling pretty much back to normal. She's due to be discharged tomorrow, and we're currently organising for some home help for the first few weeks. This includes a weekly cleaner, which hopefully means that I no longer have to put off seeing to that mould in her shower box.

The hospital staff, on the whole, have been really good, especially considering the language barrier and my mum's old-lady fussiness. I hope the janitor doesn't mind having to scrape all the shrapnel from TLM's lunch, off the floor by Mum's bed; rice balls have a habit of disembowelling themselves all over the place, their constituent grains sticking to tenaciously to whichever surfaces they land upon (hey, what a lot of big words I used in this sentence!).

We intend to go back after TLM wakes from her afternoon nap, so if you have the weather god's ear could you tell her to please make it stop raining?

Debug

eb and jb have possibly found the answer to my problem with those annoying pop-ups which appear when you lovely people view this blog. I never thought to blame it on the Nedstat code, visible in the form of a little button at the bottom. But the writer of this article does. So I've removed it and will simply have to survive with not knowing whether anybody reads my blog - at least until I find a replacement.

So the upshot of all this is, if you still get the pop-ups then let me know. Otherwise you have the cunning eb and jb to thank.

Hospital drama

My mum nearly died today.
First I got the call from my sister-out-law, that something had happened to my mum and an ambulance was already on its way to her home. When I rang Mum, hoping to speak to her friend who just happened to be with her, at first I thought I'd rung a wrong number, because I couldn't understand the voice on the other end. I kept saying "It's me, Mum - what's going on?", only to hear a distant voice that sounded as though it was talking to someone else in the room.

By the time I'd arrived at her house, my brother was already there and the paramedics were wheeling her into the ambulance. They were having trouble finding out what had actually happened, because she was speaking incoherently in Cantonese. To me, she only repeated over and over that she was feeling very faint and light-headed.

It turned out that her heart was beating very slowly, which was affecting her blood pressure. This had caused her to almost lose consciousness, and the oxygen debt was affecting her brain. I am so damned grateful that someone was there to call for help.

At the Emergency room, staff in green scrubs, blue scrubs and office clothes (that would be the cardiologist) bustled around getting blood and checking her vitals. At one point, I was asked to put my finger on her arm, where they'd put a needle in. And that's when it happened.

My brother and I had been trying to talk to her, but she wasn't responding. She didn't seem to hear us. Then she was making strange gurgling sounds, and one of the green scrubs was hoisting my mum's chin up so hard that it left finger marks around her jaw. There was a brief commotion involving an oxygen mask and more chin-hoisting, before we were asked to go to the back of the room i.e. get the heck out of their way. Seconds later, there were audible sighs of relief. The leader of the green scrubs (the chin-hoister) said something to her colleague about Mum "nearly giving up" on her, and that was when I realised how close my brother and I had come to being orphans.

Although they aren't sure, the general consensus is that the problem is likely to be due to some of the medication she's on for high blood pressure. Mum's okay now, resting in the cardiac unit for overnight observation. Her blood pressure and heart rate are back to normal and she's already started to complain about the food. As far as she knows, she merely dozed off for a while this afternoon.

Second thoughts on sleep

It's only because The Little Madam recently graced us with the third-ever night in which she slept through from 6pm until 4.30am or later, but I'm now having second thoughts on whether it really is a good thing to sleep train one's child.

For most of TLM's first year of life, she woke me up 2-4 hourly at night for a night feed. Despite all my moaning and groaning that something had to be done about it, in the name of my sanity and ability to drive without falling asleep at the wheel, we never did get around to sleep-training her (except for her naps, twice).

So I've been both amazed and relieved that she has started to sleep through all by herself, without any "training" on our part (not counting the night-weaning, which only started this week because she still usually wakes for a nightfeed once per night, and only because I've no more patience).

Several mothers told me their kids were all breastfed to sleep, and it didn't stop them from sleeping through by age two - but I sure didn't want to wait that long.

It was Dr Weissbluth's (or Dr Wisebum, as one cheeky reviewer referred to him) book, lent to me by the wise Make Tea, that told me my daughter risked becoming an insomnolent teenager with zero-powers of concentration. And most sleep books told me that the longer we left it, the harder it would be to fix.

But it looks as though, in our case at least, they are wrong, wrong, wrong.

This has brought on a bout of wisdom-in-hindsight. If we knew then what we know now about TLM's evolving sleep behaviour, would I have been so grumpy and insistent that sleep-training was necessary? Would I have been more accepting of these nightly interruptions if I'd known for sure they would last only a few more months?

I suppose when it comes down to making the decision whether to wait or train, it's a matter of whether you think you can endure it any longer and still function effectively as a parent. Did any of you parents have any regrets as to whether you made the right decision, whether it was to train or go with the status quo?

Night weaning moves

I reckon by now it's high time I got my boobs back. So a couple of nights ago I embarked on a night-weaning programming to get The Little Madam used to sleeping without a minimum of one or two breastfeeds per night.

The only thing is, I'm not sure it's working. Maybe she really can't go more than 9 hours without food (her birthday sleep-marathon notwithstanding).

The programme goes like this: First, work out how long she feeds at night. Then, each following night, when she cries out for boobie, feed her for one minute less than the night before. When she protests - and by god she will - cuddle her until she goes to sleep or will at least settle back in her cot. Once down to a two-minute feed, omit the feed altogether and just go for the cuddle. The next night is when you start the actual sleep-training (i.e. let her cry for a bit, then go in to check on her, then leave, repeat until she's put herself to sleep).

The first night I timed her nightfeed, she clocked in at seven minutes.

Then TLM got her jab, so I put the programme on hold for a couple of nights.

Night #1 of night weaning, I unlatched TLM after seven minutes; the boy and I then spent about 45 minute resettling her. Then she fell asleep until about 6am. Total amount of night sleep lost - about fifty minutes.

Night #2 of night weaning, I unlatched TLM after seven minutes again because I thought I'd take it a little more slowly. I unlatched TLM, then upset her when I dropped the clock, which made a loud, echoe-y clatter on the floor. It took about 45 minutes to resettle her. Then she woke again at 3.30am and did this slow wail that sounded like she'd settle down, but didn't. I went in about an hour later, fed her for seven minutes, and spent another 45 minutes resettling her. Total amount of night sleep lost - about two and a half hours.

I need a carrot to keep going; I will now peruse catalogues for non-maternity bras and shirts that don't open or lift up easily.

Writing stuff down

I thought of a great subject to post about last night while I was bed, but I'd already forgotten what it was by this morning. What I should do is have a notebook and pen on the bedside table, just in case I come up with an idea I want to remember.

After all, if I didn't write stuff down I wouldn't remember anything except my name.

When The Little Madam was about three months old, I started to record the times she fed and napped because I hoped to work out what her routine was. It never really worked, because by the time I'd determined what it was, she changed again. But I still, even now that she's one year old, can't stop logging her naptimes, meal times, meal contents and overnight sleep times.

It must sound totally anal to you, dear reader. But I can't stop. I've already filled up two whole notebooks with this stuff, and have just started a third*.

What can I say - I've got one of those obssessive personalities. If I'd been any different, I wouldn't have quit my IT job to learn how to paint pretty pictures, or gone overseas for two years at an age when most of my friends had already returned home, or spent 18 months in a sometimes-thankless job helping library customers with their photocopying (actually that last job wasn't all bad, I did fun and satisfying stuff too).

My obssessions are what keep me going.


*I'm not saying that one day in the far future, I'll go back to the notebooks and reminisce over how TLM slept for 40 mins four times a day at the age of four months, or ate nothing but luncheon slices and toast every day for about three months.

But it has been useful for seeing how she has progressed in her sleep habits, or even just to prove to the boy that I really did only sleep in 3-4 hour blocks most nights last month. It'll also be handy if she starts to show any symptons of food allergy, because just about every single thing that passes her lips is there on paper.

The Emperor and the Assassin

The Emperor and the Assassin (a great review on this link) is an old movie I know (1998), but I'm giving it a mention because it's so very very good. We bought it on DVD on the weekend you see, after a failed attempt to go to a carpet & rug sale (there was absolutely no parking) and a successful search for a child safety gate (so The Little Madam doesn't fall down the steps when she tries to go outside), and I really wanted the boy to see it.

This came out around about the same time as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and at the time my tinny voice could be heard in film-watching circles asserting that Assassin was by far the better movie. It's not just better because it's based on Chinese history (about a king's desire to unite China, how it changes his character, and what his concubine tries to do to stop him), it's also an absorbing story with interesting characters, and one which doesn't try to pander to Western tastes more familiar with Jackie Chan buffoonery (not that I don't enjoy those) and Jet Li action flicks.

Hammock time

We just got back from the doctor's, where The Little Madam received her fourth and final Meningococcal B vaccination (two months late). Of course, she wouldn't have the afternoon nap that would have helped her feel a little more rested for the jab. But she took it like a trooper, calming right down after the initial piercing, red-faced shriek.

And I've found that if I put a tired, jabbed one-year-old in her baby hammock (the one she looked so sweet in almost exactly one year ago, here) and bounce and rock it for about fifteen minutes, I can make her fall asleep after all.

More birthday pics

Here' The Little Madam posing on her Poh Poh's lap. Little did she suspect she would soon be attacked by a giant chocolate cake...


And here she is taking her giant jigsaw puzzle apart (she hasn't yet learned that the object of jigsaw puzzles is to put them back together).







The next day, we went out and bought her a car. It's got the words "Hunny Pot Express" on the back support. Now, I'm pretty sure that sounds very slightly soft porn. But I could be mistaken...

Miss Interpretation

Ever since we were kids, my brother and I had to take turns playing interpreter to our mum. Whether she was trying to buy insurance, or get a good price on a lounge suite or convince the electricity company that the bill was unreasonably high, one of us always got roped in to translate Cantonese to English and back again.

My Cantonese-speaking workmate used to have a great laugh when she overheard me on the phone, acting as the go-between for my mother and some poor furniture retailer or whatever her target of the day was. She drives a pretty hard bargain, which totally conflicts with my aversion to this way of doing business (what a sorry excuse for a Cantonese I must seem).

It would go something like this:

"So you want ten percent off for cash? Okay, put me onto the salesman and I'll ask him. She wants to know if she can get ten percent off for cash. You have to ask your manager? Okay, ask your manager, and let me talk to my mother. Mum, he has to ask his manager. Put me back onto the salesman again. What - the manager is at lunch and you don't have the authority? Alright, I put me back on to my mother then. Mum, he says the manager isn't there and he can't give you a discount without the manager. Mum, it's already on sale at fifty percent off anyway. Why don't you just pay what it says on the poster? Okay okay okay! Put me back on to the man. My mother says she can get ten percent off at that shop in the mall. You can give five percent off? Okay, put me back on to my mother. He says you can get five percent off. Why isn't that good enough,mum. Look, I haven't got all day to talk on the phone you know - I have computers to programme. Okay okay...put the man back on..."

And so it would continue until an hour had passed and my mother had got her bargain.


Today I had to hire a plumber for my mother, whose bathroom and laundry taps have become leaky and obstinate. Being the interpreter is much more tedious now, as every other sentence has to be repeated at least twice because my mum is so hard of hearing. It really cuts into my free time (TLM's nap time) you know.