All Sorts Weekend – Creativity, Discrimination And Hating New Math

1) The Samsung Solve For Tomorrow competition for Poly and Uni students, currently going on in Singapore (my alma mater Nanyang Technological University is one of the contest partners :).

Friend of a friend has a submission with the catchphrase “Correcting lazy eye by playing video games,” in the Samsung Eyenovation App:

They aim to create eye exercises on-screen packaged as video games which, when played while wearing special goggles, help correct lazy eye. (Quite interesting, right? Think what you can do with this! Subliminal messages about not eating candy or loving math….. Lazy eye is just the beginning! :D)

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2) He’s Not Scary, He’s A Little Boy. It’s here because Mental Note To Self to start thinking of proper responses if we ever find ourselves in a situation like this..

Jameson’s mum writes “as the mother of a child who looks different” that correcting your child’s curious (but innocently insensitive) remarks and scurrying off embarrassed still isolates her child and she would prefer you come up and meet them. (Of course in HK possibly more people don’t want you to do that and are going to snap at well-meaning, fumbling you, so maybe Response A if they look like they want you to come meet them, Response B if they look like they just want you to correct your child and run away, Zero Response if they look like they are going to take your head off if you engage………)

No, I didn’t know what cranio was until this story too. Off Wiki it says this happens when the joints between the baby’s skull fuse too early and so the brain has difficulty growing normally (it appears fixable via surgery at least to some extent, depending on each individual case).

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3) My Year with Malala.

She was shot on the way to her father’s 800-student school where she was also a student, and in his school bus.

“…..One of her classmates says to me: “We could all have been Malala, but our parents wouldn’t have let us speak out publicly as hers did.”…”

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4) This Is What Common Core Looks Like – blog post by parent of third grader re math in…… looks like the States and possibly Canada? (As in, standardized tests). I found this when another parent (who lives in Toronto) was bemoaning the same problem… I think Dooce (y’know, Queen mummy blogger in the States) also complained about it…

Dunno what “common core” is, I can understand this counting up one but then remember that the parent I know who is complaining about this was a top engineering student in college and (then) first Asian valedictorian speaker to boot. (That guy didn’t just score As, he scored 100%s in college. And 3rd grade math is already irritating him.) So I mention because Tuition Classes For Parents Is Where This Is Going……….

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5) This one’s a slightly dated report newly circulating again about discrimination against males, after airlines like Virgin Australia set rules like no male passengers sitting next to minors.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fL9RmVtMP0

Male passenger is asked to change seats because he is seated next to two unaccompanied minors. The channel goes one step further when they stage a male and female adult taking pictures of kids – the female is allowed to do so, while the male gets stopped and his camera checked by the lifeguard.

I’m going to put my foot in it and say:

1) Re male passenger having to move seats – I wouldn’t feel discriminated against (unless they give me a rotten seat), I’d actually rather just move because I don’t know the minors/ kids. What if some strange kid says, “Give me 100 bucks or I’m going to say you’re bothering me, and I just feel weird“?

Actually I’d rather ask to move. Anyway this is one situation that can easily be moot – just put a flag in the ticketing system that when a male passenger checks in they don’t give him a seat next to any unaccompanied minors. Then no one has to be made to move. All the frequent flier flags, airline staff always greeting frequent fliers, they pre-order vegetarian etc flight meals…… should be quite doable right, to just never give ’em seats together….

2) As a parent, especially a doting dad, what would be your knee-jerk reaction if your precious little girl flings her arms around you and says “Daddy! That strange man is bothering me!” Exactly. I would too.

3) So if some other rowdy kid at Funzone throws one of those plastic baskets for holding foam balls at your child’s head and you step in only to have the little girl who threw it run to her parent, fling her arms around them and say “That strange man is bothering me!” (inspired by a true story – I saw a little girl throw a basket at an older boy’s head and when his dad said something she turned around and yelled at his dad that the dad “messed with her first” (“lei gau ngor” in Canton), what would you do?

I’m just saying. Because often when I stepped in at playgrounds in cases when there were some seriously naughty kids bothering my kids (I’m talking things like when they say, “You’re not pretty enough to play with us,” or “You’re too little to be our friend”), at the back of my mind has been that boy’s dad and that little girl I saw at Funzone, and thinking, however unfairly as I stand up for my kid, fortunately I am female. (I know, sounds horrible.)

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6) Ok, change subject. Best Easter Eggs In Movies. No idea why they call ’em that, but I grew up with Indiana Jones and Star Wars and this e.g. of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg flirting with each other through the years is cute (get a room, guys 🙂 :

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7) Rockstar Skit this weekend is therefore Umm, Not Lucas And Spielberg:

(Miss is uh, posing with Rockstar Trying To Get Some Peace. You know, like when you are at the Eiffel Tower or find a pink elephant and Pink Elephant! Take A Picture Of Me With Pink Elephant!)

Good Weekend, Dears…