Just went out to shop at the local Mall, there are still crowd there, it look like that Malaysian have not stop doing their end of the year shopping as yet.....like buying school uniforms, shoes and the like for the kids, as school holiday would soon be over after a long holiday that start from November this year, the last term holiday usually are long in Malaysia....this give the opportunity to parent to take their children for holiday or back to the Kampong to meet extended families that still live in the Kampong.......by now all those that have gone for holidays would be back at their place of work since the school would be open soon..come January 2004....In Malaysia all school children must wear school uniform, one version for the primary and another for the secondary school....so at this time of the year parents would be going out to the Mall to get new school uniforms for their children...I guess this is one reason why the Mall is still crowded when I was there this morning....Public school are free in Malaysia so come January there would be thousand of new kids going for the first time to school, although most of these kids have done some sort of pre school activities since they are four or five years old....kids here goes to school when they reach the age of seven years.....It would interesting to visit the schools on the first day of schooling for this new kids....Accompanied by their parents for a number of days....Some parents would even stayed at the canteen to vouch for their children...so the first week of schooling would be a bit messy.....with too many parents stay by to watch their children....but normally after the first week everything would come to normal as the new kids get used to the real world of schooling....I guess the kids do not mind being left at the school from their first day....they would enjoy meeting new friends...It is the parent that seem to worry too much.....Well that is parents....always over protective of the offspring....there are time the teachers had to ask the parent to leave the school compound....as not to disturb the children as well as the school environment...All parents are like that....They wanted to give their best service to their children and in doing so...Sometime over do thing.....Well that is the real world...both the new school going kids and the young mothers or fathers, both have to learn to live in the real world....where the new kids had to go to school...and the parent back home... where for the first months or so there would a 'lost' in the home...where their kid would normally play around...now that they all have gone to school....the homes are no longer noisy and messy....but Silence......it is this silence that the parents had to get used to...a new atmosphere in the home....it is when the children return home after school that the home became 'normal' again....that is parenting and it would get more interesting as years goes by..... never a day....home are the same....new happening...kids going to school for the first time...grown up kids.... leaving the home for the first time...to futher their studies...and on and on...an episode after episode...with no end in sight......interesting eh!!!! parenting....