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A few years ago when my first niece was about Xander’s age now, my eldest sister once quipped to a friend in an elevator on her way to court or something, “Not say I biased (sic), but I think my niece is really damn cute.”

Fast forward to just a few months ago from today, I get a colleague saying almost exactly the same thing to my wife about her son.

And of course, between my wife and I versus the rest of the world, since Xander was born, we have been insisting our son is hands down the cutest widdle cutie-two-shoos on the face of the planet (let’s be fair, the other planets in the universe might have their own standards in cuteness).

It is at times adorable, sometimes funny even, to see parents or kin take to their newborn blood relations with such open arms. Other times, it can be a little annoying.

Signs that you are too old for a Nine Inch Nails concert:

1. You get 2 pre-sale tickets, but when you ask around, no one in your social circle wants to go because Nine Inch Nails is too hardcore.

2. You go to the concert, take your place in the moshpit and observe that everybody is at least 5 years younger than you (I actually took a census).

3. When Trent Reznor jumps off the stage and into WHERE YOU ARE STANDING, your first thought upon reaching out to him is to push him back out so he can finish his concert and you can still get your money’s worth.

4. You do not jump around after the concert boasting that you touched Trent Reznor’s armpit.

5. 3 songs into the concert, you come to the realization that your place in the moshpit is not worth risking your life over.

6. You naively think that in a moshpit at a rock concert where the frontman routinely sings such things as “God is dead and no one cares” or “I’d rather die than give you control”, people will be considerate enough to not push you. (I must interject that I was on the receiving end of an angry “Oi, don’t push!” while I was making my way out of the pit, so I I think my integrity as a rock fan can still be salvaged.)

7. You go to a concert without any bags to hold your belongings in, buy $80 worth of tour merchandise and tie your purchases around your body while you’re in the moshpit, in the vain hope that your purchases will follow you out when you leave.

8. (Bonus sign, thanks to Joe Augustin) You go to a Nine Inch Nails concert and tweet about how “the band’s use of minor chords, suspended 4ths and atonal instrumentation applied to a strong backbeat is hypnotically nice.”

I was, and still am, a huge fan of Nine Inch Nails. I have all their albums, singles, and more recently, downloads. I have kept track of Trent Reznor’s career as a musician and producer and have heard all his work, side projects and guest production work included. I know the band is running their final tour, and their Singapore gig is a once-in-a-lifetime event and wouldn’t have missed it for the world. And of course, I didn’t.

But I think I’m at a physical age now where the moshpit should be avoided, and the intensity of the crowd at a very heavy metal band can be hazardous to your physical an mental wellbeing. It doesn’t help when you’re mostly surrounded by people who feel the same way, and even less when you come home to a family that indirectly implies that you have no business acting like a 20-year-old.

Nine Inch Nails has Waved Goodbye tonight after 20 years of touring. Maybe I should too.

Right after the Mr Big concert. (This time, I’m sitting in Terence’s van).

I always thought the word “blog” sounded like the name of a word game popular with teenagers, childish adults who happen to be proficient in the English vocabulary and groups of people who didn’t have to work but rent chalets in the weekends for barbeques, walking around aimlessly in thong slippers and group make-out sessions.

Oh wait. I may be thinking of Boggle.

My dad asked today, “This is one thing I don’t understand; why do people blog? What is so useful about writing a diary about your personal life that you don’t necessarily want people to know on a website for all the world to see? Why are you so stupid?” (Quotation marks make exercising your creative license so much more realistic, but even then, that really was the gist of what I got from him.)

He was speaking in reference to the accident I wrote about in my last entry that, at the time of writing it, I felt I needed to get out of my system, hoping the topic would never resurface in conversations again. So my dad’s last question does have it’s relevance.

You may also like to note the one and only comment from my most ardent one and only biggest fan surfacing a day later at the bottom of that post. She just so happened to be at my family table tonight, raving about my humour in writing and how everyone should go take a read. “The Father’s Day one was so farnee! Pity about the accident.”

3 sets of eyes suddenly turned to me wide-eyed. “What accident? What happened?”

I rolled my eyes and proceeded to perform a badly edited re-run of the chain collision that gave me a week-long bout of misery, shame and embarrassment.

I was subsequently subjected to a whole new round of misery, shame and embarrassment.

“Do you know you’re in debt?”

“Why you waste money on car rental? Where is your sense of priority?”

“Wah lau. Last car some more.”

“You know you could have just borrowed my car.”

“Next time take MRT lah.”

“Why you go and blog about this if you didn’t want us to know?”

“Why you so stupid?”

And so, walking home from the MRT station with my iPhone in my hands and a cigarette in my mouth, I continue with my highly successful habit of being stupid by blogging about things I probably don’t want people to know about.

Why do I blog? I don’t gain anything out of it. I’m providing light entertainment to a grand total of 4 people, all of them in my immediate family. And of my ginormous fanbase, only 1 bothers to comment regularly.And that one faithful reader just happens to be the one that got me into trouble in the first place, conveniently and quietly leaving the table while the free-for-all stares in disbelief and questions about my intelligence level started to fly in my general direction.

I blog because I need an outlet. I write because it’s really the only way I know how to communicate in a true comprehension. I publish because I hope that one day my words will be able to inspire imperfect people with imperfect lives to laugh at themselves, and I wait for the perfect people to like what I say and offer me a job. I speak my mind of my own life because I want my son to read this one day, to know who daddy is, to know what he did, when he did it and how ridiculous life can be even for a 30-year-old man (give or take a few years), and most importantly, that it is perfectly fine to be living an imperfect life.

I have a blog called My Ivory Throne because it’s rhe one place I can really offload shit, and there’s really a lot of shit in here, my shit, my words, my memories, that will remind me of how I survived, teach me how to survive and survive beyond my years (as long as I keep backups).

My dad still thinks it’s stupid though.

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My first Father’s Day.

I’ve told my wife what I really thought of Father’s Day from my own point of view, particularly after having witnessed what she had to go through giving north to our son. Father’s Day to me was like an afterthought; someone came up with Mother’s Day, and then about a month after celebrating the general awesomeness of motherhood and giving thanks to the pain and hardship of women the world over for bringing up the next generation of leaders, movers and shakers, someone else suddenly sat up and asked, “what about the fathers?”

If you asked me today, “Do you feel like a father?”, I honestly would say no. I mean, given the last 6 months, as opposed to the extra 9 months of labour my wife had to go through, coupled with the last 30 hours of birthing that eventually involved every standard birth procedure (natural, induced, forceps and C-section), I was about as useful as my little toe. And till today, I still feel that way.

Se of you may know I got into a chain collision a week back. No injuries, save for a motorcyclist skidding that turned out to be the cause of the sudden turn of events but was deemed umrelated to the subsequent cars affected. Well, although no one got seriously hurt, the implications weighed heavily on me. For one, I was the last car involved, meaning the car’s insurance would be bearing the brunt of all the other vehicles’ claims. Add to that the fact that it was my father-in-law’s car, not mine, so obviously I’m not a named driver in the policy. Then add to that the fact that I just got my license and am still under probation, and you’ve got yourself a big mess worthy of a teenager’s penchant for trouble.

I’m gonna go out on a limb by saying this whole accident incident has made me doubt my self-worth as a father, a husband and a so-called head of my household. In the current climate, what with my company’s cutbacks and the general downturn in the incomes of those around me, I really couldn’t afford an accident in my current position. Where before that fateful day I felt like I could accomplish a lot, for a week and counting I was put in my place right proper and told to fucking grow up and come back to earth.

My in-laws were nothing but compassionate about my plight and stopped at nothing to help me out with the car repairs, insurance queries, and most of all, breaking the news to my father-in-law. As much as I deeply appreciated them for everything they did, I felt deeply ashamed that I wasn’t doing right by their daughter and sister. And I’m deeply ashamed that thus far I have done more harm than good for my wife and child because of my carelessness.

So do I feel like a father? No.

***

I feel bad for my own dear old dad. In the midst of having to deal with my own problems, my communication with my parents have been getting less and less, with my dad getting the brunt of the neglect.

He hasn’t been doing too well either in the past months. After having to deal with doctors telling him he’s got a heart problem and even showed evidence in his ECG that he’s had a heart attack and stroke before (so mild even he didn’t notice), currentedical results now show that he’s possibly diabetic.

He’s aged a lot in the last 2 years. The tiredness is manifesting in his receding hairline, growing number of wrinkles, his lack of energy and even his mood. The once energetic man with a corny sense of humour and an ability to solve problems in a heartbeat is now a tired old man, prone to impatience and bad temperment and sorely in need of sleep.

And all I could do today was send him a Father’s Day greeting via SMS. Heck of a father I am, and now, heck of a son.

Someone should just fire me from my life, because I’m doing a terrible job of living it.

I never thought I would be blogging in a “Wedding Jitters” topic again, but this one I thought I couldn’t let up, so…

… so I was at this wedding dinner tonight hosted by one of my wife’s closer cousins. I shan’t go into specifics about the goings on, but throughout the course of the dinner I had a number of revelations that I thought I’d share, along with a handful of good advice handed down to me by my own groomsmen and maids-of-honour, one of whom was a wedding planner herself at one stage in her very colourful life.

1. This has to be number one: Always choose your groomsmen and maids-of-honour wisely. You need responsible people who are able to do their jobs, are constantly conscious of the people attending the wedding from the moment bride and groom wake up to the moment AFTER the last guest has left the wedding dinner venue, and most importantly, respect you and your partner for who they are. Your parents might know what you are like, and they might know what your friends are like, but your in-laws, extended relatives and other acquaintances you are inviting to celebrate your special day sure as hell don’t. So when your maids-of-honour run through their morning “bargaining” ritual with the groom by picking on his poor English language skills and subsequently embarrass him in front of a whole ballroom with a video clip of him struggling through an English passage, or when your designated Masters of Ceremony conveniently forget to invite the groom’s VIP table up to the stage for the ritual toasting, or when your groomsmen start putting cigarettes in their mouths and light up in the ballroom of your wedding dinner only just after the last course is served, and they’re sitting only 2 tables away from VIP Table No. 1, not to mention the tables surrounding them that have kids ages 5 and below (including my own son), it says a lot about your social circle, and that (unfortunately) reflects really badly on you, however much of a nice person you may be.

2. Wedding affairs may be the most exhausting to plan and execute, but you need to stick it to the very end with your brightest smile and your best manners. Meet your friends and family and greet them with all sincerity (even the ones you don’t particularly like). Never, ever, miss out on anyone. See them all off at the door when they’re done dining – all of them. Show them a level of respect above and beyond any respect you’ve ever given or received. Because as much as this is your day, it’s not. Wedding days are really a big-ass extravagant announcement to the world you live in that you’re getting married, and the people you invite, whether it be for solemnisation, tea ceremony, lunch, dinner, karaoke or mahjong session, are the people you are doing it for, no matter what people tell you. Face it, the bride will always dream of the perfect white wedding, the groom will always dream of the smallest bills, but based on experience, the wedding day done right is the wedding day done with the people in your lives in mind – not you. You want to do something for yourselves, you got the rest of your lives to go sort it out (starting with your honeymoon; now that is where your married life really begins). Your wedding day goes to your guests (who are, by the way, the same people you are trying to get to pay for the whole thing anyway, so do right by your sponsors).

3. Choose your venues carefully. If you’re cost-conscious, going for a cheaper restaurant is all fine and dandy, but you got to at least make sure service standards and venue facilities are up to par with the standard expectations. People can forgive the leaking ceiling in the lift lobby, or the dingy car park with a post-dinner car queue extending 3 basement storeys because there’s only one single-lane exit point. But banquet staff who don’t bring you your drink after 4 consecutive requests, or usurp your personal space to serve food without so much as a glance or an “excuse me”, or try to clear your dish before you even touched the food on it just leaves a bad taste in the mouth. Look at it this way; the two of you are getting married because you’re committing your heart and soul into your relationship for the rest of your lives. Shouldn’t the people you’re engaging to help you on your wedding day at least put in their heart and soul, just for this one day, to making your wedding go right?

4. You have to play politics. As much as you don’t like it, politics plays a big part in this kind of event. I haven’t met a couple whose extended family doesn’t have a grouchy uncle or a troublemaker cousin or a bitchy grandauntie twice removed or any other kind of colourful character that seeks to make life interesting. That being said, you still got to invite them all for the sake of common courtesy and prevention of wagging tongues. I personally found myself receiving RSVPs from my more complicated relations, including people I thought were long estranged from my mother and had problems with my dad, but careful planning of seating arrangements and an unorthodox programme involving a trishaw and 1930′s Shanghai music ensured the enmities were kept to a minimum and the old folk were suitably distracted to forget about family warmongering for just that one night. In fact, it actually got my family closer to my mother’s estranged side, who invited us to another grand dinner event in order to try to patch things up.

5. Think through the red packets you’re giving out carefully. When you involve your friends and family in the groomsmen/maids-of-honour/flower girls/ring-bearers/drivers/door-openers/runners/odd-job labourers, this is the one time you have to communicate their worth in monetary value directly to them, so you can’t afford to be stingy, and you got to give it to anyone and everyone who’s helped you, however small the job; it’s not only customary, it’s expected of you. I made the mistake of asking my mother to help me divvy up the red packets I was to give out, and she ended up giving a paltry amount to my brother-in-law (who was my driver), who subsequently never looked at me the same way again. And let’s not forget the third-party providers that are actually billing you for their services (your matchmaker lady, photographer/videographer, restaurant manager, etc.). Wedding events for them are pretty much the only time they can earn tips in Singapore, so you gotta indulge them too.

Having said this, I am in no way a wedding expert, nor do I claim this to be an exhaustive list (although after writing this over the span of one late night and a morning, it is exhausting), but I have seen and heard enough from people at my own wedding and others to know some of the things where people get things right or where things can go wrong without you knowing. Feel free to add on your experiences in the comments. I will add points in this post when I see good points being made.

Exciting weekend, wasn’t it?

With bated breath I waited for the AWARE EGM to happen, what with all the controversies and venue-changes and my dollhouse-punting feminist eldest sister circulating emails about what injustices had transpired. Then Saturday came and went. I sent Liza to Suntec in the evening for a drinking session with one of her old friends, conveniently forgetting THAT was where a couple thousand angry women were gathered (though I suspect some were there to try out some new red t-shirts they were given at church the weekend before, or they were aunties that saw a long queue and thought, “eh, got free gift?”).

The day after that, I woke up to the voice of a newscaster on the radio saying the new guard had been ousted and a new exco consisting of old guard members had been instated. While buying lunch, I decided to purchase a couple of newspapers detailing the events that unfolded. Can you imagine, The Sunday Times was already almost all sold out in the Jalan Kayu area? I only managed to get a copy because its headline page was torn and the provision shop owner, in a valiant yet half-hearted attempt to salvage the remains of that copy’s dignity, slapped on a large crumpled clear tape on the tear hoping no one would notice (and he still charged me full price for it, the bastard).

I won’t go further into it, since the entire island has talked the event to shreds over the last 48 hours. What I do wonder is, where will the news punters go from here? I am definitely curious about the fates and futures of certain individuals and organisations that were behind/involved in/indiscriminately pulled into the fracas.

Josie Lau: What’s gonna happen to her? The new now-ex President of AWARE should have known that first step into the AWARE ex-co was going to be fraught with problems when her full-time employers started publicly complaining about her unannounced extra-curricular activities. For those of you still wondering why DBS was being so harsh on this woman when other DBS board members were happily frolicking around with their side projects outside of the Bank, I beseech you to please wake up, put on your glasses and read between the lines behind DBS’s statement. Very likely DBS, knowing the full extent of Ms Lau’s character, took the first step in denouncing her actions so appropriate action could be taken should she fail in her endeavour at AWARE. We shall see (cue snide evil laughter here).

Dr Thio Su Mien: Boy, is she going to lose business. Here we have a legal practitioner unable to talk her way out of a situation she created herself (and she did admit to creating this whole thing herself, didn’t she?). “I am a … very charmed… feminist mentor… on page 73.” Aiyoh, auntie (sorry, should be Lokler Auntie). People give you accolade, you dun rub in people’s face mah. Very chao kuan you know. That aside, it would be very interesting to know what becomes of her, seeing as this little debacle may permanently discredit her standing as a high-standing member of society. “Lokler ah? So?”

The Thio family: To a large extent, the local blogdom, and the media both contributed in bringing in an entire family into the fray of this saga. It was weird enough that Josie Lau got to where she was in the AWARE ex-co, then bad enough that her auntie-in-law came forward admitting to having orchestrated the new ex-co’s coming together. Then happy happy the husband also kena as an “I’m so angry, I’m going to write a letter” homo-basher, then Dr Thio’s daughter NMP Thio Li-Ann also got involved, and there are not-so-discrete whispers in the background of how the family’s now-blown-wide-open agenda is linked to the that previous rainbow-love saga involving Section 377A of the Penal Code. This whole thing has just made their entire family look like fish bait for queer sharks (and I use the term “sharks” in the nicest possible way).

Section 377A: Might the family’s involvement in the AWARE saga bring about a relook at the treatment of our rather dormant section of that age-old Penal Code? Many parallels can be drawn from AWARE’s EGM no-confidence voting, compared and contrasted to the much larger, yet somewhat quieter fight for and against the keeping of the Section in our law books back in 2007. I’m not trying to stir up AWARE’s involvement in the gay rights issue again, but the Dr Thio’s introducing her anti-homosexuality into the agenda of the new ex-exco does bring back some fond memories, doesn’t it?

The Church of Our Saviour: Oooh, this one’s a very unfortunate victim, and another fine example of what getting religion tied up in secular activities, whether on purpose or by accident, will get you. I won’t go so far as to say they might get dissolved, though. I believe the faith of the Church’s members will very likely keep that from happening. But in the eyes of the public, the unforeseen errors of its members’ actions have reflected the underlying agendas that build the foundations of its pulpit. As much as this is a case of its people doing injustice to its cause, we ALL know the line between church-goers and the church itself is a very very fine blurry line indeed.

DBS: Oh yes, the people’s bank. A few weeks ago, a column on Today sought to question the motives of DBS as it openly rebuked Ms Lau for her seeking office as President of AWARE. While initially both my wife and I didn’t particularly appreciate the tone in which the article was written, editor-at-large Conrad Raj seems to have hit the nail right on the head when he ended his piece with the question, “Unless there are other factors at play here?” I have also mentioned earlier how they might have had the foresight to voice their opinion about this whole Josie Lau debacle before the whole debacle even began. The recent turn of events against Ms Lau’s favour may have created a ripple effect involving the fate of her career, but as of right now, even I haven’t a clue how her company is going to handle this. Ooh, a cliffhanger! Who’da thunk it?

The war against alternative lifestyles on an inadequate platform has now turned into a fight of survival in maintaining reputations after a flurry of mistakes by seemingly respectable individuals. I have to admit, though I understand the nobility of this fight of making AWARE aware, now that the old guard is back home, I am a lot more interested in the high entertainment value of what’s about to happen to the ones that have been caught and kicked outside with their skirts down and are now walking around outside, forgetting their skirts are still inside.

It’s been quite a whirlwind experience, and it seems to be gaining speed. At only 2 months, Xander has outgrown most of his 0-3 months garb, and is fitting quite comfortably into stuff normally meant for 6-month-olds (of course being in the children’s fashion industry, I know perfectly well how inaccurate kids’ clothes sizings can be). But what really amazes me right now is his increasingly complex requirements.

What used to be a simple deciphering of diaper change/feeding time/painful cries (see what I learnt in Week 2) has now become an array of I-wants and I-feels and I-bloody-don’t-cares, including cries of shock, loneliness, discomfort in body position, fear, tiredness, wanting to stay awake despite tiredness, not wanting to stay awake because of tiredness but we’re being too noisy, and other assortments of weird and wonderful crankiness.

First-time parenthood is really a crash course into super-professional nannyhood, and what you learn really depends on how involved you are in your child’s development and upbringing. In the first 2 weeks, I thought deciphering baby cries was already quite a feat for me, but today, when the kid starts his trademark Volkswagen engine startup (“ng-uh-huh, ng-uh-huh, ng-uh-huh, ng-uh-huh, weeeeeaaaaaaaaah”), my wife and I find ourselves having to run through a much longer list of the X that’s irking the X-man. On the upside (I think), we’ve gotten so used to his cries that we are now able to identify his less urgent needs and subsequently “buy time” for ourselves to finish up whatever we were doing before attending to him. At one point when we were at my mother’s having dinner with my family (Xander’s getting daycare at my mum’s), his crying got my mum in a fluster and my sisters in a flurry, but my wife and I didn’t even look up from our plates.

Perhaps it was our trust in my mum to handle our child that was built up since Grandma Daycare started; perhaps we really did know why he was crying. But one thing is for certain, when it’s serious, we DO notice. And it almost always emotional more than anything else. Like when he gets scared, the cries are loud and immediate, and forcefully demanding of our attention. Or when he doesn’t like something, he gives this beautifully cute little pout that grows into a wonderfully written chorus of wails nobody can ignore, particularly when it’s actually being witnessed in real time.

It just goes to prove one of two things; that the evolution of humankind has written emotional responses at a higher priority of urgency than physical need, or that my son has inherited his grandmother’s penchant for melodramatics.

I grew up believing there are some careers you simply do not set foot into, if not for anything, then for not looking like an ass in front of your customers; real estate, car sales, large electronics store sales and insurance. The common trait between all these? They’re careers in sales, they’re driven on commission, and they hardsell like a baseball bat shoved up your you-know-where.

Subsequently I’ve gotten more mature in my beliefs and how they apply in the real world, and even met some salespeople in these industries that actually seemed honest. But there remains a sliver of doubt that has constantly kept me away from the salesman profession in general most of my life.

My sister has a friend in insurance whom I spoke to last year after my wife and I were i the midst of introducing number three into our world of two. For the first time in my life, I thought I found a insurance salesperson I could honestly call “honest”. He pulled no punches, seemed straightforward enough wiht what he was selling, and spoke genuinely and sincerely for his customers’ wellbeing. My sisters already have him as their regular guy, and quite a number of times they tossed me the idea of getting me an insurance policy via him. So we spoke, but for a small glitch in what was supposed to be a cut-and-dry life policy sale (higher premiums due to my health score), I had to turn down his efforts.

Since Xander came out though, he’s been keeping in touch, more so in the past few days, to the point where I am making a conscious effort not to turn him down in a rude fashion. At the turn of the year, after seeing things turning for the worse, what with the credit crisis in America affecting the whole world and a projected shrinking economy (-8%?!) in Singapore, I can understand how hard it’s going to be for someone in his profession. But hardsell tactics are the precise reason why I didn’t become a salesman in the first place, and hardsell tactics are the reason why I keep a mental blacklist of all the places to avoid when shopping for anything.

I was text-messaged 4 times over the last 3 days by said insurance guy to discuss a hospitalization plan for my son, which would involve no hard cash whatsoever, just an annual deduction of a small amount from my CPF account. If not for the fact that last year my wife had visited the hospital twice (once for a surgery and once for the birth of our son), coupled with how badly my own finances were stacking up against me, I would have met up. But money is tight for everyone everywhere, and even if it was something I didn’t have to buy with dispensable cash, I’m still being very conscious of what I sign up for.

I will admit that insurance is an important thing, but when you force the issue of selling some to me, I’m not inclined to entertain any of your schtick, nice guy or not. Especially when I’ve kindly given subtle enough hints, like “now’s not a good time” or “better if we talk when times get better”, take it that now’s not a good time and that it would be better if we talk when times get better.

I would like to say I know what these commissioned-based salespeople are going through; I’m working every day and making every dollar count to manage my own little credit crisis. But honestly, I opted out of the life of a commissioned-based salary because when times are hard, it really shows in your bank account when your daily work shows directly in your paycheck, and no matter how glib you are, no matter how soild your sales pitch is, some days people just don’t want to buy anything. Commissioned-based industries really do reflect the old adage (albeit through a different context), “When times are good, everybody’s a friend, but when times are bad…”. The big difference between applying that adage in an occupation and applying it in social context is that socially, there ais still room for acts of kindness, but in a ceteris paribus environment such as your job, the only thing that matters is dollars and sense.

It’s going to be a hard year, my policy-toting friend. Wishing you good luck, is, unfortunately, all I can afford.

At some point in a new father’s life, one might come to the conclusion that newborn babies are in fact a Samsonian test of strength. Who would think a 4kg bundle of flesh and cuteness could wreak such havoc with his parents’ biological clock to the point where one barely knows what day of the week it is (my wife has already given up keeping track).

It’s the end of Week 2, and Xander’s appetite has increased overnight. What used to be 60ml of milk a feed every 2 hours has shot up to 120ml of milk or more in 3 hours. And if you’re wondering where it all goes, last night I had the answer sitting in my hand after another sleepless night deciphering my baby son’s cries of complaint; at about 5am this morning, I had removed and disposed of what I believe to be the heaviest diaper load in the history of diaper changes. If I weren’t so sleepy, I’d have had it weighed and submitted into the Guinness Book of World Records. Instead all I can do now is open a can of Guinness and celebrate my victory of having learnt to change diapers properly without my son peeing all over himself and me. And I don’t even like Guinness.

You’d think I’d have gotten used to it by now, and I thought so too, but the sudden increase in appetite threw the entire house off-guard, even though I was pre-empted 3 days before the 2-week mark from the instructions printed on our (largely unused) can of S26 that from the second week onwards, baby feed will be increased from 60ml to 120ml, with slightly less frequent feeds per day. Slightly less frequent feeds? It feels like Day 1 after the hospital all over again, except this time, my mother-in-law had trusted me enough to run my own show for the night. Either that, or she was too bushed to wake up from my boy’s screaming.

My wife is also having a hard time keeping up with the total breastfeed program. She is now breastfeeding a lot more often, and pumping out reserves a lot less, because dear little Xander has seemingly inherited the Tay family appetite, and someone must have taught him not to waste a single morsel of food that’s served to him, so he’s sucking my wife dry every time. And when I take over to burp him after a feed, he tries to latch on to my boobs too (kudos to Xander for not discriminating). If he weren’t so darn cute, he’d be a fictional alien offspring with a voracious appetite for nipples in a B-grade bisexual softcore horror movie.

So, on Week 2, I have learned:

• When newborns cry, it can only mean one of 3 things; either he’s hungry, or he’s soiled his diaper, or he’s in pain. If only adult life were so uncomplicated.
• I am proficient enough with burping babies to be awarded with a certification. My big hands seem to scare the air out of my son the moment I sit him up and start swinging him around all Indian dance-like (video coming soon). nobody else in the house seems to know how to get him to burp, without lack of trying.
• Diaper changes require quick thinking and pre-planning. Wet wipes, powder, nappy rash cream on a sterile cotton ball at the ready, and a fresh diaper positioned for optimum switching with soiled one. I haven’t timed it yet, but if I did, I might get a job swapping tires in the F1 pit with the Honda team.
• Breastmilk poo is greenish-yellow, runny and has curds. I can no longer look at feta cheese the same way again.
• When baby takes a shit, timing is essential. You got to wait for him to complete the transaction first (usually takes another push or three, and is usually punctuated at the end with a glorious fountain of pee if you’re not careful (a huge warning sign is if his pee-pee goes to 12 o’clock position, but by then it’ll be too late and you’re gonna need another shower).
• Newborn baby farts are as dangerous, if not more, as fountains of pee.
• Nappy rash hurts. Just ask Xander.
• Hiccuping, though disturbing at times, needs to be accepted as a newborn’s routine, so there’s really nothing to worry about, and nothing much you can do. At first we tried everything from burping to feeding water, but now we just stand at his cot and laugh at how cute he is when he’s vibrating.
• Just when you think you got the hang of it, your kid will pull out new surprises to keep your days a blur and your nights sleepless. Patience is key, and shift duties are essential for the sanity of any newborn’s household.
• Being there to father your son and husband your wife is the best gift you can give to your family at this time, and especially to yourself. So don’t run away from those diapers and take it like a man. Your child will hiccup to thank you.

I’ve been reading through some other blogs on the topic of post-natal confinement, and it seems that while people are lauding over the joys of pregnancy, few people actually speak of the aftermath of giving birth. In fact, the most I’ve gotten about the subject prior to Xander’s birth were either a very sympathetic “Good luck, bro” or a very solemn “Welcome to parenthood. Try to stick with it.”

It really isn’t until you’re in the thick of it that you realise exactly why these responses sound the way they do. And even then, they don’t even begin to describe the ordeal you have to go through, regardless of whether you are the father or mother.

Take my wife (not literally). Having been through the pains of the 3 major types of delivery in one sitting (normal, assisted and C-section), one can only imagine the pain she must be going through during the recovery process. Add breastfeeding (proof that big boobs does not necessarily a happy husband make), a strict regiment of confinement foods (and very little else), perpetual house arrest, an overbearing parent, and of course a baby that cries for milk, a change of diapers or colic relief every hour without fail, and you start to wonder if it’s really hormonal changes that’s affecting her mood or just emotional retaliation to the conditions she has to go through. Whatever the case, from the day Xander was born, my love and respect for her has grown to such a level no words or actions are enough to justify its worth.

The baby, too, seems to be having a tough time. Jaundice is common among newborns, requiring a short stint in the morning sun at a specific time frame so you don’t overcook him. And since he’s only a week old, one cannot expect the kid to tell you he needs to pee or poop, though he has learnt since day 4 (to my knowledge anyway) to make known to the entire household when he’s made a bowel movement or bladder clearing (sometimes he emphasises the point some more by peeing over everything within 2 feet of his cot halfway through a diaper change). Our first night we had to pile on wet wipe after wet wipe over his poo, resulting in a sculptural masterpiece on his soiled diaper that resembled a half-serving of lasagna. And just like any offspring of mine would, he has a voracious appetite, further laying claim that he is my son by loving every minute of his face being immersed in my wife’s bosom (he’s luckier though; he gets to do it at least twice a day, while I get nada). But it is his cry that really gets to you; my wife once quipped with such terms of endearment that his crying carries such sadness with it. I can best describe it as a sudden sucking of air, followed by small whimper that grows a little in volume until it trails off into a high-pitched whisper as his lungs run out of air before he lets out a big blast of a wail that’s guaranteed to wake the other side of the estate. You got to hear it to understand how heart-piercing it is.

Being the new addition to the family, he is also showered with attention by my mother-in-law (commander-in-chief of the Great Confinement Period), her trusty maid (sometimes second-in-command) and me (the blur recruit). At some points during middle-of-the-night diaper changes (and some daytime changes), my son gets molested all over by 6 hands trying to make sense of his soiled buttocks, the diaper his clothing and his swaddle all at the same time. I’ve since learned to back off during this kind of situation. You have to trust your mother-in-law knows what she’s doing; she did bring up your wife, after all.

After all this, I cannot possibly lay claim to having the toughest job of all. over the past week, I have taken on the task of night-time nanny, allowing my wife to rest while I took care of Xander, with some help from Commander-in-Chief and her trusty sidekick and when they wake up to the sounds of Xander’s crying and think he’s complaining about me. The past week I have been clocking 2-4 hours of sleep a night – none of those hours consecutive – forcing me to retreat like a beaten dog back to my Sengkang flat as soon as the night is over to assume the foetal position in my bed and suck my thumb. I am lucky on 2 counts; that it is the holiday season (so most of the time I don’t have to work in the day), and that I got my driving license (so I can get home in 20 minutes as opposed to the 1-hour public transport option).

To all mothers (including my wife, my wife’s mother and my own), I take my hat off. If my hair weren’t so short and ugly right now, I’d take that off too. And if I didn’t need my skullcap to protect my brain, I’d take that off too.

To all new fathers, … Good luck, bro.