A Singaporean In Australia

I bet your ass you won't agree to my review.

But my opinion counts, not yours, because I am the one bringing up children and taking on the trials of parenthood every day. So, it is important that I carry on my quest when a happy mind. To make myself happy, I often commit icky mental masturbation to self praise myself to the heavens - that I made a great decision to move out of Singapore. Well, don't pretend to get turned off, our PAP Ministers indulge in these self wanks on everyday basis and the majority of you love it! I simply emulate them and realised self praising feels that good. I am sure you will love reading material as you love the wisdom given out by the likes of my idols, such as Minister Lim Swee Say.

To honour Mr Lim, I will start off with some corny statements. Well obviously I'm not gonna be as good as him. He is World Class. The gold standard. So please accept my humble mediocrity. I don't understand why people use the term "child friendly" on special arrangement made to make parents' lives easier. It is definitely, "parent friendly" to me. "Child friendly" is bullshit. Even the pit of an active volcano is friendly for a child. The world is their playground. Parents are the ones who piss in their pants when situations are not going too well, such as wet poop dripping out of a full diaper with no changing room available and everyone (such as in a fucking crowded mall in Singapore) is looking at you. Or getting STOMPED in an intolerant, close minded society (I don't want to specify where) while giving the hungry infant a dose of the breast milk in public, which is ridiculous, if you understand that babies do not get hungry only at private locations. Sure, mothers can make themselves to a room like this, (if it is avaliable)

< look, a nice spacious room that don't smell like a public toilet.

This was a room within another bigger room within a modest shopping centre we visited for our groceries last weekend. When I say modest, think Keat Hong Shopping Centre. Not Takashimaya or even Tampines Mall. Yet they made effort to provide a nursing room for mothers. In another First World country, you wait long long.

They even bother to put some stuff on the wall that attract toddlers, or even a bored father looking jealously over his feeding infant. The toy-on-the-wall will probably distract naturally claustrophobic toddlers while their younger sibling lunch. Great that someone understands a few facts.

1. Some families have more than 1 child.

2. Some families do not leave their toddlers at home while bringing their infants out. You know, just in case a toddler makes himself to the edge of the balcony and there is a need to trouble spiderman foreign worker to save him.

3. Not every family owns a free childcare centre ran by Grandparents.

Good on the sensible Aussie Shopping Mall Designer. Take a look of the rest of it,

All these in a kids-and-parents "toilet." At least we know where some of our taxes is spent on.

Number 2, if he doesn't die suddenly like the previous, will join us in about 4-5 months from now. So I needed one more baby car seat. No choice, as we are not allowed to carry babies in our laps here. To keep the flames of the Spirit of the Cheapo burning, I decided not to spend a cent on it. If you are new to Perth and want to go Cheapo Mode and don't know how, search for the term "Gumtree" and it will return results.

This little car seat is still in great shape. I got it free from Gumtree. The owner did not have any use for it anymore. Though car seats like that are available for free from time to time, they tend not to when you most need it. So I decided to look out earlier. I am still looking out for another for my friend Grace, who is a few months pregnant. Congratulations! Contrary to many Singaporeans mothers I know, they will NEVER accept used products for their babies, or anything for themselves too in fact. Since Grace told me that she would "never want to buy new" big money items such as a pram, a car seat or other stuff, I will try my best to get her one at no cost.

Later on, I found out that my new old car seat wouldn't have come cheap if I stubbornly choose to spite my wallet by insisting to go new. 

The missus did a search and found a new one of the same brand going for $479. These shit doesn't come cheap. If you take other items into consideration, such as cots, bassinets, pram, stroller, toys, comforters, clothes, warmers, beanies, jackets, a list longer than your boner, the final bill easily be a few thousand. So why pay where you have a great culture of kind people passing their unwanted but usable things to people who have use for them, usually for free or a low price? What's a little dust or stain if most of the fittings can be cleaned properly with a little bit of effort? We will keep these well maintained and pass them on to others when the kids grow up because such a community spirit is hard to come by, understanding that from where I come from. We will have to give back whatever we take from a good community to keep it going.

The medical support so far has been excellent, even though we are going through public healthcare for this pregnancy. Appointments have been kept strictly under 20 minutes of waiting time, medical staff have been professional, knowledgeable and show a lot of interpersonal passion for patients.

Last week, we received a letter from the hospital. It was an interesting one, informing that the hospital have a free child-minding service for patients with outpatient appointments with the hospital. That could be useful in situations where I could not attend an appointment with the missus and the little one is not scheduled for child care that day. We will probably not use the service but it is comforting to know there is an alternative for desperate situations.

On top of these, we receive so much parent support initiatives here such as a strong playgroup culture where stay-at-home mums bring their kids to learn and play once or twice a week. Home visiting midwives (we didn't need to pay) to check on us, give advice and answer questions. Free family events at wide open spaces almost every weekend (if you bother to find out). Free immunizations and child health nurse clinics. Family tax benefits. Child care subsidies. The list goes on to add to the fact, Perth is more parent-friendly than Singapore.