she's smiling because it's cake

she's smiling because it's cake

When we arrived here, she wasn't walking, and now she's already 3.

She had a few friends over to enjoy magic cupcake decorating, toss-the-beanbag-into-the-flower, and pin-the-petals-on-the-flower. And to complete the theme, loot bags were replaced by 'loot potted plants for the guests to take home and nurture or kill as they please.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kevjblack/tags/flowerparty

A quote of the week

While outside in the yard...

Me: Naveen, you look like you have to go pee. Please go inside and go pee.
N: Can I go pee in the plants?
Me: No, you can't go pee in the plants, go pee inside!
N: But the Vietnamese go pee in the plants.  Why can't I pee in the plants?

Sometimes, he's a little too observant...

recent media

Last Friday we were treated to Naveen's class presenting "Blue Suede Shoes" as part of the Pre-Kindergarten's show "Our Rainbow World".

Check out some pics and video of the wee Elvis impersonators.

Quote of the Week

This week Geeta participated in the launch of the Action Month for Children, and she informed the children that she "was on TV".

Asha queried:  "How did you get off the TV mommy?"

The Angels live on (sorta)

Occasionally, one of our TV channels, STAR World TV, has some free programming time before the regularly scheduled 8pm show.  They have decided to fill this roughly 5 minutes of free time with, thankfully not an infomercial, but a Blast from the Past, a Charlie's Angels episode!  It cracks us up.

But, you say, a Charlie's Angels episode is about 45 minutes in duration (1 hour show minus time for ads, etc.), how can they show it in 5 minutes?!?  Well, they show the opening title & music, cutout the opening "teaser" scene, jump straight to opening credits, then slice & dice the way through the rest of the show to the final happy ending and closing credits. 

We feel a little out of sorts watching these sliced-and-diced episodes, leaving us wondering what juicy information has been denied from us.  e.g. There are scenes  where they'll refer to a character, or an item that is crucial to the investigation, and we'll go, 'jewels!?!? What jewels are they talking about?!? we haven't seen no jewels!'.  In a recent episode the closing credits listed Tom Selleck as one of the characters.  Bloody 'ell!!  We never got to see Tom Selleck!  How can anyone cut Magnum PI out of a TV show?!?  Another episode was a disjointed stream of car chases, gun fights, and foot chases; we had no idea why the Bad Guys were Bad (other than their Bad Hair) and why they were in conflict with the Angels. 

So the question is, how are they able to distill a blast-from-the-past episode into 5 minutes and show it on today's TV:

• it's the 21st century and in this day of Twitter, news tickers, and information overload, we are trained to absorb the bare-bones information and do not have the capacity or patience to savour the full-hour Angels? (not that I've ever been on Twitter)  Who needs the full story?  Who needs a storyline?
• most TV shows are fluff.  5 minutes of hard-core story surrounded by fluff.  Fluff to suck you in and keep you watching more advertisements that periodically interrupt the fluff.
• it would be too dangerous to air a full hour of a show from the 70s.  I used to watch Dukes of Hazzard as a kid - that and Hockey Night in Canada were our TV shows.  I started watching a Dukes episode last year, nearly vomited, wondering how I ever watched such a horrific show in my youth, and as I gasped for oxygen, managed to change the channel before the next scene of Daisy's shorts sucked me in and glued my eyes back to the TV for the remainder of the episode.

The beauty of watching these Angel snippets with my wife: she has already seen the episode and can fill me in on the missing segments, or she had the Charlies Angels trading cards and remembers the scene vividly right down to the details of the outfits (especially Kelly!).

Siem Reap, Cambodia

Did you miss the pics from our Tet trip to Siem Reap, Cambodia?

Way up North

Recently, G. has rarely been at home:
 9/03 - 13/03 : receiving training in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
13/03 - 17/03 : we join her in K-L for a vacation weekend
18/03 - 22/03 : work trip to Hà Giang, the northernmost province in Vietnam to visit schools & villages in some of the poorer districts of the country.

She had many interesting stories. I'll let her pictures do some of the talking.