Organic-Ally

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Today one of my letters to the Straits Times in response to recent discussion on filial piety was published. I would have missed reading it if husband had not pointed out a letter on poorly-mannered Singapore doctors. When I read my letter again, I realized that a very important sentence was omitted because it is, clearly, not politically correct to even express such a view in a national newspaper. The full text of my letter is here: When researching elderly Chinese living in sheltered housing in the UK, I was struck by how often daughters-in-law were rendered invisible. They did not feature in family photo albums nor were they talked about, except negatively, which is probably why these older Chinese were living on their own. Why, I wonder, would this generation of women who had suffered the wrath of their own mothers-in-law, treat their daughters-in-law so unkindly? It transpired that before our marriage my husband told his parents in no uncertain terms where I, his wife-to-be, would...

Millions may lose out in reform of child benefits According to the above report in Times(Online) : "Frank Field, appointed by the coalition last week, is also looking at taxing child benefit and allowing parents to receive payments of up to £25,000 in the first three years after a child’s birth. In an interview with The Times, the former Labour minister said that the benefit, which costs the taxpayer £11 billion a year, should be linked more closely to the child’s age. "Poorer parents are eligible for payments worth up to £100,000 in both child benefit and tax credits by the time a child is 19, according to Mr Field. "He said there was a clear case for providing more money in the early years to help mothers to stay at home after their child was born — a policy also backed by Iain Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary." It is great to have a chunk of a child benefit up front to make it easier for mothers (or perhaps fathers as well?) to stay at home to give t...

Last Tuesday some of the boys in son's school showcased their piano skills. This usually means playing some boring exam piece they've spent the last six months practising. Along came one of his mates who did not attend the rehearsal but decided to come on to play ... wait for it ... Star Wars (one of the tunes from). It was a hesitant performance, but never mind. It was brave. Yesterday son came home to say another promising pianist in his class wants now to play the theme from 'ET' at the next concert (we're talking May 2011, OK?). Son asked if it was OK for him to loan friend his John Williams book. "We are not allowed to make a photocopy for him, are we? So I've better let him borrow my book." I felt really proud of my son who thinks about whether it is right to photocopy copyrighted material. I would rather he does not let his friend borrow his book for a whole year, thank you very much. And should his friend choose to photocopy from it, we might n...

Had a most illuminating chat with son last night. He was reading the book Stick Up for Yourself: Every Kid's Guide to Personal Power and Self-Esteem. A gain. Why? I asked. "O well, you know, my self-esteem is at an all-time low." Something to do with being ranked in "C" team at cricket. But you came in top at skiing, I said. "Yeah, but that is all forgotten," (ie by the other boys in class). Then he went into the technicalities on how to bowl a cricket ball and how he was often criticized, and we drifted into talking about his preference to use the right hand for some tasks and the left hand for some tasks. Clearly having a very strong left hand has given him an advantage in piano playing. Obviously, I said, your brains must be a bit confused when it comes to bowling a cricket ball. Ah! That explains why you are so good at skiing, I said. You use both left and right sides of the body equally when skiing. Face on son shows a lightbulb has gone on. Did s...

Not yet. But it was good to meet a mother from my toddlers group last Saturday. She was at my son's school "Open Day". She told me she would always remember what I said to her, many moons ago. Apparently she was trying to tell her son -- who was happily chattering away -- to shut up. Apparently I said to her that it is OK to let toddlers chatter away. Apparently I said that "we spend all their first months encouraging them to talk, and then when they start talking we tell them to keep quiet. It must be confusing to the poor child." For whatever reason this young mum remembered this, and my face -- for I don't think she knows my name -- will always be associated with that "advice" I gave her. I didn't think it was the right time and place to mention that we must also teach our children that "there is a time and place for everything", under heaven, if I might add.

From the Telegraph today: "Meanwhile, more evidence emerged of the painful cuts in public spending which are set to come in across the board whoever wins the election. It was revealed that secret plans have been compiled by NHS bosses which would see thousands of training posts for doctors and nurses axed after the election, despite claims from ministers that front line services would be protected if Labour were re-elected. "Thousands of training posts have been earmarked for closure in cutbacks planned by the government." Who are these 'NHS bosses'? Trim the layers of bureaucracy, not stop training medical staff, I say.

This election has been so lacking in ideology. Max Hastings calls this the "ostrich election" as politicians and voters alike bury their heads in sand and hope that the real problems we face would just go away. It is like a toddler putting his little hands on his eyes and saying, "You can't see me now." Then toddlers grow up and realize, hey, other people can still see them even when they covered their eyes. So, too, we must grow up. None of the major parties seem to have any undergirding ideology in the recent years. There is no real 'vision' for this society. Everywhere there is just a bit of tinkering here, a bit of polyfiller there. Meanwhile the voters want lower taxes, higher benefits, higher pensions, better schools, better health care, better transport, but how do we pay for that? Many taxpayers (of which I'm one, just as women, of which I'm one) do not mind paying taxes to help those most in need. We don't even mind helping those wh...

The politicians are not telling us about the cuts in public services that will be necessary. That's OK as I will argue that (1) because a lot of public services/offices can indeed be cut and (2) public/civil servants should work towards the goal of redundancy. I have lost count of the number of letters we have received that tell us: you are invited to make an appointment to see your consultant; this is to confirm that we have cancelled your appointment with your consultant; this is to confirm that your new appointment with your consultant is ...; please complete the survey about your experience of seeing the GP*; please be notified that ballot papers for the local election will be sent out soon; please be informed that ballot papers for the General Election will be sent out soon; ad infinitum . Does anyone seriously think that the people sending these letters out actually do make a difference to our illness/well-being or "front-line services"? What would be the effect of ...

My son (coming up ten years old) once explained to me why being a grandparent is such a wonderful thing. "All that happens is you get a phone call that says, 'Congratulations! You're a grandparent!' with none of that carrying a baby around for nine months." Out of the mouths of babes, eh? He's been away on a school trip and we noticed that he is not keen to make contact on the phone. Conclusion: our son is growing up. That is good. That is very good. (I am the one who must get used to him being away from me. ) Still a part of me thinks he is never going to understand what it feels to be a parent, UNTIL he becomes a parent himself (ie when I get to be a grandparent). However where children are concerned, you know how you keep telling them that childhood is the best time of one's lives when we could live without a care (at least it was when I was growing up). We tell them school days are the best days because we did not have to be burdened with the worries o...

I really cannot understand why parents push their prodigies into university. Let me go on field trip or I'll sue, prodigy, 13, tells college Clearly these brains are so advanced they cannot see that learning something/sitting exams/graduating university earlier does not make them any better/more mature/nicer people. So what if my child is able to sit A Level exams at age eight, ten, or twelve? After that, what? My son was able to read anything he set his eyes on at five. So Dad bought him a whole set of Famous Five books. Why not? Both Mum and Dad enjoyed the Famous Five . Son tried reading one and gave up. He did not have the emotions to cope with that kind of adventure. It frightened him. He read the lot more recently and quite enjoyed them. Age nine is so different from age five when you are under a decade old. Thirteen-year-old boys should do what 13-year-old boys do: get zits and gain an interest in girls. Children and only children once. They should not be deprived of their ...

Do you know someone --anyone -- above the age of 40 who has NEVER coloured her hair? I was researching old people in my mid-30s. It was advantageous to me then to point out that I was already greying and felt much at home with the old people I spent a lot of time with. But they kept telling me I was grey not because I was old (they were in their 70s, 80s and 90s and I was relatively young to them), but that I read too many books. Crunch came when I returned to Singapore to prepare for my wedding. Friends suggested that I might consider colouring my hair, either "just to hide the grey", or sometimes in a more diplomatic way, to give it some 'highlights'. Having seen my mum struggle to keep her hair black when there wasn't that wide array of over-the-counter hair dyes we now have, and having seen how beautiful she looked when she went completely 'silver', I was loath to colour my hair. Some years back one hairdresser had in fact suggested my trying "bur...

In the parent-and-toddler group I help to run we have two fathers from Croatia who bring their daughters. They often chat loudly together during singing time. The lady in charge is afraid to tell them off because it could be viewed as racism. I spoke firmly to these fathers and immediately instead of talking between themselves they sat down with their daughters and did "Row, row, row your boats" etc with them. The young girls were delighted. I can get away with telling these parents most things because I am not-white. So I'm glad that there are people like Mr Sewell who dares tell it as it is: (black) boys need fathers . Check out also earlier post here .

This week the talk has been how to control dangerous "status" dogs owned by young men (usually) who are often simply young people on benefits. They swagger around with their pit bull-like dogs, letting these dogs foul the pavement and often use these dogs to threaten others. Would you, in your right mind, confront one of these if you saw that they were not picking up after their dogs? So our good minister, a certain Mr Johnson, has been talking about making sure that dog owners insure their dogs against their biting innocents. My former band instructor said he came from a school in Singapore called "Holy Innocents". The boys' nickname for their school was "Holy in no sense". Mr Johnson was, in my reckoning, speaking "wholly in no sense". Then there was the news of John Veneables, "one of the Bulger killers", being thrown back into prison. A certain children's "Tsar" (advocate) also said that we are criminalizing our c...

Grrrrr! more like. I wonder if these cold callers know how annoying they are. They call often when I am cooking, trying to get a baking tray out of the hot oven, or stopping something from boiling over. Or in the middle of my lunch which I sometimes forget to eat. You run to the phone, answer it and ... nothing. No one breathes, no music. Pure nothing. Then, I imagine, something clicks or lights up on THEIR machine to indicate that someone has picked up the phone. Then they speak, usually asking for my husband. I have been so fed up recently about these calls I've taken to doing the same thing to them. I pick up the phone and when the silence indicates that it is a cold caller, I'd wait. When they ask to speak with "Mr T" I know it IS a cold caller. I hold my breath for a few seconds, then I hang up. The most hateful ones are those who say, "O! Don't worry! We are not trying to sell you something." Yeah, sure. Did they call to discuss the weather or shal...

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...

Yesterday my son was chuffed to be playing his first rugby match for the school in the afternoon. If you've seen his 'sporting skills', you would understand why this is such a big deal in our household. At breakfast I had to remind him of three things. Can't remember the first two, but the third was about teamwork. Then we moved on to Paul's analogy of the church as the body. Which part do you play? If everyone is an eye, what good is it? Or if everyone was a hand, not any good either. Later on that morning I had the reason to think about this analogy again and almost prayed "Lord, don't make me a bunion."! When I made this remark after dinner, husband laughed and said, "Or verrucca!" Everyone in a church body has a part to play. But sometimes we get to a point when God allows us to go through the darkest of sorrows and deepest of pain. We are tired, we are worn. Everything around us seems to have caved in on us. We cannot take it any more. I...

I am often not sure whether to worry about climate change given all the conflicting evidence, lobbying and mud-slinging. (See earlier post.) But I believe that doing something positive for the earth, to preserve its fertility cannot be bad. After all, the earth "belongs to the Lord". As my son once said when he was six: "There is no right in doing wrong and there is no wrong in doing right." So these two Telegraph articles are interesting: Britain facing food crisis as world's soil 'vanishes in 60 years' and Spend more on food rather than holidays, says organic lobby . When it's gone, it's gone. No soil to farm with. No water to irrigate. No food is to be grown. What good is the ability to buy cheap clothes when you cannot farm food to eat? Can you eat your cheap clothes? We are looking forward to our "holiday" (aka visit to my home country) which we try to do once in two years. My son knows no other "foreign holidays" apar...

The news in Britain is so bleak and I am full of cold (again) I thought I'd cheer myself up by reminding me of what I wrote for a school bulletin some years back when I chaired the equivalent of the PTA. This was part of the publicity for our fundraising party, the last and best we've had, with our parents band singing 'live'. You don’t need to go Sailing, Walking on the Moon , to the Mull of Kintyre , the Yellow River , the Mississippi and certainly not the Rivers of Babylon to find Clair, Vincent, Fernando and Maggie . May , some time between January and The Twelfth of Never but after December ‘63 is not a Space Oddity , yet as Night Fever In the Summertime (one of those Seasons in the Sun ) might Knock Three Times before you can put Another Brick in the Wall . Grandad with his Combine Harvester is not a Sad Sweet Dreamer . Don’t Give Up on Us! Don’t Cry for us, Argen. Tina is Three Times a Lady and she can’t live Without You . How Can I Be Sure? She’s go...

Recently on a private (Singapore) forum group someone posted a copy of "A German View of Islam" without comment. (This widely circulated "view" admonishing peace-loving Muslims to speak up against the fanatics or risk having our freedoms curtailed has in fact been traced to a blog post here that had got modified along the way.) There was a quick response from a practising Muslim who noted that she was offended. That kind of sent a chill through the cyber space of this network spanning much of the globe. Two other people (included myself) responded to the original post with what I thought were considered opinions. I didn't mention, though, that my husband was evacuated from the City of London when 9/11 happened following rumours that London would be the next target. Then he went incommunicado till he got home. I remember the overwhelming sense of relief when he did. The first news I heard of the 7/7 bombings was of a bomb at "his" station. Does anyone...