(193) A Dream 3

My husband and I made another trip up to visit the book room I wrote about in (993).

The corner shop lot is beautifully renovated. The staff quarter looks lived in finally. To date, we have one full time counter staff, one kitchen worker, a book seller and a temporary manager whose real job is to oversee translation projects in different parts of Asia.

Sad to say, my husband and I put out a fleece and found that we are not supposed to move up at all. I don't quite understand why I am being given much time to read, contemplate, write a few passages now and then. But I have to accept that here is where God wants me to be. Last year, when I prayed about a part-time teaching project to earn some money for travel, God generously gave me two trips: one to Shanghai and the other to Canton. Therefore I am most grateful and could not complain  at all. If it fits in with what God allows me to do, I hope to see two children two or three times a week. I will be paid to speak to them in Mandarin: a six year old boy and an infant girl. The ultimate goal would be to build a love for Chinese literature within these two children. My neighbor would transport me there and back as she was hired to transport the boy from school and then to cook dinner for the family.

We will see how that goes. But back to the book room, I saw hundreds of donated books being sorted and entered into the database. A few pieces of furniture were placed in different corners. God willing, the book room may even open on January 15, 2013!

(192) Zelda's update

This is another installment continuing from (9).

I just talked to my friend Zelda on the Skype. She has booked her return air ticket and if she could not extend her stay she would be back by January 28, 2013. I guess after writing to each other for over a year and then spending almost 6 months in the same housing area, he is still not exactly sure that she is the one he should wed.

Zelda went to visit her friends in Arkansas and Seattle. The church her boy friend worships in actually blessed her with a trip to Washington DC. During the week ends she managed to visit many places of interest around New Jersey. It was a wonderful rest, she managed to read many books and educate herself in psychology, how to listen to the raped, the sexually abused, the traumatized ... Even more important than gathering head knowledge, she was able to apply what she learned as God led her to those who needed a compassionate listening ear.

Now, more than before, I am sure God has good plans for her. America may just be a starting point. Being a practical and logical person, of course I would love to wrap up the saga with a wedding march. But our God is a surprising God at times, His ways are higher than ours. I could never perceive His thoughts by using my finite brain. And so I eagerly await Jan 28, it would be lovely to see Zelda face to face. Here, I reiterate that in the internet one finds more scams than romance. Unless you are sure that you are smart and scam proof, it is better to leave it alone. I wish that every woman would have the good fortune of Zelda in seeking a suitable mate in the cyber world, but that is a wish that cannot come true in our imperfect world!

(191) Recycling books

In my recycling of books, I have had two requests. A missionary translator from North America (working in South East Asia) asked me to keep a look out for any reading materials written by Mercer Mayer. It does not matter how old or tattered it is, he wants them. But until today, I have not seen a single one in book stores, second hand book shops or in the piles of books that friends gave to me.

Many years ago, I was working in Texas as a young adult. A co-worker mentioned the blue cheese moon and I was incredulous. Until then I have not heard about Dr. Seuss. Another kind person actually went home and hunted for a Dr. Seuss book to show me. In The Watchers, on page 268, quite a few children's authors were listed: Dr. Seuss, Maurice Sendak, Phil Parks, Susi Bohdal, Sue Dreamer, and Mercer Mayer.

So now I have an idea that Mercer Mayer is or was among the top few children authors that anyone well read cares to name. Another book lover asked me to look out for books by Alexandra McCall Smith. I found one, she gladly took it but asked me to continue to look out for the Lady Detective series.

(190) Watchers by Dean Koontz

I think I wrote a blog on another book of Dean Koontz quite some time back. There is a list of 39 books by him, he is indeed a most prolific author. Watchers is his 11th book. It is the second I have come across.

He writes well. By looking at the many titles he chose, I would guess that he sells horror tales. But no, he claimed he regretted writing Phantoms because most people classified it as horror but he preferred to think of it as a science fiction. I guess those who look for thrills could see it as a horror story while others could logically log it as a sci-fi.

In our world, there are many happenings that cannot be measured by science. Hence we have the supernatural as well as meta-physics. Yet cutting edge science is approaching to the capability of playing the role of our creator. We need to be afraid of what greedy and mad scientists could produce in the name of science. We have just passed the supposed the end of the world scare predicted by the Mayan calendar. When will that be, no one knows! Only we are racing towards it by destroying the earth.

(189) Book of Secrets by Chris Robertson

Out of this book, I enjoyed the different portions of the Black Hand. Either the author managed to find different stories of the same theme from different centuries, or he creatively wrote them in different styles.

As to the three individuals who could travel through time, they sounded like angels. But they seemed eminently modern in the way they talk. I rest in the premise that people read to relax and to escape from a mundane life, hence fantasy and science fiction are popular. Just like fairy tales, there is not much point for anyone to apply logic to analyse them. The ending seemed dangling, he managed to obtain the book of secrets, but did he manage to write the article he set out to research? After that, what is he going to do with the book? If I could provide my choice of the ending, he would auction off the book, then he need not work for an extra day in his life. If he enjoys writing, perhaps he would write as a hobby.

(188) Guardians of the Key by Clio Gray

In a wave of books that seemed to be related to relic and icon, this is interesting as it involved Italy and England. Yet somehow it was rather difficult to follow, I have some difficulties in determining between the ancient past and the immediate past. It was much easier, for instance, reading 187, 186 and 184.

Europe is one continent that I did not have a chance to study its geography and regional industry in detail. I have always thought of China as the center for silk production. Though we learned in history that silk worm and mulberry cuttings were taken out of China and brought to Italy, I did not envisage an Italian town involved in silk production as well as a portion of London dedicated to embroidery and sewing.

It is unthinkable that two households could be tortured and killed for a shawl which contained some information embroidered on the edges. Yet people have been killed for something much less! My sons have been talking about the young lady who was raped and assaulted in New Delhi who passed away in Singapore. Mabel, though a fictional character, was lucky that she had Stroop to look out for her.

(187) Shattered Icon by Bill Napier

Here is another book that touches on ancient religious icon. Prior to reading Da Vinci Code after hearing all kinds of attacks by all types of well meaning Christians, I did not even know the meaning of icon. I did read of the Holy Grail in Robin Hood as a teenager but did not know what it was until I accepted Jesus as my savior and hung out in church circles.

Before this book, I have read another book written as a boy conscripted to work on a boat in the 1500s. I worked tediously through another that talked about the Roanoke settlement that was abandoned. This book supplied a good explanation to the Roanoke mystery. I have read about the Spanish Inquisition. But I did not link the animosity of British versus Spanish in the high seas until I read the word "auto-da-fe". I cannot imagine such barbaric acts like flogging until a person dies nor could I associate hanging, cutting one's male organ off and opening the bowels before the prisoner dies. It sounds as barbaric as the ancient Mongols.

If you are not already frightened by my statements, perhaps it would be interesting to read this book. Life was certainly harsher and harder in those days of sailing compared to our modern comforts.

(186) Pyramid by Tom Martin

This is one book that convincingly threaded together quite a number of ruins flung over the entire globe and gave a good reason how the ancients could perform superhuman feats in building huge structures with no modern technology.

Here in the book, the conspirators are known as the Corporation. One hero and one heroine somehow managed to save the day by globe trotting. They happened to be both young and good looking. Of course there was romance brewing! How else an author could con women into buying expensive paperbacks all over the world. Just like Dan Brown's best sellers, the main characters are academics from famous universities.

Nonetheless, I still think it is a good read, well worth my time and losing some sleep over finishing it fast.

(184) The Codex by Douglas Preston

An entire batch of books came from my brother. These were meant for my children. But as things turned out, I would be reading them first.

Whether Preston meant to or not, his book could be bought and given to people who are either enemies or strangers to their siblings. Perhaps if such recipients were to read this book, some of them may contemplate that blood is indeed thicker than water.

I learned quite a few new obscure facts from this book that was set in the US and then Honduras. The book was written to entertain and inform the readers about the Amazon basin and the foothills of the Andes. I have enjoyed a good description of the Cloud forest, hills that experience cool weather and yet receive lots of rainfall which translate into passing clouds that obscure visibility.

Not that I have ever bought any novels as Christmas presents, if my readers are in the habit of choosing books as Christmas or birthday gifts, this would be a good one (especially for those who like adventure, geography, family dynamics, happy endings ...).

(182) Pragmatics

My friend and I have been attending a prayer meeting for almost two years. One day she asked me over dinner in an Indian Muslim restaurant, "I noticed you have been keeping silent even when a topic was raised that would interest you during the prayer meeting?"

My answer was I sensed that my contribution was not expected nor appreciated. I could neither justify nor prove it, but lingering feelings were there nevertheless. my friend, let us call her Kate here, said that she had not experienced it thus far.

Half a year later, she related her own experience during one prayer meeting when I was out of town. Kate opened her mouth and shared her knowledge about a new hand phone which she had researched when someone mentioned that she was not sure which type of hand phone to buy for her aged mum. Shortly after that sharing, a fourth person asked about some computer related subject, the youngest mother in the group refused to answer and smiled sweetly at Kate and said she deferred to the expert. Now that statement was laced with saccharin and the pointed stare was filled with venom. Kate told me that she felt like she was in a nightmare and something improbable was happening.

Kate asked me if she was going crazy? I laughed and said that it probably happened exactly as she related even if I was not there. I was not surprise at all! Personally I went through something similar, an equally sweet remark came from a demure, loving, proper lady who was actually the hidden leader of the group. There was nothing wrong with her suggestion, her body language nor any mannerism. But I distinctly felt rebuked for sharing my experience and hands on knowledge with a younger mother who needed help. We were told gently to form a new interest group for special education. In other words, the mother who asked the questions should not have taken everybody's time. I should not have consumed collective time by answering. That was the very last time I contributed in that group. I continued to attend irregularly and phased myself out gradually.

While I responded by slowly distancing myself from this group, I have joined another group where the agenda is on the table and everyone is free to keep quiet and speak his or her piece by choice. My objective is simple, I want to pray in a group, be encouraged and if possible I will encourage others.

There is really no need to be part of a group that involves not only group dynamics but where I have to deal with an unexpected set of pragmatics. According to my son, Michael, there is a small group of people who could neither sense nor learn these unwritten rules which no one talks about. Such a group of people would always feel like outsiders and would never be accepted by the normal folks. I wonder if Kate and I are marginally part of this group of "weird" outcasts? Why did I take two years to realize that there is nothing wrong with me? If the earlier of folks thrives on absolute control, then they would have to do it without my support. It may take Kate longer to decide to leave.

(181) News

My grand ma had a saying in Cantonese: even at a hundred years old, one still hears of something new.

Recently, I heard through the grapevine that a rather indulgent mother claimed that she was beaten by her eldest daughter. Since I do not personally know this woman nor her daughter, I cannot speculate further.

But I do know of another case. One rich lady adopted a female baby in the former's late forties. To the former's credit, she did bring up three lawyers and two accountants. Sad to say, she did not bring up this adopted child in a wise way. Instead, she indulged in the latter's every whim. For every sensible parent, we know what instant gratification leads to: the making of one big ego and an ongoing list of wishes.

Twenty years later, the adoptive mom was in her sixties. By then she was suffering from high blood pressure and diabetes. This sickly woman is the attention seeking type. She thought nothing of calling her working children with all types of pretext to get them to visit her during working hours. After a while, none of her children would answer her phone calls at work. Thus was her own downfall: one morning she was not feeling well but no help was in sight. When someone finally came after work, she sustained some brain damage because of a mild heart attack.

Soon after, more phone calls and sms deluge her children, this time claiming that the adopted daughter beat her and drew blood. Her children were at wit's end with this new tactic until they spent much money in installing CCTV in every room. Once images of the living area are on line, the SOS call stopped.

I cannot help but wonder if this similar technological solution would help in the first case. Would mother and daughter push and whack each other if they know fully well that full video would be recorded and other members of the family could access it 24 hours a day, 7 days a week?

(180) Executive Orders by Tom Clancy

This is a very thick (1273 pages) book. The main idea is to have the newly appointed Vice President who did not get elected by the electorate promoted to be the President of the United States after a disaster that killed 80% of the elected government.

The trait that the new president has which distinguished him from all the others is that he hates politics. Since he was not elected, he never accepted a single dollar campaign fund. For once, America has a decent chance of having  a bunch of efficient and non-corrupted officials.

I find the first part very interesting with a working First Lady and a toddler in the White House. However, when I moved to the part of warfare with Iran-Iraq, things became heavy. I could no longer keep track of names of combatants, advisers, countries, intelligent officers ... Well, if I am studying it for history, I would have created a table of notes to keep track. For leisure reading, I chose to skip certain parts that hold no interest for me. Kind of a waste not to read from beginning to end! Clancy is certainly a big picture author.

(179) retail therapy

I went to visit my childhood friend. She showed me four working shirts: two with long sleeves and two with short sleeves. They are lovely shirts: white, black, pink and purple. Each with different collars and minor variations in design. Come to think of it, when we first started to work we would go to look at shirts like that in Metrojaya (a departmental store popular many years ago) on Saturdays but could not afford to buy any of them.

Don't ask me why, she actually bought them a size smaller and after keeping them for a year in her closet she decided to give them to my daughter, Elizabeth. I was of course overjoyed as those were lovely clothes of high quality. As I was driving back, I wonder if this is a sort of retail therapy. You see, when we were that size, we were living from hand to mouth. It would be a good month if we could save one hundred dollars. Then we rolled into the land of becoming mothers. New mothers obviously could not fit into tight shirts. Then we quickly grow into practical women who wear clothes that required no ironing. Now that our children are off our hands, we finally have the extra time to go shopping to our hearts' content. For her, she has a high disposable income too, thanks to her inheritance from her mom.

Well, I happen to have all I need but not much else to burn. To date, I have not bought things that I don't wear or use. But I wonder, suppose I have an extra $300,000 cash in the bank, would I become a wishful shopper too?

(178) Money for retirement

How much money one needs to retire on? I quot one ordinary couple who lives in a link house and drives ordinary cars: ten million dollars. (one US$ is about 3 local dollars)

Six women heard this remark. The only mathematical one, who happens to be a former banker, started calculating. Well, by conventional financial instruments, one could expect to produce $10,000 per month with $5 million. We started asking each other, none around the tea table needs that much to pay regular bills. Among the group, one careful soul said that if one is sick and requires expensive treatment then much more than that would be good to have on hand. Other than that, whoever made the claim either lives luxuriously or is filthy rich.

The retirement age in my country has just been raised to 60. Most women are happy for their husbands to work longer. Out of the six in the conversation group, two are looking forward to retire at 55. None of any of the group's children are married. The eldest single daughter represented is 32 years old. The eldest son found is 25. There is really no guarantee that retirement would mean having grand children to play with.

(177) Young adults chose to be unemployed

Many years ago I heard my husband the amateur sociologist telling everyone who would listen that there was a trend for young folks in Japan who stayed home, did not work and chose to remain single while waiting to inherit the parents' wealth. My hubby spent a few months as an exchange student in the fair country of cherry blossoms.

A few years ago his former boss' son failed to finish his degree and ended up being a trust fund driver and companion to his wealthy parents. Today I heard that a rich couple has a middle daughter who graduated from a reputable university in Australia, worked at a local college for a few years and then sat at home for one and a half years twiddling her thumbs. At the same dinner table there was a lady whose son stayed in New Zealand for more than a year looking for some specific job but was not successful. The said young man has been in the country for many years and has obtained permanent resident status.

The young lady mentioned above spent her nights clubbing with her gainfully employed friends. She seemed to be rather happy with being unemployed, not really applying for jobs. The young man in question spent hours playing tennis with juniors in his university. They certainly are not bored at all!

For my generation, I don't remember ever hearing a single case like that unless the person involved has some physical or mental disability. Perhaps we were too busy climbing out of the extreme poverty we grew up in. The sudden wealth my generation acquired may yet turn out to be a curse for the next generation!

(176) Meeting one's old friends

Whenever friends return for visits, our former town crier tries to organize reunions. In the case when the visit was fleeting, it is usually arranged to the convenience of the visitor. Whomever contacted who could make it would join, those who could not make it just hope for better luck next round.

Some time next week I will go to one such event. This time I hope to see that the returnee relax, happy and contented. Our VIP was a former model, she was the prettiest and the most slender of us all in our early twenties. Her features were still good, she seemed slimmer the last time I met up with her; but from her body language she was far from happy then.

Her husband was in the business of some service providing in New Zealand. The fact that he is Asian probably does not help his business in his adopted land. Finances must have been tight because her visits were few and far in between. Her only daughter went through a very turbulent period as a teenager in the country down under. My friend has probably been biting the bullet for years. While all these have been happening, she went back to university to get herself the necessary qualification to teach.

I must remember to be as quiet as possible. It is not becoming to flout my homemaker status. While she has an NZ permanent resident permit, it came with great personal sacrifice. When I have been having a relatively easy life bringing up my brood of children here in home ground, she must have suffered and adapted to big changes abroad. Now that my chicks have flown the coop, I have less of a worry that I would lose all of them. It must be difficult for parents of singleton to release their precious treasure, what if she flies away and  not return? My daughter, Elizabeth, asked me why do I still want to go? Well! It is the lesser of two evil. Of course I stand a chance of being shot at for having an easier life by staying in my homeland. The attack is not considered personal nor malicious. I do not want to lose my friends from elementary or high school days. It is so very easy to lose touch by not responding to invitations.

(175) Number of children

I have always thought that the number of children we have denotes something about our choice. Since traditionally Chinese treasures sons, once a modern Chinese woman presents her husband with an male heir, no one could force her to beget another unless she agrees.

We start with my friend Amber. Amber has one son. Her mother kept advising her to have another, but in her youth she valued personal freedom and chose not to go through the business of pregnancy and years of inconvenience. Her son is grown now. She suffered through the fear of teenage suicide, son thinking of relocating with college girl friend to a state 2,000 miles away, fear of fast cars, drunken driving ... At long last she admitted that she was not wise in ignoring an old woman's wisdom.

Next we have Barbara, she has two sons. Both sons are gainfully employed and are of marriageable age. Despite the fact that both sons are sociable, there is no sign of any steady girl friends. Barbara of course is very envious of others' sons getting married. But nothing can be done since both guys are happy with their single state. Barbara could not even dream of begetting any grand babies.

Then we have Claire, who has three sons. Of all my friends, she came out with a really ingenious excuse for not having more children. She claimed that all her boys have expensive tastes. They only eat exorbitantly price fish fillets. Since each of them grew up with fish porridge every main meal, she said she could not afford any more.

Daisy is the next one with four sons and a daughter. She placed tremendous importance on the bottom figure in the bank account. Although she is rich, she claimed she could not afford foreign college education for a sixth child. In her old age, she ended with four of her five off springs in foreign countries.

Emily has five sons and one daughter. As soon as the youngest daughter was born, both Emily and her husband decided that their family is complete. Emily's husband passed on recently, her children rallied around her. Three of her children are abroad.

Of course no matter how many children we have, it does not guarantee that we would not age alone in an old folk's home.

(174) Statistics

Lately I noticed that a good percentage of my readers have different ways of accessing my blog which left no trace after they exit. It seemed that folks from former communist countries are more likely to be thus security conscious. But the other night I realized two of my real time readers from USA also seemed untraceable. Well, I do respect the individual need of privacy on the net.

A check from two sets of statistics showed me that two articles should have been included as top ten popular titles but did not because of my illusive self-effacing readers:
834 America by Stephen Fry
598 A walk to Remember by Nicholas Sparks

There are a further 3 entries that are very close too:
491 Blood Sugar Level
517 A Reluctant Queen by John Wolf
841 Crocodile meat as Medicine

Otherwise what was recorded in 697 still holds true.

(173) Where There is a Will by Jeffrey Archer

It is interesting to note how Ms Lynn Beattie skilfully talked her elderly sick employer to amend his will to give 30% of his huge estate to five of the organizations with prestigious law firms in USA and keepsake of a cane with a silver handle as well as a photograph of the deceased at Princeton to her. Once the new will was drafted, she adeptly substituted one paragraph to exchange things around to benefit herself. She was smart to pick a lawyer who did not qualify to become a partner in her employer's Law firm to witness the signing of the improved version of the new will.

The long and short of it meant Ms Beattie inherited a cool 70 million dollars while Chester(son of the millionaire who lived away from his dad) was left with a silver handled cane and Joni (daughter of the millionaire who lived in another country) was to get an old picture of her dad.

Recently I attended a wake of the husband of my mum's girl hood friend. During his final illness, the deceased's wife turned down an appointment for a proper will to be drawn up. She chose to save a few hundred dollars and decided to put the entire estate into one off spring's name as caretaker. For the moment, it seemed a convenient and economical decision. But no one lives more than a hundred and twenty five years, should that caretaker dies intestate then all the worldly goods would go to the family, who is to say whether these individuals would restore what was rightfully the rest of the siblings (uncles and aunties)?  

Very often decisions of this kind would eventually cause families to fragment, the wealth left behind became a curse to alienate the heirs rather than to bless them.

(172) The Queen's Birthday Telegram by Jeffrey Archer

When I was studying in America, I have heard lots of jokes making fun of women who never become older, at least by their own claims. It came as no surprise that a wife would lie to be a few years younger than her beloved husband in Archer's story.

Strangely, since I have returned home, I have come across only one neighbor who blatantly claimed to be at least five years younger than her legal age. In her case, it was futile to lie as there was a lady from her home town living a few doors away. The person who told untruth went to the same school as the other lady. In fact the former was a classmate of the latter's second elder brother. While the latter said she was sixty five, the former claimed her brother's sixty one.

All the while, I have been filling in forms that my father was born in the year 1923. When he died, by Taoist practice, there were to be two lanterns showing his age added to 3 (1 for heaven, 1 for earth and one for man kind). I was taken aback when it showed 91. I was expecting it to show 87, which means after deducting 3, he was 84 when he passed on. Apparently, according to his horoscope, we could tell his legal age was 4 years less than his biological age. After the funeral, I asked my mother about the discrepancy and the answer was ages were often reported lower for guys during the prewar years to avoid conscription into the army. If my father did not resort to lie about his age to the Japanese, he could have been sent to build the death railway that passed through Thailand to Burma and I might not be here today writing about him.

Well, I suppose I could buy the argument to lie to survive so that at least one son could stay home to look after the family. On my mother side, one uncle went to China to further his studies. Since his education had been interrupted by the war, he conveniently reported his age to be four years younger so that he stood a chance to compete for a prestigious placement in the medical faculty. His ploy was successful and years later he retired as a urologist. After he left for China, his elder brother conveniently took his identity and became five years younger. Until today, I could not fathom why he wanted to be five years younger. Could it be that he liked his younger brother's name? Or maybe he thought by doing that he had more years to make money?

Perhaps because women don't have the problem of being drafted, my mother and all my aunties went by their real age. If they lie at all, they often add to their legal age as old age is well respected in the Chinese society.

(171) Stuck on You by Jeffrey Archer

In this real story a young man was besotted by a society girl enough to help steal a pricey engagement ring.

One parallel in my country would be the rich being stolen from by foreign maids whose deeds could hardly be proven. I will bring forward just one case. My mother has a good friend whom she met while studying hairdressing as young unmarried girls. This friend happened to choose a husband of high earning power. While her children were young, she used to have local maids. Once her eldest son was married, she has no choice but to rely on a series of Indonesian maids.

At this point I must point out that I personally know quite a few good and honest Indonesian maids of different religions who work for long periods of time for a few of my friends. While I could not vouch for the integrity of most Indon maids, I could only claim that I am illustrating how rotten one particular "apple" is.

To get back to my mum's friend, she has had a maid that worked for her family for seven years. During that period, they normally hired two maids: one for child care and the other to look after her husband who was wheel chair bound. It was only after the long standing good maid left to get married to a man in her village that they realized she had stolen from them.

There was an impending marriage in my mum's buddy's family, a niece was being married off from her house as the niece's parents are from 400 Km away. They looked for the family heirloom tea set that came from China. (It is customary for the bride and groom to serve tea to older relatives after a wedding.) That particular tea set was worth a good penny as collectors were still looking for it. They used to display that set in a locked cabinet in the sitting room. A guest with special knowledge in ancient porcelain advised them to stop displaying it. It was then placed on the highest shelve in the kitchen out of sight.

Her good maid was well trusted that she was allowed to keep watch for the family when everyone went on vacation. It never entered anyone's mind that she would steal from them. Well! That expensive tea set is no where to be found. As they searched high and low for it, their new maid mentioned about the "loss" to the next door maid who in turn told her mistress. This neighbor came with her chauffeur. Apparently there were a number of occasions when the supposedly good and trusted maid asked on behalf of her mistress for the next door chauffeur to mail a few packages to a relative in Penang. The maid would pay the chauffeur a little in excess of the postage as a small token of appreciation. Neither the neighbor nor the chauffeur suspected the packages were not from our good lady, the mistress. After all, she does have a cousin sister in Penang. This cousin sister hired a maid from the trusted maid's village. Since that cousin sister was bed ridden, her maid had a wide range of mobility. The trusted maid had seven long years to think of what she could steal and send away without being missed. She probably started with things of lesser value. By mailing it to the cousin sister's house, no one suspected anything. After all, she has never left the house on her own without being accompanied by at least someone from her employer's family. Once the item arrived in Penang, the other maid would repack it and mail it to the trusted maid's home. A bed ridden woman could not really be sure what her maid was up to.

Sad to say, the shock was not from monetary loss or even from sentimental reason of missing a family heirloom. They have treated the trusted maid like a member of their family. Every two years, they increased her salary. Whenever she returned home, they bought her and her family members gifts. When she left for the last time, they collected from the extended family to buy her a decent gold necklace as a marriage gift. It was betrayal that hurts the most.

Or you can look at it my husband's way: he said that some of the people in my country have too much money. They ended up buying all kinds of things that they could not use. There are too many assets in the house that are not properly locked up. According to him, if a smart and unscrupulous maid could systematically steal from them for seven long years and they did not find out until she was gone, they could well afford to lose those items graciously: consider they have given the maid a chance to right the imbalance of wealth distribution between my country and Indonesia! What do you think?

(170) The Wisdom of Solomon by Jeffrey Archer

If you have read this story, you would agree with the title: remember how Solomon gave the judgement to cut a living child into two to divide it to give to two contesting mothers?

Instead of Bob, in real (happen to be mine) life the soft brain one was a great friend of mine: Serene. Just like Bob was in his forties as a man when his brain turned soft, Serene was in her early thirties when her biological clock struck.

In place of Fiona, we have John the male version of a gold digger. Interestingly, John was not handsome and tall. In fact he was thin and below average height. There is nothing in his physical build, looks and demeanour that recommended him to be the ideal husband of my friend, Serene.

I am a woman who is straight forward and would call a spade a spade. Because of my wise husband, I was more than civil in my exchanges with Serene's prospective husband. In a way, I was glad that after a parade of accountants, engineers and managers for close to ten years, Serene has finally chosen a male that could provide her with legitimate heirs. By that time, my eldest child was seven and I was quite impatient with my friend's series of failed romances.

One day Serene was complaining about all her family members and relations because they objected to her lover boy. I made it very clear to her that I personally have nothing against her intended. But I brought up the possible points of contention:
1. educational - she has a foreign degree but he might not even have a High School Equivalency
2. station in life - she is a fully qualified accountant but he is not even an executive in construction line
3. back ground - she is a city girl but he was from a village I have never heard of
4. exposure - she is well traveled but he has only been to Singapore and Thailand
5. age - he is a good 14 years older than her
6. Culture - her father went by boat to Australia for his Masters, he used to have 32,000 subordinates                before he retired but his father died early leaving a few acres of rubber estate

To every point I stated calmly, she had a clear rebuttal. I chose to keep a few minor points unsaid and wished her the best.

Fast forward 10 years and Serene told me that until her husband joined EE (Evangelistic Explosion), she thought he was a non-believer going to the church as a country club for more than 20 years. I was aghast at that estimation. Well, thank God for EE, we now know that he is a genuine believer from that point on.

They came to visit us in Silver City and I had problem ridding my downstairs toilet of cigarette smell for almost two weeks. I searched the entire house and could not find a single cigarette. My husband and each child had a good laugh at me. Finally I found cigarette butts caught between the sieve and the water outlet. The next time I visited Serene, I asked her maid in confidence. She whispered that she had the very same suspicion as she too had to clean the downstairs toilet many times because of the same complaint. It is amazing that an impostor (John pretended to be a born again Christian) could keep such a fact (he has been a long standing smoker) from his wife for at least 20 years. Either he was darn good at deceiving or she has been really blur. I certainly hope that Serene would meet her Mrs Justice Butler in some form, I wonder if her punishment for disobeying all her near and dear folks (prior to marriage) would have to last until the moment she breathed her last!?

In this case, the gold digger wanted respectability. There would be no divorce. It looks like Serene would just have to tolerate him until one of them passes on. In spite of the many years of difference in age, he looks younger than her and he is fitter than her. She has been supporting him in financial terms practically from month 14 (after marriage) onward. While she gets stressed at work and still comes home to a second shift, he reads newspaper whole day long and has plenty of time to exercise. It really looks like he would out live her and then enjoy her vast fortune that came down from her parents.

(169) Working hard in the shadow areas

When I was teaching remedial English, I normally keep mum about my 6 years of elementary Chinese education. Once I built the rapport and earned the students' respect, I would choose the right time to reveal my background.

Usually when one student complaint that he was sent to a Chinese medium school while all his sisters were sent to National schools, I would tell them it was so with me too. All my brothers were sent for English medium education because they would have better prospects in getting well paying jobs. It was very hard to break into the English speaking world, especially when all my neighbors and close friends then were dedicated Mandarin speakers.

To all the incredulity displayed on my students' faces and their claim that I was talented in languages, I would reveal my failures in English and the National language in Grade 5 and 6. I admit I was talented in Chinese essay writing. But until today I have not picked it up since I dropped that in college. My command in English came from close to 40 years of sheer hard work.

Since I was 12 years old I started a discipline of doing something every day to improve my English. For instance on Monday I would write an English letter to one of my pen friends. On Tuesday I would read aloud the newspaper article I chose and worked on understanding on Sunday. On Wednesday I would make use of my Interact Club (a school affiliation of Rotary Club) friends' good language skills by saying out sentences made with new words I learned that week, their laughed their heads off more often than not. But usually among three of them they corrected my few sentences for conversational use. On Thursday I would visit my neighbor and watch an English TV program, probably a movie or a serial. On Friday I would read a simplified classic not more than 100 pages. On Saturday I would keep my transistor radio on throughout the afternoon and night listening to Australia Broadcasting, BBC or the Voice of America. Finally on Sunday I would force myself to read the two pages of New Straits Times where the editorial was printed. It would take hours as I need to check the dictionary many times.

The rationale behind all that goal setting is:-
Monday --      writing
Tuesday --     oral (reading aloud)
Wednesday--  Verbal (using words in the correct context)
Thursday   --  video (image and audio)
Friday       --   reading
Saturday   --   audio (exposing myself to accents of foreigners)
Sunday    --    increasing vocabulary from a serious publication

To this program of improvement I studiously stuck to for at least 8 years. Of course there were days that I could not do what I was supposed to do because of scheduling. I would make a note and cover the shortfall on a public holiday if possible. Otherwise I added what I neglected to my time-table during school vacation. Through these years I was active in the library, the literary and debating club as well as the student government.  

(168) A Change of Heart by Jeffrey Archer

In this short story, the white man who caused the death of a black man survived to use the deceased's heart to live another 4 years.

On the first level, he did literally changed his own heart for a negro's heart.

Figuratively, he awoke with full repentance. He gave up everything to serve the poor and needy blacks that he did not even treat as humans before his operation.

I don't want to appear as a white basher here. I believe that given certain backgrounds, circumstances and culture, any race could and would treat some other races as sub-human. I heard that in Singapore, only mainland Chinese with money were allowed in to artificially keep up the Chinese to non-Chinese ratio for election purposes. Australia has been on a pro-white but against Asian immigration policy for decades.

In my country, the English standard was artificially killed from 1976 or thereabouts. Overnight, all subjects in elementary and high schools were switched to be taught in the national language. Now we see the result: in a premier public university, out of a small batch of first year English Literature students, they could not find 5 qualified students who could work towards Lit degrees. For practical reasons, all the students from that year may have to be shunted to an easier stream called English Studies.

These current students are lucky that they were admitted to courses of studies that are recognized and would not cost a bomb. Back to my batch, most of my friends who would have qualified by merit to enter into public universities ended up as article clerks and worked their ways to become chartered accountants. There was the class clown Jack (I remember him as the practical joker who put ice cubes down the prettiest girl's collar). He is a chartered accountant now and lives in Australia with his family. There was Clarence, the tallest boy with nimble fingers who could confidently extract things from the girls' pockets without touching us. Clarence is the Head of an Accountancy College in town now. There was the bad boy Vincent who owns his Accounting Consultancy. There was Pamela who took eight years to qualify for her ACCA, she married late and has a son at 43 years old. These are the few accountants I can off hand name out of a class of 30.

(167) A Matter of Honor by Jeffrey Archer

If you care to check the number of books I have written about in the past six months, perhaps you would be impressed if I say that the above mentioned book is certainly the best I have read lately.

What I really like about Adam Scott is that he is not perfect in every way as some fictional heroes were painted to be. He needed the gift from his grandfather to study in the right school to qualify to join the army. He was a good soldier, but the smear on his father's reputation prevented him from progressing in the armed forces. Instead of drinking himself to oblivion or becoming bitter, he resigned and look at greener pasture: foreign service.

One thing that has the ring of truth in it was his new girl friend being killed by the Russian agent. Surely even the important characters also get killed, it cannot be that all heroes and heroines survive kicking until the very last page.

Archer made Scott excellent but not unreal. Even a good and great guy is caught by the crooks. What gladdens the heart is to read that the mole: mentor was extinguished by Romanov before the story ends. I remember learning in world history that USA bought Alaska(thought of as an ice wasteland) from Russia for a relatively small amount of money hundreds of years ago. As a teenager I thought Russia was stupid to sell such a large territory for so little money. Later, the transaction was brought up by my Greek Economics Lecturer in college Econ 101. He talked about it and calculated the present and future value of the sum in question. After he related how big the purchasing power in the by gone years were, I began to see the transaction as economically sound.

(165) Shall We Tell the President by Jeffrey Archer

This is the third book in the series: Kane and Abel, The Prodigal Daughter and Shall We Tell the President.

Florentyna Abel Kane was a most unusual woman. She was the only offspring of a pair of Polish immigrants. Her dad became the proud owner of the Baron Hotels chain worldwide, one rags to riches story. She met the son of a banking millionaire and married him despite both fathers objecting. Eloping to the West Coast, she became a success selling women apparel on her own merit.

Archer seemed to have a record of twisting the tale. He allowed the younger Kane to die in a car accident. By the time Florentyna was the Vice President, she was in a comfortable relationship with her long time admirer Edward Winchester. She seemed to have married her old friend before she moved into The White House as the Chief of the nation.

The chapters of this rather thin book were action packed and believable. I agree that it is better written than The Day of the Jackal. Apart from Jackie Kennedy, I can't seem to think of any other beautiful and influential woman with ability, wit and brain enough like the first fictional Polish descent American President.

(164) Announcing a daughter's impending marriage

A week ago a friend's daughter was planning a wedding. The invitation card came with a small butter cake. It is customary for the prospective groom's family to furnish with a certain number of boxes of pastry for the bride's family to distribute. In my time, my parents only informed close relatives. I took the easy way out, I invited only my ultimate boss and my maid of honor to my dinner reception. Everybody else was invited to my church ceremony and lunch reception.

If I do not remember wrongly, I think my parents only asked for twelve boxes of the "marry off the daughter" biscuits. A small pink box contained two pieces of flaky pastry, one of them containing lotus seed (like moon cake) filling that seemed yellow and the other with bean filling which is black.Now I can't quite recall which one had pink pastry and which had yellow pastry. Both pastry was sweet in taste symbolizing the sweetness in the coming marriage.

All my in-state relatives received each one visit from my parents, bearing individually the invitation card and the box of pastry. Any out of state relatives and those in Singapore received each a long distance call bearing glad tidings.

After I was married, I remember some juniors of mine distributed pieces of well decorated sponge cake neatly placed in boxes. And I thought times have changed. Now that my children have reached marriageable age, I see another possible way of announcing a marriage by giving a small cake.

Perhaps by the time my youngest bring home her prince charming, she may indeed invite all her friends by on-line invitation and reservation as she intimated. Me being a dinosaur, I probably would limit my guest list to an absolute minimum, I plan to mail out my cards and replace the visits by phone calls.

(163) Flattery pays

A good friend of mine revealed her home background to me when I by chance met both sets of her parents. Interestingly her biological father divorced her rather beautiful biological mother and married a short and fat woman 26 years his junior.

The root cause of the divorce was he desperately needed ego boosting hourly and his well educated, cultured wife refused to say what was not really true 100% on demand. His second wife who was seducing him while he was still married could replay not very sincere compliments by the minute to inflate his overly big ego. Sure, he was a CEO at a relatively young age; heck! He certainly was not born royal nor was he a dictator who happened to be the Chief of All Armed Forces. Wrong position and wrong station in life to expect to hear constant ego boosting lies. Thirty years after adultery and divorce, he was in his seventies and he was being treated like an old man with one foot in the grave. The fifty year old wife resented him for being bald, hard of hearing and being house bound : the curse of incontinence! The old man's two sons and wives have to bite their tongues hard trying not to ask:"What did you really expect when you seduced someone's husband who was 26 years your senior??" But being civilized and tactful, they stayed as little time as possible to hear her woes.

Just yesterday I heard from another friend that her youngest sister married the latter's high school sweetheart. The couple built a multi-million industry from zero and have five children. Before the children were grown, the husband moved out with a mainland China doll acquired on his business trips. He somehow paid his wife off and booted her out of the office. To be fair, my friend said that her sis was not entirely in the right. She heard with her own ears that her sis put down her husband in a house warming party. A guest was singing high praise of her husband's business acumen when she said her husband would not be where he was without her. While the statement could actually be true to a certain extent, it was tactically the wrong time and wrong place to say such a thing! It would have been smarter to hear other people say it or wait until all the guests were gone.  

For my readers who are female and single, if you lack beauty, brain, attractive personality and breeding, perhaps all you need to develop is to learn to say the right words to boost men's ego at the right time. Should you be able to meet such a man's inner needs, you would be the best wife he could get in this life.

(162) The difference between marriage n divorce

I have a friend who married by civil registry, it cost her and her hubby $20 thirty years ago. She separated from her ex twenty years ago because he got a native underage girl pregnant. All these years there was no desire to get a divorce as she has had no intention of remarrying. Recently there was a prospective boy friend. Finally she sued for a divorce, he turned nasty and refused to sign. The cost of a no fault divorce would have cost her below $3,000. But since he contested, a second court appearance would cost her $2,000 more.

I thought that was exorbitant, then a neighbor told me that she paid 15,000 Singaporean dollars for her divorce. Even that was a reduced rate, as a nasty divorce with some custody argument could easily go up to S$40,000. I gasped and wonder if that is why youngsters choose to co-habit and not say I do. Imagine one could marry in haste: after all any Mary, Jane and Margie could dig out $20 to tie the knot. But until one saves up enough dough, matrimony is a chain that takes lots of money to unlock.

(156) The old Chinese wish to die at home

Today my friend Susie told me that after her dad passed on, her mum lived on her own. The deceased old lady was rather domineering. One would not expect her only son and daughter-in-law to take her in. But during her final illness, they did bring her home after the doctor declared from that point on it was paliative care only. Shortly after, she breathed her last. A month or so later, the son sold his house and moved temporarily to a rented house before looking for a suitable property to purchase.

My father did not get his wish of dying at home. When his eldest son purchased a new house many years prior to his death, he chose to sell his and moved to the son's. It is customary for the eldest son to look after the old parents in his house till they die. At the last week of his life, he could not even stand up. We simply did not have the facility to use wheel chair in my brother's house: the bathroom door was too narrow. Nobody dares to take him home, apart from logistics, there is no nurse or doctor in our family. We are also not wealthy enough to hire any private nurse.

Anyway, my mother is glad today that my deceased father was not brought home as he requested. Otherwise she might be afraid to sleep in their bedroom. You may think she is a coward. She is indeed a woman of many fears. But God is kind to spare her, shortly after my brother took her home, I turned up and was by my father's bedside during his last moments. The doctor gave him two weeks, therefore I was there to make him as comfortable as possible. It just so happened that my Chinese Congregation Pastor turned up to pray for him. My dad listened to the prayer, gasped and was gone.

(154) Announcing the birth of an heir

In the last blog, I wrote about red eggs.

Actually, if the infant born was a boy, some other food would be sent to relatives earlier than 28 days. Before I brought my first born son home, my mother-in-law bought a big earthen pot. She bought a few urns of Chinese black rice vinegar and a few pork front trotters. She started a charcoal stove going at slow flame and the flame was not allowed to go out for an entire month.

Everyday she added cleaned and chunky pork trotter, old ginger, and the pungent black vinegar to the earthen pot. She served the delicacy to all and sundry who came to see the precious grandson. On the seventh day (perhaps because it was  a Saturday) my husband was dispatched with quite a few containers of vinegar pork and chicken cooked in ginger and rice wine to be delivered to relatives. That day she cooked and cooked until the house smelled like a Chinese restaurant.

My mother-in-law was a Hokien while my father-in-law was a Cantonese. The latter's opinion on the significance of the day to deliver such good tidings was because of the infant mortality rate in China in the by gone years. According to my mother, who is a Hakka, such food was sent on the twelve day after my brother's birth.

Interestingly, none of these was done for any of my daughters after their births. My youngest daughter asked if she herself could carry out such a tradition for her daughters, she could as long as her husband has enough money to finance such undertakings and there is man power to produce and deliver all those food.

(147) Red eggs to celebrate one month of a child's birth

This afternoon I was peeling hard boiled eggs in my mother's kitchen. As the eggs were freshly bought a few days ago, it was rather difficult to peel them cleanly.

I recall the batch of hard boiled eggs colored red to be given away to announce my first born's birth more than twenty years ago. They were equally hard to peel. Since I have joined my present church, I have eaten quite a number of red eggs provided by new parents in church. There was one particular feast which was memorable. Not only the eggs were easy to peel, they were beautifully and evenly colored. I went around asking who the caterer was. It turned out that the paternal grandma of the new born cooked everything.

According to this knowledgeable old lady, one needs to purchase the eggs at least a week ahead of the full moon (one month from the birth of a child, 28 days) celebration. If we buy the eggs less than ten days ahead, they have to be kept at room temperature. Only fresh eggs are hard to peel, once they have aged, the shell comes off most easily. Then when we boil the eggs, we need to drop in a few drops of vinegar into the water to enable the red food dye to stick well. If the eggs and the boiling utensil are not oily, then there is no reason for patches to occur on the shells.

Now I have to remember to pass on these tips to my sister-in-law as her son already has a steady girl friend.  

(140) Nights in Rodanthe by Nicholas Sparks

Another beautiful love story by Sparks.

I think of A Walk to Remember. My youngest daughter watched the movie then she read the book. The only thing the movie did not measure up to what the book portrayed, she said, was the dying girl in the movie had fat cheeks. Other than that, she loves both the movie as well as the book.

I ask myself, is it possible this side of heaven to have such a "perfect" encounter? Moralist would call it an affair. It is possibly one in a trillion chance for Adrienne to meet just Paul Flanner in the guest house.  If such pairing is at all possible, it is unique and not repeated throughout history. If they were "fated" to meet like that, why did he die then? By this sort of combination of circumstances, it became a tear jerking fairy tale romance.

I have a few friends and neighbors who are divorcees, not by their own choices. Men seemed to lose nothing much by cheating on their wives and then divorcing them for younger models. Women who struggle to bring up a few teenagers rarely have the chance to be courted. For one, they have no time. Secondly, the care they put into their single parent family would do nothing to enhance their looks. Things may even be worse if they have to struggle to earn enough to bring up the children that the rich husbands just cast aside. At least in this part of the world, the rate of remarriage  is extremely low if the divorce occurred after a woman is past thirty five.

It is indeed gratifying to find the fat sleek lawyer Jack being thrown aside by his second wife for another man. What did he expect from a woman who knowingly lured a married man into breaking his marriage? Perhaps it is the money! Maybe it was the experience and power Jack held at that age which men ten years younger did not possess. So we find that when he gained another ten kilo, she quickly went and caught herself another eligible man not so old or with more money. Amoral women like that usually look out for number one: themselves, certainly not the victim they preyed on.

(131) Paths of Glory by Jeffrey Archer

Reading this book reminded me of patterns in families. Like in the Kennedy clan, there were senators, president and diplomat. Then two brothers were shot. In the Hillary family line, there were mountain climbers.

I am glad that there is no fever in mountain climbing in my family. Not that we are wealthy enough to support endeavors like that. Even though Mallory was from a family with slim means, he married a wife with private income. Otherwise there was no way he could afford to have two stints (6 months each) of attempting to climb Mount Everest.

What the widow of Scott said was probably true, if she did not willingly convince her husband to go to the South Pole he would probably be miserable for the rest of his life. It is a good thing that there are few born explorers. Imagine lives filled with close shaves near death, with wives who were constantly in danger of becoming widows and children who stood much chances of being orphaned in the name of grand exploration.

(130) Human foibles

Among happily married woman, sometimes we shared and laughed about our husbands' idiosyncrasies.

Vera is married to a highly creative man. Among his many job experiences, we count church full time worker, economist, a job in some financial institution, school founder and he happened to be a professional clown too. There is one thing that he absolutely hated, that is to top up petrol when there is still some in the tank. Most of the time, he waited until there is almost no petrol left before he finally topped up. It is almost a matter of honor for him to each time put in an increasing amount of petrol.

One day the vehicle they were travelling in was going on a rural road with few petrol stations. As soon as the petrol gauge showed empty, Vera prayed urgently continually until the car glided into a tiny two pump petrol station with the tank almost bone dry. It is indeed God's mercy that the carload of six children between the ages of one month to eight years old were not stranded on the hot and dry road side in 40 degrees Centigrade while their heroic father walked to the nearest petrol station with a mineral water bottle.

My husband, on the other hand, hates to ask for help. He just drove our almost over heated car out to a super market to buy black oil. Personally, I would call a friend to ask if she has spare black oil from the last service or for a ride in her car. I suppose guys have their egos to consider. If there is no police road block and check point, he might just get away with it too. But, supposing if for whatever reason the road was jammed, he would have to cool his heels, walk home or sit by the road side for a few hours waiting for the engine to cool.

(128) Lightning damage

A friend bought a house owner's insurance which covers fire, flood and lightning damage to the house and electrical item outside the house.

In a storm, her automatic gate controller was struck. Her repair bill came up to four hundred over dollars. She called her insurance agent and found that she could file an application for claim. She took photos of how the gate could not open properly, the repairman opening up the box, and the burnt part in the box. Attaching a copy of the invoice, she sent in her claim for compensation.

Two weeks later, she heard that her claim was approved with a 10% deducted. Since it was troublesome to claim, she paid for a wooden box to be made to protect the controller. It remains to be seen if the added insulation would work.

For the contents in the house, one would need to buy a house-holder's insurance against burglary, flood  and fire. If we desire to cover our television set, we need to pay extra for its protection. I have not even thought about such a clause, it seems easier to plug in the TV whenever I want to watch it. That way, no lightning could damage my TV.

(127) The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

It is rare to hear death talk about his job of gathering souls. Death was very busy in Germany during the Second World War. Since I was not enthusiastic about history and I have not seek out books to tell me more about Germany around that period, this book is an eye-opener.

I suppose it is futile to wonder why some people die during the war and others don't. The book thief's father, mother, brother, foster mother, foster father and best friend died earlier or in the bombing. Miraculously, she survived. Obviously the higher power dictated that she lived on to get married and have children.

Looking at statistics, one in seven adults in my country has diabetes. Similarly, one in seventeen adults here has cancer. Even for those who escaped these two diseases, they would die at some time due to some fatal ailment. One would sooner or later die, how would that came about seems immaterial. It is how we live, how we make use of the resources available to us that matters.

(126) Length of life

My mother has two friends: an eighty year old man who did not want to go but died of cancer and an eighty-two year old woman who wanted to die but was saved from ruptured appendicitis.

Both these two people seemed to have robust health, one before the diagnose of terminal cancer and the other before the appendix ruptured. Neither lack money, they had substantial holdings in the bank. You may ask then, why the different out look in life?

The only difference I can see is the deceased viewed his life as meaningful as he was actively helping the poor in Thailand. The woman who survived viewed her life as meaningless because she herself thought she has finished the useful part of her long life. The sad part is that she might live on much longer as her own mother actually had a life-span of 105.

None of us can choose exactly how long we live unless we count suicide attempt. Whether a long or short life, I suppose we have to live it as best as we could. Indeed life could be more meaningful if we live to serve others in ways that we are limited to by circumstances.

(123) Vietnamese Brides in Korea

The other day I watched TV with my niece and caught one documentary. My niece loves all programs Korean. She went to Korea on a package tour with her family and the following year went to another part of the country with her own savings.

In that program, we followed the lives of 8 Vietnamese young ladies who went to Korea to marry their husbands. Among the 8, I remember one supermarket cashier, 2 restaurant workers, one farm assistant and one or two homemakers. It was quoted that for the past few years, an average of 7,000 over Vietnamese single ladies went to be married to Korean men.

I can't help but wonder, if so many women left Vietnam to get married to foreigners, would that mean that Vietnamese men have to seek wives from Laos or Cambodia? Well, perhaps in a stable society in my country, I see more unmarried women than men, especially from age 35 to 50. Let us say that mutual friends match make, a few of them get married to farmers in outback Australia or some lonely bachelors in Calgary, Canada. Such social "tampering" would not change the demographics much here.

But imagine that in a Vietnamese village of 5000 population, we have 80 girls who chose to marry some far off Koreans; suddenly there is a shortage of marriageable age women. Would that mean that some men remain single longer? Or widows get good marriage offers? Or maybe some men might end up marrying women a few years older than them? Would it simply mean that single men have to court women a few villages away?

(121) Death by Overdose

A few afternoons ago I caught a program in CNN by the Chief Medical Correspondent. Apparently every 19 minutes there is a death somewhere in the US by prescription drug overdose. This cause of death exceeded death by cancer. It is common for even a young and healthy man to take some pain medicine in excess of what the doctor prescribed and then take a few beers. He then went to sleep and breathing stopped.

Even though the drugs taken were legitimate, they were opiates in origin. When pain medicine was taken together with tranquilizer, drug interaction would double or triple the effect each drug has on slowing down breathing. What happened would then not be too different from heroine overdose. These people has no intention of killing themselves. They were just guilty of "stacking" drugs and maybe mixing drug with alcohol. For instance, they were used to taken two painkillers every four hourly to control back pain. Maybe when they were under stress, they also were used to taking one tranquilizer to go to sleep. Now supposing one evening they were in acute pain, they popped in four painkillers and then decided to take a tranquilizer to sleep early. Before the pills were swallowed, they had two beers before dinner. As they lie down, the cocktail were mixing in the blood stream. Respiration slowed. The heart pumped slower. Breathing became shallow. Gradually it stopped. It was painless. The person was either unconscious or asleep.

Looking back, I did notice that in most American households I visited about thirty years ago there were many bottles of drugs in each bathroom cabinet. The people who hosted me were generally healthy and vibrant. It therefore would not be too far fetch to believe that USA uses 80% of all prescription painkillers worldwide now.

(120) Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

An abridged version of Jane Eyre was used as my literature text in Grade 8. Now that Elizabeth is collecting the classics using her pocket money, I read the original book for the first time.

I agree with Joyce Carol Oates, who wrote the introduction, that in having Jane marry Rochester is a triumph for the service class. Most novels written before that time championed marriage between people of the same class or with money. To be valued for brains, character, personality traits and not fortune ushered in a new era.

It is interesting that even in those days, orphans were brought up with education and not trade training. Yet for someone like Jane, without a teaching post or a governess placement, she was worse off than a lady's maid.

(119) Home sweet home

I am back to the land of 56% obese people by medical charts. Well! One glaring difference I can see is that there are too many fast food places here. In Danang and Hoy An, they have yet to have one McDonald!

A second difference is the mode of transportation, here we only see foreign workers cycling while in Danang those who could not afford motorcycle still bike around. Thirdly, people in the Danang-Hoy An area sleep early, by ten most houses are dark. Here, we see streams of vehicles running in the highways and the byways way past midnight.

Of course we could vote for the most livable place on earth, but could we really choose a better spot and be able to really move and settle there just like that? Perhaps when one is a billionaire? Quite a few of those rare breed moved to Singapore and jacked up their per-capita income. A friend of mine who have ties in the island nation said that such astronomical wealth did not add any benefits to the have nots in the streets of the island. The high exchange rate is the main reason that I have not visited Singapore for years even though it is the nearest foreign country to me.

(117) Comparative sizes

I am currently in Danang, Vietnam. This is my first visit to this country. The first striking thing I noticed is the slimness of Vietnamese in general. When I visited Thailand in 2000, what I saw was the contrast between the thinness of women below 20s and the heaviness of older women. After a few visits, I realized the contrast was brought on by they way they added sugar to their regular diet. Once a woman gets married and have children, her slowed metabolic rate could not burn the excess sugar taken on a daily basis.

While I was petite as a foreign student in USA. Now I am grossly over weight in Vietnam. Interestingly I have only gained 15 pounds in the interim period. Girls my height here have impossibly small bone frames. According to our tour guide, Vietnamese were incredibly poor ten years ago. Most families could not even afford night lights. What they did make aplenty were babies. He came from a family of twelve children. Now the government only allowed two children per family. There is of course enough for everyone to eat in the country now as the country is opened to investors.

What I found difficult to believe is that couples who hardly had enough to eat ten or fifteen years ago could produce a baby each a year and most of them did grow up! What about malnutrition? Childhood illnesses? Childbirth complications?

(116) Persimmon leaves for relieving gas

Just the other day my husband bought ten persimmons on behalf of an associate. Quite a few missionary on furloughs came for the meeting.

The persimmons were orange in color and they were crunchy. For our missionaries in remote desert area, faraway Pacific islands, and generally small villages with only helicopter transportation; they were a rare and delicious treat. Each persimmon costs 1 local dollar.

One of our missionary to an East Asian country said the if we collect, wash and dry the four pieces of leaves; they make excellent medicine for relieving stomach gas. All one needs to do is to boil let's say fifty leaves in water on a small fire for about an hour. The semi-cooled medicine should be drunk. If one dose could not cure the problem, the next day repeat the procedure with another bunch of persimmon leaves.

Folk medicine is very important for missionaries who live in the inaccessible places with hardly any medical service.

(114) Set between two hard places

Right before the US election, one of my husband's friends switched all his unit trust investment to US shares. He fervently believed that Romney would win, and that would cause US share prices to go up. Sad to say, when votes were being counted and Obama gained enough majority, he quickly sold and switched to local shares. In these two switches, he lost money.

Well, we gain sometimes and we lose sometimes! But on a lighter note, it must have been hard for the man or woman in the street to choose between a man suspected to be Muslim and a Mormon. Talking about between the fire and the frying pan!

(113) An Interesting Lecture

I just came back from a public lecture by Christina Lagarde, the MD of IMF. This is the second time I went to our national institution equivalent to the US Federal Reserve.

She was articulate and very easy to understand. If English was her second language, she must be a fantastic speaker in her mother tongue. Throughout her lecture, I have been listening not only for content but for pronunciation(after all, I have taught English for many years). So far I only detected one "mistake", she pronounced "multi" differently from most news readers.

For my American readers, she said that your country would have to tend to your fiscal cliff and deficit ceiling soon. If not, the projected 2% growth in your nation could be cancelled by the inaction of policy makers. We all know that 0 growth would mean stagnation and that is not good for any country.

My own country fared a little better, but with a 53% of debt to GNP ratio; we are not exactly in the pink of health. Once any nation hit the "magic" number of 60%, things could go out of control and not respond easily to remedy.

(112) this book will save your life by a.m.homes

My niece bought this book as a teenager. I read it once many years ago. Until recently, I thought of it as a rather unusual book.

A week back, I decided to read it once more. This time, I have plenty of time for reflection. After all, the last of my chicks has flown away. I begin to see the purpose for Homes to write this book. Personally speaking, I am the exact opposite of Richard Novak. He had millions, I have a few hundreds in my bank account so the bank cannot charge me for service. Any extra I lavished on my children, I gave to missions. He lived in an expensive hill top house, I live in my tiny house in a cheap part of town. He chose to leave his wife and son, I hung onto my husband and children. He was totally independent, I am totally dependent on my husband now and I will be dependent on my children if I live longer than my husband.

Yet I see his dilemma: What is the point of gaining the world (much wealth) but losing your very soul?

(111) Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

My daughter Elizabeth is going through a phase of reading the classics. Hence I benefit from the books she borrowed from the university library.

For a long time now, I have been rereading books like Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility and Emma. Jane Austen is one of my favorite authors. However, I have never had a chance of seeing even a copy of Northanger Abbey until this week.

My goodness, what if Henry Tilney was as bad as his father? It would be horrible to have Catherine Morland go back to her parents' home and stay there year after year as a spinster! Well, at this point you will probably think I am a hopeless romantic! In real life, I am more hard boiled than romantic. But I would like all the books I read to have happy endings. Same with movies! Life is already hard. Why look for more hard luck in fiction? If I were to pay for any book or movie, I want to be entertained. Even when I have the choice of what books to borrow, I would choose happy books if I could.

I am very glad that this is 2012, my daughters could choose to be single and earn decent livings.

(108) Raping a foreigner

A day ago I heard on the radio that an Indonesian woman was raped by three local policeman in a Penang Police Station.

I was shocked! If the guardians of the Law were rapists, what chance do we have in this nation? The poor woman took a taxi in the morning, these fiends trailed the taxi and forced it to stop. The police hand-cuffed and intimidated the driver into submission. Later they released him and took the woman into "custody". Apparently when the taxi driver and the victim called a press conference with the help of an elected official, ten citizens came forward to confirm they witnessed the "kidnapping".

What were the three thinking when they decided to do the unthinkable? Did they really believe that they were above the Law? Did they really believe that the taxi driver and the witnesses were so afraid that they would keep quiet? If these eleven were to keep quiet, I suppose these policemen could go on and act like the Nazis with impunity!

This tragedy brought to mind what I witnessed in a nearby eatery. I went to an Indonesian shop to buy fried rice one morning at 11:30 am. As one waitress was packing my food, two policemen in plain clothes came in and arrested one worker with no work permit. The waitress serving me hurriedly took my money and departed. She ran upstairs to call the owner, who is another Indonesian woman. The owner came down and called the husband of the helper who was arrested. According to her, once the husband appeared and pay a fine which bore no receipt, the wife would be released. They dared not let her be in custody for too long in case she gets raped. At that time, I took the comment with a big pinch of salt. Now, I realized that the owner did not exaggerate at all!

(107) Being angry on another's behalf

I have a friend whom I was walking with through a rough patch in her life. Let us call her Patsy here. Just as Patsy was 90% recovered, she stopped attending church. I sat and collected reams of information, but none of the many things she mentioned really sounded like the last straw that broke the  camel's back.

Until one evening she invited my husband and I to dinner, I was still wondering why she was no longer making any attempt to attend church. Sure, I know she was tired. Other times she was unwell. Yet there were weekends that she had to go back to the office. All these did not account for the fact that I have probably seen her once in three months in church.

She told my husband and I how her former pastor had a full blown affair with a leader's wife. When the secret blown open, the church split. Those who found forgiveness in their hearts stayed on. The Pastor repented. Patsy left with a horde of disillusioned folks, some stopped attending any church but Patsy went on to join another church.

Recently, her sister came back from a mission trip led by her Senior Pastor.(her sister attends a different church) S. Pastor's wife did not go, but her God daughter did. Throughout the journey, S. Pastor and the so called "God daughter" were blatantly flirting. Patsy's sister was so disgusted that she would not go to another such mission trip again.

The conversation went on to how Patsy wondered about whether her Pastor allowed personal dislike to dictate whether he supported (if Pastor says no, the church won't support) a young person to mission training. Patsy heard that her church did not come out with a single dollar when this young lady applied and attended a six month discovery program for mission. Interestingly, most of the cost was borne by her pre-Christian relatives.

Patsy recalled that prior to all these, she was in church and witnessed Pastor talking to a group of youth. Her Pastor was quite a joker, laughter followed him wherever he went. He has a funny habit of saying "You know? " in between ideas, pronounced the American way. Apparently the young lady in question imitated him and said "You know?" right after some thought and he said "I don't know!" rather emphatically showing his displeasure in no uncertain terms. I was not there, therefore I can't tell if this young girl was mirroring or ridiculing him at that instance. I suppose such a youth who dared to ridicule the Pastor deserve whatever he dished out as repercussion. But what if she was mirroring as a high form of admiration? Wouldn't this Pastor be reacting to something not intended as rudeness?

Well, no pastors are perfect. We are all forgiven sinners, those of us who are found in any church on Sundays. If we look for a perfect church, there is none on earth. Similarly we cannot find a single perfect pastor. We go to church because we believe in a Perfect God.

(106) Curfew

When my eldest left home to further his studies, I was more concerned that he made good friends in the capital. I did not give him any rules about when to return to his hostel. After all, he was so quiet and homey that he hardly went out throughout his teenage years.

When we located a mattress that was in fairly good shape that one friend of mine would like to give to Kenneth, his father found one friend who agreed to loan us his van for transporting the item to Ken's hostel. I remember calling him hourly from five pm to one am on a Friday night. He did not answer. The next day, we drove to his hostel armed with the phone number of his resident head just in case he was not there to let us into his room. He was there, sleeping after a late night. I was really more taken aback than upset that he was out "teh-tarik" until 2 am the previous night and he forgot to take his hand phone with him. (it is a local beverage of red tea+milk+sugar, hot but being poured from one container to another to add air bubbles to the mixture to make smooth the texture)

Now that my youngest is in university second year, I am still enforcing a curfew of 12 midnight (been doing that since she was 15). Well! She is totally different from her brother. If the week-end is made up of three days, she would be out three days in a row. Should she promise to return by X hour, nine times out of ten she would return at least fifteen minutes after the aforementioned hour. If she is Cinderella, she would stand much chance of being turned into a pumpkin if she return past the appointed hour. If we were to argue nature versus nurture, I suppose nature would account for the opposite temperaments.  The kind of friends they attract would account for the disparage amount of activities between the two. Yet they came from the same set of parents.

(105) Bullies became friends

Recently I read that a fourteen year old boy was beaten by two school mates(both male) to death in a bus stop. According to the columnist who commented on the tragedy, it was a case of bullying carried to excess. The deceased was the only son of his parents, he was being picked on because "he walked funny".

This piece of news brought to mind Kenneth's(my eldest son) brush with two bullies when they were nine years old. At that age, Kenneth was over weight and rather shy. He came home complaining that his two classmates took his water bottle and forced him to run after them while they threw the container one to the other. I am normally optimistic, while not agreeing to giving him extra money for drinks( thus dispensing with bringing plain drinking water); I did allow him to start using a disposable mineral bottle.

A week later, they did the same with an exercise book that Kenneth had to hand up after recess. While I still thought positively that they were trying to rouse Kenneth to play with them, I set about preparing goodies for him to bring to school. I baked some scrumptious short bread and packed extra, encouraging Kenneth to share with his friends, including those two playful boys who gave him a hard time. Kenneth returned with an empty food container and told me that one of those boys took some pieces of short bread but the other refused. Other classmates finished the lot.

The next day, I took the trouble to drive out of my way to buy a loaf of delicious banana bread. I cut a third of it into bite size and packed them attractively into two disposable containers. My instruction was for Kenneth to eat from one while offering the other to the friend who enjoyed the short cake. At the end of the day, Kenneth came back reporting that his friend took the small container and persuaded the other to try one piece. Quite a few of his classmates came over to help them finish the rest.

Thereafter, I would either prepare or buy some goodies or others at least once a week and let Kenneth take more than he needed to school. In this case, those two boys became his friends eventually. For it is difficult to have children partake treats from another and continue to be mean to him. Many years have passed, Kenneth found out from Facebook that the boy who ate his short bread will be a qualified medical doctor next year.

(104) The Fourth Estate by Jeffrey Archer

This story reminded me a lot about Kane and Abel by the same author. While in Kane and Abel we have a hotelier bearing animosity against a banker. In The Fourth Estate we have two communications moguls fighting in business with each other.

True to form, this type of male aggression seemed to play out until the death of one party. In the "war" between Kane and Abel, only the banker's death ended the ill feelings. But in the territorial war between Armstrong and Townsend, it ended with Armstrong's suicide. Both were willing to gamble, to take great risk for tremendous gain.  

The closest in life I have come to so far in life to this type of animosity is the disagreement between two Chinese men. One man was educated by the British and he was big on keeping his promise. He was also very adamant that any gentleman should not go back on his word. The other man was related to the first by marriage. The first man was poor while the second was rich. Under a certain set of circumstances, the rich man promised the poor man's wife something. But by the time the rich man realized what the promise implicated in terms of dollars and cents, he changed his mind.

The poor man held the rich man by the promise that came out of the latter's mouth. As long as the latter refused to keep to his verbal promise, the former refused to talk to nor acknowledge the former. This became difficult when there were family occasions, if A turned up, B would not be there. Whereas if B turned up, A would walk off. Now that the poor man passed away, the stand off ended.

(103)The Careful Use of Compliments by Alexander McCall Smith

Although this is the first time I read about applied ethics and a Ph.D. holder who edited a magazine on Philosophy, it has been a rather pleasant experience!

When I moved to the part that Isabel admitted to her lover that she owned eleven million pounds of assets in America, my thoughts strayed to two women I have the privilege of knowing.

The first one inherited serious wealth when her father passed on. She was still in her mid-twenties, but she has always had her head screwed on right. Wealth did not change her much, she was still frugal and refused to touch even a cent of the interest her inheritance generated.

It became a matter of contention between her and the rest of her immediate family. If only she would loosen her tight grasp on the dough, say let ten percent of the interest be enjoyed by her husband and her four children; I dare say she would have a happier family life.

My second friend inherited millions in her fiftieth year. She has been well-to-do all along, being married to a husband who provides aplenty. Being generous with friends on food, my family and I have enjoyed her hospitality for many years. Those millions did not change her. It gives her a push to prove to herself capable at investing and generating more money. She is currently more focused than all the previous years I have known her.

Isabel is happier with her life that money enables her to lead compared to my two friends. My first friend is unhappy that for the last few years she could not add any of her earnings to her amassed wealth. My second friend has just begun to gauge her self-worth by the measure of the earning ratio of her investment. Wealth is a good servant, but a rather exacting master!!

(102) East met West

My last blog, Feeding Station, seemed to have been received well. Let me continue, the gentleman who has been such a blessing to the needy in Penang went on to tour Thailand and he landed in a hostel for poor hill tribe children in Chiangrai state.

This orphanage or hostel was founded on faith, people and Christian organisations from many parts of the world donated funding to feed and educate the children of minorities who otherwise would not receive any education. Our friend met a Thai widow there and to cut a long story short, they were married and worked in this place where abandoned children find hope and future.

Well, the East is still the East while the West remains the West. I stepped into a rather volatile situation where the East and the West clashed. Since I am an Asian who speak English, I was asked by both sides to speak to the other. After listening to the long and short of it, I came to the conclusion that the Thais were expecting the white man to behave like a Thai since he has been there for quite a while (in their opinion). However, nobody could change his culture in such a short time (as far as I know). The white man obviously was behaving like a sincere crusader but no one appreciated that.

For a while I believed both parties were right in their own ways. Yet I know that if there was conflict both parties must be wrong too. After praying for wisdom and a persuasive tongue, I ventured to try to be a peace-maker. After assuring the hosts that they did have a right to set down some basic rules for the guests, I explained that once a Thai lady married a white man, she should step into his culture. That would most easily be accomplished when she follows her husband to his country. Therefore, the hostel should release her so that she could be with her husband in his own country (she was a staff member prior to marriage).

For the newly wed, I explained that they need to start anew. After all, she has not gone over to meet his family at that point. Why not take her over to Australia, let her stay long enough to get her permanent residency. After that, if they so feel called, they could always return to Thailand and start their own work in any way they see fit.

The day after I provided a solution and talked to both parties, I could sense relief and the very worked up people relaxing. My friend, the Thai lady, was really excited about her forthcoming trip to Australia. The hosts, which was made up of many families serving in the community, were most pleased about their white guest willing to leave for a few months. As my white friend worked out the finance side, his wife said that she would be more than willing to work in his home town at any jobs she could find. Hence everyone was focusing on how to help the couple make the trip. Conflict flew out of the window, truce was declared and the atmosphere really improved. They did leave for Australia in a few months' time and stayed on there.

(101) Feeding Station

During one of my train journeys up to Chiangmai, I met a man who was born in UK but grew up and worked in Australia. He went on a round the world back-packing tour and stayed in Penang for two years. Whenever his social visit visa expired, he would take a train journey to Bangkok. After a night or two, he would travel on the train back to Butterworth(the main land side). He spent his two years as an unpaid volunteer to feed the street people in Penang.

He considered his time well spent as his way of contributing to society. When I asked him if he had any difficulty entering and reentering that many times, he said none. After all, most of the immigration officials in my country are Muslim and they believe in good deeds to the poor. While they worked at jobs that feed their big families, they have no quarrel to pick with this foreigner who has his own means that enable him to do charity work in our fair land.

That was about ten years ago. I saw the feeding station he mentioned from my hotel window. I was surprised that it was still open and some people were still eating at 10:30 pm. Food prices are still going up but wages remained very low. With thousands of foreign workers flooding in to take most of the low level jobs, locals who work at menial jobs would be hard pressed to earn enough to feed, clothe and educate their children without any aid.

(99) Pearl of the Orient

Years ago, my husband bought into some time-sharing vacation club. As a result of trying to use up this year's room nights, we came to Penang quite unexpectedly. Paying for express bus ticket of $35 each, we were freed from driving. The journey lasted six hours with two stops.

It must have been ten years ago that we drove from Silver City to Batu Feringgi to meet up with my husband's Japanese host family. Twenty years ago my husband took part in a cultural exchange program which allowed him about three months in Japan. He met many wonderful people from that country.

While there are still many old buildings, the Heritage Building Society did a good job in getting some of them spruced up. Penang is famous for street food. We had some beef noodle and Char Kuey Teo(fried rice noodle with egg, cockes and prawns) from Ho Ping Restaurant on Penang street. We have some Chendul ice (an Indian dessert made up of green soft sticks, ice crystals and coconut extract in liquid and dark sugar) in another nearby eatery.

We took advantage of the CAT(Central Area Transit) Hop On which is free to get around the town area. The bus is air-conditioned and it runs in a circuit around 19 bus stops in the central business district. We saw a budget hotel that boasted of $99 providing two free breakfasts. If that means a private twin sharing room with attached bath, it is pretty good for Penang. We read that in the year 2011, there were 17,000 successful applicants of MM2H, a program that allows foreigner to have yearly visa to stay in this country. For this group of people who love my country, Penang is the top choice of residence. Apart from the choking traffic jams, this is a very nice place. I guess retirees do not need to rush any where, so even traffic jams do not affect them if they live away from town. Suppose if a British person draws pension in pounds, the exchange of let's say 5.5 would enable him to live very comfotably here.

(98) different learning styles

Do you know what your learning style is?

Mine happened to be audio, that was why from day one I thrived in school. One of my brothers' learns best from ideas written as points linked to each other as spider webs. I know from the notes he puts into books for as long as I can remember. Now that method is being taught as mind mapping in seminars in leading hotels. Some of my wealthier friends spent hundreds to send each of their children for three days two night seminars teaching them what my brother has naturally learnt on his own.

One of my son's friends learns best from audio-visual means. He even could close his eyes and remember events as AV footage. Then I happened to have a dorm mate who lived in the room on top of mine. She walked night after night studying. She was a born dancer who was working hard to get into a law school. In order to register facts in her brain, she has to walk up and down her room while reciting the facts aloud to herself. I knew that well, as I lived in a building that was over a hundred years old and the flooring was made of wood. I could hear her steps if I did not get to sleep before her nightly study sessions began.

Elizabeth, my youngest daughter, studies best when she has her favorite music or songs on. A few of her friends have to turn on both the TV and the radio to do their homework. I find that difficult to believe. When I was in my senior year, my study carrel was in a corner in the basement where there was hardly any human traffic. Baby boomers may need absolute silence when generation X needs a healthy mix of white noise in order to concentrate.

The most amazing person in history who had overcome all obstacles to learn was Helen Keller. She was both blind and deaf. Her teacher used the sense of touch to reach her. I presumed she learnt Braille. Without the sense of hearing, she learnt to speak. Someone who heard her recording said she spoke like an automaton. Whatever she sounded like, she wrote beautifully.

(97) The Know-them-all parents

My husband's best friend from Uni days happened to have come from within five Km of my parents in law's home. Ever since he married his beloved who hailed from a northern island, he has changed jobs and then moved to his wife's territory.

One time we went to his city and looked him and his family up. When his wife took the children to the rest room, my husband asked if he returned often to our home town. He made a face and said,"It is very difficult to have parents who are successful in their respective careers!" On reflection, I realized his father climbed rather high in the civil service ladder and then retired early to start a business. His mother did rather well in a Bank and later retired to help in her husband's business. For people who have had no set backs in their lives, it is easy for them to expect their children to do better. But times have moved on. What their children face now is not what they faced twenty years ago.

His parents probably were not gracious in their reaction and words to their only son and daughter-in-law. The worst part is that it seemed every company he joined seemed not to last five years, it was not true to assume he wanted to change jobs. Yet it would be futile to expect him to want to join his know-it-all parents in their business. It was bad enough to hear discouraging things on a weekly basis. Life would become unbearable if he were to work for them.

I could well imagine how his mother would react to his wife who chose to take care of her children herself and home make. The older lady would take it as a lack of ambition or straight laziness. The truth could be she wanted to give her best years to her children and bond with them. A close knit family is more important than financial security to some people.

As his parents badgered him and his family, he just drew closer to her side who were encouraging and supportive. It is very natural and unavoidable.