I happened to pop by my friend Burbur’s blog and found a post with which I can truly empathise, even though I am one of those six lovely women whom she met at the dinner she mentions in it. Frankly, I can never understand why some people feel the need to pity people who choose not to have kids, or to denigrate their decision to be childless. Having children is not fun. In fact, it is a downright pain in the ass punctuated occasionally by happy and proud moments. From the time you find out you are pregnant, you go through a whole host of discomforts – from having ultrasound wands, forceps, speculums and a whole host of medieval torture …
Musings
Mothering our tongues.
I’m quite bemused by this whole mother tongue issue, especially after having read a few forum letters written by parents who claim they were forced to migrate so that they could give their children a better, Mandarin-less future in a country where they would not be forced to study a language that they not only cannot speak, read or write, but have no interest in learning. I’m amused that the Ministry of Education, having jumped the gun in announcing that it was looking at adjusting the weightage of Mother Tongue (which, by the way, is not just limited to Mandarin but also includes Malay, Tamil and other minority languages) in the PSLE, quickly backtracked after pressure was applied by the …
Handle with care.
I’ve just finished reading Jodi Picoult’s Handle with Care. Of all her books that I’ve read so far, this is the only one that’s struck a chord with me. Quite naturally, given the fact that I too am the mother of a child with health conditions. The only differences between our family and the one portrayed in the book are: Zoe’s health issues were not discovered until she was born, and I live in a society that is not litigious enough for me to even consider suing the hospital and the ultrasound technician for not picking up Zoe’s issues sooner. And even if the tech had detected the hole in the heart and the absent/extra thumbs, I would not have …
Protected: Talk is cheap.
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
+1?
I was downloading some gory photos that I’d taken of my face after I covered it with Betadine (I wanted to write a post about ageing and pimples and vanity and the like after meeting a certain someone recently), when the following photos also appeared in iPhotos. They were taken by K on the Ixus last weekend. As he would say, it warms the cockles of my heart to see the love these two sisters have for each other shining through. It more than makes up for the daily fighting! The title of this post is not “+1″ because we’re thinking of adding another child to the equation. Oh no, two’s good enough, thank you. What I’m really referring to is …
