Paradox and Inspiration 147: Dignity Doesn't Come with Age

While looking for an unoccupied table at the IMM food court, I caught my nine-year-old reasoning with an old granny in Mandarin. On enquiring, my girl complained that she was the first to get to the table but the old lady argued that she was more deserving because she had gone round the food court three times hunting for a table. I pulled my reluctant, red-faced daughter away and explained to her that it was not worth fighting over it. As we retreated, the old lady also hastened off to alert the rest of her family members of her find. This time, another young boy bolted over to take the same table, but was again shooed away by the returning old lady. Looking disgusted, the boy stormed off, muttering "I really feel like giving her the finger!"

Paradox and Inspiration 146: Choice to Smile

A perspective that I'm been trying to point to my girl who tends to feel blue after having a ball of a good time with her cousins...

“Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened.”
~Dr. Seuss

Paradox and Inspiration 145: "Disneyland with a Death Penalty"

Singapore, "an antiseptic island peopled by a passive citizenry and governed by paranoia"?
Hard Truths, Lee Kuan Yew

Is this why so many western foreigners have labelled us as a people as dull and uninspired as dirt?

Paradox and Inspiration 144: ERP IU Cashcard Cover - to use or not to use?

Jason got a piece of ERP IU Cashcard Cover free from a purchase of a new Thinkpad. Useless, he griped. Obviously he wasn't thrilled in the slightest by the gift. The cover, an invention by a Singaporean, was meant to hide the cash card from window-smashing thieves and help one avoid the consequence of forgetting to insert the cashcard before driving through an ERP gantry. O come on, if there's no cash card, why put the cover, he groused again.

Paradox and Inspiration 143: Riches Without Money

"Some people are rich before they have money."
~www.financialjesus.com

Paradox and Inspiration 142: Woes of a Working Mum and the Logical Fallacy of Rewarding Moms for Working & Producing More Children

Today an old friend of mine recounted how her husband had fallen out with his own mom ever since she refused to relieve part of their burden by taking care of her daughter and how on one occassion she had to cajole her daughter's childcare teacher who was on her off-day into taking care of her sick daughter for the day. Realising I wasn't alone in the same plight of having no maid or any other help with my children, I began to wonder if there were a lot of people like me who have fallen through the cracks of the social system. I recalled during the General Election, one of the Opposition Parties found out that many old folks in Singapore were worried about falling sick. For my friend and I, it was about praying hard that the children would not come down with a bout of fever or flu that would result in denial of entry to the centre and no childcare for that day.

It's been already two years since I surrendered my corporate climb to join the part-time work force. In all honesty, I had never entertained the idea of quitting work for the family until Jerrie entered Primary One. As much as I would love to return to work full-time (Oh, how I miss the adrenaline rush from work achievements much more than the luxury of living on a dual income!), I just cannot imagine where the panacea to all my childcare woes could be sourced from. When holding on to a full-time job, I could never understand what people meant by striking a work-life balance. Resigning to a work-life imbalance sounded more realistic. Whenever the kids fell ill (and Jerrie was quite a sickly child then), we had to literally plead for help to take care of the kid for a day or two while we rushed off to attend meetings. On discovering how crappy and irresponsible the before-and-after school care was, I tried not to mull over it to repress the stabbing guilt. Many people couldn’t comprehend why we were so resolved on not hiring a maid to help out with the kids just like everybody else. Too non-conformist or too idealistic thinking? I'm altogether not too sure either. Simply put, I could hardly imagine relinquishing the role of caring for my young kids to a foreign maid.

It was then far from easy to save my sanity when I had to aim for excellent work performance and also think about meeting the needs of my kids at the same time; when I had to make sure either my husband or myself could make it to the childcare centre in time to collect the kids from Monday to Friday; when I would rebuke myself for ending up paying the late fines on days when I was not able to come up with a reasonable excuse to end the meeting earlier and reach the centre before 7pm; when I had to stop questioning why my heart could become so callous as to let my kids eat take-away food from the hawker centre seven days a week; when I just didn't know where to turn my seemingly unrepentent face away from the penetrating eyes of the childcare teacher who informed that I had time and again failed to read my child's communication book and missed signing her up for some particular centre activity; when I had to drop everything at work and rush home after receiving calls from my daughter who was weeping in trepidation on the other end of the line and sounded as if she was on the verge of freaking out after finding out she had forgotten to bring a book or stationery expected by her ferocious teacher; and when I felt there was no choice but to shut myself off from finding out how the child was coping in school because all energy seemed to have departed after work and I felt too depleted to care. Every morning, before enough strength could be braced to figure how to make a break from the rut of everyday challenges, I found myself wedged behind the running wheel of a bewildering roller coaster ride. And as each day slipped by, each one like the last, it dawned on me that I was forging forward but barely getting by.

Another friend had taken the plunge to be a stay-at-home mum some ten years ago. She recently shared with me how in the first few years she would stress to her children that she had given up her career to coach them and they better not let their grades slip, and how her husband had labelled her as "an unwilling housewife". Why do stay-at-home mums often feel that they had made a great sacrifice? Let's face it, it's an under-appreciated role in the society. Working mums are affirmed and incentivised by the government while stay-at-home mums are brushed aside and even slapped with steeper childcare fees. What message is being passed on here? Working moms are contributing more to the society? Then what about moms who had to send a child to full-time childcare to have more time for another schooling child or other family commitments? In a nation so hardwired for fostering economic growth and competitiveness, we stay-at-home-mums have paled into insignificance. Even with a part-time job now, having to make arrangements with my husband to make sure there’s always someone at home with the young kids remains a constant effort. A mere triviality it may seem, but with no maid or any other help in the picture, I do question if others could imagine how entangled people like us actually felt about appearing in gatherings or places without the kids. On one hand working moms are much valued, and on the other, they are beseeched to produce more children to boost the Total Fertility Rate, save the shrinking population, and ease immigration tensions, but oh man, where is all the help and support coming from?!

Paradox and Inspiration 140: Idiocy is Wondrous

"Idiocy in the modern age isn't an all-encompassing, twenty-four-hour situation for most people. It's a condition that everybody slips into many times a day. Life is just too complicated to be smart all the time...It is a wondrous human characteristic to be able to slip into and out of idiocy many times a day without noticing the change or accidentally killing innocent bystanders in the process." ~ Dilbert

Paradox and Inspiration 141: What He Says Versus What Others Say About Him

"You can tell more about a person by what he says about others than you can by what others say about him."

— Audrey Hepburn

Paradox and Inspiration 139: A Questionless Answer

It's amazing how sometimes people are so eager to give you an answer to a question that you may not even have...

Paradox and Inspiration 138: Making Ourselves Feel Painful

It’s easier to endure great pain than to feel the short or face the fear, so between pain and fear, pain wins hands down most of the time. And hence, the punishment we mete out to ourselves can be far more damaging and undeserving than anybody else may have given us.

Paradox and Inspiration 137: Killing time...

Has it occured to you that when discussing hobbies and interests, phrases such as "to kill time" and "to past time" have evaporated from our speech, leaving us with only "to find time" and "to manage time"...

Paradox and Inspiration 136: Elusive Point of Balance

Many parents are quick to crucify Amy Chua. I believe her method of bringing up her daughters is not entirely garbage. At least for me, she has pointed to the relevance of authority and discipline. Well, I am not lauding that mums should turn into stuffed-animals arsonists or ego-shamers of their children when they fall short in their performance, and I feel she has over generalised Chinese Mums, but there were many plain truths in what she said. And I think she got into the spate of cacophonous attacks because those truths were just downright hard, old-fangled, and drab. But I think this is one of the best things she said "as a parent, one of the worst things you can do for your child's self-esteem is to let them give up."

Yet, the point of balancing the East and West approaches in raising young souls can be elusive. I have been trying to find it (respecting the kids' individuality and protecting their self-esteem on one hand and punishing and pushing them so that they achieve on the other) and at the same time wondering if in reality it exists at all...What worked for her and her daughters may not necessarily be the best for others, and can even be plain diaster for some. So, I must say, though she wrote with exceptional aplomb, to be agreeable with her view that "Chinese Mothers are Superior" is far from easy.

Paradox and Inspiration 135: Tiger or Wimp?

"I wish she wasn't so soft and indulgent. I wish she recognised that in some ways the school cafeteria is more intellectually demanding than the library."

David Brooks
Tiger Mum? Amy Chua's a Wimp
The Straits Times, Review and Forum 19 Jan 2011

Paradox and Inspiration 134: Are Your Children Demanding Teachers Earn Respect?

Many parents, including my other half have spoken about how our new generation of youngsters have to be nurtured differently, how they should be generously showered with praises so as they would not grow up with a defeatist attitude and warped self-esteem, and how we should treat them as equals when relating to them, talk to them as if they are adults and we are all friends, and that we should be aware that they are a different generation that demand their teachers and seniors to earn their respect and adoration by first proving their credibility and worth.

Yes, I agree that sometimes we as Asian parents do not listen enough to our children, allowing them to express their views, showing appreciation of their opinions despite of our own negative experience we have with our own parents when we were young. But I am afraid that in our endeavour to perform better than the previous generation, we might have unconsciously thrown ourselves to the other extreme when raising our children. As much as we desire our children to grow up as highly self-assured, confident individuals, ask of ourselves if we have also at the same time allowed them to become too self-opinionated, ego-centric, and even too critical and arrogant in the way they perceive others. Are we indirectly encouraging them to be too quick in judging others from the start and demanding their authorities and teachers to first prove their worth before receiving any positive treatment? Are we really teaching our children the right thing? Why should we condone such behaviours and inclinations, just because they belong to a newer, more rebellious generation?

I want my children to be confident and articulate, but I also want to accentuate in them a positive, teachable spirit. As parents, we were called to be the parents of our children and not their friends. They must learn about the institution of authorities in their life and in this society, an awareness of others, and due polite respect for the authorities, the elderly, their seniors, teachers, bosses and parents, who all should be given the benefit of the doubt for the positions they are in. Yes, children should not be expected to blindly and willingly accept any kind of ill treatment and wrong teachings, but what I mean is start with the positive attitude, relate to teachers from the onset with a respectful attitude, recognising they have been given the responsibility to rule over them, rather than adopting a challenging, critical, nonchalant or even hostile disposition right from the beginning. How about unreasonable and incapable educators? Yes, they do exist unfortunately, but they will just have to worry for themselves as their standing and honour amongst their students, peers, and bosses will surely dissipate over time. When we over-indulge our children and bail them out too early from difficult situations, they cannot experience the hard truths about life for themselves and would never learn that the world just doesn't revolve around them.

Paradox and Inspiration 133: Wander

“Not all those who wander are lost.” – J. R. R. Tolkien

Paradox and Inspiration 132: Questions We Never Were Curious Enough to Ask

A story was told of a housewife who was preparing dinner when her inquistive daughter popped her a question. "Mum, why do you always have to cut the ham into half before putting it into the oven to grill?" The housewife paused for a moment and replied, "Hmmm....well darling, I'm not sure why but I learned to do this from your grandma since I was a little girl like you."

That very weekend, as part of her routine visit, the housewife dropped by at her mum's place and remembered to ask her daughter's question. And she was stumped as her mum as-a-matter-of-factly said, "Oh, I had to cut it into halves because I never had a plate big enough for the whole ham."

Paradox and Inspiration 131: Last Minute Interventions

Two weeks ago, I had a large fibroid in my uterus removed by laparoscopy. Much to my relief, I am now up and about.

In the past 9 years, open surgery was the only option given to me by my gynaecologist due to the fibroid size – scanned as 8cm in diameter. Yet, a second opinion from another gynaecologist gave me only 50% chance of doing a laparoscopy provided I took a special medicine for some time to shrink the fibroids beforehand. As much as I resented the idea of a 5 to 6 weeks recovery from an open surgery and putting up with the pain, the uncertainty of a successful keyhole surgery led me to my eventual choice – open surgery.

Just two weeks before the scheduled open surgery, my sister unexpectedly passed me the contact of an expert in minimally invasion surgery. However, after having my appointment date messed up by the counter staff and making a wasted trip, and reading to greater length that only small fibroids can be removed by laparoscopy on the internet, I talked myself out of the idea of seeking further advice. Having reached the end of my tether and feeling completely resigned to an open surgery, I decided to forget about the new appointment date.

Guided by some bizarre coincidence, I ended up at the dentist in the morning of the appointed day and then having the dentist somehow led to share with me that her friend’s fibroid which was as big as 10cm was removed by keyhole surgery. That was nothing close to what I had been drummed into believing all the time! Never did I know that large fibroids could be removed that way! Bowled over by the hope of avoiding the big surgery came, I showed up for the appointment that afternoon, without any prior planning. Unbelievably as it turned out, the doctor confidently said the surgery could be done for the 8cm fibroid and I immediately scheduled for it to happen the following week.

Many amazing things occurred, but nothing topped being told by the doctor after the surgery that the fibroid turned out to be joined with another big fibroid and its size was more than double - 19cm by 18cm!

Thank God for all the last minute interventions!

Paradox & Inspiration 130: What is Happiness?

A survey conducted by the National University of Singapore Business School in 2006 polled more than 1,000 people, aged 20 to 69 concluded the following:

"...people who have a university or postgraduate qualification and earn $5,000 or more a month are the happiest...But they are also dissatisfied with their achievements and enjoy life the least, compared with those who are less well-off...it is the Singaporeans earning less than $2,000 a month who enjoy life the most"

The Straits Times, 10 Jan 2010

So, this study seems to suggest happiness is not about enjoying life?

Paradox & Inspiration 129: Laze and Be Merry

In her Straits Times article "Have a lazy new year", a lady columnist criticised that purposeful and noble new year resolutions were stifling and questioned if there was more to life than bettering ourselves. Resolved not to undertake any industrious endeavours for the new year, she claimed, "All I want to do with time is to waste it." She advised us to think twice before signing up for another self-improvement class, and instead of getting up for morning exercise, have a luxurious sleep-in until noon...and announced she would be spending lots of time in the virtual world by joining her husband who was having loads of fun acquiring girlfriends in computer games.

When has staying productive and busy become so uncool? And, do people actually need to make resolutions just to become lazy?

Paradox & Inspiration 128: Life Isn't...

Life is not about how far you run,
how high you climb,
but it is about...
how fast you bounce.