Organic-Ally

Our church missionary to Spain was bringing a group of young Spanish people to the UK and we were asked to provide accommodation for them. I had refrained from offering because I knew we were going to be just back from a trip and there will be lots of unpacking, laundry, cleaning, etc. But husband agreed when approached ('cornered'?) by the minister's wife. Our two young Spanish lads, the only boys in the team, came on Wednesday and left yesterday. They were no trouble at all and now I miss them. (I say 'lads' and 'boys' ... they are in their early 20s. Yeah, husband and I are well old enough to be their parents.) Though speaking little English (which was one of the reasons they are visiting the UK), we managed to communicate adequately, if slowly. They left early each morning and let themselves in whenever. On the first morning they were so shy they did not dare eat anything more than a bowl of cereal. On the second morning they learned to use the toaster a...

Our six-year-old son told us early this morning what he had been mulling over overnight: "There is no right in doing wrong and there is no wrong in doing right." We don’t know how he comes up with thoughts like this, but he did. It appears that he was pondering the relationship between right and wrong and he came up with this new (to us at least) ‘thought for the day’. His thought (maxim?) reminds me of Pascal’s wager : You may believe in God, and if God exists, you go to heaven: your gain is infinite. You may believe in God, and if God doesn't exist, your loss is finite and therefore negligible. Or: You may not believe in God, and if God doesn't exist, your gain is finite and therefore negligible. You may not believe in God, and if God exists, you will go to hell: your loss is infinite. Likewise I could apply son’s formulation to the environment. Some people still insist: show me proof that my gas-guzzling habits (eg) are having a negative impact and I would start do...

There's been a lot of debate in Singapore in the last few weeks about how Singaporeans do not speak English properly. We speak a brand of Chinese-tinged English called 'Singlish' which is basically English spoken with a Chinese dialect (Hokkien) grammar. I don't speak Singlish very well as I cannot speak Hokkien and so do not have Hokkien grammar to begin with (it's slightly different from Mandarin grammar, I believe). While I speak English quite well (I write it even better), what stumps me are the idiomatic phrases which I tend to confuse with Chinese idioms. 'Green with anger'. That's a new one. It's me being green and being diligent in the 3Rs -- reduce, reuse, recycle. It's me being angry that someone saw fit to walk onto my drive, removed the cardboard boxes in my green recycling box, dumped the cardboard boxes on my drive and walked off with my green box. Yes, the audacity of it! This is the SECOND time in less than three months that our g...