The Asia + the Antipodes Thread

[noddy]

[Mr. Perfect]

[ansuchin]

[YMix]

Thanks for your interesting post, Ansuchin.

[Colonel Sun]

[Endovelico]

As Ansuchin said, "Parenting is a sensitive issue", and each person has a different approach. Being a bit older than usual, as a parent, and having lost along the way most of my certainties about parenting, I decided (or was compelled, I don't know for sure) to give my two youngest daughters a lot of room, and I simply tried to transmit to them a definite code of ethics, a respect for the world around them - starting with, but not limited to people -, and an absolute need for not ever being dependent on anyone, and definitely not on any man. Love is great, as long as you have a choice, and being dependent takes away that choice. I tell them to learn to live alone, if necessary, to enjoy good company when the opportunity arises, and to be compassionate under all circumstances. Whether the end result will be as good as I hope, it's still too soon to say, but I'm already pretty sure than any other approach would have had a worse result...

[Ibrahim]

Been in China for a few weeks, and I've traveled here before, maybe every two years or so dating back to 1998. My outsiders view is that parents in the cities in China are actually pretty indulgent. It's probably a consequence of so much new money and the one child policy, but as the years go by a Chinese middle class mother resembles her North American soccer mom counterparts more and more.

Now KOREAN mothers, they aren't playing around. South Korean childhood is much more structured, stressful, and goal-oriented (some people are using the world "Confucian" here, that might not be entirely accurate) than contemporary Chinese childhood ever thought of being. The result is some pretty nice cell phones and a society of worka-alcho-holoics.


As with most issues, much paternal pressure can be related to economic causes. An East Asian mother relies (or did until recently) upon her children to support her in her old age. An American child waits for his parents to die so her can sell their house and cash in.

[Colonel Sun]

[Torchwood]

No wonder that South Korea now has one of the lowest birth rates in the world. After all, how many Ph.Ds can one afford?

I once had a project which required working with the Korean client for a month, in Seoul. Everything went well except that:
- my utter aversion to Korean food (my nose can detect kimchi at 100kms)
- as a senior person from the partner company, i was always addressed as Doctor, and I gave up correcting them. They could not imagine that a person in my position did not have a Ph.D

[Colonel Sun]

[Colonel Sun]

[Ibrahim]

[Caskhades]

Not to generalize but the (South?) Koreans are the craziest people I've met in the Northern Hemisphere. Well, there are the Swiss, but they're crazy in a different, colder way.

[Pantagruel]

What do tigers love (aside from wealth, status and the approval of their tiger-mothers)?

[Colonel Sun]

[Ibrahim]

[Captain Murphy]

[Colonel Sun]

[Colonel Sun]

Magnitude: 6.3

Shallow, near the surface -> large accelerations -> great structural damage and some unfortunate loss of life.

Condolences.

[Torchwood]

Poor old Christchurch, no quakes for 200 years, then two biggies in six months.

Nature has it in for Australasians at the moment

[Colonel Sun]

[Colonel Sun]

[ZogLoveShqipëri]

Spoiled young people in rich countries weak and fat.

People in poor countries hunger for power and respect.

We water the garden of old Italian, cook for lonely widow, move into their house. Hahaha. This is how Greater Albania will take over the Balkans and the riches of Southern Italy!!!

[Tinker]

Colonel Sun

Thanks for posting that. I have heard that facile argument about stupid and lazy kids so much. It doesn't take into account the market realities facing young people. When I was entering the workforce us kids were lauded for building the internet. We were hailed as prodigies for work that required a skillset that older people lacked. People's opinions of young people were determined by the jobs available for us to take. Now that the jobs aren't there people are not usually bright enough to see the correlation.

[Ammianus]