Hanging out with Kids

One of my favourite things to do is to hang out with my nephews. They are pre-schoolers and are teaching me alot about life, particularly what's really important and how to have fun. It is therapeutic for me. Sunday evenings is family time and whenever we can, we'd go to the park with their scooters and convert it into a Formula One race track with a digital stopwatch and all. Another favourite activity is gravity defying swings - I'd run forward, grabbing the swing with kid in tow and let go at the last minute. It's the simple things in life that makes us happy!

A Legacy

Recently, a friend of mine passed away after a 3-year battle with cancer. She had started an outreach program for women with the vision of "empowering women to empower women" - her goal was to equip and encourage women to help troubled women. She had put up her home for rental and moved into a bigger place so that she could have more space to hold events, life skills courses and counselling sessions. With the help of friends, she organised parties to raise awareness as well as had fun clubs like jewellry making, simple cooking classes and movie nights.

When she first started on this journey, we were reluctantly supportive. Most of us are working professionals and felt apprehensive about getting involved with "troubled women". We have no training in counselling nor did we have time on our hands. In her last 6 months, she had planted some seeds in her gentle and unassuming way in the hope of having some of us build on the foundation she laid.

Since her death, one lady has said "yes" to taking up the role of Program Director and a few of us have formed a committee to continue the initiatives that she started as well as raise funds for this cause. A couple more have signed up for counselling courses so that they can be equipped to help those in need and a few trained counsellors may volunteer their services pro bono. What she founded is taking a life of its own. It's made me see the truth in this statement - "the seed must die in order for it to bear fruit".

Changing perspective

I've been shortsighted since I was nine from reading all kinds of storybooks in bed. Putting on my glasses really does make a difference for me. Recently, I've acquired a new pair of glasses called "coaching" and it's changing the way I look at people and myself. I especially like this statement that a coach shared - mentoring is imparting to a person my knowledge and experience; coaching is drawing out from the person what is already in them - it's believing that they already have the answers and simply providing the support that they need to find them. That's truly empowering!

Little Red Dot

Singapore (or what we sometimes call "the little red dot" - a term made famous by Tommy Koh and Chang Li Lim's book of the same name) is where I was raised and now live. Much has been said about this tiny nation, its achievements and idiosyncracies. For me, it's where most of my family are; it's relatively safe; most things are well run; hawker food is cheap with regulated hygiene standards, public transportation is good. It's a hodge podge of cultures and influences.

Like Singapore, I've bits of different things - part Peranakan and part Teochew; part Asian and part Western in my thinking. I'm also of the "in-between" generation in Singapore, old enough to remember when there were rubber estates with the reek of vulcanized rubber and tugboats huddled together by the godowns of downtown Singapore, yet young enough to enjoy video games, roller coasters and fast food.

The Rambutan

I've decided to name this blog "Rambutan Tree" because it holds alot of happy memories for me. One of my earliest recollections as a child was climbing up the low hanging branches of the trees in my grand-aunt's house and perching on its branches while I helped myself to the succulent, sweet fruit. Every now and then, I would flick off the little black ants which scampered up and down the branches and dropped a few fruits down to my brother who was afraid of heights :-)

Rambutan or nephelium lappaceum is a tropical tree, native to South East Asia. There are a number of varieties (including the yellow fruited kind) and they grow to a height of 10-20 m. The best part, of course, is the round or oval fruit. You can pop off the reddish skin covered with soft spines by squeezing it in between your hands (you may get a squirt or two of juice in your eye). Your reward is the sweet, succulent flesh which is hard to resist(note though that the seed is toxic). Needless to say, it's my favourite fruit.

Like the rambutan, I was born in SE Asia, in Kuching, Sarawak - the year of my birth saw a bumper crop of durians, so much so that they were thrown out and rotted on the streets. My mother attributes my aversion to this other tropical fruit to the stench that hung over the town like a stale blanket. To this day, the great divide in my family has been those who love and hate the durian fruit.