Flash cards

A parent of one of my ex-pupils from school gave me some handy tips today on how to raise bright kids. I asked her for tips – not that she thought her boys were bright. And after I lamented on the lack of time I have to actually engage them in enriching activities every day, she told me to make full use of the six weeks of holidays, and that I am going to do.

So I pulled out some of the old flash cards that I made last year. I abandoned the flash cards the moment M started pre-school. I just didn’t have the energy to keep it up and that’s a lousy excuse. And while M started on flash cards when he was eight months old, I have not even started L on that and he’s already fourteen months. L also doesn’t know as many words as M did at the same age. M’s vocabulary at fourteen months was perhaps thrice as wide, no kidding.

M was keen to review the cards. I’ll see how long we can keep this up. I cannot do the Glenn Doman method of doing this five times a day, five sets of five words. Mine is the abridged version. But I suppose any exposure is better than none. Today’s words were of some of his favourite food – egg, spaghetti, cake, ice-cream and bread. L’s words for tomorrow would be Mummy, Daddy, car, clock and socks.

Staff BBQ

We had a staff BBQ held in school earlier this evening. Stayed for only a short while before taking a walk to the service station to collect my car. It wasn’t a bona fide BBQ in the sense that we didn’t have to do any of the bbqing. People were employed to do the work for us, which, on any other occasion, would actually have been the most fun part. The satay was really good. The otah too. And the mee goreng. The sambal stingray, of which I took only a miniscule bite before dumping, was almost tasteless. A pity I had to leave just as the crowd got larger; would have loved to stay and catch up a little with the rest.

I wonder why

kids never seem to tire of playgrounds and parks.

MacRitchie Reservoir - one of the places we frequent

I need some new places. One would be the Jacob Vallas (or Ballas?) Children’s Garden, as recommended by two friends. Another is Fidgets, which I came across in a local forum. Neither is new. Just that we’ve never been there. Now I’ll just have to try to convince the hubs to try these out without his usual skepticism.

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The Before and the After

I’m not all that great when it comes to digital imaging and photo editing, but knowing what to do can totally transform a photo.

before

after

Clutter on the right is removed. Texture added. Sides of photo, particularly corners, burned. Contrast upped. Voilà!

A Thousand Splendid Suns

I finished the book last week. Man I laboured through it. Not that it was such a dreary boring book, no. It couldn’t be any more otherwise. It’s just that the only time I get to read is in class, post-PSLE, and with that noise, it makes reading and re-reading difficult. I only truly enjoy a book in dead silence, with no distractions. And an annoying quirk that I have in reading is that I read, re-read and again, not only the sections that I enjoy, but sometimes even the dry bits. I study the language, the use of words, read on patronisingly when I feel an author tries too hard, or marvel at a lone word that brings the point across.

Coming back to the book, one of my favourite parts is when Mariam was executed. How she could have tried to flee but didn’t, how her knees did not buckle at the thought of what was ahead. And on a side note, I wondered if a person died immediately if he were beheaded. Or would he be alive in damnable pain for a few seconds, his eyes still flickering, open, shut, open, then shut again, on the detached head that had rolled several metres from the body, brain nerves sending signals of excruciating pain to the head, intensified at the area around the neck where flesh had been cleaved, nerves severed? Mariam was not beheaded, by the way, though I did think, sickeningly so, that that might have made for a more gripping end. She was shot in the head with a Kalashnikov. Tsk, is that not macabre enough?

For the harvest is ripe

I spent the whole morning downloading free textures from Flickr for use on my photos. What a great day! Though at one point I was frustrated when the laptop hung on me with five downloads in tow.

I notice how my titles make absolutely no sense to anyone else except me.

All I want for Christmas

Canon EF 85mm f/1.8

except that Christmas is tomorrow! After using the $400 LDS claim, I suppose I’ll only have to top up $200 max.

Small. Light. Fast to focus. Great for portraits. And relatively inexpensive. I’ll set my sight on something with a red ring next year.