13 Apr 2009 – Mrs Yu-Foo Yee Shoon

Sat: Mrs Yu-Foo Yee Shoon, Minister of Community Development, Youth & Sports was the Guest of Honour for The Singapore Shawl’s 4th Anniversary and to unveil the Wu Guanzhong’s shawl. Was there to help with the sales and the fashion show; presented my book 1st SIN AT Thru-Hiker to Mrs Yu-Foo.

Sat evening: celebrated Peggy Tan’s 60th Bday. Peggy is an old friend and class mate from our primary school days in CHIJ at Victoria Street. She is also the grand daughter of Tan Kah Kee 陳嘉庚 (1874-1961) who built various educational institutions and the Tan Kah Kee Foundation. His resting place is in Xiamen where a University and Museum is named after him.

Easter Sun: Met up with a cousin from the paternal grandmother CHEN Swee Ngor. Karen LIM is from Sarikei, Sarawak; at present she works and lives in SIN. Wonderful to discover another long lost cousin and thanks for dinner, chilly crab, one of my favourites. I do vaguely recall Karen‘s mother’s SIN visit in the early 1960s. It will be too overwhelming to go into the extended branches of the family tree. Another long lost cousin CHEN Weng Kei (met him for the first time last year in New Zealand) has their branches impressively detailed.

There is no shame in justifiable failure. There is shame only in the fear of failure – Tan Kah Kee

11 Apr 2009 – Happy Easter

2005: Katy & Ellie at the 75,000 Easter Egg Hunt

2009: Katy, Ellie & John with the Easter Bunny

An Easter trivial question…

Q: How many eggs is a woman born with?

In Pagan times the egg represented the rebirth of the earth. The long, hard winter was over; the earth burst forth and was reborn just as the egg miraculously burst forth with life.

With the advent of Christianity the symbolism of the egg changed to represent, not nature’s rebirth, but the rebirth of man. Christians embraced the egg symbol and likened it to the tomb from which Christ rose.

While the origin of Easter eggs can be explained in the symbolic terms described above, a pious legend among followers of Eastern Christianity says that Mary Magdalene was bringing cooked eggs to share with the other women at the tomb of Jesus, and the eggs in her basket miraculously turned brilliant red when she saw the risen Christ.

A: 400,000 potential eggs but only one is released monthly.

The difference between involvement and commitment is like ham and eggs. The chicken is involved; the pig is committed – Martina Navratilova

9 Apr 2009 – Opening of the Wu Guanzhong at SAM

Wu Guanzhong (吴冠中; August 29, 1919–) is one of the best known contemporary painters of Chinese origin. His donation of 113 works to the Singapore Art Museum is the highest valued donation presented to a public museum in Singapore. The exhibition represents five decades of the artist’s works and is co-organised by Singapore Art Museum, Shanghai Art Museum and National Art Museum of China. A key significance of his art is the crossing and synthesising of the two art forms of ink and oil which represent art historical and aesthetic contexts of traditional Chinese and western art.

RADM (NS) Lui Tuck Yew, acting Minister for Information, Communication and the Arts was the Guest of Honour for yesterday’s opening. The Singapore Shawl has printed some of Wu Guanzhong’s beautiful works on their silk shawls and cards for sale. It is Uniquely Singapore to have a piece of Wu Guanzhong to cover over your shoulders.

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up – Pablo Picasso

7 Apr 2009 – SS by SS

The Singapore Shawl by Shelley Siu…  what a tongue twister!

My feet are killing me. Was standing for at least 6 hrs daily for 6 days as one of the staff was on leave and I was helping with the SS sales counter at the Centrepoint’s Robinsons. What a learning experience, and I sympathise with my fellow salesperson. It is quite amazing that there are 6 floors at this Orchard Road’s Robinsons department store and the staff’s locker room is so small that it is claustrophobic when last shift takes leave.

In addition, was told curtly that even when there are no customers, I was not allowed to take pictures of my own display nor was not allowed to chat with the other salesperson or sit, even for 1 min!  If this is what it is like working in a SIN department store, it is no wonder that courteous and compassion campaigns are needed. Observations for 8 years showed that they are not effective on this rat-race island state & country.

Does Robinsons train supervisors to be without common sense? As you can see, my blog picture is of my display and I enjoyed myself with the other salesperson when there were no customers. Started working all my summer holidays during university days and have not stopped since, but do not ever recall being treated this way. Would you want to shop at a store where staff are treated like such?

The object of a salesperson is not to make sales, but to make customers – unknown

4 Apr 2009 – Punch line to the Punks

Received this just as I started with my tax… put a 🙂 on my face and that is a good way to start with my tax! Have a good weekend and hope that most of you have completed your tax…

I took my dad to a fair the other day to enjoy the beautiful weather. We decided to grab a bite at a food stall. I noticed he was watching a teenager sitting next to him. The teenager had spiked hair in all different colours: green, yellow, orange and blue.

My dad kept staring at her. The teenager would look and find him staring every time. When the teenager had enough, she sarcastically asked:

‘What’s the matter old man, never done anything wild in your life?’

Knowing my dad, I quickly swallowed my food so that I would not choke on his response, knowing he would have a good one. And in classic style he did not bat an eye in his response.

‘Got drunk once and had sex with a peacock. I was just wondering if you were my daughter.’

But in this world nothing is certain but death and taxes – Benjamin Franklin

1 Apr 2009 – All Fool’s Day

Many theories have been put forward about how the tradition began. Unfortunately, none of them are very compelling. So the origin of the custom of making April Fools remains as much a mystery to us as it was back in 1708. April Fool’s Day has all the characteristics of a renewal festival. For one day forms of behavior that are normally not allowed (lying, deception, playing pranks) become acceptable, and yet the disorder is bounded within a strict time-frame. Traditionally, no pranks are supposed to be played after 12 o’clock noon of the first, depending on which time zone!

Cyber security experts are warning that a new variation of Conficker, a fast-spreading computer worm also known as Downadup, could attack millions of computers on today. Experts say it’s unknown whether the worm will cause havoc or merely turn out to be an April’s Fool prank. But people can protect their computers by using security software.

The question of the day… are Apple computers more prone to worms??  Even if you do not have an Apple, please make sure that your security system is updated.

Foolproof systems do not take into account the ingenuity of fools – Gene Brown 

26 Mar 2009 – Moonlight Resonance

It took me 2 days & 2 nights to watch this award-winning Television Broadcasts Limited’s highest rating HKG melodrama serial, Moonlight Resonance 溏心風暴之家好月圓 and the only TV series I have followed thru’

My children claimed that I do not need to watch soap operas as I grew up in that kind of environment! Wanted to see if I could really sit to watch a complete serial and if it will improve my Cantonese. Had to turn on the English sub-titles to understand certain parts but managed to complete watching all 40 episodes. And my Cantonese is still very basic.

Same old same old plot, good vs evil and a predictable fairy-tale ending with the only Chinese song I know. These dramas do paint an ugly picture of greed, manipulation, selfishness etc but many are not even aware when it happens at the drop of a hat in reality. Unfortunately, money often leads to power and power to corruption; the whole vicious circle seems never ending.

The love of money is the root of all evil – 1 Timothy 6:10

23 Mar 2009 – Weekend

Sat: Attended a full day conference for the Reign of the Kangxi Emperor with speakers from USA’s Dartmouth, George Mason, Yale, UK’s British Library, The Palace Museum, Beijing, Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences and SIN Institute of SE Asian Studies. All excellent speakers, very informative and intensive but a long long day. Was on overdrive by the time I got home and had to play the piano to get into neutral.

Sun: Thank you for a lovely dinner to my nephew Vincent LAM (LAM Kwowk Ping‘s son) & family. Stanley LAM is boarding at the new Sports School. He has swimming coaching and practices twice daily in additional to the regular classes. Quite demanding but the training seems good discipline for my 13 year old grand-nephew whose hair is very much in vogue, highlighted due to the Ph of the water. National Service will be a breeze for him when it is time for him to pay his dues to SIN. His younger brother Andrew is 22 months and is as cute as a button. It will be another story when the terrible twos start 🙂

For 2009, the eldest of the purple generation (my grandchildren) is born in 1989, LAM Sui Chang & Michael ANG (LAM Kwok Kiong‘s grandsons). The youngest will be my 4th grandchild/daughter who is due in Jun, making that generation a total of 23 by Jul.

20 Mar 2009 – Kenson, my old friend!

Kenson KWOK is planning a walking trip with Peggy LEUNG, married PUDDEY (Perth) and myself when he retires! The three of us go back to 1954/55, ie as far as I can remember. He is my first non-related male buddy. This relationship has lasted for over half a century in spite of the different directions in our life. Our parents were good friends and they met regularly for lunch or dinner on the weekends. While the grown-ups were busy with mahjong or card games, we kids were busy being children; such fond childhood memories filled with fun and mischief 🙂