Moms aren't perfect and that makes me sad

I used to be very close to my mom. I would tell her everything, constantly seek her approval, look up to her (even when it was through teary eyes as she threatened to slap me across the face with her slipper). It all changed over the stupidest thing – grades! Not to brag or anything, but A’s were fairly easy to get in high school. I had some struggle here and there bus usually managed to pull through. It became slightly harder in university – I actually had to try. Because A’s were harder to come by, it made me more excited about earning one. So I would proudly show her whenever I did. But then she started asking about every single thing I was studying for or working on – things I didn’t want to show her because I got poorer grades—so I decided to show her nothing.

Now that was a superficial change in our relationship – but it was the beginning of a giant snowball soon to follow. Now that I wasn’t showing her my grades, I didn’t really talk about school either. How can you talk about your tests and assignments if you don’t want questions asking how they went? Since school was pretty much the ONLY thing I did during undergrad, there wasn’t much else to talk about. The next thing I knew, I gained a whole whack of life experience over the next handful of years, and started to see my mom has a regular person – an imperfect person.
It was weird. I found that my mom was wrong more and more often and that I totally disagreed with a lot of her personal beliefs and logic. How can this strong intelligent woman think and do such silly things? I think I was fairly angry and impatient about it. I know I should be more accepting and loving, but it’s just not in my nature. I expect little from people in general, but expect perfection from those closest to me. As the veneer cracked, each imperfection would anger me and push me to look for more cracks, until the whole surface crumbled and everyone stood a loser.

When you’re a parent, it must be nice to have your kids look up to you. I imagine it`d be heartbreaking if that ever stops. See truly happy relationships between parents and their children fills my heart with joy. We don’t have an unhappy one – I just wouldn’t call it happy. It must be terrible for her to deal with someone as stubborn and unforgiving as me. Unfortunately, she doesn’t make it easy for me either. She does ridiculous things to get my attention (I think), as her way to get closer to me. But the ridiculousness of what she’s doing makes me so upset with her that I push her away. The further I push her away, the more she wants to get closer and the more ridiculous her antics become. It’s just the way she does it that makes it so hard. I think they only way out is for me to be the bigger person and play nice – but this requires my acceptance that she is imperfect and unable to live up to my standard. I wonder if accepting that and playing nice is better than hoping she’ll be perfect once again but being harsh in the meantime. Probably.

I hope I won’t have this wacky relationship with my children. I’m banking on the fact that they’re nicer to their mother than I am.

Move over Susur Lee...

...make way for Steve A!

It would be quite a stretch to say that Steve is a fan of fusion food, but he would never let any food faux pas stop him from pleasing his taste buds. Sometimes, however, I wish he would.

This man loves his sauces and condiments. It doesn't matter what he's eating or what sauce is served with it. The more sauce, the better. For whatever reason, he just really likes his food WET. If you've ever looked in our fridge, it's 80% condiments and 20% beer and juice.

In his world, there's no such thing as a wrong food-sauce combination. The first time I became acutely aware of this was at dim sum, when he would dip his food into any sauce he could find on the table. Siu Mai with mayo that came with the deep fried seafood, why not? Short ribs with the sweet and sour sauce that came with dumplings, sure! My relatives seemed quite entertained by the whole thing. I was just happy he found stuff he'd eat at dim sum.

Recently, we had lunch at a HK cafe. At HK cafes, pretty much anything goes. There are so many combinations of meats (chicken, pork, beef, fish, etc.), sauces (tomato, cream, portugese, curry,etc.) and bases (nissan noodles, vermicelli, rice, spaghetti, etc.). Leave it to Steve to come up with just one more.

Steve: I want sweet & sour pork on spaghetti.
Me: WHAT?!
Steve: That sounds good.
Me: No it doesn't...and it's not on the menu.
Steve: But they just missed it. All the other stuff they throw on spaghetti anyway.
Me: Well, I'm not ordering it for you. It's too embarassing.
~waitress comes~
Steve: Can I have the sweet & sour pork but with spaghetti instead of rice?
Waitress: Really? Um...I’ll have to ask.
~waitress goes to the kitchen~
Steve: I’d be pissed if they don’t do it...they serve spaghetti with all the other meats and sauces!
Me: Yea, but what you’re asking for is just gross.
~waitress comes back~
Waitress: Yup we can do it.
~I ordered my stuff in Cantonese~
Steve: Steph, tell her it’s not your fault that I’m weird.
~Waitress laughs~
~Steve’s dish comes~
Waitress: It looks good! No one has ever ordered that before. You’re the first one to try it!
~Waitress laughs at Steve again~

Classic.

We’re all a little more American than we think

It’s commonly known that it doesn’t hurt to carry a Canadian flag when you travel, whether you’re Canadian or not. The blatant 180 degree change in Ozzies’ demeanour once they find out we`re Canadian (rather than American) is unbelievable. Their eyes light up, they start smiling, and their voices go up an octave. We made friends with an American who is applying for permanent residence in Oz. She is really nice and you can see her physically cringe when she admits there is a stigma attached to being an American abroad. I feel bad for her because all of us are little more American than we think.

After visiting New Zealand and meeting the extremely down-to-earth people there, it made Oz seem like the American big brother in this part of the world. To me, Oz mirrors the US in other ways too. Violent acts of racism in Oz (example 1, example 2) are more likely to occur in the US than Canada. Their immigration policy didn’t allow any minorities to move to Australia until 1970s and presently uses loopholes to keep refugees trapped on Christmas Island in immigration detention facilities. That level of racism was certainly abolished and shunned decades ago in the US and many more decades ago in Canada. Ozzies think that they are very much like Canadians and I don’t have the heart to tell them otherwise.

Canadians mirror Americans too, but not in an offensive way. After observing European influences on Ozzie culture, I realize how Americanized we are at home. Canadian content in the media is embarrassingly low, we spell “organize”, “maximize”, “realize” with “z” instead of “s”. We know more about work than play. We’re not obsessed with soccer, cricket, or rugby. We think Starbucks makes awesome coffee. While these are not terrible things, they indicate that we don’t get off scot-free.

Team Arnold!

I’ve always been a 9-5 girl. I was happy working for large corporations, with regular working hours and set salaries with benefits. I wanted to do my job well and add value to the company – that’s it. I never wanted to climb the corporate ladder or deal with office politics. If you pay me to use my skills for 40 hours a week and expect nothing more or less, I’m a happy camper.

I was never entrepreneurial. I’m still not. But having taken the opportunity to work with my husband in starting a small business, I realize how I can never go back to a corporate 9-5. I`m in that elusive sweet spot where I`m getting the best of both worlds. He`s the entrepreneur taking the risks and (hopefully) reaping the rewards whereas I`m still a regular employee. I have the security of a salary but the excitement of having an impact on the direction and operation of the business. And with the excitement driving me, I don`t mind working late in the night or over weekends. Since there are so many different things that need to get done at the start-up phase, I don`t feel pigeon-holed into doing one set of boring tasks using a restricted set of boring skills. I finally feel like I`m getting to be paid to be me (or at least, my own biased perception of me) – an analytical, efficient, smart person with a business background and wicked Excel skills. If it weren`t for the fact that our strengths are almost completely exclusive of one another`s, I wouldn’t have the luxury of doing what I do best. What can I say...we make a great team!

An unintended upside of working together is that we whenever we disagree, it`s only about work! And since we live and work in close quarters, we had to learn to ``get over it``` very quickly. We`re usually back to being a happy couple before the end of the bus ride home. Sometimes, we really impress me!

To tip or not to tip

Apparently tipping is not customary. While some places have tipping jars/bowls, they don't expect much more than loose change. But if you're at a nice restaurant, apparently tipping is the norm. It's hard for us to differentiate between the two types of establishments. Even if we could, we always always always feel bad about not leaving anything. It almost seems rude! Even when there was hair in my food and we had to force the manager to acknowledge the issue and apologize, we tipped. :S

Breaking a sweat...but not really

I got my GymStick today! I only tried a few exercises and now my shoulders, arms, and back feel like jelly. My muscles gave out before I even broke a sweat haha. Good thing I got the one with "medium" resistance. I don't think I can handle "strong" because it's for "fit women" (and men and athletes). :S As I've always said, strength is not one of my strengths.

I also want to start running but it's harder than I thought because my knees and feet ache from walking around Sydney. As soon a I get home, I have to sit down and make Steben rub my heels. I'll start with working out for now until my feet get more used to the walking before I graduate to running.

Take a look...it's in a book...a reading rainboooooooooow

I rediscovered my love of reading. It was simply a matter of making time, which is surprisingly easy to do when you don't have tv. I also lucked out with some quality books.

The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls
Still Alice by Lisa Genova
The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway
The 10pm Question by Kate De Goldi (NZ)
The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas (AUS)

I just started The Slap. I was very proud that I was able to find award-winning books by authors of the countries I visited. As a bonus, I bought and read them in their respective countries.

I also read Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith. I enjoyed it, just not as much as I expected because it wasn't an easy book to read. I don't think I've read a book written in language from that era since high school. I also read Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult. It's always nice to read a page-turner. They give you a different kind of satisfaction than quality literature.

I can't wait until someone visits me so I can share the books with them. If you visit me and are a reader, no need to bring books for the flight back. I'll hook you up!

My observations on Auckland thus far...

The weather is fickle. The sky can't figure out if it wants to pour or drown us in sunshine. It changes every 10 minutes. Either way though, it's COLD.
The people here are extremely friendly and love to chat.
Auckland reminds me more of home than Sydney.
Bus drivers have a really good relationship with their passengers. Everyone thanks the drivers as they leave. When the bus driver is done for the night, they say "see yous" to the whole bus. When they are just starting for the night, they say "good evening". One of the drivers got off the bus to make sure we knew how to get to the museum because she could see us looking aimlessly around. Precious!
They don't have pennies or nickels.
They have a closer relationship with their native people, the Maori, then we do with ours.
They do not have lactase pills.
The landscape is quite hilly.

My observations on Sydney thus far...

Men really like skinny jeans...a lot.
They don't have pennies so you lose money from rounding.
People inexplicably give us the wrong change regularly so we lose even more money.
Women are well dressed - no Lulu pants or TNA sweaters in sight.
Most things are 50-100% more expensive here than they are back home.
A very high percentage of retail space is dedicated to food.
There are lots of cafes that specialize in chocolates.
Meat pies are everywhere.
Lots of restaurants have the same menu but charge different prices throughout the day and week (i.e. weekend surcharge).