laremy.sg

The police officers called my home after they couldn’t contact me on my mobile, and as luck would have it, they reached my mother instead.

Now, my mother is prone to over-reacting, and her first thought was to start crying when she heard the words ‘police’ and ‘your son’.

When I called her back to tell her that the police officers had passed my keys to me, I hung up the phone feeling extremely irritated – and for good reason.

I understand why she was upset, but I don’t think it was justified for her to get so upset over something like this. Plus, this isn’t the first time she has over-reacted to something like this, and she has a tendency to overly-dramatise not-so-significant situations. Most importantly, even if the worse had happened, what good would crying do?

I don’t think I’ll be able to tell her this, because she’ll probably over-react while I am trying to explain all this to her. I don’t know if I’ll have the patience to explain all this to her, either.

But what I am going to do is to bring her to watch this play. Hopefully it might open up some space for us to discuss what happened.

Recalling Mother
Presented by Checkpoint Theatre

Dates: Wed, 26 Aug – Sun, 30 Aug 2009.
Time: 8pm – 9pm.
Venue: ARTSPACE@Helutrans (39 Keppel Road, Tanjong Pagar Distripark #02-04)

In this funny and moving piece written and performed by Claire Wong and Noorlinah Mohamed, two women tell stories about two other women – their mothers – and the complexities of living with (and not living with) Mother.

The performers discuss the genesis of the piece:

“Neither of our mothers has much formal education, but they’re both highly intelligent, capable and strong women. Both are wonderful cooks and love to feed us.

“But they find it difficult to talk to us – and we to them. Neither of them is fluent in English. We, on our part, have only functional abilities in our “mother tongues” – Cantonese and Malay, respectively. So, we get by, functionally. But we can’t share our deepest, most complicated thoughts and ideas to our mothers in a common language.

“Yet through our telling and re-telling of stories about our mothers – and about ourselves with our mothers – we discover a kaleidoscope of memories, and of insights into ourselves, and into that strange, complicated and wonderful relationship that we think almost everyone has with their mother.”

Performed in the intimate setting of an art gallery to an audience of just 80 people per night, Recalling Mother is a unique and engaging theatrical experience. Nuanced, compelling, honest and surprising, Recalling Mother is a celebration of the joys and challenges of motherhood – and daughterhood.

Tickets: $28 (excluding SISTIC booking fee).
Discount of 15% for groups of 15 or more.
Buy your tickets starting August 6th through the SISTIC Website: www.sistic.com.sg, the SISTIC Hotline: (65) 6348 5555 or SISTIC Authorized Agents islandwide.

Supported by Valentine Willie Fine Art.

People with two copies of the high-risk variant of the gene are likely to develop depression in response to multiple stressful experiences like divorce or assault, but they are fine if their environment remains benign. (via)

It’s been said that a lot of kids don’t possess the ability to defer gratification, which results in a myriad of problems later on in life. Based on my own experience during my Practicum stint, I’m quite inclined to believe in this idea.

I think it’s necessary for parents and teachers alike to teach children how to defer gratification, but it’s the ‘how’ which always eludes everyone. I’ve been trying to find activities that teach the above skill but haven’t been very successful so far, though I’ve come across some tips that might be helpful and a good place to start.

Off the top of my head, some games that teach deferred gratification and which come to mind are: Jenga and Simon Says. Anyone has any other suggestions?

(In light of the octuplets incident, I thought I’d pen a short blog post to explicate my thoughts on parenthood, since everyone knows that I am the world’s foremost authority on many things.)

1. Don’t have any children, period.
2. If you must have children, for whatever reason(s) you may have:
   • Go for marriage counselling. You’re bringing another life into this world, and you sure as hell better make sure the two of you are emotionally stable enough to handle it.
   • Go for financial counselling. Calculate if you can afford having a child in the first place. Take into account stuff like college, before you even start thinking about what brand of diapers to buy.
   • Go for parenthood counselling. It’s not all rainbows and unicorns, and your child is not going to be perfect. (For the guys who’ve served NS, here’s my favourite analogy: No one is truly PES A.) For the people who want to argue with me, look in the mirror – you’re not perfect yourself.
3. If you’re looking for a marriage, financial or parenthood counsellor, my rates are S$100 for an hour.
4. If you’ve passed all those hurdles successfully, less is more, IMHO, but if you really must, stop at two.
5. Good luck.

ADDENDUM: I don’t want to sound overly-cynical, so I thought I’d mention that of course, I do recognise and acknowledge that parenting can be a joyful experience too. But don’t delude yourself into thinking you’re gonna be a great parent unless you’ve spent your life actively working towards becoming a good one. Of course, you can always come to me so that I can pass my very critical judgement on whether or not I think you’re qualified to be a parent. Cheers.