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The Business of Christmas
It’s the most-monies-spent time of the year, when discounts are free-flow and the street is aglow with a light-up on show… I’ve always considered the Orchard Road light-up to be a signature yearly Singaporean event, never mind the Singapore shopping belt has been having trouble keeping brick-and-mortar retail going since Amazon kicked off the e-Commerce revolution. For about two months, the iconic stretch of malls was a visual celebration of the things we never had as an island-state: snow, pine trees, reindeer, sleighs, and a judgy man in a red suit and white beard that makes children sit on his lap and promise them things for suspicious reasons no one…
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[Review] Marsiling’s Automated Tray Return System
First published on The Blogfather’s Facebook Page here. Marsiling: this seemingly innocuous estate has seen a bit of drama over the last year, firstly when it quite inexplicably lost its representative Member of Parliament to an unfortunate incident many of us now refer to under our breath with a disgruntled, forceful spray of spittle as the Reserved Presidential Election. It looks like some of the people managing Marsiling want to keep the momentum going, this time with an absolutely brilliant idea that will surely thrust the constituency into the forefront of Singapore’s Smart Nation initiative, complete with green and pink robots sprouting multiple arms out the sides of their bodies.…
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Coffee, Tea or MOE (or Oops, I Overdid It Again)
I may have gone a little overboard on what I thought about one of our Education Ministers.
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That’s Not How You Make a Better World, Kid
This went viral on 9GAG back in February last year—exactly one year ago, in fact. And I'm going to say straight out, I really didn't agree with this back then, and I really don't agree with it now.
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The Big PSLE Freakout
This is beginning to be as sensitive as talking about religion. And it’s getting worse and worse every year. Then there are all these positive initiatives getting people to share stories and PSLE T-scores in the name of telling Nintendo DS-denying parents grades don’t matter (she’s since learned an important lesson: be careful what you say in front of a journalist). First: I love that this is happening, I think it’s important that it’s happening, but I’m sorry this is happening. Second: please, please stop for a minute. We’re making things worse. All these hundred stories from a hundred voices about defining and achieving success a hundred ways, all these I-did-well-despite-my-studies-so-can-your-child-now-let’s-group-hug hullabaloo, all this is as useful to our PSLE-worshipping parents as…
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Coping, with Success
Up until I was 35, I wanted to be successful, too. Or at least, I was taught to want it.
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Please Stop Teaching Us How to Raise Successful Children
This is an appeal to any person, group or organisation that plans parenting talks, seminars, workshops, forums and conferences. Since I’ve started blogging as a parent, I’ve received invitations to attend (and a couple of times, sit in the panel of) quite a few of these parenting events. It wasn’t until recently that the messages some of these events organisers are using to market their events started to concern me. Back in 2012, I attended a half-day seminar called “Raising a Successful Child”. The content served isn’t nearly as overbearing as their promotional copy makes them out to be. In fact, one talk I attended actually used case studies of so-called…
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Life After Suicide: How to Live with a Permanently Broken Heart
As progressive a nation as we have become in the last 50 years, our failure to accept failure also happens to be our biggest failure. And no, I'm not just talking about parents.
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Kidzania: Understanding the Mania
The week before, I took a day off to bring everyone to Kidzania Singapore to see if we could get tickets, but we arrived at Beach Station at 2pm, and seasoned parents of Kidzanians will point at us and mock us in utter noobery of not knowing that we can’t just get walk-in tickets into Kidzania Singapore in the middle of the afternoon during the school hols. So early this week, I took another day off, and The Wife, Xan and I verbally committed ourselves night before to wake up at 7am and get to Sentosa by 9am (Yvie just wakes up whenever the hell she wants, so we didn’t…
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The Lee Our Children Don’t Know
Before the Blogfather resumes normal complaining tomorrow, I’d like to add my bit for Lee Kuan Yew’s passing. When Xander woke up for school yesterday morning, I turned on the television to watch the Channel NewsAsia broadcast announcing MM Lee’s passing and his various tribute clips. When I told him what had happened, he watched the screen for a few quiet seconds and said, “Ye ye will have a new friend going to meet him.” Later, when the Mother of Xander went to fetch him from school, she asked him if the school explained what the one minute of silence observed during assembly was for. He replied, “No. Maybe Lee…
