Want to prevent myopia? Head outdoors.

I’ve done a couple of posts on the apparent health benefits of exposure to nature

• Overcoming the Nature Deficit Disorder
• More on the Nature Deficit Disorder

In case you missed it, Australian researchers have just completed a study that concludes that exposure to sunlight is a major factor in the incidence of myopia.

Comparing six and seven-year-old Chinese children in Singapore and Australia, they found that 30 percent of the Singaporeans were myopic, against just 1.3 percent of the Australians. The differentiating factor was the amount of time spent outdoors – 30 minutes for the Singaporeans versus two hours for the Australians.

“What we would suggest,” said the researchers, “is that what’s happened in east Asia is that they have got the balance totally out of kilter.”

What an indictment.

You can read more here:
Red Sports – Spending time outdoors in the sun stops myopia
AFP via Yahoo News – Sunlight can help children avoid myopia

Freecycled Home For the Froglets

I joined the Singapore Freecycle Network a few months back. It’s basically a community that aims to connect people with things to give away, with people who want those things. It’s been fun (and heartening) to read the regular mailers describing things that people are giving away.

Anyhow, Athos has Show and Tell next week and he’s decided to bring the froglets to school. Rather than spend money on something I only needed temporarily, I thought I’d see if the Freecycle Network would have anything to offer. So here is the request I put up:

Freecycle!

I encountered the term “freecycle” a few months back but never got round to looking it up. Thanks to Alternative Mom’s comment on my previous post, I was reminded and went to look it up.

The Freecycle Network began a couple of years back in Arizona, USA and now has 4,221 groups and 4,335,000 members around the world. The idea is basically to connect the people who have things to give away, with people who want those things. I am completely sold on the idea.

And the great news, my friends, is that Singapore has its own Singapore Freecycle Network! An excerpt from its Yahoo Groups webpage:

Whether you’re looking to discard or acquire an item, you’ve come to the right place. Computers, furniture, clothing, magazines – no item is too big or too small. (That said, we request that you keep in mind that this is not intended to be a Christmas wish-list. Asking for LCD TVs, XBox’s, PS3s, etc., is a bit over-the-top.) Since this is a Freecycle list, ALL items must be 100% FREE and not subject to exchange or sale.

As of this writing, it has over 4200 members. I have just signed up as member #4211 – will you consider being #4212?

Join the Singapore Freecycle Network.

Too. Much. Stuff.

After hosting 6 multi-family garage sales, it’s become painfully clear to me that we are living in a consumer society in which we often buy things we don’t really need, or in quantities that we don’t require. (True of the Pilgrim family too, by the way.)

Which is why I was struck by what’s going In The Trenches of Motherhood. This mother of seven is taking one year off buying anything other than essentials, and writes some great posts about (non-)shopping at Target and Ikea. And then today, a friend sent me the link to The Story of Stuff, a compelling (though somewhat long) video about the crisis of our materialist economy. Watch it, if only for the superb graphics.

What will you do about it?

A Red-Hot Multi-Family Garage Sale

The Pilgrim family loves garage sales. As a seller, it’s a great way to keep your home free of clutter, and to give unwanted items a new lease of life. As a buyer, garage sales present an opportunity to save a lot of money, and to uncover wonderful treasures.

We’ve hosted regular multi-family garage sales for a few years now, and we are having our 6th this weekend! We usually have between 15-30 donor families/individuals, so there’s a huge variety of stuff. We price our items to sell (my dad calls it “ridiculously cheap”), and ALL proceeds go to charity. We’ve done this so often we actually have regular customers, ranging from expatriates to families to domestic helpers and foreign workers, to bargain-loving Singaporeans. Some even come back several times in one day!

Anyway, the details are as follows:

Date: Sat and Sun, 1-2 December 2007
Time: 9am to 5pm
Items: Electronics, books, toys, clothes, household items, fixtures and furnishings, decoratives and lots of other stuff
Venue: Email pilgrimmom[at]gmail.com for address

Do drop by!

And God blessed the seventh day…

Upper Pierce Reservoir

A 6-Year-Old Muses On the Law

The Pilgrim family has been working on reducing our carbon footprint, and one of the things we’re talking to the kids about is to walk wherever possible. Which then led to an interesting conversation with Athos this morning:

Athos: Mommy, does Singapore have a government?

Pilgrim Mom: Too much if you ask me. Yes of course.

Athos: Then why can’t the government make a law to tell people to walk to nearby places?

I was stumped for an answer, and our subsequent discussion touched on crime and punishment, enforcement, and what the law is for. I am pretty sure very little of it made any sense to him.

So how would you have responded?

Nature On Tape

I took Aramis out for a walk this evening and we did the masking tape activity again – described in this post.

His fine motor skills have developed a lot since the last time, and he seemed to enjoy sticking on the bits and pieces I gave him, as well as exploring the stickiness of the tape in general (finger on, finger off, ooh, sticky! Two fingers on, two fingers off, oooh, still sticky! Now for the palm… you get the general picture)

Here is what we ended with:

Wildness And Wet On St John’s Island

Last week, my work department went for some team bonding at St John’s Island. Many of us hadn’t been there in a long while, and for me, it was a sheer delight to be out of the office and in the wild on a workday afternoon.

The only way to the island is by ferry from Marina South Pier – $15 for adults, $12 for kids (which includes island admission). Click here for the schedule. If the group is large enough, it’s possible to charter a ferry. I didn’t realise this but there is even a holiday bungalow and campgrounds – read more here. If you do intend to go though, please note that there are no shops of any sort on the island, so you’ll need to bring your own food and water.

Here’s our boat approaching the island:

Labrador Park: Where Nature Meets History

Over the weekend, a friend who works for the National Parks Board arranged a walking tour of Labrador Nature Reserve with a nature guide.

It’s been a while since I’ve been there, and I must say I had some reservations. The sky looked threatening, we are still in dengue season, we would have three kids in tow, and the walk would last about 2 hours.

As it turned out, I absolutely LOVED it.

Botanic Gardens: Lushness!

I had a rare morning off work today. So after dropping the boys off at school, Aramis and I had a little date at the Singapore Botanic Gardens.

Now gung-ho as I was, I thought it would be wiser to attempt this only after having some caffeine in my system. (Despite my earlier bravado about weaning, I am, I’m sorry to say, still nursing at night. We don’t call him Suckzilla for nothing….)

And here is where I start my rave about the newly renovated Botanic Gardens.

Good Bye, Braddell Angsana

Every Sunday we go to Grandpa and Grandma’s home for dinner, and our journey takes us down Braddell Road.

Every Sunday without fail, I marvel at the magnificent angsana tree that stands in the middle of the road. It’s not just a grand dame of a tree (80-years-old!), it’s also a romantic, expensive oddity in practical, pragmatic Singapore. In 2005, authorities decided to spare the tree and build a new road around it, at an additional cost of $200,000. For me, the tree was a marker of a society that had come of age.

Every Sunday, the 5 seconds it took us to slow down and pass the tree was a time for quiet delight. In the tree, and in the society that would work its way around it.

Every Sunday until this Sunday.

Gerard Manley Hopkins: Inversnaid

As a student, I used to love the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins. It wasn’t intellectual like TS Eliot, nor contemplative like Wordsworth. It wasn’t trying to be anything except a joyful exploration of how sound and language could represent the world around us. At his best, Hopkins’ poetry was worship. My favourites are The Windhover and Pied Beauty.

And continuing on the theme of nature from the last post, I’ve just discovered this one (Inversnaid is a waterfall in Scotland). What a rallying cry in the last stanza! – Pilgrim Mom

More On The Nature Deficit Disorder

I last posted on the nature deficit disorder here. While catching up on blog-reading, I found this link to a Washington Post story via Whymommy over at Toddler Planet. The article expresses concerns over nature’s diminishing presence in the lives of our children, and it’s worth a read.

It’s sad but true that unless we make a special effort, the next generation of children will experience less of nature than us. My father talked of catching guppies in drains and fighting spiders as a child. Today, we have to go somewhere before we can be surrounded by nature, and ahead of that douse ourselves head-to-toe with insect repellent so we don’t get dengue. And here in Singapore, it’s hot, it’s sweaty, and it’s so much easier to go to a mall or just stay home watching TV and playing videogames.

But let’s not be lured by what’s easy, nor put off by what’s hard. Is being outdoors amid nature a good thing? If yes, for the sake of our children, let’s just do it.

Need ideas? Try the Places to Go link above.

Here’s more if you’re interested in the topic:

• Salon.com – “Do today’s kids have nature deficit disorder”
• Chicago Tribune – “Go outside!”
  
• “Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder” by Richard Louv.

Incidentally, Whymommy, whose blog I read regularly, has just been diagnosed with breast cancer. She has two boys aged 2.5 years and 5 months. Would you drop by her blog and give her some encouragement?

Reconnecting With Nature At West Coast Park

Yesterday evening, in a bid to redress the Pilgrim family’s nature deficit disorder, we brought the kids cycling at West Coast Park. This is one of the bigger parks in Singapore, and at its western end features a huge playground with all sorts of funky equipment that kids of all ages love. (Yes, the one with the inevitable McDonalds.)

The quieter sections are around Carparks 1 and 2. These are where you will find the runners, walkers, couples on a date, and once in a while, a boisterous family (ahem) puncturing the peace.

Now Singapore’s parks aren’t exactly a walk on the wild side. There are footpaths and bicycle paths, all prominently labelled. Fallen leaves are swept up, bushes are trimmed, and there are toilets and rubbish bins at regular intervals. Still, amid the manicured look, there is real fauna to be found. In the half hour we were there we saw:

• An army of large red ants marching in neat rows
• Another army of small black ants hauling home a dead wasp
• Two snails, a big one with a conch-shaped shell and a small one with a spiral-shaped shell
• A lizard (possibly iguana?) with his body nicely camouflaged against a bed of leaves
• A perfectly-formed spiderweb with its owner sitting calmly in the middle awaiting his dinner

The kids were especially thrilled by Messrs. Snail and Spider (hurrah for all things slimy and creepy). I think the cool factor of West Coast Park went up several notches just on that score!

Overcoming the Nature Deficit Disorder

Someone sent me this at work – the World Future Society’s annual top 10 forecasts. It’s a short, punchy and provocative piece, well worth a read.

As a parent, I was particularly struck by #4:

“Children’s ‘nature deficit disorder’ will grow as a health threat. Children today are spending less time in direct contact with nature than did previous generations. The impacts are showing up not only in their lack of physical fitness, but also in the growing prevalence of hyperactivity and attention deficit. Studies show that immersing children in outdoor settings – away from television and video games – fosters more creative mental activity and concentration.”

Living in a city-state like Singapore, we face a double whammy. TV and video games aside, most of us live in apartments and are surrounded by more buildings than trees.

Nature isn’t second nature, but we can make it so. We still have enough parks and open spaces to call our own. It’s just a matter of overcoming the mental hurdle that it’s easier to just stay indoors. So get a ball, a frisbee, a picnic basket, and venture outside!

Pasir Ris Park: Tranquillity on a Weekday

Last week, Porthos’ kindergarten went on an excursion to Pasir Ris Park. Organised by Club Kangaroo, the kids played carnival games, interacted with wildlife (two pythons and an iguana), and picked seashells on the beach. I was impressed by how smoothly everything went, and how well the team managed the kids and kept them engaged.

But what left the deepest impression on me was

Connect with Nature at Sungei Buloh

A dear friend left a comment on this blog which I felt was too generous to be left simply as a comment. So here it is in full:

Hi Pilgrim Mom,

Here’s some info on Sungei Buloh!

This is a great place to go if you want a bit of seabreeze without sand AND you live in the northwestern part of the island, otherwise, it’s a hike!

Features:
(a) You can use a stroller!
(b) There’s a bridge from which stones can be plonked into a wide river (and there are handy stones). This is my 2.5 year old’s fave activity at the moment. This is right in front of the visitor’s centre and already a nice place to hang out even if you go no further into the reserve.
(c) Some of Singapore’s bigger (hence more spottable by small eyes) birds reside here such as herons, egrets, eagles and kingfishers.
(d) There’s an activity/info centre with buttons to push.
(e) The Nasi Lemak at the cafe is pretty good!
(f) Entrance is 1 dollar for adults and 50 cents for kids. Free if you go before 7.30am.

Remember to:
(a) Use mosquito repellent
(b) Keep hold of the little ones especially on the boardwalks where railings are not childproof.
(c) Go early in the morning or in the late afternoon or it will be too hot.
(d) Best times to visit birdwise are between Oct and Feb.

Visit http://www.sbwr.org.sg/

Singapore birds that it’s fun and easy to get to know:
Oriole (flying banana bird), Koel (noisy oh-oh bird), Cattle Egret (stalks around at the end of the road), Mina (numerous), Sunbird (various, especially Crimson), Kingfisher (various).

Check out http://www.naturestops.com/

Lucy