Paradox and Inspiration 159: A Glimpse of My Child's World

My daughter Jerrie, 10, gave me a fright of my life. Never had I expected a reaction such as that from her. Her sense of emphathy and interpretation of adults behaviour were quite out of sync with my expectations.

During our holiday in Taiwan last December, the whole tour group happened to be enthusiastically bargaining with a young tea salesman over the price of his premium green tea leaves (about S$100 for a small pack of 150g tea). I must say our tour mates were quite skilled in bringing the discount from 20% to 50% in an extremely hilarious way (at least that was how I saw it), haggling over the price as if we had known the sales man for ages). But Jerrie unexpectedly broke out in tears upon seeing this and after some probing, I found out that she felt that the tour group people (including me) were really very mean and nasty to the salesman. She felt very sorry for the salesman and said so many people should not have cornered and attacked just one man and if he had given so much discount, how was he going to profit in his sales.

It was an incident that got me wondering much about my child and her perspectives.

Paradox and Inspiration 158: The Enigma of Tolerance

Tolerance is fervently preached in a multiracial, multireligious country like Singapore so that everyone can embrace this thing called diversity. But can anyone understand how this can actually be achieved in the process?

But how possible is it for someone to appreciate a belief or practice that you have to tolerate because there are conflicts in the different value and belief systems. If appreciation of others' cultures is not a relevant outcome here, what is? Long suffereing, grudges, or pretence? And, in striving towards being a tolerant individual in the society, should one try to be tolerant or intolerant of intolerance?

Paradox and Inspiration 157: The Power of Camera

If you have young kids or hang around with them often enough, you must have noticed this already - that kids are almost too ready and happy to pose and smile when you asked for them for photo shots. The camera seems to be able to trigger some very instantaneous reaction in them, but yet interestingly they don't seem to be very concerned about the result of those shots. Most of them would never asked to look at the pictures you have snapped for them and even if you do show them the pictures, they don't seem to be that interested either.

On pondering further, does this phenomenon apply also to adults?