The difference between learning an instrument now and learning an instrument during my time is that parental involvement is more important now than before.  When I was learning the piano, my parents didn’t have to do anything except to provide the instrument and pay the fees.  The learning is strictly on me and my teacher.  My mother certainly didn’t have to help coach me at home.  She could not even if she wanted to because she herself did not learn to play the piano.  The case is very different these days.  I find myself having to coach my children in their practice.  Sometimes I wonder how mothers who do not have any music background can wing it.  It is almost expected that the mom (or dad) has to be a kind of “assistant teacher” at home.  If there is a problem with the child’s playing, the teacher raises it with the parent and the parent is expected to make sure the child practises correctly at home.

I digressed.  What I wanted to write is actually my opinion for some of the questions I get from friends around me regarding the learning of instruments.

Question : How do I know whether my child is interested in music or not?

My Opinion : There is no litmus test to this.  In my opinion, music appreciation is a very innate thing.  Most babies and toddlers will jump around, dance and move with music.  As long as it is something that they enjoy, they will be interested in it.  I guess the real question that the parents want to ask is actually “How do I know whether my child is interested in learning (a certain instrument)?”  These are two very different questions.  As I said, most kids, in fact, most people enjoy music.  Adults enjoy all kinds of music.  Mostly pop music, I guess.  That’s why things like iPod sell so well.  Even my eldest, who is not learning any instrument, and whom I jokingly call a philistine, enjoys music and will drum along with the beat and rhythm.

As for whether a child is interested in any particular instrument, I think the best way to find out is to let him try it.  Sometimes, this involves a bit of risk-taking.  For instrument such as the violin, the initial outlay is small and you can always get a 2nd hand instrument  quite cheaply to let your child try out.  For the piano, most parents hesitate because the cost is so high.  At some point, one just has to bite the bullet, take a risk and make the decision.

Question : I really don’t want to spend all that money to buy a piano.  I am not sure if it is a short-term interest or not.

My Opinion : I used to work in a music shop and once heard my piano salesman colleague answered this question.  I think his answer makes a lot of sense.  He said that if a child came home and told the parents that he found school boring and didn’t want to school anymore, would the parents allow him to quit school?  Likewise, if the child said that learning the piano was boring, should the parents let him quit?

I guess his point was that learning an instrument is a commitment.  And I agree with him totally.  One way to mitigate the cost issue is to buy a second hand instrument, or borrow one until you are very sure.  There are many children who quit learning prematurely and their parents are likely to sell the instruments.  Look out for these resale instruments.  You don’t even have to get a very good one.  What is needed is just a decent instrument in good condition.

Question : I want my child to enjoy music so if it is not fun for him/her to learn anymore, I will not force him/her.

My Opinion : At the risk of sounding rather Tiger Mom-ish, let me get straight to the point – learning an instrument is not “play” and “fun”.  It is not like your other enrichment classes like art or Speech and Drama, or Music and Movement, where things are meant to be fun or “learning through play” and all that.  Of course, there is a place for all that Play and Learn stuff, especially for very young children.  This is where you get all the group classes that teaches basic music appreciation and all that.  But you might as well accept the fact that after that initial 2 or maybe 3 years, things will not be so much “fun” anymore.  Learning an instrument, as I said earlier, is a commitment.  It is a discipline.  It is a lot of work.  The learning itself should be enjoyable.  Music is, after all, a beautiful thing.  The sound an instrument makes should delight your soul.  However, a lot of hard work is involved here and there is no way you can get away with it.

Here is where I totally agree with Tiger Mom (Amy Chua).  A child cannot enjoy something she is not good at.  In order to be good at something, she has to work very hard to perfect her skills.  However, most kids will not, on their own accord, want to work hard at it.  Hence, it is up to the parent to make sure that the child diligently work at practising so that she can become good at the instrument.  Only after she gains a certain level of competency can she truly start to enjoy the instrument.

The initial years of learning an instrument can be very dreary, although I think things are much improved now, with more palatable music scores catering to the taste of little kids.  In order to play nice pieces, one has to have a certain level of skill.  To gain that certain level of skill takes years of drilling and practising, playing boring stuff like finger exercises and scales.  While doing all that, the child still gets to play music but probably the more boring, uninteresting stuff, although as I said, things are much better now.  Even playing nice music takes practice.  It is really no fun to be stumbling through a piece of music.  Even a child knows whether he plays well or not.  After stumbling and stumbling all the time, he will think he is not any good at it and quickly lose interest, when in fact, there is nothing wrong with him except perhaps a lack of discipline and practice.

The role of the parent is to help give that push to make sure the child practises well.  This is where it is like school.  E.g. if the kid comes home with bad maths results, what would a typical Singaporean parent do?  Get more assessment books for the child to practise until he is good at it.  Do we say : let’s quit Maths, it’s too difficult?  Of course not!

So if you are still thinking that you do not want to impose a boring activity on your child, then I think you should not consider letting your child learn an instrument.  All is not lost because for young children, you can still send them for group music appreciation classes.  Just because a person does not learn an instrument does not mean the person cannot appreciate and enjoy music.  For older children, there are other avenues where music can become part of their lives, e.g join a school band (though still need to practise, but probably less so and probably more fun), or learn to strum a guitar.

Question : At what age should my child start learning an instrument?

My Opinion : One can learn an instrument at any age.  I am just starting to learn the violin, along with my little one.  However, the reality is that the later you start, the greater the handicap.  Hence, it is always good to start young.  How young really depends on whether the child is ready, and whether the teacher is willing to take in a very young child.  Most places will accept violin students from 3 years and up, and piano students from 4 years and up.

Question : How often should the child take exams?

My Opinion : Less is more.  Exam is really not that important.  It would be really sad if the objective is just to take exam at every grade, quickly achieve a Grade 8 or Diploma and be done with it.  The child ends up doing mostly 3 exam pieces every year, and knows nothing else apart from exam pieces.  It is a waste of money and time and whatever qualification achieved is really a sham because the kid knows nothing else apart from exams and more exams.

So how many exams should a child take?  I think 3 or 4 would be about right. The time that you free up from not having to prepare for exams can be used to play such a lot of other music and learn about more things at a leisurely pace. Music is so much more than exam.  The child gains from a more well-rounded music education and is truly “qualified” when he get his Grade 8 or Diploma or even higher qualifications.

Question : Violin or Piano? (Or others?)

My Opinion : It is entirely up to you and your child.  As I said, piano is a default with me because I already own a piano.  My #3 learns the violin because I am kind of sick of doing piano with two kids, so it is more for variety’s sake.  There were other considerations involved but those were unique to my family and my children.

Question : Group Class or Individual?

My Opinion : Depends on the child.  Some kids thrive in a group setting.  Others don’t.  My #3 dislikes a group setting.  On the other hand, I think a group setting helped sustained the interest for my #2 for a while, until he felt confident enough to take on individual lessons.  Bear in mind that the progress may be a bit slower for a group class setting.

Question : How Do You Know When To Quit?

My Opinion : This is a question that nobody can answer but yourself.  Just like you don’t go into a marriage thinking about divorce, you don’t start learning an instrument thinking about quitting. That said, there will be children and parents who give up.  I was one of them.  I started my #1 on the piano when he was 5, at a group class.  It was the Yamaha Junior Music Class.  He was more interested in meddling with all the buttons on the electone, generally fooling around than actually learning.  I took him out of the class before we even finished Book 1 because he was getting too disruptive in class and I was getting too fed up with him.  When he was in Primary 1, his brother started the same class and he suddenly asked to learn the piano again.  We sent him for individual lessons after he told us that he was very sure he wanted to learn.  The whole thing lasted but for 9 months before he quit again.  He didn’t like to practise.  As I said, it is a rare child who would be totally motivated to practise.  However, after months of dragging him through practice, and hearing how he played, I concluded that classical piano was not suitable for him and agreed to let him stop.

Please don’t ask me how I know for sure it is right to stop.  It is really a judgement call.  Sometimes, the kid just goes through a phase of not wanting to practise, but after that, will be quite happy to practise again.  This sort of situation does not call for a complete cessation of lessons.  You just have to bear with the grumbling for a while and wait for the phase to pass.  Many children actually do not really start appreciating music and the instruments they are playing until they are around Grade 5 and above.  That’s when they gain certain competency and start playing nice music, you see.  That’s also about when some of them grow up and gain certain maturity to appreciate feelings and expressions.  So you probably need to be mentally prepared to “drag on” at least until this stage and if the “relief” does not come, perhaps, you can consider letting your child quit.

That said, if you child, like mine, clearly does not seem to be very musical (especially in terms of classical music), then there is not much point to let him go on.  For my “philistine” son, as I said, he still appreciates music.  It is just not the sort he gets through classical piano or violin.  I am encouraging him to pick up the guitar when he is old enough to play chords on it and he is actually more interested in that.  Not the classical guitar though.  I think that would be equally out of his league.

What if the child is actually quite musical but just hates to practise?  There are ways to motivate the kid.  Sometimes you need the carrot, sometimes you need the stick.  Sometimes it is about what makes the child tick and sometimes it is just bearing with the tantrums until the phase is over.  You can find out from other moms what they do to motivate their children.  Find ideas.  Be creative.  Sometimes, the solution is just to take a short break and revisit the piece again.  There are just so many ways to explore. The bottom-line is try to keep things positive and less of a fight.  The kid may take twice the amount of time to achieve something but at least he is getting there comfortably at his own pace rather than giving up altogether.

What you really don’t want to do is to allow your child to quit on a whim, and then pick it back up again, then quit again, and then ask to start again, and so on.   I think this just encourages the child to be impulsive.

The rest of the Questions

Such as which teacher is good, which school is good, which programme is good, who or what do I recommend, etc, these I will not answer because they are very subjective and it is best you do your own research and find what you are happy with.

#1

I tried to speak Mandarin to him since he was a baby and among the 3, I think I spoke the most to him but sadly, still not enough.  I would say at best 80% of the time, it was English and 20% of the time, Mandarin.  At that time, I had not come across all the good Chinese children books yet so book reading was almost nil.  When he was about 1 year old, he was taken care of by my parents when I went back to work.  My parents are Chinese educated and we speak Mandarin at all.  Not just your regular ‘market Mandarin’.  It is quite common for our speech to be peppered with metaphor, idioms (成语 )and proverbs( 谚语 ) and Chinese history and culture is also not unfamiliar to us.  So #1 spent close to a year in a Mandarin-speaking environment.  At that time, he was not speaking yet.  After I quit work to take care of him full time again, he continued to spend time with my parents through regular stay-overs.

Then he grew up and went to preschool.  He had Chinese lessons in school and his Chinese teachers spoke Mandarin to him.  His preschool was not particularly Chinese-oriented.  I would say his preschool experience is quite typical of a Singaporean preschool experience.  I did not do much about his learning and his Chinese.  He wasn’t sent to an enrichment class to boost his Chinese standard, like so many preschool kids are today.  When he went to Primary School, he had no problem coping with Chinese in school.  He had already learned Hanyu Pinyin in preschool, so he did not have problems learning Hanyu Pinyin in Primary School.  While he was in preschool, he already learned how to write Chinese characters.  With some reinforcement at home, he could recognise and write enough characters to get by Primary 1 and 2 uneventfully.

However, by the time he was in Primary 3, and the expectation was much higher, he started having more problems with Chinese.  He could, for example, read all the characters in a passage but had no idea what he was reading about.  He could not string proper sentences together, much less express himself effectively.  All these pose a problem for composition and comprehension.  While having all these issues at school, he has no problem talking to you in Mandarin, albeit in a rather ‘broken’ form of it.  He is not completely tongue-tied when it comes to Mandarin.

Recently, I have resorted to forcing him to read Chinese books, copy Chinese phrases and basically doing most of the things kids are made to do these days just to deal with the exams.  He still does not attend any enrichment classes.  I am a little doubtful about the effectiveness of enrichment classes at this level.  Besides, it is not as if I do not have the ability to teach him.  The issue is more of whether he is willing to co-operate with me!

#2

This boy is probably the ‘worst’ of the lot.  While I spent about 20% of the time speaking Mandarin to #1, I spent 0% for him.  He wasn’t the most easy baby to care for and with an older boy to take care of, I just didn’t have that energy or time to do deliberate things like that.  By the time he was 3 years old, he had ZERO Chinese ability.  As he was a very clingy child, he did not spend time at my parents’ place until he was about 4 or 5 year old.  This boy was also a very quiet child, refusing to open his mouth to speak unless he really wanted to.  Once, he stayed with my parents for a period of two weeks, and I wondered whether he spoke at all during that time.  It was comforting to hear from my parents that he did and he also spoke some Mandarin to them.

He went to preschool school when he was 4 years old.  His preschool experience was not quite the same as #1 even though they went to the same school.  First of all, as I mentioned earlier, he was a very quiet child.  He would sit quietly in class and listen and would not participate nor open his mouth to talk, especially in a language he was not good at.  His teachers, typical of a lot of teachers, would conveniently leave him alone to handle other kids who were more rowdy in class.  He also had the misfortune of getting a Chinese teacher who was not very experienced.  Nevertheless, he did have more opportunity to speak Mandarin in school than at home.  With zero exposure at home, school was already a major improvement.

When he was in the last one and a half year in preschool, I started coaching him actively in Chinese character recognition using his brother’s Primary 1 字宝宝 word cards.  Fortunately, this boy seems to have greater aptitude in learning languages than his brother even though he may not seem to be as intelligent*.  So he actually picked things up pretty quickly.  I was getting very hopeful!

* I know I should not make judgement like that but as a mother, I should know the abilities of all my children.  A more accurate and general assessment is this : These two boys are as different as chalk and cheese.  #1 is your typical ‘man’ kind of boy, quick at picking up mathematics and could not be bothered with words.  At Primary 1, for picture composition, asking him to write 1 sentence per picture was like trying to squeeze blood out of stone.  Writing a story was like getting from Point A to Point B and he saw little point in meandering around details.  #2, on the other hand, is rather more ‘arty’.  He is not very good at mathematics but he is better at languages.  At kindergarten level, notwithstanding grammar and spelling errors, he could write story at least 7-8 sentences long.  If I asked him to write about a field trip that we went on, he would have no problem writing and illustrating.  While his brother would not touch a book when he was at lower primary level, this boy is reading books that his brother was reading last year, even this year!  The only problem is that he is also a rather dreamy sort of person, so he can be very “blur”  and takes a longer time to learn something.  So there you see the difference in inclination and ability.

This boy also refuses to speak in Mandarin no matter how much I tried to get him to do so.  If I threatened to ignore him unless he spoke to me in Mandarin, he simple shut up and leave.  He would rather not say anything!   I think it is largely due to his lack of vocabulary and his fear of failure.  When he was in K2, I found great Chinese children literature and started buying a lot of books for the boys.  He was interested in the books.  But with a toddler in tow, I hardly have time to read to them.

When he entered Primary school.  He did not seem to have much problem with Chinese, judging by his results.  He also does not go for any enrichment class.  He is really a paradox.  While it seems like there are a lot of things he does not know, yet he seems to be doing pretty fine in school.  Of course, it is still early days and we can only really tell whether he is really going to be ok or not when he reaches Primary 3.  I am hoping that with a little coaching, his innate aptitude for language will eventually carry him through.

#3

I have already shared about how I ended up teaching the youngest boy myself instead of sending him to preschool.  I have also shared about how I am teaching him Chinese.  In summary, I decided I had to do something about his Chinese.  I had to avoid making all the mistakes I made with the two older boys.  So one baby step at a time.  I started with reading lots and lots of Chinese story books to him.  I also taught him to recognise many Chinese characters.  In terms of getting him to speak Mandarin, I am still at point zero. With two older brothers and a father who speak English with him at home, I am fighting a losing battle.  Again, this boy only speaks when he wants to, which is almost never.  However, when he does, he speaks accurately, not like a westerner trying to speak Mandarin.  I attribute it to the exposure he gets through all the reading.  In terms of spoken language, he is still at Point Zero.  He needs to practise and open his mouth.

The great part is that he is not averse to Chinese due to the stories and the fact that he could recognise and read many characters.  So fear is not a factor. He is even quite happy to practise tracing characters.  At this point, I do not know how well this boy will turn out.  He is my ‘experiment’ and I feel like what I am doing now is preparing the ground and sowing the seeds.  We can only know how good the ground is, and how great the harvest will be, in a few years time.

We just celebrated Chinese New Year last week and as usual, we visited the same people on the same days, did the same things, had the same goodies.  When things get done the same way many times, it becomes a tradition.  I realise that mothers tend to be the ones who establish the tradition in the family. In my own household, there are certain things we do for Chinese New Year every year.  For example, we would buy new clothes, new underwear, new pyjamas, new socks and shoes for the children.  We would have new bedsheets, sometimes new floor rugs too.  We would buy New Year goodies, set up the same decorations every year.  It has been our tradition for several years now and I would cook a pot of minestrone soup on Chinese New Year eve for our dinner for the First Day and Second Day.  I know having meatless minestrone soup for Chinese New Year sounds odd.  It all started when I decided that after all the rich food and pastries that we had throughout the day, it would be nice to have something that is more nutritious, less fattening and easier on the digestive system to end the day.  It was a hit with my husband and the boys. Since then, this has become our tradition.

I realise that a lot of the things we do for Chinese New Year are practices that I learned from my own mother, who probably learned it from her own mother, plus and minus some modifications of her own.  My husband would never bother with such things.  He does not see the point of going into all that trouble. He does not get why I insist on keeping the new stuff until Chinese New Year and not use it immediately upon purchase.  I have a feeling it is a men thing.

If we don’t make special occasions special, then every day of the year will be just another ordinary day.  Eventually, the special days will lose their meaning.  It is bad enough as it is when we can have new clothes, new shoes and eat good food every day of the year, unlike in the past when people only got to have these during Chinese New Year.  This is not just for Chinese New Year but all kinds of special occasions.  I know it is very popular to think that Valentine’s Day is too commercialise.  Why waste money on flowers when you can get the same at probably half the price on a normal day?  Even women these days could not be bothered about such things in the name of being practical.  Yes, it is true that  a lot of special days are commercialised for businesses to make a killing.  It is true that we probably can save a truckload of money if we buy things on normal days and not just wait for special occasions.  But the question is : take Valentine’s Day, for instance.  How many people will actually buy flowers on a normal day?  I suspect apart from newly minted love birds, there are not too many.

I think special days serve an even greater purpose now in our society when everyone is busy all year long.  They serve as a reminder to slow down, think of the special people in your lives, and take the time to do something special for them.

As for festivities like Chinese New Year and Christmas, how often do we get a chance to meet up with friends and relatives whom we see only once or twice a year?  When I was young and single, I used to hate Chinese New Year very much because of the famous dreaded questions “Have you got a boyfriend yet?”, “When are you settling down?”, and then later on after I got married, “When are you going to start a family?” and “When are you having the next one?”. After I got married and have kids, I started to appreciate Chinese New Year more.  First of all, I think of our parents and know that in their old age, they will appreciate having their children and grandchildren around during a festival that is so important to them.  Then I think of my children and I think I do not want them to grow up without this celebration with extended family.  I do not want them to lose their cultural heritage.  I want to pass on the practice of celebration to them so that they can pass it on to their children.  Traditions like this don’t just bind people together.  They bind generations – past, present and future – together.

As for the unwelcome questions from busybodies, as I grow older, I learn to brush them off and not be affected by them. I learn to appreciate these people who ask and not mind their asking.

Life will be pretty boring and meaningless without festivities and celebration.  In every festivity and celebration, there are traditions involved.  Some traditions are passed down from generations to generations and some are created along the way.  Some last and some don’t.   The women tend to be the ones who establish and carry on the tradition. Regardless of whether you work at home, out of home, or are a homemaker, perhaps it is time to think of the tradition in your own family and how to carry it on.  Years later, our children will not remember a typical day.  They are more likely to remember these special days and the tradition that comes with these days.

As part of the unit study, we also made a red packet envelope, Chinese New Year card, as well as practised writing couplets for the fun of it.

I realise that a lot of parents may not understand the significance of certain practices or know how to read some of the Chinese Characters.  Hence, I have included some explanations to help the parents along.  The unit study covers topics like :

1. The 12 zodiac signs

2. The name of Chinese New Year in Chinese

3. Couplets on the door posts

4. Vocabulary associated with Chinese New Year

and more.

This year we are not going to do another unit study on Chinese New Year but we are now reading some books on Chinese New Year.  I bought these books from Maha Yuyi :

This one is about the legend of the origin of Chinese New Year.

This story is about the 15th day of Chinese New Year, which is another important day in the new year period.  The 15th day is the last day and concludes the celebration.

The 2 books above do not have Hanyu Pinyin and are meant to be read-a-loud books for parents to read to preschoolers.

This book is actually part of a graded reader series but I bought only this book because I wanted a book on the story of how the 12 Zodiac animals came about.  Because it is part of a graded reader series, it is very simple, comes with Hanyu Pinyin, and my #3, who just turned 5 last week, can read most of the words.

I may create some materials based on one or more of these three books, depending on whether I have the time and inspiration.  Meanwhile, if you are interested in the unit study that was created last year, you can download it here.

That I did.  Unfortunately, somehow, when I backed up my data the last time, I don’t know why by WP did not back up the media files, ie. the pictures.  Hence, all the pictures are now missing.  I also discovered that some of the links are gone.  Gah!  Argh!  It is really a bummer because I do not have all the pics anymore.

Then for some reason, I cannot do Chinese characters anymore.

Right now it is a really busy period for me, so I do not have time to slowly comb through the site to restore it.  So it will take time for things to go back to normal again.

Everybody wishes for a clean kitchen.  In an asian kitchen, the elusive dream is to have one that does not have oily surfaces and oily fume filling it everyday.  The amount of work that goes into cooking a meal in a typical asian kitchen can be daunting : the amount of chopping, cutting and cleaning; followed by the frying and cooking; and then the cleaning up of the aftermath.  Not only the kitchen gets dirty and oily, the person cooking needs a thorough wash from head to toe too.  No wonder so many people are reluctant to cook.  In the past, people don’t have much of a choice.  Due to cost-consciouseness during a time where money was hard to come by, and the lack of alternatives, most people had to cook whether they liked it or not.  These days, with greater affluence and proliferation of all kinds of eateries, more people are choosing to eat out or buy take-out to keep their kitchens clean and their work simple (or non-existent).  Of course, there are those who just can’t cook.

Like most people, I don’t like cleaning up.  I learn to take short cuts to minimise the amount of cooking-related cleaning I have to do.  For instance, instead of mopping the floor after cooking every meal, I find a large cardboard box, like the kind refrigerators or washing machines come in, cut it open so I have a large, flat piece, and lay it on the floor next to the stove whenever I cook.  I line the counter top around the stove with newspaper too.  Now, this can be a bit of a fire hazard, so if you are planning to do the same, please make sure you do not leave your stove unsupervised!

Actually, I don’t quite get the rationale for mopping up the floor after every cooking session.  Whenever I tell people that I don’t mop after cooking, I get a sort of surprised/horrified face in response.  When I asked them why they found it necessary to do that, the response was always something about sticky floor.  Fact is : I have seriously, carefully examined my kitchen floor.  I even asked my husband.  My kitchen floor does not feel sticky after I cook.  Perhaps it is due to the cardboard-on-floor trick.  Perhaps it is because I cook rather cleanly.  The point I am trying to make is this :

Instead of inheriting a tradition from your mothers blindly, examine whether it is really necessary or not.

I know there are people who do not cook “cleanly”.  A lot of older folks love to cook like their lives depend on a very hot stove, a very hot wok, lots of steam, fume, hissing and splashing.  I always know when my neighbour downstairs is cooking : I can hear her wok banging, oil splattering, and I can actually see her cooking fume coming out of her kitchen windows, drifting upwards and into my kitchen.  I have to close all my kitchen windows whenever she cooks.  I can imagine how cooking a meal can dirty her kitchen, make her walls and floor sticky with oil.  If she is the clean sort of person, then a careful mop down of her kitchen is absolutely necessary for after she finishes cooking a meal.

On the other hand, there are people who are determined to cook so cleanly that they would not cook anything that requires a stir fry or deep fry.  Boiling, stewing and steaming only.

I kind of fall in between. I do a fair amount of boiled, stewed and steamed stuff because they are ‘clean’.  Yet I cannot imagine myself eating only raw, boiled, stewed or steamed food all the time.  I love to eat.  It is also boring for a person to only cook by boiling, stewing and steaming.

What this means is that there has to be some kind of a compromise.

I don’t deep fry that much but I don’t avoid deep frying.  It is a known fact that fats makes tastier food.  My mom’s philosophy is this : better to deep fry at home once in a while, then to not deep fry at all because you will then resort to only eating deep fried food outside which are a lot less healthy.  First of all, you don’t know what kind of cooking oil is used. More likely than not, it is the cheapest palm oil.  Palm oil does not stand out as a healthy food option.  Secondly, you do not know how long they use their oil.  It is unhealthy to use the same oil over and over again.  But people selling food to you will not care.  If you allow yourself to deep fry food every once in a while (not all the time), you are in control of the type of oil used and you are not likely to reuse the oil over and over again.  In the end, you get better tasting food due to the fresher, better oil, and you also end up eating a healthier version of deep fried food.  Without being deprived of deep fried food at home, you are less likely to indulge in it when you eat out.  Better to sacrifice the clean kitchen ideal for health.

My mother does not use a deep fryer because she feels that it uses too much oil.  I believed her until I got one for free and tried using it.  Then I discovered that :

1. A deep fryer does not necessarily use more oil than deep frying in a pan or wok.  If I use the traditional way of frying in a pan or wok, I find that periodically, I have to add more oil.  I don’t have this problem if I use a deep fryer.  So I figured it works out to be the same.  Even if it uses a little more oil than the traditional method, it is still worth considering because …

2. It is a lot less oily than the traditional method.  The oily cooking fume is a lot more contained if you use a deep fryer and keep the lid closed. The steam comes out but not so much the oil.  So all in all, it is cleaner.  Cleaning the deep fryer is another issue altogether.  Still, it beats mopping down the whole kitchen.

So it is a misconception that the deep fryer is not worth the money and the trouble.  If you want to deep fry at home, I would recommend using a deep fryer.

At this point, I should clarify that when I say ‘deep fry’, I do mean it in the traditional sense.  In other words, it means cooking food by submerging it totally in a large amount of hot oil.  Then there is pan frying, where you use a modest amount of oil in a pan to fry your food, such as patties, without submerging the food completely in the oil.

The way to cut down on damages from pan frying is to reduce the wetness of the food.  E.g. if you are pan frying a fish, then use a kitchen paper towel to pat dry the fish first.   Wetness from the food will cause an excessive amount of oil splattering and steam.  Secondly, as much as I can, whenever I pan fry something, I will cover the pan with a cover.  Obviously, when the pan is covered, oil splatter and steam cannot get out to dirty the surrounding area.  Secondly, the covered environment keeps the heat in and cooks the food faster.  The faster you cook, the less time your clean kitchen is exposed to cooking fumes and oil splatter.  Just remember when you remove the cover to check on your food, DO NOT tilt the cover.  Steam would have condensed on the inside of the cover and there will be lots of water droplets there.  If you tilt the cover, the water droplets will fall back into your hot pan and what you will get is lots of fumes and oil splatter.  Hold the cover straight and remove from the pan.

Lastly, use a cooker hood!  Get the strongest one you can find.  It really will help.   Please avoid placing your stove next to your kitchen windows or in the service area.  I know some people are fond of doing that because it helps to keep the cooking fume out of their houses.  I am a victim of such practice.  Spare a thought for your neighbours.  Just get a cooker hood to deal with the cooking fume.

After cooking, we have the cleaning up.  Remember this :

Clean as you go, and you will have less cleaning to deal with after your cook.

Do not leave garbage, dirty pots and pans, dishes and utensils all over your kitchen. Do not leave cleaning to the last.  Do not allow your kitchen to look like a hurricane just blew through it.  Clean as you go.  There will always be pockets of time during the entire process where you can quickly clean up and wash up what you have used.  Usually, by the time I am done with the last dish, I only have the wok left to clean.  A messy and dirty kitchen makes cooking unpleasant.  In order to enjoy cooking, clean as you go.

One particular point about cleaning is to keep your kitchen as dry as possible.  I know that washing and cleaning is part and parcel of cooking.  So how do we keep the kitchen dry?  Have a cloth close by to wipe your counter top dry as often as possible.  I also have a foot rug on the floor next to the sink so that I can use it to mop up droplets of water that dripped on the floor.  Why does this help?  If you have water on your floor, for instance, it will mingle with the dirty and dust.  As you step on the droplets and spread them as you walk around, you will spread the dirty and dust all over your floor.  If you have ever walked into a wet toilet with dirty feet, you will know what I mean about leaving dirty marks on the floor.

By the same token, if a piece of food happened to drop on the floor, pick it up immediately.  Even a tiny little crumb.  This is especially important if the food contains oil.  If you pick it up immediately, what you will end up with is just a little, indiscernible speck of oil mark on the floor, which can be easily cleaned.  If you do not pick up the food, someone will be stepping on it and dragging it around with his feet.  Then you will get patches of oily stain on your floor and you will find it necessary to bring out the mop and bucket.

With all the drying and picking up of things, it seems like an awful lot of things to take care of while you chop and fry.  How can anyone do it?  Well, you will learn not to splash water all around when you wash and clean.  You will learn not to drop things on the floor.  You will learn to mop up and pick up quickly.  It will be like second nature and you will do it without even being conscious of it.  Sooner or later, you will train yourself to cook cleanly.

Having said all that about maintaining a clean kitchen, I want to encourage you to just cook.  Your kitchen is meant to be used to bless yourself and your family.  The function of a kitchen is to be a place where nutritious meals are prepared.  Your kitchen is not meant for you to keep so spotless that it resembles more a showroom than a real kitchen.  If we are only preoccupied with keeping the kitchen clean and sparkling, then what is the point of having a kitchen in the first place?

During the June Holidays, I bought this Emoti Talking Pen at the Singapore Book Fair.  They had a booth there and were selling the pen for S$198, bundled with $70 worth of books.  Effectively, the pen cost S$128.  On its own, the retail price of the pen is S$168.

Normally, I would not buy anything remotely electronics without my techie husband around, especially when it costs more than a hundred dollars.  But on that day, I bought this without a second thought, much to my husband’s surprise.

This “pen” is not a pen for writing but a kind of pointer.  It is similar to what Leapfrog has.  Popular Bookstore has its own in-house system called i-Pen, which works with the Robin series of English children’s books.  For Chinese books, so far, I have only seen Emoti 易读宝.  In Chinese, this is called a 点读笔, which basically means “point and read pen”.

What do you do with this pen?  You point at the books and it will read for you!

First of all, you need to buy books that are tied up with the Pen, just like you need to get Leapfrog books for Leapfrog and not just any book.  Naturally, the company that sells the Pen, sells the books.

1. Point the pen at this Logo on the cover of the book.  This is to ‘let the pen know’ which book you are reading.

2. Point to the passage and the pen will read it for that page.

3. If you point at any of the characters, you get a ‘dramatised’ version of the story, with the character saying their own ‘lines’, which is not part of the actual passage.  My boys love to hear the characters talk.  This is still ok with me.  It is still exposure to the spoken language.

4. Wherever you point on the page, you will always get a sound.  Even if you point on a blank part, as I did in the picture, you will hear music.  My boys enjoy the music as much as the story.

5.  In every book, just inside the covers, you will find this icon.  Point at the icon and the book will read the story in its entirety.  The saleslady said that it is good for bedtime story reading.  Point at the icon to activate and leave the pen to do the bedtime reading for you!

6.  To adjust the volume, point at this icon.

As we all know, having a Chinese-speaking environment is important for the learning of the language.  Thus far, all I can do is to read story books daily, but this is still limited as we hardly speak Mandarin at home.  I bought this Pen to provide additional Chinese speaking environment for my boys.  At least they will get more exposure to the spoken language through this pen.  So far, the two younger boys (Ages 7 and 4) enjoy using the Pen.  I am thankful that they are not turned off just because it is Chinese!!

As for the books, although I cannot say that Emoti currently has a huge range of good quality children books to go with its pen, the range of books they have right now is sufficient and they do have a few good series, such as this 笨笨猪 series by famous children books author, 杨红樱.

I also bought this series of Chinese Character books for the 4 year old to supplement what he is learning from 四五快读.

The inside of the books look like this.  Just like the story books, you can point at any part of the book and there will be something there.

They also have books on Hanyu Pinyin and even English!!  They have books suitable for very young children to older school children.  Now they even have Enghlish-Chinese phrase books for adults!

Besides selling books, Emoti also sells icon stickers for the Pen.  As I explained earlier, you point the pen at different icons for the pen to execute different commands.  The icon stickers consist of a “record” icon and a “playback” icon  and this allows you to record your voice and playback.  What this means is that you can stick a sticker onto any book you own, point at the ‘record’ icon to record your own reading, and your child can point at the ‘playback’ icon to listen to your reading any time.  You can also get your children to read the book and record his own reading, and then playback for him to listen to himself!  It only costs $10 for a whole book of stickers.

My techie husband loves the fact that the pen appears as a thumb drive when you plug it to your computer.  You don’t have to download any special software into your computer before you can make the Pen and your computer talk to each other.  You can add files and delete files just as you would for any thumb drive.  Nothing complicated at all.

When I first bought the Pen, the Pen was already pre-loaded with the audio for all the books that Emoti was selling at that time.  As Emoti brings in new books to sell, if I buy the new books, all I have to do is to go to Emoti website to download the audio file and save it to the Pen directly.  Some of the series come with their own CDs, which contain the audio file so you don’t have to download from the website.  If I run out of space, all I need to do is to delete some audio files that I am not using to make more space.  Since I don’t buy all the books, there is more than enough space.  I don’t think I have mentioned it earlier.  The pen has a capacity of 4G of memory.

As for power supply, all you have to do is just to plug it to a power source to charge.  It comes with a USB cable.  No change of batteries required.  The pen will auto shutdown after a while.  Before it does so, if the pen is left idle for a while, it will say ‘Children, don’t leave me alone!‘ (In Mandarin, of course.)  I think this is very cute.  This is to remind the kids to switch it off if they are not using it.

The downside is that the books only go with this particular pen.  So if Emoti discontinued this Pen, and your old Pen is not working any more, you can’t use the books you have with other reading pens, unless they use the same system and reads the same format.  Still, all is not lost if such unfortunate scenario comes to pass.  The books are still perfectly good for reading.  Just that you or your child has to do your own reading instead of having a pen to read to you.

All in all, I am very pleased with this product.  In fact, I just visited the Popular BookFest at  Suntec Convention Centre to buy more books for the boys.  They are very happy with the new books.  If you are not very good at reading Chinese, I think this would be a good investment to have some Chinese reading time with your child.  You may still need to sit down with him to read together.  At least you don’t have to worry about reading the words yourself anymore.

Right now, at the BookFest, Emoti is selling this Pen at $198, with $80 worth of books thrown in.  You can pick and choose whatever books you like up to the amount.  If you want to buy more books, they are giving a 10% discount on books alone.  Emoti is available in quite a few book shops and educational toys shop.  Check their website for more information.

Update : I just remembered that there is a new brand of Chinese reading pen.  I believe it is also available in Popular and I have seen the booth at the current BookFest.  It looks like a cute tiger.  I had a quick look at it at the BookFest.  They do not have as many books as Emoti Pen, and the books that they have are not as good as the ones that Emoti has.  Hence, for now, I would still go for Emoti.

I saw a whole table of 四五快读 at the Popular BookFest today! (I took a quick snap at the books, so the pic turned out blur. ) This is the Chinese literarcy programme that I have recommended before. I am excited to see this at the BookFest. Does this mean that it will be widely available in Popular outlets from now on?

If you have bought or are planning to buy this set of books, don’t forget to check out the templates for tactile character cards, which I have created to be used with this set of books, here

How much longer will I have a small hand to hold in mine? Cherishing every moment now.

How is this different from the Category Menu on the right?  If you click on a Category on the menu on the right ( we will call it the Right Menu), you will see a page with the beginning of the articles.  You will have to click on ‘Older Posts’ to browse further because the page cannot contain all the articles under that category.  In other words, you won’t be able to see all the articles under that category at a glance.  The new Menu just below the Header Picture will allow you to do that.