Tag Archives: MIL

Looking back at 2016

Once again a new year has begun and I am really looking forward to it. This is not only because we are expecting in May a little sibling for Nathan but because the past two years were kind of – meh. For one there was the incredible terrible year of 2015 in which I got ill and then 2016 when recovery started.

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I deem this year unworthy

Though things got better last year it was a really strange year as well. Not that anything bad happened during that year to us, in fact things were going rather smooth in total especially with our business. I’d say all the negative news during that year were putting everything and everyone a bit down. At points my wife was just too scared to fly as she expected terrorist attacks at the airport and we did not visit the local Christmas Market due to the attack in Berlin in early December. Perhaps also having MIL for three months with us put a dark stain on the year but then again it would have not worked without her here at all with us being busy with our busy business and Nathan not having any spot at the Kindergarten (on the waiting list now for nearly three years…).

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I have a bucket

Not all was bad about 2016 especially as we were able to do some travelling. I think it was actually the year we travelled the most ever. First we had a lovely trip to Cologne in the end of March together with my parents and shortly thereafter we went together with my father to China for nearly three weeks. There we had also the memorable crazy city tour, an experience I shall never forget and of course the weird countryside experience for the rich. During the summer months we drove to Dresden together with MIL to visit some of my old friends and experience that lovely city with its surroundings. Just one week later we flew to Finland to visit my parent’s cottage and then stayed with some of my wife’s Chinese friends in Helsinki for a few days. I’d say that is pretty impressive when it comes to travelling for such lazy people as us and especially as there was still one more trip in autumn to Prague!

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Busy Nanjing Lu in Shanghai

In retrospect it appears that 2016 was actually rather good! It always depends on the perspective in the end. Though 2016 was after all pretty good I do hope for a better 2017 with less madness in this world. With this first post in the new year I also want to start blogging more regularly again, somehow I had always some excuses in the past half-year to skip one or two posts a month. My plan for now is to stick with the basic Sunday posts and hopefully being able to throw here and there some mid-week posts again about food, hobbies or actually some videos I am supposed to have uploaded already a year ago on my channel.

How was your year 2016 and what do you have planned for this year?

Be sure to follow me also on Facebook and on Twitter as I will post there occasionally pictures which do not find their way into my blog posts. Furthermore I also have a YouTube Channel in which some videos might pop up from time to time

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Family 4.0 in progress

Next year will be again a special year for us. In previous blog posts I mentioned already that we won’t be going for holidays in 2017 and we got a very certain reason for it. No it is not because our business is taking too much time but something more important. In May of next year #Nathancuty will be a big brother! We wanted already for longer time a second child but always things got in between such me having a very bad health condition for nearly the entire year of 2015 and my wife having lots of dental troubles (no good when being pregnant!).

As you might imagine my dear mother-in-law has been pestering us for a second grandchild ever since Nathan was born. Sometimes she would even ask my wife several times a day something along these lines “You sure that you are not pregnant? You got fatter!”. MIL is also a person who believes all kinds of nonsense, especially when it is some viral message on WeChat, because you know whatever is posted there must be true. Because of that she did not believe even that Nathan would be a boy untill he was born because of some kind of calendar in a WeChat Group stating that the child would be a girl…

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Yes, back in 2010 we did this stupid MorphThing as well…

My wife is now 16 weeks pregnant and we do not know the gender yet as the baby is not really cooperating during the ultra sound check-ups. This also reminds me that the whole pregnancy situation in Germany is very much different from our experience in Finland but more about that in another post in the next months. When my wife told her mother that she is pregnant MIL was immediately like “No no, can’t be a girl according to the calendar”. That’s it, her comment at first was only that the child can’t be a girl, nothing else! Few weeks later she send my wife a message “I have great news, I have this new calendar and it says that the child will be a girl!!”. Really woman? She drives me insane.

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Back then Nathan was still so peacefull

I for myself do not really care whether it is a girl or a boy. My wife is a bit different and only wants a girl (aka Chinese perfect Family). MIL, well MIL wants of course also a girl so she can brag about the perfect family in front of her friends and we all know how she loves to brag about stupid things like this. Father-in-law has said nothing regarding this so far but I guess he is busy trying to stay sane as he has to endure his wife every single day. I also have the slight feeling that he won’t comment even after the birth for some long time. When Nathan was born the only time he contacted my wife was to send her some advertisement. Yeah he is not a man of many words.

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Nathan just few hours old, I still hate myself for not taking that hat with me from the hospital!

Recently we started to think about possible names and it is not easy at all. So far we had Zero ideas besides Nataly in case it is a girl but in my opinion it is a bit silly to name the girl Nataly just because her brothers’ name in Nathan. We (I) came up with Nathan back in the day pretty quickly as the name is easy for English speakers and for Germans as well (+ I got the idea for Nathan because Nathan Adrian, an American swimmer, won the 100 freestyle at the 2012 London Olympics). You know any famous mixed Athletes who won recently big competitions? I am kind of out of the loop when it comes to sports as I am even too lazy to watch sports and my wife is absolutely clueless when it comes to sports or famous athletes. All I know is that MIL ain’t allowed to decided the Chinese name for the child. She named too many kids already and they are marked for life (wife’s sister is called ChuChu, Nathan loves to make that noise when he imitates a train).

How did your parents come up with your name?  Or in case you are a parent, how did you decided on you child’s name?

Be sure to follow me also on Facebook and on Twitter as I will post there occasionally pictures which do not find their way into my blog posts. Furthermore I also have a YouTube Channel in which some videos might pop up from time to time

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https://twitter.com/CraChineseFam

https://www.youtube.com/

Real Competence

For a long long time I did not write any stories about my dear mother-in-law or the rest of the crazy bunch. Sure I did mention some of it in the post “Three Months Survived” but that was more or less just the basic stuff you might expect anyways from her. It is not that nothing happened all the time but I just did not feel like writing about it. I can’t say whether is was due to the fact that it all is so ridiculous or that I might become just a lazy blogger.

You all have read over the past years that my mother-in-law is a bit unique. She has her own view towards how the world functions, she is always right about everything and she brings chaos wherever she goes. Guess how it is to have such person also being responsible for some of the distribution process of our business activities in China. Yes you read it right, SHE is responsible and as you might imagine it is not going really smooth. To describe her tasks in a short and simple way: She receives boxes from us in which different products are already sorted in a way that she just needs to put them into a new smaller box and sends them to the customer according to the instructions given by my wife.

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I have everything under control!

There is really no way anything could wrong, am I right? I mean it is all sorted already and never anything went wrong when FIL was still doing it (he started working again this August so he can not do it any longer). I guess both my wife and I were just too positive and spoiled with the great work FIL was pulling off. There is currently really no week without at least two things going horribly wrong when MIL is doing the work. Remember everything is already sorted in those boxes we send to China and all she has to do is follow the instructions my wife sends her via WeChat about who receives what products and what little gifts to pack. I don’t even know where to start describing this whole disaster which brings my wife near insanity. I will give you only few examples which I can handle right now as thinking too much might give me another migraine attack.

I do everything right, even this dog agrees!

So how can dear crazy MIL do anything wrong? Oh that is so easy with her! Remember I just mentioned that she simply needs to follow the few instructions my wife sends her via WeChat such as which of the pre-packed products belong to which customer and the address. Nearly every single time it happens that some products end up at the wrong person as she never really reads the entire instructions. To make it worse she even has the nerve to tell my wife that she didn’t tell her good enough and it does not help that my wife even resends the same message again to show that everything was explained. Of course then MIL just blames her husband, even when he wasn’t around because it can never be her fault.

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Look at FIL’s hairs, at least now we know why he lost them all ever since getting married…

Another classic is that she just takes stuff out of the sorted products and gives them to some other people.  Yes, she just takes out some items and gives them to others not even seeing any problem that might cause for us when the customer is missing here and there some bought stuff.  Her excuses are usually “No no, it was not with the other things, it was just alone there so I thought it is not meant for anyone”, or “I gave it to X and Y so they can try it out, they might buy them also later”. With these fine ideas she has made my wife always so happy. Whenever I see this kind of disbelief in my wifes eyes I know that it has to do with her mother. That woman has a real competence in driving other people insane.

#Nathancuty in the claws of MIL
#Nathancuty in the claws of MIL

Last but not least of her showing real competence is that she does not even send some of the boxes, just keeps them at home. Then it is either the customer complaining after a while that nothing has arrived or actually FIL asking my wife why so many boxes are still at their home. When asking dear MIL why she hasn’t sent the boxes it is either “You didn’t tell me where it should go”, or “I didn’t realize that there are some boxes here”, or even “You stupid father has been hiding them!”.  In the end it is always either the fault of FIL or because my wife didn’t tell her what to do. It is just amazing to see what she is messing up all the time with this. We really would love FIL doing MIL’s job again but he started working full-time because “I can’t stand being whole day with your mother”. We know what he means so we can’t say anything about him working again at some company.

Do you know a person who can mess up pretty much everything?

Be sure to follow me also on Facebook and on Twitter as I will post there occasionally pictures which do not find their way into my blog posts. Furthermore I also have a YouTube Channel in which some videos might pop up from time to time

https://www.facebook.com/CrazyChineseFamily

https://twitter.com/CraChineseFam

https://www.youtube.com/