Oliver Stone's "World Trade Center" calls to mind Taily's question: "What is the worth of a blade of grass?" In the awful carnage that occured on the day that changed the world, Stone focuses his attention on just 2 police officers trapped in the rubble.

McLaughlin and Jimeno, 2 of 5 volunteers who swallow their fear and venture forward to assist in the evacuation of the towers. But here's the thing: before they even have had a chance to help anyone, the sky has already fallen on their heads and they lie buried 20 feet below visible light.

Stone ignores the major tragedy and loss of life and keeps our attention on the efforts of the two men who though separated and out of sight of each other keep each other alive by exchanging stories about their loved ones.

When word gets out that the two are still alive, the news mobilizes whole battalions of emergency and rescue personnel. Though only a few men can actually work on extricating them, due to the tight confines they are trapped in, when they each finally break the surface, the welcome they get from the hundreds of PD and FD volunteers is overwhelmingly tremendous. Everyone is just so happy to see them alive, and anxious for them to return home to their families.

Only 20 people got pulled out alive from the wreckage in which nearly 3,000 perished. Jimeno and MacLaughlin were numbers 18 and 19. But as in the story of the lost sheep, there is great rejoicing when the single lost sheep has been found.

What's the value of a blade of grass? Taken out of context, it means nothing. But when we connect its roots to the field it belongs in, it's true value is actually quite astonishing.

Horrid haze hangs heavy.
Hostile heat harms historical habitats.
Hacking, heaving; holding hanky handy.
Hope heaven hastily halts haughty human hubris.
Health, hurry! Hie hither home!

It's the mooncake festival tonight, and I've taken my 2 nephews down to the playground to bask in the light of the full moon. So many other kids down here with us, swinging their lanterns and sparklers. Some are busy trying to set the playground on fire with such arrangements of candles as are usually seen on a psycho's shrine to the object of his obsession.

Apparently, amongst all this lunacy, traditional Chinese scholars are meant to drink tea and compose poetry. That explains the few lines above that begin today's entry. Yes, it's supposed to be poetry. And it's about current affairs too.

So there.

What is, "family"? Family is a beat-up old VW bus. The horn is broken and sounds intermittently, attracting all kinds of embarassing attention. The clutch is broken so it needs to be push-started, everyone putting their weight behind the machine until the starter can kick in and 3rd gear can be forced into engaging. Since the bus is now on the move, it has to be boarded one at a time on the run.

The first few times this process occurs, it's a mess of coordination, and getting moving seems pretty touch and go. But on further repetition, a system slowly emerges and eventually it becomes smoother and smoother, almost effortless.

A family may be completely dysfunctional, comprising every manner of misfit who can't even get along with their own closest kin. But the nature of the family is to bind people together as one, whatever friction is generated between its members. And when 1 family member is threatened, all differences get set aside and the family faces the threat together.

Whatever am I talking about? I must say no more or I might just spoil the fun when you go watch Little Miss Sunshine. This movie would've passed under my radar if Shah didn't highly recommend it. She wasn't wrong, and now I'm highly recommending it too! Whaddaya waiting for? Go!

With regard to yesterday's entry, on 2nd reading it does rather seem pessimistic, as Mei has pointed out. I actually meant it to be read in a positive light, and I'm glad that Mei did fill in the blanks for me in her comments.

Let me expand on what she said. Y'see, by the time we've completed our undergrad studies, we've actually just had a glimpse into the known areas of work done in our disciplines. Our undergrad degree acknowledges that we have the necessary grounding to then start work on the unknown areas outside the borders of our current knowledge. That piece of paper we work so hard for is our licence qualifying us to explore beyond; to apprehend the unknowable; to distill new understanding; and to communicate our newfound knowledge to others; and thereby make our own meagre contribution to the sum total of human knowledge, taking us one more step closer towards a more unifying Wisdom [KIds, pay attention here].

Most people these days are content to take their undergrad qualifications as proof of their ability to slave away for some corporate entity for the rest of their days. They undermine all the work they've put into their studies by taking this attitude, but that's the nature of our employment market. Forget your airy-fairy dreams, people gotta eat!

But those who know the true meaning of their qualification and accept the responsibility therein are ready to take their toe out of the ocean and immerse their whole selves into it instead. The unknown is obviously scary, but it is also a source of great freedom and exhileration as well. Too bad that the ocean is so vast, but there are so few explorers to help chart it.

Why am I working with Education? Because I'm in the business of training explorers of the unknown. It's difficult because many of my students see a more pragmatic end to their studies. Often, we seem to be working at cross-purposes. Still, for every batch I get a Mei, a Faith and a Taily. That's what keeps me going.

As we move closer to the 'A' Levels, our J2s are very much aware that they are approaching a big hurdle they have to clear before they can move on to the next stage in their education process. But while their eyes focus on the obstacle itself and how insurmountable it seems, how many of them have thought about what awaits them on the other side?

It takes 12 years of schooling on average to qualify as an undergrad. Within that time, how much knowledge in our basic disciplines -- language, math, the sciences, aesthetics -- have we already crammed into our minds in order to just sit for our entrance exams? Well, from our J2s' perspective, a lot. The endless late nights beating their heads on page after page of textbook material and lecture note scraps, and bits of tutorials they're still trying to make some sense of; while the X-box is mouldering away in the living-room (though Dad the dinosaur still dusts it off occasionally to play Tetris on).

All this sacrifice, we hope, gets us into our first tutorial room as a freshman at the uni. If we've made it this far, we've got to remember how smart we have had to be to get here. A moment of pride is justified.

However, within the 3-4 years of study till the time we receive our undergrad degree, we will learn only 1 lesson, and it will be the most important one we will ever learn in our lives. That lesson we will remember, as we step up to shake the Dean's hand, is that everything we've learned in our now 15-16 years of study add up to a staggering sum total of absolutely nothing.

The receipt of our degree is a humbling occasion rather than a proud moment. It's the time we actually see the vast ocean of knowledge for what it is, and we are finally convinced that what we know amounts to less than a drop in that ocean.

If we have learned this lesson, we are firmly placed on the path of wisdom, and our Education has actually meant something. But if we we think that receiving that piece of paper shows the world how smart we are, then I'm sorry to say that we've wasted our time.

I feel very challenged right now. Tomorrow first thing in the morning I'll have a lecture hall almost all to myself, and I'm to talk about 3 of the essay questions that we used in the prelims. Talking about 3 essays isn't the problem per se. But talking about 3 questions within the time limit that I've been given is going to be quite a feat.

At my usual rate, I'm like 1 hour per essay question (for someone as shy, quiet and retiring as me, I hog more mike time than I am usually aware of). Tomorrow I'll have to keep it down to about 20 minutes max per question. Maybe I should get someone to ding a bell or something for me?

I'm starting to realise that I get too anal about content and then I'm yammering on and on, layering more material than the kids can deal with. I mean, it's impressive and all, but all the kids need is just the bare-bones argument structure. Then they can fill in their own content as is relevant to the question.

Ultimately, it isn't about the content. It's about being able to have an opinion about the issue/s the question raises and being able to defend that opinion rationally and reasonably. That's it.

OK, something to bear in mind while I continue to prepare my lecture...

So Faith asks the $64,000 question: Why did I come back? If only we could discern the secret to bringing home our diaspora, our government wouldn't have to be so worried.

Unfortunately, there's nothing to be learnt from my experience. Well, nothing relevant to the government's problem, anyway. The truth is, I have a very bad habit. When I get to the top of my game, I become very reluctant to move on. I don't want to change level, and I don't want to change the game either. Physicists call this tendency, "inertia." It's a great asset that keeps a body in motion, but it's a terrible liability when the body comes to rest.

After achieving an academic qualification I had never thought I was capable of, my reason for being away from home ceased to exist. In my remaining days out there, I was supposed to find employment to qualify for a work permit. But I wasn't ready to make the transition to employment so soon after my recent brush with success. Getting a job meant I'd have to get back on the ground floor and work my way up again. How painful is that?

Thing is, by not making that choice to go to work, the days slowly bled away on my student visa, and eventually I got kicked out of the paradise I had come to love. Stupid. Stupid Stupid. Lazy. Stupid.

Still, if you asked me today whether I have ever wanted to go back, I'd have to honestly say, "no." Location isn't the major factor as to where we choose to settle. Location is important, but human beings don't always choose based on logic alone. The friendships and the relationships I've formed here since I returned are stronger than glue. It's because of the people around me that's how I know I am where I am supposed to be. I am home.

Feel free to barf now.

When I left home at the age of 22 to study overseas, I left feeling I HAD to leave because I was neither wanted nor valued here. My academic achievments were worth less than nothing. At the age when my schoolmates were going to work with high expectations (it was the boom period of the late '80s), I was still the proud holder of only a rudimentary 'O' level cert, with the job prospects of a [insert whatever your mother lamented your fate would be when you got 97/100 marks here].

From the airport, I was determined to make a better life for myself out there. I had my ticket to ride and there was the possibility that, hey, maybe I would never have to come back again! Promises, promises.

I spent nearly 5 years living in a time zone exactly 12 hours apart from my point of origin, literally on the other side of the earth. And I'd be lying if I said I missed home. What was there to miss? Family? But I was independent, free, to go where I wanted, do what I liked, whenever I liked, buy whatever I wanted, with no one to answer to but myself. Food? I was surrounded by such a variety of food from all over the world, with way cooler places to eat it in too.

The grass in the park didn't induce itching, the weather didn't encourage sticky sweatiness (except in late summer), the people were friendlier and more used to seeing strangers than they are here. There were sports teams we could really root for and scream our lungs out for (go, Jays!!!), and when the Jays won 2 back-to-back championships in 92-93, I learned what pride really felt like. You get the idea. I never wanted it to end.

Today, I've been living back home for nearly 3 times the length of my stint overseas. Ironically, I've spent about half that time working with the social institution that caused me to leave in the first place: Education. Funny how life turns out.

Reflection prompted by today's ST article on the 'Singapore diaspora'.

Lost Olly today. Just like that, upped and left for the poly. Sigh. Well, good luck, m'boy and may you find better success where you're going!

Got an unexpected call from Will, saying he has finally compiled the footage of my last major performance with MU. That performance was 4 years ago already. How time flies.

This evening we dropped in on MU ostensibly to collect the DVD from Will, but also to sit in on our last rehearsal together, for the last show we'll be performing together. Though I say, "we," June and I will be in the audience this Saturday instead of being in the show itself.

It's the last show because we're closing shop end of this year. Our key members are committed to their work here locally (like me for example), while a couple of us are headed overseas to LA and Paris, and there's not enough critical mass left to keep the group together.

Still, as Tina sort of suggested, the company has fulfilled it's purpose, providing us with training and exposure and now, we're free to go independent and explore the world on our own. It's a GOOD parting.

Genting is bidding to install THIS as part of their plans for the IR on Sentosa?

It's about bloody time! Trash rationality and whatever bleeding-heart arguments about conserving the natural environment, moralistic pontification about the ills of casino gambling, yadda, yadda, yadda...! For my own personal pleasure and selfish desires -- barring any other offer for an even bigger, better, faster 'coaster park -- they've got my vote!

Who's with me on this one? Say, "Hulk, yeah!!!"

We in the staff room have always been indignant of the staff appraisals we have to sit through every so often. We think of them as a "corporate American" idea that puts undue pressure on us and pits us in unhealthy competition against each other to attain the best personal ranking at the end of the year.

This potentially divisive but mandatory exercise in worst case scenarios could lead to backstabbing, theft of ideas and innovations from others, a disruption of trust amongst people who need to work together as a team, leading to a survival-of-the-fittest scramble for the top. Doesn't seem like a healthy environment to bring kids up in, does it?

But Stossel, in "Myths, Lies and Downright Stupidity," is forcing me to have another look at competition and what it does for the consumer. John Stossel is a free-market advocate, and speaks out against government control policies in the US economy. Indeed, the amount of meddling that goes on there that he exposes makes them look like hypocrites when they criticize us for our state-planned economy.

OK, granted that if such a book were written here about our government, there'd be a general consensus to treat it with suspicion, disdain and contempt as we do with Mr Chee and his publications. But Stossel's critique of the US government has nothing to do with us, right?

Anyway, back to our topic of competition. Market forces, Stossel believes, are the answer to pretty much everything that's going wrong in his country. If the market is free to apply Adam Smith's "invisible hand" the US would get the best solutions to poverty, hunger, gender equality, human rights, healthcare, and, yes, education as well. But instead, government controls and regulation kill competition and makes these problems worse than ever.

Competition is good because it forces people to improve and innovate, in order to provide goods and services to consumers at either better prices or some other value-added incentive. The consumer will always benefit because of the choices there are available on the market. Those who aren't chosen go out of business (tough) but the consumer benefits from getting the best value for money every time. In this economic model, if we put the consumer first, then everything supposedly will fall into place.

What if we applied this theory to our own education system as well? How much better would I perform, knowing that if I failed to deliver the goods I'd be immediately replaced by a young tyke eager to earn his stripes? How much more would I be motivated to innovate, to prepare my lessons better, to be more well-read and knowledgeable, to make my lessons more fun and engaging, if I knew the students could choose between boring ol' me or some other less socially inept teacher instead?

Frankly, I'm afraid to know the answer. But it does put the appraisal into another perspective.

Wonder if this idea would apply if we made things more competitive for the students too? Would they be falling over themselves to be more diligent and turn in better work on time? Ok, let's not get carried away.

For goodness sake, people, stop abandoning your pets! Driving towards Yishun dam we saw a small shape crawling across the road. It was a tortise and it looked lost and disorientated. Cars and huge trucks occasionally whizz by along that stretch and it was a prime candidate for road-kill if we didn't do something.

Fortunately, it wasn't a busy road (which is why people tend to speed here), so I pulled over to the road shoulder. June performed the rescue, plucking the tortise off the asphalt. She said that it was trapped between the kerbs on both sides of the road and could never have climbed to safety without assistance.

But what to do with it? To release it back on either side of Yishun dam would be counter-productive. Too full of people, too many cars and trucks, and water so deep it could drown. So we drove him deeper towards Seletar Camp where there is a little water feature that extends out of the golf course there. There's tall grass, shallow water, water-lillies and tiny fish swimming around, and there we left it.

Hopefully, no one will disturb it there.

Actually, what we did wasn't much better than what its original owners did. It's still very cruel to abandon a pet into the wild. There are too many unknown factors to know what the impact of a new organism will be on an existing ecosystem. The risk of damage or destruction to either one is very high. We tried to salvage what was a certain fatality, and under the circumstances that was the best solution we could think of.

Don't make us have to make decisions like that again. If you're thinking of abandoning your pet for whatever reason, stop it! Bad human! Go to your corner! Don't make me go over there...!

The Singapore Dream is still pretty much like the American Dream of the '50s. If you work hard enough now, one day you'll have accumulated enough wealth so that you won't ever have to work again. Then you can retire, live out the rest of your days in a big house, drive a big car, ad nauseum.

We've all heard this tale before. This myth is our defining characteristic as Singaporeans, our national identity. We can't tell stories of ourselves without using it as the overarching theme, or the central tenet. "Singapore Dreaming" is no exception.

Like many of its predecessors, Mr and Mrs Goh's tale reminds us that beneath the successful, sparkly-clean, luxuriant veneer that we like to show off to our foreign guests and visitors, there are still people for whom the dream hasn't yet become reality.

But the daily grind is our reality, with its physical and psychological pressures at work and emotional stresses at home, particularly for those of us who face an ever-widening gap between our experience our expectations.

Every character in the movie has a failed dream, a dashed hope. Whether it's wedded bliss, parental approval, or material comfort (even if not wealth), these aspirations remain elusive to them.

Only Pa (Richard Low) makes it in the end, sent off in style at a lavish funeral. In effigy, Pa is swimming in hell money, surrounded by paper models of opulence, all consigned to the flames for him to enjoy in the afterlife. As we watch the paper mansion burn and collapse into a heap of ashes, we have to ask ourselves if that's all there is to look forward to in life. Well, at least Pa died with his Dreams fulfilled. The rest of his family still have the rest of their lives to fulfil theirs.

Though Seng got what he deserved in the end, even he has my sympathy. It isn't easy being the One everyone pins their hopes on to raise the family name a notch up the social ladder. It's the life of the fatted calf -- given the best of everything while the rest of the family skimps and saves on themselves, knowing that at some point he will have to pay everything back twofold or more. Seng isn't seen so much as a person, but rather as a family asset with an unrealistically high return on investment (ROI). Even at the funeral, Seng still has to follow his father's path, unable to break away and chase after his girlfriend, Irene, whom he loves(?) and owes so much to, who is leaving him.

So even here in luxuriant, opulent Singapore, life sucks. But the PRC beer girl (NBS, the role was made for you!) makes an interesting counterpoint. Singaporeans passively wallow in their suffering only seeing the hopelessness of life. We give up our dreams so that we can make money. She, on the other hand is willing to suffer to make money so that she can realise her Dream someday. With that kind of attitude, no wonder China is on the rise while we appear more hopeless and helpless every day.

Although Mr Goh has a regular funny column in the Sunday papers, and a funny web identity talking his cock on Singaporean issues, the movie isn't a comedy. The plot is tight and tense, events winding the characters up towards their breaking points. So, will the family remain intact through it all? Telling would be spoiling. Haha.

My current booklist.

Picked up the Clarkson and the Stossel this evening at Kino. The others, I've only read a chapter or two from each over the past few months. Nothing to be proud of.

Oh well, at least I have something to look forward to doing when the December break rolls around.

Is it just me, or has GM food gone a little too far? 

Confirmation that for me, crime doesn't pay. Took a chance at not using a parking coupon at dinner thinking we wouldn't be parking for long. Right on cue, just as we we were about to cross the street back to M2 to drive off, the Auntie in the big hat popped up and slipped a ticket under the windscreen wiper.

Dinner: $6. Parking fine: $30. Learning that I'll never be able to get away with it, ever: Priceless. Dammit.

All the more ironic because earlier in the afternoon, Amy had said how fed up she was with people parking illegally in the parking lot where she lives. Guess I should'a taken the hint.

Am beginning to suspect that only 1 law applies to my existence: Murphy's.

Just finished marking this essay question: "Man is at his best in times of crisis. Discuss." If you understood how basic grammar works, you'd know that the focus of the essay is not "crisis," like several candidates had erroneously supposed.

The focus of the essay runs parallel to the SUBJECT of the given statement, and not the PREDICATE. What's the subject? The NOUN, "man," is a big hint. It's about man (in the non-gender neutral form that Cambridge apparently prefers), but what about him? The VERB, "is (at his best)," is the other hint. We're discussing Man being at his best, or, the Best of Man.

But this discussion will fill up volumes of encyclopaedia unless we set a context. In this case, the parameters fall within the scope of the PHRASE, "in times of crisis," which forms the PREDICATE of the given statement.

What follows, therefore, should be a discussion of the kinds of qualities that crisis brings out of us; an evaluation as to whether these qualities do indeed constitute our "best" attributes (best of what, exactly?); and perhaps some thought as to why and how these qualities become most obvious under stress, duress and imminent danger.

We could observe that people respond very differently from each other when facing crisis, and our best qualities don't always come to the fore. Depending on how people respond to crisis, they will be either victims, villains, or heroes. We villify self-serving, personal advantage-taking responses; we glorify and encourage selfless, generous, uniting kinds of responses; and... we light candles for the victims. It is in our memory, in hindsight and in the retelling of these crises as stories that we choose to highlight the best behaviour observed as an example for others to emulate in the face of other crises to come. And also, perhaps to delude ourselves on how noble we are as a species.

To focus the essay on listing the different kinds of responses we might observe from a range of different kinds of crises and suggest that we tend to "do our best" to overcome them just doesn't quite measure up to the full requirements of the question. Can pass, lah; but so-so only.

A tip for those of you taking your GP 'AO' this year: pay attention to your GRAMMAR so you can be certain of your focus of your essay. It'll make a difference to your grades. Trust me.

Spent last evening at a bbq with June's colleagues for a change. I'm now convinced that despite English being touted as our language of business, the real lingua franca for the Singaporean office is Mandarin.

All the more I appreciate June for being able to relate so well with my colleagues. Between the 2 of us, I tend to be the less adaptable -- not meaning just language-wise but also simply in meeting new people in a social context.

It wasn't a disaster, though. I didn't embarass either her or myself for one thing; and for another, I did rather enjoy chomping down June's curry chicken, toasting marshmallows on the embers and horrifying people by eating raw champignons-on-a-stick. Great. I sound like the little kid in the corner who has a "problem".

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.