This week in Singapore

The week so far:
1) Tsunami tsunami tsunami. Don't know what video coverage you're getting in the US, but there's a ton here, from CNNAsia to BBC to MediaCorp (local news station) to TVB (Hong Kong). Pretty gruesome tales and pictures. The corpses are stiff and decomposed already. Because they're stiff, you can see the last grasps, hands in the air, as if trying to hang on to some form of survival. One mother cries her heart out as she relates how she had to let go of one of her two children, so she can hang on to a tree. They miraculously both survive, but her older child, she knows, is scarred for life, because she chose to let him go.
2) Shop shop shop. Chrismtas marks the beginning of the holiday season here in Singapore. It's Christmas, then New Year's then Chinese New Year. Hard not to get caught in it. Will be in Thailand this weekend and guess what I'll be doing? Shopping. The damage so far includes 2 pairs of shoes, 1 dress, 3 blouses (albeit not for me but for folks at work).
3) Clear vision. I can see! 20/20 eyesight. Had lasik surgery done last thursday and I've said goodbye to glasses and contact lenses. If you can do it, do it. Perfect vision is fanatastic.
4) Family and baby Claire: Have been hanging out with my cousins. I have a ton of them cos my mother has 5 siblings. Baby Claire is my cousin's latest addition to the family. Everyone has been "promoted" so to speak. Am no longer called "kah cheh" which means cousin sister but "ah yee" which means cousin aunt. My mother is a "gu poh" which means grandaunt. These new names are as confusing to me as they are to Baby Claire I'm sure. We realized yesterday that 4 generations of women have gone to the same hairdresser. I cut my hair at Camay hair salon when I was a little girl growing up at my grandmother's home, as did my mother and her mother and now Baby Claire just got her first haircut at Camay's. A part of me wonders if my offspring will do the same.

Well, that's the news so far. Hope the New Year's starting off well for everyone.