Two months of intensity

I look at the last post date and wonder where my life is going - just amazing that two and a half months (!!!) can blast past like that. It's been a pretty seismic time though - I think I'm getting some sort of traction, if not a grip (and certainly not on top of) this job - hopefully fast enough - or it will be gone. Alongside this, and it really does feel alongside it, I've been to Sydney and Melbourne for the first time - I've met Zara and Arie your littlest cuzzies - and they were fantastic (wonderful, funny, engaging - Ari's big pasttime is laughing; if he's not sure what to do, he just chuckles - an anti-grumpy personality - and Zara's shiny and complicated, speedy mind, whispy little reed of a ruby-child, and for me, beyond what I'd imagined I might feel, and devine; a life moment) - I've seen Simone for the first time in 11 years - which is beyond belief - and that's over a quarter of my life - so a lot of change, inevitably - and Geordie, such a lovely, groovy human being - I've been to Singapore again, and went to a friend's house on the edge of a rain forest -with little green-grey monkeys swinging along the edge of the jungle wall - literally a wall. I've fallen along the way with regard to photos - really leading a two dimensional life, and wanting to, meaning to zap the shutter - but not getting it together. Your little brothers are bursting with summer life. Swine flu closed Aiden's school three weeks early - something that Aiden seems not to mind. He lost his first tooth, which came so fast that I had to check on the internet to see if this was meant to be happening - or parental dental neglect (fortunately the former) and he was terribly pleased about this (and not swallowing it). So I got the two of them together for a missing tooth pic - a peek, and a show, with Ev getting bored and distracted between the one and the other. We got a pool - Hong Kong style, which means temporary, small enough to fit, big enough to enjoy, and with fake mosaics (and, I might add, a filter). You'll be surprised how much water fits into this thing - it took a good five hours to fill, even with a little help from the skies. But the beach remains the fave, so we headed off this morning to a more-than-ususal misnamed Big Wave Bay, - it was 30 something degrees by 9.00am, but a crystal day, and the jungle-like vegetation just heaving with life. Also the tide was right out, which really helps when there are lots of people who think hitting the beach might be the way to go on a public holiday of significant beauty. Ev's clicked onto the joys of boogie boarding, having wanted nothing to do with it for the first two and a half years of his life. The red board on the right is his, being borrowed by Aiden (man it's amazing how difficult two little guys can find sharing something ... but Aidens board's cover came undone from the polystyrene filling, and the glue I tried to stick it with last night was hungry glue - made short work of chowing big holes in the front - so we had to endure this for today, and will move speedily towards resolving the situation.

End of Easter Tryp

End of Easter 2009

Easter Birthday

Aiden's birthday was cool - he was up at the absolute crack of dawn - before even, as one is when it's your birthday - and zoomed into our room. Between then and this photo, he'd woken Ev, convinced him of the value of a quick cheerful get-up (this being a good thing - Ev can be seriously grumpy for the first hour or two of a day), got something to eat, and arranged the prezzies he spotted next to the bed in a circle on the carpet, and plonked himself in the middle of them, smiling excessively. Then with he help of Ev he tore into them, and by 8am had got himself into one of his quiet acquisition blues moods - these afflict Aiden twice a year - birthdays and Christmas - where he gets himself so worked up for weeks before that arriving at the event can only be an anti-climax - funny, complicated child. We had a party for him later that day, with a gang of his friends. Ange made him a really cool easter egg cake, and by the time the head hit the pillow 15 hours later our little friend had had a wail of a time, completely, as had his little boet. Ange and I had a really nice time too, the parents of his mates who came to pick up their kids were really cool - one of them brought me a carrot cake, because this is my thing - superkind, and tasty. Yesterday we went to the beach and later, for a walk in the forest, which was cool - Ev's old enough to make his way up - needs his hand held on the way down still - lack of common sense and abundance of bravery dictates. I took these really nice photos of the boys. They were already quite grainy from highish ISO settings, so I added some in photoshop to even it out, and I think they look pretty cool. I really like the one of Ev, he's such a beautiful little kid in every sense.

Short weeks starting

A pretty standard weekend has just passed, but what a treat. I'm finding that I really need these, and am starting to think that I've gone too long without a holiday. I hope your term has passed meaningfully, and that you have plentry in your easter hols to look forward to. Despite a grey day we went to the beach yesterday, not a huge success, but we needed to go to a particular place, miles away, so that we could get Aiden a boogy board for his birthday on Thursday. The place that sold the boogy boards also rents out surfboards, so we hired one, principally as a distraction from the boogyboard transaction. I waded out with Aiden and made him lie down on it, waited for a broken wave (in the shallows) and gave him a push into it - off he went, boogy-board style. Then at some point he decided he should stand up - so he did - and cruised along. I was pretty amazed, and he was very chuffed. What's the big challenge, like? However, he then spent the rest of our time in the water trying to do it again - but alas - never quite regained his initial glory run. He did however do a spectacular face plant, somehow managed to get face first into the sand with his mouth open - took a bite out of the beach so to speak. Not to be recommended. Ev had a short go on the surfboard, lying down, with Aiden in front of him, but they wiped out pretty early on, and of course Ev fell in, but couldn't stand up because Aiden's leg was on his head. When I pulled him up he was already pretty cross about it all, and went to sit on the beach between Ange's legs looking out like some angry little animal. There's a dodgy typhoon battered little restaurant on the beach that makes pizza and chips, in both instances well, so some blue lipped troops had a quick chowdown and that lifted the moods. Looking forward to next weekend - four days - oh yes, having a party for Aiden on Thursday, and then not sure what next. Keen to get my boat licence sorted out, because I saw our mate Kevin this morning and they're off to Dai Long Wan to go camping, which is absolutely the thing to be doing. So that's something that needs to be sorted now that my SFC banking thing is behind me. The one below is from the set before - just a reminder to keep on the level there mate, the big A is watching.

March - time marching on - no phones - good news though

My lovely young man - I thought a post long overdue - a month whizzes by - a month thin on communication - hope you get the texts at least. I got the camera out today - thought I'd take some pics of the boeties for your newsletter, and thinking as I do it, that you change as much as they do, and so the pic in my mind's eye of you is dated - and I'm wondering therefore if the text is audience dated - I know that I've stepped in that trap more than once in the past. So much less big to small then, less adult - child, more person to person. To keep me on track, I think the things that I communicate with my limited number of friends about, and share those with you. Life in binary; or is that bipolar? Working-life and life. I'm going with the Chinese view that work-life balance is a silly concept - it's just life, and you want that balanced. On the work side of my life then, I've learned a lot - not all of it comfortable - and by that I mean that it's tough on your sense of self changing jobs - which I've done a lot of since coming here nearly eight years ago - changing continents is start at the bottomish and build your career up again (unless, come to think of it, you are super-qualified, which I am not, or have worked for recognisable multinationals (like Goldman Sachs or perhaps in South Africa's case Anglo) - each time you step to the next thing, you have to relive the inevitable which is all those people around you not knowing you, and understandably not knowing what you are (or are not) capable of - and it takes time for you to be able to add value, and for those around you to value what you add. I think that I've toughened to this though, this is my fifth job in these eight years - and this one's a bigger step because it's also sector changing - but there's a level at which all jobs are about shaping pictures of what collectively and individually needs to be done, refining the questions, seeking answers which are immediate in effect, but also srategic - meaning that they get important things achieved now, but position you successfully for later too - carrying water to drink and test the new pump, so to speak. I set up my first trip for last week - easy one to Singapore - nice place - meetings were pretty good, learned a lot about how I'd tweak it in future. I'll go to Aus in April, possibly to Jakarta before or after then, and of course to planet Japan - wooohooo. I had lunch in Singa with a very cool person called Celine Tan. My coming to sit down with her was an unusual route in itself, but I've discovered there are a lot of people out there who will do something surprising, and they are inevitably enriching, which she really was. At some point we talked about young people and parenting, and I have many misgivings of my capacity in this regard so it's a topic that interests me; she has three kids who are out of school, and in the course of the conversation she said that she always thought that "To kill a Mockingbird" was the top view of parenting - have you read it - I ask because back in my life of teaching English at highschools it seemed a perennial set-work book - and for good reason - really red hot literature - 30M copies sold cannot be otherwise - so I bought one in a bookshop (Singa has the best bookshops in Asia I think) and it was a hugely fantastic thing to read (again); so very different through these eyes now. So if you haven't read it, read it now, entertaining, beautiful, deep, smart, and not irrelevant in theme to our collective history - though I think too that one can overlook a lot that it offers about people and judgement and the problem and stupidity of collective convention and mores, if you get stuck in the black and white of it - thereby missing it's incredibly rich greys. Author is Harper Lee - have a look in your school library - I think it's pretty much guaranteed to be in there, if you've not read it and are interested in doing so.

So here are some updates on the little guys. The weather's been pretty gray and rainy this weekend, so we got up and fooled around at home - it did brighten later and we got to the beach for an hour - but these are from early morning before. The two above I thought were lovely pics, so they're separate; below are graining and moving, Jens borrowed my flash and lens for a photo-job last night (he's bought a new camera - superfantastic camera) so I had to use a 50mm with a really short f-stop for these: Aiden being a bad dog, pillow-fighting with one of the couch cushions (to be frowned on, but difficult), drying his hair (!) with a dishcloth after getting nice and sweaty disco dancing, and in the clutches of a good belly laugh after I gave him a fright when he was advancing - he thought stealthily - armed with a more reasonable pillow. Ev's got into showmanship, so it's difficult to take an authentic pic of him - I liked the hand one - the one next to it is his happy thug look, advancing for a bit of a scrap - there's also the serious thug look, which is the same, but with real intent (he's going to be a problem in this regard), and with one of his cars. Hope you like them, and I'm sorry I've been so absent from the shutter button lately.

After week 1 new life

The first time that I worked as a teacher in a classroom was teaching on a Shawco Education project in the late afternoons in Mannenburg outside Cape Town. That was in February 1988, at the age of 19. Since then I've always had some sort of an teaching related job, with the exception of 1990. Sometimes however I've had two - in the second half of 1994, and 1995 I worked at Leeukop Prison during the day and at Ikageng three nights a week. Suddenly it's twenty years that I've been in this line of work - which is a surprise to me in some ways. And it's been a great career, interesting, challenging, a feeling of contribution; I've also appreciated it's transportability, and reliability. You've got to get to the point of Zimbabwe for schools to shut down - and to my thinking that's a point a long way down from where you want to be living if you're lucky enough to be able to move away from that. I'm now one week into an attempted switch of career, not sure how it's going to turn out, but it's good to be trying something new, and particularly on the back of something that I feel lucky (in terms of my own standards) to have been successful at. I hope this one turns out OK; it would be great to avoid the pressures of unemployment and sudden loss of income. This is me on day one - entering a working world uniquely trashed by the global credit crisis, and facing record layoffs. I'm smiling here because I'm optimistic and feeling like I've achieved something in getting the position. Hope I don't look back at it later and think that I'm smiling because I was so naieve. Hold thumbs.


Last night we went to Tracy and Simon's house for a braai, and in my case to watch some Super14 rugby. Greg and Pam and Brett were also there, and lots of kids. We were having such a good chat that we didn't notice the meat was uber-fatty, and had started a significant fire inside the gas braai - because it had a lid. Ange noticed the flames. Simon ran for the rescue gear. Greg thought that the fire was big enough to put out some portrait lighting. I thought he had a point. By the time the rescue was complete, the meat was pretty well done . Later that night it got really misty, with a beautiful stillness. I took this shot and cut it into three to make a tryptich for you; Sheung Sze Wan small boat harbour in the middle of the night:

Shek O on your birthday