Diary of an Expat in Singapore (25 page)

Lately, it seems like many of my friends are having family come to visit them from abroad. When that happens I usually get
visitor envy
(a common complaint among expats who live halfway across the world from their loved ones). You get to hear all about the delicious champagne brunches they’re planning or the family villas in Thailand they are renting. But I shouldn’t complain too much. I’ve gotten to see my entire family this year. Even Julian, my concert pianist bro all the way from New York City! When he comes to Singapore, even the barista at our local coffee shop gets excited and hand-crafts cappuccinos for us. It’s like everybody is waiting for the virtuoso performances he gives. At the last open-air gig he did at the Botanic Gardens (the Central Park of Singapore), the audience kept asking for encores and not even the sudden rain made people leave… beautiful music or impossibility of getting a taxi, who’s to say?

Your son no longer wants to go to school.

Alexander didn’t want to go to school today. Actually it was the first time ever. He was scared about not remembering a Chinese poem he needed to recite by heart. Seems the teacher yelled at him yesterday, threatened to cane him, and had him stand outside the door for the duration of the class. Did I mention my first-born can be melodramatic at times? Probably the fact that he was more interested in reading ‘Eragon’ yesterday than doing his Chinese homework had something to do with it. Having gone through the Italian school system as a kid, I wasn’t overly sympathetic and just answered: “But did you
see
a cane?”

By this morning he had learned all of it. I was quite impressed and asked him what it meant. “Not really sure… something about the moon?”

Over the weekend, he got me quite angry, so much that I told him I would be looking up boarding schools on the computer. The fact that a few moments later Eliot wondered out loud, “Is Alezander going to an orphanage?” didn’t really help.

But later on, he bought me some flowers. “Not purple even though they are your favourites because they were too expensive.” He even bought his sister some princess stickers with his tooth fairy money. Still, boarding school is always an option.

Your daughter doesn’t like characters.

There are, after all,
only
80,000. Now that Eliot no longer gets to use glitter glue to trace the character for the word
bunny
, things have gotten a lot less fun in Chinese class. Spelling tests, short essays… learning characters has lost much of its allure. You may have studied Spanish in college or spent your summer in Paris learning French… not the same thing.

She no longer sings the cute songs in Mandarin she sang last year.

All those songs she sang that impressed your friends and relatives back home? Nada. Kiss them goodbye. They’ve exited the premises. And way before fairies and unicorns, I might add.

She cries because she doesn’t understand what’s going on in class.

Well, they do speak Chinese after all. On the plus side, she still hugs her
laoshi
on the way into class. On the downside, she doesn’t hug her on the way out. This could be a telling sign.

You dread asking your kids if they have any Chinese homework.

It’s 5 pm, they’ve had their snack, they’ve even watched their favourite show on TV. They don’t have math, they finished English… maybe they have Chinese? You know you can’t help them even if they do. Suddenly, you become one of those moms who doesn’t believe in homework. And not because you don’t want your child to do homework but because you don’t want to be the one who makes them do it. Life is short and you’re not getting any younger.

You find out all the kids in your daughter’s class have a Chinese tutor.

It’s only taken you one whole semester but at last you’ve found out the dirty little secret of the first grade: every single person has private tuition in Chinese. After your
I knew it
moment, you proceed to book a tutor. Tip: Do not employ the same
laoshi
who is already teaching her at school. This idea, which at first might appear genius, will backfire if your child takes a sudden dislike to the tutoring and has a new reason for not liking Chinese and for not wanting to go to school.

She looks at you and says: “I wish you were Chinese.” She is not joking.

There will come a moment in the life of every expat kid forced to study Mandarin when they will turn to their parent and with eyes full of longing utter the words that parent has been waiting her whole life to hear: “I wish you were Chinese.”

“You don’t have to go to school if you don’t want to.”

It’s Mother’s Day and my own mother is far away. And sometimes it’s the thing I hate most about living in Singapore. Wish we could have a cup of coffee together and go look for houses that I can’t afford. Ancient-looking houses in the
centro storico
(historical part) of Verona, with frescoes, Venetian marbled floors, and a view. The good old days.

True, she wasn’t always great at boosting my self-confidence: “You’re going to be beautiful when you’re 16… What’s that you say? You
are
16. Well, that’s strange. Then 17, you’ll see…”