We walked on another world

CNN should have asked me. I would have said that "Man's greatest achievement" was our first moon landing. Apollo 11 proved we could accomplish the impossible. We set foot on another world and came back to brag about it. Not sure what happened after that, but no one has made any effort to top that accomplishment since.

Hard to believe that that was exactly 40 years ago, today. Harder to believe that in theory I could have watched Armstrong and Aldrin's moonwalk 'live' on TV. I'm pretty sure we had an old black-and-white, and I know I was already watching TV at that age (I have the glasses to prove it), but I don't know if we could get a 'live' feed back then.

What I do remember of the Apollo 11 mission was several years later when I watched an amazing theatrical performance at which the solo performer faithfully recreated each shot of the televised mission using the exact voice transmissions and, get this... his fingers! That's right, his digits were the only things moving on stage, and through them this historical event came to life again. I don't remember whose hands they were, and I haven't been able to discover even a mention of the performance online. A pity, 'cos I'd really love to watch it a second and even third time.

Essay mill's on hold 'cos life just got really busy. But hey, 40 years ago, we touched the moon. What can't we do now?

"Prince" only half-blooded

For all the hype, HBP felt like just another installment in a tale that's been too long in the telling. The movie itself isn't bad. I like that the focus is character-driven, but since there are so many characters central to the plot, there isn't sufficient air-time to do them justice. There's enough to get the idea about what's going on with them, their conflicts and confusion, but not quite enough to empathise.

The fact is, I wasn't blown away like I was expecting to be. This installment felt like a set up, providing exposition for what (I'm hoping) will be a big finish. It was "Star Wars: ESB" all over again when at the end the first thought was, "is that all?" Even the big revelation at the end of HBP didn't warrant the title. I don't remember much from reading the book, but I'm pretty sure there was more to it than just a simple admission of identity.

There, see? The elitist comment was bound to show up sooner or later: the book was way better than the movie.

Not too many more summer movie releases left to look forward to. So far this year, I have yet to be impressed.

Essay mill: World records

Oh, wow! Another world record has been trashed. Throw confetti! Wear party hat! Ha. When was the last time we did that? We don't really seem to care much for new world records, do we? In this next essay, I'll be taking a look at world records and what they might mean to us.

I'm beginning to see how this kind of question can become a problem for essay writers. I'm barely getting warmed up, and I have to end it abruptly bcause I've already breached the 800 word limit.

Do you agree that the breaking of a world record is a significant event?

Post mortem: Could use more examples, almost exclusive focus on athletic records (there are other kinds of world records, y'know), gross overgeneralization, dubious evidence -- may be factually incorrect, some circumlocution.

Essay mill project

Welcome to my new personal project! It's an essay mill from which I churn out essays to lousy essay questions, and I already have a few doozies lined up. Obviously, these essays are going to be of no help to anyone taking any exam this or any other year. They're purely going to be for my own entertainment and self-indulgence, mainly to see what kind of nonsense arises out of badly-thought out questions. So here's the first of, I hope, many more to come:

How far would you agree that foreigners regard Singapore as "unique"?

Post mortem: A bit hyperbolic in places, naive in others. Some reasoning is contrived, and it generally reads like NE propaganda.

The facade falls

Don't like my new style. Makes me sound too morose. Might as well be Twittering if I want to write two lines at a time. Anyway, I'm embarking on a new personal project that should ensure lengthier entries for at least the next few days. Stay tuned.

Anyway, I'm not sure why I've been masquerading as a teacher for so long. The facade has never really fooled anyone, except maybe myself. Fact is, I can't see the reality that the kids are just 18 years old while I'm expecting them to perform like undergrads already. It takes other people to remind me to stop overestimating their capabilities and try to pitch material more at their level. But even up till now, I am still uncertain what an 18 year old is capable of. Obviously I don't know my audience well enough at all.

So I've decided today to acknowledge myself for what I truly am. I'm not a teacher. I am just a guy who has a silly habit of reading... um, whatever, and has recently acquired another habit of scribbling stuff, perhaps hoping that one day it might get good enough for someone to actually read it.

Coincidentally, I've been told that this quirk of mine is a skill (a skill?) that our young people need to acquire, so I'll just be sharing my idiosyncracies with them if they are willing to give me some of their attention -- and many of them are. And so long as someone is happy to pay me for my services, I'll be more than happy to keep on sharing.

Sounds like win-win to me.

Faux pas of the day

Put foot in mouth in class. Described petanque to them as "people throwing steel balls at other people's balls". Hilarity ensued.

Wannabe

In American Idol, I've never envied any of the contestants -- not even the eventual winners. Here today, gone tomorrow, them. It's Ryan Seacrest who I want to be.

Looking ahead

The number of abortions is about 30% of the total number of live births in S'pore last year. This does not bode well for my retirement.

Bad dreams

Couple of nights waking up from disturbing dreams. I remember one with me committing some horrific, unthinkable deeds while apparently playing through an uncomfortably realistic simulation; and another of being cast out of polite society due to some minor infraction on my part. The two dreams were not related, occurring on two different nights. But no further details to be spoken of here 'cos I'm not asking to be psychoanalyzed -- I'm a bit afraid of the diagnosis.

Well, it has been a rather stressful weekend.

Getting bigger

Went shopping for office pants. Waistband size increased by another inch. Sigh. Am now so close to Dad's size when he was my age.

Testing...

Hmm... this is one experiment worth trying out on the kids to see if the results are reproducible.

Edit 01:
But seriously, folks... we got a mention in "Discover" hailing what we've done to Pulau Semakau as one of "9 of Humanity's Greatest Environmental Successes"! Not bad!

Language and old age

If ever there was an incentive to develop "superior" language skills at a young age! This study of nuns' brains suggests that a strong command of language in one's teens and 20s tends to ward off the symptoms of dementia and Alzheimers' disease in old age. Read it for yourself here.

Should wave this at my kids if they ever ask why we're such grammar nazis grading their scripts. But with my kind of memory... er, what was I saying...?

Angry stomping people

Stomp (ST's purported "citizen journalism" site) fascinates me. Most of the so-called stories are little more than the tattletales of small-minded people ratting out on other people's petty misdemeanours in public -- with pictures. Yet it's a daily visit for me because the small-town gossip is just too compelling to pass up. It's almost a competition to see if the current story could possibly be any worse than the previous one.

There are few better examples of global village technology being used to perpetuate just the village. Everyone's minding everybody's else's business, airing everybody's dirty linen in public, expecting some authority or other to solve the problem for everyone. And then bemoaning how ineffectual the authorities are going about it. Tsk, tsk.

I'm not suggesting we should take the law into our own hands, enacting mob justice on every instance of loutish behaviour we encounter. I'm saying we should allow some flexibility in administering the written social rules rather than complain so loudly every time people are not slavishly adhering to them. It's quite vindictive, some of the entries, as if posted to spite someone else because the contributor isn't allowed to do the same thing.

Maybe it's all just in the eye of the beholder, 'cos on the rare occasions that I have used public transport (for example) I have yet to encounter any of that 'inconsiderate' behaviour that gets featured every day on Stomp ad nauseam. What I have encountered are clear pathways on escalators shared between walkers and non-walkers, or when there is a blockage, a polite "excuse me" more often than not has the effect of parting the Red Sea. In the trains, people are popping up and down like so many jacks-in-the-box offering their seats to people who vaguely look like they might appreciate the seat more. It's even a bit embarrassing how polite they try to be with the old and infirm, the pregnant and the child-laden.

If people eat and drink on the train, as long as they show some personal responsibility in clearing up after themselves, then there shouldn't be a problem. People are hungry, people are tired, but just because there are written rules doesn't mean we as fellow commuters cannot be more understanding and accommodating with each other.

I am now very cautious when taking the MRT. With all these camera-happy Stomp contributors around, I worry that one day my unflattering photo will appear on that infamous website with the complaint that some young whippersnapper should be giving his seat up to me instead of hogging it for himself and his $#%* ice-cream cone. I could never live that down.

Time out

Fergeddit. I'm taking the night off to play Bejeweled 2.

Not a(nother) model essay on Technology

How do I spend my Youth Day day off? By preparing material for a lecture answering the following essay question:

"Technology never provides solutions – it only poses more problems." What is your view?

What follows is NOT a 'model answer'. It's more like a coherent collection of ideas that the candidates might have included in their essays, but pitched at the level of a well-written H1 paper.

Again, to me it's just an outline for a much larger paper, since I've left many claims unsubstantiated, but even then it's still a hefty 1800+ words long. For one thing, it's a very general question, and for another I'm trying to incorporate as much subject material as I've gathered from all the essays I've been grading, so I've got a lot of mileage to cover.

Next step is to condense it to about half its size, and in a form a 17 year-old would be reasonably expected to present it in.

If you insist on reading the original, click here. But don't say I didn't warn you!

Just one thing

Quote of the day: "School teachers are concerned about creating moral people. [But] We focus more on getting the students better grades in a short amount of time. That's why we are needed and popular," says super-tutor Woo Hyeong-cheol. Woo's annual paycheque comes up to US$4 mil.

There's a bold mission statement if I ever saw one. So devoid of fluff and other distractions, the sharpness of focus makes her organizational systems and processes crystal clear, minimizing wastage of resources, maximizing output and income.

We've been discussing campus branding in our recent meetings. Too many people want too many conflicting things for our students. The more we talk, the more things get added on. What we really need is to pare down everything into one core objective that everyone can agree on and work towards.

Do we want our students to have values, or leadership, or world-readiness? We don't have time to give them everything. According to Ms US$4-mil-a-year Woo, students want results above all. If our kids just want results, they can go look for her. But we are a Ministry approved college, so I suggest we pick just one item from our existing list and run with it.

I won't arbitrarily make my choice now. I want to ask my alumni for input 'cos you probably see things quite differently from the Staff and I've already got lots of their input already. My question: what positive experience do you remember best from your days in JC? If I can detect a common thread, that's probably the best indication of how our branding should go.

In defence of the Arts

One question I'm currently grading has to do with how literature (and by extension, art) has no practical value. Have a look at the video below that YT shared with me:

Who says engineers have no aesthetic sense? Who says artists are technologically inept? Because our school system segregates Arts kids from Science kids by faculty and subject combination, this dichotomy causes them to pigeonhole themselves and they get proprietary over their intellectual turf.

Many of the essays I've read are by Arts kids vehemently defending literature as an essential, relevant but neglected part of our life experience, and hence must necessarily be "practical".

But watching this clip, I wonder if there is any need to make such a strong point about the "practicality" of art? Art doesn't have to be practical, but so what? Art is beautiful and that's all it needs to be.

Wonder if there'll be a Part 2?

Lunch party found our way to Little Part 1 cafe. Strange name. Not a lot of parking and seating, so car pooling was a smart thing to do. Also had to split tables, one for the working lunch people, the other for the fun lunch people.

Decor is cosy, homely. lots of framed snapshots on the wall, no theme I could discern. Two fell off the wall as we ate. Tremors? Free wifi! Great place to eat, grade papers and surf all afternoon.

The cafe's specialty is crepes. I had the Louisiana crepe. Attracted by the two different kinds of cheese fillings: emmental and mozza, though a bit leery about the asparagus. Ham is ham. Combination turned out to be quite pleasant. Could have done with an alternative flavour to the BBQ sauce on top -- tang was sharp, distracting. Fresh salad helped balance.

Brownie a la mode was fluffy and crumbled a lot. I appreciated the lightness 'cos I could eat the whole thing and not feel particularly guilty. Nevertheless, since mine was a communal table, I happily shared it with my fellow piranha.

Veggie items on the menu too. Know of any veggie people we could invite to lunch next time?

Slightly derailed

Been putting all my resources towards the one goal of finishing my assignment grading, and my rhythm's been thrown completely off because of it. Perhaps I've set myself an unrealistic deadline, but there are many other tasks needing my attention that I can't even look at until I get this giant bugbear off my back.

Unrealistic or not, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel already, which means my strategy has paid off! And the only casualty has been this long-neglected blog which I've unintentionally forgone because I've simply run out of steam by nightfall.

Very grateful for the lunch circle that has provided a much welcome break over the last couple of days. We don't get many chances to eat off campus these days, so yesterday's jaunt to Botak Jones, and today's extended "Land-Ex[pedition]" to Cafe Oliv and Chin Mee Chin (for kaya toast, a couple of doors down) were a real treat.

Should be back to regular posts soon, but perhaps in a new text format. Hearing a lot lately about the advantages of terse, to-the-point entries. Time to update my style.

Happy July First!

Been feeling inexplicably homesick. It's July and that means summer in TO. Bright, cloudless skies; sun on my face; cold, dry air I can breathe in with less effort than this humid soup we swim in all day here in the tropics. Wonderland, and the Jays at the SkyDome. Hot-off-the-cart Polish sausages with all the toppings you can balance between your buns (how rude that sounds!). And CHUM FM*, a constant companion that sets the mood just right for driving long distances on highways that have no end.

Without looking it up, I must have instinctively felt it in my bones. July 1, Canada Day!

*CHUM FM is a lot like Power 98 here, except I just heard a great ad for Trojan condoms, and the Internet radio works!