I just realised that A Mummy in a Strange Land turned one yesterday! Yes, it's been a whole year since my very first post. I'm getting more sleep these days and I hope that's reflected in the writing! Whether it is or not, I just wanted to say a big thank you for reading, commenting, supporting and inspiring me.
When I first started writing I didn't really have a plan or a vision for where I wanted this thing to go - I just knew I wanted an outlet. Hong Kong was driving me crazy and despite having lived here for 3 years, I didn't feel like I was home yet. I still have days like that, and this week especially I have been feeling intensely homesick, but being able to write about it has helped immensely. You guys, out there, writing or calling to tell me you feel the same way has helped even more. I thought I had it all figured out until I had a baby, and there have been lots of times when I have thought that I had him all figured out but was proven to be quite wrong. But I wouldn't change a thing. Not a minute of it.
A lot has changed in the last year - it's been amazing, wonderful, heartbreaking and exhausting all at once, and life is only going to get more interesting, more wonderful, and more exhausting in the next 12 months. I can't wait, and I hope you'll all stick around to read about it.
Showing posts with label Blogging. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Blogging. Show all posts
Thursday, August 4, 2011
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Real Friends or Facebook Friends?
I have to say from the outset, I love Facebook. It's not without it's flaws, like all of us, but I think anyone who criticises it too much simply shouldn't use it. I have one friend who comes and goes from it every now and then. He said it has turned him into a "lazy friend." I can definitely see how this is possible, after all, you simply need to log in to catch up on what most of your friends have been up to lately, you don't even need to contact them if you don't want to - it's that simple. You also get reminded when your friend's birthdays are coming up and you can write on their wall instead of putting the date in your diary and labouring over birthday cards, which is SO last century! (Check out this article in The New Yorker on the same topic).
I think the main appeal for me is that, as an expat, I live a long way away from everyone I love. I like being able to see photos of my friend's babies, and reading about my cousin's recent trip to Europe, or the wedding of an old uni friend. I probably wouldn't know about any of this stuff if it weren't for Facebook. I might sound like a lazy friend who can't be bothered keeping in touch any other way, but the reality is I'm a busy friend. We're all busy, and sometimes it's easier to write a quick status update than an email detailing the minutiae of our lives for each of our long-distance friends.
Sometimes Facebook a little intrusive and voyeuristic, but I make sure that I only accept friend requests from people I'm actually friends with - people I genuinely want to keep in touch with. Here lies one of the problems with social networking: far too many people use it as a form of consumerism. They base their self-worth on how many friends they've accumulated. You meet them on the street one day and have a chat about how cute your kid is and the next thing you know they want to be "friends." I do believe that networking is an important part of building a new life in a foreign country, as we are so valiantly trying to do, but do I really want random neighbours and colleagues having access to my photos from last Christmas? Or have them knowing that last night I made a kick-arse gnocchi carbonara? I try to avoid giving away too much normally, and I tend to avoid others who like to share way too much, but where do you draw the line? Who do you let in? And what do you do when someone is offended by being kept out? The biggest question is, can you really count someone as a friend if you're "friends" on Facebook? For now, I can say yes, they're all genuine friends, but I don't know how long it can stay that way.
In this day and age where everyone has a blog, a Facebook profile, connections on LinkedIn, and a Twitter account, and where so much marketing and networking is done online, you feel like you need to have an internet presence to achieve almost anything. I was recently part of the Sydney Writer's Centre blog awards, and one of the things the judges looked at was the way bloggers used social networking sites, like Facebook and Twitter, to promote their blogs. Basically I would've scored a big, fat ZERO in that category, because apart from linking to the occasional post on my Facebook page I didn't do any of it. None of it comes naturally to me. Self-promotion has always been a challenge and it seems anathema to me to befriend someone or make a connection in the hope that my blog will be promoted and it'll boost my "traffic." But then again, isn't that the whole point of social media and networking sites?Perhaps the whole "you promote my blog and I'll promote yours" mentality is the new Tupperware party or recipe swap: we're all in it for something, so what's there to lose? A connection is a connection after all.
I know that there's a lot that I don't know and if I can't use social media to my advantage then I may as well get out of the game, so to speak. I recently joined Twitter, and I felt like how I imagined my Nanna felt the first time she used a mobile phone, because as much as I love my laptop and my blog, at heart I'm old-school. Until I got an iPhone for my birthday last year, I still carried an address book and diary around in my handbag, and even now I still dutifully transfer the birthdays from one calendar to the next every December. I like handwriting Christmas and birthday cards, and heaven forbid, I do still pick up the telephone (a landline no less) to call people. I have been trying to touch base with an old friend for a week now and we emailed, we chatted on Facebook, we tried Skype, but we kept missing each other. Eventually he called me using Viber, another new fangled technology, but it was still great to actually hear his voice on the phone. Sometimes, I truly feel like all these new ways of connecting make it more difficult to actually, genuinely connect. And there are times when I wonder if they're all just a number of different ways to be rejected - it's like highschool all over again.
But, having said that, I do like Facebook and I use it liberally, because I like knowing what my friends are up to and I can choose who I interact with. It's not an old-school way of keeping in touch, but for now I can be selective and keep it as simple as I like. So the guy who used to throw spitballs at me in English class was rejected, but some very dear friends who I lost touch with are now, and I'm very grateful for it, back in my life. I don't base my personal success on how many Facebook "friends" I have, or how many people follow me on Twitter, and I like it that way. Unfortunately the success of A Mummy in a Strange Land may be riding on my ability to promote it across the internet (or are the kids calling it "the web" these days?) and that's a far more difficult task than writing a few posts every now and then, or remembering someone's birthday.
I think the main appeal for me is that, as an expat, I live a long way away from everyone I love. I like being able to see photos of my friend's babies, and reading about my cousin's recent trip to Europe, or the wedding of an old uni friend. I probably wouldn't know about any of this stuff if it weren't for Facebook. I might sound like a lazy friend who can't be bothered keeping in touch any other way, but the reality is I'm a busy friend. We're all busy, and sometimes it's easier to write a quick status update than an email detailing the minutiae of our lives for each of our long-distance friends.
Sometimes Facebook a little intrusive and voyeuristic, but I make sure that I only accept friend requests from people I'm actually friends with - people I genuinely want to keep in touch with. Here lies one of the problems with social networking: far too many people use it as a form of consumerism. They base their self-worth on how many friends they've accumulated. You meet them on the street one day and have a chat about how cute your kid is and the next thing you know they want to be "friends." I do believe that networking is an important part of building a new life in a foreign country, as we are so valiantly trying to do, but do I really want random neighbours and colleagues having access to my photos from last Christmas? Or have them knowing that last night I made a kick-arse gnocchi carbonara? I try to avoid giving away too much normally, and I tend to avoid others who like to share way too much, but where do you draw the line? Who do you let in? And what do you do when someone is offended by being kept out? The biggest question is, can you really count someone as a friend if you're "friends" on Facebook? For now, I can say yes, they're all genuine friends, but I don't know how long it can stay that way.
In this day and age where everyone has a blog, a Facebook profile, connections on LinkedIn, and a Twitter account, and where so much marketing and networking is done online, you feel like you need to have an internet presence to achieve almost anything. I was recently part of the Sydney Writer's Centre blog awards, and one of the things the judges looked at was the way bloggers used social networking sites, like Facebook and Twitter, to promote their blogs. Basically I would've scored a big, fat ZERO in that category, because apart from linking to the occasional post on my Facebook page I didn't do any of it. None of it comes naturally to me. Self-promotion has always been a challenge and it seems anathema to me to befriend someone or make a connection in the hope that my blog will be promoted and it'll boost my "traffic." But then again, isn't that the whole point of social media and networking sites?Perhaps the whole "you promote my blog and I'll promote yours" mentality is the new Tupperware party or recipe swap: we're all in it for something, so what's there to lose? A connection is a connection after all.
I know that there's a lot that I don't know and if I can't use social media to my advantage then I may as well get out of the game, so to speak. I recently joined Twitter, and I felt like how I imagined my Nanna felt the first time she used a mobile phone, because as much as I love my laptop and my blog, at heart I'm old-school. Until I got an iPhone for my birthday last year, I still carried an address book and diary around in my handbag, and even now I still dutifully transfer the birthdays from one calendar to the next every December. I like handwriting Christmas and birthday cards, and heaven forbid, I do still pick up the telephone (a landline no less) to call people. I have been trying to touch base with an old friend for a week now and we emailed, we chatted on Facebook, we tried Skype, but we kept missing each other. Eventually he called me using Viber, another new fangled technology, but it was still great to actually hear his voice on the phone. Sometimes, I truly feel like all these new ways of connecting make it more difficult to actually, genuinely connect. And there are times when I wonder if they're all just a number of different ways to be rejected - it's like highschool all over again.
But, having said that, I do like Facebook and I use it liberally, because I like knowing what my friends are up to and I can choose who I interact with. It's not an old-school way of keeping in touch, but for now I can be selective and keep it as simple as I like. So the guy who used to throw spitballs at me in English class was rejected, but some very dear friends who I lost touch with are now, and I'm very grateful for it, back in my life. I don't base my personal success on how many Facebook "friends" I have, or how many people follow me on Twitter, and I like it that way. Unfortunately the success of A Mummy in a Strange Land may be riding on my ability to promote it across the internet (or are the kids calling it "the web" these days?) and that's a far more difficult task than writing a few posts every now and then, or remembering someone's birthday.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
The Days of Our Lives
I was speaking to someone recently and she asked me if I was still blogging regularly. She said that she initially thought the project was a little ambitious and had wondered to herself if anyone's life can really be "that interesting." With that in mind, today's post is dedicated to the minutiae of my life (which is apparently what this blog is all about), and you can be the judges of whether or not it's at all interesting!
Monday
J woke at 5 again this morning. We're not sure what's suddenly changed but this new routine is not working out for us at all! I spoke to my friend K about this yesterday and she told me that she gets her boys up at 6, gives them a bottle and puts them straight back to bed. They then get up somewhere between 7.30 and 9 for breakfast. This sounded pretty good to me so I decided to give it a try. J loved the early bottle but would not go back to sleep. We battled for an hour before he crashed but he was up again by 7.30. He passed out around 10 and missed playgroup so I had to take him out in the afternoon. We went to see the triplets but after the early start and only one nap, J was a very grumpy boy indeed. He was in bed by 6.30 and I wasn't far behind him. I think tomorrow we'll go back to what we were doing; ignoring him till 6.30, or until he started shouting at us to come and get him up.
Tuesday
The day started for us at 3.30am. This did not bode well. J woke up crying and couldn't be consoled. We gave him another bottle, and had flashbacks to the days when we were up at that hour every night. In the end I got into the cot with him, an exercise in bendy gymnastics, and rubbed his back till he finally fell asleep around 5. D got up to him at 7 and I got a sleep in, a rare treat but well earned! Our helper was off today so while J napped this morning I tidied up, baked a cake, vacuumed and still had time for a shower! Definitely feeling like supermum today. We missed playgroup again but went to the playground in Mui Wo, which J just loves. He chased another little boy around and came home filthy and exhausted. I was pretty wrecked too but had to leave the boys at home and head to Discovery Bay for the 2nd half of a CPR/First Aid course I've been doing. I did a proper first aid certification several years ago but I never renewed it. I always thought I'd know what to do in an emergency, but if a child was involved I'd probably end up flapping my arms about shouting "help, help!" This course was invaluable, and the procedures for CPR have been simplified so much since I last took the course, now anyone can do it, and should. My helper also did the course and we both agree it was invaluable. I just pray we never have to use our new skills. I came home and watched my little guy sleeping for a while before heading to bed.
Wednesday
I remember reading somewhere that if a baby is habitually waking every night at the same time you should wake them an hour earlier to reset their body clocks. Well, J woke this morning at 6.30, so even though it wasn't intentional, I think yesterday's early start probably did just that. Today we realised that our little man is officially a walker. He still wobbles quite a bit and crawls when he wants to get somewhere quickly but he's walking all the time. He went from taking a few steps here and there to walking across the room so quickly, it almost happened overnight. We filmed him walking towards me, with the biggest, proudest grin on his face and emailed it to the grandparents. We spent most of the day today organising our upcoming trip to Sydney. We fly out on the 1st and it feels like we still have so much to do. There are so many people we want to catch up with, and so many family members who want to see us. It always feels like we spend our time trying to please everyone and we end up disappointing someone. I'm trying not to let it worry me, but I can't help feeling like it'd be easier just to stay home...
Thursday
Another relatively uneventful day. I have been working on an article for Playtimes magazine, and I finished my first draft today. It still needs a lot of work but I'm very pleased with my efforts, and even more impressed that I finished a draft 6 weeks before the deadline! We took J out shopping today. He's still at an age where a trip to the supermarket and a ride in a shopping trolley counts as an outing. We decided to have some lunch while we were out but it wasn't quite the leisurely seaside meal we used to have once upon a time. J was a bit cranky and restless, he hates sitting still, but once we started feeding him from our plates he was quite content. He played with a drinking straw for about 15 minutes and we ended up having a lovely time. He has started to reject lumps and chunks in his food so we're back to purees this week. At the same time he'll eat anything we're eating. Last night he had spaghetti and tuna off D's plate. I'm not sure he could eat a whole meal of it but we're going to start trying more grown-up food when we're away. D went off to work tonight and he'll be in LA till Sunday night. I had to trim his moustache before he left, it's getting a bit unruly now. He's growing for Movember and has raised quite a bit of money. I don't think he had any idea what he was getting himself into when he drunkenly declared at the rugby that he was going to grow a mo for the month, but I'm very proud of him for following through!
Friday
The little man woke early again today but it meant that he had an early nap, so we finally made it to playgroup. When we got home I spent some time rearranging the furniture in his room, something I've been wanting to do since we moved in. I was sick and had a newborn baby when we moved so everything was done for me. We had a huge wardrobe in J's room and D laid out the furniture differently to how I would've done it. It's always bothered me and this week I was determined to rectify it (while my husband was away and couldn't argue with me). I think it's important that little people have their own space. I hated that we used J's room to store our crap, and I felt like he deserved better. So with our helper by my side, I put things right, and I'm so happy with how the room looks now. By 2pm J and I were both pretty tired so we had an afternoon nap. J's favourite game at the moment is hiding things under the sofa or behind the curtains. He hides something and holds his hands up and makes a sound that we know means "where is it?" Tonight while he was eating his dinner he was repeating 'daddadadadad' over and over, then he stopped, looked at me, held up his hands and said "where is he?" It's only been in the last month or so that J has started to notice that his dad goes away. He gets very excited when Daddy comes home (as do I), and I'm starting to wonder how long it will be before we gets tantrums when Daddy leaves...
Saturday
J slept last night from 7pm-6am, and I took that as a sign that he also loves his new room. We're on our own for the whole weekend so we took the dog for a walk and while J had his morning nap I did the dishes and tidied up. I don't mind being on my own now, and it's definitely manageable, but it does make it harder to achieve anything. We went out to Tung Chung, something I hate doing on the weekend but couldn't avoid. We went to Taste and J was quite happy until we got to the checkout. Of course there were about a million people in the queue and I had to try a few different tricks to avoid a complete meltdown. In the end I pulled the straw off a juice box and he played with that till we were done. Unfortunately I realised at the checkout that I had had a mummy-brain moment the day before and hadn't noticed. I had been at Park N' Shop on Friday (yes, we do go to the supermarket an awful lot!) and paid with my card to get cash out. Only, they didn't give me my cash and I didn't notice. So after Tung Chung we made a quick trip to Mui Wo where I explained my dilemma and the helpful staff at Park N' Shop corrected their mistake. Thank goodness they were helpful, I don't know how I would've explained to my husband that I left $500 at the supermarket! After that a coffee and a quiet afternoon were in order. I also weighed myself today and the scales (might be broken) showed that I had hit a 10 year low, so I celebrated with pizza and chocolate for dinner.
Sunday
J didn't have the best night's sleep last night so we both woke up at 6am feeling pretty shabby. After breakfast I ran upstairs to get my glasses so we could go out for a walk and "had a fall" on the way back down. It was the kind of fall that knocks the wind out of you and breaks hips in older people, and the only thing that stopped me from bursting into tears was J standing at the bottom of the stairs with a look that was equal parts concern and impatience. I brushed off my bruised ego (and elbow and bum) and we went out. Still feeling pretty rotten I decided that there was only one thing to do when we got home; put on Christmas carols and kick off Pudding Sunday. But that's another story...
Monday
J woke at 5 again this morning. We're not sure what's suddenly changed but this new routine is not working out for us at all! I spoke to my friend K about this yesterday and she told me that she gets her boys up at 6, gives them a bottle and puts them straight back to bed. They then get up somewhere between 7.30 and 9 for breakfast. This sounded pretty good to me so I decided to give it a try. J loved the early bottle but would not go back to sleep. We battled for an hour before he crashed but he was up again by 7.30. He passed out around 10 and missed playgroup so I had to take him out in the afternoon. We went to see the triplets but after the early start and only one nap, J was a very grumpy boy indeed. He was in bed by 6.30 and I wasn't far behind him. I think tomorrow we'll go back to what we were doing; ignoring him till 6.30, or until he started shouting at us to come and get him up.
Tuesday
The day started for us at 3.30am. This did not bode well. J woke up crying and couldn't be consoled. We gave him another bottle, and had flashbacks to the days when we were up at that hour every night. In the end I got into the cot with him, an exercise in bendy gymnastics, and rubbed his back till he finally fell asleep around 5. D got up to him at 7 and I got a sleep in, a rare treat but well earned! Our helper was off today so while J napped this morning I tidied up, baked a cake, vacuumed and still had time for a shower! Definitely feeling like supermum today. We missed playgroup again but went to the playground in Mui Wo, which J just loves. He chased another little boy around and came home filthy and exhausted. I was pretty wrecked too but had to leave the boys at home and head to Discovery Bay for the 2nd half of a CPR/First Aid course I've been doing. I did a proper first aid certification several years ago but I never renewed it. I always thought I'd know what to do in an emergency, but if a child was involved I'd probably end up flapping my arms about shouting "help, help!" This course was invaluable, and the procedures for CPR have been simplified so much since I last took the course, now anyone can do it, and should. My helper also did the course and we both agree it was invaluable. I just pray we never have to use our new skills. I came home and watched my little guy sleeping for a while before heading to bed.
Wednesday
I remember reading somewhere that if a baby is habitually waking every night at the same time you should wake them an hour earlier to reset their body clocks. Well, J woke this morning at 6.30, so even though it wasn't intentional, I think yesterday's early start probably did just that. Today we realised that our little man is officially a walker. He still wobbles quite a bit and crawls when he wants to get somewhere quickly but he's walking all the time. He went from taking a few steps here and there to walking across the room so quickly, it almost happened overnight. We filmed him walking towards me, with the biggest, proudest grin on his face and emailed it to the grandparents. We spent most of the day today organising our upcoming trip to Sydney. We fly out on the 1st and it feels like we still have so much to do. There are so many people we want to catch up with, and so many family members who want to see us. It always feels like we spend our time trying to please everyone and we end up disappointing someone. I'm trying not to let it worry me, but I can't help feeling like it'd be easier just to stay home...
Thursday
Another relatively uneventful day. I have been working on an article for Playtimes magazine, and I finished my first draft today. It still needs a lot of work but I'm very pleased with my efforts, and even more impressed that I finished a draft 6 weeks before the deadline! We took J out shopping today. He's still at an age where a trip to the supermarket and a ride in a shopping trolley counts as an outing. We decided to have some lunch while we were out but it wasn't quite the leisurely seaside meal we used to have once upon a time. J was a bit cranky and restless, he hates sitting still, but once we started feeding him from our plates he was quite content. He played with a drinking straw for about 15 minutes and we ended up having a lovely time. He has started to reject lumps and chunks in his food so we're back to purees this week. At the same time he'll eat anything we're eating. Last night he had spaghetti and tuna off D's plate. I'm not sure he could eat a whole meal of it but we're going to start trying more grown-up food when we're away. D went off to work tonight and he'll be in LA till Sunday night. I had to trim his moustache before he left, it's getting a bit unruly now. He's growing for Movember and has raised quite a bit of money. I don't think he had any idea what he was getting himself into when he drunkenly declared at the rugby that he was going to grow a mo for the month, but I'm very proud of him for following through!
Friday
The little man woke early again today but it meant that he had an early nap, so we finally made it to playgroup. When we got home I spent some time rearranging the furniture in his room, something I've been wanting to do since we moved in. I was sick and had a newborn baby when we moved so everything was done for me. We had a huge wardrobe in J's room and D laid out the furniture differently to how I would've done it. It's always bothered me and this week I was determined to rectify it (while my husband was away and couldn't argue with me). I think it's important that little people have their own space. I hated that we used J's room to store our crap, and I felt like he deserved better. So with our helper by my side, I put things right, and I'm so happy with how the room looks now. By 2pm J and I were both pretty tired so we had an afternoon nap. J's favourite game at the moment is hiding things under the sofa or behind the curtains. He hides something and holds his hands up and makes a sound that we know means "where is it?" Tonight while he was eating his dinner he was repeating 'daddadadadad' over and over, then he stopped, looked at me, held up his hands and said "where is he?" It's only been in the last month or so that J has started to notice that his dad goes away. He gets very excited when Daddy comes home (as do I), and I'm starting to wonder how long it will be before we gets tantrums when Daddy leaves...
Saturday
J slept last night from 7pm-6am, and I took that as a sign that he also loves his new room. We're on our own for the whole weekend so we took the dog for a walk and while J had his morning nap I did the dishes and tidied up. I don't mind being on my own now, and it's definitely manageable, but it does make it harder to achieve anything. We went out to Tung Chung, something I hate doing on the weekend but couldn't avoid. We went to Taste and J was quite happy until we got to the checkout. Of course there were about a million people in the queue and I had to try a few different tricks to avoid a complete meltdown. In the end I pulled the straw off a juice box and he played with that till we were done. Unfortunately I realised at the checkout that I had had a mummy-brain moment the day before and hadn't noticed. I had been at Park N' Shop on Friday (yes, we do go to the supermarket an awful lot!) and paid with my card to get cash out. Only, they didn't give me my cash and I didn't notice. So after Tung Chung we made a quick trip to Mui Wo where I explained my dilemma and the helpful staff at Park N' Shop corrected their mistake. Thank goodness they were helpful, I don't know how I would've explained to my husband that I left $500 at the supermarket! After that a coffee and a quiet afternoon were in order. I also weighed myself today and the scales (might be broken) showed that I had hit a 10 year low, so I celebrated with pizza and chocolate for dinner.
Sunday
J didn't have the best night's sleep last night so we both woke up at 6am feeling pretty shabby. After breakfast I ran upstairs to get my glasses so we could go out for a walk and "had a fall" on the way back down. It was the kind of fall that knocks the wind out of you and breaks hips in older people, and the only thing that stopped me from bursting into tears was J standing at the bottom of the stairs with a look that was equal parts concern and impatience. I brushed off my bruised ego (and elbow and bum) and we went out. Still feeling pretty rotten I decided that there was only one thing to do when we got home; put on Christmas carols and kick off Pudding Sunday. But that's another story...
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