When he looks at me, it makes my heart sing – I want to see that same glimmer in his eyes even when the time comes that he’s taller than me.

I came across a wonderful article written by a mom: 25 Rules for Moms with Sons

As a new mom to a baby boy, I really appreciated the post and I bawled through it, especially the last one:

25. Be home base
You are home to him. When he learns to walk, he will wobble a few feet away from you and then come back, then wobble away a little farther and then come back. When he tries something new, he will look for your proud smile. When he learns to read, he will repeat the same book to you twenty times in a row, because you’re the only one who will listen that many times. When he plays his sport, he will search for your face in the stands. When he is sick, he will call you. When he really messes up, he will call you. When he is grown and strong and tough and big and he feels like crying, he will come to you; because a man can cry in front of his mother without feeling self-conscious. Even when he grows up and has a new woman in his life and gets a new home, you are still his mother; home base, the ever constant, like the sun. Know that in your heart and everything else will fall into place.

As early as my son’s first six months of life, I know and feel he thinks I am the center of his universe. I enjoy the unconditional love (mostly demonstrated by biting off my face! LOL) and attention he gives, those squeals of excitement when I come home from work, that look of love when I hug and kiss him.

They say there would be rough days with boys, days where they mess and break things but reading the “rules” made me excited and tear up just thinking about all the wonderful adventures and lessons we have in store with the little guy!

Yesterday’s back to work thing was ok. No one jumped in to tell me, “hey, I thought you were away to give birth, how come you still look pregnant?” Hah. The joys of having an all male colleague in the office. There were no nasty comments to welcome me back, only a huge amount of paperwork.

But my work colleagues were kind and understanding enough seeing my anxiety that they told me I can go home early and they wouldn’t tell the boss…

As expected, Benjamin was hysterically crying for so long. He wouldn’t give it up, looking for the real thing. I am so thankful his caretaker never gave up on him and was able to manage a smile (of relief) when I went home during my lunch break! Baby Ben was like a lost puppy who finally found his mother when he saw me. I was totally like a mother dog who found the lost pup too. I couldn’t take him off me even if I needed to so I can eat my lunch. He gave me the most adorable smiles and coos after I fed him.

We took a lot of photos  (he loves seeing himself in the phone camera) – all of which Benjamin looks scared. And clingy. But at least he was calm and I could tell, so happy.

I really really wish I didn’t have to go back to work in the afternoon.

I got bailed out. From heavy work, that is.

When work got in the way too much that I have to do at least one hour of overtime per day (no overtime pay) and even miss my lunch to finish up reports, I thought enough is enough – especially if in the middle of this mess, I see some colleagues opening their Facebook and chatting away the time or practicing their farming skills the whole day.

I took the matter to my boss, the team had a meeting and overall work was distributed – properly, this time! It can’t go on like it did these past few weeks – what for I left Japan, the country of overtimes and “karouji” (death due to fatigue from work)!

So, I could say I’m back in the groove of things and hopefully it will be this way always. It’s not fun to have work overload, I get lost in a time warp and I end up too tired even to drive home from work and feeling without a purpose in life than sit in the office. Living to work and not working to live, which should be.

That said, I’m going to enjoy my day off tomorrow by not getting up at 6 am.

*****

On the other note, I almost missed to win a trip to Australia (free tickets, hotel, city tours in Perth and concert tickets) to see Lady Gaga. The radio had taken finalists all this week and I grabbed the last spot last night. The draw was this morning and I was so nervous, waiting for a phone call (I wasn’t able to do anything else including take breakfast because I was too distracted) but I wasn’t picked – oh well, at least I have a CD and a Lady Gaga monster headphone (whatever that is) to whoop whoop.

I am not that gaga over Gaga but a free trip to Australia is something to get excited about!

They’re doing the contest again next week and you bet, my fingers are ready to dial again!

*****

Congratulations to Jackie who won a copy of the book, Brava, Valentine from Harper Collins! (Sorry this is late – you all know I was dead these past few days…)

Sharjah is one of the seven Emirates that comprise the UAE. Since Dubai has risen to great heights among the seven Emirates, people seem to have little knowledge of Sharjah and have missed to see some of its beauty, thanks to the horrible traffic going into and out of the emirate.

We visited the Sharjah Museum of Islamic Civilization located in an old area of Sharjah. The building was only the second of its kind in the Gulf region, after Sharjah’s “New” or “Central’’ Souq constructed in 1977, to use traditional, Arab-Islamic design elements in its ground-plan and décor.

The building with its impressive architecture and attractive design features was subsequently renovated and reopened in 2008 as the Museum of Islamic Civilization. Its most outstanding feature is its majestic, gilt central dome, decorated on the inside with an intricate mosaic depicting the night sky and the signs of the zodiac.

Here we learned a lot about Islamic culture. My mother became too engrossed with an image of pilgrims doing the Haj in Mecca, Saudi Arabia.

Some photos of what’s inside the building:

Even if we went on a Friday (off day for most), the building was almost empty except for a few staff, us and a couple of tourists.

See? The halls look ghostly.

On the second floor, you can see the beautiful interior of the dome, decorated intricately to depict the night sky with glittering lights to form the zodiac. Sadly, I only brought a 50mm lens with me so it was impossible to get a full  shot of the ceiling.

An old door:

Traditional utensils for Arabic coffee:

There’s some sort of cafe upstairs which wasn’t open. The chairs are exquisite.

Outside the weather was so nice, blue cloudless skies, typical UAE “winter” weather.

BONUS PHOTO: We passed by three men who had just finished with their Friday prayers at the nearby mosque. They didn’t seem to mind a stranger taking their photograph.

If you are living in the UAE, I’d suggest a visit to the museum on Fridays, preferably so you won’t have to endure the horrific traffic between Sharjah and Dubai on other days. However, the museum is only open from 4pm to 8pm on Fridays.

You can view the photo gallery from the main website here.

… and telling me to rent, buy, get hold of it, whatever means I can. I told her I’ll try and on the first day, she never asked me about it. On the second day, she asked me again and days after that.

Today, she’ll be happy because I’m bringing it home. Finally we can have peace in the house and on Friday on our dayoff, we can all stay home and have a nice quite time.

Any idea how many hours it would take to watch all three Indiana Jones movie?

I saw Indy on screen again! I saw Indy on screen again!

We squeezed ourselves into the pack of moviegoers on a Thursday night – somewhat like catching the first available flight in the middle of a holiday season. Friday is dayoff for most working people in Dubai so Thursdays are usually mall shopping and movie flocking days.

I felt we will not be able to get any tickets at first, but so surprised that there were seats left for the four of us (me, M, Pristine and my mom). The movie rating was PG15, meaning the movie is suited for young audiences if they are 15 years old or above. Our babe is just 4.5 years old so they must have assumed she had the mental age of 15 because they still sold the tickets to us. I won’t complain though, I badly wanted to get into that movie house!

Movie will start at 7:30 pm and by 7, we finished eating dinner, unloading our bladder and already snickering in our seats with popcorn in hand. Oh, I know why we got the tickets despite the huge premier night hype – the only seats available are front row seats and we are seated on the 5th row from the screen! The horror. Talk about gigantic people and blasting ear-damaging sound in front of our eyes.

The movie started after 15 minutes of commercials and movie previews! It was not like this when we watched Harry Potter last year! Then everyone was silent when the much awaited movie started. Almost immediately, I can hear cries of babies and there were no babies in the Indy movie scene. I looked around.

There were infants and toddlers inside the movie house!! PG15!? The parents (including myself but Pristine is so mature and can sit down in one full length movie, trust me) must have thought PG15 meant for 15 months ?? I wished the mom took the crying baby out because the wails just kept going louder and louder. Then out of nowhere another baby cried.

All in all, despite some babies crying here and there, we thoroughly enjoyed the movie. My mom could not stop laughing at the Indy jokes, scream during breathtaking scenes – yeah she was screaming with excitement but let’s give her a break, she has not been into a movie house for more than 10 years!

My say of the movie? Despite what the critics say, you go watch it! If you liked the first three Indiana Jones movie, there is absolutely no reason for you to hate this one. In fact, I admire Harrison Ford for putting up with the physically challenging scenes despite his age. I am sure the critics who are much, much younger than him couldn’t even match even half his moves. 

Hee-how, Windows Live Writer rocks! I can actually see my test post reflected in my blog seconds after I hit publish.

What happened is, today is a self-declared holiday. There’s not much work to do in the office since it’s still holiday in Japan so thought it would be better if I use this chance to stay at home and blog help my mother with the chores, and most especially to be with my daughter. Since Pristine is at school and won’t be home until 12:00 noon, I tried to login to my wordpress blog (I couldn’t help but blog while waiting for the laundry to finish!). I entered my username, then password and hit the Login button. Poof! The data I entered just disappeared and I am stucked outside of my blog wall. I could not get in. What the heck!?

I tried like, a bazillion times and nothing happened. I cleared the cache files, deleted the temporary internet files and restarted my system. Nothing.

Can someone tell me what is happening here? I am with Bluehost (my server) and they told me they can login without any problems from their side.

Did I write anything offensive in my previous post that deserved internet censorship? Am I blocked?

So this post is written via Windows Live Writer. I’ve never used live writer before so I don’t know if this post goes through or not so I’ll make this short and sweet.

I am home now. I did go out to go to work and accompanied my mom to the clinic in my office building for her regular check up regarding her hypertension. Since it’s too hot to let her get a cab or a bus, I decided to drive her home – and we all know what happens when you walk right through that front door and on to the bedroom to get a quick hair fix. The whole atmosphere told me it’s time I get a special day off. Just this once. When was the last time I was off from my usual work schedule anyway?

I got this idea from Karin of Heartsongs. Since I randomly browse sites via Stumble Upon, I thought keeping some of the links will be a great reference and a fun way to share to others.  

Kiddie Talk:

My daughter comes home with a new song everyday with some nursery rhymes I don’t know. She teaches me the lyrics, of course, in her own words. But I check out Lyrics for Nursery Rhymes, Children’s Songs and Poems, just to make sure. The last time she sang “Ferry Chaka, ferry chaka” turned out to be Frere Jacques!

Great Photos:

• The Nortern Lights in Iceland
• See this artwork – on a watermelon!

Leisure and Entertainment:

I want this trailer too!

Strange and funny signs for a chuckle.

Cure boredom:

Tired of looking at the same desktop the whole day? Play with a shark with your mouse.

Check your reflexes. This can be a little addicting. You should be fast enough to close the window when your boss comes..

How well do you know your world map?

This is by far the easiest way to get cold cash. If this qualifies as a valid entry which I think it is, then I am so lucky today to get 10 bucks without doing anything! Aside from writing a post which is no big deal! 

The Money Blogger is giving away $10 to whoever blogs about their site and link to them. All you need to do though, is not only blog and link to them but you must also be among the first 10!

Money Blogger is a very new blog (less than a month) about monetizing your blog and ways to effective advertising and traffic.

So hurry, hurry, get those fingers typin’!

UPDATE: I was the 6th person to place the comment on Money Blogger’s blog therefore placed myself in the magic 10. $10 was wired on my Paypal account today!