At my alma mater, we were streamed according to UPSR results so most of my friends and I who scored 5As had been automatically streamed into Commerce and Accounts despite preferring Home Science subjects. The real reason why we preferred Home Science was because of the cooking and baking lessons. Delicious cookie and appetising chicken curry aroma always came from the large cooking and sewing hall!
Once weekly, during the 160 minutes of Living Skills class, we would enjoy lessons on how to change the flush toilet float, how to unclog L-shape pipe under the sink and such. It was engagingly fun! However, we never once learnt to poach an egg or operate the oven.
The point of my post is this: I wish I had insisted on the change of streaming then. Of course I cannot turn back time now and what I had learnt in all my years drafting the Balance Sheet was definitely useful in paving the way to a degree and beyond.
It is just that, learning to cook and sew then would have saved me from my current misery of not being able to cook/bake very well; and having a sewing machine without knowing how to operate it. Lessons for adults these days are costly and time-consuming, as I recently discovered.
As a consequence, I am trying to expose my children to as much living skills as possible. I hope for them to be able to create, than just be a user (of things, and having to pay for everything with currency). Skills like swimming, playing any musical instrument, cook, bake, sew, farm, clean etc. I will join them on this journey, as I am evidently far from being accomplished myself.
So, wish me luck! In sha Allah I can find a way out of this and arm myself with more useful domestic skills. Maybe after picking up some new tricks, planning our monthly menu rotation will not be such a difficult thing to do.
*lifting up the phone to dial for cooking and sewing lessons, becoming fast-friends with Jamie Oliver and Martha Steward online*
Glimmer of hope...
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