The oxymoron of Life

You know something? It is kinda strange. Ever since the beginning of time and education, it has been proven that those who come from educated families do have a leg up. It is not because the educated value an education more, but when a child comes and asks how to do a quadratic equation with multiple variables, you will not have the dad jumping out of his HDB flat... I will be very tempted to jump though because I am just so bad in Maths.

Also it is something the children will want to follow. If you only knew A,B,C, your kid will be happy really soon that he knows more than you. This is especially so for families who have noth graduates for parents. So why only now does the gahmen say that children of families from good schools have an upper hand?

But let me ask you this question than... is it really true? So what of the better schools take in children of their former students and so what if they draw better teachers? It may be in the genes that a kid born of be?

Better educated parents may have slightly more inclined genes for study, but not in the Sg context where education is still predominantly memory based till the child is way too old to use his or her brain to think things out. I would like to say that parents from normal schools should take heart. If you show a love for learning, a love to study and to help yoru children study, they will still do well and they will still go for higher education..... on the premise that you can afford hor...... hehehehehe

As for those who have gone to good schools and have gotten their Uni certs, their masters and so on, if you prove to yoru children that they can be butt stupid and rely on you to give them your company and your wealth, they will then become half baked potatoes who will not strive for a higher education and then you will see how they face off with the elites who have lists of certs likes an SPG with a list of credit cards from her various boyfriends. What is the use in that?

Life in Sg

It is interesting, life here in our little dot. We get peanuts for pay and everyone other company head is claiming we are too expensive. Hey, compared to many other countries, we are still cheap hor... But living here is not cheap... Just consider this as an average:

Salary: 5k
Take home: 4,100

Car loan: 800
Fuel: 400
ERP 170
Car Park HDB: 90
Food per day: 10 Per month 300
Road Tax per mth: 150
Insurance: 150
Housing per month: 300 (top up for CPF shortage)

What you have left: 2,360

If you have a family and have to pay the bills and utilities, you can easily take out another 1,000 at least.

Now then friends. This is if you are careful with your spending and also you try to save, because if you notice, I did not put anything for luxuries and so on. No eating out, no partying and so on. So you make your own calculation.

It is not cheap to live here and probably you will have to hire a maid to assist you in your household chores while your wife has to go out to find a job. A maid's base salary will be 450 soon and the government levy is around 300..... That excludes her food and so on..... so my frens... if a household does not have 5k a month.... you are well and truly screwed....

Are we being productive enough??

This is a good question huh? Now our fertility rate is like 1.16?? We cannot even produce enough to replace the people who will kick the bucket in a few years..... and we work 12 hours day plus and yet not earn enough or do enough to make our paymasters happy...... oooooohhhhh... we are indeed in a pickle huh??

Imagine, wife says "dear... lets get naughty"... and you are hunched over the workstation trying to complete the darn report by tomorrow or your ang mo boss who does nothing at work will be angry... "Not tonight dear... got work to finish".... Even if you wanted to be naughty, she will most probably say that she is too tired because she has had a tiring day running after your little one because child care is way too expensive.... Seems like a vicious cycle huh?

But still, I actually have it quite easy lah... At least I will not get any ahem ahem even if I do not have any work to do and am really feeling randy and robust... hehehehe... Isn't it a coincidence??? But hey... why the hell do I care because I am always too tired anyway.

However, in being tired, I find that going home and being with my family makes me feel so much more alive and happy. It is tiring to run after the little monster, but then she is such a beautiful little monster. And it makes me feel very happy and secure to be home in a place where I can be myself and talk to a person who understands me and cares for me like my wife.

I am blessed.

How not to bring up your children

Through the recent years, I have been bemoaning the upbringing of the younger generation here. From kids who come from families so rich that they are given exotic or powderful cars even before they turn 18 to kids who do illegal things and their parents condone it. Please let this madness stop... They are our future and if things turn out this way, I would rather not have such a future. So many children, teenagers are so spoilt rotten that they do not even consider about anything other than themselves. In their lives, they think that the whole world owes them and not the other way around.

Just take the example of a kid who posted on twitter his exam papers and instead of being repentant,now posts that he is driving his mom's company cars without a license. As a parent, I would be incensed. Yea... maybe he will inherit the business one day and he does not have to worry about his future. But then lets face it, right is right and wrong is wrong. When my monster does something wrong, she gets it from me and my wife. No matter how cute she is. When she throws a tantrum, we make sure she learns not to do so again or we will be very angry. When she bangs things or drags things that makes noise that will irritate others, we stop her in her tracks. Why??? It is because of the simple fact that we do not want someone else to do the same thing to me.

Now, if this mother allows her rather ugly son to do as he wishes, then one day, if something happens to him, he crashes into someone or gets himself killed, she will rue the day she ever was so lax on him. And it is true for all parents. The kid who crashed into the taxi driver and killed him, he may not be repentant now, but one day, he will have to pay for it. Just like the idiot who killed the Mazda sales girl, he is now a criminal and will not be able to get a license for the next 9 plus years. If course he can drive without a license or plan for the day he can get his license and his parents can get him another powderful car, but hey, if he crashes and this time kills himself, doing justice for society, his parents will be jolly sad...

Ladies and gentlemen, it is still not too late to repent. It is still not too late to bring your kids back into the fold and to teach them proper values. In this society where money talks and walks, money is not everything.

2011

No I will not say that 2012 is getting closer and besides, it is the end of 2012 that we have to be worried about, so we have another almost 2 whole years. But in a way, I look back at 2010 and look forward to 2011 and have a sense of almost bewilderment. My kid will be 2 this year... my god!!! has it been that long? This year, we will give her a cake and candles to blow out, not because we feel a need to do so, but I feel that we should celebrate 2 years of her life. She is now a really cute young lady. I will post some pics and vids as and when time avails.

I spent 3 weeks in Japan and it was such an experience. Being with your family is a nice thing to do. I do not understand how or why some people will want to find love outside of their families because it is all there for you. My kid was kinda strange with me on the first day. Maybe because she was used to being with her mom alone in Osaka, but by the second day, she was as happy as a monkey drinking rum and happily playing with old daddy. I do mean that I am an old daddy because if I need to run after her, I will usually ask my wife to do the running.

But she has grown so much through the year. In Dec 2009, she could barely crawl and was able to respond to stimulus, but not in any intelligent manner. Now she is running around and she is showing her ability to understand things both said and unsaid. And she is damned smart, when she knows that she has done wrong and I am pissed off, she will run to her mom, but then she gets it from the mom because as parents, we agree only to be together on all decisions. We do not disagree on anything, especially on how our child should be brought up. This is actually good because we have actually seen how one party tries to be the nice guy or is the nice guy while the other is the stricter one or worse if both are strict or nice. We try to align ourselves to her behaviour and ensure that across the board, she does not do anything wrong and or bad.

How this new year will unfold for us? I really have no idea. For me, I am not afraid of the future as it is still unkown and also undecided. It can be anything I want it to be. It can be as good as I want it to be, or it can be as bad as I want it to be. Even for a bad situation, it can be good if I look at it in a postive way or it can be the worse thing that has ever happened.

Well, good luck to everyone and I wish all a Happy 2011