Fantastic Fukuoka

After last year's unexpected blessing of numerous overseas trips, the day after Christmas saw an airline seat sale and had us booking tickets to another new destination, Fukuoka. With two other couples and three additional friends tagging along, there were nine of us going in all, in the last weekend of February.

Knowing very little about this city but loving Japan, even in the winter, off we went.

To our delight, the coastal town was much larger and more cosmopolitan than any of us expected. We spent the long weekend on a ramen eating binge, mainly, and doing a little shopping.

My favorite part of the trip came on the second day, when three of us took a local bus trip to an outlet mall by the water. Not only did we eat the freshest sushi I've ever had, but on the way back the bus made one of its usual stops, which happened to be located outside a primary school. About half a dozen children between ages 8 and 12 got on, looking like a cross between Madeline's friends and the Von Trapp children in their uniforms.

The students quietly found places to sit or stand, and, as we entered the city, one by one left the bus at their own stops and from there made their way home alone on foot. Not one parent met a child at a bus stop. This is something I had never experienced before, and it made me marvel anew at the cultural wonder that I have found Japan to be.

While we have yet to take Little A to visit this amazing country, we definitely will do so, and hope he comes to love it as much as we already do.

Pet Day

This year, Little A's school celebrated Pet Day. For an animal lover like my son, an event such as this was miles better than Santa coming at Christmas.

In the course of his youTube video watching over the last few months, he managed to come across one-time cooking show host Rachel Ray's human interest programme, particularly the episodes featuring animals. Now a favourite on his playlist, my son has shown me that one blind lady in the USA has not the usual seeing eye dog but a guide horse called Panda, a Shetland Pony.

On findining out that a Shetland pony would be part of the animal interaction opportunities at Pet Day, Little A was all the more excited. 

Before meeting and greeting the other animals though, the schoolchildren got to play with some therapy dogs. Their trainer was a neighbour of ours, and Little A was familiar with her dogs, but I was pleased to see him feeding another dog a piece of carrot, a first for him in terms of animal interaction.

The pony was the last animal in the petting parade, and each child was encouraged to sit on its back for a photo. I had to correct the teachers whokept telling the children they could "ride" the animal by announcing to Little A that he would only sit on it for a few seconds, as riding meant going from point A to B on the horse's back, which was certainly not on the agenda. 

My son had other ideas, naturally. After hanging back so he was the last pupil in his class to be photographed astride the pony, he mounted it again by himself and gently tapped the horse's sides with his heels to try and move it forward. The pony complied, but I quickly said that it wasn't allowed and that had to hop off quickly, which he did. Promises of properly going riding soon satisfied him, but come dismissal time he raced back to the playground to see his new friend only to find it had gone. Perhaps he will see it again next year.

Ten Years Married

This month, Big A and I celebrate a decade of marriage, and mark 15 years to the day we met.

Sometimes it seems like those carefree single days are a lifetime ago, and perhaps they are. Back then our social lives were a whirl, with late nights spent out with each other or other friends several times a week despite the day jobs we both maintained. We lived in the hippest part of town, a short walk from the best bars and trendiest new restaurants.

These days, we still live in the (new, decade or so old) hippest part of town, but now we prefer to stay home in the evenings, relaxing after the days' work and anticipating the next morning's early school run. Nights out consist of the occasional movie, or dinner for a friend's birthday. Alcohol is consumed with a mind to the early morning wake-ups courtesy of Little A, and the fact that our now middle-aged bodies don't recover as quickly as they used to.

Much has changed in Big A's and my relationship in ten years of marriage, as it must with all couples; many challenges have been thrown at us financially, employment-wise, and as a result of Little A's autism diagnosis. But thankfully we have managed to weather them together, despite the issues that plague all marriages. 

One decade down then, and overall we have been blessed far more than challenged as a family. May the next few decades be just as kind.

New Year's Maintenance

2016 is here. And with it, new resolutions. I normally don't make any, but this year I vowed to be healthier. And that meant addressing issues long neglected.

When newly pregnant with Little A, I was put on bed rest for a few weeks in the first trimester due to bleeding from polyps on my cervix. I had to work from home, and was forced to do this from a sideways reclining position which was the closest I could get to sitting upright.

As a result, something twisted in my left hip, near the coccyx. It didn't bother me unless I pushed for full spinal and hip rotation mobility, which is not something one really needs when mothering an infant, doing housework and performing other basic life chores. Sometimes though, when seated for a long time, I would feel a twinge, and when doing my eventual, sporadic, exercise classes the past couple of years, I knew something in my spine was rather misaligned.

This month, after a dozen years' absence, I finally paid that long overdue visit to my chiropractor.

At age 11, I was informed by my ballet teacher that my hips, ribcage, and shoulders were not the straight line they should be and in fact curved rather like an S. It was visible from the mirror, when looking at my body in a leotard. My mum has mild scoliosis, so we assumed I did too. I was taken to an orthopedic doctor to see about straightening my spine, as at this time I was already applying to ballet schools in the UK.

The orthopedic doctor informed my parents that my degree of scoliosis was such that "it was a miracle I could walk properly", and that the ideal treatment was to put me in a spinal brace, with no more ballet in my future.

Thankfully, a second opinion was sought from an alternative practitioner. The chiropractor ran his hands gently up and down my back, then told me to lie on the special bed and with a few quick pulls and tugs, corrected the nearly 2 inch difference in my legs, straightened my hips to an even keel, and aligned my ribcage and my shoulders. I stood up slightly taller than before, feeling "straight" for perhaps the first time ever.

It took another visit or two to get things fine tuned, as I got used to an entirely new centre of balance in my ballet classes. But to all intents and purposes, my spine was straight, I could carry on dancing, and all was well.

I continued to see this chiropractor yearly when I was in Manila, and found an osteopath to see in London while at boarding school.

Fast forward to the end of my dancing career, and the beginning of my corporate one. No more regular, demanding physical activity meant less chances for spinal misalignment, so my chiropractic visits dropped to once every two or three years until Little A was conceived and I stopped going for over a decade.

I figured that after the pregnancy would come years of baby carrying, which would no doubt throw my alignment further out of whack. With Little A now 8 and nearly as tall as I am, it was time to finally get my back back in order.

It had been so long since I'd been to the clinic that my old chiropractor was no longer in full-time practice. He had taken on a partner - his daughter, who had been a pigtailed pre-teen in a photograph on his desk all the years I'd been coming to the clinic. She was fully qualified now, and strong enough to wrestle 300 lb men's spines into submission.

These days I walk straight once more. And now I have no excuse but to start the second phase of my New Year's Healthier Me programme - exercise classes.

2015 Comes to a Close

Another year is nearly over. The month of December is always a chaotic one, particularly because it happens to be peak season at my two shops. This month, after wildlife weekend Big A and I had to fly to Hong Kong quickly to collect some corporate ribbon orders, and then the following weekend we took Little A to the mountains for our annual end-of-the-year trip.

The "snow" village is only open in December, and this year we were properly equipped with wellingtons and a raincoat. Little A wasn't feeling too well, but he rallied like a trooper as best as he could, and enjoyed, for the first time since we begun staying there, the Japanese restaurant at the Country Club. He has taken to watching cooking shows on YouTube recently, and was thrilled to see the chef at the teppanyaki table prepare his meal.

Little A wasn't the only one feeling out of sorts. I experienced terrible vertigo for most of the month, possibly due to an ear infection, adverse reactions to my new birth control pill , or simply stress and over fatigue. Little A was sleeping well, thankfully, and I was on track in the presents department, with all gifts wrapped and distributed in record time, apart from two that Big A had ordered last minute. There was too much to be done, work-wise, to take any time off to rest, at least not before the 25th of December.

Before we knew it, Christmas Eve was upon us. We had two families to visit that night, Big A's first, and then my parents', where Santa made his annual deliveries. The next few days were more restful, though only slightly less stressful as I worked feverishly to catch up on the paperwork that had been neglected in the week or so leading up to Christmas, when every hand was needed on deck to wrap presents, make change, and ring up purchases.

And so 2015 comes to a close with a whisper. We have been invited to Big A's client's apartment for New Year's Eve, to watch the fireworks across the city from their floor-to-ceiling windows. It will be a quiet night, and an early one. I've cleaned out our flat and finally sorted out the boxes of car parts and old clothing that sat on our balcony for years. New Year, new start. We hope 2016 is as kind to us as this year has been. 

A Year of No Shopping

In 2015, I was a total consumer. Big A and I traveled to over 10 cities together, two with Little A, and did a significant amount of shopping at each.

Granted, Big A only shops properly about twice a decade and many of my purchases were from the discount, secondhand, and thrift stores I love so much, but I still acquired, in one year, six pairs of shoes, four sets of hugely expensive undergarments, swimwear, beachwear, daywear, and winter wear. And a couple of handbags.

Looking through my wardrobe before Christmas I knew there was nothing more I needed for at least another year. I turn 40 in 2016, and while most people buy a new dress to celebrate this milestone I decided it would be even better to pick out an old dress from 15 or so years ago and make sure I still fitted into it. Double goal: shop less, and get fit. 

As for the pile of unread books I have accumulated over the years, it stands at about five dozen, 1/3 actual and 2/3 virtual. A book buying ban is also in effect, at least til this stack gets down to manageable proportions of a dozen or two at most. 

So, goals in place, let 2016 begin.

Ocean Adventure

Given the number of overseas trips Big A and I have made this year, we wanted to take Little A somewhere very special as a change of scenery from our usual mountain getaway (though we have visited that one twice this year already and have a thirs trip lined up for the second weekend in December).

About 18 months ago, I made a booking for Little A to meet some dolphins. He would play with them for about half an hour in the shallow water of a beach located just two hours out of the city. 

For most children this would be an amazing experience, but for a nonverbal autistic boy with a special affinity for animals, the encounter would be a dream come true.

Unfortunately, the weekend prior to D-Day, both Big and Little A fell ill with the bad cough and fever combo that was making the rounds. The Dolphin Encounter was shelved, and we didn't  manage to reschedule it within the year.

With another long weekend coming up, I dusted off the telephone number still written in my little notebook and dialled. After confirming that the date we wanted was available, the lady on the phone asked me how old Little A was. On replying that he was eight, she cheerfully informed me that his encounter would no longer be a shallow water one, but that he could swim with the dolphins already.

What a thrill for him this would be! While waiting to board our flight to Hawaii, Big A and I booked a hotel and settled payment details for the following weekend. On our return from Honolulu, I prepped Little A for the dolphin swim, showing him his and his dad's matching outfits and encouraging him to look up videos on YouTube.

The weekend arrived, bright and sunny, and off we went to Subic Bay. We checked in, unpacked, then drove to the small zoo where Little A saw some animals and got to ride a train.  He enjoyed himself, but we knew the best thing would come the following day.

D-Day arrived, and we arrived at the ocean side of the freeport with about half an hour to spare before the scheduled dolphin swim. It was perfect because a dolphin show was about to start, and Little A, who had always hated such things because of the noise and the crowds, saw four dolphins in open water and decided right there that he had to watch.

He found a space on the concrete steps leading to the water, outside of the main seating pavilion. With great excitement, he barely blinked as he watched the graceful mammals jump, splash and twirl.

When the show was over I told him it was his turn to meet the dolphins. He immediately started to take off his clothes and quickly donned his swimwear. I told him there would be a quick lecture first, and that he needed to sit and listen to the "teacher" before he could swim with the dolphins. 

With such reward in store for a little bit of sitting and listening, he complied (though he did run around a bit calling out with joy first). Finally, it was time. The trainer took his hand he raced toward the water, only to stop short and cling to Big A as the gentle animals approached.

The encounter started in shallow water, with the trainers showing two groups of four guests how to gently stroke and then interact with the dolphins before each animal towed them one at a time into the deep water. When Little A first laid his hand on a dolphin's skin, all fear evaporated instantly and he fell in love.

In the deep water, the humans donned life jackets and one at a time learnt how to instruct the dolphins to spin, jump and twirl. Little A found a pen with more animals, wild ones and young ones, and watched them jump in their contained space.

At the end of the allowed time, they were meant to be pulled back to the shallows to say goodbye. One animal, called Loki, ignored his trainer's commands for a few minutes and looked long and hard into my little boy's eyes. They had a bonding experience all their own, and then he allowed himself to go back to the shallow water. Come goodbye time, though, Little A swam out after his new friends and had to be firmly led back. Inconsolable, the only thing that stopped his crying was the promise of sea lion show starting in a few minutes.

He raced into the arena full of people and found a seat in the crowd. Expecting him to be overwhelmed by the noise and to want to leave soon, I stood near the entrance/exit only to be pleasantly surprised when Little A motioned me to climb up the bleachers and sit with him. He proceeded to wait for, and watch, the entire 25 minute show, clapping, cheering and all, with rapt attention.

At the end of that, when told there would be no swimming with the sea lions as night was falling, he cried a little. But only a little, and got into the car and rode back to the hotel with memories in his head and on our mobiles. We promised him another trip, with more sea animal encounters, and all look forward to the next one.