There are shrewed/sharp, motivated/ambitious individuals from any rich or poor country. Here I briefly look at the populous developing countries such as China and India. Some of these individuals receive a decent education in their (low-income) home country or as a foreign student in a developed country.

How about Singaporeans? When we meet a Singaporean abroad, we often see them as not-so-sharp, but with a rather resourceful government supporting them. So some of them are lucky kids, rich kids, if not all smart kids. These kids belong to a rich “extended family” — the Sgp nation.

Perception of Sgp nation is more positive. I will skip the list of adjectives.

— opening eg:

Some unknown source says that a child’s grades correlate with mother’s education.

Some mothers without a degree feel “doomed” but hey, a large percentage of kids of blue-colllar mothers do defy that statistics and score high.

Grades are easy for statisticians, easier than academic success, or professional success. If we look further out, beyond grades, the advantage of having a white-c0llar mother wanes.

— eg: stent MTTF

Once you get a stent, how long can it last? It’s an accurate, well-established statistic, but I would choose to put in the parking lot.  Some percentage of stent patients do live many years without another procedure.

k_soul_search

Vivo Y02 has a product name like “vivo_v2236”

Update: May 2024 Vivo support centre confirmed that my battery is not bulging, so no need to replace

Base plan: Instead of a $40 battery I had better get a $140/3GB new phone.

• j4: hopefully faster than my 2GB model… actually visibly faster

Additional cost: screen protector + finger hook, both bought in China.

In hindsight, Buying a cheap China-model .. vindicated on China trip. A China model is better (than foreign model) supported in China. But iPhone is presumably even better supported.

In Vivo 1820, the only way to know my ChnM number is to trigger a smsOtp from ChnM app.

See also SMS apps on Y02

— buying the cheapest model

My VivoY02 was the cheapest smartphone on the market at the time, even cheaper than my 2019 purchase 🙂 beating historical inflation, thanks to Chinese tech progress.

In Beijing, I progressively became one of the millions of Chinese who depend on their phones for everything… They need speed, full-feature,,, I think the Beijing trip served as a quick but real test for the product I bought. I noticed some minor limitations, but speed is not one of them.

A “higher” phone may not help. More storage may not help.
A “higher” phone increases my worry about loss.

 

At ChildGuidanceClinic counsellor’s prompt, we hope to agree on a criteria. If boy meets these 自我管理 criteria, then parents will gradually grant more freedom how his spare time is spent, esp. screen time.

Criteria need to be observable and measurable. When this is not possible, the criterion fails and parents have to use judgement, based on circumstantial evidence.

-> #1 sleep — go to bed before 12 midnight. We will say screen time has not affected sleep.

-> #2 exercise —  one exercise session during Mon-Fri. We will say screen time has not affected 运动.

-> family communication — (No measurable yardstick) we should not see any time boy doesn’t hear parents even after repeated calls. We will say screen time has not affected family communication.

-> 学习 — hot spot of contention. Each weekday, we want to see boy spends at least one home hour on studies including homework and revision. (Home revision is crucial for any fall-behind subject.) We will say screen time has not affected studies.

-> family outing and social interaction — No criteria. We already see that boy’s screen time doesn’t affect these areas.

Dad’s note — There are real life, verifiable examples among our families and friends, where a teenager has many hours of screen time (or its equivalents in another era) but is unaffected in terms of health, school work and interpersonal relationships.

k_my_adapted_jargon

There’s a technical literature on psychological inflexibility, and my concept is an unscientific, and unconstrained adaptation. (Similar situation in r-ikigai and focusing effect) I like it loose and vague — Additional precision (blogg) would create Sys2 workload. IFF blogging is purely recreational (for-fun), then it may serve as a brain exercise. It does strenghthen my vocabulary.

• Eg: ctbz is a good habit overall, but can become psyInf
• Eg: bur or rot
• Eg: calorie restriction .. daily battles
• Eg: Just don’t eat anything unless hungry .. I guess psyInf is leaning too much to one extreme. The other extreme is also very common — grossly inadequate regulation and enforcement so that BMI never really improves.
• Eg: I have poor tolerance for wasteful small spends. Many of them feel like (the worse type of) life style creep.
• Eg: I struggle to accept my son’s impunctuality for school, tuition classes, medical appointments etc.
• Eg: I remember XiaoChen came to my house to help repair something and he forgot one tool, so he drove to a nearby shop to buy it. (If I were him) I can’t accept such imperfect planning. Self-hate.
• Eg: I have numerous elaborate guidelines for air travel. I spend many hours a day over many days in meticulous preparation for a single flight. If I fail to observe one of my guidelines I feel insecure, anxious.

I guess a “journey” is well-defined — with a long rest at the end, before next journey starts.

Car is about 10 times worse than bus in terms of fatality.

Bus is the safest overall. (Excluding the notorious motorcycle) Bicycle is the most deadly.

Mode of transport	Deaths per billion journeys	Deaths per billion hours	Deaths per billion kilometres
	Criteria JJourney	Criteria T	Criteria DDistance
Bus	4.3	11.1	0.4
Rail	20	30	0.6
Car	40	130	3
Air #longer, fewer trips	117	31	0.05
Cycling	170	550	45
Motorcycle	1640	4840	109