The 19th Month Update & Year-in-review

I've somehow lapsed a little on the updates, and there's a good reason -- okay, it's not that good a reason, but nevertheless -- Working Parenting. If 2012 has taught be anything, it's how to prioritise and backburn. Hey, no matter which sort of world you inhabit: elitist, autocratic, wartorn, there is one thing that makes all men and women equal: time. We all only have 24 hours to get our shit done each day, be it parenting, working, ruling the country or ruining it. This second year has been much about Keeping Up With Ju, and he's not even two.

Juju The Explorer

Ju has gone from a relatively quiet (in terms of verbosity) and active infant to a relatively loud and hyperactive toddler. There is not an ounce of stillness or equanimity in this boy. It is as if in his mind's eye, his life is an endless business of exploration from 7am to bedtime at 8pm. He only stops moving when he is strapped into his carseat or in his stroller. And even then, nothing outside the window escapes his curious attention. His eye for the smallest detail like a grain of rice amid the warzone of toys on the floor baffles us all. Like all humans unsaddled by the weight of norms and logic, he makes his own rules and ignores all common sense, especially when it comes to splashing in puddles.

Juju The Comedian

At 6 months, little sparks of what looked like his sense of humour forecasted what might come. At 19 months, I find myself puzzling over which genetic input from both our families contributed to his wicked humour. Last night, as I was removing my contact lenses (and hence engaged at the sink), Ju decided to play a trick on me from where he lay on my bed. He started crying out in alarm -- Ahhh! Ahhh! Ahhh! -- and from my vantage point, he looked like he was about to topple face down over the side of the bed as half his body was over the edge. With two fingers in my right eye, I yelled at him to get back on the bed. "Ahhhhhh!", he shouted. I rushed over to the bed and as I tried to prevent him from slipping over, he started laughing like a hyena. The funniest thing was he repeated his prank and screamed with laughter whenever I rushed over to "rescue" him. He knows exactly how to get your attention by doing precisely what he knows you don't want him to do, and he delights in the remonstrations and scoldings that follow. It's hard to stay irritated at him after you realise from the sparkle in his eye that he is having you on. My parents are usually his willing victims.

Juju The Temper

Before Ju was born, I had some misgivings about him inheriting some of my traits that I'm not too proud of....my fears were not without basis and I am afraid that the contribution from our parents' genes is a lot more than 20%. The wrath of Ju rears its head daily, but Ju has as short a memory as his temper, so tantrums blow over as quickly as they come -- most of the time. I don't know if it's a normal part of the Terrible Twos, since the screaming-when-he-doesn't-get-what-he-wants only began since the 15th month. He is open to distraction or negotiation but if he is stopped during an activity he enjoys (like sweeping up fallen leaves on the balcony) or rejected (like being told he cannot have the yoghurt despite it being very obviously in the fridge where he showed you) he will howl bitterly. In case you're wondering, for me, no means no. Luckily, his tear-streaked face and hiccupping sobs elicit nothing more than amusement in me and none of the heartrending pity my father feels. That's why Grandpa is the most bullied member of the family.

Ju also hates having someone brush his teeth, he would gladly chew on his toothbrush (albeit ineffectively) but fights to the death if we attempt to brush his teeth with it. Last night, in a fury as I was wrestling with him and his toothbrush, he slapped me in the face. I was stunned for half a second, but in another half, his face changed and his eyes registered that he had assaulted his mother. He actually reached his hand out and stroked my cheek. I didn't get angry but I used a strong, accusatory tone to berate him for the slap, to which he responded with what looked like 19 month old remorse and another stroke of my cheek. You have to hand it to the little guy, he's barely a toddler and he's already learnt how to mend fences.

Juju The Athlete
Ju can now climb up a slide unaided, clamber up steps unaided and sometimes toting a ball, and jogs quite efficiently. The heaviest weight he can move is a 5kg bag of rice, the heaviest he has lifted and carried with him is a 2kg tin of milk. He himself weighs as much as my friends' kindergarten-age children and the next time I am asked what I feed Ju, I shall say steroids and protein shakes. It's also ironic that as big and as physically adept as he is, he's a real wuss when it comes to the tiniest things like sand between his toes! He hated going into the sand pit or the beach and staunchly refused to go near it. At the sandpit, he would stand stiffly next to the pit staring mournfully at the other kids playing with their toys, their bare toes shuffling in the sand. 2 weeks ago, Dan and I decided to rehabilitate his sand phobia. We've never cheered and encouraged anyone as much as we did Ju at the sandpit and I am happy to state that Ju is now almost a new toddler when it comes to sand. Ju also enjoys bike rides, feeding the turtles at the pond and threatening the neighbourhood cat. He is indifferent to dogs on a leash but panicked when my friend's playful Labrador chased him around the flat.

Juju the Creative

Ju makes a toy out of everything but refuses to play according to what is expected for the toy. He loves drawing with his water-soluble crayons but watches me out of the corner of his eye for any chance to draw on any surface but the paper. I am starting his potty training slowly, getting him to sit in the potty at regular intervals like before bed. He isn't completely sure of what he's supposed to do when he's on it, since I don't force him to remove his diaper, but I'm also reluctant to be too pushy, having read too many reports of potty training trauma. He sometimes uses the potty as his hat and I don't know if I should laugh or scold him for wearing a portable toilet on his head. Incidentally, the supermarket is running out of options for pull-up diapers in his size. 

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All in, 2012 has made for a wonderfully eventful year. Ju now has a fully toothy smile, a receptive vocabulary in 3 languages and less hair than I would like since Dan forced the crew cut on him. I have forgotten what it is like to have a Girls' Night Out and we have resigned ourselves to sharing our bed with Ju until he decides to speak. Everything has changed since Ju came into our lives and nothing could be better than it is now. I don't crave for my youth or my waistline back, and I am even willing to juggle this parenting gig with my work demands. Being away from Ju the whole day, and sometimes for days if I have to travel only makes me cherish the time I have with him (an average of 1.5 hours per week day) even more. Every minute with Ju is a minute of the most profound feeling of content and satisfaction. It's almost Nirvana.

Bus Drivers Are Workers Too

I am a worker, I work for an employer who pays me a monthly wage to do a job that value-adds in some way. I don't produce a physical product for sale, but I perform a service which the public may need from time to time.

Bus drivers perform such a service, and a bus service is a definite value-added public good because everything depends on transportation of people. Your entire economy would grind to a halt if millions of people were unable to go to work on a given day.

So I don't understand why so many people are throwing up their hands in self-righteous condemnation when a hundred or so bus-drivers decided not to call-in for work one day because they felt that they had been unfairly remunerated compared to their Malaysian or Singaporean counterparts who did the SAME job as they did. Would the reaction have been different if the strikers had been Singaporean or Malaysian?

We wouldn't be able to say. But I suspect the uproar would have been more tempered. But then again, it is very unlike Singaporeans to go to such "drastic" measures which, in some highly-developed countries, counts as the norm where industrial action is concerned.

It came as an even bigger surprise to me when I heard on last evening's news that the acting Manpower Minister had said that a legal manner in which to have staged a protest would have been to give the bus company, SMRT, 14 days' notice.

You mean to say there is a legally-sanctioned recourse for workers who want to go on strike?! I hope the children in school are listening to this.

I agree fully with the position that there are alternatives to bring a worker's grievance to his employer before a strike is called. Do we know if the Chinese bus drivers had already done this and exhausted this possibility?

We do not, because the press and the government spokespeople have so far obsessed on how ILLEGAL the action was. And how zero the state's tolerance is for such action.

Do we know from the mainstream media if there is any veracity to the bus drivers' claims of unequitable remuneration? We do not, because SMRT, the employer at the center of the maelstrom, has kept silent on the crux of the matter -- its wage package. And if you look at the table I've borrowed from the Online Citizen, your first conclusion would not be that the bus drivers are greedy, subversive and criminal.

As a principle of ethics, it is wrong to treat any group differently be they a different nationality, gender, ethnicity or pregnant. People have a right to have their concerns heard and rectified to their satisfaction. Barring that, they are free to leave. But what if they are NOT free to leave? What if they want to do their jobs but they just want a fairer deal? Is it not their right to pursue that? Yes, within the limits of the law, but the common worker has not a legally-trained professional. He does what he can within his means and understanding. I would let the employer and the authorities decide if the striking bus drivers had any legitimate claims and if they had breached any laws in taking the action they had on Monday. But I would not rush in to judge or demand for their termination, as so many rabid netizens have done.

Who will drive the buses? Isn't it patently clear from the numbers in the table that few Singaporeans would do this job for the amount they get? It is taxing, exhausting work to ply Singapore's busy roads with its lunatic and inconsiderate drivers.

There are 3 things happening here: one, the government is trying to contain the political fall-out from the strike action by thundering on about its illegitimacy and criminality. It has to send a clear and present message to any other group (local or otherwise) that they should not even think about doing this.

Two, SMRT is trying to resolve the dispute with a large group of disgruntled employees while keeping the lid on its pay policies tightly clamped lest they are forced into the awkward spotlight to explain what looks to everyone as discrimination.

Third, the elephant in the room is the fact that SMRT had to employ this many foreign nationals to drive their buses. What is responsible for the dearth? Dismal wages that put off Singaporeans from the job? Higher profit margins from depressing wages of certain bus-drivers?

I don't have the answers, but the picture would surely look much clearer than the murky sludge it now resembles if we had those answers. But to the ignorant, xenophobic person, everything naturally looks crystal clear. 

I'll end with an anecdote. I was in Germany during the summer and 3 days before we were to fly home from Frankfurt, the news reported of an impending strike by Lufthansa cabin crew. They had been in week-long negotiations by then with their carrier about salary increments. I was furious, I remembered, at the thought of a bunch of air-stewardesses who could barely provide proper service holding me hostage with their belief in their entitlements. Anyway, the news would broadcast developments in the negotiations each day, and the interesting thing was: we were all told that if negotiations broke down, that the strike would take place on Friday from 1am to 12 noon. (This was announced on Wednesday). In addition, only the short-haul flights within Europe would be affected first.

So as expected, talks reached an impasse, the workers striked, and Lufthansa did their damage control. By Friday evening, when we arrived at Frankfurt, the airport looked normal. Talks had resumed, we heard, and the crew had gone back to work. Our flight proceeded as normal. This episode showed me that even strikes can be carried out to a certain degree of normality, that it is within the right of the worker to demand something, as long as he acted within legal and fair limits. The dispute was between Lufthansa and its workers, and to some degree, the union and workers were cognisant that it would do nobody any good to inconvenience the very customers that contributed to their salaries.

There has been no real union or recourse for workers with grievances in Singapore since this was wiped out in the 80s. We are a workforce that runs on compliance, no matter how resentful or involuntary that is. Is it any wonder that we are the unhappiest, unkindest and most unemotional nation in the world?

My Experience With German

Language By Accident

With the exception of those who are true linguists (people whose life obsession is to learn as many languages as they are interested in) none of us choose the language(s) we speak. In a monolinguistic society like Germany, France or the the UK (I exclude the new immigrants) and China (I mean the dialects in addition to Putonghua), people speak the language they grow up with and they learn a foreign one or two, as in Western Europe, but they are mostly dominant in only their mother tongue since the opportunity to use the second or third languages is rare given the monocultural envionment. In smaller nations such as the Nordic countries or Holland, people are more bilingual given that linguistic cultural imports (like movies and music) are consumed in their original form, i.e. not translated into the native language. That's why on a holiday, you're more likely to encounter a Swede who speaks fluent English than a German or French one.

What about Singapore? Or the handful of tiny nation-states scattered across the Pacific that also use English in addition to their native languages? We're a quirk, a flash in the plan if you will. English is not considered our native language despite it being the lingua franca, the official working language and the first language taught in schools here with the mother tongues being called the "second language" (in the 90s, "second language" was dropped in favour of the term "mother tongue" to denote Chinese, Malay and Tamil for political reasons). I suspect it has a lot more to do with history, race and ethnicity rather than which language Singaporeans are strongest in. But I digress. This is not an essay about why English is our native language.

I would restate again that people do not choose the languages they speak and learn. It's a happenstance of birthplace, the education system and which world economy is currently dominating the airwaves. In the 20th century, it was America and Britain and for a decade or two, Japan. Today, it's China. If your child is learning French in school, you would not have a long wait before someone asks you why he isn't learning Chinese. Then again, there are many folks who are schooling and nurturing their kids in their own native tongue for the sole reason of passing on their heritage and this is completely reasonable too. In fact, if I were to take the extreme economic-advantage position, there would be no reason to put Julien through the torture of German verbs.

I jest of course, no offence meant to Germans, I would be the first to tell you how insane it is to memorize thousands of Chinese words. The point remains that languages are living things, they're not some physics or math theorems you should master. Languages are tools of communication and a window on culture. There are no better or worse languages, but there are languages that can give you an advantage depending on where you happen to be and what you have chosen to do.

Why Not German?

I am asked constantly why I don't speak German, or why I have never learnt it. The short answer would be: no time. The long answer is more interesting I hope. I am bilingual, so I've always been able to juggle two languages and make the code-switching in everyday life, since my parents speak different languages with me. I spoke a smattering of Cantonese as well, my mother's native dialect and the only tongue my maternal grandparents spoke. I loved the idea of French (note: I loved the idea of speaking it and being in France, not necessarily the French way of life, which I knew nothing about when I first learnt it) and so I studied it in university for two years. At age 19, any language feels great to learn, and French was fun. And as with any foreign language, it just gets harder and harder if there aren't environmental conditions to support its acquisition. So by my third year, without native speaking French friends or actually having to live in France for at least a year, it was pretty much au revoir to francais for me. I retained the basic structure of French grammar (which doesn't go beyond the present, past, future and imperfect tense) and some vocabulary to this day, but for lack of use, it's as good as Greek. So with 4 languages under my belt (each at different levels of proficiency), I did not approach German with as much enthusiasm as I would have expected of myself when I met my German husband at age 29.

I dabbled in a few classes of Spanish after graduating, and even a bit of the local Hokkien dialect. But I couldn't see the point in acquiring a language I didn't need. Language acquisition takes time, effort, practice and committment. On top of these, you need to use the language or you may as well learn Advanced Calculus. I've heard people complaining about foreigners who write English well or have excellent English language grades on paper but in person, they can hardly string a sentence together. So you see, while I was in university with all the time in the world to study and learn, it was no problem picking up a new language. In my late 20s, the motivation to put myself through the rigours of homework, practice and more practice (which I wouldn't get with Daniel anyway) didn't exist and the prospect of this seemed like a waste of my precious Saturday afternoons.

I'm not picking fault at the process of language acquisition, I am stating the facts of it and what is entailed in language acquisition. Julien is picking up 3 languages at the most amazing pace, but he is 17 months old and he has no other job to do but to listen to us talk to him all day. He isn't even required to answer us! How great would it be if you went to German class every day from 8am to 8pm and all you had to do was play with stuff and not have to talk to your teacher? I'd take this class in a heart beat.

Furthermore, I didn't live in Germany and I didn't have to speak to Daniel's parents but for a few weeks in the year when they visited Singapore or we visited them. Of course I made the effort: I bought books, a CD, a dictionary and I prepared before each trip. This was more for social reasons than anything else. And I was more than a little pleased when people in Germany complimented my German with each passing year. It was encouraging and no one gave me a hard time for bad grammar and tenses or my broken Germanglish. And trust me when I say it matters to many learners how others perceive the way they speak the language, I have heard Germans tell me they are simply too shy or embarassed to speak to me in English even though there is no way I would judge them or laugh at them.

The Way Julien Learns

In 2011 I gave birth to Julien and the world of social exchanges became transformed. There came a new person in all our lives and for the most part, life became tenfold richer and more full - of excitement and excrement. Suddenly, there were more things to talk about with the Germans, more reasons to interact and visit cross-continent. When I first met Daniel's parents in 2008, I started to email his Mum, because this was the only way to communicate with her (with an online translator, bless Microsoft Bing Translator, anything is possible). We kept up the weekly conversation and today, I still paste her emails into a translator. Technology is convenient, but it doesn't help you acquire a language. 

Now I am learning German (organically) along with my son, but nowhere at the rate that Julien is learning it. A child's mind is like a supercomputer. A billion neurons are firing every 3 seconds in his first 5 years of life. That's his job: to learn. Our adult brains will never acquire language the way a child's brain does until he is age 7. In a nutshell, Julien is learning German completely differently from the way I am: he is using both sides of his brain. Scientists discovered that in early childhood, the language center of the brain (located in left hemisphere) isn't formed yet, so a child processes language with his entire brain - the parts responsible for learning language and producing it is more diffused across both hemispheres. MRI imaging found that as we get older, the brain begins to specialise so that only one part in the left hemisphere takes over the work of understanding and producing language.

This explains why 33-year-old me finds it a terrible chore to remember genders and cases in German while Julien will most likely take to it "naturally".

Learning German "Organically" - What Works and What Doesn't

When I say "organically", I mean without the intervention of a teacher or a structured classroom curriculum. The problem with picking up a language through informal interaction is you would never learn the rules of its grammatical structure and syntax. You would be confined also to the parameters of the conversations you have. This way has been great for me, don't get me wrong, more words and phrases stick than if I had had to memorise it in a whole semester of language class. But the biggest obstacle is usage. Passive/receptive language acquisition, like what Julien is doing now, precludes the active component of speech. It is only when I have had to structure a sentence that I realise how handicapped I am. 

4 weeks ago, I started German lessons at the Singapore Goethe Institut. I am not in the beginners' class, since my test score let me skip 3 levels. My acquisition has leaped exponentially for the following reasons:

1) I have to do homework (which means daily or almost daily revision, which is necessary)

2) I have to speak German in class

3) I have a teacher who explains things and gives me the rules

Rules of grammar are for me like the roadmap to someplace I need to get. I just need it. I must say GI has a good program structure and the methods are effective. We get out of our tiny classroom at least 2-3 times each lesson to the break area and practise with one another the lesson, be it asking and answering questions on the Dativ prepositions or the Warum/Weil agreements. Using the language makes ALL the difference, and in this I have a small advantage because of my family circumstances. Daniel and I still speak no German with each other, but he helps with my homework and when I have a question on Why This Particular German Rule is So Annoying. So far, Daniel has agreed with me more than not that it is annoying. 

My experience with German has been largely positive, despite my bellyaching. The pronunciation is easy enough, I get plenty of practice if I just go online for lessons, and I have access to German speakers. The pace is much slower than French, which aids comprehension and conversation by 500%. I'm going at it really slowly, as I have no personal goal to master it in a year. After all, ignorance still comes in handy when you are not in any mood to join in the conversation in German!

For me, languages are the most interesting thing in the world. They are puzzles and when you get them, they become such handy tools. And starting on my fifth, I can say that multilingualism isn't just some lofty hobby, it can and should be normal. Our brains are capable of so much more, and looking at the state of our "bilingual education", I would guess that something just isn't being done right at the level of acquisition. If schools would help their students learn Chinese or Tamil the way I am learning German now, as a foreign lamguage, I am certain it would benefit a lot more children. If they hang on to the belief that Chinese is a "mother tongue" for Chinese kids, then the thousands of Chinese tuition schools will continue to reap millions of dollars each year. 

Jay Chou for Beginners #3: 一路向北

词 (lyrics)：方文山 Fang Wen Shan
曲 (music)：周杰伦 Zhou Jie Lun (Jay Chou)

This video has Pinyin and English translation too, which is great for beginners who want to sing along =) I've added the Simplified characters below for those who are stumped by the Fan ti zi. The title, 一路向北 literally translates to "The entire road northwards". Figuratively, it means driving all the way north. The last two words, 向北 (xiang4 bei3) also sound like the words 伤悲 (shang1 bei1), which inverted, means hurt and sorrow. So the play on words gives the title the meaning of one who is going in the sole direction of hurt and sorrow. The MV shows scenes from the movie, Initial D, where Jay Chou played the lead character, who, of course, had his heart broken by the duplicity of the sweet Japanese girl whom he catches with her sugar daddy. This is the b-plot to the main drifting action, the movie's unlikely hero being Jay Chou. 

后视镜里的世界 越来越远的道别
你转身向背 侧脸还是很美
我用眼光去追 竟听见你的泪

在车窗外面排徊 是我错失的机会
你站的方位 跟我中间隔著泪
街景一直在后退 你的崩溃在窗外零碎

我一路向北 离开有你的季节
你说你好累 已无法再爱上谁
风在山路吹 过往的画面全都是我不对
细数惭愧 我伤你几回

后视镜里的世界 越来越远的道别
你转身向背 侧脸还是很美
我用眼光去追 竟听见你的泪

在车窗外面排徊 是我错失的机会
你站的方位 跟我中间隔著泪
街景一直在后退 你的崩溃在窗外零碎

我一路向北 离开有你的季节
你说你好累 已无法再爱上谁
风在山路吹 过往的画面全都是我不对
细数惭愧 我伤你几回

我一路向北 离开有你的季节
方向盘周围 回转著我的后悔
我加速超越 却甩不掉紧紧跟随的伤悲
细数惭愧我 伤你几回
停止狼狈就 让错纯粹

Jay Chou for Beginners #2: 搁浅 Run Aground

搁浅 (ge1 qian3), describes a ship that is stranded or run aground, is one of Jay Chou's emotive ballads. Full of recrimination and remorse, Jay's character recounts the hurt he had wrought on his sweetheart (due to a misunderstanding, as seen in the MV) and proceeds, in characteristic Jay Chou style, to beat himself up emotionally for what he has done. Composed by Jay Chou, the song hits its depth of meaning with the lyrics and Jay's vocals, which is undeniably powerful, even with his garbled mumbling. Beginner to intermediate ability required for this one.

搁浅

久未放晴的天空   jiu wei fang qing de tian kong
依旧留着你的笑容 yi jiu liu ni de xiao rong
哭过却无法掩埋歉疚 ku guo que wu fa yan mai qian jiu
风筝在阴天搁浅 feng zhen zai yin tian ge qian
想念还在等待救援 xiang nian hai zai deng dai jiu yuan
我拉着线复习你给的温柔 wo la zhe xian fu xi ni gei de wen rou
暴晒在一旁的寂寞 bao shai zai yi pang de ji mo
笑我给不起承诺 xiao wo gei bu qi cheng nuo
怎么会怎么会你竟原谅了我 zen me hui zen me hui ni jing yuan liang le wo
我只能永远读着对白 wo zhi neng yong yuan du zhe dui bai
读到我给你的伤害 du dao wo gei ni de shang hai
我原谅不了我 wo yuan liang bu liao wo
就请你当作我已不在 jiu qing ni dang zuo wo yi bu zai
我睁开双眼看着空白 wo zheng kau shuang yan kan zhe kong bai
忘记你对我的期待 wang ji ni dui wo de qi dai
读完了依赖 du wan le yi lai
我很快就离开 wo hen kuai jiu li kai

(Repeat)
The sky that hasn't cleared up for a while
As usual retains your smile
(I have) Cried, yet no way to bury the guilt
The kite has run aground in the overcast sky
Missing (you), still waiting to be saved
I'm pulling the string
Reviewing the tenderness you gave
Loneliness that is scorching
Laughing at me for not being able to give a promise
Why is it, why is it
That you unexpectedly forgave me

I can only forever be reading the lines
Reading the hurt I caused you
I cannot forgive myself
So please treat me as if I am no longer here
I open both my eyes, looking at the empty space
Forgetting your expectations of me
(Once I have) Finished reading dependency
I will leave very soon

Jay Chou for Beginners #1: 七里香

While talking to a good friend in Czech Republic who is struggling to recapture the lost Chinese words from her years of Chinese classes, I sent her a song by Jay Chou, only one of the most successful and prolific young Taiwanese singer-composers of contemporary times. Jay (Zhou Jie Lun), who shot to fame in the late 90s with his unique hybrid of western rap/R&B and Mandopop is also notoriously garbled in his enunciation. Not a good start for those of you just beginning Chinese lessons, but a fun way to learn a couple of songs. Jay Chou's music is oddly haunting for me, perhaps because I listened to him during some of my most significant milestones during my 20s.

I have included the Chinese lyrics, pinyin and the English translation below. Because Jay Chou is from Taiwan, the lyrics you find online and in the MTV would be in traditional script. I have changed it all to simplified for the benefit of those of us who didn't learn Fan Ti Zi!
 
七里香 (qi li xiang), the song title, means "Common Jasmine Orange", a fruit that gives off a fragrance from as far as 7 Chinese miles, therefore the literal translation, "Seven Mile Fragrance", qi li xiang. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

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七里香

窗外的麻雀 在电线杆上多嘴  chuang wai de ma que zai dian xian gan shang duo zui

妳说这一句 很有夏天的感觉   ni shuo zhe yi ju hen you xia tian de gan jue

手中的铅笔 在纸上來來回回  shou zhong de qian bi zai shi shang lai lai hui hui

我用几行字形容妳是我的谁  wo yong ji hang zi xing rong ni shi wo de shei

秋刀鱼的滋味 猫跟妳都想了解  qiu dao yu de zi wei mao he ni dou xiang liao jie

初恋的香味就这样被我们寻回 chu lian de xiang wei jiu zhe yang bei wo men xun hui

那溫暖 的阳光  na wen nuan de yang guang

像刚摘的鲜艳草莓  xiang gang zhai de xian yan cao mei

你说妳舍不得吃掉这一种感觉  ni shuo ni she bu de chi diao zhe zhong gan jue

雨下整夜 我的愛溢出就像雨水  yu xia zheng ye, wo de ai yi chu jiu xiang yu shui

院子落叶 跟我的思念厚厚一叠 yuan zi luo ye, gen wo de si nian hou hou yi die

几句是非 也無法將我的热情冷却 ji ju shi fei, ye wu fa jiang wo de re qing leng que

妳出现在我诗的每一页  ni chu xian zai wo shi de mei yi ye

雨下整夜 我的愛溢出就像雨水 yu xia zhen ye, wo de ai yi chu jiu xiang yu shui

窗台蝴蝶像诗裡纷飞的美丽章节chuang tai hu die xiang shi li fen fei de mei li zhang jie

我接著写 把永远爱妳写这诗的结尾  wo jie zhe xie, ba yong yuan ai ni zhe shi de jie wei

妳是我唯一想要的了解 ni shi wo wei yi xiang yao de liao jie

那饱满 的稻穗 幸福了这个季节  na bao man de dao sui, xing fu le zhe ge ji jie

而妳的脸颊像田裡熟透的蕃茄  er ni de lian jia xiang tian li shu tou de fan qie

妳突然 对我说 七里香的名字很美 ni tu ran dui wo shuo, qi li xiang de ming zi hen mei

我此刻却只想亲吻妳倔強的嘴  wo ci ke que zhi xiang qin wen ni jue jiang de zui

The sparrow outside the window chatters on the telegraph pole

You say that this sentence has very much the feeling of summer

The pencil in my hand moves back and forth on the paper

I use a few lines of words to describe who you are to me

The taste of saury (a kind of fish), that both the cat and you wish to understand

The scent of first love is hence retrieved by us both

That warm sunshine, like a freshly-picked bright strawberry (strawberry also refers to a hickey in Taiwan)

You say you can’t bring yourself to eat up this feeling

Rain falls the entire night, my love overflows just like the rain
Leaves fall in the courtyard, like my thoughts in a thick pile
A few words of gossip, are unable to dampen my passion
You appear in every page of my poem

Rain falls the entire night, my love overflows just like the rain
The butterfly on the windowsill, like the beautiful chapters fluttering about in the poem
I then write, that I would always love you, at the end of this poem
You are the only understanding I want

The plump ears of the rice plant, has blessed this season
And your cheeks are like the ripe tomatoes in the field
You suddenly say to me
That the name Common Jasmin Orange is very beautiful
Yet at this moment I want only to kiss your stubborn lips

Survival Of The Weakest

Singapore will not find itself climbing out of its fertility rut for a while. I'll tell you one of the reasons for this: our species has become too weak.

By "species", I am referring to the Kiasu Singaporean. We Singaporeans need no introduction or explication of the infamous term, but for those in doubt, click on the link. 

Before I proceed, let me qualify that I am not saying that there are not many reasons for the global phenomena of falling birthrates. I am only pointing out that there is one glaring symptom among Singaporeans of a certain creed...that acts like an antibiotic that has become ineffective to fighting a virus. 

In an NHK broadcast on September 28 which reported on Prime Minister Lee's speech in his National Day Rally on the lack of babies being born on our high-functioning island, the reporter interviewed one 33 year old Charmaine Ho, her occupation:  "reporter for a fashion magazine". The reporter described CHarmaine as someone who "wants her career but also to give her children the best possible education". Balancing those goals won't be easy, it went on because Ms Ho is adamant that she wants to have kids but she doesn't like how "competitive Simaporean society has become".

Ms Ho said to the camera, "Having kids...is very expensive, we don't mean it in a monetary way, we mean...the kind of sacrifices you have to make [...] Maybe you have 1000 kids trying to get into the same university where there's only like...100. You're fighting with the whole nation."

Watch the clip here.

Let me pause for a moment to take in the news. Wow, this is the first time I've heard someone equating competition with a few million people with a reason NOT to have children. It's a wonder Singapore's population hasn't gone under decades ago like the sinking city of Venice.  

Yes, it's not news that we are and have been a nation of complainers (which advanced, insecure, non-G8 member country isn't?). We're also notoriously protective of our offspring and we suffer from a pathological obligation to ENSURE that their childhoods culminate in illustrious professional careers in medicine, law, or at the very least, a position in the upper echelons of the civil and administrative service. Better yet if they can get their hands on a tax-payer-funded Ivy League college education, since those degrees are worth a lot more than others. 

I get it, parents want the best for their kids. I have one, so I feel your angst, Ms Ho. But somehow, the kind of parents that echo Ms Ho's sentiment is the sort that goes beyond the boundaries of typical parental concern. Singaporean parents want a guarantee that their kids will do well, and by "well", I mean head and shoulders above the rest, even if it means they have to get there kicking, shoving and pushing others aside for their kids. And this is precisely what Ms Ho does not want to do, or at least is loathe to do. But she will do it, if she eventually succumbs to the biological and evolutionary urge to procreate. 

What I think is this: the spirit of competition is not dead. But it has evolved into an ugly, narrowminded, class war between those who have and those who have more. It's the new middle class against everyone else: the less well-off, who seek to compete with their children for the same things, and the more well-off, whose privileges it seeks to replicate and gain.

Those who have some, aspire to have more, and they will do everything it takes to ensure that their children come out ahead of the rest, no matter the cost to the children. Those who have more, will use all their resources to keep it that way for their children. Failure is never an option for those who feel that what they have achieved could be snatched away at a moment's notice. Their children's success or lack of it reflect their own worst fears and insecurities. We are a generation that has come to fear competition, maybe because those of us who have reaped the fruits of our own struggles, cannot bear to lose the privileges of the new middle class. Our children are a reflection of ourselves, even though this is a seriously warped view. Their failure becomes our failure, and their success becomes our imaginary trophies and the chimera that we are safe and secure in all that we have achieved.

As a result, the strongest don't come out of this system to re-populate the nation (and workforce), the weak that have the social capital of middle-class parents and networks do. But this isn't new, is it? It happened to Venice, and it will happen to Singapore if the class warfare in our education continues unabated. Immigration might actually be a good thing, if it brings in people of another ilk, with a taste for competition as it really is in the jungle. But is our system robust and open enough to accomodate all kinds of talent? From the economy to the government, from schools to the home, there is still only a very narrowly-defined idea of a productive, able and valued member of society. So I will wait and see if we go the way of Venice, or perhaps we will be something else altogether.  

Morality Is Not Solely A Human Condition

Self-recognition
 Ju was completely oblivious the last time I performed the mirror test on him with a dab of pink lipstick on his forehead. Fail! And get this, no matter how interested your child may be in his reflection, he may gesture at it, smile and laugh at it or reach out and touch it as if he were actually interacting with his reflection, he DOES NOT UNDERSTAND that it is himself in the mirror so long as he fails the mirror test. Trust me, I was fooled by Ju too.

It is difficult to get inside the head of a toddler without scientific inquiry and experimentation. Sure, Piaget did it by observing his kids, but Piaget was a psychologist who kept meticulous records which I doubt any common parent would care to replicate before  she declares proudly to others that her kid is so and so. It is the same with Ju's self awareness. That is why I do the experiment every month or two just to be sure. Apes are the only other species that recognises their reflection. 

Empathy

It is still too early to start on the experiments on morality, specifically what is fair and what is right or wrong since Ju cannot yet speak. But at 16 months, Ju is surprisingly empathetic. Some time ago, I decided to see if Ju could feel empathy. He could, by then, tell us with gestures that he was hurt (even though these days, I think he feigns pain to get some sympathy and attention). We would naturally go to his "rescue" and blow or stroke on the "wound" or hug him. So as I played with him one day, I pretended to hurt myself and I made a whole charade of wincing and grimacing and moaning in pain. The first time, he was taken aback and stopped to stare. Then as I said, "Oww! It hurts!" (in Mandarin) a few times, he reached out his hand to stroke my face. I was really surprised but he did it again the next time. He is more skeptical when Daniel tries it with him and needs a lot more convincing. It's either Daniel is not as good an actor or Ju doesn't believe that boys can feel pain. I don't have a means to test his understanding of gender yet, so I can't rule out either explanation.

The other clear evidence that Ju can feel empathy is when we read his picture books. In two books, there is a picture of someone hurt next to an ambulance. In "Busy Town", a flap book, we open the flap on the ambulance to see a little boy inside, with his arm in a cast and a paramedic tending to him. In the second, "Mein Puzzlebuch Tatutata", Grandma is lying on a stretcher with her leg in a cast. Of course when we read the book with Ju, we would describe the pictures to him, like "Look at Granny's leg, she's hurt. She needs to go to the hospital." Here's the interesting part, Ju gets visibly concerned and starts pointing to his leg, or to his arm (if it's the boy with the injured arm) and looking distressed. Now, EVERY time he sees the pictures, even before either Dan or I says a word, he gets really upset. He would wear a distressed look and point vigorously at the injured body part, then go "unhhh, unhhhh!" and point to his corresponding body part. He would not stop until we validate his concerns. We would say, "Brother's arm is in a cast, it's alright, he's going to the hospital now. Give Brother a kiss." And Ju would kiss the picture! He is also more fascinated by these scenes and would pay more attention and time to these compared to the others.

So Ju is almost 17 months old and he doesn't yet share or cooperate, not surpringly, since he still isn't self-aware. But he can feel empathy for others' pain. He shows concern and is visibly upset by the sight of someone in a cast (I haven't got any other books with pictures of crying kids). He may be reacting to the words and concept of "pain" and "hurt" since he has experienced these himself. Empathy is clearly a developmental milestone that every child hits (save in serial killers or children with disorders like autism) but it cannot be taught, I believe it either is there or it isn't. You could nurture it, of course, and some children have more of it than others.

Monkeys Are Moral Too

They really are, and we shouldn't be surprised, since we share more than 99% of our DNA with them. To think otherwise is sheer arrogance. Whether you belong to the essentialist camp (morality is given to us by God, for those of us who lack creativity; or it is intrinsic to human nature) or the social scientific one (morality is nurtured through socialisation and education), you can't deny that morality aids survival of the species in that it facilitates cooperation and social order - two key factors for survival of the group.

Frans de Waal, renowned primatologist, shows several experiments where monkeys clearly show empathy, cooperation and even a sense of fairness. At 13:00, the most amazing experiment of all reveals that Capuchian monkeys actually reject income inequality!

Absurdly Hard Chinese Characters #1

Today's absurdly difficult Chinese word is

邋 遢

lā       ta

 邋 遢 is the adjective "sloppy". 

Let's first look at 邋 which has a whopping 19 strokes to the word. I saw so many radicals (parts) that I had to blow up the word to actually figure out how it is written. On its own, the word is an enigma, I couldn't find the etymology so I will try to break it down into its component radicals so it makes more sense than a mass of squiggles.

You would first recognise the 巛 (chuān) radical on top because you would have learnt or come across the word 巡 (xún), to patrol or tour. 巡 is made up of radicals 巛 (chuān) and of course 辶 (chuò) which means "road" or "to walk". 

Incidentally, 巛 is an archaic variant of the radical 川 (chuān) which means stream or river.

Next, you would recognise the bottom part that looks like the legs of a cockroach lined up in a row. It occurs in the word for "mouse" or "rat", 鼠 (shǔ). Notice how this word has no component radicals, I checked the etymology and the seal character looks like this:

It is the remnant of the primitive ideograph of a mouse with legs and whiskers!

You of course write the mass on the right first, then the 辶(chuò) radical last. Much like the icing that goes on at the end of making that big cake.

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Next, the word 遢 (ta) which is in the neutral tone. 遢 which itself has 14 strokes, means "careless" and "slipshod". It's pretty easy to write as it has three fairly common component radicals: 日, 羽 and 辶.

日(rì) is the word for "sun" and it does look like a sun doesn't it? The bronze and oracle characters in fact were circles with a dot or little dash in the middle.

羽 (yǔ) , a feather, goes commonly with the word "shuttlecock": 羽毛球

Finally, we've already talked about  辶 (chuò), which is written last.

So there you have it. Two absurdly hard to write Chinese words which most Singaporeans probably would never use on a normal day even though they are common enough in our standard vocabulary.

The (Dismal) State of Play

For those of us who have been fans of the acclaimed BBC series, Child Of Our Time, which debuted in 2001, you would be relieved to know that they continued filming the 25 families after 2007. In 2008, when the children turned 8, the series was modified and only a few themed episodes were produced each year. Series 7 has just aired on Starhub cable's BIO channel and I watched the first two episodes last night at 9pm. It was akin to a family reunion with the much-loved kids like the twins, Charlie and Jamie!

I am reposting this Telegraph article written by series producer, Dr Tessa Livingstone, here. It was written in 2008 but echoes eerily for Singaporean society, which is one of the world's worst-faring states in terms of fertility. I can't speak for the quality of our children's lives in Singapore, since no valid research has been undertaken to investigate this, like the Child of Our Time response to UNICEF's report. Or at least nothing has been made public or discussed openly here. Yet there is no more crucial time than now to seriously ponder the real effects of our globalised world on our children's every day lives and how it is impacting their physical and emotional devopment.

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Child Of Our Time: Whatever happened to our children's playtime?

The BBC's latest 'Child of Our Time' investigation confirms worrying reports that Britain's young are overworked and underplayed, reveals Dr Tessa Livingstone.

From The Telegraph

By Dr Tessa Livingstone

10:54PM BST 31 May 2008

Last year, a Unicef report on the wellbeing of children shocked the nation. Even though Britain is the fifth-wealthiest country in the world, out of 21 developed countries our children had the lowest level of wellbeing – a statistic that horrified lawmakers and parents alike. It was the first in a spate of damning descriptions about the state of Britain's children.

A few days later, I started a new project. I have run the BBC series Child of Our Time for eight years, following the lives of 25 children born in 2000 from all over the UK and from all walks of life. But this year it was special. The team filmed the children continuously for 48 hours, during one school day and one home day, recording every movement, every emotion and every word.

We then worked with academics to discover what our 21st-century children do with their time and whether the quality of their lives is good enough – or, as Unicef would have it, a cause of real concern. 

We studied play, the use of technology, and the impact of the "me generation", as well as communication between children, parents, teachers and friends. The results were astonishing.

Our most surprising findings were about play. Play is vital; it makes children happy, as we discovered when we counted the number of laughs. The more children play, the more they laugh, especially when they are outside. In fact, our greatest players laughed up to 20 times as much as the children who played less.

And play does not just give children joy, it is also "work". Young children need to explore the world; they are enthusiastic learners, they need challenges and excitement, and even a frisson of danger. As one child said in response to a survey on the children's website CBBC: "Adults can be very stupid at times. Kids should be allowed to experiment and try things. Otherwise when they grow up they'll make very stupid mistakes from not getting enough experience in childhood." 

Precisely! The great players from our series included an imaginative girl called Rhianna, who messed around happily for almost eight hours, much of the time with her friend in the garden. Playing sociably in a bigger space is even better. 

Lucky Jamie spent his weekend in a caravan park with his family and ran wild for most of the day, coming back to base for meals. Others had less opportunity or desire to play. Tyrese spent only 25 minutes on free play and, when shoo'ed out of the house to go to the park with his elder sister, he looked lonely and bored. 

Indeed, parks are an indication of the greatest change in play. One Child of Our Time parent recalled: "You'd go off for miles and it was all right as long as you were back for tea." Nowadays, two-thirds of children aged eight to 10 have never been to a shop or park by themselves, while a third have never played outside without an adult. The distance children can roam has been reduced by 90 per cent in just 20 years.

Robert Winston, professor of science and society at Imperial College London and presenter of Child of Our Time, took himself four miles to school when he was only seven and has a robust view: "Certainly there is a risk about traffic, but we are over-concerned about risk." 

The anxiety about stranger danger and accidents trickles down from society at large to parent – and on to child. As another parent told us: "Whether we like it or not, there is a climate of fear for children and you can't sponge that out of your head if you've got a child." Seven-year-old Parys reflected the same nervousness when asked if he would go to the shop for milk: "I won't have anyone to keep me guarded," he replied. 

So what do the experts think? Play expert Tim Gill is worried. He believes that today's children are captive, no longer allowed the chance to meet the people and explore the territory around them. "A few years ago, I was involved in a campaign to make a street more child-friendly," he says. "So the residents had a party and closed off the street, and the kids and all the people were out talking together. 

"At the end of the day an older lady, a resident, came up to me and said, 'What a lovely event! But I have just one question. Where did you get the children from?' She had no idea that there were so many kids living on the street. It's not that there aren't any children but that those children are spending their lives indoors." 

So what are our kids doing if they aren't visible in their neighbourhood? The answer is obvious. They mitigate the boredom of being confined to home by sitting in front of a screen. British children watch more television than any others in Europe, and two-thirds have TV sets in their bedrooms. Sadly, more children today are injured by TVs falling on them than from free play. 

One of our children spent the best part of nine hours looking at one screen or another; a second clocked up seven hours playing video games. Television and the internet enable children who are stuck at home to experience adventures vicariously. Still, parents worried about new technology should take comfort; their kids are having fun, and evidence from many sources tells us that most children benefit. 

The problem, then, is not that children shouldn't be watching screens but that they are watching so much, there isn't room for anything else. 

Tanya Byron, a clinical psychologist and author of the recent Government report on children's use of computer games and the internet, told me that children have more chance of meeting paedophiles online than in the park or on the streets, and offered some good advice. 

"If your children were in the real world," she says, "going to a youth group or a scout group, you would check it out and make sure they got there safely. But in the online world we check nothing. We should tell them they can't go places, we should put filters in place like locks on doors, and make sure sites are moderated, just as when we send them to a pool, there are lifeguards." 

But while new technology is vilified by many – and not always justly – there is one thing about British children's lives that most people ignore. Our lives are shaped by the way we communicate with each other. A good conversation, however short, can make us happy; a bad one, sad. So how do we chat with our children? 

We asked a random selection of people in different British towns a simple question: "What do you talk about with your children?" The answers? "Everything, we talk about everything"; "All sorts"; "I talk to my children all the time." 

The reality, though, is very different. Two-thirds of the parent-child conversations from Child of Our Time were purely functional and only three of our families had long and discursive chats with their children during filming. This is in line with other finding: one survey, for instance, found that only a quarter of children say they talk with a parent more than once a week about something that matters. 

British children, it seems, are still seen but not heard. Edward Waller, Unicef's representative in London, told me that while southern Europeans are credited with an innate love of children, northern Europeans are chillier. To counteract this, many of our near-neighbours have legislation: parents take long maternity and paternity leave and work less in Scandinavian countries, for instance. Yet British adults have the longest working hours in Europe, are more stressed, and therefore have less time to talk with their children. 

Teresa Cremin, professor of education at the Open University, thinks it is a problem. "If all we're saying is 'Do this, do that', 'Hurry out of here, it's time for tea', and so on, then we do have to be concerned that it's not a dialogue, it's a one-way monologic piece to put pressure on children. I think there is a huge value in shared social interaction with youngsters – parents can extend a child's understanding of an issue and help youngsters to think and understand." 

But if children do not communicate with adults very well, they do at least talk among themselves. The child-child conversations we recorded were energetic, inclusive and often very funny. Young children play with language as if it is a game, so perhaps it's not surprising that children's strongest relationships are often with their peers. This matters. Several researchers have told me that too much can fracture parent-child relationships and, in the long term, contribute to a "gang" mentality and a society broken along age lines. 

None of which helps children, who are already under the most tremendous pressure. Our children are the most tested in the world, facing around 100 exams by the time they are 18. Pressure to succeed has generated a stress epidemic where one in 10 children risks developing a mental health problem. 

This has not gone unnoticed. The Open University is surveying attitudes to childhood in the UK, and their latest results show that three-quarters of us think there are too many pressures on children today and worry that they grow up too quickly. 

Jay Belsky, professor of psychology at Birkbeck University, is also concerned. "We've lost sight of the fact that one can have fun and not worry about future consequences but stay in the moment. We don't value the moment, especially in childhood – we think more about whether an experience will pay off down the road in economic terms. Nowadays we're not even thinking in emotional or relationship terms." 

It has become impossible to ignore the Unicef research or feel comfortable at the bottom of the developed countries league table of childhood happiness. Most people who work for children and families in Britain know this. Can anything be done, or have we left it too late? 

For my follow-up BBC programme, A Revolution in Childhood, I asked an expert panel, what do they feel are the most important changes the UK must put into practice to make our children happier? Here are their answers. 

Prof Robert Winston: "We must be careful about our aspirations for children. Happiness, contentment and wisdom are not achieved by fame, and that's a real issue for our society, where we put our children through hoops. It's something the government needs to think about." 

Prof Teresa Cremin, professor of education at Canterbury Christ Church University and president elect of the United Kingdom Literacy Association: "There needs to be a radical change to the assessment system, particularly in primary schools, since it generates overly high expectations. We should shift it to a less narrow frameset and fewer early exams. That would make a difference." 

Tim Gill, one of the UK's leading thinkers, writers and consultants on childhood, and adviser to the Conservative Party on its childhood review: "Children live in overly captive environments, but if we improve the real world offers that we make to children and put some real energy in, open up front doors, give them things to do, then the issue of spending time in front of screens will dissolve. And they'll be happier." 

Less pressure, more play. Really, how difficult can it be?