Last night, my wife and I drove out at around 8.40pm, to pick kiddo from an Aunt’s place in Glen Waverley. She had gone there from another uncle’s house out in Maribyrnong, where we all  (including the Aunt-from-Glen’s family) spent the afternoon, after church. We had earlier been to Footscray for some very good Vietnamese beef noodles. We were supposed to yum-cha in some Chinese restaurants but it was full as it was Mother’s Day. Our drive last night took us past a nearby restaurant which looked jam-packed. “Mother’s Day”, we said to each other. When we got home around 9.30pm, wifey called Malaysia and found no one home. A call to her dad’s mobile established, of course, that they were out for Mother’s Day dinner, in a very noisy restaurant. So it looked like the occasion was a profitable one for restaurateurs not just in Melbourne but also in Klang, Malaysia. I guess commercialisation is rampant wherever you are. So it was good to receive an email this morning, saying a cousin gave her mom a present in the form of an early rise on a Sunday morning to prepare breakfast for mom. The romantic would say this is a better form of showing appreciation than joining the restaurant-going mobs. I am not quite a romantic but I’d go along with this. As a father in Melbourne, I shoulder a fair bit of the work around the house. I know if kiddo on her own, decides to take over a good part of these tasks on Father’s Day, it would be top drawer present for me – certainly better than socks! I know my wife would have appreciated that. Actually I suspect she would shudder at breakfast in bed as that runs the risk of having crumbs falling all over in the bed or the bedroom, creating even more work! So voluntary assumption of household duties, even if just for a day, would I’m sure be highly appreciated. I hope the dinners mothers were being treated to last night were really a last gift of the day, with the first being making breakfast, followed by laundry, vacuuming, toilet and bathroom cleaning. ironing, grocery shopping and sweeping the yard. I guess kids are thankful Father’s Day does not fall on a summer’s day as dads would have liked the lawn being mown by kiddo on a Saturday morning!

I don’t know if it is fair to say that when we think of what to give our children, we think of the best we can give but when our children think of their gifts to us, they think of what in their mind would be the most fun things to do together. That’s why I don’t count on waking up on Father’s Day weekend to see kiddo pushing the lawn mower along the nature strips…

This morning I caught glimpses of stories making the waves. Among them are – the Minister of Finance (Treasurer) Peter Costello is publicly fighting with the PM, his boss. He wants the PM to step down well in advance of the next election and let him become PM. He told the Sydney Morning Herald the PM is wrong to carry on. Can you imagine a senior cabinet member telling Pak Lah the same thing and more importantly can you imagine the NST or Star reporting this? That’s why Malaysia is ranked somewhere between 121 and 123 in a press freedom ranking recently published. Don’t know where Australia ranks, but I think it is considerably higher than Malaysia. There are scores of stories everyday which demonstrate the role a free press should play in a mature society.  These stories would never see the light of day in Malaysia, even assuming the journalist have the courage to try. Yet since coming over to Melbourne 4 months ago, I have been stingy on spending on newspapers. I used to read the Sun and Star everyday in Malaysia, but here I only read The Age Newspaper once a week, Saturdays, in the library. I must do something about this.

My wife and I stepped into a Nissan dealership near our home (about 20km east of Melbourne CBD) last Saturday afternoon, at around 2.30pm. We made a purchase, and yesterday (Monday) at around 5.30pm, I went and took delivery of the car. No waiting period, no registration headaches and certainly no JPJ-like pains. The registration authority here is relatively pain-free to deal with. Need a customized plate? Log-in to their website to find out the costs. No winks and nudges or secret handshakes as to who to see and payment for unlisted items. As for insurance, I went online and purchased coverage. As for the trade-in, again, I went online and cancelled the insurance for the old car. Did that yesterday and this morning, I got a reply saying my refund has been approved, and I should expect payment within 7-10 days. Cheque is in the mail for sure, but thus far, I didn’t even have to use a single slip of paper. I remember selling my car before leaving Malaysia. The buyer needed me to drive the car to his financier’s branch way out in Selayang somewhere. I then had to go see some lawyer in that area, to sign some statutory declarations. Then I was told I could only be paid at least one week later, as the registration process would take at least that long. I told the manager if it was going to take that long I wasn’t going ahead with the sale as I has some other cash buyer lined up. He then suggested a “fast-tracking” or “express” registration process. Needless to say, some payment is involved and I was asked to pay, in order to be paid faster. What the…. I said no, of course. I was leaving the country precisely because of this sort of nonsense, and I wasn’t about to leave with this lousy experience as one of the last things to remember it by. The buyer ended up paying for all these “extras” (I guess I must have sold it at a low price, or he must have liked the car very much). Anyway, this morning I drove that brand new car, but no sense of excitement there, as this was the exact same car I sold. I sort of like replaced my old car with the same model, except that here, I pay about 1/5 the price I paid for in Malaysia. Even if I allowed for the conversion/exchange rate, I would have still paid only about 60% of what I would have paid for it in Malaysia. Hmmm… another Proton success story, I guess.

 

 

Both mornings of the weekend were wet and cold. Thankfully, I managed to squeeze in a run on Saturday morning which probably because of the weather, saw me pulling in with a faster time than any runs in the past 2-3 months. At least the 8km round is inching closer to the 45min mark. Certainly I can hope to squeeze in a 10+km/hr again, if this keeps up. Went for another one yesterday evening but left it too late. By the time I reached the 5km mark, it was dark (although it was only 6pm then) so I had to take the next turn home instead of completing the 8km route. Still, it was better than nothing. It would have left an uneasy feeling to have just completed one run for the entire weekend.

 

In between runs, a number of things happened – did the usual weekend household chores, attended a birthday party Saturday afternoon which stretched on till almost 10pm, and bought a car!

 

It was an auntie’s birthday party – had relatives and church friends there. Main feature was the satays, made by a church friend using “organic chickens”, ie. chemical free chooks. Some other fantastic foods were on offer, including a terrific beef rendang and some typical Malaysian desserts. All these washed down of course, with some nice Aussie wines and beers.

 

Sunday started early as wifey and I had to shop to cook for the church anniversary lunch. We hit the supermarket at 7am sharp and got the stuff we needed, headed home, cooked, headed to church and got back at almost 2pm. Had to then go out for grocery shopping and by the time we got home it was 3.30pm and there was still the showers to clean and clothes to iron. Hence the late start to the run. Together with an early breakfast meeting this morning, the weekend was tight. Still, it was fun and much better than an otherwise quiet one.