Organic-Ally

Here in the UK the clocks were put back on Saturday. Effectively we had an extra hour. Sunday mornings are usually manic in our household as we try to have a lie-in (but not too much) and get ready for church. Well, yesterday, despite husband having to drive to Gatwick to make an unexpected pick-up (his brother lost the car keys while on holiday in Florida), son and I actually managed to get things done. We even managed to get on the bus and got to church on time! So having an extra hour a day does help. The problem is: we can't have this extra hour every day. And then we lose that hour come summer. You win some, you lose some. Back to Organic-Ally .

We managed to get back to the Farmers' Market this last weekend ( see previous post ). Some of the prices were crazy. We got a large punnet of Egremont Russet apples for £1.50. Husband didn't mind the £1.50 but was thrilled that they were ER apples. We asked the stallholder to just tip the apples into our organic cotton string bag , which he did, and he was able to re-use his pl_stic punnet. Later on we saw another stallholder tip a punnet of pears into a pla_tic bag another shopper had brought with her. Further along another lady shopper told the butcher, 'No, no, I've got my own bags.' She had a lovely wicker basket and several 'long life' pl_stic bags. At the baker's, he simply wrapped up our loaf in recycled paper and put it into the string bag I was holding open. None of that 'Would you like a plas_ic bag?' business. I was really encouraged to see how in the space of a few minutes we could observe several people consciously doing their bit f...

While on holiday I could not help but notice how much space some restaurants have 'invested' in play areas. One restaurant we went to had a space that could easily take another 35 to 40 diners devoted to children. They had built a wonderful obstacle course and soft play area that my son kept wanting to return to. When I first worked in the UK the only children we saw at restaurants were Chinese ones, in one particular Chinese restaurant. There was, and still is, no play area for the children. Children were expected to sit quietly during the meal and ate just like adults. The only distraction was a fish tank. My own childhood experience of restaurants was just like that. We sat at huge round tables. We sat and made polite conversation. We sat and answered questions by relations we do not recognize at wedding banquets, etc. We sat and ate what the adults ate. When we got bored we were taken to the aquarium to watch the fishes. Some restaurants have other types of fish tanks. Occa...

Just back from a much-needed break with husband and son, to a holiday place with lots of children. 'Family-friendly' they are called these days. It was fascinating to see very tiny babies being taken on holiday. Some didn't look more than two or three weeks old. We didn't go any where when our son was that young. I think my first trip out of the HOUSE was going to the local sub-post office two minutes walk away. Son was about three weeks old. Even then it took me a long time to pluck up enough courage to do that. I was so nervous. Never used that pushchair before. Not sure how things click and unclick in and out of place. What if I failed to secure the seat and baby falls out? After 30-plus hours of labour and an emergency Caesarean-section I was still feeling a bit sore where they had cut me open, and I wasn't sure I could lift the pushchair (just one end of it) across the threshold to get out, and then to come back in again. It was like I had to will myself to com...

Cousin took us out to lunch as she normally does during her stays with us. We went to Oriental City in Colindale where there is a 'food court'. It's a concept familiar with us Singaporeans. Different stalls sell different types of food in a 'court' (ie large hall) and we can purchase from any of the vendors, pay for it, wait for our order number to be flashed up on an electronic board, collect the food, and eat it any where we could find room to sit. There's a wide range of foods ranging from Vietnamese to Japanese, different types of Chinese to cuisines from different parts of south-east Asia (Malaysian 'nasi goreng', Singaporean 'Hainanese chicken rice', Thai green curry, etc). We had our greasy fill -- we do indulge once in a while -- but found that we could not finish the Shanghainese ('little dragon') dumplings that cousin ordered. To be honest, I didn't like it all that much. Usually, that would have gone to waste. Not today. To...

Well, cousin has flown in again to attend classes as part of her PhD programme. She looked at the stuff we have in the fridge. 'Wah, you're buying all organic now.' My reply was, 'You know, in my mother's time, everything we bought was organic. Then they brought in intensive farming. And now we are paying a premium for "organic".' While we were both growing up in Singapore we could drive down fairly main thoroughfares and catch a whiff of organic manure. (I am thinking of Potong Pasir and Braddell Road.) There were vegetable farms and pig farms where now high-rise flats are standing. Fruit and vegetables were plentiful and not too expensive. Meat was dearer. Chicken was only for celebrations. I remember my sisters having a school reunion in our little flat. Can't imagine how brave they were to even think of that. They gathered a group of school friends from primary school and they partied in our tiny little two-bedroom flat in Queenstown. The highl...

I was brushing my son's teeth. Once or twice a week I feel I have to make sure his teeth are brushed properly. While I was doing this he raised his hand and ran a finger down my face. 'What's this?' he asked. 'What's what?' I replied, being a bit miffed. 'What's this?' son repeated, running finger down one side of my nose and past the corner of my mouth. 'That? O, I suppose it's a line. Your mummy is old. She's an old woman. Old women have lines on their faces, you know. You don't mind your mummy being an old woman, do you?' 'No,' son said, 'I don't mind.... Actually I do, because that means you would soon die, isn't it?' 'Yes, but I hope to live a lot longer and not die so soon.' That is what happens when one has children late in life. We have never tried to hide from son the painful realities of life -- like death. And he has worked out that Mummy and Daddy, being older than most (possibly all...

Went to the French Market happening around here last weekend. Bought some chestnuts for son as we could not find any conkers around here for him. Thought I should roast some of these in the oven, it being a cool-ish evening. BANG! went one. Oops! Better get the rest out of the oven quick. Retrieved the tray, put in on the hob, and BANG!! went another one right before my eyes. Bits of chestnut every where in the kitchen. Bother! Back to Organic-Ally

It has been an incredibly hectic week. There was a fund-raising event to help organize at son's school and a major church project to take care of. At very short notice we were given a video project to sort out. I ended up having to edit 90-plus minutes of video footage into 12 minutes. On Friday I had to, unexpectedly, shoot some new footage to add to these 12, and eventually had to sub-title the whole project. There was no script, no guidelines, no concept to work with. It was just: produce 15 minutes of video that we could show to the public. I like hard work. I like the adrenalin of getting things done by a deadline. But I was so tired by Friday evening. When I started making mistakes and a pain was creeping up my wrist, I knew it was time to stop. Saturday morning found me frantically splicing the video. Husband took care of son while I did this. Then it was his turn to complete the technical bit while I entertained our son ... well, more like getting him to complete his homewo...

The title to this section of Letters to The Times is 'Poor kids can't have their cake and eat it'. One letter-writer pointed out that the 'humiliation of poverty is a reason for truancy' as poor families 'are unable to respond to the peer pressure in the playground that results from brand targeting by advertisers'. When in my first year of school in Singapore I was asked to bring in twenty cents to buy a plastic cover for a workbook. My mum could not find those twenty cents. Instead my eldest sister sacrificed an old plastic cover from one of her old books. A wealthier girl at school laughed at me. I was so embarrassed I went home and cried my heart out. The following week, Mum squeezed twenty cents from the housekeeping money and I had my new plastic cover like everyone else in class. So I understand where this letter-writer is coming from in terms of peer pressure. But he goes on to note that the same single mother of four children on unemployment benefi...

Dr Barry Marshall has just been awarded a Nobel Prize for Medicine for his work (with colleague Robin Warren) in the research of stomach ulcers. Having injected himself with the bacterium Helicobacter pylori , Dr Marshall developed the symptoms of stomach ulcers and then proceeded to treat himself with antibiotics. I've come across the name Barry Marshall about ten years ago when I saw a documentary featuring his work. I was interested because my selfless mother nearly died from stomach ulcers back in the 1980s. Thankfully her doctor managed to control her condition by drugs, but she was then put on a very expensive drug for years. Dr Marshall's finding suggested that sufferers of stomach ulcers could have lived in poverty at some point where a combination of poor nutrition and bad hygiene could have allowed the bug to enter the body. The bug could lay dormant for years and manifest itself only years later. Mum fitted this profile exactly. During the Japanese Occupation, Mum, ...

Would you believe me if I said my son has never had a M... hamburger? He's had their chicken nuggets and fries but never a hamburger. He only had those nuggets because we were a 'captive market' at the Science Centre in Singapore. From a very young age we talked about 'junk food' and 'good food'. Maybe too much. For a long time he had problems with children's party food. Took him a long time to bite into his first pizza. Now that he has tasted it, he likes it. He's also not allowed fizzy drinks and salty crisps, especially if they are laden with MSG. Are we weird parents or what? Thankfully I've found other parents who are just like us. We sit around at parents' committee meetings enjoying the crisps and hula hoops, etc, because 'We don't get to eat these at home.' It all goes back to one blue M&M. Took son to a Christmas story-telling session at the local library. He was coming up two. A kind lady there gave him one blue M...

Noticed this report in The Times today and couldn't help but feel -- only initially -- a little smug Basically, what it's saying is that a child is better off -- in terms of developmental tests -- if its mum had stayed at home instead of palming it off to a nursery or other carer. Such children manifest less aggression, for example. I have mixed feelings about this. I stayed at home to look after my child. He was a a few weeks old when I trotted off to a post-doctoral fellowship interview. While on the train I realised that I could not leave my baby to take up an academic post. When the phone call came later that evening to say, sorry, you were very good, but someone else was better, i felt a tremendous sense of relief that i didn't have to choose between son and a job. That was five years ago. Now that son is in school, I am beginning to wonder if I did make the right choice. What the researchers do not indicate in this piece of research is whether the birth order of the ...

The weekly Farmers' Market at Pinner started three Sundays ago. We've only managed to get down there for the first time yesterday. (Church service ended rather late the first week. Then last week we decided to celebrate our wedding anniversary at our son's favourite eatery.) It was wonderful to see such a wide range of food being sold. Better still to see the delight on the faces of the people at the market. Then we got to the soup stall. Son wanted to have his vegetable soup, but they could only sell it to us in a -- horror of horrors -- foam cup! I've been going on and on about how I hate plastics . So I was not impressed. However, i must not blame the nice guy there selling such delicious soup. I should be the one bringing a sensible container with me to the market. Just like we used to do when i was growing up. Came home and quickly emailed my cousin. Please bring me a stainless steel tiffin carrier when you come next week. The other disappointment was the sheer num...

Was reading my Straits Times Online that corporate businesses have taken to blogging seriously. While I had started my own business only very recently, I had been writing various bits on the News and Misc(ellaneous) pages about issues close to my heart. That was in essence, my bit of blogging. I enjoy writing those. But putting those pages onto the website itself can sometimes be hard work and I would rather be busy doing something else. So i headed off to find myself a blogspot. Not sure how this would look. Even less sure if it would work. And cannot imagine how much of my soul I dare to bare. Check back, and we shall see. Meanwhile, for those of you who've said you enjoyed my writing before, please check this blog for future entries. As always, best,

This date was etched on my mind: 4th August 2005. It wasn’t the birthday, wedding anniversary, death anniversary, party, etc. of anybody I know. It was the day I received my first Christmas shopping catalogue for the year. August? Some of us haven’t even tasted summer weather! In the event that I do return to academia (when my son is happy for me to work outside the home), I plan to carve out my own sub-discipline in anthropology. I would like to establish ‘anthropology of junk’ as a must-have in any decent anthropology department. I can picture it now at my funeral: friends and colleagues would say, ‘Siew Peng will be forever remembered for her rubbish.’ Paper, plastic, food, music, toys, gadgets, consumer goods, why is there so much of what we don’t need around us? Look in some shopping catalogues and you would find: tea bag squeezer, and used tea bag holder. Fact is I actually had to order one of these for uhm, mother-in-law. She was on her way to getting a tea bag holder when I off...

Writing in the Times recently, Mary Ann Sieghart praised the use of buses to ferry children to and from school. Not only are they more environmentally-friendly, it could – potentially – mean that children might think about applying to schools more suited to their needs even when they are further away. I have a particular aversion to doing the school run by car. I have the unusual experience of being ‘taxi-ed’ to and from my primary school. Being the youngest of six children, the only school that my parents could get me into without the hassle of balloting and endless finger-biting, etc, was the school my older siblings went to, on the basis of sibling connections. However, while we used to live about a minute’s walk from the school, my family had to move several miles away before I started school. So father had to arrange for a private taxi to ferry me to and from school. The first driver proved to be unreliable and father stepped in for the rest of the year, but this was too much of ...

It’s the end of an era at the nursery my son attended as a three-year-old. Myrna, who’s been running that school for 35 years, has finally decided to retire. From September 2005, it becomes part of – with some irony – the nursery section of the school my son currently goes to. Myrna is another of my major role models of the recycling habit. She’s been able to run her school on extremely low overheads partly by being able to engage all the parents in recycling. Parents are asked to collect milk bottle tops, cereal boxes, colourful card, yoghurt pots, bits of fabric, egg cartons, etc for use in craftwork. Apart from paints, pens and glue, everything that is used at the school seems to be recycled, even address labels and name badges. Milk and drink bottle tops are used in sorting exercises and in craft activities. Someone drills holes in them and children thread these onto string to make their models. Cereal boxes are cut into various animal shapes for the younger children to learn gluei...