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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hopefully, no one will disturb it there.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My current booklist.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

from "These Apples," by Barenaked Ladies

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Photos here:

by s_min_y

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

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

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

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

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