Shopping

I went shopping in Tokyu Hands and Loft Shibuya today. And I bought:

1. A Japanese how - to - knot book to make and some thread to practice on.
   
2. A scalpel like thing to make rubber stamps (from erasers). I think I bought the cheapest option.
3. 2 sewing guides - a screen for my mother in law to make for Jonathan and aother table cloth for me to make one day. Both of them use white thread on Japanese dark blue material. I so wanted to by some Japanese design cross stitch but I could not think of what to do with it when I finished. Actually the Klimt picture was fabulously complicated - but it wasn't Japanese...
4. A disposable fountain pen for Stephen - he said I should have bought 6.
5. A sewing scissors. Another Japanese souvenior. I am thinking that their scissors are the best in the world? aside from perhaps German scissors which I am not going to get.

After picking Nathan, we went to get his haircut. This normally if followed by some toy shopping. Our deal, about a BIG police car was meant to be done with Daddy so we went to the 100Yen shop to get LOTs of presents. We got:

1. 5 mini highlighter pens
2. a thomas paper aeroplane
3. mini water balloons with a filler
4. paper make-a-car kit
5. magnets to post nathan's school artwork
6. mini othello set
7. shinkansen stickers
8. ratatouille stickers
9. a hiragana book for Daddy

25 Random things

3 friends wrote 25 random things about themselves and tagged me in it, along with all their other friends. I thought it was very brave of them to write 25 random things about themselves to be aired publicly on facebook. I couldn't do this. But it sounds like a very cathartic as well as a good exercise in self examination. This is a more appropriate place to air those things - whomever finds this blog is already interested and will read it.

Here are the rules:

Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it's because I want to know more about you.

(To do this, go to “notes” or the "+" sign under tabs on your profile page, paste these instructions in the body of the note, type your 25 random things, tag 25 people (in the right hand corner of the app) then click publish.)

1. I like food and especially food cooked by someone else.
2. I so love my son, Nathan - he is overwhelmingly cute and adorable to me. I feel this for Enzo and Dino, my 2 dogs and Stephen, my husband.
3. I like watching TV.
4. I do not know how to keep my house as tidy as I would like it to be.
5. I have 3 blogs.
6. I like looking at shops for interesting, beautifully designed products.
7. I feel very helpless at the injustices in the world. It is all wrong, and there are no answers to them. While we like to reduce our carbon footprint in this world, Martin Khor thinks otherwise and has his points. So what can we do?
8. I like listening to my favourite music.
9. 
   

Travel Africa

If i ever go to South Africa, I want to visit:

Maropeng: The Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site
Visit Liew Siew Leng

Absorbent Mind

You can help to support your child’s Absorbent Mind by

• limiting stimulation for very young babies
• keeping distractions and interruptions while your child is working, to a minimum
• providing an uncluttered, ordered living space where everything has its place
• giving your child as much independence as they can handle
• allowing your child to choose and direct their own activity
• letting them work on that activity until they are ready to pack it away
• eliminating or limiting television, which wires the brain up for a short attention span, a permanent effect.
• choosing toys and activities that offer sensory information to your child i.e. things made of natural materials, things that work mechanically rather than electronically, real tools that actually work
• keeping in mind that the young child thrives on actual, real experiences, and learns much more from these than from a virtual or imagined experience

090214 Newspapers

Reading this weekend's International Herald Tribune, I noticed that on the same page they reported the release of a Ukrainian ship captured by Somalian pirates: its cargo was arms, tanks from Ukraine destined for the 'Kenyan military' (this is a suspicious claim) and a Sri Lankan peace activist kidnapped in Southern Philippines.

Both articles were laid side by side. The Ukraines paid $3.2 million ransom to the Somali pirates and the Philippine government told the kidnappers they dont pay ransom to kidnappers.

Life or arms are more important?

Sri Lanka

[TamilNet, Tuesday, 27 January 2009, 16:10 GMT]
Sri Lanka Army (SLA) has instructed UN and World Food Programme officials to keep away from 'safety zone,' which has been subjected to continuous inhuman artillery barrage, denying civilians any meaningful space of refuge, said the latest reports from the offices of the Regional Director of Health Services (RDHS) for Ki'linochchi and Mullaiththeevu. 300,000 Tamils are denied of even drinking water and are facing hunger, the reports say. "Completely given up by the International Community, the civilians are left to face the fate at the hands of their genocidal killers. Indications are that they would rather choose to die starving rather than getting caught by Colombo's army of predators," said a medical staff at Udaiyaarkaddu hospital.

Walking the dogs

I dont think the dogs enjoyed Japan very much.

After we left, I counted that they had perhaps been off the lead and running twice - once in Tamagawa River and once in Kamakura where we went for Christmas lunch. It was freezing and we let them off on the beach. They ran up and down once, and stopped, as it was too cold.

However, we did walk them almost everyday, was introduced to our favourite restaurant Burger Arms and met many people. I also got to observe the pet world in Japan.

The most outrageous activity was what my friend did. She rented a dog for a day so her children would experience owning a pet?? The dog she 'rented' was a maltese cross and after collecting it, they set off to take it for a walk at Yoyogi Park. They put the dog on the leash, and she said after 20 minutes, it stopped walking and needed to be put back in its pram. The poor dog was kept in a cage for most of its life, that it didnt know how to 'go for a walk'.

My neighbour who I call the 'white one' because she likes wearing white and she drives a white Audi TT, she owns a miniature white poodle who is properly groomed and visits the vets/pet shop once a month in the least. She taught me a few pet owning etiquettes and recommended the vets/pet accomodation place we used whenever we travelled. She told me she fed her pet poodle a little kumara or sweet potato to cleanse her as she ate dog biscuits everyday.

When walking a dog, I seldom saw a Japanese person carry anything else other than their dog 'small bag'. Unlike me, they didnt double their dog walking with another chore, like shopping or looking. Their dog 'small bag' was filled with all the things required for walking the dog - a doggie bag - to pick up their poo, small treats and a bottle of water with a small bowl for their thirst. The 'white one' would also carry a spray bottle to spray the its urine, to wash it off or to dissolve it. Later I learnt that dog urine can indeed be poisonous to plants as its too concentrated. Urine dissolved in water, though can provide fertilisation.

One man, I observed walking his dog in shirokanedai made me smile. He had a boxer and he was as round as his dog. He would walk his dog with a large dog bag. The dog would always defecate on his walks and when he did, the man would stop for the job to complete. Then look in his bag for a plastic bag and toilet paper. Use the toilet paper to pick up the poo, then use more to clean the dog's anus. He would take his own time to do all this, his labour for his dog!