1) Little Girl With No Feet Receives Puppy With No Paw. Lead and my absolute favourite link this week: Several breeders suggested the puppy should be put down. Instead, someone saw potential in him being a therapy dog. How many more animals’ lives could you save, how much more happiness can you bring to someone who needs it, just by finding more ways to do things?
Also beautiful inspiration for how “disabilities” can make you special. They can put you in the unique position of being able to help someone that others may not be able to, in quite that same effective way. See, people shouldn’t be thinking about shooting you, they should be thinking about what kind of awesome life of love and luxury you should get to lead! Thought for the weekend….. 🙂
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2) Save The Bees! Heard of Colony Collapse Disorder? I…. might still haven’t <sheepish>
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3) Transient Workers Count Too’s “provocative” message aimed at encouraging employers in Singapore to give their helpers their day off.
“…40% of Singapore’s 222,500 domestic workers do not have a weekly day off, despite a law coming into effect in January 2013 making it mandatory…”
..Ok, go watch the video on their link (sorry, that’s a pic up there), then come back.
Ready?
OMG!!!!!!!! This is a campaign to inspire mums in Singapore to give their helpers a freaking day off????? As in, “Give the maid a day off before they are closer to your kids than you are???????”
Am I the only one who doesn’t think the two should have anything to do with each other? Like, you should give the maid their legal day off. Aside from the having a break thing being good for everyone, there’s also the not-likely-to-get-so-exhausted/ careless/whatever-they-break-something-or-themselves thing?
The thing about maids vs mums being closer to your kid……….. mostly a different story, isn’t it? There are working mums who are “kind of fine” with it. I met many, when I worked. “Kind of fine” as in one very senior banker mum told me initially she cried about it – but she had to work, and the helper being close to her child meant her child was being treated well while she was away. Oh and I know a few mums who hire a cleaner for when the regular helper is on her day off.
Being a mum – whether you work or not, and anywhere in between – is the hardest thing (I have never thrown up because of work, even in my worst moving market, even hitting the moving market for USD 10 mil a pop (equity derivatives) or USD 27 mil (interest rate derivatives), having been in the former job 11 years. I have thrown up several times during the Stay-At-Home-Mum years, and that’s not counting morning sickness. What’s cool about this is once you’ve gone through the erm, trial-by-fire – which I’m pretty sure any heavy-lifting mum would have – get this, some of my mum friends even drive in Hong Kong while they’re at it, you are really a lot less self-conscious about well, throwing up in public. The people who expect you to be overly embarrassed and what-not are probably the ones who haven’t done that time <shrugs>)
Which is great, because whatever your choices, you will be judged. And by other mums. And there will be mums in a position to help you/ give you some kind of not necessarily verbal, not necessarily visible (heck – telepathic? :P) moral support and they will choose not to because hey, Mums Are People And Some Are *ssholes Too (in the same vein as my I Get To Make Dead Father Jokes Because I Have One friend who erm, likes to joke around). What, you thought only bankers can be cutthroat? <snort> But then what goes around comes around in The Secret Dream World Of The SAHM too!
And don’t get me started about when well-meaning (I hope) non-profits stomp on your extra-sensitive mum nerve endings with their big high heels.
ps: My rant appears to be skewed towards mums rather than just parents because it’s all mums in the video I saw. No dads. Separately, in Hong Kong, I know maybe one stay-at-home dad. (Or rather, know of one stay-at-home dad. It might possibly be worse for him, because you know that wonderful, supportive network of mums all of us rely on to give our kids even better than our best? Yup. Stay At Home Dad has to go try and break into that as well. And erm, yeah Stay At Home Hong Kong Resident Mum is more likely used to their own Super Career Busting Hong Kong Resident Dad in the family.)
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4) Only the weirdest thing in nature I’ve read f-airly recently from WTF, Evolution?
Yes, really.
“…“Evolution, what are those flatworms doing?”
“Oh, they’re getting ready to penis-fence.”
“Penis… fence?”
“Yeah. They’re hermaphrodites, so either of them can inseminate the other one to reproduce, but neither one actually wants to be inseminated.”…”
Read the end of that story here…
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5) Photographers who will stop at nothing for that great shot.
Hugely inspirational. Freaking trip-ey. They are the person next to you on that gruelling endurance run who inspires by whatever means to squeeze that last 30 feet out of your soul.
It’s either them, or the bear.
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6) And then…. And then there are those moments when like an oasis in the desert, a magic carpet floats up. A HK taxi or MTR sign appears. And the taxi driver might not eve be a total *sshole!
Miss Skit this week is Magic Carpet Ride. Or,
Q: How Long Does This Go On For?
Things That Make Ya Go “Hmmmmmm…”
“Ohm……….. Ohm…………. Ohm………… Ohm…………….!”
“Did I Leave The Lights On In The Other Room?”
(The Miss was “meditating” on an Ikea bench and storage stool; every now and again we lifted her up and slid fresh paper along under her :D)
Easy As Ketchup Bottle.
A: About 12 feet. It went on for about 12 feet.
Good weekend, dears 🙂
A good weekend to all of you too!
I was wondering why the girl’s feet need to be amputated just because she does not have any toes and on that page, someone left a possible answer in the comment section.
The bees conservation thing, I remember having bees building hives not once but a few times in the garden and we did not call the pest control companies to get rid of them but just be careful around them and let them continue there until they move to a new home on their own timing.
I really learn something new today and it is about how a certain type of flatworms propagate.
The painting Miss Rockstar was creating looked like butterfly wings, so colourful! Did she choose the colours herself? And also why was she doing the painting perched high up on a bench and storage stool? How are you going to frame the 12 feet masterpiece?
For some reason she wanted to perch on the stool… She had a choice of laying the paper out on the stool or up on an easel and initially she was just walking around the stool painting… Then she climbed up. No idea re 12 feet, I usually cut off a piece (sheepish)