Tip 128: A Miso a day for longetivity

Nope, I do not drink a bowl of miso soup every single morning, not these past few months at least since I have been travelling and adjusting to new cities. Though, I try to have it as often as I can. Its especially timely to have a miso soup on a cold day, or after working all night in the cold of the night, a warm miso soup comes handy to prevent a cold. You could feel the warm miso immediately boosting your immune system as you drink it. Its health benefits are especially high for women, where it helps to regulate the hormone estrogen in women and cuts the risk of breast cancer and tumors. It's no wonder then that the Japanese who drink a bowl or more a day record one of the highest in longetivity. That together with a diet rich with grain and fish. The best part about miso soup is that it's quick and easy to cook, hence no excuse not to try it. There need not be many ingredients, just miso paste, katsuobushi and sea weed or tofu. Heat up the water, but not to boiling level and add the ingredients and mix it. It could take as quick as 15 minutes for a bowl of nutritious sustainance for the day.

I have to admit that initially I miss my mother's home cooked soup that requires 2 hours boiling a stock of meat, more than the instant miso soup. I have grown up with these chicken or herbal soup since young and have the mentality that the 2 hour boiling ordeal churns out more nutritious soup to the body. These chicken soup definitely have their health benefits. But the method of how miso is manufactured through stringent Japanese quality control and age old tradition, together with the simplicity of preparing it makes for a more replicable bowl of nutrition each day, than boiling different sets of ingredients over long periods of time. This is my theory anyway. The proof of the pudding is of course, the healthy greying population in Japan. Besides just soup, miso can actually be used as an ingredient to cook many other dishes. More popular Japanese recipes include miso marinated grilled/fried fish and miso stir fried vegetables, but one can really be creative by putting a spoonful in any cooking to add flavor. Also, many out of Japan may not know that there are many varieties of miso from different prefectures of Japan using different ingredients. One day, I do plan to start a business to popularise miso by starting a chain of Japanese restaurants with a menu of home cooked dishes served by friendly family like staff, with a blend of Okinawan delicacies and an easy going ambience with the theme of Okinawan beaches. Though to kick start a successful business requires strong capital reserves and reliable human resource and that's another blogpost to come hopefully. Before that day, let's drink to health.

Any of you already trying a bowl of miso soup regularly or sometimes? Would you like the concept of Japanese home cooked nutritious dishes as opposed to elegant cold raw Japanese dishes? :)

(Photos show a day trip to Macau at the ruin of St Paul, the garden at Macau town hall, St Francis garden and playground, and a large aquarium at Grand Lisboa hotel. Photos of Venetian and the Sands in next blogpost).

Tip 127: New friends and toys at playgroups

A crawling baby/walking toddler loves to explore new play environments. It is through such exploration and play that the baby develops his/her mental faculty. It could be possible that bringing a baby to new playgroups, as opposed to a daily 9-5pm routine at the same childcare center allows the baby to develop a sense of adaptability, courage, curiosity and adventure. These could be the very characteristics necessary for children in the new global age. Even just 1-2 hours a day, on a frequency of 2-4 days a week is sufficient to fuel the interest in the baby to look forward to go to a playgroup to learn something new always. Usually, kids in such playgroups are more happy to meet new friends since they are not bored at the place and come each time with good expectations to play. It is such happy environments that further stimulates learning and encourages the baby to inculcate new positive habits.



As shared previously, Tomomi prefers a home near to a park and playground where she would take Haruka daily if the weather is good. Besides going to the park, Tomomi takes Haruka to the playcenter/playgroup. In London, she would take Haruka to the Ideastore (term used for library) two times a week to play for free for 2-3 hours then have lunch with me since the Ideastore is near to my office. In Hong Kong, the free public playcenter at the library has very tight schedules with a long queue of parents, maids and grandparents waiting. So, its only possible to play for 1 hour, 2-4 days a week. In Tokyo, we previously joined to a government playcenter 5 minutes from our home for just 1500 yen (USD$15) a year and there is unlimited visits as there are less children in Japan. I have found all these playcenters are very helpful to Haruka in playing new toys in large space and meeting other babies. In Tokyo, Tomomi could make new friends with other mummies and so is London as the mothers are friendly there. In Hong Kong, the short play period does not help and parents either could not speak English or are more shy to start conversations with each other. Nevertheless, these different playcenters have different toys and notice boards in different languages which I think Haruka is loving to learn as well.












Do you send your children to other playcenters/playgroups besides their usual routine? Do you think it helps to bring new passion to playing?

(Photos show two of the videos of a session at the Idea store, Canary Wharf which Haruka watches over and over again, Haruka playing at the Hong Kong toy library at the Hong Kong Central Library, Causeway Bay and a moment of reflection as Haruka takes the ferry to Kowloon from Hong Kong island).

Tip 126: Immersing in nature

We are increasingly living in a dense concrete jungle and even in our private place, we surround ourselves with technological gadgets and human altered articles such as plastic and glass. Most of us who live in highly populated cities would have to put up in high rise apartments with little greenery. I thought to myself, such is life. Yet, I am beginning to see the gems of wisdom of my wife who was brought up in a peaceful island south of Japan, Isigaki, Okinawa in a family of fishermen. We need to regularly expose our young children to serene and clean nature, as unspoilt as possible. Children are growing up in an environment where electronic buttons are touched more often than clean sand, television and computer graphic displays are more often seen than a scenery of clear skyline without buildings, and music from CDs or videos are often heard more than the rustling sound of tree leaves brushed by wind or sound of crickets and cicada behind tree shrubs. Could this be just our Asian mentality that work comes first over relaxation and getting in touch with nature? I was working in London as well as visited Paris and see crowds of Europeans lying down on the green grass to feel the breeze and face the blue skies on weekends or even afternoons on weekdays. Yet, many of us fill our little free time being transported from our home in an aircond car or crowded train into another aircond enclosure of a large shopping complex or cinema and never even seen the blue sky once. Would immersing in nature teach new lessons to our young of sustainability and the simple pleasures of nature that require little efforts to acquire but mere contentment? That in nature, we can see the Creator God who created this earth, since often times we are more familiar with the many gadgets created by humans.























Upon setting foot in Hong Kong, I was blessed to see blue skies on my first day, but that did not last. But recently, I realized that there are quite some fairly good beaches in Hong Kong that is just less than an hour from the city center. The soft and fine sand at Clearwater Bay beach, Sai Kung, New Territories is easily accessible by public transport and offers an eyeview of mountains and skies without any view of concrete skyscrapers. Stanley Beach is a nice spot too since it is also close to good food and markets, but the beach does not give too much of a feeling of closeness to nature. It is amazing that if we do try to look for nature, we can find it. I was a little doubtful in the beginning that Hong Kong being close to the pollution of China can have anything to offer. In fact, there are many nice trekking trails and nice beaches close to the city center compared to Tokyo. I found that a handful of beaches in Hong Kong are even the best among China and Taiwan, though they are far from world standard or close to the Okinawan beaches. I believe that if we make an effort to search, we can find nature where ever we are, though most of the time, we got too lazy or too occupied or absorbed with the existing routine that we do not seek after this solace. Nature does wonders to us and our children. I think even babies can feel the impact and difference nature offers. When searching for an apartment, my wife requested that it be close to a large park with many trees and I now understand the effects this can offer in the mist of the cramped and dense city we live in. I also know that when we seek, we shall find, especially with a little prayer in our hearts to God who so richly seeks to bless us when we seek to glorify Him and His creation.












What do you think? Is nature really that important and how often do you seek to immerse yourself in nature?












(Photos show St Stephen's beach near to Stanley market and bottom 2 photos show the soft sandy beach and clear waters at Clearwater Bay second beach).

Tip 125: Blog to shape baby's memory

A baby learns exponentially about languages and new experiences. After each experience, a baby would develop preferences for certain experiences, play or taste. Yet at a certain age, the baby does not know how to accurately express himself/herself on what preferences he/she may have to communicate with others. The baby may not even remember what are all options available and the language term for each option. Only when the baby experiences it a second time, the baby would recall the preferable experience and smile or laugh doing the activity. Yet, blogging together with the use of camera and videocamera is a powerful tool to reinforce a baby's memory and teach the baby the different language terms for each activity and experience and further increase the speed of learning. As the activities are participated by the baby, the baby has greater interest to participate in the learning compared to reading a book that is not personalized. The baby thus would not mind going through a blog, video or camera over and over again with daddy teaching him/her the many names of activities in the blog. This could be the solution to recapturing childhood memory, many of us adults have loss. More than memory of activities, a blog can recapture the memory of the relationship parents share with their babies/children.

Like many, I do not have a strong memory of my baby or toddler days or the involvement of my parents being there for me. As my mother is a baby sitter, I could guess that my parents would have been as caring to me, as they had to the other babies I witnessed them caring. While my parents did capture a few photos of the many activities we were involved as a family during our childhood, these were not digital and some may not have been kept well. Also, there were less efforts to be taking photos of every activity and to capture as many special moments in each activity since the speed and cost of photo taking was higher previously. The power of digital photography and video making creates a whole new world of recapturing memories of the past and reinforcing new meaning to them. It further adds possibilities to what a daddy can do for his children and potentially creating a gap between parents who have done, and those who have not. While I observe that consumers are beginning to be more demanding of the services and products they expect from manufacturers, so I foresee children to be expecting more and more from their parents in this consumerist society as children compare what other parents are offering their children. Besides just joining a potential rat race to be the best daddy, I have found that blogging and capturing my child's development is an effective means of teaching. Whenever I am free, I would show Haruka my blog and would tell her the story of her life through all the blog posts and photos. She would begin to learn the different language terms of them. For instance, she would know that she likes to go to a bird park and in the bird park, there are many different birds. As her understanding of experiences advances, she may even be able to differentiate between a bird park in Malaysia, Singapore or a bird park in Hong Kong. I am also glad that I have spend a lot of time capturing photos and videos and in my free time, I play it over the TV and Haruka could recall the activities we do together as a family. Technology has advanced as such that it is simply a plug and play effort and does not involve any complicated steps. One day, when Haruka can read, she will also be able to understand my sentiments and ideas behind parenting and would appreciate the time and effort I spend on my children because I love them very much. This again reinforces the importance for a daddy to blog.

Have you also used a blog to teach your toddler/children? Do share.

(Photos show a relatively small but well designed bird's aviary in Hong Kong park, a footbridge nearby, taichi at Victoria park and a marriage registry at Hong Kong park.)

Tip 124: Serving the graveyard shift duty

I got this message from a friend and its my pleasure to blog on topics of interest to my faithful readers.

"Hi Philip ! You've been traveling round the world heh? I love hong kong as a holiday spot, been there twice but dunno about living there though. Hey, I find your postings on parenting tips, keep it coming yeah ! Did you post anything on how to survive night time feedings and getting back to work the next day?"

To be honest, I never really done too much graveyard shift duty. Usually, at least one of the parent needs to wake up at night to attend to the needs of the baby for 3 reasons: 1. to feed her. 2. to put her to sleep again and calm her down from her crying as she is ill. 3. to calm her down from her crying as she had a nightmare. It may come as a shock to many, but Haruka is still breastfeeding after 1 year old as my wife is a keen believer in attachment parenting. Will blog more on this, probably when Haruka has weened herself of breastfeeding, and I can provide an objective reflection of the pros and cons of breastfeeding for extended periods of time. The plus point here is that daddy need not be waking up at night to feed the baby. Actually, another practice in attachment parenting is that the baby sleeps next to the parents, instead of in a separate bed to promote closeness in the family relationship. Though I end up sleeping like a log when I do sleep, as I spent a lot of my few waking hours with productive activities (or try to do so). That leaves me only waking up 10% of the time when Haruka is crying. There were only 2 occassions when Haruka fell ill with fever and I recall, Haruka has never ever vomitted and caused too much of an unpleasant night for us to have to clean up the mess. If she does wake up at night because of a nightmare, it would be just a brief 5 seconds as either mummy takes her to comfort or Haruka would be quick to seek her mother's breast. I probably have many blessings to count as a daddy for having to care for a baby with little tantrums and my wife for doing most of the graveyard shift duty that has probably adjusted well to her sleep rhythm.

I do understand what the graveyard shift duty entails and the stress of needing to tend to the many tantrums of different babies, especially when they are ill at night. When I was young, my mother used to be a babysitter and when I was back from school, I did assist her sometimes. Or there were a few occassions when the baby's parents went on holiday and the graveyard shift had to be served by my mother. But, the dynamics of such a situation changes when you are married, do not have access to a babysitter (or do not believe in the need for one) and has full responsibility to attend to the needs of the baby. The wife needs to know that her husband cares and does not shirk off this responsibility to the wife alone. Hence, my previous post about the importance at least on weekends to do more housework to affirm the wife that the husband is trying to do his best to share the responsibility, eventhough he may have work demands during weekdays. Daddy also needs to be wise to balance between effectively contributing towards lightening the load, and letting mummy handle it if she has many preferences. A mother's instincts is always ahead of daddy's in terms of understanding the baby's needs and how to attend to it well and often times, daddy gets in the way by being clumsy (according to mummy) or simply not doing so well as he already had a long day at work. Daddy thus only needs to listen, acknowledge and suggest humbly what can be done (most of the time, the suggesting part can wait till the day time during a nice meal or at an outing when mummy is more receptive) to make mummy happy that she is doing everything well. Then, go to sleep.

I remembered one occasion when Haruka had fever, Tomomi asked me to fill the water pillow that we got for Haruka to reduce the temperature. I filled it and came back to the bedroom and Tomomi complained that it was still rather damp as I did not wipe the exterior dry enough. I came back and she said that Haruka does not need it anymore as I may disturb her sleep. So I went to sleep. My duty as a daddy probably became effective the next day when I had a chat with Tomomi about how Haruka was doing and affirmed her that she did well caring for her. Graveyard shift duties ,,, do them when you are really doing it effectively, else wait till next day to finish off the job.

Any pleasant or unpleasant stories to share about such graveyard shift duties? Please do, as it does encourage parents who are reading this blog.

(Photos show view from the Peak, Hong Kong, the litmus test of whether we should enter Madame Tussauds, the Peak by posing next to the free display of Bruce Lee, the many varieties of fish ball sold at Gresson street, Wanchai and Cheung Kong park, a small park next to St. John's Cathedral.)

Tip 123: Understanding cultural norms

Speaking the language of a country, do not necessarily mean you would have learnt all the cultural norms pertaining to common lifestyles of the people. This include how ordering tea could differ. It was a fairly hot day in Hong Kong and a tiring one after carrying Haruka around, so I ordered iced chinese tea at a coffee shop. Chinese from Malaysia would relate to this habit since its pretty common to have chinese tea with ice in a hot weather. The waiter frowned and asked me in Cantonese if I wanted iced lemon tea instead. I said, "no, I would like chinese tea with ice." The waiter then begin to get irritated so I relented to stick to the cultural norm, and said hot chinese tea please. This Chinese cultural norm stems from the belief that brewed tea leaves in hot water would lose their antioxidants when chilled. This in fact is proven, but it seems that chilling hot brewed tea is still more healthy than the cultural norm of conveniently buying a cold can/bottle of processed tea from a vending machine. If in Japan, carrying a bottle from home daily would seem silly since you can conveniently buy a drink from a vending machine at any corner of the street or office. Breaking such cultural norms leaves the impression of being less sophisticated. Same goes to deciding how you want your tea served in England. It would be polite to be decisive and eloquently specify whether one prefers Earl Grey as opposed to English Breakfast, as well as the number of sugar cubes and teaspoons of milk you would have in your tea. Hence, why James Bond looks sophisticated by decisively choosing to have his martini shaken, not stirred. I am sure a Malaysian looks sophisticated in front of a foreigner at the mamak when ordering Teh O kosong (no milk, no sugar), Teh O ais (no milk, cold tea with sugar), Teh O ais limau (lime tea - not lemon!), Teh See (Tea no sugar but evaporated milk). Now, let's have a movie where James Bond orders at a Malaysian mamak stall.

This does not stop there. Match the following combinations of breakfast to the right citizenship and see if you get it wrong, the guest would feel offended. (Rice, miso soup, natou, green tea), (Fish ball noodles, milk tea in a glass), (toast, cup of tea), (naan/roti canai, curry), (porridge, hot chinese tea). It would definitely not make sense to a British for having curry during breakfast since it is a food reserved for lunch or dinner, or to a Korean for having porridge when one is not sick. Does following these cultural norms make for more pleasant conversations and better acceptance? As subtle as these examples sound, they could mean something to different people. If we are getting more mindful that we should not serve Muslims pork, then these subtleties count in the coming global age. Paying an extra attention can gain favor and less frowns. I look back to a breakfast interview I had a long while ago with a Vice President of a company at the executive lounge of a hotel. My interviewer filled his cup of coffee, while I conveniently took a glass of orange juice and somehow I could feel later that it would have been more pleasant at this important first meeting to have similar matching cups at the table where we would be spending an hour of close discussion.

Any other ways to order tea? Any other peculiar breakfast habits of countries you have visited? Do enlighten everyone by leaving a comment. I have also compiled a list of blogposts from my blog on Japanese cultural norms.

(Photos show my first week in Hong Kong with my family at the Hong Kong Zoo overlooking the Hong Kong skyline and the cheapest bowl of prawn wonton noodle that I found at Wanchai during breakfast priced at HKD11 or USD1.40)