Changed da house,
Changed da look.
BTW, my bathrobe's usually pink
and we don't have a fireplace.
Other than that,
it's pretty accurate...
Psst...click the words above to navigate.
Best viewed, unfortunately, in Internet Explorer.
Wednesday, June 29, 2005
~ It's Mrs MARKETINGMANAGER Velle to you ~
I AM OFF THE EMPLOYMENT-CAMPAIGNING MARKET!
It is official. I have accepted what I'd initially referred to as the Purple Dinosaur Job ("I love you, You love me...") It successfully marries two of my many loves - singing, and Integrated Marketing Communication.
To put it all in a nutshell, I'll be working for a nonprofit organisation that plants choirs all over Australia. I've been told some travelling will be involved (some 28 choirs went to Gallipoli this year to sing at the 90th anniversary of all that fighting). I also get to do something I never really thought I'd do - de-snobberise the entire classical concept of Choirs. All their choirs consist of people who might have been told at a tender young age that They Cannot Sing, They Bray. There are no auditions; shower singers are most welcomed and trained. Tone-deafness is accepted and ultimately corrected, and the loudest message of all is that Singing Is For Everyone, so Stop Saying It Isn't.
Initially, I was uncomfortable with the concept. I'd been fighting to be part of the Best Choir for years in Singapore. We LIVED to crow over the choirs that lost (although we hid the gloating with an air of superior restraint, professionalism and - dare I say it?!! - Sportsmanship.) I am STILL proud to have been part of the elusive ACJC choir, and I STILL poke fun at VJC and their darling maestro. Auditions were tough, many were left behind, and those that made it felt like 'A' Grade Virtuosos.
But I also remember how I was yelled at heaps when I couldn't live up to the moment; when fatigue literally left me crying because I'd sing from 8am to 10pm on Saturdays in 3 different choirs "because I had the voice"; when I was left on the outside pretty much looking in because I wasn't pretty/cooperative/pitch-perfect. And I remember how Madam had her favourites. How all of them did. And how all of them were really complete snobs, because that was "part of the craft".
Yeah, whatever.
Look, I've always known I didn't suck at singing, but what is also lesser known is how I champion the croaker. I find it touching that people who are absolutely tone-deaf in church also sing the heartiest. One might argue they sing LOUDLY precisely because they ARE tone-deaf, but there's this guy in the Canberra church called Kevin and he loves, loves, loves singing. And he throws the song leader off at times because he's super-loud, but I find myself grinning when he does, because I've long had sulky kids in bible class with mealy mouths who think it's beneath them to sing to God. At age FIVE. It's REFRESHING to see a man with white hair displaying less cynicism than a five year old, I'll tell you that.
I'm Mrs Velle who Used to Sing Hoity-Toity... and Madam, I'm setting out to free the masses.
Monday, June 20, 2005
~ Prepatellar Bursitis ~
Usually when I get back home from work, I walk into the living room to be greeted by a rather gleeful looking husband who's halfway through yet another rivetting episode of Doctor Who.
So imagine my surprise when I walked in today, to see him standing rather stiltedly, propped by the arm of the couch. Doctor Who is running in the background along with the usual screaming damsel, but he's not watching it so it must be serious.
My surprise turns into slight alarm when he tells me the following:
1) He can't bend his right knee
2) Actually, it kinda hurts when he's sitting down as well
3) It's rather difficult to walk
4) His right foot feels colder than his left "and sort of tingly"
Apparently, it started this morning at about 10am while he was attending a conference (or a "love-in", as he likes to call it) and he noticed his knee was starting to feel sore. He didn't realise how bad it was until he had to walk down the stairs for the first tea break, and then getting back home on the bus was a bit of a challenge.
Thing is, I only got back from work at 6.15pm; he was back home before 4 because of the conference, and was sitting around waiting for me till then. (That man ah, I tell you...) I don't know whether it was stubbornness, denial, or just his overall aversion to "fussing" over himself that told him he'd wait till I got home before he told me, but he didn't call once. I think he might have sat there and willed his knee to get better, but it didn't of course.
The initial plan was that the financial planner would come over at our place at half past six for a consultation, but that got blown out the window pretty quick when it became apparent that Tony needed more immediate attention. The financial planner came on time (it was too late to call him and cancel) and the poor dude arrived just in time to drive us to Calvary hospital.
So yes, Tony has whatever I wrote as the subject heading. I suspect it comes from many moons of being a goalie at indoor soccer championships. He's on a case of strong antibiotics now and he's presently in bed having a rest, but even that has its little dramas.
For someone who quite loathes being fussed over, this ailment is something of a bane beyond just the physical agony. First, we discussed if I should go into work tomorrow (I wanted to take at least the morning off just in case he got worse, and he didn't want me to fuss.) Then he realises that he can't get in and out of chairs without shots of pain, and that even walking is hard work. Then comes changing into sleeping gear and the simple chore of wearing a pair of socks that suddenly becomes so agonisingly delicate and painful.
The thing is, he's a man who's in his prime. So sitting around and being helpless just isn't the done thing. While I was writing the second paragraph of this entry, I heard him shuffling about and realised he had gotten out of the sofa (when he should be resting and taking full opportunity of my wife/maid services while he still has them). I got out of the study, went into the living room, only to spy him hunching over a Mars bar in the kitchen, half in discomfort and half in total delirious contentment that he made it to the kitchen By Himself.
That's until a fleck of chocolate landed on the floor. Can he reach the floor to pick it up before it melts, in his condition? No. What does he do? He stands there with his mouth still full of incriminating chocolate, and points pathetically at the floor till I come over. I laughed so hard, the neighbours must have wanted to kill me.
For better, for worse, right? I think we just had a glimpse of how intimate two people have to be in a marriage, where privacy on so many levels has to be stripped in order to get things done. Meanwhile, having had a taste of dependence on another person, he now empathises a bit more with why old people stereotypically get grouchier.
Pray for him, if you can.
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
~ Minding Money ~
You know what I love and detest about being married? Having horribly adult choices land on my lap when I'm not quite prepared for it. These six months have jolted me into carrying out sensible adult decisions I can scarcely make sense of. I think the only coherent decision I've really made thus far is deciding to marry Tony. The rest of it is coming hard and fast and is all looking rather blurry.
Suddenly, I have to think about writing a will, sitting down with the family solicitor (!!!), talking to Tony's accountant, and inviting the financial planner over for a chat. If you really know me, you know numbers are not my forte and by that extension, talking about money actually intimidates the living daylights out of me. It is highly ironic that my mother is a financial adviser, because I don't share her love of discussing money.
I am acutely aware that I possess a large Ostrich head (which is actually still small and rather flat) and I'd sooner dig a deep hole and shove it riiiiight in than really talk about stocks and shares and how to avoid tax and combine my superannuation funds. I think I've only been used to handling my minute, koochie-fied POSB/Commonwealth account with $$$ that vaccilate between a few hundred dollars and $0.32. I left the inner workings of insurance and CPF whatevers and all that jazz with my mother for the few years I worked, secretly putting off the day when every money detail had to be handled by me. I've always known I was a fairly sheltered single woman in my early twenties - I think a lot of my peers (save the few more conscientious ones) tend to be fairly sheltered as well.
Thank GOD I married Tony.
My problem, I think, is that I've always lived to stretch the dollar and now that I have to think farther than the mere end of the month, I am resistant, petrified, and clueless as a kangaroo caught in headlights. What the heck do I do with all this information the husband keeps throwing at me!!! It's daunting enough as it is figuring out Australian laws on taxation and trying not to get a cardiac arrest or denounce the government everytime they rudely take out some exorbitant figure from your pocket to pave a road. Now add to the mix the straddling of two countries and all its money laws, and it just takes the wind out of me.
You might be thinking, "Well DUH, didn't you talk about this BEFORE you got married?" Yes we did, smarty-pants. Did I understand it then? Probably thought I did. Could we have done things better before we got married? Prepared me a little better, being as phobic about finances as I am? Possibly, yes. But could we have discussed it at greater length at the time? Probably not. Nothing like actually DOING it to make you realise what a lot of hooey talk is.
I'll say the same thing here as I did when someone reproached me for not pre-empting stuff like this - there is NO SUCH THING as being completely prepared for a marriage. Really. You can discuss which side of the bed you sleep on, how you plan to combine your assets, how you want to split up the bills, when you want to buy a house, how many children you want to have, how much money you should ethically spend on clothes when the other party hates shopping... You can talk and write it all down on paper and build a gantt chart and a spreadsheet and congratulate yourself on being SO organised, but it's only until you live in the same house and actually sit there and write your first will that asks you about children you haven't even spawned yet... that you realise how little you'd prepared before you got married.
It blows my mind away, just exactly what I got myself into.
But I love it because that's what it's all about. I'm having fun, chickies...
Monday, June 13, 2005
~ Noo nee nooo ~
We just spent a mind-boggling 4 hours trying to nail down what we should do about buying a DVD recorder/hard drive.
I won't bore you with the mind-numbing details, except to say it all started because the Grand Prix got wiped out when we taped it last night. We have an LG video recorder that serves us well (4 Doctor Who episodes, 1 CSI and 1 Desperate Housewives episode per week), but then it started taping this awful buzzing sound over our recordings so you could hardly figure out what was going on (unless it was the Grand Prix, which is mostly visual anyway).
We went to Big W on Sunday to get a tape cleaner; got one from Philips. Went back home and opened the box. Bottle was empty. Went back to Big W to get a swap. Went back home and cleaned the VCR. Set the VCR to tape the Grand Prix at 2am so we could watch it today. Rewound the tape this morning and realised nothing happened. The stupid Philips cleaner thingy ruined our VCR.
And that is how we wound up at Harvey Norman sussing out whether we should buy a DVD recorder or a hard drive.
I'm really boring you with this, aren't I.
