Home Alone

Khe ren lai, kan papa (Guest is here, to look for daddy)
Papa pu cai jia (Daddy is not home)
Wo cing khe ren xian xuo sia (I invited the guest to have a seat)
Chai ching yi pei cha (And serve him with tea)

The above is a mandarin children song. Obviously, it's about manners and how to treat your guests. I was singing along with Ivan and explaining the lyrics to him but when I get to lines 3 and 4, I felt uncomfortable. With so many cases of abduction, I don't feel comfortable teaching my son to invite guests in while we are not around. Geezzz ... this is scary. So, I changed the lyrics to this ...

Khe ren lai, kan papa (Guest is here, to look for daddy)
Papa pu cai jia (Daddy is not home)
Wo shuo papa pu cai jia (I said daddy's not home)
Ching wan tien dau hui lai (Please come back later)

Hmm ... I'm not satisfied even with the above. I would rather have my children not to answer the door at all if there's no adult around (In the first place, I will not leave my children at home alone unless they are bigger and independent). By telling strangers or even people that you know about you being home alone itself is already a huge mistake. (Well, even though the song didn't say anything about you being home alone, but ... can the other adult(s) protect them as well as own parents?)

That reminds me of what happened to me and my ex-colleague last time. I was once handling a job that requires us to work longer hours (till very very late at night) and once, another colleague was working late with me and then we got hungry. We decided to order pizza and as a precaution step, we ordered pizza for 5 - 6 people instead of just for the 2 of us. When the pizza arrived, one of us will pay while the other will 'check' on the pizza. As if to further convince the pizza guy that there are more than just the 2 of us, she said, "Ha ! There are 6 chicken wings here and since the guys are in the toilet, I will choose 4 fat ones out first. 2 for myself and 2 for you, ok?" "Oh, the beef pepperoni is for Albert* and Desmond*, is it?"

2 pathetic OLs.

*Names have been changed to protect the identities. The truth is, I can't remember the names we used. :P