The Sermon on the Mount

Who does the Son of God bless?



The poor in spirit;
The mourners;
The meek;
Those who hunger for righteousness;
The merciful;
The pure in heart;
The peacemakers;
The prosecuted righteous.

Come my friends, and be blessed.

The cost of labour

Many people have argued for fair-trade coffee, clothing and computers but I'm just thinking that it’s not a good idea having an air con drainage pipe facing the sunshine. Fresh water and sunlight make for algal blooms during summer. So much so that it choked the pipe and my bedroom was flooded for three consecutive nights. Anyway, we had the maintenance guy come over to clear all that for 40 RMB. Wifey and the kids are sleeping fine now despite the 35 degrees heat outside. The bliss that comes with technology and cheap labour.


Labour is dirt cheap in Shanghai and, by extension, the rest of China. 40 RMB is less than nine Singapore dollars. I wouldn’t make a big deal out of it, except for the fact that to clear the drainage the guy had to crawl out the bathroom window and along a 4-inch foothold to reach the compressor unit hanging from the side of the building. With no safety attachment. I should also mention that the entire estate has the same air con brand and installation design, which means this guy and his colleagues have to do this continuously at the height of summer.

Tonight my family’s getting a good night’s sleep under climate-controlled conditions while I think about fair-trade coffee, clothing, computers and compressors. It’s definitely not a good idea having the air con drainage facing the sunshine.

Thoughts about Singapore education

On this 45th National Day, the thing that's on many people's minds isn't finding the best place for watching the fireworks. The national obsession of Singaporeans isn't food. Nobody likes to face it but all, and I do mean all, Singaporeans are obsessed about education. Talk to any parent with children of school-going age and you'll get the feeling that you've spoken to a war-weary veteran.



Getty Images

There are as many points of view as there are Singaporeans, yours truly included. My beef is with too many mandarins fiddling with the system. We started down the slippery road with P3 streaming. Guess who was among the first batch of students subjected to streaming?

Grade school education is very simple - get kids to love learning. Never mind the technical skills, just teach them to fish. If any, only two things need to be done:

1. Get rid of P3 streaming.

2. Reduce class size to 20 or less.

The reason behind streaming was so students of similar cognitive ability would feel more comfortable learning with their peers at a similar pace. But take a moment to think about this. Isn't it unrealistic to expect a teacher to handle 40 EM3 students who *all* need close attention?

Experienced teachers will agree with me that in any class there will probably be 4 or 5 students out of 40 who need attention. That works out to about 10% of any cohort. Now if we reduced class size to 20, a teacher will have 2 students of such learning ability. Plus, having 18 other students of quicker thinking will exert a positive influence on these 2. That's way better than having all slower students lumped together.

Class sizes of 20 is realistic. Think of the millions spent on an "elite" few. That's more than enough to pay the salaries of extra staff and building more schools. Not enough land? I don't think so. If we can have 20 golf courses and God-knows how many shopping malls, we can build more schools. If we can have 50-storey HDB flats, we can have schools going vertical. A classroom on the 40th floor with plenty of sunlight lifts the moods of kids anytime.

Remember this, education is not about the fancy whiz-bangs, the facilities, the first places in academic olympiads. Heck, it's not even about fancy notions of teachers making dinosaurs leap out of textbooks. Just get every child interested in learning and stop destroying their self-worth with streaming.

Give the war-weary veterans some rest.

Hong Kong vs 1984-ville

I'm still thinking about the recent trip to Hong Kong. The abundance of cheerful locals in service-related jobs compared to Singapore was glaringly obvious.


Admit it, Singaporeans shun and look down on service jobs, like waiting at tables and attending to customers in a retail store. Not so the folks in HK. And attitudes have changed so much that there were smiles in abundance. Wifey and kids were fussed over at a street-side eatery at the height of lunch hour.

I'm still trying to put a finger on this difference in mentality. A wise friend of mine put it down to the HK-er's internal sense of self-worth. He feels that people in Hong Kong derived their worth not by the jobs they hold, unlike Singaporeans. He's probably right. Some years back the Singapore government announced that more jobs would be created when the casinos open for business, a friend of mine remarked sarcastically that these would all be service jobs like cleaning, waiting at tables etc. His comment revealed a lot about how Singaporeans look at such jobs.

Hong Kong is a dynamic place, owed largely in part to the dynamism of its people. At a time when LKY is fading, his son not filling his shoes too well and the average Beng/Mat/Thambi complaining away, Singapore has a lot to do to catch up with Hong Kong and other rising economies.

Amateurs vs. professionals

"If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur."

Red Adair (1915-2004)
Legendary oil well firefighter, who was fighting fires well into his 70s

Couldn't agree more with the man. His advice is applicable to all industries.

Expo 2010 fever

Everyone here is talking about Expo 2010. Tickets aren't cheap, coming at 200 a pop. To help them make even more money, or to recover the cost, depending on your viewpoint, there are the day-pass and week-pass options.

I'm just thankful that the construction madness is almost over. Traffic isn't that congested as before. But I suspect the relief will be short-lived. The regime will need something else to generate public interest, distract attention from social injustices etc. Peking 2008, Shanghai 2010. What next? Canton 2012? More city governments will be clamoring for a huge event to stir the local economy.

The human nature behind disasters

So airlines are demanding compensations and questioning the need for the closure of airspace over Europe.

Read this article --> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8636439.stm

Funny how we react to disasters, actual and potential.

Nobody saw the need for stringent security measures before 9/11. Something happened, then we reacted.

Nobody knew what might happen to modern civilization at the stroke of midnight on Jan 1, 2000. But the millenium bug turned out to be an entomological and technical non-entity. People questioned the time, effort and money spent on preventing nothing.

So now, because nobody was injured or killed, and no plane was as much as scratched by volcanic ash (due more to the flight ban rather than actual flying), airlines and passengers are up in arms.

To anyone who's making noise, I dare them to sit in a plane flying through volcanic cloud.

Nobody is going to use my tax dollars to pay for the lost profits and bonuses of airlines and their CEOs.

For more than once, the right decision was made and nobody saw the need.

Human nature, it's a curious thing.

Nicer weather now

Went out with the family to a park that charges RMB100 per person...to view flowers in bloom. Was sulking about the price and 1.5-hour car ride but it was nice. Environment was nice, mainly because of the lack of the ubiquitous Chinese smoker and spitter. Of course, the occasional idiot existed but with the fresh Pudong air, all was forgiven.


Kids loved it too, with nice food (Mac's), ice-cream and nice lawns to trample play ball on.

And Faith even gave that rare smile for the camera...



All in all, a good weekend of spring-summer weather.

@gfw

The Great Firewall of China is truly keeping out foreigners, like its brick-and-mortar counterpart built centuries ago. Only this modern wall keeps out ideas. What a reflection of the small minds that exists in the powers that be. Narrow minds I can tolerate, at least there is a path. Small minds? They're not going anywhere.

Imagine the Internet Archive being blocked. This is so wrong. And ironic too that there are so many libraries in Shanghai. So are they promoting or restricting access to information?

Small minds aside, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina looks like an interesting place to work...

Spring equinox

The early spring rains have passed. Temperatures are in their teens. Had a good run around the estate this evening.

Spring is here and hope no one gets a bad case of hay fever.

Bak Chor Mee recipe

Trying to replicate the taste of the Singaporean staple was quite an experiment. Haven't managed that yet but here's the closest I got:

1. Sauce for noodles:
a. Shallot oil
b. Sesame oil
c. Light soy sauce
d. Chinese black vinegar
e. Ketchup
f. Soup stock



This is for the non-spicy version. I've yet to figure out the recipe for the chilli sauce. More updates in the future...

2. Soup stock:
a. Pork bones
b. Ikan bilis
c. Dried sole fish <-- this is the key to achieving that tasty soup we all love.



Good luck in your attempts! And let me know once you figure out the recipe for the chilli sauce.

Why I love digital...

Back in the bad old days of film, I would have wasted a whole roll...

OK, so how do I get this self-timer function to...oops..that's NOT it...



Dad: Joy! Look at the camera!
Joy: Dad! Stop messing with my hair!


*thump*
Wifey: Stop pulling me! And lose some weight so you won't fall over every time you try to squat.


Finally....
And Baby Peace has lost her patience...

Ubuntu usability log

Installation issues:

1. Installs from Live CD with no problems.

2. Dual boot options working, with default to Ubuntu. Default changable to Windows partition with edit of GRUB loader.

3. Did not attempt booting from USB thumb drive.

HDD partitioning and recovery to Windows:

1. Ubuntu OS may be deleted without affecting Windows

2. Deleted partition may be recovered
 a. Boot from Windows CD
 b. Format Ubuntu partition to NTFS --> this gets rid of Ubuntu and GRUB boot loader so that HDD boots from Windows MBR.
 c. If Ubuntu partiton is deleted directly from within Windows, without NTFS formating, then GRUB boot loader still exists, albeit in a corrupted form, rendering HDD unbootable.
 d. To merge partitions (Windows + deleted Ubuntu partition), use third-party software. Windows does not have ability to merge system partition with other partitions. Recommend EASEUS Partition, as it can merge partitions formatted with NTFS on the fly, and it's freeware.

Network issues:

1. Works out-of-the-box with Intel 2915ABG.

2. WEP, WPA, WPA2 security options available.

3. VPN connections available, with some changes to default settings
 a. need VPN server address
 b. disable <to update> setting
 c. enable <to update> setting

__________

Wiping USB flash drives with DBAN

This is so obvious I missed it completely.

To wipe a USB flash drive, the only option is to use the 'autonuke' function. However, using this function means that the hard drive is also wiped. You can't customize DBAN to only wipe the flash drive.

John Greth has an excellent write up about how to wipe the flash drive only. It involves running a virtual machine to simulate a boot up within the running OS.

I'm using a method that doesn't require running a virtual machine:

1. Disconnect the HDD.
2. Attach the flash drive you're wiping.
3. Boot up with the DBAN CD.
4. Select 'autonuke' and DBAN will detect only the the flash drive.
5. Power down system after wipe and re-connect the HDD.

It's so obvious I missed it...

Torrent jackpot

>200kB/s for a torrent download of the lastest Ubuntu OS...

Finally configured my net connection to circumvent The Great Firewall. Muahahahaha!



uTorrent rocks...'nuff said.

Blogging

Just saw the number of blog posts this year.

This is the 40th for 2010 and I'm already posted more than the whole of 2009.

So much for consistency...

Coming out of a time warp

You know you've had too much CNY food and drinks when you turn up at your friend's house for an afternoon CNY gathering...

...except that you're a day too early.



My lunch appointment is suppose to be this afternoon but I hauled myself, Wifey and the kids across town yesterday, only to have an embarassing laugh out of it. Not to mention the 60 RMB cab fare.

Somehow "星期四" sounded like "初四", especially after endless cold cuts, sweet meats and red wine.

Happy Lunar New Year!

Hope everyone will be happy this year.

新年快乐！万事如意！身体健康！

The estate lighted up at the stroke of midnight. My neighbours decided to have a go at seeing who had the grandest firework...





It's good to be in the country that invented gunpowder...

Pimp my XP

With a two-week break for Lunar New Year and not much to do, I decided to see how far I can push my 5-year-old Lazarus before I replace it with a tablet this summer. Read somewhere on the web that you can mod your copy of Windows XP to the tablet edition without too much trouble.

So I decided to try and.....


Ha! If only Lazarus had touchscreen or Wacom compatibility!

Now I can run my nLite-d copy of Windows XP with tablet functionality instead of the resource-hogging Windows 7 on the new tablet. Which means I can get something with the power-saving but slower SU series of Core 2 Duo CPU instead of the T or P series and still run a fast OS.

Which means a savings of a few hundred bucks. The Fujitsu T5010, running a T series CPU, costs just over $3k while the T2020, running an SU series CPU, costs about $2.3k.

Sounds like a good deal...

Ikan bilis with peanuts!

Deep fry ikan bilis until crispy, place on paper towel to remove excess oil.

Fry peanuts (without skin) over medium heat in a *dry* wok until golden brown.

Toss both ingredients in a bowl before serving.

Sambal egg!

Material:
Hard-boiled eggs
Tomato paste
Coconut milk, 2 table spoons... See More
Lemon juice
Sugar, 3 tea sponns
Shallots
Chilli powder
Ginger, 1 slice
Garlic

1. Pound shallots, ginger slice, garlic and chilli powder.
2. Fry the above over medium heat until fragrant.
3. Add tomato paste and mix well.
4. Add eggs and fry.
5. Add coconut milk, mix well.
6. Add lemon juice and sugar.
7. Mix well and simmer until liquid is thickened.
8. Serve while hot.

Hay-bee hiam prawns!

Material:
French beans, cut inch-length
Medium prawns, shelled
Dried small prawns (hay bee), minced
Chilli paste & chilli oil (vary amount according to how *power* you want your tongue to feel!)... See More
Garlic, minced
Corn starch powder mixed in water.

Method:
1. Stir-fry medium prawns over high heat for 30 seconds and set aside.
2. Stir-fry French beans over high heat until shiny and set aside.
3. Stir-fry hay bee with chilli oil over medium heat until fragrant, add garlic and continue frying for a further 30 seconds.
4. Add chilli paste and fry until the paste melts.
5. Add beans and fry for 2 minutes.
6. Add medium prawns.
7. Add corn starch solution. Mix evenly.
8. Serve while hot.

Sambal belacan!

Tried making Peranakan sambal belacan. Now I can have a taste of home, ha ha!



For recipe, please refer to Mrs. Lee's Cookbook. Adjust according to taste.

Belacan really stinks! You have been warned...

Update:
After some experimenting, and major waste of ingredients, here's what works...(recording for posterity)

1/8 teaspoon belacan. Anything more simply ruins it and stinks up the whole house.
5 large, fresh red chilli
4 fresh chilli padi
1 teaspoon sugar

1. Toast the belacan in a frying pan without any oil. Use a spoon to turn the paste into a coarse powder. Ensure that the belacan is really dry.

2. Place the dried belacan powder in a mortar.

3. Cut chilli into small pieces. Place them in the mortar.

4. Pound until well-mixed.

5. Add sugar and continue pounding to mix in.

Holidays

Lunch at Johnny Moo's. Nice day out with the family along Hong Mei Road, an expat area of Shanghai, much like Holland V in Singapore. JM serves the best all-day breakfast...





Having a two-week break for the Lunar New Year. Went to Xian Xia Road yesterday for dim sum breakfast at an authentic HK restaurant, complete with smoking patrons. The smooth Cantonese porridge and family time made up for all the 2nd hand smoke.

I like lazy days with my family...

The arrival of spring

15 to 20 degrees Celsius.

Walking around with t-shirt and a jacket.

It's a nice feeling that winter's over...

Ogre asleep

My big problem is being highly irritable when awoken in the middle of the night.

Faith came down with a cold and was whining last night. Couldn't get back to sleep because of her weeping.

I've got to be develop patience.

__________________________
Evil ogre manifestations for 2010: 02

Back on the laptop

My Fujitsu is back online after replacing a burnt out chip. Cleaned out the fan, too. Now it's as quiet as new. I shall henceforth name it Lazarus.

The guy who fixed it is very knowledgeable and provided very good service. Anyone needing his laptop fixed or even looked at for advice, here's his shop contact:

圳芯电脑技术有限公司
漕溪北路41号
太平洋数码一期345号
021-54900137
方先生

Birds of a feather...

...NOT!

So pissed. Can't register myself on a forum in the US because the sysop has decided to block all logins from China IP addresses.

Idiotic...

Vale 7021

The 5 years old Fujitsu laptop finally gave up the ghost this morning. Not bad in terms of computing lifespan where 1 year is roughly 25 for the hardware. Considering that I've never had to repair it for the whole time I've used it. The RAM and HDD upgrades don't count. The original HDD is still stashed away in an external case somewhere.

I will miss it...

-----
PT Log:
20 minutes on the treadmill

Conversations with Wifey

Wifey and Faith were baking chocolate muffins when I got home. Being the woman that she is, she looked at the bake pan and asked me, "How large is the pan?"

"Which side?" I replied.

"The pan, how large is it?"

Exasperated I traced along the sides of the pan and asked again, "Is it _this_ side? Or this?"

"This lah!" Now it's her turn to be exasperated.

"Okay, let me get the measuring tape," I muttered.

"The whole point of asking you is to I don't have to look for the measuring tape."

Hmmm...

PT log

30 minutes of slow jogging on the treadmill.

15 minutes of stretching out.

First of a million steps...

Becoming overweight

It begins insidiously...gram by gram...at first, your favourite pants feels a little tight but you ignore it, then the belt doesn't clip at the usual hole and you move it to the next one...soon you can't fit into the pants after a meal...the next thing you know, hey, the pants suddenly fit again and seems roomier than ever.

That's when you realize your wife has kindly replaced that 30-inch pants with a 34-inch of the same brand, texture and colour without telling you to avoid hurting your ego...

The passing of time

You know that something significant in life has taken place when your former students on Facebook start reminiscing about their youth.



I'm so glad I have a family. It's paradoxical. Faith is like a reflection of time passing, yet she keeps me young.

Go figure...

The Big Picture?

So Hillary Clinton visited Haiti.

And the security cordon prevented any humanitarian work for 3 days.

Bigwigs should just get out of the way and let the little people do effective work...

The space-time paradox

Woke up 15 minutes earlier today to fix and eat breakfast. It's part of a wider attempt to improve overall health.

Ended up rushing out the door with the toast in my mouth, hoping that the company bus hasn't left.

Somehow the time equation doesn't add up. It felt like I had woken up 15 minutes *later*.

Perhaps Einstein has an explanation...

Fitness programme

I need to get fit.

Not Ironman fit, just to feel my age and not like I'm some 60-year-old after climbing up two flights of stairs at work.

By the way, there IS a 60-year-old at my work place who climbs stairs with me. He doesn't seem breathless...

Time to get that pair of Adidas off the shoe rack.

Of black boxes and candies

Had an interesting session with the kids on the fundamentals of Science. I constructed a black box with some candies inside. They had to guess what's in the box without opening it. Some were indifferent, some showed enthusiasm and all had different methods.

What we think of as high school science is not Science. Science isn't listing down a set of facts. Knowing that Jupiter is the largest planet of the Solar System or that the human heart has four chambers isn't Science.

Science is the process of discovering the world around us through the use of a set of rules and procedure. So now you know, Science is a verb.

The epistle of James

It's time for a meditative study. Please read with me.

Open my heart, Lord.

If we knew better

Kids are a blessing to their parents in more ways than we can count.

Faith was whining for chocolates earlier today while I was frying some Indonesia fish keropok for her. I told her to be patient, to wait for something better but she kept crying for the chocolates.

Her tears turned to the widest smile ever when I finally handed her the keropok.

It's very similar to how we relate to God. Many times we think we know what's the best for us but God has something far better down the road. And we're too impatient to wait on Him. The amazing thing is, He still loves us through all our nonsense. Maybe it's because He sees us for who we are: weak, helpless and ignorant.

I'm amazed that I still love Faith for all the frustrating times. Maybe it's because I see her the way God sees me?

Earthquake in Haiti

A 7.0-magnitude earthquake has struck the island of Haiti. Thousands have died and infrastructure, including Parliament and the island's main prison have collapsed. The UN office was also struck, with scores of UN peacekeepers and workers expected dead or injured. It seems civilisation has ended in Haiti.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8455629.stm

Keep praying for them.

Rex Muscidae

The traffic in Shanghai is a mirror of the human condition here. Nobody waits, obeys traffic rules or gives way. A two-lane road has four lines of vehicles. A chicken can't cross the road unless it jaywalks.

The only time when some semblance of order is restored is when a traffic police arrives on scene.

With 5000 years of civilization behind them, you'd expect the Chinese to do better. Maybe the ruling class was right. You can't expect the ignorant to govern themselves. You can take the peasant out of the village but you can't take the village out of him.

OK, enough of my rants...

Showing some spine?

So maybe Google has decided to show some spine and walk away from a potentially lucrative market?

Read this article.

Everyone's talking China these days.

Censored search engine is an oxymoron anyway. So maybe Google might just salvage some pride with this move.

Evil ogre at home

I'm so tired of myself screaming at Faith whenever she does something that upsets me. My resolution this year will be to not scream at her. And I'm starting the count of the number of times I do so for the rest of the year.



Faith woke up at 3am this morning, crying because the night light was switched off. And I scolded her for that. So the count begins...

Evil ogre manifestations: 01

Cup of Nations Day 1

Angola 4 Mali 0 after 80 minutes of play. Then, all of a sudden, everything lit up and 4 goals in the last 10 minutes, including the final 2 within a minute of the final whistle.

Full-time score: Angola 4 Mali 4

What a game. What a way to come back for both Mali and football in Africa.

An African dance

Get ready to witness football at its purest. Forget about the over-commercialised World Cup and European Championship with over-paid, under-performing stars.

This is what it's all about. The African Cup of Nations. Free flow attacking football and passion. Why do you think the biggest clubs in Europe send their scouts here?

Let the festival begin.

Raising kids

Everyone's an amateur when it comes to raising one's own kids.

Faith suddenly burst out crying while playing at the playground. No one bullied her. She didn't fall down from height. And I couldn't get her to tell me what's wrong. So she wept all the way home.

A hug from Wifey settled it.

So much for being a sensitive dad...

Running

This article is not a surprise:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B8JHF-4XX36D1-2&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=0bea7b09825dec6d17d30e7ec502b545

Barefoot running produces less stress on the joints than running with shoes. And be spontaneous.

What did I say? Forget about the slogans and just run, darn it!

Kids and pizza

Made pizza with Faith last night. She was most enthusiastic about piling the pineapples on the dough. Looks like she's going through a pineapple phase. How I wish she'd go through a vegetable phase.

Seeing her do things, I realised Faith is no longer the toddler she used to be. I'm beginning to miss her baby days. She now looks out for her younger sister, even giving up TV time so that Joy can get to watch her favourite musical DVD.

Wifey has done a tremendous job of inculcating manners and a spirit of giving in her.

I love the girls in my life.

Decent folks along the way

It's always the nice people that made things memorable at work.

I've been thinking about all the jobs that I've done. Then I realised that it's not the job per se but the people.

You can have either the most coveted or undesirable job in town but it doesn't matter. It's the nice folks that made things good.

I miss research days for the beer and makan sessions with a crazy gang who chased after the weirdest of things on Earth.

I miss the civil service for the nice aunty who always had good words in tough situations.

I miss hospital days for the guys who could play computer games all day, pass the finals AND shared tips with me on how to beat the level monster.

I miss teaching in Singapore for the department which never called a meeting unless absolutely necessary.

I miss giving private tuition to the kids who couldn't solve a simple equation but wrote side-splitting commentaries about life.

It's the nice people. Always.

Exit plan

We will be in Shanghai until 2012 if plans are not changed. I'll need to work on an exit plan soon, not just from the company but also from this line. It's been an interesting 4 years as a teacher. By 2012, I will have done the same thing for 6 years. That is a long time by my standard. I'm looking for a new direction at work, please pray with me.

Thinking of working in a library or in a line that handles information. Archival, retrieval, classification, dissemination, transformation, search engines. We process information on a daily basis without giving it much thought. I think of all the data banks in the world and wonder. How does it get organized? How do I find anything of use? I first encountered this problem of getting useful information during my research days. Getting all that relevant references for a simple paper took a lot of effort. You'll appreciate the complexities involved in selecting data if you've done any sort of referencing.

Maybe all the browsing through WIkipedia is getting to me.

For now, that old Queen song "I Want To Break Free" is ringing in my head...

Dealing with the weather

So the forecast from last week turned out totally wrong. It's been a colder-than-expected week so far, with temperatures fluctuating on both sides of freezing both outdoors and in the office. Yup, the powers that be have decided to save on the heating bill.



I'm wondering...if it's minus 3 degrees now, how's it going to be come Chinese New Year, the coldest time of the year in Shanghai? The thought of it makes my brain freeze.

The good news is that the kids are enjoying the frosty weather. Never mind the adults shivering away...

First work day of 2010

The heating broke down this morning. Office is freezing with single-digit weather on the outside.

Good thing I'm back to work. It's not something that I'm proud of, work. It's something that puts the bacon on the table. No, I'm not being cynical either. I'm glad to be back in the office because it gets more difficult to start with longer holidays. The end of summer is worse. I'm grateful for the dough.

Work is just something incidental, for now. I'm still looking for work that will become part of my belief. That's different from simply something that provides a salary.

The cold is getting to my brain. Better do something else...

School for Faith

We're starting the ACES curriculum for Faith tomorrow. Wifey has taken the step of faith in starting this journey of home school. It's something we talked about and prayed about ever since Faith was born. We know it's the right step but having a formal starting day still makes us anxious. I guess it's human nature to be afraid of the unknown. Three words to comfort us though: go with God.

How anxious it must be for parents with kids starting K or P1 tomorrow? Lots of parents back in Singapore are having a sleepless night tonight. I bet even the ST will run a coverage about the first day of school on its front page on Tuesday.

I'm not going to write anything about why we think home school is better than public school. I just want to wish all parents peace tonight. Don't worry about it. Go with God.

Moving out, moving in

So we completed the move to the new apartment today.

Fourth time in a year.

It's tiring just thinking about it. Not all expatriates enjoy the glamorous lifestyle. No limos, no villas with a pool in the backyard. No permanence either.

Thankfully the landlords we've encountered have been kind. The Shanghainese may be known for their prickly and tough personality. But beneath that, most are just folks who've had a tough life. They're always glad when we show kindness and understanding. Even reciprocating to the point of being charitable at times.

The lesson we learned over the past year? ...all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them

The things I want for my kids in the 10s

Spent the day breathing in the air on the first day of the 10s.

Sounds strange. The 10s...

Faith is four. She will be 14 by the time 2020 rolls around. I wonder how the world will be like for her? I wonder how it will be like being a teenager in 2020? Wifey will begin "formal" home school with her from next week. We're talking about things like teaching her to sit down and pay attention. Being polite. Expressing her wishes through speech instead of snatching or raising her voice. Never mind the academics. I'm thinking, those are things we've been trying to model for her as parents. It always warms my heart to see her clasp her hands and hear her say "amen" at the end of a prayer.

It's going to be a radically different world, the 10s. But some things never change...