Raising Rockstar

Because NASA could spend millions to develop a pen that writes in zero gravity…… or we could consider using pencils in space.

Summer break is when we play catch up, spending a bit more time on a wish list of things we feel could use more attention and effort, because during school term I try to give the kids fewer activities since school is already a very big part of their day…

This break, around the “real” activities, we had lots of cleaning up to do – not just of the clutter that accumulated in part while JD was sick, but of erm, the kids’ daily habits…

That means fixing simple meals, then clearing their own dishes, scraping before putting them in the kitchen sink, tidying up after their baths, putting their dirty clothes in the laundry basket.  Think about it: except for food prep and grocery shopping, the rest are small no-brainer tasks we pay someone to live in our home and do for us. And then for all the ‘tude we might get from managing someone who already misses their own family, coming to work abroad in a demotivating job that SCMP columnists have described as “modern day slavery”, we can’t wait for the domestic helper to come back from their holiday, just to clean up our mess. What? (*more on that below)

There is so much energy expended on looking for helpers, vetting, training, RE-training, checking their work (always also that awkwardness when they think their way is better).. Meantime, the kids have SO much extra energy they can surely walk the extra 20 steps to the laundry basket or kitchen. Why don’t I use the energy I would’ve spent on looking for new helpers/ retraining/ constantly having to check on them/ arguing with them, on my own kids, making it so tidying up after their own baths, clearing their own plates etc is as natural as reflex. 

So let’s try this crazy idea then:

Fixing a good snack is a biggie. Like most growing children, both kids are snackholes, but just to make things more complicated for everyone concerned, there’s also the big difference in biological clocks – while one loves elaborate breakfasts/ brunches, the other starts raiding the fridge close to bedtime. Not to mention the two kids have very different tastes AND they change many of their food preferences every few weeks.

So when Kitchenaid gear came up for grabs at 360 and a couple other grocery stores and the whole of HK (fine, the HK that I know) started saving stamps for months, we too were caught up in the madness – WHEEEEEE! 

Screen shot from Carousell.com

You get 1 stamp every HKD 60 spent, or 3 times that on the weekend (so it’s really not hard to get up enough for a redemption, if you are shopping for a family over like, 6 months, like we have.) When you reach 500 stamps, you can pay a top up of HKD 2,699 for the #2 Multi-Cooker, valued at HKD 7,500, thereby saving HKD 4,801 off the list price. Or save 2000 stamps and get the M-Cooker for free. (WHO is going to take the middle option – saving 1000 stamps to pay HKD 1,799 for the cooker, ie a whole other 500 stamps for just a HKD 2,699 – 1,799 = just HKD 900 extra discount.) So I assume you’d either save 2000+ stamps and spend all your stamps on the multi-cooker (which bakes, stirs stews, grills and steams – basically it’s almost a whole kitchen on its own…) or spread them out among a few appliances, like we did.

Our built-in appliances that come with the Bel-air rental unit are pretty old by now – we just ripped out 4 out of 5 air-conditioning units because they died at the height of the last heat warning and all at about the same time because they’re inter-connected – and the kitchen gear ain’t in good shape either (this is a big caveat if you are considering moving into the Bel-Air area… it makes a big difference whether the appliances have just been updated, or if they are the no longer serviced originals because they’re over a decade old).  

It then occurred to me that while we bemoan how much time kids spend on smart phones, iPads and laptops from such a young age these days, it also means they should be able to swing high-tech cooking appliances with relative ease 🙂 Yes there’s still heat for cooking, but instead of open flames on stoves and huge ungainly woks, they can certainly put ingredients into a pot per a recipe and program the Multi-Cooker, or for that matter insert waffles, crumpets or hash browns in the Toaster. Ditto reading nutrition labels at the supermarket.

Took some practice, but mainly because we spent a few days just trying various settings and ingredients in the evenings, and then doing over any “mistakes” (not having the toaster set high enough and nothing happening for ages).

Hello, “Camp Gear” (sorry, forgot to take a pic of the blender, that additional  is a little toastie sandwich maker from Franc Franc that Rockstar specifically asked for. And his tuna sandwich :P)

The smell of toasting bread gets the birbs excited (yes, we still have them, yes Rockstar still cleans the cage every 5-6 days by himself while HN changes their water)

Got the #4 Toaster and #5 Multi-Chopper and some #6 or #7 accessories as well (original prices: HKD 7,500 + HKD 1,800 + HKD 1,000 + HKD 400 = HKD 10,700 list px, for which we paid a grand total of HKD 2,699.)

HKD 10,700 – 2,699 = HKD 8,001 => after getting a lot more stuff, the “net” we got is still a better value (the catch is you must actually need the stuff you’re redeeming, which we did) even after paying the HKD 2,699.

HN, for all her crazy noise levels, likes to “mother” her pets, play “house” and yes, prep food. When we got the Kitchenaid stuff, it was an added bonus that everything was in a gorgeous shiny red. She unpacked everything efficiently for us… and then set about crumbling the packing foam all over the apartment haha

This is her slicing cucumbers for her bro’s grilled tuna sandwiches because she likes using knives <cringe>, and making herself a waffle snack – she started off with various fruit compote and jams, and then switched to potato waffles with microwaved smoked salmon. No raw meat or fish. (I am germ-freaky about raw food bacteria, ever since economists Levitt & Dubner highlighted in Freakonomics the probability of a case of mad cow vs the far higher chance people got severely sick from raw food bacteria in kitchens, to illustrate how “irrational” parents were about “real” dangers to their kids. Levitt was in a grief support group for parents, after losing a 1yr old to bacterial meningitis, during which it also struck him how many child deaths there were due to drowning.)

(I ended up ordering this brilliant cutter off Amazon.com)

And then I also found this:

And that was how we got Rockstar on board 😀

It’s quite substantial, here’s a look inside (with HN’s post-its):

(Don’t get me wrong, I’m no serious baker/cook unlike a lot of mums I know, they must surely get more mileage out of stuff like this. Me, I’m just looking for hacks and to get the kids interested enough to help out…)

Anyway. Why bother with playing “make believe” when there are kids who like doing this stuff for real – this is HN “hoovering” dust mites off her faux fur rug with some UV-producing mite-killer (not a toy, apparently it’s a real… thing we redeemed about 10,000 arcade points for)… and calling dibs on Lego storage boxes to make “real” furniture..

Truth be told some of the early messes were horrendous – and I really had to sit on my hands and bite my tongue. Surprisingly, Rockstar is still the one who holds the “record” for “toddler mess” though – he once tripped the security on our safe by keying in too many experimental pins, and Kings almost couldn’t get his passport out in time to go on business trip. We had to call the manufacturer to crack the keypad. (My point being, it wasn’t like my kids don’t create the most awful messes – it was painful.)

Next, we got to work on the mountain of Lego accumulated predominantly by Rockstar during his more erm, “introverted” days… HN called dibs to make herself a seat (Rockstar has one of those adjustable office chairs which she thinks is hidious) and the thing below took her some time what with the heavy blocks –

(yes all those boxes are filled with Lego ONLY – and those aren’t all the storage boxes we’ve got)

On an aside, if you asked Rockstar, he would attribute part of how he is today, relatively extroverted (though still needing quiet alone time at the end of the day to decompress), to HN’s constant LOUD noises and fearlessness. She would run into things, pick herself up, keep on going. Throw herself (only ever with me close by, otherwise she is not allowed to, under threat of loss of water privileges) into the deep end of a pool, struggle to the side, retch pool water, get back in and repeat, until she learned to swim in her own way (they later started actual lessons and proper strokes at school last term..

Depending whether they like Rockstar’s kinda kid or HN’s more, people often think one is lucky to have the other as a sibling. Truth be told however, they “help” and strengthen each other a lot. Because both on their own are extremes – when younger, one was vulnerable and fragile, retreating into the comfort of repetition and practice, memorising many facts and figures, the other an excitement junkee who is quite fearless and unbreakable, perpetually looking for her next adrenaline fix, thriving on the thrill of unpredictability… 

In the end it was a powerful lesson for all of us concerned, that you cannot choose your hand – but you can make careful exploration of the task you are given, and do your creative best with the good and bad cards you are dealt. (Like, kinda stuck with both of them right, cannot dump either one (or both) in a cardboard box outside with a sign “Free Kid! Just take him/her! PLEASE.” So had to find a way to not die from the parenting evolve or die make living with them more tolerable.

(This is them playing with the boxes the Lego boxes arrived in <rolls eyes>)

ps: Oh, and HN looks like this now. She wanted an edgy look… and to not have to tie her hair up in this summer heat. Guy Who Cuts Her Hair at private i kids’ salon is really good, he took the pic, remarked it was an “unusual” cut for a 6yr old….. and then recreated the look in the pic perfectly. And he works in a little kiddie salon ok….

So now we have a boy with long hair and a girl with short hair (who are bickering about making eye contact, in this picture) insert eyeroll.

pps: *For awhile, I’ve had the epiphany that instead of “training” a domestic helper to fit our family needs, I could use that considerable energy to “train” my own kids to be self-sufficient. (We will get a professional cleaning service several times a week and meantime, it occurred to me there was a substantial investment of time, energy and money that went into finding then training and managing live-in domestic help here – and they would always eventually leave. I would like to try investing that in my own kids instead.) So lemme clarify – I am NOT against the people who are domestic helpers, I don’t like the concept of the domestic helper particularly in HK (my mum friends in the UK and Australia and the States all do fine with day care – but one of my closest friends who is leaving HK for the UK and has been managing two helpers is now terrified of the move) – it has to do with our dependency on a job function that by definition isn’t the most inspiring or motivational. I do not want that to be the main erm, “execution platform” for raising my kids. 

There is so much childcare and education research out there, there are so many authorities in the field. There must certainly be more than one way to do it right. The problem however was never a lack of good ideas or research – it is one of execution.  It’s most humbling – supposedly we know so much more today about parenting, early childhood education etc etc…. yet we can’t run away from the fact you can have the most awesome ideas backed by the most substantial research, you can put so much energy and attention into decisions re raising your kids – but right up at “execution” and even “back office support” (let’s call that simply consistency in parenting) thereafter if people didn’t pay attention to getting it right, are too demotivated to make sure they got it exactly right, all that careful planning is going belly up anyway…

I used to have a trader colleague quoting some of the equity derivatives I was sourcing for my Sales’ clients – from a very well-to-do family herself, young, pretty and bright mum of a toddler, who worked really hard on the desk – at home if they were out of water, she wouldn’t put the kettle on, she would wait for her helper to do it, because it was what the helper was paid for, and she already worked so hard in the bank. But she still had to expend energy reminding, reminding the helper to do it.

I would prefer not to be so dependent. I guess that means working harder myself. No Free Lunch, right? First Summer Housework Camp lesson to the kids: Everything has a Price. It isn’t always in $$$, but it’s there, alright. I got that ‘tude back from private banking – when a corporate or high net worth individual wanted to do something in the financial markets, there was always a cost. Either it’s an opportunity cost, or it’s an added risk – you can change the form of the risk, but you can never make it magically “disappear”.

 Then one day, my trader colleague came home to find her daughter’s bangs cut off by her helper with a scissor, completely changing her hairstyle. She was so upset. (There are certainly mums who are fine with this, but I’m not one of them either.) And I’m not sure this aggro is worth it.

When I was away working long hours, I thought the solution was simply training or education, and so I sent our then-helper for full baby-care certification (yes complete with certificate of completion she gets to keep, with her name on it) with Yvonne Heavyside, the UK-trained nurse who runs Family Zone. That Indonesian helper lasted 11 months with us. She couldn’t stop trying to find other jobs. It exhausted her, made her care of our kids very bad, not because she was incapable.  And Rockstar always knew she didn’t care, it was just the job she could find…

We had another helper who was a college graduate. I started looking for her replacement about 6 months after hiring her. She had recently been let go from a family she had worked for for almost a decade and a half. Now the little local girl she had been taking care of was grown, the family no longer needed her. She had left a similar-aged daughter back in the Philippines as a months-old baby, and her own daughter had grown up never really knowing her. It was after all this that, still relatively emotional, she then came to work for us.

She then formed a huge preference for HN over Rockstar, and it showed. Not just in their little bickering fights where it was “never” HN’s “fault,” even things like the very different way she spoke to the two children, and never remembering to refill Rockstar’s drinking bottle after she washed it, leaving all the parts disassembled on the drying rack even when he needed to pick it up and run out the door… but HN’s would always be ready and right where she wanted it. Both kids picked up on it. Now go back up and read the bit I wrote about how much these two kids actually need and help each other, cancelling out their very different “weaknesses” with their own individual “strengths.” I would not have that to work with, if they developed a strong dislike for and competed fiercely with, each other.

It’s been two years since then. They both still remember the time with that helper. When HN gets her water, she brings Rockstar his as well. When they drive me nuts and I don’t farm it out to a helper, I remember that difference.

I think that if the more capable domestic helpers were hired (retrained if need be) to help run day cares, cafes, cleaning services, book stores etc etc, the same people would do a better job there than as domestic helpers. Domestic helpers particularly in HK often feel like the job is beneath them and that they can do more. If that’s what gets better work done, then I really think they should. I’m obsessive-compulsive about motivation levels, and not just for domestic helpers – I strongly believe that unmotivated people will produce absolute rubbish no matter how “educated” or not, as long as they feel none of it matters at the end of the day – that must’ve been how my college grad helper felt, after saying goodbye to the local girl she had raised as her own, at the expense of not knowing her own child back in the Philippines. And it’s not just your household and domestic helpers – in any organisation where people believe in what they’re doing, believe in the organisation they serve, have a genuine faith in the existence of fairness and meritocracy over say, “power-tripping”, I think the boost in motivation and capability would be out of this world.

This is Jenny Humphrey, as played by child star and rock music protege Taylor Momsen* – before (left) and on her way (right) to becoming the self-hating trouble-causing girl Blair Waldorf eventually exiles from Manhattan:

(pics from refinery29.com and wikipedia)

Jenny Humphrey is Dan Humphrey’s star-struck 14 year old little sister who initially arrives at the prestigious prep school very eager to please the older girls from the powerful families, only to be subjected to cruel pranks, fight her way to the top of the Mean Girl hierarchy, strive to keep her position as new Queen Bee without rich parents to pay for her stuff (brunches, outfits for the many parties) by first earning a respectable and prestigious job in fashion, and then striking out on her own with her own label. 

No surprises, of all the Gossip Girl characters, Jenny’s is the one with a further spin-off book.

(And do I get flamed for putting a(n albeit clean) Gossip Girl clip up? This one gets telling comments like, “Remember when we could still root for Jenny?”)…..  

In the scene below, Blair Waldorf hands “Little J” the keys to her mother’s fashion design shop during a big sleepover after a party, asking her to “steal” the jacket off the mannequin display and deliver it to her (Blair has Mum Issues, perpetually thinking her mum loves her friends especially the super smiley and carefree Serena more, despite all she (Blair) worked hard to achieve at school and extra-curriculars).

What Jenny doesn’t know is this is a ritual hazing for new girls, and she’s about to get locked in and left to face the police when the alarm terrifyingly goes off:

“You need to ask yourself if all this is worth it.” So says Blair in Queen Bee mode to Jenny. Some of “The Rules” – include which way to wear headbands (y’know, like the Secret Handshake) which otherwise perfectly functioning attractive young women attending Ivy-s like Columbia, among others, actually follow. You must not sit higher on the steps than the Queen Bee, or suffer yoghurt dumped on your head.

Now, within the fictitious safety of Crazy Girl Land: if the system or person(s) you require approval or affirmation of your own self-worth from is flawed, or worse – broken or dysfunctional – what d’you think happens to your goals and morals?

Jenny is who you start off respecting, for her gumption and resourcefulness. Except… like any adult in the “real” world, when she strikes out on her own with the best of intentions, she experiences politicking, disillusionment and betrayal despite her best efforts, and eventually succumbs to the temptation of responding in kind. (And all the grownups in da office say Yeah, Exactly!! 🙂 ) Several times she finds the strength to walk away, telling Blair Waldorf whom she once admired, “It’s not worth it” – only to relapse, eventually leaving for good, but not before doing devastating damage to herself while trying to hurt her enemies. 

Jenny’s is the biggest cautionary tale, that even the most resilient and resourceful of kids need “parents” (actual or figurative, hence the quote marks) – even if they say they don’t, and go to great lengths to establish their independence and capabilities. Because you don’t know who else they’ll meet. Because you cannot foresee all the things that can happen (and to some extent probably will – look at what happens at work everywhere.. can you imagine it happening to your kid?)

What happens to Jenny Humphrey is a stark reminder that just because they’re kids doesn’t mean it can’t happen to them (there is actually no correlation between age and work politicking barring toddler and early childhood, but it’s one of our blind spots.. Without firm grounding and support, at a time when they’re trying to establish their independence (NOT disrespectin’ their capabilities and maturity, you understand 🙂 ) it can be even harder to stay close. But even more necessary.)

Jenny’s first “jobs” are innocuous enough – writing Blair Waldorf’s party invites, because of her excellent calligraphy, making her own outfits for the increasingly frequent parties she gets invited to, doing so well that some of the rich girls start to commission her to dress them (that is actually really awesome, right? These girls wear Stella McCartney and Prada – made by adults who have gone to design school and won fiercely competitive careers at major fashion labels…. and she 15 Year Old With Sewing Machine.)

At some point however, as she gets more popular, Jenny sells her sewing machine for cash so she can keep up with the lifestyles of the girls from more privileged families. That was such an OH NO!! moment for me. Her natural talent and resourcefulness are what won her a respected place in the girl group, not how much money her parents had. She should’ve been proud of that, it was no secret to the others that she couldn’t afford quite the same lifestyle anyways and the other girls already accepted her.

Instead, Jenny eventually chafes even more than her brother Dan does, at her family’s inability to afford the same lifestyle the less resourceful, more privileged-by-virtue-of-birthright girls take for granted. She soon resorts to stealing from them (in fact, THIS is what loses her their respect, NOT the lack of money from her parents). Then her new boyfriend, whom she believes to be The One, offers her a deal – lie about their relationship so he can keep quietly seeing other boys, and he will fund her spending habit. Eventually he gets outed, and so she looks for another “job” – delivering recreational drugs at social events. This includes sewing pills into jackets. 

(So brilliant. So wrong. Some high end clothing for real have chains sewn in the bottom hems link by link – it makes the (heavy!) jacket fall better. It’s also a case for home-done vs high-end; clothing/ accessories label designers and chefs alike care first and foremost that their piece looks/ tastes good – no free lunch, they give up some comfort in the design for that, I’ve read interviews where Michelin-starred chefs have highlighted that part of the reason your home cooking doesn’t taste that good is because of the much higher amount of fat or sugar they use (don’t you just love people who are secure enough in their own skin to be honest).. Such revelations are incredibly valuable (but often underrated) – we would not be able to create our own stuff quite as well, without the honesty of highly qualified people at the top of their game.. We should give them more credit for being honest, otherwise we’d be stuck only with the people who breed insecurity in order to make themselves look better… (And of course the flip side of the fat and sugar content is also true, some chefs strive to use their skill to recreate traditional ethnic foods without the unhealthier stuff.)

Anyway back to GG – what makes the character of Jenny Humphrey a total parent’s nightmare is it can happen to anyone. In this case it happened to someone talented, gutsy and hardworking, from a grounded upbringing. AND it happened to her while she was still a kid.

Somewhere between fake boyfriend and drugs, Jenny earns a legitimate internship with Blair’s mother’s fashion line – on sheer merit, despite her young age. She fights hard for the job she has won fair and square and needs (which arguably the rich girls messing around with her job responsibilities when they bring their Mean Girl Games don’t), emerging with some very resourceful saves…… only to have her boss, Blair’s mother, pass off the final masterpiece design as her own work. Jenny even initially goes along with it, until being brutally told off (not completely out of line, she went partying too late to finish a lesser assignment properly) and not allowed to join the client meeting where her masterpiece will be shown. She leaves, taking her masterpiece with her.

At some point, her very attentive and dedicated father finds out Jenny is cutting school in order to keep up with the designing. When he puts his foot down she legally files for emancipation and moves out. (OMG. Anyone remember how hard he worked, ironically, to get her in school?) They eventually compromise with homeschooling, but he had so many hard fights that included not being on her guest list at shows, and all the while the stigma of not having a high flying career while being around all the dysfunctional but high achieving Type As – Stay At Home Parent is a much harder label to wear than any other job description especially when you’re walking in to society parties trying to find your daughter – AND daughter had to experience this terrible crash first –

Moving in with a model friend/ room mate who is relatively older, Jenny struggles to start her own fashion line. With not much money (paying for materials with jars of change etc), she eventually produces enough for a show, and arranges with her model friends to crash a society event – they hijack the music, and the models walk through the event wearing her designs and handing out her business cards. Jenny politely and sincerely apologises right after the show, explaining how badly she needed the break. The host – Serena Van Der Woodsen’s mum, a former wild child herself (who probably also thinks her own daughter causes more headaches than that with the wild partying haha), admires the effort and declines to press charges when the girls are arrested.    

Jenny continues to grow her business, but then the hard partying lifestyle of the older girls, especially her room mate/ business partner, make it difficult for her to keep client and investor appointments. She is also placed at risk when, during her estrangement from her father she follows her room mate to a photo shoot and is encouraged to undress for pictures and nearly taken advantage of by an older photographer, before one of her brother’s friends happens to check on her and get her out. When she attempts to see clients without her wild friend, the friend gets horribly offended and throws her out, setting fire to all her creations.

Jenny’s dad somehow gets her rehired at Blair Waldorf’s mum’s fashion label and this time Jenny works hard at home school AND her design job… until going out for “reconciliatory drinks” with her wild former room-mate and ending up drugged and almost taken advantage of again. When one of her brother’s friends rescues her (again!) she starts to fall for him. And then everything just goes to hell in a handbasket. Jenny gets into idiot girl fights over boys, stoops to anonymously tipping Gossip Girl (the kids ALL end up doing it in the end)…. and when rejected (and pretty much asked to get a grip), throws herself and her first time away to Chuck Bass who is reeling from thinking Blair has dumped him for good during their latest crisis. He still asks Jenny if she’s sure, and she insists that she is. (Um.. Y’know what? The answer to this is always NO. Just. NO. Even if it sounds like the word “yes,” what that still means is NO.)

I struggled for some time as to whether to tell this part of the story but without it you would not see as clearly how much really happened to Jenny.

Blair Waldorf appears at Chuck’s door having decided to try again (remember their relationship eventually survives many, many devastating situations including deaths, fake deaths, being stripped of inheritance, etc etc). In that moment, Jenny – who has just given her first time to Chuck – is impulsively told by him to leave quickly and not let Blair see her. (Jenny runs out, goes to pieces, tells everyone (guys – another reason even if the girl somehow says yes like this, YOU SAY NO) and Chuck (who otherwise usually sticks to strippers and not barely-legal girls, when not with Blair) is so ashamed of himself that he disappears completely – Serena eventually finds him working as a waiter under an assumed name in another country and close to marrying the restaurant owner’s daughter.)

When you cannot watch that “morning after” on a fictitious show without flinching is when you know without a doubt – THE ANSWER IN THIS SITUATION IS ALWAYS NO. (<sheepish> don’t waste the warning? GG’s out there and with all these “unsuitable for teens” themes, and it got so popular anyway.)

Gossip Girl the original anonymous blogger at long last is revealed to be……….. Jenny’s brother, Dan Humphrey (any cares haha). Dan explains in the finale that he started the anonymous blog when he realised he would never be accepted into this prep school elite culture. (This is actually not true because he did become accepted… and then he chose to betray those kids, including Serena (who falls hard for him despite being super wild and whom he claimed to love in return), and his own dad who had nothing to do with that elite school circle.) In other words, it didn’t matter how much love he received outside because he hadn’t fixed what was in his own head. (This is why they tell us to put the oxygen mask on ourselves first before turning to help children and other passengers around us)

In the end, Gossip Girl is not a person, not even an anonymous blog, so much as a concept, a phenomenon, a weakness in all of us that will be exploited. There is no “Gossip Girl” without anonymous tips, without readers, without the motivations that feed “her”. And so there will always be a “Gossip Girl”.

*Taylor Momsen’s casting however is even more interesting – leggy and blonde, she looks nothing like the Jenny of the novels – very short, chesty and with dark hair like her brother’s.

This piqued my curiosity because there are so many hopefuls and stars out there… Yet the “Jenny” of the tv series ended up being re-written to fit Momsen and accommodate her rock music career – and when she left the show, despite the potential of the character and movie talks, producers never cast a replacement. You wouldn’t guess Momsen’s professional muscle either, given some of her quotes in interviews at the height of GG fame when she left:

“I was coming to (Gossip Girl) set with a guitar every day… I am very lucky the producers were kind enough to write me out, allow me to… pursue my passion, because they could very well… have kept me on the show.” 

Unlike the other Gossip Girl cast who are adults playing the roles of out-of-control teens, Momsen started work on Gossip Girl aged 12, having acted professionally since 3, following modelling auditions her parents brought her to where she was signed by the prestigious Ford Models Agency aged 2. She had her big breakout role (Dr Seuss’ How The Grinch Stole Christmas) aged 7.

Of her former acting career however, Momsen has been quoted, “No 2 year old wants to be working, but I had no choice….” 

“Fame is fleeting and stupid…”

Irreverent and unapologetic, Momsen has also been described as Rock Music’s Smartest Wild Child: “The power lies in the few and then you witness so much poverty, depression, and repression, and (coming back from tour) it changed my perspective on everything.”

Shortly after leaving GG, she co-wrote “Heaven Knows,” which reached no.1 on rock music charts in both the US and the UK. Her band has had some setbacks losing a large quantity of equipment during Hurricane Sandy, and more recently the death of a mentoring producer in an unrelated auto accident; her current net worth is around USD 4mio..

She also came very close to being Disney’s Hannah Montana, but lost the role to Miley Cyrus, which she has said in retrospect she was happy about (no kidding haha). She describes her turning point as when paparazzi shot up her skirt and for some time the picture of her tampon string was the first thing that popped up when she was Googled. (Sorry ah, a bit graphic but my point is everything comes with good and bad, no matter how shiny and pretty we think it is… You cannot say you want only the good and not the bad, it all comes together…)

** Have work assignment, will brb

“All that glitters is not gold…” – Merchant of Venice, 1599

pic from junkee.com

N-ot a judgmental vitriol of the sometime-acclaimed tv series which nonetheless deserves to be flamed, but some observations and caveats that got completely overshadowed by too much attention to the decadent lifestyle – while the similarly popular book series is said to diverge from the screen version, both have been criticised for having themes unsuitable for the teen audience originally intended. Cast members – the professional actors playing the parts – have described how working on the 6-season series was eventually so de-sensitising to committed relationships that “Everyone was doing it (hooking up casually), even the ‘adults’…” 

The problem with that however, is that in avoiding it altogether we miss out (I couldn’t find a “cleaner” version anywhere near as powerful and so I really bemoan the excessive rubbish that distracts from the messages – so many entertainment writers feel they have to include a lot of steamy affairs into their work just to get it to sell, and they end up selling their talent short – they didn’t need that stuff, it doesn’t detract from the broader picture)…

The Gossip Girl series covers the privileged lives of teens enrolled in upscale Manhattan prep schools, their struggles to prove themselves, sometimes to themselves, gain attention from wealthy-but-dysfunctional parents, fight self-hate and destructive behaviour…. all festering beneath the glamorous socialite events, competition for Ivy League places, liberally decorated with branded consumer items, magnified by the anonymous blogger using the Gossip Girl pseudonym. (The fictitious Manhattan prep schools in the show btw, are modelled after the real life Spence School, among others.)

What is often missed is that the non-socialite kids become painfully aware of what they don’t have (money, family status), while unable to see what they do have (“real” parent(s) who are trying their best to parent and provide) ….. and this proves their most spectacular undoing. Ultimately they hurt themselves and their families more, create more damage, than the (already) messed-up privileged kids who eventually fight their way back to a “normalcy” they were not fortunate enough to have in their childhood.

This is one big reason I decided to blog it – because of the cautionary tale that gets completely overwhelmed by the wild parties and eye candy and juicy scandal distracting from the fact many of the rich kids in the show have overachieving Type A parents who turn out to be extremely self-centred or just plain dysfunctional. It’s very easy to see the rich kids simply as “spoiled”, but as it becomes clear what mess they grew up in, can you blame them? Yet the main thing everyone sees is…. the money. Rich kids get spoiled, become dysfunctional? Insert Schadenfreude <sheepish> It’s actually amazing how the trials and tribulations they endure turn them into better people than their parents.

Also in an amazing twist, you suddenly realise the average income family kids develop a huge chip on their shoulder. They become so hungry to afford the same lifestyle they see the privileged kids in that it corrupts them, affecting their initially mature and sound judgment. The most attentive and dedicated parent in the show also gets seriously burned by his kids, eventually also becoming corrupted. Corruption of the best is the heartbreaking worst.

Gossip Girl “herself” is one of the students, intelligent and wily, blogging anonymously and sowing huge discord, feeding on the equally anonymous “tips” sent in by fellow students about each other. Anonymity absolving accountability, she fuels all kinds of “cheap shots” and back-biting between the kids and their family members, posting all the dirty, often unsubstantiated laundry online. She also uses a mix of technology and manipulation (ever seen a teen without a cellphone? It’s like in The Matrix, where any of the “plugged in public” can be used by the System to be an “Agent” – or encouraged to take cellphone pics for you to spy on your subject) to flesh out her stories, entertain, stalk. In other words, in a horrible but no less creative way, she creates 1 + 1 = 10 billion.

This has sat in my drafts folder for really, really long – because for all the fact I have 7 ear piercings, 2 tattoos, a glass of wine most nights and due to 3 mergers have “lived” in at least 6 different dealing rooms of various sizes (going through that many makes you less interested in selling your soul because it crystallises the extent to which you are your job for maybe a few decades – but who you are, you are for the rest of your life and you need to live with that), some of them rife with some serious hard partying – at one place my “final interview” was during a company “team building” where I watched one of the very senior Sales bosses whose team I would be sourcing investment products for take to the dance floor while his team slipped folded dollar bills in his waist band….. yet I still do not believe in promiscuity and still believe in saving something for marriage. (That position’s been in my older posts for a long time, just hasn’t come up in awhile.)

Sigh. That’s not easy to talk about on an English blog in HK full of stealth readers who prefer to email because they don’t know who else is reading. Y-eah and I’m writing perpetually without a pseudonym, way to freak me out even more guys. The difference between an anonymous blog and owning everything you sign your name to. But I vowed that if I ever drew attention to Gossip Girl, horribly de-sensitising to promiscuity and substance abuse that it is, I would also disclose this other stuff about myself.

I was in at least a few places where it was really not cool to not “loosen up, let go,” but still not everyone completely loses themselves in parties. In every single place there were still people who were NOT hard partiers – but sometimes it took awhile to find them, it’s not like they have neon signs above their screens or wear big hats. Meantime the excessive party people, by definition as well, are just SUPERLOUD.

(And proud! Thank You, People Who Decide What’s On TV. Thank you, Kardashians. And can I include Deadpool – SO much wit, SUCH humour and then….. Splat. Brains flying everywhere. How. Inconsiderate. Now I can’t….. bring the kids, or watch it and still eat… watermelon.) I don’t know why what we watch “has” to more often than not be that way – think about it, if it really were in real life, then why would the actors  in Gossip Girl observe that playing the parts altered their behaviour? Nothing to alter right, if even in showbiz everyone was like this… Ryan Reynolds, who plays Deadpool, has also said the X scenes are very uncomfortable, completely unenjoyable….. and still they have to put all this stuff in, ensuring there is a big market who are going to miss it.

Newsflash, producers: Grownups watch a movie once… Twice. Little kids watch Trolls and Disney Princesses ten freaking billion times)

Anyway per my “pledge,” for ever mentioning Gossip Girl, here’s not allowing yourself to get into situations that you will regret: 

I’ve mentioned before that as a young adult (NOT a kid ok, any kids find this – without a fully developed (ie grownup) liver, alcohol is poison to your system even in small quantities) I put some effort into “practicing” ordering alcoholic drinks with friends I could trust, so I would not someday find myself in an embarrassing situation during work entertaining. But this once happened to me:

One evening at after-work drinks in my 20s, I couldn’t get through a half glass of wine. Now, I drink a full glass of red wine (resveratrol!) most nights, and at “practice” I would not even feel 2 consecutive Vodka shots at all (btw an average adult female liver can take only 2 drinks tops before you start to do damage to yourself even if you don’t yet feel it – d’you like sports? Go check how many professional athletes are super anal about what goes in their bodies…) Google will tell you a standard glass of wine is about 12% alcohol, a standard Vodka about 40%. That night however, I looked at my still half-full glass of Shiraz – far less than what I knew my limit to be – and couldn’t understand why I could barely keep my eyes open. My point is this – STOP. Someday you’re having grownup drinks somewhere, even if you have no idea like I did, why I felt that way – stop and go home. This is what happened to me next –

I could walk to the taxi stand, but I was getting more and more drowsy. The guy I knew loosely through work, based in Taiwan and just in town for a few days, had followed me into my cab and was kind of holding on to my shoulders with one arm and pushing my head into my chest with his other huge hand. He seemed to not want me to look up, and so I tried harder to see what it was he might not want me to see. That’s when I saw the cab driver’s eyes in the rear view mirror.

That cabbie kept wordlessly looking into our backseat and, in my drowsy state, it became a bit of a game. Stopping at traffic lights. Shop windows, street lamps lighting the rearview mirror of the taxi. Is he going to look in the mirror again? Yes. There are his eyes. Next light? Again. And again. I got more alert. As we approached my building, the guy began to ask if he could come up. I have never let relative strangers up ok, especially not males. Because I remembered that, rather than any conscious decision when my eyelids were still not completely behaving, I kept saying no, as clearly as I could. The moment I lurched out of the taxi, the cabbie sped off with him still inside.
 All the idiot things cabbies do, that was one good idiot thing 😀

For real though, it took me very long to figure that there really could’ve been something other than wine in my drink that night. I always snack on the desk, especially if I know I will be drinking, so I have no idea how so little wine nearly knocked me out after all my “careful practice”… I remember briefly considering downing the rest of my drink as I got up from the table, just out of habit – I don’t like to waste and drinks in nice places cost a lot – but that time, thank goodness I wasted it 🙂 Just stop and walk away.
You may not get a second chance.

Not getting drunk or giving back rubs as the “sweet young thing” on some desks was not cool when I was a 20-something hungry newbie. I mean, they don’t ask every girl, but if they ask you, I guess you’re supposed to be flattered (that in itself is another problem). I also remember one senior who was a Harvard alum telling me “if everyone else was doing it maybe (I) should too”, because other girls “who had total i-banker instincts” – his exact words – would. The term “i-banker” (investment banker) was also supposed to be really cool in those days. But I don’t remember ever regretting not doing those things. Feeling intimidated – sure. Scared of what it might cost me at work – absolutely. But not sorry. (Did more breakfast runs! Tea breaks! For a time I carried dozens of Penang Char Koay Teow packets back with me from CNY leave – the good stuff, from the real old retired uncle hawkers… all packed up carefully.) Now I look back, I don’t think not doing the back rub kinda stuff really cost me either – so I’m really glad I didn’t cave to fit in. You do not need to, you can always offer to do something else you are comfortable with that is closer to who you are.

(Apparently who I am is carrying in big loads of lard-fried CKT that pong up the entire dealing room.. Um.. Well also when one senior Forex Sales’ fish died while he was on Compliance leave (he kept a live blue fighting fish named “Fishy” under his screen for “stress release” – SERIOUSLY) I replaced it with a purple one. And then I gushed about the most Fabulous New Colour Enhancing Fish Food I found.) He said it was convincing, but he knew if I was lying I would not let him gush about it to other colleagues and that was how he called my bluff – by turning to gush about it to another team head.

OK so now I can Gossip Girl. If you’re gonna watch it, read my post above (and the next time anyone wants to bitch about my personal blog which I don’t publicise, remember that I sign my name and own everything I say.)

The unrealistically good-looking and privileged teens start out with pretty stereotypical characters, only to be tried and tested through growing pains, deep-seated insecurities, and family scandal.

And now, BIG FAT SPOILERS…

pic from eonline.com

From left-to-right:

1) Nate Archibald – His finance manager dad, married to socialite mum from uppity family and struggling for credibility, goes to jail for embezzlement while the mum then struggles with her fall from grace among the socialites (but WHO wants to be friends with people like this in the first place???), resulting in Nate camping out in the family’s re-possessed home and, hungry to succeed, desperate not to end up like his dad, eventually builds a celebrity tabloid and news website and agency intended to rival Gossip Girl’s. Then he hires Serena…

2) Serena Van Der Woodsen – sweet, trusting, irresponsible uber-popular wild child who gets drunk and high a lot. Her perpetual escapades and the fact one of the big reasons she is popular is for getting drunk and high make it look like wild partying until you can’t remember who or where you are is just supercool. Go back up and read what I wrote earlier. Then read on and look for what happens to her next…

Her tabloid escapades are later revealed to be a desperate attempt at getting the attention of her high-flying selfish-disguised-as-well-meaning surgeon dad (who does things like elaborately fake her mum’s illness in order to keep his wife with him after he cheats).

Serena’s lack of sound judgment (well if you’re perpetually intoxicated it’s harder to have all your marbles) leads to some horrible choices – at one point she throws herself at one of her high school teachers, and though he remains professional and refuses her no matter what she says, it still destroys his career and sends him to prison. 

(That particular story might be fiction, but one of my close friends told me a few weeks ago about a real one she is aware of in an upscale school (maybe UK not HK, the family shuttles between at least the two countries regularly, and I didn’t ask specifically) – 16 year old boy formally charged with molest by his girlfriend’s sister. Years later when the case is now on hand, he is still struggling because it’s permanently on his record as a sex offender, even after it comes to light now, that the two sisters were horribly competitive with one another and the one who brought the charges only did it because she was jealous her sister had a boyfriend. “It wasn’t even like she was interested in the boy,” my friend says. And yes all of them were strong students academically. I don’t think those grades they worked so hard for matter right now. Also, lemme ask you this: Which sounds worse – “perjurer” or “acquitted sex offender” (which is the best he can hope for)?

As for Serena – think she got away with (albeit mostly unwittingly) ruining her former teacher’s life? His family seeks revenge by befriending her-of-the-unsound-judgement (in other words – wasn’t very difficult), spiking her drinks, and convincing her own family she needs to be forcibly committed into rehab.

When she recovers, Serena with “new clarity” eventually becomes the new “Gossip Girl” anonymous blogger on the block, shutting herself away until her original High School friends figure it out and stage an intervention.

3) Chuck Bass – rich-of-the-richest kids and sole heir to a hoteling fortune…. Who initially appears to be content buying whatever he needs – including strippers – until it is revealed the one thing he strives for is credibility and approval from his hotel empire-building dad – he aggressively and legitimately works to build successful business ventures, desperate to earn his dad’s love and approval…. until his dad verbally demolishes him and strips him of his inheritance for being too “soft” when he fails to professionally end the girl he loves (Blair Waldorf).

4) Blair Waldorf – high-achieving Queen Bee of the Mean Girls. Despite coming from money, and being surrounded by all the irresponsible partying, she has conservative ideals re drinking and promiscuity, initially saving herself for the childhood sweetheart she intends to marry…. until he cheats on her with a very drunk Serena who, upon waking up, is horrified and flees NYC for about a year with no explanation.

A top student who loves scheming to get what she wants – coveted Ivy league spot, honour roll, social status – she starts off incredibly manipulative and bitchy, but ultimately falls for Chuck Bass, eventually becoming selfless and also proving a better-than-expected friend to her fiercest rival-in-popularity, Serena.

Blair and Chuck’s on-off relationship-partnership-friendship eventually stands the test of some devastating life incidents, mistakes, and personality hang-ups brought upon by their dysfunctional parents. It’s inspiring in a most back-handed way, if you see the horrible things their relationship crawls back from, the forgiveness, the recovery from destructive behaviour and self-hate to eventually become married adults themselves.  

5) Dan Humphrey – Down-to-earth studious “good guy” from loving-though-single-parent family, who turns out to be the worst self-righteous character. He has the one thing none of the rich kids have – a “real” dad focussed on raising him and his sister right.

(Dad Rufus Humphrey is a former rockstar, struggling to expand his art gallery, having nonetheless managed to supplement Dan’s scholarship grant and send both kids to the elite prep schools he believes will give them the best college opportunities and future.)

Dan starts off the most “normal” one, struggling to fit in with the wealthy kids who can afford way more stuff than he can – including on dates, getting good grades, working part time jobs and calling the rich kids out on their irresponsible ways with his native wit and strength of character….. until his drive and ambition to catch up socially and financially inspires him to write a “tell-all” satire around the social and familial dysfunction of the rich kids, including those who have come to accept and befriend him. The book causes some of the other characters real pain and humiliation, and becomes a best-seller on the back of this.

After his success (his dad having weighed in on the fact he sold his friends out to get there) Dan tells his dad he would certainly not have wanted to end up like him, no high-flying career, big load of money or status. Rufus also reads in the book what his son really thinks of him. (OMG)

So yes there’s a part II…

ps: A-and, someone asked me what my second tattoo is. That didn’t take long 🙂

It’s meant as a reminder for myself, that I can see easily

“..Models are, by their very nature, simplifications. No model can include all of the real world’s complexity or the nuance of human communication..”

– Cathy O’Neil, Math Nerd. Mum of 3, who still plans and cooks all the family’s meals and writes about modelling her kids’ meals (I’m guessing this blogger of MathBabe sounds more human (:D fine, is more able to relate) for being a “Mom” – little people after all have very little respect for PhDs. Harvard Math what? 🙂 )

Somehow I thought you should also get a picture (from technoskeptic.com)

Tangent alert: Remember this Nerd With Funky Hair –

Bobak Ferdowsi, the NASA engineer whose faux-hawks, visible over his screen during the Mars Rover landing, drew attention away from the Red Planet, to his initial chagrin -pic from Youtube

Have Math Degree Will Crazy Hair? A thing about books and their covers comes to mind, and how some of the overly brainy seem to really enjoy toying with irony:

(originally off Facebook)

My absolute favourite quants are the ones who look like the aliens they are the ones who can be ironic. Irony requires being human enough enough of an understanding of human nature to be able to discern what makes the extraordinary dissent, the exquisite, just-over-the-top statement delivered while walking that fine line that qualifies wit from crass…

Then there’s the fact you simply have to understand the nature of the subject you are modelling because otherwise it’s all rubbish anyway – a person building a model has to make assumptions. Simplifications. Find proxies. Crucial decisions about what to include. What this means of course is that models and their blind spots are terrifying   evil  reflect the priorities and biases of their creators arguably as much as literature would.

People think numbers don’t lie, but in reality they lie all the time, because of how they were arrived at to begin with… Isn’t that just so exciting? 😀

If you don’t want to (potentially) be lied to then you cannot be afraid of numbers. Or of seeking knowledge. (And btw I don’t like people who jerk others around because of the little extra stuff they know… because no one can know everything ok, so either agree to share the way various team sportspeople must, in order to get the ball into the basket or goal so their team wins, or spend the eternity your work life feels like in a hell of insecurity of your own making. <shrugs>)

A la Nassim Taleb’s self-fulfilling prophecies, that is the first thing that tells you that deep down they themselves believe they don’t know enough… Taleb said “When a corporate feels the need to ‘instil (investor) confidence’ we know they are weak and therefore doomed.” When an investments salesperson who doesn’t know enough to make themselves understood to you starts regurgitating a bunch of hairy bull complicated stuff you may not be able to understand it simply because the person talking to you doesn’t either 😀  Knowing Realising it’s not just you, that the other person may not know what they’re talking about, is a most liberating phenom. I love Emperor’s New Clothes Phenomenon. Nor do I believe it a coincidence it was a little kid who has the gumption to call the emperor out, grownups have all had the “Muchness” educated and parented out of ’em.. Kids are just infuriatingly awesome and awesomely infuriating.) 

Don’t you just love a good ole’ nonsense use of a word? – pic from uedata.amazon.com

Anyway. You have to not be afraid to look inside the “black box” (that’s not just me, O’Neil really does say that). Y’know, like what they asked Jobs about the Mac decades ago: That’s Very Cool. Exactly What Does It Do?  😀

Perfectly good numbers don’t have to lie, sometimes they present perfectly legit opportunities that for a short time no one noticed because the trader with an axe was too busy well, trading, and the salesperson was too busy pushing the sexy new stuff to go take a second look in the older inventory that, by virtue of the latest happening in the market is now attractive. And sometimes predators are the way they are, for lack of imagination 🙂 (Think about it, if you could make the same money (well, get the same final payoff) legitimately, why would you ever cheat? Cheating simply “looks good” and appears to have a viable payoff because you haven’t seen beyond the immediate gratification – if you saw also how much you lost in valuable real skills-building time and energy (Get Good, Not Just Get Grades), if you saw the devastating cost of getting caught, factoring also the hit to your own self-esteem from believing more and more that you don’t have what it takes to win legitimately, the risk-reward would not make sense.) )

Sadly, “Solid values and self-regulation rein in only the scrupulous.” 

O’ Neil adds, “…I saw all kinds of parallels between finance and Big Data. Both industries gobble up the same pool of talent, much of it from elite universities like MIT, Princeton and Stanford. These new hires are ravenous for success…” 

“Ravenous”-ness for success by the usual benchmarks is exactly what caused the last financial crisis. We blame models, identify greed, revile self-serving natures in a way that implies we think this is relatively exclusive to “other” professions. (Wait for it….)

It starts with the kids (what ya think I was gonna say, Imma Mummy Blog). The character kids form before they become working professionals. The selfishness and ultra-competitiveness that might be particularly effective in squeezing out that little extra ounce of performance (no I don’t personally think so but lotsa people think pitting kids against each other or for that matter adults – the politically correct term I believe is “healthy competition” – produces satisfactory and better performance; I do think that comes at a cost though, because in all likelihood we’re gonna overuse that tool because it produces quick results… and it then creates a vulnerability of character that we will all end up paying for eventually – in school, college, then at work, in research and innovations….) The same personality traits some adults proverbially like to pluck at and play to in order to produce relatively quick results are the same traits that potentially cause financial crisis and colour goodness knows how much policy setting and research and funding…

We are the parents of the next generation of Type A professionals: How do we raise them?

Know this guy? (And I don’t mean Benedict Cumberbatch :D) – pic from digitalspy.com

(No I don’t mean the Fictional Mystic Arts Special Effects Trip) 😛 Dr Stephen Strange is a gifted but selfish surgeon who preserves his track record by picking and choosing his cases. There are of course many real-life professions, not just in the medical field, where you can manipulate your track record by picking cases likely to succeed in the first place. And so we use the safe fictional eg of Dr Strange 🙂 One day, Dr Strange is involved in a car accident that severely damages the nerve and muscle tissue in his hands. He can no longer perform his amazing surgeries as a result of this. As he expends his considerable wealth in an increasingly desperate attempt to regain his former livelihood, he encounters similarly gifted and selfish surgeons – who refuse to take his case because of the low likelihood of success, just as he once did with his own potential patients. 

See, we might think rewarding performance and competitiveness leads to well, greater performance…… but it also leads to cheating…. of the kind that can really hurt someone.

By that unwritten rule that says we perpetually strive to give our children better than we ourselves received – from hindsight, from the child always thinking they know better than their parents – we probably think we parent better today than our parents did 😉 – HOW will we measure that achievement? With… grades? Literacy tests?

Levitt and Dubner’s Freakonomics and now also O’Neil’s WMD, using as an example the American public school system and the (arguably too strong) stick-carrot approach (ref also Harvard Business Review’s Motivating Employees Is Not About Sticks And Carrots), show how instead of inducing dedication and performance teacher evaluation algorithms in Washington district public schools encouraged teachers to cheat.  (Cheating in itself is problematic, but when they’re changing test answers what could they have been better spending time and energy on?)

In an effort to overhaul D.C. public schooling, they threatened to either fire teachers or give them performance bonuses of up to USD 8,000 based on a teacher evaluation algorithm that relied heavily on student test scores. In a bad job market, desperate public school teachers started changing their students’ test answers to help them pass.

(I actually think this is a little funny – if too-strong stick-carrot approaches have been shown to induce perfectly decent adults to cheat (for one thing, performance by that yardstick might be too difficult to keep up legitimately in the given time frame each teacher has with a student), then WHY are there people who still expect it to work well with kids – are not kids simply juvenile versions of adults of the same species. (What, no? Kids are aliens? 😀 )) 

Better watch out, kids ;D -pic from pastposters.com

You guys seen this old Will Smith/ Tommy Lee Jones trilogy? Weird and whacky aliens… which, nonetheless, if you look closely enough are still modelled after predominantly Earth critters – cockroaches that love sugar, worms that can be cut in half – because y’know, Hollywood is limited by our human imagination just as much as mathematical models are coloured by our quants’ human biases  –

“The question is… whether we’ve eliminated human bias or simply camouflaged it with technology…”

Here’s another eg, this one being how bias made it alive and well into the prison models: In a 2013 New York Civil Liberties study, it was found that while black and brown (African American and Hispanic) males aged 14-24 years consisted just 4.7% of the total NYC population, they made up a whopping 40.6% of all stop-and-frisk searches by the NYC police.

But wait. Maybe there was a basis for those searches. Maybe the reason such a small percentage of the NYC population was searched so often was because said searches actually turned up something. Right?

The number you’re looking for is how often searches of that demographic, the 14-24 year old Black or Latino males, were actually innocent ie the searches turned up nothing.

Ready for it? Over 90%.

Over 90% of the time police searched this demographic, they didn’t turn up anything. You’d think said police would’ve then realised that they were wasting their time and they should turn their attention elsewhere…. but no, they kept right on searching that same demographic. This is because some human biases are very, very hard to fix.. Not… that it makes sense to let sleeping biases lie (sorry) when you actually need the police to catch the real dealers on the streets and they’re looking in the wrong place… Your friendly neighbourhood dealer meanwhile has probably figured out that they should dress not like a gangsta rapper, but like say, an Asian Science Nerd  😀

“Come, I Make You The Drug” – pic from masterfile.com

That’s not all – you’d think that algorithms run this bias out of data evaluations that affect policy setting, right? The problem however is in the collection of the data itself (Garbage In, Garbage Out). An actual prison inmate survey question to determine recidivism (the risk of a repeat offender and therefore affecting eligibility for early release) used to be, “Describe your first encounter with the police.”

Recall the >90% coloured male youth who get baselessly stopped and searched. What happens when they answer that question?

What about the heroin dealer who is never searched because she looks like an Asian Science Nerd (I got to type Asian Science Nerd three times now!) right up until they have to pull her Porsche (birthday gift from affluent parents) over because it’s weaving about unsteadily on the highway… and that’s when they find the glove compartment full of Blow.

More Up Is Down… In 2012, the British Telegraph reported the discovery of 99 identical copies of a single test in Zhongxiang province, prompting local authorities to come down hard on cheating – installing metal detectors, organising sting operations that uncovered transmitters in pencil erasers, individuals camped out in hotel rooms across the street, ready to communicate test answers……….

What d’you think the result of all that was – honesty? Yup.

Some 2000 stone-throwing protestors took to the streets chanting “We want fairness. There is no fairness if you don’t let us cheat.” 

They were honest about the (albeit) perceived need to cheat in order to level the playing field – because they truly believed everyone else was doing it.

Epilogue: Meantime on a lighter note, HN has been playing this on Youtube for days after picking it up in school assembly (bunch of different ways to be kind) and now the song’s stuck in our heads… From Life Vest Inside.
Lemme repeat that: Life Vest. INSIDE 🙂

Updated 11 June 2018: Kids Club FX final event before Summer.. 

Fedora: My outfit is better than yours.
Beard: I don’t understand, my stylist said shaggy facial hair and tunics are all the rage now.
Fedora: This is a Fashion Crime. Give me your stylist’s number. There’s just no accounting for taste these days.

“SEZ WHO?” (pic from IslandECC Instagram)

*Sketch – NOT what really went down (you guys know Im just messing, right? 😀 )..

That is the story of Gideon in the book of Judges, told via a sketch of a private investigator looking into how he succeeded in leading the Israelites into a winning battle with insurmountable odds against the Midianites, in Judges 8. (The picture after that is of a Superhero Dance-off 😀 )

Insurmountable odds. Personally, I love this story – Gideon begins with an army of about 32,000 against 135,000 Midianites – odds of 4 to 1 against him. Like that’s not scary enough (this is not like in Nerf battles where you hit each other with rubber-tipped foam pellets) God then keeps whittling away at Gideon’s forces until just 300 remain, the rest being sent home, odds of 450:1.

(This is especially powerful for me – I once (ok, for over 10 years) dealt in investment products made from a wide range of derivatives (options, swaps, the whole gamut of stuff that can be put together from these basic building blocks to access credit, interest rate, forex as well as stocks) –  odds, or probability, plays a very, very important role – the price of an investment, also the price to protect the client’s initial investment (with more of said building blocks) all comes from probability. Prices that the final investment product lives or dies by, prices that determine whether the combination of blocks even makes sense, are all made out of their odds, their probabilities, and how traders view them – if the trading public believes the market is likely to tank, protection against a plummeting market costs a lot. (In a bull market therefore, is when you should buy your protection against a plummeting market 🙂 because then it’s just super cheap…) )

As the “private investigator” interviewing “Gideon” finds out, Gideon’s army of 300 then proceeds to go to war…… not with swords, but with trumpets. And lamps in pitchers. That must’ve sounded so strange. Trumpets?

At the right time, the loud sounds of the 300 breaking pitchers and lamps and trumpeting and screaming their lungs out in the middle of the night so startles and confuses the sleeping enemy that the panicked Midianite soldiers turn on each other in the dark. Then, they flee…… and eventually run into the thousands of soldiers Gideon had sent home.

The powerful lesson is one of confidence, of faith in the Lord. He sees what we do not.

Ps:

Besides Gideon’s Insurmountable Odds, awhile ago the Grownup Service mentioned the story of David and Goliath, including British-born Canadian journalist Malcolm Gladwell’s Underdogs, Misfits and Battling Giants’ take on how the Goliath of the Bible was not the fearful opponent the Israelites believed him to be. He was possibly a “pituitary giant,” thereby lacking speed and agility, and David actually had a fair chance at defeating him based on the strategy he employed and Goliath’s potential conditions which would only be discovered scientifically much later….. Except all David had back then was his faith. Science caught up later. And that was so exciting!)

“Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit.” 

In an informal, warm and friendly class ceremony last Sunday, Rockstar graduated from Kids Club to Youth, receiving a certificate of completion and Boys’ Bible to mark the occasion…

Au-natural, almost nobody’s ready pic 😀 (There were two, one at 9.30am and another 11.30am)

Can’t thank some of these kids and volunteers enough, 30 kids in the group, and currently 130 middle-to-high schoolers spread across 3 out of 4 of the regular Sunday services (somebody please correct me if that has changed!) we came here relatively anonymously and then more and more regularly for months, then years… One day Rockstar realised how much he looked forward to joining the group every Sunday – I think it was when we were really late and he didn’t want to wait for me to check him in before getting to class 😛

You might still see Rockstar wearing his orange Kids’ Club band about despite the “graduation” into Youth though, they officially start in September, and that band’s just the most recent one he’s had from church along with the ball in the pic on the right.. (the other pic is from several summers ago, when the kids’ floor was decorated animal/ jungle themed for another Bible Study series)

My favourite worship song lyric, “Today is the day the Lord has made, we will rejoice and be glad in it”

“We have one rule: Honour One Another…” Youth Leaders giving the kids a brief run-through of Youth activities at the church with an emphasis on inclusion (below)

(Even as Rockstar gravitates toward the snacks bowl 😀 )

“…Is there any pleasure on earth as great as a circle of Christian friends by a good fire?”

– C. S. Lewis*

No Fire Today, But Pizza!

For several months prior, we’ve just seen this one classroom when we pick our soon-to-be Youth up (or stand at the door gesticulating for them to meet us on the Kids’ floor when they’re done, then go down to stand outside the relevant kids’ class and patiently surf our phones as HN carefully avoids eye contact because she’s not ready to leave yet :D)… Oh yeah and about half the time Sophie The Hamster also comes with (I… bring the hamster with me to Grownup Service and then let HN have it after class to play with her friends. Yes, IslandECC, there is at least one hamster sitting on one of your 3 sermon floors during one of your service times :P)

Anyway. Today we got to walk around the entire Youth floor; other Youth would explain they mostly hang out here on weekends between services/ activities… (There is a separate Kids floor, and about half of another floor is a Babies/Toddlers floor)

Ready?

Yes under the “graffiti” words are Bible pages on that canvas

(Missed taking a pic of the 2-3 other classrooms to one side though)

No Fireplace Today, But XBox!

I. Know. I wanna be Youth! (Sadly, missed by like, 3 decades :P)

(And the skateboard makes this art :D)

Ends.

Epilogue:

(Grade 5 = ESF Year 6)

Haha “Grossology” – Boys Bible indeed!

And down on the Kids’ floor HN got this for her birthday too, from volunteering Youth. Origami dragon. Havent seen this particular one before, you guys seen this one? Really complicated folding 🙂

*C.S. Lewis: What I owe [to the Inklings] is incalculable…

In the 1930s and 40s Oxford University boasted some of the greatest Christian minds and an all-male informal group who got together simply to discuss unfinished literary works, with no rules or agenda, known as the Beatles Inklings.

The young men amused themselves with activities like Who Can Read Bad Prose The Longest Without Laughing (Try Not To Laugh Challenge, anyone?), and out of the 2 decades of fortnightly meetings were born such works as Lord of the Rings, and Chronicles of Narnia…

(Narnia pics from hotspot.com and syfy.com)

Many of Rockstar’s school friends worked creatively in many different mediums of expression, culminating with the showing of their original works – poems and prose, fashion design, weavings (particularly with varied textures and materials), towering building constructions, musical interpretations, dance moves, video games with some interesting original-designed villains, to name a few… 

So this is a quick and by no means exhaustive post of some of the creations on the night, in one of those inspiring Can’t Believe These Are Made By Kids moments 🙂

Some of the questions prompts for parents to ask the kids at their presentation booths

Bravest, most inspiring answer I got to the question, “What is the most important thing you’ve learned about yourself through the Exhibition process?” was the very honest, “Coding is hard and I got so mad (when there were) bugs and I really had to try so hard to stick with it and finish.”

(He admitted it was hard! He didn’t give up! My reply was, “That’s so encouraging. I find coding hard too, and if you had insisted it was all super easy, I might think I was the only one who found it hard, and that I just wasn’t cut out for it… and then maybe I’d give up and never learn it.”)

This is written by another friend – who is a native Chinese speaker btw

Dis is art. Also final Boss Monster in the game they made

This post, I hardly need to write nuthin’

Ok this is the I Cant Even Room.

“Tiny Teepee” To Scale I Can’t Even.

Future City I Cant Even.

I Can’t Even, I Can’t Even. And the one on the right reaches almost from floor to ceiling I Can’t Even.

And of course fashion and costume design…

…looks store-bought, but they made what they’re wearing – skirt, scarf, multi-pocketed pants, full armour and shield…

Ends.

I have a sometime fascination with that age group of youth who have entered the workforce just after middle-aged us, just before our kids will 🙂   Hence this book – the story of how a Finance, Mass Communications and Entrepreneurship undergrad eschewed banking…. to start a successful cleaning company.

pic from amazon.com

In 2009, University of Florida student Kristen Hadeed wanted a pair of designer jeans. When she called her parents for the money, they told her to get a job. She wasn’t surprised – Hadeed Sr, an attorney with a talent for numbers, was the kind of parent who, when his nonetheless precious daughter begged him for help with Calculus homework, told her to get to class early the next day with relevant highlighted portions of her textbook.

As they say in showbiz, one thing led to another (she wanted those jeans!) and in her junior year she had 60 fellow students for their first big job – cleaning the filthy vacated dorm rooms of fellow students. “An incredibly tough job …when some of those tenants were frat guys who lived there for years without ever so much as lifting a toilet brush.”

This is Hadeed (pic from Invibed.com)

..and some Action pics –

pic from creativeclickmedia.com

pic from gainesville.com

Those look pretty cleaned up, it really is as gross a job as you think it is. Dead-hamster-in-freezer gross. (Well I suppose I lost my dead animal cherry in upper primary after coming across an abandoned litter of puppies dumped in a rain gutter. You could see which were already dead because of where the giant blowflies were. I couldn’t bear the thought of the live ones following suit so I ran home and got rubber gloves and a bag. I remember praying and praying the little corpse would not burst open and rain down fly maggots and thank God it didn’t. Still, I never went into veterinary science because I thought my maggot-tolerance was too low and my stomach for animal mistreatment not high enough. It would disgust and amaze me decades later to meet young veterinary professionals who don’t even seem to like animals.)

Anyway. Back to the seemingly inexplicable phenomenon of college kids doing cleaning jobs to be able to afford text books… and branded items 😀 As a general benchmark, the average profit margin of a cleaning company is just 15%. Average client turnover 55%. Average employee turnover rate a whopping 75%.

How did Kristen do it? And WHY?

45 out of 60 of her initial team for their first large job quit on their first day – but her company had signed a contract, so she had to get them back – which she did, with lotsa pizza….. and by agreeing to do the toughest jobs for them. That mouldy refrigerator in 208. That ceiling fan in 106 so covered in black dust it rained dirt down on you if you so much as breathed near it. (I. Know. More, at the end.)

She credits her parents, particularly her dad’s brand of tough love, with her ability to tough it out. Whenever Hadeed Sr. had a choice between handing Calculus answers to his daughter on a platter to preserve a sterling grade <pats self on back for awesome parenting because kid got an A>, or risking that grade so she would solidify her learning of Calculus in the teacher’s class, he…. “risked the grade”

Respect. It can be very, very difficult to see the forest for the trees, the life lesson for the immediate grade. But at her successful company, whether she got an A or a B in Calculus is less important than the strength of character required to motivate fellow undergraduates in an unglamorous, low-paid, gruelling job. (We can see that now, and when it’s not our kid but can you imagine what a feat it is for those involved to pull it off?)

What I’m perpetually trying to figure is the fine line between raising someone who can say, create a successful company in a most unlikely industry, motivating the most unlikely of candidates…. and someone who cannot be in the same room as Calculus. 😀

One day early on, Kristen and agricultural, education and communications student Cacee took a job cleaning a “home” that had bunnies, cats, turtles, ducks (yes really) and the poop that comes with, littering a living room that positively reeked. In the kitchen nearby, fruit flies blanketed countertops. The two students decided to leave. When they passed a human baby crawling around in the filth, they called Child Protection Services. Then they called the client back to give them a heads-up that they had reported it.

My favourite story however is this one, because it involves the collective strength of character of some 27 individuals: At 2 am one night, Kristen is awoken by an employee because his account has been credited – not for the several hundred USD he earned – but with several thousand. An entry mistake by an otherwise very bright intern who was using their software for the first time had resulted in 27 students being overpaid by about USD 40,000. Reversing the entries would take several days, during which a bunch of college students who were relative strangers (she posted ads to fill large jobs) and who needed spending money badly enough to have taken low-paid cleaning jobs had thousands of extra dollars sitting in their accounts.

How many of the 27 students do you think touched the money, either ending up owing Student Maid or closing out their accounts, thereby disappearing, never to be heard from again? 

None. Every penny was recovered. Insufferable idealist that I am, I believe that everyone (and I mean everyone) has the capacity for good……. or evil. Integrity and selflessness begets integrity and selflessness. The flip side…………..run. Run, before you find yourself lowering your own bar Because ‘Everyone’ Else Does It. Run! 

(pic from hobbylark.com). Much beloved selfless Gandalf’s last words when, thinking he has achieved the impossible and vanquished Balrog into the abyss, he allows his attention to lapse for a moment –

And is dragged in by the tiny tip of the demon’s whip. “Fly, you fools.” (pic from Youtube)

What a powerful analogy (and one for the Obsessive Compulsive!) to not let up, to see your endurance race right to the end – pic from deviantart.com

Now, The Noble Reason For Honesty is certainly something an idealist loves to hear. However, there is also a very practical reason, one I believe those college kids understood as well:

“The 27” are going to graduate and go off into the world as professionals in their chosen field. Someday, somewhere, you never know who you might meet – who might have hired you to clean their block of 100 dorm rooms. Someday you graduate and find the same person sitting on the opposite side of an interview table where you’re applying for an architectural apprenticeship or F&B junior managerial position at Trump Hotel or….. Were a couple extra pairs of designer jeans worth more than that? 

Someday some of these kids gonna be able to afford all the designer jeans they want – and they know it. That, indirectly, is a major selling point of Student Maid.

One day, Kristen’s dad found out about her Student Maid business and freaked out because she had not formally incorporated it to protect against liability exposure. So he speaker-phoned her mum and lectured her all the way home before sending her an email with a link to register everything properly and also check for trademark infringement. (Well… it’s not Calculus? :D)

She… doesn’t check for trademark infringement because she is utterly sure no one else has thought of this, receives a lawyer’s letter for trademark infringement not too long after that, happens to read it in class (anyone remember she is still a college student), runs out in tears and calls her dad, sobbing. So you’d think Daddy bails her, right?

Nope. All he says is “I told you to check.” (Ok, maybe a little Calculus. And she writes in the book that she then hangs up on him 😀 She would ultimately change her company name to avoid the infringement. No one died.)

One hour after she changes her company name, she arrives at a conference room expecting to sign a client. She finds about 50 other people, predominantly competitors and much older than herself, hoping to sign clients. (She misread a document from several months ago re the meeting.)

“My dad knew if I was to be successful, he had to push me to take responsibility…”

In contrast, some of her employees’ parents called her office to ask for a raise on behalf of their college-aged kids (I know, right?) Others wanted extra vacation days, or called in sick days for their kids. One mum described filling out job applications and writing phone interview scripts, and how much she now regretted it…

Some fellow students rang Hadeed’s cell continuously… and asked things like what to do about a bottle of cleaning liquid (or a bucket of cleaning supplies or their partner) they’d left at a client’s house. (Can you imagine what that looks like if you did that after graduation at your first “real” job someday? But I’m sure we can all remember interns from our own working life who were like deer in headlights when they first arrived..)

One job involved cleaning over a hundred apartment units…… that upon arrival the 70 of them who took the job together discovered were all locked up. They were eventually handed one key ring with over a hundred keys on it and told they would be charged USD 50 per key, if they lost any. They designated one girl, Monique, to hold onto the keys and go up and down locking and unlocking the units.

“Students were becoming empowered to make their own decisions without (my partners) or me…”

Monique eventually turned down a job at a prestigious design firm for a career with Student Maid. She would say it was the lack of trust at the other firm that influenced her decision the most.

“We expect (students) will solve their own challenges when they arise, but it doesn’t mean we don’t support them.”

Kristen wrote 60 pages’ worth of work manual. Student Maid developed software to manage cleaning appointments, cutting 14 hours’ booking turnarounds to 10 minutes.

From horrific cleaning assignments, the core student employees who made up Student Maid with their reputation for reliability started getting hired to walk dogs, house-sit, put up Christmas decorations, tutor kids (this is my personal favourite – we used to hire high school kids to play with toddler Rockstar while I was working long hours, until those few teens left for college. One boy turned out to have a parent who was my colleague in the bank. He then told me his son was saving up to go backpacking in Vietnam with his friends. Nowadays there is (last I checked sometime back) a Facebook group my friend at a top tier international school added me, that hires teens to sit for younger kids – the teens’ parents are also kept informed of their kids’ whereabouts.)

For all that though, there were still bad apples at Student Maid. ‘Jennifer’ (not her real name) padded her time sheets, then encouraged other kids to do the same. Kristen writes candidly how she lost one student’s respect for her as a leader, after that student awkwardly but bravely came forward…. only to have Kristen do nothing about it. (When cornered, ‘Jennifer’ often insinuated she might find some excuse to sue.

“…our most dedicated, determined, high-spirited, and trustworthy… team leaders’ biggest challenge – greater than roach-filled refrigerators and inch-thick dust – was managing the people assigned to them. …people sleeping, texting, fighting, goofing off, making popcorn… watching movies on their phones. Every now and then they’d walk in and find no one at all.”

S-o… remember that question from the beginning of the post? Why do it?

There ya go. It’s a huge learning opportunity in real life situations for the undergrads..

“To Achieve The Impossible, First Believe That It Is Possible.” – Alice, Through The Looking Glass 2016

Now, I’ve always loved the story of Alice, the precocious 7yr old girl who follows a rabbit with a pocket watch down a rabbit hole, gets over her initial fright quickly for all the strange, wonderful and seemingly illogical things she sees on her way down.

“What if I should fall right through the centre of the earth, and come out the other side, where people walk upside down?”

pic from pinterest

Surprise, surprise, the original 1851 novel was written by Charles Dodgson, Oxford Maths Professor, under the pen name Lewis Carroll.  “Alice” got her name from the 10yr old middle daughter of the then-Oxford Vice-Chancellor.

pic from gliamantideilibri.it

(Way to curry favour with the boss, you think? Hold that thought… 😉 ).

The 2010 Tim Burton movie portrays an 18yr old Alice who has grown up over the last decade believing her first trip down the rabbit hole was all a dream (thereby picking up where the old Disney cartoon left off, where she woke up in her own land, from being chased by the Red Queen). Right beside the impossibilities of snobby talking caterpillars with bad smoking habits and rabbits who dress up for tea, are that of a girl coming of age only to eschew the security of marriage into a good family, instead seeking her own fortune as the captain of her bereaved father’s ship.

2010 Alice in Wonderland

Wait, what? Yes! Along with the “nonsense world” of Wonderland is written into the storyline how strange it is to everyone else in her own world that she should have ambition beyond that of simply finding a good husband (or well, going along with her arranged marriage*), and in the sequel she has to also fight the obstacles her offended, spurned ex places in her path to derail her career as ship captain – at one point he even commits her to a mental institution and she narrowly escapes forcible sedation, the “cure” for “a classic female disease” of the time.

*I’m not saying “arranged marriages” are completely wrong (no one wants their kid to make their own choice and then marry a fool or fruitcake either 😀 I had an ex-colleague who used to say all the time that his greatest parenting fear was that his 16 year old daughter would come home with a 30 year old banker she met in Lan Kwai Fong.. and he himself was a banker haha we would rib him about it all the time and he would absolutely NOT see the humour in that at all) – Alice’s betrothal is obviously “wrong” because the potential husband her mother has selected for her is so bent on not letting her be who she is – and the who she is, that everyone in her world has a problem with, is someone capable of slaying the Jabberwocky, taming the Bandersnatch and fine, serving as one of the best captains her would-be husband would have had on his fleet. 

(NOT say, fighting him for the reins of his entire business. Why do people infinitely fear sheer ability/ capability, particularly in women, without regard for inherent personality? The big unseen risk I think when you do that, is you create more bright young women who are monsters. Because they think they need to be, in order to succeed. Some societies don’t have a particularly good record of being otherwise.. I don’t think we realise how much “ripple effect” damage we could cause by allowing mean-ness to be what gets things done, because we’re just teaching everyone that being mean is more effective than being kind or having integrity.. (Uh, we liked and supported you before you put on the whole dog and pony show of erm, staged walking direction 😀 So you need to ask yourself whether the person who put you up to it has your best interests at heart to begin with… I’m just sayin’ .. The Red Queen will turn out to be someone who grew up ridiculed and bullied (read below), thereby personifying a monster of Wonderland’s own making..)

Alice is so freaking cool, WHY do people think there is no storyline, the movie is ill thought out, ODs on CGI (Computer Generated Imagery – and how come no one said that about the Transformers franchise?)

Anyway. Alice, the girl who once “believed in as many as 6 impossible things before breakfast” is called upon to save Wonderland from the Red Queen’s tyrannical, Jabberwocky-fired reign.

Jabberwocky, Bandersnatch and Vorpal Sword in the 2010 Tim Burton movie are actually pretty consistent with the 1855 ‘Jabberwocky’ poem written by Carroll/ Dodgson:

‘Beware the Jabberwock, my son!

The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun

The frumious Bandersnatch!’

It goes on, dubbed “glorious nonsense” that the author wrote to entertain his family (how many awesome things get created simply because people were looking to entertain their own kids? Some say this is how Lord of the Rings began too)..

Oh, and this is the Jabberwocky that Alice is about to decapitate (haha there you must’ve been wondering why HN might possibly trade Wonder Woman for Alice)- pic from John Kenneth Muir’s blog

You might think the impossible is well, impossible, but then one of the most important nonsense-genre books of all time, translated into 200 different languages, perpetually in print, inspiring countless adaptations and sequels, literary papers and well, the imagination of innocents all over the world, is really outliving its creator, proving the popularity of believing in impossibilities.

Think the Oxford Math Prof and Alice author Carroll/Dodgson was an alpha person? Maybe not quite – the “Dodo” character in the 1851 novel is inspired by the fact his stutter was sometimes so bad he introduced himself as “Do-Do-Dodgson.” He also had a psychological disorder whereby he misperceived body parts and objects as changing in size and distance in real life – thereby inspiring the “Eat Me,” “Drink Me” size-changing biscuits and potions in virtually all Alice storylines.  

Talk about making the most of the hand you are dealt in life.

Wait, there’s more, if you want to be a nerd about this ( 😀 ) – Dodgson/Carroll wrote math problems, particularly algebra, into some of Alice’s original adventures – for eg chapter 2’s Pool of Tears where 7yr old Alice appears to be performing “nonsense” multiplications – which actually make sense using base/ exponentiation. You can find modular arithmetic in the Hatter’s tea party when the guests change their seats around. It’s all available on Wiki – y’know, in case you thought it was “impossible” for math to be “wonder-full,” or for that matter that academics and bookworms were boring conformists – there are literary scholars who believe Dodgson wrote Alice in its final form as a scathing satire on new modern mathematics that were emerging in the then mid-19th century. 

Basically he was Being Sarcastic. Ridiculing. Portraying With Irony, because this Oxford Maths Prof had a problem with how he thought the study of maths was evolving. And did anyone remember his boss’ daughter is the freaking title character. (Beat that reality side show, Kardashians.) And I’m willing to bet, given the lack of erm, barb in the general Alice storylines, that this was meant as a compliment for a supportive boss, rather than anything negative. (But no, it’s not a straight-out curry favour, is it? It’s better 🙂 )

Then we finally caught the sequel (to be exact, one of my former colleagues was playing Alice Through The Looking Glass on DVD in her car for the kids haha) and so I went searching for a copy…

pic from Disney Wiki

It’s spectacular. Ties wonderfully with the first, the costumes and effects are amazing, WHY did it get flayed by some popular movie critics and ratings sites?

A: Because they ain’t mummy blogging Mums 😀

You get the most mileage from watching the two movies in sequence, because the sequel picks up on a few key threads….. and then irrevocably changes how you view some of the characters in the first movie. The shift in equilibrium is….. really trippy. I’d watch it just to see how they change everything just by adding a few key details in a kid-friendly setting. (Ever read Sense of an Ending, British author Julian Barnes’ Man Booker Prize-winning 2011 novel? Ok, maybe not little kid-friendly, how about the simple Blind Mice “See” Elephant In Parts, But Not Whole? Like that, but with the element of time  we all draw conclusions from… depending how far back in history we go…)

Spoiler alerts (any cares; these have been out for over a year now)…

A tale of two sisters, and a joke that goes too far…

His “harmless” joke – at ONE very wrong time – costs the Red Queen her crown, and all of Wonderland, when she vows to seek revenge. This leads to her secretly imprisoning the hatter’s entire family for a long time

As a “mad” Hatter, succeeding in the very area his very proper hatter father disapproved of – impossibly flamboyant, unconventional millinery creations – a then-adolescent Tarrant Hightop watches his court hatter father create a piece for the budding Red Queen, then-Crown Princess preparing to inherit her father’s kingdom.

She’s not as bad as everyone thinks from the first movie

The headpiece turns out too small for the Red Queen’s large head, and at the very public ceremony, it breaks. Ever the joker, Hatter leads the entire court in laughing at the Red Queen and her large head. (Could there be a worse timing for that laugh? One careless gesture, that even the best of us are not immune to making…!)

Humiliated at the crown breaking, expectedly upset at being then ridiculed for her physical appearance, the adolescent Red Queen melts down, prompting her father the King to publicly discipline her by stripping her of her rightful inheritance.

Her younger sister, beloved sweet tempered White Queen, is then named the new Crown Princess.

She’s not as “good” as everyone thinks…

Flashback to when Red and White Queen were little girls, and how the Red Queen got her large head to begin with:

They both loved jam tarts and like any other kids, would bicker over them -pic from Youtube

After their mother has told them not to eat any more tarts, little White Queen sneaks that last tart into the bedroom the two girls share…… and promptly eats it, then hiding the tart crusts under her sister’s bed. (OMG)

When their mother finds the last tart gone…… (pic from Youtube)

…because the tart crusts are under her bed, little Red Queen gets the blame for everything – stealing the tart, and trying to hang it on her younger sister. Little White Queen is way too scared to come clean. (Is there no better time to be brave and have the integrity to speak up?) She watches in silence as her older sister rails at the injustice, then runs out the door as their mother moves to punish her….. thereby falling and hitting her head hard. One little lie, or omission of truth any of us could have made, by little White Queen..

Almost at once, her head starts growing… this is the cause of the Red Queen’s large head that eventually breaks the crown that causes the Hatter to start laughing at her, that causes her to be stripped of everything.

While she watches guiltily, now even more afraid to come clean than ever (but still looks absolutely gorgeous) – pic from Youtube

And so the two princesses grow up.

Iracebeth, the Red Queen, ever the butt of “bloody big head” jokes even as her head gets ever bigger, believing their parents, taking her younger sister’s side, love her younger sister more than she.

Mirana, the White Queen, beloved of all, beautiful, even tempered and never being the one who gets into any trouble. If you look back at the first movie, Mirana flits back and forth gently, reminds her court to speak kindly to the trees, is infinitely soft spoken.

…until the day sweet Mirana watches her sister meltdown after being humiliated and ridiculed once again for that big head. In this scene, she tries gently to “reason” with her sister, “Racie, please!!”

Even as her sister all but says outright, “You of all people should understand,” thereby entreating White Queen again to tell their parents the truth about what really happened with the tarts. She. Still. DOESN’T.

Go back and look at the initial portrayal of the Red Queen. You might now see one of her favourite quotes, “It is better to be feared than loved”, imbued with pathos…

Do you now see the Wonderland crises as begun by Red Queen……. or, amazingly, by White?

Tea, anyone? pic from Disney Wiki

Rockstar has wanted a pet bird for awhile now. Last year, a classmate happened to catch her African Grey in the background of footage being used for their school project (to be precise, the bird was going “OMG” in the background of the initial cut 😀 ), and that sparked his curiosity. He promptly went to find channels like A Chick Called Albert (guy puts random doz supermarket quail’s eggs into incubator, one hatches, and – voila! A Youtube star is born! This is almost how they discovered Justin Bieber).

I especially liked when Albert ran for POTUS (President of the US; “All parties are willing to accept him, for he has a left wing… and a right wing” 😀 )

Many Vines are just timed music to the ridiculous plumed-head waving, dub-stepping and flapping that birds do naturally, drawing peals of laughter from the kids (and we all need a good clean laugh – last one in this clip’s the best –

https://youtu.be/ZsZiKVjzKtw

– this one’s from Cotton Candy; the yakkety Cockatoo running all over the apartment goes on for much longer and strings words and phrases together even more randomly in the original video)

…but there are also some inspiring ones from the Albert channel like Do Not Help A Hatching Egg (as in, too early and the bird dies, too late the bird also dies) where these huge hands are seen painstakingly opening a tiny quail’s egg with a matchstick.

I know what you’re thinking. Pet Rebound!

You’d be right. I threw myself into executing this for the kids particularly at the height of grieving for JD. As far as possible, pain should after all not be “wasted,” because it sucks so much. But that doesn’t mean I hadn’t challenged Rockstar to do his research in his spare time over the last few months and pledge to handle the cage cleaning – if given the option, he would not have minded doing his school Y6 show on birds (but what he did get is pretty cool too 🙂 ).

We’d been checking bird availability at the SPCA for maybe 6 months (if you cannot delay gratification that long, maybe longer, how will you ever stick it out for the lifetime of the animal). Initially there was never anything, and then for 1-2 months lovebirds kept popping up in pairs (as in, you have to take both birds because they are bonded). We’d read how if you want a lovebird to bond with you, you should get it alone.

Finally, a single one pops up on the adoption site: “Blackie”.

One morning while the kids are in school, I call ahead at the SPCA before they get back – we have never had birds before, and I want a proper look at whether I can support Rockstar’s budding bird habit before I feed this particular monster. HN has proven far more persistent than Rockstar in the taming of small furry animals (I do believe that caring for pets, or at least living things – one of HN’s favourite things in school is the large gardens where the kids are organised to tend to a large variety of flowering and leafy plants. Some even put Lego builds up there “to shelter slugs” – Things That Make You Go Awwwwwww – it brings out something desirable in a child’s personality, in a way that just being around only humans does not – because humans can be @ssholes in a way other living things cannot, so we could all use a little caring for other living things 🙂 Like, why else must they be on this earth right, besides to eat 😛 )…. So if Rockstar wants a bird then I’ve gotta see what I can do.

The handler shows me……. not one but five freaking lovebirds all perched in a row on a stick, nuzzling each other contentedly. Turns out they just rescued 4 more, and so “Blackie” has now made 4 other bond buddies. We must take either 2 or 3 together and never separate them when handling, or they might die of fright.

HOW INCONSIDERATE. The nerve of these things.

Also, the handler tells me they’ve all grown up flapping about in a large cage somewhere with little human interaction, and so we will likely have NO chance whatsoever of taming them to be like some of those in the cute Youtubes above. (The SPCA likes to dash all your hopes of being a Bird Ninja this way manage your expectations this way.)

After making us aware of the uphill task ahead (I want to say Did I Not Mention My Old Dog Has Just Died So My Tolerance Level For Animal Crap Is Pretty High Right Now In Fact You Could Say I Need This Crap), staff leave me to take a few pictures and videos, watch the animals awhile more, before returning to tell the kids that we will have to deal with 2-3 times the initially expected amount of animal poop relay all this to Rockstar when he gets off the school bus. He still wants to take a swing at it.

(Opportunity Cost Alert: Rockstar is of course aware that if we get the birds now, we’re not getting others later. It’s a great excuse way to cut “impulse purchases” – if you get something you don’t really want, maybe just because someone else found something they really love, you will no longer have the same resources available to get something else you might want more, should you then come across it in the near future.)

That’s how Rockstar comes to stand in front of the bird cage quietly to see if he can stick it out (for a good 45 minutes), even as HN entertains herself looking at all the other animals in the Small Animal Section. She observes the few male hamsters (Sophie, also adopted from the SPCA, still follows her everywhere and has taken to chewing holes in her pyjamas before bedtime most nights. HN insists on wearing the hole-y clothing like some badge of honour, so if you notice her in anything with little holes in them, that’s what the holes are.)

There is a brown snake nearby named Nagini (yes, after Voldemort’s pet and horcrux vessel), and a leopard gecko across the room, named Fire. Nagini appears to be quite unlike the snakes I used to see in the Penang Snake Temple as a kid, that mostly eat eggs (in those days many were green, venomous, and inhabited various potted plants – they get draped near the altars, where they eat the offerings in the night, too. I’d not heard of anyone getting bitten though, and sure enough I can find tourists complaining online that the snakes never stick their tongues out, “are they fake?” (no they’re not, if you tap on their heads they’ll slowly slither off their branches (I once saw a boisterous tourist do it, but I really don’t think you should touch them, they’re purportedly varied, and most are venomous) – I was told as a child that the incense smoke especially in the day when more visitors are burning offerings keeps them sluggish)). Nagini however looks more like a little python, and idly I guess she eats things like mice. I am not keeping frozen mice in our fridge with the kids’ school lunches so I don’t even ask.

We are discouraged from taking Fire because he eats live crickets and cockroaches, and the SPCA handler says they invariably get complaints from inexperienced owners about then having bug infestation. I can totally picture HN chasing hopping crickets and scurrying cockroaches about our living room at feeding time. (In other words, our neighbours would freaking kill us 😀 one of our neighbours has two female turtles who are over 10 years old and about the size of dinner plates btw, sometimes they crawl around the common corridor to stretch their legs)

Anyway. There is a difference in personality among the 5 lovebirds, that becomes apparent if you watch them long enough. Some of them are content to perch very close to each other and chirp a wide variety of sounds. They take very little interest in anything else going on around them (so they potentially don’t startle as easily either). Others are curious about what visitors might be doing outside their little cardboard box while still hiding in it, and after awhile we realise the most curious one is watching Rockstar as intently as Rockstar is watching them (to be fair, after about 20 minutes Nagini has also quietly raised her head from the depths of her coils, and is peering at Rockstar from behind her water tupperware. When we all come and look at her though, she goes back into hiding.)

When the SPCA handler approaches the birdcage, Most Curious Bird comes right out of the box and climbs up the bars inches from Rockstar.

No prizes for guessing who eventually follows him home.

“Sans” and “Savage Peach”

Smaller, less brightly coloured, most of his markings are muted by a blackish tinge. Doesn’t chirp as much. But he’s the most busybody bird of the bunch by far. (I say “he”, but in truth you need a blood test to accurately confirm the gender of your lovebirds, and the SPCA prefers not to expend valuable resources to test this. We are simply advised to remove any eggs we find from the cage. I don’t know how I’m going to look those birds in the eye if I take their eggs, so we keep giving them all these foraging activities because to bird brains (sorry :P) that apparently discourages them from laying eggs)

We also found a way to recycle HN’s old Elsa jigsaw pieces – parrot toys!

Sans’ companion bird is larger, much brighter coloured, and HN is pleased to be going home with a “free bird” (because we have to take two – in the days that follow however, this turns out to be a blessing in disguise because while not as shy as expected, these birds are very, very active – without a companion bird to entertain each other, even if they don’t sicken like the SPCA cautions they might if separated, they would probably chirp and whistle your ears out for attention).

Coincidentally, Savage Peach is LOUD, chirping at the top of her lungs, swinging vigorously and precariously from her perch and occasionally falling off with a crash (in other words, quite like HN :D). To match her noise levels, Sans resorts to plucking toys off the bars and dumping them to the floor of the cage with a crash.

This is Sans pulling jigsaw pieces off the rope – he also unhooks that purple ladder and flings it to the floor of the cage

This the kids on our first visit to Parrotshop in Wan Chai, which is where the SPCA advises us to go for an (inexpensive) cage and a few starter toys….

The smell of bird feed is overpowering, I can’t stand it <sheepish> though both kids say it’s not a bad smell. I still miss the smell of wet dog. There are also maybe 10 screechy parrots (but no lovebirds) who up the screeching when they see kids, and what looks like a toucan. We are told (at the time) that Mong Kok Bird Street is closed due to a bird flu alert, so then we try not to be around too many birds.

We recycle toddler toys and suitable little plastic Gacha prizes (like that pink slinky the parrots keep unwinding off the top), to keep them busy/foraging, not say, laying eggs.

A bit over a week now, they’ve been home. They fill the apartment in the day with chirps, whistles and loud squabbles. When we want them to shut up (:D), we cover the cage with a scarf – the longest they’ve taken to quiet down at “bedtime” is about 15 minutes, but first few mornings they woke us around 6am. Kids haven’t been late for school all week (for us this is a HUGE achievement ok!!)

HN now has them eating from a spoon, even when they have the same feed available in their bowls (the SPCA handler taught them how to best try to tame the birds – turns out he was an animal trainer at Ocean Park, before leaving to the States for further studies, and has only just gotten back to HK) and Rockstar is up to getting Sans (the more interactive one when no food is involved :D) to step on a perch he holds up. He cleans the cage in small increments as he goes about the day. No reward without risk or well, work, no pet without poop…

And so the saga continues…

JD passed peacefully a day after we brought her home, looking out the open balcony window, while we were at church last Sunday. We weren’t gone that long, and had left her stable, fed and calm, but she was completely gone, with no signs of a struggle, when we got back.

It was the most merciful, blessed passing we could have hoped for.

No! Wait!! I want to take care of you! I want to put my life on hold for awhile, to nurse you faithfully just as you loved me so unconditionally all your life! 

I thought I was going to be nursing her til the next review of anti-seizure meds in a month. I was buckling down to do just that. Because as long as my best friend kept sticking around against all odds, I was going to meet her halfway. If/when she decided she had had enough, I would let her go. It was the most loving thing I could think to do for her. She gave me, us, so many years of love.

I once prayed that where I landed in my leap of faith over whether to bring 4month old JD home out of the blue was the right decision. I never regretted it, but a Border Collie in Singapore and Hong Kong is not exactly always easy to tend to as nature intended, for the breed. I never looked back. Raising and training this hardcore working dog meant for farms and chores, who initially had behavioural problems to boot, was good and very needful for me.I gave up all my gym time and hunkered down to figure out how to train this screaming thing under our sofa, or at least get her to go with me to classes. (We flunked out for about a year 😀 )

Over Easter Break I spent all my free time while the kids were at camp going to see her, at one point taking her home until she had to go for more tests, feeding her kibble one piece at a time.

As for the “emotional roller coaster,” this was the cause – when she first went down about 8 months ago, tests had indicated she likely had only 2-3 months left to live, she was that far gone. We had grieved, looked at palliative care…. and instead of 2-3, she had lived another almost-8 months before one day doing a little stumble along Repulse Bay where the kids regularly had pasta and she dug a big hole on the beach.

This is it. She’s had all morning with us, the last 8 months have been a blessed gift. Not a bad way to go. 

I can’t just watch her die though, so despite all the regular clinics we were in contact with apologetically saying no one can come that far to help, promising to be ready to save her if we made it all the way over, I go stand at the side of the beach road and try to flag a cab. When I manage to, I beg the cabbie to wait, then run back through the mall shortcut, back down the escalator and to the entrance where my best friend of the last 15 years is gasping for breath, her tongue purple. (Air pressure buildup in her chest squeezing her airways shut, from leaks likely brought about by her still trying to jump into cars and run up and down stairs, despite weaker legs – she hit her chest about once a week on stairs on getting in and out of taxis – inconsequential blows for a young dog, but one of the many vets we met offered a most plausible no-brainer theory – that at her age soft tissue might have eroded away, making her bones especially sharp and hard, enough to puncture her own airways whenever she fell on her chest) I enlist two teenaged boys walking a Pom to help me hold the cabbie and carry JD’s other half.

The kids and I say our loving goodbyes to her in the taxi on the way over. She makes it to the clinic and they initially think she’s stable. The nurse offers me a spare pair of nurse uniform pants from their clinic. I assume it’s because my clothes are covered in the phlegm and drool my beloved border collie has expelled in her efforts to breathe, and I decline, “It’s ok, I don’t care about that.” I just care that she’s ok! Just make her ok!!

Kings has arrived from the office and he gently tells me to put the pants on. The sides of the white slacks I am wearing are heavily smeared with animal faeces from her struggle. I had not even noticed.

As we’re sitting there a helper runs in carrying a bloodied Shiba Inu, followed by a grim-looking youngish caucasian man who turns out to have been passing by when he sees the helper and brings her to this clinic. The Shiba is pronounced dead on arrival from a hit-and-run, after the dog ran onto the busy mid-levels street, and the staff try to find his owner off the helper who is sitting on the floor crying. They eventually search clinic files instead and locate the owner’s number.

The dog’s owner comes in tearfully from work and spends some time with him alone in the next room. She leaves with her partner. Awhile later the dog’s helper/ walker comes back in and asks if she left her earphones in the clinic. In all, about 6 hours pass.

JD is transferred to a 24 hour facility. They tell us she may not wake up ever. This new revelation for some reason causes even more anguish for me. I thought she was going. Then I thought she was stable. Now I find she may be severely brain damaged from lack of oxygen anyway.

In the van going over to the 24 hour facility to nurse/driver asks me if I’ve considered Euthanasia. He tells me there are vets who make house calls and also do this.

Next morning I’m called and told she has in fact woken up. I drop the kids in camp and rush over.

That’s when the roller coaster really takes off. She comes home. They say they can’t believe she is not a vegetable. She crashes at the follow up. She crashes on the transfer. I watch her die several times over. She keeps coming back up to the point beyond needing to euthanise her. So they transfer her for extensive tests. Everything would eventually come back negative.We thought she had a very high likelihood of cancer. She doesn’t have cancer! She doesn’t have any of the terminal things they thought she had. She’s still having seizures in the night, which they say is likely due to being without oxygen for so long at Repulse Bay. Still they test her. Nothing ever comes up conclusive. No cancer in the abdomen, no throat paralysis or other clear respiratory system problem. For awhile I think she’s getting better. Then I get another call in the night about another “seizure” and we are pushed to do another heart test.

I bring her home the next day. They give us all the meds and teach me how to insert a suppository should she seizure again. I can see a light slowly return to her eyes as we’re all holding her in the car and she realises from the car window that we are going home.

I make side arrangements that should it become necessary, we will be able to euthanise her at home (there are “roaming” vets who make housecalls by appointment, but they only work office hours – so the big risk is that should she have a complication in the night we either have to wait til morning or bring her back to one of the emergency clinics she loathes). I talked this over with the kids. That if the worst happened, that there was a wait before she could have medical attention, they would go to the next room and busy themselves, knowing I first had the stuff the hospital and clinic taught me to do, and if that didn’t work we would have to wait it out til proper medical assistance could arrive. Thing is, that already happened to us in the worst and most unexpected way at Repulse Bay the other day.

To the best of our ability she will not suffer a painful end, no matter that she and I desperately wanted for her to pass away when she was ready, in the familiar surroundings of our home, rather than the hospitals she’s so terrified of. Lovingly, we envisioned that all she would know was that she made it home. Bedtime in the kids’ bedroom as always, while they were at school or camp. That would be the last thing she remembered. Both kids know this. HN buried Gemma, her first hamster, not too long ago. Sleeping and not waking up doesn’t sound like such a bad way to go.

That night with JD is everything we could ask for. I have a makeshift stretcher and we wheel her all over the home just the way she likes to move around following the family from room to room. We all eat together watching Annie. Then tv. We stay up late. Then I carry her into the kids’ bedroom just like always. She never has a seizure or other difficulty breathing, but every time she makes a sound I sit bolt upright and finally decide to switch on the pure oxygen machine we have borrowed for the night, if only for my own peace of mind. She stares at me blandly and grunts.

The next morning is Sunday. It’s a wonderful time of taking turns to feed her, and we leave her looking out the open balcony window to go to church. This time when I say “Stay. We will be back soon,” I’m almost sure I get a look. 

She must have gone not too long after we left. It was an incredibly merciful and peaceful passing. No signs of struggle or pain.

There is a pet cremation/ funeral service that makes housecalls – yes even on a Sunday evening. For awhile I can’t stop touching her fur. I know what made her her is gone, but I cannot help missing her so terribly.

At some point during this ordeal HN had remarked, “I don’t want a little dog after JD anymore, Mummy. Because of what I see you going through.”

Later, she clings to me and sobs, just the once (both kids otherwise shed a few tears, but I am the one experiencing the most intense grief by far – the kids have always identified JD, mature border collie as she is, as my pet – Rockstar otherwise holds me tightly and wordlessly if I cry). “I know you keep saying you knew her for 15 whole years, but I knew her my whole life,” HN says.

And so healing begins. Even as we all know there will never be another for us like JD.