Andrea's Rambling Notes - once from Japan, now from Canada

::Andrea's Rambling Notes - once from Japan, now from Canada::

My notes and my memories: sometimes about a mom - sometimes about a wife - sometimes about a woman - sometimes about our life

::Author::

Name::Andrea
From::Small city/town, B.C., Canada
I am a short girl from the west cost of BC, Canada and I am a proud Canadian. I went to Japan in 2000 because my Dad told me I would regret it for the rest of my life if I didn't. He was right. I lived a good life found my husband from the other side of the world and have a beautiful daughter. Basically we lead a pretty normal life filled with normal ups and downs. We both come from different cultures: me Canadian, him Chinese. Living in Japan was a real eye opener about who I am and about the people I associate myself with. I lived and loved in Japan but the time to move on came upon us and in May of 2006 we left and moved to Canada: a huge move for us all. We are now trying to start up again, remodel our lives and create our future for our family. I now feel like a tourist in the country of my birth, my eyes see different and my life will be forever changed. This blog is my notes and observations of our life, our changes, our adventures and new beginnings. Welcome.
View my complete

::Recent Entries::

::Personal Links::

My Japanese Culture Teaching Notes

::My Family's Sites::

Alisha - a site set up by friends and family of my little sis

Phrax - my step-brother

Blue Mountain Stable

::Index::

An Index of past posts - the Japan Years

::Archives::

::Image Event Album::

My Image Event Photo Album

::My FlickR Photos::

www.flickr.com

::Tech Sites::

Tech2all

Blog Flak

::Extra Internet Info::

Canadian Atlas

National Geographic

Wikipedia

World TimesZones - please check this BEFORE calling me!

Currency Converter

eigoNavi - a pretty good language converter

The Samurai Appliance Repair Man - a funny repair site for N

::World News::

Generation Woman

Japan Times

Counter Punch

Japanese General Union - a must! read before working in Japan

::RSS Feed::

Blogarama

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Sunday, January 22, 2006

The Soprano's

Thank you to everyone for leaving their comment below about their vacation destinations. If you haven’t left one yet, please do. It has been most interesting reading everyone’s vacation places. As Turtle found out, he really has been somewhere!!
I found it quite fascinating how much we have all traveled.

‘It’s a small world after allll
It’s a small world after allll
It’s a small world after allll
It’s a small small worlddddddd…’

Ok now that everyone is going to kill me for implanting that hugely annoying tune in their heads I am now going to talk about the Soprano’s.

After reading Granny’s ohh soooo true post about how pathetic some of us have become due to our addiction to our computers, (sigh), Li woke up a little earlier on Sunday and took over baby patrol so that I could take a vacation at the local supermarket (stole that from L’s comment below, giggle)

I bought myself a few of those special vacuum-sucking-space-saver bags and did a bit of packing in the afternoon. The only way I was going to even slightly accomplish any packing was by turning on a movie or show that is connected to the computer. I am truly pathetic. (sigh, sigh)

Well our dear friend Kelly had told Li all about the Soprano’s, so Li went and down loaded a few seasons. I have never seen it and as far as I am aware it is not on Japanese TV. It might be now, but I canceled our satellite subscription due to our ridiculous addiction to the damn computer.
It is highly possible that they are on season ten, but I started right from the very beginning - season one.

I got a ton of packing done and was even more amazed with the special vacuum-sucking-space-saver bags than ever before. Ji helped me out a ton. She thinks the vacuum is the coolest thing around. She also helped me take all of the clothes out of their storage boxes (not in any particular order of course) and did some great impersonations of driving a car while sitting in the box. She also did her share of jumping up and down on the bags to get all of the air out and squashing them as much as possible.

I was truly amazed at how much I packed but how little space I used and I also threw away a large bag of cant-remember-when-we-last-wore-it clothing. As well as some old blankets that I still had, for some strange reason.
I am a pack rat. (sigh)

ANYWAY,
I think I was now onto episode 6 of season one (I only made it to episode 7) when the family is having to deal with the possibility that their son has ADD.

This peaked my interest in the show: I really wanted to know how they handled this.

I have had a bit of experience with other people who have been diagnosed with ADD: some I believe the diagnosis to be true, others I honestly think was just a cope out to not dealing with the real problems at hand.

Recently Blogging Baby dealt with the issue of ADD and Recess time at school: I enjoyed the read and the comments. I also totally agree.

I admit not having first hand experience with ADD, but I know that even though I may be a girl, I was one very active girl as a child. I was having many problems in my first elementary school: fights in the school ground, poor grades, math sucked more that I could possibly emphasis, and not getting along with the teachers.
My parents finally went ape shit and got me transferred to a different school. They later transferred my brother there as well. My sister fortunately never had to deal with them.

This school had a much better sports attitude and seemed to reward active kids more. Lunchtime and recess running laps were rewarded with little stars, and prizes were given to the kids with the most stars. I will admit that I came home with a few running prizes.

Can’t get me to run now unless there is a disaster about to happen. Walking is my preferred speed of choice.

I was a happier kid all around, my grades improved, my self-esteem improved, and I entered Middle school with a considerably better attitude on life.

After watching Soprano’s yesterday I would just like to say that their handling of their kid was, in my opinion, brilliant. I don’t get to say that about many TV shows. Most idealize everything. I think the father had it down perfect:

Fiddling? What constitutes a fiddle!!
Pushing the rules? He is 13!!!
Attention wavers? He is a 13-year-old boy with a hard-on ever 5 minutes!!

Ya, I think that just about summed things right up.

I am not saying that there are not people out there with ADD, because it is an unfortunate truth: I do worry that too many people jump the gun with ADD diagnosis and not work on life style changes first.

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Posted by (Top)Andrea::1/22/2006 :: 6 Comments:

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