I have been so tired. Maybe it's the remnants of my jet lag. Otherwise I don't know what it is and I am definitely not p******* if that is what you think. Been sleeping and staying awake at all the wrong time.
It is coming to the end of summer but it is still hot outside and infested with insects. There is this bug that the people here called love bugs or something because there are always two of them stuck with each other. They come in twos. Mate for life!
Guess fall is creeping in soon as the new fall collections are out and it's clearance for the summer wear. Daytime hours is getting shorter as maghrib is more like 6.23 pm compared to 7.58 pm in June.
Afzal is back in school and been telling me about this boy who keep physically hurting him. This boy is not much bigger than Afzal. I have told his teacher but I guess she has not seen this chap doing anything yet. Even when we told Afzal to do something about it like telling Kevin off, or 'telling him that he does not want to play with him,' Afzal just do not want to do it. Afzal is not traumatised by the incidents but behaviours like slapping, pulling the ear and kicking is definitely not acceptable. I have to go to his school and observe myself then or even talked to this Kevin.
Oh btw, I have written a simple children's story in Malay and I have printed it out on powerpoint. No illustrations yet but maybe I'll draw myself. Any publishers out there who is interested?!
Anyway, I realised that though Afzal can speak fluent Malay, it is conversational. When I started formally teaching him Malay, he is stumped and he can only think of the words in English instead of Malay. It is because he has taken Mandarin since playgroup as we wanted him to learn the language as we can teach him Malay ourselves. However, since we are in the US now, we do not know any Mandarin, therefore we have to double up on the Malay for him. This is just some of the tough decisions that we parents make.
I've brought some Malay books that we bought in Johor recently when we went back home and I've also bought some Islamic books in English online for Afzal and ourselves. Hopefully, we can homeschool him on Malay and Islam, Insya Allah.
An uprooted tree within the compound of our apartment crashed onto the gate. Though Mobile was not as devastated as New Orleans or Biloxi, Katrina did give the residents here a scare. We are thankful that we are back in Singapore when Katrina hit but for those Singaporeans who were still in Mobile, it was a wild gust of wind and thunderstorm on the night of Monday, Aug 29th. It was reported that the wind speed were 80 mph or 130 kmph. We returned to Mobile on the evening of September the 4th. And as our plane were moving over Texas and into Alabama, the change in the clouds and weather was significant. The sky from Dallas Fortworth Airport was clear and the clouds looked like little white shrubs sporadically scattered across the clear Dallas sky. But it was not so as the plane entered Mobile. It was as if the plane was moving into a kingdom of clouds... it was mountainous huge of swirly white and greyish clouds. It was like "kepulan kabu-kabu putih dan kelabu yang menggunung". When the plane entered the clouds, we could just see misty white stuff outside and as the plane was lowering its altitude, there was turbulent. It was pretty scary as we couldn't see much outside. There was slight rain too. When we drove back to our apartment, we could see fallen trees and damage billboards. As some traffic lights had been blown away, there was a police officer to help navigate traffic at affected road junctions. The pawn shop just outside our apartment had its roof blown away and the three gas stations at the junction were closed. We found out later that gasoline is a scarce commodity now and there is a cap of $20 for every pump. There was also a state of curfew in our area. Except for those who are working, everyone else has to be home from dusk till dawn (ie. 6pm) until further notice. Public schools in Mobile County are closed until September 12 so Afzal will be home until then. As I am writing this, the news from tv reported that the next hurricane - Hurricane Maria (of all name) is lurking in the Bermuda but the good news is Maria will not be heading towards land. However, they are taking caution to tropical storm Nate that is moving towards Florida again. It is definitely a Hurricane Depression in this region.
