the little things
It's the little things that make each day pass faster, somehow.
On Tuesdays, there's a farmers' market on the Lido, and according to our guidebook, Venetians will take the vaporetto (water bus) over to shop at the market. I had a rough idea of where it was but was prepared to give it a miss if we couldn't find it, since J had tried to look for it on the way to work (by bicycle!) and didn't see it. As it turns out, the bus we were on was filled with many little old ladies, and we all happened to alight at the same stop. My mother pointed at them all headed down a small lane with their shopping trolleys and bags, we decided to follow them and there was the market.
The market on the edge of the Venetian Lagoon.
It was nothing spectacular, but a good way to spend the morning regardless. There were lots of fruit and veg stalls, a couple of cheese and salami trucks, a sweet stall (where The Bun bought himself and his sister a lollipop each), many clothing and shoe stalls, a haberdashery stall, etc. Plenty to browse and look at, and my mother bought two blouses for €5. Most of the people shopping there were locals, and I did hear a family speaking French but otherwise nobody else seemed to speak English. We got lots of curious looks, being the only Asian people at the market, and English-speaking ones at that.
We found a rotisserie truck doing a roaring business, with a crowd gathered in front of it waving queue tickets in their hands and calling out their orders in Italian. This would be our lunch, we decided, and I went to queue while my mother waited in the shade with the kids. This stall was so popular that when I grabbed my queue ticket the number was 49 and they were only just serving number 21. I stood in the thick of the crowd trying to see what everyone was ordering and ended up buying one roast chicken, a small carton of roast potatoes, and a bag of deep-fried potato croquettes that seemed to be all the rage. The total cost surprised me: €9! The same thing in Geneva (without croquettes because they don't sell them) costs around 25CHF or €21.
Crowds for chicken.
Bao had fallen asleep in her stroller while holding her lollipop and her brother hijacked the remainder for himself, having finished his a long time ago. We all walked back to the bus stop while eating the hot potato croquettes which were really good. I think we'll be back next Tuesday, and this time I want to try some of deep-fried calamari and shrimp that were also being sold at the same stall.
Bao woke up when we got back to the apartment and all of us shared half the chicken and the potatoes for lunch. We'll have the rest of the (shredded) chicken with some stir-fried noodles for lunch tomorrow. It now seems like watching catch-up Channel 8 TV online will be part of our routine here - my mother keeps up with her drama series, and the kids get a healthy (albeit not very PG-rated) dose of exposure to spoken Mandarin and a visual reminder of what Singapore looks like. The Bun is especially captivated, because while he does remember HDB flats and some of the locations in the show, by and large Singapore has become quite unfamiliar to him. TV-addict Bao will watch anything on a screen and stared captivated by the show throughout.
After the episode was over it looked like it was going to drizzle so my mother and I went to the balcony to take the laundry in. There's a washing machine in this apartment and no dryer, but with the scorching sun and the dry air, the clothes are dry in about a day. The kids 'helped' us with the laundry for a bit before I broke out one of the cheap playdough sets from Daiso that my mother had brought over and let them make a mess in the balcony, which was breezy and shady. There was enough for both of them to share, and with the cutter pieces, a plastic toy car, and a bowl of seashells, the children were happily occupied for almost two hours just like that. I sat in a deck chair next to them and read and snoozed a bit. Mmmm.
We had tea and pastries (again, another part of our daily routine it seems) and then headed out for the short walk to our neighbourhood supermarket. It's crucial for us to have these small outings everyday, mundane as they may be, just to keep the day moving along and to give us something to do. By the time we came home it was almost dinnertime, which is then as usual followed by bath and book and bed.
And so a day would have passed like that, with simple outings and activities at home. Except tonight Bao decided to scream and have an overtired meltdown just as a massive thunderstorm broke right above our house. Everything was happening at once: J and I were trying to give Bao a bath and calm her down, my mother had discovered that the heavy rain had seeped through the kitchen window and flooded the floor, also shorting out our wifi router that was placed in a corner of the floor, Bao was screaming inconsolably, and The Bun was asking endless questions, singing made-up songs, and being such a pest that J snapped at him and he cried. Sturm und Drang.
Bao was overtired because she had such a short nap in the day - the downside to her falling asleep in the stroller when we're out. I think her eczema's also acting up because today her elbows and arms were itchy and red. She's definitely sensitive to heat and sweat because her eczema cleared completely after we moved to Geneva and the colder weather set in. So she's sleeping in the air-conditioned room tonight and I guess we'll have to keep wiping her down with a damp cloth (which she hates) for the duration of the summer. Hence her enforced bath earlier tonight despite her being so tired. She was also upset because she hadn't seen J all day and she's been particularly clingy to him recently. Hopefully she sleeps through the night and wakes up in a better mood tomorrow morning.
Having rushed Bao off to bed amidst assorted chaos (mopping the kitchen floor, blow-drying the router in an effort to resurrect it) none of the adults realised that it was only 7.30pm and The Bun had already been put to bed, obviously wide-awake because he was too curious about all the commotion in the kitchen. So we let him come sit in the kitchen with us while the adults talked about the day and checked the router, which thankfully came back to life. I told him that it was now the adults' time and as a special treat he could stay up and join us, but it wasn't a time for him to engage us in play or to go off on one of his drive-me-up-the-wall singing marathons. He understood, and at 8.30pm I sent him back to bed again. He usually sleeps till 9am now that there's no school so it was unlikely that he would have fallen asleep at 7.30pm, which is a bit too early for him. If only Bao would wake later in the mornings - it would shift our routine such that we could have later dinners and enjoy the summer evenings, but Bao wakes at the same time every morning, no matter how late she slept the night before. Push her bedtime too far, and the end result is a meltdown and a snotty, sobbing child who only falls asleep out of sheer exhaustion.
Tomorrow I think we'll have to hit the bigger supermarket in town for groceries, since it stocks a wider variety of meat and veggies. The rest of the day will depend on the weather, since there's rain forecasted. Still, a bit of rain amidst the sun is better than what Geneva is having now - endless rain and temperatures of 16°C. In July! The weather's been really strange lately.
On Tuesdays, there's a farmers' market on the Lido, and according to our guidebook, Venetians will take the vaporetto (water bus) over to shop at the market. I had a rough idea of where it was but was prepared to give it a miss if we couldn't find it, since J had tried to look for it on the way to work (by bicycle!) and didn't see it. As it turns out, the bus we were on was filled with many little old ladies, and we all happened to alight at the same stop. My mother pointed at them all headed down a small lane with their shopping trolleys and bags, we decided to follow them and there was the market.
The market on the edge of the Venetian Lagoon.
It was nothing spectacular, but a good way to spend the morning regardless. There were lots of fruit and veg stalls, a couple of cheese and salami trucks, a sweet stall (where The Bun bought himself and his sister a lollipop each), many clothing and shoe stalls, a haberdashery stall, etc. Plenty to browse and look at, and my mother bought two blouses for €5. Most of the people shopping there were locals, and I did hear a family speaking French but otherwise nobody else seemed to speak English. We got lots of curious looks, being the only Asian people at the market, and English-speaking ones at that.
We found a rotisserie truck doing a roaring business, with a crowd gathered in front of it waving queue tickets in their hands and calling out their orders in Italian. This would be our lunch, we decided, and I went to queue while my mother waited in the shade with the kids. This stall was so popular that when I grabbed my queue ticket the number was 49 and they were only just serving number 21. I stood in the thick of the crowd trying to see what everyone was ordering and ended up buying one roast chicken, a small carton of roast potatoes, and a bag of deep-fried potato croquettes that seemed to be all the rage. The total cost surprised me: €9! The same thing in Geneva (without croquettes because they don't sell them) costs around 25CHF or €21.
Crowds for chicken.
Bao had fallen asleep in her stroller while holding her lollipop and her brother hijacked the remainder for himself, having finished his a long time ago. We all walked back to the bus stop while eating the hot potato croquettes which were really good. I think we'll be back next Tuesday, and this time I want to try some of deep-fried calamari and shrimp that were also being sold at the same stall.
Bao woke up when we got back to the apartment and all of us shared half the chicken and the potatoes for lunch. We'll have the rest of the (shredded) chicken with some stir-fried noodles for lunch tomorrow. It now seems like watching catch-up Channel 8 TV online will be part of our routine here - my mother keeps up with her drama series, and the kids get a healthy (albeit not very PG-rated) dose of exposure to spoken Mandarin and a visual reminder of what Singapore looks like. The Bun is especially captivated, because while he does remember HDB flats and some of the locations in the show, by and large Singapore has become quite unfamiliar to him. TV-addict Bao will watch anything on a screen and stared captivated by the show throughout.
After the episode was over it looked like it was going to drizzle so my mother and I went to the balcony to take the laundry in. There's a washing machine in this apartment and no dryer, but with the scorching sun and the dry air, the clothes are dry in about a day. The kids 'helped' us with the laundry for a bit before I broke out one of the cheap playdough sets from Daiso that my mother had brought over and let them make a mess in the balcony, which was breezy and shady. There was enough for both of them to share, and with the cutter pieces, a plastic toy car, and a bowl of seashells, the children were happily occupied for almost two hours just like that. I sat in a deck chair next to them and read and snoozed a bit. Mmmm.
We had tea and pastries (again, another part of our daily routine it seems) and then headed out for the short walk to our neighbourhood supermarket. It's crucial for us to have these small outings everyday, mundane as they may be, just to keep the day moving along and to give us something to do. By the time we came home it was almost dinnertime, which is then as usual followed by bath and book and bed.
And so a day would have passed like that, with simple outings and activities at home. Except tonight Bao decided to scream and have an overtired meltdown just as a massive thunderstorm broke right above our house. Everything was happening at once: J and I were trying to give Bao a bath and calm her down, my mother had discovered that the heavy rain had seeped through the kitchen window and flooded the floor, also shorting out our wifi router that was placed in a corner of the floor, Bao was screaming inconsolably, and The Bun was asking endless questions, singing made-up songs, and being such a pest that J snapped at him and he cried. Sturm und Drang.
Bao was overtired because she had such a short nap in the day - the downside to her falling asleep in the stroller when we're out. I think her eczema's also acting up because today her elbows and arms were itchy and red. She's definitely sensitive to heat and sweat because her eczema cleared completely after we moved to Geneva and the colder weather set in. So she's sleeping in the air-conditioned room tonight and I guess we'll have to keep wiping her down with a damp cloth (which she hates) for the duration of the summer. Hence her enforced bath earlier tonight despite her being so tired. She was also upset because she hadn't seen J all day and she's been particularly clingy to him recently. Hopefully she sleeps through the night and wakes up in a better mood tomorrow morning.
Having rushed Bao off to bed amidst assorted chaos (mopping the kitchen floor, blow-drying the router in an effort to resurrect it) none of the adults realised that it was only 7.30pm and The Bun had already been put to bed, obviously wide-awake because he was too curious about all the commotion in the kitchen. So we let him come sit in the kitchen with us while the adults talked about the day and checked the router, which thankfully came back to life. I told him that it was now the adults' time and as a special treat he could stay up and join us, but it wasn't a time for him to engage us in play or to go off on one of his drive-me-up-the-wall singing marathons. He understood, and at 8.30pm I sent him back to bed again. He usually sleeps till 9am now that there's no school so it was unlikely that he would have fallen asleep at 7.30pm, which is a bit too early for him. If only Bao would wake later in the mornings - it would shift our routine such that we could have later dinners and enjoy the summer evenings, but Bao wakes at the same time every morning, no matter how late she slept the night before. Push her bedtime too far, and the end result is a meltdown and a snotty, sobbing child who only falls asleep out of sheer exhaustion.
Tomorrow I think we'll have to hit the bigger supermarket in town for groceries, since it stocks a wider variety of meat and veggies. The rest of the day will depend on the weather, since there's rain forecasted. Still, a bit of rain amidst the sun is better than what Geneva is having now - endless rain and temperatures of 16°C. In July! The weather's been really strange lately.