LIFE has been so hectic for actress Tan Kheng Hua that recently, for the first time, her 10-year-old daughter Lim Shi-An asked her to forgo an audition.
And she dutifully did. No matter that she's only paid for the projects she takes on, and that she's a workaholic.
"We play fair," says Tan, 45, explaining that she has been away a lot this year for various projects like Slurp!, an infotainment programme on Mediacorp Channel 5 which took her to Australia, Indonesia and Malaysia; The Kunstenfestival Desart in Brussels; Singapore Day in Melbourne; and Glen Goei's new movie Funeral Party, shot in Penang.
She's also the co-producer of It's My Life!, a teen musical directed by her husband Lim Yu-Beng, and director of Do Not Disturb - Late Checkout, Please, the stage version of the Arts Central television series Do Not Disturb, for which Lim is composing and performing the music.
Though it's family first for Tan, she feels that her life is to be shared between the people and the work she loves. "It's important to me," she says.
Her work and her husband Lim, 43, came too close for comfort at the start of the project It's My Life!.
"It was very difficult for the first three weeks," she admits candidly, adding that it was the first time they had worked together as producer and director.
Setting some ground rules helped.
For example, they would not talk about work at home - except through e-mail.
This sense of duality seems to permeate her life and work.
"Sometimes, too much balance is very deadening," she says, adding that the "year has been a very interesting excavation of all sorts of new feelings and new experiences".
When asked to sum up the challenging and busy year, the usually quick-talking actress pauses to reflect.
Calling 2008 a year of "strange dichotomy", she adds: "I'd say the winner of this year is, undoubtedly, Shi-An because she passed test after test as the youngest member of a family that embraces change and fights against typical family structures and routines. With every test, she always somehow found the most perceptive way of dealing, and coming to terms, with it.
"From dealing with my absence, dealing with her father becoming the main caregiver a lot of the times, dealing with the tensions of her parents working together, being alone a lot of the time - she took it all in her stride, one day at a time in her characteristically non-judgmental, accepting and patient way. I am very proud of her."
The Christmas season will provide Tan the opportunity to reflect on what she stands for and what she wants to do, she says.
"Especially at Christmas, and because it is the year-end, I feel a sense of excitement about what we can do next year."
Christmas is always spent with Lim's side of the family. He says: "Every Christmas Eve, we have a terrific dinner, and do the whole presents, prayers and play thing. It's a hoot."
And for something new and exciting, says Tan, they intend to go on a family dive trip to get their certifications, as their close friends are dive masters and instructors.
Life for the Lim family is "about sharing ourselves with each other as well as for the work that we do, because we do love our work passionately", she says.
It's My Life! is showing at the University Cultural Centre Theatre from now till Dec 5.
