I Work At Home

Everyday passes really slowly especially when my wife and son are away in Brisbane. I am alone in the house after work. I managed to go through some of the photos that my wife took in the laptop.

I recalled my son telling me that he works at home when I told him I was about to go to work in the morning.

Exactly what work does he do??

1. He cleans the dead leaves and twigs that falls into our fish pond at the back of the house. This is normally our driver's job but my son likes to help adults do chores. Maybe I can get him to wash the plates next time!...LOL! Washing plates is my most hated chore as both my brother and I were forced to wash up after dinner every night (we had to rotate everyday)!

2. He pretends that he is an excavator digging the soil that we put into this cut-into-half oil drum from my work place. We had to plaster the sharp edges of the drum so that he does not get cut.

My son normally would find worms and caterpillars and cut them up! We tried to let him cut the caterpillars only because they eat up my wife's plants whereas the earth worms help loosen the soil for the plants to grow better.

3. He is also the construction team coordinator. He instructs his shovel to scoop soil into the dump truck. The soil we have on the ground is mostly clay, so it is hard to dig and gets messy when it is wet.

We thought of building him a sand pit. However the thought of cats doing their business in the pit put off our idea. My friend also just reminded me that it would be very difficult to find clean sand in Palembang.

Wishing that I could reunite with my family in Brisbane soon, all that I could do now is to continue to browse through the many photos that my wife took throughout the 3 years we were in Palembang. I never really had time to go through all of them when they are around. Yes, 3 year olds do work at home!

Things That I Will Miss In Palembang

It has been almost 3 years since we moved to Palembang. In my previous posts, I have blogged about things that I hate or dislike about living in Palembang. Besides the negatives, there are also positive things about Palembang and I will mention about the things that I would miss the most upon leaving.

Of course, the first will be the people in Palembang. We have made a number of friends in Palembang throughout these 3 years. We spend almost every weekend hanging out with some of them. So it will be truly sad to leave them behind because our friendship bond has strengthened tremendously throughout these years. Next will be our house and the routine activities that we do.

When I first arrived, I went looking around for a house so that we can have a comfortable place to stay when my wife and 6-month old son join me. We did not want a double storey house because it is a bit dangerous for young kids. Finally after plenty of negotiations with the company regarding rental cost and furniture, the company finally rented a semi-furnished house for Rp30 million a year (approx RM1000/month).

This is not the biggest house in the housing area but definitely one of the bigger ones. It has a garden and a fish pond at the back. My wife and toddler son spent more than 90% of their time IN THIS HOUSE after they moved here.

My wife started to plant flowers and vegetables in our garden. We have okra (ladies fingers), kecipir (four angled beans) and potato leaves as our weekly supply of vegetables. My toddler son helps my wife water her plants. Digs sand and plays with his toy trucks at the places with soil (mostly clay). Every morning, the "taufu-man" will drive past in his bike selling tofu and my son will tell him that we don't need any tofu (because we normally buy our tofu from the market). Sometimes, the lady that sells vegies and eggs will drop by. Sometimes we hear the clinging and clanging of bowls and kitchen utensils, indicating the "tekwan-man" selling noodles and Palembang dumplings is near.
In the evenings, our neighbor's kids will come out and play badminton along the road. Certain times, children will walk past our house in groups heading towards the concrete field where they play football with their bare feet. My son will try to talk to them in Indonesian with his hands holding along the fence like a monkey in a cage....;)

Besides the garden, we also spend a lot of time in the fish pond area. There's a bridge across the pond. Our son would try and help us dish out the leaves and twigs that falls into the pond. He said it is "his work". When he was still 7 or 8 months old, we used to put him in a rocker next to the pond. He tasted his first durian and rambutan in front of this pond.

In our dining room, we have some odd authentic Palembang designed cupboards that we use to keep our cooking utensils and food storage. We used to spend almost an hour every meal waiting for our son to finish eating his food! The white board at the back is used for me to draw things for him as he eats his food. He likes me to draw his favourite TRAINS.

We also have this picture of EEYORE the donkey (Pooh & Friends) from my son's 2-year old birthday party. I drew it for the neighbour's kids to play "place the tail blind folded" during the event.

Due to weight limitations, I don't think we will be able to bring my son's TRICYCLE back. I got my maintenance crew to weld together some galvanized pipes so that I could push my son while he rides along the road every morning before I go to work.

The living room in our place is quite big. It has 2 sections. One is for watching TV and the other one is for my son to play. The TV section is only used for watching TV (obviously!). In the photo you can see that the computer table has been shifted in front of the TV. This rearrangement only happens whenever my wife is not around. Most nights she will occupy the laptop but when I am by myself, the new arrangement enables me to multi-task... LOL! Another plus thing is I could get more direct A/C.

In the photo that shows my son's play area, you could still see streamers hanging on the chandeliers. We were too lazy to bring them down, so they have been left there for ages! At the right hand side of the photo is a door connecting to the fish pond. My wife spends a lot of time sitting next to the door reading to my son. Sometimes we eat there because there is a pillar to lean against and the ants around will come and pick up the crumbs on the floor (friendly black ants). On the left hand side partially covered by the standing fan is my son's playhouse. My wife used our fridge's carton box to make it into a house with doors and windows at the side. Sometimes my son and me used to lie in that box pretending that we were asleep.

The room next to the towel rack is OUR BEDROOM. It is the coziest part of the house because of the air conditioning and the foam mattresses. We do a lot of reading in the bedroom. We do not have any beds except 3 mattresses laid next to one another. We have one queen size bedsheet that has underwater fishes. So we do "swim in the sea" a lot too!

Palembang does not need a lot of fancy things for us to miss. It is the small small nostagic things that we will miss when we eventually leave this city. Palembang is my son's "hometown" despite being born in Kuala Lumpur because he spent most of his infant and toddler-hood here. Plus, he likes PEMPEK (Palembang fish-cake/dumpling)!... only a true Palembang person likes PEMPEK!!

The "Yellow House"

When I first came to Palembang, I went around looking for houses with my father in law. We came across a yellow coloured house that we were very interested to rent but the contract did not fall through because it has been leased by another occupant a month before.

After 2 years, the house became available again and I took a look at it again today. The following are some photos of that "yellow house".

























However, that house is smaller than our current house and does not have any "green areas" for plants as the landlord had already made his lawn "concrete". We also calculated again the cost of moving to another place and it seems like it is still worth it to pay for a slightly higher rent with the existing house that is "semi-furnished".

Houses With Big Compounds But Small Rooms

I have been looking around for houses for the past few weeks because our landlord wanted to increase the rent of our current house.

We had to look for other options but most of the houses in the Kedamayan area do not have any spacious living room (one of the necessities for my 2 year old son to play).

Here are some of the photos that I took of a corner house that has a very big compound. However, the living room and bedrooms are pretty small compared to our current house.