Organic-Ally

Found ourselves reading this comment in the papers: Schools are churning out the unemployable and nodding our heads in agreement. Husband gets sent lots of CVs whether or not he is recruiting. Most of these go straight into the bin. If it's not Oxford, Cambridge or one or two from London University, he does not even bother to look. This article tells us how schools or rather teachers seem fearful to teach. They "facilitate". This morning I heard a trailer on radio of how a young man believes that while in the past teachers were respected purely because they were teachers, these days teachers have to "earn their respect". I'm afraid the schools must have had the management consultants in, paid them a lot of dosh, and then decided to "facilitate". As a former management consultant, I can tell you we are very good at teaching clients how to "facilitate" in the work environment. Assuming that grown-up workers have a basic knowledge, we teach

When we take our kid out, we make sure he behaves himself. I remember my sister-in-law saying of her children (now grown up), "Rather they behave badly at home than they behave badly in public." Us Chinese have this notion called jiajiao (literally "education by/in your family" which can be translated roughly as "parenting" or as I prefer "family honour"). So if a child behaves badly, a grandparent is likely to mutter, "Don't do that. No jiajiao ." Those words alone were often enough to stop most young children from misbehaving. So when we go out with son to an event we make sure he is polite. We also help him with his food when he was much younger, and wipe up any spills, etc. to ensure that we do not trouble the hosts too much. Last Friday was a very emotional day for me. I was in tears a lot in the morning. I was finding it hard to get over how our neighbours' eldest son had died so suddenly, and it was his funeral. This dea

In a few minutes I take my son back to school -- at last, yay! On Tuesday we went to his favourite little cafe as a treat. This is a department store cafe. We arrived just after 11am and we could not find a seat. At last an older lady vacated her table. I took her tray back to the used trays trolley and we sat down to have our early lunch. I looked around and was surprised to find so many people eating on their own, at tables intended for parties of four. Were they being selfish by taking up so much room? Why not opt for a table for two? We were resigned to having to share a table had our lady not get up just at that point. Then it dawned on me that perhaps these people sitting on their own were hoping that others might join them at their tables. Maybe yes, maybe no, as my son would say. But when you are old and live on your own, a bit of conversation with a stranger in a 'safe' neutral place like the department store cafe is not a bad idea. I remember from when I used to volun

News last week -- OK, old news -- that 'Sir Fred' had his house vandalized. OK, I do not condone vandalism. But it was the editor of the Business Times, I think, according to a little video clip on a news site that says, "Look, Sir Fred is a private citizen now. You may not agree with his pension and all that, but that was in accordance with his contract, etc. Think of his children. He might now have to move his children to another school because of this act ...." Think of the children. Think of the children. Think of the children. I thought of the children and wonder if Fred the Shred ever thought of the children when he acted in those (now generally considered) despicable ways not only with his bank business (the mismanagement of it) but also with his pension (the sheer audacity and greed), etc. Did he think of the children -- other people's children -- when he made those corporate decisions that led to his eventual downfall? I think of two children in particul

Wanted to say something about son's achievement at school yesterday in my other blog . But there was such a kafuffle getting onto the blog -- because Google decided to switch us bloggers all over to Beta whether we liked it or not, after which I couldn't log back on -- I've forgotten what I was doing to say. There must be a reason for 'Old Blogger', for bloggers who are old and short on memory power and who want life kept simple. Digital clocks are OK so long as the instructions on the display aren't so small I can't read them, for example. My son's clock-CD player-radio was broken and we bought him a new one. The writing is so small on the display and the buttons so minute for my fat fingers I find it very difficult to get it to do what I want. There's the trouble these days with young prime ministers, young politicians, young designers, they don't realize what life is like -- going to be like for them in years to come -- when life, vision and t

This is the first time ever that I’m spending Christmas at mum-in-law’s house. I was really looking forward to a 'restful' time as recent poor-ish health has made me irritable and quite depressed at one point. It was nice that we could look out of the window and see sheep wandering on the Devon hill-side. When we did go out, it was not unusual to see tractors (real ones, not Chelsea versions) holding up long lines of traffic. There was no internet service. Ah.... There was also a lot of food. We had brought with us a lot of fruit from our weekly organic fruit bag, not wanting it to go to waste. My ‘job’ on Boxing Day was to make a fruit salad. With all that rich food, ultra-sweet Christmas puddings and all that, husband and I thought a refreshing and detox-ing fruit salad might be a good idea. So it was a bit strange, as far as I am concerned, that mum-in-law kept asking whether she needed to make a (sugar) syrup for the fruit salad. No, I said. And thought, 'Syrup on fresh

When you've spent most of your adolescent life (and your twenties, thirties and forties!) finding 'stuff' to rid your face of the grease that gives you zits, pimples or 'youth spots' ( qing chun dou as we call it in Mandarin), would you not, like me, be taken aback when you are then told that your skin is 'very dry'? So it was that when I used mum-in-law's birthday gift money to treat myself to a salon massage and facial, I was told, 'Your skin is very dry.' But I don't like the idea of slapping cream and stuff on my face. I was therefore chuffed to discover this helpful page from Lyrae's Natural. Lyrae's and Hankettes formed The Good Life Collective some years ago to market their natural and organic products. The advice here is to use oil, like jojoba oil which I happened to have, and work it into the skin with the help of water. Simple. So simple. I don't know if my skin has got less dry as a result, but it is much more shiny a

Last Sunday at church I commended one of our oldest members on her very smart suit. 'O! Thank you, my dear! I bought this in America.' I knew she was recently in America. She's 90-something and she tells me she wakes up each morning saying, 'Thank you, God, I'm still alive!' She then went on to tell me how her son who is soon to retire had bought a retirement home in Palm Springs. He had arranged for her to fly first class with a companion to see his new home. She has one grateful son (amongst others) who is mindful of the sacrifices she made while he was younger. A successful businessman now, he has seen fit to make sure her mother travelled in the utmost comfort to visit him. She then commented on how my own son was growing. (She first saw him at two weeks old.) 'Look after him. He's your pension,' she said. The truth is I grew up in a family and generation where people had large families because 'our children are our pension'. My parents u

Husband and I went to see our accountant last week to sort out our tax. I'm a bit of what Singaporeans would call 'sua-ku', meaning 'mountain tortoise' with a very limited view of what life is all about. I don't often travel on the Tube now. (I used to have to Tube and bus to and from work. Tedium.) The thing that struck me was the sheer number of people, especially young people, walking about with their ears glued to a mobile phone. OK, a mobile phone glued to their ears, maybe. 'How soon,' I asked,'would we have babies born with mobile phones stuck to their ears?' 'Don't be silly,' said husband. 'You know that is never going to happen. What might happen is that they would be born with ears modified to fit with the shape of the phone.' 'Ha-ha,' and a few minutes later, 'What about babies born with elbows crooked to keep their phones in place?' People do not sit and wait any more. As soon as they sit down, out