it's (about!) time

Ironically, the words "it's time" are printed on the package delivered to my house today. Ironic because I ordered it just shy of a year ago, hoping it would arrive by my birthday. Then I watched Christmas; New Year and Chinese New Year; Valentine's Day; and wife's birthday roll by... and finally, finally, it's here! Yet I still have to wait another 24 hours because no one was home to accept delivery and I have to collect it in person at the local post office during opening hours tomorrow. Rawr.

A Rocky morning

The Animal Rescue Squad swung into action again, reuniting this naughty runaway dog with his owner.

This bad boy was running around loose on campus with one of our students in hot pursuit. She eventually pinned him down, while I arrived huffing and puffing to see if assistance was required.

Fortunately, his owners had tagged him with his name (Rocky) and their cellphone numbers. A couple of calls later and we established contact; the owners' daughter would collect him from us.

Unfortunately, he decided not to wait with us any longer. Sensing a slight lapse in attention, he bounded off again and I had to run after him. He ran out of the main gate (without signing an early-leave form!), but at least had the good sense not to cross the main road; and even better sense to know that the construction site he ran into eventually was not any more hospitable for him. Making a U-turn, he ran back into my arms.

With a firm grip on his collar, we both marched back to campus. For safekeeping, we locked him in the new HODs' room with air-conditioning and lots of well-meaning company.

That would include Wayne who fetched him a bowl of water; Josh who feels it was partially his fault Rocky got away the second time; HOD PE who ran with me after the escapee; Gurmit who fetched a hefty hemp rope to secure him; Amy who rescued my tea from breakfast when we were so abruptly interrupted by the unauthorized new arrival, and offering her room to keep him in; and all the kaypoh little children who tried to make him feel all warm and welcome while we waited for owner to show up.

And that's where his owner caught up to him. Mission accomplished.

The Literature paradox

The reason why Literature as a school subject is in trouble is because we don't know what we want from it. By 'trouble', I mean that it is declining in take-up by students who are favouring the more 'practical' subjects like the sciences and math. All the hand-wringing that been going on in recent weeks is nothing new -- lit has been in decline for a long time now.

The issue isn't really about whether to keep it on as a subject or phase it out. No one is actively campaigning to eradicate it from the syllabus; a number of vocal supporters are rallying support for it; some are lamenting how pragmatic our society's become; but most are silently indifferent and will neither be sorry nor surprised if it dies a natural death.

I belong to the vocally indifferent camp. We love good books, but the link between the enjoyment of reading and having to take an exam about it is problematic. Both are diametrically opposite activities. Old man story follows:

Way back when I was a green trainee with a class of my own, I had to give a lit test. My objective was to see what creative things the kids could do with the poems they were reading. I designed a test to assess their interpretation of the text through a choreographed or dramatized group movement, i.e., a dramatic reading of the poem of their choice. I even designed a rubric so I could grade the performance with a clear conscience.

As much as the kids were astonished by my test design and rubric which I briefed them on beforehand, they astounded me with their interpretative performances. Working together, not only did they show they understood their poems, they showed that they were able to translate text into visuals, and visuals to aesthetic movement -- and they did it all on their own. I didn't teach them to do anything that they did, I just said, 'GO!', sat back and marvelled.

A couple of days later, I returned to the classroom with a heavy heart and a text-based re-test. Since the kids were sitting for a written exam at the end of the year, my mentors insisted that I give them a written test now. I guess they wanted to see how effectively the kids had memorized their Coles' Notes or whatever else they were studying. I never knew how the kids did on the re-test but I'd like to think that the rescinded test helped them some.

The lit exam is a very different animal from the simple activity of text reading. Despite the fluidity of subject matter, there's nothing whimsical about how questions are to be answered, or subjective in the way the answers are graded. The exam is purely mechanical in its emphasis on critical analysis, and that it rewards logic and structure -- just like the other kind of argumentative academic study. The questions require a scientific hypothesis and a mathematically logical approach to developing a reasoned conclusion.

Lit is a subject that bundles more content than its packaging can possibly hold. It's the elephant all of us blind men are feeling a different aspect of. Yes, it is creative, humanistic, historical, expressive, and everything else a lit buff identifies as good for the growing child; but it is also as practical as it gets, training the same child to think and appreciate current realities while developing a critical mind and a personal voice to match.

The problem is, people don't see how two contradictory objectives can co-exist in the same subject. Me, I enjoyed the books I read and most of the lit classes I attended. And I aced every test and exam I took beyond Sec 2. AND I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one to be able to say that.

I don't believe anyone wants lit to die (apart from those poor sods who only know lit through memorizing notes), but if it is to have a renewed viability, the people setting the syllabus and the people setting the exams will have to start talking to each other once again to figure out how to market the best of both worlds and ditch the public opinion of lit stemming from the worst; while making it relevant to a generation of twits*.

*by which I mean people who tweet. On Twitter. Rather than like some old pedagogue ponderously pontificating on Blogger. 

Taoist send-off

It's been a rough few days. It's been like another month, another wake. There was no getting out of this one. The wife's closest aunt passed away over the weekend and for the first time I've been attending the full works of a Taoist send-off... in the capacity of favourite grand-niece's husband and designated driver.

From the ecclesiastical perspective, we do not share the same beliefs but as family I'm not about to be all stand-offish and disrespectful of the obligatory rituals. As I'm not immediate family, I don't have to play a part in the main proceedings. That gave me lots of time to grade papers at an unoccupied corner table of the tentage; but where I am expected to show the minimum of family support, I take the wife's lead.

I helped fold origami 'ingots' (the more, the merrier) to be burnt on behalf of the deceased; wore colours appropriate to the occasion; and for the short procession behind the hearse, I had a mourning sash tied around my waist -- though I waited in the car, ready to join the convoy headed up to Bright Hill.

Between these familial duties and caring for the new maltipup, there isn't much left to Spring Break. So I'm really glad my grading quota has been met... and now I can party the rest of what's left of my brains out the rest of the week. As if.

Baptism by poo

Let's start today's post with a cute pix. That's 'cos yesterday, Tasha really had her baptism by diarrhoea. This phenomenon appears to be our welcome-to-the-family tradition and most of our pets have gone through it, though to greater or lesser degrees.

It's hard enough toilet training a puppy, but when she gets the runs all the 'no' and 'good girl' messages get all mixed up in the frequent -- and messy -- 'accidents' that occur wherever in the house she is in.

Fortunately, the biggest damage was in the main bathroom where we confined her for a while. But we had to deal with smaller issues in the bedroom, living-room and study as well. And she thoroughly messed up her bedding, probably during a surprise attack.

The reason why we were so concerned was at about past midnight, there was blood in her stool. We bundled her into a large plastic bag lined with a pee mat and drove her straight to the 24-hour emergency clinic. For an after-hours consultation and prescription costing over $200 we got the very helpful diagnosis that our puppy was having a diarrhoea problem. Wow, thanks. They also showed us a magnified peek into a stool sample they'd taken to show us a microbial parasite that could be the cause of all this anxiety.

So, no unauthorised snacks for her and definitely no human food. Instead, a regimented feeding schedule, antibiotics and pepto bismol doses twice a day -- at least until her systems can process at a more mature level.

Congratulations, it's a maltipoo!

This post is a day late, but we have a dog to take to doggie events again! After being nameless for a day, she has finally got one we could both agree to: Tasha. Tasha is a cross-breed, fashionably referred to as a maltipoo (no prizes for guessing her parentage).

And so now with a new puppy in the house, we'll all be making a lot of adjustments while we adapt to a new personality in residence. For the moment, the cats are unhappy with this new addition and have gone off their food.

And for us, Tasha is no Q-tip replacement. Where Q-tip tended towards placidity, Tasha is a ball of energy and is quite demanding of attention. For a small pup, she has a sharp, high-pitched bark that can be quite startling. And the process of housetraining has to begin all over again.

Fortunately, this week begins Spring Break, so I can afford to spend a little more time at home to get this little fella acclimatized to our family, and us to her.

Raw or rawr!

Tried a sampling of Sunday Pets New Zealand freeze-dried beef and blueberry. I thought this combination might work and I would finally have grateful smitten felines circling my ankles every time I brought out the snack-pack...

Sadly, this was not the case.

Maui took a sniff, a lick, and when threatened with having to eat it for real, ran for the hills. Kaiser (above) only saw fit to bat it once across the floor with a deft paw. Clearly the boys are not impressed.

Only Momo will eat it, and even then, it seems she has reached maximum marginal utility with the freeze-dried stuff. She munched through this last piece (above) looking totally bored.

Fusspots!

Edit 01:

The cats continue to confuse me. At breakfast, I decided to get rid of the remaining sample by evenly distributing it all in their individual bowls. Before the other two cats got there, Maui wiped them all out. I've never put much stock in the fickleness of feline dietary preferences, but if this experiment has proven anything, it's that my cats are mad.

More adventures in the raw

Feeding the cats with the Ziwi Peak raw air-dried venison and fish. As usual, the boys will have nothing to do with it. One sniff and they're walking out of the kitchen already mentally composing a letter of complaint to the management.

And again, only Momo is willing to put her face in it and nom away.

Managed to convince Kaiser to try some of the stuff by adding a level spoonful of his regular kibble. Even so, he's no big fan going by his leftovers.

For dessert, Sunday Pets freeze-dried Manuka glazed lamb... but the cats have totally confused me. Yesterday, Kaiser couldn't get enough of the snack, today he absolutely refuses to touch it. Momo was the complete opposite: where yesterday she refused it outright, today she's eating it out of my hand.

So far, my experiments with raw pet food have been pretty inconclusive. If I'm going to plonk down actual money for a pack, it'll be a small pack just for Momo. The two boys can jolly well get a top-up of their current commercial crap, and like it.

Cats and raw snacks

No hard feelings. Ginger tom still recognizes us and begs us for food despite being wrongfully imprisoned in our cage for over 24 hours. Apparently, he's already been fixed, so the trip to the vet proved unnecessary -- apart from his ear tipping (which Elim says is very important).

Today we're visiting the ST classified ads sponsored pets event at ECP, reliving the good ol' days when we had a dog to bring to such an event. Maybe we will again soon... but that's left to be seen.

But that's how we wound up with a bunch of free sample Ziwi Peak air-dried (above) and Sunday Pets freeze-dried (below) raw food to try out on the cats at home.

This could get complicated. It's bath day for Momo (see her traumatized look above) and so we wanted to reward her with the Sunday Pets lamb snack (below). She sniffed it suspiciously; licked it once; took it into her mouth... and promptly spat it out again. Either she doesn't like it, or multi-tasking between lick-drying herself and snack-eating was conflicting with her taste processors. We'll try it again later.

Kaiser, on the other hand, went bananas over the lamb snack. The first two morsels he ate while perched on his favourite shelf. The third piece brought him to floor level where he chased me into the kitchen. Maui, as before, turned his nose up at the treat and let Kaiser have it. Above, Kaiser is polishing off Momo's refused piece.

So, each cat has it's own preferred raw food type. We have yet to find out what turns Maui on, but Kaiser goes for the cheaper lamb snack while hoity-toity Momo wants green-lipped mussels. How to remember all these specific little details? *headache

Gourmet girl

Latest update on the pet front is that despite the wife's hankering after a replacement Q-tip, we still have not found one. The one at the SPCA was not a mini-maltese and anyway she, being over four years old, has no history that we know of. We don't know her health condition, temperament, or even how she is going to react with three other cats in the house. Sad, but we gave her up to the third person on the wait list and hope she can find a good home there.

Least of all, I don't want a rebound dog picked up on impulse, thinking the same personality will be perfectly replicated when we should know very well it's not likely to be. If we got a puppy, we could watch her grow up, and adapt to her quirks as they develop.

In the meantime, Elim gave me a sampling of Sunday Pets freeze-dried raw mussels (above) to see how the cats would take to it. Out of the bag, the mussels smell like something even I would like to put in my mouth, but I bested temptation and gave the cats one each in their dinner bowls. The boys ran away screaming. Those two must have been brought up to eat commercial crap. Plebeians!

But Momo proved to have the more discerning palate. After a cautious sniff at the mussel in her bowl, she picked it up and ate it on the kitchen floor. The boys weren't troubling her, so she took her time to savour the delicate bouquet of this rare treat. Then she went back for seconds.

For her thirds --  la piece de resistance -- she chose a cozy spot on the kitchen rug to down the last one. I groaned inwardly over the prospect of having to clear the crumbs away, but Momo did a good job of mopping up most of the mess for me.

Freeze-dried mussels are gourmet food for cats with more mature tastebuds and who can appreciate the finer things in life. But they are only an appetizer, as far as Momo is concerned. She still came back for her regular two scoops of commercial kibble for dinner.

A little give... and take?

Q-tip left quite a bit of food behind, both kibble and canned. We donated it all to the SPCA. While we were there, the wife went to look at the dogs up for adoption. Her eye went to a female mini-maltese who was quite friendly.This 4-year old is already pledged to someone else, though, so the wife put her name on a waiting list. Something tells me she's already contemplating a Q-tip replacement...

Exit, stage left

Friday evening, we attended Tina's memorial (above) dressed in our old "z-Friends" costumes. Comprising a solid colour T-shirt underneath denim overalls, this was what we wore for our street gigs. Using (or rather, misusing) buckets and mops, we devised many ridiculous scenarios such as "astronauts"; "circus" and "Olympics" for the purpose of entertaining children and for other fringe activities. Of course, my set of overalls had gotten tight over the years. Sigh.

Anyway, a number of very eloquent people said a lot of very nice things about Tina which we all could nod to. Her straightness of back; her humility; her giving of herself to project, people and the community; her sense of quick-witted and spontaneous fun; her discipline; her genuineness; her respect for others regardless of age, background or experience... and so many other things we will miss now that she's gone.

So with red wine and white wine, masala tea and tetra-pak drinks, we toasted Tina even as we vowed to keep her memory alive while we kept theatre alive and thriving even though one of our biggest prime movers has exited, stage left for her curtain-call of great applause.

Not easily won

I once told x13 that we weren't scholar material. Every bit of success we got would not have been easily obtained, but rather the result of a very hard slog through blood, sweat and tears. Guess what? They girded up, put their noses to the grindstone and started grinding.

I've never taken a CT before that produced multiple distinction achievers at the 'A' Levels... until now. I shouldn't take pride in an achievement based on an effort not my own, but I can't help but be proud of x13 for their determination to do well and the grit to pull it off in the end. Very nicely done, kids!

To be fixed

This poor fellow is a recent arrival to the void deck of a neighbouring block. He's very friendly... which is how he ended up in our cage. We're helping our local cat welfare chapter neuter strays and this guy is a prime candidate for fixin'. He'll be be picked up in the morning by a fellow cat caretaker and taken to the vet; after which he'll be released to recuperate where we found him downstairs.

I feel sorry for him, though. Confined to a tiny cage all night and made to fast before his 'procedure', he hasn't stopped crying since we brought him home. I feel your pain, l'il buddy. But it's for your own good.

Edit 01: Oops, the boy was already fixed. Oh, well, just to make his overnight stay in our cage worthwhile, he got a health screen and his ear clipped.

Keep the memory

As the wife and I are getting over our loss of Q-tip, Elim so thoughtfully shared this handwritten poem with us. Though sometimes we want to forget the pain of separation, it's also good to keep the memory of our happier times together. That way, Q-tip will always be a part of us and have meant something special to us.

"until we meet above"!

Goodbye, Q-tip!

And just like that, Q-tip left us on Friday morning. After a couple of days of home care, when she seemed to be doing better than at the hospital, she suddenly took a turn for the worse. She was refusing food again and later on, her body started rejecting the food that was already inside her.

By morning, she was severely depleted and no longer responding to stimulus. At this point, it was clear that nothing more could be done. We mutually opted to have her euthanized at the vet. It was a decision we'd been hoping to avoid as long as possible, but time just wasn't on our side.

Goodbye, Q-tip! Rest well!

The invalid

Just so you know, home-care for invalid pets isn't easy. Woke up at 6 am today, didn't leave for work until 8. Either we wake up earlier, or find a more efficient routine. Let's see what the sequence was today:

Took Q-tip to the pee pan -- success
Made Maui's water-diluted special formula food and fed cats -- success
Wife made Q-tip's water-diluted special formula food (not the same as Maui's) -- success
Helped Wife feed Q-tip, alternating between laps of water and food -- success
Fed Q-tip heart meds -- took a number of attempts but she finally swallows half-pill (success)
Helped Wife remove Q-tip's dressings -- bandages stuck to skin and fur causing distress (fail)
Helped Wife re-dress Q-tip's bedsores -- looked like a neat job but dressing slips, exposing wound (fail)
Q-tip threw up entire breakfast -- probably put too much pressure on her stomach holding her still (FAIL)
Helped Wife remove failed dressing and redress wound -- success
Helped re-feed Q-tip breakfast -- due to previous trauma, she didn't eat much (limited success)
Washed Q-tip's feeding dish -- success
Cleared cats' sandbox -- success
Got ready for work -- success
Dosed self with personal meds -- success
Discovered Maui vomit (he's the only cat who eats formula, remember?) and cleaned up -- success
Staggered out of house to go to work -- success

Because of Q-tip's bedsores, Wife got her a soft foam neck-rest that allows us to immobilize her on her back or on either side. We just have to keep turning her over throughout the day to avoid making her wounds any worse. Good news is that Q-tip's eating and drinking on her own again. Bad news is that her bedsores look slightly bigger than they did yesterday, maybe due to poor dressing removal technique. Seriously considering taking her back to Kasey every other day for professional assistance instead of DIY.

Also so you know, although she looks insanely happy in the photo, she isn't really. That's just how her face is. Poor little dog.

Home-care for Q-tip

Q-tip is home from the hospital for a round of home care. That would involve syringe-feeding her small amounts of food over the course of the day and administering her meds and a sub-cutaneous drip twice a day. To work the drip, we have to poke a small needle into the scruff of her neck then suspend the bottle until the fluid reaches the next mark. Rinse, repeat with a new needle once more later in the day.

This complication is necessary as she won't eat or drink, yet she needs her nutrition or else her condition will deteriorate faster. Fortunately, when we got her home, she started drinking again -- big laps of water and even some milk from her water dish. At least if she's voluntarily hydrating herself, she won't require the drips and that saves us one painful step twice a day.

Oh, the other thing we have to do is turn her over every few hours to keep her from getting bedsores. Yup, her joints are stiff with arthritis and so she has a lot of trouble even maintaining a sitting position, let alone being mobile enough to shift position even if she was uncomfortable.

At this stage, the prognosis of recovery is narrowing with each passing day. The best we can do for her right now is to keep her as comfortable as possible over the next couple of days while we figure out a care-routine that will work for her. But as long as she still has a spark in her eyes, we're not giving up on her.

Don't cry for me, Sergeant Tina

One day, I ran off to join the circus and when I came back, part of the circus came back with me. Back then, I was young, energetic and didn't know what I wanted; but I knew what I didn't want: to live according to the usual cycle of drudgery that everyone else seemed destined to live.

What I had to offer was mime. Learning the discipline as a church activity, occasionally taking it out onto the streets (it helped me establish some common ground with my more hellfire-and-brimstone bent brethren), and later honing the craft in an undergrad elective course, it became a crucial aspect in getting my early life back on track again. Through mime, I learned that I didn't have to be good at everything -- I just had to be good in one thing, and then everything else will fall into place around that thing. That thing for me just happened to be mime.

So when I joined the circus, you could have called me a practiced hand already. I joined on a whim, because I knew someone who knew someone who was holding free after-hours classes. I needed the exercise and an excuse to maintain my muscle memory and because working the arts scene was... a different life, here in S'pore almost two decades ago.

Where there is a circus, there is a ringmaster. Tina held centre-ring for us in Mime Unlimited. Beyond the exercises and skills training which she led us in, she encouraged all of us to train each other with what we ourselves had learned from whatever our backgrounds were. We threw in a little yoga, Pilates, Alexander, and later on some of us learned ever more exotic techniques of movement theatre and passed them on to our pool of performers.

Our pool comprised many, like myself who had full-time jobs by day but found time to train, rehearse and perform whenever we could; while many others joined the local professional theatre scene in one capacity or another in time. You could say that Tina clearly had a personal hand in shaping theatre in S'pore with so many current professionals having either trained under her or worked with her at some point in their careers.

So although I joined her merry little band of itinerant mimes with some skillz, Tina opened my eyes to the production aspect of theatre. Working with her on a number of productions showed me that the magic of theatre rested on the hard work of every crew, every talent, every hand working together, coordinated, organized and tick-tock, and yet being prepared for the unexpected because every show is not like any other. Some of us would give 110% to the production, which was great, but Tina could also find a use for those who could only give 20% as long as they gave 100% of their 20%. That kind of welcome valued every contribution and made everyone involved proud to be in the production.

Apart from working on the 'now' of producing shows, she was also very interested in preparing for the future. She played a big part in Drama Education. In the early days, we took shows into the schools. Later we started training school-based drama CCAs and helping them produce their own productions... and that's about the time I left the circus and brought it with me to my current place of employment where I'm doing all I can to carry on what Tina started in building into a new generation a love for theatre, whether as audience members or as contributors in one way or another... or at the very least, to give kids who might never have an opportunity to have a taste of what magic theatre has to offer once, even if they never go back to it again.

And now with Tina's sudden passing, the whole of our country's theatre and arts industry is going to feel the enormity of the vacuum she's left behind. We'll go into a period of shock and sadness for a while. But if Tina's done her job like I know she has, she's already trained a fantastic group of people and influenced many others in such a positive way that we're going to pick up the torch she's been holding up for us all this time and continue running in her place because it's now really our torch to carry.

I'd say this little island owes much more the this crazy American lady (who became as S'porean as any of us) that many of its inhabitants will ever know. Director, teacher, mentor, friend... and in many ways the indirect influence behind many things that have gone right in my life whether she knows it or not, at least this little islander does.

Till we meet again, peace out, Tina!

Sick as a dog

It's sad that although you feel as sick as a dog, it turns out that the dog is actually sicker than you. While I'm down with the flu (I've been fighting it since before CNY, so no wisecracks about scoffing too much bak kwa), Q-tip's health has been deteriorating over the long weekend.

Although not the most active of dogs to begin with, she's losing strength in her hind legs and is no longer walking properly. She can barely even stand up. In the last couple of days, she's been rejecting food and has developed bedsores where her elbows would be if she were human.

Brought her in to see Kasey this evening. Blood test shows signs of infection and kidney dysfunction. Heart weak. We decided to temporarily hospitalize her hoping that with some professional assistance she will take in fluids and food again. Only then will we be able to see how we can medicate or otherwise care for her in the near future and, hopefully, beyond.

Old grandmaster story

The next winning kung fu movie formula from HK will have to be an Ip Man vs Wong Fei Hong epic. The Ip Man story has been told too many times already and it's time to let the imagination do what it will with the characters left behind by these two martial arts greats -- the latter having been forgotten for quite a while and could be begging for a resurrection anytime soon.

In The Grandmaster, Wong Kar Wai's retelling of the Ip Man story, the intention seems more to document than dramatize the major events in Master Ip's life. The lead character, played by Stony Leung, carries the same stoic, long-suffering face throughout the movie. Not sure what he has to suffer since his wife, Gong Er (Zhang Ziyi), does the major fighting for lost family honour and such while he goes about sampling the skills of the other fighting schools he is neighbours with.

I suppose any lesser man would be pissed that his wife left him to go fight another man to the death, but not Ip Man. His face says 'a woman's gotta do what a woman's gotta do' and on the odd occasions that he meets up with her again their interaction remains politely cordial, though I suppose the audience is probably meant to assume that the poor man is all torn up inside. Really.

The cinematography is just beautiful, with lots of slow-mo water splash; drip; ripple and reflect effects. The fight scenes are stunningly choreographed with lots of precision moves in both many-on-one and one-one-one battles, though often the killing blows happen so quickly we miss them completely and next thing you know, someone's dead or dying for no apparent reason.

Dialogue is poetic. Something like, 'That bread in your hand is the entire world to me' could mean 'You've already lost, but you don't know it yet'  Or, 'The night is dark, but the nightingale sings through till sunrise' could mean, 'I'm a'gonna rip your face off!' (not actual quoted dialogue, but just to illustrate the point). Sometimes, you wish they would talk like normal people.

There were Hollywood influences to a couple of scenes: the disciple banishment scene from Kung Fu Panda, and Spidey vs Sandman vs speeding train scene in Spider-Man 3... or maybe I was desperately looking for identifiable points of reference to keep from losing the coherence of the plotline, which was confusing with all the flashbacks and flash-forwards and long periods of nothing happening. That kind of story-telling needs a deft hand, and this one was no Cloud Atlas.

Perhaps I had my expectations too high for thinking a kung fu fest to be all action, but I was somewhat disappointed to get a philosophical commentary on the nature of mastery instead (which, I grant, IS an important learning point... but it just wasn't what I was looking for here). In my book, this movie rates four Zs.

Omakase and Coke

Oh, yes. Been looking forward to chomping down on an Omakase burger since I read the review on Yahoo! Was also intrigued by this other unique selling point: Coke imported from Mexico (above), supposedly made with natural cane sugar and comes in a nostalgic glass bottle. Dunno, maybe this old palate is losing it's sensitivity, but other than going down a bit smoother (less 'dry', as I was explaining to Elim) it didn't taste that much different from the local variety. It's good for bragging rights, as in "I drank stuff Mexicans are drinking -- Arriba!", and for the novelty, but not much else.

But this is what I'm here for: the deluxe burger, meaning everything including cheese, onions, and 'shrooms. Actually, I meant the Ultimate which would have included bacon as well, but I had a slip of tongue at the counter so a deluxe it was. Served medium, it had a fresh beefy taste -- nothing like filling your mouth with juicy chunks of cow -- soft and tender, grilled evenly with no crispy burnt bits around the edges. Mmm...oo! On the left is a cupful of accompanying truffle fries. Cooked with truffle oil, the crispy outside, fluffy inside fries had an subtle flavouring of mushroom (a rather crude description, but I don't have the vocabulary for a flavour like this) that was as delicious and it was addictive.

Altogether, the set cost a little over $25, which some people would say is expensive for the size of the burger. But quantity isn't everything. It's a reasonably filling meal already, but you're paying for a quality food that sings in your mouth. It won't be an everyday affair, obviously, but it's a great place to go with yo' homies when the occasion calls for it -- and when you can round enough of 'em up to make the trip worthwhile.

Thing of beauty

Just when we think we've seen everything El Cantina has to offer, Mak Cik surprises us with her latest creation: Nasi Pattaya. That's fried rice wrapped in a skin of thinly fried omelette and covered over with lashings of ketchup and mayo -- and what a thing of beauty it is.

Here's hoping this volley over the bows of the other stallholders is just the start of a total gastronomic revolution... or maybe we can just keep hoping.

In other news, it looks like fairy rings (or are they crop circles?) are starting to bloom on the Astroturf. Better go wake the groundskeeper again.

Oh my, lo and behold! It's back!

The sight of this venerable, iconic truck makes me happy. It contains so much promise of cold, chocolatey liquid refreshment, and it's not disappointed me yet. The rumours were going around that this old Milo van had been retired. Glad to know it's still serving icy beverages instead of dry, dusty mothballs.

TV withdrawal

Been without a TV for more than two weeks already. Not that I've been trying to prevent further brain-rot, but that since the Hitachi conked out, we've been going through the process of shopping around for a new one at a price we are comfortable with.

The Hitachi we sold off for $20 to the friendly neighbourhood karang guni man (a.k.a., the itinerant scrap dealer) -- although he wouldn't have taken it at all if we hadn't also saved the stand it came with. Apparently, people in Indonesia who buy their consumer electronics second-hand don't mount their TVs to their walls. Go figure.

Anyway, that was two weeks ago. Finally, this arrived:

That was yesterday.

Today, the new TV is still in the box. While the delivery went without a hitch, it seems somebody (i.e., our dealer) neglected to arrange for the human resource to do the wall mounting for us. Next available date: Monday, late afternoon shift.

And so... we continue to wait.

Greater plans are afoot

While the Population White Paper announcing plans to cater to a 6.9 million population by 2030 has riled heartland sentiments, there is one other Masterplan that is slowly but surely being realized, but remains undisclosed for the moment. This unannounced Masterplan will kick in if the vast majority of S'poreans are so adamant against population growth that the proposed population projection becomes politically unpalatable.

What Masterplan? Haven't you noticed all the extensions to the MRT lines that are coincidentally going to continue all the way to 2030? All that tunneling going on under our feet is designed to undermine our bedrock foundations so much that at a push of a button, a small chain of explosions will detach the island from the Asian continent altogether. Prevailing winds and ocean currents will then shift us entirely into the Pacific Ocean where at a precise location that is equidistant from any major landfall, we will anchor and live our lives happily away from the rest of the world.

Our island is so small that no one would bother to visit us all the way out there. We have nothing to offer them, anyway, apart from maybe our heavenly chilli crabs -- if we could gather a decent enough harvest from the ocean bottom. Likewise, we could all subsist reasonably long and healthily, feasting on all the vegetables we can grow in our hydroponic rooftop farms.

No pressure of competition, we can all put up our feet and relax while watching the sun set over the horizon, once we're done tending to our veggie crops in the morning. The kids can play all day, though they might occasionally have to help out carrying seed bags and take turns running on the hamster-wheel powering the desalination plant that provides us with fresh drinking water every day.

Life couldn't be more idyllic. No one would miss us and while the rest of the world can rain nuclear apocalypse upon themselves, we'll be safe in the middle of the ocean. If we play our cards right, when all is said and done, we could be the only remaining survivors left on planet Earth. When that happens, we would have achieved World Conquest -- thus finally fulfilling our National Aspiration to be the only people on the planet that matter! *waves S'pore flag enthusiastically while National Anthem plays rousingly in the background*

Remember, patriotic S'poreans say 'NO!' to 6.9 million population.

Secret Masterplan proposed by Global Domination White Paper.

Sock it to 'em!

NYeDC takes a stab at basic puppetry. It's good to have Sirius back for another season taking the kids in hand -- and getting their hands in socks. Who knows? Maybe we can offer the CNY cultural showcase a skit involving slithery sock serpents in honour of the upcoming Year of the Snake. Then again, maybe not. They are still a tad rough.

There's a machine for that?

Can such things be? This here is an electric kueh buloh making machine. Judging by the design and gaudy paintjob, it's been in M-i-L's possession since the '70s. But I think June wants to follow the more traditional way of baking what I guess is the local equivalent of the humble madeline... though for the moment, she's shifted her attention to baking cupcakes.

A little perspective

Featuring news appearing on the very same day:

Govt has to speed up on bread-and-butter solutions (ST Forum Letters)

Do more to stop eating, drinking in buses (ST Forum Letters)

These links represent the voice of People Power in S'pore.

Egypt protester: "There is no bread, no freedom" (CBS Evening News)

representing the voice of People Power elsewhere.

Banishing happiness from the classroom

After a round of assignment grading, I've had an epiphany about why the kids sound so flat, dispirited and naive in their written work. The kind of answers they were giving me was equivalent to typical teenspeak: "How was your day?" "Fine." "How was school?" "Good." In an exercise that required the kids to explore problems, issues and concerns, the kids were killing off the discussion like they didn't really want to talk about it. It was like they were faking a veneer of happiness as if appearing unhappy was abnormal behaviour.

As education workers, we generally like happy children. They are easier to control in class as they tend to be more compliant with what we tell them. Anytime we notice a child is unhappy, alarm bells ring. We take it on ourselves to "get to the root of the problem" and punish, counsel or medicate their unhappiness away so that they can return to a state of compliance and be like everybody else again. Our assumption is that happy is normal, unhappy needs to be dealt with -- severely, in some cases.

I think we're forgetting something. The happy student has the least incentive to learn anything new. It's the unhappy student who stands to gain more from learning than the contented one. Happy students are resistant to learning because new ideas rock the boat they're already comfortable in. Unhappy students learn because of the opportunity learning offers to change their circumstances for the better.

These days, our efforts in school are geared towards making our students as happy as possible. At home, too, parents want their kids to be happy and will do everything they can to make it so. We simply give them too much: resources, equipment, information. The kids themselves have to be feeling that with so much going on around them to make them happy, they should be happy -- but they're not. And if they're not, something must be wrong with them. So they pretend... and then they turn in essays that we'd prefer to burn than grade.

New rule for my classes: My students have to be angry; upset; disappointed; frustrated; worried; scared; and bring all their negativity into the classroom. The happy student is complacent, useless and a non-contributor and has no place in my class.

I don't have to make them unhappy, I know they already are. My class wlll be noisy with kids sounding off their gripes, grouses and rants. I'm not going to pretend that I have a solution to their troubles. That's not my job. My subject being GP, I teach them to observe, organize, evaluate and recommend approaches to deal with their own problems so that they have something useful to learn.

However, last thing I want is to dictate what they should think. I don't want them to approach their questions by trying to recall how Mr X answered a similar question previously; what argument structure he applied; what his conclusions were... Their problems, their approaches, their solutions, not mine.

... and a little something more. An Ingredient X that I will be experimenting with in subsequent classes. I'll let you know how that turns out once I get some data to reflect upon. Stay tuned.

Visiting our neighbour in the North

This meal marks the accomplishment of something I swore I'd never do. I'll give you a hint: this is a shake tempura mayo bento from a restaurant called Kinsahi... located at the AEON Tebrau City. I drove up to JB.

And back. I'm still alive; my possessions and loved ones are still intact; and my car's GPS unit isn't being tracked by the authorities from two or more sovereign States. Let's call that a step beyond my comfort zone, shall we? Though by now it's quite clear that anywhere outside the confines of my cosy living-room bean bag is beyond my comfort zone.

It helped that we went north in a two-car convoy led by Tong, who is more experienced with the checkpoint procedures and road conditions of our neighbour in the North. We kept in touch on the road by walkie-talkie and no one got lost. In fact, the drive, once we got clear of the inevitable traffic congestion around the causeway area, was smooth and even pleasant. As a precaution, my GPS was active and though I was mostly following Tong, it did not steer me in the wrong direction.

On this trip, the closest thing I experienced to danger was when I'd returned to the causeway after a moderately successful shopping trip. There was a long line waiting to be processed by Malaysian Immigration and I was getting bored and sleepy. I closed my eyes for a second, and for a brief moment, I was transported out of the present into someplace that wasn't "here" and a time that wasn't "now". That's the danger of micro-sleep. I opened my eyes to June's screeching and frantic waving of arms as she sat in the shotgun seat. I'd taken my foot off the brake and was advancing towards the waiting vehicle in front of me. Jamming my foot down, I stopped just before contact. No harm done but, darn, what a scare!

Would I drive back up there again? Now that I've broken the taboo the first time, subsequent trips are conceivable. But there must be a real good reason. Though bigger, a shopping mall there is still just a shopping mall.

Kueh buloh: pre-baking prep

CNY is just around the corner and June's itching to try out a new recipe. These here are aluminium kueh buloh moulds for oven baking. We got them from a kitchen supply store on Joo Chiat Road, towards the Geylang Serai end.

The talkative auntie at the cash register advised us on how to prepare the moulds before baking in order to avoid the little cakelets getting stuck in them:

1) Do NOT wash the moulds first thing you get home. Instead, coat them all over with cooking oil.

2) Baked the oiled-up moulds for about a half-hour in a gas oven, or an hour in an electric oven.

3) Pour away the excess oil and set aside to cool to room temperature.

4) Lightly wash the moulds just before you're ready to fill them with the kueh buloh batter.

Alternatively,

4) If you're not ready to bake kueh buloh immediately, don't wash the moulds but rather wrap them in newspaper and store until you do want to use them.

Oh, you want the recipe? Sorry, no idea about that.

Edit 01:
pre-bake prep didn't actually work 100%. June's experiments eventually resulted in her temporarily giving up and baking cupcakes with the remaining batter instead. Still a few kinks left to figure out, but there's still time. No pressure.

After the final pitches in Punggol East

If I had to go to the polls this Saturday to vote a new representative into parliament, what would my options be?

First, I'd have to consider my position in life: I'm decently happy, possibly to the point of being complacently so. Married; have something of a family and a job that pays a fair wage for a fair day's work. My living conditions are comfortable, while the neighbourhood is still developing. It's not particularly upscale, but it's not exactly a slum either. It's a position I'd like to keep for a long time to come.

After tonight's final rallies, my take on the candidates is as follows:

The green guy who's aiming for a job that requires him to talk in parliament can barely make himself understood talking online. He has no discernible platform beyond wanting to be in parliament and on my behalf run interference on crucial matters that require a decision because that's what an Opposition does, thus proving that Opposition unity is possible. Mr Logical, himself.

The yellow guy alienates everyone the moment he opens his mouth. It's not his grating colonial accent but his air of superiority that tends to rub the wrong way. For a person who claims he can out-debate the PM should he ever have the opportunity, it's puzzling that he would deliver his last speech -- haltingly -- reading his script word-for-word, which he had prepared on his smartphone. Maybe he should not have forgotten to bring his reading glasses.

It's really down to the last two candidates who deserve more serious consideration.

The blue lady represents a party that has been building credibility of late. It's a party that's been increasing its vote share over two consecutive national election campaigns because it promises to do in parliament what many people would love to do personally, but would get arrested if they tried: slap the decision-makers for making stupid decisions, "stupid" being a relative term: if the decision was not for an option mooted by the blues, it's probably stupid and deserves a slap.

The new white guy isn't above hamming it up for the camera and making some incredibly dumb assumptions about private transport ownership during televised interviews. A touchy subject, considering he owns two and so many other people own one less than he thinks.

At this point, neither looks like a viable choice. Let's now examine the blue vs white campaign strategy to see if there's anything there that could sway my vote.

While blue lady raises important issues that many people are concerned and even angry about, as a (hypothetical) voter in a by-election I feel that she's addressing the wrong crowd. For all the rhetoric she raises on behalf of stay-at-home-parents and single parents, just how many of such people actually make up the electorate in Punggol East constituency? In a national election, perhaps such issues might make a difference, but as an average HDB dweller, I'd rather have assurances that my neighbourhood will be well taken care of. Blue lady assures us that as soon as she's elected, she'll take over the town council expediently... but that's it. She has more important issues to consider, issues of national importance, so I should just go home and suck it up. Gee, thanks.

The white guy, oddly enough, has the smart game plan for once. He knows his audience. He's talking about things I want to hear about: literally concrete issues like maintaining the upkeep and the upgrading of the neighbourhood where I live in and getting the mall fixed up. In a by-election with only one seat being contested for, I know voting in a non-majority candidate will make absolutely no difference to the party proportions in parliament. I'm not going to sacrifice the next 3-4 years of development of my constituency (and my property value) for a symbolic political principle. Plus, unlike the other guys and gal whose language sounds imperative and commanding -- vote me in 'cos I know what's good for you -- white guy is offering a hand in partnership and is saying let's work together.

Yeah, yeah, I know it's all campaign blather, but in the end we have to trust that what comes out of the mouth originates from the heart.

Edit 01:
The election results are in. It's an odd feeling to see that what I thought was the rational choice was not what the majority decided on. Emotion and feel-good won the day, and perhaps I shouldn't be too surprised. There's been too little of that going around our little island recently. And now that the people are seeing that a bluer Parliament will not usher in the end of the world, it's clear that this blue wave is just starting to pick up momentum. Let's prepare for a more balanced Parliament at the next GE, trusting that head and heart can work together for the benefit of the body. At least the people are still discerning enough to keep the lunatic fringe where it belongs: out there.

Shooting for aces in GP

As I understand my place on the General Paper (GP) team, my little division has been entrusted with helping the kids with higher potential to achieve their aces. That's not a bad thing. Since we have kids with the ability to reach higher, it's both my duty and my pleasure to get them on their way.

Working with higher ability kids, though, requires a different strategy from the average group. I'm not being elitist, but that's the way it is. For the average kid, GP is a test of knowledge. The strategy here is the common approach: pump them full of content; predigest for them template approaches so that they can hopefully identify and plug in the right argument structure and pass with a sigh of relief.

Although knowledge is a prerequisite to a pass, knowledge alone will not ace the GP H1. The presumption about the higher ability kids is that they're better read than their average peers; they have a stronger command of the English language; and they are perhaps more willing to take "riskier" options or approaches to engaging their questions. This bunch knows they have the ability to do better than what their test results are returning, and they are probably frustrated.

So what do we do to help them do better? My take is that we change the rules and objectives of the game for them. At higher levels, GP is no longer about how much knowledge the kid has, so providing them with more material to swallow and regurgitate will not help them increase their grade perceptibly. Instead, we view the GP H1 as a test of mental agility and train this lot of kids to handle questions as if they were completely unexpected situations. So rather than approach the questions from a position of knowledge, they approach the questions from a position of ignorance.

To the average person, to feel ignorant is to be disadvantaged. Embarrassment and panic set in; confidence collapses; and abject surrender becomes a very tempting proposition. However, the problem of a knowledgeable kid approaching a familiar question is the tendency to show off his smarts while disregarding the question. His pride is his fall.

A smart kid who approaches his question humbly is more likely to pay attention to the requirements of the question. With this focus, he can cut out all the noise in his head clamouring to be vocalized on paper and prioritize what knowledge he can bring to bear that is pertinent to what he is being asked -- regardless of 'topic'.

If the kids want their aces, they're going to move up from being mindless footsoldiers wielding blunt cudgels while making loud noises to intimidate the enemy and become quiet, disciplined snipers who can adapt to any environment and boast a hit ratio of one shot, one kill.

Sotto voce: Oh, man! What am I getting myself into?

Today's post was inspired by "Mental agility: how to react quickly to any situation".

How to have more kids

Nope. The Population Dept has got it wrong again. Throwing more money at the problem of a shrinking population, and now endorsing paternity leave as well won't lead to more babies... though it might lead to even less.

It has always been a resource problem. We've always thought of money as being the resource that we lack, but that's not it at all. The scarcity is not in the money but in the children themselves. In truth, there are a lot fewer children than there is money to spread around.

Couples today aim to stop at two, or one, or have none at all. In fact, what is happening is that we are artificially restricting the supply of children. Because children are scarce, they come at a premium. Suddenly the price of having children has skyrocketed. Now we can never save up enough to send our sole little precious to school and see him (or her) grow up with all the luxuries his or her little heart desires. And for some of us, we feel WE don't deserve even one child because we'll never be able to work hard enough to ensure that our child will grow up to live the life HE or SHE deserves.

As my kids in discussion shockingly observed: in the past, respect went to the eldest in the family and trickled down through the hierarchy. However, these days, mommy and daddy have become slaves to their kids. Is it any wonder that we have little desire to serve yet another Pharaoh in our household? We're already slaves to our jobs in the morning and when we do manage to escape home we need a break. Oh, wait, Junior's there. Damn. I'd rather stay at work. At least my boss looks like a boss. Please don't make me take paternity leave! I'm serious!

If we really want to encourage our people to have more kids, we need a mindset change for couples to start having kids indiscriminately. Every household norm should have seven or eight kids whom we can then view as disposable commodities. Multiple redundancy drops the value per kid to near zero. If one kid screws up or dies or something, there's always another to replace the faulty product.

Economies of scale would mean that they all share the same toy, clothes, food, and they don't even have to go to the best schools. That's because whether they study and be educated or not, it's their lives and not my problem. Out of the many, all I need is one good kid -- if I'm so lucky -- and the rest, well, good luck to them. If I work hard, the money goes to me. Conversely, if you don't work hard, don't come crying to me for a handout. The next population campaign should go: Kids aren't precious -- have as many as you like!

When we live in the First World, it's easy to overlook the simplest of solutions which our Third World neighbours are so much wiser to.

What a rush of sugar

All hail Vanellope Von Schweetz, the latest addition to Disney's pantheon of princesses... although her political status as 'princess' is complicated. Also, unlike her pulchritudinous colleagues, Vanellope is not pursuing a male figure to define herself by but rather seeking to come to terms with herself and her flaws that keep her outcast from both her immediate and wider society.

Everyone calls Vanellope a 'glitch', an appellation she accepts as what makes her different from everyone else. In a game world, graphic integrity is a premium so a sprite that occasionally de-rezzes cues the gamer that the game is malfunctioning and should be trashed in favour of a better one.

It's not clear whether Vanellope understands this rationale keeping her from participating in the game her character is designed as an avatar for. All she is told by her fellow racers is that her existence is a mistake and as such, she is not permitted a space on the roster of playable characters.

Secondly, her game world's economic model is such that racers have to ante-up a gold token before racing, and she being outcast has no opportunity to earn tokens and is therefore priced out of her own employment market. In an economy of plenty, she represents the 1% destitute.

What's admirable about Vanellope is that she never loses hope. Although very clear in her mind who she is -- "racing's in my code!" -- her difficulty is in proving it to the other racers. She may have been unscrupulous in acquiring her first gold token and impossibly optimistic in self-building a pedal-operated cart to compete against powered engines, but such optimism in the face of impossible odds makes it easy for the audience to root for the underdog in this race.

The race itself, of course, is only a plot device. While ambition motivates us to do more than we think we can, it's in developing our "softer skills" such as love, friendship, trust, and making up our own minds about what is right and wrong rather than just having our moral sensibilities dictated to us that rounds us out as people instead of being merely 2D sprites fixated on a singular goal: winning at all cost.

What I really like about 'Wreck-it-Ralph' is how tightly the story is guided by its own internal rules and logic:
1) Bad guys (function of external perception based on one's prior actions) are not necessarily bad guys (function of personal character)
2) Sprites automatically respawn in their own game worlds, but are unable to respawn if they 'die' in another game world.
3) 'Pulling the plug' in the real world results in the annihilation of the game world. However, sprites who evacuate the endangered world in time can continue to live in Game Central Station, the nexus connecting all the game worlds in the arcade, though as homeless refugees.
4) Glitches lack the ability to leave their game worlds.
5) Cy-bugs are attracted to and are annihilated by lighted beacon towers. This procedure is necessary to eliminate all Cy-bugs after a game run ends as they are not characters as such but behave as viruses if they ever leave their game world.
6) 'Going Turbo' means to permanently jump a game world, resulting in the glitching of both worlds, the consequence being 'pulling the plug' (3).

By keeping to these rules, the story avoids fluff and arbitrariness, doing away with the need for a deus ex machina to save the day. Every scene and interaction is essential, providing enough exposition to advance the plot, yet not give too much away. They also provide context for the sight gags that come thick and fast; and for credible character and relationship development.

Problem-solving is up to the characters' innovativeness using game mechanics that are already present in their specific game worlds. While Felix has his magic hammer, it's more fun to watch Vanellope and Ralph fix-it themselves with trial-and-error, lots of elbow grease, out-of-the-box thinking, and a sense that if I don't help myself, no one will.

For Vanellope and Ralph, it really is suck it up and "make [their] mommas proud time". And they do.

Stray wars

Dang! Two stray cats living in the multi-story car park were discovered dead this morning. Initially suspected of being poisoned, the case was reported to the police for further investigation. Latest update cites evidence of the killer/s most likely to be dogs, possibly also strays.

I wasn't close to these two cats, but they were familiar. One of the victims was part of a pair that always hung out together; the other a rather anti-social Maui lookalike who lived a short distance from the car park.

Now we are worried for the well-being of the two strays we are rather fond of and who live in the immediate vicinity. But here I'm running up against a moral dilemma. Saving the lives of our stray cats is most likely to mean the culling of a stray dog or two. But I can't see another way out of this situation. One way or another, somebody's day is going to be ruined. :'(

We have a winner!

A cat accurately tracks the ball in the shell game.

A cat picks stock market options more profitably than human experts.

Conclusion: trash your broker. Get a cat.

Application Question confusion

Just because there is a question mark behind a sentence doesn't necessarily make it the main question for the GP Application Question (AQ) component. Too often, our practices default to whether the student agrees with the author/s or not, but this kind of evaluation tends to miss the point of the question altogether.

Take this one from a recent practice session. Given a piece of text about the pros and cons of fashion, the AQ goes:

In this article, Jean Jacquard comments on the importance of fashion to society and how it can be useful, and at the same time, problematic to us.
How far do you agree with his observations on fashion and clothing? Illustrate your answer or own views by referring to the ways in which you and your society regard fashion.

First, the sentence that ends with the question mark is itself a problem. A person's observations are hardly open for dispute. What a guy sees is what he sees so agreement means that you agree that he saw what he saw, whereas disagreement means that you think he didn't see what he thought he saw. Now that's confusing enough without adding the further complication that he is not in a position to see what you see, and vice versa. So if the answer focuses on this question, there's going to be confusion all round, leading to frustration for both assessor and student alike.

If the question mark is an unreliable indicator of the main question, then which one is it? We need to look at the purpose behind the question holistically. If I asked you such a question, I wouldn't care whether you agreed or disagreed with the source, nor your justifications why. What I would want to know is how a new context in your estimation compares against the situation that the source has identified. So the focus is on the new context (in this case, "you and your society"), not on rehashing what the source has already provided.

Another concern is the limited time and space allotted for this question under exam conditions. We need to identify context and parameters really quickly in order to provide a sharply-focused, narrow-band answer rather than a random, broad-based one. The AQ's lead-in or introductory sentence provides the parameters, while the final instructions provide the context. That leaves the sentence that ends with the question mark as merely a stimulus to begin writing.

Below is a link to my treatment of this question, including my highlights of key ideas from the source; my remarks on sticky notes (open the .pdf in Adobe Reader or Acrobat to see them) and my sample answer. Oh, if anyone wants to know if my answer follows a template... yes it does! It's provided by the source. Figure that one out!

Click here.

Welcome and c'mon in!

Campus Open House! We've pulled out all the stops to make our college noisy, lively and -- to some extent -- spontaneous. It was an opportunity to show off our latest attraction: a high-elements confidence course strung across the garden courtyard for brave souls to test the limits of their acrophobia. There was free food and lots of simple booth games with prizes for our visitors; and the performances in the atrium showcasing our aesthetic co-curricula activities.

My initial job was to look after the emcees at the performing venue. My duties include script vetting and rehearsing. That was the easy part. I should have given more attention to rehearsing the unscripted dialogue that inevitably takes place in between items. While the emcees knew that the visitors need lots of information about what's going on, where to go and what to do when they get there, holding the mike and hearing your own voice amplified tends to be very disconcerting and you quickly run out of things to talk about. So cue next item -- at least the script tells us what to say about that.

I realize on hindsight that although the emcees' job appears to be that of introducing items and saying nice things about them (that's the scripted part), in this kind of Open House environment the entertainment is only an excuse for the emcees to pump information to the guests, keeping them constantly updated with what's what.

My secondary job, unfortunately, took some of my attention away from my primary. The atrium, being quite breezy, turned the huge vinyl backdrop into a sail. Though it had been taped down the afternoon before, today the tape kept ripping up and had to be constantly replaced... by yours truly. As I said, not my primary job, but it had to be done out of necessity. Still, I learned the gaffer's trade through experience. By the time the performances were over, with strategic overlapping applications of tape, the backdrop ceased to be a threat to the performing area.

All in all, I'd say we did a reasonable job, though leaving some room for improvement.

The take over

The year has inevitably kicked off. Met the new kids today: fresh faced, eager-eyed, and so quiet... as they suss out the New Teacher. I'm taking over this J2 batch from whomever was tutoring them in J1. It feels very much like I'm testing out my theory that GP doesn't really need two years to master. One should be quite sufficient.

Keep on running

Finally! New running shoes to replace my previous old faithful. This new pair fits well and is light on the feet. While I am happy with the purchase, I'm a little less happy with the sales rep. As he brought the shoes to the cashier, he called out, "Uncle heng (paying)!" Grr... you're not so young yourself, whippersnapper!

I suppose that kind of ageist identification is to be expected. I'd just come in from my grand-niece's first month celebration. The view is from the young family's apartment, 33 floors up. I've never been in a residence that high before. You can see the sea from here, yonder on the horizon.

Back t'work, ye scurvy dog!

When the two highlights of the day are visiting the clinic for flu meds and sending a friend off at the crematorium, it's no wonder I'm feeling lousy today. Can't tell if it's physical because of the illness or emotional because it's a crappy start to the year, or a combination of both. Or maybe lately, I've been having too much time to think. Even though I'm not looking forward to it, going back to work may just be the cure to the post-holiday blues. Oh, the irony.

Ways we've gone and ways to go

If the first day of the new year is any indication of how the rest of the year is going to turn out, it's going to be a bitter-sweet 2013 for me.

Spent the afternoon bowling with extended family. Now, that's something that occurs only once in a very long while 'cos as a group we prefer eating to physical activity. Seeing that the last time we did such a thing was conceivably a couple of decades ago, today we got a true sense of how far we've advanced in our years. Two games apiece and collectively we're creaking in the joints; muscles stretched and tender; stubbed toes and much wounded pride from the number of gutter balls thrown. Not that our scores were very much better twenty years ago, but still...

And like we did back then, we gathered to dine. But tonight's dinner conversation was more polite and focused. We didn't harass the staff like we managed to do before, and we actually got some talk going on a joint tribal vacation. That, we've never done before, but it's a lot more feasible now that we're all working adults with some kind of disposable income. The only question, then, is to coordinate the timing. Hold onto your hats, folks, it may yet happen!

The later part of the evening was more sombre. I've never been to a wake of a friend before, let alone a working colleague. Aggie (later known as Deb) battled cancer over the past couple of years. It finally ended just before the beginning of the new year.

With Aggie's passing, I've lost both my mentors from when I first started teaching. Mim went earlier via an untimely accident. Mim taught me the rules to obey while Aggie taught me to organize and colour-code everything, and something called a "CRAFT" book, which stands for "Can't Remember A F****** Thing" in which I was to write down everything I was supposed to remember but was likely to forget.

I appreciate the lessons these veterans imparted to me. They practiced what they preached. They were ready to teach; effective at their jobs; and their lessons stuck with their kids. They were loved; respected and unforgettable to their students. They were looked up to by their colleagues.

Yet every class has a black sheep (baa!), and this one knows the distance he still has to travel to get to where they left off.

Lost in translation

I really wanted to love Les Miserables, the movie, as much as I do the stage production. But despite some spectacular sets which were unreproduceable onstage such as the jaw-dropping manual dry-docking of the hulking warship in the opening sequence and the colossal barricade of the closing; and the palpable reality of the sewer escape sequence, the experience wasn't as emotionally impactful as it was onstage.

Perhaps some genres don't translate well into others. The script being originally written for stage assumes that most of the audience would not get close enough to the characters to empathize with them as individual people. It is the music that carries the emotion and from a distance therein lies the drama of the musical.

On film, it's quite different. On the 70mm screen, the action is literally in your face. Every tear, every frown, every wrinkle is there for all to see so the delivery has to become more realistic. The irony is that using nuances of spoken delivery takes away something of the emotive potential of the music and so the effect gets watered down.

There is also a problem using recognizable faces in the leading roles. At some point I was expecting Jean Valjean to sprout adamantium claws from his fists and eviscerate his tormentors; Fantine to grow pointy ears and a tail and bi*chslap with a bullwhip the sleazebuckets going after her. That they meekly rolled over and resigned themselves to their fate was mildly disappointing. Big names may help box-office receipts, but it's better to cast iconic roles with performers who themselves have not been cast in other iconic roles else the wrong images are likely to stick and confuse.

It's not that I didn't enjoy the movie, but that this experience is unlikely to be as memorable as the stage version, for me anyway. But at least I didn't have to pay an exorbitant sum for crappy seats in the theatre's nosebleed section for it.