The difference between China and Japan.

An advert, on the radio, made it clear to me, just now, quite what the difference is, internationally, between China and Japan.

The advert was for a new type of toothbrush that claimed to be able to leave your mouth cleaner than a traditional toothbrush. That, in itself, was not what interested me. It was the way they finished the ad that really caught my attention. It went a bit like this, “The Product X toothbrush…from Japan.”

They were using the word “Japan”, as a kind of brand to sell their own brand. All the many associations, in my head, and in the heads of us all, between “Japan” and “efficiency”, “attention to detail”, “well made”, and “hi tech”, sprang to mind. The implication was clear: this would be a quality product.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I have never heard an ad that said: “Made in China”, as the final, selling, punchline. Just consider the effect, on your perceptions, if they had. Would you buy it? Or would you think: “shoddy”, “cheaply made”, “dangerous”, “potentially poisonous”, “fragile”, “poor quality”; “fake” and so on?

Over the past few decades, Japan has built a reputation for quality and being at the leading edge of all that is to do with engineering, at least, in the ways that impact the consumer. China, on the other hand, has come to be seen, by most, as a bit of a scam artist of a nation. Few people trust their products to be reliable, of high quality or even safe (just recall all the scandals about lead paint in children’s toys, melamine in baby milk, fake rabies vaccines (that led to children dying from rabies) etc.).

China may be growing fast. It may even become an “economic superpower” in the next few decades – but it is a long, long way from achieving a good reputation, in the way Japan has. To my mind, this makes any Chinese success very susceptible to sudden collapse. What happens, for instance, when a critical mass of people in other countries decide that they have had enough of disappointments with products “Made in China” and turn away from their products, wholesale? It won’t be long before China’s economy deflates, when no-one is buying “Made in China” anymore.

An intelligent shopper is a cautious shopper. Many an intelligent shopper considers the trustworthiness, safety, durability and reliability of a product before buying it. This is particularly important if you are a parent and have children in the house to keep safe. Long experience has shown that “Made in China” is a ready indicator that these qualities are likely to be absent – and so it is that the intelligent shopper should thank China for making product selection that much easier.

China will only ever become a true economic superpower, secure in its position, if it manages to shed this well deserved reputation for shoddiness in its wares. The day that China is able to finish ads with “Made in China” and ensure a sale, is the day that China will really have made it. That day, however, is many decades away of hard, disciplined work, in changing its manufacturing habits, business practices and ethical outlook. In truth, in some way, the Chinese will have to become Japanese, to win the reputation in manufacturing and business, that the Japanese have. Until that day, I am quite prepared to buy “Made in Japan” but am most wary of buying “Made in China”. I doubt that I am alone in that assessment.

(If you would like to support my continued writing of this blog and my ongoing campaign to raise awareness about giftedness and all issues pertaining to it, please donate, by clicking on the gold button to the left of the page. To read about my fundraising campaign, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-in-support-of-my.html and here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-first-donation.html

To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 4, this month, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

There is a review of my blog, on the respected The Kindle Report here: http://thekindlereport.blogspot.com/2010/09/boy-who-knew-too-much-child-prodigy.html

Please have a read, if you would like a critic's view of this blog. Thanks.

You can get my blog on your Kindle, for easy reading, wherever you are, by going to: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Knew-Too-Much/dp/B0042P5LEE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1284603792&sr=8-1

Please let all your fellow Kindlers know about my blog availability - and if you know my blog well enough, please be so kind as to write a thoughtful review of what you like about it. Thanks.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at: http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/

Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3305973/

Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is at http://www.genghiscan.com/

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)

The Nurburgring race track, Germany

I have to come that the true purpose of children, is to surprise their parents. That, after all, is what my children do, with astonishing regularity.

A few weeks ago, Fintan, seven, was in a shopping centre, with me. We were walking past an electronics store. Outside it, were some high end televisions, showing glossy images, to attract attention. One of them showed a racing car in action.

"That", said Fintan, as he stopped in his tracks, "is the Nurburgring."

Personally, I was flabbergasted. How on Earth could Fintan recognize a German race track, from a few seconds of footage on a TV?

"How do you know that?", I asked Fintan.

"Anyone knows that.", said Ainan, with an implicit shrug.

"Really?", I countered, looking at him, intently. "How many seven year olds do you know, that recognize the Nurburgring, from a glimpse?"

"Ah.", said Ainan, coming to a realization, "Yes. Among seven year olds, perhaps none of them would recognize it...but among those who know about racing..."

"Yes...and how many youngsters do?"

Ainan fell silent, his wordlessness sufficient agreement for my liking.

I thought the whole incident very informative for the way my son's mind worked. He only needed a fragmentary image of the Nurburgring, to recognize it. That can only mean that he is very visual in his thinking - or at least one aspect of it - and is able to match parts of images with ease. I was impressed, for it was something that, at forty two, I could not do. I simply didn't know enough about racing to recognize the tracks. Fintan, at seven, however, had imbibed enough background knowledge, from his shared passion for cars, with Ainan, to do so, in an instant.

Like I said, to be a father, can be surprising, at times, but also humbling...for though young, little children may be able to do things, that one cannot do oneself - and they do it, without apparent effort.

Well done, Fintan!

(If you would like to support my continued writing of this blog and my ongoing campaign to raise awareness about giftedness and all issues pertaining to it, please donate, by clicking on the gold button to the left of the page. To read about my fundraising campaign, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-in-support-of-my.html and here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-first-donation.html

To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 4, this month, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

There is a review of my blog, on the respected The Kindle Report here: http://thekindlereport.blogspot.com/2010/09/boy-who-knew-too-much-child-prodigy.html

Please have a read, if you would like a critic's view of this blog. Thanks.

You can get my blog on your Kindle, for easy reading, wherever you are, by going to: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Knew-Too-Much/dp/B0042P5LEE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1284603792&sr=8-1

Please let all your fellow Kindlers know about my blog availability - and if you know my blog well enough, please be so kind as to write a thoughtful review of what you like about it. Thanks.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at: http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/

Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3305973/

Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is at http://www.genghiscan.com/

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)

When a birthday is not a birthday.

Tiarnan is a boy prone to his own point of view. It may not be obvious what this implies, at first, but, in his case, it means that he lives in a different world to the rest of us. He sees it in ways that, perhaps, others would not.

Thursday, 20th January was Tiarnan’s fifth birthday. At least, that is how the rest of the world saw it.

“How do you feel being five?” asked Tiarnan’s mother, Syahidah, on his birthday.

“I am not five,” Tiarnan explained, carefully, as if his usually wise mother had unaccountably overlooked something, “Until my game comes.” He seemed somewhat put out, that it hadn’t arrived yet. His face seemed quite determined on the issue.

This seemed a very reasonable position, to Tiarnan. Clearly, the whole world had to wait for the arrival of his present, Little Big Planet 2, from my mother, his grandmother. Until that moment he could not possibly officially be five, since, he seemed to be reasoning, the present was his fifth birthday present – and so its non arrival meant, quite clearly, that he could not yet be five.

A couple of days later, Tiarnan rushed upstairs, in the morning, to his mummy. There was excitement in his eyes, eagerness on his tongue.

“My fifth birthday has come!”, he announced.

Syahidah at once knew what he meant, though he was already a couple of days past his fifth birthday: Little Big Planet 2 had arrived.

The wait turned out to be worth it. The verdict of my three sons on Little Big Planet 2: “The best game ever!”. Even Ainan thought so. My own intuition for why they think so, is that the game has a great variety of challenges in it…so they do not find it repetitive and boring, as most games are. They even said, most surprisingly, that: “It is better than Ultimate Alliance 2” – which had been their previous best game.

Anyway, Tiarnan’s birthday may have been a little extended – but he certainly found it enjoyable.

(If you would like to support my continued writing of this blog and my ongoing campaign to raise awareness about giftedness and all issues pertaining to it, please donate, by clicking on the gold button to the left of the page. To read about my fundraising campaign, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-in-support-of-my.html and here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-first-donation.html

To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 4, this month, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

There is a review of my blog, on the respected The Kindle Report here: http://thekindlereport.blogspot.com/2010/09/boy-who-knew-too-much-child-prodigy.html

Please have a read, if you would like a critic's view of this blog. Thanks.

You can get my blog on your Kindle, for easy reading, wherever you are, by going to: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Knew-Too-Much/dp/B0042P5LEE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1284603792&sr=8-1

Please let all your fellow Kindlers know about my blog availability - and if you know my blog well enough, please be so kind as to write a thoughtful review of what you like about it. Thanks.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at: http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/

Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3305973/

Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is at http://www.genghiscan.com/

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)

Wondering at the adult world.

Tiarnan wonders at the ways of adults. To him, they, at times, seem arbitrary and somewhat bizarre – for they seem to have no reason to them. The answer, of course, is that perhaps they don’t.

A week or two ago, when Tiarnan was still four, he came to his mummy, with a puzzled little face.

“Why,” he began, in his very small but proper voice, “do people shake their heads, like this,” he shook his head horizontally, from side to side, “to say no, and like this,” he nodded his head up and down, “to say yes?”

His mother, who was usually very good at such things, had no answer for him. She realized, in the moment of asking, that he had a point: these gestures seemed to be arbitrary, with no real reason for their being. No doubt, there was a historical tale as to why they were the way they were…but she didn’t know it.

Tiarnan didn’t let her dwell long, before making a further enquiry.

“Will people die by breaking their necks, if they keep on saying no?”

He demonstrated, by moving his head from side to side.

She gave him a smile and a hug, suppressing her laughter, for the sake of his serious demeanour.

It was clear what Tiarnan meant. He realized that, mechanically speaking, the human neck had rotational limits from left to right – and that pushing those limits would result in a broken neck. So, again, he had a point, even if a rather bizarre one. It is a wonder what fears fill his four year old head, that he should imagine fatalities in simply saying no. Yet, his fears derive from a consideration of the ways of the adult world and his attempt to understand them. So, I suppose that, ultimately, the adult world is to blame for his little worries. Together, we have created an arbitrary set of rules and behaviours that new little children have to strive to understand. Tiarnan, in his clear sighted way, has made me see the accidental nature of our behavioural customs. The fact that he had to question the reason behind these customary gestures is enough to make it understood that there is no obvious reason for them. Thus it is, yet again, that the child teaches the adults, how to see the world. My children often do that, for they see truly what is and not what they have come to understand things to be. Too often, I think, in our world, the views of children are dismissed as being “uninformed” or “naïve” – yet it is precisely that lack of prior knowledge and newness to experience, that makes it more likely that they will see things as they truly are, and not as they are expected to be or understood to be, by convention.

Perhaps, it is the littlest “men” who are the wisest, after all, for they see what is and not what should be.

(If you would like to support my continued writing of this blog and my ongoing campaign to raise awareness about giftedness and all issues pertaining to it, please donate, by clicking on the gold button to the left of the page. To read about my fundraising campaign, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-in-support-of-my.html and here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-first-donation.html

To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 4, this month, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

There is a review of my blog, on the respected The Kindle Report here: http://thekindlereport.blogspot.com/2010/09/boy-who-knew-too-much-child-prodigy.html

Please have a read, if you would like a critic's view of this blog. Thanks.

You can get my blog on your Kindle, for easy reading, wherever you are, by going to: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Knew-Too-Much/dp/B0042P5LEE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1284603792&sr=8-1

Please let all your fellow Kindlers know about my blog availability - and if you know my blog well enough, please be so kind as to write a thoughtful review of what you like about it. Thanks.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at: http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/

Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3305973/

Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is at http://www.genghiscan.com/

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)

Dreams of yesteryear.

Last night, I had the strangest dream. It was the kind of dream that lingered into the waking state.

Indeed, as I lay, between sleep and waking, I thought I heard my parents, downstairs: it was as if I could half-hear them, in distant conversation. Then I awoke, fully, and the sensation faded.

Yet, for a moment, it seemed as if I was back in my parental home, in my former bedroom, listening to the world, from my vantage on the top floor. It was uncanny. It was also most meaningful. It told me, in the way the unconscious is wont to tell us, that, perhaps, it is time to go home. I really should visit my parents, soon. I have been living in far flung places, too long, it seems. So, a visit, at least, is in order.

Many years have passed since I left for Singapore, in 1999. Barring a couple of years’ break, I have lived in South-East Asia, ever since. I have learnt new perspectives on the world and come to understand things I would not otherwise have done. Yet, there has been an “opportunity cost” of doing so. I have foregone all the time I could have spent with my family in Europe. I have missed many opportunities for conversation and sharing. I have lost out on many events that others witnessed, but I did not.

What, perhaps, is not so readily realized by most, is that the life we choose, comes at an infinite cost. To choose one life, is to give up the infinite variety of other lives that we could have lived instead. Thus, all lives come at infinite cost and infinite sacrifice. This morning, before the world awoke, I lay abed and felt an echo of that sacrifice: I felt the world I had left behind, impinge on my present. I felt, once more, what it was like to be home, as it was, when I was younger. It was a comforting visitation from yesteryear. I fell asleep, again, thereafter, to dream dreams of impossible places and worlds that will never be realized. Yet, I had felt a “dream” of a world that was once very real to me. I slept very well.

(If you would like to support my continued writing of this blog and my ongoing campaign to raise awareness about giftedness and all issues pertaining to it, please donate, by clicking on the gold button to the left of the page. To read about my fundraising campaign, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-in-support-of-my.html and here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-first-donation.html

To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 4, this month, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

There is a review of my blog, on the respected The Kindle Report here: http://thekindlereport.blogspot.com/2010/09/boy-who-knew-too-much-child-prodigy.html

Please have a read, if you would like a critic's view of this blog. Thanks.

You can get my blog on your Kindle, for easy reading, wherever you are, by going to: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Knew-Too-Much/dp/B0042P5LEE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1284603792&sr=8-1

Please let all your fellow Kindlers know about my blog availability - and if you know my blog well enough, please be so kind as to write a thoughtful review of what you like about it. Thanks.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at: http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/

Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3305973/

Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is at http://www.genghiscan.com/

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)