The Adventures of Elite Girl

http://www.insanepoly.com/blog/?m=200610
You might need to be a Singaporean to understand, but heck no, I don't think it is below the belt.

Of course, I'm sorry that my own [i]alma mater[/i] got dragged into it.

Snowylass playing sand (corrected)

Last Friday, Snowylass' childcare centre was suddenly closed for second case of HFMD. I must thank God that I could take urgent leave. Had to go to the office nonetheless to pick up some work to do over the weekend (which was not done because the weekend haze kept us busy), and then to the beach for a short walk (That's where I met LJM briefly who was on his way to Pasir Ris).

For the little girl, only mummy's absence kept her day from being 100% perfect.

Taken with my new SE K800i with image stabiliser on. It's my hands that need to be more steady.

Snowylass playing sand

Snowylass' childcare centre for closed for second case of HFMD. I must thank God that I could take urgent leave. Had to go to the office nonetheless to pick up some work to do over the weekend (which was not done because the weekend haze kept us busy), and then to the beach for a short walk (That's where I met LJM briefly).

For the little girl, only mummy's absence kept her day from being 100% perfect.

Taken with my new SE K800i with image stabiliser on. It's my hands that need to be more steady.

Weeping for the babies

From Straits Times October 5, 2006 (Thursday), WORLD section

Smoking Warning Sends Wrong Signal
London: Teenage girls in Britain are deliberately smoking during pregnancy because they know it lowers a baby's birth weight and believe it will reduce pain during labour and delivery, the Nursing Standard reported yesterday.

Teenagers have heard the warnings that smoking can lead to smaller babies but misinterpreted the information, the journal reported Public Health Caroline Flint as saying.
BLOOMBERG

Snowylad at infantcare

I am missing most of his milestones ... I missed his first time climbing up, I missed his first time climbing down.

When common sense just do not prevail

Reference : http://news.yahoo.com/s/hsn/20061004/hl_hsn/sundaybluelawslimitalcoholrelatedcrashesdeaths on Sunday Blue Laws Limit Alcohol-Related Crashes, Deaths

For those unfamiliar with the term "Blue Laws", those were US laws that could be traced back Puritanical influence which restricted what one could do, wear, eat and drink etc., on the Sabbath.

Most had been repealled, but many legislations with similar intent are still referred to as Blue Laws today.

"For the first time, we have real data on whether blue laws actually protect public health. Today's study finds that the Sunday ban saved lives and prevented hundreds of injuries and fatalities from alcohol-related crashes," study co-author Garnett McMillan, of the Behavioral Health Research Center of the Southwest in Albuquerque, said in a prepared statement.

The study was funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Alcohol Substance Abuse Policy Research Program.

In New Mexico, advocates of repealing the Sunday ban on packaged alcohol sales argued that the move would reduce the incidence of alcohol-related crashes and fatalities on Sundays. They reasoned that lifting the ban would divert alcohol consumption from bars to homes on Sundays and therefore reduce the number of impaired people driving home from barsThis study refutes that contention, McMillan said.

"By increasing the availability of alcohol on Sundays, you open the door to more opportunities for drinking and driving and the negative consequences that result," he said.

Reading the article reinforces my prediction that introducing casino in Singapore will bring in new problems and exacerbate some existing ones.

Money attracts criminal-minded. (Yes, that applies also to banking and financial institutions, strong regulations and enforcement are required even today).

Casino operators will do anything to attract and retain "whales" (high-stake punters) by catering to all their whims, including sex (all sorts you can name and more), drugs etc.

I am not sure what the advocates for repealing the ban have to say, perhaps attack the study for being biased as it was funded by a program on Alcohol Abuse Policy Research, but I'm sure they will not admit they were wrong or agree to restoring the ban.

Thus, the day when it was impossible to deny the problems brought in by casinos in Singapore, we will not find the politicians who advocated them volunteering to take responsibility or resign.

And there will come a day when the entry tariffs and other measures for local Singaporeans will either fail to keep addicts out or the entry tariffs will be repealed because casinos complain their business are at risk, no politicians will take responsibility and admit they were mistaken and try to set things right by banning the casinos.

Once the Pandora Box is opened, it will be most difficult to close it back.

Outward Bound ACT 1997

This took place in December 1997 in the Brindabella Ranges near Canberra.

The few pictures did not fully capture our ordeal for the 4 weeks.

When I have time, I will look for more pictures from the event.

Did we count these blessings?

During church services, we oft sang songs praising God, promising to worship Him with our hearts, turning our ears to listen to him, lifting our eyes to see Him, raising our hands to touch Him, opening our mouths to glorify Him, and so forth.

We have these songs in all kinds of services, the traditional type where songs are only sung from the hymnals, the P&P type where they flash the lyrics on the big screen.

So often do we sing them that we allowed the words to become jaded.

Thus it was, I was shamed many years back when I started being involved in ministry to "differently-abled" people.

It was an awkward feeling, bringing them into worshipping with the "normal" congregations, aiding them with the lyrics, while most of them are physically deaf. What would the words "listen with our ears" mean to them?

Even tougher, what would they make of pulpit speakers who quoted from the Bible and proclaim God's promises to "heal us of our infirmities", announcing God can do miracles to make the deaf hear, the blind see, the lame walk ... and our charges from the Ministry depart from the services ... the same.

The ministry grew, we had special children, someone brought a blind man. The feeling that the worship leaders and pulpit speakers and the main congregation are out of touch grew stronger.

If only Jesus was here, I prayed many times, He'd know what to do, what to say.

He'd heal them, either physically, or at least give them inner healing.

So often I wanted to quit. Not just the Ministry, but the entire church for being so darn insensitive.

Thus it was that I learned some of the most beautiful hymns were written by disabled Christians.

Frances (Fanny) Jane Crosby (1820-1915) wrote "Blessed Assurance" among the thousands she had composed. She was blinded from 6 weeks of age.

And perhaps it was the voice of the LORD which spoke when I heard "What about yourself? Do you really mean it when you sang those words? Those people you worry about are in GOD's hands, you just concern yourself with what you're supposed to do - worship and witness."

Oh GOD, forgive me and never let me be jaded by the words of worship ever again.

Birthday 2006

I wish birthdays could be rescheduled.

When your only son who is just past 9 months old is sick, upset all the time, halving his food intake, couldn't sleep for more than an hour before crying and waking, you won't be in the mood for celebrating your birthday.

Until last Thursday, the plan was for me to take leave on the day itself, and wifey also got a mandatory offday from her school. And with both children in childcare and infantcare respectively, we were finally going to spend a few romantic couple time together for several hours.

All that went out of the window when after 4 days, Snowylad is still running high temperature off and on, unable to sleep with phlegmy coughs and stuffy nose. We saw the paed *3* times, and each time, she has to prescribe additional medication.

The best to have happened on my birthday itself is that after the 3rd visit, he finally managed to sleep ... for hours. Since going out to celebrate was impossible, I went to get take-out. Wifey had had no appetite for days, and not even her favourite mussels could cheer her.

The spots we were anticipating finally began appearing at the end of the day ... signs that his fever and viral infection were on the way out. It'd take a few days to clear, and until then, Snowylad looks like he's having an early stage of chicken pox. Thankfully, it's not chicken pox, and his infantcare accepted him. We burnt a lot of time-off/leave from work during the last few days.

I'm gonna have him immunised against chickenpox soon. I don't buy into the idea of letting him get infected so that he'll develop immunity.

If there's anything positive from this experience, is that it helps Snowylad to reconnect to us, or perhaps I should say, reconnect back to me (he's always connected to his mum), after the connection was seemingly lost after he began attending infantcare.

He looks at me more, and he approaches me to carry him a lot now.

PS : like Ur, the birthdate on my multiply profile is not my actual birthdate.

Some US Muslim cabby refuse to ferry passengers with alcohol

Sources : http://newpaper.asia1.com.sg/news/story/0,4136,114756,00.html?

If the link no longer works, google the name "Ali Culed".

Citing religious reasons, some US Muslim cabbies refuse to ferry passengers carrying alcohol.  Ironically though, a drunken passenger would not be rejected, if he was not carrying alcohol drinks.

The ban has created chaos at the Minneapolis-St Paul international airport, where about three-quarters of the 900 taxi drivers are Somali, and mostly Muslim.

Airport officials have begun working with taxi drivers to install colour-coded lights on taxi roofs to indicate which are alcohol-friendly and which are not.

I don't know exactly what the law in the US is that gives cabbies the legal right to reject passengers carrying legal items, but I thought that is crazy.

To me, a cabbie operates his business through getting a license - and this license did not allow him to discriminate legal passengers carrying legal items. A taxi is not his personal home, it is the equivalent of a business premise.

I am surprised that the authorities did not revoke their licenses.

Have these cabbies considered that what they did is to legitimise other people discriminating against them, or refusing to serve them if they were carrying the Quran, simply based on the individual's religious beliefs?