House calls

We continued the tradition of our quarterly library book delivery to the disabled folks in our community. Head office knows us by face and name already, so we were spared the usual rookie briefing. Destination: Woodlands.

Veterans we may be, but still making rookie mistakes. Navigation is always a problem. Turn left, turn right, go straight, didn't you see the arrow back there, where the h*ll are we now? Yep, those and the "I thought YOU had the checklist?" "No... didn't YOU hand it to the lady to sign at the last house?" "Oh, yeah. Crap." variety too.

One of our drops was to a minor celeb of sorts. He was the friend of another young disabled chap with MD featured on an episode of Life Transformers. We'll be getting a chance to appear on TV ourselves. Some Middle Eastern film crew wants to interview some of us volunteers, possibly next weekend. We'll see how that goes.

Josh and Jan hosted dinner for us. June wanted to learn some Thai cuisine from Jan and together they whipped up a creditable green curry, prawn tom yum, stir-fried mixed veg combo. Mango sticky-rice for dessert. Jan's a good teacher, June's a good student and their hubbies are becoming quite well-rounded as a result.

While the ladies were busy in the kitchen Josh and I rented Tropic Thunder to entertain ourselves with. It's quite a work of metafiction being a film about a film with a character actor, a method actor and a clown cast as the main stars of the film within the film. Amidst the action and things blowing up, there are lots of commentaries about film genres, acting styles, and a behind-the-scenes look at the dirty business that goes on behind a Hollywood blockbuster production. Loads of fun to watch.

But I am kinda' regretful renting it too because with its profanity-rich dialogue, I'm pretty sure Josh's house has never endured such colourful language since they moved in. Wouldn't be surprised if he's put "spiritual cleansing" on his to-do list for tomorrow.

High strung

I can't shake this odd sensation I've been experiencing all morning. I'm feeling all excited, but can't tell if it's the excitement that comes with the anticipation of something wonderful about to happen or if it's the fear of some great horror that's fast approaching. The odd thing is, I have no reason to expect any such thing, either way. Weird.

I wonder if it's the result of the two consecutive cups of coffee I had for breakfast? Caffeine doesn't usually affect me that way, but maybe McD's is using a blend that's more potent than any other I've had so far?

First timers at Resorts World Sentosa

Happens that a special occasion falls on today's date. We decide to celebrate at the newly opened Resorts World Sentosa. Here we're at the Brazilian themed Fiesta Restaurant. Expect lots of meat!

Fiesta features a four-course set: soup, appetizer, salad and the main course. There are lots of options per course, but you get all the salads listed including the salad of the day. Salads are quite exotic with ingredients such as baby beets and heart of palm. Thought I would hate beets, but these ones didn't kill me.

June's option was pork ribs for the main course. This portion was way more meat than she could handle. She ate one-third and donated the rest to her dining companion.

He was busy with his own Churrasco, a mixed grill of sausage, sirloin steak and spring chix. The meats were done beautifully, especially the sirloin that was delightfully pink inside. All this on one plate would have sufficed for a meal, but with June's donation of pork practically melting off its rib bones, I became a gorging carnivore, eating like I'd marked tomorrow's asteroid impact on my appointment calender.

One item not listed on the menu is dessert. Today, they served two kinds; on the left is a sweet-sour passion fruit pudding, on the right a sweet-bland port-soaked rice pudding. Exotic and surprising.

Tea and coffee to wash it all down. Overall, the meal was well-balanced. Lots of veggie-salads to complement lots of meat. Each dish was light and fresh, in just-right portions. I believe if we had asked for more salads and sides we would have been obliged. As it was, we were already stuffed without having to ask for more. How much per pax? A very reasonable $39+++, really not bad for a special occasion.

Sadly, we couldn't get tix into Universal Studios, so this is the closest we could get, standing forlornly at the turnstiles. Never mind, we'll plan an outing soon, I'm sure of it!

But when it comes to parking in the massive underground parking complex, please don't be an idiot and park anywhere you please. They're serious about enforcing proper etiquette and they will clamp your wheels if you try to get creative. Don't worry, this isn't M2. There's enough parking for everybody plus there's a free tram service around the parking lots too. So any lot is as near your intended destination as another -- there's no reason to park like this.

Gambling on a dream

Goodness! My old boss is in the news today. Should have known he was the one behind it all 'cos he was already talking about it way back then. So glad to know that his dreams have come true, especially since they said he was just living in a fantasy world. Major hospitality resort (check), on Sentosa (check), US franchised theme park operation (check), superstar concerts on a regular basis (check), casino (um, he never actually discussed this in my presence -- maybe I wasn't in his inner-circle of trust, but check). Article says it took him 35 years. I say if anyone was going to get it to work, he would.

Congrats, Ron! You've proven your critics wrong, and I'm really happy for you! Now comes the really tough part -- keeping it all alive! You the man!

According to Me

According to you
I'm difficult
Hard to please
Forever changing my mind
I'm a mess in a dress
Can't show up on time
Even if it would save my life
According to you
According to you

But according to him
I'm beautiful, incredible
He can't get me out of his head
According to him
I'm funny, irresistible
Everything he ever wanted
Everything is opposite
I don't feel like stopping it
So baby tell me what I got to lose
He's into me for everything I'm not
According to you

Sorry, Orianthi, but According to Me,
assuming you've been in the relationship long enough, the one who truly loves you is Mr "you". Mr "him" is only out to exploit your gullibility and cheat you of your money, your goodwill, and anything else you might have of value. And that's all.

There's nothing like being taken well and truly for granted to know that your relationship is secure. See, when "you" complains about you, it's because "you" is prepared to see you for what you really are -- and what you are not. "You" no longer needs to pretend to be head-over-heels in love (that's a tough act to maintain for long, anyway). Likewise, there's no more pressure on you to keep hiding your flaws from "you", yet "you" is still by your side, still your man.

The only thing that's going for "him" is a sweet tongue -- and most likely a sweet tooth to go with it. Once he's got past your wrapper, he'll just suck you dry and spit you out when all the sweetness has gone.

So, Orianthi, ma'am, catchy song, but Me isn't buying your little tantrum.

Blindly into the future

First term is over. Time for a little reflection on the tumultuous couple of months that have just passed. Big realization comes hot on the heels of the iCTLT: what the heck are we trying to do, preparing the kids for a future neither they nor we nor the experts have a clue about? We're the blind leading the blind, and where we're going, nobody knows.

We're better off simply preparing the kids for a much more certain here and now. If you don't do your homework, if you don't practice this past exam paper, you will fail your end-of-year exams. That's pretty certain.

Why go all the way out of our depth about this? We should let go, and let the kids discover their future for themselves. That's their destiny, and they will embrace it, and adapt themselves to it when it becomes relevant to them. For now, their only future lies 7-8 months ahead of them. That's as far as they can see, and in reality, our crystal ball only scries within the same limits.

School isn't about preparing kids for the future. Never was. School is about teaching kids the wisdom of their elders, their traditions and their roots. Let's continue to do what we've always done best: ground kids in the skills and techniques that have worked well for us, and let them figure out how to innovate around what we've taught them in order to get around the problems they will face in the future. It's up to us to give them the base of our past knowledge and up to them to inscribe the knowledge they acquire from the future to pass on to their subsequent generations.

If they don't learn their past from school, they won't learn it anywhere else.

Talking in class

Improving the proficiency of our spoken languages is a step in the right direction. People learned to speak first, and only when they discovered that what some people were saying was meaningful then we developed the skill to record speech through writing. What our schools have been doing is putting the cart before the horse and making written language a priority over spoken language because its easier to mark to a standard.

About time they fixed things. I've always believed that as you talk, so shall you write -- so it's pointless to teach people to write before they can talk. If drama and story-telling are truly coming to the fore with today's Parliamentary recommendations, I guess yours truly has a reason to stay employed for a while longer. Apart from needing to eat, of course.

But no exams, please. Some things have to be taught for their utility alone. When you stick in an exam, as soon as the exam is over there's no further motivation to use it ever again. Keep the exams on the written papers, let the oral component just support the written component. That'll be the best deal for everyone.

Universally within our means

Jim Simon takes issue with Universal Studios Singapore for charging its unlimited all-year pass with special privileges at an exorbitant S$1098. That's much like someone craving a Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost when he can only afford a Kia Picanto. For most of us, a Picanto's good enough. It's cheap, gets us to places we wanna go, and most of all, it's available to anyone who wants one.

Dude, open your eyes. There's a S$66 option for those of us who can't afford better and are prepared to rough it just for a day in our lives. The 'Annual Superstar Pass' is meant for people who can hang out and live at Universal Studios the whole year 'round. That kinda' assumes they don't work for a living. And if they don't work for a living, then they probably are the sort who think S$1098 is a mere frivolity to their daily expenses.

In the free market, there's things affordable to the workaday masses like us, and there's the luxuries for the few who aren't us. Let's learn to live within our means and not be in such a huff that we can't exercise our sense of entitlement if we aren't willing to pay for it.

Drink with me

Wow! Great news for womenfolk, right after International Women's Day even. Avoid getting fat by drinking alcohol! Did I die and wake up in women's heaven? See article here for how you can booze away the bulge.

Construction noises in the background

9 pages from an NYT article, "Building a Better Teacher." Today is for listening, not talking.

COMFORT goes co-op

We generally revile taxi drivers as a profession. They drive too fast, they drive too slow, they cut other drivers off abruptly and slam on their brakes at the last second to pick up a fare.

Must be a cut-throat business with so many cab drivers plying the streets competing for a dwindling number of potential passengers. With so many strange fare surcharges these days, people are starting to consider owning their own vehicles as a cheaper option for getting around town.

But look! In order to obtain a bigger slice of pie per cab driver, instead of competing each other off the roads, they're building a communication network to share information with each other.

Expanding market share by killing competition: Bad. Expanding market opportunities by sharing information: Good. Cooperation is the name of the game, people! Sesame Street may have had it right all along.

Fluff

As before, while immersed in iCTLT mania there's the tendency to get over-hyped with all the new concepts and ideas buzzing around and the temptation to turn this platform into a pulpit preaching change, innovate, move! There's the appeal to start participating in discussions with people who know so much more, have so much more experience, and actually know what they're talking about.

But sooner or later the reality hits home that there's no place in that discussion for Xmac's idealist fantasies and techno fetishes. Especially not when he is still unable to reconcile technical methodology with pen-and-paper results.

Xmac has no credibility discussing matters beyond his ken. So he will continue to talk about his dog, and his friends, and other random things fluffy and inconsequential instead:

Yesterday, Q-tip had the time of her life being petted and fussed over by many hands and one giant golden retriever at the college Sports Carny. After, we together with the usual suspects, feasted on meat at Brewerkz -- cool, another dog-friendly place to spend an afternoon. Dinner we celebrated with more meat catered by the Botak one in celebration of FLY-girl's, um, "21st" birthday.

Goodnight, dear diary.

iCTLT 2010, Day 2

iCTLT 2010 Day 2

This morning's keynote speaker, Jenny Lewis, reminded us that our students' success depends on a whole-school commitment to producing an end-product that is contextually relevant to market needs. Make 'em employable, then they can carve out whatever future they want for themselves. Towards this end, she showed us impressive stats and studies that made it painfully clear that student performance can be consistently tracked and measured against a standard benchmark in order to identify which kids require what forms of intervention when. Technology applied with bottom-line in mind.

Other factors of school success is teacher quality, not just across the board but also in maintaining an atmosphere of openness and a sense of mission such that teachers freely collaborate with each other within and across departments and levels because everyone has an interest in the total learning potential of every child, rather than keep the learning experience into subject-specific domains dominions limited to the individual teacher's personal sphere of influence.

That makes sense. Often there's the tendency to protect the subject or department without considering the kids' total development. Homework, remedials, assessments and research are all imposed on the kids by subject. Hence, every subject competes for the kids' time, effort and concentration. We make the kids prioritize between one subject or another, and there's probably a spiralling cycle of guilt when a choice is made. That choice is usually on the basis on which teacher the kid likes the most or which teacher has the loudest shouting voice or is the most creative (or ruthless) in meting out punishment. That's not really a good way to develop a well-rounded student, but it happens all too often.

Thus, a whole-school approach can be a very simple exercise of having all the different subjects coordinate the kids' workload evenly so that five assignments, two tests, several tutorials and a lab assessment don't all collide on the same week for them. The sooner we teachers stop competing against each other, the sooner we can have saner kids. Well, maybe easier said than done.

Lewis is also a firm believer in Authoritative pedagogies underlying all teaching and learning activities: school-wide, and personal. Um, 'k.

David Warlick's back to discuss personal learning networks. What I learned wasn't so much about how those are supposed to work for the kids but rather the mistakes I have been making as a blogger. Although I keep reminding my kids that essays are mostly commentaries on other people's essays and little else, I realise I'm not following my own advice. Blogs are little more than commentaries on other people's blogs. They are meant to contribute to an extended conversation that's going on in the blogosphere, but because I don't like butting in on other people's conversations my blog's been feeling like the lone voice in the wilderness. Long-winded one at that. So, time to go see what other people are writing about. I'm sure there are nice people out there. Yes.

Finally, Terry Freedman broached a topic that I'd so taken for granted that I didn't even realise was a topic of discussion: Reputation Management on the Internet. But he's right. I admit I've been releasing all kinds of skeletons from my closet and letting them collaborate freely all over cyberspace. I'm sure they'll all come back and haunt me again someday. But if savvy ol' me could be so careless with his rep online, the kids really need to be guided in this area or exam results might just be the least of their worries.

Unfortunately, I didn't stay for the final keynote speaker. I sensed dark clouds brewing on the horizon, and sure enough, there was trouble on the homefront. Not ready to release this skeleton into cyberspace yet. Some conversations are really not for public consumption.

Anyway, biggest takeaway for me from iCLT 2010: Whatever else you do with technology in education, please collaborate, socialize, share, converse. That's learning in the 21st Century.

iCTLT 2010, Day 1

iCTLT 2010

The iCTLT is back in town, presenting us with another opportunity to rub shoulders with prominent education te[a]ch-ies from around the world. I got overexcited the last time the circus came to town, and I did try some of the stunts at home. So I knew enough to look at things more realistically this time around.

My key question this time -- and I heard the speakers address bits and pieces of it -- was how do we stop teaching kids to write the perfect answer, but rather teach them to ask a better class of questions instead? And given that keynote speaker, David Warlick, reminded us time and again that we don't know what future we're preparing our kids for, it's clear they won't survive on our pat textbook answers any longer. They have to start asking useful questions and employ processes that help them find those answers on their own.

I may once have been blinded by technology, but if there's one thing that's coming clear from this year's conference, it's that the shiny toys and tools won't work on their own. Access is not a problem for us -- the tools are readily available at our fingertips. My biggest problem and disappointment so far has been in attempting to orchestrate a social learning environment among kids who view each other as competitors rather then collaborators. If I understand the psychology of my kids correctly, they'll distract and disrupt class so that no one can gain an advantage over anyone else, then frustrate themselves by trying to catch up with the lesson at home, away from prying eyes.

Good that Warlick pointed out that the most successful organizations are collaborative rather then competitive in nature. There's a story there I could use to bring the kids back online.

Elliot Soloway and Michael Furdyk were seriously gung ho about the collaborative learning potential of technology. Soloway was hot on mobile, anytime, anywhere, teacher-designed, student-centered learning platforms; though I imagine such programmes have to be... creatively funded. It would be best if such learning programmes could be accessed by every kid using the mobile phones they already own but because there's a multitude of software platforms, apps markets, service providers and indeed differing capabilities of mobile phones themselves, schools will have to shell out for a standard-issue device per child. That's a very expensive proposition for a school, so until every kid can afford an iPhone or a comparable competitor, I don't see that happening en masse just quite yet.

Furdyk is all about inspiring young people to get together through collaborative social networks to actually work on social entrepreneurship projects because they will have to put real learning into direct application towards real problems in order to achieve tangible results in real humanitarian causes. Makes sense. If the kids are worrying about bigger problems affecting people other than themselves, their exams will seem minor in comparison.

Currently, we're facing a vicious cycle. Kids worry about exams and they don't see the problems of others. They study to pass their exams, but they can't put their learning to real-life use. But because they can't apply what they're studying, they can't understand or appreciate what they're studying. They get bored, disconnected, frustrated and ultimately worry they can't pass their exams. Ad infinitum. It isn't that the kids are dumb or stupid, it's that they have to live outside of themselves in order to make the difference.

Providing the balance to today's session, Jason Trump reminded us that throwing technology at our problems isn't going to solve them for us. The potential for personalized learning is all there for us to harness, but a school must "have a clear vision for how, why and when to move" towards implementing tech as policy or it will either become a white elephant or, worse, counterproductive -- causing more problems than it solves.

I see the gaps in my approach in using technology, but I think I didn't see them before because I tend to work alone. If I start collaborating with others, I may yet figure this thing out. Question is, who will work with your friendly neighbourhood misanthrope? Yes, I have issues.

Inbox has (308,462) new messages

On the eve of iCTLT 2010, I discover that kids today don't check email any longer. That's so last century. No wonder all my important notifications have fallen on deaf ears. Kids want their messages now, not wait to get PC time then log into their email server. Want kids to respond, send SMS: a mobile, handheld, instant communication medium that's never far from their person. The old man learns something new today.

Pet owners' commitment

Jojo's geriatric rabbit, Bobby, has been stricken with paralysis and needs lots of care and attention because he can't perform his usual bodily functions unassisted. Because of his age, recovery is not expected, so it's tempting to consider euthanasia as a quick, painless way out for everyone. But though it's available, it is seldom the best option, and she knows this.

Jojo asked how we coped when our cat, Belle, faced a similar situation. Well, Belle was our cat and we couldn't imagine not doing our best for her during her time of paralysis. We chose to care for her when she was young and lively, and that commitment extended to the time she became crochety and unable to walk. We chose to love this particular cat among all the other cats in the world, and when she needed our love the most it was there for her without second thought, without reservation. And when Belle eventually did pass on, we cried. When it comes to 'coping', that's as good as it gets.

Strange to think that one could love a cat, but love isn't always rational. Love is simply like that.

Our fellow pet owner is about to undergo this same process. It'll be painful and tiring and frustrating, but at least after our chat today she knows she isn't alone in this difficult time.

Monologues for an audience of one

I know myself as a writer. Too much text. So much I scare people off reading. Lengthy descriptions and unwieldy grammar make people give up and scream, "get to the point already!" Creating long, elaborate set-ups just to deliver a corny, often obscure punchline. Making people scramble for a dictionary to decipher otherwise incomprehensible vocabulary is a sign of compensating for deep-rooted insecurity in a person.

No wonder my GP Forum page (sorry, members only) is near stillborn. The kids are going nowhere near my article commentaries that are longer and more confusing than the articles themselves. It's not that they aren't reading -- the counter tells me they are -- but they're simply stunned into silence within the first paragraph. And in the end, I'm still writing monologues for an audience of one.

Ah well, I've always had trouble talking to people anyway. Conversation is just not my thing.

I do want to keep the Forum running though. Must learn to moderate my tendency towards excessive exposition and stop imposing ideas on the kids. The less I talk, the more they have a chance to say something back.

Currently reading "Ten rules for writing fiction" as a guide to developing my Forum personality. The rules may have been advocated by writers of best-selling fiction, but are still good advice for writers in general.

15 days later

16 days ago at our CNY reunion dinner, we had an excess of the most delicious fish gravy remaining from a deep fried sea bass we eagerly devoured. Not willing to waste such a delicacy, Haen had a brainwave. He ordered two bowls of rice and dumped them both into the remaining "chup" and stirred well. We each took a small bowlful of the concoction and declared it was the best dish of the whole meal. The chef we complemented was aghast at the travesty we made of his specialty and could only shake his head in dismay at the barbarians crowding his gate.

But based on our response, perhaps we might have invented a new dish for Ah Yat to serve in the next CNY. No need to thank us. All credit should go to Haen, the family's "chup" gourmet.

Happy 15th day of CNY, folks!

Revolutions

I remember when I installed a Sound Blaster card into my old, boring 486 International Business Machine and reaping a revolution of whizz bang proportions. The bloody machine had found its voice! It spoke! It sang! It replicated explosions so loud that Dad charged into my room with a fire extinguisher, looking for a fire without seeing the smoke.*

It was the beginning of clocking many hours of flight time on Wing Commander with audible dialogue between the characters, contextually sensitive background music, and full sound FX (volume down, of course, to stave off another unnecessary parental intervention). And it wasn't just me alone celebrating this noisy revolution. Around the world, gamers rejoiced as their games got more realistic and hence fun to play with the introduction of sound.

Then imagine my surprise when I discovered that the master of the revolution was a fellow S'porean. I'm no flag-waving patriot, but I was proud to know that one such as myself, with my upbringing, my culture, had made such an impact on the world, the one behind all that was good for us gamers with the promise of things only getting better.

Today, I'm lugging around a laptop packed with so much more computing power than my long-trashed 486. But the tablet is peeking over the horizon and it's really tempting to make yet another substitution. A tablet would certainly be handier for computing on-the-go. Not that I'll be playing Wing Commander on it while crossing the street, I believe I've outgrown that phase of life, but for immediate access to my life online which is getting harder to distinguish from my life in so-called 'meatspace'. My calendar; status updates; blogging; messages and chats; commercial transactions; work planning, preparing and perhaps one day even delivery, all in the palm of my hand without physical commute-time delay. Oh, don't feel sorry for me. I believe I'm already working all the time -- it just doesn't feel like work.

But here's the thing. Do I go with Job's new baby with all it's glam functionality, or do I go all patriotic-proud again with a locally-made competitor launching at about the same time? Back then, Mr Sim had no competition in the market. There was only one product, which made him the innovator of his day. But now it looks like I won't be able to make a purchase unthinkingly. It can't be an automatic 'buy S'pore' anymore. The tablet will have to wait until I do a few more market comparisons. May the best competitor deserve my last dollar.

*This never actually happened. I just made it up for the effect.

Trusted

It's an honour to be among the fourth most trusted professions in S'pore. The top three positions are firefighters (they have no reason to lie), doctors (we trust them with our lives, basically), and judges ('cos if you can't trust a judge, whom can you trust?). And then there's us, the humble teacher, trusted with imparting knowledge and the right values to "the future of our nation".

Aw, shucks. We do our best.

On an unrelated note, Amy's link to Lennon's "Imagine" performed by the cast of "Glee" (below)

... contains lyrics that are perhaps too idealistic for me. Lennon isn't asking us to "Imagine" what could be, but rather what once was. Everything he wishes away are structures and institutions that humans have made and that make us human.  Look, we're already here and we're here to stay. Yes, we're made a mess of it and yes, we're responsible to clean it up. And we will try. But the only way Lennon is going to see his imagination become reality is if he includes one last verse beginning, "Imagine there's no people..."

I'm a cynic after all. Who knew?

Sorry for the breakdown

In case you're wondering why the format of these entries now looks different and untidy, it's because NBS alerted me to the unfriendliness of ECHO Live, the new comments manager I had subscribed to. Note the past tense. I quote her official complaint

"... your Comment function comes with custom barriers. Sign in first...choose which profile to sign in with, wait for the program to load...And hence, I gave up. That blog isn't an interactive one, it's now officially a soliloquy."

Removing ECHO was a pain as it had somehow embedded itself into my blog template through some obscure HTML coding. Though no HTML expert, by trial and error I've finally restored Blogger as my comments manager. However, as a result I've lost all the comments to my previous entries. :(

Blindly messing about with unfamiliar code has also resulted in the messy layout, and I have no idea where the "Reactions" check boxes came from and how to remove them. I may have lost other functions too but I'll probably find out which specific ones over the next few days.

But anyway, the soliloquy is over. It was never meant to be one, anyway.

Under the sea

I had no idea women were banned from submarine operations.

What were the reservations of the Navy when they instituted the ban?

I suppose practical considerations like privacy and accommodation are valid. Besides, sub ops often isolate people for months on end, and in such cramped conditions emotional attachments and rivalries could easily arise and thereafter compromise the morale and operational readiness of the crew. Also the social and political fallout of having women killed in battle could reduce national will to pursue an aggressive course of action against an enemy over the long term.

These were the notions of sailors in ages past, when bringing a woman on board ship was once regarded as ominous to the voyage.

Today, the US Navy has relinquished such archaic thinking. The nature of modern battles places women on the frontlines regardless of the capacity they are serving in. In war, any target that moves is fair game, conscience and regret be damned. At least give the lady a rifle and she might be able to shoot back,increasing her chances of survival on the battlefield.

In combat, women strategize in ways that often blindside men (if you don't know this, you haven't fought one before), so male dependent enemy forces could be at quite a disadvatage when the US military machine employs its latest now not-so-secret weapon to its fullest and deadliest capacity.

But the biggest reservation against assigning women to the undersea corps has to be the negation of a very old joke. To the question, "what is long and hard and full of seamen?" the answer can no longer be "a submarine."

Free to any home!

Maui's been a naughty boy lately. Apparently, he's been overeating at breakfast so between the time I've gone off to work and June's just about leaving he's eaten not just his own share but has also robbed Momo and Kaiser of their shares, and consequently has upchucked it all in little piles all over the floor. Little wet piles of unchewed, mashed-together kibble all over the floor. June's mad 'cos she has to clean up everything before dashing off for the train, hoping the delay won't make her late.

As we're discussing the problem we hit on a few solutions: reduce everyone's rations by half. Print and distribute flyers offering a free cat to anyone who wants one. I suggested that to save money and material, we shoud just stuff Maui into a random mailbox and assume the best. June reminded me that Maui was so fat already, he'll never fit into a mailbox and still be in any condition that will keep his disposition sweet enough to be adopted. Eventually we decided to encase him in a crate large enough to accommodate his girth, weigh it down with his sandbox and a starter pack of kitty litter, and place it in a strategic location where a prospective adoptive family might be curious enough to lift the lid and be charmed by the no-longer-little ball of ginger-striped fur within.

Of course, none of those scenarios is ever going to come true. Oh... but the temptation...!

Anyway, that's my point. Never adopt a pet unless you're prepared to tolerate all the unglam inconveniences that comes with pet ownership. Don't give pets away as gifts either, it's unfair to stick your best whomever with an unwanted responsibility.

The same goes for having kids -- there are consequences. A baby is not a decision to be made willy nilly. Have or have not, there is no 'Maybe'.

"I will feed him"

This being the third Sunday of the month, June cooks up a chix curry for the old folks at Gift of Love and I provide transport. Still haven't quite warmed up to conversation with them yet...

Have a happy heart

Columbia Uni researchers say that being happy reduces the risk of developing heart problems. Even if you aren't a happy person by nature, just 'acting' happy benefits your heart. In practice, people aren't natural actors either. So how?

Enter Lauren McCarthy's Happiness Hat! This unique headgear actually 'trains' its wearer to be happy. And when your're done with the training, you'll be absolutely certain that you need a heart attack like you need a hole in the head.

If you would only look and see

Call me paranoid but in my dreary workaday existence I can't help but think life passes me by beyond the range of my peripheral vision.

Thanks for the link, YT!

A little professionalism, please

What gets my goat is a paid professional instructor in the performing arts who has no clue about performance discipline and backstage etiquette. As someone who should be setting the example, he's breaking every basic rule while his students are showing a little more restraint than him. Disgraceful.

He is no one I know personally, but at this morning's CNY concert, while waiting for his troupe's item to cue up, he's blithely walking past wing space and standing clearly visible onstage to check out the MCs making their welcome intros. Strike one.

When he's not making a nuisance of himself with his uncued presence, he's back in the wings rocking in a squeaking comfy-chair and making conversation with his students -- while the P is giving his address! Strike two.

Then he gets bored. He reaches in front of him and picks up a drumstick that has been preset for the Chinese Orchestra's performance. He uses the purloined drumstick as a personal back massager! Anyone with even a modicum of professional courtesy will keep their paws OFF props and equipment that do not belong to them or their part of the show. Strike three!

Two things I'm concerned about in confronting the man is that I don't speak his language well and anything I say could potentially spark off a diplomatic incident. And two, because he knows kung fu, he could well beat me into a pulp if he detects an antagonistic tone in my voice. So I simply walk through the wings to his immediate location and place my physical presence right next to his, and between him and the other Chinese Orchestra instruments. I don't have to say a word, though I don't like the way he's eyeing the triangle either...

How do I know he was the instructor despite him being dressed like the rest of his troupe? His bushy mustache gave him away. If he was one of our students, he'd just look seriously overaged.

I think that's the problem with us as a whole. We focus on being competent, excellent even, in the work we are supposed to do; but we forget that beyond our little world there is a larger performance going on around us. We forget that even if we're not yet called on to perform, what we do while waiting our turn still contributes to or detracts from the larger performance.

Why is our little country ranked 53rd among the most liveable cities in the world despite scoring high in "stability, healthcare... education as well as infrastructure"? Because our scores in "environment and culture" pulled our overall grade down. That's exactly what I mean from today's little story. It's a waste if our overall efforts to perfect our personal competencies are let down because of poor environmental awareness and a lack of cultural propriety. Those are the niceties, the little things we don't consider so important and thus we tend to ignore them. But they do add up towards the final tally.

Your individual performance may have been spot-on perfect, but people are more likely to remember if the concert on the whole sucked or not. Perhaps you think I'm being a Nazi about this but, even if occurring offstage, just one thoughtless act, one moment of indiscipline, or one misplaced prop could bring down the entire show. Fortunately today's concert, apart from the above-mentioned backstage shenanigans, turned out quite tolerable after all.

Announcing Wowpowbow

I know I'm not likely to have any success publicizing Drama Night 2010 through this post, but I'm providing a link to the promotional website anyway. Following the success of the 10-minute play genre that we used for last year's Drama Night, this year we've decided to host a 10-minute play competition open to our kids and staff to see what hidden talents may yet shine on campus.

The competition will be called (and I hereby copyright the name) "Wow! Pow! Take a Bow!" or "wowpowbow" for short, because these three words encapsulate both the intensity and the berevity of the 10-minute play.

Expanding the theatre experience to the rest of the college is part of my vision to turn the NYeDC into a credible in-house theatre management company rather than just an expressive outlet for an exclusive bunch of emo teen "artistes" in need of shock therapy. No offense, alumni! Ha ha!

Anyway, the website link as I promised: http://wowpowbow.viviti.com. I've been experimenting with Viviti as a way to cobble a website together quick and dirty, and without the need for messing about with code. Everything's wysiwyg, instructions are easy to follow, and all I do is choose what I want to go where, click the right spot and edit the text where needed. QED, though I've already spent at least a couple of days tweaking. OCD, can't help it.

Problem with Viviti is that I'm going to have to start paying for the service soon. Not cheap (US$10/month!) but it's either that or risk ads popping up and annoying my eyeballs. Grrr... Tough decision...

Speaking of paying for services, my free Haloscan comment service is winding up and now I have to pay for the new comments host they've so kindly transferred my account to. Wonder if it's worth the expense...? Hmmm...

Early bird

What the heck am I doing on campus at 0630? First thing in the morning class? Yes, but that's not the reason. The reason is that my own version of daylight savings time unexpectedly kicked in this morning. Woke up at 0530 thinking it was 0630, performed my usual morning routines and rituals and arrived here a whole hour before anyone sane normally shows up. No wonder the roads were so clear of traffic and the sky never got brighter en route.

If it's true that older people need less sleep, I'd estimate my age to be at least 100.

'Laundry list'

Does being focused on exam results actually get in the way of a child's education? Engel, writing in the NYT, thinks so. In her article, "Playing to Learn," she envisions her ideal primary school curriculum -- free of a "laundry list of goals... and... devoted instead to just a few narrowly defined and deeply focused goals".

If school was just all about the kids and their needs, I'd agree with her. Unfortunately, though we would like to think it was, the whole community wants their hands in the pie, and everybody has a stake in how our little "future leaders" are going to be raised.

The government wants a workforce that can sustain and even grow the economy; the economy wants loyal consumers and a competent and relevant employee pool; parents want the best (which Indicators are they most likely to identify as "The Best", anyway? A slew of Awards, perhaps? Track record of 'A' grades?) for their kids; the kids want some meaning to their lives apart from the prospect of lifelong enslavement to an inescapable cycle of work-earn-shop-rinse-repeat; and we staff want to remain employed by doing our best to satisfy everybody. Ergo, laundry list.

Sorry, kids. It's time to face facts. School does not revolve around you alone.

What's my line?

Got introduced to ecareers.sg, a new career matching portal that we're to encourage our kids to use. Although it's meant for use by our industry, it looks like anyone with a S'porean IC can sign up for a free account and get their interests and competencies surveyed for a job that they could be suitable for.

There's a section for mapping out an education path to a desired career along with several local and international colleges and universities offering relevant courses. Also advice on resume writing and an online portfolio for each account holder to store and manage their interview materials and other career-related stuff. Looks quite useful and user-friendly overall.

As part of the intro, I had to try out the questionnaire myself. 23 pages of questions to answer with a slider-bar rating my interests in various tasks and confidence in doing each well. It was quite demoralizing as I discovered I have very little interest and even less talent in most of the jobs the portal suggested. 'Modelling fashionable clothes': No. 'Managing an office': No. 'Greeting people': Erm... if there's nothing else better to do. It went on like that for many, many questions.

After grinding through my responses, the portal spat out my results: high Artistic tendencies, very poor Realistic outlook. Topping the list of jobs suitable for one such as myself: Author (no full-time career position available, likely to only make money if I can sell 50,000 books. Don't think ANY S'porean author has sold anywhere near 50,000 books yet).

'Education Officer' was nowhere on the list. Guess that explains a lot. 'Author'. Feh. How ever did the portal get that idea?

VinceheartNBS

I don't have all that many friends, so the odds of two of them pledging to spend the rest of their lives together is astronomical. Yet, here they are, Vince (of the tell-all stag party expose) and NBS (my partner in KrIme), are wed and locked -- and it's about time, you two.

This is one wedding where I could not answer the question, "Bride's side or Groom's?" with any certainty. So being shelved under 'Miscellaneous' was as good a category as any.

I know both Vince and NBS have been stressing out over the preparations for the ceremony, but from my vantage point it looks like everything went off just fine.

The church wedding was relaxed. The preacher exhorted the principles of Contentment, Committment and Consecration in their marriage with the authority and levity of liberal quotes from both the Bible and Hallmark respectively. He neglected to mention Consummation, but I'm sure we don't really need a lot of instruction from the pulpit about that.

Standard Chinese wedding fare for dinner at Qian Xi (Farrer Park). The food was good, and the servings were generous. Pity we didn't have bigger eaters at our table, however -- there was much we couldn't finish. Standard procedure for the dinner rituals as well: champaign pouring, the toast, the 'thank you' speehes, the photo shoots per table. Uncomplicated and easy-going, much as what the happy couple generally prefer.

From mad off-campus lunchbreaks with us, to long weekly drives to Jurong (for personal routines), to investing in a condo together. It's been a long journey to get here, and now a new road has opened up for you to travel together. Take good care of each other, 'k?

NYeDC: New Blood

Am feeling good about NYeDC's recruitment. We've attracted some promising J1s who have had some theatre experience already, so we need not begin from scratch with them like we usually do every year. Here, they're playing a game of Tableaux, in which the kids come up one by one to create a picture based on a particular theme. What do you think the theme for this picture is?

And here's RodO leading a reading of his (now mostly typo-free) script. Mel and I sat through auditions with him and together we made our casting decisions. Looks like we have a strong cast this year. Let's hope they have the discipline and work ethic to match.

My kingdom for a script

Upon pain of death, NYeDC has been charged to perform a comedy in which no one wants to commit suicide and no one wants to murder anybody either. Our club has somehow gained a reputation for OTT emo portrayals of doom and gloom and our principle audience has had enough of it. They want something to laugh at, and not crave to slit their wrists immediately following the denoument. Our director, RodO, has found us a script that fits the bill perfectly.

And now NYeDC is back in competition! Today is the deadline for submitting our registration. The rules say I have to submit a proofread script, approved by the P himself. But the script I submitted was full of typos and some inexplicable changes of gender for the lead character.

It couldn't be helped -- I only got the script emailed over to me the night before and this morning was a rush to juggle classes and P for his stamp of approval, then there was the drive to personally hand the script over to the judging authorities before the deadline. It was a case of getting registered first, and worry about getting scolded for lax proofreading later. At least we're still in the running.

Et tu, ME2

"Mass Effect 2" arrived on the shelves without the fanfare of its illustrious predecessor. No talk of banning the game for perverted sexual content, no appeals committee set up to review and repeal the ban, nothing. And indeed, there is nothing in the game that looks controversial enough to warrant even a raised eyebrow, except the one on the forehead of the most rabid anti-violence militant or repressed pro-celebacy Taleban enforcer. This sequel seems much more careful not to incite the wrath of our censors this time, but has lost a little bit of it's "bad boy" appeal because of it.

But it's still fun to play. What's not to like when your character develops the power to shoot incendiary bullets at enemy targets? Zooming in with the sniper scope reveals said enemy performing an "OMG, I'm on fire" dance, frantically trying to beat out the flames before collapsing into a shower of blackened, powdery particles. Or picking them up with TK powers and slamming them around the room, onto the walls and floor, or dropping them off the edge of a bottomless precipice? Hilarious.

But this isn't to say that the player is all-nigh invulnerable, though. I've died several times too due to successful enemy flanking manouvres catching me in a crossfire or surrounding me in a swarm of melee attackers if I can't put them down fast enough. Or more irritatingly, when an overexcited button push vaults my character over cover instead of ducking behind it. When that happens, I'm directly in the line of fire and then I'm dead in seconds. Bah. Design flaw.

The fun part is to gather a team of badass squaddies, each with their own back stories. In order to unlock their special abilities each of them needs their baggage resolved. Most have problems with either their parents or their children, which seems like an odd collection of problems to solve for such a hardcore bunch. Maybe it's because they weren't loved as children that's why the became such badasses who can't deal with their own children? I dunno.

What's missing is the randomness of battle encounters that the first installment had in spades. Now almost every mission has some purpose towards the immediate goal rather than building up a picture of a universe far larger than the obvious. Most side-quests are of the find-fetch-deliver variety which are mundane at best, and no setting people on fire while we're at it. Meh.

Depending on the player character's selected gender, there are a few teammates that can be flirted with throughout the mission. However out of the many dalliances, the player has to choose only one to complete the romance narrative with. But all that takes place in a blackout between cutscenes, so there's hardly anything to get excited about. Perhaps alien-human pairings are too biologically complicated to animate? Or a parent control lock somewhere I haven't disabled? Or maybe I just have a whitewashed no-controversy S'pore version of the game? Oh, well.

Anyway, I'm just playing ME2 for the story only. Because the choices I made in my playthrough of the previous game persist and even affect the events and relationships I can have in the sequel, it really does feel like being part of a coherent epic story. If I replayed ME with different choices, my ME2 experience would also be different. And so will it be for ME3, whenever that comes out.

42

It does not matter that the individual with boots on the ground is constantly evolving, always adapting to changing circumstances; or that the audience is always dynamic in their needs, preferences and levels of engagement, never static. What might have worked for one audience is rarely going to work for another; what didn't work before sometimes when taken back to the shop for tweaking could work wonders for a fresh new audience. An organization that offers such variations year after year means that it must be doing Something right, especially if the variations show a discernible improvement over time.

An organization, on the other hand, cannot accept this "Something" to remain undefined. To the organization, an undefined "Something" is like having an itch it cannot scratch. How will it know to replicate its benchmark-topping successes if there isn't Something to pin down as the Method/Best Practice/Framework/Model or whatever else you might want to call it as the One Key Factor that made it all happen?

Individuals simply adapt, change, survive, and are grateful to simply live to see another sunrise. Change is the only Constant, Luck or lack thereof messes up carefully calculated odds, Sh*t happens; so attempting to attribute certain habits, behaviours or practices with life-preserving qualities is a complete puzzle for the individual to fathom. Nevertheless, that was precisely the exercise for this afternoon's after-school activity.

From our discussions, I came to understand what Corporate was getting at. It didn't really matter what all our disparate individuals were doing on the ground, whether we were lighting lamps or filling empty vessels or saving starfish or dodging bullets or fighting fires. What Corporate wants is for all of us individuals to provide the same answer, sing the same tune, dance the same dance to the same piper's tune if and when someone asks Something about our organization. That's all.

Now it has just become clear why the answer to "life the universe and everything" is "42". As long as everyone in the organization agrees that the answer is "42", "42" IS and henceforth shall ever be the answer.

Dogsitting Mimi

While the Wongs have been away on their short trip to HK, I've been dogsitting Mimi as per our usual arrangement.

Having taken care of her for a week, it's become painfully apparent that she's aged quite a bit. On walkies, her gait is much slower than it used to be, and she certainly isn't as excitable as she once was. She's also gone quieter, with things that go on around her passing with scant notice and even at home she's no longer barking for attention 'cos most of the time she's just sleeping. She takes her meds with no fuss either (yes, having to take meds is another sign of ageing).

She has indeed mellowed out over the years. So she's been such a good girl to look after for a week, no trouble at all. Wonder if we human beings generally age this gracefully?

What happens at stag

Oops. I seem to have generated some unhealthy interest in last Saturday's post. Apparently, I've broken some unspoken taboo. What happens at stag, should stay at stag. Pardon my indiscretion. :X

A change of menu

Just when June had begun to see a pattern after being married for ten years... whenever we visit my parents on the weekend for dinner, it's always the same thing on the menu. Steamed chix, steamed pomfret, roast pork purchased off the shelf, stir-fried towgay, and either a canned Campbell's whatever or fresh spinach soup, in more or less that combination.

To be honest, meals aren't my family's forte. Sure, even when growing up our meals were hot, fresh, probably nutritious too, but they weren't exactly "Omg, you've gotta try this!!!" on the Michelin star scale. Probably explains why as kids we ate so little, and it still took us a long time to shovel down what little we had too.

Anyway, just when June had detected a pattern in the way our weekend dinners were repeating themselves, today there was a sudden change in the menu. Mom had discovered Fassler Gourmet and suddenly we had a spread of sashimi salmon, US scallops, and satay (not from Fassler). It was a whole new taste sensation!

And June, well... she missed dinner 'cos she's in HK. Oh, well.

Vince's stag

Just got back from Vince's stag party. The plan was to accompany him as he indulged his fave Saturday night passion: supporting Liverpool on the TV.

We chose a big screen for him -- at the atrium of the Rendezvous Hotel. But the match was boring, and despite it being advertised as the gathering place for the "Official Liverpool F.C. Fan Club" for tonight's EPL clash, the atmosphere was a far cry from Anfield.

By the end of the first half, we'd already drained our glasses and gnawed every chix wing we ordered and we were outta there. CHIJMES next, but here there was too much of a crowd, already well settled in and occupying all the tables in front of the big screens.

However, without the distraction of the big game, we were able to execute our primary objective for the evening: get Vince to drink more than we've ever seen him drink before; then get him to perform a short list of tasks which he will never attempt again as of next week when he joins the ranks of the Marrieds.

We got a private box overlooking the dance floor of La Baroque where a decently competent 'live' band was belting out covers of recent hits. Loudly. Screwdrivers all round (except for the DDs, me included). Vince proved quite sporting in his sincere attempts to collect 1) a lady stranger's phone number; 2) a photo of another lady stranger which she would forward to his cell phone; and 3) get yet another lady stranger to buy him a drink.

Two out of three ain't bad. Phone number, check. MMS photo, check. Mooch a drink, fail. But he made up for it by dancing onstage with the band to BEP's "Boom, Boom, Pow!" while wearing his newspaper hat and flying goggles.

What were you expecting? "The Hangover"?

TGI so not Friday

What is it about today? It's a Thursday, but it feels so like Friday; which shouldn't be unusual because for someone with my sense of time, messing up my days of the week is par for the course.

What's strange is that I am not alone in this mistaken sensation. Independently, different people have casually mentioned to me how today feels like Friday and they're a little worried that they might not show up for work tomorrow thinking that's it's Saturday instead of Friday like it should be.

And even more oddly enough, there are yet another few people on FB who have independently updated their status claiming something similar.

Coincidence? Could we be all so heavily worked this week that we can't wait for the weekend? Or have we so little work that it already feels like we're winding down for the weekend? Am I even asking the right questions?

A very civil (defence) afternoon

Time for the college to have its civil defence competency recertified. Part of that exercise involves having us attend a recourse in basic emergency procedures conducted by Civil Defence personnel themselves.

Such young boys they are, and having to give us hard-bitten, jaded, seen-it-all-before Education Officers an afternoon of going back over things-we-already-know can't have been their favourite assignment on the day's roster. I bet they'd much rather be fighting an actual four-alarm fire, risking life and limb and the prospect of a horrible crispy death than face being slowly and painfully flayed alive and torn to shreds by, um, us.

Nevertheless, they kept their composure, put up a brave front and on the whole did a reasonably good job of entertaining us with good, old-fashioned schoolboy humour -- and still got through to us on some new developments in the emergency rescue industry. Like, we got some hands-on with the Automated External Defibrillator (AED) that has recently been installed in many shopping malls and has since been the object of desire for anyone with fantasies of playing doctor in a public place. The device actually produces vocalized instructions (in English) to prompt the user on the correct sequence for its use. Still, it requires the user to have had some training in its use. The prompts are simply reminders, not instructions to land a plane by.

The other training modules were refreshers: CPR, basic fire-fighting, emergency evac and the mummification of live but injured subjects.

The boys showed courage in spending a whole afternoon us, a truly fearsome audience bent on making their lives memorably miserable for their pains. And they survived us well enough that I'm sure they'll show the same level of courage through hell and high-water to rescue me should I ever require their assistance.

Nice job, boys!

Home, Heart, Horizon

Home. Home is where I live. Home is where I have invested most of my resources so that I have a place to crash, to be secure in, to have a context outside of the rest of the world. It's a place that I can define in my own terms, where I can indulge at least the illusion that within a limited space, I am in control of my environment, and my influence holds sway.

Heart. Heart is life, the promise of continuity and the promise that life is worth continuing. Heart is courage, the confidence to keep struggling on when times are tough, even if it means adapting temporarily or changing permanently behaviours and routines one has grown accustomed to. Heart is love because we aren't alone to fend for ourselves; it's comforting to know that others can't do without us either.

Horizon. Looking ahead to the future. The continuity that stems from from the heart needs a direction and a destination -- somewhere to go in a roughly forward direction 'cos we really hate it when we discover we've been walking in circles all along.

Having said that, I'm not all that clear what PM means by "the mountain has moved; we are waiting for the mouse to come out," with reference to making babies. I have no qualms about moving mountains, and my mouse is always ready to come out, "mouse" being a rather modest euphemism compared to "mountains". Guess he's being a conservative Asian gentleman speaking about such things.

As for the babies... well, Jojo's been regaling us with tales of her weekend spent with half-a-dozen of them. They wrecked her Home, they quailed her Heart and they gave her second and third thoughts about getting Horizontal ever again, lest she unwittingly contracts one for herself. Jojo is not alone in this sentiment.

PM has his work cut out for him. You could say he has his hands full, moving mountains: "Home, Heart, Horizon"

A wedding and five near funerals

Picked up an invite to Jamie's wedding on the auspices of being the spouse of her close friend at work. I also had the privilege of transporting a few of these lovely ladies to the dinner. More on them later.

It was good to hook up with Cammy again. Haven't seen him since he helped us entertain Madoka-san a couple of years ago. Also good to discover he'll be joining our industry when he finishes his PGDE. Anyone need a tutor in linguistics sometime in the near future? Let me know, 'k?

Our table, which sort of aggregated former staff of June's workplace, apart from June herself and Cindy... and the odd spouse.

Ah, about our passengers in M2. After dinner, as I was driving out from the parking lot, I overshot the gantry and had to reverse so I could slot in my complementary parking coupon. When the bar raised, I stepped on the accelerator a little harder than usual to compensate for the speed bump in front. But M2 was still in reverse gear, so we shot backwards instead.

I could see a BMW approaching in my rear-view mirror, and since backwards was not the accustomed way people drive their cars, I stepped down hard on the brake to stop and change direction. But it wasn't the brake. My foot found the accelerator again and now there was a little grey car hurtling backwards even faster towards imminent disaster.

From the backseat three terrified women were clutching each other, harmonizing in a collective "Ahhhh!!!" My exact thought was, "OMG, we're all gonna die!" Not very glam, but very common last words to go out with.

But for some unknown reason, the BMW had halted quite a distance away, and having disengaged from my brain, my foot finally found its way to the brake and brought us to an abrupt full stop. One quick gear change later, we were on our way home again, in shock but thankfully unscathed.

I bet the security camera caught everything on tape. I wouldn't be surprised to see it up on YouTube tomorrow entitled "Idiot driver charges ass first into trouble" And maybe, just maybe, the camera might have caught footage of my guardian angel working overtime to pull my butt out of the fire... again.

Replacement sofa

Say hello to our new Sea Horse sofa, a significant downgrade from the one it's replacing. At least the new one is neat and because it's a little smaller, our once cramped living room now feels more spacious.

Tong had also dropped by to help us with some home repairs -- a leaky kitchen tap for one, and to troubleshoot a lighting problem in the bedroom. And Ling helped us save $35 which the delivery guys were charging us to dispose of the old sofa. No, she didn't carry it off herself; she reminded us that the Town Council provides a bulky item removal service for free. We'll give them a call on Monday.

A sad tale with ice-cream

When our doorbell rings we normally won't bother to see who's there unless we have a prior heads up that we should be expecting guests or a delivery. But there was no way to pretend no one was home because our living room lights were on and the TV volume was up.

It was a young fellow at the door with a heart-wrenching story about how he had to help his mother support his family of three brothers, blah, blah, and would we be so kind as to purchase some ice-cream from a small styrofoam box he was carting around?

It was the same type of ice-cream our local vendor-uncles sell in the form of wafers and sandwiches from off their motorbike sidecars. He had a variety of flavours too and so happened he was able to supply us with sweetcorn and his last carton of raspberry ripple. How much? $20 for the two cartons we had taken off his hands. Blink, blink... a tad steep, but who were we to cast a wet blanket over youthful entrepreneurism, right?

That was last night. Tonight while we were over at M-i-L's, a girl approached the gate with a story about how she had to work to pay her school fees, blah, blah, and would we be so kind as to purchase some ice-cream from a small styrofoam box she was carting around...?

Next time we want ice-cream at a premium, we'll walk to the supermarket for Ben and Jerry's. And we'll savour it while wearing headphones over our ears and watching TV in the dark. Call first if you want to visit.

Eyes on the prize

NYeDC is back in competition this year. The dreaded S'pore Youth Festival (Drama) has spun another revolution and it's our cue that's been called. The pressure's on and there are forces behind the scenes that remind us that there needs to be an achievement goal to attain or better otherwise we shouldn't have bothered trying at all. Failing to meet our expectations assumes that the human/financial/time resources would have gotten a better return if it had been invested elsewhere. Or in short, just FAIL.

Here's a dilemma that we tend to get ourselves into. When kids join a CCA, is it for their own enrichment and exposure, or is it for the development and training of their talents? The choir is currently holding auditions because it wants the most musically inclined kids to make up its numbers. Sports groups have trials to select the best talents to represent the college. There's always a prize to be won, and everyone wants the best possible chance to win it. The prize, or how close a CCA gets to it is the justification for the existence that CCA. Life is cold, hard and practical. No return, no investment.

Lament all you want, that's the way it is. CCAs are serious business.

Which is why I'm so glad to have caught tonight's episode of "Glee" on Star World. All this negative thinking has been weighing me down lately, and even though it's a TV show it was refreshing to look at my situation from different perspective. Glee follows the misadventures of a talented but dysfunctional high school choir as it prepares for the National Championship. The budget to keep the club running, the aspirations of the Glee club members, the passion of the teacher fighting to keep the club alive are all on the line -- they've bet the farm on the Nationals. It's not an unfamiliar situation to us CCA I/Cs.

But "Glee" recognizes one thing that I may have forgotten in my funk. Kids join a CCA to become good at something. That's what the CCA offers them: the training, the advice, the encouragement, the exposure, and ultimately, the benchmark by which they can measure in concrete terms how good they have gotten, and how far they still have to keep going if they really want to make use of their talents in the future.

We may not like working towards the prize. We may not like working under the pressure. But without either the prize to aim at, and without the pressure to keep the engines running, there wouldn't be any point to working at all.

Dual income

My wife works and I stand to gain more from this financial arrangement between spouses, according to the Pew Research Center. But that's basic mathematics [2(income)/x(dependants) > 1(income)/y(dependants), where y>=x], isn't it?

But my puzzlement is more regarding the question of why when more women are getting an education more men are not, and when more women are entering the workforce more men are losing their jobs? That's what the numbers are implying... or am I reading them wrongly?

Assuming gender bias isn't clouding my judgement, it seems that on the whole, men and women don't like sharing gender roles. When women started moving into once male-dominated areas, the guys quit the field. Whether in education or career, work or housekeeping, the main trends point to an either-or proposition -- one gender occupies one domain, the other gender occupies the corresponding domain.

But it's still too early to see if this revolution will result in a complete reversal of our traditional gender roles. Probably not, I think, but in the meantime I'm not going to be an old-fashioned patriarch about it. My wife works and our combined income makes for a more comfortable lifestyle for both of us than I could provide for myself on my own. Can't see anything wrong with that.

Out of idle, into first

We're three weeks into the year and the first batch of assignments has already arrived to be graded. It'll be a struggle to get the momentum back, seeing as how the brain is still fuzzy having just reanimated from winter hibernation.

Also had my first meeting with a whole new committee comprising Meng, YJ and Loke. The meeting went chop chop with a liberal sprinkling of mad ideas and terrible jokes around the table. And we still managed to get a plan shaped up within an hour. Well, the rough outline of one, anyway.

Yep, the work year has definitely begun.

Pickles in hand

Thanks to Jen, we've started on a programme joining her and her family to cook and deliver a dinner dish to the residents of the Gift of Love Home every third Sunday of the month. June whipped up a chix stew cooked according to a fairly standard recipe which we then transported over to join with the other volunteers' dishes for a residents' pot-luck.

The home is for the destitute elderly, many of whom are wheelchair-bound. At five o'clock sharp with everyone arranged at their tables, the dinner-bell sounded, everyone recited grace and immediately got on to the business of eating. Although we were encouraged to engage the residents in light dinner conversation, I being such a terrible conversationalist was ever so grateful to be handed a container of achar (mixed shredded pickles) and told to just serve.

In less than a half hour, dinner was over, the crockery and cutlery were washed, tables cleared and wiped down, the floor was mopped and disinfected, and the residents had moved off to whatever programme was awaiting them next.

For us, "next" was dinner with our families. Which is kinda' sad 'cos the people we'd just served don't themselves have family to go back to. That's why they're here.

Grand Dame

The end came for Auntie Sook fairly quickly and unexpectedly, but she made her peace with the world and left well.

In fact, the whole world came to the Garden of Rememberance tonight to send her off. The word that kept being repeated when people talked about her was "impact". Whether knowing her as a teacher or as choir mistress, they remembered her for the difference she made in their lives.

I never knew her personally, though. She was always my sister's M-i-L and a friend of my parents. Nevertheless, what I do know of her is that she was a formidable grand dame with lots of energy and a great love for her family.

Tonight's service for her was quite a tribute from both the family she loved and the choir which she had worked so hard to build up and nurture. Auntie Sook was one amazing woman.

Too chicken to traverse

It's college Open House day! We seem to have generated quite a lot of interest, judging by the number of kids and parents wandering around our halls and jamming the "Subject Combination Chat Session" tables. Odd that among the other activities promising more fun -- like the mini-tournaments and "one-minute challenges" organized by our various co-curricula groups, the chat tables (which we thought would be the most boring section of the Open House) would turn out to be by far the best patronized. Welcome to S'pore!

Truth be told, I really wanted to experience the Tyrolean Traverse that had been set up on the fifth floor spanning the diameter of the Drum atrium. That would have been the highlight of my day, had I actually gone on it. Procrastinated too long and eventually lost the opportunity when the call for "dinner!" finally ended a rather long day.

There was a [belated] birthday to be celebrated with the promise of BBQ'd chix wings and other street food to be had at Chomps. We also got a couple of surprise dinner guests, NBS and Vince, who dropped off their invites at the table. It's about time, you two!

Troubleshoot fail

In less than 24 hours, I'm experiencing browser time-outs and blank pages at all odd hours of the day once again. And after already spending a pretty penny on sexy new router too. Grrargh! Time to give Starhub another phone-call...

Process of elimination

Since my last complaint to Starhub over my intermittent connection to the Internet at home, it seemed like they'd fixed the problem by the time I returned from BKK. But beginning this week the problem has resurfaced. Despite my terminals' insistence of my wireless 'net uplink, browsing proved impossible as regardless of which web page I wanted to access, I kept getting time-out messages and a perpetual blank browser. And this time these white-out periods were becoming longer and occurring more frequently throughout the day.

Frustrated, I disengaged from the wireless and plugged Mr L33t directly into the modem. Behold -- I'm back up to speed again! Clearly something wrong with the router, then. Half-an-hour later, I've hooked up a new Linksys router and... surf's up dudes!

Book run to the Cheshire Home

Today's Library delivery run took us to the Singapore Cheshire Home. For once we were assigned to a single one-stop address. Though that sounds more convenient, it was actually a bit more difficult because once we arrived, we had to locate the individual recipients and then figure out a system to keep track of our disbursements and collections when more than one came to find us at about the same time. Communication wasn't easy either -- some of them were barely audible because of their disabilities.

The residents have a mixed bag of disabilities. Most are wheelchair-bound, some needing help to wheel them around the place. They vary in age-range, from teenagers to the elderly. It wasn't even possible to guess who was requesting which books until we met them personally. One young fellow was quite taken by a book about tattoos in his pile and soon became absorbed in choosing a design for himself, quite determined to get one as soon as he was able. An older gentleman turned down a pair of Chinese classics, though initially we couldn't understand why. Then it became face-palmingly obvious: the books were too heavy for his atrophied hands and the words were too small for him to read. We went looking around for a little kid who ordered a set of primary readers, but he eventually turned out to be an elderly lady who wanted to learn English through reading kids' books.

Quite a bit of feedback for the NLB then, especially to the staff helping to choose books for the next delivery. Hope they can read the scribbled comments I left for them in the feedback form.

An expat settles in

Another of June's foreign contacts dropped in from Germany. He'll be staying in S'pore for half a year and needed a place to rent. We spent this evening taking him around to view a couple of rental units that June could scrounge up at such short notice.

The first one was in Potong Pasir. A tiny, cramped shophouse apartment that smelled funny and was asking 2.6k per month. For a foreigner, it would have been quite exciting to live like a heartland S'porean. To eat for cheap at the kopitiam downstairs, to go marketing at an NTUC, to mill about with aunties and uncles and listen to the cacophony of a milieu of incomprehensible languages and dialects from day to day, that's learning to be a true S'porean while simultaneously studying at at NUS on an exchange programme. But the asking price was way too much for the experience so we moved off to the next prospect.

Staring out of a 30th storey window of the Plaza Apartment, the view was absolutely stunning. The panoramic windows put the entire city on display. At night, it's a fully dynamic light show of buildings and traffic that never sleep. Just slightly left of centre is the S'pore Flyer and Marina Bay lies beyond. That promises a fantastic view of the occasional firework display, the next one probably being at CNY, just around the corner. Food around here is still relatively cheap in the Arab Street area, while the heart of downtown is within walking distance, as is the MRT if he wants to go further. Jacuzzi bathtub in the bathroom. Asking price (after June got through negotiations) 2.8k per month, pro rated.

No prizes for guessing which apartment won the contract. Our friend is going to live like an expat and not a heratlander after all.

The apprentice

Dropped in on Jojo and Derek's new condo for their BBQ housewarming. Most of the evening she was recounting to us her renovation experiences which didn't quite live up to our expectations as we had recommended to her our ID whom she contracted without seeking a second opinion.

Therein lies the difference between having the work done by the master ID himself (which was our experience) and having the work done by an apprentice. While William controlled every aspect of our renovation with an iron fist over his workers, his poor apprentice showed how freshly minted green she was by getting properly bullied by everyone from her workers to her increasingly frantic client. The apprentice got run through the mill of tardy workers, delayed deliveries, assorted errors of calibration and other careless mistakes; and probably got yelled at quite a bit too by various parties.

We're kind'a sorry our recommendation for a trouble-free renovation experience turned out to be a more hairy one than expected for Jojo, and we're thankful she's not taking it to heart against us. As for the apprentice, we hope this job has taught her to be tougher and more in control of her resources, and not run home crying to mommy about all those mean people she's had to put up with. It's that kind of an industry, and she's just got to learn to survive in it.

Practical GP

Since we're already discussing how dynamic the education industry is with its constant updates and course corrections, can we really think we are so unique that change doesn't take place as quickly in other countries? That seeking education 'for a job' and not as an end in itself is just an Eastern/Asian concept?

Here, we old schoolers bemoan the dwindling number of scholars in the more liberal arts, like literature and philosophy, while the bandwagon hard sciences and math; accounting and business have gained in popularity because they appear more connected to the 'real' world where food on the table is a necessary precondition of life and all else is esoteric luxury. It's hard to argue against that kind of cold pragmatism.

However we like to idealize education, the fact is that today the primary purpose for people to take up an education is indeed to become employable. It's true here, just as it is in the US where the Liberal Arts are likewise giving in and reinventing themselves to become more practical in the employability stakes: see "Making college 'relevant'".

Are our Liberal Arts degrees (and the ricebowls of us old-timers) going the way of the dodo, then? Of course not. As the article points out, the key is to innovate our subjects so that they can offer the kids long-term training in real-world, practical skills. As long as we can give what employers want, we continue to be relevant.

What do employers want?

According to The Association of American Colleges and Universities (quoted in the above article) 89 percent said they wanted more emphasis on “the ability to effectively communicate orally and in writing,” 81 percent asked for better “critical thinking and analytical reasoning skills” and 70 percent were looking for “the ability to innovate and be creative.”

Currently, people view GP as just essay writing and comprehension exercises, a.k.a. advanced English (language). But everything employers want is there in the GP package. But we need a fresh way to teach and engage the kids in it, with more emphasis on what employers want rather than just GP for its own sake. Fortunately, what's required is not a major overhaul of the subject itself, but merely a redesign of the packaging.

New year, new kids, new focus.

Tastes like protection

We're quite indiscriminate about our daily expendables such as toothpaste. We have no brand loyalty. Our priority is whatever looks cheapest or on promotion, we grab. So happens, the latest teeth cleanser we're using is Sensodyne. The ads say it's a special formula that protects people with sensitive teeth from pain when biting into hot or cold foods. What the ads don't say is that it tastes like mint bubble gum that's lost its flavour having been previously chewed... by someone else.

Changeup*

It's good to know there are upcoming changes to the teaching and testing of Chinese to cater to students who have difficulty in the language because an increasing number of them are growing up in English-speaking backgrounds. I presume some of the changes might include a more bilingual approach such that the use of English will be used in Chinese class to facilitate better communication and foster understanding (i.e., comprehension) between teachers and learners.

In the past, the most frustrating thing was being restricted to only use Chinese in class, and how could I answer the teacher's questions if I didn't understand the question? How could I ask if I couldn't formulate the question? How could I read if I didn't have a Rosetta Stone to translate from? It was a downward spiral of "negative talk" and punishment that drove our mutual antipathy in the bad old days.

Today, though, I no longer feel so negatively towards Chinese. I believe I've picked up more of that language through informal means than I ever did than in the ten years I spent in the classroom. It's still embarrassingly pathetic, but I can get by and better with more practice.

But this entry isn't about me, for whom it's all too little too late. It's about the kids studying GP with me. Against the grain, many of them have grown up in predominantly Chinese or dialect-speaking backgrounds. Though their experience in my class is probably not as dire as mine were in my day, English is tough on them especially at the level we expect them to use it. Grammar can be confusing, vocabulary is immense, spelling isn't always 'like it sounds'. Not to mention that we want them to think, reason and logicize in a language that isn't their first choice of communication.

If we're trending towards accommodating English-speaking kids in Chinese class, maybe it's also time to slaughter GP's sacred cow of "only English to be spoken in class" for our more Eastern-rooted kids. A little compromise for the sake of clarity and keeping everyone on the same page would help a lot more than enforcing a dogma that does little to encourage the kids to use the language more.

* Heh. Looks like a Korean word, doesn't it?

First dinner of the decade

New Year's day, 2010. It's been completely dedicated towards preparing this family feast celebrated with the in-laws. This was one occasion for the turkey and pumpkins we were so desperately hunting for last night, but failed to find. The turkey being carved up on the far left was the one we bought for this occasion weeks ago. But because a couple of unconfirmed invitations suddenly became confirmed, our turkey supply of one became inadequate.

As you can see from the orange shade of the soup, we found our butternut pumpkins after all. The further you go looking for something, the greater the chance you're going to find it in your own backyard. These we found this morning at the market where our old place was. Saved!

June took on the lion's share of getting this meal ready. From boiling up the soup to roasting the turkey to prepping the salsa for the tortillas, to chopping up the salad, she was multitasking in the kitchen like you wouldn't believe. Me? I'm just there for basic fetching and carrying, and other assorted grunt work. Which suits me just fine. I'm quite brainless at the culinary arts. :P