Medan Kota

My eldest son, Jadon will be sitting for his first primary 1 school examination on 16 November, lasting 4 days. The school, Piaget medan was kind enough to inform us the parents very early on… when I received the notes and the guidelines… I have a rather mixed and confused feeling … part of my little voice is saying…  ‘hai yah… he is ok… not need to worry… his only problem is carelessness..’ … but honestly, another part of my little voice is praying rather aggressively hoping for the best…

I am writing this because… I can’t think what is right or what is wrong any more… you see… raising such worries and concern with any husband… these men replied will be.. ‘don’t worry too much, our child will be alright…’ and when the result is out?.. they start interrogating the wife (instead the son/daughter) of why the result is such and such… and what tuition are the children put on…

for me… I never bothered to ask the dearest daddy… he knows I am the fussy one.. so no matter what he said… the final decision is up to me anyway…… with Jadon.. for all his class tests, his results were always above the 95%… the errors that he made were mostly carelessness… in addition to the fact that he has really bad writing skill… as a mum… what is right?.. should I scold him on his carelessness? but knowing that it is not big deal…? so why should I make his life miserable at such a young age… knowing that getting 100 or 95 or 80 right now will make no difference to his adult life… BUT on the other hand… knowing that he knows and that he should easily scored full marks? … he does deserve some  punishment dont you think?…

so with 2 weeks to the D day… I don’t really know what to do with him… should I choose to grill him?.. gosh… I am definitely jeopadising the mother and son relationship …. which I really don’t want to… but should I choose to do it in moderation form… seeing the end result will not make us very happy… which with Jadon’s personality, he will develop that… ‘it’s ok… my mummy is happy go lucky kind’... coz right now… whenever he came home with the silly mistakes… he will always casually replied me… ‘it’s ok mama… I know the anwser but I didn’t see it properly’….

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things I find interesting…

ICBC is one of China leading bank … I was being recommended to buy their stocks in fact… I was seeing the logo everywhere I turned… but each time we see one… hubby will say ‘ICBC = ai xi bei xi’ which in hokkien translates to ‘ICBC = want to die cannot die’… and since there is one right opposite our hotel… I went in there to change some money… as I was being given big 100 notes… I asked for some to be changed into smaller ones… the clerk guy said that he had not enough on hand for other customers… !! I was like… comeon this is a bank and you gave me that excuse??..

I skipped my breakfast for this famous restaurant at Yuyuan… one word ‘disappointment’… the queues were long and everyone was talking about it… so I have to try… the big bun with straw.. it was just plain soup inside… and I couldn’t understand why it was oily since it was simply filled with soupbase …

we went to the pudong side to have a better view of the full Shanghai Tang… along the river bank.. I saw this set up photography store… and I really have the urged to have one taken… but because 1. there is no changing room so I have to slip on the costume over what I was wearing…2. the camera that they were using was a lot much worst than mine.. 3. lots of people were starring… so.. I didn’t have the guts to do it…

at the Zhuangzhou Watertown… the food came in HUGE portion… it was enough for at least 6 people… obviously we managed to eat just 1/4 of it… tastewise… just only ok… but most interesting part was when you see how the vegetables were being pre prepared….

one of my most disappointment was not seeing the BUND… the whole stretch is having construction going on to prepare for the Shanghai Expo in 2010…

but one of the fun part was experiencing the automated toilet in the lounge of the Shanghai Airport… I have tried many of the semi automated ones but not like one of this …. and all along I have always wondered about why the Japanese all have such a big fuss over their toilet seat until now…. for this one, as you opened the door, the light is automatically switched on… the toilet seat cover is then automatically lifted up… then on the side.. instructions and a panel of functions you pressed .. high or low, front or rear, different types of spraying methods… and it comes with the DRYER function!!… I am NOT at all ashame to admit… but it was really cute and I was like a little kid finding excuses to go in again and again…

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I was going through old clothing …. and somehow at the back of the cupboard found hubby’s old Versace jeans, shirts etc… I was not slowly picking the pieces out one a time.. instead.. I was sweeping it all off in one go .. straight from the shelves landing directly onto the ground… and I saw this…

many of the more ridiculous ones have been donated to the 2004 Tsunami victims….

I stared at it… shouted out loud and asked him to come over and looked at what I just did to his ex-treasure… he gave me that shocking look… and I said… ‘do u really think you will still want to wear these colourful jeans!!!…’

these jeans with holes… imagine my lovely then boyfriend managed to wear it during the UK winter season and yes… it’s see through and yes… it was freezing cold… and it came in different types of holes too…

I remembered the Versace era extremely well… it was around 1995/6… I came over to Medan for a quick visit during the school break… and it was my first time here as a non-tourist… on my first Saturday here… my now in-laws decided to take us out to watch a movie… I was about 20 yo and thought … ‘wow, hubby got cool parents‘.… we changed… I was in my typical teenage outfit… capri pants and t-shirt… while his parents were in full designer gear… I remembered whispering to hubby saying.. ‘it’s Saturday afternoon.. aren’t we supposed to dress casually?’.. well, he explained and I acknowledged with ‘ooohhh’…. ‘aarrrr’ …. ‘I see’

so it was lunch then over to the Medan’s Hottest and most Happening place to hang out at that era.. ‘the cinema at Sinar Plaza’…. we arrived at about the right timimg… what I saw was a ‘Versace’ fall/winter as well as spring/summer collection all in one…

no matter which angle my head turned… many young and old..and for some, the full family troop were dressing from head to toe in Versace gear… guys were wearing shirts in loud print and coloured jeans.. while the ladies were not only in the silky shirt with matching bottoms  etc  … but belt, bangles, earring… accessorizing the body were all glittering with Merdusa Head…

from then on… I began to understand the term ‘Indonesian are extravagant’… and yes.. I was badly influenced by hubby… I remembered buying a pair of ‘knee high boots’ from their Haute Couture line  which cost about USD 1900 at the then value… and yes.. I worn it like 4-5 times… when my mum saw me wearing it… she wasn’t mad at how ridiculously I was spending her money… instead she find it amusing seeing me in one…

the boots look similar to the pic shown except that it has the Versace trademark on… and I bought coz friends were saying like… ‘Vic… if you wear.. people will know it’s Versace’…  that was about the last time I ever spent so much on a pair of shoes… it’s still around somewhere in my BKK home cupboard though…

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I overheard a boy speaking to his mum and dad one day … ‘wo ai makan sausage sama french fries.. papa xu mai ok…’ …. I always thought Singaporean mixing English with Mandarin were bad enough (including myself)… well.. some children in Medan possessed a much better capabilities in mixing about 4 languages to form a sentence…

‘wo ai makan sausage sama french fries… papa xu mai ok?‘

Wo ai = ‘I want’ in Hokkien
Makan = ‘eat’ in Bahasa
Sausage = English
Sama = ‘with’ in Bahasa
French fries = English

Papa = ‘dad’ is universal language
Xu mai = ‘go to buy’ in Mandarin
Ok= universal language

it definitely was interesting to hear… I am not the kind to evesdrop on people’s conversation…. But I couldn’t help but heard it as the boy was saying it out rather loudly and it wasn’t just the boy himself… both mum and dad were forming each conversation sentences in ‘ice kacang’ format too…

our boys… when JD was born… I have decided that… Hubby was gonna speak English to the kids, Me in Mandarin, Nanny in Thai while the maid in Bahasa…. we all did our best… by 6 months, at the age when Jadon began to understand stuff …. we noticed that he looked rather confused… being the first and only child.. whenever both of us and the nanny fussed over him at the same time, …. my gosh.. it sounded so weird… all 3 of us were talking all differently… by about 1y.o.. he was picking up the English more… and was definitely confused… I check with doctors and many baby bible books… all pointing to the same direction… ‘kids will do fine… just throw all the different languages with them.. they will understand..’..

right now… the only language we are all having difficulty with … so shamefully to admit… is ‘Bahasa’… we kinda ignored the local Bahasa thinking that he will pick it up as he grows… obviously it wasn’t the case… the only person who seems to make sense with the local language is my husband.. (though 1/2 the time he has difficulty finding the right words himself)… and now with Jadon doing Bahasa in primary 1…  he will often turned to me and furiously said: ‘mama!.. why you don’t know!!.. all my friends mummy speak Bahasa..!!’

and yesterday, he came home with Bahasa homework … on the books, he had to name the photos…

1.    ‘comb’ =  me and him looked at each other… have no absolute clue
2.    ‘toothbrush’ = I told him to write ‘tusuk gigi’… and I was utterly confident that I was right…
3.    ‘soap’ = we both were like ‘soap too right?’.. but it has 5 missing characters blank so obviously its not..
4.    ‘nail clipper’ = I went ‘what’s it call in Mandarin?’
5.    etc..

there were about 6/7 questions … and I think I only managed to answer like 1 or something… hubby came home, checked the answers and laughed at both of us like there’s no tomorrow….  while every of his classmates have no problem… Bahasa homework has turned into our family laughing time…

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It has been many many years since we last applied for a credit card… we hold the HSBC and Citibank.. and is given to us since we have accounts with them… the application for the cards were applied on behalf for us by relationship manager or the RM which is safe and sound…

anyway, about 3 weeks back… we had lunch at Taipan… as we were leaving the restaurant, we were approached by the Mega credit card people… 2 youngsters who definitely have no appeal as a banker at all… came to us… saying “ko.. cie.. free first year and now with Mega cc, it’s 50% off at Taipan”… hubby looked at me… father-in-law turned and said “50% off leh…“… so I said to the salesperson and asked..” how do I cancel it should I want to discontinue the service after the 1st year”.. (after that BCA incident… it’s gonna be my first opening question to all these people..)… anyway… I am not that keen…and I didn’t want to manage another account… but the in-laws and hubby went ahead…

First they asked to fill in the standard information on the form that has the usual empty dotted line for address, billing address, income etc… next, copy of the personal identity card.. which obviously we don’t carry the copied version… so they ended taking out their handphone and capture the ID… Third, asking for a copy of the credit card that we already hold… and again, since none copying machine insight, again both guys used their mobil phone to capture the front and the back of our credit card…

I was sitting nearby and seeing how the whole thing being process…. something striked me that could these people be a fraud?… darn.. they took all our details!! …including our credit card details for both front and back!!… as an online person… what we gave them is more than enough for them to go online and have a big shopping extravagenza!!!..

I seriously didn’t feel right about the whole thing… so I turned to Hubby… explained my whole concerned .. and asked them both if they are those freelance credit card salesman employed by the Bank? or the full time employee…. well.. they replied ‘No’… which was not a relieved to be honest…. whether they are one or the other… they definitely have more than what is needed to be known….

somehow… hubby went ahead with the application… he just received a call about further verification… and frankly… this will be our last … the more I think of it, the more I feel unsecured !!!… well.. do take precautions… Medan does has scammers… actually in all places around the world… but it’s the way they do things here that make it worst… and the law does not protect the credit card holders like how it used to be…. so watch out…

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