August 2010 – miyagi.sg

Thank you, Lion Cubs

I must have been one of the biggest skeptics of the inaugural Games, but over the last 12 days, I’ve been treated to some of the best things it has brought to our shores.

I’m just hoping we’ll forget trying to show the world how we can do this and do that – it may take several more decades before we break the stupid inferiority complex that makes us call ourselves ‘the little red dot’ – but instead savor and remember the enthusiasm and joy some of these kids have shown the older cynics like me.

If you’ve been hiding underneath a rock, let me tell you now, that Boys’ Own stuff was demonstrated in the bronze medal football match by our own Lion Cubs even with their captain Jeffrey Lightfoot having been taken off early in the game for a nasty gash that required stitches.

Our boys went and, according to their coach, overplayed their hand, disobeyed coaching instructions, and smacked four goals past the boys from Montenegro.

It’s been a long, long time since a local football team’s photo graced the front pages of our news broadsheets, and just as long since one packed a stadium. I’d have bet that if the National Stadium had hosted the Cubs for the Games, the Kallang Roar would’ve made a comeback and scared the crap out of people riding in the Singapore Flyer.

Thank you, our home-grown boys.

Ah… Capella

My wife is nuts. She knows I’m under the gun with deadlines looming, and what does she do? She goes and books a villa at Capella Singapore, so that I’ll have nice, tranquil surrounds to do work in while we celebrate our 4th wedding anniversary. How to be all angsty and writer-like, like that?

Work beckons. It’s almost 1am, she’s asleep and so’s the baby. Tell you all more after a dip in our personal pool in the morning.

Banker!

We’ve been very lucky to have a baby boy who’s so easy to look after. He eats well, is able to play by himself, and sleeps mostly to a schedule, and when we’re eating out, he’s able to sit at the table for up to an hour – enough for us to finish our meal without fuss.

Because Naomi is the one that does the details, we have a log of Kai’s daily doings like waking and sleeping times, eating and excreting times – although I’m sure there are other parents like us, with computerised logs that offer an instant audit if so required.

We also have a live-feed list of Kai’s vocablurry, which currently includes such food related words as “eat”, “pasta”, “chicken”, “bread”, “apple” and “hot” and “cold”. That’s about the same as an SQ stewardess’ operating vocabulary at cruising altitude – because at take-offs and landings they have to learn to read other complicated things from a card.

A friend tells us to be very careful what we say in front of Kai from now on, as they’re at the “storage of information” stage. Her 18 month old daughter shocked her last month by parroting a rude word she heard her father say.

So we are now at the next stage of parenting where we have to start spelling things out. Or pretend we said something else.

“Banker! Papa said Banker!”

More than half of toys tested unsafe

The Consumers Association of Singapore (CASE) tested a basket of 50 toys sold in Singapore, and more than half were found to be unsafe. Naomi and I are not surprised.

But what I’d like to know is, what kind of crap toy is this?

The pictorial list of toys is here, and I kinda agree with the toy gun / cuff set being unsafe. A friend of mine handcuffed himself to the fence when he was five years old, and was only released by his laughing parents when they got home several hours later.

A few days later, he shot himself in both nostrils with the dart gun. Actually, he was the sort of kid who’d manage to injure himself even if you put him in a straitjacket in a padded room.

Gold for Singapore football?

OK chope. I’ve only just discovered that there are only 6 teams competing in the Youth Olympic Games football competition. So it’s not exactly a world stage for our boys due to a ruling that each country can be represented in only two team sports at the Games.

That means the chances of a gold medal for our Lion Cubs are pretty high indeed. OK, maybe with just a little bit of luck, like when Steven Bradbury won Australia’s first Winter Games gold medal: