Buhay Brunei

International Day

2010-11-05T07:02:00.000-07:00

Last Friday was International Day at ISB. Kids and parents went to school wearing their countries' national costumes. There were song and dance numbers, a mini parade of nations, and booths selling food from different countries.

Big Girl has a Baro't Saya (the Philippine costume for girls), which I bought at SM before we came here. Unfortunately, it's still too long for her so we decided on something more casual but actually more appropriate for the Filipino-Canadian that she is. A black cap that says CANADA, a black shirt that says PHILIPPINES, plus a Philippine and Canadian flag!

Proudly Filipino-Canadian

Mr. Big wearing his TORONTO MAPLE LEAFS shirt. He had this for years now, but hadn't worn it in public until that day. Big Boy is wearing a shirt that says CANADA. I wore a shirt that says BORACAY PHILIPPINES.

The Pinoy booth selling puto, kutchinta, pansit, bibingka, cassava cake, and banana cues (from me----I didn't make them though, I ordered them from a manang)

A nice lady from Australia looking sooo cute in her pink robe and rollers while selling some yummy treats.

It was a fun but tiring day for our "international" family. We all fell asleep as soon as we got home. I woke up around 3 pm finding myself still on the couch, feeling like I slept forever, and the kids and Mr. Big sleeping on the carpet, looking like refugees!

A Very Late Hari Raya Post

2010-11-01T07:37:00.000-07:00

The majority of people in the Philippines are Christians, and I was raised as one, so really, I never had to immerse myself in Muslim practices and celebrations first-hand. Before we came, I thought that being here wouldn't bring a lot of new experiences and surprises, but I was wrong.

Experiencing Ramadan, for example. No, we didn't join the fasting, but we learned to be very careful not to eat or drink in public. Just common courtesy, and consideration, really, but it's one of those things that we can only fully understand if we are out of our comfort zones.

And Hari Raya celebrations. Honestly, it's a shame that I had no idea how they were going to celebrate it considering how many Muslim friends/classmates I had when I was growing up.

I was very surprised to learn that it felt a lot like having Christmas in the Philippines----minus Santa and the christmas tees, of course. Colorful lights, visiting people's houses, buffet-styled feasts, sharing gifts, giving money to children, wearing new clothes...it was very nice.

Big Girl in a Baju Kurung, her Open House uniform

Above and Below: Big Girl together with her dad and his students during their school's Open House

I am already looking forward to next year's celebrations. Next time, I will get myself a nice Baju Kurung, as well!

Halloween Party

2010-10-31T11:33:00.000-07:00

No trick or treating this time, that tradition is not commonly done here in Brunei. Fortunately, my new-found Filipina friends here has an annual Halloween potluck party, and we were invited to join.

Tinkerbell and Bumblebee

The finished pumpkins

sweet loot

Do we look good together?

Her very first pumpkin

We had a nice dinner, some parlor games, and lots of sweets to give and share. Plus, each kid carved or got helped to carve his/her own pumpkin.

It was a fun night!

Sandflies

2010-10-23T07:30:00.000-07:00

The kids and I went to Muara beach last Thursday. We had a nice time playing in the sand, chasing after small crabs, and playing at the playground, totally oblivious of these very small blood suckers.

Well, we learned about them the hard way. The small red bumps came out yesterday, but I was not bothered because they weren't any worse than mosquito bites, and we felt fine.

But today the bumps look angrier. Worse, they're really, really itchy. Poor kids!

I just found out that these bugs breed in swampy or estuarine conditions. It's just strange that I've been to numerous beaches in the Philippines, Korea, even Hawaii, but I've never experienced being bitten by these damn sandflies.

Note to self: Thou shall not forget thy Off lotion!

Anniversary Getaway

2010-10-16T07:01:00.000-07:00

Last Thursday was our 8th year wedding anniversary so we decided to revisit The Marriott in Miri to make it a little more special. We could only stay for 1 night though since Mr. Big had to work today, but we still had a good time. We thought at first to leave the kids to our tried and trusted sitter/part-time amah, but changed our minds like we always do. I guess that's what parenting is. We wished to have some "alone" time with each other and yet we knew we wouldn't enjoy ourselves anyway thinking and missing and worrying about them.

The traffic was really good going there so we managed to arrive in the hotel in 2 hours. We went swimming as soon as we arrived. The hotel has a really nice pool area right near the beach----great for just relaxing and having fun with the kids. I forgot to recharge my camera's battery though (bummer!), the pics here were taken last June (sorry about the wrong dates on the pictures!).

Another great thing is that the hotel offers babysitting (for 30 MYR/hour) so at least we were able to have an anniversary dinner and have some drinks afterwards by ourselves.

8 years, eh? I guess we have successfully scratched the 7-year itch! Yay!

Happy Anniversary baby! Love yah!

Facebook update copied and pasted

2010-09-29T20:51:00.000-07:00

Ugh. Clean up. Shower. Pack/buy lunch. Pick up Feliz. Send her to art class. Go to parent-teacher meeting. Pick up the car at the repair shop. Buy costume for school event tomorrow...while taking care of my 1 year old boy. Super crazy day today!

Seriously, how do moms with a dozen kids do it???

Yay!!!

2010-09-28T20:55:00.000-07:00

I passed my driving test yesterday! I can finally drive around!

I was a bit nervous before the test. Fortunately, the test officer chatted with me about the Philippines and my life in Brunei and that helped me a lot to calm down.

Getting a Bruneian driver's license if you're a beginner isn't easy. First you have to apply for a Provisional License at the Land Transport building in Sungai Akar. Bring your passport and IC card, fill-up the form, and pay 5 dollars.

The provisional license is only a learner's permit, you are not legally allowed to drive without a licensed instructor. There are not many instructors, and only some can teach in English.

After deciding on an instructor, you will need at least 10 hours of sit-down lecture about safety, road signs, etc. This cost 150 dollars.Then, you have to take the written test.

The test had multiple choices. There were two parts. First part was about road signs and the second part had questions regarding safety and road knowledge. You have to answer all the questions on the first part correctly or you will fail. The second part allows a maximum of 6 mistakes. Most of the questions were common sense, but you must read them carefully because some of the questions were deliberately tricky.

You can schedule a re-test after a week in case you fail.

After you pass the written test, then you can start having actual driving lessons. The lessons cost 15 dollars per hour. You need at least 10 hours of lessons before you can take the actual driving test. The driving test only allows manual transmission, so of course, learning on automatic was not an option.

On my first day, the teacher and I went straight to the road. I had never driven in my life before that, so that was really nerve-wrecking for me. The learner cars (the white small cars with green roof) have an extra brake and clutch pedal on the teacher's side though, so that was a bit comforting.

Then you have to practice 2 round courses inside the Sungai Akar practice area. This is where you learn how to drive on a slope, how to make a 3-point turn, how to make U-turns, how to drive around tight angles and S-roads, and how to make very precise reversing and turning in order to parallel park and rear-in park.

Basically, if you slide down the slope, hit any curve or parking pole during the test, you will fail. If you pass these, however, then you will be tested on how well you drive out on the main roads.

The instuctor will teach you 6 routes near Sungai Akar, although the test officer will only choose 1 during the test.

If you pass, then you can finally apply for a Driver's License! If you don't, then you have to wait at least 2 months before you can take the test again.

Fortunately, I passed! I am so happy and relieved. Public transportation (even taxis) is almost non-existent here in Brunei. It 's quite inconvenient if you don't drive or if you don't have a car, unlike in Korea. As it is, we've been paying a lot for a driving amah to bring/pick-up Big Girl to/from school and to drive me to places whenever Mr. Big is at work. On the plus side, I was forced to finally learn how to drive.

Next thing to do: Find an inexpensive used car that is not too old and in excellent condition. Wish me luck!

5th Birthday

2010-09-15T10:07:00.000-07:00

Big girl turned 5 three weeks ago. Her actual birthday fell on a school day so we just had a simple family dinner on that day. Roast chicken+mashed potatoes+chocolate cake---her favorite meal!

with her brother

5 candles!

A few days after though she had her party with her friends at Jollibee Yayasan Mall. We first thought about having it in the Jungle gym, but it was closed for renovation. Now we're happy that we didn't do it there because I think that even though the playground area was small, the party program at Jollibee included dancing and fun games.

Jollibee is a Filipino fastfood chain that is also popular here in Brunei. The birthday package includes a set meal plus all the party stuff (emcee, parlor games, invitations, balloons, prizes, etc). And for every $300 you can have its mascot Jollibee for free (or pay $50). The party and games went really well but the highlight of it all was when Jollibee came out and danced in front of the kids. They really went crazy!

my happy girl

Dancing time with Jollibee..."I want nobody, nobody but you..."

fun, fun time

more dancing

Big girl had a really good time. According to her, it was the best party she had ever had so we were very pleased.

Updates, Updates...

2010-09-12T08:44:00.000-07:00

I'ts really hard these days to find the time, energy, and great will to regularly update this blog. What can I say? I have a busy 5 year old and a toddler who needs full-time attention and supervision.

So what's new?

Big Girl had her 5th birthday two weeks ago. More info and pics later...She cut her first tooth before that and got a shiny coin from the tooth fairy.

She also started Year 1 a few weeks ago. Time flies really fast! I can't believe how fast my baby is growing up...

I got a teaching job at an international school. I will start working again in January, and I'm very excited about it.

I've been taking driving lessons for several weeks now, and I think, I'm finally ready to take the test. Wish me luck!

Mr. Big's is currently enjoying his school term vacation.

We just had a nice 7-day adventure at KK (Kota Kinabalu). More entries about it later...

Till then!

Big Girl's Art Works

2010-08-23T07:49:00.000-07:00

Online shopping

2010-08-02T21:46:00.000-07:00

Shopping for us here in Brunei is not fun at all. There aren't many shops that sell Mr. Big's size (which s surprising because unlike Korea, there are a lot of big people here) and the ones that do mostly have pricey stuff with poor quality. I don't get much luck on the women's department either. We find it more practical to buy clothes online. There are many North American shops that ship here, and if you shop wisely, you can get great deals, and the shipping costs are not bad.

Landsend has been our favorite even when we were in Korea. It sells excellent quality classic dress shirts/pants for as low as USD20 at its Overstock section, and shipping up to USD100 is only USD28. I can usually get 5-6 things for my USD130, which is very cheap considering that a good quality dress shirt here costs at least USD60.

LLBean is also a good one, with styles and quality comparable to Landsend, but with slightly more expensive shipping costs and less stuff on sale.

JCPenny offers more choices in terms of brands and styles. It always has a lot on stuff on clearance, but since it's selling stuff from different brands, the quality and sizing can be a hit or miss.

Overstock also ships here now, but I haven't tried it yet. It looks like it has nice dresses though.

Gmarket from Korea ships here too. It's hard to navigate it well though if you don't read Korean, but it sells almost anything imaginable, from small stickers to huge furniture. I used it a lot when I was in Korea.

For books, Amazon ships here but the shipping costs are horrible. About USD6 per book plus USD7 per order.

I recently found that Betterworldbooks sells used books and ships here for USD4 per item.

Quality shoes, bags, and children's clothes are easy to find here, although I don't consider quality that much whenever I'm buying clothes for the kids. They're gonna grow out of it after a few months anyway.

New phone

2010-07-20T21:29:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, Big Boy did something that is so Big boy. He dunked my 3-month old Nokia in a mug of steaming coffee. Of course, I got really annoyed not at Big boy but at Mr. Big who left his coffee where he shouldn't. I tried to wipe it clean but it wouldn't turn on anymore so we all went to the mall to have it fixed. It turned out without any surprise that the damage was really bad and trying to fix it meant that I would have to pay almost as much as buying a new one. Also, the repair guy made no assurances that it could be fixed.

So that's the story of my new phone (which actually doesn't look new because I chose the exact same model...yes, I'm a colossal bore!). I know that I should stop being so annoyed about it (after all, it's just a phone and I did get a new one!) but I lost a lot of phone numbers because of it, and eventhough it wasn't that pricey, I hate the fact that I had to throw it out.

Yes, [bow] I'm cheap. (Hey, I'm not from the Philippines for nothing!)

It's hard to be the Big Sister

2010-07-19T21:04:00.000-07:00

"Big Boy, I love you no matter what but you are the whiniest boy ever!!!"

Sultan's Birthday

2010-07-17T11:04:00.000-07:00

Last Thursday, July 15th, was Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah's 64th birthday. It was a national holiday, but Mr. Big and some of his co-teachers had to bring some of their students near the palace early in the morning to greet the Sultan with flags and banners, along with thousand others.

Weeks before that, shops and other establishments everywhere put up their greeting banners. Some busy roads had big birthday greeting signs from popular companies.

According to the news, it was also a lucky day for the babies who were born on that day. They got lots of gifts and souvenirs, including prams and $100!

Now that's a happy birthday!

Usual Family Sunday

2010-07-11T10:07:00.000-07:00

Unless there's a special occasion or we're not home, we try to keep our little family tradition every sunday...

1. Pancakes for breakfast. Mr. Big likes his with honey, while Big Girl and I like ours with extra butter and a sprinkle of sugar-cinnamon powder on top. Big Boy will eat whatever you give him.

2. Meat-vegetable tomato-based stew for lunch. Everybody loves it, and best of all, I get to use the vegetables in the fridge before they go bad. Thus, the ingredients vary everytime. I use whatever is available, as long as it will keep the stew tasting like stew. Today we had chicken with baby corn, snow peas, sweet potatoes, and cabbage. Yum!

3. Swimming in the afternoon. Our great attempt at exercising! The kids love it though. Plus, it makes them really tired, which makes sleeping time afterwards a breeze!

I spy...

2010-07-10T02:01:00.000-07:00

an Eagle!

Yes, just saw an eagle hovering near the house.

Welcome to our life in Brunei! :-)

While having a pap smear...

2010-07-07T19:49:00.000-07:00

After seeing the doctor bring out a metal tool (called the "speculum", thanks toWiki)...The clinic had no stirrups, just the usual check-up bed, and the doctor was not nice at all.

"Oh, are we using that?"

"Yes!" [incredulous tone] "I thought you had pap smears before? What? They don't use this in Korea?"

"Sorry, I just didn't know. I was up on the stirrups so I didn't see. "

"Stare up? You can stare up!"

School Break for Big Girl

2010-07-02T20:02:00.000-07:00

Big girl's school break has started. It's too bad that her daddy doesn't share the same vacation time, but that's okay, there are tons of activities for her to do anyway.

Mr. Big's company has a summer camp for a month at the RBA (Royal Brunei Airlines) club. That's 4 weeks of swimming, small fieldtrips, and other fun stuff. Most of her friends in school are joining as well, so she's very excited about it. Plus, once a week she'll have art class and ballet.

The summer camp costs almost nothing, but the art and ballet classes are surprisingly very pricey. It costs about USD 50 a month for 4 lessons in art class. In Korea, we paid about USD 100 for 20 lessons a month plus they pick the kids up and bring them back home for free. Same thing for ballet. It costs about USD 65 a month for 4 lessons. In Korea, we paid about USD 85 for 12 lessons! And again, the school bus is included.

Considering how most necessities (water, petrol, food, electricity) are way cheaper here than in Korea, we really didn't expect to pay this much. My guess is it's because there isn't enough competition around. There are only 2 ballet schools to choose from and the art school is probably the only genuine one here.

Big girl really loves making art and dancing ballet though. She actually wants to go to these classes more than once a week! We'll see, but I guess, we really don't have a choice. As the Visa commercial goes:

Art class: 50 dollars
Ballet class: 65 dollars
Driver: 100 dollars

Big Girl's happy face: Priceless!

Big Girl when she was 3 years old

OMG, a snake!

2010-06-27T03:18:00.000-07:00

Just heard that one of Mr. Big's teaching colleagues found a baby cobra (seriously!) in their kitchen. Fortunately, nobody got bitten before the firemen came to deal with it.

(Check out this family's similar scary experience here in Brunei.)

This is not surprising considering how Brunei is basically an inhabited rainforest/jungle, but it's still really scary, especially since we're only a house away from the wild .

See the picture on the header? That's the view from our veranda. It's nice because we sometimes see monkeys swinging on the trees and we get visited by small reptiles, but having snakes in the house is a totally different matter, of course!

We're used to seeing this fellow around.

TGIF---especially in Brunei

2010-06-25T06:50:00.000-07:00

Brunei is an Islamic country, and since Friday is a go-to-mosque day, it's also an off day for most public offices, hospitals, and schools. It's business as usual on Saturdays though.

It's still a bit strange for us that Mr. Big has Fridays off instead of Saturdays, but we're getting used to it. This means though that we can't have weekend trips somewhere. Fortunately, he gets a 2-week break every 2 1/2 months.

The international school follows a Monday to Friday schedule though. At least, Big Girl and I get to sleep in a bit on weekends!

Home sweet home

2010-06-23T19:27:00.000-07:00

We love our new house. It's spacious enough for all of us plus extra guests, but it's not too big that you can't possibly maintain it without a battalion of help. It's also in a quiet neighborhood, not far from Big Girl's school(but then most places in Brunei are quiet and it only takes 20 minutes to go anywhere in the city).

We were looking at several houses that are within the company's housing budget and we instantly took this house as soon as we found it. Some houses were so huge! Mr. Big thinks that we probably only think this way because we got used to the small apartments in Korea. He's probably right, but really, who needs 8 bedrooms and 7 bathrooms when you have 2 small children who still like to sleep with you sometimes? Plus, some of them looked really old, and the interiors were too ornate for our style. Elaborate ceiling paintings, velvet curtains, Baroque furniture...Nah...I don't have Imeldific delusions of grandeur. We wanted a house that is nice, homey, and comfortable and most importantly, child-friendly.

Blogging again

2010-06-23T08:03:00.000-07:00

Welcome to my new blog!

It's been 5 years since I kept a blog when I was in South Korea. Of course, many things have changed since then. I am now a mother of two (a 4-year old girl and a 1-year old boy), my hips are much wider, and we now live in Brunei (a small, oil-rich country that is geographically sandwiched by Malaysia). We've only been here for 3 months, and so far, it's good. New place, new people, new language, new adventures/misadventures.

This blog is for those who miss me (yeah, all three of you!) and our family and for those who want to learn about life here in Brunei. But most of all, this blog is for the frustrated writer in me that has been itching to come out after it got buried under tons of kimchi, diapers, insanity pleas, and other self-concocted excuses.

Someday, I hope I'll be able to find the guts and the inspiration to actually write the stories that have been swimming in my head for years. But until then, I guess this blog will do.