It looks like I've fallen off the blogging bandwagon.
Well, I was never really consistent in the first place anyway. It's just like the time I joined a gym. First month I go there 3 times a week. By the second month, maybe twice a week coz things are getting busy at work/life. By the third month, once a week or lesser. After 6 months, I just go there for a shower when I work late nights. It's one of those personal projects that was meant to end in a natural death.
I started this blog as a platform for me to practice creative writing, for fear that all I could compose in the future are formal emails and boring words. But in order to write, I have to be inspired to write. There must be something that I feel passionate and strongly about. Rambling on without a point is not my style.
I don't know why inspiration has been hard to come by. And even when I do find inspiration, I get lazy. You see, writing a post takes up a lot of my time because my words are thoughtfully selected (see above point on creative writing) and I try to include pictures and colours to make the post interesting. That's a lot of hard work when one has a full-time job and is a full-time mother outside of working hours. Even my Facebook doesn't get much updates so you can understand why my blog has been abandoned since October 2015!
Anyway, I'm trying to hop on the bandwagon again 😊 I haven't really figured out what I'll share or how much. Maybe some cooking posts since I cook so much now. Some family stories and anecdotes, maybe.
Hmm... I think I'll get the ball rolling with some sights around Singapore since I'll have visitors this week and I'm playing tour guide. I'll also copy and paste a post I made on Facebook on the phenomenal tsunami rakyat, for memory's sake.
Wait for them!
Sunday, May 20, 2018
Sunday, October 25, 2015
nobody told me it would be this hard
I just read this in the news –
It's very sad to read something like this. I myself am a new mother, about 14 weeks, and I too have struggled with breastfeeding.
I was drafting up a post on breastfeeding before this, but in a slightly different vein. I wanted to document my breastfeeding journey, both the good and bad, the real experience so to speak, so that I could encourage others. But now, I'm not even sure if I should.
Every new mother would've been told or read about how breast milk is best for the baby. If you join a breastfeeding support group on Facebook or elsewhere, you would then get access to many many updates from mothers on (i) that they have successfully exclusively breastfed their child until a year old or older, (ii) posting a picture of milk bottles with a "modest" 15oz acquired through one pumping session on their 3rd day post-partum and then asking the group whether that will be enough for her baby, or (iii) posting a picture of a freezer filled with nothing else but breast milk. While I understand that they're trying to encourage mothers to breastfeed, I sometimes feel these updates are rubbing my failures into my face. It's hard not to take it personally, especially when it hits so close to home.
I don't have a freezer full of breast milk. Whatever I express today will be enough only for tomorrow's feeding.
My baby took mostly formula milk until she's about 4 weeks old and even now she still tops up with some formula milk, depending on how hungry she is.
When anyone asks me whether I'm breastfeeding, I felt I will be judged unfavourably if I told the truth. So I glossed over it.
The first time I tried to pump, I spent 10 minutes and yielded 5 drops of clear yellow liquid. In my humble opinion, that's hardly enough to feed a hungry baby mouse, and I'm not even sure if that baby mouse wants it.
I cried many many times, not because it hurts so much when my baby suckle, but because I felt like giving up and I would be less of a mother for failing to fulfill the most basic of my child's needs.
When the pediatrician asked whether I'm fully breastfeeding, I said no. He asked how much. I said about half half. He gave me a look, as if to say I should try harder. I wanted to hit him, but I said nothing and my little one has a kinder pediatrician now.
Finally, I spoke to friends who are mothers. Many of them struggled with breastfeeding the first time. They also top up with formula milk and has no or little spare supply of frozen breast milk. I realised that I'm not alone in this, that what I went through is more common than I think. But people don't talk about this, about struggles or failures, for fear of being judged. Had I known from the very beginning, I wouldn't have been so hard on myself.
Mothers are not told enough that breastfeeding is not the only way.
Mothers should not be made to feel ashamed or guilty for not breastfeeding.
Mothers should be honest and not only share success stories.
Mothers should not judge other mothers for the choices they make.
After all, the most important thing is our child is growing well and has a happy mother. Whose business is it that you breastfeed or you don't breastfeed? As long as you shower your child with lots of love and care for him/her in the best way possible, does it really matter that you can't or don't breastfeed?
You will still be the best, and only, mummy in your child's eyes.
Tuesday, August 05, 2014
Monday, August 04, 2014
musical x wings
I'm having so much fun with today's interactive google doodle which celebrates the 180th anniversary of the birth of John Venn. I was testing out all the combinations and made these:
My favourite has to be the soprano and the clown car!
John Venn introduced the Venn diagram, which is a diagram that demonstrates a logical test on a collection of sets. For example, what is a mammal and is tiny? In the google doodle, one of the possible (or logical) overlap between a set of "mammals" and a set of "tiny" is a mouse.
I don't quite remember learning about Venn diagram in primary school, but I'm pretty sure it was somewhat incorporated into secondary school math class where it's applied in probability theory.
A ∩ B
A ∪ B
Ring a bell?
Anyway, I'm thinking how amazing this Venn diagram would be in the development of logical thinking in small children, who would then have the potential of growing up to be logical adults. Just saying.
Read about the designing of the google doodle here.
Born in 1834 in Yorkshire, England, John Venn's first vocation is that of an Anglican priest as he was descended from a long line of church evangelicals. It was after his return to Cambridge University aged 28 years old to lecture, that he developed the diagram of his namesake.
My favourite has to be the soprano and the clown car!
John Venn introduced the Venn diagram, which is a diagram that demonstrates a logical test on a collection of sets. For example, what is a mammal and is tiny? In the google doodle, one of the possible (or logical) overlap between a set of "mammals" and a set of "tiny" is a mouse.
I don't quite remember learning about Venn diagram in primary school, but I'm pretty sure it was somewhat incorporated into secondary school math class where it's applied in probability theory.
A ∩ B
A ∪ B
Ring a bell?
Anyway, I'm thinking how amazing this Venn diagram would be in the development of logical thinking in small children, who would then have the potential of growing up to be logical adults. Just saying.
Read about the designing of the google doodle here.
Born in 1834 in Yorkshire, England, John Venn's first vocation is that of an Anglican priest as he was descended from a long line of church evangelicals. It was after his return to Cambridge University aged 28 years old to lecture, that he developed the diagram of his namesake.
Monday, April 28, 2014
a slap to the face
Since Sunday evening, my FB page was all abuzz with people rushing to share this particular link: http://www.themalaysianinsider.com/malaysia/article/malaysia-cannot-succeed-unless-equal-opportunity-given-to-non-muslims-says. It was an article on certain statements made by Obama during the Young Southeast Asian Leadership Initiative town hall meeting, held in conjunction with his visit to Malaysia over the weekend.
While I applaud him for being quite bold, I did not feel the ground move. He merely reiterated what Lee Kuan Yew had written in his book, and what we Malaysians are well aware of but do not openly discuss.
Regrets, I have a few...
I'm not writing this to go into on how wise he is or how Najib probably doesn't want to be friends with Obama anymore. I made an interesting observation amidst all this: none of my Malay friends have shared that link or like the shared link (none that I have observed anyway). Now that I think back on it, almost all my Malay friends chose the silent path when race as a subject crop up. I'm far from upset at them, but it does beg the question, what is so taboo about speaking up on unfairness or a show of support for equality?
Obama wasn't criticizing the Malay race. He voiced out what we all already know: that the Malays are one-up from the other races of the land. It's a fact. A way of life that the non-Malays cannot question and the Malays do not complain about.
Any factions who are oppressed or marginalized need a defender to speak up for them. I would like to see that things can go on the way it is if a 19 million strong voice actually spoke up for the non-Malays. But the sad and ugly truth is, most Malays do not want to get involved. Being involved means that they want their special rights to be taken away, and it affects not just them but their future generations too. I must agree that it's always nice to have insurance to hedge against the unknown. In their shoes, I wouldn't want to be worse off than when I started either.
What this effectively means is, although the President has spoken, we all just syok sendiri only. Nothing can change and nothing will change until the government changes. BN cannot take criticism and cannot care less if people don't agree with their ways. As predictable as the ticking hand of a clock, the government has quickly defended itself with logic that’s so off tangent and at the same time evasive. Read all about it here.
A system or society built on meritocracy is really not such a bad thing. If you run a cafe, and your cashier kept getting all the bills mixed up, would you keep him? If you run a hotel, and your hotel manager is rude to guests and spends all his time chatting on the phone, would you keep him? I'd be surprise if you said you would, for it's human nature to only want the best, especially if you're paying for something. Running a country is very much like running a business. Everyone must do their job well so that the business will flourish. And if you understand this, why would you want anything less for your country?
** Edit **
Included here a screenshot of the article by The Star, the government's preferred daily publication. I would deeply regret it if such a fine article is archived in the future and no one gets to read it anymore...
While I applaud him for being quite bold, I did not feel the ground move. He merely reiterated what Lee Kuan Yew had written in his book, and what we Malaysians are well aware of but do not openly discuss.
Regrets, I have a few...
I'm not writing this to go into on how wise he is or how Najib probably doesn't want to be friends with Obama anymore. I made an interesting observation amidst all this: none of my Malay friends have shared that link or like the shared link (none that I have observed anyway). Now that I think back on it, almost all my Malay friends chose the silent path when race as a subject crop up. I'm far from upset at them, but it does beg the question, what is so taboo about speaking up on unfairness or a show of support for equality?
Obama wasn't criticizing the Malay race. He voiced out what we all already know: that the Malays are one-up from the other races of the land. It's a fact. A way of life that the non-Malays cannot question and the Malays do not complain about.
Any factions who are oppressed or marginalized need a defender to speak up for them. I would like to see that things can go on the way it is if a 19 million strong voice actually spoke up for the non-Malays. But the sad and ugly truth is, most Malays do not want to get involved. Being involved means that they want their special rights to be taken away, and it affects not just them but their future generations too. I must agree that it's always nice to have insurance to hedge against the unknown. In their shoes, I wouldn't want to be worse off than when I started either.
What this effectively means is, although the President has spoken, we all just syok sendiri only. Nothing can change and nothing will change until the government changes. BN cannot take criticism and cannot care less if people don't agree with their ways. As predictable as the ticking hand of a clock, the government has quickly defended itself with logic that’s so off tangent and at the same time evasive. Read all about it here.
A system or society built on meritocracy is really not such a bad thing. If you run a cafe, and your cashier kept getting all the bills mixed up, would you keep him? If you run a hotel, and your hotel manager is rude to guests and spends all his time chatting on the phone, would you keep him? I'd be surprise if you said you would, for it's human nature to only want the best, especially if you're paying for something. Running a country is very much like running a business. Everyone must do their job well so that the business will flourish. And if you understand this, why would you want anything less for your country?
** Edit **
Included here a screenshot of the article by The Star, the government's preferred daily publication. I would deeply regret it if such a fine article is archived in the future and no one gets to read it anymore...