Organic-Ally

Last Saturday we ran into Mr H at the supermarket carpark. He's our school gardener. He normally goes about doing his work quietly. For some reason we always greet each other and often stop for a chat. Then recently he lost his wife of many years (50-something?) very suddenly. He was making lunch. She went to the toilet, he heard a bang, and she was gone. Wedged behind the door, he could not even get to her and had to call in the Fire Brigade. This year while making cookies for the school staff at Christmas I decided to also give him a little bag. A sort of 'thank you' for keeping the school grounds pristine and planting the little flowers that have added some needed colour everywhere. And the first Christmas after the death of a loved one must be so, so difficult. Back at the carpark he told me even before I could ask that he'd spent time with his relations. O good, I said. Then he went on to say how delighted he was with the cookies. He didn't want to eat them and

Malawi strikes organic gold What a marvellous story. This and other stories like this formed part of the impetus for me to start up Organic-Ally . Some scientists might pooh-pooh the idea about going organic, that we cannot feed ourselves, etc. Well, maybe if we ate less but ate better? Or how about eating less meat so that we could share the grain around? I am a meat-eater, I must put my hand up to that, but I am also conscious that our family do not eat huge slabs of meat every day. The other issue is of course scientists who focus on GM and conventional agriculture work on a very different scale whem compared with the smallholder farmers. The latter have a different set of problems and their problems need a different set of solutions. There is a Chinese proverb that roughtly translates as "a long barge pole could knock everyone off the barge" (akin to not tarring everyone with the same brush). It's easy to understand the mentality that we must not "rock the boat&q

This bit of information has come at a good time for me, and so I'm sharing it. Our family have slowly over the past years switched to using greener, organic skincare, shower lotions, etc. My son and I have switched to organic toothpaste without all the foaming ingredients. Husband is a bit slower to change. I think this is because I remember my first toothpaste as being a 'cake' of powdery stuff in a little flat circular case. We rubbed the toothbrush onto this cake till we had enough on the brush. This toothpaste -- like the one I now use -- often leaves a residue on the toothbrush because it does not get 'foamed away'. That is why I still have the habit of tapping my tooth brush rather hard on the edge of the sink to get rid of this residue. You can now save £5 at Green People on orders over £35 when you apply this code AF27740957 at checkout. Code expires on 31st January 2009 . Back to Organic-Ally . Become our fan on Facebook .

UK's holiday waste smashes all records Too much packaging. Haven't we heard it before? These days I tend to walk away from stuff that I might buy, but don't, purely because there is too much unnecessary packaging. (Or if the packaging is not as eco-friendly as comparable products.) Of course this has its roots in 'stuff' travelling very long distances to come to us. Toys, fruit, cake, etc. Where food is concerned we also have the problems with preservatives . Take festival times. It used to be -- at least in my experience with Chinese New Year, Autumn Festival, etc -- that festive goods were made in our locality and we bought these as close as possible to the times we needed these items. My father was a pork butcher, and two nights before Chinese New Year the wet market would open in the evening instead of the morning. There the housewives gathered to 'fight' over the freshest seafood, pork and vegetables they could get their hands on. At home, in between ho

We did something unusual this year. We took off to mum-in-law's the week before Christmas. It was a short, pleasant visit. Amidst the doom and gloom I had to fight my own battles. On the Friday before Christmas my GP told me rather nonchalantly that I have arthritis. Nothing much we could do, it seems. Physiotherapy was prescribed and if I am lucky (lucky??) I might be seen by a physio six weeks down the road and he/she might be able to prescribe exercises to prevent the arthritis from getting worse. Ouch! Surely I am too young to get arthritis? GP said he's had arthritis since he was 32. Was that supposed to cheer me up? Apparently my kind of arthritis has to do with 'things' growing from my spine affecting the spinal cord. This was causing numbness in my fingers, leading to an x-ray which confirmed it. Well, if my body can make boney material where there isn't supposed to be, does that mean that I am in no danger of suffering osteoporosis then? Dunno. Actually I w

The news about the conviction of Shannon Matthews's mum -- although a foregone conclusion to many, it seemed -- left me quite sick in the stomach. Actually I WAS sick in the stomach. Having gone to the hospital on Monday for an X-ray it appeared that I picked up a bug. I was sick Tuesday evening and could not hold my food down for the day. Recovered sufficiently well on Wednesday I thought but there is still a constant discomfort in my stomach. There! Set the record straight. I revisited this blog and was a bit amused to then find this report: 'Educate girls to stop population soaring' . Basically it tells us that "the longer girls stay at school, the fewer children they have" and reducing the population is critical to the sustainability of the earth. And on Women's Hour this morning -- only because I was too ill to get to do what I normally do this time of day -- I learned that the cervical cancer rate is highest amongst women who come from the lower social

This is to follow up an earlier post . I had just been out to pick my son up. I was pleased to have had my hat on. I was 'freezen'. I prefer the word 'freezen' to 'frozen'. Don't ask me why. There had also been occasions when I was standing on the school playground and hear other parents complain that the weather had been too hot. "Global warming", we all agreed, and then lament a few weeks later than summer had passed us by. "What summer?" We blinked and the warm dry weather had gone. For the year, it seemed. I also remember someone expressing her fear for little creatures disappearing because they will not be able to cope with the warmer weather. "Yes," I said, "that is probably the case. But nature always finds a way to adapt. Some parts of the UK, it seems are able to produce grapes. Some people are pleased." I'm in a business which has a 'mission' to protect the environment. I cannot be certain if our

OK, I must confess I am a Strictly Come Dancing fan. As I started this post I thought of Heather Small because I could hear her song, "What have you done today to make you feel proud?" Or something like that. Our freezer continues to be rather bare and we are wasting much less food than we used to. Amongst other things I learned that though sliced bread is convenient a whole loaf of bread keeps better. Like many people I know I am hopeless at slicing bread. It usually looks OK when I start at the top but 'it' usually disappears before the knife gets to the bottom of the loaf and I'd have a slice of bread with no crust on the bottom half. Not any good for toasting as it would burn. It was interesting then to hear mum-in-law congratulate herself on being able to slice bread quite well when she was over to mind our child over a weekend. "Your bread knife is nice and heavy and it goes straight down." Even mum-in-law who had difficulty slicing bread found it

It was interesting to read Waste watchers: Save cash and the environment . If there is one up-side to the 'credit crunch', recession, whatever you choose to call it, a wave of belt-tightening seems to be having a positive impact on the environment. Our bills, like other households, have been going up and up. But there is nothing we could cut from our shopping. We buy roughly the same every week. It reminds me of the 'epiphany' I had years ago. I made an undergraduate mission trip to Thailand. I was there for a month and packed everything into one bag. Then I went to an undergraduate conference which lasted about five days. I still needed that same bag to carry the things I needed. I chided myself for a few minutes for having packed too much for the conference. Then it dawned on me: Did I carry too much for my five-day conference, or was I travelling really light for the month that I was in Thailand? The 'muchness' really came out the 'very little' in m

This is an edited version of my letter published in the Straits Times in Singapore: ========================= Oct 22, 2008 Charity and a culture of dependency IN READING what Mr Willie Cheng had to say about the non-profit sector, ('Good Principles', Oct 12), I was struck by the following point he made: 'Charities should seek extinction rather than growth. The mantra of business is growth. 'The opposite applies to non-profits. Non-profits are created to achieve societal change. Ultimate success occurs when the non-profit's mission is achieved and its existence is no longer needed.' What a timely reminder amid the current context of big banks (formerly 'cooperative building societies') becoming 'super-banks', the dependence on non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in disaster zones, and nearer home, the 'mega-churches'. I realised that NGOs, mothers (and fathers), teachers and missionaries have one aim in common: to work ourselves out of a

OK, just inserting a link in a post does not constitute much of a blog. The truth is I need to think, cogitate, over this one. Back to Organic-Ally . Become our fan on Facebook .

I found this very interesting: The climate change unbelievers Back to Organic-Ally . Become our fan on Facebook .

We see them often in shopping areas, Chinese illegals hawking illegal DVDs. Here is a spine-chilling story of one of these who did not get away. I am very disappointed that humanity could produce specimens that know only to exploit other human beings. When the scientists tell us that the natural world is always evolving to be better, I have my doubts. Though we have made many advances in technology and medicine, our morality seems to be in constant decline. From the Independent : This murder illuminates a darker truth Back to Organic-Ally . Become our fan on Facebook .

Yesterday was a sad day for me. The leading opposition politician in Singapore Joshua Benjamin Jeyaretnam died suddenly from a heart attack. He was 82. I didn't think I would, but I did, shed tears. My only significant encounter with JBJ was at Gleneagles Hospital when his late wife and my late mother were both patients there at the same time. He looked very tired but still acknowledged us when we realized who he was and kind of waved. (His wife died in 1980.) I was an impressionable and impoverished undergraduate in 1981 when he won the by-election at Anson. That was indeed a politicial milestone. There are several obituaries here: Singapore opposition icon J.B. Jeyaretnam dies fighting (AFP) Singapore opposition head Jeyaretnam dies (IHT) Death of Singaporean maverick (FT) And then there is the 'letter of condolence' written by the prime minister of Singapore to his grieving sons: =============== CONDOLENCE LETTER FROM PRIME MINISTER LEE HSIEN LOONG ON DEMISE OF JB JEY

The words 'big' and 'mega' have been in the news all around the world. The big banks and other massive financial institutions have fallen, or are falling. I could not understand how Fannie May and Freddie Mac could become so big that they are not allowed to fall. (They were 'born big', being instruments created by the American government.) And the likes of Morgan Stanley and Lehman Brothers.... Big does not mean invincible. In Singapore recently the spotlight has also fallen on the 'mega-churches', non-denominational churches led by very charismatic personalities that now boast of thousands of 'attendees' (apparently not all are 'members') in sparkling new buildings with massive carparks, state-of-the-art audio-visual equipment, huge auditoriums, etc. with millions of dollars in the pot. This scrutiny is partly due to the fallout from a few major charities where the accounting has been found to be somewhat less than transparent. (My ex-bo

Recently the 'not in my backyard' syndrome reared its ugly head in Singapore. Somehow news got round that a disused school in Serangoon Gardens -- a rather nice, quiet, very middle-class part of Singapore -- were to be converted into a dormitory to house a thousand foreign workers. There are more that 500,000 such foreign workers in Singapore working in construction sites, apart from many more thousands working as domestic servants in households while both parents are at work. I know Serangoon Garden well because I had relatives living there, and I used to have to change buses at what is called the 'circus' (roundabout) when I went to Nanyang Junior College. I wrote the following letter to Straits Times and it was, of course, rejected. Basically I believe that there has been a dereliction of duty on the part of the policy-makers to make life in Singapore more human/bearable for the foreign workers in our midst: ============= Social scientists have long debated the meani

Having found the Olympics a bit too political and commercial, I found myself sitting down in front of the Paralympics by default (the TV was on, we'd just come back from a walk, I was tired). It was interesting how some commentators say 'paralympics' in such a way that it sounds like 'power-lympics'. And for me, I think the 'power-limp-picks' was a lot more meaningful. Part of the opening ceremony brought tears to my eyes. Can't see the point of an Olympics with tennis, basketball, etc, being played by top-notch, overpaid professionals. And beach volleyball? It's just an excuse for TV to sell spots to beer companies so that men could ogle at those bodies. I might never understand the different categories in the paralympics, but it tugs at more than one heart string when I see these athletes strive against mental and physical disabilities to excel in the various fields of sport. This is the real Olympics for me. Back to Organic-Ally . Become our fan o

Sometimes that's how I feel: old and limp, needing a pick-me-up. Family obligations took me back to Singapore where we missed the opening of the Beijing Olympics. When we did see the highlights of fireworks and the lighting of the Olympic flame I felt: what a waste of energy. Fireworks … well… China is the leading exporter of fireworks, I guess, and it should not cost all that much in real terms. (Subsequently, of course, we learned that the fireworks had been digitally enhanced. Still, fireworks were used.) But keeping the flame burning for the duration of the games … well … that would require a good deal more of fossil fuel. Fast forward to 2012 and the London “eco-friendly games”: do we plan to outdo the Chinese in the use of fireworks? Instead of it being the "most expensive", could we make it the most frugal? My husband suggested using a virtual flame. Well, if the Chinese could use digitally enhanced fireworks, I think a virtual flame will be an excellent idea. I wo

The last time I walked past the local Primark with my son he spotted from the outside "organic cotton T-shirt £4". I was incredulous. Here we are, organic cotton retailers struggling to procure certified organic cotton because the big players now want a piece of the cake and are coming in with their huge buying power, and we see organic cotton T-shirts at £4 at Primark. How do they do that? How much do they (not) pay their workers to be able to afford to sell at those prices? Today I walked past that shop again (as my local sub-post office had been forced to close I now have to take my parcels to the main office) and saw the same sign again. I meant to go in to examine the label, but somehow couldn't bring myself to do so. Maybe on the next trip. What would Mary Portas say? Been watching her series on turning retail fashion boutiques around. How can I run a business without knowing my competition? Here's what she has to say about Primark ( Independent , 12th July 200

Having been nudged by a customer onto Facebook -- I like to claim that I try to meet customer demand -- I had been dipping into FB gingerly being very careful about being sucked right in. You know what I mean? It can get very addictive. But FB can also be a bit scary. Like every time I log in (which is not often) I get on the left-hand side an advert that usually headlines with "45-49?" followed by small print -- which I am still able to read without my reading glasses, thank you -- about manufacturers requiring people of that age group to test various products. Of course a vehicle like FB requires advertising for all these fun and games to be provided 'free'. Ah, there really is no such thing as a free lunch. I really hate to think that someone has gathered so many of my details as to know what kinds of food I eat so that they could 'target' their marketing at me. This morning we received junk mail sent to my eight-year-old son. He managed to fill in some det