The Road to 40 Day 162/365: (Un)Packing Day

We are back in Singapore, but it was time for us to prepare for a planned trip to Korea, which means more packing after we unpack.

We came home late the night before, and I barely had sleep. It was not by choice, I just couldn’t find my spot to sleep and ended up sleeping past 3am. However, I woke up at around 7am and thought I could maybe play basketball.

Being an almost 40-year-old, I decided not to push through playing basketball considering the lack of sleep.

I had an appointment with a repair shop at 11:30am to bring Vino’s tablet and hoping they could fix it. Unfortunately, I was told that they can’t fix it. They can, but they wouldn’t want it to be brought back with the same issue as before. It may cost around 400-500sgd to get it fixed, but there’s no guarantee that we won’t return for other issues.

While I thought that Vino took all the news well, he apparently did not. While I told Che about it on the phone, Vino was very much devastated and even tried hitting himself out of frustration. I guess he was holding on to the slight glimmer of hope that it will be fixed, so he was kinda fine with it being broken.

He has calmed down when I came home, and Che only revealed this to me after she read my blog. I had to talk to Vino about it later on.

I asked him if he knew how important he was to us, and how I would get angry anytime someone hurts him. He is the most precious for both Che and I, so I don’t want anyone hurting him in any way, including himself. Che already talked to him about it earlier.

I feel like this should be something that must be nipped at the bud. There are plenty of reports of teens taking their lives because of pressure or depression, so I’m scared that self-harm is a common occurence in today’s youth.

He knows that it was his fault and he can’t blame anyone for his tablet getting broken, and I feel like it was his way of punishing himself for what happened. I want him to understand that he has more value than any worldly possession, so while I understand it was expensive and he cared for it a lot, it was not worth hurting himself.

He does have an extra tablet that we use for school. It’s an older model that Che bought using her reward points from the office. They have a system where their superiors or colleagues can send kudos points to them for a job well done. They can then accumulate these points and use them for a plethora of items available in their system.

She had plenty of points, so we used that to get a tablet that Vino would use exclusively for school. Instead of buying a new tablet, I set up his school tablet to have the games he plays. I still have limits for his apps though, so I think I can still control it a bit.

Che spent the rest of the day collecting our clothes that we plan to use for Korea. She’s more efficient if I get out of the way and just do requests she may have. I played with Vino for a bit, but also prepared ribs for dinner.

We got a couple of ribs last time, and while I already cooked one for when Steph and James came by, we still had another one. With another trip coming up, we were looking to empty out our fridge before leaving.

I had this recipe for quite a while now, and while the ingredients are easy enough to put together, the cook time greatly affects how it will come out.

I took this one out after about three hours, but Che said it still wasn’t soft enough. I broiled it more to get it more tender.

There’s still a lot of things to be done for preps, but all those will be problems that tomorrow us will have to deal with.