Fatigue and the future

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.