SKYNI

Nicke is away in Finland for the entire week and this leaves me home alone with the kids.

The stressful part is to drive them to and from school in the busy peak hour traffic and also parallel park on the narrow street where we live. (Yes, I am still bad at parallel parking after 20 years of driving). The Swedes are very very courteous drivers. It’s amazing that they immediately slow down and let you in when you signal that you want to switch lanes. I try to stay focus by staying on the right side of the road. However, parking is not cheap in Stockholm. It costs SGD 3 per hour between 9 to 5 pm. That is why I insisted that Nicke takes the car to work and pick up the kids instead of leaving the car with me. 🙂

The kids are happily picking sniglar (snails) from their outdoor trips with the school. They show and give them to me everyday when I picked them up from school. I can’t help but think of escargots when they put them in my hands.

Today, while driving the kids home from school, I commented to Linn that her friend’s mom is very pretty. Her surprising answer is that ‘I don’t think so. I am pretty too…just like you!!!’.

My dear Linn, all that sweet talk will not earn you more sweets.

We attended Mika’s and Eleanor’s church wedding last Saturday. It was really beautiful.

As we were leaving, Jon turned to the empty church and asked loudly …

‘Hello! Is there anybody there?’

We can’t help but smile. 🙂

Nicke and I started a course organised by the Autism Society for Small Children last Thursday. The course is conducted for parents who recently received their child’s diagnosis and to help them understand more ASD. It also creates an opportunity for parents to meet and get together for sharing and bonding.

It started out like AA where you introduced yourself and tell them about your child with autism. Some parents broke down as they described their journey so far. I can see the eyes of despair and sadness when they talked about their child. None of us have ‘chosen’ to be in that room. I too have cried buckets in the past 3 years and I still do. I worry incessantly over Jon’s future and how he will be able to look after himself in the future.

Nicke said that we despair because of our shattered dreams for a child. Jon does not have such dreams and maybe, he is just happy in his own ways. So instead of being sad for him, we now just focus on understanding him better and make him happy.

From time to time, I will check with the kids on how they feel about the move to Sweden. Jonathan says he likes ‘Sweden’. But Linn says that she wants to go back to Singapore. When I probe further to find out what exactly she misses, she says that she wants to go home to Anan and she misses him. He is her best friend!!!

So maybe it is just Anan she misses and not Singapore.

Nicke and I have finally started to give candies to the kids. But they only eat candies on Saturdays. This means that they have to be good for the rest of the week to earn their candies for Saturday.

Last night, in an attempt to get the kids to finish their dinner, i made a mistake by saying that the kid who finishes first will get a lollipop. Jon was motivated and he ate up everything on his bowl immediately. Linn did not care and chose not to finish her dinner.

When Jon tried to claim his reward, Linn casually said : ‘Mummy, it’s not Saturday today and so Jonathan cannot get candy’.

!!!!

Ever since I have been here, i have been doing a lot of shopping. The kids need a new wardrobe since their clothes in Singapore consists of largely T-shirt & shorts (Jon) and dresses (Linn). Most of their clothes cannot be worn in Sweden. Well, maybe for summer but their summer is mostly about 18-25 degrees.

The autumn weather has been quite kind to us. It has been about 10-15 degrees everyday. At night, it drops to below 10 degrees. Here’s a joke i heard. A man was asked for his opinion of the swedish weather. He commented that he only experienced 2 weather – the Green winter and the White winter. The green one is alot kinder and prettier.

The kids have been obediently putting on their clothes. We just keep layering them to keep them warm. It is not exactly fun buying all these kid’s summer,autumn,winter clothes as they can only wear them for THAT season and they will outgrow it in the next season. Poor Linn, i see that she will be wearing alot of hand me downs. And with my rigid ‘washing’ schedule in the service apartment, i have to buy even more clothes for now. Fortunately, swedish kids clothes are really colourful and nice.

As for me, that’s a different story.

Thank God for H&M!

Nicke organised our first family weekend trip last weekend to Mariehamn, the largest monolingual swedish municipality in Finland. We took one of those Viking cruise out on Saturday morning and came back on Sunday evening..The 8 hours cruise ride (to and fro) was interesting as most Finns and Swedes do this to get completely slosh on duty free alcohol and they are there mainly for duty free shopping. Our Singapore version is the Star Cruise where there is alcohol, entertainment and gambling.

Of course being responsible adults, Nicke and I hung around in the family restaurant area which has 2 good size playrooms for the kids. The kids had a great time whilst Nicke and I had really good views of the beautiful archipelago.

The city of Mariehamn is dead quiet. I don’t think I can live here. We were there on a Saturday afternoon and the streets were really empty. Maybe the 11,000 inhabitants were out in the bathhouse in Mariebad or at their casinos!

Jon and Linn loved the bathhouse although it was still cold at 22 degrees temperature. A bathhouse is actually like a ‘country club’ with good swimming facilities and nice water slides for the kids. It costs SGD10 per entry. The only thing is that they heat up the water (A LITTLE). The bathhouse was really crowded!

It was a nice getaway and and we really enjoyed it.

Thanks for all your kind comments. We haven’t moved in yet…these were the pictures posted online for the sale of the house. Based on what we saw online, we went to view the house.

Fortunately, it is close to what we saw online but it really isn’t very big inside. We have seen houses that have more deceiving pictures.

Let’s see how the house will look when we move our ‘kids friendly’ ‘furniture into the house.

I conclude that Linn is too young to attend the Chinese school.

We tried her out in another class last Saturday, recommended by the school principal. This is the most basic class available in the school. Some parts of it are ok…for example the teacher will show pictures and tell the kids how to identify the objects in mandarin. But the parts where the kids have to write the a, e, i, o, u is not ok for Linn. They even practice writing the chinese characters such as ‘cow’ and Mama’. The other kids are all above 5 years old.

We initially thought that this is an opportunity for Linn to learn and speak Mandarin with the kids in the school. But the kids speak only Swedish during breaks! We were really hoping that it would be a fun experience like a playgroup with music, dancing, singing and learning Mandarin at the same time. But it is really a classroom environment.

I will have to try harder to keep her interest in the chinese language until she is ready to go for class in 2 years time.

See if you can spot my little girl in this picture.

Maybe, I should send Nicke to attend this class.

For those wondering how i am doing in the kitchen…i don’t claim to be fantastic but i guess we are eating ok. I must admit that it is not so simple cooking in a service apartment kitchen. For example, i have always used a rice cooker to cook rice and never from a pot. Well, there is always a first time for everything.

Thanks to my mother in law who is a ‘kitchen goddess’, she taught me a few easy dishes to feed my kids. We have been eating quite a bit of meatballs, sausages, thai curry, lemon chicken, pork fillet and pasta.

And do i crave for my favourite chai tow kway, laksa, yong tow foo etc..Not all the time but definitely when we are out and the good options we have are only pizza or kebab!

So the next time you tuck into that nice hot steamy bowl of laksa, think of me and really enjoy it!

Jonathan said this as he hugged and kissed me one day. Unprompted.

How wonderful…specially coming from Jonathan.

Nicke is adamant that Linn continues to learn mandarin and we found a chinese school for her. Classes are scheduled every Saturday between 9.30 to 12 pm. We enrolled her in the most basic class for kids.

We tried it out last Saturday thinking that it is a playgroup for kids conducted in Mandarin but turned out it is for kids to learn Hanyu Pinyin. It is taught by a mainland chinese girl and I must say that the class is excellent for those who want to learn Mandarin via the Hanyu Pinyin route. The kids attending are all Chinese above 5 years old and most of them are from mainland China speaking perfect Mandarin (they obviously speak Mandarin at home). Linn is the youngest at 3 years old and amuse herself by repeating the a, e, i, o, u in the different tones. She participated but being the smallest, you can hardly see her sitting behind the table. The teacher thinks she will soon get the hang of it. I can tell that it is difficult for her as she does not know her ABCs and cannot even write. So i guess, we will try to find another more suitable ‘playgroup’ class for her next week.

It is really interesting to see the Chinese community. Whilst the children are having class, parents are invited to participate in the tai ji class. I was more interested in the canteen and there were groups feasting on da pau and dumplings. Maybe we will meet some interesting friends here. I overheard the parents telling the kids that they must pay attention in class as it is very important that they speak Chinese well. China’s economy is their future.

I will be contended if my kids can converse with me and my family in Chinese one day.

The kids started school / childcare on Monday. Actually, we registered them in the school when we first arrived to Stockholm thinking the registration will take some time. We just picked one of the many schools in Taby and thought that we may change it if we find that it is too far from our new house. So I guess we are fortunate that it is only 10 mins away from our new home.

The kids were excited and even Jonathan seemed eager to go to school. We are quite impressed with the school as we only met the school principal on Monday and spoke to her about Jon’s special needs. Today, we met Sabrina, a shadow teacher who will be attached to Jonathan and will spend 100% of her time in the class with him, looking after his needs and ensuring that he is fully engaged in class.

Linn, on the other hand, is just getting to know her classmates and she claims that she can speak swedish already. 🙂

As for me, now that we have confirmed a home in Taby, i can start going to ‘Swedish for Immigrants’. It is starting to be a problem as everything in the swedish…on the roads, in the shops, on your phone, atms, parking ticket booth, application forms. In many ways, I feel both useless and frustrated. I don’t bother to open any letters as i cannot read them. More importantly, the kids cannot go to school and enjoy free childcare unless i am attending a course or working.

So, stay tune..or should I say ‘Hej da’.

After months of searching online and viewing houses, we finally confirmed our new home. It was actually our back-up plan after the earlier 4 options became either unaffordable or not available by 1 Oct. In our opinion, we paid too much for the house but I guess we were worn out by the bidding process and also, very tired from househunting every Sunday.

Our little ‘cottage’ is in Skarpeng, Taby (approximately half an hour away from the city central). We chose Taby because it is known to be a child friendly municipality and more importantly, it has 2 special schools we have identified for Jonathan.

We will move into the new house on 1 Oct. Here is the only picture that we took of the house.

Jonathan likes to climb trees and pick apples. Whilst the adults were not looking, he and his cousins climbed the tree and threw all the apples on the ground.

We like the improvements in Jonathan’s confidence and motor skills.

I really never thought that Househunting can be so stressful.

Nicke and I have been seriously looking for a new home. It has been a month since we arrived at Stockholm and our search for our new home has been only stressful.

It is not difficult to find nice looking houses but it is the bidding that is really difficult. Nice looking houses usually have loads of bidders and the bids can be up to Swedish kroner 1 million more than the seller’s asking price.

The last time, we managed to afford the highest bid for a house we really like but the seller turned us down and went with the second highest because they cannot release their house in October to us. So, we thought we will change our strategy by bidding for a house that has ugly interior, requires 100% makeover but the house is in a great location (next to a lake) and is available immediately. But the bidders went crazy in the last 2 days, we saw the price jumped from 3.495m to 4.25m. We love the house but this would mean we would have no money to hire a contractor to renovate the house. Actually, it was a bad strategy as Swedes love to renovate their houses themselves. The house is a gem to the typical handy swede and with such an excellent location, they will jump at this opportunity.

No wonder my sister in law, Sofia told us that buying a house is such a pain.

Nicke’s mum live in the countryside 2 hours away from Stockholm. The town is called Koping (pronounce Shopping) but there is really not much shopping to do there. 🙂

The kids were having so much fun in Grandma’s camp and really seemed to enjoy the outdoors. They picked and ate wildberries. They looked for various mushrooms in the forest, and played at the playground the entire day. Farmor (Swedish for Grandma) has a rule in her house. Kids are not allowed to be indoors all day. They must go out to play and are only allowed to come indoors for their meals.

It’s great for the kids to experience the country living. Guess who we found in Farmor’s backyard one morning.

With the kids at my mother-in-law’s camp, Nicke suggested that it is a good time to explore the city and know my way around.

So, this is my observation so far.

1) Everything here is in Swedish. (streetsigns, directions, atms, menu…etc).

Everything in the supermarket is in swedish. Just the other day, i bought 2 different fabric softeners when I am supposed to buy washing detergent and fabric softener.

2) All immigrants must sign up for a ‘Learn swedish’ course. But everything (including enrolment brochures, instructions) in the ‘Swedish for Immigrants’ Office is in Swedish! If I know how to read Swedish, I wouldn’t need to take up a course.

3) They have awfully long road names…Kommendorsgatan, Vahalllavagen, Torpangsbacken, Lansenvagen, TeniskaHogskolan..

4) ‘Herr’ refers to Men..

5) Why do Asian supermarkets smell so bad? Honestly,the supermarkets in Singapore do not smell of rotting bamboo shoots.

6) The MRT train ticket comes in a row of 16 stamps. Why does the minimum cost per trip start at 2 stamps?

7) Eating out is expensive. Be prepared to pay Swedish kroner 100 for a simple meal. Pizza is inexpensive and maybe the cheapest. You can get a nice decent pizza or kebab at Swedish Kroner 80+ ( but the coke will cost at least Swedish Kroner 25+) Exchange rate SGD1 = 5 Swedish Kroner

8) The most popular Asian food is Thai and Japanese. You see one in almost every corner in the city.

9) There are no attendants at petrol stations. Everything is DIY.

10) Driving on the ‘right’ side of the road is interesting. But parallel parking is not!

11) Usage of the toilet is not free. It cost 5 Kr (SGD 1) per entry!

12) Everyone (above 10 years old) speaks English! They all learn it in school. They have English programmes on TV all the time!

13) The city is very child friendly! School and childcare is free! If you push a baby pram, you get on the bus free of charge!

14) Swedes are big on recycling. You need to pay for all shopping bags in supermarkets. If you return an empty drink bottle, you get some money back. I was told, rubbish collection is done only once a week!

15) The city sits on 14 islands connected by bridges and there is water everywhere which makes the city very pretty.

16) Swedes love candy. I have never seen so much candy in my life! I think dentistry is a good career option!

It has been good so far learning new things everyday. I even found a boat named Singapore…

Bless my kind mother-in-law. She offered to take the 2 kids for a week in her home in Koping so that I can focus on looking for the house and check out the city. Essentially, get some ‘ME’ time.

It is really sweet of her and I really really appreciate it. I think it is also good because she lives in a house with great child friendly environment and the kids are given more space.

So far, she reported that the kids are doing great at her camp. They are very obedient and listen to whatever she says. They eat only 3 meals a day, eat their food without pushing, don’t give her a hard time when requests for candies and ice cream are turned down, and sleep promptly by themselves at 8.30 pm.

Gotta ask her to pass me some of those magic spells.