Friday At The Movies When The Line Between Fact and Fiction Blurs

1) Telekinetic Coffee Shop Surprise, the video by viral marketing company Thinkmodo to promote the upcoming movie version of Stephen King’s Carrie.

Why can’t all those annoying telemarketers in Cantonese calling our cellphones (who hang up when you insist on speaking in English) do one-a these instead.

2) Buzzfeed’s The One Mistake In Gravity That Is Truly Unforgiveable – that Sandra Bullock exiting her space suit was not wearing an astronaut’s diaper. “A gross misrepresentation of space travel.”

I know, I know she should be wearing a diaper, and yet I also prefer seeing this:

But this is prettier

But this is prettier

To this:

Than this

Than this

And the moral of the story is, we go to the movies to be entertained. We shouldn’t expect it to be totally realistic unless they tell us. Because yes they left out the diaper, but do you really want to see the diaper?

I used to have a thing for Kevin Bacon. I don’t think I would’ve enjoyed Apollo 13 as much with him in a diaper. Tom Hanks in a diaper I don’t mind, he was Forrest Gump anyways. Y-eah they have a better shot at pleasing everyone if Sandra Bullock has a Hot Astronaut Workout Scene and they put the diaper on George. Okok don’t scream at me put the diaper on some unattractive unknown actor so the purists don’t wage Twitter war and we still get our eye candy fix.

Then give both Bullock and Clooney Hot Astronaut Workout Scenes. Oh, and throw in Kevin Bacon.

My work here is dones.

3) The West Wing Shutdown In Real Life and another reason I used to watch West Wing so much when I worked. They had a Filibuster episode too, but unlike “Wacko Bird” Cruz’ real life one, theirs was a beautifully warm and fuzzy filibuster-er grandfather who didn’t tell anyone he wanted at least the token autism research funding in the package because he had an autistic grandson. I like the fiction version better, especially when the fictitious president realizes why his opponent is filibuster-ing and is the one to call other senator allies to assist in the holding up of his own policy.

West Wing cast (pic from tvtropes.com)

West Wing cast (pic from tvtropes.com)

“…Such devotion to the idea of fair play politics and honor amongst politicians isn’t exactly rare on The West Wing — the show was, at times, not so much a political drama as an idealized vision of how politics should work…..

Funniest comment in the thread: “In a lineup how many Americans would pick Josiah Bartlett (played by Martin Sheen) if asked “Who is the President?”

So maybe movies really are more fictitious than we’d like to believe. But I like to believe.

And well there’s latest updates indicating Republicans “Badly Damaged” By Shutdown Battle as support for Obamacare, the very thing they shut down to hold up, rises.

I don’t explain it that well because the argument ultimately lies on faith and belief, not logic (which I usually much prefer in these kinds of arguments) – in my case over the 11 years I worked in what people consider a particularly “nasty” industry (and which I consider no nastier than everywhere else there be politics which is pretty much everywhere there be people) I came to fervently believe that clear conscience was what allowed me to keep God close. Without a clear conscience I couldn’t proverbially look Him in the eye – that included prayer – and therefore I could do nothing without Him. Ergo, without clear conscience cannot get anything done. (Non-Christian friends would go “So, Karma <shrugs>”)

(Oh, and in the recent Cruz filibuster they coincidentally discussed how he might have been wearing “astronaut underpants” i.e. catheter, to assist his ability to stand there speaking for hours and hours and hours and hours without having to go to the bathroom. I just mention because of the Bullock-Clooney lack of space diaper thing.)

Anyway, new goal: watch British sitcom Yes, Prime Minister.

4) AND 11 (more) Mindblowing Facts That Will Change Your Perspective Of The World.

I like #3 “There are castles and even lighthouses that are less expensive than NYC apartments.”

Among others, Kings has been organizing Asia Bankers’ Club buying trips and things, and the hot locations have been KL and Bangkok, which are expected to experience attractive capital appreciation in the future. Around the same time, a Korean girlfriend of mine then explained the tradition of a newly-wed couple’s parents providing a furnished home for them as a wedding gift – the boy’s side provides the home, while the girl’s side provides the furnishings. And so I put two-and-two together and arrived at a thousand-and-one, at Kings’ offhand remark that he’d noticed some of the earliest buyers into these southeast asian properties have been middle-aged Korean couples…… 🙂

But #7 “A whole ecosystem lives in your belly button” would just blow your mind.

Ew.

Ew.

“Scientists found 2,368 different species of bacteria living in belly buttons after swabbing the navels of just 60 people. In that study, 1,458 might have been entirely new to the scientific record…”

And #8 “You can’t see as many colors as a chicken is what I’m entertaining Rockstar with, in honor of his current learning unit about animals.

5) And this should’ve been #12. Because Rockstar has a favorite coin he sometimes palms about and I told him if he flips it (which he can’t really do yet, so most of the time he’s kind of flinging it) he has an equal chance (i.e. 50-50) of it landing on either side.

coin_toss

Oh, you thought so too? According to a Stanford University Prof of Mathematics, the coin has a 51% chance of landing on the side that was facing up. 

This however only works on a new (i.e. clean) coin, because apparently grease and dirt can throw the weight distribution off.

We have school to thank for starting this particular conversation between Rockstar and I because he came home one day and found a use for the freebie Pepsi from our sometime weekend pizza meal orders – to clean coins. (Rockstar has pronounced all fizzy drinks “disgusting”.) Turns out the phosphoric acid in the soda removes the oxide layer.

And then I went and followed the discussion thread in the link above for some interesting comments on probability. Probability fascinates me because derivatives have always fascinated me and the price of a derivative, say an option, is dependent on the probability of the payout. NO, scratch that, it is dependent on what the market believes the probability of the payout to be. The confluence of the human element, math, and our limited knowledge – providing investment opportunity and encouraging faith, ironically in what most people deem a godless environment – is just so beautiful and exciting.

6) This week, Little Miss Rockstar takes matters into her own hands in more ways than one, in Feeding Time In The Rockstar Household Part II:

Little Miss, taking matters into her own hands (rather proud of Rockstar for "getting" it immediately :D)

Little Miss, taking matters into her own hands (rather proud of Rockstar for “getting” it immediately. Because that is a spoon in her other hand.)

Also arms and sleeves

Also arms and sleeves

Because feeding with Spoon isn't al it's cut out to be.... Meh.

Because feeding with Spoon isn’t al it’s cut out to be…. Meh.

But this little suspense-filled drama has a happy ending.... Success!

But this little suspense-filled drama has a happy ending…. Success!

Have a good weekend dears. But eat your greens too…

 

 

 

Posted in The TGIF Posts | 4 Comments

Mutt Meal Kitchen

This is Suzy.

Freebie meal

Freebie meal and water

There used to be Brownie too, but he died of old age. Suzy’s not young either, but not quite that old… And now I know why my mum saves all those tupperware. Also, you can probably recognize former stray mutts in the area because apparently they don’t eat dog food, my parents’ rescue mutt is the same. (Funny story, Rockstar came home one day from school saying besides being endangered, hedgehogs eat dog food)

"Hi, Suzy," she comes up to the door for a sniff readily, before going back to her meal

At “Hi, Suzy,” she comes up to the door for a sniff, before going back to her meal. You can tell she’s cleaned up real good.

Apparently several times a week the family Suzy adopted allows her to roam freely for the day, reliving her former stray mutt life (otherwise she has a home with a garden – though she seems to have forgotten to put her tag on that day), and one of the things she does when she’s out is stop by the back door of my parents’ place for a meal. We completely missed her appearance last time, but on our most recent trip back I hear a gentle wuffing and find her come to lunch. My parents’ mutt and Mupp have a firm playmate and escort if she’s out and they’re being walked – for a share of treats, of course.

And this is Muppy after the visit and her daily half bath.

Yes I think that's a smile.

Yes I think that’s almost a smile.

(But really, I took that picture because I thought she looked like a fat fur barrel with 4 limbs that may never meet…)

Posted in Rockstar Shots | 2 Comments

Rockstarism #281 – 3-way Rockstarism

#281
Little Miss: (pointing at JD) Rat. 

Me: No, Little Miss, JD’s a dog.
<pause>

Little Miss: Doog. 

Me: (feeling lazy) Close enough.

Rockstar: (calls over from laptop) She called JD a dog? So all dogs aren’t “JD” anymore?

Me: Yeah maybe. Hey you want Daddy or me to put you to bed tonight?

Rockstar: Daddy. I only say “you” when I want to be sweet.

(Private joke, because the dad travels so much by default we assume the Dad will perform regular parenting activities he can fit in. Rockstar obviously calls dibs on these…)

Me: Oh really. And you don’t feel like being sweet tonight. Doog.

Rockstar: That’s close enough. (Turns back to laptop)

Watcha doin' Koko? The Rockstars highly involved in the important task of sandwich making

Watcha doin’ Koko? The Rockstars highly involved in the important task of sandwich making

Ps: I don’t know why she called JD a rat, probably lucky stab in the dark at an actual word…

 

Posted in Rockstarisms, Talking To Rockstar | 2 Comments

The Thank God It’s Sunday Linky

So on Saturday we rose at 5, left home at 6 to get to Penang just before noon even as the dog moped, and got to bed after midnight and my grandma’s birthday bash; Rockstar came back from Sunday school last week coining the acronym TGIS and so let’s do that…

1) Russian boy and his sparrow friend.

Hey little fella, who's your pet human?

Hey little fella, who’s your pet human?

My mum felt strongly that I should grow up with animals, because they would teach me something books and other humans could not really. And so after her regular hours as an upper secondary school English teacher and after-hours free English tuition to kids in lower-income households/ reading at St Nicholas’ Home For The Blind, she would clean hamster cages in the night as my two rodents in a cage morphed into 16 in a wall of cages. (Pet shop guy swore they were both female. It would seem Kenny was a late developer.) I can imagine this is every parent’s nightmare.

Hamsters tend to be far more fragile than dogs or cats; you don’t hold them properly and they fall, they die. They hop off the bed wrong, they die. The aircon/fan is on too strong after you give them a bath, they die. It occurred to me one interesting thing about the way my many pets shaped my personality was the way in which they trained me to “think.”

Hamsters have absolutely no respect for heights, and a rabid fascination of forbidden places. Their best “stimulation” was to be allowed out of their cages and then of course when you have to put them back in you have to go searching all over the room. They turned up in mattresses, the old sewing machine I used as a sometime-table, in the toilet, out in the yard befriended by my semi-wild giant rabbit that ran free in the garden and attacked repairmen and such – interestingly the one with the rabbit could’ve made a total break for it and we would never have seen her again, especially with all the stray cats around. But she was smart enough to stick close to Honey Bunny. (What? I was nine.)

Every one of my hamster adventures is absolutely true and unembellished, I swear. Searching for my lost hamsters provided a weird problem-solving stimulation and a motivation like no other. I found every one of them (though one managed to disappear two whole weeks and the one down the toilet developed pneumonia and eventually died).

So conclusion to the yarn is simply why I have a real soft spot for stories of kids who develop relationships with animals.

2) Proof more people love animals: Massachusetts police force salute old police dog on final trip to vet.

Proof animals are people too

Proof animals are people too

This respected member of the force had to be put down due to kidney failure.

3) Sorry Mrs Jackson.

pic from The Daily Beast

pic from The Daily Beast

Billion dollar lawsuit re negligence in Michael Jackson’s death draws to a close. Amid the Mrs Jackson Is Believed To Have Been Trying To Set Up Nest Egg For MJ’s Other Sibs Who Are All Left Out Of His Will stuff, what really struck me was how the MJ estate with its USD 400mil debt at his death has since become USD 600mil – USD 1bil profit. In this market. What I really want to know is who these whiz kid portfolio managers are and why no one has given them a medal. I mean, this was an estate that included giraffes and things isn’t it?

4) The Man Who Ran The Silk Road.

pic from Huffingtonpost.com

pic from Huffingtonpost.com

The original Silk Road of course gets its name from the lucrative historical Chinese silk trade that was responsible for many transcontinental trade routes. The virtual Silk Road, which I suppose got its name from Original Silk Road, was a website for trafficking drugs and illegal immigration/ identification papers and possibly even killers for hire, which the FBI has now shut down. Way to Real Life Nikita. Just waiting for the movie to come out. Bet discussions for rights include numbers with very many zeroes in them. Maybe Twilight Guy will play the lead. Go, Team Edward.

5) 22 Coolest Tweets According To Twitter (and 19 you’ll never see again):

“Four More Years”.

What I really like is the picture. Although I also think somewhere someone asked Why? Are they breaking up?

What I really like is the picture. POTUS chose this picture, of all the several million pictures he could’ve picked, when he got re-elected. Although what I’d really love is to find the guy who responded Why, are they  breaking up?

Conversely,

Hahaha

Hahaha

HAHAHA

HAHAHA

6) MIT develops self-assembling cubes. Because what the world needs right now are cubes that stack themselves. (Sorry MIT, I really mean congrats on your self-assembling cubes, because there was a time someone probably snarked about penicillin too.)

Clever Cubes pic from Daily Beast

Clever Cubes pic from Daily Beast

So proud my almost- 16 month old stacks cubes. Somewhere there are parents whose kids go to MIT who are also proud their kids stack cubes ;D

I should’ve ended my yarning right there, but noooo I have to go on and add that right this instant, at 11.33 on a Sunday night, I’ve decided it would be just swell if The Rockstars grow up with both tech and hamsters. (It must be the tiredness – we’ve been partying with Grandma and now we’re hung over). Come morning and in a few years’ time my offspring searches and holds me to it and it shall be my turn to wash hamster cages (well at least move rodent babies about with chopsticks*).

I type that flippantly, but I’m not totally kidding. Tech is the world our kids’ll grow up in, and where we once had to learn to write lightning-fast for essays in 3 hour exams, today quite frankly typing is another mode of delivery of your best ideas (in fact I lose a lot, in a delivery with pen and paper, compared to typing). Rockstar is a very slow typist – as evidenced by his interactions with one of my closest blogger friends – in fact it was one of the things he mentioned somewhere in one of their comment chains, either on this blog or on hers – that it takes him so long. So I was pretty impressed, the day Rockstar came home from school recently and substituted his regular nightly Youtube TMNT fare for something called “Dance Mat”. It’s something on their Virtual Learning Environment (if I recall correctly – he accessed it, not me, and I only glanced at the screen once when he explained it) that gets them used to typing more efficiently, with all their fingers. And he subbed his TMNT time for it that night, that’s something. 

So anyway I believe the kids need to get techie. And you then just throw a few hamsters in the mix. Dones.

Have a good week ahead dears. <sheepish> we’re starting ours a little hungover. I have nice pictures, I do. And I can tell you exactly where they are in Kings’ camera too. So here are a few hurried pics from my iPhone til I can put the good stuff up.

IMG_1342 IMG_1343  IMG_1350

You can tell from the maniacal look on Rockstar’s face that he thoroughly enjoyed one of the best buffets in town. Broke out in song. Our relatives were treated to a rendition of:

A healthy life needs a healthy di-et, 
So check the label before you buy-it,
There are better ways to cook than to deep-fat fry-it,
So think before you drink or cheeeeew…..

Resting, it’s a necessi-ty,
Gives you a chance to gro-oow,
A healthy life needs a healthy di-et….. 

And then one of my uncles walked over and offered him that deep-fat fried Keropok Udang. Ay, but there are now various elderly going A healthy life needs a healthy di-et…………! 

Posted in Rockstar Shots, The TGIF Posts | 1 Comment

That Means “I Love You” (Or, The Deviousness of Mc Donald’s And Starbucks)

During the recent public holiday we discovered the Mc Donald’s at the Peak was selling not one but two Happy Meal toys of the Hot Wheels variety that Rockstar loves (to be exact, it’s the tiny stickers with minuscule instruction diagrams he enjoys putting together).

Rockstar on a mission to Mc Donald's one day (for real ok - he thinks the whole Mc Donald's thing is for toys)

Sc00ter Boy on a mission to Mc Donald’s (for real, he thinks the whole Mc Donald’s thing is for toys and then they offer SOME food in case you get hungry)

Now, the Cyberport Mc’s often sells out of the Good Stuff real fast because of all the little kiddies in the area, there are so many big developments/ homes with families living here. So I know what’s coming when we bring JD for her 3km walk at the Peak on yet another sweltering day (way to tell the dog we love her) and there is, as often is the case on a public holiday, a massive crowd of tourists and picnickers swamping the Mc Donald’s counter.

No wait, Rockstar actually didn’t even notice the Mc Donald’s, but with only a couple seconds’ hesitation I pull him over to check the “Happy Meal Toy On Offer” window. To me that is an indication (to self) how much I love him ok, because I loathe crowds and especially crowds of tourists because of the whole germ-freaky thing whereby they might have foreign bugs we haven’t built resistance to etcetcetc (yes, from That Time when a visitor from our London office sat in the dealing room I worked in back then with only a light sniffle – that seriously floored all the otherwise tough locals because obviously English bugs are different from Hongkie bugs. When I worked I was squeamish because I didn’t want to make a mistake on pricing and execution of someone’s trade (since your mistake is in dollar terms and error reports signed off by bosses, no one wants one-a-those) cos I wasn’t feeling well. Now I don’t work, it is JUST SO MUCH MORE WORK if you have a cranky, sick toddler. And frankly I see more and more mums everywhere sanitizing things. At Cantonese Music Class the local mums wipe down the music keyboards before their kids start ok….)

That’s when we queue for some 25 minutes in the crowd (which I might add by Hong Kong standards is a lifetime ok, remember when I told you how Kings went nuts at an uncrowded KFC in Seremban because they took 20 minutes to still not yet produce a zinger burger without mayo) just so I can not wait for them to get the Happy Meal food that comes with.

Kings made an even bigger sacrifice that day – he almost didn’t make it for his basketball game. By “basketball game” I must clarify it’s not the people who stand around aiming a ball at a hoop while swapping desk stories. It’s the people who post online not just how many points everyone scores, but the number of rebounds each player makes, right next to the manga cartoon or other caricature/ photo of said fanatics enthusiasts even as they discuss their over-zealous frenetic rabid passionate efforts on some officious-looking website in Chinese. By all means read into that how I think they should audition for the cast of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest (showbiz good!). I call dibs on saying that because I have agreed to spend the rest of my life Til Death Do Us Part with Guy Who Thinks People Die From Playing Soccer.

In fact Kings so tried to hold it in he bundled a maniacally-waving-Hello-Kitty-helium-balloon-Little Miss (normally, he HATES even the freebie balloons and this is one that yes, floats about – we suffered a lapse of judgment so severe as to present it to a younger child who is very particular we not attach ribbon to wrist or balloon to anything else really, because why shouldn’t we follow behind her holding the tail end of the HKD 78 balloon in case it flies away? Wasn’t like we had anything better to do like eat lunch), a mad-delighted newly-walked border collie, an over-packed diaper bag and an annoyingly collapsible stroller into the car so I could sprint over to the carpark with our older child, clutching his newly acquired Mc Donald’s prizes tightly.

Somewhere I just know there is a marketing researcher who works for the big bad golden arches doing a fist pump of the formerly-embarassing-to-Rockstar kind, and going YES! 

Rockstar was “Do I have to eat chicken nuggets to get the toy??”

No darling, you don’t have to eat the stuff that comes with the cheap little gimmicky toy by devious multinational company to make you Bite of the Proverbial Junk Food Apple. In fact, lemme tell the swamped staff they don’t have to actually take our Happy Meal order or pack it for us, they may simply zap my Octopus card so we can have the toys.

Said swamped staff then refused to let us do that. Tut-tutted us, even. Wouldn’t take any money for food we would not consume. (To be fair the plain steamed corn doesn’t really qualify as junk). Insisted on charging us just the HKD 8 for each toy and “counting it” as the person before us having bought the Happy Meal. There are battle-weary Mc Donald’s servers who care. Even as she hands over an umpteenth plastic, not paper (which was returned in favor of plastic) bag to Random Elderly Tourist Who Couldn’t Finish Her Fries.

Somewhere I just know there is a PR person who works for the big bad golden arches doing a fist pump of the formerly-embarassing-to-Rockstar kind, and going YES!

And btw my late maternal grandma from Guangdong who lived to be in her late 80s more than a decade ago loved Mc Donald’s french fries. I was a teenager back then and she even tried to make her own when she couldn’t get to Mc Donald’s, then concluding they had secret ingredients in the oil they used to fry the potato.

And so then here we are.

That is Rockstar making his breakfast sandwich (chicken and ham paste with thin slices of pear)

That is Rockstar making his breakfast sandwich (chicken and ham paste with thin slices of pear) with his Mc Donald’s Happy Meal toys in attendance

On the inside, he is smiling. But he wants that picture up. I have such a BOY of a child.

On the inside, he is smiling. But he wants THAT picture up, of him seriously scarfing. I have such a BOY of an elder child.

And where’s Little Miss while all this caffeine-fueled typing is going on?

On a foam break at that Place of Worship of the Work Warriors, St. Arbucks.

On a foam break at that Place of Worship of the Work Warriors, St. Arbucks.

Free babycinnos from Starbucks. Just as devious, these people. It’s like the Miss and I just have to have our Starbucks fix before heading on to Wisekids or Chinese Playgroup, these days.

Another tip: When you are hard-pressed for time at Mc Donald’s on a public holiday, you may want to consider not standing behind any holidaying helpers in the queue. Only because it’s fairly likely the one innocent-looking helper ahead of you is going to be ordering 20 large Coca Colas, several bags of burgers and 2 dozen large french fries because that is exactly what happened to us. Our own helper seconds me on this one.

ps: Linky party will be late this week because it’s my paternal grandma’s 90th birthday tomorrow! The whole extended family will be flying from near and far to the birthday bash over the weekend… 

Posted in Talking To Rockstar | 3 Comments

Wordless Wednesday (Or, Bumblebee practices his Chai-nese)

photo-1483

Rockstar’s costume for this year’s Halloween arrived in the mail today… And so Bumblebee is practicing his Chai-nese.

ps: We just got our school logins for mandarinmatrix.com, we really like it because especially for potato parents like me who really cannot speak proper chinese there’s even a function to play out the chinese phrases and record and replay Rockstar’s pronunciation; just we already had the book before learning about the online resource…

Posted in Rockstar Shots, School For Rockstar | 2 Comments

Rockstar’s Got Mail…

Something came in the mail yesterday...

Something came in the mail yesterday…

One of my closest friends in the blogosphere had a giveaway recently to commemorate the anniversary of her blog and Rockstar announced he would attempt a comment to wish her Happy Anniversary though he didn’t really want the freebie jigsaw in the giveaway because he wasn’t very into Disney (he commented with my login btw – we’re still trying to figure out how much cyberspace access we’ll be allowing not-yet-6 Rockstar; in fact we were just getting him a gmail and worrying if he’d get spam email (because when we got my grandma a yahoo years ago she got lesbian porn) when we realized they all get school email addresses which is great cos then there’s school firewall right)…

This led to me telling her quietly that a postcard would do, because he likes getting mail and saves the stamps… Unfortunately after that I was kinda proud of him not simply wanting stuff and being happy to comment for nothing so I then “beh paisay” (trans: was shameless) and further asked if she had any odds-and-ends stationery lying about to send to him as a surprise.. Except then Rockstar wasn’t the only one surprised.

Loot!

Loot!

My dear friend: Rockstar was expecting a postcard, and I was expecting he would then be surprised with like, a cheapo freebie ballpoint pen ok, not a pencil case, eraser, mechanical pencil and lead, pen, ruler and- and – is that a cow keychain????

IMG_1276

Oh, but the “Kami Anak Malaysia” actually gave me a chance to mention we taught Rockstar to read bahasa phonics (Bahasa Baku phonics haha) over the recent summer hols (he’d abruptly read “Kuala Lump-ah” off a road sign! Shocker…) and kinda steeled ourselves that it would temporarily mess up his English phonics a bit til regular schoolwork fixed it <sheepish>… And well, he doesn’t know a lot of Malay words but I find his Bahasa Baku with that accent kinda cute :D)

He also typed out a thank you:

Dear Auntie Mun, 

Thank you for the package with lovely things.I am surprised. I thought it was going to be one thing but it was a lot of lovely things.My favorite thing is the eraser.I like it because it is useful.I can change my mind when I write. 

Signed, 
Rockstar

(But on my iPhone; with predictive text and small keypad it’s faster than on a regular keyboard)..

Thank you Auntie Mun!

Thank you Auntie Mun!

Posted in aileensml | 2 Comments

What Happened To “The Best Kosmo Guys In Hong Kong”?

Remember this post about how these awesome guys at Kosmo’s saved the few foods I could choke down or watched my laptop while I ran for it, virtually my whole morning sickness-filled pregnancy with Little Miss?

Remember them?

Remember them?

The lease was taken up by an independent investor (met him couple times, but didn’t know him beforehand) and the place is now Recharge of the Gourmet Coffee. One Best Kosmo Guy stayed back for a better paycheck, the other Best Kosmo Guy was hired to help set up the new space. And so for the past few months Little Miss and I were passing by chatting with Other Best Kosmo Guy around the construction debris, and finally, Recharge has been (fully) open about a week+ now.

And so this the Miss in the play area…..

photo-1476photo-1474 photo-1475 photo-1477

 And this The Rockstar and friends…

photo-1479

(Fyi, in this pic they were working on a treasure map which would lead to……… a sandwich. Later efforts were for much loftier more ambitious treasures, but I still loved Sandwich Hunt best… Belatedly I realized I should’ve encouraged them to connect the chalk and whiteboard maps into a really big map/diagram… ah well…)

But back to business.

Formerly Best Kosmo Guy still does the hypnosis thing.....

Formerly Best Kosmo Guy still does the hypnosis thing…..

It still works!

It still works!

Though this afternoon was the first time these two were actually eating there together (haha look at them scarfing away)

Though this afternoon was the first time these two were actually eating there together (haha look at them scarfing away)

These guys mean business, they even have matching shoes!

These guys mean business, they even have matching shoes!

Bring your kids down, Formerly Best Kosmo Guy’ll even hypnotize em to sleep for you, if he’s around. Maybe tell you where he got the shoes.

photo-1480

ps: Formerly Best Kosmo Guy, this one’s Thank You.

 

Posted in aileensml, Traveling With Rockstar | 5 Comments

Weird Wonderful Friday Feedings

1) Daily Beast’s The National Book Awards Longlist For Fiction. Ah yes, that time of year when I’m reminded how many books I haven’t read. Well, only all of them. Like, why bother anymore. “Because” shall be some kind of subset of Bridget Jones’ resolution to stop buying books just to display impressively on bookshelves: No more linking of stuff I probably never intended to read anyway.

2) I did however skim this: The Social Life Of Genes. Betcha didn’t know it’s not a good idea to eat a banana next to a beehive (bees’ “alarm” pheromone apparently smells of bananas – you see the lengths I go to, to entertain The Rockstars). Anyway entomologist Gene Robinson switches 250 young African killer bees with 250 young European milder bees in their hives to challenge the theory that you are born who you are: He proves your environment can change your genes and therefore behavior, dimming the traits of certain genes and enhancing others. For applications think cancer genes. At least, if you’re a bee. Hopefully eventually even if you’re not.

3) Should you Friend your child on Facebook? Author of  The Big Disconnect: Protecting Childhood and Family Relationships in the Digital Age spends 3 years interviewing kids aged 4 – 18 “to get a sense of what makes a parent approachable and trustworthy.” There’s lotsa stuff I hope to read in detail but the verdict is: yes you should friend your child and check in just as you would if they were having a party in your living room. But you wouldn’t sit on the sofa the whole time…

4) Ok really picture-lite lemme try and make up for it:

Dis is apparently a dog dressed as Madonna

Dis is apparently a dog dressed as Madonna

Howl-oween costumes for pets, on gilt.com. I prefer “Why Dogs Bite”.

And Why Cats Hate People.

And Why Cats Hate People.

5) This one’s not a costume:

What is WRONG with this animal?

What is WRONG with this animal? pic from boredpanda.com

That’s Lil Bub, the cat born with various genetic defects including dwarfism which makes her too-short limbs useless for jumping and leaping like normal cats, 4 extra toes, and no teeth, which is why her tongue does that most of the time. She is also an internet celebrity. Way to work with the hand you’re dealt. 

6) This one’s not a costume either:

Rain-dog.

Rain-dogs.

This the Dog-brella from 30 Awesome Inventions.

7) More awesome inventions and ideas in 33 Amazing Home Ideas.

Dis is one...

Dis is one…

But dis is Rockstar's favorite one...

But dis is Rockstar’s favorite one…

8) This week JD guest stars in the The Rockstars’ 5 second Good Weekend skit titled Feeding Time In The Rockstar Household.

photo-1469

photo-1470

Original Rockstar is sharing his snacks 3-ways these days because he’s the only one of the 3 of them who can raid the fridge. Have a wonderful weekend, dears…

Posted in Rockstar Shots, The TGIF Posts | 2 Comments

The Kennedy School Phonics Workshop For Year 1s and 2s

5 years of standardizing the practice across the school (especially with all of us coming from many and varied kindergartens), 4 years of training staff, going with Read Write Inc……… and now I get the chance to go to this thing and talk about it after.

Now, I would not be painting an accurate picture if I wrote this like I just discovered the existence of parent workshops by schools to brief and train parents in reading to kids/ helping with other schoolwork. This is like telling a parent in Hong Kong their child will have to go for an entrance interview to get into a primary school <snort> In some places I heard working parents even send their helpers to attend phonics trainings because it will be the helpers who sit with the kids. And btw I heard there are even in-vitro Mandarin classes nowadays…

The difference that evening was in the presentation of the boot camp training session. In how they coached us to give encouragement and raise our kids’ confidence levels before correcting our kids’ mistakes. In their showing us how to make the text come alive, how to have fun and in so doing inspire and instill enthusiasm.

I especially value this because somewhere in my reluctant acknowledgement that a certain amount of hard work has to go toward little kids keeping up with all the stuff they have to learn at their age nowadays (and which we feel a little sorry for them for), is the fervent hope that it doesn’t have to be too painful. 

It would be nice if my child could have a little fun and still maybe make it to Harvard someday 😀

To set the tone of the evening, they opened with this:

This what your child might feel when first learning to read. Can you read this? No? Then why get impatient with your child for being unable to?

This what your child might feel when first learning to read.

Can you read it?

This was very effective in illustrating to us parents how our kids might feel as they first learned to read, the discomfort of letters or sounds they couldn’t yet recognize, the effectiveness of an accompanying picture to try and figure out the unknown bits.

That alone is already quite different from what a lot of us grew up with – in primary school Kings had an English teacher who regularly flung his books out the classroom window. After a 1st from London School of Economics and employment at a major British investment bank for several years in London before a transfer to Singapore where we met and got married, there are still a few grammatical mistakes he defiantly insists on making which I’m almost sure is some subliminal thumbing of his nose at his former primary school English teacher. And truth be told, I could see Rockstar reacting like that if someone tried to “kill and drill” him. When I complain about stress-y interviews and power-tripping school administrators et al I always wonder how many “difficult” children are actually bright kids “rubbed the wrong way” by over-competitiveness, obsessive parenting or simply the way people are because there are just too many good applicants in this town – rather than having their natural strengths nurtured and brought out by the right teachers given the right opportunities and environment.

So anyway boot camp training session. We put some effort into learning cheers. Yes, cheers. A little less on extrinsic “sticker rewards” and more on intrinsic ones ie different kinds of praise like ketchup hand, bubble clap, thumbs up good job, group whoosh, firework (oo ah bang bang bang bang). We practiced them.

So I’m just sitting there thinking, this is brilliant, because I remember one bank I worked for had us all almost kill ourselves at a Pulau Ubin Adventure Camp-esque “teamwork/ bonding” exercise. Some of those guys climbing rope ladders and doing simulated parachute jumps weren’t exactly young; how come no one is worried one of the fossils more senior bankers gets hurt? Why didn’t HR just train us to do this? I can see it now:

In dealing room…

To client: “Deal DONE 5 bucks CDO Equity tranche.”

Everyone in the room goes “Ketchup thumbs up all around!” CLAPCLAPCLAPCLAP
“Firework whatchamacallit- ooooh aaaaahh bang bang BANGBANGBANG”

To client: “You are FILLED at two ticks better on the spot..” To trader across the room: “I NEED – (whatever stock to hedge position)!”
“EVERYONE GIVE HIM A WHOOSH!” WHOOOSSHHH!

What? Wouldn’t that be cute?

Imagine getting a WHOOSH! from 80-200+ people in your standard open-seating dealing room. Probably improve the juju of the whole place, too. (Well excuse me, I happen to know a British trader who was given a stern talking-to for ignoring the lion prancing about the dealing room at CNY to improve juju. Don’t mock the juju.)

Still you scoff? You don’t get a ketchup thumbs up. In fact, betcha don’t even know what a ketchup thumbs up is. <uppity sniff> No, no wait – which would you prefer, climbing several stories up a pole for the Confidence Jump so your colleagues can cheer you on encouragingly in Team Building, or Ketchup Thumbs Up? (Suddenly Ketchup Thumbs Up in dealing room doesn’t sound so bad now, does it?)

And then the rest of it. Going through all the pronunciations. Cautioning against the most common mistakes. Teachers going round checking to see if we “get” it.

There were graphemes. I learned the word grapheme. See now, I can use that word in a sentence: I never thought I would type the word grapheme. We learned the “Magic E” – “when e sits next to another letter sometimes they talk too much so they put another letter between them but they can hold hands and still change the sound. e.g: make, name, late…

It was a very meaty session that ran overtime with active parent participation and us practicing cheers and stuff, just I don’t post all the notes (which included a table of various sound groupings) in case one of my friends is I Had To Ketchup Thumbs Up With A Smile After A Hard Day At Work So I Could Get Notes And You Just Posted All The Notes? WHY YOU NO SAY EARLIER? Because the rest of us who attended were:

pic from www.asiatorrents.me

pic from www.asiatorrents.me

That’s a joke ok, and my response to fictitious complaint is “The Ketchup Thumbs Up happens to be a complicated move you need to be there in the work-suited flesh to learn correctly“. AND if you have never heard The Hairy Fairy read and acted out so your child is enthusiastic about reading and gains understanding from the text (instead of simply reading without comprehension) then you’ve not seen Shakespeare the way it should be read.

I know I type that flippantly, but I’m not kidding – pick up any of his works and thumb through it, most of us will probably not make it through. Being shown it’s how our kids feel went miles in our understanding and ability to be patient with our kids. Next, watch the play (and fine, read the Cliff’s Notes, Wiki the plot – we are supposed to read through the text together 3 times for the school readers to gain an understanding right…) and suddenly it all makes sense. Comes alive. Is……. fun. How alive? How much fun? Watch the teacher on the stage being The Hairy Fairy. Fun can be reading together, not just throwing a ball around or having a tub of ice cream.

We always bemoan how much work and stress and competitiveness is in our kids’ schooling nowadays, and then we might get worried whether our kids are keeping up, and…….. so they remind us to leave the bad day back at the office (or Park n Shop). Don’t let your child see it. Don’t let your child see you hating reading. Stop, if you and your child are not enjoying it, rather than risk developing a bad attitude to reading.

The most powerful message for me was learning to have fun while learning with your child. My own childhood was a blur of activities and tuitions and competitions, as I’m sure many of my friends’ and ex-course mates’ were. I had to play an exam piece 3 times perfectly before I could stop, and every mistake meant having to play 3 more times perfectly. Ever tried it when you were 9? It feels like death, as you work out how many more times you will have to play exponentially and the more tired you are, guess what happens? 

It may have reflected the best wisdom of the time, but it would be great if they’ve found a better way today, what with all that effort and research that has gone into children’s education. Kids already have to learn so much more when they’re so much younger than during our time, I can’t imagine how unpleasant the equivalent of exponentially increasing piano practice times in reading or writing would be today, to get through all the material they have to.

And well I didn’t get to have much fun the first time I learned to read, so I’m all for enjoying myself now.

I Wuff You Big Bro - Little Miss providing an unamused  Rockstar a little encouragement...

Little Miss providing an unamused Rockstar a little encouragement… (He’s ignoring her and watching Youtube)

Posted in aileensml | 2 Comments