Above all else

Everyone loves happy endings.  We especially love happy endings if they're happening to us.  This is particularly true on social media, where we generally put up happy news on our status updates and blogs.  This tends to make our lives look and sound like the forest of the Smurfs, where everybody is constantly singing "La la la-la-la-la, la la-la-la laaaa...!".  But life isn't really like that at all, is it.  As the subtitle to this blog says - sometimes stories are sad.  And in this case, also somewhat lengthy :P I have two kids - a 12-year-old daughter Natalie, and a 10-year-old son, Daniel.  This blog post is about Natalie.  Natalie is smart, hardworking and responsible.  And like her Dad, she loves winning.  She's in the best class in a brand-name school (excluding the gifted pupils), and even in that class, she's among the top 5 or so.  I'm really proud of her. Some of you may have heard of the Direct School Admissions...

Every first Friday of the month, my church cell mates and I distribute free bread to the residents of a rental block.  Sometimes we distribute other stuff, like masks, during last year's haze.  These are residents who qualify for rental flats, which by definition means they are low-income earners.  Our work has no strings attached - we just love the residents, and the bread opens the door to a trust relationship so that we can help them with any bigger problems that they may have. We've been doing this work for more than 2 years, but we continue to learn new things all the time.  One of the most important lessons is that the residents don't really need our bread all that much.  The bread is great of course, but what they really want is simply to be loved, to know someone is on their side in tough times, and yes, in good times too.  Many of them are elderly, and not all of them have kids who have the opportunity, or sometimes the inclination to spend the...

The classic 1985 story of Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card gives some insight into the mentality of war.  Early on in the book, when the boy Ender is attacked by his classmates, he retaliates and beats his opponent into complete and senseless submission.  When asked why he retaliated so violently, Ender's response is, "I have to win this now, and for all time, or I'll fight it every day and it will get worse and worse." The recent movie re-make put it in even plainer terms.  "Knocking him down was the first fight, I wanted to win all the others [in the future].   So they'd leave me alone ." Let me be very very clear - I'm not saying at all this gives anyone an absolute moral right to beat anyone else into submission.  I'm just saying it's an understandable sentiment, and a very tough call to make.  But what would make someone feel this way about conflict?  And in the light of today's front page news on the Straits Times, the Is...

A well-known American catchphrase is "Do you know where your children are?"  It's often used at the start of radio or news programmes - say the 10 o'clock news, and I suppose it's meant as a reminder to check if your children are safely back home. My wife and I have a good relationship with our kids at this point of their lives.  Dan is only 10, and he still pretty much listens to everything we say, although actually following through is a different thing of course!  Nat is 12, and she's starting to hear the voices of friends and the media a bit more loudly.  Like many of her peers, she has a mobile phone, but she's only allowed to use it at home (basically to keep in touch with her friends on Whatsapp) and the wife and I regularly check on her conversations. At some point, I suppose this will no longer be appropriate, but right now, I've found this to be a helpful arrangement.  We occasionally catch her joining in gossip or playing tweeny c...