The car stays home today. I'm taking public transport into town; yep, cutting class to attend a course at the National Library. No way am I shelling out for ERP and whole day parking downtown. Gonna join the rest of humanity jostling our way through the bus and subway system enroute to and from work. Should be setting off in the next few minutes. It'll be like old times again.

For once, Drama Night has a proper performing venue. This despite having convinced ourselves that the only available venue was back in LT4. But because it became possible to share the stage with a concurrent production, this year we get to tread the boards of SRT. Yes!

Went with Mel and Steph to recce the site. We looked at the stage, backstage, changing rooms, and we're pretty sure the kids will give extra oomph to match the glam factor of performing in a professional theatre. No doubt we have to share the morning show's set and lights, but we're adaptable.

Now the thing is whether we can produce a show worthy of the space. Steph's piece should be well in hand, given her experience in directing, but I'm still kind'a antsy about mine. Today's rehearsal at least showed some of my ideas are feasible, and that I do have a core set of actors to build the show on. We're off to a slow start, but at least we're starting to move.

The South Koreans see that proficiency in English is essential for staying competitive in this world. We've known that all along, making English one of our official languages. South Korea wants to start teaching English classes in English -- a bit late in the game, since we have already implemented this revolutionary innovation since granddad's time. And yet so many of the essays and assignments I've received for marking only just approach the quality of perhaps the harder working students in ESL class. Grammar, syntax, paragraph construction, vocabulary, convey some basic sense of the subject in question, but because of frequent poor expression it all sounds like I'm being reached out to by some rudimentary intelligence rather than the erudite seekers of answers that the students are supposed to be.

Making English an "official language" may actually have the drawback of allowing our people to settle into complacency about it. It's an official language, therefore whatever vernacular we use must therefore be good enough, collect or not? When it comes to spoken English, we have the attitude that when in S'pore speak as the S'poreans do. As long as can unnerstan', can awreddy, w'at!

It's also a pride thing. S'poreans speak Singlish. It's our identity, our heritage and our proudest export to the rest of the Commonwealth. C'mon, lah! We not kentang or banana; wanna be so Ang Mor for what? Speak "proper" English in school and be labeled a Western wannabe, a freakshow, an object of ridicule and contempt. This probably happens in most neighbourhoods and families as well, so there's little encouragement to learn more than what passes for basic comprehension.

It's little surprise then that our students find difficulty expressing themselves in public. The brand of English they use is obviously inappropriate for formal discourse, and naturally, it's easy to develop an inferiority complex coming face-to-face with others who have a stronger command of the language. This lack of confidence is more pronounced in the colleges ranked below our mythical "top 5" JCs. They are "top 5" because their students use a higher level of English that allows them to access, digest and discuss higher level reading material. Those kids thrive on, and are stimulated by stuff that would put their lesser peers to sleep. They get to be the future brains, bureaucrats and insensitive policy-makers, while the majority of their cohort get by with their daily grind and complain how unfair life is.

I daresay the English teachers we have on campus are among the world's best. We have an oyster for every student who passes through our classes, but few of them actually reach out and take what is rightfully theirs. The rest rather slog away at more concrete subjects like the sciences and math, but they forget what language medium they receive such instruction in. That's like sweating it out making bricks, but without the cement of English to bind all the brick fragments together, they'll never be able to build a house. And they wonder why their lives are so hard.

"The private English education market is estimated to be worth about US$15.8 billion (S$22 billion) a year, fuelled by families who spend an average of 700,000 won a month on their children, according to the Samsung Economic Research Institute." That's a lot of moolah to be shared by those of us who can teach English. Perhaps we should put some thought into getting a piece of that action and be paid by people who can appreciate what we have to offer.

Women are such incredible motivators for men to do great things. Or if not, then to just get off their lazy butts and do constructive things with their lives. It's sort of biologically hardwired in us guys that women have to be impressed, and so we scramble to make ourselves more outstanding, to prove we can provide, to otherwise jump up and down, wave out arms and yell, "Pick me! Pick me!"

But over time, guys discovered the online world, and they have started overwriting their biological programming with Internet code. It's something of a revolution. They're tired of women pushing them around, making them jump through hoops, and saddling them with irrational domestic responsibilities at the prime of their lives. No longer are guys content to be willing victims, sacrificing themselves to the altar of the preying mantis / black widow sisterhood. Guys have finally found a way to turn their backs on hormonal tyranny and return to what nature intended them to be: slacking, unwashed neanderthals, as they "huddle together and have fun" for the rest of their parents' lives. The Internet: the saviour of MANkind, fancy that!

Boys. Heh, what do they know? All it takes is one woman to be firm enough, who will reach out, grab and drag the unwary guy home by the ear to reactivate the biological imperative again. For me, I believe that when June decided to take me home, reality split in two. In one reality, June never appeared in my life and I'm still the 'home boy' that I was more than a decade ago. But in this reality, I have a great wife, a home of my own, an interesting job, a decent income AND I still have the Internet to regress to when I feel like it.

Women are great motivators. Men are easy prey.

You'd think Maui was totally sedate, the way he curls up to sleep...

but he's also got real guts staring down Kaiser like this.

There's more testosterone flowing through my house than ever before.

Maui launches a surprise attack.

The boys play "King of the Hill"

Year of the rat notwithstanding, the new kitten rulez!

Maui takes a swipe , but the teddy bear's reflexes are just too fast.

Mom? You in there?

Cover me! I'm going in!

For the second year running, we had our clan reunion dinner at Ban Leong Wah Hoe, Casuarina. The food portions were as generous as always: from our three tables, we collected several containers worth of leftovers to take away.

The clan reconvened at Aunt L's to carry out our traditional Chinese familial duties. This year, the game was Bingo, with Aunt L particularly anxious to put her brand-new lottery ball tumbler to good use. Won a little, lost more; but it was for a good cause. The family that plays together, stays together...though not necessarily in the same house.

Happy year of the rat!

Our little newcomer is making Q-tip a little uneasy. June's officially calling him Maui, and while he's adjusting to his new environment, we're devoting a lot of time and attention to him to make him feel safe and welcome.

Q-tip's a little jealous of this new addition competing for our time, so she's temporarily abandoned her usual reserve and reticence to hang out longer with us in the living room. Or else she's frequently hovering within our peripheral vision just to make sure we remember that we still have a dog in the house.

It'll be a delicate balancing game of dealing with Q-tip's insecurities and Maui's demands for attention, but I believe June and I are pretty fair with our pets. One more shouldn't disrupt our routine too much. I know we'll adapt and manage.

"If you save someone's life, you become responsible for that life." I can't verify this quote anywhere, but I'll take it to be true anyway. Hence, I have a new member in my family: this four-week old kitten, as yet unnamed.

It happened when we took Mimi to the vet for her shot and a follow-up exam of her recent allergy attack. I found this little guy sitting atop the car in front of mine in the parking lot. No way he could have got up there by himself, and I can't bear to think what would have happened to him if later the car drove off with him still on top.

I couldn't put him back on the street either 'cos the cars were passing by so close to the slip of a sidewalk, the only place I could have put him on. So it looks like he's gonna be my third cat despite the resistance I've put up over the years not to have more than two.

He's tiny now, and so fragile, though Kasey gave him a clean bill of health. But his paws tell me he's got great growth potential. We got him some milk, a personal sandbox to suit his size, and recycled a sleeping basket for his comfort. He hates being left alone right now, so I let him fall asleep on my stomach before transferring him to his basket.

He's the smallest ball of fur we've ever picked up. He's just awakened again so now he's sharing my office chair as I'm typing. I can't help it. I want him to know that as long as I'm around, I'll protect him and keep him safe, come what may.

Hmm... hope he'll be ok when June and I go to work tomorrow.

The militants responsible for blowing up the pet market in Baghdad have finally made a statement about how far removed they are from the rest of normal human society. The weapon: bomb vests strapped on mentally disabled women (though I don't know how the militants mentally disabled the women... probably through endless repetition of boring militant rhetoric). The detonator: a cell phone. The target: pets -- kitties, doggies, monkeys (actually, these shouldn't be kept as pets), birds, and the kids who throng the market every week looking for an animal they can shower their budding affection on. And the regular joes, shmoes, and janes taking their families out on a weekend jaunt, the usual IED fodder.

Don't know what's up with them militants. It's fine if they blow themselves up 'cos there'll be less of them in the world, but they aren't even doing that now. They're detonating bombs by remote control showing that cynical as they are about life, they do feel that there is at least one life worth saving: their own.

If we look through their eyes, this is what we'll probably see: Women have attractive qualities so they make good bait to draw as many as possible into the kill zone. The mentally disabled are of no use to anyone and are probably carrying the curse of the Almighty anyway, so no loss there, and no backchat either. The cell phone to them is not a device for getting to know people but to communicate their miscreant tendencies instead. The poor shlubs who got blown up , well, the more the merrier, and the stronger the statement that nobody matters in this petty vendetta of theirs. And the animals? People seem to care more for the four-legged beasties that serve neither as labour nor food than for the militants themselves and their pitiful cause, so they deserve to get blown up too.

That's it, then. There's no one left that they would want to share this world with. So why don't we just offer them a nice asteroid for them to inhabit and leave the rest of us alone? A couple of hundred smelly bearded guys squatting on an arid rock floating through the cosmos. After all, if and when they achieve their desired objective, that's still going to be the net result.

It was kinda' fun to self-diagnose my own inner-demons, though the game initially was to source interesting reading material for KI from Psychology Today. I like the articles 'cos they are easy to read, without all the technical gobbledegook that professional shrinks use to euphemise "I haven't the foggiest idea what's wrong with you. Solve your own problems. That'll be $150 for this afternoon's session, thank you!"

The topics make for highly compelling reading: advice on confidence-building, an in-depth look at introversion as a personality trait, how to get over a break-up, taking apart "champions of lost causes" to see what makes them tick (tick, tick, tick, boom!). I could picture myself lounging on a comfy couch as the Doctor probed the deepest, darkest recesses of the cesspit I call my mind with the most impertinent of questions.

Fortunately, my indulgence in an afternoon's worth of pop psychology didn't cost me a cent. I grabbed the couple of issues lying around in the college's library stacks for a free consultation.

For a moment this afternoon, I really wanted to shut down my brain. It was textual overload after a whole day of processing text from a variety of sources: admin forms, news, lecture notes, play script, meeting notes, routine schedules, email.

It was the compulsion that was scary, like being addicted to the stuff: ploughing through one thing, then putting it away and instantly, instinctively, reaching for another. Even when I was trying to rest, I'd naturally gravitate to the library looking for something new to read, or trawl the 'net for news and trivia. My whole world today comprised nothing but text, and nothing but text could fill my world. Seems as if I was trying to occupy my mind though there was nothing there but noise, yet too afraid of the resulting silence if I stopped. Weird.

Let's not do that again. ok?

Teachers are great students, contrary to popular belief. The Civil Defence people came over to teach us staff how to save lives in an emergency, but I also got to see how fantastic lessons are conducted as well.

We ran three modules in one afternoon: fire fighting, CPR and first-aid. They could have been dreadfully dull as they involved us learning procedures for dealing with various types of emergencies, but we had a ball of a time instead.

Some things the trainers did right:
(1) Invoked self-interest -- we saved our lives and those of our friends too
(2) Liberally used self-deprecating humour -- they didn't take themselves or their content too seriously
(3) Delivered only core ideas -- just enough theory for background understanding but not to confuse or bore us
(4) Lots of stories -- we could vividly visualize the situations we had to respond to
(5a) A variety of media -- text and visual...
(5b) A variety of practical activities -- contextual and tactile
(6) Highly participatory, spontaneous presenter-audience interaction -- non-threatening environment giving free-rein to questions and responses from both parties

But most of the enjoyment from this afternoon's session was due to (6). We staff may have been bored and tired, but we were fully participating in the lessons anyway. We asked as many questions as the trainers asked us, we answered questions voluntarily even if we didn't know if our answers were right (we didn't take it personally if we were wrong, sorry B-lo), we threw observations, comments and questions as they occurred to us even if it meant interrupting the presentation. We took every opportunity to engage, sometimes even make the trainer eat his words (like making him confess that Chapter 1 in the Training Manual had some outdated information).

We had a great time, 'cos we wanted to learn, and more importantly, we wanted to play and have fun with the trainers and their programme. That, I think, is already half the battle in creating a lively, constructive learning environment -- the learners themselves having a good reason (whatever it is) for attending class.

Ha! Everything I learned about teaching, I learned from a firefighter.

Kids are left to roam the streets unsupervised during the afternoon hours and dogs have to live in pet hotels costing a monthly bomb of a bill. Sumiko continues acting wistful, pining away for a family with kids of her own to assuage her boring single life. When we connect the dots in today's ST, we're looking at a picture of a people who are lonely even in the midst of company. Is that what life in S'pore is like these days?

While I have little affinity for kids, it does perturb me that of the kids surveyed there were so many left to fend for themselves while the adults were out at work. That they were gormless enough to receive a stranger's advances suggests that they are quite lonely for an adult's attention, especially if the adult treats them as equals and not talk down to them. Kids like being helpful, particularly if it seems to them as if they posess some knowledge the adult does not, like how to get to the MRT station for example. And with all the questions the reporter asked, the kids are quite happy to spill the beans on their personal lives. Who else is there to talk to? Who else has shown them such interest in a while?

On the other end of the spectrum, some people are spending a lot of money making sure their dogs are well taken care of. They can't help it. Our society isn't open enough to tolerate the idea of peaceful mutual coexistence between the species. So by legislation or public censure, we separate companions from each other, and make them pay a hefty penalty if they wish to continue the relationship. I shudder to think what happens to those who can't afford to make such payment, and I'm reasonably sure there are lots more who fall into the latter category than the first.

Even the free-wheeling single, living an independent life, accountable to no one, unencumbered by family responsibilities goes all misty-eyed longing to exchange all that for domestic bliss and its attendant shackles and chains and the promise of a lifetime of hard labour that follows. At least she won't have so much time on her hands that she's "bored out of her mind" over the weekend.

Isn't that the problem? We only want a family on the weekend to keep us occupied and busy. Family isn't so important on weekdays because we already have our hands full with our occupations and businesses. It's fine to let the kids roam the playgrounds on weekdays, we'll make it up to them on the weekends when we pack them off to tuition and ballet class and check on their homework when they come home at night. Oh, by the way, remember to drop in on Fido at the pet hotel on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. We have to hug him and let him know we love him, or he'll have separation anxiety, you know?

Geez. Even I think there's something wrong there.

Am I a "creative"? Is that how people see me? An eccentric with the occasional wild, wacky idea that could potentially turn the world on its head, but fizzles out when I actually try to implement it? Is that why people handle me with kid gloves like as if I was a leaky crate of nitro that could explode at the slightest jolt?

Maybe it's the image I have been projecting for myself, so I'm not really doing myself any favours there. If I was a crate of nitro, I'd still much rather make a detonation that will help people build a railway or something useful rather than leak away neglected and forgotten in some secure bunker kept safe for some future contingency that will never happen.

If people want the best out of what I have to offer, they have to engage me, and not just assume that I know what I'm doing. Kellaway's FT article on managing creatives makes a lot of practical sense, assuming I am some kind of "creative". Sure, I get weird ideas sometimes. I may get idealistic, and do things my own way. I shake things up, buck trends... but only within my own limited sphere of influence, which realistically amounts to nothing at all.

While I'm grateful that people generally leave me to my own devices, I get precious little feedback and even less guidance as I trailblaze my path to parts unknown. So although my bumper sticker may read "Don't follow me, I don't know where I'm going!", it'd be great to have a co-pilot or even a backseat driver to help me evaluate what I did before, and discuss what it is I'm about to do next.

I don't need multiple leather sofas backstage like Streisand, though a little praise would be nice. But I also need a boot up the butt from time to time as motivation to improve or work harder on turning concepts into reality. And being able to see things from beyond my own warped perspective will be a major plus.

No one creates in vacuum.

Killerzyph interviewed me for an article in the next NYconnex, something about featuring various staff members to show we have lives beyond hectoring students all day. Trade secret: Actually, we just return to our closets in a hidden underground facility in the campus basement where we get deactivated, then brought out again to walk among the living when the sun rises the next morning. Heh, if only.

We talked about mime and busking, which I don't do anymore, and about my goals for drama now that I've moved back to the only place where I really know what I'm doing. Except this year I've been so out of touch, I am freaking out at the edges wondering how to bring a Eunuch Admiral back to life again by Drama Night.

I owe a lot to my training in mime, and not just for my appreciation in the aesthetics of the theatre. Being primarily a kinesthetic learner, I discovered through mime a movement-based language that I could use to understand abstract concepts better. The movement doesn't have to be physical, it can take place in my imagination, though occasionally my hands or fingers may twitch, echoing the thought I'm processing at the time.

It's hard to explain how a "movement-based language" works. However, I assure you that there there is no white-face painted street performer that's producing the movement in my imagination. The movement sort of exists on its own. There. Now I sound like a raving lunatic.

The point I was hoping to get at in killerzyph's interview was that all of us need to train in some form of discipline and get real good at it. I'm talking about non-academic disciplines that involve making things (like an art, craft or music) or doing things (like a sport or dance or theatre). The discipline has to be non-academic in nature because it is physical, tangible and direct, and therefore easier and clearer to obtain good results in. We get praise, applause and appreciation for our masterpiece, encouragement if the product is so-so, or by audience critique or defeat we know we sucked and therefore need to work harder at it.

Training in a non-academic discipline gives us the confidence to take on academic disciplines which, being more abstract, operate at a higher level. Academics are text-language based, so there is a step of having to learn the language first, even before apprehending the concepts themselves. People deficient in the language of instruction are screwed. Unlike non-academic disciplines, there is nothing in an academic discipline for monkey to see, and therefore monkey cannot do if the student and the instructor do not speak the same language. Gibberish text input results in gibberish text output. Garbage in, garbage out. And that's just the first level of difficulty.

If and when we do master the language of an academic discipline, we realize that the results of academic study are often judged arbitrarily, often subjectively. As academic concepts are text-based in construction, a lot depends on the interpretation of the text, and there are often too many variables to pin down. Academics themselves seldom agree with each other, in fact, they thrive in their fields by proving one another wrong. Success in the academic world is either a paper qualification (how satisfying), or a paper published challenging others to attack the ideas presented therein. That takes a pretty hardy, highly confident individual to live like that.

Success in the academic field is easier to strive for if we know we are already doing well in our non-academic pursuits. Well, at least this approach has worked for me so far. I am a degree-holding pedant by profession, but by trade, I am a mime. Most people find this combination to be the most irritating by far.

To be honest, it's getting harder to sustain a daily, even a regular flow of entries to quidestveritas. The nonsense I've been spewing these last few weeks only shows that I've lost a sense of purpose for this exercise. I'm losing touch with my audience, what with all these random posts about whatever I can force myself to commit to text. It makes for quite painful re-reading, actually.

Perhaps all I've been aiming for recently is to just reassure myself that life is more exciting than it really is? Or by commenting on policy that I'm smarter than I really am? Or to persuade myself that I have an audience because I'm writing, and not that I'm writing because I have an audience?

Quidestveritas needs a fresh purpose, perhaps even a new identity. One of its original purposes was to be an exercise for me to practice what I teach: writing. For the moment then, I'm going back to my roots. No more writing for any particular audience in mind, it's just going to be a jotter book of grammar and vocabulary practice, perhaps some composition or loosely structured argumentation, or whatever else strikes my fancy. In other words, I'm still going to be spewing nonsense, only that I want to stop feeling guilty about it. I reserve the right to slack off anytime I want, and not let my addiction for "addressing the world" get the better of me if I don't feel like it. So there.

When my new batch of GP kids arrive in a few weeks' time, maybe I can go back to writing for them again. But in the meantime, if anyone wants to stick with me through my dry spell, they're most welcome.

We're reaching the end of a major JC tradition. This year is the last time 'O' level kids will get to sample JC life for one term before they commit themselves to (or opt out of) the remaining year-and-a-half of hard labour. No longer will there be in subsequent years this opportunity to try before they buy; to focus primarily on making new friends and work on the side and with less dire consequences to bear for taking it easy.

From next year, as soon as they step through the front gate, they're our to keep, for better or for worse. In a way, that helps planning our programme easier. A single intake of students is less disruptive, so whatever systems we put in place the first time won't have to be redone three months later when our 'real' students report for duty a whole term later.

We will need to plan for only one Orientation week, undergo only one time-tabling allocation exercise, and start our co-curricula activities (CCA) immediately without an additional recruitment drive to replace members lost in the second posting period. That cuts down a lot of annual pain by half at least.

So how have we been treating our final batch of transients? In a move contrary to my personal preference, we're running "seminars" instead of the [relatively] small tutorials that we're used to. Seminars, as far as dNYel interprets it, means that we get a huge group of students per venue supervised by two or three tutors at once. We manage the numbers by setting them a group-based project which they collaborate on while us tutors provide the scaffolding as necessary.

Seminars are such an impersonal way to interact with the students. So many kids, how are we going to remember all their names before they graduate? How can we tell from the sea of faces who needs help with what? As tutors, we can only flit from group to group, bearing in mind that there are lots of other groups that could use a little of our attention as well.

Guess what? I'm enjoying this teaching format a lot -- more than I ever expected to. With less tutor time per student, we can't afford to hold anybody's hand (figuratively speaking, of course) for long. The kids have got to depend on their groupmates and on the general seminar discussions a lot more than before, and as they grab the microphone to share their solutions to the assigned problems, their difficulties and reflections on the tasks, they seem more like adults at a learning conference than just a bunch of difficult kids being spoon-fed stuff they don't like to eat. To me, that's progress.

Well, hope our JC1s will be happy with their 'O' level results when they collect them tomorrow. Hope they come back...

Mimi went to see Doc Kasey today. She has developed an allergy to some unknown substance and is scratching herself silly. The Wongs will have to slowly track down the allergen, but in the meantime, her medicated shampoo, a course of antibiotics and antihistamines will have to suffice.

Here (pix left) Mimi is getting a blow-dry after a nice shower with her new shampoo. And Q-tip got her annual booster too, while we were at the vet's.

The Wongs marked their annual ancestral commemorative lunch today. They loaded the dining table with a variety of deep-fried finger foods, and the specialty of the occasion: Shanghainese meat balls with cabbage in gravy. There is a bowl of rice and a glass of beer in front of each place around the table. The places are not for us, but for the departed Wong ancestors. The Wongs individually offer joss at the head of the table, kowtow thrice and pray for continued blessing and protection over the family.

June and I don't participate in the ritual, since our religion doesn't count so much on ancestral support. We're there because it's an event of family significance, so even if we don't pray to the same deity, our togetherness keeps the family bond as strong as ever.

What's good about ceremonies like this is the sense of history and continuity in the family line. It's nice, I guess, knowing that people will still remember us, call us by name and recall how we impacted the lives of those closest to us long after we've gone.

Not so many of us are in that position these days, though. So those of us who don't have much hope in having adoring descendants are going to have to make the most of life while we're still here. Rock on!

Our industry is still getting criticism for someone's poor choice of words in advising some kids about their academic options. Now it's about the tone adopted in conveying the message as being demoralizing, discouraging and disparaging, instead of being encouraging and uplifting. The kids should have been inspired to work harder to achieve their 'O's, they say, not crushed underfoot at the beginning of the year, fresh after their success at the 'N's.

It's a dilemma, really. In our profession, we know that the next level is a tremendous leap from the previous. To paint a rose-tinted picture of what lies ahead for our kids can be misleading, especially if the kids, in their post-challenge euphoric state, choose to hear only the good stuff. To point out frankly the risks, dangers and pitfalls of the road ahead can, as seems to be the case, make the way forward insurmountable. And to try to balance between the two sort of waters down the message, and an unskilled orator will just appear to be babbling contradictory nonsense of the kind I spout all the time.

But, honestly, when taking up a new challenge, we don't usually expect to breeze through it easily. Taking up a new challenge is an informed decision on our part, not simply a matter of process. It takes a struggle and a fight to overcome our latest challenge, and though it would be nice, our previous success seldom adequately prepares us for the task at hand. It's best to know what we're in for rather than just jumping in blindly thinking it'll be no problem. After all, being forewarned is being forearmed.

We learn on the job while we're doing it, not while we're resting on our laurels. And on the job, whatever the job, the reality is that people won't always say what we want to hear. So if we're going to become so easily "shattered" at the first obstacle, say a vocal Supervisor who may be more draconian than inspirational, that's not a very strong indication of our commitment to the cause, is it?

As for the kids affected, I'd say they showed some gumption -- enough to cause a ruckus amidst kopitiam talk about how the education system is going to the pits -- but I'd respect them more if they'd just had enough gumption to determine to prove their advice wrong. Instead of hitting the books, they hit the streets, making a Roman spectacle of their situation. I'm sure that'll help their 'O' level ambitions no end.

The key questions everyone's missing are these:
Are they still enrolled to take the 'O's? If they still are, then their wishes are being respected.
Have they been advised of their options and the consequences of their choice? Evidently. Pretty much the whole newspaper-reading population of S'pore also knows now.
Are they prepared to bear the consequences of their decision? Ah, that's up to them, isn't it?

Our industry has tried to open many more routes to "success" today than was available to me when I took my 'O' Levels. Our people, however, are still locked into the view that the traditional Cambridge route is the only acceptable one.

Our ITEs still have a horrible rep among our parents and concerned constituents. This despite the makeovers these vocational institutions have undergone in recent years. As I've observed before, their campuses have facilities comparable to our current JCs. Their curricula are just as rigorous, even if the content focus is more practically tuned. If ITE students don't study they flunk out, just as students in other institutions do. Trust me, I know about this first hand -- and that was before the makeovers.

The P who "advised" her Sec 5 cohort to apply directly to ITE instead may have been insensitive in her delivery, but the real damage to the kids' morale has been done by all the people who wrote in to the press to complain how wrong she was to give such advice. As unwilling as the P seemed to give her kids a chance at the 'O's, the public is just as unwilling to give the ITE path a chance to succeed as a viable alternative route to education. Thus, instead of having more doors opened to them, all the more the kids will feel that they've been hung out to dry in a society that gives no respect to ITE grads.

We have to wonder what exactly the people who have had their gripes published in the news really want. They tear down the scholars who did well in school for not understanding the plight of their less able compatriots, but they are also tearing down the systems that at least try to do something for the underachievers as well. Perhaps mediocrity really does crave company.

Check out the comments of people who have an axe to grind here. Don't know how long the link will last, so get it while it's hot!

Edit:
Looks like the argument has balanced itself a little since I last looked... a little.

My seniors are overwhelmingly interested in my next level of career development. I've been getting advice, encouragement, portfolio samplers and additional materials from them in the last few weeks, ever since I inquired about what's next.

Lazy slob that I am, I'm not really inclined to much thought beyond my next meal. But knowing that people believe in me and are supporting me in this, the prospect has become a lot more exciting. In gaming, we call this process "levelling up"; in reality, forward movement actually does mean something more than just a bunch of pixel enhancements on an LCD screen.

Let's get something clear. It isn't about mo' clout or mo' money, though they're nice too. What gets my juices flowing is that I can define on my own terms what area of specialization I want to develop in. By so doing, I could find myself right on the cutting edge of the industry where all the exciting things are happening, where few people understand precisely what is going on and what it all means.

Here's my problem: the above paragraph is probably gibberish to anyone living outside my brain. I know what I want, but I haven't yet found the words to describe it to anyone else. Well, that doesn't mean I won't try. Here goes:

This afternoon, I was sourcing materials for use in class. I was looking for video clips about future technology to inspire the kids in their small group research project. Many of the clips I looked at posed questions about the adequacy of our current education system in meeting the needs of the 21st century. Other clips showed off the capabilities of current developments in technology and projected their applications in the years ahead.

I realized that what the future promised was already what I was doing, only faster, more streamlined, seamless, portable and invisible. Gathering a wealth of information today is already quite easy. Search engines are fast and getting more reliable, streaming video is comparatively lo-res but already quite watchable. Information is still manipulated through mediated interface i/o systems (i.e., physical keyboard-mouse-monitor combinations), but we have solid platforms for social and collaborative networking.

The capabilities of intelligence wizardry we have already. A 'net search yields material we ask for, plus other possibly related material as well. A video clip contains expert opinions and projections from named interviewees. If we pause the video and search the names onscreen, we easily find information about them; their credentials; other works they have done; the organization they work for and its field of business/research... ad infinitum, almost. Depending on how curious we are, our minds can wander as far as our fingers are able to type and click.

The learning potential of our existing everyday technology is aready quite awesome, if we know how to use it properly. The future promises learning that will be a lot more intuitive, perhaps even unconscious, in the way that the individual mind and our collective human consciousness will be able to intertwine and interact with each other.

I think I know what I want now. My niche will not be for any particular subject. I want to teach people to use the technology of the day to teach themselves according to their own needs and interests. Perhaps I might have to phrase that in more academic terms if I want to be taken seriously.

Other than that, there's the mundane stuff of having to put together a portfolio spanning the last three years (current year inclusive) of stuff I've been doing as a JC tutor. Now, that will deserve an entry or more on its own.

Somewhere in here is the closest thing I'll ever get to a new year's resolution. Wish me fair winds and good fortune!

Just read about Oscar Peterson's passing (which happened in mid-December). He was Chancellor of York U when I graduated in 1991. At my convocation ceremony, I discovered to my horror that underneath my gown I was the most inappropriately dressed of my fellow grads. Everyone else was in a suit and tie, proper shoes; or in a dress gown if female. I was in a t-shirt and jeans, sneakers, and for the occasion, a light jacket. Apparently, I didn't get the memo.

As I stepped up on stage to receive my scroll, the Chancellor, seated on his throne or whatever they call that big chair reserved for the big kahuna, made eye-contact with me. His eyebrows shot up. Immediately, he rose and strode briskly over, intercepting me at the point where I had the scroll placed in my clammy, nervous hands. He gave me a firm handshake and with a broad smile on his face, returned to his seat like as if I had made his day. More likely, I won him a bet.

I think that incident had a lot to do with my educational philosophy as it stands today. Thanks, Oscar. We made contact for just a second or two, but I'll miss you.

The music in heaven has just got better! Yahoo! video clip here.

That we aren't neighbourly to our neighbours kinda' hits home in today's ST article. Our front door is locked tight, though it would seriously improve the air flow in our flat if it were kept open. When I come home, I try to make it a point not to share the lift with anyone, and all the more so when I go out. Neighbour makes for the lift, I make for the stairs; anything to avoid making contact with anyone I should at least be familiar with. (Note that I'm speaking for myself 'cos I don't think June is as pathologically paranoid as me).

"A man's home is his castle". It's where we feel safest, freest to indulge in our own excesses without having to keep up appearances for the sake of harmonious living with the rest of humanity. Outside the home, it's all propriety, sobriety, and hard work pretending that I know what's going on and what I'm doing at all times. The social fraud shows through the cracks sometimes, although generally, we're quite good at the cover up game. But at home, I can be the lazy slob that I am, watchin' too much TV, gaming, surfin' and attempting the other 6 deadly sins. Honestly, who's to say I can't?

Being neighbourly literally opens the door to much unwelcome intrusion. The social masks come on again and while I'm grinning and making small talk, my eyeballs are anchored in place, doing their darndnest not to roll, and the little voice in the back of my mind is going, "C'mon! Heroes is starting already!"

It's easier to be friendly with people outside. It's quite legitimate to get rid of them by saying I have to go home. What excuse is there to toss out the neighbour since we're both technically at "home" already? And usually, there isn't just one neighbour, their kids are part of the package too. I don't want to be a meanie, so I avoid situations that may potentially force my hand.

That's not to say I won't help out in the neighbourhood if there is a real need. If there's an emergency or something, then of course making contact is the necessary and humane thing to do. But other than that, I'll be in my room.

So if I died in my own house, would anyone know? Would anyone care? Perhaps not among the neighbours, but hopefully, my friends outside will call the cops before the smell gets too bad.

Human kindness is not kindness at all, especially concerning our dealings with the wild animals in our midst. Now that the fine for feeding the wild monkeys at Upper Seletar Reservoir has skyrocketed, the monkeys -- spoilt by years of living off human handouts -- have pretty much forgotten how to forage for themselves in the forest and are instead moving to the edge of human habitation in search of food.

We were at Casuarina Road today where we saw families of monkeys dangling on tree branches hanging over the public parking lot. There were monkeys on the street and clambering over the parked cars as well. They've never come this close to our space before, but hunger is making them stupid, making them lose their natural caution of us.

I can imagine what will happen next. People are going to complain to the authorities. Their homes will be invaded by desperate monkeys. Their cars will be scratched and shat upon by monkeys who know not the value of COE-enhanced automobile luxury in Singapore. Several will get killed by passing traffic, and when the authorities arrive, well, let's just say there'll be a significant reduction in the primate population in our protected rainforest.

What's happening to these monkeys is our fault. Our acts of kindness and charity sometimes do the greatest harm to others. But it's probably happened many times before as human civilizations encountered one another. Apart from bringing warfare and disease, we've also killed each other with a similar brand of misguided goodwill.

It's hard, but sometimes, the greater kindness is to say, "No. Go away!"

"Survival" is the name of the horror movie genre these days. There is no triumph, no hero. Only people who make smart and/or lucky choices and live to see another day. It is this way too with AvP2. A Predator ship carrying Alien facehuggers has a nasty Alien-induced accident and crashes on Earth. This is the Earth of today, a semi-large town, populated with ordinary people with ordinary concerns. We haven't a chance against the specialized hunting skills of the escaped Aliens and the one horrid "Predalien" that emerges from the wreckage.

A single Predator arrives to take care of the mess. Between June and me, we can't decide if the Predator is of the Hero class, or the Janitor class. Whichever, the lone Predator is quite capable of taking on the Alien infestation and taking out any human being careless enough to get in the line of fire.

And all the townfolk can do is to run, scream, cry and die senselessly and unpredictably. With everyone equal in misery, no one deserves their deaths, helpless in the disaster that befalls them. I'm pretty sure the Predalien crossed an unwritten line that horror movie monsters have not crossed before: don't mess with newborns and expectant mothers. The atrocity it commits in the maternity ward is the stuff of nightmares.

No one's a hero. There is no avoiding an Acheh tsunami, a Katrina hurricane, a Malibu wildfire. There are only survivors and casualties. In these days, we're beginning to recognize how helpless we are against nature's wrath. Yup, it's time to give nature back the respect she deserves.

When dealing with turkey leftovers from the recently passed festive season, M-i-L does it with style. Her solution: breaded turkey cutlets served with french fries and side salad.

I lie. The turkey in the pix is freshly thawed, not actual Christmas leftovers. Still, if anyone does have a problem with turkey leftovers, this is one way to make disposal more pleasant.

On my side of the family, the story's quite the opposite. We got Mom a nice, 4kg turkey to roast on new year's eve. June dropped out to entertain Madoka. Then their designated driver for the evening got sick, so I had to provide transport. 31 Jan 2007 was a Monday, not a Sunday, which is our usual day to drop in and have dinner with my folks; so my sis and her brood forgot to show up that evening. Same thing probably happened to my bro too. Poor Mom & Dad waited till 2000 hrs and no-one showed up for dinner. So, according to Dad, they switched off the lights and had a quiet, romantic candlelight dinner for two.

Yep. There's still a lot of turkey left in the fridge. Turkey porridge for the next few weeks... mmm...

I'm going to miss the journo/debate kids now that I've moved back to drama again. While I'm happy that NYconneX has continued to publish over the last two years I've been on board, I still feel that I haven't got it running at the level I was hoping it would be at by this time.

Truth be told, I had no idea what I was doing when I first took charge of it. Thankfully, Amy's initial guidance and advice helped me catch some direction, though what we are still producing today -- two years later -- still tends to be more self-indulgent ramblings than actual Journalism. I'm quite proud that it's got this far, that is, all the parts are working, but it hasn't taken on a life of its own yet. That's why it's hard to pass it on to new management. I feel I haven't done enough to let it go.

Debate, on the other hand, was an unqualified disaster. That's no reflection on the wonderful, enthusiastic, and courageous trio who stuck with me through the year. Let's just say I've been nursing the team through a stint in the ICU and have just managed to keep it breathing, but not much more. Hopefully, new management will find a way to revive the team. I'm sorry, guys, but when it comes to debating, I just don't have a green thumb for it.

CCA recruitment starts tomorrow, so good hunting, my ex-charges. Hope you get another crop of good people this year that'll bring some new life to the club!

Meantime, with drama, I'm taking on yet another role I've never done before -- not at this scale, at least. I may well have just signed up to direct a famous local play penned by a famous local playwright. As yet, I have no cast, no crew. I do have a couple of sketchy ideas, and a grand total of three months to put it all together into a performance... if we're lucky, on the SRT stage. No pressure.

Kindly keep an open reservation for my favourite padded cell. I may be visiting it wearing my favourite long-sleeved jacket real soon.

'Fluke' could have been a bleeding-heart appeal to "save the whales" but author, Christopher Moore, avoids all the maudlin and instead spins a tale of great imagination and wit, conjecturing the purpose and meaning behind whalesong, and offering an unusual perspective on why hunting the great whales to extinction isn't exactly a good idea.

Fortunately, the novel isn't about the whales themselves, but rather focuses on the lives of a struggling whale research team which comes so close to deciphering whalesong that someone or something begins sabotaging its operations in order to preserve the secret.

What's fun is the question of who is in on, and what motives lie behind the conspiracy. Is it a rival researcher, or a business or military interest? Hmm...

I like the idea that although trust is an issue between the team members, suspicion fails to drive them apart. Instead, they continue to trust each other to do their jobs as part of the team despite their personal flaws and mysterious backgrounds. This team truly believes in (I'm inferring this) not jumping the gun; nobody's perfect; innocent until proven without a shadow of a doubt guilty; and everybody has something to contribute to the effort.

Each of the main and a couple of the minor characters grow and develop. Either by discovery, learning or revelation, they eventually experience a transformation that gives their initial passion a purpose and a new perspective and direction in life. Yes, I know this is supposed to happen in a good narrative, but it's good to see the team also getting stronger as a result.

Despite the weirdness about mid-way through, 'Fluke' is a compelling, easy read. Moore liberally peppers his narrative with situational and dialogue humour. There is also some exploration on the issue of dealing with sexual attraction in a professional relationship, though the situation between the older male lead researcher and his perky, cute, smart-as-a-whip assistant who has every guy on the island drooling after her is too conveniently and unconvincingly resolved. Few of us are ever gonna get that lucky.

So, let's see... this past hols, I've managed to read Gaiman's "Interworld", Maguire's "Son of a Witch", Moore's "Fluke", and Gaiman's "Marvel 1602" (a graphic novel). I'm getting slow.

Oh, yeah. Anyway, "save the whales!"

Visited Sentosa twice in three days! This time it was to accompany our new J1s while they ran around the island on their orientation activities.

EmL kindly let us have the run of her house in Sentosa Cove, so we set up an impromptu base of operations in the most luxurious of surroundings most of us have ever seen in our pathetic little poverty-stricken lives.

There was nothing but exclamations of 'wow!' from the entourage as we went room-to-room on our grand tour. From the living room that seems to float on a koi pond, to the open-concept glass bathrooms, the backyard boat-dock, the swimming pool surrounding the house, the roof-top bbq facility, to the comfy, comfy things that people sit on (including the massage chair that nearly ate Baggy), to the four continental cars in the driveway, we're like, how on earth does anyone ever live in so much wealth and yet still be the down-to-earth, normal, all-round ok person we all know her to be?

'k. Enough gushing.

Madoka's arrival threw our lives into utter disarray. June went home to stay with her mom, we neglected our pets, destroyed our diets and drank into the night, foregoing sleep for entertainment.

And despite all the bitchin' and whinin' I've been doing, I had a really great time! We showed her as much as we could of S'pore in the short time she had, and in so doing did some amazing things that we normally wouldn't have done if we didn't have a legitimate excuse.

Hopping the barrier along the river to get a better view of the new year fireworks was one. Having our feet nibbled on by fish at Fish Therapy, Underwater World was another. Jostling with the crowds at Mustafa's while laughing at tacky souvenirs was an eye opener -- whoever would buy a plastic merlion that lights up and sings 'Rasa Sayang' at the flick of a switch? Oops, sorry, B-lo! Hogging a comfy, secluded spot in Muddy Murphy's (pix) and enjoying the cool easy listening tunes of Take 5 at the Raffles Long Bar, mocktail in hand, over two nights was kinda' special too.

But full credit to Cammy, without whom this trip might have been a horrible disaster: an embarrassment for us and a total bore-fest for her. With all his non-stop prattle (which would have driven me stark-raving nuts very quickly if I had been his sole audience), he kept Madoka entertained, flirted with and cared for throughout her stay. Between June and myself, we didn't have much to talk to her about. Language was no barrier, but we just couldn't find a common wavelength with each other. I felt so 'uncle' beside her, particularly as I found myself carrying mineral water in an unglam Watson's plastic bag on one day, and a large umbrella to ward off potential rain on another.

If anything, I was behaving like an indulgent otosan with his favourite musume. Now, that was an interesting brush with my paternal side. But Cammy, same age, same interests, his eagerness to learn language from her, and his all-out eyeball-rolling attempts to be amusing at all cost saved the day for us. So glad we brought him on board.

Well, hope Madoka has had a holiday to remember with fondness. And things are settling back to normal at home. Phew! :)

Too many late nights and early mornings. My brain is suffering sleep deprivation... can't... conentrate... Meanwhile, Madoka's pix (yet to be captioned) are here.

Happy New Year 2008! Got home late from watching the countdown fireworks at Marina Bay. This view from a "secret" location in Tg Rhu isn't bad... except for the two tall trees near the Flyer blocking the lower rockets.

Consider this a temporary post. Rushing off now for another day on the town...!

Madoka arrived in the midst of the worst rainstorm I've ever driven through. Visibility was severely down through my windshield while my wipers and lights were operating at max. And we were late. Her plane had already landed ahead of schedule even as we were getting ready to drive off to meet her at the airport. Fortunately, the torrent didn't last and we were able to take her around and introduce her to S'pore's most favourite pastime pretty much as soon as she arrived:

Yup, our eating culture. This is at Jumbo Seafood Restaurant, ECP, where we -- me & June, with June's colleagues including Cammy (at right) whom we assigned to escort Madoka on the grounds that he needed to train his conversational Japanese since he is looking for a posting in Japan soon -- demolished three chili crabs (it's been a crabby month for me!), cereal prawns, scallops in yam, and the house not-on-the-menu specialty: some tofu/nametake dish.

We took her downtown after dinner to Suntec City to have a look at the big fountain. We needed to buy time to let the crabs, et al, digest a bit so we could attack dessert!

(R-L) June, Madoka, Jamie, Jamie's hubby, Cammy and yours truly look seriously well-fed after cheesecake, chocolate milk, a brownie and ice-cream. NYDC rox!

Oh, and a small reprieve for us. We're putting Madoka up at M-i-L's instead of our place. She'll certainly be more comfortable in a proper guest room than the meagre lodging we can afford her at our place. Hope she can get along with Mimi ok. We'll see how they pass the night...

There was a lot of repeating, overlapping material during our discussion groups' sharing session as we collectively planned for next year's programme. That's a good thing, because that shows that generally, we are all on the same page on what we need and want to do for the college, the kids and ourselves in 2008.

In retrospect, we've done fairly well in helping our kids absorb knowledge, enough anyway to get through their year-end exams. But knowledge isn't really like random plankton drifting around on currents, and our kids aren't really sponges and anemones willy-nilly ingesting nutrients that unhappily float within tentacle reach. As a species, we've evolved further along than that, so to revert to such a learning pattern will inevitably bore us and our kids to no end.

I think we've begun to view knowledge as a slippery, fast-moving, shape-shifting thing, that to acquire needs to be hunted down, tamed, and manipulated into working for and with us. Or else it just isn't knowledge.

We already know that knowledge shifts with remarkable speed. A day or two ago, Pakistan was heading for a democratic election. Yesterday, Benazir Bhutto's life tragically and brutally ended by some random element that didn't agree with her. Today, Pakistan has to deal with an upcoming democratic election in which bombs and guns make more impact than a person's vote in the elimination of prime ministerial candidates. That knowledge, and its implications therein shows how uncertain the world is. Knowledge may bring hope today, despair tomorrow, but as long as we're not dead, life goes on. Hence, our kids need above all to learn how to live in uncertain times.

First, they'll need to make a habit of sampling from good information sources to constantly be aware of their environment as it changes around them. They need to identify threats and dangers, but also sense opportunities to capitalize on to sustain their existence. They need to learn that we hunt best in a pack, so we have to teach them pack dynamics and strategies so we can work together for our mutual benefit. They need to experience that not all hunts will bring back rich rewards, and so tough it out during lean times. And when times are good, they must learn how to share their bounty with others. That, and a dash of personal and collective confidence in the future too. Not asking too much, are we?

Essentially, nothing's changed since our earliest civilizations, except the nature of our prey. We no longer hunt animal prey, but information and knowledge. The good news is, there's plenty of it to be found everywhere, but it needs to be chased down to be exploited.

Our challenge as I see it: to create an environment that catalyzes the evolution of inert, invertebrate sponges into a tribe of hungry, thinking hunters with a plan for action, and not devolve them back the other way.

Today, we decided where our destination lies. Getting there is half the fun.

One final fling before the work cycle picks up again. Having failed yet again to procure black pepper crab at Eng Seng -- we were there at 1800 by which time all their crabs had already been sold out(!) -- we contented ourselves with chili crab yet again at the Red House. There was a smaller party this time: me & June, B-lo, HP, Mel, Amy, Linc & Grace, and Wayne.

Our appetites must be shrinking 'cos among the nine of us, two crabs were more than sufficient. Ok, besides the crab we had bbq squid (which was better than I expected), a so-so fried rice, drunken prawns, tofu served with all the broccoli Mel could eat, and two rounds of mantou. That altogether didn't quite add up to our usual capacity. Maybe our Christmas feasting might have had something to do with our lack of ambition tonight.

Dessert at Icekimo: proprietary ice-cream with lots of local flavours to choose from. The place seems to be a hit with the below-8 audience. Guess they were having a final fling before school starts for them too.

Time to punch in tomorrow morning: 0800. Oh, the inertia!

The teeth get a clean bill of health despite my not having seen a dentist for a couple of years already. On June's recommendation I went to L&O who have a plush and comfortable waiting area at Far East Shopping Centre. I really needed somewhere to wait as the dentistry was so backed up today, my appointment got pushed back about two hours.

While waiting I popped into Borders and bought Christopher Moore's "Fluke" to entertain myself with. It's an intriguing and light-hearted read involving the mystery of whalesong and it's got some memorable characters as well.

Back at L&O, all I needed was a clean up job. Some prodding around the spaces between the choppers and I was done. Done enough to take June out to dinner at Tonkichi.

Teeth freshly scraped, tonkatsu for dinner... ouch* what was I thinking?

Another Christmas over. Gifts unwrapped, food eaten, remains thoughtfully or creatively disposed of, carols sung, once-a-year relatives met and greeted. Another year past, a new year to look forward to.

A week to spin up to full operational capacity, then it's showtime once again! Omg.

I've been watching "Samantha Who?" over the 'net. So far, only the first three episodes are available to us in this region. It's quite coincidental I started tuning into Sam during this Christmas period because while being an obviously secular TV sit-com, SW is quite an apt parable about the experience of being "saved" in the Christian sense.

Sam wakes up in hospital an amnesiac. As the pieces of her life fall back in place for her with the help of her family and friends, she realizes that the life she lived before her accident was... let's just say disreputable. A terror and a bi*ch, once before, her new tabula rasa personality cannot believe how nastily she had once treated people. Now that her memories have to begin all over again, she's thankful that she has the opportunity to make better choices for her new life, and so put her past behind her.

It isn't like her past has ceased to exist, though. Her coma has only been for a week, so people haven't forgotten her yet. It's like being born fresh and innocent, then realizing that actually she's far from innocent. She still has to deal with the consequences of her misdeeds, and in fact, her past is an important, integral part of her identity which she is trying to re-establish, though with her new perspective of life she's a lot more idealistic and less selfish.

For the forgiven, the world doesn't go away. It's still a part of who we are and where we live. The person is still the same person, save for a new, different way of looking at life. And perhaps, one is less automatic, becoming instead a little more concerned about the consequences of the decisions one makes in one's daily life.

To top it off, SW is very funny. Because she has estranged so many people in the past, Sam has to heal the relationships of even those closest to her. Sam becomes so very earnest in making amends for her past, she sometimes makes quite terrible mistakes, making the situation worse than before. Regardless, she doesn't lose sight of her "second chance" but uses it as the foundation upon which to build a new life for herself.

Actually, just watch "Samantha Who?", and interpret for yourselves. Even if you don't extrapolate as much as I did, it's great for a laugh or lots. No link, 'cos I'm not about to get myself involved in some illegal copyright issue, so I'll just direct you to www.sidereel.com where you can do a search for Samantha Who. And that's my Christmas pressie to you (hope you have broadband)!

Merry/happy/blessed Christmas!

Me as Santa, jolly old elf? I was quite sorry to turn down Mom's request for me to play the role traditionally played every year by 1st uncle. The Christmas Event with my maternal clan is starting in a couple of hours but, really, I don't want to be Santa.

All year long, I've kept kids at arm's length or further. Some people have phobias of spiders. My phobias tend towards the bipedal and noisy. It feels horribly insincere to make a sudden, complete transformation and pretend even for an hour that things have changed. I know it's just a role, and actors play roles all the time, but this is family.

Hope Irwin's up to the task. He's way more paternal than me.

How do we say 'goodbye' to friends who are leaving us, if not necessarily for greener pastures, then for new opportunities elsewhere? Well, Mel got us breakfast circle people and attachments over to meet at Wayne's house for a farewell barbecue for JY and Linc.

For once, there was no messing around with a messy charcoal bbq pit. Wayne cooks with gas! Meat went on the grill, flipped a few times over, and then off for consumption (i.e., to be eaten, not tuberculosis). The biggest worry was overcooking rather than undercooking the spread. The other worry was, as usual, too much food.

We commemorated their departure the same way we celebrate each others' company every day at work: over food. Anyway, since JY still 'blades with us, we'll still be in contact with each other from time to time. And now that NBS has a pair of new pink 'blades, maybe she'd like to join us sometime?

Momo, you are such a bad example! I've been taking your lead over the last couple of days. So much needing to be done, but here I am procrastinating until there are no more days left to push yesterday's work off to. I am so dead.

Madoka, June's friend from Japan, will be arriving for a homestay with us a couple of days after Christmas over the New Year. That's gonna call for a major cleanup of our house, which, I suppose, is long overdue. Notice when I take pix in the house they're always super close-up? Now you know why.

Finally got to celebrate our anniversary, a couple of weeks late. Every year around this time, we'd pick a nice restaurant to pig out at to commemorate another year of our being together.

This year, thanks to a memory jog from Mary, I picked Wild Rocket @ Mt Emily. What I did forget was that the menu is entirely fusion which I disapprove of on principle.

Regardless, we had a solidly satisfying meal. June had a pleasant "giam chye" duck/quail soup, while I had a smooth cream of cauliflower to chase down the complementary foccacia dipped in olive oil.

What June's holding in the pix is our main dish: an Aussie ribeye. Just look at the colour... these people know medium-rare. I ordered the rare, myself. Let's just say ketchup is redundant when the meat can produce such a lovely quality of red on its own. The other things in the dish are sweet potato chunks and rocket, the leafy vegetable that the establishment takes its name from.

We took dessert at NYDC. Sorry, but fusion desserts do not compute for me. Simple, honest-to-goodness cheesecake and ice-cream (so fresh even the nuts are still crunchy).

Better start exercising to burn all these extra calories off!

We and Jen are back at 1827 for Adrian and Mary's birthday. There are some new items on the menu and it's still cheaper to order a complete 5-dish set at $40 than go a la carte. The portions are a little small, but it makes sense to go with 5 dishes instead of ordering an el cheapo 4-dish option.


I had:
Home-cured salmon
White cod soup (cod a little underdone, but I think it was meant to be because when I got used to the taste, it was beautiful)
Seafood stew in otah paste
Pumpkin custard
Coffee (which, I guess, counts as the 5th dish)


Made plans for Christmas dinner over dinner, while pouring over Adrian's holiday snapshots from a couple of years ago which he only just developed. And we all (except Mary) agreed that the year has passed by so quickly.

The concept of "blood brothers" in "Warlords" is self-contradictory and self-defeating. Loyalty among men, especially fighting men, is paramount on the battlefield. There, survival depends entirely on brothers watching each others' backs. Life-debts get owed and repaid countless times over. There is no other binding force like facing death together, and surviving, of course.

Things get a lot more complicated in peace time. Loyalties are put to the test when it comes to deciding on how to treat unarmed prisoners-of-war. Ethics, morals, honour and justice are fine ideals, but the practicalities of war necessitates that such have to be put aside for the success of the campaign. Among the three sworn brothers, played by Andy Lau, Jet Li and Takeshi Kaneshiro, there's bound to be a difference of opinion in such a life-and-death decision, and an army can only have one commander.

Other conflicts arise over the division of the spoils of war, and the code-of-conduct of soldiers during the sacking of a fallen city. Lau's greatest concern is for the welfare of the men who serve in the regiment, while Li's war doctrine is victory at any cost. Kaneshiro is stupidly caught between the two poles, unimaginative and consequently unhelpful in his sorry attempts to keep the integrity of the brotherhood intact.

Their brotherhood is based on some rigidly inflexible premises. The blood they share comes from each of them slaying an innocent non-combatant captive; their oath prescribes death on any that comes between their brotherhood. Although Li says the oath, he also reveals that he does not believe in it. As a General of the Qing army, he knows that keeping such an oath is impossible. And when Qing Dynasty politics takes an interest in Li's Shan army, the brotherhood is doomed to fall apart.

Of the movies this year, "Warlords" comes closest to depicting war is hell. "300" boasts some lovely fight choreography, but "Warlords" is just brutal hand-to-hand melee combat. Li demonstrates some wushu technique but it is understated compared to the wild swinging of bladed weapons and the thrust of spears of men concerned not so much about winning as they are about just surviving to see another day.

The greatest tragedy is that this war means nothing to the people who are fighting it. Li's Shan army fights on the behalf of a government that cares nothing for it. The soldiers have enlisted only so that they have food to eat, and to send they wages back to their families who are otherwise destitute.

It's a dark movie, and the lack of pretty faces underscores this point. Lau at some angles reminds me of DiNiro, Li is heavy-set and balding, and Kaneshiro and his scraggly beard just looks goofy as he dithers between his two brothers. Even the female lead played by Xu Jinglei (who's she?) while reasonably pleasant-looking, is no mega-babe and we wonder why she is the object of affection for both Lau and Li, as if there's only one woman in all of China. While she isn't exactly a cause of conflict between the two, their triangular relationship does become too much for the dimwit Kaneshiro to process, and his response is legend among village idiots to this day.

Closing thought: The feast Li prepares in Lau's honour looked very much like what B-lo, Mel, NBS and I, and several other people around us were having for lunch today. That so many of us can now eat like how only Generals of the past could is quite a staggering thought. That's not something we should take for granted.

The boy called Liir grows up with more questions than he has answers for. Of his parentage he is uncertain, of his talents he apparently has none, his lot seems to be nothing more than being a target for bullying or otherwise suffering. His purpose in life? Dunno.

When we first encounter him in Maguire's "Son of a Witch", he's in such bad shape he practically has to be scraped off the desert floor with broken bones, a broken face, and bordering on death. His shallow breath and his erratic heartbeat are his only signs of life. How he got there and in this condition is also a question that needs an answer.

"SoW" is the sequel to "Wicked" in which Liir is introduced as a permanent tag-along of Elphaba, aka the Wicked Witch of the West. By proximity alone Liir is assumed to be Elphaba's illegitimate son, but there is no evidence of any biological bond between the two in "Wicked".

Apart from Liir's history, "SoW" also explores how this nobody of a character -- plagued with uncertainty, inertia and self-doubt -- attempts to cope with growing up, orhaned and abandoned as he is after the watery demise of his guardian, Elphaba.

But Liir is no hero, as such. Liir's flawed sense of self leads to a tragedy that will haunt him for life, and in atonement he undertakes a series of loosely related tasks that sets him against the new political-military machine that has arisen since the Wizard's departure from Oz.

Liir must live a very frustrating life. From Dorothy (from Kansas) to the Elephant disguised as a human princess, Liir manages to find closures to their quests, and others besides. But for himself, well, let's just say that he doesn't demand much out of life, perhaps just some answers to his questions, and even then he finds that in life there are always more questions than there are answers for. How familiar that sounds.

What's admirable about Liir is that his questions determine his actions. Hence, for the most part, he really is quite a self-directed individual. It's only when he subordinates his questioning mind to the will of others, that's when his greatest regret occurs.

In life, having questions with no answers is better than accepting answers with no questions. Any questions?

The rains of the last few days washed out our cycling plans at Ubin. Plan-B it had to be: ice-skating at Ice Palace. What better way to acknowledge that winter is now upon us? The rink was packed with kids, it being "Students' Day" and they are off on their Christmas break. With such little room to maneuver, I was happy just to weave in and around the throng, round and round like a goldfish in a bowl.

But if I was a goldfish, there were piranha and 'cuda sharing the same bowl with me and the little fry clustering around the edges of the ice. The hockey guys had their throttles on 'high' and they were finding spaces to power through like the Millennium Falcon in an asteroid field. There were the gripes and grumbles about them, like how dangerous their play was and how nervous they made the other skaters feel. But where else could have they gone to practice what they love doing? I was marveling at how despite their tight constraints, they were still able to express themselves in the way they knew how. As far as I could tell, they didn't bump anyone, so hey, y'know, they have more right to be on the ice than the rest of us.

We had a small convoy bound for Seafood Paradise in Defu for dinner. This was to make up for not being able to have seafood under the sunset on Ubin. I doubt we could have had better fare on Ubin, though. Mmm... oatmeal prawns... chili crab... butter crab... apart from the sides shared among our table for eight. Gotta be fast eating with these guys, though. Wonder who made off with my mantou when I wasn't looking?

Welcome to Barrow, Alaska, where for one month every year, it remains night-time until sunrise, 30 days later. In "30 Days of Night", just as the sun begins to set for a month, a dingy icebreaker arrives bearing a crew full of pale-skinned, ill-tempered people with very bad teeth. Unfortunately for them, the local orthodontist has just flown off to spend his hard-earned cash on a sunny vacation in Florida. The strangers unsurprisingly go ballistic and turn the town upside-down.

"30 Days" is yet another movie in the survival horror genre. Only here, the survivors are hopelessly outclassed and outmatched by the visitors. Bullets don't even slow them down, so pretty soon, the town's population takes a drastic reduction with the visitors' onslaught.

In one breathtaking sequence, the camera tracks across town from a directly-overhead perspective, depicting the carnage as it takes place. Silhouetted against the snow, people get pounced on, sliced, diced and chomped on, leaving a brilliant crimson splatter on pristine white. Occasionally, we see flashes of gunshots, but we know it's a foregone conclusion. The view reminds me of an RTS simulation where things have gone badly wrong for your side. >Game over!<

For the handful of survivors to stay alive, there is no confronting the enemy. They stay quiet and hidden, doing nothing to attract any unwanted attention to themselves. That's a little difficult when among the survivors are a cantankerous Alzheimer's sufferer who needs his walkies, and a paranoid "I can't just sit here and die" nervous wreck.

To last 30 days in a frost enshrouded wreck of a town surrounded by a boatload of bloodthirsty predators, supplies are going to be a problem, and I don't remember there being much discussion on how the toilet facilities were going to work. Sneaking around, trying to stay quiet, hiding, all make for tense storytelling. Doors that don't lock very well, windows that expose too much, walls made of flimsy wood instead of reassuring concrete, the survivors' hiding spaces provide very little sense of security, and we feel it too.

Was it the scare-fest that I was expecting? Well, there were shocks a-plenty; some gory, disquieting scenes; and the atmosphere was taut throughout. Not a bad mix for a thriller, but I doubt that it will make a lasting impression on me. My mind's already too far scarred for that.

The mandatory vehicle inspection that I had to put M2 through was pretty thorough, and I got to watch the mechs put him through his paces. All the tests are in the open and there are signboards explaining what each station checks for.

The tests include an identity check to make sure the car you say is yours is yours, and no illegal mods. There is the brake test, and what appears to be an anal probe checking that exhaust levels are within tolerable limits. They check for engine noise at max rpm to ensure a happy car and happy neighbours.

Result: flunked the wheel alignment test and the headlight focus test. While I might have thought M2 was the picture of perfect health, guess I didn't realise he was actually myopic and limping around.

Had to make an appointment to have Mazda take fix up M2 before going for a retest. I do so hate the "F" grade.

It's Aunt L's 80th birthday! The clan got together to celebrate at Ah Yat Seafood Restaurant. For some reason we seem to like that place a lot.

Our 3 tables comprised 3 generations of family plus extended family we've not met before from Sabah, but who are now settled here. My table had a lot of engineering talk with notes being compared between the construction, shipbuilding and manufacturing industries. The topic of industrial accidents came up a lot, keeping us well entertained throughout our dinner.

The delectable confection in the pix (i.e., on the table, not behind the table) is a meringue cake from Canelé Pâtisserie Chocolaterie. It's light and sweet, and overgrown with lots of fruity surprises. Even the Shou figurine is made of sugar, though I doubt anyone would want to eat that.

More pix here.

Working breakfast at Cafe Les Amis, Botanic Gardens. Great ambiance for a relaxing brainstorming session 'cos there's good food, big tables and we can do the road warrior thing there as well, HP discovered. Thankfully, the weather was kind. It was cool but no precipitation for the duration of our meeting. And there's the added advantage of taking Q-tip for a stroll on the grounds after.

It was on our stroll that we encountered this guy, by the edge of the big pond where the bandstand is. The pic is a little hard to make out, but it's a squirrel looking like it's doing some exotic foraging. At least, that's what I thought when I snapped this shot. Cute, right?

Idiot! The squirrel was actually in serious trouble, but I only realized it's situation when it lost its toehold and slipped into the pond.

As it splashed around in the water, I lay on my stomach to reach it, but I couldn't get a proper grip on it. Between my flailing fingers it sank like a stone. I could only watch in anguish as fewer and fewer bubbles broke the water's surface. Then they stopped altogether.

I lay there for a long time, hoping for it to resurface by some miracle, but there were no miracles today.

If only I pegged onto what was happening sooner. If only I wasn't such a photojournalist, so anxious to grab a shot of a cute animal. The precious seconds I wasted cost the little guy its life, and this dumb photo can now only serve as its obituary.

I'm going to be beating myself up over this incident for a long time to come. I'm upset, sad, and so very guilty.

Sorry, l'il fella...

There is Project Work that is such a drag for everyone when it is a compulsory subject, then there is the real deal in which 16-17 year old students spend their holidays working on treating diseases like tuberculosis and bone disorders. The prize is a US$100k college scholarship, so there's something of an incentive, but I believe the money is more a bonus to these kids than the prime factor.

Yes, these are especially outstanding kids to be working at such a mature level, but I'm just amazed that there can be such a gap between them and our regular teenager, since they are the exact same age, after all.

What's it going to take to close the gap even just a little? From what I can see, these kids aren't just textbook smart. They are audacious enough to attempt working on things most adults have no grasp of. There's confidence in their own abilities, yet humility as well in learning from every opportunity. They believe in what they're doing, and know that it's worthwhile as people who are suffering may in time benefit from their study.

Now, that's studying with a purpose. Fox News interviews the grand prize winners of the Seimens Science Competition. Click here.

To have friends among the people you work with is a major factor in 1) making the job worthwhile, and 2) though the job isn't always fun, at least it doesn't feel like work. I say I'm not a "people person", but keeping the company of a small group of trusted individuals is nevertheless important to me. The time-outs we share while off-duty make up much of my sense of well-being, and I hope they feel the same way.

The last couple of days had me running around like crazy. Tuesday Amy, HP and I dropped in on Vays at Mount A to see how she and the new addition to her family were doing. We arrived at feeding time so hubby, TW, showed us his digital pix of "Doudou" while we waited. When we got to meet the kid in person, she looked peacefully contented, and Vays herself was upbeat as she recounted her delivery experience to us. After our visit, it was off home again to freshen up for the Prom (previous post).

Today, due to some mis-organization on my part, I spent the morning gift shopping with B-lo. The purchase was relatively painless, although we were getting a little worried when the first few stores we inquired at didn't have what we wanted in stock. But we did eventually find it in time for a nice set lunch at the Greenhouse. For what we usually pay at Friends, the set here includes a generous portion of sides apart from the entree. There was quite a variety of veggie-things, while the sirloin went down easily despite being slightly more done than I prefer. And B-lo had her own hunk of meat to drool over.

After lunch, we ran to meet Mel and Wayne for "Enchanted". What a piece of fluff. It had some gloriously funny moments, in particular the big number in Central Park, but while it tried to splice together elements from different popluar fairy tales, I felt they weren't as skilfully woven in as say, Shrek, or Neil Gaiman's intricate storytelling. Perhaps I'm asking too much. "Enchanted" was sweet but predictable.

Then I ran off again to collect June for dinner. It was the core of our usual breakfast company that reconvened at the Ellenborough Market Cafe to feast on the Peranakan buffet. Specifically, we were there for the durian puree that was cold, smooth and creamy, and without the seeds and spikes to get in the way of durian bliss. The other dishes were nice too.

Back to work in the morning, but I'm ready.

The Prom was a little tamer this year. Possibly because of the sit-down 10-course Chinese dinner and the presence of more senior staff that's why things felt a little more formal.

Not that the kids weren't having fun, they were playing along with the table games and being very competitive about it, but the cheering, clapping and general noisemaking for one another didn't exactly feel like it involved everybody. Perhaps they were saving their energy for the post-prom party later in the evening?

Or maybe I'm a bit jaded, having sat through the same MC's schtik for the third time already. I know his jokes, his routines, and despite minor variations here and there, it's usually funniest just the first time.

I promised to get some pix for NYconneX so I was also busy with my cam. Above with me are Que and Taily in one of the very few personal shots I took last night.

I have never played Hitman, but I went to watch the movie anyway. The Hitman in question is a nattily dressed bald guy with a barcode tattooed on the back of his head. How that makes him inconspicuous in a crowd, I wouldn't know.

His backstory gives him a reason for being as emotional as a hypothermic doorstop. He, and many others like him, have been raised from childhood as smart, efficient killing machines by the nameless Organization. Its clientèle are none less than political heads of state who order clandestine hits for reasons Joe Voter will never understand. The Hitmen are that good, and that expensive. No doubt the Organization itself has an agenda to run in its own interest.

In this movie, Number 47 takes the job of assassinating the Russian president, but realizes very quickly that his client has set him up. His client's agenda is so sensitive that even the Hitman himself has to be eliminated as a potential witness. 47 then has to survive hits from his own colleagues and the Russian secret police, and dodge a persistent Interpol officer hot on the trail of a phantom killer. Meanwhile, out of the goodness of his heart, he protects another witness: a woman who keeps taking her clothes off for him only to be rejected and rebuffed every time. No distractions on the job, or while trying to stay alive, 47 is such a pragmatist.

In whatever situation 47 is in, he firmly remains in control. On the job, his preparations are extensive, every detail thought through, ensuring a clean hit and getaway. His fighting skills get him out of unexpected situations, and at no time do we feel 47 is in any danger. For him, everything that happens is part of his plan, and he does have a lot of foresight.

Perhaps that's why we can't really get into the story much. Our sympathies are more for the bad guys as we wonder what 47 has in store for them, rather than for 47 himself. With the protagonist this strong and invincible, we just coast through the narrative. Though we may revel in the carnage of gunplay and thrill to the swordfighting sequence, the experience is like playing on God-mode. You get to finish the story, but there's little sense of accomplishment at the end.