Round it up

To the Big 50.

Smallest smarts

Smallest Sprout asks if I have paper notes for her to count. "I can do it real fast. I'll show you how." She threads the notes between her middle and fourth fingers and runs them between her thumb and index finger.  "Who taught you that?"  "No one did.  I figured it out on my own.  I'm street-smart, you know.  Like you are book-smart."  I don't know who taught her that.  Maybe she figured it out on her own.  I can't stop laughing though.

Pride and Joy

Slow and mellow

Last week, Spore Sprout realized that many of his favorite Broadway show tunes were about the seasons and the passage of time harking back to when "the livin' was easy" in days that were "slow and mellow."  He wonders if that is how all middle-aged folk remember the past -- or just those grappling with the quickening pulse of life in Singapore.

Try to remember
(H. Schmidt & T. Jones)

Try to remember the kind of September
When life was slow and oh, so mellow.
Try to remember the kind of September
When grass was green and grain was yellow.
Try to remember the kind of September
When you were a tender and callow fellow.
Try to remember, and if you remember,
Then follow.

Follow, follow, follow, follow, follow,
Follow, follow, follow, follow.

Try to remember when life was so tender
That no one wept except the willow.
Try to remember when life was so tender
That dreams were kept beside your pillow.
Try to remember when life was so tender
That love was an ember about to billow.
Try to remember, and if you remember,
Then follow.

Follow, follow, follow, follow, follow,
Follow, follow, follow, follow.

Follow, follow, follow, follow, follow,
Follow, follow, follow, follow.

Follow, follow, follow, follow, follow,
Follow, follow, follow, follow.

Deep in December, it's nice to remember,
Although you know the snow will follow.
Deep in December, it's nice to remember,
Without a hurt the heart is hollow.
Deep in December, it's nice to remember,
The fire of September that made us mellow.
Deep in December, our hearts should remember
And follow.


Summertime
(I. & G. Gershwin)

Summertime,
And the livin' is easy
Fish are jumpin'
And the cotton is high

Oh, Your daddy's rich
And your mamma's good lookin'
So hush little baby
Don't you cry

One of these mornings
You're going to rise up singing
Then you'll spread your wings
And you'll take to the sky

But until that morning
There's a'nothing can harm you
With your daddy and mammy standing by

Summertime,
And the livin' is easy
Fish are jumpin'
And the cotton is high

Your daddy's rich
And your mamma's good lookin'
So hush little baby
Don't you cry

You could look after marketing

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal on Europe's "opposite twins" recounted this incident:

Shortly after Nicolas Sarkozy was elected French president in 2007, he met German leader Angela Merkel at an aircraft factory in Toulouse to resolve a Franco-German squabble over who should run Airbus, the European plane maker.

Mr. Sarkozy joked that he and Ms. Merkel would make a good management team for Airbus. "You could look after the details," he said, according to people present. Ms. Merkel responded with a quip of her own: "And you could look after marketing."

Nixon on Brezhnev

He said, "Mr. President, most politicians have tragedy in their early lives."  Well, I told him that I lost two brothers to tuberculosis.  And he watched his father die from the cancer he caught in the steelworks.  He was a sad man and a noble adversary.

Germany 4: 1 England (Round of 16 June 27)

“Football is a simple game; 22 men chase a ball for 90 minutes and at the end the Germans win." -- Gary Lineker, circa 1990

Watch the highlights here.