A Few Things, This Friday

1) Like, Wow. These Hotels. Bored Panda’s Worlds’ Best Hotels.

This one’s the Manta Resort in Zanzibar…  

–

–

This one’s Attrap Reves Hotel, France. (Someday, Rockstars. Some. Day. Or, there’s always Snowglobes!)

–

–

2) Somewhat in contrast, Schools Throw Out Children’s Lunches To Punish Parents Who Haven’t Paid Up. As in Yikes They Really Did. And threw out food that was perfectly good too, rather than serve it. Say what? Oh, and apparently one 12-year old was only short US 30 cents. (I know, I’m still on Is This A Hoax?!)

–

–

3) Hong Kong Tycoon’s Daughter Defends Sexuality In Letter. Tycoon offers ~GBP 40mio to find a husband for his daughter. She married her gay partner in 2012 and in a recent letter on BBC news, also described in The Daily Beast as “a demonstration of good humor,” apologized to her father, “I’m sorry to mislead you to think I was only in a lesbian relationship because there was a shortage of good, suitable men in Hong Kong.”

I haven’t followed this very closely… so – did I understand this correctly, the HK Tycoon is actually ok with a straight man who would marry his daughter for money?

pic from BBC News

Anyway I have a (quite unrelated) story to tell: I used to have a good friend I’d known since JC, from a well-to-do family in Singapore, from a top school gifted program, had gone on to study Law, and who was openly gay. Attending his birthday party in his home where I and his younger brother were the only straight people in the house (well except for his mum who was upstairs; I think his dad was at work) left an impression on me that remains largely unchanged today.

About 21 back then (I would become a Christian several years later) and irrevocably straight (much to my friend’s disappointment :)) I remember my friend muttering to me while staring at his then-16 year old brother, “He is sooooo straight. I think he’s pretending, because he doesn’t want to be. Because of me, because he looks up to me. I’m very worried, it’s not who he is.” He would send his brother upstairs, then out of the house on an errand, and finally <raises voice> “Everybody listen up. MY BROTHER IS STRAIGHT, OK.”

That was more than 15 years ago in Singapore. “It’s not who he is.” That was what my gay friend had said about his straight brother. And I realized I would never know what it feels like to be gay. I have also known a practicing Catholic and a non-practicing-but-wistfully-once-telling-me-he-wished-he-could-go-back-to-being-a-practicing Christian – who were gay. And I realized I would never know what that feels like either.

The second thing I came away with from my friend’s birthday party that day, meeting so many gay couples, some nice to the Straight Girl (Really?? Straight??), some not so nice (Who Let The Straight Girl In), was the observation (again: some 15 years ago in Singapore) that some of the gay relationships I saw that day were much stronger than straight ones I knew (SOME, NOT ALL, certainly not ones where committed Christians have their faith to guide and strengthen them so DON’T SCREAM AT ME).

Just that I knew straight people who wanted to be attached for reasons like “I want to be attached.” (Obviously they shouldn’t do that either right, it’s not fair to the other person whose opportunity to be in a more fulfilling marriage you are taking away… In church they have singles nights, they have pre-marital counseling so you know what you’re getting into before you take the vow, they have marriage counseling to help you stay committed to your vows…..). In contrast, I didn’t meet any gay people in that party who were with their partners out of societal pressure to be attached – 15 years ago in Singapore many of them had to want to be with the other person despite pressure. Anyway. I remembered all that when I read the news article.

–

–

–

4) OK change subject. The dog is bigger, the child is bigger, this is Two Months Later He’s Still Napping With His Puppy. (Since I put the first one in previous TGIFs.)

–

–

–

5) Because I am a germ freak, I need to now also be a chemical freak. Toxic Cleaners Hall Of Shame. (We use baby-safe sanitizer on the kids’ hands, not the drug store stuff. It’s relatively expensive compared to the cheap chemical stuff that kills lots of other things besides harmful germs, I hope there is a good reason why. We’ve started other friends using it too. Because YES some germs are good for them. Up until they miss whole weeks of school and have problems keeping up without some real pain. I know someone whose child missed a month+ of school from something that was at first a runny nose before it became infected and passed into his lungs)

6) Little Miss’ 5 second skit this CNY weekend is Well The Gloves Are Red:

Yes, she was about to fall asleep. Yes, those are her Ko-ko’s boxing gloves. Yes, as a matter of fact she was banging her fists together in those gloves not minute ago.

Part 2:

Why yes, this is the Miss, just woken up. Yes, instead of going out to have breakfast she’s decided to have a lie-in. Yes, she went to put on her Ko-ko’s gloves that I had taken off after she fell asleep (she’s been falling asleep wearing boxing gloves for several nights), before settling back into bed.

Rockstar’s comment? “If there’s apple in there I’m not going near them. Ew.” (One night she’d been eating a slice of apple and when we turned around the apple was gone and she was wearing the gloves. We never found the apple. Occupational hazard of having a toddler around.)

ok here’s a prettier pic without the boxing gloves, at one of Kings’ clients’ homes today

And here’s what rockstar was wearing..

HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR 2014 TO ONE AND ALL

ps: Rockstar’s last day of school before the holiday was yesterday, Little Miss is in school come Tuesday morning, and Kings has meetings and work – even today – so it’s going to be a short holiday……..