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The Better Toy Store needs better English

There’s a wonderful toy shop in Ngee Ann City and Tanglin Mall called “The Better Toy Store”. You can find great toys which are generally eco-friendly and non-toxic, which is a good thing, because Kai’s at the age where he tries to eat everything including the foam mat we’ve assembled on the floor of his play area. But cute lah, our boy.

Anyway, The Better Toy Store has an online shop, which for some reason, is full of surprisingly bad copy and a standard of English you’d expect to find on labels of Chinese foodstuff and not sensible, educational products for children.

For example:

Playtime Ideas

* Children can use the mallet to pound the different colored pegs as they like and continue playing by simply turning the board; this develop fine motor skill and eye-hand coordination. Pounding also helps children release tension and teach them regarding disciplinary action.
* Parents should specify the color to hammer; this will help children learn to differentiate and recognize colors easily.
* Parents should praise children when they can do it and advice if they are not able to do so.

Children can use the mallet to pound the Parent’s head since the Parent already has a headache trying to figure out what the website is trying to say. Children can disregard disciplinary action in this instance.

I think maybe the copy might have been written by Jamie Yeo cos I have no frikkin‘ idea what she’s on about.

Underworld childbirth

Yesterday we congratulated our friends Mika and Gary because they’re brand new parents to a brand new baby boy, and we went and visited them at KKH just a couple of hours after she’d returned to the ward and enjoyed her first couple of hours of motherhood.

It was a happy afternoon all round, and it’s always a happy feeling around the maternity ward and the nursery and it was probably the only place in the whole world where I would have completely understood what the women in the corridors were talking about when they were discussing the merits of natural childbirth as opposed to a Sicilian one.