The holiday was great. Well, really good. I did all the things I wanted to do with the kids - we went to the water park and played, meeting up with some friends from Segamat - the family of one of my students. We went shopping, ate good Western food and really good Chinese food - softshell crab anyone? Then we swam, visited the aquarium in KLCC (Kuala lumpur City Centre) and our accommodation resembled a 5 star hotel, complete with gorgeous swimming pool, gym and luxury apartment with a huge, plasma tv.
It felt good to be away, like everyone else, good to be on holidays, where I didn't have to cook or clean. It was good to see other people, to talk and be appreciated. We went to dinner at ex's relative's, who thinks her son might be autistic. I watched him carefully and fielded the family's questions about what autistic children are generally like. The boy doesn't seem to be obviously autistic, but there are some traits that seem strange - the head banging when someone scolds him, the lining up of people and toys, the lack of functional speech. But, he seems quite happy and social, evidenced by how he greeted his grandparents at the door - he was ecstatically happy to see them. He played normally or so it seemed. In two year olds, there's so much variance, that it's hard to tell if there's really something wrong, so I told them to wait and see and if the strange behaviours get worse, have him assessed. I was a little uncomfortable because I'm not an expert and I'm not trained to assess - just to teach. So I'm sitting on the fence with this one.
What I see as strange behaviours could be just a reaction to the incredible amount of attention this boy gets. At the very least, their are 3 adults catering to him - his mother and her parents. Then when the in-laws come around, that's 5 adults, all focussed on him - and they are- he is the first grandchild and his father has not long died, so there could be some over-compensating going on too. I have a feeling that he doesn't talk because he doesn't need to - everything is given to him before he even knows he wants it and sometimes it's given twice, by different people. He doesn't get a chance to mix with other kids and his mum, who should be the stand out carer, is simply one of a crowd of people who take care of him. So, it's hard to tell.
We visited no less than 4 bookshops - I love them. The kids and I love to hang out in them, perusing books, choosing which ones to buy next to read and which ones to read at the store - you're allowed to do that here. I've found a new author - Torey Hayden - whose chronicled her experiences teaching special ed and disturbed children. Inspiring stuff (and it's not a self-help book). Some of the kids she has reminds me of some of the teenagers I taught a very long time ago with Melba - lots of strange behaviours and sometimes, even stranger parents. I want to absorb her experience and her language when she deals with tricky situations. I want to see how she handles the really hard stuff. For me, it's good reading, I can hardly put it down. And one of the things I thought when I picked up her book was that perhaps one day, I could write a book like hers. One day, maybe.
On Wednesday night, a cousin of ex's took us out for ice-cream. We'd finished eating a fantastically tasty dinner at a place called Marmalade. I had tandoori chicken with briyani rice, my son had spaghetti with chicken, pesto and olives and my daughter had lasagne. They both made impressive dents in their food. After that, we met up with ex's cousin who informed us their were two places to eat ice-cream. The first one had a nice assortment of gelato icecream but at the tables they had these smoking pipes - they looked like bongs but weren't and because I don't smoke, I couldn't even tell you about it properly, but it seemed a strange combination - ice-cream and bong-like things. I didn't want my kids sitting there, so we went to the next venue, Baskin Robbins. Yummo. Much better and no smoking paraphernalia.
We were having a fab time, when ex rang and said he'd pick us up the following day. I queried him because he'd told me he'd pick us up Friday. No he said, it was the 11th and tomorrow was the 11th. Ok then, even though I swore that I'd heard him say 'see you Friday' - there wasn't much I could do about it. The kids were terribly disappointed, even though we'd already been there 5 days. They wanted another full day. No can do, we had to pack up. No matter, we still did most of what we wanted to do. The next day we went to "the Curve" shopping centre, saw our first 3D movie and managed another two bookshops.
All in all, a good holiday. Today we did a lot of stuff too and had a really huge storm, but I've got to go to sleep, so I'll tell you about that tomorrow.
'night.
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