Law, Partially

There are advantages and disadvantages to marrying a foreigner. Chinese New Year brings to mind an advantage and disadvantage. Advantage: there is never any argument over whose family we will spend the most important holidays with: my family for Christmas and Thanksgiving, her family for Chinese New Year. Disadvantage: spending one of these holidays with the family is going to involve a very long trip. In fact, to spend Chinese New Year with Christine's family involves not just a trip to Singapore, but another trip to Malaysia as well. Never mind the difficulty and expense of travelling, however, because our 2018 trip to the former Straits Settlements was very enjoyable. In the kampung It is traditional that a Chinese family would spend Chinese New Year at the husband's parents' home. Christine's husband doesn't have any immediate Chinese family, and, besides, we already spent November and December with his family. Christine grew up spending the holiday wit...

The timing of our Asian trip was meant to correspond with the wedding of Wei Hao, Christine's brother. He is marrying a girl from Penang, Malaysia, who now lives in Singapore. Her family remains in Penang. Hence, last weekend we went to Penang for a wedding, and this weekend there will be another wedding in Singapore. This also means Bobby, not yet 6 months old, now has his third set of passport stamps (entering/exiting Singapore, entering/exiting Malaysia, entering Singapore again). Quick history of Penang Penang, you may recall from when Christine and I visited in 2011, is an island off the west coast of Malaysia, with a city, Georgetown, founded by the British. The early history of Georgetown is similar to that of Singapore: port cities from the English empire, distinctive Straits colonial architecture, majority Chinese, prosperous and modern due their being entrepôts. After Singapore's independence from Malaysia in 1965, however, their trajectories began to diverge. S...