Organic-Ally

This time every year we run a Christmas party for the children and their parents/carers who bring them regularly. We provide party food for the children and the adults are asked to bring food or give £3 towards food. We give each child and adult a Christmas present. The money for the food and presents comes from what is left over from the £1.50 we collect every week, after we have provided drinks and biscuits for both children and adults, craft materials for the children, etc. We also invest in new toys and equipment regularly. Mdm P is a parent who usually arrives quite late. Sometimes after I've put my moneybox away and I would say, "Pay next week." But she'd forget to pay the following week, especially if someone else was standing in for me. In fact, even if she did come early-ish, she would shuffle about, taking ages to look for her money. Sometimes I have to confront her (which I find very embarrassing) to say, "Have you registered?" and she would claim...

This time of year, every year, I dread having to do my accounts for tax purposes. I am fairly numerate, but when it comes to accounting, I wallow in the abyss between the debits and credits. My dear husband, trained in accounting, thankfully tolerates sitting down with me to sort out the numbers. Always we row over my poor book-keeping(??), my lack of analysis, and ... O dear! So last year, for Christmas, I was given Book-keeping for Dummies which I attempted to read, and even did exercises, etc. Last Saturday we sat down to do the accounts. I had made a start on the Trial Balance and the numbers on various bank accounts were adding up properly, etc. But still I managed to put some DRs and CRs in the wrong columns -- which he spotted, and I failed to find a record of my last payment to the accountant (!). But, BUT, we managed to balance the account without getting too cross with each other. Whew! Profit/Loss? Apparently I made a tiny, teeny profit, not enough to buy a half-decent han...

Isn't it ironic that someone who does not know how to take good pictures to profit from market-place websites like Etsy should have one of her photos featured in the local papers? Sadly it was the photo of my 'little brother' "Big Ben" in a tribute page . We looked at our photos of Ben. They are either of him with hands in his pockets or arms around a little baby. The photo here is actually one of him with our new-born son ten-and-something years ago. We knew then that he would have made a good father, and we were right. Sadly his daughters now won't have him around any more. Our prayers are with your family, Ben.

This was going round the Internet. There is no certainty over its authorship, and the piece has been called a "hoax" and all that. Still it is worth reading, methinks. When pondering the question of taxes and the structure of our tax system in general please refer to this explanation using the language of Beer !! Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this; The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing. The fifth would pay $1 The sixth would pay $3 The seventh would pay $7 The eighth would pay $12 The ninth would pay $18 The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59 So, that's what they decided to do. The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy withthe arrangement, until one day, the owner threw them a curve ball. "Since you are all such good customers," he said, "I'm going to reduce the cost of your daily beer...

Yesterday was a very sad day at church. Last Sunday we heard that we cannot put God in a box as we looked at the passage in the Book of Samuel and the way the Ark of the Covenant was treated and feared. The congregation was bowed by the news of a serious house fire that left one of our church leaders and his wife (a paediatrician) in ICU. Later that day we learned the news that Ben, a Microsoft engineer, had been called home. Smoke inhalation had led to cardiac arrest. And the young man who first came to our church 11 years ago, spent Christmas with us, gone away, come back, got married, had children, was now back in the arms of Jesus. Yesterday was the first day back at church together for many of us. There was such an outpouring of grief. Ben was special. Ben was much loved. I spent time with his mum last Friday. O, how we cried. "Why? Why? Why did God take him at the prime of his life? Why did He not take me instead?" Ben's mum cried. We will never understand. I could,...

I find it hard to believe that. My eldest sister. Sixty. And she spent four hours working at McDonald's today, because the manager there could see that her work ethos was so different from that of Generation Y (or X or Z?). But she had a run-in with a much younger staff member who did not realize that she was a champion french fries fryer whose "just-in-time" technique was exemplary. Sister has a full-time job in accounts. She 'retired' and started doing some hours at M's, but was soon offered a job elsewhere. M's called her up, asking her to work Sundays. Actually Big Sister is very good at audit/accounts but never quite bothered to get her accountancy qualifications. I remember her talking for hours on the phone trying to explain to her best friend the difference between debits and credits, assets and liabilities. I look back at my young life with great sentimentality today because the talk in the UK this week was -- still -- on cutting publi...

In my short walk to the Post Office and back I was struck by three family situations. #1: Little blonde toddler running after balding dad who went, "Come on, catch up with your gingerbread Dad." #2: Dad and son had just crossed the road and dad had swooped son into his arms. Both having a lovely chat. #3: Attention drawn to child (about 11-12 years old) stamping and completely destroying a pair of glasses on the ground. It was a family of mother plus three small children plus this lad. They must have just come from the cinema and had been given those pretty sturdy 3-D glasses. Mum was tending to a much younger child when the oldest child stamped on the glasses. Mum: "Any why did you have to do that?" Boy: "Because no one would recognize me." Mum: "Now pick up those bits and put them in the bin." I don't know what transpired before this incident. But the look on the boy's face and his manner suggested to me that he needed some help with an...

Earlier this evening I said to "my boys" how I always enjoyed our meal times together. Son was telling good jokes and giving good reports of life at school. What more do I want? Had to explain how when I was his age meal times were served over two hours. Because of the wide range of our ages and the two-session school system, my siblings and I never seemed to sit down at the same table. Either I came home far too late to eat with any of the family (older siblings would have eaten and gone onto evening classes) or I had to eat way too early before I set off for school. That is why I always made it a point that our family sat down together for meals. No TV. No books. And lately no talk about Lego and computer games. We're at the end of our first half-term. There has been many changes, not least of all that son is walking to and from school by himself. He's supposed to be at a 'silly age'. But he's also getting more and more responsible and I AM NOT COMPLAINI...

Woohoo! And what are they saying? Apparently: "governments need to cut benefits and tackle restrictive practices and regulations in the labour market to boost employment levels". What does this mean? Minimum wage, maximum hours, and everything in between? Right. Original report here . Who would win the Nobel Prize for saying that "ethical" employment practices would benefit all?

Sunday morning and having breakfast with son. Somehow we drifted into a discussion on asking the right questions. My point was as we grow up and are being introduced to new knowledge, knowing the right answers is important. But as we progress up the learning ladder it is not knowing the answers but knowing which questions to ask that matter most. It is the case in research. The whole point of research is finding the answers. What answers we find is directly correlated with the questions we ask. So this report on How Fair is Britain? appears to have the statistics for all sorts of un/fairness. My question to my son is: Were they asking the right questions? Take the issue of gender and how boys do not know how to sit still. Or sitting still – something girls tend to be better at. "So a boy can't sit still, so he gets told off, so he starts to feel like a bad boy, so he starts to behave like a bad boy, so he gets told off some more, so he gets angry, so the teacher gets angry an...

(A shorter, less controversial version of this was published in the Straits Times online section on 11th October. I had assumed that the Editor was not going to run it. Apologies for the overlaps.) The English-Singlish debate has thrown up a vociferous group defending the use of Singlish, largely because they see Singlish as being tied up with a Singapore identity. (I tried to explain how being a good Singaporean should not preclude us from learning to speak good English in a letter to the press .) This group seems to be made up of people who are able to speak (or at least write) excellent English when they choose to. There is a deafening silence, at least in the English cyber-media (and understandably so), from the Singlish-speaking group who could most benefit from learning to speak good English. If I were a Marxian sociologist (not the same as being a Marxist, nota bene ) I would say that this ‘good English’ group own the “means of production” and the ‘Singlish’ group do not. In or...

Some of you might recognize that this is the title of a 'classic' by Paul Willis. It tells how working class boys learn to become working class and take on working class jobs. We recently had a downstairs toilet refitted to make it easier for our aged visitors. It was put in single-handedly by a young man of 30 (30 is young to me now!) who originally came from Bosnia. Us here in the UK are very familiar with the tea-drinking antics of workmen. A point not lost on the author of the The Yellow Tractor , for example. But I was quite taken aback by how hard this young man worked. He was always on time. He never asked for tea or coffee unless I offered. I didn't even see him taking lunch (although I'd seen him drinking Red Bull twice). He cleaned up every day after he had finished. He was meticulous. If something didn't go as planned (like finding a loose floorboard) he would check with me, suggested solutions, waited for approval and then acted on it. He did not even tu...

Recently I sent this letter to the Straits Times : To be or to be – what is the question hah? “Should Singaporeans speak a standard English or Singlish?” is the wrong question. We need to “ go stun ” (back up a little) to ask whether Singaporeans need, or wish, to speak and write a language – any language – fluently enough to hold a sustained, logical and sometimes protracted discussion. Then only do we know how/which to choose. Many have observed that code-switching within a sentence (English, Mandarin, Singlish) is a common phenomenon in Singapore. My Sociology professor reasoned, “But you can’t translate the concept ‘ pek-chek ’, can you?” No, I can’t. I cannot even spell it. This difficulty in writing down the language is an intrinsic part of the problem. We borrow words like “ anomie ” and “ Weltanschauung ” in Sociology because there are no accurate English equivalents. Similarly, when discussing localisms the use of a Singlish term may be appropriate. However a lot of conversati...

This is a brag post. My son gave me permission to post his poem written some time in the last academic year. The teacher had gone over the structure of a poem and the pupils were asked to write another based on that structure. He wrote the first three stanzas in class and I saw him sitting at our dining table hacking out the last. As usual he refused to let me read any of his homework before submitting. ========== The Story of Tommy the Cat The milkman was driving in his multicoloured truck, When something jumped in front of him – a cat covered in muck! The milkman swerved, the milk truck tipped, and threw him out the door. The milk was flying everywhere and all across the floor. The cat now grabbed a milk can, and knocked the man half dead. Then dragged him to a building, and left him in a bed. He grabbed the milk, then ran away, and gave himself a drink. For the cat’s name was Tommy, and he needed milk to think. The milkman woke up in his bed, and thought it was all a dream, But Tomm...

Bought shirts for son at the Singapore Zoo. The sleeves and bottom hem of one ended up looking like this after first wash: Now the zoo shop people tell me it IS supposed to look like this. Here are the pictures they sent me to show what a new t-shirt SHOULD look like: Except that I don't remember it looking like this on the display. And it did not look ripped on the day that son wore it. Basically I wouldn't have bought the shirt if I knew it was supposed to look "ripped". Would you spend S$40 on a shirt that is ripped like that after first wash? I think it is a rip-off.

Do you agree? Original report here . Yesterday as the IFS report tells us that the "poor" are worse affected than the "rich" given the new financial squeezes, our minds turned to the thousands needed to pick fruit and veg. People complain that there are no jobs, yet thousands are recruited -- need to be recruited -- from overseas to fill these posts. I have an East European chap working on my bathroom. He's very conscientious, very thorough, very diligent. And so polite. He didn't even dare put his radio on because I have mine on. Until I went out to do a shop. No wonder this well-known local firm of bathroom specialists employ him.

We are all set to check out of the YMCA hostel here which has been our home for the past two weeks. Husband, however, has to trek over to Funan to get a battery for his new camera replaced. That is after we made the futile trek to Wisma Atria as instructed by the Funan salesman to claim our special wide angle lens at an incredible SGD99. Sony is promoting this camera and enticing customers with a promotional offer, but when we went all the way to their distributor they have none of the lenses in stock. In fact they do not have this particular lens ANYWHERE in Singapore. How then should they be allowed to carry on with this promotion? As husband says, "I see a letter (to the press) coming". We tried leaving feedback at Sony website, but it does not accept complaints from tourists from the UK. (The drop-down menu does not feature either UK or USA, why?) So I phoned and guess what? they are closed because of a "company event" and they won't be available till Monday...

I don't usually shout about promotions, but: Just received my goody bag from People Tree. It's FANTASTIC VALUE!!!! "Beautiful skirts, hand made tops, perfect summer dresses, cropped cotton trousers, delicate jewellery and stylish accessories – in this mystery Goody Bag you will receive at least FIVE hand made Fair Trade products WORTH AT LEAST £100 for JUST £30." Get your own Goody Bag from People Tree quickly now! (O no! just found out they've run out of stock on these bags. But still lots of other stuff that's good.)

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...