Emu with a Clue

Update on my son's haircut

nobody@vox.com(Emu with a Clue) — Fri, 30 May 2008 20:25:01 -0700

Just heard there are headlice doing the rounds in his class so his timing actually very good! He now has an ultra short hair cut which should make any bugs that venture onto his little noggin pretty easy to spot and destroy!

bug

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Take me back to Terengganu!

nobody@vox.com(Emu with a Clue) — Fri, 30 May 2008 00:05:36 -0700

This is where we were in July last year (so not where I live but just near Leila's parents and busy enjoying lots of Leila's favourite foods):

Bob the builder

Merang, Terengganu

Water baby

Tengku tengah zahara mosque

Terengganu village

Museum kuala terennganu

I highly recommend Terengganu to anyone visiting Malaysia. Senyum sokmo!

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Friday 13: 13 books I studied at high school

nobody@vox.com(Emu with a Clue) — Thu, 29 May 2008 22:19:21 -0700

Lord of the Flies

William Golding

Julius Caesar (The New Folger Library Shakespeare)

William Shakespeare

John Brown, Rose and the Midnight Cat (Picture Puffin)

Jenny Wagner

The Plague (Penguin Modern Classics)

Albert Camus

Tirra Lirra by the River

The Crucible (Penguin Plays)

Arthur Miller

Madame Bovary (Penguin Classics)

Gustave Flaubert

Washington Square (Penguin Classics)

Henry James

The Age of Innocence (Barnes & Noble Classics)

Edith Wharton

Macbeth (Folger Shakespeare Library)

William Shakespeare

The Power and the Glory (Penguin Classics)

Graham Greene

Sleep It Off, Lady (Twentieth Century Classics)

Jean Rhys

The Getting of Wisdom

Henry Handel Richardson

Can you tell I went to a very traditional, all girls school? The one that stands out for me is the picture book, John Brown, Rose and the Midnight Cat. We only got to study this because of a visiting American teacher we had who was obviously way ahead of his time. The other thing that I find interesting about this list is how few Australian books we studied. I am pretty sure that The Getting of Wisdom and Tirra Lirra by the River were the only ones in four years.

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The 'before' shot

nobody@vox.com(Emu with a Clue) — Thu, 29 May 2008 19:22:03 -0700

Teeth before shot

I am in the process of spending an obsene amount of money getting my teeth fixed so thought it would be good to post a 'before' photo here for posterity.

The really discoloured one (top front right in this photo) is one that I damaged as a child (Note to parents: keep your children away from trampolines if you don't want to be forking over huge amounts of money to your dentist!) and has been gradually dying and becoming more discoloured over the years. I am getting a porcelain veneer put onto this one to make it appear whiter. The other option for this one was root canal surgery and colouring from inside but this would have been more intrusive and expensive and the dentist didn't think it was necessary given that this tooth really isn't giving me any trouble despite it being dead.

The one next to it is actually not a real tooth at all but a plastic falsie on a denture (you can just see one of the ugly metal wires from the denture in the left of the picture). I knocked the original tooth out in the same accident. This is where the real expense comes in as I am having this one replaced with a dental implant which is a porcelain tooth anchored in by a screw implanted in my upper jaw. I have already had the surgery to have the screw implanted (this was much more of a big deal than I realised and I had close to a week off work afterwards as it was so painful afterwards) and just went back to the dentist a few days okay to check that everything has healed up okay before moving onto the next stage. Later this week, I will go in again to get some impressions done (you know when they stick those horrible plates full of gunk into your mouth). These will be used to make a replica of my mouth which the technician will refer to in making my new teeth.

All up, this is costing almost AU$10,000.00! I decided to get it done after inheriting some money from my grandfather last year. I also figured that it wasn't going to get any cheaper if I waited and in the meantime, the denture (my 3rd or 4th in about 30 years) is damaging my other teeth and causing gum problems and was due for replacement anyway. The other problem with that if I had started showing any signs of bone density deterioration (had to have a bone scan done to check this), then I could never get it done. This is a real danger for me as osteoporosis is something that runs in the family. The signs of osteoporosis generally start showing around the same age as menopause (estimating this is about 5-10 years away for me).

I will post some 'after' shots once it is all finished. The dentist has also been taking plenty of photos which he said he would email me. Of course, he is quite gleeful about all this. What I am paying him will make quite a nice dent in his kids' private school fees!

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Vox Hunt: Simply Irresistible

nobody@vox.com(Emu with a Clue) — Thu, 29 May 2008 18:12:37 -0700

Show us something you can't resist.

Sago gula melaka

Should say that this is not my photo. I pinched it from this blog by Terri from Malaysia (where this dessert comes from). She also has a recipe for it on her blog. I make it myself sometimes (using a recipe from my Malaysia neighbour in Sydney) but it doesn't tend to look as impressive as this. I think the secret is to use good quality (ie, non gritty) coconut milk as there is nothing worse than grit in your gula Melaka.

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QotD: When I Was a Kid

nobody@vox.com(Emu with a Clue) — Wed, 28 May 2008 23:46:35 -0700

What did you do for fun when you were a kid? How is it different from what you see kids doing now?
Submitted by jaklumen.

For most of my childhood (in 1970s Melbourne), I had a really good friend, Karen*, who lived about three blocks from me. We used to spend most of the weekend wandering or riding our back and forth between one another's house at whim and getting up to all sorts of unsupervised shenanigans. A few in particular that I remember:

making a "mud bath" in her father's vegetable patch;
making our own "swimming pool" by pegging garbage bags into large cardboard boxes;
constructing a "house of horror" in her parents back shed for the other neighbourhood kids to walk through blind-folded. This included things like rubber gloves full of water which would brush clammily over the blindfolded one's face, lots of wooo wooo type sound effects etc;
doing Mythbusters type experiments with all the hazardous chemicals in the garage;
building cubby houses;
thinking of new and original ways to torment our respective younger brothers;
roller skating on the bathroom tiled floor; and
playing Pong on the TV (this was later on in the early 80s I think - thought Pong pretty boring even then).

My kids are much more closely supervised than we were and aren't allowed to just roam the streets. Apart from the increased traffic danger, we just don't know the people in our neighbourhood like people did when we were kids. My kids are still pretty imaginative and creative and we limit their access to technology so they don't become completely reliant on it. They don't however have the same access to wide open spaces that we did so a lot of their activities more indoor focussed, eg, cubby houses in the lounge room rather than up a tree etc.

One thing that I remember doing that my kids still do was making up dances to pop songs. The music has changed but the dances are just as terrible!

Future Rock Star

*As for Karen, she went on to have (and is still having) a very creative and adventurous life. She has illustrated children's picture books and well-known wacky science books (hopefully inspired by some of our garage "experiments"), travelled the world and has just returned from a stint working as an aid worker in Cambodia.

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Self Portrait Thursday: Sleeping Beauties

nobody@vox.com(Emu with a Clue) — Wed, 28 May 2008 20:49:15 -0700

Those who have been reading of my son's adventures with the scissors over the past few days will be able to tell that this portrait was not taken today but pre-haircut:

Sleeping beauties

My son likes to climb into bed with me in the morning and pretend to go back to sleep with his nose pressed against my face. It is my favourite time of day. My daughter in contrast likes to stay in her own bed and is usually grumpy as a bear when she does get up. They are definitely Yin and Yang those two.

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Music QotW: Just the Two of Us

nobody@vox.com(Emu with a Clue) — Wed, 28 May 2008 17:41:38 -0700

Share your favorite duet.

Denise Drysdale - 2006 (Spicks & Specks)

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Oh no!

nobody@vox.com(Emu with a Clue) — Mon, 26 May 2008 19:57:45 -0700

Before:

Haircut before

After:

Haircut after

I know every kid has to do this at least once but my son's hair has just grown out from the last time he did it. This time much worse! Fortunately school photographs were last term. He did look a bit idiotic for his multicultural day performance today. I tried to take him to a barber before school but got caught in traffic so had to take him to school looking like this (his sister wanted him to wear a beanie so he wouldn't embarrass her). The other kindy kids didn't seem to notice anything unusual. The Love of His Life just groaned to her mother when she saw him "Oh no, here comes J. He look like he wants to give me a hug".

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A little song before bed ...

nobody@vox.com(Emu with a Clue) — Sun, 25 May 2008 20:25:01 -0700

Monkey monkey moo

Don't know how to flip this.

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