The aim: Less meat

I know that there are regular readers of this blog, but I couldn't really catch up with time for this at present ..

Just one thing to jot down - I like to pen down the first-time-for-me things! Not extraordinary for some or many, but just new way of thing.

This just related to our diet. The aim for both of us is to lessen meat intake. We plan to have no meat for a day in a week - as a start. Maybe more days later - see how  it goes. So for beginning, we chose  Friday as our no-meat day.

We  have started last week - the menu was sweet corn rice and lentil curry. We've never taken lentil before. We found that it is good. The kids however do not really appreciate the taste.  But sweet corn rice is good enough. I need to find more recipes for this - which must be simple and easy for both of us to prepare.

The reason? One is for a good diet  - thanx Dr Lim Hin Fui for making us realize about how important it is to take care about our food. I feel that we take too much meat in our diet that may be harmful. Two, I feel that we should also  play a role to lessen demand from commercial poultry. It must be Mr Daddy's thing - being an advocate for animal welfare, I feel. When he showed me videos about factory farming, I do feel that we have to do something too.  

The budget 2012 and children education

The only thing that I would like to highlight from the home country budget for this year, is education - for obvious reasons; first: we are parents, second: we do feel that more should be done for the education system in the country, and third: it is an undeniable fact that present generations are the future of the country.

The following is the excerpt from the budget:

"Education:

Total allocation: RM50.2 billion- First time in history, all primary and secondaryschool fees to be abolished, beginning 2012 school term. Cost to government: RM150 million.

- RM1.9 billion for all schools, including mission and vernacular schools.

- RM1 billion for betterment of schools premises (RM500 million for SRK, RM100 million for SRJK (Chinese), RM100 mil SRJK (Tamil), RM10 million for mission schools, RM100 million for Sekolah Agama Bantuan, RM100 million to MRSM - Mara secondary schools)."

We hope from part of the 50 billions, more schools would be built. At present, many classes in schools consist more than 30 pupils and some could be up to more than 40. How could the teachers focus to improve the skills of the children with the numbers. It is not necessary for the school buildings to be too beautiful  - at present with the finite resources, we need quantity more than beauty.  

We also hope that the current ongoing process of reviewing the school curriculum will fit the need of the students. Too much subjects as we have at present may not achieve the objectives expected. Focus for basic, creativity and learning enthusiasm - it will lead to other knowledge enhancement.