The Road to 40 Day 45/365: Errands, training, and late night talks

Monday was a day for errands that I wanted to finish before picking up Vino because he had goalkeeper training after school.

Che left early for her 7AM flight. Vino asked her to wake him up when she left so she did, but Vino couldn’t get up completely, but did try to respond to what Che was telling him. I had another hour of sleep before the alarm went off, but I snoozed it for five minutes.

30 minutes later, I saw that my phone had a few missed calls from Che as she was trying to wake me up, but my phone was on “do not disturb” until 7AM. It was just enough time though, as I cooked rice when Che left, so I just needed to whip up a quick breakfast and lunch for Vino.

After the blitzkreig of breakfast and preps, I took Vino to school. Luckily, it wasn’t too expensive and difficult to get a ride despite the rain. Bonus is that we weren’t super late to arrive in school.

A couple of kids left their water bottles in Vino’s party, and we also left a couple of gifts so I headed out there first thing after dropping off Vino to school.

Singapore is pretty convenient, with practically everything reachable by public transport if you have time. For context, Vino and I take the cab to school, which would take us about 15 minutes. By public transport, it takes me about 30-45 minutes to reach, depending on the bus timing.

Most things are expensive, that’s true, but if you have the time, the patience, and the energy, it’s easy to not spend too much on anything.

As a Filipino who has been part of the workforce, I traveled via public transport and by car for sub-10 kilometers for an hour or more, so taking public transport alone to anywhere in Singapore is just a regular Monday for me.

Singapore is not quite like Vietnam in the sense that Vietnam has a lot of establishments open at around 9AM, while Singapore waits until 10 or 11AM. With the ride taking an hour, I was around the venue by 10AM, and thankfully, they were already open at the time so I was able to take the things immediately.

I had my laptop with me and could theoretically go to straight to pick Vino up while burning time elsewhere. However, I thought it was quite a long time to wait, so I decided to go home first.

There was an event I had to transcribe at 2PM – the exact time I usually leave the house to pick up Vino. I decided to leave home earlier than usual so that I would be working around the area.

At times, I want to eat a variety of food at the hawker stall nearby, but I always gravitate towards the prata shop. The curry is good, and apparently one of the best. One of Che’s colleagues who lives quite far says her husband would sometimes drive over to Dover to eat at that prata place.

Honestly, it’s all spicy, and it shouldn’t really matter. I’d eat at any clean looking prata place here and would leave satisfied. But I do understand that there are subtle differences in the taste that this particular place offers.

He got his yearbook today, which is nice. Back in Vietnam, it was a cool memory for him with all his classmates writing stuff on his yearbook. This time, he commented that he doesn’t look the same as he did in the class picture.

I guess this year was a quick year of growth for all of them – Vino lost two of his fronth teeth this school year, as did some of his friends.

It’s interesting that he noticed it himself though. He said some of the kids also looked a bit different.

Folded some clothes at home and did my blog, then we proceeded to goalkeeper training.

There’s only two of them this day, as one of the guys went on a holiday. While one-on-one training is cool, having another guy training with him works well for both of them as it gets their competitive juices flowing.

They follow instructions well most of the time, but there are things that they just can’t do yet. Their jumps are not as crisp yet, and their arms can’t stop strong kicks yet. After training, Vino said he felt his wrist snap all the way back in one of the blocks.

I asked him to rotate just his wrists, and he couldn’t do it without his whole arm moving. He was asking me how I did it, and I just don’t have an answer for him. I said maybe he’ll grow into it, maybe his bones are not yet capable of doing it.

I ordered in for a quick dinner for him. I had breakfast and a heavy lunch with the murtabak, so I decided to skip dinner altogether.

A little later, I was able to get up for some late night snacks and some late night catch up with Che. I appreciate that we’re not overly religious but we both understand how God is such a big part of our lives in everything that we do.

I was worried that we would end the night on a low note with what we were talking about, but a couple of random prayers popped up while she was doomscrolling. Her stopping to read it and feeling that they were very timely made me feel at ease because it showed me how her mindset remains the same despite her worries.

While I write random stuff that happens to me on a daily basis, I understand it’s not always interesting and I really don’t care much who reads it. But if there are people who care enough to read long blogs like this at this day and age, I really hope they get to read about how amazing of a person my wife is.

If she was half as talkative as me and would care to write her story, I believe a lot of people will learn a lot and get inspired by her life, motivations, and mindset. I got this personal blog as an outlet and didn’t really have a goal of growing my readership, but if ever I do, it’s only because I want more people to know about Che. 

But of course, I can only tell the stories that I know. 

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