Darwin is One Year Old

"Today is my 111th birthday. 111 years is far too short a time to live among such excellent and admirable Hobbits. I don't know half of you half as well as I should like. And I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve."

The Fellowship of the Ring (1954) by J.R.R. Tolkien

On the 6th of September 2014, Baby Darwin evolved out of infancy into toddlerhood and came to the realisation that people will celebrate the fact the planet he was riding on managed to go around its sun for the 4.54 billionth time and give him free stuff for it. Darwin's mom had organised a joint birthday bash with his milk brother, Keve (which I understand is pronounced like how Ukrainians pronounce Київ, rhyming with "Eve"). Their milk kinship arose from my wife donating gallons of her breast milk to the care and feeding of Keve every time our freezer run out of space for my cocktail ice, because priorities.

Because Keve's actual birth date is on the 8th of September, they split the difference and threw the party on the 7th and everyone for whom the idea of parties with booze, drugs and loud music is a fading distant memory (i.e. parents) were invited. Even Darwin's maternal grandparents and his aunt's entire family flew over to celebrate.

It was Darwin's first party and quite a lot happened, and... you know what? I'll just let the kid tell you about it himself in the picture captions.

Yo, 'sup? Now that my aging, prime-passing, wordy nerd dad is out of the way allow me to intro myself. I am Darwin - yeah, like that place in Australia - but you can call me The Winster or D-boy, like me mates at the daycare do. And I got like everything, man. You can see me chillin' in the picture up top on my brand new 2014 Kiddieland roadster. Check out its hot vroom-vroom flame decals. It is off-da-hook!

I even got me own pool and all the balls I can ever want. I have like ALL THE BALLS, brah.

But it all means shizznit if I ain't got that special someone to share it with, y'know what I'm sayin'? It's like feeling all lonely in a room full of peeps at me own 1st birthday party. Hey, that's deep stuff. Gimme a sec while I tweet it to my followers, mkay?

And then I saw her standing there across the room. And I thought to myself, "Va-va-voom! Who is that gorgeous little lady right there!?" So I got me old man to carry me over to her double-quick. My mom told me that her name is Charlie. Short for Charlotte.

So I went up to Charlie and gave her one of my smooth lines, "Excuse me, are you candy? Because you are making me drool and it ain't 'cause I'm teething."
I waited for a response but she just gave me this gaga gorgeous icy look so I introduced meself, holding my hand out for a dance all gent-like. "The name's Darwin, but you can call me..."
And here's the part where she turned and walked away, saying, "Sorry sugar, I am allergic to baldness."

But The Winster ain't no quitter, ya dig? So I took to the dance floor to show her my moves. If there is one thing I can do, it's working it. Of course, I boogied to my jam, The Bieb's Boyfriend, because I am a baby and I got phooey taste in music.

My hot dancing soon drew the attention of the other chicks in the house. This one lady was all like, "Your moves so hot, Darwin baby! Have all of my balloons!"

"Thanks but no thanks, sweet cheeks," I brushed all of them off. They were like, "Have a heart, lover boy!" and was like, "I ain't got no heart to give 'cause Charlie's got it."

'Sides, I only date gals my age. These girls are totally too old for me and I ain't no cougar-hunter, y'know what I'm sayin'? "Excusez-moi," I bid them and left the scene. I got some major sorrows to drown.

So, there I was trying to drown my sorrows in the pool 'cause my heart's fillin' the diaper, if you catch my drift. I am one year old and still single! Can you believe it, brah? I thought I got everything but I ain't got game. Ain't got hair neither. I just want to splashy-splash into the cold, deep water and end it but my mama's all like nuh-uh.
"You go back in there and blow your candle on your birthday cake, young man." she said. "Then, it's off to bed for you!"

Anyway, I didn't even get to blow the candle out on my own birthday cake because I still haven't learn how to do that without spraying me sa-li-va. Mama and Keve's mama blew it out for us. Keve there in the picture called dibs on the candle and I let him, because he is my milk brah. And like they always say - milk is thicker than water, amirite? Bros before hoes! Blue bibs before pink cribs!

And thus concludes Darwin's saga of love found, lost and clean forgotten by his next bottle feed.

I would like to thank everyone for coming and showering Darwin with more toys than he knows what to do with (though admittedly, he doesn't even know what to do with his two hands on most days). He had so much fun and excitement that he pretty much brought the party back home and terrorised his poor father and mother all night long. At one point, I was forced to stopper his caterwauling by streaming an episode of the 1994 The Tick animated series on YouTube for him (I am not even joking).

Here are some of the other pictures from the birthday celebration:

Darwin running to greet a fashionably late Keve by slapping him in the boobs.

Milk bros fo life!

Darwin and Keve's Olaf-themed birthday cake.

A pair of sisters giving an impromptu performance of Frozen's Let It Go.

Darwin, seemingly already gotten over Charlie. The blue 2-year-old in blue shirt reaching for the plastic cake knife is Darwin's cousin from Penang.

Father of one,
k0k s3n w4i

The Third Hundred Days of Baby Darwin

"When I ask how old your toddler is, I don't need to hear '27 months.' 'He's two' will do just fine. He's not a cheese. And I didn't really care in the first place."

George Carlin

Because trilogies are de rigueur for epic stories, here is the third instalment of Darwin's hundred days - this time spanning the 25th of March to the 2nd of July, 2014 documenting my little pup's growth from 201 days old to the 300th day of his life and following his growth from a drooling, faeculent, flatulent baby into a more mobile, larger and heavier drooling, faeculent, flatulent baby.

He spent most of this period in Penang at his maternal grandparent's place so most of the pictures and videos here were captured using her Samsung Galaxy SIII phone camera, the screen of which he recently cracked. Ain't no Gorilla Glass tough enough for this baby!

Day 202 of life: Look at them thighs.

Day 210 of life: Darwin's first crawl (with actual forward motion) after being on all fours and rocking to-and-fro for the longest time.

Day 211 of life: Darwin drools so much that his mom decided to get him a baby chair cosy (or whatever those things are really called) that covers his immediate surroundings in entirety.

Day 212 of life: Darwin crawled to the glass door and watched as his grandmother shave Isobel.

Day 220 of life: Darwin standing up for the first time while trying to peek at what his grandmother's doing on the laptop.

Day 221 of life: Darwin in a Superman outfit.

Day 221 of life: Superman stealing food from senior citizen.

Day 226 of life: Darwin meets Himmat and Arvinder Singh. He bawled because he is racist like that.

Day 227 of life: Darwin learning how to handle cats from his mother with assistance from Isobel the Ragdoll.

Day 229 of life: Darwin feeling up his first pop-up book, a gorgeous copy of The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, gifted by his mom's buddy, Amy. He is, however, treating it like a scratch-and-sniff and gets upset when no one flips the pages for him.

Day 240 of life: I flew to Penang to visit Darwin. We had lunch at Kim Gary at Queensbay Mall right after I landed.

Day 241 of life: Darwin and I spending some father-son time together at the Gurney Plaza Kim Gary while his mom and my mother-in-law watched The Amazing Spider-Man 2.

Day 241 of life: Cheryl taught Darwin how to swim splash about in the pool.

Day 244 of life: Cheryl using Darwin as an accessory while modelling her old Singapore Airlines uniform. Va va voom!

Day 245 of life: In the bathtub with rubber duckies.

Day 246 of life: Look into my eyes and obey, parent.

Day 251 of life: The first and last time Darwin was photographed putting food into his own mouth on his own. He figured that it is easier to just keep his mouth open until one of his parents shove edibles into it.

Day 254 of life: Darwin being watered by his cousin in the paddling pool to help his sparse peach fuzz grow faster.

Day 258 of life: This is the first time that Darwin was caught cruising on camera while holding on to a couch. His motivation was to look at a smartphone's screen (what else?). You can see him changing the direction of his cruise when the phone was moved.

Day 262 of life: [Narrated by David Attenborough] And here we have a common human infant sleeping in nest of cotton gathered by its mother. We have to be very quiet so as to not startle it from its hibernation. You can see that the little hominin have one thumb planted in its mouth as a simulation of the comforting taste of his mother's nipple...

Day 266 of life: There is no toy quite like a simple box for young children.

Day 273 of life: I don't know how Cheryl did it, but Darwin's trained to open his mouth to let us brush his 4 little front teeth whenever we bring his toothbrush near his mouth.

Day 281 of life: Darwin developed a nasty habit of biting his parents and he would do it so hard that his little jaw will tremble from the exertion. In this video, Cheryl scolds Darwin for being a cannibalistic little jerk and he cried some of the most ridiculous crocodilian tears I have ever seen.

Day 286 of life: The day after he returned to Kuching, we started him in a daycare which he took to surprisingly well. Here he is, in his first day there.

Day 295 of life: Because of the shedding and heat, we shaved our cats. Here is a newly-shorn Sophie trapped in Darwin's newly converted playroom.

Day 300 of life: Another annoying habit Darwin picked up - blowing raspberries, thus turning his drool into projectile weaponry.

In case you missed it the first time, all the pictures in this post have alternate captions in the hover texts which you can reveal by moving your mouse cursor over them and waiting for a beat.



RELATED POST:
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Chief captioner of Darwin's photos,
k0k s3n w4i

The Sins of Our Fathers

"We seldom realize, for example that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society."

Alan Wilson Watts

This is a Father's Day post.

One of the questions that people asked me the most after they found out that I had my first-born son take his mother's surname was, "How did your parents take it?"

That is an important question because I am Chinese and the very core of Chinese culture is the Confucian concept of filial piety. Disobedience to one's parents and ancestry is considered to be one of the most unforgivable sins a Chinese person can commit. Ensuring the continuity of one's family name - the 姓 or surname - is a sacred duty that is entrusted upon all Chinese men. Friends and colleagues asked me about my parents opinion on my son's surname because more than anything, they wanted to know how my family could accept my act of sacrilege.

I have always given vague answers to that question and occasionally, outright evaded it. What I usually say is, "I have discussed it with my parents before Darwin was born. He is my son and that decision was mine to make." That's usually enough to placate most busybodies. It also has the advantage of being absolutely true without actually revealing how my parents reacted to my, how should I phrase it... blood betrayal?

Fact is, that's exactly how it was taken: a betrayal of one's family and blood (never mind the fact that Chinese women are expected to "betray" their "blood" every day). My mother disowned me, said that I did it to hurt her and cut me off from my inheritance. One of my favourite aunts said many harsh things to me over the phone and we have never talked since. My father alternately blamed me, my wife and my wife's family, lashing out indiscriminately like a wounded proud animal, spitting many hate-filled utterances that I would never have imagined could come out of his usually gentle, soft-spoken mouth. He had, in his moment of outrage, called his one and only grandson a bastard.

I don't blame them and I certainly don't blame my father. In many ways, his reaction was understandable. The weight of thousands of years of Chinese tradition compelled him to denounce my action as nothing less than a complete abomination, and it is just as hard for him to put down that cultural burden as it is for a person raised as a Christian to blaspheme in the name of Jesus or a Muslim to eat bacon. From what he said, I gathered that he saw me as a weak, placating man who was either going beyond all reason to please my wife or was somehow bought over by my wife's family via monetary means. In a way, his disappointment in me; his perception of me as an avaricious, unprincipled coward was what cut me the deepest in this entire sorry feud.

That's because everything he accused me of is the opposite of that person who did what I did. I risked being disowned and disinherited for what I believe in. I stood my ground against the monstrous momentum of that thousands of years of Chinese tradition my father and family are yoked to when it crashed headlong into the unyielding, unbreaking backbone of my most cherished principles.

Growing up, I was fed a steady diet of TVB Chinese period dramas that impressed upon me the importance of one's family name which, in many ways, is synonymous with a person's honour. Only males have the exclusive power to pass down the surname and the few rare times the reverse occurred had always been depicted in the context of an impoverished, degenerate man changing his name and marrying into a wealthier, more powerful family which has no sons to pass the family name down. As you can see from my own experience, not much has changed since the Qin dynasty.

This patriarchal practice forms the root of the disproportionate treatment of men and women throughout the annals of Chinese history. Female children, with their inability to continue their family's line and the combined cost of raising them and the cost of dowry when they are married away, are considered to be net losses to a family or "money-losing enterprises", to loosely translate a charming Cantonese idiom. This devaluation of the female gender directly led to one of the darkest elements of Chinese traditions and culture: two thousand years of gendercide committed against the female sex.

Till today, and perhaps aggravated by China's one-child policy and the lower earning power of women, the Chinese people are still killing and aborting female infants to the tune of millions. The sex ratio at birth (SRB) of China in 2005 was recorded at 121 males to 100 females, rising drastically from 106:100 in 1979. By 2020, men are expected to outnumber women by 30 million. This is what our Chinese "culture" and "tradition" of passing down family names exclusively through the male line represent to me. Our Y-chromosomal surnames are the symbolic bloody knives that have killed hundreds of millions of innocent girls over two dozen centuries of deadly sexism.

So tell me: how can I brand these sins of our fathers into the very identity of my innocent baby boy? How can I meekly comply and add to the silent assent for this "traditional" idea that men are better than women, that I am somehow superior to my wife? Am I not a man of principle?

And I assure you that more than anybody else, I have considered the consequences that might be visited on Darwin because of his unconventional name. Will he be teased or even bullied for it? Will people question his legitimacy behind his back or even to his face? Will he hate me for singling him out by giving him his mother's name instead of mine?

A 9-month-old Darwin, wondering how that piece of cardboard would taste like.

I don't have the answers to those question. What I do know is that I do not want him to grow up thinking that men are more important than women. And I certainly do not want him to carry the same two thousand years old cultural burden my father did which resulted in the murder of countless baby girls and made a grandfather call his innocent baby grandson a bastard.

Besides, what the fuck is Chinese culture anyway? Some sinologists have argued that the earliest Chinese people might have even practiced matrilineal naming conventions because when we look at the Chinese character for "surname" (姓) we can see that it is made up of the radicals of woman (女) and born (生). I neither read or write Chinese, nor worship any of my forebears' deities but that is somehow okay? And why are we wearing T-shirts, jeans and Western-style dresses instead of changsans and qípáos?

We have to admit to ourselves that the "Chinese culture" of any century is going to appear strange, offensive and even blasphemous when examined by a Chinese person from a preceding century. That is because culture is a constantly evolving construct and anyone who tries to defend any cultural tradition as the "correct" version is going to fail inevitably before the jackboots of progress.

My parents are not the enforcers of Chinese culture but rather, its victims. Their beliefs which formed the barrier that separated them from getting to know their only grandchild are not their own beliefs, but that of generations past - all of them insolently making little changes to their cultural traditions every step of the way anyway. Now, nine months after Darwin arrived into this world, my mother have since let it go and have chosen to fully embrace him. As for my old man, I texted my him this morning with an awkward, tentative Father's Day wish. I have not given up on him. I once met a beef noodle seller in Subang Jaya who recognised me and told me that my father is one of the nicest, most decent men he knew, and refused to let me pay for my lunch. I know that. Deep inside my father beats the heart of a good man.

"Thank you, son," he replied.

It's a start. Perhaps one day, he might even be proud of what I did.



RELATED POSTS:
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On both sides of Father's Day,
k0k s3n w4i

Darwin Meets Ice-Cream

"Without ice cream, there would be darkness and chaos."

Don Kardong

This is a video of Baby Darwin eating ice-cream at day 203 of life - almost 7 months old.



He had ice-cream before this and knows it blew the taste of everything else we have fed him out of the water. In fact, after his first taste, he freaked out when we wouldn't give him more, something he had never done before. That revealed the dark side of the frozen confectionery to us unsuspecting new parents - it's like crack cocaine for children.

In the video, you can see Darwin keeping his mouth wide open in anticipation of the sweet treat like an overgrown featherless nestling (something I wish he would do for the baby mush we usually feed him), his hands waving about in grabbing readiness. When I finally gave the spoonful to him, you can see him little face frowning from the unexpected brain freeze. Cue laughter from his parents at his expense, because we need to stay sane from raising him somehow.

Brain freeze of ice-cream headaches occur when cold food touches one's roof of mouth (or palate). It causes the capillaries in the area to quickly constrict and dilate again, stimulating the pain receptors nearby which relay the information to the brain via branches of the maxillary nerve, itself a branch of the trigeminal nerve which is responsible for the sensations of our faces (amongst other things). The "headache" or the sensation of your noggin freezing painfully up is actually a referred pain due to most of the head and your palate sharing the same sensory (trigeminal) pathway.



Ice-cream dealer,
k0k s3n w4i

The Second Hundred Days of Baby Darwin

"Love can change a person the way a parent can change a baby - awkwardly, and often with a great deal of mess."

Horseradish (2007) by Lemony Snicket

Consider this a sequel to my previous post, A Hundred Days of Baby Darwin. Yes, you blinked and missed it because my sole progeny have made it to 200 days old last month! He is now a harder, better, faster, stronger baby and is scientifically proven to be 200% better than his closest competitor.

Here are the snapshots (and two short video clips) of him from day 101 to 200.

Day 102 of life: S'up.

Day 107 of life: BLEURGH HEURGH BLAAARGH!

Day 112 of life: Darwin reclining on his fuzziest, warmest pillow.

Day 115 of life: Darwin at a local Toys "R" Us in his brand new perambulator being attacked by a T. rex that Cheryl wouldn't let me buy for him.

 Day 121 of life: Here's a video of Darwin's parents having a laugh at his expense.

Day 123 of life: This bean bag gets a footsie thumbs up from Darwin.

Day 123 of life: Cheryl introducing her Samsung Galaxy S III to Darwin.

Day 125 of life: Darwin celebrating his mama's birthday at Bla Bla Bla. That face needs no caption.

Day 128 of life: A HOT CHICK KISSED ME!!!

Day 135 of life: Darwin eating his first ever Lunar New Year red packet given to him by a bloke dressed like Cai Shen at the Summer Mall.

Day 136 of life: Sitting by a pretty fountain, watching the water dance.

Day 136 of life: Here I am playing Darwin's favourite game. He has the most adorable and infectious laugh.

Day 141 of life: 7.3 kilograms of cute.

Day 145 of life: Sitting in a baby chair for the very first time.

Day 148 of life: Future Coke addict. Like his mom.

Day 148 of life: I think babies just look around a room thinking "What does THAT, THAT and THAT tastes like?!" all the time.

Day 150 of life: "OH NOES HE'S GETTING AWAY!!!" Darwin playing with his cousin.

Day 152 of life: Darwin noticing that he has hands for the first time.

Day 167 of life: This is the face he made after his first ever taste of rice porridge.

Day 168 of life: At less than 6 months and 3 weeks after his first seating in a baby chair, Darwin perfected the Malaysian kopitiam slouch.

Day 168 of life: For his first holiday, Darwin spent a night at a boutique hotel in Penang called Noordin Mews. He was simply fascinated by the dancing dots cast by my laser pointer.

Day 170 of life: Darwin REALLY wanted our makizushi at Minoru.

Day 172 of life: Darwin frenching a Pringles can passionately.

Day 184 of life: WANT.

Day 190 of life: Darwin (sort of) sitting in the driver's seat of our car for the first time. The bib was purely a happy coincidence.

Day 190 of life: Yay, mommy bought a breadmaker! SOOO PSYCHED!

Day 196 of life: SOPHIE!

Day 196 of life: Darwin, seconds away from pulling a handful of fur from Mikey's face.

Day 197 of life: He went through a phase where he would stuff his mouth with a hanky and then wave his arms around like a drunken squid.

Day 198 of life: Darwin experiencing grass for the first time at the Borneo Highlands Resort's Kalimantan border viewpoint.

Day 199 of life: Darwin snarling and flashing his two lower incisors (they first appeared nearly 3 weeks ago).

Just like Darwin's last picture album (and in all the posts I write, really), there are secret captions written in all the photo's hover texts which can be summoned if you just let your mouse cursor linger over them for a sec. So scroll all the way up and start again. Chop chop!



RELATED POST:
A Hundred Days of Baby Darwin
The Third Hundred Days of Baby Darwin



Darwin's fat landlord,
k0k s3n w4i