Sterile but not clean ...

Sitting at football last weekend chatting with a few mums who'd gone the HK then SG route and comparing our impressions.  We all felt the lack of a certain something.  A grubbiness, a run down shambolic busyness.  The slow service generally, most particularly in restaurants even the pricy ones. And how we lamented the loss of fast efficient public transport.  And I in particular the loss of the speedy green mini-buses.  I've tried, I really have.  I even have "one map" on my bookmarks bar.  But something that would take me 15 minutes by car will take me more than an hour by public transport.  With many interchanges in-between.
My conclusion was that SG is sterile but not clean.  Wow, that word "clean" kicked up a storm in the conversation.  All around agreed that SG is a dirty dirty place.  Why?  Because of the litter.  Now I'm not saying that HK people are exactly good at picking up their litter after themselves, but I guess the government has more or less resigned themselves to the fact that it's inhabitants are a lot of littering so and so's (let's keep this blog clean on the language at least) and therefore have employed a whole host of friendly, conscientious and very nice people who spend their days, every single day, cleaning up after the so-called more educated, sophisticated and advanced members of the population who don't deign to do so themselves.   I'm apparently not the only one noticing the litter, as this post indicates - with all the whys and wherefores.

Here in SG things aren't cleaned on a daily basis, and it shows.  On my street, it seems people regularly drive along and throw their newspapers out the window - how else can I explain whole newspapers blowing in the wind after the morning rush?  And the papers will stay there day after day after day.  And then finally after a few weeks they'll disintegrate or disappear or go to newspaper heaven.  I walk the dog through the Chinese cemetery most mornings.  One of the debates on the littering thing was that it was the "expatriates" and "foreigners" - here in SG I've learnt that expat doesn't necessarily mean a well paid lawyer or banker from the old colonial masters.  It's just as likely to refer to the bangladeshi manual laborer hanging onto the back of a pickup truck.  Nice one, pass the buck.  Now I don't know of many "expats" who go around preparing 100 course meals for their hungry ancestors and then leaving the tinfoil and styrafoam plates with the food rotting around the graves with piles of half burnt money and other stuff for the afterlife and burnt down wax candles and incense.  Oh, and don't forget the plastic bags.  And the tin cans, and the glass bottles.  Hungry people those dead.  On the first day it's a stinking mess.  By the 3rd or 4th it's a fly infested buzzing gagging area which you have to avoid if you don't want your breakfast to form another feast.  And your dog to die from food poisoning.  I guess that's "culturally acceptable" littering?

It's funny how one tries to find rational explanations for things going on around you.  One can be liberal with truth and causality as long as it sort of makes sense.... One of the explanations was that perhaps HK was only so clean because it was so hard hit by SARS.  Whereas SG "only" had 238 cases and 33 deaths, HK had 1755 cases and 299 deaths.

On the home front?  We don't litter because it's not right.  Because I try to make the kids extrapolate to the nth degree.  As in "if everyone were to leave their piece of paper on the floor how long before it would be out of control"  and in other cases (like not picking flowers etc.) "if everyone were to pick a flower as they walked past how soon would it be before there were no flowers for us to enjoy the sight of".

I'm still trying to get to grips with recycling.  I've been told the SG has only one landfill and it will be full by 2040.  Not sure how accurate that is.  I've bought the sorting bins and we're separating plastic and paper and bottles / tins.   I've got the wormery for the vegetable waste. The bins are full and now I need to work out what to do with them, so now I've found a site where I can take action.   I was told that they sort after collection.  One woman from the AWA environmental committee said she'd even seen a rather nice and flash video of them doing so.  "But," she added, "why were they just showing me a video and not letting me see the actual sorting going on?  Was it real or just a promo."  Yes - how conspiracy theory we all are.

I'm off to sort out the waste.

how low you can go ...

I think I finally found the depths of what it is to be a less than adequate mother / person this morning.  I thought we'd got it pretty sorted last night, packed the bags with the school clothes as cross country starts at 6.45 at the reservoir and they shower and change afterwards.  I'd reminded the helper that we had to be in the car by 6.20 with breakfast in hand.  That there needed to be extra snacks for the hungry tummies afterwards.

I remembered the kids, the dog, the leash, the blanket and towel for the dog and her water.  The school bags, the changing bags.  We get to the reservoir.  No water for the kids.  No towel for my daughter's shower afterwards.  How can I get my act together that one child has a towel and the other doesn't?

We compromised. We improvised.  My daughter had her school water bottle (son wisely keeps it at school) and my son got the dog's water in an empty bottle that was lying in the car.

My daughter got the towel the dog had been lying on (it was clean that morning, and only slightly smelly). The dog got her walk.

I got the information on the drive to the reservoir that the children thought that the helper should go, as "this would NEVER, have happened with M (our old helper) as she would have helped to remind us all", "yes mum, she always is better at thinking than you are"  and that when I'd left them with her when we went to the meet the teacher evening, she'd not given them a story as requested, my daughter had had to read the story as she couldn't read.  Ahaaaa.  That would explain many many many many things that have gone wrong by omission or commission.  According to the little wise ones she hadn't gone to school.  But she did have a college degree.  I explained to them that it was fairly rare that someone who hadn't gone to school and couldn't read an 8 year old reading book would be able to go to college.

Now I need to wait for the boss to get back from his silent retreat on Monday where he's uncontactable as he'll have to do the firing and the new hiring as it's all in his name as I'm a non-entity here.  My dictionary doesn't recognize uncontactable.  How funny.  Must be a 21st century dictionary.  I hope to heavens that the worst that overcomes us in the next week is more missing water bottles and frazzled incompetent mum.

Battle whimper of the MOBs

I've been extremely fortunate in SG in that I knew a few people from HK who have moved here, and they've been most gracious and welcoming in introducing me to their circles of friends.  Quite unlike my experience when I moved back to HK again many years ago.  But that story you know.

On Friday, I was invited to lunch with 6 other ladies.  I knew I was in the right place when the hostess offered us frozen Margarita popsicles as a starter drink.  As I sat back getting comfortable,  listening to the chatter around me, with a nice little buzz from the margarita, I suddenly realized that I was part of a MOB gathering.   Yes, all around me, the ladies were MOTHERs OF BOYs.  And the stories they had to tell - the best was the one whose sons had climbed up the storage racks in the garage to get hold of some of dad's sailing ropes so that they could tie them to the 3rd floor window to make their own private bungee jumping paradise.  Fortunately she is a MOB and caught them in time.

But it wasn't all bravado.  It is no co-incidence I think that the infamous "battle hymn..." was written by the mother of girls.  She'd not have gotten past first base with a bunch of boys.  The undercurrent was not so much a battle cry or hymn as a whimper.  Seeking solace in each others tales of homework undone, library books not returned, appalling handwriting, wonderful affection and caring, weakness in math and the inability to sit still.  One of the women, of asian-american descent openly said that she was dead sure that had she been living in the USA her son would have been on Ritalin (later, one of the other ladies in an aside said it may be beneficial for said lady to partake in the Ritalin as well).  There was a little undertow of anxiety, just how much of a normal BOY is my child and just how much ought I to be worrying about him.

After lunch when we all had to rush back to fetch our respective children and take them off to their various enhancing activities, I went for a pit-stop.  On the hostesses bed was a copy of Buzz.  I remarked on it as I said goodbye and asked what she'd thought of it, as she is a fellow meditator, and that was one of the interesting aspects of the book.  Two other ladies were also saying goodbye and both of them had also read the book.  That's scary.  That kind of statistic is that?  I've met some of their kids, and they seem pretty normal nice kids and not on a DSM scale type of children.   I find this concerning on the one hand.  It seems like these days, every time I meet a MOB and we start becoming a little closer, you hear the tales of despair and uncertainty. The concern, the love, the desperation to want it to be all right tinged with fear that it wasn't alright.  Would this be any different if our children were in single sex schools?  Are we too involved? Are we too close? Do we have too few children and too much time to think and read?

I left thinking that MOB gatherings were a good thing.  Never mind class mothers and PTA's and parents associations, every school should have a MOB club.  And every school library needs a MOB book section - goodness knows there's been enough ink spilt on the matter in recent times.  A simple amazon search with the phrase "boys" came up with nearly 140,000 books, and the top 10 (here's an example) were all indicating that all was not right in the world of boydom and MOBdom.

I'm infinitely happy that my children's new school has a good number of male teachers.  Teachers who were once boys.   I think my son is in safe hands.

Paper factory

My life has shifted downstairs.  Until Saturday 4pm with the arrival of B, a lot of our life took place in the family room which is a sort of landing between the master bedroom and the other two bedrooms.  It houses the computers, desks, the piano, cellos, viola, and armchair, a rocking chair and 5 bookcases.  Yes I was allowed to buy one more. Just one more.  With an extension.

Despite B being the most obedient well mannered member of this family, she's not allowed upstairs as she's biologically incapable of keeping her fur to herself, and we're trying to keep the sleeping areas fur free.  She's awfully good about this.  On the first day we told her to stay and wait at the bottom of the stairs, and stay and wait she did.  When it sounded too much fun and exciting upstairs she finally let out a yelp to remind us of her presence.

So now many of our activities have shifted downstairs.  For the first time in years we're using the living room, not only when we have guests.  We're doing the old fashioned thing of sitting on the arm chairs and reading a book before bed, instead of internetting.  The kids do their reading there instead of in bed, and the music practice has been transformed into daily recitals for the dog.  It's not a bad thing.  B likes our company and quietly nods off to sleep and grunts when we switch the light off and go up to bed.  At 6am as we descend the stairs it's a lunacy of happiness as she greets us each.

Today I decided to bring down my in tray to sort out and to work a little on some chinese.  I managed to read one text more or less (had to look up a few very basic words!).  What a paper factory it is again.  We've been sorting and throwing and organizing and still the table is yet to be cleared.  We have guarantees and instructions from the early 90's.  It's not so much that I have a problem throwing them out, the problem is finding the time and energy to sort through them to throw them out.  Our last big sort out a few weekends ago resulted in 6 black bags going out the door.  And when we do throw out, suddenly it's the one thing that is needed (eg. Ikea instructions for less than handy handymen putting a bed together in a hurry).  For good measure my daughter was given her 3 baby boxes (make those big boxes from when she was a baby) and school files for the last 5 years and told to keep only the best. Even she weakened after a few hours of this.  My son's stuff is just piled in piles.  He has cupboards with potential in his room, 5 metres floor to ceiling.  We may never have to sort and then could just close the door quietly when we leave and forget about it all.

Does anyone else get the "flylady" emails... they exhaust me, but occasionally in a queue I use them as last resort reading.  The philosophy is pretty spot on.  Set a timer for 15 minutes and tackle one spot.  One day I may be a domestic goddess and justify my expensive accounting education with a spotless house and everything filed and thrown out at 5 yearly rotating intervals.

And then I'll be in a position to blog about the stitching on my Tods for Grit.

Bottom line, what's better - me organized, or me blogging and getting out to take photos and experience experiences to blog about?