Most parents nowadays are facing this similar challenge and are guilty of not spending enough quality time with their children. In a highly competitive society like Singapore, a lot time both parents are working and their children are either left to the care of grandparents (who are the more fortunate one like my siblings and I) or domestic helper.

As much as I believe that it is important for parents to be working hard to provide for the family, it is equally important for parents to spend quality time with their children and to be there for them.

Reading the column reminds me of a meeting I had with a friend last year. While giving him a ride home, I sensed his weariness and asked him about it. He shared about his new appointment at work; he was given a role to manage projects and some junior staffs. With the new appointment and responsibility, he not only had to work late almost everyday to fulfill endless deadlines but also had to spend time to guide the junior staffs. Even at home, he often had to reply to time critical email; ignoring the email could hold up the whole production.

As a result of his new appointment, he was always tired and did not have the energy to spend time with his new born daughter. He told me the feeling sucked. It was clear that his top priority is his family but his work was keeping him from doing what is important to him. It was no wonder his positive energy was all drained and he appeared so tired, not only physically but also mentally. Good thing he realised what is his priority and making change.

I believe that most people realised the important to attain work-life balance but most are being thrown into the same situation as my friend. As what the columnist wrote, “The hard part of course, is putting realisation into practice.” A message from a fridge magnet given to the columnist, which I found very true, “This is how kids spell ‘love’ - ‘T.I.M.E’.” Children will not understand “…we’re too busy trying to make sure our children have the luxuries we never had.” To them, ‘love’ is us spending quality time with them and always being there for them.

The first time when I read the report, I couldn’t have agreed more with it; the economy many months back was still sluggish and not showing any signs of recovery. If you were stuck to the TV, you would have gotten constant waves of negative news directing at you. Have it gotten any better now? Maybe. At least the economy is showing signs of a slow recovery and hopefully it will continue this way.

Sad to say that news of the economy is only the tip of the iceberg of negative news. We constantly received news of people in suicide bombings; killing themselves and others in the process. There were also news of natural disasters all over the world - taking lives of some and making a lot others homeless overnight. What else comes into your mind? I would leave it to you to fill in the blanks. I guess you have gotten my idea on how depressive watching the news can be … especially when one is focusing on all the bad news.

A study by University of Maryland, by analyzing 34 years of data collected from more than 45,000 participants, shown that unhappy people spend 30% more time in front of TV than happy people. Could you imagine that? I like to watch movies, and informative shows or documentaries on TV. However, any time the opportunities come up to catch up with friends for coffee, I will readily give up the square box.

Engaging in TV is so easy especially for people who don’t like to socialise or may not have much resources to do it. For TV, they just need to turn on the set and they can indulge themselves in hours of inexpensive and passive self entertainment.

So what does happy people do? Researchers found that activities such as sex, reading and socialising correlated with the highest levels of overall happiness. According to the co-author of the study, Dr John Robinson, “We looked at eight to 10 activities that happy people engage in, and for each one, the people who did the activities more - visiting others, going to church, all those things - were more happy.” Can you relate to that? I certainly can.

The study further states that unhappily married couples also watch more TV. And what do happily married couples do? They engage in 30 per cent more sex (yes, that caught your attention, didn’t it?), and they attend religious services more, and read newspapers on more days. I believe for happily married couples, you need to spend more quality time together on engaging activities rather than passive entertainment on the TV.

According to the study, watching TV had a direct correlation with unhappiness. However, I believe that watching TV can be quality time spent too; you choose the right programs to watch and focus on the positive. There are things and values which we can learn from watching TV too. Are you happy? Then most probably you’re not watching much TV. What activities do you engage in that make you happy?

Photo by benipop

Last Sunday, I was at the Singapore Botanical Garden. As it was a Sunday, there were not only a lot of tourists, but there were also a lot of Singaporeans. Some were jogging, some were just taking walks and there were some who were having picnics with their families on the grass patches.

What were I doing at the Singapore Botanical Garden? I was intending to take some pictures of the place, with my Sony Ericsson Cyber-shot camera phone, to take part of a competition. However, the picture did not turn out all that well. Nevertheless, I still managed to get some pretty decent photos to share with you. I guess it was worth spending $55 to get the camera phone fixed.

There is a Symphony Stage in the Singapore Botanical Garden which sits in the middle of a pond. While I was taking photos of the Symphony Stage, I saw these white flowers growing out of the water at the side of the pond. And there were dragonflies and bees.

Finally found out the name of this with help from someone. This plant is called Sagittaria latifolia and is sometimes known as broadleaf arrowhead, duck potato, Indian potato, or wapato. This is usually found in shallow wetlands

From my previous experience trying to take photos of the Leopard Flower and the bees, I tried to move in slowly this, to steal some shots of the dragonflies and bees.

Apparently, they were much more ‘cooperative,’ comparing to the bees at the Singapore HortPark and I managed to take a few shots. Frankly speaking, I am quite impressed by the Sony Ericsson Cyber-shot camera phone although it has its limitations. Perhaps, I have yet to master the usage of it completely.

If you want to take a break from all the shoppings in Orchard Road, the Singapore Botanical Garden is definitely an ideal place for some family bonding activities in the heart of the city. The best thing is, there is no entrance charge; you can bring your whole family along.

“Can you still do something to save your dying marriage?”

The fact is, there are lots of ways to save a dying marriage and prevent divorce. And if the couple wills it, they can successfully bring back the excitement that is last felt long time ago.

Marital retreat

Married life can be stressful. The work, children, financial obligations, and the overwhelming tasks of living contribute to the slow death of marriage. And in this modern time where it is hard to stay way from stress, the marriage will more likely to fail simply because it never occurred into the couples’ mind that all they need to do is to rest.

Slowing down and taking the time to rest and to forget all the things that keep the couples away from each other could mean bringing back the lost excitement that the couples once have. Spending quality time with each other together with other couples in a marital retreat can work on saving the marriage before it even gets to your mind.

Admitting the mistakes of couples and forgiving each other for any sin they have committed and pain they have caused to one another could save marriage.

Improving the things that has caused cheating to happen is an effective way to keep the family in tacked.

Seeking professional advices and couples therapy is a great way to heal any wound caused by infidelity.

Improving communication

There will come a time when marriage is going nowhere but down. One of the reasons for this is the lack of communication from both parties. This could be because of the limited time they spend together mainly because of career. While making money is important, taking care of the family is priceless. Communication keeps couples emotionally connected. And spending quality time together provides a good venue to keep the lines open.

Marriage counseling is often seen as the last resort in the attempt to save marriage. This is very unfortunate since marriage counselors can be more effective if the couple has seek help when the problem is just beginning to arise. What is more unfortunate is that the notion that once the couples decide to go to marital counseling sessions they have already given up since there are already tremendous emotional buildup inside marriage and there is nowhere to go but to separate. 

Marital counseling should be taken as one of the more effective ways to save marriage and not just as a final nail on the coffin of marriage.