Baz the Eagle

I'm reading Stephen Pressfield's new book, The Afghan Campaign. It's about Alexander the Great's military expedition into Afghanistan, following his defeat of Darius in Persia and before his campaign into India. Apparently, the Macedonians nicknamed the Afghans "Baz," so that got me thinking about the etymology of Baz's nickname.

We've always thought of it simply as a derivative short form of Baz's second name, Sebastian, and not coincidentally the nickname also of a well-regarded French director, Baz Luhrmann (Moulin Rouge, among others). Google searches of "Baz" always pulled up Afghan references - apparently there's an Afghan warlord of the same name. But I haven't given it much thought until Pressfield's excellent book.

So after a little more searching, we find that Baz, in Pashtu, means "Eagle" (or "falcon," depending on which source you're reading). Not bad symbology for a nickname. In Pashtu it's written like this: باز

Gramps Nas visited the Khyber Pass about a year ago (the high mountain pass between Afghanistan and Pakistan), and he got the the two boys hats while there, one of which Baz is wearing in the picture above. Another Afghan connection is Malou's cousin-in-law Habib, who's married to Lally and who live in New Jersey. Malou stayed with them before and after Hadrien was born, so a big hello to cousin Ariana and Alex - Ariana is the ancient name for Afghanistan, I recall Habib saying; and Alexandra is the feminine of Alexander.

"I'm loving it!"

Some people have done a study the conclusion of which is that food in a McDonald's wrapper tastes better to kids. Apparently, "even carrots, milk and apple juice tasted better to the kids when they were wrapped in the familiar packaging of the Golden Arches." The article is here:

http://www.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH/diet.fitness/08/06/mcdonalds.preschoolers.ap/index.html

Seems about right. The boys love McDonald's french fries and seem to enjoy it even more when they get to eat the fries in the original packaging. In fact when eating at home Baz requests that we not put the fries into a serving dish, preferring to pick them out of the cardboard sleeve. Hadrien prefers catsup with his fries, but once or twice he's insisted that we pour him the McDonald's catsup out of the little disposable pack, not from the bottle at home.

In Vicky's blog she talks about the "consumerization" of her son Teo, and that is certainly so true. There are so many advertising, trade and commercial messages bombarding the kids, and unless you blindfold and earmuff them, it's inevitable that at least some of it - by sheer repetition - is going to get through. I'm not even talking about TV - the kids are limited to an hour a day, and usually it's an educational DVD or Nick Jr.; I mean the everyday environment. Just on the road to and from home, for example, we pass God-knows-how-many billboards. They're colorful and catchy and because we see them everyday, the kids can't help but read them. Hence Hadrien's "Goodbye, dedduwyte" (for a Nivea anti-cellulite cream) and Baz's "Wucky Me!" (Lucky Me Instant Noodles) and "Come...See Us!" (a Suzuki advertisement).

It's cute to see them do it and I admit that we sometimes encourage them to verbalize the billboard advertisements they're reading. Hey, that's how I learned to read: Dad and Mom heard me say "Alaska" as I was looking at the billboard. I wonder how many kids learned to read on EDSA?

Anyway, back to McDonald's. The boys love fries and view it as treat, so it's a once-a-week thing, meant to reward being good and obedient and not throwing any tantrums. They read the "Love ko 'to" slogan on some of the McDonald's advertisements, so now I'll point to one of them, say "McDonald's ... in the Philippines" and they'll respond with the Philippine slogan. They can do Jollibee also ("Bida ang sarap"). Meantime, "McDonald's ... in America" is "I'm loving it!" (McDonald's has apparently regionalized its advertising), but of course Hadrien's got his own version: "McDonald's ... I"m eating it!"

Cain and Abel

The two boys and I were reading a children's bible story book tonight, and Hadrien focused on the Cain and Abel story. I think what caught his attention was the illustration: Cain as a bearded, large caveman-ish looking fellow, hitting Abel - pictured as a slight, gentle staff-wielding shepherd - with a club worthy of Cro-Magnon man.

He started out by pointing each to Cain and Abel, asking, "Who dat?" I then explained that Cain and Abel were fighting because Cain was jealous of Abel. Baz asked what happened to Cain after he struck Abel ("What happened after Cain hit him?"), and I said that God had gotten very mad at Cain, and had said, "Cain! That was very very bad! You must not do that!" This prompted a discussion about where God was when He was telling Cain off, so I said, "Heaven," which then led to another discussion about where Heaven was ("all around us..."). All this time Hadrien's pointing to the pictures, asking "Who dat?" or, "Is that Keym/Abel?," in his Inquiring-Minds-Want-To-Know! voice.

But ever inquisitive Baz did indeed want to know what happened after God got angry, so I told him that He had sent Cain away. Baz said, "No. He sent Cain to the corner!" Laughter all around.

What appeared to make an impact on Hadrien was when I said that Cain and Abel were brothers. He seemed intrigued by that concept as much as he found it funny (but also probably because he was focused on sound effects - as I was telling the story I made a 'toog' sound to indicate Cain's club hitting Abel).

To Baz, on the other hand, this meant role assignation: he immediately volunteered that he was Cain and that Hadrien was Abel. I shushed him, saying that the story wasn't meant to be made fun of that way, and asked him what the lesson from the story was. His very perceptive reply: "Don't fight."

Tomorrow: the boys deconstruct the Noah's Ark story.

Hadrien's First Movie

We went to see the Disney-Pixar animation film Ratatouille today, at the EDSA Shangri-la cinema. It was Hadrien's first movie, and I'm happy to report that he sat through it (it runs 1:57) except for a 15-minute interval when he insisted on going to the bathroom. The bathroom break - which was despite the fact that he was in diapers - was probably attributable to Kuya Baz having just gone to the bathroom himself. Hadrien looked so cute sitting on the theater chair, barely keeping it from folding up. Baz, meantime, was busy with popcorn and gummi bears, although there was a part with an old lady and a shotgun (she was going after the rats) which he disliked, saying that it was "violent."

The boys are quite the Disney-Pixar fans. Baz's first movie was Cars, last year, followed by Charlotte's Web with Gramps and Gramma. At home the boys enjoy Finding Nemo and like listening to the audio versions of Monsters Inc. and Toy Story. In fact, when Baz was big on Finding Nemo, he'd refer to himself as Nemo; to Hadrien as Marlin (which came out as "Marine"); to me as Bruce the Shark, and to Mommy as Bloat. That was before his Wallace and Grommit phase, with him as Wallace and Hadrien as Grommit - Hadrien appears to have accepted that he's the sidekick.

Ratatouille is about a rat (Remy) who's inspired to become a chef. He arrives in Paris, ends up at the restaurant owned by his cooking idol, Gausteau, and meets Linguini, the restaurant's garbage boy. Remy helps Linguini pass himself off as a chef, thereby earning Linguini the ire of Skinner, Gausteau's former sous chef who now runs the place. The movie's various plot points resolve themselves with the revelation that Linguini is actually Gausteau's illegitimate and unknown son; and Remy's father forgives him for leaving the family to help a human, and with the colony works the kitchen to help Remy save the restaurant from a scathing review by the very same food critic who ruined Gausteau. The movie's title explains itself in that scene with the restaurant critic, an excellent piece of work which wouldn't be out of place in a live action film.

Like any good fable, there's a moral: you can be anything you set out to be, as in this case when Remy pursues his calling to become a chef. You can also read it as, "Become the change you want to see" (Remy's father believes humans and rats will never get along); or "Give credit where credit is due" (when Linguini becomes famous, he has trouble admitting that Remy is behind his rise as a chef).

Good plot and excellent animation - Baz, Hadrien and I each give it a "thumbs up." Baz liked it because it had to do with cooking. Hadrien liked it because now he gets to call himself "Hadatouille"- I swear, he thought this name up himself.

Et tu, Elmo?

Today we learned about a recall issued by Mattel for certain Fisher-Price toys, including Sesame Street and Dora The Explorer licensed toys. Apparently, one of Mattel's Chinese suppliers had applied decorative paint to the toys that "contained excessive amounts of lead."

A list of the toys affected by the recall, and a news article about it, is here: http://www.smdailyjournal.com/article_preview.php?id=78607

Unfortunately we had one of them: Silly Parts Talking Elmo. So this afternoon, he became Wrapped In A Bag And Thrown Away Elmo. I explained to the boys that I had to dispose of Elmo because he had bad paint on him, and they didn't seem to mind. Luckily, I don't recall them ever biting into the toy, as this thing's body is entirely plastic and covered by that leaded paint.

Doing an inventory of all the other plastic/painted toys, it struck me that almost all of them are "Made in China." The boys are big Sesame Street and Dora fans, so there were other toys to go through and compare to Mattel's list.

Ironically, I was reading an article in Fortune magazine a couple of weeks ago about how Mattel is the model for how to do manufacturing in China. By all accounts they're very careful about how they choose their suppliers, as well as their quality controls, so if something like this got past them, what about those less stringent toy manufacturers? Bearing that in mind, Singing Nemo joined Elmo in the disposal bag: this Nemo was by some Chinese-sounding company, hence my refusal to give its plastic orange and white painted body the benefit of lead-free doubt. I'm not being a Mattel apologist here, nor am I exercising a reflex prejudice against Chinese goods. But the litigation-happy environment in the United States has made American companies (rightly) paranoid about safety concerns, something that can't yet be said about those manufacturing on the cheap out there in Guanghzou.

Then again maybe I threw Singing Nemo away because it was just so damn annoying. That toy did one snippet of a song in a high pitched yet pinched, nasal voice, all the while rotating in circles on the floor (it had wheels).

Maybe all this is just an overreaction, and that 0.06% lead content in paint (the standard used by the US Consumer Product Safety Commission) isn't really harmful. Certainly those metal painted toys from our childhood was in the day before all this lead paint/sharp edges/small parts/Not Safe For Children Below 3 consciousness. But as a parent there's no way you take a chance on any of this; so God help Mattel and that Chinese paint supplier, if I ever get them in a room with me.

Toddler Wrestling

Toddler Wrestling from malou.khan and Vimeo.

They say having two boys is a handful. But we're enjoying every minute of it. Just take a look at this video! More videos to come once I download and crop the videos we've taken.

This clip was taken during our trip to Singapore. But we see this scene on a regular basis. It's not just the macho-wrestling that they're into though. They scratch, pinch, pull each other's hair too. Until today, Hadrien is sporting a scar just below is lower lip. Baz got quite a scolding for that. The funny thing though is that when he was sent to the corner, Hadrien decided to join him there. I guess Hadrien realized that he must have done something to so annoy his Kuya!

Fountain Fascination

I was in Rockwell mall today with the two boys, and of course we had to pay a visit to the jumping fountain on the first floor. The circular, colorfully-tiled Rockwell fountain sends out two to four bursts of water into the air, which then come back down with a splash. The kids love watching the water shoot into the air, and because they're Baz and Hadrien, particularly enjoy the anticipation of waiting for the water to burst from the nozzles.

Which reminds me about the boys' fountain fascination, which I attribute to Baz who passed it on to Hadrien. It was certainly encouraged by Gramps Nas and Gramma Cholly, who'd always take Baz to the cascading ring fountain in Greenbelt across from Baz's first favorite restaurant, Sentro 1771 (where he was enough of a regular that the waitresses recognized him and knew that he preferred the table with the banquette on the far end near the bathroom). Another favorite fountain is the circular one in Shangri-la mall, where Baz first coined his "walk around the fountain" song; and the walk-through ones at Greenbelt 3.



The boys make it a point to draw our attention to different fountains on our usual routes: there's the small single fount under the Buendia flyover as we make our right to Buendia; or if we're on the way to the Gramma's condo there are the Manila Pen fountains at the corner of Ayala and Makati Ave. and the black tiled fountains at the Ayala Museum, on Dela Rosa. On the way home it's the fountain in the driveway of Tektite Tower, which apparently never run for more than a few hours a day, hence sparking a usual debate among the brothers about whether it's "on!" or "off!"



We don't have pictures of these fountains unfortunately, but we should get around to capturing them despite the fact that they are everyday. So while we're doing that I've attached pictures from other places (from above: a fountain in Princeton University; with Daddy, at a fountain in a New Jersey mall; and the fountain in front of the National Archives in Washington DC).



So sure, kids love water, after all. Yet it's refreshing that B and H are fascinated by the manipulation of water - shape and form dictated by forces they can't see and perhaps can't yet explain. They enjoy just the watching, and they're willing to sit and observe how water flows and ebbs through the space, sometimes noisily, sometimes not. Very Zen of them.