Dinner at Azusa and Serge

More writing on foods when I have a bit more time...

Dinner for David

He came back from Florida's internship for a month, and had complained so much before that he missed my foods ;-)

Hungry ghost dinner

And the night finished when the sun rose...The best dancing nite out ever, everybody danced salsa, african...

Albert and girlfriend- high school prom

Tasty ;-))

Kajak in 2007...

...the water trip that I did not see the final ;-(, but did have a super meal ;-)

Uncle and Nico

Uncle's health is not good in recent years, and he is working so hard...One of the continuous subject of our discussion is that he does not take time to take care of himself. So, every time I go on a hiking trip with friends, I try to encourage ( a softer word for 'oblige') him to come with us. It has become a habit now ;-), not so old guy after all!

Walking trip

Uncle's suprised BD ;-)

Because we have ever celebrated uncle's BD, so this year, I and my sister invited some of uncle friends and organised a suprised BD for him. It was a big suprise, and he was very happy to spend his BD with his people ;-)

How much enough is enough?

A FAQ but often there is no clear answer for it, or most of the time, there are some so called “expert” give us a piece of their minds on the subject. Yesterday I went out for dinner with a friend of mine, after having dinner, we ended up having a beer outside a bar near by. Suddenly, there was a Belgian lady who sat at the table next to ours, and she just turned to us asking where we came from, and slowly but surely, she started to tell us the story of her life.

It made me feel so sad for her. I mean how lonely she must have been in order for her to just grab strangers like us to talk about her life. The way she talked about the sad parts of her life with a laugh even hit me hard; she could have been a potential suicide candidate. What if.

Her son is 18 years old, she made a joke saying I made him on my own, and raised him on my own. But apparently the young chap does not listen, she pays his school fees, he goes for one month, and then quit. Sometimes, he asked her for money to buy cigarettes. She blamed herself for working too hard, and did not have time to spend with him, “but I have to work to support the apartment that we live in, am a single mom”…. So, she decides to quit her job, and spends more time with the kid. It made me angry. I think of many of people in our ages, we are too spoiled by our parents that we don’t realize how lucky we are, but we continue to suck live out of them or hurt other people. Is this our generation? A generation of selfishness, manipulative, arrogant, and having no purposes?

I remember when I was younger, my mom had to let me and sister home with our grandparents, I remember how much I was upset that she had to go to work, and how much I was happy when she quits her job J. Yeah, when you are a kid you don’t get it that your parents have to work in order for them to give you and comfortable life, it maybe it is a lifestyle that they wish to have when they were a kid, or what they had when they were a kid. In any cases, a lot of it is about responsibilities of giving birth to us, because we were not the one who decided to be born. But does that give us the reason to demand more and more from our parents?

How can you decide when a job is taking away your time for your family? Yes, it is true that our kids do not need all the toys that we buy for them, but how many times, a kid envies what his or her friends have as toy. Their conception of love goes together with how many toys they have or the things they can do like their friends most of the time J. So, parents keep on working more and more to answer these needs because life is getting expensive every day. Not only that, when your kids are sick, you have to make sure that your insurances cover that, you want to give them everything you think that they might appreciate…Above all, you have to provide and maintain a safe roof for them. The question is when you say enough is enough :-)

Being parents require so much of energy :-)(like it was a new fact!), I mean being a role model so your baby behaves like a civilized person, counseling them when they go through a difficult period, helping them finding their own way in life…These are our basic instincts, instincts to protect, teach, feed.etc.

My mom used to say only when you become parents you will understand how to be parents (obviously, I guess). Many of my friends, who had bad relationships with their moms or dads, after they had their first child, relationships between their parents and they are getting to better term.

I guess we will be blessed with children who understand our actions, why do we take those decisions. Many parents want to be friends with their children, but don’t forget that maybe sometimes our kids just want to have parents because they already have a lot of friends :-)
On the ending note of this posting, I would like to wish best of luck and courage to any of you who are becoming parents, those who are parents, and those who have been parents, and successfully complete this task like my mom :-)