A Day at the Races

Call me strange, but at age forty-mumble, I’ve never been to the races. Last Saturday I had my first experience of the thrill of the horses at the Pacific Jewellers Wellington Cup. Of course, to go to one of the biggest race days of the year, it’s almost expected, nay demanded that women dress like flocks of flashy birds of paradise (complete with feathery fascinators). Considering there was only one dress residing in my wardrobe, I figured that since we were going on the invitation of my husband’s new employer, it was time for shopping trip. If you read my last blog about Bangkok, you’ll have gathered my feelings on the matter of retail therapy. By the time I’d tried on at least ten dresses I was a basket case – especially when I ended up buying the first dress I tried on. Isn’t that often the way? So, a flash dress purchased and the makings of a fascinator to which I utilized my limited craft skills in applying fiddly feathers to a tiny woven circle with the gluggy mess of a glue gun …and I was ready to go.

Wellington on a summer’s day can’t be beat, and Cup Day was no exception – it was a purler of a day. My husband’s company had an amazing marque right by the track finish line and we were spoilt rotten with the delicious buffet lunch. The real buzz was seeing so many gorgeous thoroughbred racehorses in one area – oh, how I wanted a pretty dappled grey one (even though he came nearly last in his race). We had a small flutter on the horses – with my husband’s picks coming in the top 3, and sadly Savour the Moment, Lovetessa, and Hell Yeah (picked for their cool names, of course!) coming in waaaay at the back of the thundering herd. But aren’t they magnificent to watch? And so exciting to see them galloping toward the finish line – I couldn’t help but get caught up in the excitement of the crowd. However, the last race I bet on a lovely dappled grey mare called London Dream, and unbelievably, the wee beauty won – and I was $60 richer! Luckily I don’t have a gambler’s heart and I quickly tucked my notes into my bag to shout hubby and I to the ‘Les Miserables’ movie Saturday night!

Funniest experience at the races? Watching made-up-to-the-max young ladies strut on their 6 inch high heels out of the racecourse gates, only to quickly remove them to stagger off barefoot, bemoaning their aching feet. Two words for you girls: Kitten heels.

Tracey

What I’m reading this week: You don’t want to know – Lisa Jackson. First book I’ve read of Ms. Jackson and I think I’ll be going back for more. So suspenseful, it’s hard to read more than a few chapters at a time!

What I’m watching this week: Grey’s Anatomy. Next week is the season finale and I have a really, really bad feeling after watching the trailer for it. There’ll be hell to pay if they kill off any of my favourite characters. Just saying.

This week’s favorite quote: The profession of book writing makes horse racing seem like a solid, stable business. John Steinbeck.

Hot guy of the week: Personally, I don’t find jockey’s sexy – but cowboys? Now that’s a whole different matter. Like they say, “Save a horse, ride a cowboy…”

Friday I-Wish-I-Were-There (Bangkok, Thailand) Part 1

Welcome to my Friday I-Wish-I-Were-There Blog.
So, a little fib on the title of today’s blog – technically I don’t wish I was there (as I'm soooo happy to be back home in New Zealand), but I’d like to tell you a little about my experiences in the city of Bangkok. Because we spent two weeks in this crazy city I’ll spread this blog over two weeks.

Things I loved:

Tiger Temple in Kanchanaburi, Thailand. We did a full day tour up to the Tiger Temple (although we were only at the temple for approximately 3 hours) and it was the highlight of the trip for me. We got to bottle feed tiger cubs who were the just cutest thing ever. Ever. I felt so privileged to even be allowed to touch one of these gorgeous animals, let alone stroke its ears, play with its tail, gauge the size of its paw in my palm! The big cats appeared to be very well looked after and we could tell the volunteer staff really cared about these animals. We had a go at washing a full grown tiger and I even fed him a cooked chicken. Later we had a photo with an adult male tiger’s head on my lap (and boy was it heavy holding his jaw up!) and we watched these incredible creatures frolic and play in the water. We also got to ride on an elephant's back (my husband even got to take a turn at being a Mahout) and walk on the 'Bridge over the River Kwai, which was a sobering experience.

Chatuchak Market. I had a love/hate relationship with this market. While it was fabulous seeing all the different things for sale and being able to pick up gifts for my kids relatively cheaply, it saddened me to see animals in tiny cages sweltering in the heat. Evidently over 100,000 people visit the market each weekend, and the weekend we were there, it felt like it.

The people. Thailand really is the ‘Land of Smiles’. Everyone we met was very polite and nobody ever seemed to lose their cool like you see in Western countries. One of the most interesting conversations I had was with our Tiger Temple tour guide, who told me quite candidly what life is like for a lot of Thai women. Damn near broke my heart.

Lumphini Park. How can you not love a place that blocks out the roar of traffic in Bangkok, has pedal boats shaped like swans and huge monitor lizards roaming free? Fabulous. 

Things I didn’t love quite so much.

The heat. Oh my goodness, it was hot. Too much for this Kiwi lady who is used to temperatures in the early 20’s – Bangkok was in the mid 30’s! God bless air conditioners is all I can say – and I’ll never again complain about Wellington’s cool breeze!

The culture shock. I got used to it once I’d been there a week, but to start with the smog, smells, noise and craziness of Bangkok overwhelmed me. But I still never got used to seeing babies and toddlers jammed on bikes and mopeds (without helmets) weaving between fast-moving traffic - it horrified me. And while it may not be politically correct to say so, I found it very hard seeing the poverty and misery of the city's many beggars and homeless people.

The language barrier. I may not have loved not being able to communicate easily, but boy, was it funny some days! Ever tried to mime out ‘I’m missing a pair of shorts and pants’ to a sweet little old Thai lady laundress who doesn’t speak English? No? It’s great fun! (I admit I cheated in the end and got our hotel receptionist to write it down in Thai so she could understand).

Shopping. You think I'm kidding, right? Nope. After two weeks in Bangkok being crowded by makeshift stalls on the side walk that sold everything from t-shirts to deep-fried insects, or swallowed up by giant multi-levelled shopping malls (at least they were air-conditioned), I am totally done shopping for the next year. Or maybe two.

Next week I’ll cover a few more things I loved/didn’t love so much. And that’s the thing I enjoy about travel – it’s discovering some wonderful places and things, and learning to deal with and laugh about the things that perhaps weren’t so great. It’s all experience – and as they say in New Zealand, “It’s all good.”

Tracey.

Worry (What is it good for?)

Hello, my name is Tracey Alvarez and I am a worrier. It’s been less than eight hours since my last worry – ‘What will happen in a couple of years if my teenage son comes home drunk for the first time? Maybe he’ll choke on his own vomit – which means I’d better get used to staying up all night watching him with a flashlight. So since it’s 1.30am, now would be a good time to get into the practice of not falling asleep…’—And surprise, surprise, I stayed away for another hour or so while these sort of things bounced around my brain like ping-pong balls. Actually, they were more like golf balls, because these kinds of worries hurt.

I don’t mean to worry, and I know from past experience most of the things I worry about don’t even happen. For example, our recent trip to Thailand. The purpose of the trip was for my husband to have LASIK surgery on his eyes – he hates wearing glasses, mainly because he’s one of those people who are forever taking them off his face and misplacing them. I had half convinced myself that he’d be one of the teeny-tiny percentage of patients where everything that can go wrong, does go wrong. But he waltzed out of the surgery not even requiring a pandadol (of which I had packed boxes and boxes of the stuff in our luggage – as well as neruophen, aloe gel, diarrhoea pills, itchy cream, bandages, safety pins – you get the idea) and my worries of leading a bandaged blind man through the streets of Bangkok never came to fruition. Dear husband rolled his eyes and couldn’t resist an ‘I told you so’. He could see quite well, thank you very much, and didn’t need me or my makeshift pharmacy.

I blame the worrying partly on my writer’s ability to see a myriad of possibilities for every situation, and being somewhat of a natural pessimist, the bad stuff that could happen always rises to mind first. Common sense does temper my wilder worries, but it’s the everyday ones that creep up and latch on so subtly with little sharp teeth that I don’t realize they’re dragging me down until I feel the heaviness in my chest.

Sometimes I use a little trick on my brain like saying ‘You don’t need to worry about your upcoming visit to the dentist as it’s a whole month away. You can worry about it in three and a half weeks’ time.’ Sometimes I just tell myself ‘For Pete’s sake, don’t sweat the small stuff.’ I remember all the times people said to me when I had my first child, “Don’t worry about the sleepless nights and the baby vomit on your shoulder, this phase will pass.” And it did. Baby number one turned sixteen yesterday and not a drop of vomit stains my shoulder, though that may change when he hits eighteen. The point is, all those things I worried about when he was little never happened. He never got whooping cough, he eventually got potty-trained, he did learn to read (so thank goodness my son doesn’t bother reading these blogs), and he outgrew carting around his stuffed-toy shark. I could’ve saved myself a few grey hairs.

What’s the 12-step program to stop worrying? I have no idea. But it’s something I’ll be working on during 2013. Yeah, I remembered it was on the list of 'personal guidelines' mentioned in my last blog! Maybe I need a new mantra - change up the lyrics of the 70's hit to 'Worry, what is it good for? Absolutely nothin' - say it again!' I could just see myself bopping along, muttering that out loud, but then my family might start worrying...

Tracey

What I’m reading this week: Getting Lucky – Susan Anderson. Who doesn’t love a book with a road trip, a hot hero and a ransom note?!

What I’m watching this week: The Big Bang Theory. If ever there was an antidote to worry, this sitcom is it – what a crack-up.

This week’s favorite quote: “Sorrow looks back, Worry looks around, Faith looks up” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Hot guy of the week: Johnny Galecki from ‘The Big Bang Theory’.

Happy New Year - Highlights and Resolutions.

Happy New Year everyone! Just a quick blog today, as my husband and I are off to Bangkok for two weeks today (with no kids, wheee!) so I’ll be having a holiday from blogging also.

2012 has been a year of highs and lows for me, the biggest low in losing my mother to a catastrophic stroke in February. But even through that I have learned a lot this year, and had many positive experiences also. I found out just how much my friends and family love me by their incredible support over such a difficult time—and even the love and care from neighbours and my church community blew me away. 

I had a wonderful time at the Romance Writers of NZ conference in August, and of course winning the amazing prize of seeing ‘Mary Poppins’ the musical in Auckland with my daughter. Then there was Bear Grylls live in November, and at the very beginning of 2012 my family and I got to spend time with relatives in Canada and the U.S.A. 

Those were some of the big things of 2012, but it’s the little things that I am grateful for too. Seeing my daughter receive a certificate of merit at her school prizegiving and watching her skill on the piano and recorder increase. Meeting my son’s teachers at school who describe him as an incredibly well-mannered super young man and every now and then having an almost normal conversation with him (he's 15, and if you have teenage boys you'll know what I mean...). Laughing with my husband on our 17th wedding anniversary as we try to decided what to eat on our first visit to a Thai restaurant (yeah, I know, how are we going to cope with two weeks in Bangkok!). Having a regular coffee morning with a friend after we pretend to exercise, meeting up for a lunch date with my BFF in Kaitaia to try and cram a year's worth of catching up into two hours (I nearly lost my voice!), and boogying my butt off with my daughter to the soundtrack of Abba on the wii (and doesn’t she hate it when I beat her score!).

New Year’s resolutions? Honestly, does anybody actually stick to these longer than a week? I’ve given up trying to, even though I’m the type of person who loves making lists and checking things off. So instead of resolutions, I’ve come up with a little list of personal guidelines to 2013:

Be kinder to others and to myself.
Laugh more.
Write more.
Love more.
Give more.
Appreciate more.
Risk more.
And,
Worry less.

I’d love to hear some of your New Year’s resolutions.
Wishing you all the best for 2013,

Tracey.

What I’m reading this week: Rescue my Heart – Jill Shalvis. Adam Connolly is one of the hottest heroes ever.

What I’m watching this week: The Hobbit. So proud of our kiwi director Peter Jackson!

This week’s favorite quote: (It’s a long one, but very, very worthwhile): “I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You're doing things you've never done before, and more importantly, you're Doing Something. So that's my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody's ever made before. Don't freeze, don't stop, don't worry that it isn't good enough, or it isn't perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life. Whatever it is you're scared of doing, Do it. Make your mistakes, next year and forever.” ― Neil Gaiman

Hot guy of the week: Richard Armitage from ‘The Hobbit’ – minus all the hair. He’s single-handedly made dwarves sexy…