Late Arrival

This week I have mostly been becoming a parent, eventually after a good 41 weeks in the womb little Phoebe emerged into the world. You know you are in for an interesting time when the doctor dons a pair of white gum boots that look like they may have come from a Sydney Fish Markets surplus store to deliver your baby. I would have thought being dragged through a tight space by a suction cup attached to your head would be quite traumatic, but it didn't seem to be too much of a concern.
Being a parent is better than waiting to be a parent, which often meant Emma and friends would get tired and have to sit around in rocking chairs to get their breath back. Carrying the chairs around was becoming quite a drag, and we are all quite pleased that is over. So now we have our very own Golden Pig, which are meant to be very lucky. As per instructions from Aunty Token the Token Local Godmother we were to use the significant numbers associated with her birth to win the lottery. We had lots of 3's so filled in the lottery tickets and won nothing. She is not a lucky Golden Pig at all as it turns out, she is something of a pig though.
Being thrown into parenthood obviously means the alcohol consumption and related foolishness has declined significantly, however Singapore still manages to provide plenty of unusual things to talk about.
This week it was the death of an elderly man who lost a fight with his flatmate. While this initially conjured up images of a real life Grumpy Old Men movie gone wrong, it actually highlighted another oddball rule related to subsidised housing and single people. The current rule does not allow eldery people to live in Housing Development Board unit by themselves, so they need to find themselves a flatmate or are assigned one. Quite often this means two people sharing one bedroom, and quite often this is with a stranger and quite often they do not like each other. This was apparently not an isolated case and previous efforts of matching a 48 year old schizophrenic with 65 year old man that was killed over a lottery ticket suggests the screening process might also be a little flawed.
The other day I went to lunch and was a little disturbed to see a bloke on the footpath waving a shotgun around, and even a little worried when he shot it into a tree. But it turns out he wasn't a disgruntled HDB flatmate but a crow culler. Yep that was his job loosing off birdshot into trees during the middle of day to reduce the crow population. Judging by the pile at his feet he was quite good at his job. Very very odd I thought and went off to get a sandwich.
In tank news Matt the Crab appears to have scuttled off his mortal coil. There is no sign of him, and judging by the size of Pinchy 2 he may well have been a tasty treat, there was no sign of chilli or pepper sauce in the water so am assuming sashimi. Pinchy 2 is a far more energetic specimen than his predecessor and may well have been a gardener in a previous life judging by the way he moves the plastic plants around to create his own little sanctuaries in the tank. I also think one of the angel fish is pregnant and Reidy wants to sort out a breeding tank, she has suddenly become very maternal and wants lots of babies in the house.