Allegro the Ballerina Duck, bought off eBay. Delivery in less than 7 days from the UK, not bad at all! 

An evening more memorable for getting lost in Katong again than for anything else. There would've been no problem if I had kept on the route I'm familiar with though it's longer, but clever me tried a short-cut through the housing estate. I got disorientated with all the similar sounding road names and parked at a different parking lot from the one I had in mind. Then it was on foot trying to find our way back out to East Coast Road, going the wrong way up Joo Chiat Road, then backtracking 180° the other way.

What was supposed to be a fairly simple stroll down the street became a nearly 1 hour trek to find the eatery Jen recommended. With the parentals and my aunt visiting from the UK in tow, it was a bit embarrasing to be so lost. And then it started to drizzle. And only mom had a personal brolly. Nice.

The food at Peranakan Inn & Lounge was worth the walk, though. It's an old-style shophouse setup with a bibik green-and-pink paintjob and Ming blue-and-white wall-tiling. Ex-pres Wee and incumbent, Nathan, pose with the proprietors in 2 photos on the mandatory display wall of publicity/awards/memorabilia.

We ordered only the familiar stuff: bakwang kepeting, chix buah kelak, babi ponteh, sambal kangkong and otah. Everything fresh from the kitchen, no mass-produced dishes. Peppery soup, non-piggy babi (unlike the one we had in Malacca -- and enjoyed anyway, mind you), buah kelak kernel that comes out more or less intact rather than as a pasty mush. The kangkong and otah were so-so.

Parents and aunt quite satisfied and impressed with the authenticity and quality of the food here. That's good enough for me!

A reunion of sorts for us folks at MU, new and familiar faces alike. Tonight's performance, as it has been for the past 3 years, was an anthology of short movement pieces developed by the performers themselves, though there were also remakes of some of the older favourites in our repertoire.

Many of the newer pieces were minimal in narrative, opting to explore the movement aesthetic instead. This direction isn't likely to please everyone. The easiest way to appeal to the masses is to contextualize the movement discipline into simple storylines for the audience to fill-in-the-blanks and "get" what the performers are doing onstage. A few items were narrative-driven, such as Tina's box-from-hell; a rough remake of our z-sequences (basically a pair of janitors with more imagination than cleaning ability), and a very polished retelling of Silverstein's Tree story, but they were the minority.

In any case, tonight's performance was meant as a showcase of works-in-progress, of the material the performers are creating for themselves from their weekly rehearsal-workshop. Some pieces were just exercises, some will never be performed for real, and some will be cannibalized and recreated into some other form in some other performance.

Bottom line for this performance is: don't expect perfection, that's not what it's about, anyway.

Drama Club and Alumni, this performance runs till 16 Sept, so if you want to see what our old friends are up to it's not too late -- there are still a couple of shows left...!

Am looking through my 2nd set of KI research essays, and realizing that there are a number of key questions that KI research must address that GP doesn't have to bother with.

GP is very situational -- what is, what happened, how we respond to events and people, what we can conclude about ourselves from our observations of daily life, that sort of thing.

KI is more about ideas than ideals. From the topic of interest we choose to write on as a starting point, we explore the ideas behind the topic; as in the origins of those ideas, who were the major proponents of those ideas, how those ideas are manifested through common reference points in our society, how those ideas have shaped our lives as we know it, how we maintain and propagate those ideas in our society, what new ideas have arisen to challenge existing ideas, who the challengers are, how (manner, strategy, arena) these new ideas are being spread in our society, what kind of effect does the clash of ideas have on us in our society, what do we conclude about ourselves though observing how we think and respond to our thoughts and ideas.

Ultimately, we want to examine what we, collectively, are thinking about and how what we think leads us to behave in society the way we do. The topic of discussion -- whether Politics, Pop Music or Pokemon -- has to fit itself around these guidelines, as far as its content goes. Too cheem?

Caught a glimpse of the world Amy left behind to join us in our industry. I got to soak in the atmosphere of the tabloid newsroom for about 10-15 minutes, and it wasn't anything like it's portrayed in the movies. No mad rush, tapitty-tap of keyboards, phones ringing off the hook commotion; no JJJ loudly chewing off the head of some dumb-ass freelance photog hawking shots of mayhem and gore; none of the chaos as it appears in the Bugle or the Planet archetypes.

Instead, like any other office (if I didn't know I was in a newsroom, I wouldn't have known I was in a newsroom), there was a quiet professionalism mixed with the easy camaraderie of people who know their purpose, and know how to get it done.

Would be nice to run NY conneX at the same level. Perhaps we need another Lim Kim San to bluster and rave and threaten to close us all down before we start taking ourselves a little more seriously? Not to say that I'm dissatisfied with the way things have gone so far, but when you get a view of what's over the fence, you realize that status quo is never enough. Loga, et al, let's not get too comfortable with our routines just yet! Our 'paper still has places to go!

A friend brought me flowers, she said they were lilacs,
But I've never been good with plants.
Her next presentation, a new dictionary,
She circled the word, "romance."

So enthusiastic, a little bit drastic,
I shaved her name in my head;
And as she beheld it, she said I misspelled it,
Need more be said?

from "These Apples," by Barenaked Ladies

When it comes to giving gifts, we men seldom get it right. Well, me, anyway. Guess I shouldn't have been so gung ho about making my first eBay purchase that I didn't really consider the price I was paying for the item -- twice what she could have paid if she went shopping for it herself, she said. Not quite the response I was expecting, but a lesson about Internet purchasing worth learning, I guess.

JY puts on her best smile for her mugshot. Good luck, girl! 

To us, JY's not just another face in the crowd. Here, she awaits her turn in the audition room. 

But... our hopes of being the next Superstar's best 'blading buddies have come to nought. Oh, well, there'll be other auditions.

Together with Thad, the four of us binged on carbs at Swensen's, J8, just to spite the celebrity-making industry. Mmm... seafood pasta...

Watson totally crashed on me the night I got back from Malacca. I'm now posting this entry via his replacement, erm... we'll just call him Mr L33t for now. I went for an Athlon 3000+ and a GeForce 7600GT. With the other essentals thrown in, he cost me nearly $1.2K, just after my Malacca vacation AND another $200 which I had to fork out to replace M2's reverse parking sensor which also mysteriously died as soon as it's 1-year warranty expired.

Yesterday was my day to spend an awesome amount of money. No wonder I'm broke all the time. Sigh.

Oh, and this morning, I worked on reviving Watson. Turns out it was the Radeon X700 that had totally died, so I replaced it with my old, faulty 9800 and installed a spare 80G HDD, so Watson is more or less resurrected. He's ok to run Office on now, but I doubt he'll ever play games again. Time to put him out to pasture, anyway. Old people shouldn't have to strain themselves so hard.

Back online at last! Lots to update, so let's take it slowly...

Well, I'm back from Malacca. With me were Amy, Baggy, CQ, Dee, HP, Shah, and Vince, all stuffed into a Suzuki APV, the only Class 3 8-seater we could find on the rental market. More on that later.

We put up at the Hotel Puri, a refurbished Peranakan shophouse that's very proud of its heritage. It may not look like much from the outside, but it's quite spacious and comfortable inside. The rooms are functional, and thank God for air-conditioning. Service staff very friendly -- almost family-like even, about as familiar as that.

3 main activities that kept us occupied: eat, sleep and mark assignments. We made the absolute right choice in coming here. The food's excellent, it's quiet enough to concentrate on marking and since there are no other tourist attractions to distract us, we slept any time we felt like it without feeling guilty that we might be missing out on something.

For food recommendations, we applaud Shah for insisting we try the seafood at the Portuguese Settlement. Getting there without a map kept us in orbit around Malacca's Bandar Hilir until the Italy bakery we passed by again and again became our landmark for being lost. But the people were helpful and by piecing together their scavenger-hunt clue fragments we eventually settled at the Settlement for a magnificent feast. We polished off sambal fish, deep-fried calamari, devil chicken, 3-flavoured prawns, sambal kangkong and rice in a fraction of the time it took us to find the place. Half the fun is getting there, after all. No stingray as a mark of respect for Steve Irwin. Crikey!

A gold star for Baggy too, who found the little outlet serving the cendol and laksa she was raving about. "Donald & Lily," just across the big car park off Jln Tun Tan Cheng Lok. Fresh, concentrated coconut milk is the essence of their house specialties. If you're on a diet, too bad for you.

In the evenings, we gathered in the boys' room to watch the least intellectual of the DVDs CQ brought along (he'd taken it upon himself to be Entertainment i/c), though we never did play his card games. We were just too lazy to get ourselves that organized.

I got to drive the APV back in Singapore. For an 8-seater, it's powered by a relatively puny 1.6l engine, and looks about as sexy as a brick. I don't know how it handles fully loaded (ask Vince about that if you really wanna know) but empty it feels surprisingly nimble. Acceleration and braking are quite responsive; almost like driving a regular sedan though the vantage is slightly higher. Returned the vehicle to the rental company in one piece this time. :D

Great vacation! Got close to 40% of my marking load completed so it was a productive time too! We've proven we can travel together without killing each other so... let's do it again!

Photos here:

by s_min_y

People bring their cats to dog shows and no one bothers. We were refused entry into today's cat show because we brought Q-tip with us. Security at the door said that Q-tip needed a vet's certification of health to get in, but the vet on duty had already left the building (it was only just after 1100 hrs!). Poor Q-tip. Being a dog means she gets subject to a lot of discrimination.

So we bought only 1 ticket for June while Q-tip and I waited outside for her. These occasions are usually good for discounts on pet supplies and we didn't want to waste the opportunity. She bought a new scratching post to replace the one Kaiser single-handedly destroyed within a couple of months, a new sleeping basket for Q-tip (who will be summarily evicted out of by Kaiser at his leisure), and 4 months' supply of kitty litter.

While June was shopping, she also made contact with the home for strays that we put Abby in. The home had set up a booth at the show to show off their more promising cats up for adoption. Abby was amongst the eligible so June got to play with her again for a while. Good news! Abby's been adopted by someone called Jasmine, so she has a proper home to stay in now.

Other than that, my Aunt Shirley arrived from London this evening. We collected her from the airport and went back to my mom's place for dinner, following which we drove her to another aunt's place where she will be staying for the duration of her vacation. M2 really put in quite a lot of work today. Never mind, he'll get a break for the next 3 days. I'm off to Malacca (again) in the morning!

Hmm... doubt I'll be updating while I'm away. In that case, see y'all at the end of the week, 'k?

Q-tip accompanied me to Sembawang Park for a little prelim marking. Earlier on there was something of a flypast from the airbase nearby: 2 Chinooks, followed by 2 Super Pumas, followed by 2 Apaches! We felt sooo honoured.

NBS on keyboard, Ivay on the 'bone 

JY tries out her audition piece in front of a 'live' audience. Good luck, JY! We're behind you all the way!!! 

Mel powers out her 'top of the world" feeling at the Staff dinner on Wednesday night. 

A happy 'chers' Day to my friends and colleagues! The actual day is tomorrow but today are the festivities. I got a chance to sit out of the performances this year and let the new guys and a couple of evergreens take the spotlight in my stead. I was glad to get out of the way 'cos I got to enjoy a good show in its entirety.

The unnamed staff band rocked socks. A little more practice and polish (NBS, read more rehearsal time), a more confident presence from the band members (don't let Mel steal all the limelight from you), and a catchy band name, and you'll definitely top the charts on campus! I think there's actual quality here, and it'll be a shame to let it just get forgotten after only 2 outings. Cut a record, guys! Think about it...

Gotta thank various people for the miscellaneous consumables that came my way: Li Ting, Shu Hui, and the collective represented by Glyn. For the little magic wrought by KI's Taily and Que, the card of quiet understanding from Shao Xun, and warm and sincere slippin' of skin with 'deep, Stan and Jackie. For the most appropriate reporter's pad and pen from conneX' Loga. For the e-card of heartfelt appreciation from conneX' Faith. For the photo ops with 2 great gals, Mun Foong and Hui Chiet, and with Jian Sheng too! And for the album of thoughts and well wishes from 05s6a. Um... did I miss anyone out? Thanks so much, everyone!

S6a, about your album, I think that above everything else I've tried to teach you, I wanted you to learn to write truthfully, honestly and from your heart. It seems many of you have learnt that one most important writing skill going by some of the things you wrote, and I am gratified that I have done my job so well. Thanks for the encouragement!

I've also been recently blessed with a pile of prelim essays to mark over the hols (thanks...). Just how bad were the prelims, anyway? I'd appreciate feedback!

It's the calm before the storm as a sullen mob gathers outside their room of doom. Welcome to the short spell before we let the kids in to take the GP prelim paper. Yup, prelims have begun as the calendar counts down the days left to the 'A's

 

Hey, for what it's worth since you'll only be able to read this after your paper, have a good paper y'all!

The modern tricycle is an irksome machine, reminding me of everything that's wrong with today's version of 'childhood'. The tricycle I remember was a 3-wheeled, muscle-powered vehicle that transported a kid to wherever his imagination took him. Today's new-fangled contraptions come with an added innovation: the adult supervisory steering (ASS) handle, which sticks out from behind the rider's seat for a parent to grab onto and literally become the back-seat driver. As if parents these days don't have enough methods of pushing their kids around, as it is.

Sure, the parent doesn't have to hold onto the control stick, but I would think that such a device ought to be an opt-in choice rather than an opt-out one. If parents want such exclusive control, the onus should be on them to bolt on the device themselves rather than making it the default option. After all, who's riding the trike, anyway?

Fine, it's safer, 'cos who knows what horrific accidents a kid might cause if he's left pedalling by himself? Who wants to risk a civil lawsuit on grounds of parental neglience by failing to prevent junior from bringing down a telephone pole, thus causing communication outages in several sections of the neighbourhood?

But that's just it, isn't it? Childhood has become too 'safe' for society's good. From the cleanliness and sterile hygiene of infancy, to the padded surface of the standards committee certified-safe playground, to the educational safety-nets parents tend to over-provide for their growing offspring, everything about childhood is designed to enhance the viability of each individual child to employable maturity.

Is it any wonder, then, that we're having a Great Baby Shortage? With the chances of each child making it to adulthood so high these days, we don't see the need for multiple redundancies any longer. Back in the days when Safety didn't feature so much, attrition compelled us to lay our genetic eggs in as many baskets as possible. John got smallpox and died; Mary fell off a cliff and died; a mammoth stampede killed Jason; Steve got impaled with a spear in the... (ahem) wars against the Medes and is, um... not likely to bear any offspring as a result; Thomas got sacrificed to the gods for a good harvest next year; and Graargh, the Sabretooth, happily dined on Heather last weekend; leaving only Harold and Sally to carry on the family name. Two replacing two, if we were so lucky.

These days, we see that kids are so gonna make it into adulthood that we don't mind that they're other people's kids. We don't want or need our own since we're already assured that our species will go on at least till the next generation, so hey, why bother? Other parents' bundles of joy are our bundles of joy, minus the bonus of soiled diapers and screaming competitions that we really can do without.

What then do we have to do to increase the number of babies born to our populace? It isn't the money, it isn't the time, it isn't the selfish attitudes of our young adults. There simply isn't the biological incentive to make more copies of ourselves than absolutely necessary.

So what do we have to do? Remove the control handle on the tricycle, for a start. Remove the safety standards from our playgrounds. Let kids eat the dirt and crap they prefer to their sanitized processed foods. Let them play with other kids and risk grevious bodily harm as they rough-house each other. When the mortality rate gets high enough, we will compensate biologically. It's only mathematics, after all.

Forgive me. After a couple of lean, uninspired days, we get this sewage overflow.

Recently, I've had several enquiries about the Language component in GP, mostly regarding the basis on which we assign the grade. Without having to explain the entire "band" marking scheme which can get unnecessarily quantitative, here's my own qualitative approach to gauging language use in a paper:

You have to imagine your essay or compre script as a discussion between yourself and your examiner. You are both seated at a coffee table talking over the issue of your question. The examiner is most likely to be a native speaker of the language, and you are, well, you.

Ask yourself how comfortable you are with the situation. Can you have as easy and fluent a conversation with your examiner as you could with a friend? Is what you are saying comprehensible to your examiner or are you likely to get lots of "excuse me," "pardon me," "could you repeat that s.l.o.w.l.y. for me, please" requests? Are you giving the impression that you are treating the examiner with the proper respect as an equal, or -- like you do with your mother -- are you trying to brush off the issues as quickly as possible so you can get on with the rest of your life?

You can multiply these self-check questions with the application question. Sitting with you and your examiner are the authors of the articles that you are reading as your compre passages. The AQ is a full-blown discussion amongst the 3 or 4 of you, all learned, articulate men and women, interested in the world, sharing different ideas from all your myriad experiences over biccies and a hot cuppa'.

The ability to speak a language is a mark of peerage. In other words, if two people use exactly the same language, they are equals. In this case, the more equal you are, the higher you're ranked. Paradoxical, but there you go!

Kaiser got his claws trimmed. He's not gonna stab me in the toe while I sleep again! 

Look who's got a new haircut -- that scruffy snowball look was so yesterday! 

It's been this kind of a weekend for Q-tip, and us too! 

Guess it's been that kind of a week, with me feeling all self-indulgent and not making much more than brief comments about the stuff I've been ingesting. But that in itself is significant in that throughout the week some of us did manage to find time to socialize and unwind, for which I am truly grateful. It took some co-ordination, and there were a few last-minute decisions made, but I'd say the effort was worth it. Yes, this week was special. Thanks, everyone :)

So much protein in my diet. The past few days it's been a carnivore's paradise. Last night we were at Sunset with me pigging out on a fabulously thick, juicy hamburger with cheese, bacon and 'shrooms. Table for 10: Amy, CQ, Dee, Gary, HP, Jo, me, Q-tip and Vince; Anthony and Wendy joining us later.

Not often so many of us can buang our responsibilities and enjoy an evening out, but we pulled it off anyway -- without guilt too, I daresay.

Dropped in on the parental residence last night. My bro had brought back an Austrian salami as a souvenir for me from his sojourn in Germany, and it needed collecting.

Makes a nice change hanging out with the parents. It's so relaxing being with people who have all the time in the world on their hands. No rush, no schedule, just doing what needs to be done, when it needs to be done, no earlier.

I walked with them to dinner, and for the first time in a long, long while, I walked through the old route along the storm drain that cuts a narrow path between our neighbours' backyards to the coffee shop that was once my dining room. It bears a new name now, Seletar Corner, and the most popular stall there is the Western food one. The steaks are functional at best, but cheap and tasty nonetheless.

Al fresco dining on a breezy cool sidewalk with the folks. Wonder why we don't do it more often?

Busy days, nights of good eats. Sunday's dinner was at Tonkichi, Suntec City. There's a 20% discount off the menu on Sunday evenings until late September. Pretty generous! Food's substantial -- a thick tonkatsu pork chop on rice for me 'cos I wasn't feeling particularly imaginative, and June settled for her usual prawn tempura, pork fillet combo. We walked around the mall to digest dinner, then went for a goldmine and a lemon shiver (what a concept: a scoop of lemon sorbet floating in freshly squeezed lemonade) at NYDC.

Last night Vince and NBS kept me company -- June's flown off to Manila -- at Secret Recipe, J8. Vince just had to try the Irish lamb stew. Having to carve meat off a large bone brings out the utter carnivore in me. Fortunately, the meat was tender enough to grant the illusion of being a primitive savage ripping flesh from a fresh kill without having the proper canine development to do it for real. With Og Mammoth Hunter's face smeared with gravy, we ended the evening with a civilized slice of yogurt cheesecake. Thanks for picking up the tab, NBS!

Mary invited us over for dinner. We had a steam boat, which is how she usually entertains her house guests. The difference was, this time she added a few bottles of Brand's Essence of Chicken into the stock, and perked up the soup like nothing else would. She assured us that the bottles were close to expiry and that it wasn't an unnecessary extravagance on her part.

Looks like everyone's making some kind of career change too. Adrian's making a lateral shift in his company, and both Jen and Mary have gone back to education (though not as Ministry minions but rather as independent consultants) after several years of self-exile from the Ivory Towers.

Jen brought over a set of Star Wars themed Monopoly for after-dinner entertainment. Adrian appeared a bit upset at the trade alliances that were forming around him, so June gave up her 'Park Lane' equivalent so that he could develop the prime property in that corner of the board in exchange for rent-free status should she ever land on that property. The game went on till past midnight.

When we finally decided to call it quits, we took the opportunity to go look at Adrian's new Civic in the parking lot. Mary got a new car too, a Mazda 2 SP! Yay! Another M2 owner. June pointed out that if we drove all our cars together in a convoy, we'd look like the Mafia.

I topped up my fuel tank before the weekend last week. Today, at the top of the weekend, my fuel gauge is still reading above the half mark. Either I'm getting a lot more economical with my driving style or, well, the alternative is too sad to even consider.

Edit 01:
Being fuel economical means that I have time to churn out yet another "model essay." This one's based on a Paper 1 question from the Cambridge 2004 GP exam: 'Far too much attention is given to beauty products and treatments.' Do you agree?

Do I?

It may have taken a couple of days longer than expected, but my work debt from over the weekend is finally clear! I can breathe again for the next couple of days. Yes.

The printer delivered our latest NY conneXions late this afternoon, on time to meet tomorrow's distribution schedule. Despite -- and possibly a little because of -- some earlier confusion, we got our centrefold printed in colour, FOC! Great job, dude!

If you can get your hands on an actual limited run copy, please do so -- it'll be distributed on campus tomorrow during common lunch break. But if you can't, you can download it in .pdf format here (600 kb).

Survived Monday, just barely. Reduced the long line of people waiting to kill me for missing their deadlines to just one. Sorry, NBS! Considering the hours I put into my entire weekend, with Amy providing assistance and advice in laying out the latest NY conneX print edition, I think I got quite a lot accomplished. All GP marking completed, Baggy's assignment completed, ish #3 printer's deadline met, lecture prepared and delivered (I felt like I knew what I was talking about in Monday's lecture, anyway)... I may have burned my weekend, but at least it was productive. Phew!

Even managed to find time for a late lunch at Friends with Vince and ZC (is that how you spell his name?). Friends has a set tea menu for us who arrive too late for lunch. A chicken or salmon sandwich with choice of hot beverage. On the menu the set reads quite prosaically, but when it actually arrived it was a jaw-dropper. Much bigger than expected: chunks of chicken inside a thick, folded-over flapjack-style pancake. And crispy fries. And lots of salad in balsamic vinaigrette dressing. Dunno why but I get a good impression when restaurants are generous with their salad servings.

Ever had one of those days when you realize that everything you've been procrastinating; been putting off till another day; been saying, "tomorrow never comes," about; suddenly have all got the exact same "tomorrow" deadline?

Tomorrow is going to be exciting. Let's see how I survive it. OMG.

I've got work piled up to my head
All I want to do is jump into bed

- Corrine May

I have no weekend. Sigh.

Drove out to find a suitable, conducive venue for marking my latest set of test papers, but today being a public holiday, everywhere was full of noisy holiday-makers and overcrowded car parks. So mission failure, drove back home and caught the Parade on TV. Usually June and I would be on-site, but this year we didn't score tix. Oh well, at least Q-tip got to go out on a long drive, so she's happy.

On the eve of National Day, it feels good to be well-fed and happy. I must give thanks for the 3 solid meals I got today: brekkie at Ya Kun, lunch at the Colbar and dinner at the Delhi Restaurant. Good food with various combinations of the EL Dept people for company.

Not too many people in too many parts of the world can say something similar of their day today. How's that for perspective?

Rediscovered that walking to the old coffee shop at Ave 2 isn't such a bad thing. For a quick off-campus lunch it'll do. No need to burn fossil fuel unnecessarily when you can just amble over there, eat and return all within an hour.

Like every other establishment around here, it's undergone some kind of facelift, giving it a rather sterile kind of appearance, compared with the grungy look that I remember. Thankfully, the food's still pretty ok.

I enjoyed my chicken rice with liver, my first in many weeks. Can't find a decent one near my place, that's why. It came in nice, big portions too, though there was a bit more heart (literally) than I'm used to.

The other stalls there look worth trying out, too. Nice to have options.

Spent the day feeling dizzy and sick. Not in a delibitating way, but also nothing I can describe to a doctor for an MC... or medication. Maybe it's more emotional than physical. Hope I'm not coming down with something. This is a bad week to get sick on.

Edit 01:
Attended our first ever film festival this evening: a triple-bill of short films shot by the kids themselves, apparently without help or advice from anyone who might have known anything about filmmaking. That, I believe. The experience was painful. I usually try to be more tolerant of kids' work, but they went and made this event public, so to me it's a free-for-all.

"Sisters":
How many cuts does it take to get a girl to walk from the end of her driveway and into her front door? The continuity is no doubt smooth, flawless even; but as the opening sequence, it sets the tone for a tedious succession of slide-show images that the film does indeed comprise. There's so little movement it's a waste to capture it on video.

"Waiting":
12 minutes of someone waiting for someone else to show up but doesn't. It's ok to make the protagonist wait, but it's unforgivable to make the audience wait with him. Even a tiny payoff, like say a glimpse of the cute Japanese-speaking girl who leaves "don't wait for me" messages on the protagonist's answering machine would be something, but no such luck. Instead, the audience is treated to a final shot of a pedestrian-crossing's countdown timer counting to zero. It's like we're just waiting for the movie to come to an end, and so relieved are we when it eventually does. A tip: have lots of things happen to the protagonist while he's waiting, so the audience is entertained, though none of these things is what he's waiting for. Ultimately, he can be disappointed, but your audience should never be.

In-house band performance:
Please, less idle chit-chat with the audience, and more music. Die-die also must get a monitor so the guy on vocals can hear himself sing. Learn to attack the music, especially since you're playing Green Day and Bon Jovi stuff, otherwise it's all just falls flat quickly.

"Angel":
Highlight of the evening. I never imagined the malaise of the long blackout would ever infect the genre of film, but it happened. Several narrative bits over a completely black screen drove me nuts in my seat.

The dialogue is minimal and inconsequential, many scenes cutting themselves short before any dramatic point can properly develop. In close-up shots the script drives the characters away from the camera too quickly, whereas what looks like promising lines of dialogue are taken in long-shot and either voiced over by yet another irrelevant narration or covered over by background music.

The film suffers from having too many locations, making the audience work overtime trying to figure out where the characters are. Lots of scenes were taken on campus so the backgrounds may be quite familiar to us, but an outsider would have given up a long time ago. The audience should at least be able to sense a rough map of the location, but with locations whimsically jumping all over the place we're just hopelessly lost.

Lights. Very poor lighting choices. Characters' faces are so often in shadow, it's hard to distinguish who's who. After a while, we don't care any more.

Conclusion:
These guys are very good with the camera equipment, and very good with the technical aspect of post-production. Drama Club has the talent and possibly the vision for shooting a good story. Dare I suggest, barring pride, prejudice and parochialism, a collaboration for next year?

Look what June left for me before taking off on her Aussie vacation.

I discovered this new stash, neatly arranged and concealed under the comforter. It took me a while to realize that the arrangement had a particular shape to it, but it wasn't long before I introduced myself to Mr Snackinbed.

Now I feel like a cannibal.

The college alumni arranged an informal chat session for our JC1 student leadership and the 2 newly elected MPs who are also college alumni. Coincidentally, the 2 were students in the same year, though they never met each other on campus before.

Arriving in non-standard t-shirt and jeans, they showed they intended to keep the session as comfortably informal as possible. It was nice that they chatted about their experiences as students in college and traced their separate paths towards local politics. They were emphatic about their preference for CCA activities rather than their academics, and in fact it was through working on their own projects that they developed the confidence to take on more and more responsible leadership roles.

They used their own personal anecdotes to explain how our grassroots democracy works, and that despite their own youthful dissenting voices, the political leadership was willing to listen to them and gave them a chance to put their proposals for improvements to the community into action. Today, because they were successful in their follow-through, they were invited to become part of the political leadership themselves.

So today, they have become The Man. But at least this incarnation seems more approachable, more consultative and less know-it-all dictatorial than before. They present a more "we are all in the same boat" leadership style as opposed to the "swab the decks, ye swabs, 'cos I'm the cap'n, an' what I says, goes" approach that we've come to expect from members of our dominant political party. They did, however, occasionally slip into repeating some tired old cliches, e.g., "Singapore is unique...," "we must be prepared to face the challenges ahead...," "Singapore is a small country..." But they did seem to genuinely want to engage rather than nag, which made today's dialogue more lively than we had anticipated.

Meantime, June left for Sydney, Australia today. She'll be there for a week on her company's annual incentive tour (i.e., corporate all-expenses-paid vacation). And my bed's full of consumables again. Heh.

What a smack in the face for our proud, grand institution of Education. Wake up and smell the coffee, 'cos apparently corporate society doesn't want people with academic smarts any longer. Nope. Higher education, in fact, is becoming increasingly a liability for those of us inclined towards, as students like to say in their essays on education, "getting a good job." Employers are now looking for people who have the skills to attract people, hold their attention, interact with them, and -- above all -- can have a great time with anyone, anywhere, anytime, anyhow. This cynically astute observation appeared in TIME Magazine, online version here.

In corporate America, the mugger-toad with his nose in a book, and speaks in proper grammar when he finds both the occasion and the courage to say something, will live and die under the rock he never crawled out from. Good riddance, too!

Fortunately (or unfortunately?), we live in the rest of the world alongside the "Chinese and Indian brainiacs." Waitaminnit, we ARE the "Chinese and Indian brainiacs!" So let's not give up on studying yet, ok? And in any case, whoever said that education is only meant to prepare students for employment?

Been re-reading Blackfoot Physics, and I found an anecdote describing a familiar classroom scenario. I could identify with both points-of-view: the teacher's and the students.

The story's a bit lengthy, and I don't have the author's permission, but I'll put the excerpt here for downloading anyway. Click.

Sometimes, I wonder if traditional ways were indeed the best?

Hung out for a couple of hours at Serene Centre yesterday. It's easy become quite enamored with the place. It's as comfortable as my living room, only mall sized.

For a small mall, it has everything I like: comics, toys and collectibles, books, PC and other platform games, ice-cream, and a McD's for a quick nosh. Even the supermarket stocks US brands imported from the US and not their Indonesian, Thai or Korean equivalents.

Wanna psychoanalyze me? See what's going in my mind? Just walk around Serene Centre. You get the idea pretty fast.

And in a couple of hours, June will be home! Better toddle off to warm up M2...

Friends@Maju has just changed its lunchtime set menu. Just as well; we were getting a bit tired of their previous one.

Today being Friday, we felt the need for more pampering so Amy, Dee, Josh and I went for the more expensive set lunch option. Josh's ox-tail stew came in a healthy-sized portion and looked like it melted in the mouth. Amy picked the bones of her baby back ribs clean, 'nuff said. Dee and I ordered the seafood jambalaya. For a portion of what actually amounts to seafood fried rice it actually made my mouth and stomach happy. The shrimp and fish pieces were tender and fresh and the mix of spices in the rice was novel and, um, sang! I really don't quite know how else to express the sensation. Fine. Maybe I'm gushing a little, but I haven't been disappointed by this place yet.

Speaking of friends, I really do appreciate the mealtime companionship I've enjoyed, especially from Amy and Vince, without whom dinner would have been quite dreary this week in particular. Not to say that Q-tip doesn't make good company, but her subjects of conversational interest are somewhat... limited. Thanks, guys! :)

Didn't know it, but I have family who had to be "evacuated from Lebanon," wot with all the bombs droppin' and all. Sort of brings the news in the far-flung middle-east a little closer to home, though this branch of mi familia I've hardly any contact with due to geographical distance.

The young lady in this news article is my cousin (mom's sis' daughter) and I haven't seen her since eh... a long time ago. Still, glad to know she's ok.

Catch a fish for a Singaporean and he will eat for a day. Teach a Singaporean to fish and he will expect a textbook, handouts, worksheets, quality instruction, regular testing, course reviews, safety guidelines, IT lessons... and wonder why fishing is so boring. And not want to learn anything else for the rest of his life.

Today's "Teach Less, Learn More" workshop has parallels with how organized religion picks up on Divine Commandment and turns tablet-engraved words of wisdom into dogma and ritual. It's the nature of being in an organization, I guess. The leadership is obliged to interpret the Word from On-High on behalf of the rank-and file by translating It into procedures that are easy to follow. In this way, we obey the Word, and thereby are we good.

This heretic observes that we are simply barking up the wrong tree with TLLM. TLLM is a value and an attitude, to be obeyed in spirit and not by the letter of the law, or SOP at our level. It doesn't neatly translate into "action plans" or even "learning activities," but it is an admonishment to us in the education service to stop overplanning the lives of our kids, force-feeding them with exam-based but otherwise irrelevant nonsense inapplicable to real-life, and conditioning to them to think it is us who hold the key to their "success in life."

TLLM makes sense, particularly in today's context in which Education has taken on such self-importance that without Teacher's proper supervision, young lives get ruined. And what a waste of our only natural resource that would be.

Homework for math, tutorials for physics, chapters of texts for lit, project research for GP, who knows what else for other subjects... daily exercise regimen for physical health... CCA responsibilities... adequate rest and nutrition... revision of the day's lessons... remedial this, remedial that... tuition... Students seem to live in a time warp that stretches longer than the usual 24 hours a day for the rest of us normal people. We do this to our students because we are good, dedicated teachers. We blame ourselves if individual students flunk a major exam, and think if only we worked them harder they wouldn't be in such dire straits.

Yup, it's all about us. We take things personally: they failed because we failed them. They messed up because we didn't take them in hand. And so, we do everything we can to ensure they don't fail. And we make sure they know it, too. We boil down complex ideas to easy-to-swallow but meaningless factoids. We drill from TYS, as if the only questions (and their corresponding answers) our subject poses come from the last 10 years' worth of exam papers. We pack the time table and schedule their holidays so that they can't waste time with frivolous activities outside of our supervision.

TLLM basically says, stop it. Stop hand-holding them all the way to adulthood. Stop giving the impression that they always have to get it right the first time. Stop pre-digesting things for them and making them eat vomit. Stop being the centre of their learning universe -- we aren't that important. Really.

Individual words make up a sentence, but it's the tone and inflexion that give the sentence it's meaning. Likewise, TLLM is about the manner in which we teach, not about what activity or content goes into the lesson. It's not so much a matter of doing less, or even doing things differently. It's a matter of being. Being more considerate. Being more humane. Being more realistic. Being more practical. Being more far-sighted.

It's also a matter of trust. Trust that kids will learn useful things from people other than ourselves. Trust that learning doesn't always have to be ordered, structured or even planned. Trust that kids will learn in time, so let them have time to learn. Trust that when a child falls down, he will pick himself up, dust himself off and continue the game because there's still fun to be had in playing.

Good luck planning a "TLLM lesson." Oxymoron of the day.

Edit 1:
Happy birthday, Josh!

I may be left to fend for myself for a time, but June didn't leave me unprovided for. As she is wont to do before an overseas trip that doesn't include me, she left behind a little something to keep me occupied until she returns. Under the sheets this time, I discovered a hidden cache of assorted snacks, all neatly arranged so that no suspicious lumps stood out. Good thing I'm not the kind of person who jumps on the bed when no-one's looking, eh?

Such a colourful arrangement it was, too. I wanted to take a picture, but I had given June the digi-cam for her HK holiday snapshots, so I'm camera-less for the moment. The best I can do now is to list what the individual snacks are before they get devoured:

• Chocolate sandwich biscuits x 1 roll
• Pocky-like biscuit stix topped with chocolate and almond bits x 1 box
• Kjeldsen's butter cookies x 1 soft pack
• Lay's potato chips, salt and vinegar flavour x 1 bag
• Caramel corn puffs x 1 bag
• Snickers x 1 5-pack

While I wait for my wife to come home, I can rest secure knowing that I'm not gonna starve.

And just like that, June's packed her suitcase and left for her mother's.

The family has a 0600hrs flight to catch, bound for Hong Kong. Yup, family vacation time; and I'm the man o' the house again for a week! Oh, the possibilities...

Caught "Dead Man's Chest," a sugar rush of wild, frenetic, high energy action from beginning to end. This second installment of the "Pirates of the Caribbean" franchise is a fusion of the old sea myths of the Flying Dutchman, the Kracken, and the maritime euphemism of "going to Davy Jones' locker."

DMC seems fixated with the idea of balancing honour and integrity against selfish betrayal of friends, family and loved ones. Turner and son are deadset on doing the best they can to watch each other's backs, while pretty much everyone else has his or her own agenda to run. And while Elizabeth Swann realizes her heart's desire lies between her white knight in shining armour and her bad-boy pirate captain in heavy eye make-up, the boys seem intent on chasing this movie's featured treasure for reasons other than to get the girl.

Resolution? What resolution? DMC is, after all, part 2 of a trilogy. Like "Empire Strikes Back," DMC ends in a cliffhanger and a promise of more swashbuckling high-jinks on the high seas to come.

Oh, and a tip from NBS: there is a final scene at the end of the credit roll. Did you see it?

Expedition XO's log, Earthdate 07212006:
Skeleton crew took possession of MPV class vessel, Estima, reg.: SDW-7607K, at 0900hrs.
Rendezvous with full crew complement at Checkpoint Bugis. Lost 1 junior crewmember to healthscreen failure, but expedition proceeded as planned.
Detoured back to Pilot's residence to collect personal ID inadvertently left behind.
Detoured to Local Liaison Officer's residence to collect holodisks for in-transit entertainment.
Holodisk transmitter system failure resulted in temporary morale setback, quickly rectified by re-engaging "personal conversation" mode lasting the duration of the trip.
Vessel developed "whistling noises" at high speeds along Malaysian North-South highway. Cursory inspections for leaks, etc., failed to detect any obvious problems with hull integrity, warp drive or life-support systems.

General expedition notes with image archive can be cross-referenced here.

Personnel Notes:
Resource Procurement Officer's acquistions from Orang Utan House: 7 T-shirts. From Giant Supermarket in Makota general supplies depot: a large quantity of personal mood-enhancing, nutritionally dubious, ingestible materials. Excellent!
Navigation Officer discovered several discrepancies in our starcharts, but Pilot managed to locate Objective Satay Celup via Serendipity. Counselling Officer was on standby to manage any stress fallout, but no action was necessary. :)

Further Notes:
On return leg, vessel encountered heavy warp traffic delaying our homebase ETA. While Immigration and Customs checkpoints were understandably bottlenecked, other causes were closures of traffic lanes on CTE main warp corridor, 1 due to regular maintainence and another due to wreckage from a brief but intense skirmish involving 5 vessels of differing classes.
EXO took over helm duties for crew disembarkation run. 7607K docked in EXO's residence docking bay at 0100hrs, earthdate 07222006.
EXO returned 7607K to dry dock by 0905hrs as per agreement.
Discovered "whistling noise" was due to hull damage to vessel's undercarriage shielding, possibly due to debris impact some indeterminate time enroute. Though not obvious at first, the breach grew progressively worse as the drive wheel kept in constant friction with the loosened hull plating. Replacement is inevitable.
Dry dock authorities will liaise with Pilot for follow up procedures, if necessary.

Expedition Evaluation:
Overall relaxed and relaxing trip, good food, even better company. Plans in motion for a return trip, longer in duration. Hotel Puri recce'd and designated Starbase for future ops.

End log.

A temporary respite from work, and time to smell the roses and chicken rice balls. College has declared today off in lieu of Polling Day. A little hasty planning during several breakfasts this past week resulted in Vince, Amy, Dee, Lucy, Jo and me renting a Toyota Estima and heading north to Malacca...

As I work on essay skills with my GP groups, I find that it isn't the lack of content that's bringing down grades, but rather the overflow of content that overwhelms students and shocks them into mental paralysis. The misconception is that the more content goes into an essay, the better it will be graded; but quantity of content means nothing if it isn't relevant to the question.

It's all well and good to maintain a storehouse of knowledge, but selecting the most appropriate material from it quickly while disregarding the rest without guilt or doubt, and organizing the selected material effectively pays off more handsomely in an argumentative essay. After all, the objective is to win the argument, not confuse the situation any more than it already is.

For any argumentative essay, one fundamental requirement is to be able to have a general discussion on the concept in question. The simplest way to explain "concept" is to think of it as a short phrase that describes what the essay is about without any opinions or other preconceived notions about it. For example,

Q: The only role of the mass media should be that of a watchdog. Do you agree?
Concept: The mass media as watchdog.

Q: Does the Internet have a positive or negative impact on your society?
Concept: Social changes resulting from the widespread use of the Internet.

Q: Should people have the right to decide when and how they will die?
Concept: Human rights and the differences between suicide and euthanasia (asks a bit much of a miserable 800 word essay, I say)!

Notice that the concept can double as an unbiased title for the essay. Identifying the right concept gives us a handy guideline to help us decide if the content we select is relevant to our essay or not. What determines our stand (thesis) will depend on what our selection then leads us to believe about the concept we are discussing.

Hmm... I seem to be obsessing over GP this week. Guess I'll have to get it all out of my system before I go back to my regular nonsense. Bear with me, there's more but it's already quite late!

The interview with ZB has been published, and 'deep and Que have their pix printed in colour. I'm not entirely sure what the article actually says, given my level of Chinese literacy, but you can access it online here.

I can only content myself with a very badly translated into English version here.

In "Philosopher's Stone," letters from Hogwart's to Harry Potter are addressed, "Mr. H. Potter, Cupboard under the Stairs, 4 Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey, England" to which we can add, "Western Europe, European Continent, Planet Earth, Sol System, Alpha Quadrant, Milky Way Galaxy, Known Universe."

How does a postal delivery officer know which mailbox to place one letter and not another? The information on any address is arranged from the smallest possible unit that needs to be located (the person) to the most reasonably large locus where said person is most likely to be found, in ever-widening concentric circles.

So any terrestrial post office can easily locate the intended receipient of a piece of mail by country, then by state or province, then district, then street, then housing unit, (then in Harry's case, by specific room in the house) till finally the mail reaches the right person. The additional information might be useful for perhaps an inter-galactic mail courier, but it follows a similar narrowing procedure.

Whichever layer of our address we physically occupy determines our view of the world in which we live. We wish for our GP students to at least live as citizens at the national (country) level and to write from that perspective. Better yet, if they could feel like they occupy a much larger space, on the regional or even the global level, the scope from which they write would be so much wider.

Unfortunately, most of our students still write as if they only live inside their "Cupboard under the Stairs," cooped up within the confines of 4 dim, dusty walls with no window to even look out of. And they wonder why despite so much work they undertake to do better in GP, they still find difficulty getting a satisfactory grade.

Open the door and step outside. The world is bigger than your comfy bedroom.

Whoa, stop the presses! Just got a comment from an author whose work I reviewed a couple of months ago. Now I'm truly awed by the power of the Internet in helping perfect strangers contact each other. The world is so much smaller now!

Wish I could write back to him, but the link to his email address doesn't work somehow. Hmm... perfect, the 'net isn't.

Just for reference, my review is here.

Dr McG's comment is here.

What makes a person a criminal? The simple answer is, the law determines for us who stays free, who pays a fine, who goes to jail and worse. But while it's easy for the law to see things in clear black and white, in the realm of human interaction, things get horrendously fudgy.

Laws change retroactively, in response to disastrous events the repeat of which we hope the new laws will protect us from. But what if by enacting new laws, a group of people who were once tolerated by society suddenly become lawbreakers simply because the new laws say they are? Or what if the beliefs of a group of people suddenly become outlawed overnight and they have to decide to abandon their beliefs or face legal consequences?

In the light of religious extremism and senseless terrorist attacks on secular society, society usually seeks the protection of the law to preserve a sense of security for daily existence. In the US, for example, new anti-terrorist measures have been enacted by their lawmakers; but such measures have also caused concern that the citizens' civil rights and liberties have been sacrificed as a result.

Marvel Comic's recent "Civil War" story arc is a modern day parable for the fear and tension against the unpredictability of life and death as we recognize that terror strikes anyone, anywhere, anytime. No one is safe, no one is innocent, everyone is a target.

It isn't an act of terrorism that sparks off the Civil War. It is an irresponsible act of nationally televised super-grandstanding by a group of inexperienced costumed heroes causing a horrific disaster in Stamford, a peaceful residential suburb. The death toll runs in the hundreds, the majority being children from a neighbourhood school, the calamity's ground-zero.

Thus, the move to press a Super-human Registration Act into existence. This Act by law eradicates any protection superhumans have of their secret identities. The law compels all superhumans to be properly trained and carry a Federally approved licence, their activities having to be officially sanctioned by the US government. In other words, they have to become civil servants if they wish to continue righting wrongs, doing justice and preserving the American way. By implication, it will also become the government's decision as to who registered superheroes go after.

The new law, such as it is, splits the superhero community asunder: those who feel that registration is the right and responsible approach (notably Iron Man and surprisingly, Spider-Man, and those who never had a secret identity in the first place, like the Fantastic Four), and those who feel that secret identities have to be protected (for fear of reprisal agaist their families and loved ones, or just at least having a chance to lead a normal life on the side) and that what they do should not be government-controlled or directed (biggest surprise for this faction is Captain America -- chief protector of American values or something like that).

In one early incident that causes the superhuman community to have a very serious think over this situation, the Fantastic Four's Human Torch gets hospitalized by a very angry, very human mob who recognizes him (he is a public figure, after all) and attacks him outside a nightclub while he is there on a date.

Because a new law is called into existence, many superheroes who refuse to abide by it become super-villains overnight, and are being hunted down by others who were once their friends and colleagues. Some previous super-villains who choose to abide by the new law suddenly become elevated to hero status as well, so the whole Marvel Universe is in massive turmoil as loyalties change, battle-lines are drawn, and casualties mount.

What makes a person a criminal? The Law. Whose side are you on?

Tasked with developing a possible essay outline for the question:
Does the Internet have a positive or negative impact on your society?

Warped my brain around the question enough already. Still not all that satisfied with my response because 1) I'm dealing with the Internet like it worked in its ideal form; 2) the examples are a bit naff; and 3) the conclusion looks a bit like a cop-out. Thankfully, I'm not demanding perfection from myself, so I'll upload it as is.

If interested, click.

For most subjects, they're about what you know.
For GP it's about what you think about what you know.
For KI it's about what you know about what you know, AND what you think about what you think.
What a headache.

June's off and running again, living the jet-set life and leaving me to tend the home fires till she gets back on the weekend. This will be the first of a scheduled series of "out-station" trips, though not all for work-related issues.

Gonna have to get used to the quiet around the house for a few days on end. At one time in my life I would have thought such days would have been days of luxury, days to dream of and die for; but these days I prefer my isolation in moderation. Never mind, I get enough chaos at work to keep my adrenaline levels pumped so I'm ready to enjoy a quiet evening at home with the animals after hours.

In a strange, but not altogether unexpected turn of events, I facilitated lunch with the newbies. We made a return to Gardens Market after a collective absence of, who knows how long? But because there were so many of us today, we had to split tables. Since I drove the newbies down, I felt it would be better form to sit with them and not ditch them at the first opportunity.

As in any social grouping of relative strangers, conversation was careful, tending to remain within the boundaries of our so-called areas of expertise, not exactly the bimbo talk I'm more used to. Wish I could have been a better host and got everybody to lighten up immediately, but my social skills aren't quite up to that standard yet. Still, the conversation didn't run dry and we had things to say till it was time to leave, so for stepping out of my comfort zone, I think I did pretty ok.

Had company of a different sort species at dinner. Took Q-tip to the Colbar where I wolfed down a sirloin steak with egg, chips and beans. Excellent stuff -- homestyle cooking, just the way grandma made it way back then. In the quiet of my table I pondered KI (of all things!) while Q-tip kept a wary eye on a roving chihuahua who was making eyes at her.

Yahoo! News reports that memory and sleep are closely tied together. I'm not surprised. Maybe I should try sleep more? Click.

Just a quick reminder: Happy birthday, Dee!

Also got our staff photos done for college annual. No department-level photo this time, but individual pix for everyone. Had a big goofy grin on my face at the director's behest. Hopefully I won't be the only one looking like that.

Restarted 'blading with JY, but only got 2 rounds in before the sky opened up and washed us out of the park. So we made our way back to Tomoko for lunch joined by Chewy and her mom as well. No set lunch on weekends, but they offer a bento that's bursting at the seams with a variety of good stuff. Apart from what usually comes in the set, we also get an additional couple of gyoza and a side of egg salad (huh?) too.

After lunch, we followed Vince's footsteps of last Friday and drove up to Upper Peirce Reservoir to feed watch the monkeys.

Getting some sleep... World Cup Final night...!

Superman Returns! Returns from what? It took me by surprise that this installment of the Supes movie saga sort of continues from where the old Chris Reeves version left off. I thought we'd have to sit through the entire re-telling of the modern myth we all know so well already.

Instead, Supes makes his return from a 5-year sabbatical and finds that though the world is still pretty much the same as he had left it, his personal life has a few new wrinkles he has to get used to. And that's just it, isn't it? It's not so much the duty of saving the world every 5 minutes that matters, but fighting the monsters of ostracism and loneliness that plague him throughout his whole existence.

This installment isn't about him saving the world yet again -- although there is some of that against his arch-rival, Luthor -- but about his friends and family saving him when he's in trouble, and continuing to assure him that he isn't alone in the universe.

Director, Singer, keeps reminding us how "iconic" a figure Supes is in depicting him in visuals that parallel Atlas bearing the world on his shoulders, Christ at his crucifixion and resurrection, and Superman himself as he appeared holding a car over his head in his very first comic book. Yet the man is always either on a solo mission to find the remains of his home, taking refuge in his Fortress of Solitude, or hiding behind a "secret identity," both making and not making an effort to blend in with the crowd. That is a guy in conflict with himself.

Sadly, Luthor, his nemesis has no such conflict. The Luthor in "Smallville" is a much more interesting character seeing how divided his loyalties are, but in the movies he's just another loony tune with big ambitions but severely lacking in follow-through.

The version of Supes on TV's "Justice League" is my favourite of the non-print portrayals of the man-of-steel, though. This guy's a slightly edgy fascist, violent when riled with a dangerous dark side to boot. He doesn't always smile and wave at the crowd, not the boy-scout he's usually seen as.

As Lois Lane writes, "... the world doesn't need Superman," as our world seems to get along peachy without him. It's Superman who needs the world more. The wackos give him a sense of purpose, his friends and family make it worthwhile.

Go Team Peggy! Today was the college Sports Carnival, after a hiatus of a year. This bunch of my fellow flying horsies unexpectedly won me a new trophy to weigh down my desk. "Unexpectedly," because JY said yesterday that the team was already full, then today she recruited me at the last minute for the staff novelty race. A 6 x 50m relay but instead of passing a baton, we had to dress and accessorize ourselves with more and more stuff with each completed lap. Shirt... sarong... handbag... clip-on "earring"... umbrella (open)... silly hat, I think that was the order. Clix for more pix.

Edit 01

Larger than expected party at Tomoko, Casuarina Road, for lunch. First time experience for Belinda, Lucy and Aggie, packing out a table for 10.

Smaller than expected party at Wild Rocket for dinner. For various reasons, our table for 10 became a table for just Vince, Amy and me. Has a sort of right ambience for a date with soft lighting, light jazz on the stereo. Fusion menu, but we chose the basic stuff. Rib-eye, rare and juicy for me, and a chocolate gateau with flambe banana to follow. Just-right portions, filling without being uncomfortably so. How did it taste? Let me put it this way: Rib-eye. Steak. Bloody. You can't go wrong!

We adjourned to cheap kopitiam in Siglap to join Anthony and Wendy for kopi (what else?) and catch-up. Sort of to make up for not being able to attend his birthday dinner last week. Happy belated!

Since we've been talking about chemistry and physics and the problems we have in applying the subjects to "real life," why don't we all watch the following video clip (you've probably seen it before anyway) and see how these 2 nutters interpret "applied science":



Now then, is this experiment a demonstration of a chemical or physical reaction? or magic? How would you explain what we've just seen? A gold star for anyone who attempts some kind of plausible, rational explanation!

Thanks to Taily for the link.

Got interviewed by ZB about KI. Last week, boss-lady informed me they wanted to interview 2 KIds, but I didn't expect to talk to the reporter as well. I picked 'deep and Que 'cos they're the most media-friendly of the bunch and after prepping them a bit, I left them to have their private chat with the press. Soon after, P called me down to the office to share the interview with him, so they got staff and admin's perspectives as well. A bit unnerving 'cos the photog kept taking pix during our interview. Hope he got my best side!

Jo and I went to the beach in the afternoon to continue marking. Nice spot along ECP's car park 'G' next to the Sailing Federation. It was practically deserted when I went there yesterday (where I was at my most productive) but today the sailors were having some kind of event and the picnic table I was eyeing was occupied. We had to walk a little further down the beach to find another picnic table near the breakwater. So nice, being there with the warm sun, the cool breeze, the mass of sailboats superimposed against the horizon line, the waves lapping so close by. It's quiet and no distractions; just mark, mark, mark the afternoon away.

In response to 'deep's long comment from yesterday:

Funny you should mention 'incentives.' Been reading 'Freakonomics,' have you? I'm not sure what you mean by that but, especially for GP, essay questions clearly do not reward unthinking regurgitaion of material. The nature of the exam itself encourages "understanding and interpretation" of the materials pertaining to the subject, so the problem isn't the exam per se.

I think a lot of it is the way we're brought up to study. Memorizing from a book actually looks like you're studying -- giving assurance to your ever-watchful parents that you aren't wasting your time socializing with friends, watching TV, or whatever other thing you would rather be doing than reading and re-reading a bunch of nonsense words. The incentive is that your parents won't nag at you. The disincentive is having to participate in a family drama.

Why do people forget what they "studied" immediately after their paper? Memorization is baby food: a melange of pre-chewed, pre-digested thoughts we have no claim of ownership to. It's essential for a baby to get started on solid food, but not very substantial for grown people like ourselves. Memorizing stuff is much easier to swallow than having to acquire, think about, analyze, verify and apply it, which is what you're required to do at your level. If you've done the work in hunting, preparing and chewing the food for yourself, you're more likely to remember what it was. If you're given mush to eat, what it actually was will forever be a mystery to you.

Memorizing stuff is reassuring to ourselves as well. There's a certainty to the material we memorize. It must be right, therefore we must memorize it. Conversely, we memorized it, therefore it must be right. But if we actually thought about the material, we risk doubting it and then we have to go through an ardous process of having to discover the truth for ourselves. That's a scary way to prepare for an exam, but that's what learning is.

Again, I'm not saying memorization isn't important, but it is overemphasized in our study culture much to our detriment. We lack entrepreneurs because risk aversion is so deeply ingrained in us from young, but that's the least of our problems. A people that relies on memorization without questioning and understanding the material first is a people easily "brainwashed," to use a term our students so like to use, to do the bidding of others.

Wish we could keep Abby ourselves, but we already have 2 cats. Kaiser, you know. This is Momo, our other cat. Oh, and the latest report from the shelter is that Abby's adapting well. She's out of her cage and mingling more amicably with the other cats now. Still, there's nothing like having a good home.

What's the role of memorized material in a written exam? It really depends on what skill the candidate is being examined for.

If we were still hiring civil service personnel for the dynastic Chinese court, memorized texts are all-important because they reflect the candidate's ability to be absolutely accurate in keeping records and in passing on information that, without his (not her) personal trustworthiness, would be unverifiable and thus useless in helping a superior officer trying to access the information make any intelligent decisions.

If we were still an oral culture, our whole history, mythology, culture, belief system and laws reside fully in the memory of a single archivist, usually a storyteller or bard. Candidates seeking to succeed the incumbent storyteller must faithfully memorize word for word the entire oral history of the people and in a public examination narrate the entire story tracing generations of different families and their exploits from the time of the earliest creation myths.

Some cultures are so serious about the exam that the chief examiner, the incumbent himself, is required to instantly club the candidate to death at the first error in the examination. He will then train a new candidate until one who renders a flawless narration can be found. Why so serious? It's because nothing about the people has been written down. Any error in the telling completely messes up the people's identity and beliefs, and errors compound themselves like in the game "broken telephone." And unless stringent, unforgiving standards are set, the people will never be able to know themselves with any certainty.

Life has got much more complicated since then. Information is not a problem for most of us to access. Not because of the Internet, but because practically everyone today can read and write. Today's exams aren't just about memorization skills. Especially at JC level, the skills being tested are mainly problem-solving skills. There is a series of questions through which the candidate demonstrates skills in pattern-recognition, logical reasoning, and moral awareness (especially in GP); and it is in his or her abilities in these areas that achievement is recognized.

Notice that many examinations are of the "closed-book" variety. The skills the candidate brings to play need to be practiced way beforehand. Moreover, the materials the candidate brings into the exam hall have to be stored within easily accessible locations in the brain. So yes, memorization is a crucial factor in any written exam. The more facts memorized, the more options one has in finding a solution to the problem at hand. The more toys you bring, the more different games we can play, I always say.

The problem comes when students stop at the memorization stage and think that reproducing notes, textbook pages and other copyright material as verbatim as possible is what will score them the most marks. Different skill for a different exam for a different time. Sorry.

The biggest nightmare for me is marking scripts that are obviously memorized and plonked down near vabatim without showing any understanding of the concept being referred to, or any appreciation of the question being answered, but rather using it because the topic appears similar.

We still keep reminding our students to accurately recall names, locations, events from the real-world to substantiate the solutions they are proposing on their exam scripts. That takes memory. BUT we also need to see skill in selecting the appropriate memes and in shaping them in a form relevant to the question in order to award marks.

Mei is right, and I should have made myself clearer in my previous entry. These days, memorization is still important in an exam, but it just isn't enough. The good news is, if you spend less time reading and re-reading your textbooks trying to memorize chunks of paragraphs that don't make sense, and more time inquiring into; discussing; and making observations about what you have just read with someone else (not necessarily your teacher) you tend to remember it a lot easier as you seek to understand what it's all about.

So why are y'all still wasting time reading this rubbish? Go study!

Still busy with marking. New topic: Should scientists be concerned with moral issues? Should be lots of scope for an interesting discussion, particularly as we consider the duties, obligations and responsibilities of the scientist to self and to society, and how the scientist might cope with conflicts between his/her professional conduct and his/her personal ethics especially in the more controversial fields of study.

It's interesting to note, however, that our students still place more emphasis on memorizing and reproducing their lecture notes as verbatim as possible rather than actually considering their material and discussing what they understand with respect to the question. Regardless of our push towards thinking skills, our students still rely on memory as the key indicator of their intelligence, and assume that we will reward them for it.

About half a year left to patch up the damage. It's a living.

Watson ate a fairly long entry. No, didn't save it. Complacent, lah. No morale to retype. Not tonight, anyway. Bah.

DSCN0714

DSCN0714,
originally uploaded by Xmac2005.

The authorities want to know everything! First, MDA fines people who do not report that they do not own a TV. Now the General Office wants to be informed if we notice that there are no defects in the toilet!

Guess it's always nice to know you're doing a good job!

Marking season begins anew. Currently marking a question on whether the Internet has made a positive or negative impact on our society. The students generally interpret the question as requiring them to point out as many 'net applications and services as possible and decide if they are "good" or "bad." But "impact" is more than being just about features, functions and (side) effects. It refers more to how the 'net has made certain irrevocable changes to our society because of its nature and because of how we use it, and to evaluate if we have bettered our lives/selves/society through these changes, or if we are now worse-off than ever because of these changes.

Once again, I ask myself if I am expecting too much from the kids. But then again, why should I lower my expectations to accommodate them when they will benefit so much more if they can rise to meet them instead?

In other news, we took Abby to her new home last evening. She wasn't happy with the arrangement and we felt like we betrayed her, allowing her to become so comfortable in our house, then pushing her away to live in an orphanage, so to speak. Hope she can find a more permanent home with nice people to look after her soon. Sigh.

Since yesterday we've accumulated a mass of exam scripts to mark. But it's the last weekend of the June hols so we're having 1 last fling before getting stuck back into our marking loads again.

Went with June to watch Silent Hill. Silent Hill 3 -- the game -- creeped me out but the movie came nowhere close. What a disappointment. The movie tried its best with the use of darkness and fog; deep, steep stairwells; and amazing environmental transformation effects. The music was atmospheric, as were the sound effects; all adding up to a creepy ghost town with some pretty disturbed residents, human and otherwise.

A movie is no game, though. Firstly, we know very well that the protagonist isn't going to die halfway through the movie 'cos that'll be the end of the narrative, right there. Um... you know what I mean, right? In the game, at least there is a sense of danger that your avatar could perish in spectacular fashion, and even though that eventuality simply prompts a reload, you still have to think about possible solutions to get past the hazard to continue the story.

Secondly, in the game, you control the pacing of your avatar. You can take your time to observe the surroundings and take in all the ghastly details, building up a sense of dread about opening the next door or descending a dreary staircase. In the movie you're just rushed through the process, following along, having no say in the decision-making process. It's the difference between a carnival ghost train ride and personally exploring the house with a reputation for being haunted in your neighbourhood.

Thirdly, the game makes you feel almost completely alone and friendless whereas the movie crams in too many other characters who seem to want to help. Not that everyone can be trusted, of course, but generally the movie loses the sense of isolation that might have been another fear to exploit.

The monsters in the movie are also quite disappointing. Well, they weren't all that scary in the game either. They were just obstacles to get through to the next objective, but still... The zombie nurses in the game put my nerves on edge, mostly because of their disjointed, misshapen bodies and their disturbing, shuffling gait. But the nurses in the movie have to be played by real people, and they got what looked like a company of modern dance performers to imitate the movement of their game counterparts. Unfortunately, I saw the dancers, not the movement, so another highly anticipated thrill lost.

As in many other horror stories, it's the people that are the real monsters. Fanatic, extreme, self-righteous, conformist, sheep-like human beings that do really nasty things to other people because of their differences. In that respect, at least, the movie got it right.

Some bits also probably censored for the NC-16 rating. The censors with their sharp scissors are the scariest of all.

Oh, my. Vacation's over already. 4 weeks blew by just like that and tomorrow it's back to the old grind again.

In Bali (and I suppose in many other parts of the world too) the kids take their exams first, then they enjoy their holidays. Here in Singapore, we let the kids have their holiday first so that they can use the time to study for their exam which we administer as soon as they come back to school. Pragmatic till the end, we are.

Hope the kids are ready for GP come daybreak!

Meet Abby. We are temporarily sheltering her while a place is being prepared for her at a home for stray cats in Punggol.

Meantime, we're also hoping someone will adopt her for good. She's already sterilized and uses the sandbox instinctively. She's gentle and affectionate with us, though she doesn't get along well with Kaiser at all. She'll probably have a hard time living with so many other cats at the home.

Any takers?

Just to balance things, Bali wasn't all that terrible, in case you got the wrong idea from my last entry. It was quite a culture shock at first seeing what it means to have tourism as the main source of income for these folks and hence, every tourist becomes a juicy fruit to wring dry. Once we got wise to this pattern of behaviour, we dealt with it and we really did enjoy our stay.

There were nice people around too. Like the free shuttle bus driver who took us back to our hotel anyway, even though we boarded the wrong shuttle by mistake and the route took us in the opposite direction from where we were going. Also the folks in the main establishments smiled at us a lot but didn't try to make over-friendly conversation, thankfully leaving us alone to browse. And once June got the hang of bargaining, she played the game well and we did get some good rapport from the sarong dealers on Jln Pantai Kuta, where the traditional market is located.

And people aside, Bali is really beautiful. The environment varies so much, from beaches both calm and tumultuous; terraced agricultural greenery; grand mountains and great lakes.

We were there to relax, and relax we did: We half-slept in a large sheltered massage bed on a cliff overlooking the Indian Ocean at our hotel in Tanah Lot.

We alternately baked in the sun on the beach in Benoa and dipped in the hotel pool to cool off so many times we lost count of our trips back and forth -- well, I did anyway, June just slept under a large umbrella on the beach.

We got to watch World Cup soccer matches every night on our room TV, or on the big screen in the pub if we wanted.

In the 2 spa sessions we had, we were steamed, skinned, tenderized, basted, marinated and boiled with flowers.

We shopped and we ate... what more could we have asked for on a vacation?

And in any case, we hadn't intended to bring much rupiah back anyway. And we didn't. Mission accomplished!

Got away from it all those past few days with no computer and no Internet. And, strangely enough, no withdrawal symptoms either. I was vacationing in Bali, and though I said we didn't need a plan, maybe we should have had one anyway.

My impressions of Bali:

The people have one staple diet -- radish & sotong soup. The radishes are usually those just fallen off the radish truck while the sotong are simply blur. And they get eaten for breakfast unless they get smart, fast.

There is an unquiet desperation for the tourist dollar in Bali. hawkers and street vendors are everywhere, all asking to know where you're from, and most try to make civil chit-chat until you realize that they have something to sell -- some decorative nonsense, or the promise of the adventure of a lifetime, or a sight you'll never see again and if you haven't seen it, you haven't been to Bali. Some vendors aren't even that civil; they crowd around you, blocking off all possible polite exits and shove their wares in your face, while undercutting each other 's prices to entice a deal.

It's sad 'cos they destroy what would otherwise be a scene of breathtaking beauty. For example, the rice terrace and the view of Lake Batur that our cab stopped at on our day-tour we couldn't wait to leave because of the vendors who effectively cut off the scenery while they surrounded us. It's even sadder that there doesn't seem to be anything else they could be doing to make a decent living.

Most of the attractions, even public parks, require some entrance fee and even the ancient Besakih temples required a donation (US$7 per pax recommended) for a guided tour.

Some vendors go so far as to simply be plain dishonest, like the lady who insisted I buy a sarong or I wouldn't be allowed to visit the temple. So, sotong that I was, I bought the sarong she wrapped around my waist at a price that would have allowed her to retire after lunch. It turned out that as long as I wore jeans (which I was wearing at the time) I would have had no conflict with the dress code anyway.

There was this little kid at the Besakih temple who placed a small flower on June's pouch and refused to take it back. He kept chanting, "gimme money" repeatedly and kept following us until our guide advised us to put the flower on the ground and walk on.

Then there was this jolly cab driver whom we engaged to take us from Kuta to our hotel in Benoa. He engaged us in loud conversation and offered to show us where we could see a beautiful sunset "near our hotel" so we said, "ok," as long as it was on the way. It wasn't, and we had to pay an entrance fee to go in, and the cab driver encouraged us to go explore and take photos, though it was nowhere near sunset yet. And he kept his meter running all the while. AND as we were still unfamiliar with the denominations of Indonesian currency then, we seriously overpaid him his fare and he didn't return any change to us. This we discovered only on hindsight when June suddenly wondered why she was so short of cash.

These people really got fat on June the radish and me the sotong, but these experiences hardened our hearts to all street vendors and cab drivers from then on. We said, "no," a lot, and many times we didn't see anybody, we didn't hear anybody and we just kept walking. June made it a point to bargain for everything and we faithfully counted our money and our change till it became a little embarrassing.

And, no, we weren't impressed with the local food either. The decent places to eat were just as expensive as fast food, the menu items didn't seem to offer much variety; and the cheap places to eat would have qualified for a stunt on "Fear Factor." No thanks.

The really sad thing is, we didn't mind spending more on established businesses and multinationals. We couldn't bargain these rates but we happily forked over our hard-earned savings to them anyway. I guess if there's a product or service we want, we're the type to go get it without the provider's effort. But if there's something offered to us that we don't want, no amount of persuasion is going to make us feel good about paying for it. And so our tourist dollar still goes into the hands of the corporations, and away from the hands of the locals whom we were there to "help out" in the first place.

I have photos, of course. A whopping 80+ I've uploaded that mostly tell the tale of our travels. The slideshow takes a while to load, so please be patient. Click.

Bali beckons. Departing on a Valuair flight in the late afternoon, arriving at a destination neither of us know anything about, apart from a quick flip through a travel guide or two. No plan, just our flight schedule and hotel bookings, no idea what we're going to be doing once we get there. Actually, that's all the plan we need. We're on vacation!

JY's mom's wake was in the void deck of her HDB block. By her tradition, JY couldn't leave the area while the wake was in session, because the immediate family of the deceased had to keep replacing the big joss stick whenever it looked close to burning out. This meant that JY spent 2 nights straight in the void deck, only taking a couple of hours break in between to rest.

June and I joined her late last night to keep her spirits up. We brought the 'X-men' Monopoly set that June had bought for me a couple of birthdays ago, along with other games and reading materials in preparation for a long night.

It was the first opportunity to tear open the Monopoly set, and the 3 of us enjoyed a silly, not completely by-the-rules game all the way till about 0400 hrs this morning. By then, we were all drained so JY went to sleep in her uncle's car which he had kindly parked just in front of the void deck, and we went home.

We rejoined her at about noon for the procession to the crematorium. There was a simple cermony for the closing of the casket, during which JY had to focus on her mom instead of on her guests and well-wishers, and... well, it was clear she missed her mom a lot.

It was the same at the crematorium. The ceremony seemd designed to alternate between procedure -- routine behaviourial response -- and moments of silence and stillness for reflection and personal emotional response. The balance between the 2 responses helps the bereaved deal with the loss and brings closure at the same time.

JY, you've had a really trying ordeal to get through and you've had to be strong all the way. We won't be around next week, we'll be in Bali, but you have no shortage of friends who will be there for you. Hope you get some rest soon, and try to enjoy what's left of your vacation. Let's go 'blading again soon, ok?