Let's be Quiet.
A quiet early morning start to the new year. A quiet birthday cake with my parents last night, to close three weeks(!) of birthday surprises. Very befitting to start off the year this way, and a good promise of peaceful things to come.
As always, the obligatory looking-back post, done looking-forward:
Things I did for the first time in 2009 that I want to do again in 2010:
1. Make books that mean something to me, that tell the story of the children I love
2. Have happy relationships with my colleagues, whoever the new ones may be. I felt sad packing up all my office desk stuff yesterday (plants, toys, photos, totally non-work-related), and sad to receive the beautiful birthday/farewell package that Chelsea prepared for me.
3. Have lots of picnics and adventures. With K, with family, with friends. In 2009 K and I explored the island for many picnic spots that I want to share (with a lucky few), places with great green fields, poetic trees, and views of neighboring countries.
4. Spend more time with family. Cycling with my dad, home barbecues, and mindless activities like bowling.
5. Kids Camp in Hokkaido. The strange and beautiful places I visited, the surreal settings for the same family camp; walking with kids by misty mountains to the breakfast hall is certainly a more calming experience than the Singapore camp. Or I might stay to do camp in Singapore. Whatever God wills.
6. Have birthdays with my loved ones. My first birthday back in Singapore in a while, and the celebrations have been endless. Yesterday I had lunch with my colleagues, and was preparing to be picked up by my mother at 3. But of course, my mother was lying again, and it was the Glue Girls there to whisk me off for a home-cooked picnic. They had cooked all morning and risked life and limb to come out in their post-cooking selves (ie no eyeliner) to surprise me. It's so difficult to even get them out altogether for a meal, let alone see them do this great feat on my birthday. Much, much love, wish there were photos of the PSCafe-style cuisine. And then it was a quiet dinner with noble K, who had survived 4 birthday celebrations with me and coordinated 3 of them, and is still going to birthday lunch with me today. He deserves many pats on the back, a spa back massage in fact.
7. So much blogging! If you didn't realize, I wrote posts for the national heritage board in 2009, to promote museum visits. My application letter for the job read like this: "I have FIVE BLOGS." I can't keep up with all of them now, and I can't stop making new ones either. But everything I want to write about the kids will be still be on apart, and if I do any new illustration work it will be on ennegrey, and this one here is for all of you who I wish I saw more often, so we don't grow too distant. The others shall die slow and painless deaths.
SO I hope you find many things you'd like to repeat this year, and many new things you can carry forward with you in 2011. Learn new things, love more people, do something that scares you, change your hairstyle, step on new soil and take new photographs.
As always, the obligatory looking-back post, done looking-forward:
Things I did for the first time in 2009 that I want to do again in 2010:
1. Make books that mean something to me, that tell the story of the children I love
2. Have happy relationships with my colleagues, whoever the new ones may be. I felt sad packing up all my office desk stuff yesterday (plants, toys, photos, totally non-work-related), and sad to receive the beautiful birthday/farewell package that Chelsea prepared for me.
3. Have lots of picnics and adventures. With K, with family, with friends. In 2009 K and I explored the island for many picnic spots that I want to share (with a lucky few), places with great green fields, poetic trees, and views of neighboring countries.
4. Spend more time with family. Cycling with my dad, home barbecues, and mindless activities like bowling.
5. Kids Camp in Hokkaido. The strange and beautiful places I visited, the surreal settings for the same family camp; walking with kids by misty mountains to the breakfast hall is certainly a more calming experience than the Singapore camp. Or I might stay to do camp in Singapore. Whatever God wills.
6. Have birthdays with my loved ones. My first birthday back in Singapore in a while, and the celebrations have been endless. Yesterday I had lunch with my colleagues, and was preparing to be picked up by my mother at 3. But of course, my mother was lying again, and it was the Glue Girls there to whisk me off for a home-cooked picnic. They had cooked all morning and risked life and limb to come out in their post-cooking selves (ie no eyeliner) to surprise me. It's so difficult to even get them out altogether for a meal, let alone see them do this great feat on my birthday. Much, much love, wish there were photos of the PSCafe-style cuisine. And then it was a quiet dinner with noble K, who had survived 4 birthday celebrations with me and coordinated 3 of them, and is still going to birthday lunch with me today. He deserves many pats on the back, a spa back massage in fact.
7. So much blogging! If you didn't realize, I wrote posts for the national heritage board in 2009, to promote museum visits. My application letter for the job read like this: "I have FIVE BLOGS." I can't keep up with all of them now, and I can't stop making new ones either. But everything I want to write about the kids will be still be on apart, and if I do any new illustration work it will be on ennegrey, and this one here is for all of you who I wish I saw more often, so we don't grow too distant. The others shall die slow and painless deaths.
SO I hope you find many things you'd like to repeat this year, and many new things you can carry forward with you in 2011. Learn new things, love more people, do something that scares you, change your hairstyle, step on new soil and take new photographs.
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