How far can a five year old ride on a balancing bike?

Our family made the following cycling (not all) trip on Sunday. My couple and our five year old son. I am on a Tern Link C7. Wife on a Polygon Urbano 3.0. Son is on a loopfiets or balancing bike, or kid training bike.

So, what if the law didn't state?

In this modern age, people are asking if this and that is legal or not. Is that the ultimate guideline for us to follow? Have we forgotten this thing called the conscience? By the way, are we to base our acts solely on the laws?

Things that are so obviously wrong that all the while nobody finds the need for such obvious things to be explicitly stated in the laws. Interestingly, when some raise the question asking if such obviously wrong thing is wrong, there are people who really try to answer the question. More surprisingly, such obviously wrong thing could be argued to be not wrong just because legal laws didn't say so!

前车之鉴

The last sentence in What same-sex "marriage" has done to Massachusetts says:

To the rest of America: You've been forewarned.

I feel strongly that it should be: ...

To the rest of the world: You've been forewarned.

Finding safe products for mother to be

Do you find it difficult to find suitable products for pregnant women? Most products that are not targeted at pregnant women typically advise against being used by pregnant women. Why is this so? I have a guess ... .

In this era of evidence-based medicine, the need for evidence is a necessity. Researchers conduct scientific studies to gather data and hopefully can arrive at statistically significant results. When a product is not targeted at pregnant women, they would not want to take extra risk to test it on pregnant women. Therefore, no data, so there is no evidence. It is also quite difficult to get pregnant women to volunteer to be their "guinea pig".

Beaute de Maman aims to provide health & beauty products that have been extensively studied and evaluated, allergy and obstetrician tested.

Furthermore, in order to ensure the safety of both mother-to-be and fetus, Beaute de Maman utilizes only natural and herbal ingredients, and develop products by a board-certified obstetrician to treat problems specifically related to the physiological and hormonal changes experienced by women during pregnancy.

They are offering free shipping with $25 purchase on domestic orders. You may
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I feel the need to mention that, I did not use it (obviously!), and neither did my wife.

We need Actions Against AIDS?

When asked about the results of his fight against Aids,

“We have hardly moved from the time we began 20 years ago. The number of infected people has been growing. The trend these last few years shows a jump which is alarming — 357 in 2006, up from 317 the year before,” he (DR ROY Chan) says. Last year, the figure shot up to 422.

And on the question “WHAT MORE MUST BE DONE TO HELP THOSE WHO HAVE HIV/AIDS?”

Three things — HIV sufferers need help to buy expensive retroviral drugs, employers must not discriminate against employees who contract HIV, and three, educational programmes must reinforce the drive for safe sex.

1. I have mentioned before, he and his Action For Aids is not fighting against AIDS. He is fighting ... for the wellbeing of people with HIV/AIDS.

2. Instead of admitting that the approach is not working, many other things were being said, with implications existence of intolerance, discrimination, inappropriate laws, etc.

3. The first two things mentioned have nothing to do in fighting against AIDS. These are about the wellbeing of people with HIV/AIDS.

4. There is no such thing as safe sex! Sex has always been dangerous in terms of viral infections. That's why it should only be done between life trusting people, i.e. husband and wife.

5. I further feel that the possibility of safer sex due to another not exactly related technology in contraception, started and caused the spread of many STDs. Thus, promoting safer sex cannot be the way to go.

It's getting more difficult to stay home

This blog title, Trying to stay home.... interests me. In the blogosphere, there are many moms, and specifically stay at home moms. I thought historically it is natural and right for moms to stay at home. However, this modern, or should I said twisted world ... is making it so difficult for moms to stay at home.

My wife recently mentioned to me she felt her native country Malaysia seems to be lagging behind because her Malaysia friends find it strange that why isn't she working as if she is supposed to work. Whereas here, most will envy her for being able to stay at home.

Nevertheless, staying at home doesn't mean not earning money :) Many moms in the blogosphere will agree.

However, earning money shouldn't be the focus. What's importance is our contribution to the society and world. To us, investing in the upbringing of our children is much more valuable than earning money. Unless, the job or work one does outside benefits the world and society in a greater and significant way, such as running a charity.

Cruelty or Teamwork

Many times we see beauties in nature. Some times we see disturbing happenings in nature. For example, the parasite practice described in the article Parasite turns host into bodyguard.

At the end of the article, it highlighted there were some sacrifices by some par­a­sitoid larvae for their brothers and sisters. How are these few being chosen? Whatever the way is, is it fair? ... Nevertheless, because they benefit those who we perceive as their "brothers and sisters", so we use the word "sacrifice".

In the case of the caterpillar, as the par­a­sitoid larvae were not perceived as their "brothers and sisters", its death is a sad and cruel one. What if we see them as a team, can we then sense some beauty in how the caterpillar had "lived for the sake of others".

From a smaller unit, we see unfairness. From a bigger unit, we may see teamwork. E.g. in a family, the husband or the wife can see unfaireness as they are tied down in different ways, one to work and one to house and kids. Alternatively, from the family perspective, there can be beauty of a harmonious family.

Who do you call?

The other day my wife called telling me that a bamboo pole with bedsheet had been blown off the holder and fallen down. However, it did not drop all the way to ground level, but hanging at 8th level by the bedsheet in an unsafe manner. Accordingly, it is not quite possible to be retrieved by the neighbor at the 8th level. Since she has a 2 month old baby to care for, it wasn't convenience for her to go to the neighbor, who is stranger to us.

Thus, we decided to call for help. I called the neighborhood police post. After briefly describing to the policeman who answered my call, he tried to explain to me that they do not typically help residents to pick up their fallen off items. WHAT!!! I almost shouted at him ... What did I shout?, "I AM NOT INTERESTED IN GETTING BACK MY BEDSHEET NOR THE BAMBOO POLE!" I explained, "I'm not calling to seek your help to retrieve my stuffs. I called because I want to alert you of a potentially dangerous situation that need to be attended to." However, I didn't feel that he agreed. He briefly asked for some details like my name and address, but happy with just my last name and didn't mention to me his name nor any reference number if I would like to follow-up.

May be I should have called the Civil Defence. If so, he could have suggested that to me. Nevertheless, to suggest that it isn't their job to retrieve items for residents indicates:
1) He is not sensitive to dangerous situation;
2) He seems to be interested in reasons of why they need not act;
3) His listening skills need training as his first concern is from his point of view, rather than that of the other party.

Eventually, I don't know what actually happened. According to my wife, it is still hanging there after an hour, and later both items were not being seen. I presume nobody is hurt by the accident.

Work life balance

What is the similarity between a person having 2 full-time jobs, and a family with both husband and wife working?

Are double-income families in some way sub-ideal families?

A person normally would not want to have 2 full-time jobs. He has got other things in life to attend to.

A family normally would not need double income. They have got other family needs to attend to.

If the society is to be blamed, then it would be a sub-ideal society.

Some may think that the wife is contributing to the society. Good if that's true, and after making sure that the other family needs were attended to. However, how many of the working wives are truly doing more by working then by raising up their next generations?

Start courtship early

This is an interesting and good idea: start writing love letters to express your love to your spouse to be, before you know who is he/she. I heard this in a talk by the Generations of Virtue Ministry.

Express how you have live each moment of your life maturing and preparing yourself for him/her. E.g. You do not flirt with others. You have always behaved as if your spouse is just next to you. Your plans of how you would take good care of him/her.

How touching it is to read such love letters of your spouse when you get married later.

Butterfly effect

Few weeks back I watched the movie 'Butterfly Effect'. In the study of ecology, scientists have also learnt that minute changes will bring about huge effects. Similarly, in many nature parks, signboards were put up to instruct tourists not to feed the wild animals to avoid undesirable effects on the species. Today, in two conversations, some friends have noticed that young men in some countries are less manly. A conjecture comes to my mind, is it probably that most man in Singapore went through the army training at a young age of about 18 serves the function of boosting the manly characteristics of men here?

On some further thoughts, it seems that some evolutional changes that have been happening for at least some decades should be seriously studied. As more women step into the fields of men and as the living environment become safer, the need for muscles and those capabilities once mainly or solely belong to men reduces. This results in an environment where men are more unlikely to play the full role of the male species, in terms of protecting the females, being the bread-earner, making all decisions, etc. As a result, women are becoming less womanly and men are becoming less manly.

I suspect this could be a major reason for the low rates of successful marriages in many modern societies. As men and women not playing the proper roles of husband and wife, respectively, the relationship within families could not be properly formed and grow.

Feeding the hungry wild animals may appear as an act of kindness, but the effect on these animals could be disastrous, unless the importance of the animals to acquire their own survival skills is being re-enforced. Similarly, for women to be able to survive by themselves and contribute more to societies after the expansion of their capabilities may appear good, but this might have caused men to be less manly. It is as if the magnetic bonding force between two magnets weaken is due to the north and south poles of the magnet becoming less ‘northly’ and ‘southly’ respectively. Relating this to the case of a family, the bonding force between husband and wife would be weakened due to the husband and wife becoming less manly and womanly, respectively.