Distinction

Finally, after 8 attempts since I've been with NYeDC, we have achieved a coveted Certificate of Distinction from the big bi-annual youth drama festival.

I shouldn't feel this elated because theatre shouldn't be a competition between productions, but I've learned that it's ok to celebrate an achievement, especially one this long in coming. Every other year I've been cool just to meet expectations, but there's no stopping the rush to have for once exceeded them.

This year's entry was a true collaboration from start to finish. Beginning with a self-written script by one of our members, it was workshopped, tweaked, rewritten and polished in bits and pieces. Everyone helped out, whether onstage, backstage, admin. With Sirius directing and delivering the final script (her first ever!) we were in good hands the whole time.

Feeling very grateful to everyone who pitched in. It's nice to be on top for once. XD

Unscathed

Nice to know that I didn't get shredded this morning. It was a presentation to an audience of very experienced cross-department colleagues on a perspective that could have come across as heretical if taken the wrong way. Instead, the audience asked the right kind of questions during the Q&A and was very kind with its feedback. Perhaps the ground is ready for some new ways of thinking?

Personal insight gained: I can diagnose problems and prescribe workable treatments, and maybe I can make a convincing case to my fellow physicians. But what I haven't yet learned is how to make the patients take their medicine.

Remembering 'If I could tell my past self something'

Things that have to go on record about our entry in this year's big Drama Festival 'cos they won't be mentioned anywhere else: Touching up our movable flat screens with white primer, we got streaks of paint on the Concourse floor. That's for not lining the area with newspaper first. Not pictured is me, the wife and Sirius, sitting on said floor, using nothing but water and lots of elbow grease scrubbing the floor with brushes for over an hour until the sun went down. But we did a great job. Little trace of our unintentional vandalism left that could be connected back to our activities of the previous day.

With this slick move, our lead tosses his hat offstage as a time transition cue. Today at the show, his tossed hat landed smack in the face of an official sitting in the audience. Her lanyard indicated she was probably from head office and likely to be an organizer of the event. While we hope that this little blooper isn't going to cost us too dearly in points, it also confirms to us why this boy is in Drama Club and not in a sports CCA.

And finally, a shot of our team this year. Proud of you guys! You make us laugh and give us heart attacks at the same time! But it's not over yet. Drama Night is just around the corner...

More photos of our rehearsal process can be found here.

Edit 01: Forgot to mention the bus. The return bus stranded us at the venue having mistaken our order to depart at 1445 hrs to mean 4:45 pm. Sirius kicked up enough of a fuss with the bus company to get one delivered pronto, though the delay was still about an hour.

Core business

"The sole purpose of education is to get a good job." This statement is clearly absolute, but that doesn't mean that the proposition has to be automatically rejected. Not when the reasoning behind the statement is logically sound.

Education arose from a tradition from which craftsmen and merchants taught their apprentices the necessary skills of their trades. The higher the skill mastered, the more trusted the trainee grew to handle increasingly complex tasks. Apprentices were trained on the job for the job. What they chose to learn was to make them better at their jobs.

The situation has not changed. The motivation for people to get an education is still, ultimately, to be in a better position to claim a better job.  The motivation to set up an education system is primarily to raise the knowledge and skill levels of a population so that collectively it is better positioned for better paying jobs.

Without this motivation, who would go to school? Attending school delays an entire generation's employability in hope of increasing its future occupational prospects. Students delay their independence while in school, continuing to be treated like children by their teachers and parents though, biologically, they are already capable of starting and tending to their own families. What keeps them in school is the promise of a good job at the end of their studies.

Even if schools provide personal enrichment opportunities such as co-curricular and "Service-Learning" activities, these efforts are still directed at providing experiences that develop employable skills that are certified via official testimonials, attendance checklists and other documents.

Today, schools are still in the business of training, assessing, qualifying and assigning students to the jobs they are best suited for, but are also expected to play surrogate parent. This dichotomy results in schools being conflicted, forced to be both dispassionate and objective while being compassionate and empathetic at the same time. These clashing objectives make education more onerous and cumbersome than it has to be.

There is nothing wrong with seeing education's sole purpose as getting people the best employment opportunities as possible because this is what schools do. In fact, if schools dared to accept this truth, their programmes would be much more focused and much more purposeful. It would make the core business of education so much clearer for both schools and their attendees.

'A' almighty

Getting an 'A' for learning to do something well is not the same as getting an 'A' for doing what we're told. The result may be the same. An 'A' is an 'A'. But only the former is worth anything.

Don't ask why

Finally figured out what annoys me about the so-called "paired approach" of responding to GP essay questions.

The "paired approach" is a fancy name for a "reasons-for vs reasons-against" pairing as we consider a given proposition.

Reasons are prompted by the question "why", to which the logical response is "because...". Conversely, to answer "because" only makes logical sense when responding to "why".

Therein lies the problem: GP questions are never "why" questions. Therefore, to argue "because this... however, because that..." neither makes sense, nor is any help in the decision-making process.

The "paired approach" is inherently self-negating, yet it is the default technique by which across the board we teach kids to argue essays. When the kids do what we taught them to do, we say they aren't answering the question, and they don't get it, no matter how much we teach them. We are logical readers, after all. Then we wonder where we went wrong.

Well, at least now I know.

Love and marriage

A realization arising out of a classroom discussion over the topic of marriage:

If two people are in love, then they will remain committed to each other regardless of whether they are married or not. Which means that marriage exists to ensure that two people stay committed to each other even after they fall out of love with each other.

So, marriage is like an insurance policy that operates in the background while we are lovey-dovey as a couple, but kicks in once we can't stand each other any more.

Marriage is certainly not a decision to be taken lightly, if so.

Eclipse over campus

A false image of yesterday morning's solar eclipse. The actual eclipse is taking place somewhere up and to the left of this seriously cropped photo. This here is lens flare that has inadvertently captured the sun's crescent penumbra while I was trying unsuccessfully to shoot the eclipse itself.

But the point of this post is really to say how pleased I am that the kids were naturally captivated by the celestial phenomenon. Almost everyone was out in the open trying to capture a shot or a glimpse, one way or another.

Best of all, although it was time for morning assembly, no one rushed the kids to get in line in the parade square. A rare event to be marveled at took precedence over a weekly routine, and I'm glad we could recognize that fact.

Not yet predictably successful

After the big final results were released on Friday, instead of being relieved at the hugely successful percentage pass rate, I had been feeling disappointed at the small number of distinctions (a.k.a. 'A' grades) achieved by my kids.

It was almost like what I teach them doesn't translate into top band results at the exams. It doesn't seem to matter how or what I teach: it still isn't good enough. And this isn't the bosses talking, it's my own internal voice telling me that the results should have been much better.

But my disappointment is also an encouragement that GP is still worthy of respect and therefore still worth teaching. It means I haven't discovered a 'winning formula' yet for scoring As. It means that the exam still tests an individual's skills and knowledge on the spot and that it has not yet become just another just-fill-in-the-template-for-an-A exercise.

No cheap A grade here. Everyone works hard, but only those who really deserve it can celebrate their A. Reminds me of how tough my own high school English course was; how hard I struggled to perfect my exercises and research paper; and how proud I was of the result. Though I was hoping to get an A, I could respect that it truly was a hard-fought B that I could triumphantly say, 'YES!' to.

And it means my job isn't over yet. There is still much for the Master to learn. There is still room to avoid past mistakes and try new stuff. It's only when things get predictably successful that's when you know you're in a rut and it's time to retire.

Being qualified vs being educated

First off, as an industry insider, I don't believe that our ever-improving exam results is in any part due to grade inflation. If the letter writer is concerned that we are handing out cheap As, it isn't true. We and the kids really do work our collective butts off to achieve those results.

What our industry is highly proficient at is quality control, emphasis on control. We have identified the factors that make the 'A' grade and distilled them into a system that, if followed as prescribed, will give the student every chance of success for a desired outcome at the exams. It's a system that handsomely rewards the obedient student -- the one that does what he is told to the letter. Study this. Do it this way. And when everybody studies the same material and does it the same way, the As come pouring down like manna from heaven. Our children are nothing, if not obedient. And as far as tangible indicators go, the industry has achieved its highest criterion year after year. Everything is transparent and fair, and the customer is more than satisfied.

But if our new acting co-CEO is going to get his way, This system that we've so studiously developed over the years will to have to go.

What Mr acting co-boss has identified is that there is a huge difference between being qualified and being educated. The industry is excellent at qualifying our students. Every factory follows a uniform standard of teaching, learning and assessment, each product follows a uniform assembly-line process and passes through stringent quality control checks before being certified fit for the next level of processing.

The good thing is that the system ensures very little waste. The dropout rate is low, and there are learning and career opportunities available for everyone who leaves the system without necessarily following it through all the way to the end. The not so good thing is that at every level, each individual product is barely distinguishable from another -- being mass-produced within predetermined specs. Totally obedient, but empty; non-functional until programmed, or at least given very specific instructions. And it isn't their fault if something screws up, because you didn't give clear enough instructions. Yes, in the end, the qualified student is very good at taking orders, not half so good at giving them, and hopeless when working unsupervised. Just ask local employers.

The industry hasn't quite figured out how to educate students quite as well as how we qualify them. Education occurs in a much more chaotic environment than we are used to. It requires lots of space and time for unsupervised creativity; for failure; for mistakes; and for problems to be solved by the kids themselves. Not hypothetical problems in class, but real ones in life. Messy problems involving emotions, issues with peer socializing and personal safety which we adults are too anxious to step in and take over before the poor delicate things hurt themselves. Minor bumps, bruises, scratches, blood, mud and tears are part and parcel of the hard knocks of education, and we adults must learn to deal with these problems in proportionality to their occurrence. But as we industry employees have now been made aware, every ounce of prevention is far better than a lawsuit.

We need our future adults to exercise human judgement. We need them to be innovative and adaptable. We need confident decision-makers, who can work with and identify relevant partners in the pursuit of new opportunities. We need brave adventurers who explore unfamiliar paths and rugged individuals who can work around and through obstacles to attain their desired outcomes (preferably legally permissible ones). In order to get such people, they cannot be handed everything they want on a plate when they are young. We can't say to them, if this is what you want, then this is how you're going to get it. Instead, we have to follow them on their own path, help them up when they fall (or fail), discuss with them their learning points, and then let them go again. It'll be one horribly messy school system, but the average grade will be back to a more realistic 'C' since most kids won't be spending their time cramming for the sake of cramming any longer, but rather on their own interests and pursuits, many of which are ungradable except to their own standards of personal engagement. Education can't be manufactured. It's a craft.

For now, it looks like the boss is asking for a paradigm change in the industry-wide mission, and as a result, a major overhaul of our systems. It's a much needed change, but I wonder if we can use the momentum we've already achieved and just change track at the next switch, or whether we have to hit the brakes, come to a stop and completely reverse the train in the opposite direction. Either way, like it or not, change has to come.

Like pulling marrow from the tulang

I turned down a good cause. A door-to-door representative from the Bone Marrow Donor Programme (BMDP) approached me and I flatly declined to donate either my time or money to the cause. Donating my bone marrow was out of the question. Was it worthy cause? Yes. Were they asking for much? No. Could I have been inclined to help out? Maybe. So why didn't I?

It was the sales pitch. The boy, bless him, was such an android doing everything he had been programmed to do. He started off by offering me some very unpalatable alternative ways to be a contributor. While he wasn't asking for my bone marrow, he suggested that I could be a volunteer like him, then he reminded me how busy I probably was and so I wouldn't be likely to consider contributing that way.

Next, he went on a heartbreaking spiel on how young some of the bone marrow recipients were -- "months... months old only" and how would I feel as a parent of such a child, separated from parental love being confined in a glass box and stuffed full of tubes? I happened to be holding on to the dog at the time, so it was hard to empathize.

He complimented me on my interior decor (seriously?), hoping to trigger a psychological reminder of how well-off I was, then offered me a suite of possible tax deductible donation plans and which demographic each plan was targeted at. He surmised that like so-and-so and so-and-so who signed up (ooh, neighbour envy), I might undertake the middle-income plan, at which point I had heard enough and closed the door on him with a "thank you for the information, sorry for wasting your time."

Understand that the boy did everything he was taught.He smiled at the right time, he picked up on the right cues, he asked for reasons for my concerns... he was trained well. And that's my problem. I turned him down because he was doing what he was told.  While he may well have been personally motivated for whatever reason to volunteer for this worthy cause, his performance was perfect as a mouthpiece for whomever trained him and didn't sound sincere at all. Most of all, I hate being manipulated. This template-dialogue just made it so obvious.

Perhaps karma will bite me in the ass someday, but if and when I do donate to a good cause, I want to do so because I genuinely believe it is the right thing to do, and not because I couldn't say, "no", to someone groping around looking for the right buttons to push on me.

Cat and consequences

Thought the cat was sick this morning. When I woke up, he was alternating between trying to attract my attention and avoiding me. He tried to hide in the wardrobe, but only succeeded in knocking over my t-shirt stack to the floor. He was meowing like he was hungry, but refused to eat his breakfast.

Then, I saw the study door open. He must have got in during the night. On the carpet, there were the remains of a large vacuum-sealed package of pork floss meant as a Christmas pressie for someone. More than half the contents were missing.

I exited the study, and it was obvious that the cat had gone into hiding. There was a suspiciously large lump under the living-room carpet. Such a ninja, that cat. I lifted the carpet, and stroked him gently until he resumed purring. I had to make sure he absolutely knew he was forgiven.

Which makes me wonder: I know he is smart enough to open doors. A problem-solver, that one. But could he possibly be smart enough to know that what he did was wrong, and that there would be dire consequences when his human found out? And are cats capable of feeling guilt? Or am I reading too much into his somewhat abnormal behaviour?

The perp.

Star Wars at Changi Airport

Have to thank Uncle Moe for the gift of a re-contracted Samsung Note 5. No, this post is not a review of the new toy, but a sample platform for its photographic capabilities. And what better way to initiate testing than by visiting Changi Airport the day the cool life-sized display mock-ups of the new X-wing and TIE-fighter make their debut to promote Ep VII: The Force Awakens?

 OK, it starts with a lunch set at Itacho, but so pretty and colourful!

 Happened to catch the 501st Legion standing by to make their grand entrance.

 New Republic base on the 3rd Terminal of Changi revealed!

 Poorly-disguised spies of The First Order "surreptitiously" photograph New Republic hardware.

 Rebel pilots being directed to the cafeteria

 Retro troopers defend an Imperial asset from curious citizens and pesky journalists

 Ever wanted to play whack-a-mole with a crowd of camera-wielding tourists?

Red-shirt recruits, yet to qualify for a personal blaster, have to make do with pew-pew fingers

A simple test for career assessment

Random thought of the day: how do you know if the job you are doing is the right one for you? Or if you're better off quitting the job you have? Or if the job you've been fired or retrenched from is one you cannot afford to lose?

Ask yourself if you would do the job for free. If you can't or won't, get the heck out. The logic is simple. If you can't even give it away, no one in their right mind would pay you for it.

Looking back at the results of GE2015

Woke up to clear white skies with just a tinier patch of blue than before. Against expectations, the incumbents took a larger share of the popular vote at GE2015 than earlier indications seemed to suggest. It looks like beyond the raucous rallies and the social media frenzy of support for 'alternative voices' in parliament, the sleeping giant of the silent majority only made a noise where it counted the most: at the polls.

Looking back at how this apparently out-of-the-blue support for the incumbents might have reached landslide proportions, we need to see what the electorate did NOT vote for:

Clearly, the electorate did not want the incumbents to lose its 2/3s majority in parliament. Given that all constituencies were once again being contested, voters took no chances and chose conservatively. Having said that, it is telling that the blues kept their strongholds while the other oppo parties were quite let down at the polls. It could be said that the blues did not fight to win big at this elections but rather strategized to not lose its major symbolic territories. Letting the other oppo parties become the distracting sideshows that they were actually made the blues look good in comparison, and keeping 6 elected seats in parliament is still better than losing them all. The voters win, the blues win, and the other oppo parties win because they still keep an 'alternative voice' in an otherwise all-white government, 'moving forward'.

Even before Nomination Day, the voters could see the infighting, dissent, tantrums and rage quits that showed the different oppo parties not quite getting their act together. If that was what the campaign was going to look like, the electorate could not stomach that lot in parliament where actual decisions are being made about real lives and real livelihoods over the next 5 years to come.

The biggest losers are the Independents because if no one wanted them to join a party... 'nuff said.

The party that was obviously running a poorly-disguised racist platform got few votes because the electorate had already left ethnically-based politics behind decades ago, knowing that a country divided along such lines will absolutely ruin what has gone right for this country for the last 50 years.

The party that promised to TAKE money out of voters' pockets and give it to the poor and needy elderly cardboard collectors union of Singapore found little support for its well-meaning humanitarian social-welfare platform.

The party that stood for Democracy over Action found out that the electorate, though relishing a good debate, is still fundamentally pragmatic and is swayed more by results than a dramatic chin-and-finger-wag.

The People's party found out that after all, only one Person ever mattered, and that without him, they had become the who-are-you party. Which was probably the same case for the remaining oppo parties which ran equally forgettable platforms and candidates.

What the electorate DID vote for was a calm, dignified, matter-of-fact, results-orientated tone of voice. Non-reactionary, non-sensational, ultimately boring and occasionally foot-in-mouth in presentation, perhaps overly-highly paid but at the same time has done nothing to damage the reputation; infrastructure; and standing, trustworthiness and respect of the country on the international stage.

In fact, GE2015 turned out to be little more than a municipal election in which all contesting parties, including the incumbent who went along and played the same game, were only vying for a town council seat. The electorate instead decided to vote for a Government -- the one that was already there in the first place.

The good ship, Singapore

One metaphor used in the #GE2015 campaign is the one that likens Singapore to a 'cruise ship'. The one who proposed it is deluded, and the one who opposes it is equally deluded -- and paranoid. Our little red dot has never been a cruise ship and will never survive as one, iceberg or no. The moment we start believing we are a cruise ship, everyone will want to be a first class passenger, no one wants to work any more. And given the rhetoric that's been passing for 'campaign speeches' on both sides, this belief is strongly setting in already.

Most of us have forgotten what we truly are: a pirate ship. All we have is what we have taken from others. Sure, we are nice pirates and we don't do bloodshed, but we own nothing but the planks we stand on and that's all that's shielding us from rough seas, bad weather and rival privateers, some of whom wield larger cannon and bloodthirstier warriors than those we seem to have on board.

No one in this campaign is talking about them. No, we are stuck with squabbling over how to cut the pie that we have into larger pieces for everyone. For now, it may look like a huge pie in it's totality, but if everyone wants a bigger share of it, we will find out how quickly it becomes a finite resource. Look, if we want more pie, the answer for our little pirate ship is to go plunder other people for what we need. That's all we have to go on.

And, no, on a pirate ship, there are no lifeboats, no safety nets, unlike a cruise ship. The reason why we've been confidently sailing the 7 seas for the last 50 years is because we knew our vulnerabilities and we've played by the rules of our constraints. We do have a few rubber rings, but more importantly, we have each other and we have each other's backs. At least, we did, until we started recognizing that some of our shipmates were starting to look and talk a little differently from ourselves. Then we were no longer 'we' any more, but 'us' and 'them'. And now it's getting to be more like 'me' vs everybody else.

A pirate ship does not become a cruise ship. We have all got to get back to being pirates. Everyone works, no passengers unless they are hostages held for ransom. Not happy with a pittance of a fixed wage? Take a risk. That's what the top-paid pirates are doing. Not happy with the income disparity? There's a way to get some of that money back for yourself. It's a free market, so sell a better product or provide a better service. Make other people say, 'please, take my money'. Plan your own raids, recruit your own crew, branch out and remember to pay your taxes (kept low to encourage entrepreneurship) when you make it big. But if you don't make it big, remember that it was a risk you took and it doesn't always pan out. Either settle; or learn, grow and try again. Can't stomach the risk of a raid, then don't complain about swabbing the deck. Your fixed salary will see you through, as long as you're careful with your expenses. That's the pirate's life.

More importantly, there are opportunities out there that we are missing. Those opportunities are what we should be talking about. We need to be planning adventures, expeditions into the unknown; seeking new resources and planting our flag everywhere. It's not like anyone died and has left us an inheritance to divvy up (although we are behaving a lot like that). Rather, we are building on the foundations laid down by our pioneers, building a stronger, better, faster, more nimble ship that will carry us into our pirating future. And as crew, we don't need the 'leadership' to tell us how to manage ourselves -- we take care of each other.

If the competing candidates now want to captain a cruise ship instead of a pirate ship, well, it's been a fantastic 50-year voyage. There are no lifeboats...

Achievement unlocked

This is the team (well, most of it -- there were others helping out in many areas but who couldn't be in this pix) that fulfilled a long-standing ambition of mine. It took 14 years, but NYeDC has finally performed in a professional venue for a national youth theatre festival that isn't the SYF. Cast, crew, coach, all, were dedicated and driven; and strongly bonded through the experience. Good humour abounded in this production. One team member, in particular, received the appellation of 'comedy gold' for his off-stage comments during the feedback interview event. Theatre noobs, all, but thrown in this pressure cooker of juggling rehearsals and schoolwork over these few months, they've grown so much. This team knows what professional theatre is like, running five shows in four days, and it's not hard to tell that they love it. I'm so proud of them!

Last night's show marked the culmination of a peak I've been patiently scaling. My one (and only) career ambition is now fulfilled. I need a new destination that lies somewhere over the horizon. Today, I have the luxury of asking myself, 'where do I go from here?' The answer, I hope, will come to me soon.

Hiddenradio2 -- big sound from a tiny can

Another early arrival -- my set of 2 Hiddenradio2 Bluetooth speakers. Ordered from Kickstarter more than a year-and-a-half ago, it arrived unexpectedly on my doorstep this morning.

Unboxed and activated (right), it looks like a soft drink can. The bottom layer is the speaker proper, while the upper bit is the casing that slides up and down on a smooth touch-activated mechanism. In fact, there are no visible controls at all. Just touch the top surface for on-off; start-stop music track; or draw circles, clockwise for more volume anticlockwise for less. Right now, I've got a single speaker playing music on Spotify. The sound is beautifully crisp, no hiss, no fuzz; lyrics, instrumentation and percussion sharp and clearly reproduced -- though given its size, it's not bass-heavy. Maybe when the app is released on the respective app stores, there'll be a software equalizer to play with. Still, sound projection is omni-directional, which means it should do well outdoors, especially when paired with its twin for a stereo effect.

For the moment, though, I'm thinking of keeping one unit at home and taking the other to work. Yes, there are times I need an easily set up wireless speaker system while being hard at work. This device should fit the bill quite nicely!

It's timely

This box arrived at my doorstep even before I got the notification that it was on the way.

It's my new Pebble Time bluetooth watch and its magnetic charging cable. a couple of hours' charging, and I'm supposed to get a week's usage out of it. Let's see...

Not much to look at now, since it's fresh out of the box and I haven't activated it yet. It looks functional as it is. No fuss, just clean lines and an assurance that it... just works.

There! On the wrist and connected! A simple e-paper display in colour, and cutesy animations precede notifications of incoming activity from its paired smartphone. The design is slightly slimmer than its predecessor, the Pebble, and with a curved back it's a lot more comfortable to wear. The side buttons feel more robust and more satisfying to push as well. And that's just it for the physical construction. I have yet to explore the Pebble Time app that promises loads more watchfaces and other utility apps that will keep me busy and distracted for a while.

The Pebble Time's arrival was also particularly timely as the old Pebble's e-paper display is starting to bleed, causing the graphic images to smear badly. So, time for a change, I say!

Rising above merit

Meritocracy is a great idea to build a society around. It upholds the ideal of equal opportunity for everyone, regardless of social background; ethnicity; creed; or any other impediment that might hold an individual back from doing better in life. Our country is built on the idea of Meritocracy. Those who prove they can, deserve the biggest rewards is what we believe. Unfortunately for us, that's not how Meritocracy works. I'm not saying that our version of Meritocracy doesn't work, I'm saying that the mechanic of a meritocracy in general does not work the way we think (or wish) it would work.

The central tenet behind Meritocracy is "the best man (or woman) for the job". True. Whomever has the ability will also have a job. But no one said the job had to pay well. Meritocracy works fine in determining an individual's starting point. The transition between schooling and getting employed is certainly determined by the merit of one's academic qualifications, no question there. Entry-level requirements and starting pay can be said to follow along a merit-based scale. So it's no lie to tell the kids to study hard to get a good [entry-level] job.

But once in a job, merit is acquired by meeting job requirements, and sometimes taking up higher education is part and parcel of those job requirements at higher levels. So far, that's what we do understand of how Meritocracy works. What we haven't quite grasped yet is that being competent in one's job is not commensurate with the expected rewards that go with it. So when we berate our overwhelmingly well-paid top policy-makers for not being competent at solving the problems they are being paid to solve, what we fail to comprehend is that they are not actually being paid to solve those problems.

Let's talk about 'competence' first. Being competent means to do one's job well. It's a matter of training, a little aptitude, and a whole lot of experience in order to be competent at one's job. The longer one stays in a job, therefore, the more likely one will become increasingly competent in it. This is especially true if the job is a safe, normal job that many other people are doing and thus it is easy to benchmark one's 'competence' against an industry average. If the job we are competent in is a job many other people are also doing, that's a job that isn't likely to be well-paid because everybody's doing the same thing.

So how do some "lucky" people wind up with the jobs we know are better paying? The better paying jobs are the ones that have few common equivalents. These are the jobs that shoulder huge risks, or are so incredibly difficult that no one knows how to do them properly -- or what 'properly' even means in this context. At these levels, people are rewarded, not because they are competent but because they are willing to take on those risks. We're talking about the risk of epic failure; of losing big and committing career suicide; of facing daily public ridicule and disparagement; of losing fortunes, family reputations and possibly their personal freedom if their failure is somehow interpreted as a criminal act; of letting down lots of people who depend on their continued success (which no one has guaranteed). In short, these people are not being paid for being competent, but for their gumption and audacity to take on these risks which we ordinary folk would never dare to even consider.

Ironically, while the top paying jobs are the jobs we prefer not to do, the least paying jobs are also jobs we would rather not do. The "sandwich class" is stuck being competent in our little fish-bowl world.

It's easy to be competent swimming in a little fish bowl, not so if we choose to swim in the ocean. There is potential for much reward out there in the ocean, but it's safer in our fish bowl where we get three square meals a day -- that's it. Maybe we are so competent we can actually solve those big problems we complain about every day, but unless we are willing to take that plunge from frying-pan into fire, don't count on those well-paid people to solve them for us. It really isn't their job to do so.

In short, the way to the best rewards in a Meritocracy is to say "yes, I'll do it!" and take responsibility in situations we have absolutely no experience in; to tackle problems no one (not even ourselves) knows how to solve; and to basically make people believe the impossible can happen. If we don't get it right, or if we screw up, say we are learning from our mistakes and we'll do better next time. It's either that or face the consequences and die.

The Meritocracy our society is today was envisioned by our late former PM, Mr Lee. We are fortunate that when he stepped up to the plate, he faced the impossible and made it happen. Although we paid him well for his efforts, we all firmly believe that he didn't do it for the money. His life was exemplary -- someone who made huge waves abroad, yet kept a humble, frugal, incorruptible personal life at home. He did what he had to because he believed in us. He fought for us; played hard-ball for us; he WAS us to the end.

With his passing, the mantle has firmly fallen on us, the next generation to continue where the previous generation has left us. Now we will we find out if our generation is made of the quality of steel he and his generation were made of. Will we discover that the meritocratic state that hems us in and determines how we are to live does not actually define us? Like him, can we rise above Merit and just do what needs to be done, do whatever it takes because the bigger picture means more to us than our individual whims and fancies? I don't know, but I will say that Mr Lee was an extraordinary gentleman, and  -- I hope -- the likes of whom we will see again in this present generation.