women = shoes ....??

someone(s), presumably an ad agency doesn't get it.  Or maybe they do and I'm suffering from a worse than usual cultural discombobulation.

Women's day.  Happy women's day everyone.  Well, the women amongst you anyway.

There is this whole advertising campaign going on here in SG to celebrate women for women's day.  A lot of money has been spent, it's on buses, on the radio, and if I watched TV I'm sure I'd see it there.  It is this thing about women and shoes and how many they have and how many they buy and how men only need one pair of black shoes and that it's hard to fill a women's shoes (well, I'll buy into that bit - a little).  And then the BBC in the sanctimonious way only it can announce things, mentioned women's day on the radio and how it was about recognition and equality and all the rest and I just couldn't tie that up with a stereotype about shoes.

I guess I ought to be celebrating that someone in this country even cares enough to spend money on the subject where elsewhere women are having acid thrown in their faces, can't afford child care, are being trafficked etc.  Does that make me a typical women, where it's never enough?  Where we want the door opened for us but also want to open the door ourselves?  (Actually I do like that type of manners but I don't expect it).

I tried to find the mass media advert, and couldn't but I did find this "I am aware" campaign which gets 5 stars from me - women's rights here are redeemed!

Poem in my pocket

Today the kids had to have a poem in their pockets for school.  Here is mine for the day:

Walking Away

This poem first appeared in the collection The Gate and Other Poems, published in 1962. It is dedicated to Day-Lewis’s first son, Sean, and recalls a day when he was watching Sean go in to school. It has become one of his most enduring works and in 2001 was chosen by readers of the Radio Times as one of their top ten poems of childhood.

It is eighteen years ago, almost to the day –
A sunny day with leaves just turning,
The touch-lines new-ruled – since I watched you play
Your first game of football, then, like a satellite
Wrenched from its orbit, go drifting away

Behind a scatter of boys. I can see
You walking away from me towards the school
With the pathos of a half-fledged thing set free
Into a wilderness, the gait of one
Who finds no path where the path should be.

That hesitant figure, eddying away
Like a winged seed loosened from its parent stem,
Has something I never quite grasp to convey
About nature’s give-and-take – the small, the scorching
Ordeals which fire one’s irresolute clay.

I have had worse partings, but none that so
Gnaws at my mind still. Perhaps it is roughly
Saying what God alone could perfectly show –
How selfhood begins with a walking away,
And love is proved in the letting go.

Arm Chair critic

I was assailed by the cover of a book on Friday morning.  I was still in a rather grumpy anti-SG mood and this kind of jumped out at my grumpiness as I was off to watch "Hugo" and had arrived at the shopping mall a little earlier in the hope of finding something elusive for my husband's birthday.  Naturally, all the shops were still closed.  After all, why open a shop at 8 or 9 or 10 if you can open in at 11am?  Anyway - here it is:

Luckily the rest of the day / weekend has gone a LOT better, but just seeing that put everything and particularly my attitude to it all in perspective.

The movie Hugo was great, the 2nd choice cello teacher turned out to be really great, and has inspired two days running of 1/2 hour practicing (proper practicing).

We go out together and went on a local tour exploring the Joo Chiat district (thoroughly recommend Tony Tan of Betelbox and his tours - more to follow in another blog - my neck is killing me).

Saturday night was spent at a ball in the Raffles hotel where I managed to win an iPad 2 (due to my last minute insistence that my husband bought another round of tickets for a good cause).

One downer is that I've hurt my neck rather badly and can hardly sit or lie or stand.  Going to have to have it seen to but where or by whom, is the question.  I'm starting at an osteopath recommended by a friend - I've never been to one so rather nervous.

And I finally made an appointment to have my crowns replaced and to take the basic theory test for driving (not sure that the latter two are a good thing, but they are necessary).