Library Haul

1. Kimchi & Calamari - Rose Kent
2. The Absolute True Diary of A Part-Time Indian - Sherman Alexie
3. Bones of Faerie - Janni Lee Simner
4. Fire Star - Chris D'lacey

Sophia meets Sophie

I've just come to realize what a common name we've given our daughter. There seems to be an abundance of Sophies and Sophias all born of that same generation.

Alarm bells should have gone off in my head right from the very start when, after birth, I ended up sharing a room with a woman who had also named her daughter Sophie (Sophie, Sophia, what's the diff? They're all variations on the same).

Up till this day, I think we've bumped into no less than 6 or more Sophies/Sophias while on our educational tour of Singapore. We've had Sophies/Sophias drop in for make-up lessons in our Sophia's regular classes. We've had trial classes in other Sophies/Sophias regular classes. We've also tried out a swim class with another Sophia in it and unbeknownst to us, until the day we went for class, signed up for a swim class with a Sophia in it too (no relation to the other Sophia nor ours)!

Most recently, Sophia (ours) was introduced to Sophie (not ours) in the seat in front of her (our Sophia), 10 months her junior, on the flight back from KL to S'pore. Confused yet? Well, luckily they didn't look a spot alike (9-month old Sophie is Ozzie and well, our 19-month old is quite purely M'sian).

Rizal blames it on The Da Vinci Code and one of the title characters, Sophia. He's convinced a whole horde of people named their daughters Sophia after reading or watching the movie.

This world is just a little too crowded with Sophies/Sophias at the moment. My name, Poh Ling, in fact, is such a common name that I went to school with a senior of the same name (spelled a little differently in English but written the same way in Chinese characters) and I've had people tell me they know another Poh Ling often enough. But the best was when I enrolled for college and I found myself face-to-face with another Ng Poh Ling not only in the same college but in the same programme and transferring to the same university as I was going to. I mean, come on, PAULINE NG POH LING. The. Exact. Same. Name.

I always wondered what possessed my parents to give me such a common name and when I was battling teen angst, somewhat resented my parents for naming me such. I'm wondering if Sophie will feel the same way.

Sigh...I've got another 12-15 years or so to find out.

Keeping Up-To-Date

So, at someone's request, I'm gonna try to update everyone on the latest right now without sounding too long-winded or haphazard.

We've finally succumbed and gotten ourselves a helper. Her name's Jona and she's a godsend. She's amazing with Sophie and the apartment no longer looks like the aftermath of a hurricane storm.

Sophie's now pretty much potty-trained and credit has to go to Jona, who has infinitely loads more patience than I do. It doesn't help that Sophia usually chooses to have an accident whenever I'm around in the house.

Our fridge decided that it was time to start preparing us for its demise (by cranking up the temp so that the food hardly felt chilled) but the day after our landlord had taken a look at it and decided to replace it with a brand spanking new one, it seems to have suddenly recuperated from its bout of sickness and appears to be working fine (just to spite us?). The new fridge is being delivered this week. Can you say, guilty? Or maybe it's just that our landlord was way too efficient. Either way, we're getting a new fridge.

We flew Tiger Airways back to KL and had a fun time running around at the children's play area while getting Sophia to finish her lunch. There was a children's play area. In the Singapore budget terminal. How. Cool. Is. That. Oh, and Tiger Air too is cooler than AirAsia. Any budget airline that allows you to select seats is cool. I know AirAsia will feature that soon but come on, being the last one to do so? Sigh.

Sophia started her swim classes. She LOVES it. And I discovered that 30 minutes for a swim class really isn't too short for a toddler's attention span or energy level. In fact, 10 minutes more and it's chaos.

We've also started a couple of trial playgroup sessions to decide which ones we want to attend. Most likely, mommy will veer towards the one that is best accessed via MRT (The Forum is so much easier to get to than Suntec via the train).

Oh, and Singapore can be hot but KL can be hotter any day!!!

Library Haul

This week it's back to the normal loan quota of 4 books:

1. In Your Room - Jordanna Fraiberg
2. Thornspell - Helen Lowe
3. Wake - Lisa McMann
4. The Eyes Of A King - Catherine Banner

I also added to my collection recently, Lament by Maggie Stiefvater (love this, so much more than Twilight), Need by Carri Jones (it's OK but I think I overdosed on fairy fiction) and The Fetch by Laura Whitcomb (which I've yet to read). I'm going through my libary haul first.