The Road to 40 Day 180/365: The Malaysia Trip

For the first time in our lives, it will be Vino who will be away from home while Che and I have to say goodbye.

Dover Court has school residential trips every year to promote independence of the kids. Last school year, they had an overnight camp in school, but Vino wasn’t able to sleep over as we had to fly out the next day.

This year, they were going to Kuala Sedili Besar in Malaysia, which is about a few hours away from Singapore via land travel. It’s going to be a three-day, two-night camp in a glamping resort that the school locked down for the duration of the trip. This means it’s only the kids, the teachers, and camp leaders who will be in the resort.

There were plenty of checklists, guidelines, and briefings prior to this trip to try and assure parents that everything would be fine. However, as a stay-at-home dad, I can’t help but think, overthink, and worry.

I’ve been with Vino since he was born, maybe save for a couple of trips early this year where I was the one who traveled instead of Che. For those two trips, I got Che’s old iPhone just so I could have direct contact with him.

I know that at some point, he’ll have his own life and his own interests, but I feel like it’s not yet now. Still, it’s good for him to have an experience like this and learn how to be independent.

We reached school at around 7am, and there was still plenty of chaos around. We had a last chance to say goodbye to the kids before they went to their respective buses. There were no assigned seats, but I felt like Vino would sit at the back to wait for his other friends who would most likely join them later on.

Che and I waited for his bus to go before leaving for her office. We planned on having breakfast together, but the schedule was too tight as she had an 8:30am meeting.

I went to Vivo to gather ingredients for the night and the next day. While Vino’s trip is a milestone for him, it’s kind of a milestone for us too. After all, it will be the first time that we’ll be away from Vino for two nights, and there’s no way for us to contact him directly.

He has slept over at Ten’s house before, but it’s usually only for a night. And we’re in constant contact with Ten or Vino while he’s away. This time around, we can’t even ask anyone.

I felt that it could be a good chance to have a date-date, so I got surf and turf ready – a ribeye steak and soy-miso salmon. I also got soup and salad on the side, just for a full experience.

Once I got home, I got my giant pau and rested for a bit before trying to clear out our luggage.

The cleaner came shortly after, and to my surprise, Che also arrived. She wasn’t feeling well, so she decided to take her calls at home instead of being an infection risk in the office.

She still had meetings going on, so we tried to let the cleaner do the rooms that were furthest from her to minimize the noise while she had meetings.

After he last meeting and the cleaner had left, I started preparing for dinner while Che tried to sleep with hopes of recovering from the sickness that she felt.

I got canned clam chowder for soup, because I knew she needed something hot. I would usually order mushroom, pumpkin, or French onion, but for Che, it’s usually clam chowder. I thought about other soup options, but we just had kimchi soup and I was using miso for glaze, so the two simple soups I had were not going to work.

It’s just the two of us, so I didn’t want to do too much, just enough to make it kind of a nice date feels.

Unfortunately, she was really feeling under the weather. She feels bad enough to beg off from a workshop she was supposed to attend tomorrow.

We just had a quiet night, as I let her rest while I washed the dishes, and we would binge watch Our Movie on Disney.

Even before we slept, we just kept thinking how Vino was going to be sleeping without us and if he was doing well in the trip. We just have this night and tomorrow night before we find out from him first-hand.