This one’s fun. H/T to Information is Beautiful.
Most common words used in advertising for girls’ toys, and for boys’ toys:
Life
News feed gems
I don’t open my RSS reader very often these days; today I get two gems.
One is the graphic slaughter of an elephant by GoDaddy.com’s CEO, in some misguided attempt to help some poor Zimbabweans protect their crops and get some protein at the same time (um..huh?!). Boy am I glad we took our websites off GoDaddy!
And then there’s the Scarlet e-Letter. Third year student Alexandra Wallace had to leave the UCLA (dropped out?) because of the outrage, including harassment and death threats to her family, on the heels of her YouTube rant against Asians. Check out this video. As a bonus, the guy’s voice ain’t half bad, so I voted for him (clicked on the thumbs up) for YouTube NextUp!
.
Breastfeeding is a partisan issue??
Image from babynursingblog.com
Really?? A “leftist agenda” of a “nanny state”? I especially love the bashing of Michelle Obama’s breastfeeding advocacy after Palin’s own breastfeeding initiative in 2007.
Why people choose leaders with nothing constructive to add to the dialogue except to auto-bash the other party’s efforts is beyond me. Great quote from one of the commenters to the above blog post:
“Empty vessels make the loudest sound, they have the least wit and are the greatest blabbers” Plato
And a shame that people blindly follow.
Living in Phnom Penh, Having a baby in Bangkok
Photo by Keith A Kelly
CHOOSING THE HOSPITAL
We work and live in Phnom Penh, and wouldn’t feel comfortable with the specialists / facilities here in case of complications during delivery. The nearest city with internationally accredited care is Bangkok, so there we went at 35 weeks 6 days gestation, the latest we’re allowed to board a Thai Airways flight (with a fit-to-fly certificate from the doc).
Most of Bangkok’s well-known private facilities have high quality patient-oriented care and great customer service. They have translators, can take care of extending visas, take the baby’s passport photo (this isn’t easy so do get this done at the hospital!), get the birth certificate officially translated and documented at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and liaise on documentations necessary to register the birth at your particular embassy etc. Many people go to Bumrungrad Hospital; read this post and follow the link to her birth story at Bumrungrad here. This hospital is located in the neighborhood of Sukhumvit where many Arab nationals live, so the third spoken language is Arabic.
The delivery packages she quoted for Bumrungrad are comparable to those at Samitivej:
- Natural birth/Water birth (3 days admission) 55,000Baht / US$1800 on exchange rate 30Baht=US$1
- Natural birth with Epidural (3days admission) 68,000 Baht / US$2267
- C-section (4days admission) 78,000Baht / US$2600
So I’d heard there is a ~90% c-section rate in private hospitals in Bangkok..? At any rate it’s high, but that’s due to a lot of other factors (including the Asian quest for luck, leading parents to schedule c-sections on the most propitious time and date for birth). [Read more…] about Living in Phnom Penh, Having a baby in Bangkok
Mom I Am
I love it! Poem is from the Mom’s Online Breastfeeding Board:
Little ones can squirm and pout,
make a fuss and scream and shout.
When hunger hits without a doubt,
Sit right down and whip it out.
I would nurse her if she cried,
I could nurse her far and wide,
Here and there or anywhere,
Up or down or on a chair.
I could nurse a teddy bear,
For this fine milk is very rare!!!
Would you nurse him on a train?
Would you nurse him on a plane?
Would you nurse him in a car?
Would you nurse him in a bar?
Yes, on a train, yes on a plane.
Yes, in a car, yes in a bar.
I would nurse him here or there.
I would nurse him anywhere!
I would nurse him in a booth,
On the stairs or near the roof.
Anywhere my boy cries out,
I pop the nummies in his mouth.
I can serve it by the ounce,
I can serve it while I bounce.
In a bottle or in a jar,
I can serve from near or far.
Twelfth Night – It’s CARNIVAL time!!
Thanks to @yatpundit for the reminder, since I miss it every year if I’m not in New Orleans!
Bangkok’s malls are taking down their Christmas shopping scenes to put up the next shopping holiday marketing props [Valentine’s Day – sticks finger down throat]]. But the holiday festivities are just shifting – Mardi Gras season begins today! Man I miss King Cake – we’ll have to get ourselves over to Bourbon St off Sukhumvit Soi 22 and see if they have some!
Happy Carnival! Here’s a little background from NOLA History: Reveling on Twelfth Night:
Christians all over the world celebrate on the Sixth of January. While some parts of the Christian world may differ on dates, January 6th is usually recognized as the Feast of the Epiphany, the day that the Magi, or Three Wise Men, visited the Christ Child. In most of Christendom, Epiphany marks the end of the holiday season. The Christmas tree is taken down, the decorations stored away for another year, and life goes on.
Except in New Orleans.
Epiphany celebrations are also known as “Twelfth Night” celebrations because January 6th is the “Twelfth Day of Christmas.” There is some confusion over whether Christmas Day is the “first day of Christmas” or Boxing Day (December 26th) is the “first day.” Another variation in the celebrations is whether or not Twelfth Night happens on the night of January 5th or 6th. This confusion results from the date convention of Medieval Europe where a “day” begins on the night before.
As the sun sets on January 6th and the rest of the world formally gets back to normal life, New Orleanians merely shift the focus of our celebrating. The Christmas season is over, and the Carnival season begins.
A bit of explanation is in order here: One has to keep in mind that there was hardly any celebrating done before Christmas before our now-very-secular society. The four weeks prior to Christmas are the liturgical season of Advent, a time of fasting and penance to prepare for Christ’s birth. With the season of Advent largely ignored in modern society, pre-Christmas celebrations lead to post-Christmas and New Year’s parties, and that turns into Carnival time.