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[Media Event] The Delifrance Mother’s Day Event – Mothers Not Invited
There are 3 days in every year that the Blogfather will always dread the most: his wedding anniversary, his wife’s birthday, Mother’s Day, Christmas and Chinese New Year. We have our reasons for the fear, too. The husbands will have a tendency to forget dates or worse, face scheduling conflicts. And if you do happen to remember and ensure the special day is free from other commitments, there’s the issue of the present, and even I need help in that area most of the time. My son and I were invited to take part in a Mother’s Day clay-making session hosted by D?lifrance, which I took as a much-appreciated respite…
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In Danger of Silencing the Voices that Care
Admittedly, listening happens to be the difficult part; as a dad, I do regularly fail in this respect whenever my wife and I have a spat. But fatherhood has also taught me, if you expect to change mindsets for people to accept what you're doing, you need to change your own mindset in order to know what you're doing.
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When a Barber Laughs Mid-shear
Sometimes, you have to place your trust in the hands of someone you’ve never met. Most times, things turn out all right. On rare occasions, however, that trust is grossly misplaced. But it’s how you handle times like this that truly show the person you are. I had a gut feeling that something might go wrong when I walked into my neighbourhood barber shop and was directed to a seat right at the end, a seat I have never sat on during past visits, and manned by a guy that has never cut my hair. As he started prepping me, I gave my usual instructions. “High slope, sides and back.”…
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[Wordless Wednesday] Zero to Ten – A Family Event
Your mother made us do it.
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[Wordless Wednesday] Zero to Ten
So the wife made a pact to post up a series of Instagram poses, inspired by a YouTube spoof by the very funny people of JinnyBoyTV created, and promised her motherbloggin' girlfriends that I'd join the linky party as well.
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[PV Series] The First Assignment
To recap from my previous parent volunteer (PV) series post, I received an e-mail from a parent support group (PSG) committee member asking if I could fill in for a PV to attend a Primary 1 afternoon school outing. The excursion would be, er, excursed, the following Monday – just 2 days from the date the email was sent. Turns out another PV pulled out at the last minutes and they had trouble finding a replacement at such short notice. I responded to say I was available, and was told to report at the school to a certain class at 1pm. When I arrived, I was expecting some sort of…
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The Non-Working Adult
We were visited by a door-to-door charity spokesperson last Saturday. My son stood next to me at our half-opened flat door with me in my sleeping clothes as the guy on the other side immediately raised his house solicitation card and his other hand in defense, blurting out as his first words of greeting, “Don’t worry, sir. I am not trying to sell you anything.” Thanks to my rather well-documented dealings with various telemarketers and over-enthusiastic salespeople, I instinctively knew I was gonna have fun with this one. In the middle of his well-rehearsed introduction, he said this: “… we’re encouraging working adults to go for health screening and also…
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Being Good
Dear Xander, I was speaking to a few dads in a sitdown meeting when the topic of our children’s future came up. It was a complicated and heavy discussion, delving into such sub-topics such as our local government policies, its emphasis on meritocracy, and ultimately the need for our children to work on their academic lives even harder than any child has ever done in the history of our country, just so we can compete on level ground in what is currently a country growing a majority of foreigners who are equally, if not more, driven, talented and less materialistic. As the “impassioned” discussion wore on, I studied each father…
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[The Parent Volunteer Series] Beginnings
Back in the tail end of October, my wife pressed me into applying for a parent volunteer (PV) programme at a rather reputable school near our home. I was planning to make a living out of working at home at the time, and thought it might actually be a good experience to document here. Yes, we also wanted to try and jump queue for our son. But given the debate over whether PVism actually does put your child in a better position to enter the school at the end of the day, The Blogfather will reserve comment… that is, until he finds out in the second half of 2014. I…
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The SMBM – Wow, What an April Fool’s Joke
Yes, the Singapore Man Bloggers Group is an April Fool's Joke. Some of you will have caught the very subtle discrepancies from yesterday's spoof post, but I really do hope we've kept you guessing.