Paradox and Inspiration 167: Oddity at Owndays

It was about 9pm when I picked up my progressive reading glasses at Owndays, Jurong Point. The girl at the counter handed over my glasses and advised that I would have to learn how to use them. I was surprised to be told that I should move my eye balls and not my head when focusing on something, and was even more surprised to find everything looked blur when I put on the new glasses. Near or far, everything looked blur. The optician came after a long wait. Upon checking my eyesight he said the glasses were blurry for me because I had short-sightedness on my left eye and was puzzled why I was given no prescription. Then, I explained I was not myopic and the optician who checked my vision about 2 weeks ago also confirmed that I was able to see far perfectly well. He kept asking me who checked my vision and hinted I had been given the wrong glasses, and subsequently put me through a series of tests to convince my that I had both short-sightedness and long-sightedness. In the midst of it, I kept pursuing "How bad is my short-sightedness?" but he just kept quiet. "So exactly, how bad is my short-sightedness, why can't you tell me!" I asked for the third time. My patience was tested.

Optician: 50 degrees on the left eye
Me: Oh, only 50 degrees, then why can't I just take this pair?
Optician: You try covering your left eye and look far, and then try covering the right eye and look far. You will know the difference.
Me: But I see with both my eyes, not one at a time.
Optician: That's true..... Well you just imagine, if your right eye has perfect vision and your left eye is 300 degrees, you will have a big problem focusing.
Me: But mine is 50 degrees, not 300 degrees.
Optician: True.

In a few seconds, he was quick to come up with another solution.

Optician: I think you can still try using these glasses. But you need to learn how to use progressive lens. I will teach you... Move your head and not your eyes.
Me: This is opposite of what the girl at the counter told me.
Optician: Oh it must be a new staff!

Goodness.

Paradox and Inspiration 166: Whose Bean Sprouts?

Talk about getting started on "big trivia"...

A very odd incident took place at Giant Supermarket, Jurong IMM about two or three years ago. You probably will find this one amusing.

I made my way to the little section where I normally got my bean sprouts. An Indian woman in her traditional wear was already there sieving the bean sprouts with her fingers and putting them into a plastic bag. Nothing wrong with that. But what disturbed me was, she had gathered all the bean sprouts in the corner next to her, so it looked as if only she could use the pile. There was nothing left for me or others to take. Not knowing exactly how to react, I stretched my arms to take some from the pile. As I was about to take the last few grabs of the bean sprouts, the woman suddenly bellowed at me, and started berating me for being rude and not getting her permission for taking the bean sprouts from her pile. Annoyed and amused, I told her that the pile didn't belong to her and asked her where else I could take bean sprouts from other than that one pile. She ignored all that I said and continued to argue what I did was plain rude. Just as I was about to escape from the absurdity with my bag of beans sprouts, the lady's husband appeared. Before she could complain about me, I told the husband what happened and said what his wife did was unreasonable. Her husband didn't utter a word, but just kept nodding with a straight face. Well, I never understood if he was agreeing or disapproving what I said and I didn't really care.

Paradox and Inspiration 165: Big Trivia at McDonalds' Napkins

It's been a while since I last wrote in this blog. Time has been against me.

Most Saturday afternoons, my husband and younger daughter would stop by at Bedok Central to have tea around one of the tables outside McDonalds and at the same time wait for my older daughter to finish her ballet class at a nearby community center.

Today an old man (probably in his sixties), bespectacled and neatly dressed in a beige Polo shirt and office pants, caught our eyes. He was having a burger meal alone at a table inside the restaurant about five to six meters away from the self-help napkins and sauces station. Through the glass panel, we could clearly see him walking to the napkin station every few minutes. Furtively he would scan left and right to make sure no one was looking before pulling out a stack of napkins, return to his seat and then stuff the napkins into a white plastic bag.

Being just me, I was totally disgusted by what the old man did. Where had his dignity gone to at that age? Despite being told by my husband to mind my own business, twice I walked into the restaurant and told the staff at the cashier about what I saw, but each time, I was told that these customers existed everyday and nothing could be, not even if they brought the whole bag of napkins home. Reason? Because they were customers. It was unbelievable that McDonalds would to turn a blind eye to this, there was not even an attempt to gently tell the old man not to do that.

By the time the old man had finished his meal, he had gone to the napkin stations umpteen times, and his plastic bag was full. As he cleared the table, took all his belongings with him and headed towards the napkin station for the last time, I stood up, approached him, and pointing to his plastic bag, I said softly to him, "It's enough, you have taken a lot already." He looked at me, dumbfounded but as I walked out and returned to my table outside the restaurant, his stunned look turned into a long furious glare. Much to my relief, he didn't run out of the restaurant to confront me. Eventually he sauntered off, probably after seeing that my husband looked much taller and stronger than him...

My husband said it wasn't our restaurant and questioned why I should care when McDonalds did not even care. So, was I too much of a busybody?

Paradox and Inspiration 164: Why I Still Want to Have My Ears Pierced

My seven-yr-old daughter waited anxiously for her turn while her elder sister did her ear-piercing at the jewelry shop. And when her sister's streams of tears turned into bawling and wailing, the salesgirl told me that I should have let the girls come at a different time as the younger one would naturally back out upon witnessing her sister's dramatic reactions. When asked if she still wanted to have her ears pierced, she said yes without a moment of hesitation, surprising me. But what took me by an even greater surprise after the whole episode was over was her answer to why she still chose to go ahead despite that her sister complained that it hurt a lot - "I wanted to know how Jiejie (sister) felt."

On pondering how the younger one has always shadowed the sister, maybe it's not that hard to understand after all. She has always wanted to wear the same clothes and shoes as the sister, have the same hair style, buy the same school bag and stationery, and even attend the same enrichment classes (whiich she confessed she didn't like but just refused to give up). The power of sibling identification.

Paradox and Inspiration 163: When You Think Too Much Praises is Harmful, Too Little Too Can Be Detrimental

I was reading this controversial article which argued that praises were bad for children, and what this guy shared in his posting to the article had me thinking for a while. As a child he was gravely deprived of compliments because his parents almost never praised him. When he saw how his friends' parents praised them and his own parents would only criticised him, he concluded that either his parents didn't really like him or he was just not good enough for them. And when others praised him, he assumed that his parents must see something which others couldn't and he constantly worried that others would eventually see the "bad him" and reject him after discovering that he was just a fraud. This guy grew up thinking he was terrible and sabotaged friendships out of fear that his real self would be found out. I never knew that the lack of praises could have such severe repercussions on a child's development. The praise culture originates in the West (and has its influence on Asians in the recent decade), while the criticism culture tends to makes more sense in the East, so, would that guy's life turn out better if he had been brought up in the Asian culture?

Paradox and Inspiration 162: What's So Contemptible?

I have been scratching my head over a guy's contribution of his 4-sentence long comment to my blog post about honey labels. In that brief paragraph he basically stated that he studied law and what he understood about E.C law for honey standards. That was perfectly fine. It was what he said in his second post that really baffled me. "How embarrassing..." he said, "I didn't realise the comment was linked to my Facebook...I do not spend odious amounts of spare time commenting on honey blogs."

Well, according to Oxford dictionary, odious is defined as "extremely unpleasant; repulsive".

His perspective posed an incredible challenge to my intellect. Is such a strong reaction and defense really called for?

Paradox and Inspiration 161: Better to be Busy Than Not?

I smile as I read "The Busy Trap" article dated 30 June 2012 in nytimes.com. Surely, not only the Americans have fallen into the trap. It is a phenomenon of the modern society where the keen pursuit of wealth to create a better life marks the very focus of everyday living. “Very busy!” as a response to “How are you?” is a way of telling others that everything is well and fine, that one is no loafer, is gainfully employed and much valued in the job and have no time for any form of idleness. I laugh at how the author describes busyness as an hedge against emptiness and how people are always sounding so insanely busy and dead tired, because I was no different in the past and now have been trying to do the opposite. Somehow, now I like to sound as free and relaxed as I could no matter how occupied I am. Why feign indolence? I’m not sure exactly why. Perhaps I have become a bit irritable from constantly hearing how busy people are, that time is against them and they have absolutely no time for this and that, how they are going bonkers and how stressed they are at work. I just want to appear to be out of line and atypical. I don’t remember meeting anyone who is not frantic with work or their kids, so maybe I could just be that breath of fresh air. What difference would it make if I add myself to the perpetually busy crowd? So what if I go around announcing to my friends that I am hysterically busy? Idelness doesn't equate with slothfulness, does it? Maybe someone who appears as more free than them or a freak who is busy keeping up with some trivial sounding hobby like drawing or reading would confound them and inspire them to drop their pace a bit?

Paradox and Inspiration 160: Little Chloe, Giant Spirit

My P1 niece, Chloe did her parents extremely proud recently. She was paired with the naughtiest boy in class for a class assignment. Knowing that she would have a hard time getting the boy to work on the assignment, she made a chart with many boxes after school and asked her father for some nice stickers. The next day, she showed her partner the chart and the stickers and promised that she would give tick a box whenever he behaved well and the more ticks he collected, the more stickers he would get. The boy was so thrilled and motivated to fill up the boxes with ticks to get the stickers that he did his best to cooperate with her in the assignment. Their work was assessed by the teacher and Chloe and the boy were named the best-performing team!

What great problem-solving ability and exemplary attitude toward life from a seven year-old girl! Chloe could have just gone to look for the teacher and beg if she could partner with someone else, complain to the teacher that the boy wouldn't cooperate with her, cry and whine to her parents or even threaten the boy that she would inform the teacher if he didn't behave. How often do we adults throw in the towels so easily when we are run into difficulties, even before we could take a step back and think how we could rise to the occasion, how ready are we to grouse and protest that life isn't fair, and how quickly can we brace ourselves during challenging moments and create a win-win situation for everyone?