I found this little summary on the web.

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Nov 30, 2009
Fight alternative values

Archbishop tells them to recognise family as cornerstone of faith
By Yen Feng

THE leader of Singapore’s 30,000- strong Anglican community yesterday called on his followers to unite against ‘alternative cultures’ and recognise the family as a cornerstone of faith-building.

‘There’s hardly any consensus on mainstream values,’ Archbishop John Chew said in a sermon to about 10,000 people during the Church’s centenary service at Suntec City, citing the spread of ‘alternative’, ‘fringe’ and ‘fundamentalistic’ values.

Speaking to The Straits Times after the service, Dr Chew, who is also president of the National Council of Churches of Singapore, said he was referring to the erosion of mainstream culture by homosexuality, rampant materialism and religious extremism.

He spoke on the need for ‘classical compositions’ of family structures – father, mother and children – instead of non-traditional ones consisting of single, divorced or same-sex parents.

He said the West has had to face the consequences of the rise of non-traditional family structures and ‘alternative’ cultures.

In his sermon, he also spoke on the importance of procreation within the family structure. Referring to the low fertility rate, he said if Singaporeans do not produce enough babies, ‘the danger is that the mainstream population, its socio-cultural norms and ethos, will dwindle and diminish down the generations.’

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I do not know who this Doc Chew is.  What’s up, doc?  But I found this article being very disturbing.

Firstly, it smells of intolerance.  Secondly, it smells of generalization.  Thirdly, it just smells.

Homosexuality and same-gender parenthood – Right or wrong, I do not know.

Putting ‘Single, Divorced and Same-gender parenthood’ as one category – Right or wrong, I do not want to discuss either.

So…I skipped the discussion of all the above.  What else are there to talk about?  Well, the not so obvious.

Putting blame on erosion of mainstream culture due to other factors – It sounds like pushing the blame.  There are enough problems of families WITH classical compositions.

By putting emphasis that we derived the upkeep of our moral values from classical compositions of a family, it will cause a lot of stress to the children of the UNclassical compositions.  The children have no choice. They are the real victims. They will (if not already) get discriminated against.

So what if a family has classical compositions?  What if the father figure is a drug addict?  What if the mother figure is a compulsive gambler?  What if the only way to feed the baby brother is to steal milk powder from the store?  Just having a classical composition does not mean anything, Doc…  Try to live in the real world for a while, won’t you?

If the society is starting to be dominated by the not-so-mainstream-now culture, then it will become the dominating mainstream.  Such is evolution, Doc…learn to accept it.

I do not know who you are or who you think you are.  You may be the nicest guy in the world, but you are so full of **** from what this article said about your thinking.

Edited Additions:

I happened to chance upon the full article.  I must add… Doc, you are really a weird piece of work.  So if your faction in this country is united and so unlike the faction of the same name in the west.  They are divided.  Err…. you are part of the same faction, whether you like it or not OR whether you are in the East or West, your faction is divided.

Besides, this faction is hardly the MAINSTREAM of the chinese culture that you have obviously descended from… so much for having some standards.

‘Live for nothing. Die for something.’ – John Rambo

When we talked about Rambo, we often associate the series of movies with violence, muscles over brains, blood and gore. Maybe we had been selective. Maybe the dialogues are too little. But there is actually a lot of issues faced by soldiers returning from wars. We are confronted with personal issues at every point in our lives. We put a lot of blame in our surroundings.

Recently, I was talking to a number of my younger friends, who are still schooling. One of them is talking about the lack of options in his choice of studies. He is being put into a course which he has absolutely no interest in. And he is collecting failing in each semester. He said that he would like to do Mass Communication and possibly do Public Relations work. He said that he could write. As my usual self, I was being very harsh with him.

I asked him how much time is he spending to review his studies and does he know what is PR work? His reply was 2 hours a day as a lot of time is needed to travel to school. He feels that PR work is interacting with people and writing in a positive way of the companies engaging a PR company. That is a lot of excuses and a very shallow understanding of PR work.

Unfortunately for him, I have a bit of experience in PR work, which consists of a lot more writing than he expected. It also consists of a lot of ‘studying’ into areas that he may or may not be interested in. So I told him to write a summary of each module that he attended every day. He was shocked and came with a lot of excuses of how tough it is for him.  Furthermore, I cannot imagine having two hours every day to review his schoolwork as sufficient. Given school is 9 hours, sleep is 8 hours, travelling is 3 hours (which is ridiculous in this country in my opinion), there is still 4 hours left. He should have another 2 hours to spend on his school work. When we told him that there should still be free time in between modules, he came up with the lame excuse of not feeling like looking at his studies to ‘clear (his) mind’.

To me, these are issues that he has to come to terms with. If he cannot graduate from his course, it also mean that he will not be able to cope with the PR work that he so desire to work in. We all have personal issues and surrounding pressures. We have to come to terms with them by ourselves. Sure, it will be great to get some external help. But if we do not use those help to propel us towards the direction we want to go, then its just wasted effort. Then again, who the hell am I to advise him? But I do not have the compassion to comfort him. To me, he just need to face up to the harsh reality. That’s life, pal.

I do not support excessive physical punishment.  But my belief is that physical punishment has its place in the education of one’s child.

When I was growing up, visible physical marks of a cane is enough to shame me from doing the wrong things again.  Times have changed.  But is it for the better?

The newspaper reported this:

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A MAN was charged in a district court on Wednesday with ill-treating his year-old son.

The 36-year-old coordinator, who cannot be named to protect the identity of the child, allegedly slapped the toddler’s cheeks and hit his right arm, causing him unnecessary physical pain on Feb 18.

His lawyer, Mr Lai Kwok Seng, told the court that he would be making representations.

The case is scheduled for a pre-trial conference in a Community Court on Dec 7.

Anyone convicted of ill-treating a child under his care and custody can be fined up to $4,000 and/or jailed for up to four years.

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We need to know more details than what is offered in this summary report.  But if  a light slap is considered as ill-treatment…..we will be looking at more problems in near future.

In another perspective, I have observed that I will need to break into a smile to greet my 1 year old.  Even on days when I am beat and tired.  The kid could not care less that I had a lousy day.  Just to get his attention, I have to put up an exaggerated greeting.

Baby Xavier is 1 year old. We decided to throw a party for him at our new home.

We prepared most of the food by ourselves.  Everyone put in at least a dish.  So its a lot of preparation while trying to keep away from getting into each other foot.

Baby Xavier was in a fantastic mood that day.  He got lots of gifts, hugs and carry carry.  To people who say that we should not babytalk to babies….well, its just too bad coz even between my wife and I, we babytalk.

Thats the baby cheering to you.

Here’s a photo of great grandma and baby X.

That’s our little family.

Baby X’s Godfamily.

Baby X’s birthday cake.

We are getting ready form a family party for Baby X first birthday party. We have decided to prepare the food by ourselves. The biggest issue is keeping the food warm. So I have contacted a number of catering equipment rental companies for that.

As we are preparing the food ourselves, I need to come up with the list of food that we will be serving. So here’s the list:

- Sotong Ball/Fish Ball
- Fried Rice (Luncheon meat, mixed peas, eggs, dried cuttle fish, prawns)
- Fried Bee Hoon (Milly is cooking this)
- Sambal Eggs or Devilled Eggs
- Fish Cutlet (I am buying these)
- Fried Chicken Wings (Ordering these as well)
- Curry Chicken (My Milly has a hellish flavored recipe)
- Satay (Ordering as well)
- Otah (Ordering too)
- Mixed Veg with Tofu
- Friut Jelly (My younger sister-in-law making these)
- Cake (Whats a birthday party without cake?!)

I was just browsing youtube and saw this.

This is a very good advertisment.  Her voice is soothing…..

English is my preferred language.  It takes a lot more effort on my part to read Mandarin.  When it comes to radio station, I used to listen to Class95.  I prefer to listen to news in English.  At least, I will be able to figure out who, what, when and where.  Mandarin news will translate names into Mandarin.  Sometimes, they used phonetics.  Other times, they use the meanings.  Its too confusing for me.  Try finding out the Mandarin names of soccer teams of EPL.  It will give you enough of a headache.

I listen to the radio when I am driving.  I seldom play my own songs.  The main reason is that I want to listen to traffic news.  Recently, I decided to listen more of Y.E.S933.  I was very finally pissed out enough with the Morning Express of Class95.  They have good traffic updates.  But because they are a big station (with a big audience), they get many info-mercials.  Advertisement disguised as a topic between the DJs.  Secondly, they tend to throw out a topic and will only ‘tell you about it later’ to hook the audience to stay with them.  Humans are curious creatures.  But I hate the suspense especially when they announce something (seemingly interesting) and I cannot wait til later coz I have reached my desination and radio is no longer available.  Thirdly, all the female DJs on Class95 irritates me for reasons that are unknown (even to myself).  They just irritates me.  I am sure that they are nice people.. but they wun get my vote on being a popular DJ.

So those are the likes and dislikes for me.

Since I have been listening to 933 quite a bit in the past month.  I have been hearing a lot of buzz about the 15th Singapore Hit Awards.  Its an annual award show.  Some popular singers, local and overseas, are invited to attend, receive awards and perform.

With popular names in the Mandaring pop culture, I would imagine that it is quite a major thing.  But it seems that the media in Singapore is a tough cookie.  What is interesting to them?  In the Entertainment section of Saturday, I found no reference to this award show at all.  Maybe coz I am reading the wrong newspapers as well.

Now this is an interesting band.  And they have been around for quite some time too.  So success is not an overnight thing for them.