Baby Gloom

By now , people should be aware that Singapore has a rapidly aging population. This Will lead to more money need to be spent on health care services and more importantly initiatives to keep seniors active and contributing to society. But why in the first place do we have a baby problem.

The problem lies in perhaps in my generation and people like me. I mean some people want to have families but it is a quite expensive to bring up a kid in Singapore. The cost of education is also quite high. But I would like to argue that it goes way beyond money. Of course the government has alot of monetary incentives for people to have children but that alone is never enough.

I think about myself and my friends and how tired we all seem to be when we meet up. Its like the pace of work in Singapore is very fast. We work hard and we work really long hours. I try to imagine what it would be like to go home after work and despite all the fatigue from work, still have to spend time nurturing a child, and I realise it is something that is really really hard to do.

The government does encourage a work life balance but at the end of the day, it is up to employers to put schemes in place to help their employees spend more time with their families.

Then there is the nature of our competitive education system and country in general, Everything is like a giant rat race from the moment a child enters school. In fact the whole country seems to be in a race, to get on the bus, the train to get to the food. We are not a friendly and gracious society and it sometimes feels as if everyone is only out for him or herself. Would anyone want to bring a child up in such a selfish society? What would the child learn from the adults around him?
Complain when you're unhappy, rush for seats, push people aside on the train, hesitate to help others. It is quite a bleak picture when I think about it.

And our transport system is so family unfriendly. I can sometimes barely get on the train and I can't imagine what mothers with strollers feel like.

Can this country become truly, a conducive place to bring up and nurture a child like? OF course! But that takes time. It takes society to be more kind, for parents to spend more time nurturing their children to be respectful and well-mannered, for employers to understand. But will it happen? probably not. Although the government will try their best, they are fighting a losing battle and society has to shift first before we become a great place to raise a child. And that, is the most difficult thing to achieve.

The Blame Game

Who stole the cookie from the cookie jar......

If one cookie goes missing then can there only be one culprit? Its never really just one who...unless its cookie monster. HE definately stole the cookies. But maybe he had friends, maybe, Some others want the cookie to be stolen. Who made cookie monster, a MONSTER in the first place? So are the monster makers the one that stole the cookies?

Blaming someone for something is never easy and trust me on this words can make all the difference. For example: Who was to blame for the Cuban Missile Crisis

Best answer: almost everyone involved had a part to play.

The trick is to be able to classify and make clear if the blame could fall more heavily on one or two parties. adjectives can make all the difference in an explanation words like:

Aggressive action, Provoke, Instigate, inaction, irk, irritate, anger

Explaining the blame is a tricky business. It is very easy to fall into the trap of describing what happened instead. Be clear and take about the nature of the blame and only about one party at a time. Here's an example of how it can go.

At the end of the day, both America and and USSR were responsible for the crisis where it seemed as if both might go to war. This is because both took deliberate and provacative action that made the other worry and fear for his country's safety. America is to blame for setting the stage that could allow the crisis to take place in the first place. By planning the bay of pigs incident where they tried to invade Cuba and by putting missiles that can reach moscow in turkey in 1959, it made both Cuba and Russia fearful and wary of them and more likely to take counter measures to off set their threat. Russia was at perphaps less at fault as their provocative action of putting missiles on Cuba was in defense of a communist state, Cuba. However, their Krushchev's defiant and attitude towards Kennedy's demands for their removal and the very act of putting the missiles there would provoke the USA to feel threatened and react to put in place aggressive measure like a naval blockade to protect themselves. At the end, it is the tensions, paranoid fear of the arms threat caused by both countries in this cold war that resulted in the crisis. If they had to try to diffuse tensions earlier and found a way to communicate, this entire affair could have been prevented.

Hope this helped

Potsdam conference

I was actually wrong about the Potsdam Conference and the view of Stalin during it. It is an opinion that he didn't trust the USA already because of the atomic bomb that they only told him on the spot but had been developing for years. He knew about it from his spies but he didn't betray anything... Got this from the Manhattan project website:

"Truman approached Stalin without an interpreter and, as casually as he could, told him that the United States had a "new weapon of unusual destructive force." Stalin showed little interest, replying only that he hoped the United States would make "good use of it against the Japanese." The reason for Stalin's composure became clear later: Soviet intelligence had been receiving information about the atomic bomb program since fall 1941. "

The Manhattan Project is the name they gave to the research and development of the atomic bomb. This website is worth to check out: http://www.cfo.doe.gov/me70/manhattan/potsdam_decision.htm

It has detailed stuff about what was happening just before the dropping of the bombs. Cool sources too!

Many people have pointed to Potsdam as the start of the Cold War. Yalta in 1945 was where they set the tone for the future of Europe and Russia agreed to war against Japan but it was at Potsdam when these discussions continued that fissures emerged. Truman was more suspicious then Roosevelt and things they clashed with Russia was the future of Poland and the eastern European states as well as how to treat Germany. Russia wen on to instill communist leaders in Russia hence gaining distrust over their true intentions.

I think that Russia did want to spread their influence but also did so to ensure a buffer and allies in the face of America aggressively recruiting allies through the Marshall Plan, Nato and other schemes. The way America acted, it seemed they openly distrusted Russia and was building might against them. Russia acted like wise. Hence : The Cold War.

Oh and there's an interesting and great comic out there called The WatchMen. Must read if you can get your hands on it.

How to run 42km

I recommend you buy this book: Marathoning for Mortals . I bought it when I did my first 21 km run in 2005 and I still use and refer to it today.

There are a couple of things to do to plan to run 42km.

1. Respect the distance. 42km is a really really long way and recognise that it will take quite a bit of training.

2. Set a goal. Are you a first time runner? Do you have injuries? Coming up with a realistic running goal according to your abilities and the time you can afford to train is essential in any marathon running. If you are running for the first time, I suggest just aiming to finish.:)

3. Plan. Plan your training, refer to books and if you have trainers, listen to them. Running 10 km and running a full marathon are very very different. You have to factor in stamina and strength building, endurance and even mental strength. It is amazing the amount of focus you need when you run beyond 5 hours.

4. Stick to the plan. We all slack off from time to time and please don't give yourself too much of a hard time about it. But do try sticking to your plan. It all builds up to better running.

I use a modified Galloway method when I run. I run 4 mins and walk 1min on run day itself and follow a training plan in the book in which training runs prepared me very well. The strange thing is that run/walking made me faster then running over longer distances. If you are starting to run, do consider this method. It allows your running muscle groups to rest in short intervals.

There's an age minimum for marathons, 18 I think. Please check. Hope this helped.:)

Oh and please get the book or any book to guide you.