Wednesday thoughts in Singapore

Wednesday thoughts in Singapore

Do you have a problem getting you kids to eat vegetables?

I used to. Not anymore though.

There is probably no greater thrill than being with your son, traveling, experiencing new things, and seeing him enjoy things that also stir your soul.

My youngest son takes after me. He eschews the expensive for the simple, cheap, and ordinary. Like me, we can be done shopping in seven minutes or less. Our shopping esthetics is ridiculously easy to appease. In the vernacular, we are the tiangge habitués.

Oh, the vegetables. When I started taking my kids with me on my trips, I began to open them up to new types of food. They were notoriously boors when it comes to food. On Sundays or on occasions, I’d ask what they’d prefer to eat. They use to enthuse the usual fast food crap that I’d roll my eyes to.

Traveling. As cheap as fastfood is, no one did we go all the way to a foreign land to eat that same old. So I started them out with Mexican before moving on to Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, and Asian. And the floodgates to adventures in new cuisine began. And so did the vegetables. I have no idea if your kid eats cucumbers and other veggies but my youngest son did when he began trying out Vietnamese food. Imagine my kid asking me what kind of vegetable that was and liking it!

Flushed with success, I used my approach to eating vegetables in my getting my kids to read. I have no idea what it is with today’s kids who don’t pick up the newspaper or paperback. They don’t go to the library to research as they rely on wikipedia. For news they go online and the mention of books means Kindle and the sort.

I was disappointed at first that they had no love for comic books or even reading. I tried to force them to no avail. Then one day, they began to pick up some books. Nowadays, no trip abroad is not complete if we don’t pass by Kinokuniya or Borders. They pick up not just graphic novels but even books. My eldest even read his first sports book ever which was John Feinstein’s The Punch.

Speaking of sports, over a mixed lunch of Chinese and Indian food (with veggies) the other day, we talked about those new adidas kicks. How the Ibrahimovic AC Milan jersey at 313 Somerset looked real nice (except that it fetched for a little over US $100). How it was a blast looking at those UFC DVDs. And how Liam Gallagher’s new outfit (the renamed Oasis) Beady Eye had a not so bad debut with Different Gear, Still Speeding. But he prefers heavier stuff. When I say heavy I do mean heavy.

The other night, in this most cosmopolitan city of Singapore (that my son adores), we were watching on the internet a match thousands of miles away. Over in Brazil to be exact. We watched as Santos FC goalkeeper Rogerio took a free kick that veered away from the Corinthians wall before wickedly curving in to go past keeper Julio Cesar. It was an incredible goal. One keeper beating another. Perhaps more importantly it was Rogerio’s 100^th net bender.

Woe to our dismay that Rogerio was shown the yellow card because FIFA dictates that taking off one’s jersey is a cautionable offense. What crap!

We hollered and protested to no avail.

My kid and I root for many similar teams. Although he likes Arsenal first, he also digs Liverpool. And of course, there’s the Ateneo Blue Eagles that our entire family roots for. But we watch just about every club out there save for those two teams from Manchester.

Even as he plays his hand held videos games, once he hears the sound of a match going on (such as last night while watching a DVD of highlights of a previous Liverpool season), his attention is now divided.