The Power of Words and Action.

(this post was written on 24th October 2011)

If you have read my entries, you'd have known that my weekends for the past three over years was spent learning something. Which in the past years was korean language. As a result, I'm now fairly conversant in Korean.

About three months back, a Thai mate of mine and I were scouting for college courses at TAFE and UTS. I ended up enrolling and studying.

Now three months on, I see the same mate getting her academic papers certified true copy. I believe that Actions do speak louder than words.

So it happened one day over dinner..... Like most adventures, thats how it started....

Over Vietnamese pho for dinner one weekend with three of us, a Thai, a Korean, and a Malaysian, I proclaimed that as women living in Sydney, we had to do something of value for each day that we lived.

'We all work hard year in year out, and the years are just passing away. As women, we are not getting any younger. I dont want to live my life like that. I have a goal (which I shall privately if you ask nicely). But before one can do that, one first needs to have the desire to reach it.

Do you have that desire? What are you doing about it?'

One mate jokingly threw a challenge. If that's the case, why not lets pray to reach ours in approximately 14 months? Then we meet back at the end of that time period and share our results.

So this fateful evening while having dinner with the Korean mate, I heard that the Thai mate had heeded my words and put that into action. The fire spread to another over the phone to a HK mate. And then finally back to me.

The scene has been set. We shall tentatively come together in 14 months and let the outcome be known by then.

Role of a man.

So I have five different sources telling me this.

'It is the role and responsibility of the man to support the household and the wife and not expecting the wife the contribute in any way. It is a bonus if the wife decides to work.'

It is something to ponder on in this time and age when females seem to be fighting for equality, and buying into that line of thinking where mothers seem to have difficulty when it comes to deciding if they even have a choice anymore to be a stay at home mother to look after the children.

Did the father expect the domestic help to look after the children? Even mothers in law may not want to help out with looking after the grandchildren.

Or is it different depending on where you are located?

In Sydney, sending a child to daycare is an expensive affair. Parents have to be earning thousands of dollars to be able to afford sending their children to the daycare five days a week.

Granted, some of it is subsidized on the days the children come as the australian government is trying to get mothers back into the workforce. On the days the children don't attend daycare, I know of many mothers who stay at home to look after the children.

Sending a child to daycare in Sydney CBD can cost up to AUD100ish per day, whereas in the suburbs is about as much as AUD80ish in 2012.
If parents have two children in daycare, that's twice the amount....

Unless a mother is earning enough to cover the daily daycare fees, it is not worth the effort for the mother to go to work, and better to just stay home to look after the kids.

I concur.