The Joy of Being a Father

There is a lot which I want to share with you on my fatherhood experience, but there is limited space or time to write them all in my blog. To put it bluntly in a simple phrase: I enjoy the fatherhood! I enjoy every second I spend with my daughter. Nadia is getting bigger now. She is simply adorable and in my opinion fairly easy to manage.

For the latter, the credit goes to Dita. If she had not imposed Nadia's daily routines from her early age, it would not have been this easy. It seems that having a routine for an infant is the key. It also helps them to recognize what to expect on a daily basis. Dita works really hard to keep the same routine for Nadia starting from the wake-up time in the morning, meals, naps, snacks, playing and tv times. It proves to be working incredibly fine. Furthermore, it helps me to understand my tasks as a father and a husband too. Dita and I both also like to learn from the tv program, Supernanny. Their main concept of children management starts from having a routine and a stern discipline to follow it.

A lot of parents were complaining of sleepless nights. Frankly, I have never had such an experience. At 7ish pm, she will walk herself towards her bedroom (Nadia has started sleeping in her room since she was 3 months-old) looking for her dou-dou (dou-dou is a French slang, a nickname for the baby's beloved item, e.g. doll, pillow, etc). For Nadia, her dou-dou is her soft pinky blanket she once received it as her birth gift from The Faisals in Dubai. She just loves it so much, as if her dou-dou was her boyfriend. Without her dou-dou, it will be a struggle to put her to bed. But with her dou-dou around, she goes to sleep in no time and quietly.

She rarely wakes up at night (unless she feels pain, say, for teething or fever). She sleeps all the way through until 6ish am. Needless to say, I have retired my clock alarm since we have Nadia. When she wakes up, she quietly calling "Mamaaaa... mamaaa...." No crying whatsoever (are we not lucky?). Of course, her Mama would not wake up at this point, because in the morning, it's her Papa's duty to take her out of bed and change her nappy, which a task I always look forward to. Why? Because seeing her in the morning in such a cheerful smile gives me some energy to start the day with, even when I am lack of sleep sometimes. It puts a smile on my face whilst kissing her bonjour.

Morning is always the best chance for me to see her, because on the weekdays most of the time I reach home when she is already in bed. My objective is to come home before 7pm once or twice a week, so I can still catch up with her. The funny thing is if I am planning to go home early, I always call home first and ask her to wait and not to go to bed yet. According to Dita, at times, Nadia has already had sleepy eyes whilst waiting for me in the couch. But when I reach home and when I open the door, she gets up from the couch and quickly runs towards the front door to greet me! As if she regained her energy. Of course, her cheerful greeting electrifies me. Instantly, all the tiredness is gone! All the office problems seem to be temporarily erased from my mind. She simply makes my day! When this happens, Dita can only stare in disbelief, because a second ago Nadia was like a kid draining the energy and ready to sleep soon. Now, we find her fully recharged! So, I play with her for a little while or read her bedtime stories until she points to her bedroom for her dou-dou.

Books are her favorite thing! Nadia simply loves them. Now that she starts talking. She picks up words pretty quickly and tries really hard to follow me or Dita when we say a word in English, French or Bahasa. I think she has built her vocabularies significantly for the last couple of months. It's no longer Ma-ma, Pa-pa or dou-dou only. She can correctly indicate the right subject on her book, even when it's a little tiny thing. Last time when we were doing a groccery shopping at a supermarket, she quickly grabbed three colored books in her tiny hands. Of course, we do not always agree to buy all that she wants. So, we paid only for one of them. It turned out that her choice was a very good book for her age. Last month, we bought her her first bible and her first prayer book with a lot of pictures, of course. At least now she recognizes Jesus on those books. The rest will follow. Still, I was wondering from whom she inherits this book habit... maybe from me, but obviously from her Opa Klaas.

During the day, I usually call home from the office to see how things are going. Dita usually gives the phone to Nadia, so she can talk to me first. Hearing her voice simply makes my day, no matter how rough my day seems. She does not talk a sentence, but she has her own language, as if she understood me. However, it's good to hear her say "Hallo... Pa-pa... Bye". She has been able to wave her hands whilst saying "bye" for quite some time. She does it to anyone... in the bus, metro, streets, etc. Sometimes she becomes popular in a public space because of this. Last weekend, we were driving with Nadia sitting in her back seat. Suddenly, there was a group of granny waving towards our car. At first, I thought they were waving to someone in the streets. But then I realized Nadia was waving to them. So cute....

Nadia likes to sing. It's amazing how she hums different children songs in their correct notes. To name the few: Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Can You Do A Kangaroo, Je Fais Pipi, Cicak Cicak di Dinding, Kuu-kuu (refrain from Burung Hantu).... Although she hardly sounds the words, she picks up the melody pretty quickly and repeats it herself. Last month Dita bought her a CD & a DVD of the French children songs. A good collection of tunes. Catchy melodies to follow. A lot new French words to learn. Although, sometimes, the story of the song does not make any sense. One of them goes like this":"Un petit cochon, pendu au plafond, tirez lui le nez, il donnerait du lait, tirez lui la queue, il ponderait des oeufs..." (A little pig, hung on the ceiling, if you pull his nose, he will give you some milk, if you pull his tail, he will give you some eggs). Isn't it a bit sadistic? Hanging a pig on the ceiling? A pig yields the milk and some eggs? No, no, no.... After all, it's only a song. But that makes me think a little. I was trying hard to find an Indonesian children song that makes no sense like that French pig song. I can't find one, so far. Bintang Kecil, Kapal Laut, Kapiten... hhmmm... all seems makes sense.

Dancing is her another favorite thing. You may have seen her dance on youtube in my previous post. Still until now, whenever she hears dance music, her body moves easily, be it at home, in a supermarket, in a shop.... Her favorite dance songs start from Le Titou, Ray of Light (Madonna), Terre Bin (Rabbi) to Horizon Has Been Defeated (Jack Johnson). I mean... any dance tunes will do.

Lastly, you have to see this for yourself.... Since the first time Nadia was introduced to a pencil, she has grabbed it the way the adults do (you know what I mean) and no one taught her how to do it! Some kids grab a pencil from the other tip with all their fingers. Some grab it with their four fingers. But from the beginning Nadia has grabbed it correctly between her thumb and index finger. Amazing! It is also amazing how she loves to draw. For this, without doubt, she inherits it from her Mama. At home, she has her own little IKEA desk. Apart from becoming one of her activities during the day, this drawing thing in most cases also helps to distract her attention, particularly during some inconvenient times, e.g. flight take-off, waiting for the meals at the restaurant, etc.

Do not get wrong, I did not intend to tell you all this to show my daughter off. I do not think Nadia is special, nor is she different from any other kids. She is a kid like the others. But I simply want to share my experience with you on how wonderful it is to be a father and how amazing the God's creatures called children are! If only we, adults, were always that innocent....

Obviously, the past 20 months have been an incredible learning experience for me and, I am sure, for Dita too. Kids like Nadia can teach us a lot in our lives. Nadia has definitely taught different aspects of life for which most people take them for granted. Everyday she teaches me how to love and to be loved.

The Catalogue of Disasters

This morning, as usual, I did my ritual before starting any works: updating myself with the world news. Sadly, today's headline on most of the journals shared the same breaking news: "Garuda Bursts into Flame and Kills ... People".

My heart sank immediately. Never had I felt very disturbed with disastrous news before. This is the 6th disaster that hit the nation within 2.5 months, which means since Dec 30, 2006, we have heard a disaster taking place in Indonesia every 11 days! Gee... we are talking about real disasters here... disasters on which human beings were killed in vain.

The record does not stop there. Since the last tsunami that badly hit Aceh and its surroundings on Dec 26, 2004, there have been 15 disasters altogether, natural and accidental. This gives us one big headline almost every 2 months (53 days to be exact).

For the list of the disasters, you can click here, but they simply forgot to list the recent deadly floods in Jakarta early Feb this year.

Sadly, it's just yesterday when we heard about the 6.3 Ritcher earthquake in West Sumatera that has devastated the people (... and my thoughts and prayer are still for them). And today, we had Garuda on the news.... just moments after we selfishly judged Adam Air or the other budget airliners and said never to fly them again and decisively chose only to fly Garuda for domestic flights thinking they are safer than others, given the few available options.

For the accidents, I am not here to judge anyone. It has been said enough by many people who demanded the accountability of the Ministry of Transportation, the Governor of Jakarta, airline or ferry owners, etc. But will they ever listen to us? No! Will they ever learn? Never! Will they step down? Never ever!

I am just tired of all these.

L'Importance d'Etre Constant (01.03.07)

Last night, I was invited to see an ancient comedy called L'Importance d'Etre Constant (The Importance of Being Ernest) from a British author, Oscar Wilde . Although I did not know much about the play and the author, not to mention the actors, I had been excited to see it and compelled to brave my French. (Needless to say, the play was in French.)

I was the only non-French person in the group (11 of us from the project team). Some offered themselves to be my interpreter. Luckily, hours before the play, I had a chance to read the plot summary in English from Wikipedia. This really helped. At least, I grabbed the general idea of the storyline. The rest was a matter of relying on my listening skills.

I won't write the synopsis of the play here, because you can read it from Wikipedia link above. En general, c'etais une bonne experience de degouter le gout Francais. It was my first time entering a theatre in France. The experience was overwhelming. Although Le Theatre Antoine in Boulevard de Strasbourg was pretty small compared to what I have seen in London, for example, yet the interior still impressed me. Rennaissance style. Looked pretty ancient. Not sure when it was built, but I could imagine the French has successfully preserved one of their lifestyles from generation to generation. Theatre has been part of their lives since God knows when, even last night you could easily spot many youngsters amongst the spectators.

During the play, I of course missed half of the dialogues, particularly when they spoke too fast or when the phrases were too foreign to my ears or too French, to say the least. And of course, there were times when I missed the laughters. Fortunately, in a play like this, the lights are always down. Hence, no one will see you when you are frown, whilst the others laugh out loud. But still, they can hear you laugh when the others not. In this case, they might have thought you were weird or something. Nevertheless, the good thing is I did not miss half of the dialogue, which means I could understand the jokes and laughed when the people laughed, particularly during the last act (of out 3).

Not only was the play funny, but also it was unique in a sense that it was written with a very rich English flavours in it (the setting was in England during the Victoria era), but the French interpretation brilliantly blends the two different poles into one superb script. For us, the spectators, we found it funny whenever the actors were repeatedly saying "bunburying" in a very obvious French accent.

Overall, the night was brilliant. One more enrichment in my life experience.