How I want my future child to grow up

- Appreciative of the beauty he/she sees around, in anything, every day
- Delighting in the little things, and with a keen fascination for things
- Healthily balanced between motivation/drive and chill-ness
- Happy, or at least able to find healthy outlets for worries and other negative feelings
- Loving the outdoors as well as the indoors

I actually really don't want my child to grow up in Singapore. Being here when he/she is older is fine, but I don't want my child to grow up in the sterile yet perpetually hectic and dissatisfied environment here. I want my child to grow up playing in the outdoors and being creative, in a relaxed, nurturing environment. It does so much for a person. With that foundation he/she can move on to the city life, but I really want him/her to first know that in life, we must strive to be the best of ourselves, while always also remembering to be happy and to love the beauty in the little things.

When I stayed in Abingdon (Oxfordshire) for a week, that was pretty much it. I went for a two-hour walk with the dog and there were these beautiful fields - not in the pruned-perfectly-pretty sense, but in the natural, free sense. And the girls both sang along to Taylor Swift and happily helped out with the vineyard; they baked and bounced on their trampoline and played hide-and-seek. There were 12th-century churches and houses left their gates open.