Sox Fans and Swimming Pools

SOX FANS

On Tuesday morning, the Tremblay family went to "new student orientation" at the Singapore American School. They spread it out over a few days and also break the meetings up by grade, so in our group there were about 7 or 8 families with 1st graders who are starting this year.

During the small talk that is inevitable before one of these things, I heard someone on the other side of the room use the word. "Scituate." Situate is a town on the south shore of Massachusetts, about 30 miles from where I grew up. I figured that the number of towns in the world named Scituate was pretty small, so I thought it would be a safe bet to assume that this family was from Massachusetts.

Toward the end of the tour I approached the dad of the family, a guy who was about my age, and asked if he was from Massachusetts too.

Now tell me...if you just happened to be in Singapore, and someone asked if you grew up 30 miles apart from each other on the opposite side of the world, wouldn't you at least pretend to have a small conversation with the guy? No? OK. Apparently, your other option is to mumble something about the Sox being down by a run in the 4th inning and then walk off to talk to your wife.

Our luck making new friends here hasn't been horrible, but it hasn't been great either. I was kind of hoping that when school started, we'd have access to a lot more people who are like us; new American transplants looking to make friends. Hopefully, I just met a standard "Masshole" and we'll have better luck in the future.


SWIMMING POOLS

When Jack went to SAS a few weeks ago for a summer day camp, one of the things he complained about was the water in the pool. He said it tasted so bad that he didn't want to swim in it. Apparently, he disliked it so much that he spent the entire swim time sitting on the edge of the pool. When I pressed him on the issue, he said that the pool was filled with seawater.

I've spent the last few weeks doing two things. Firstly, convincing him that no matter how bad it tastes, he's got to get in for swimming lessons; it's part of the curriculum at school. Second, trying to convince him that it's not seawater. There must have just been a lot of chlorine in the pool that day.

Once again, we come to an occasion where we clearly prove that Matt is an idiot. It is seawater. The 6 year old was right, I was wrong. It seems they don't want the children to be exposed to normal pool chemicals on a regular basis, so they fill the pool with seawater.

No wonder tuition is so high.