I made my first visit to Vietnam a couple of days ago together with my colleague and we flew straight from Singapore to Hanoi.
I have never known what Vietnam is like and always have good impression of it because I felt that it is the country that is developing very well among the rest of the South East Asia countries. As a matter of fact, my colleague and I were actually looking forward to this Vietnam trip because it will be our first time to Hanoi.
Traveling around the world has certainly give us some decent exposure to what the world is like and throughout my past 14 years of working life, I have been to Austria, China, Denmark, Germany, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Spain, Sweden, Thailand, US and now Vietnam.
Of all the countries that I have visited, even how bad or poor the country is, I always find something good or even likable in the country but I think I have to go to Vietnam a few more times to discover what is it that I like about Vietnam. Food is good and cheap but I think there should be more exciting things in Vietnam.
Let’s see what is coming out and perhaps we will visit Vietnam in the near future but if you have any exciting things to share about Vietnam, please drop me a comment.
I was packing my bag a couple of weeks ago for my trip going to China for about 3 weeks and my daughter always want to help me to pack my bag whenever I am making an overseas trip.
I believe it has been the consistent help that my daughter has been giving that she even knows what are the things that I bring for my overseas trip. A couple of months back, when I just left all the clothes on the floor with my suitcase opened, she actually make the effort to pack all my clothes into my suitcase and I was elated to see that.
What surprised me more was during my packing a couple of weeks back and while we were packing halfway through, my daughter suddenly shouted:
“Papa, you forget to bring your socks!”
I had wanted to pack my socks later but to think that Meredith noticed that I forgot my socks was really amazing. I was delighted and my wife and I could not stop laughing.
Now, talking about family bonding, this could be an incident that we continuously talk about whenever I am with my daughter and my wife because it is really such a unique incident.
So, what are you doing right now that bonds your family and you closer?
During the time when I was in Singapore a couple of weeks ago, I made a point to spend some time with my family and told my wife to arrange for a time to go and watch Kung Fu Panda with my daugther.
My daughter was actually counting down to the days where we were going to watch Kung Fu Panda and she was very excited on the day itself. As what kids normally do, she was asking questions almost throughout the whole movie and it is fun to watch how inquisitive they are.
It has been more than 5 years since I had last watch a movie with my wife and I think the last movie we watched together was The Lord of The Ring : Return Of The King.
I am actually a big fan when it comes to watching movies but have stopped due to 2 reasons:
My wife doesn’t like to watch movies
Investing in more time to learn the skills that can propel me to my dreams faster
However, I have decided to inject a little fun into my family life and instead of watching movies alone, I will do it together with my family. What a great idea! I can do what I love and also spending time with my family.
Just the day before I travel, my newborn son was waking almost every other hour requiring attention from my wife and I and as I was about to travel the next day, I was trying to get as much sleep as I could.
I suddenly felt very helpless and incompetent as it all seems to be that my wife is managing the home affairs and I couldn’t help much. At that moment, I thought to myself and even told my wife that since I couldn’t help much, I might as well and be better off traveling doing my work and bring the bread back home.
My wife did not say how surprised she was listening to what I said until about a week later when I started telling her that I feel that our passion and lovingness seems to be dwindling ever since our second child was born.
What a coincidence or is it the attraction that we are doing that while having dinner at a restaurant in Central Java one night, I heard an old song from Linda Ronstadt and Aaron Neville, “I don’t know much but I know I love you…”
At that instant moment, I was overwhelmed by the song as I thought to myself, I may not really know as much as I would probably should in the business that I am working on or even the work that I am working laboriously on but I definitely know that I love my wife very much.
Honestly speaking, I have to thank all those personal development that I have been engaging these years not to sabotage my balance for family time with my work and more importantly, expressing my love for the loved ones before it is too late.
For those of you who have not been expressing your love to your loved ones, is this the time to dedicate this song to your loved ones?
My wife just had a call from the paediatrician and was told that even after the phototherapy, my son who is slightly jaundiced when we left the hospital yesterday, his readings was even higher today and it seems like he has to stay in the hospital for another 2 days.
I must admit that I do miss him and being a father again, there is an entire different feeling when you have a daughter and when you have a son. My sister in law did mention that there is a difference but I did not notice it until now.
I am quite keen to find out what is the cause of jaundice. Is there a way to prevent kids from staying longer in the hospital because of jaundice? My wife heard an old wives’ tale that taking coconut juice during pregnancy will prevent the kids from getting jaundice but it doesn’t seem to work as well as we expected it to be.
Well, will find out more and hopefully we can find a way to prevent it so that all mothers can go home with their newborns when they are discharged.