ANZAC Day Vs Total Defence Day

Dear SG,

Today is ANZAC day in New Zealand. It’s a public holiday that commemorates all New Zealanders killed in war and also honours returned servicemen and women. ANZAC stands for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps. This same day back in 1915, New Zealand and Australian soldiers landed on the Gallipoli peninsula in Turkey. It was the first time New Zealander felt they have a role as a distinct nation fighting in the name of the British Empire. 2721 New Zealanders were killed, almost one in four of those who served on Gallipoli. That was in the First World War. Their bodies were not bought home. It’s very sad especially for the families.

http://www.dva.gov.au/images/commem/2_Turkey.jpg
A picture of the Anzac Commemorative Site build at Gallipoli in conjunction with the New Zealand government and with the approval of the Turkish government.

On this public holiday, businesses or trade not under the exempted categories are not allowed to operate until 1pm. (some examples are the banks, barbers, shopping malls etc. Most will just take the whole day off if they can’t open until 1pm)

Learning about New Zealand’s ANZAC Day prompts me to compare SG’s young history as a nation. We too have a special day dedicated to our war history. In 1942 15th February, British surrendered Singapore to the Japanese. That was the beginning of the Japanese Occupation of Singapore in War World Two. 15th of February not only marks the Fall of Singapore and commemorates those who died, but is also designated as Total Defence Day, a day to remind all Singaporeans of the need to be self-reliant in the defence of our country.

http://www.cofepow.org.uk/images/photo_surrender2.jpg
The Unconditional Surrender of Singapore
Lt. Gen. A E Percival sitting opposite Gen. Tomoyki Yamashita

However, Total Defence Day is NOT a public holiday in Singapore. :P It is however a significant day and a memorial service is held at the War Memorial Park to remember the victims of the war.

Singaporean works too hard, maybe we should make 15th of February a public holiday too, that way we can slow down little, take time to remember the past and appreciate the present.

With love from NZ,
J

Spot the differences:

ANZAC day is a public holiday… at least until 1pm for some.

Total Defence Day is not a public holiday.

Businesses are not allowed to operate on ANZAC day unless they belong to the exempted categories. It is an offence to open and trade during any time the law restricts trading, and the owner or occupier of the shop may be prosecuted and be liable for a fine of up to NZ$1,000.

SG businesses remain open any public holidays so long as it makes money senses and they can profit. However, most administrative offices will close so that their staffs can go shopping and contribute positively to the economy.

Some things are the same:

Both New Zealand and Singapore were part of the British Colonies.

I got email!

Dear SG,

Today is a public holiday in New Zealand. It's called the ANZAC day. I wasn't very motivated to find out about this special day until I received an email from Victor and I had to reply him. (hee...) Here is what Victor wrote:

From: Victor Chua
Subject: Have a good ANZAC day

>Hello Aunty Joan.
>I remenber today is ANZAC day.
>ANZAC day is a special holiday.
>Have a good ANZAC day.
>By Victor.

Isn't this sweet? :D

Victor is turning 7 years old this year and he loves writing. To encourage him to write lots, I've created an email account for him on Feb 24 and started a blog for him too. He didn't like to blog much, but he checks his email everyday. Sometimes when he wants to tell his parent something but they are not home, he email them instead! kekeke...

This email account gave us a chance to send him links leading to educational websites while keeping track on his writing abilities when he replies. Ann is considering a children's creative writing class for Victor. Instead of whining about the additional class he might have to attend, Victor is actually very pleased with the idea. All we have to do now is to keep a lookout for such a class.

I am really proud of him, he attends additional Chinese class and Maths class which he's pretty ok with, and swimming class which he likes. And now he wants Creative writing class! He sure is a busy busy boy.

Check out victor's blog below:
http://victor-chua.blogspot.com/

Because of his email to me, I now have to find out what exactly is ANZAC day so that I can reply his email and tell him why ANZAC day is so special. He loves information and the best thing about him is that he remembers them! This makes him a joy to teach.

Check out my next blog on ANZAC day.

with love from NZ,
J

Hail to the weather

Picture from thefreedictionary.com

Hail: define by thefreedictionary.com as Precipitation in the form of spherical or irregular pellets of ice larger than 5 millimeters (0.2 inches) in diameter.

Dear SG,

I wish I can say I’ve finally see snow but nah… not in Auckland. Here we get hail instead. Tiny cute little round ice pieces that falls from the sky. The first time I’ve seen it was around October I think. I thought it’s strange to see so many white petals falling on the floor, I assume the wind and the rain was causing the wild flowers to loose their petals. Andrew didn't believe me when I told him it's raining petals outside. He went out to investigate and found out that my white petals were actually tiny pieces of ice! We were pretty fascinated. (Mountain tortoises) hee...

The 2nd time I’ve see it was last Thursday 12th of April, the temperature was around 12 degree Celsius. It’s fortunate that the hails are pretty mild here. The ice is so tiny that it melts easily in our hands. (M&M does better than that even though they are only slightly bigger) I was too cold to go out of the house and take a photo of the hail. But I found one picture from the internet that best describe what I’ve seen here.

Picture from franklin.thefuntimesguide.com

The white spots are the hails and there isn't a lot of them, that's pretty much the same with what I've seen here. They melt pretty quickly and all that's left are just puddles of water.

we miss warm and sunny SG.

with love,
J

Spot the difference:

No hailing in SG, the only thing we hail is a cab.

In NZ, we had to call a cab, we can't really hail a cab from the road. The only hailing are from the sky. :)

Strike One! Strike two! Strike THREE!!!

Dear strike-less SG,

I heard about the SG wage increase for Prime Minister, ministers and top civil servants. Sigh... I should have chosen politics when I had the chance. *grin*

Oh well, back to the news from NZ. For the next 2 days starting from tomorrow, medical laboratory workers will go on strike. Blood transfusions, blood testing and tissue sampling services for public and private hospitals are all affected. The union is seeking a couple of improvement for their laboratory workers in terms of wages, flexibility in working hours etc,

This is the 3rd strike since I came to NZ. The 1st was on Nov 2006 and it was a 7 days strike from the same union!!! That strike caused a backlog when nearly 1000 elective surgeries were put off in Auckland.

The 2nd strike was from the Service and Food Worker Unions. They took to the street to highlight their low wages and unjust treatment from the hospitals. Although they only clean the place or prepared the food but they are certainly more considerate. Their strike only lasted 90 minutes because they wanted to make their problems known but they didn't want the patients to be affected.

It says "Healthy Pay for Healthy Hospitals". Service staffs are indeed an important part of any industry, never take them for granted.

Taking their strike to the streets.
Both pictures are from the Service and Food Worker Unions website.

Anyway, for now, the affected hospitals put up notices in the newspaper, radios and TV to remind everyone that the labs are on strike, and hospital services will be limited. The public is also reminded to see their family doctors first if it is not an emergency. Life goes on for the rest of us, I hope everyone gets what they want and no one gets hurt.

with love from NZ,
J

Spot the differences:

Auckland has 3 strikes since I arrived 6 months ago. That's an average of 1 strike every 2 months!!

The last strike in SG is ..... I really don't know when!!! But there was a famous strike called the 'Great STC Strike' ("Singapore Traction Company") that lasted 146 days and that was in 1956! The whole country's transport system was affected. For the last 30 years while I've gotten conceived, born, grew up and got hitched in SG, I've not heard of any strike.

Sticky mouse trap

Dear SG,

Living in newer neighborhood estate in Singapore means that I am not used to having mice problem in the house. In fact, I was told that only lower floor flats in very old estate has such a problem.

While NZ don't have house lizard, they do have mice. Especially when the weather turns colder, they will start to appear in the house instead of staying in the garden. Yesterday night when I was on the phone with my mom, I saw a mouse running across the hall. This morning, Joseph saw 2 of them in the same place and decided to set up a mouse trap.

Ship rat. Similar to the one we seen. They are actually pretty adorable but they do smell quite badly. This picture is taken from http://www.taiko.org.nz/Taikotuku.html

They place 3 sticky mouse trap on the floor along the wall just before they go to bed. Andrew and I got thirsty so we went back to the kitchen to get a drink. When we switch on the lights, we saw one mouse stuck to the mouse trap. To cut the long story short, Andrew painstakingly got the mouse freed from the super glue trap. It limped away into the garden but that's definitely better than staving to death or dying in a slow agonizing way. 3 cheers to Andrew for being kind and patience enough to free the mouse while I plaster myself to his side wincing at the pain the poor mouse had to go through.

This is exactly how the mouse looks like when it was caught, sticky trap and all. This picture is taken from http://salvoarts.com/melrose/AprilShow.shtml

The 2nd mouse is still at large, I pray it won't get caught in the same way. Sigh, I rather have the house lizard any time even though they too make my hair stand.


with love from NZ,
J

NZ Adult minimum wage increase

Dear SG,

New Zealand is indeed a state that gives lots of benefits to the lower-income group. While some will says Singapore favor the rich and powerful, New Zealand take cares of it's poorer citizen. In my opinion, it's debatable if they both went into the extreme. I think a balance will be nicer. A bit of NZ, a bit of SG, right in the middle path, everyone benefits in the way they needed most.

But the world is not perfect, so never mind, we'll just do the best we can, ya? :)

Today is April the 1st, April fool's day, and this is not April Fool's joke.The adult minimum wage increases from $10.25 an hour to $11.25 starting from today. That's $450 a week for a 40-hour week. The minimum youth rate for 16 and 17-year-olds goes up to $9.00 an hour from $8.20. The Government had also delivered on its promise of a minimum of four weeks annual leave.

They (NZ Government) intends to raise the adult minimum wage to $12 an hour by the end of 2008.

Interest rates has just went up. Saving accounts gets around 7%, term deposit can be as high as 9%. *Slurp* But if we want to borrow money, the mortgage rate is around 8%. *Sob*

So there you have it, all the important statistics to a Singaporean.

Happy April Fool's Day! (I'm not kidding about those numbers!)

with love from NZ,
J