It was bound to happen, but I didn’t expect it to happen so soon. My son taught me a new word in Japanese.

I’m not particularly 負けずに嫌い (makezuni kirai, Japanese for hard to lose out), but since I am an ex-Science teacher, I have been inundating my son with Scientific principles so that he doesn’t struggle so much with Science for the Primary School Leaving Exam.

Hence, since his obsession with Pokemon, I have been emphasising the word magnets through this Pokemon compass.

My consistent indoctrination must have worked. Today, he told me something about 磁石　(jishaku).

“Okay what do you mean?” I asked, totally bewildered.

He was patient enough to explain to me that he was referring to this.

I confess that I asked Meta AI for the meaning of jishaku. You can imagine my delight when I learnt that it refers to magnets. 🧲

This means that my son has not only internalised what I have taught him, but was also somehow able to learn the Japanese word on his own. (Or maybe his mum taught him.) But it doesn’t matter.

Singapore is a competitive society in which we are regularly pitted against one another - for grades, for marriage prospects, for early retirement, for performance ranking. We typically don’t like it that much when we lose out to others. But today, I can tell you this:

My son can surpass all my brilliance for all I care. 😁