Ari

I really like our neighbourhood. It feels like we're a part of it, if only superficially, because the street vendors and shop owners smile at and acknowledge us (or rather, Max) when we pass by. There's the family with a toddler too that runs the corner coffee shop selling fried noodles, mixed rice, bananas. They find Max's fascination with all their fans (ceiling, exhaust) amusing and encourage his excitement. There's the roti woman who says "mum-mum" by way of hello to Max. The old lady selling watermelon and guava who mews along with Max when he spots the usual sticker of a cat on the glass door. The couple selling mandarin juice do the same. And on and on - everyone smiles and exclaims. It really is quite something to see how much attention a toddling being gets.

Another city in B

It's been 3 weeks since we landed in Bangkok to start a new life. I'm writing this amidst the sounds of a Bangkok morning - intermittent chirps from birds and insects, the sputtering of motorcycle taxis and the hum of air conditioning units covering the drizzle.

The area we live in is a hodgepodge of old houses and apartment buildings. From our balcony we have a view over a collection of houses all sharing a leafy compound with a frangipani tree in the front. The houses are completely hidden at street level; it must be annoying to have so many balconies of the hoi polloi with a direct view onto what was previously wholly private.

Every day we make many trips around the little stalls that line the pavements on the way to the BTS. We get grilled chicken, spicy papaya salad and sticky rice. Fresh seafood. Mangosteens, longans and golden bananas. Energy-saving light bulbs. Teo chew duck. Pandan swiss rolls. Stewed pork (yes to the tofu, no to the intestines). Sliced pineapple with a ready skewer. Beer and bills at the 7-11. Milk, bread and pasta from the expatriate supermarket across the main thoroughfare. And, rashly, yesterday, one very expensive peach out of nostalgia for our last summer in Budapest.

It's the rainy season now, so it rains at least a little every day. Some days it cools the city down, as it's doing now. Others it thickens the humidity in the air, offering little reprieve from the heat. I'm hoping the rain today at least deters the ants a bit. Gone are the days when we could leave a plate lying about. There are scouts out in stealth and within the hour the troops invade, so we have become quite OCD about the cleaning and washing-up. Which half-amuses me, considering the lackadaisical attitude that one of us tended to exhibit pre-ants.

There are certain things I really miss in Budapest. DM. Kid-friendly spaces. Affordable wine. The things I sold, gave away and left behind. We left a box here, a pot there. I wonder if we'll ever see those things again. Most people miss friends but I miss the knowledge that my possessions were somewhere in the recesses of that cluttered, dusty flat, things I collected from travels, friendships.

As for friends, there are the myriad ways to stay in touch, and visiting is easy enough as long as you're committed to maintaining relationships. The day-to-day of friendships in Budapest we've given up, of course, in the hopes we will find something similar here eventually.

For now we are a family of three on a Noah's ark of ants.

Things I love and hate about Budapest

With every departure from a place, I always feel nostalgic about it during my last days there, and Budapest is no different. I've always known I wouldn't live here forever, and though nine years is far longer than I could have anticipated, there are some things I have never taken for granted, like my daily commute on Margit bridge with its view of the Danube, bridges, Parliament and the castle district, the shadings of the water and sky always different.

Other Budapest things I have loved and will miss:
- Public transport, especially the 4/6 tram, the 2 tram, the 11 bus, the 15 bus, the blue metro
- Spring and summer fruit, especially the berries
- The Hungarian health care system
- Margit island
- Szamos Marcipan's budai kremes, Daubner's eszterhazi torta, Trombitas' gulyas, Indigo, szekelykaposzta, Klassz, Falafel Faloda
- All the rom kerts - I will never forget the first time I walked from a quiet street through a series of double doors into a courtyard that was the Szoda kert of 2003
- Sziget
- The kindness of strangers to a mother and child
- Playgrounds with the ubiquitous sandpits and boats
- Cheap wine and beer

Mixed in with all the rose-tinted nostalgia, however, is, regrettably, relief at leaving some things behind:
- The right-leaning trend of politics and society, and the attendant suspicion/resentment/mistrust of foreigners it brings
- Dour faces and indifferent service
- Shopping that is more expensive than in countries where people get much higher salaries, though this is mostly for 'luxury' items rather than bare necessities

2 more things to mention that have been significant during my time here. First, my workplace. Supportive, flexible, fun, with an ever-rotating but always great group of colleagues.

And, of course, predictably, Budapest will always be the place where I met my partner, and the place where we had Max.

Shot by Marcus Liang - my favourite photo of Max.

Malaysian citizenship for babies born abroad to Malaysian women

Yes, it can be done. We are living proof!

When Max was 3 months old we took him to the embassy and filled in lots of paperwork (including thumbprints of a 3 month-old!) to apply for Malaysian citizenship for him. We also declared his other nationality in the forms - i.e. we did it all above board; none of this getting of a Malaysian birth certificate and passport and then sneaking off to get another one (Malaysia doesn't permit dual citizenship).

Since this was a new law, as of June 2010, no one really knew what to expect of the procedure. So, as we say in Malaysia, I decided to 'tembak only' and see where the cards would fall.

Fast forward a year. Last week I got a call from the embassy informing me that the application had been approved. We went today and collected the letter from the Minister of Home Affairs, which says:

Dengan segala hormat dan takzimnya, saya dengan sukacitanya mengambil kesempatan ini mengucapkan tahniah di atas penganugerahan Taraf Kewarganegaraan Malaysia kepada anak saudari.

Sesungguhnya, penganugerahan ini merupakan suatu amanah dan kepercayaan yang amat tinggi diberikan oleh Kerajaan Malaysia kepada anak saudari. Justeru itu, saudara sewajarnya mendidik anak saudari supaya beliau sentiasa menumpukan usaha untuk mencapai cita-cita yang termaktub dalam Prinsip­ Prinsip Rukun Negara.

Saya juga berharap agar anak saudari memberikan komitmen dan kesetiaan yang tidak berbelah bahagi sebagai seorang Warganegara Malaysia yang mematuhi undang-undang negara ini. Sokongan dan dokongan anak saudari terhadap segala usaha murni Kerajaan dalam mewujudkan keamanan dan kehsamonian masyarakat berbilang kaum serta membangun dan memajukan negara bangsa amatlah dialu-alukan.

Feeling proud. And victorious. Hurrah!

As the year turns - a year of mothering, and 3 songs

It has been a momentous year, 2011. And literally too. Life with an infant is nothing if not about the moment-to-moment changes of mood, emotional development, mobility, cognitive ability... and for the baby too.

I have some friends who are pregnant and who ask me what being a mother is like. I usually respond that it's all-encompassing, with highs and lows. Truth be told, as enriching as it is, it's also depriving. It's depriving artistically, intellectually, romantically. Which is a huge sacrifice if you've grown accustomed to a childless overgrown pasture of time with the sporadic bursts of colour that are music, banter, reading, restaurants, Internet-idling.

Is it a worthwhile sacrifice? I think it's too soon to tell, sacrilegious to the altar of motherhood as that sounds. Of course my heart is warmed at the simple happiness of my baby, and the ease with which I'm able to provide it. And I pace and worry with all 12 kilos of him on my shoulder when he cries in discomfort or distress. And there is something innately fulfilling about being the carer of another human being, providing his basic needs and being a constant source of stability. But being that core is also incredibly wearying. Sometimes, in the midst of a difficult moment, I look up and see, unfurling before me to the horizon, the unending moments of the next 20, 30, 40 years, and it is a weight which I wish I didn't have.

But let me end on a positive note, since it's the end of the year. We play a game, Max and I. Sometimes I rub his Buddha belly and, in a low voice, say "belly, jelly, belly". He stared askance at me before, but now he pats it contentedly too. That makes me happy.

His song of the year:




My songs of the year (literally, they were the only 2 new albums I listened to):

A typical day with an 8 month-old

Max has just turned 8 months, and clichéd as it is, I can't believe how time has flown.

And how my daily life is so different now. Days begin before dawn, when Max makes "I'm hungry" noises and I shuffle my way blindly into his room to feed him. Then back into the cot he goes, and I head back to fitful sleep, not unlike the days when I woke up, glanced at the clock and thought "Ok, one more hour." Except my clock didn't sporadically yelp.

It's uncanny how I usually wake up moments before Max does. Must be a biological urge to protect one's young? Or natural sleep cycles? Thus begins our daily routine, though I use the word routine very loosely here. If having a baby has taught me one thing, it's that there's no such thing as a consistent routine. Basically, though, the day is broken up into 4 sections.

The first is the 2 hours between waking up and his first nap. Babies are delicious first thing in the morning, because they're refreshed and see the world anew every day. You'd have to be a very cynical, jaded (ha ha) person not to be affected by the sight of a baby whipping his head around as if seeing everything for the first time. At the moment Max is practising syllables, so there's also a lot of da-da-da-ba-ba-ba-ma-ma-ma going on to make up for the lack of it while he was sleeping. We have breakfast (his is invariably much healthier than mine) and then I take him for a little walk along our corridor overlooking the courtyard, when various neighbours coo at him and mostly ignore me.

Nap time = me time. Now this is tricky because there's so little me time during the day that I'm often torn about what to do with it. Prepare food? Shower? Trawl online gossip sites? Or, what I really want to do but don't because it seems like such a waste of time, nap myself. In any case, 30 minutes or 2 hours passes, and then we're onto the second section of the day.

Since there's a little more time in this section, we usually leave the flat to (a) do food shopping (b) go to a playground (c) go to the shopping mall near us if the weather is crappy. I've come to enjoy food shopping, because I no longer do it at the supermarket, but at the butcher's, greengrocer's and bakery 5 minutes away, or at a produce market. I used to hate these interactions, because let's face it, most Hungarians are really not very service-orientated, and at least in a supermarket you only have the one cashier to deal with. But that was before baby. There is nothing like a baby to break the ice and make you feel a part of the community.

Then I rush home because Max has got bored/hot/hungry in the stroller, and another rice cake just will not do. Lunch for him, and then me time part 2. I keep reading that at some point he will only have one nap, which is akin to hearing that more of your land, part of which has already been occupied, is being encroached upon even further, so I'm sticking my head in the sand on that one.

Section 3 is the home stretch. I try to make this time as busy as possible, because Max is somewhat less delicious later on in the day. So we almost always go to the park, or meet up with someone, and then have dinner, a bath, and then time for bed. I'm not exaggerating when I say that sometimes I'm literally standing outside the door waiting for Max's dad to get home so they can have some quality father-son time (no ulterior motives of course).

Then he's asleep and we're in section 4. And would you believe that after spending all day trying to steal some time for me, I sometimes end up looking at photos/videos of Max before I go to bed? Ridiculous I know.

Finally I turn in and sleep for a glorious, uninterrupted 8 hours.

Maybe some day.