When I Was Young

From TODAY, Voices
Wednesday July 30, 2008

Letter from
Gilbert Goh Keow Wah,

Sydney, New South Wales

WHENEVER I read about the challenges facing permanent residents and work permit holders in Singapore, I have mixed feelings, for I am a Singaporean who has just left the country to live and work in Sydney. So far, in Australia, I have yet to face any of the discrimination of which I have been warned. But, I feel how foreigners in Singapore may feel and hope that the locals will welcome me, and not see me as a threat to their livelihood.

In Sydney, I have seen a medium-sized company of about 100 employees boasting people of 10 different nationalities.

Such a diverse workforce not only allows creativity to take place but also creates respect and tolerance for one another’s culture and religion. There are two distinct nationalities settling down in Singapore: the Chinese and the Indians. They have formed almost 75 per cent of all our foreign talent for the past five years.

Many are competent professionals who are deserving of their residency in Singapore, but their cultural habits and working attitude are not much different from the local Chinese and Indian workforce. There is not much diversity they can bring to the workforce. In order to boast a strong cosmopolitan work force, our Government needs to cast the talent hunt search wider, from Europe, Africa, the United States and so on.

But, no matter where they originally come from, Singaporeans must welcome such foreign talents, which is what good global citizens should do. At the very least, we must not give them a hard time. For, one day, you may end up working and living abroad. Just like me.

From TODAY, Plus
Friday July 25, 2008

PHIN WONG

Tween stars are making big bucks with their wholesome images. Does anyone buy it?

IS IT just me or does everyone have a halo these days?

You’ve seen them, haven’t you? They’re not ordinary halos — they’re manufactured in China, made with small movable parts children choke on, slathered in lead paint, assembled right next door to the poison pet foods factory.

If you look a little closer at the label, it reads “Channel” — as in 5, not Coco.

These halos belong to the angelic tween stars making massive business these days.

Fifteen-year-old Miley Cyrus, along with her alter-ego Hannah Montana, has a sold-out American tour and her 3D movie set a new Super Bowl weekend record, pulling in US$29 million ($39 million).

The Jonas Brothers — Nick, Joe and Kevin — pulled in 8.9 million viewers in the United States with their Disney TV movie Camp Rock, making it the second most-watched-TV movie of all time, ahead of the original High School Musical. Their soundtrack to Camp Rock has the No 3 position on the Billboard album chart.

Miley’s been featured in Vanity Fair. She’s been on Good Morning America talking about how she’s a good role model for kids.

To mark their full crossover from kiddy pop to mainstream domination, The Jonas Brothers — with their “purity rings” that 18-year-old Joe Jonas said “promises to ourselves and to God that we’ll stay pure till marriage” — are on the cover of music bible Rolling Stone magazine. “The Clean Teen Machine”, shouts the headline.

Well, I call their bluff. People, have we not learnt anything from history? It wasn’t that long ago that Britney Spears promised to stay a virgin till she got married.

Lindsay Lohan started off all cleancut and wholesome. A mere five years after Freaky Friday, Lindsay now has jail time, multiple DUI-related offences, rehab, and public display of her genitals on her resume, along with what seems to be a very public same-sex romance with DJ Samantha Ronson.

You couldn’t get more squeakyclean than the dimpled Vanessa Hudgens from High School Musical — until full-frontal naked pictures the starlet took of herself for her boyfriend were leaked on the Internet.

History is already beginning to repeat itself. Miley has had her MySpace account hacked into, resulting in provocative pictures of the clean tween star flashing her bra and posing in the shower being splashed on the Internet.

Already, rumours are swirling around gossip circles that two of the three Jonas boys haven’t been saving anything for marriage — except for maybe a townhouse or two. That’s after rumours of 15-year-old Nick Jonas being “friendly” with Miley (he was apparently the one she took those pictures for).

There are now reports of young Nick dating fellow Disney lass, 16-yearold Selena Gomez.

All three brothers are featured on the cover of Rolling Stone making broody come-hither faces. Either that, or they’re trying to hypnotise you into giving them your allowance.

Who wants to bet the kids are a hop, skip and click away from a sex tape?

Still, parents seem to take comfort in the fact that however manufactured their sunshine-y wholesome goodness might be, buying into these “positive role models” is still much better than exposing their kids to the mainstream reign of hip-hop, with their “pimps”, “hos” and “candy shops”.

Think again, mum.

Yes, 50 Cent and Lil Wayne make music that is sometimes violent, misogynistic and grammatically incorrect — but those guys come with a PG rating. If you’ve done a half-decent job as a parent, no kid is going to mistake gun-totting hip-hop gangsta rappers as adult-sanctioned role models.

Tween stars, on the other hand, are more insidious. They’re rated G. They’re in your homes without supervision. They’re the people your kids look up to. Let’s see you try to explain why Hannah Montana’s been arrested for driving under the influence. Oh, give it another year.

Maybe I’m being too harsh on Miley and the Jonases. After all, they’re young and they’re going to make the mistakes young people do — the fact that they’re rich and famous only makes it easier to make the same mistakes we did without getting caught by their parents.

It’s the adults who are to blame. The adults who market little girls as mini saints while dressing them in Lolitaesque off-the-shoulder tops. The adults who blindly allow their children to worship these false idols because they’re waspy white with good teeth. The adults who should know better.

This clean sweep is going to end with delicious dirt. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

From TODAY, World, HEAL TH WATCH
Friday July 25, 2008

A diet high in soya may water down those little swimmers and lower fertility: Study

IN THE biggest human study into the effects of soya on fertility, a link between soya-rich diets and lower sperm counts has been detected.

The study, by Dr Jorge Chavarro at Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, showed that men who consumed more than two portions of soya-based foods a week had, on average, 41 million fewer sperm per millilitre of semen than men who had never eaten soya products.

The apparent fall in sperm count is unlikely to make healthy men infertile, but some experts said it could have a significant impact on those already with lower-than-average sperm counts.

A sperm count of between 80 million and 120 million per milliliter is regarded as normal, while men who produce fewer than 20 million sperm per millilitre are regarded as clinically subfertile.

The study builds on previous research in animals and on human tissues that has suggested certain ingredients in soya could harm sperm production.

Male fertility has been in decline in the West for several decades now, with about 20 per cent of young Europeans having a low sperm count, while levels of soya have risen steadily in the Western diet since the 1940s because it is a cheap source of protein.

Soya-based products are now found in two-thirds of manufactured food including biscuits, sweets, pasta and bread, according to the Institute of Food Research in Norwich.

In the study, Dr Chavarro and colleagues at Massachusetts General Hospital recruited 99 men who had visited a fertility clinic between 2000 and 2006.

The men answered a questionnaire which asked them about the amounts of 15 different soya foods they had eaten over the previous three months.

The researchers then put the men into four groups according to the levels of chemicals called isoflavones in their diets.

Isoflavones are ingredients in soya products that mimic the female sex hormone, oestrogen. Each man then provided a sperm sample for testing.

Dr Chavarro found that men who consumed at least half a portion of soya food a day had the lowest sperm counts.

“Our findings suggest that the greater the soya food intake is, the lower the sperm concentration, compared with men who never consume soya food,” said Dr Chavarro.

THE GUARDIA N

From TODAY, News, I Say
Friday July 25, 2008

ANSLEY NG

I AM almost ashamed to step into the video rental store near my home on a Saturday night alone. It is like an admission that I am single at 29 and a loser without a date.

But I am increasingly seeing other lone men browsing the shelves, too.

Sure, Pete’s girlfriend could be having a girls’ night out and Siong’s wife might be busy making dinner, but I’d like to think that these men, in their 20s and 30s, are single and, like me, not doing too much about to change that.

While there have been a mountain of suggestions about how to get Singaporeans to make babies, the single’s problem — one that has been receiving national attention lately — concerns the precursor to procreation: We have trouble meeting new people. Specifically, candidates who could turn out to be Ms Right or Mr Right.

Singles here, apparently, want to get hitched but the majority bemoan the lack of chances (or skills) to socialise, according to survey findings unveiled last week by the National Population Secretariat.

I know people around my age group who have given up trying. While I’m not one of those – yet – my attitude is, “I am really keen, but I won’t try very hard” and I suspect many other busy working singles think that way too. Call it inertia, if you will.

So it would be interesting to see what measures the Government unveils next month to help the singles-networking process along, and how different these will be from its early attempts at playing Cupid.

I refer, of course, to its Social Development Unit (SDU) which went into semiretirement in 2006 and passed its bow and quiver of arrows on to private matchmakers — which it now accredits — probably after realising it could no longer keep up with a more sophisticated and demanding market of single, young professionals.

There were, at last count, 30 of these dating agencies compared to 10 just two years ago, and the industry’s fecundity suggests more people are receptive to turning to one for help.

Still, too many younger men and women think the only place they can make new friends is at a noisy club or bar, and thus limit their chances. Or, their excuse is that that they are too busy with work to explore other avenues.

And while dating agencies may have glammed up their image, I daresay they, just like the SDU before them, still encounter resistance from those (like me) who feel only desperate people sign up and “I am not desperate, what”.

So, here’s my idea.

Have the push could come from the workplace, where many singles of marriageable age spend a lot of their time.

The National Family Council or another government agency could provide companies with incentives to pack their single employees off to dating agencies. In the same way that they send staff for training courses, employers could stipulate a number of hours that its single employees have to clock per quarter attending events arranged by a dating agency, like lunches, cocktails, outings. (Don’t laugh — yes, the situation may have gotten that bad.)

Companies could also be allowed to dip into the Manpower Ministry’s $20-million Work-Life Works! Fund, to organise monthly drinks sessions or outings at which their single staff can meet people from other firms. They could be from the same industry or just share the same building.

Even if no romantic links are forged, hey, at least their business or professional circle is widened.

Take-up of the fund, set up in August 2004 to help companies promote worklife harmony, has jumped from 160 in 2006 to 400 this year, so there is mounting interest among employers to ensure workers have a happy balance in life — by extension, one would expect better productivity and retention rates. Why not broaden that balance to include singles’ socialising needs?

But that’s for the future, hopefully.

Until my company helps to hook me up with other singles — say, from one of the legal or financial firms in our office building — would any one (female, preferably) care to join me for some tortilla chips, Chardonnay and Dr Zhivago this Saturday night?

From TODAY, World
Thursday July 24, 2008

WOMAN’S DIETING WOES

THE family of a British woman who suffered brain damage following a “detox” diet warned on Tuesday of the dangers of such regimes.

Ms Dawn Page received more than £800,000 ($2.2 million) in an out-of-court settlement after a diet in which she increased her water intake and decreased the amount of salt she consumed.

The 52-year-old mother of two, from Faringdon, southern England, began vomiting severely soon after starting the “hydration diet” in 2001. She was left with epilepsy and a brain injury affecting her memory, concentration and ability to speak normally.

She gave up her job as conference organizer and her family says she will not work again.

Ms Barbara Nash, the nutritional therapist she consulted, allegedly assured her that the vomiting was part of the detoxification process. Ms Nash, who calls herself a “nutritional therapist and life coach”, denies liability in the case and insists she was not guilty of substandard practice.

But Ms Page’s husband, Geoff, 54, yesterday warned of the dangers of “fad-type” diets. He said his wife was not obese but had just wanted to lose some weight.

“Just days after she started the hydration diet, she began to feel unwell ... Things went from bad to worse ... Her life has been seriously affected, perhaps ruined,” he said.

Geoff said his wife was advised to drink at least four pints of water a day. The therapy was known as the Amazing Hydration Diet. He added: “It’s important people understand how dangerous diets like these are.”

Ms Nash has a diploma from the College of Natural Nutrition, based in Tiverton, Devon.

Plexus Law, the firm that represented her in court, said all allegations of substandard practice made in the litigation would continue to be “firmly denied” and the settlement agreed was less than half the total claimed.

THE GUARDIAN