$150 fine -- makes me a criminal!

I was fuming today. I got given a ticket. I had committed a traffic offense -- not stopping at a double yelllow stop line. I felt ridiculous. I felt outraged. I felt poor. $150 is a lot of money for a small oversight. I have never bumped into anyone on the road. Never had a speeding ticket. Had a small fine for parking at a 30 minute park longer than necessary.

So I was fuming and fuming. The police officer who stopped me told me in a very nice way I didn't stopped at the stop sign. The intersection was clear, there was no traffic coming anywhere....so being me, I turned left (after making sure there was no traffic coming down Allum Street from the right).

I had no excuse. But that didn't stop me for ranting for a few hours about the pitiful cop sitting by the roadside waiting for an offender like me. A good citizen -- I don't commit crimes, I don't steal lie or cheat or put graffiti on walls. Sigh.

This week I learnt an important lesson -- you can have a clean track record and get so bent up over a misdemeanor. I envy the countless cars that go pass that intersection without stopping and not getting caught. I hate the fact that the cop was sitting there -- all attentive but when real citizens get in serious trouble, the cops always arrive too late.

We had our house burgurled when we were renovating. Our kind neighbour spotted a car/registration departing from our property at 1am in the morning. We gave the police the details. The cops said they know the "offenders" but they were powerless to do anything as they dind't get caught in the act.

So I was unlucky, I got caught in the act while committing my offence.

Princess laughed. Hubby laughed. I didn't laugh.

I am still trying to get over how ridiculously affected I am by this whole traffic offence thing!

Anna's gone bald -- Support her cause

Those of you who have been following my sis in law Anna's ordeal with cancer will know what a courageous and can I add "tempestous" character Anna is. Anna is one never to mince her words. You won't get niceties from her but she is as genuine as they come!

People love Anna for many things. Even when she was in hospital sick with tumour ravaging her body, she still thinks about the person next to her bed.

Well, Anna is raising money to support the Luekemia & Bloodfoundation. Check out Anna's own page at Shaveforacure Help support Anna's cause.

“Screw the goldstars”

This week I read a book which really opened my eye to a few things. The book is called Learning Outside the Lines (Simon & Schuster). It is written by two people who were deemed “academic failures” who then went on to conquer their own Everest, to graduate at the top of their class in an Ivy League college.

Jonathan Mooney is a dyslexic student who only learnt how to read when he was 12. David Cole has ADHD and at 15 dropped out of high school. Cole went on to graduate with Honours in visual arts while Mooney was recipient of the distinguished Truman Fellowship.

After reading this book, I vowed not to be beholden by external markers of success for my child. Asian parents measure their children’s success by how high their exam marks show. Education, to us, is the hallmark of having beaten the system, and having thrived. Limited as this measure is, we have always relied on this as a measure of our parenting and personal victory. It is not, and it cannot be allowed to be.

Mooney and Cole made a strong case for every college student saving himself/or herself from the "institution". This is especially so for those students with learning disorders or disabilities. According to them, while we encourage our children to pursue college, or education (which puts them onto a professional track) most parents do not encourage their children to look inward to define “who we are or what we want, or chart an individualized path. Success often becomes external, in markers like the GPA (grade point average), internships, and the networking we do.”

I had friends who used to be smacked by their parents if they came home with anything “red” in their report cards. My parents were less draconian but I still got a major telling off if I came home with a red mark. (I think I only did once.) In the Asian context, getting smacked for not reaching your parent’s expectation is normal. A good report card is equivalent to upholding your family’s honour. Failing in school is synonymous with failing in life. Hence the intense focus on education excellence. Education is the passport to professionalism.

I have come across friends with kids diagnosed with ADHD, or kids who are slow to read or kids who can’t add or learn basic facts. How best to help these kids who will face the sanction of their teachers (because he won’t sit still or is disrupting the class”)? How best to help someone whose brain can’t collect information and regurgitate them like what the school system demands?

Learning Outside the Lines challenges the limited definition of intelligence heaped upon us by our education system. So if your child’s teacher gives him/her a below average mark for writing, or if you child gets a 10 out of 50 for math – do not despair. The book encourages us to look within ourselves to define “success” as an individual. “Screw the goldstars” (report cards) and “template identities”, the authors tell us. Instead focus on helping the kid excel at his personal goals.

Be compassionate, not 100% in math
As a parent, I think, I too have been consumed by external markers, worrying about spelling test scores and math groups in school. I think it will take me a while to shake off being bound by external markers of success. It is a hard process, to deprogramme something so deeply embedded. But try I must. I remember writing in one of Princess’ goals for a school term “to be compassionate” to her classmates and “enjoy learning”. I should have more of those rather than the more mundane goals of “achieving 100% accuracy in punctuation” or “master long division”.

Remember, we can waste too much time thinking that there is only one way to learn “in the classroom”. True learning is more powerful than that, “it cannot and should not ever be held prisoner by the classroom.”

Edward Hallowell (MD) wrote in his foreward of the book: “For centuries, the word stupid, combined with various intensifiers like bad, lazy, willful, or weak has been used to create a moral “diagnosis”. That moral diagnosis has ruined millions of lives. Now thanks to neuroscience, we are starting to make the medical diagnosis. We are starting to help unusual learners tap into their unusual talents. We are starting to realise how complex learning is, how destructive the concept of stupid has been, and how glorious getting the most out of a mind can be.”

It is all about hardwork - of wizards and geniuses

Early this week, round about 7.30, Princess told me to watch this feature on Breakfast (TV One). It was about New Zealand’s most brainy kid – a 16 year old King’s College boy called Stephen Mackereth. The reason Princess was yelling for me was she had tuned in to a conversation I was having with a friend at dinner about this same boy and thought I shouldn’t miss the item. This Stephen boy topped the world in 4 out of the 6 Cambridge papers he sat, my friend told me. He was the Australasian champion for the Brain Bee competition and is a consummate debater (in Spanish) (I found this info from the web, incidentally). While reading up about neuroscience or the mystic workings of the brain, he also laps up on Ancient Greek during his spare time. What is it that makes him tick? His television interview doesn’t really shed much light. He seems like a nice kid.

Check out TV One's Breakfast interview with Stephen Mackereth

I have a confession – I am a sucker for watching boy wonders (champions in spelling or math and the likes). I spend hours watching You Tube clips of piano protégés. It fascinates me how children or young people have the capacity to coax their brains to do so much while my own brain is so static. The brain is a wonderful machine. Use it or lose it is the prognosis. I plan to do word puzzles to keep my brain going when I go older, or will it be too late then?

So back to talent. Lately, New Yorker journalist Malcom Gladwell (of Tipping Point fame) came up with a book on success – Outliers: The Story of Success. His point was although we love to think about genius or raw talent as key to success, the reality is successful people have been presented with great opportunities to do what they love in the first place. I have read in several places that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to make a world class violinist. Gladwell reiterates this 10,000 hour-analogy. I haven’t read Gladwell’s book but a report in the Listener it sums up this way: It takes more than pure talent to succeed; it is better to give your kids more to do, more experiences, than to cushion them from hardwork. So if you are a mom ferrying your child to piano, to tennis, to math tuition, to drama, to dancing, to rugby, to cricket – you are on the right track. And if I heard all the child protégés correctly when they were interviewed, it tells the same story – they practice and practice and practice, some do three or four hours, others do six!

I keep parroting these words to Princess: “It is all about effort.” Some day, I hope she will remember talent is not everything, hard work is.

So Stephen, I think is a damn hardworking kid, to his credit. He also has inherent intelligence, curiosity and an infinite passion to learn – I think that is his key.

In schools, do they teach our kids in a way that unleashes their curiosity? Do they give kids the freedom to explore, to seek, to challenge? Or do the kids sit restless listening to the teacher drone on about this or that? This week, Princess has a topic to write on. No prizes for guessing. It has something to do with a dead boy king, some believe bludgeoned to death by a rival.

Camping at Tauranga Bay

I now know why I like camping so much. It has to do with not having to do housework! You see, on the campsite, you can cook outside your tent, eat outside or spill food all over, it doesn't matter.

I also lap up the luxury on not having to make beds, not having to do multiple loads of washing and no vacuuming. Clothes dry outside the tent on makeshift clothes line. If the clothes stink a bit, I don’t care. No one seems worried about being too clean.

At the camp ground, humans display their wide array of behaviour. Some tents are more tidy than others. Some people camp with their fridges and freezers. Some people have super duper tents, others have basic units. Some have fancy camper vans, others gargantuan mobile homes. Out on the campsite, my only worry is that the mossies or bugs don’t build their metropolis next to my bed inside the tent.

The OZtrail tent we bought did a splendid job of keeping us comfortable. Princess and I had one mattress to share. Hubby had another of his own. We read at night under our LED lights. Princess and the vampire Edward. Me and a man I once know and admired so much, a book about a true Malay gentleman. Hubby and a book he didn’t really enjoy.

Princess spent most of her days at the beach with her friends Imogen and Brittany, jumping waves and squealing a lot. I spent most of my days under the gazebo, reading, reading -- coffee -- reading-- pure bliss. Hubby spent most of his day in the sea in his kayak, or with his friend Marcus, hoping to catch more scallops, more snapper and more crayfish.

Out on the campsite at night, there is such amazing brightness with the moon in full attendance. The stars dress up the night sky in a dazzling veil of diamonds. All is quiet except the ‘trudge trudge trudge’ of my jandals as I make my way to the communal ablutions block.



Out on the campsite, at dawn, the sea sparkles in a brilliant bluish, greenish hue. The waves whisper hopes of a brave new day; a new beginning. The repetitive waves mirror the mundaness of life, but in each mundane movement, nothing ever stays the same. Everything changes - become relevant or irrelevant. You can't hurry the sea as it shifts its tides.

Out on the campsite, at dusk, the sky drips golden, magenta and almost lavender – a portrait of nature so beautiful your heart needs to skip a beat. Ah, this is the beauty of camping, you take the time not the miss this beautiful life.

Christmas 2008 - Celebrating friendships

Christmas Letter 2008



Greetings! What a year 2008 has been. I just spent an evening with great friends for a year-end party. Times like this remind me of all the great friendships I have formed over the years. Thanks for being friends with us! As always, we remain humbled by all your generosity, kindness and compassion.

This year caught us by surprise. Julia fell ill around April and was in Starship Hospital for 8 weeks due to a narrowing in her bile ducts. She also had unexplainable leg pains and had a series of investigations ending with a bone biopsy. So imagine crutches, moonboots for a period. She later had a minor fracture (had a cast for a month) on her arm from gymnastics and was out of action for a while.



Picking up
Despite all the physical barriers, she didn’t let her illness or physical limitations get to her. She is good at picking up where she left things – and returns to school as if she hasn’t left. She came back from a long hospital stay to win 1st place in the 100m and 200m sprints in her schools athletics’ day for Year 5 girls. She surprises Tony and me with her tenacity and rapacious hunger to thrive. She outdid a few boys in her swimming class and moved up a group! Next year, she continues her gymnastics, her ballroom dancing, her swimming and Mandarin lessons. We are pleased with her achievements in school as she has had an excellent year with a very good school report.



Transplant lunch
In the first quarter of this year, Steve Munn (her surgeon) and the Liver Transplant unit coordinator Margaret asked if Julia could read her poems at the 10th anniversary of the New Zealand Transplant Unit of Auckland Hospital. Initially Julia was reluctant. After a bit of pep talk by her principal Ms Adamson, she caved in! Talk about armtwisting by mom/dad! She read at the luncheon and at the formal dinner. Dr Munn stood by her as she read "Orange" and "The Writer of this Poem" (both written when she was in year 4 in school). She surprised me with her composure and poise, and how well she carried herself in an audience on very serious business. These were all a bunch of professionals belonging to the arcane world of liver magic.

Here is a sample of her poem which she read.

The writer of this poem

The writer of this poem is as chatty as a cheetah,
Bouncy as a flea,
Flexible as a snake,
All these things make the writer of this poem sound fake!

The writer of this poem is as tall as the door,
But not as small as the floor,
Is wide as a baby tree,
But not as round as a bee.

The writer of this poem is as imaginative as vivid,
Is as permanent as immortal,
Is as kind as a friend,
Is as soft as a rose petal!


Playhouse
Julia was also lucky to get her wish granted by from the Make-A-Wish Foundation. She now has her own “house” (a playhouse) in our little yard. She plans to move out real soon except she is petrified of the bugs that tend to visit from time to time. She hangs out in the playhouse with her girlfriends. The walls are already covered with Jonas Brothers posters!

Tony moves on
Tony had a watershed year, moving on from APV (which he has been for over 19 years on and off either fulltime or as a contractor) to GEA, doing the same thing. He is learning the ropes in a new environment and is ready for new challenges! His collection of Big Boys toys continues to grow – a fishing kayak, fishing gear, a trailer and other things I don’t even get to hear about in detail, that gets hidden in the garage. We also added a new fancy tent and quite a few other accessories to the garage which incidentally seems to be getting smaller by the day. And oh, a stainless steel BBQ to make a Kiwi home complete!


Anna
The not-so-good news this year was Anna (Tony’s sister) being diagnosed with brain tumour. Anna fights on, in an indomitable way. We are awed by her approach and how she copes with all the chemos and countless visits to hospital. She continues to be Julia’s "Aunty Unu" and they provide great company for each other - both feisty and not to be messed about with.

Freelancing
It has been over two years since I left fulltime work. I am still freelancing and am enjoying the freedom. Tony thinks I should get a real job. I think I have a real good deal!

This year, I learnt to knit from my dear friend Sally. My two favourite books this year have to be -- Three Cups of Tea – about the work of Greg Mortenson, who built schools for Afghanistan kids high up in the mountains - and Journey of A Thousand Miles – life story of Chinese pianist Lang Lang. Julia asked me to read a book she fell in love with -- The Power of One -- so I am reading it at the moment and enjoying it too! Julia and I also went through Cleopatra and Boudica -- both romanticised versions of the historial personalities.

I also managed to get rid of a lot of things in my bid to clear clutter. The Woolfs and the Cheahs (and some other families) went camping in Jan08 at Treasure Island, and we fell in love with the concept of waking up late and not having to do housework. Julia continued to be so well looked after by her two older and extremely awesome friends Chelsea and Daryl that we plan to have the Cheahs camp with us sometime soon!

I continue to seek the inspiration of our resident monks and nuns at Dorje Chang (a Tibetan Buddhist Centre which Julia and I) - they show us how to live with compassion and how to cherish others above ourselves.

Oldies
Mom and dad came for a visit in April. So did my aunty and her family! It was awesome having so much fun! Imagine a bunch of 50-something year old ladies learning dance steps from Julia; competing on sports virtually on the PlayStation. The laugher resonated through our house which continues to be filled with loads of great energy from great people we love! Tony was a away so he didn’t mind the noise.

Thanks again!
To all our friends who came to the hospital bearing their prayers, kindness, comfort, food, toys, games and books – thank you as always! To those who are far away but continue to send their prayers and wishes for health and pray for Julia – thanks from the bottom of our heart.

Here’s a wish for your health and happiness in this and all lifetimes! Have a great 2009!

Love: From the Woolfs

Joyous effort, joyous season

This is the season to be silly. We eat too much and spend too much. Last week, a bunch of us got together to celebrate the end of the year in the spirit of merry-making.

There were a few things that stood out in this gathering – the amazing food, the friendship and camaraderie. But our kids -- they stood out in particular because they did us proud with their achievements.

Remember, we are a bunch of sometimes pushy moms who stand behind our kids and make them do what our moms made us do – our homework, our practice, whatever it might have been. We Asian moms carry inherent DNA in us that forges our survival. We carry this survival kit, everyday, every moment, seldom easy if we let go.

I was particularly awestruck by 2 kids in our group who made a choice last year to apply to get into architecture school at university. That was plan A. These 2 girls had no plan B, their parents told me. They were so confident of making it. They did. And this week, watching those 2 girls again – made me realise their true prowess. These 2 young adults played the piano for us – they sounded discordant because they didn’t have their own music. But they obliged us. What they lack for in prepared-ness, they made up for in gung-ho-ness. I have no doubt they can play the piano. After a few songs, they told me there were a musical duo to be reckoned with.

Many talent in one bundle
Then we heard another kid (young man) whose parents told me he finished university ahead of time. I know from the past he was a competitive swimmer. He has a formidable upper torso, I am sure. And when we heard him play the piano, I am sure music, studies, sports – they excel within this being at real ease.

One young boy went from having zero Mandarin, to being conversant. I always have admiration for this young man – when he was in college, he came to tutor Princess of the House. He has a great gentleness and patience about him. My admiration for him grew when he started speaking to my parents in Mandarin (from having no Mandarin a few years ago). Oh, then he also grew in stature because he also likes Orson Scott-Card who is my all-time favourite author. He sang us a Chinese song. I think he lost his tune because I know this song. But he earned my respect for taking on a difficult language and becoming so good at it. His mom has raised a fine young man.

Juggling
Our hostess’ teenage son played Pachelbel’s Canon on the piano – heavenly enough to bring angels down to earth. He also entertained us on his diabolo (a juggling contraption) which made me certain he is a man with many hidden talents. I am also convinced the juggling takes real concentration and effort. He was gentleman enough to play down to Princess’ level at table tennis – very awesome.

Other parents in our crowd have similarly outstanding children who were not there. My Princess was game enough to do 2 pieces on the piano. I noticed her mistakes with Shubert's Moment Musical but then I am used to Vladimir Horowitz’s rendition of the same piece on YouTube. Yet, she did well with Rihanna’s Take a Bow. I am particularly awestruck by Princess because she missed 8 weeks of school, had many surgical procedures and never let that stop her from picking up and continuing as if life was normal.

Behind every success is effort
We Asian parents celebrate our success through our kids. And this is despite all of us being successful people in our own areas of work. A few of us hold full-time jobs, others part-time. We are different in how we lead our lives from our mothers who were mostly stay-at-home moms. But we are no different from our stay-at-home moms who pushed us beyond our limits.

Comfort zone is a dirty word. I think we parents push our kids beyond their comfort zones so they can rise above the ordinary. I don’t mind ordinary people. But it bugs me when Princess skips over the effort bit. Children can do extraordinary things -- with effort. Effort lends itself to success. One of the 6 perfections which the Buddha taught his followers was joyous effort. The other perfections are generosity, patience, concentration, ethics, wisdom – I forget in which order. How wise to master all 6.

So, here’s a celebration of our kids – who do have been practicing effort, concentration and patience (if not wisdom and ethics or generosity). And here’s a celebration of moms and dads who stood behind these great children, ever loyal and faithful, every step of the way.