Let's talk about sex

My baby sister is pregnant! It's a trying time for our family as we are alternating between phases of joy and horror. When I first heard it, I was over-joyed at the prospect of having a few more furry additions to our family. But my mom - to whom my baby sister is well, still a baby - isn't taking it too well and she's been cursing "the perpetrator" who in her eyes is a sick predator preying on little children. After all, she is only about seven months old and clearly in no state of mental maturity to embrace motherhood. Perhaps she dived in willingly without being armed with all the facts a young adult should have.

She's got a loving family who is going to support her through "the crisis". Not many do.

Sex education and development of one's sexual image in many Asian (and I suspect other conservative) societies fails to prepare young adults, especially girls, for the real world. It is not just a biology lesson; there are emotional, social, cultural, religious and ethical tags attached to it too. Also, when talking about sex education, gender equality and sexual orientation can no longer be factored out. Many find themselves hurled from years of protective embrace from their parents into the real world, armed with nothing but a (badly illustrated) text book knowledge and/or engraved cultural/ religious notions like going to hell for even contemplating about sex before lawful marriage or being non-heterosexual or that the worth of a woman lies in her virginity.

So during that period between first contemplating sex and the lawful marriage, on one extreme, some of these young adults who may not have received a well rounded sex education or developed a healthy sexual image may engage in risky sexual behaviour, have to deal with unwanted pregnancies, become involved in cyber-bullying and sexual violence, catch STDs or worse, contract AIDS. On the other extreme, another group of women naively enter their first lawful marriage to find out that their patriarchal society/culture measures her worth primarily by her chastity yet, none of that applies to her first lawful husband and she can't expect the same of him. And some men in these societies enter their lawful marriage believing it is their right to demand that his wife be a virgin (otherwise he may choose to pay a bride price of less monetary value for her worth).

I'm playing with extremes here, but the truth is a lot of conservative parents don't have the talk of the birds and the bees and the pill and the latex condoms with their children or entertain any questions. Due to their inability to address it, they prefer schools and the Internet to bridge this gap (which in some cases work out). For one thing, conservative parents who didn't receive this lesson from their parents are mostly at a loss to sit down and talk to their curious children about something as personal and taboo as sex. And for another, it's not an easy talk to have for either party when one's cultural/ religious influences stand in the way.

Apart from the technicalities, enough emphasis is not placed on the fact that one's sexuality is a personal choice therefore one becomes solely responsible for the consequences of one's actions relating to one's sexuality. Girls are not told enough that they can say NO to sex if they are not comfortable with it or to fight back when harassed or abused; they learn from an early age to be submissive and keep quiet out of reasons like shame or guilt. Boys often watch how their fathers treat their mothers and go on to treat their wives/ girlfriends in the same way and on the negative extreme, it can lead to generation upon generation of disrespect to the opposite gender and even violence.

I think somewhere among all the extremes, there is a dimension where both male and female children can be properly educated on sex and their rights, encouraged to respect the opposite sex and be empowered to have a healthy sexual image of oneself and one's actions relating to it.

On a related note, the Internet has given a voice to many female rights activists:
https://www.facebook.com/womenbloggers
http://wbsa.wordpress.com/

Though this post wasn't really about my baby sister, I look forward to seeing her get through her term and have a healthy litter!

Tales of Sherwood

When I walked into the office this morning, my Boss wasn't looking too great.

Instead of going, "Why Boss, you look inflamed this morning. Are you alright?",
I asked politely "Good Morning Boss, didn't you catch enough sleep last night?"

He looked a bit taken back and denied any anomalies in his routine. Also, he never likes to admit it when he is coming down with an illness, however obvious the symptoms are.

Much later in the day, he tells me,
"You know, this morning when I went to the 7-11 store at the gas station, I was attacked by a swarm of fruit flies near the biscuits shelf while waiting to pay for my things. I don't know why there were flies inside the store. Maybe the door doesn't lock well and they got in. They were too small to be bees. They looked thinner and longer."

I asked, "Did you get bitten?"

He said, "No, but I whacked all of them."

This funny little story didn't seem out of line to me from an ordinary day in Sherwood (the gas station may as well been a watering hole for the horses). My Boss is after all the spitting image of Little John from the story of Robin Hood. Not just in his physique, but also in character. He's very protective of his team, extremely kind, easy going and fearless when it comes to defending those who try to attack him or his territory.

From the left: Will, Little John, Lady Marion, Much, Robin Hood, Friar Tuck, Nasir

There's a trusted associate of my Boss who brings him useful information from the world outside, who also happens to have a short stature like Much. Nasir, who joined our company recently is very capable but speaks very little. He also has a moustache. Another elderly and jovial team member is Friar Tuck. His table is always filled with food and he generously feeds anyone who stops by his desk. Even I like frequenting his table for snacks.

The King of England actually sits in the cubicle next door and is separated from our cubicle by a drywall partition (this guy though is originally from Scotland). This elderly gentleman can't stop swearing or talking about himself. I sometimes enjoy his company since he is an entertaining story teller and he never runs out of amusing stories (about his life) to relate. Also, he depends on me to fix his Microsoft Powerpoint and Microsoft Word problems.

My Boss' Boss  is undoubtedly Herne the Hunter. When he does approach our office to see my Boss, the skies turn grey, the birds flee, flowers wither and we are engulfed with fear, because it's rarely a good thing. Sometimes Herne summons Little John to his office and even the bold Little John gets uneasy.

Herne the Hunter

Photo credits: Pork Magazine

In case, it wasn't downright obvious, I'm Lady Marion. Robin Hood and Will are yet to appear on the set.

Spoilt for choice

It's a perfect rainy stay-in Sunday and I'm surrounded by two of my favourite types of chips; salt/vinegar and banana chips. I've overslept, caught up with family/ friends and procrastinated on cleaning the house and practicing my 1st prepared speech for Tuesday. So that left me with doing a blog post!

There's no denying that having the freedom of choice when it comes to decisions like choice of studies, choice of partners, choice of residence, choice of career, choice of meals, etc, is a privilege.

But there's a downside.

I've always been been  frustrated by the concept of going shopping, especially when it came to things like dresses, shoes and bags. I suspect it is because I get mentally drained too quickly. Recently though I even noticed how mentally frustrating shopping for groceries and electronics are (things which I usually enjoy doing). The only conclusion I came to was that there was an ever-increasingly growing number of choices available for one simple requirement like a box of tissues, toothpaste, a pen or laundry detergent. And in today's competitive markets, making a choice isn't as easy as picking a pink one over an obviously blue one, rather it is like picking one blue shade out of 50 other similar shades of blue.

Reading a label for comparison is not always foolproof since human minds can be easily be manipulated with clever marketing and consumer psychology experts. For someone who obsesses over details, it is mentally tiring to analyse the slightly varying qualities of several brand names, it is time consuming and sometimes we are not even satisfied with our choice of purchase by the time we get home (Ahh I should have picked the one which scored 9.77 instead of the one which scored 9.80 out of a 10 on my personal scale!). Life was indeed simpler when there was just a couple of brands to choose from and we may have even been more satisfied with the purchase since we knew of no other options.

It's not just me, looks like a lot of people were driven to frustration by the same problem so they went on to blog, write articles, publish books and give talks about it!
http://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_choice
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/09/how-should-we-make-hard-decisions/

  

Monkey See, Monkey Do

My shopping trolley on the first round of grocery shopping for the month (just after pay day) consists of many bags of chips, treats and ingredients to improvise new recipes. When it is the last round of shopping for the month, my grocery basket consists of the bare essentials to maintain ordinary bodily functions.

So I was out grocery shopping today and ended up buying more than I could carry. I queued for a taxi, right behind a family of two kids and their mom. To attract taxis to this mall, one had to regularly press a button that triggered a sign somewhere on the highway, letting taxis know that people were waiting. The annoying thing was that the button remained activated only for a few seconds. The two kids watched me intently as I pressed the button a few times whenever the light went off. Being curious creatures, they quickly took over the job from me as I sat back and felt smug about having trained two little baby monkeys to help me.

Yesterday at the zoo, I joined a group of five other Docents for station duty. In addition to visitors, we expected a new batch of volunteers who went around the zoo, visiting various stations i.e., "Reptile Realm" (that's us!), "Fragile Forest", "Tame and Touchables", "African Adventure", "Conservation Cove" and "Primarily Primates" to help them decide which station they wanted to volunteer at. So we put out some of our best specimens at the station, including a live Kingsnake, hoping to attract enthusiastic new recruits.

I remember my first time as a trainee having a look at all the stations, trying to pick one. It wasn't that difficult. From a very early age, my likes for snakes were mixed with both fear and fascination. I felt that more of us had to speak up for the unpopular animals which are easily shunned by the public before giving them any chance of survival. Reptiles are incredibly adapted, diverse and useful in this web of life which we are part of.

The trainees came in all sorts with various intentions. Some were fascinated by reptiles, others were averse to reptiles. Some had many stories of reptile encounters to tell and wanted to learn more. Others wanted to know if we handled live reptiles because to them, it was associated with thrill and bravery perhaps. For the record, we do get to occasionally handle snakes and lizards under the supervision of the zoo keepers, but we had to make it clear to them that if handling live reptiles was their sole intention, it won't be long before they became disappointed and unable to keep up with the required commitment levels. Our job primarily was to engage visitors with facts and try to instill in them an appreciation for reptiles in hopes that they will go back and play a part in conservation.

On this day at the station, we got a California Kingsnake from our keepers. Kingsnakes are commonly kept as pets due to their docile nature and ease of care. He was named Bob and was a favourite of the keepers, having been with the zoo for nearly a decade. Kingsnakes, like King cobras prey on other snakes. However, while the King cobra is venomous and belongs to the family of elapids, the Kingsnake is nonvenomous belonging to the family of colubrids and it kills prey by constriction. It is also not fussed about having a primarily snake diet unlike the King cobra.

King Cobras are not true cobras, instead belong to its own genus. 

Source: A snake blog

A California Kingsnake

This morning, I was very touched by Arunachalam Muruganantham's story on the BBC news. There was a time, long ago when even I couldn't afford the luxury of a pack of sanitary pads every month. Now, when buying a pack off the shelf, I don't even give it a second thought because it's taken for granted. But to think that so many girls and women out there are still resorting to unhygienic and inconvenient means of managing their period because they simply can't afford it (as reminded by this article) made me sad. That is also why I was amazed by this "uneducated" man's determination to dare to go where no man went with only his self-belief to guide him until he turned an idea to a practical application. His story sounded more like a successful PhD project with a beneficial outcome to the general public! Not many people (regardless of income level) will walk away from a patent like that and not use it to accumilate as much money as they can.