It's Mother's Day and I'm having a hangover from too much partying during the last nine days.
Not the normal partying but from an over consumption of political parties and rallies during Singapore's General Election. Even though we are miles away from our home country and two hours ahead, the election fever is burning hot here despite the cooling Melbourne temperatures. At our Mother's Day dinner, currently into its 2nd year, for the Singapore Mothers in Melbourne group, names like Chiam See Tong, Nicole Seah and Wong Kan Seng peppered our conversations as we dipped sashimi in soya sauce and munched Peking Duck. Pity there weren't any Bak Chor Mee or Teo Chew Porridge at the China Bar Signature Asian Buffet restaurant.
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| A Party of Mothers |
Not that we can do anything to make a difference, as making a trip to Canberra to fulfil our national duty at our own expense is too costly, however many of us still felt a close connection to what is going to happen back home. It's ironical but I've never felt so close and interested in Singapore's political scene before I left. Maybe it was because we didn't have such good opposition candidates before. And now, thanks to the internet and social media, we watch rally speeches on Youtube every night and read news reports about the candidates from different parties on different websites, mainstream or otherwise. All of us knew this election was going to be different from the previous and were eagerly waiting for the results to filter in.
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| XX's Gift |
Unfortunately, by the time the first results got announced, it was already 2am Melbourne time. My eyelids started to feel the pull of gravity as I tried to focus them on the tiny square box live streaming the election news on www.ge.sg. By then, there were a few unconfirmed reports that Hougang and Aljunied GRC has been won by WP. I tried to share the news with Hubby when he moved from his slumber but I'm not sure he heard me. I decided not to resist the z-monster anymore.
By the time I woke up at 9.30am the next morning, everything was over. PAP had formed the government and Lee Hsien Loong had held his press conference while I was in slumberland. It appeared that I did not miss much.I wondered if life will be the same again for people back in Singapore. Here, our Sunday progressed quietly. After checking up on the counts and margin, I went back to bed again after breakfast for a nap. And that's how half of Mother's Day was spent, tucked under the quilt, drowsily, feeling like age has definitely caught up on me. I can't even stay up late without feeling the after effects.
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The sweetest thing for this year's Mother's Day came on Friday when XX brought home a handmade gift from kinder. The teacher had organised for them to decorate a glass bottle with colourful paper and glitter glue and turned it into a beautiful candle holder. There was also a small pouch of pot purri packed in a nice purple gift bag. I'll never forget XX's sweet face when he presented it to me. My first Mother's Day present from XX. Not to be outdone, KK immediately drew a drawing of 4 stickman (our family) with the words "Happy Mother's Day" on a piece of paper and presented it to me. I guess that counts as a Mother's Day card from him?
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| KK's card |
I had originally planned to take my mom out for dinner to celebrate but due to the upcoming NAPLAN tests for KK next week, we felt it was better to postpone the dinner to the end of the week, after his tests. Instead, after sleeping off the 'politcal parties' hangover, I regained enough energy to make my mom's favourite cream puffs as dessert.
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