Gentle Birth(1)

11 yrs ago, I had water bag burst at 8pm, i showered n took some food. By the time reached hospital it was 9pm. Nurse who attended to me said 1st delivery is it....then need to wait to next day. Doc said only 5cm dilation, still need to wait. I hv nvr taken any thing said to me, internally i was telling myself, "is it? this body belongs to me, i know better than anyone else, the timing doesnt have to follow anyone." So i plugged in my Metta Chanting cassette in my walkman and continued to immerse myself in meditation mode.... u can imagine it was such a long long time ago. At 1230am i had more frequent contraction n i delivered at 1am. Close labour pain was about 1 hour. oh....btw, doc took away the strap ie the Electronic Fetal Heart Monitoring and so it took away the high volume beating which is inaccurate.

Does Flinstone Qualify for Macbook?

Many many ages ago Mac caught my eyes with it's light weight, less(or not at all) prone to virus attack, fast boot up and many other features. Having certain level of fear, i ended up with Acer, going for the lightweight version as well. But alas, i have to accommodate with smaller screen which was fine for me. I was ever so intimidated that i dared not upgrade to Windows 8 and still maintained with XP, fearing that some of my programs may ended incompatible. That's how pathetic i have to be. So keeping myself as dinosaur as i can be seemed to be the safest option. An old friend started asking me where is my Flinstone family ---- referring to my dinosaur technology with no wireless home environment. It was a good topic to start off with about keeping radiation as low as possible. It was even a better topic for old friends to tease me because only old friends will tease without second thoughts. That reminded of this: “Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day.” ― A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh

Mom and i both have Blur vision

Strangely i am having blur vision or floaters today. Oh no, it cant be premature cataract! Well, it is the inherited family disease that comes from my mom which may ingeniously discriminate between 'us and 'other' women. Both of us dont mind getting the 'blur vision' simply because both of us seldom (or dont) wash our glasses and most often than not, we have thumb prints on our glasses. This is just a reflection on the way of living we both have been engaged in. Mom and I are always up to something, and cleaning glasses seems too trivial for us. Yes, instead of holding, we grab glasses as we exit the bathroom. We can ignore the blur images (on our glasses) but not the laundry, and not the list of things-to-do in our mind, and certainly not the added businesses like baking homemade pizza base for lunch, preparing baked beans from the kidney beans I happily got at special offer......and the list goes on. And we are always multi tasking. But of course, up till today, i still cant beat her for being able to sew, watch TV series, chit chat and cook... all concurrently! The best achievement i have recorder so far is to iron, talk over the phone and write down shopping list ---- yet still 1 item less from mom's list. If ever we were to choose another name for ourselves, it would should be MT for Multi Tasking. Yet, i still lack one important bullet in the list -- being Jane of all trades, i am still mistress of none.

"德国宪法禁止学前教育" --- my view

"德国宪法禁止学前教育。 徳裔获得的诺贝尔奖人数占总数的一半。通过国家介入，禁止对孩子过早开发智力，避免将孩子大脑变成硬盘，留给孩子大脑更多的想象空间。孩子在小学前“唯一任务”就是快乐成长。 1.不该过度开发孩子智力 原以为在德国只有幼儿园的孩子不允许学习专业知识，后来才发现上小学的孩子也不能学习额外的课程，即使这个孩子的智商超过同龄人。来自科隆的桑德拉写到：“今年我儿子7岁，我向学校老师提出，能否额外教他一些东西，因为他5-6岁的时候就自己在家学会了基本的阅读、书写和简单的数学计算。老师表示反对并说：您应该让您的孩子与其他孩子保持同步。一个星期后我再次去见老师，并出示了孩子高智商的证书，希望得到她的理解和支持，但老师用一种奇怪的眼光看着我，似乎我像来自外星的人一样。 老师进而解释，孩子智力被过度开发并不是一件好事情，因为必须给孩子的大脑留下想象空间。过多的知识会使孩子的大脑变成了计算机的硬盘，常此下去，孩子的大脑就慢慢地变成了储存器，不会主动思考了。 尽管如此，我对德国禁止学前教育的做法还是不太理解。为了搞清楚这个问题，我专门请教了德国的教育人士，他们让我找《基本法》来看看。翻开联邦德国《基本法》（即宪法），我大吃一惊。其中第七条第六款明确规定，禁止设立先修学校(Vorschule)。我还是不明白德国宪法为何这样规定，只好再请教有关的教育专家。他们告诉我，孩子在小学前的“唯一的任务”就是快乐成长。因为孩子的天性是玩耍，所以要做符合孩子天性的事情，而不应该违背孩子的成长规律。 如果说在上学前对孩子非要进行“教育”的话，那“教育”的重点只有三个方面： 一、基本的社会常识，比如不允许暴力、不大声说话等。 二、孩子的动手能力。在幼儿园期间孩子会根据自己的兴趣参与手工制作，让他们从小就主动做具体的事情。 三、保护孩子情感胚胎，培养情商，培养领导力。 原以为只有德国才有如此奇怪的规定。后来查了一下欧洲有关国家的情况才发现，他们对待小孩子的做法基本上大同小异。" I was using exactly this philosophy especially for my no2, and she didnt hv any prob in catching up her primary school work. she learnt Ejaan and proper way of writing S, G n what not after 7 yrs old. She still get confused over how to write big and small letters at 8 yrs old, but she always has the initiative to learn. Though the local primary school system may not be ready for this ideal system yet, but having a non-rushing home environment for the first 7 yrs is certainly crucial. As such, i dont rush my kids to start too much of reading at young age. Some parents engaged in too much toy buying, but if we feed in with too much of reading, it is also falling to another part of 'consumerism'. That's why nowadays i seldom buy books, but try to encourage them to borrow and excahnge books. Looking back i think that was how i grew up too, at the age 7, after 1st term exam when i first entered the class 1E from 1J, i didnt even know how to write 爸爸妈妈 and i heard someone laughing at me. haha. but who cares? eventually all of us will learn in our own pace. No rushing is always the key. As i get in touched with many of my ex-classmates, i realized that there were many friends who attended at least 2 yrs of kindergarten during my time. Not trying to compare who is better than who. But i found that, people like me and some other friends who hardly have chance to attend a 'good' and competitive kindy during my time ---- eventually did rather well in our studies. We have good initiative to learn and progress. We have high level of curiosity....even till today, i have very high spirit of learning in whatever i am exposed too... and LEARNING itself has never stopped. But unfortunately many friends who have attended kindies for 2 and more years has stopped learning by Std 3-4.....which is at the age of 8-9 yrs old, i.e. at the time when 9 yrs change was about to happen. These friends eventually get punished for their not-doing homework and it was a pity thing that they get caned most of the time. What was the fundamental cause of this happening? Definitely not because of laziness. But it has a lot to do with too much or too early intervention of learning which involves brain. Children before 7, should be exposed to nature, outdoor and lots of play. I remembered myself attending a kindy at 6 yrs old. A village kindy which did not even have a proper 'graduation' party! I can even remembered myself not knowing how to recite number 1-10 by the age of 6 and mom was teasing me i was lagging behind my sister who was 2 yrs younger than me. At 6 yrs old, i fantasied a lot with the backyard at the village Temerloh. I scooped up tadpoles after big rain. I played with rain water during year end flood season. I walked along the rubber tree at the back of my home and picked up the sound of rustling leaves for my memory box. I dont remember knowing how to speak English well, coz the language i knew best was Hokkien! Before 12 yrs old, i hardly watch TV series coz we cant afford video player but that was really a blessing in disguise. I eventually grew up knowing that i didnt have to become anyone's fans except for the lord Buddha, the sage of past and present, the great people with great minds! For goodness ake, for the good lesson and good testimonial that we have from my ex classmates, please, stop abusing a child's brain before 7 yrs old!