Thinking Outside the Box

Used to be, I loved waking up to the sound of rain. There was something so peaceful about the gentle pitter patter of the drops announcing the start of a lazy day ahead. Now that I'm a mom of two toddlers in Singapore without many toys in the apartment nor a car to escape the four walls here, the sound of rain sends shivers down my spine - with good reason as it turned out today. It didn't help that I woke up on the wrong side of the bed and never quite found my way back. When Maisie is cranky like that, we call it Bombaloo after a book we read about tantrums. I was Bombaloo today and wanted nothing more than to crawl out of my skin. I needed to get out and about! I figured out too late I forgot to change my hormone patch today. Thank God there's such thing as hormone replacement otherwise, I'd be coming apart at the seams after my surgery. As anybody who knew me during all my fertility treatments, I'm not so good with changes in hormone levels.

The morning was an ugly one. The rain showed no signs of stopping. We watched the same old videos that we brought, played some games, did some art and then just kind of stared at each other. FINALLY, the rain let up and we headed out with Hudson wailing because he wanted to walk on the busy street. Letting him walk to the fireworks the other night was a huge mistake because all he wants to do now is walk, but it's too dangerous for him. Sigh. The trials of an independent toddler...! He also insisted on wearing his heavy raincoat even though the rain had long stopped!

With Hudson napping, Maisie and I had a mother/daughter lunch at a place she suggested: Charlie Brown's. That kid has an amazing memory of things she's seen in passing and - yet more impressive - remembers exactly where she saw them. I think she might be able to walk home by herself from a whole host of places. She is frighteningly observant.

Afterwards, we did nothing important - bought some more videos (thank God!), visited the local indoor mall playground and ran general errands. The kids at the playground were ALL wild! I mean - out and out madness had taken over each and every child, screaming and running with all their might. Maisie crashed into another girl at full speed and busted her lip. NO biggie. It actually gave us a great excuse to leave. On the way home, we went to the grocery store and - for once - Hudson didn't wail - well - not too much. Wahoo!

Since our day was so blah, let me talk about TV. It's been a bigger part of our life here than it ever was in the U.S. which is a huge shame. There is one, free, kids channel here that doesn't even start until 9AM. If we were living here for good, we could pay for Nickelodeon and a couple of other channels, but for now, we have to watch a lot of videos. At home, we could do view-on-demand of just about any kid-friendly show on TV. Darn! I need TV to keep the kids quiet early in the morning so the neighbors don't freak. Otherwise, they run acround screaming and chasing each other. The floors here are paper thin.

When we're not out and about, we do a few arts and crafts, play some games and read some books, but they eventually end up in front of the TV. That means we've now watched the same 20 videos a million times. I can almost recite them by heart. Rah. That's why we bought some more today!

I feel fairly confident this TV-thing will change when we get back to New York. If we move here permanently, we'll have lots of toys, school and activities so TV will be less of a crutch. I'm longing for the time when rainy days don't automatically mean TV.

For me, TV is less a part of my life on this side of the planet. There are a zillion different channels in just about every language: English, Mandarin, Malay, Indian - you name it. All of them are very different from what we would consider prime time fare. Some channels have subtitles in both Mandarin and English. There's very little of the picture left to see! Often there are English subtitles even when people are speaking English because there is such a wide variety of accents here. 

On the Chinese channel tonight, there was some weird show that had these frightening, yet comical characters in a sci-fi setting. The creatures were going to eat a monk, but the monk turned out to be an evil pig.

On the Indian channel, there is apparently some kind of American Idol for little girl dancers. 

The news aired a story about Muslim fashion models.

We do get CNN and several business news channels. Business news is king here.  In general, Asian television news programs sucks. The production quality is frightening - almost on par with college stations. Seriously. The most well produced of all the news channels is Russia Today, an English language channel primarily focused on Russia. All Asian news is far more international in scope. The big $US 337M jackpot in Michigan made the local news here tonight. There are very few Americans on TV (if any) so while a part of me thinks it'd be easy to parlay my vast news experience into a job here, the other part of me isn't so sure. I know very little about Asian affairs and perhaps even less about business news. That doesn't bode well for me not only as a reporter, but also as a producer.

Having worked in morning television for years and years, I always at least watch the morning headlines at home. I've seen them twice here - and that was this week! The anchors are quite likable, but again, the show has no production value. It's very bland. How I miss my morning news!

While it's fun to see what's on all these channels, at night, there are very few channels of interest to actually watch. Gone are my favorite episodic shows. What's going to happen on "Grey's Anatomy?" "Breaking Bad?" Oh the drama! I better darn well be able to watch them on view-on-demand when I get back! You'd think I'd be reading more, but I'm writing this blog and crashing generally. The heat just sucks the life right out of me.

The only type of American TV I've seen here is "Minute to Win It," "Wipeout" and a couple of other prime time game shows. For a while, "30 Rock" was on every night. They had a preview week of a slew of HBO channels which was oh so exciting! Now it's back to all the food shows as well as "smart" TV like BBC Knowledge, National Geographic Discovery, TLC and Animal Planet. I'm learning a lot of interesting things here! 

If we move here permanently, we'll have to investigate things like iTunes movies and slingboxes. I can only learn just so much after a day of mothering toddlers!