Through my eyes

This week, I will be staying at home with my dad. Only two of us without my mum. She is away in Seattle on business trip.

Dad told me that he will come back early from work to bring me go walk about in 1-Utama and Curve. He knows my favorite is New Zealand Ice Cream and Rotiboy. I am sure he will get me these two things after my dinner.

After that we will go home to watch movies together. But, most of the time, I will have to wait for him to complete the housework before we can watch the movies together. He will be busy with house work like boiling water, laundry, cleaning house, etc and I helped him.

Later, we will play some games like “snake and ladder”, ludo and tic-tac-toe. Then, he read me stories for me before I sleep.

Today is my mum and dad’s wedding anniversary and mum called from Seattle to talk to us before we go to bed. She told us that it was very early in Seattle.

Mummy has been telling me that she is going off for business trip again. This time is only for one week to Seattle. I guess she wants to prepare me to live without her for a week. I am fine to have only dad around. We are counting days until the day she will leave for Seattle.

The day before she leaves she reminded me one more time that she will leave the next day. She told me she will leave very early and probably, I will still be asleep when she leaves. She promised to bring back presents from Seattle.

When I woke up this morning, my mum has already left for the airport. My dad told me my mum has left at 7AM when I was still asleep.

Later, dad took me out for breakfast and we went swimming at the neighborhood club.

When we at Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra to watch the The Swan Lake concert last weekend, my parents got interested in another concert - Dances of The Seven Veils. The concert was scheduled for the next weekend. The next day, my mum bought the tickets for three of us. And she forgot to check for age limit for the concert.

When we went for the concert, they realized that I may not be able to go in because I am underage. Minimum age was 8. They asked me to keep quiet and act like an 8 year old girl. We were hoping for the best. Luckily, no one stopped us at the entrance. The usher just showed us to our seats. They reminded me to stay quiet throughout the whole concert.

The concert was conducted by Claus Peter Flor and the main pianist was Orli Shaham. The orchestra played three compositions for that evening. The main one was Dance of The Seven Veils composed by Richard Strauss, Piano Concerto No 27 in B Flat by Mozart and Also Sprach Zarathustra by Richard Strauss.

The Dance of The Seven Veil was such a long musical composition. It was almost an hour long before we had a break. My mum and dad kept checking on me to make sure I was comfortable. I managed to sit through the whole concert without talking to anyone.

After the concert, my mum reminded me that she will travel the next day to Seattle for her work.

I worked up early on weekends as usual. My mum and dad will be late as usual. It seems like we swap placed between weekdays and weekends. During the weekdays, they will wake up early and had to literally pull me out from bed.

I do the same to them during the weekends. I will tell them the sun is up. It’s time to wake up. Sometimes, I call them sleepy heads.

Once my dad woke up, I asked him to bring me go swimming at the neighbourhood club. Since he has already promised to bring me go swimming, he agreed. He had quick breakfast at the nearby mamak stalls. I had my favorite roti canai with sugar and teh tarik. Dad has his roti telur and teh tarik too. Mum will eat when she waits for us by the pool. This is her usual routine.

At the pool, my dad and I will have our usual arguement over my ability to swim. I told him can swim very fast with a tube. He said that I am still not able to swim since I am dependant on the tube.  Well, we have been arguing over this for a long time.

We are back to Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra again. One week has passed so quickly. My tuition teacher came to give me home tuition twice this week. The concert we attended was Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. Before we left our, my mum and dad kept reminding me that there will not be any Barbie in this concert. I will see the real ballet on the screen accompanied by Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra.

In this concert, the recording of Swan Lake ballet produced by Bolshoi Theater in 1989 was shown on a large screen in the hall minus the sound. The conductor of tonight’s concert, Carl Davis, informed the audience that he deliberately left the clapping and cheering sound of audiences in the show on for us to hear how much the Muscovites appreciated the ballet.

While the Swan Lake Ballet was shown, the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra played the accompanying music from the original score used in the ballet. The Bolshoi Theater Orchestra was conducted by Algis Zhuraitis. Yuri Vasyuchenko is Prince Sigfried. Alla Mikhalchenko acted on both Odette and Odile roles. Aleksandr Vetrov is Rothbart. 

The whole concert was 160 minutes. My mum was worried I would not sit through the whole show. Actually, I did and I enjoyed the concert. I kept discussing with my mum about the various scenes in the ballet as I already knew about the story from watching Barbie of Swan Lake.

Unfortunately, after the concert was over. An uncle told my dad that I should not be talking during the concert. My dad apologized to him.

My mum told me that the following week, we are going to MPO to watch another concert and I will have to keep absolutely quiet during the whole duration of concert.

Today is my first day of having my Chinese language tuition at my aunt’s house. It’s was one and a half hour. It seemed like forever for me. I never had to concentrate so much when I was in Montessori school. Now, I have a dedicated teacher to teach and guide me in my Chinese language skills.

My dad told me he wanted to me to learn how to speak Mandarin properly. According to him, I could write and read well. He wanted me to speak Mandarin better.

So, the teacher only spoke to me in Mandarin and no English at all, unless she has to explained something to me which I had difficulty understanding in Mandarin.

Anyway, I survived one day of home tuition today.

When I woke up this morning, my mum told me we are going to attend the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra (MPO) family fun day concert. Today’s event is “Hollywood to Broadway”. The session will start at 2:30PM. There is another session at 4:30PM.

My mum told that we won’t be going for swimming today. We don’t want to get tired and feel sleepy when the shows starts. The MPO hall is very cosy and one can easily fall asleep.

This concert was conducted by Carl Davis and some of the songs were sung by Mary Carewe and The KL Children’s Choir. I enjoyed the concert very much as they performed many of my favorite songs from my favorite movies like The King and I, Sound of Music, Swan Lake and Toy Story. My dad told me they played his favorite song from the movie Gold Finger. We are allowed to sing along with the Mary Carewe and The KL Children’s Choir for some of the songs like Do-Re-Mi.

The KL Children’s Choir was formed in April 2003 by Ms Susanna Saw. They have performed in many events like the opening ceremony of the largest IKEA store in Asia.

Mary Carewe’s versatility ranges from musical theatre showstoppers and cabaret songs to contemporary music. She has performed under the baton of Sir Simon Rattle, Kurt Masur, John Rutter, Charles Hazlewood, with the Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and
the BBC Concert Orchestra.

After the concert was over, my mum told me we are coming back again next week the watch the Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake concert to be conducted by Carl Davis again. Before, I could asked my mum about Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, she told me this is not the Barbie’s Swan Lake. It’s a real ballet concert. I will tell you more about this concert later.

School holiday has starts next week. I don’t have to go to school until next year. My dad told me that will be about 8 weeks. I don’t really understand what is 8 weeks, so he told me that it is 56 days. What! I don’t get to play with my friends like Jolyn, Ryan and Jaden in school.

My dad told me that he has arranged for one of my Chinese language teacher to come to my aunt’s house to tutor me in Chinese language. He does not want me to forget what I have learned in school. He told me that he cannot teach me Chinese language at home. So, he needs help and he engaged the teacher to teach me twice a week. Each time will be one and half hour.

Anyway, he promised to bring me for vacations and do interesting stuff during the holiday period. In fact, we went swimming yesterday at the pool in our neighbourhood club.

Today, my daddy told me that we were going for a birthday party. It’s a birthday party for his school teacher. So, he came back from work early. We went back home and got ready. Then, he drove us to his teacher’s house which was nearby.

The teacher’s wife invited us for a small party in their house and thought we didn’t know that it was his birthday. But, my daddy knew about it. He remembered his teacher’s birthday.

I met so many friends at the party and we played among ourselves. Later, we sang the birthday song for my daddy’s school teacher.

There was so much to eat. There was sausages, nuggets, fried chicken, friend noodle, cakes and drinks. My mummy fed me with so much food so that I have enough energy to lay with my friends.

In my school, my teacher taught me about Deepavali. She told us it’s a Hindu’s celebration for light. Last year, we went to my aunty’s house for Deepavali lunch. But, this year, she is very busy with her job assignment. She is a journalist and she has to cover the UMNO General Assembly. She told me she has to hear what people say and she writes her report.

So, I wish my aunty and uncle, teacher Jeya, my friends Arun and Arthi a very Happy Deepavali.