What the...

"e" in place of "the". I am chatting with my reception officer at the moment and he's telling me about the shortening of words and even phrases in Singlish. I noticed that "e" is put in place of "the" - even in writing, not just sms(!) - and I thought...maybe it's 'cos the "th" is a little hard to pronounce - hee.

Little did I know it's because "d" is already used for another abbreviation, that being "already". Yes, it's true. For those of the Singlish uninitiated and hard of imagination, the phrase "have you eaten already" can be more efficiently phrased as "eaten d". Voila.

That's my 5 min for today.

Oh and culture shock hits us in the most quiet ways... plays with your state of mind about everything. Slowly all woes become "it's Singapore!" even when it's totally unrelated and could happen to you in say Eastern Europe :S more on that point later.

Why should we bring up more children?

I read an article recently that highlighted the dawn of the New Girl Order made up of Single Young Female (SYF). They are appearing everywhere on Earth from affluent parts of Asia (Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong) to Western Europe (Spain, Italy and UK) they are spreading. The birthrate for Hong Kong is at record low 0.98; less than one child per woman. So 'highly' educated and affluent nations' rates of growth are dimishing and those countries in need of more education and higher literacy rates are increasing quickly. In less than 50 years, the world will be a different place. If education makes the world a better place, we better start educating quickly.

The article says "SYF are having too much fun". It also says because most SYF do not want to be "housewives" of men in their societies. Understandable. These are two reasons amongst many factors covered in the article adding to the trend of more SYF and later marriage - higher education, career development, better lifestyles.

But something is missing. It did not mention whether or not there is a need (or want) for SYF to bring up children at all.

Are there good reasons for having children? Not because they're cute, not because "you have to", not because "aww everyone else has them too", not because "I'm married". Could one reason be: there is a need and responsibility to bring up another human being? A responsibility to educate, to give life, to let them have choice, to let them change the world in their own way?

Yes, adoption works too because there are a lot of children who need good families and the world's population is exploding. But there haven't been a lot of statistics about SFYs adopting mass numbers of children around the world... so I wonder.

It's raining and pouring and lightening and thunder

My first experience of a monsoon season aka 'rainy season' is coming.

As Sharon describes it, in Singapore there are only two seasons, 'hot' season and 'rainy' season.

All my life I've wanted to experience a monsoon. I will challenge myself and maybe one other person who's game to stand outside with me once during this monsoon to feel the giant rain droplets soak through our clothes in an instant and look at the world from behind a veil of water.

No doubt I'll be unlucky enough to be caught without an umbrella at least once over the next couple of months. Let's just hope it's not before work.

One of the great things about the monsoon is the temporary reprieve it gives us from the humidity of the 'hot' season.

More Singaporean

In the interests of keeping me blogging and Emad mentioned that it really doesn't take that long to write an entry. I will challenge myself to write 5 minute entries.

Forgive all spelling mistakes etc.

Random observations of why I am becoming Singaporean:
- I stand on the left side of the escalator and walk on the right side. If people stand on the right side, I get irritated
- If I'm sitting on the outside of the bus seat, I would move sideways to let the other person sit inside, in case I have to get off the bus quickly
- I no longer say "thank you" the bus driver :(
- I like to eat breakfast at my desk
- I like to drink lots of 'teh-c'
- I take tissue with me whenever I'm going to eat lunch to save a table
- I say "ah" at the end of my sentences and I use "can" instead of "okay"

5 minutes up!