Random thoughts

Yesterday, we went to the Back-to-School Night for the middle school a.k.a for Zey. He prepared a schedule for us to follow starting with his homeroom. Then we moved from building to building and many different rooms to meet different teachers. I knew what he meant when he first started there that bunch of students moved from class to class while getting lost. He quickly got a hang of it. Rob had a good sense of direction and I just followed Rob as I usually got lost as soon as I stepped out of a room. Zey’s home room teacher was very new agey and fun. We met teachers who taught Spanish, PE, Science, English, Design, Humanities, Art, Drama, Repair and reuse and Math. I saw 3D printers, tools he would use to build wooden products, a classroom where they repaired old things, a science room where they incubated some duck eggs. Anyone want a duck as a pet? Hope might go berserk if we brought one home.  We saw a library which was larger than our DC public library. We saw more s...

I went to two coffee events at my children school yesterday as if I needed that much coffee to stay alert. I had to leave the first one early and arrive the second coffee late because of overlap in schedule. Their school is a UN International School, one of the two schools in the world; the other one is in New York. Apparently, the UNIS in New York is one of the founding schools of International Baccalaureate (IB) program. I heard about IB program for the first time in Tokyo and wanted my children to experience it when possible. My first impression of the school is very warm and fuzzy. Elementary school has no homeworks. Yaay for Khin!! Not that she ever complained about homework back in DC. In fact, Rob and I have always been the lucky parents who did not have to battle with our kids to get the homework done. Recently someone commented that our kids are easy going because the parents are easy going. Imagine a big smile on my face! I take credits whenever possible even though all I...

People are often surprised when I tell them that I do not like hot weather. Just because I come from Yangon doesn’t mean that I must like the hot and humid weather. Many of them are perfectly happy to announce they hate cold weather because they are from Michigan or Minnesota. Well, I wouldn’t go to that extreme level of emotion to express my dislike for a particular type of temperature or season but of course I have a preference. I get super sweaty and smelly and perfume can’t hide it easily. I take multiple showers a day which may contribute to my ever increasing pile of laundry. No, thank you, if possible, to hot season. Anyway, I am back in South East Asia and it is mostly hot. Hey I will get used to it, no big deal. I will just complain for a bit until I have other things to complain about, like coughing a lot. Preference, no preference, it doesn’t matter when I have to follow my spouse. He is really, really nice by the way. He is not an alcoholic, a womanizer or a gambler an...

I arrived in Hanoi from Yangon one week ago. Somewhat surprisingly, I cried when I left Yangon. I always have strong affection for my mother and younger brother. Now that my younger brother is married and has a kid, who is super adorable and lovable, and my own kids are older and not wanting to cuddle, there is no surprise my niece gets my affection. And she has become super sweet (sometimes naughty) two year old who likes to play with me and my kids, wanting to be held, be entertained, and be cuddled. Zey loved her too. Khin, not sure what to do with her since she herself is in a stage of moodiness. Oh dear, she is only nine years old. At least, Hanoi and Yangon are closer than Washington, DC and Yangon. We can just fly there for a long weekend if we wanted. Yangon International airport has changed for the better as well. We can now check in then hang out with family until we need to go to immigration and additional security. There has never been a long line at immigration and ...

This trip I managed to see several friends I had not seen in a while. I had more time as I did not have my children with me. မတွေ့ရတာ ကြာတဲ့ သူငယ်ချင်း တွေနှင့် ဒီတစ်ခေါက် ခရီးထွက်တာ တွေ့ရတယ်။ ကလေးတွေ မပါတော့ အရင်ထက် ပိုပြီး အချိန်ရှိတယ်။ On my first day, I ate Montinghar and many more. One of the reasons why I went home regularly was because I wanted to eat Burmese food. I didn’t usually get sick but this time, I ate four different kinds of food in three hours and got sick. Then I recovered in a few hours and became more careful. ပထမရောက်တဲ့နေ့မှာ မုန့်ဟင်းခါး ရော၊ အခြား အစားအစာတွေရော တော်တော် စားလိုက်တယ်။ မြန်မာပြည်ကို ပုံမှန် ပြန်ရခြင်း အကြောင်းထဲမှာ မြန်မာအစားအစာ စားချင်တာကြောင့်လည်းပါတယ်။ ပုံမှန်အားဖြင့်တော့ အစားမှား ဝမ်းသွားတာတွေ ဘာတွေ မရှိဘူး။ ဒီတစ်ခါတော့ စားတာများသွားပြီး ပြန်အံ့တယ်။ နာရီပိုင်းအတွင်းပြန်ကောင်းပြီးတော့ နည်းနည်းသတိထားလိုက်တော့ နောက်ထက် ဘာမှ ဆက်မဖြစ်တော့ဘူး။ On my second day, I saw my high school friend whom I did not see for more than 17 years. It was ...

I just came back from nine days trip to Yangon. It was a short trip but the jet lag did not understand that it was short and I suffered the same as always. ရန်ကုန်မှာ ၉ရက်သွားလည်ပြီး ပြန်လာခါစပဲရှိသေးတယ်။ ခရီးက ရက်နည်းပေမယ့်၊ jet lag (နေ့နှင့် ည အချိန်ပြောင်းတဲ့အတွက်) က ခရီးတို တာမသိဘူး။ Washington, DC ကို ပြန်ရောက်ခါစက အတော်ပင်ပန်းတယ်။  The trip was fun. I flew over 13 hours to Doha from the Dulles Airport in Virginia with Qatar Airway. It was a good flight. The seat has special head rest cushion and I was able to sleep pretty well. I did not watch any movie completely but slept and ate the whole way. Once I got to Doha, I started missing my children tremendously because we made this trip together April last year. I bought some baklava and a carton of Dunhill cigarettes at Duty free for my brother. I did not charge my phone during Washington,DC- Doha flight which was a big mistake because the iPhone charger did not work with the power outlets at the airport. Everyone seeme...

I can’t believe my last post was in October 2010. It has been almost seven years since I last wrote a blog. I was very busy with my two young kids and a full time job then our move from Tokyo to DC. I also forgot where the blog was hosted. Somehow I stumbled upon this yesterday without having to try passwords. Hooray!!! I love Google and all the linked accounts. I shall write more soon!

Sometime ago I realized that my stamina is really bad. I get tired so easily and I need at least 7 hours of sleep a night. These days, I get less than 7 hours and I work a lot and come home so exhausted. Then I spend another hour or more with the kids who want my attention especially Khin. I love them dearly but I am getting so tired and exhausted. I need to find a way to balance my work and my family life. Balance or find the middle like a good Buddhist would say.

One week after I had the interview for the Community Liaison Office (CLO) Coordinator position, I got the conditional job offer (i.e. I have to pass the security clearance in order to work). So I quickly filled out forms for the clearance and sent them in. It could take two to six months or more if I am unlucky. Well, there is nothing I can do so I will just have to wait. So after the security clearance forms, I took my auditing exam, which was a little difficult to prepare because it was a bit boring. Then yesterday and today, I went to the US Embassy to shadow meetings of a lady who was visiting from Washington, DC. She works in a Family Liaison Office (FLO). She also taked a lot about the CLO program and there was a lot of information to absorb. The good thing was that because we met each other, I would be more likely to contact her if I need help in future. And I got to meet many people in the process, which was what my future boss wanted me to do. The downside of my two days work ...

Searching for a job in a country where you speak the language is time-consuming at best if the economy was good. But, if you were to look for job in the US now, I am sure it is stressful. Looking for a job in Japan is equally stressful because Japanese economy is not doing well. Plus, the inability to conduct business in Japanese, I have very little chance of getting a job here. Don't forget it's financial crisis that caused the downturn, and the ex-Lehman Brothers and Bern Stearns bankers are also searching for jobs in the field that I just started to work in. With the reality in check, I decided to try my luck within the US embassy in Tokyo as an EFM (Eligible Family Member -- DOS has many acronyms and I finally am familiar enough to apply for a job there). There are about 25 positions available to spouses who are under chief-of-mission (ambassador). How many spouses? I don't have the exact numbers but my guesstimate is about 100 or more. Tokyo is a big embassy with many ...