I read 2 articles in the Chinese newspaper yesterday about languages. One about doctors who can't speak/read Chinese competently and the other commented on the inconvenience caused to some passengers, especially the elderly as directional signages and station announcements in MRT are only in English.

In the first article, the author (doctor working in a hospital) was from a SAP school and he felt sad that a Chinese national TCM doctor in the hospital expressed surprised when the author could read Chinese newspaper. Although many of us could advance in our career without much in-depth knowledge of Chinese, we could become a laughing stalk when foreigners see us Chinese can't even read/speak or understand Chinese very well.

The second article mentioned that announcements and signages in Switzerland are in the 4 official languages.

My DD1 had this idea of doing a mini fun fair/carnival for her birthday celebration last year but as her birthday fell within the exam period, she had to postpone materialising her idea for a month till the June school holidays when her cousins came over to our house for some play time. I thought I’ll share it with everyone here so instead of spending a bomb on birthday celebrations, we can save money and at the same time, recycle materials and cultivate creativity in our children. Here goes what she did:

I think my DD2 has too much free time in her hands so she loves digging for things (esp. tissue boxes, empty toilet/paper towel rolls etc. which I put aside for recycling) and create things from what she can find. Just to share some simple "crafts" that she made by herself when she was 3 yrs old (she just turned 4 recently) so parents here can either do with their children if they're too young or you can throw all the materials at them and let them occupy themselves.