The gold standard

So something super-duper-awesome happened over the last two weeks.

Viv was selected to be part of the Singapore national cricket team to play in the SouthEast Asian games (SEA Games) in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. This was the first time cricket was included in the SEA Games, and they had a 50-over and a T20 series. The countries playing also included Thailand, Myanmar, Vietnam and Indonesia, but Singapore's arch nemesis was mighty Malaysia.

I didn't go to Kuala Lumpur for the matches as it would have been impossible for Xena to sit still and watch all the matches in the heat. Luckily, the Malaysian Cricket Association livestreamed all the matches, so we watched it on the computer. Xena, who is still TV-free, was very excited to have the opportunity to watch her daddy play. (I'll do a separate post on her hilarious remarks and commentary.) Because he's the wicket-keeper, we had a clear view of him the entire time Singapore was fielding. He did well, getting four stumpings and a catch overall (plus a stumping that wasn't given out, and I'm still half-sore over that.)

Both countries reached the finals of the 50-over series which was played first, but Malaysia edged us out for gold. It was nice to get the silver, but we were all slightly disappointed because aakhir gold toh gold howe hai... nahin? Now all our hopes were pinned on getting the gold in the T20 series. (Bollywood drama queen that I am, I asked Viv to please listen to SRK's 'Sattar minute' speech for inspiration before the match, and the poor guy actually complied. What a keeper -- wicket- and otherwise.)

And what a nail-biting final it was. My heart was literally in my mouth. The match literally ended at the second last ball, and... Singapore got GOLD! I have been screaming non-stop since, and on some level, I think I'm still screaming on the inside. This was Singapore's first ever cricket gold in an international competition, and hence, a very very very big deal. Like Aamir Khan said in Dangal, "Agar silver jeete toh aaj nahi toh kal log tanne bhool javenge ... gold jeete toh misaal ban javenge ... aur misaalein di jaati hai, bhooli nahi jaati."

(And why did I never mention a thing on the blog all this while? Because I'm a person of science and people of science do not believe in jinxing themselves. Erm, except when their spouse is playing for the country. Hehe!)

So now that it's all over, and has ended on a high note, and Viv is home with two gigantic medals, I can finally get my original heart rate back and blog about everything. He just got home yesterday and what a reception the team got at the airport! (I plucked Xena off school early so she could go to the airport with me and shake hands with everyone in our golden team.)

Our immediate and extended families have, of course, gone completely bonkers. My aunts (who I've always suspected like Viv more than they like me) are making statements like "Arre we don't care if he got a gold or a silver. He's always been a diamond to us." Wah wah.

We have, of course, been celebrating nonstop. Within hours of his landing, our neighbours had thrown him a welcome party. That was a real surprise. People he had never met before came down with their kids to shake his hand and take photos with him and hold and wear and admire the medals. A lady whose son is a big cricket fan came to drop off a bottle of wine. It was fabulous. Viv generally likes to remain low-key, so it was a pleasant surprise to see him in the spotlight, being treated like a celebrity. (I swear I felt like Gauri Khan at one point.)

Viv's hard work and dedication aside, it's not been easy for Xena and me either. He already travels a fair bit for work, and to have him away so much for cricket training or matches means that I can never truly get away from holding down the job, the kid and the household. Our family time has definitely been compromised a lot, simply because of the immense amounts of time the game of cricket takes. Unlike football or badminton or tennis, each cricket match already takes the whole day, and add to that, all the training sessions. Most of his weekends basically went into cricket, while Xena and I made our own separate plans. It was difficult but then you can't make an omelette without breaking a couple of eggs, can you?

I know Viv feels the guilt of missing out on Xena's childhood too. Two years ago, he was seriously contemplating retiring, but in spite of my selfish interests, I had to disagree. Here's the thing. How many of us in our 30s pursue a hobby so passionately that we are willing to put in that kind of crazy hours? How many of us have hobbies that automatically keep us fit? And I'm so glad that he continued playing at the club level all these years. If he had been out of touch, there is no way he would have been selected to represent Singapore at the SEA games.

Here are some more photos from the SEA Games cricket matches, which feature Viv.

The smell test

After I tucked Xena into her bed and said good night, I told her I was going for a shower.

"Okay, but come back after your shower and hug me, okay?"

So I went back to her room after my shower and hugged her. She was kinda awake.

"Mama, you smell so nice..."

"Hmmm... like a flower?" (My shower foam is lavender -- my favourite.)

"Noooooo... if you were a flower, bees would go into your nose!"

"Uhhh okay. Not a flower then..."

"Yep, not a flower. You smell like... uhh..." (thinking hard)

"What?"

"You smell very nice, like a... like a..." (thinking harder)

"Like a what, baby?"

"I know! Like... the opposite of a skunk!"

Touché.

The rolling stones

Two months ago, a friend added me to a very cool pebble-painting group whose main objective is to get kids away from electronics, and out and about in nature. It's become a big craze in Australia, New Zealand and some parts of the US, and something that tech-crazy kids of Singapore desperately need. It's like the analog version of Pokemon Go.

The rules are simple -- you paint pebbles and hide them around parks and playgrounds for other kids to find. What you find, you re-hide in another location. You post photos of what you paint, hide and find, and your personal hashtags at the back of the pebbles can help you trace where your artwork has travelled. Singapore may be a tiny island, but it sure is heartening to find in the west coast a pebble painted by a kid living in the east coast.

Xena and I already do a lot of art and craft and outdoorsy stuff, so this fitted right into our interests. However, I had no clue how obsessed she (and me; mainly me actually) would get.

Here are my top reasons for loving, loving, loving this new hobby:

1. It promotes creativity and resourcefulness. 
You can paint absolutely anything on the pebbles using any media you like. In the beginning, we had no suitable art supplies —just two bags of pebbles we had bought. Xena's water colours and finger paints turned out to be no good for painting on the surface of the pebbles. While I checked around to see what kind of paints and markers would be the best, we had to make do with whatever was at hand. So we used nail polish for colours, a correction pen for white and markers for outlines. Since I was really into nail art at one point, I do have some very funky colours and nail art tools. And I have to say they served us very well. And because the 'canvas' is so small, you don't need any real artistic skills. Anything you paint on a pebble will end up looking cute.

This entire batch was painted using nothing but nail polish and nail art tools.

At this point, I'm doing most of the painting, though Xena helps me do the base coats and paints some of the simpler designs after I do the outlines. 

Most of this is Xena's handiwork, with a little help from me.

2. It gets kids out and about. 
Xena and I often go for long walks to faraway parks and playgrounds. By the time we are done, she's often very tired and if we haven't taken her scooter along, I encounter some "carry me" whines. (Now, she may be super-light, but I ain't carrying a 6-year-old home.) However, since we started on this, I don't hear any complaints at all. Scooter or no scooter, she cheerfully ventures near and far in search of painted pebbles. And she goes to great lengths to find them.

We were pebble-hiding near the cable ski lagoon at the beach with a friend, when she borrowed his toy binoculars and said, "Mama, I'm looking hard for pebbles!"

3. It teaches kids to share. 
It's simple: paint --> hide and find -> re-hide. You can't hold on to the pebbles you find, no matter how pretty they are or how much you like them. You can keep them to admire for a day or two, but you gotta release them eventually for others to feel just as happy as you did when you found them. Xena gets this, and I sure am glad that she's able to let go of stuff this easily.

4. It's a cycle. 
If I had a penny for every piece of artwork that Xena handed to me that I actually kept, boy oh boy. Every term, her preschool also sends me every single drawing of hers, and some of them are, well, I have no idea what they are. On an average, I keep about one in twenty. The rest dutifully make their way to the recycle bin, mostly when she's asleep. It's true; kids are inherent hoarders. They get attached to the most random things -- leaves, twigs, candy wrappers, ribbons, pieces of blu tack (I kid you not), etc. What they'd want to do with these things is anybody's guess, but they do love them dearly. So you can only imagine how attached kids can get to a cute pebble with a cute mascot painted on it. Now imagine if you kept every pebble you painted and every pebble you found. That's a lot of stuff to keep in the house, and goes totally against our general KonMari philosophy. So I'm actually happy that the pebble artwork gets renewed and recycled without anyone having to throw anything away.

5. It teaches kids how to deal with disappointments.
This is my absolute favourite. This generation of kids rarely have to deal with failure and disappointment in their childhood. (That's why 'participation prizes' bug me. Why are we rewarding kids for just turning up?) My worry is that when they grow into (rather entitled) adults, they will not be able to cope with all the curveballs life is gonna throw at them. Rock-hunting is great for this reason -- you might spend an hour combing through a park and find ZERO pebbles and that's okay. And of course, there is always the heartbreaking possibility of your beautifully painted pebble being discovered by someone who doesn't know what it is; someone who just picks it up and keeps it, or worse, throws it into the bin. Oh, well.

6. It's 'reboot' time for me.
Viv has been insanely busy with cricket so our weeknight Netflix sessions start only around 10 pm after he gets back from training. I end up with some free time after putting Xena to bed, so I just sit down and paint the stuff that *I* want to paint, without getting distracted with phrases like "Mama, this fish looks angry. We need to change its mouth!" or "Mama, please draw a JigglyWigglypie [aka random cartoon character she learnt about from her classmates that I have no clue about and have to google to draw]." This 'me time' is really calming. I can literally tuck away all my other thoughts and just focus on the pebble I'm painting. And now I have armed myself with acrylic paints and better markers, so the pebbles are looking better too.

Here are some of our latest creations. Will update as we paint more!

One of a kind

Where possible, I try to sneak in a message about kindness and compassion to Xena.

The other day, we were waiting for the lift to get home after school. I had a splitting headache and she was insisting we take the stairs up.

"I'm not feeling very well, Xena. So let's take the lift today. We can take the stairs tomorrow. Or you go up the stairs and I'll take the lift and meet you upstairs."

"Nooooo... let's both take the stairs."

"That is not very kind, Xena. I'm not well, so you need to think about me too. Imagine if you were very sick and I said, 'Let's go climb a mountain right now.' Can I do that?

"No, Mama, you can't."

"That's right. Do you know why not?"

"Because there are no mountains here."