The Household COO

One of hubby’s and my favourite passtimes before we had Gavin was to head out to the cinemas for a movie.  When I become pregnant, our friends who had a baby before us told us to watch as many movies as possible before I delivered because there would be no more movies for a good long while once the baby was born.

Indeed, I have yet to see a movie in the cinema since I had Gavin.  Restricted to home DVDs on muted volumes and reading subtitles so we wouldn’t disturb the baby, it hasn’t quite had the same effect as watching it in the cinema.  While movies like 27 Dresses and What Happens in Vegas are perfectly watchable on the home TV, you really have to watch something like this on the big screen:

Yup, it’s the Mummy 3.  It’s scheduled for release in January 2008.  Gavin will be two by then so I wonder if Mummy and Daddy will be able to sneak out to enjoy a movie date? 

They say that all the spontaneous spark flies out the window when you have a toddler.  Indeed, all our plans revolve around how the little one will take it.  So how’s this for advance date planning - a movie date seven months in advance? 

I’m probably rather late in posting about this but anyway, here’s the other trailer:

Rob Cohen also has a production blog complete with pictures and various details about the movie.  It looks great, but I’m a little disappointed to see that Rachel Weiss won’t be back to reprise the role of Evelyn.

I love looking at Gavin’s old pictures.  It’s sometimes hard to imagine how little he used to be and how quickly time flies when you’re having fun.

Traditional Chinese families often have a preference for offspring of the male gender. This predilection dates back to a historical era when females who were married off where no longer considered a part of the family. Once married, they became a part of their husband’s family and were cut off completely from their own family. Male offspring, on the other hand, formed the foundation for the next generation within family and hence the reason why they were valued more highly. They were responsible for carry the family name and ensuring the family prevailed (much the same way as a dynasty).

Of course, in this current day and age, such traditions no longer apply. A daughter still remains very much a part of her own family regardless of whether she is married or not. Even so, we still observe the bias for male offspring which has resulted in China’s imbalanced ratio of men to women which is progressively getting worse with their one-child policy.

This bias was still evident up to my parent’s generation. My FIL had a friend whose wife was made to take a cab to the hospital whenever she went into labour because she was carrying a girl. The only time that the husband ever went to the hospital was for the birth of their last child, because she was delivering a son.

Up until recently, I thought that this age-old Chinese bias had ended with the last generation. I know a couple who were living in Sydney. When the wife became pregnant, her hubby automatically assumed she was carrying a boy. He was so insistent that it was a boy that he would always tell her, “Make sure you take care of my son.”

Recently, she had an ultrasound check to determine the sex of her baby and the doctor told her that her baby was a girl. She called the hubby and told him over the phone. He swore in Chinese, “T.. N… Ma!”

Now the most amazing part is this: the hubby is a doctor who spent most of his life growing up in Australia.

Lucky his wife is keen on a girl. Poor dear. This whole thing has made me reassess my own bias for a girl. I have decided not to talk about wanting a girl any more. I don’t want Gavin to feel that his Mummy didn’t want him because he was a boy.