How I can tell that LJ is having problems another PR disaster these days: When announcements keep popping up in my messages, sounding vaguely apologetic.

Then I read about the shitstorm in comments, where I can pretty much get the full picture. I like staying in S1.

I'm rereading The Highly Sensitive Person by Elaine Aron and learning from it more than I had the first time. I picked it up first for the affirmation as I was going through a difficult period; now, it's become an avenue for growth. I'm very pleased with that development.

As part of the book's activities, I asked my mother what I was like as a child. She said I "needed very little attention". My favourite hobbies were watching Sesame Street, playing with jigsaw puzzles, arranging zoos and castles with Lego or plastic animals, and reading. My parents would bring me to a place and I could be left alone; I'd just wander to a room and end up playing with some object, or watch TV. I never messed up people's things, though. There could be a whole table of cosmetics and I'd leave it alone, in contrast to my cousin's more 'normal' interacting behaviour. One example was when I'd climb on my grandma's bed and play with her tissue box for hours. I wouldn't even take the tissues out, but turn it around and around and that would keep me entertained. I recall moments of ecstasy as I sucked on a milk bottle or watched my vision distort when I narrowed my eyes in a certain way.

That all sounds very HSPish to me. I was fascinated by nuances, details that most people don't care about. I wasn't very mechanically-inclined. I probably wanted very badly to please my caregivers and noticed that being quiet was the best way to do that. I would think that I spent my time in mental activity, dreaming, and was barely aware of my surroundings.

These were traits that caused me to suffer somewhat during the school years. But they also resulted in some gifts or honed inherent traits: insight into people that comes from understanding my own mental processes; empathy, from pain; a preference for the systematic; and of course, a liking for text that endures today.

Had a shock when I was exploring the life insurance segment of the filing income tax page.

In the brief version of the income tax help file, it says:

https://mytax.iras.gov.sg/ESVWeb/IIT/FormBB1/Help/Helptext_2007_LifeIns_3.2.htm

The following conditions apply to claims for Life Insurance deductions:
a. The amount of relief you may claim must not be more than 7% of the insured value of your life or your wife's life.
b. For your insurance policy bought from 10 August 1973 onwards, your insurance company must have an office or branch in Singapore.
c. If your combined CPF contributions as an employee and as a self employed personand your voluntary contribution to your medisave account are more than $5,000, you cannot claim life insurance premiums.
d. If your combined CPF contributions as an employee and as a self employed person and your voluntary contribution to your medisave account are less than $5,000, you can claim the lower of:
· The difference between $5,000 and your total CPF contribution.
· Up to 7% of the insured value of your own/your wife's life or the amount of insurance premiums paid, whichever is lower.

Here, the default audience is the married heterosexual man, and all other parties are not addressed. Yet this is the main file that people will see when filing tax -- a pop-up window opens when we click the "i" (for "information") symbol next to the heading in the main form. The average reader may only see this file and not explore further.

So if you are a heterosexual married woman who paid for your husband's life insurance, where do you go to see if you can claim for it?

That would be this page.

http://www.iras.gov.sg/irasHome/page04.aspx?id=208

'Life insurance relief' is a relief on annual insurance premiums paid on your own life assurance policies or on insurance bought on the life of your wife and you are the policy holder of the insurance.

Who can claim
You can apply for this relief if you satisfy ALL the conditions below:
* Your total compulsory employee CPF contribution or self-employed Medisave/Voluntary CPF contribution or both in the previous year is less than $5,000.
* You paid insurance premiums on your own life assurance policies or on insurance bought on the life of your wife and you are the policy holder of the insurance.
* The insurance company must have an office or branch in Singapore if your policies are taken on or after 10 August 1973.

If you are a married female
You can apply for this relief if you satisfy ALL the conditions above. However, no relief will be given for insurance premiums paid on your husband's life assurance policies.

Not only does it address the man as assumed reader, apparently Singapore does not allow women to claim for their husband's policies. Sorry, married women, you are not allowed the additional tax relief. Even if you paid through your nose for it.

I wonder if this is another archaic rule that got left behind by the times. With the greying population and shifting gender roles, is it really realistic to speak of the man as the sole breadwinner any more? Not to mention being a completely discriminatory piece of writing that misses half of its audience.

I dreamt that I was/was watching a character in a world that was invaded by aliens who kept going back to relive the invasion because he (I think it was) wanted to fix the relationship between himself and his sister. If the parents died in the invasion, they'd be separated and estranged, and he didn't want that. It was very exciting to be standing in the middle of the shop knowing that the aliens were going to attack the oblivious humans in a few minutes.

But even that didn't beat the walking in burning rubble dream with the rocket launchers. I love my sci-fi dreams. No, I don't know what they say about my head.