Breaking Up Is Hard To Do

My chicken man isn’t speaking to me.

Actually, I should say my former chicken man.  The one I have been buying chicken from since first venturing into the local wet market with my friend “A” last September.  You see, I recently left him for another chicken man.

It wasn’t that I was unhappy with my chicken.  Actually, it was “A” who started the whole thing.  I remember the day, we were sitting in her living room, drinking coffee, when she lowered her voice and confided to me: “I have been given the phone number of a chicken man who delivers...”  

This is gold in a town where we walk or take public transportation everywhere, dragging wheeled carts behind us to the markets when we are buying more than we can carry in a tote bag.

Now, I have to say, I did have a certain feeling of loyalty to my first chicken man.  I mean, his stall is where I first saw the heaping bowls of chicken heads, the piles of feet, and those strange, not yet fully developed eggs that some around here think are a delicacy.  He always cut up my chicken to order, and I even gave him a couple of home remedies to get his voice back when he was a bit worse for the wear after the Hari Raya Puasa holiday.

But still, the idea of a chicken man who delivers was too enticing, I mean, chicken is heavy, without chicken in my wheelie cart, I would have room for pineapple and mangoes every time, without the risk of crushing my bean curd.

I called the number:  “Hello, chicken man!”  Hey, I like this guy.

It hasn’t been all smooth sailing.  For one thing, we have a little bit of trouble understanding each other, and the phone doesn’t leave any room for the hand gestures and pantomime that are so useful face to face at the market.  His wife helps to translate,  not by taking the phone, mind you, no, that would be too easy.  We do a sort of hilarious three-way round robin where I say the address, he hollers to his wife what he thought I said, she translates for him, he repeats it back to me, I try again...surprisingly, it works.

On our first visit to the market after ordering from the new chicken man “A” needed a couple of chickens, I did not.  I tried to act casual, but I thought he gave me a funny look.   The next visit confirmed it.  “Did you see the scowl on the chicken man’s face?”  I think I did.  

Discussing the situation over dinner at our place, I wondered out loud whether I should buy a chicken from him from time to time, just to stay in his good graces.  Our husbands, who were weak with laughter upon hearing this story for the first time, advised against it.  No, they agreed, a clean break was best.  There is no point in buying “mercy chicken” from the fellow at the market if we intended to stay with the new guy.

So there it is.  My new chicken man brings me chicken and eggs whenever I call, and last time he offered to bring me fish too, if I want it.  I admit, I am tempted. 

Not a Tiger or a Pussycat

It may take a village to raise a child but heaven help the villager who tries to give parenting advice.  

I learned this lesson the hard way, before I even had kids, when I innocently responded to a friend’s complaints about having a back seat full of cracker crumbs left by her toddler by asking “why don’t you just feed her before you get in the car?”

Once the laughing had died down (it took a while) my generous friend simply responded, “Well, just wait and see what you decide.”  And, she was right.  Parenting is not a spectator sport.  Once I was in the thick of it, my back seat was a disgrace of cracker crumbs and hoagie wrappers.

Parenting is a tricky business.  On one side of the balancing act is the long term goal of raising a happy, educated, well adjusted person who is prepared to go boldly into the world.  On the other side are hundreds, even thousands of daily decisions about where to push, where to ease up and where the line is between letting a kid be a kid and abdicating your responsibility as a parent all together. It isn’t easy. 

Here in Singapore, parenting has been front page news with the recent release of Yale Law Professor Amy Chua’s book “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother” and it’s description of her “Chinese” style of parenting.  Keep in mind, this is the land of “Singapore Math,” a country where the top students get their names and test scores published in the newspaper.  Singapore parents are not pushovers, and even these parents thought the Tiger Mom was a little harsh.

At the same time that I was reading the book, I had the opportunity to see a compelling documentary called “The Race to Nowhere: The Dark Side of America’s Achievement Culture,” which challenges the way children are educated in the United States, especially the focus on test scores and crippling amounts of homework.  This film showed kids who were exhausted, frustrated, miserable, and had no idea why they should even get out of bed in the morning.

It is here that I have to give grudging respect to Amy Chua.  While many of her methods were by my measure extreme (and by her own admission, not wholly successful) her daughters are smart, talented, accomplished young women.  They know how to work hard and achieve their goals, especially the goals they ultimately set for themselves.  Whether I agree with her methods or not, her daughters have learned the important lesson that they can do hard things and that success often means trying again, and again, and again.  

What seemed to be lacking in many of the kids interviewed in “The Race to Nowhere” is what I think of as resiliency, the ability to bounce back and re-group.  These are also smart, talented kids, but many of them seemed wrung out and emotionally fragile.    

Too little sleep (this is a huge problem), too much pressure, and a system that is skewed toward “posting good numbers” left some of these poor kids completely adrift when they reached a point when the numbers weren’t there.  I was shocked at the statistic given in the movie that the University of California system, which enrolls students with an average weighted GPA of more than 4.0, has to provide remedial math and English courses to nearly half of the freshman class.  Ok, so these kids had the grades, but should they really feel good about it?

Trying hard things, failing at first, and eventually being successful; I believe that is what makes a person feel strong, competent and brave enough to reach for goals that are way beyond their grasp.  I would even argue that protecting children from failure does them more harm than letting them fall and teaching them how to get back up.  How do we teach our kids that “failing” at something extraordinary can be judged more of a success in life than playing it safe?  

I don’t know the answer.  I do believe it is our job as parents to give our kids the tools that they need to be successful and happy adults, including discipline, empathy, resilience, self confidence, and a curious mind.  How we decide to go about it is up for debate, but I am not going to criticize the Amy Chuas of the world for trying what worked for her.  And I hope she won’t judge me for telling my son that if he wants to take on the challenge of the more advanced Chinese class, I will be thrilled with “Bs.”

It seems to me that the best we can do is try to understand what motivates our kids, push them when they need to get out of their comfort zone, cut them some slack when they are up against it, hug them a lot and, in good faith, make the tough parenting choices.  With any luck, our wonderful and resilient children will forgive us for our inevitable and all to human lapses in judgment. 

It's Good To Be King!

“When the game is over, the King and the pawn go back into the same box.”  - Italian proverb

I love a good story, always have.  So imagine my delight to discover that, in addition to breathtakingly magnificent architecture and stunning countryside, my recent visit to Cambodia was going to be full of stories of gods and heroes, epic adventure, mystery, magic and, yes, tragedy.   It helped that our tour guide had a flare for the dramatic.  On the first day, taking us to Angkor Wat, the 12th century temple that remains the world’s largest religious building, she brought us in through the back entrance and across the moat “so that you can imagine you are all alone, discovering a lost temple in the jungle.”  

She kept us captivated by the stories carved on the temple walls, Hindu legends of love, adventure, and the search for immortality.  Angkor Wat was built in the 12th Century by Suryavaraman II, one of a line of Khmer “god kings” that started when Jayavarman II, who is credited with uniting the Khmer Empire, had himself declared “Chakravartin” or “king of kings” in the year 802.

A dazzling array of Khmer kings followed, with reigns marked by prosperity, religious tolerance, and the building of some of the most amazing temples anywhere in the world.     King Jayavarman VII, known as the king of all the god kings and the most prolific builder, shifted the official religion from Hinduism to Mahayana Buddhism and ruled in a golden age when all of his subjects, men and women, enjoyed rights to education, property ownership, and healthcare  There is even good evidence to suggest that his two wives, Queen Indradevi and Queen Jayarajadevi served as his chief counselors, taught in the monastery and ruled with him as equals.

Now I have to add, much of what is known about the Angkorian period is pieced together from the carvings in the temples and one 13th Century diary kept by a Chinese diplomat, so there is plenty of room for stories and speculation about how bucolic an existence it really was.  

One area that hovers on the line between history and legend involves the succession from one king to the next. It appears that in this Southeast Asian Camelot, there was no birthright to the throne.  Just because your dad was king didn’t necessarily give you a better shot at the job than any other clever and talented prince.  When it came time to decide, the princes vying for the role pitted their talents against each other and the Brahman would decide who would be king.  Our guide told us that there were ten kingly “qualities” a prince would have to show in order to be found worthy. 

So, what does it take to be an Angkorian god-king?  Well, the king must be honest, he must be a good judge of the people, and he must possess respect for the ancestors and respect for the religion.  In addition, the king has to be the best architect (to design the temples), the strongest, the best warrior (so he could command the army), the best chess player, and the best trainer of elephants.  Last but not least, a king must be handsome.

Actually, that doesn’t sound like a bad model for a 21st Century leader.  Handsomeness aside, the qualities required in an Angkorian king are all ones that could be cultivated with hard work and dedication.  And all of them, except maybe elephant training, would be a good basis for a successful life and compassionate leadership in any century.

Of course, we all know what happened in Cambodia.  The classical age of the Angkorian period was followed by a period known as the dark ages, then French Colonial rule, and decline into the chaos and destruction of the country and it’s people by Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge.

Since 1979 the country and its people have been struggling to rebuild.  What kind of leadership does Cambodia need right now?  Although the golden dream of an Angkorian god king is tantalizing, our guide had a more practical take on the question.  She told me with a rueful chuckle that she would happily settle for a leader who possesses just two of the top four qualities.  Any two would do.  

And she is teaching her young nieces and nephews how to play chess.