It's late, I know but it's been a long day.

First thing in the morning I'm paying my parking fine at the nearby AXS machine. So damn easy to use, I'm afraid I might get so addicted I just might purposely irritate more URA aunties so they'll fine me some more. $12, gone just like that and I think it's fun. What's wrong with me?

Today was our scheduled half-day off in celebration of our outstanding 'A' level results. Official time to end classes was 1310 hrs but the Drama Club stayed on from 1400 to 1700 for our Friday rehearsal.

I hadn't mentioned it before but I'm really happy with the music MJ is composing for our musical, though there was a slight misunderstanding with Pete who played his initiative card and wrote some of the music by himself. Suddenly, from no music I had more options of original compositions than I knew what to do with.

I decided on the best compromise and that was to get both composers working on the same pieces of music cooperatively rather than separate pieces of music in competition with one another. Pete assured me that there was no intention on his part to compete, but perhaps if he and MJ had communicated better with each other earlier it might have saved us a few ruffled feathers.

Rehearsals are going well (considering how little time we have left to curtain) and we are working with the novel experience of having the script written out as we are blocking the scenes. What's happening is that we are projecting our script onto a screen in our rehearsal room, working out the stage directions and dialogue, choreographing movement on the fly and instantly feeding back to our scriptwriter at the console what he needs to fix in the script. Presto! Changes are made and the script continues to evolve as we go.

A very scary way to work, but I have confidence in Tina. She's not up for this year's Life! award for best director for nothing! Incidentally, all the best director nominees this year are all linked together through Tina who has had a hand in training them all while they spent some of their earlier years playing with us at MU. Sam (3 nominations!) and Nat have made great progress since those early days and we're proud of them.

By the time I left campus after rehearsal, there was only my car, Amy's and Vince's left in the parking lot. Have to be grateful it was a half-day, else rehearsals would have started to 1600 and ended at 2000. That wouldn't have been funny.

Popped Shall We Dance (Gere and Lopez) into the DVD. It's a Hollywood remake of a Japanese movie I watched some years back. It was an amusing and whimsical look at how John Clark (Gere) deals constructively with male mid-life crisis by taking up ballroom dance lessons and in so doing he rediscovers the romance in his overcomfortable, overfamiliar marriage. I'm no fan of ballroom dance myself, but the choreography is quite something to watch; graceful, dramatic and passionate. Whoo! And a cast of quirky characters thrown in moves the story along quite painlessly as well.

Right. To bed...

I really have to apologize for being a rotten GP tutor and Civics tutor to my current yet soon-to-be-disbanded CT. Ever since the Chinese New Year public holiday there has been a weekly disruption to our timetable: experiential learning, KI course for me, release of results, and PW course again for me, so in reality my CT has yet to truly experience what GP and Civics tutorials are like. So much for their 1st term preview of JC life. My other 2 tutorial groups seem to be enjoying themselves for the most part, but my CT... sigh. I just haven't been there for them, I feel.

Today I abandoned them again to attend a briefing by a Cambridge marker on the new look PW will have this year. Less rigid in structure, more open in interpretation of the question, less quantity of research material required (no more overstuffed GPFs), but higher level and quality of in-depth analysis required by each member of the PW team. Assessment criteria has now been condensed even further and a few redundancies have also been eliminated.

There is of course the group assessment, but individual accountability seems to be this year's emphasis. Another small step in the right direction as far as intention goes, but a human resource nightmare since instead of keeping an eye on 5 project groups we PW supervisors are now chasing up 25 individual students multiplied by the number of PW classes we're assigned (2 for most of us). It's going to be an interesting year.

After the briefing, we adjourned to lunch at the Annalakshmi. This restaurant concept is very special. The menu is an all-you-can-eat Indian vegetarian buffet with quite a variety of rice dishes, veggie curries and gravies to savour, fruit and pastry desserts, juices and hot beverages, and all for the price of... well, you decide. All proceeds from whatever patrons decide to give go directly to charity. This business model sounds like a recipe for financial disaster, doesn't it? But the establishment is already in its 19th year and looks to be still going strong. I love the concept: eat as much as you like, pay as much as you like. If you want to try it out, it's on the 2nd floor of the Excelsior Hotel. Use the mall entrance, not the hotel entrance. Really, here you have nothing to lose (the food and ambiance have quality), and a good cause to support with your contribution.

And I got my first parking fine today too. I parked at the National Library parking lot, which is just a short walk to the Excelsior, but I didn't read the parking rates carefully enough. Here, parking is $1 per half hour, not per hour as I have gotten used to. For parking 1 hour more than what I paid for, I now have to pay $12 in fines for my misdemeanor. I am a criminal!!! What will my mother say?

Amazing. I hypothesized a scenario with my students just a couple of days ago: what if PEARLS was scrapped? On freeing up this time committment from students, what kind of activities would they pursue out of interest rather than for incentive? Sorry to say most of my students couldn't conceptualize this possibility.

Today, this sacred cow lies dead in a mercy killing. No more PEARLS for this current batch of J1s onwards. What was unthinkable just a day or so ago has become reality today. The kids are free! There will probably be a lot of unhappy, aimless souls casting around for some sense of structure in which once they felt comfortably constrained in, at least initially, but it's time people realised that forcing kids to participate in activities is not the responsibility, nor even the calling, of schools and colleges.

As with any other transition, there will be an awkward stage as we find new stability but I think we've taken another step towards becoming a more mature people. It all depends now on whether kids and their parents and teachers(!) can cope with the insecurity of driving without a safety belt, with the kids themselves in the driver's seat.

Edit 01:
It was Q-tip's 1st outing to the Colbar. She made the acquaintance of Wendy and Anthony and may have planted a seed of a thought in them about accessorizing their new apartment with a canine of similar size and temprament. She sat quietly while we took turns to put her on our laps as we chatted.

Weng joined us later and purchased a small bag of pork crisps from the bar. He passed the bag around and June took a piece, like we all did. Wendy's piece was quite large and by it's appearance I recognized it for what it was -- deep fried pork lard, the stuff they use in tiny bits to flavour some local fried noodle dishes. June hates to see them in her fried noodles and will hunt down every last one of them, putting them in a neat little pile at the side of her dish. Tonight, however, she was quite happily munching away on her piece of pork lard, not knowing what it was. I couldn't stop myself from announcing my discovery out loud, "chee yao cha!" June's face changed. She choked and spluttered then disappeared indoors to parts unknown and we didn't see her again for a couple of minutes while she rinsed out her mouth with Dettol. Moral of story: Ignorance is bliss, or a little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

I'm a cute widdle kitty up for adoption...


I don't even have a name yet. Will you take me home?

Yep, Flirt's injured kitten is much better now. He's playing rough with the other two cats, dashing around at top speed all over the place, and his limp certainly isn't obvious anymore. He's also starting to grow and as much as we like him, we've still gone beyond our limit of 2 cats max, and we're now searching for a good home that'll take him and treat him well. June's put a good word in with the bakery lao ban niang who was a faithful provider for Flirt and her family, including this unnamed kitten. All of Flirt's other kittens seem to already have been adopted by families in our neighbourhood and this one will remain in our care until he finds a new home; soon I hope, before the occasional catfights (for the position of Top Cat) in our house get serious. June says we'll toss in some cat accessories as well to save his adoptive family of these necessary expenses. Right. Think about it, ok?

Not much happening today. The limp on Flirt's still nameless kitten is hardly noticeable now, though his paw is still looking awkward. He may be small, but he's starting to demand his way from the other members of this household. He no longer recognises the priority Belle has to be served first at mealtimes. He trades punches with Momo just to be naughty. They all give way to him because he's just a little kitten, but I hope he doesn't turn into a Little Emperor due to their indulgence.

Training proceeds for our bowling team at SAFRA Yishun. I managed a 3-game average of 138 despite some horrible out-of-control frames. Vince has improved quite nicely. If he's willing to commit to our cause, we'll take him. Amy is also improving, today breaking the 100 mark though she seemed tired in the last game and dropped slightly below her usual score. Anthony is off his game, distracted by the new toy he bought for his car: a Digital Signal Processor (DSP) that makes his car stereo sound really sweet. Yee, our 3rd member couldn't make practice today even though he suggested that the loser of tonight's game will buy breakfast tomorrow. Guess brekkie will be on him, by default!

Learned a new word, "daizyoubu," which means "no problem; I can do it!" Am considering this word as a possible name for the M2, or Flirt's kitten, I can't decide which. It was a visiting Japanese preacher, Pst. Nobu, who used this word in his sermon about faith.

This morning we woke up late, having slept late after an evening of carousing. It was raining heavily so we decided to avoid town area and instead take a short walk down the street to Evangel for 11am service. It's not like it was our first time there, but when we go we know to expect an all-out assault on our auditory senses. The worship is loud and enjoyably so; and everyone who preaches there, or indeed grabs hold of an unattended mike, shouts at the congregation with unbridled passion and fury. Wonderful orators, all of them, but we leave with our ears ringing and slightly groggy.

Pst. Nobu is here on a short vacation with a small crew from his church in Japan. He was introduced as a man who firmly believes that it would be a Japanese who would successfully reach out to the Japanese people. Likewise, it will be the representatives of the "unreached" peoples themselves that would make the best outreachers for their own peoples, because they understand their own people best and because they know their own culture and sensitivities best. This point was inadvertently proven correct in a real, practical manner by a member of the church leadership closer to the end of the service. But first, a story that Pst. Nobu used to illustrate what faith is.

A crowd has gathered below a length of cable stretched over the tops of 2 buildings. They watch hushed as a tightrope walker gingerly makes his way across the wire and when he safely reaches the other side, the crowd cheers wildly at his accomplishment. They call him "great," "magnificent," and "awesome!" Then they fall silent again when they hear his voice calling from his perch. "You call me these wonderful things, but is there any of you who would dare ride on my shoulders as I cross back along this tightrope?" No one responds. "Crazy," "seow!" they tell each other. Then one little boy stands up and says, "I would!" The crowd holds him back, reminding him of the danger and his social irresponsibility should he fall and make a mess on the sidewalk. But the boy brushes past every well-meaning adult and climbs up to meet the tightrope walker on the roof of the building. The tightrope walker carries the boy on his shoulders and slowly, carefully walks the wire once again. There is another hushed silence, then another round of wild cheering when they both make it safely to the other side. When the boy returns to the crowd they ask him where he got his courage to try such a dangerous thing from. He says, "Simple. The tightrope walker? He's my dad!"

Faith is knowing, really knowing who our father is, and what he can do. It's one thing to stand on the sidelines and cheer and clap and shout praises, but it's quite another when he tells us to trust him in crazy, dangerous times. Can we endure by simply trusting in him or do we balk, lose confidence, berate our situation and just sit there and say, "we're all going to die!!!"? Faith. Daizyoubu. Don't leave home without it.

It was a great sermon I thought. Then it took a Singaporean to spoil the service for me through some thoughtless, careless remark. The lady pastor who took over the mike got a bit emotional sharing (talking about, not opening up her purse and throwing money at the congregation) the church's financial blessings. She let her tears flow, sobbing occasionally, then said one really insensitive thing to our Japanese guests. "You Japanese aren't used to this... I'm crying up here, but you can't show your emotions, can you? [Imitation of Japanese stoicism] I'm Singaporean and I can express myself any way I want..." Oh, the assumptions and cultural stereotyping going on in that head of hers, letting that one utterance fly like that. That was embarrassing, but mercifully brief. I'm pretty sure it was forgotten amongst the other things she was shouting at us.

If we really want to reach out to the unreached peoples, given how culturally superior we think we are, I am convinced now that they're better off reaching out to themselves.

A long day out and about. One of the few Saturdays where I actually have the morning free with no other agenda other than my own. Q-tip got her first long ride in the M2. After breakfast we drove out to look for Weng's birthday pressie and thought we would look through the flea market at Liang Court for an antique object that he might like. No luck for us there as the place looked like it was undergoing some renovation works and it looked deserted too. So we sort of gave up the search and drove back to Sembawang Park to let Q-tip stretch her legs a bit.

Sembawang Park is quite large, as parks go around here. There were a few families strolling, picnicking and fishing, but not too many. Lots of shady spots under the trees and the sea breeze makes the park a great spot to cool off in. This place might also be a great venue for rollerblading as it is open, not crowded and the slopes are gentle enough to be challenging without being too dangerous. A possible routine activity contributing to my new healthy lifestyle, perhaps?

Having failed at the task of finding a pressie for Weng, we assigned Anthony to go forth and seek his fortune. He returned with an ethnic blowpipe with 6 darts in a matching quill. Nice job! But because it was a bit cheap considering how many people had a stake in the same pressie, June & I decided to throw in the bottle of Canadian ice wine that was sitting almost forgotten in our storeroom.

The party at Weng's house was fun, though not the overboard asylum he had made it out to be. The theme was "Juvenile" and some of us came in their old college t-shirts, or threw together a makeshift school uniform (Wendy seems to have made a good effort with her white blouse-checked skirt-school tie-floppy school bag ensemble), while I and June made do with a t-shirt-3/4 berms combo, what we usually wear every day, basically.

Dinner was barbecued junk food: french fries, chicken nuggets, meat patties, hot dog sausages followed later by the slower-to-cook shepherd's pie and the piece de resistance, 2 ikan tenggiri in foil. Lots of Coke and since most of us drove, few of us could touch much alcohol though it seems everyone had brought some.

For dessert Weng passed around slices of a watermelon he had injected with vodka. An interesting idea, though the distribution of liquor was uneven. Some of us got a concentration of vodka, some got none at all. I drove home safely, so I guess I was one of the latter.

We had a mini-rock concert on his lawn, enjoying the sounds from an amalgamation of members from Weng's 2 different bands. We passed the night to the beat of the band, trying to bowl over tiny skittles we set up on the lawn with a handful of marbles. Party on!!!

Left just before midnight while the party was still at full swing. Old bones need their rest. Tomorrow's going to be another long day.

Emotionally and physically drained. Today's distribution of the 2004 'A' results is my final farewell to 3A2 whom I have grown much attached to. The next stage beckons and it's good to know that most of my former civics tutorial can move on in higher education having cleared this last hurdle. Kudos to 'rah, Farisa and Lynn for producing the best results for our CT, and to the rest who worked hard and did well as a result.

From my other tutorials of last year, it was quite astounding for me that some of the students who were having major problems with GP finally cleared the mark AND achieved multiple distinctions in their other subjects as well. I had no idea they were such swots, but there you go. To the others who ambushed me, hounded me and besieged me during the run-up to the exam, it was very gratifying to see how much they progressed and learned in just the short, concentrated private sessions we had together. From D grades to B grades, their effort and determination really paid off for them. Good show, people!

Back in the staff room we're all pleased with our over 90% GP passes. As soon as we found out, there was a flurry to contact our friends in the other colleges to see how well they fared. Somehow, rankings still matter to us, even though the Ministry doesn't publish these stats any more. We just have the need to find out where we stand in relation to things. Guess we didn't do too badly then. Yes.

From distributing results I immediately proceeded to drama club where we held our final casting exercise. We have a cast now and can move on to the publicity photoshoot next week. MJ let us hear 2 songs which she composed for our musical. She also introduced us to her friend who is keen to be our 'live' improv keyboardist for the musical. Both songs are deliciously bluesy so perhaps the rest of our music should follow a similar sound. We had some guests drop in from last year's crew: I saw Adam, Gid, 'sif, Sam, Reina, Liu Yin and Shariffa. Great to see y'all again!

The evening still found me on campus attending the annual Chinese Drama presentation. It's clear that the Chinese Drama team has put in much effort into the 3 short plays. The storylines were quite interesting, focusing on the most mentally unsound characters therein. Chinese Drama still has a problem with being overly-dependent on blackout for scene changes or identifying passage of time. The stories could have been told smoother, snappier and more efficiently; and that would have raised the interest level significantly. Hmm... now we English Drama have a mark to surpass. 'Can we do it? Yes, we can!'

Tired and incoherent now. Just look at the time...

The hardest thing about being endowed with super-strength is trying to live a normal life amongst normal folk. Agnes remarked last Wednesday that I reminded her of Mr Incredible, dressed as I was in regulation Wednesday attire -- long sleeves and tie --and trying to squeeze into the tiniest of spaces at the overcrowded breakfast table. Oh, it was all haha fun and games then, but tonight Mr Incredible did something incredibly stupid.

The one thing he is most incompetent at is housework. June reminds me of the time I made the vacuum cleaner topple over just dragging it across the floor. It's a water-based thing so dirty water slopped over the nicely cleaned floor which had to be cleaned again. The water may also have got into part of the electronics because from then on activating it became a trial and error affair. There was the time I cleaned the marble flooring of the bedroom but I didn't check the detergent I was using. It foamed beautifully on the floor but not because it was a soapy sudsy reaction but because the floor was being dissolved by the acid in the detergent. That patch of bedroom floor no longer shines as brightly as the rest of it.

This evening, I took on my old nemesis the vacuum cleaner once again. This was the one with the punctured hose I recently bought a replacement for. The same one that had fallen over, c.f. the above. I vacuumed the guest room, the bedroom and the study, no problem. Then came the living room. As I was vacuuming I felt that the power cable needed some more slack so I gave it a couple of pulls. I wasn't using strength (honest!) but there came a spark from the machine and my apartment suddenly went dark and silent. A faint smell of burnt electric coil hung in the air. The power cable refused to retract back into its housing and I knew the old thing had reached the end of its tether.

My first reaction: go unplug the faulty appliance then go to the fusebox and reconnect the tripped fuse to restore power. I did just that -- and nothing happened. My second reaction: panic!!! I called my dad, June called hers. They offered some advice that didn't work. We decided to come out of our shells and asked our bus-driver neighbour for help. His son came over but couldn't help. The bus-driver's wife suggested we ask our taxi-driver neighbour for help because he used to be an electrician before. Taxi-driver's wife said that he would be home soon, but in the meantime she'd come over to see what the problem was. As we were looking at our main fusebox in the common corridor we attracted the attention of our immediate neighbours, a retired couple and family.

Soon our corner of the 6th floor was a buzzing hive of activity, with fragments of questions, answers and more advice being thrown all over the place. Dad called and said he had managed to track down a qualified electrician who would arrive at our doorstep shortly. Meantime, our taxi-driver/electrician neighbour returned home and took a personal look at our fusebox. A quick fiddle and -- everything's back to normal! Power's restored and life as we know it can go on!

And then dad's qualified electrician arrived to find there's nothing left for him to do apart from reexamine the fusebox, declare one trip-switch faulty, make a correction with his test-pen, explain to me in Mandarin what to do next time a trip occurs (though he spoke to dad on the phone in perfect English) and collect $50 for his trouble.

After he left we drove to MIL's in Sembawang to collect her spare vacuum cleaner. There's still the rest of the house to be sucked and mopped. Sigh.

Mr Incredible declares housework an abhorrence.

Having a car means having freedom of mobility, going places where one would never have thought of before when one relied on public transport to get around. It also means taking time away from one's previous preoccupations, e.g., the PC and the 'net, that once kept one occupied and homebound. June is happy beause now she's moved up my list of priorities whereas Watson has moved down a notch. After all, what's the big deal about owning a car if one doesn't have a date to drive around in it? So the both of us are out and about at night, Watson sits on his table neglected and, the pets basically take care of themselves. So it was last night.

Flirt's injured son is still living with us and we had intended to take him to Dr Ling's for a 2nd opinion. But his limp seems to be getting better and it doesn't seem to hurt when we test press his paw. He is such a complainer that he would yowl if it caused even a minor discomfort but there's a just a contented purring from him and that's it. We decided to cancel his appointment and observe him some more before we hit the panic button. Instead, we took the time to revisit the Colbar on Portsdown Road for a bite and a drink. And to see if it is still as dog-friendly as it was in it's previous location.

It's unusual for us to have dinner with company but last night we joined Anthony, Wendy and Amy. The menu has a selection of English pub food and local food, the specialities of a Colonial Hainanese kitchen. I ordered a sirloin with chips and 'shrooms; and June had the fish & chips. The dishes are rough and ready, reasonably sized and priced. There is quite a mix of exotic imported beers and other liquor products so oddly-shaped bottles appeared on our table for a few of us. Weng, Lu and a certain artistically-inclined judoka who is anxious about her 'A' results on Friday joined us later for drinks and lots of yak, friendly jibing and round-the-table gossip till past midnight.

Good company, good ambiance, palatable food and patrons' dogs happily sitting at the tables. Definitely a place to bring Q-tip to next time we come.

Alternative methods of assessing GP. What does GP test? The ability to read a range of texts for information that is processed through the reader's own set of flexible meaning filters and less flexible value filters (Paper 2 - comprehension) then synthesized and re-expressed as a cogent unified thought in written form preferably in fluent language (Paper 1 - Essay). So Essay and Compre are both part of a whole sequence of mental activity operating within a particular social context, and not separate skills in themselves.

Adding in the Application Question into the syllabus was therefore a step in the right direction, though the other types of compre questions are problematic in that marking them can be quite arbitrary and highly dependent on individual interpretation. A pass or fail depends on how the marker interprets the answer scheme, not necessarily on the written answers to the questions themselves. Interpretation and application of the marking scheme is easier and fairer when the answers are written in a language form that is easy for the marker to understand, but is very difficult to apply when the marker has to simultaneously interpret the written answer as well. Thus students who are facile with English (the agreed upon language medium of the paper) have a massive advantage over students who are not. So marking the General Paper can be a problem if students don't take proper language usage seriously.

The purpose of the General Paper? To equip students with the methodology, skills and ethics of research and essay writing so that the student learns how to speak sensibly with the authority of a learned person. These skills are essential at University level, but are not taught at Secondary level, hence GP is meant to bridge the gulf separating basic education from tertiary.

Does the current assessment of GP match up to it's purpose?
Paper 2: Awarding marks for paraphrasing text teaches the student to avoid plagiarism but coming up with a marking scheme that covers all possibilities can be quite anal. Vocab can be quite juvenile as meanings are forced from and within unnecessarily tight contexts and does not encourage interpreting the text from the wider perspective.

Paper 1: What are we really testing? The students see this exercise as a test of how well they've memorised the material they received from their tutors, but this isn't the point of the test, is it? We want to see if they can use information from whatever source they deem relevant to the question and how well they are able to synthesize the information into a convincing argument that is both fair and sensible.

The problem here is that different tutors not just across the different colleges but also even within the campus of the same college give different students different materials to study. When the students take the test, they bring with them warped memories of what they had studied (or left to rot) and base their essays on a synthesis of what they remember, not on actual texts themselves.

Since most courses at University level are more heavily weighted on the research paper rather than the written exam, shouldn't we be testing the students on how well they use info rather than how well they've memorised info? Yes, there's PW; but why add a new subject if we can fix GP to begin with? No need to duplicate jobs then (sorry, Avril!).

Hypothetical 'new' GP exam I would like to propose: 5-6 similarly themed texts of general interest given out as passages. One essay question from a choice of a few questions to answer based on the theme of the passages. The one essay assesses the student's ability to use and interpret texts (covering vocab, context questions) from all sources (balance), construct an intelligent argument (essay structure), AND ability to handle quotations and references in standard university-accepted format (MLA, APA, etc.).

I can see the storm of controversy now!

Today the J1s collect their 'O' results. May y'all get the results you're hoping for and choose your next path wisely! Last year's J2s, soon, soon...

Not many people here can say that they had a bulgogi burger fresh from Korea for dinner. June's sister brought back a couple on her flight back from Seoul and microwaved them before June collected them in the early evening. I've never had a food delivery from such a distance before. I'm not absolutely certain the burger contained 'bulgogi' which I thought meant grilled beef. It tasted more like a chicken burger topped with lettuce and mayo, but hey, the experience of biting into such exotic food was enough of a thrill.

Earlier this morning, I found a notice from the Ministry calling for participants in the bowling league this year. Anthony's keen as is Yee, but that leaves 1 vacant spot to make up our foursome. We practiced at SAFRA in the evening, and we jokingly said we were 'trying out' Vince and Amy to see who would fit into the remaining slot. Ladies have a 12-pinfall handicap so Amy had the advantage. I wouldn't mind either of them becoming our last member; I'd rather bowl with friends than some other assigned bowler from the Ministry. Anthony competed against noone for the Captain's role. His 3-game average was in the 170s and mine was an average average 135, or thereabouts. I think we'll do ok in the league. Wish us luck!

June brought work home with her last night so after bowling I helped her to get some printing done on my quirky little printer, and created a mail merge document for the name tags she was trying to print. Mail merge is annoying in the initial stages as formatting the document can be a real pain, especially having to adjusting the size of the individual tags to fit their small plastic folders; and having to type in individual entries into the database is tedious and boring. But once the donkey work is done, the printing can be done en masse and all to the same measurements too. It's pretty brainless after that.

Drove sandwiches to church breakfast early this morning. It was so early that traffic was easy on the CTE and though we left a little later than we intended we still made it in good time. After service we met June's brother from whom we 'inherited' a quantity of car products -- shampoo, wax, washing sponges and cloths. It's car wash day!

First, we collected my parents from their service for lunch, then drove them back to their place where, after an annoying brief spell of rain (always rains when you want to wash your car) June and I got the M2 bright and shiny again. Not car groomer Eddie's standard mind you, just a quick and dirty rinse-shampoo-rinse-dry cycle. Eddie would'a just died.

Drove home for a short nap on the living room floor. In the early evening we decided to try out the pet cafe that was featured in the Sunday Times, Munchies Cafe at Sin Ming Plaza which is not too far from our place. We were a little embarrassed there when we discovered what was on the menu was meant for doggies only and not their owners. Since Q-tip had already eaten dinner we took her with us to explore what other places we humans could eat at.

Lots of options along Thomson Road ranging from simple noodles to dim sum to prata to McD's. We settled for noodles 'cos the establishment allowed us to violate the "no pets" sign as long as we sat outside, far away from everyone else. They serve a not-bad bak chor bee hoon soup and their home-made lime juice is quite a thirst quencher.

Wonder what my duty will be for JAE tomorrow?

Attended a course on "Mental Skills Training (MST) for performance excellence" on campus today. Compulsory for all staff to attend. To appease us for calling us back on a Saturday morning, we got a pretty decent catered breakfast to start the day.

The trainer was one of a small handful of local sports psychologists working locally. He tried to tie his ability to overcome his horrible ('horrible' is relative) academic history with his current role as a trainer of our national athletes' minds, getting them to focus their mental energy on overcoming their performance obstacles.

His methods involve keeping logs and records for training performance, evaluating and correlating personal emotions and thought processes with personal targets hit or missed. We went through some simple exercises for relaxation, concentration and positive imagery, and listened through lots of personal anecdotes of his experience as a college athlete and as a mental skills coach employed by various local schools.

There seems to be a snag when we think about whether we perform to win (as in athletics) or to enjoy the experience (as in drama). To want to win means having a goal, a point of focus to drive and strive towards, which is fine for competitive sports; but for aesthetic experience it's harder to set a concrete goal to aim for. Is our goal to make as much profit as we can on our performance? Is it to get a good review from our critics (a major can of worms for any aesthetic activity)? Is it to get our students to build personal skills in the field and to enjoy the experience so much that they continue to develop those skills in later life?

For competitive sports it's simple: win/lose; gold/silver/bronze; Xth position in the rankings. How does one set such clear-cut goals for an aesthetic group? And yet we must at least set some standard, some mark to stretch ourselves to reach, else the performance is pointless. I suppose we ultimately have 2 very clear responsibilities: 1) to the audience who must enjoy the performance and 2) to ourselves for whom the show must go on.

To summarize things in my own words, performance excellence is about Passion and Professionalism. Passion is the fuel that drives one to perform at one's best because there is some intrinsic motivation for the performance, PEARLS be damned. Professionalism is both glue that binds a performance community together, and a lubricant allowing individual performers to relate well with each other within the community as well as to set and raise the performance bar for each stratum within the community.

Passion and Professionalism then. Perhaps we can set Drama Club goals around these 2 driving principles?

Dammit! Lost a post due to me pressing a wrong button on my keyboard. It closed my browser window before I could publish. Gaaaah! The scary thing is, I don't know which button I pressed! Will piece it together again tomorrow. Waaaaah!

Escaped from campus today to attend a course on the New Subject which will be introduced into the curriculum next year. It's a fascinating examination of how it is we know what we know, and how it is that we trust what we know to be the truth. Well, that's just a simplified version of what we expect our kids to grapple with, even as I am grappling with it in this blog. The subject really should be called, "quid est veritas?" because this little Latin phrase summarises its objectives quite succinctly.

No question, it is a difficult subject and certainly not for the fainthearted. It is for those with an undefeatable sense of adventure, a drive for discovery, and a passion to challenge the known for the sake of gaining greater understanding of the unknowable. This, of course, leads to a small problem: how to teach this subject in such a way that the students will develop their innate curiousity and turn it into a sharp, practical tool of inquiry as they strive to seek answers throughout the rest of their lives? This, no one can teach us pioneer teachers facilitators of this new subject. We will have to learn on-the-job even as the kids struggle to make headway exploring the human mindscape. Wonder how many intrepid explorers we have out there amongst the next year's batch of 16 year-olds? How many of my previous batch might have taken up this challenge if it was offered to them?

Being in town for this course meant being just a short distance from the original Killeny Road Kopi Tiam, the one that was closed for CNY a couple of weeks ago. Today, NBS and I got to try their nasi lemak which was generously spread over with sambal chilli. Very basic, no-frills and no add-on options either. The kaya toast is different from Ya Kun's in that Killeny Road uses thicker slices of bread, lightly toasted, with warmer, meltier butter and a subtler kaya spread. I don't know which kaya toast I like better. Given a choice, I'd prefer to let someone else make the decision and I'll just go with it.

It is now evident that my parallel parking is better than my reverse bay parking. No problems parking at Lloyd Road, though I forgot to display my parking coupons and had to run back before the URA auntie came along. Good thing I hadn't gone far before I realised my mistake. Also, coming into town into the ERP zones is very expensive. The $10 I had in my cashcard diminished suddenly to slightly more than a dollar just from entering the zone! How do people drive in on a daily basis? It must cost a fortune!

The quality of this blog seems to be deterorating. It's almost perfunctory, just another day-in-the-life kind of thing. Oh well, part of the writing discipline I suppose, to keep on pressing on while waiting for new inspiration to strike. Let's see...

I really like my current Arts tutorial group. Only 13 in the class and it doesn't take much to spark off a raucous discussion with them. They are so ready to jump into a topic and argue it amongst themselves. They have strong opinions (although individually they could be better informed) and I truly have kopi tiam sessions rather than "lessons" with them. Discussions quickly become shouting matches as they tumble over each other trying to make themselves heard. It's fun for me to just conduct/moderate/facilitate them, occasionally tossing new material in the form of a question or comment for them to tear into like a pack of ravenous wolves. A couple of the initially quieter ones are now starting to vocalize their thoughts as well, though 1 vocal chap has suddenly become disengaged and is becoming a bit of a diva in an attempt to seek some kind of attention. Perhaps I should find out a bit more about him and see if he needs special assistance or something. For a bunch of "Higher Chinese" kids, they seem to enjoy GP in a way that runs counter to what we usually observe. As one of them remarked this morning, a 90 minute session just flew by. Guess we must have been having fun.

For lunch we went to have Katong Laksa, and for a change I decided I didn't want to drive. Amy drove instead and she managed to squeeze into a rather tight though conveniently located parallel parking spot just in front of our eating place. Vince arrived as we were finishing our meal. Behind him came a large garbage truck that stopped parallel to Amy's Echo, and hence in front of us. Ugh. The garbage truck revved its engine loudly then a cloud of flatulence exploded from its exhaust port, showering the Echo with soot and ash. Part of the noxious cloud enveloped us too, and it was a good thing we had finished our meal by then, though Bhags wisely decided not to continue polishing off the dregs in her bowl after that. Bleargh!

Drama Club is moving forward with our Drama Night preparations. We have an updated script to work with, though a rough final script should be ready be Saturday. We should also have our casting done by then as well. Tina worked on a bit of choreography using office swivel chairs, and she was quite impressed with the set concept that Yee came up with. Backstage is hard at work on costume designing and the publicity machine is just starting up. It's going to be a breathless run up to opening curtain but we've left the start gate and we're off! From next week, 2 rehearsals a week. Then 3, then 4. Oh, my...

Proud of the Drama Club's J1s today. They had a performance during common lunch break, venue the Drum. It was the physical manfestation of a chatroom dialogue. Though there didn't seem to be much use of movement in the short play, the stillness seemed appropriate to the situation they were playing out. The performers included the 2 scriptwriters for this play. The text was based on an existing play, but 2 of our J1s rewrote the script in order to discuss issues that are more of concern to teenagers today: homosexuality, loneliness, eating disorders, self-mutilation... and worse.

It was fun to see the J1s in action, especially since I have been too busy to help them. They were on their own throughout the run of this production and I must say, they pulled it off quite splendidly regardless. The title of the play was "No Easy Answers," and like the title goes, many of the issues were left open-ended at the end of the play. Looks like we've got a good set of J1 who are committed, independent, interested players. Hope they stay after first term.

Went with bro-in-law's recommendation and went with a full bi-monthly car grooming service. Eddie's set up is a tentage within the Orchid Country Club's driving range parking lot. He's a friendly enough chap who knows his cars and takes great pride in making the cars that come under his care gleam like new. All the cleaning is by hand, not machine. For taking up the package deal, my first polish included a sealant treatment to protect the M2's body from minor scratches and other damage from tiny flying objects, like the gravel in the campus parking lot for e.g. Service was quite rapid. I drove in at 1600 and the M2 was ready to drive out at 1900. He takes cash ONLY so credit-card dependents please take note.

If this seems like incoherent rubbish, it's because I'm half-asleep writing this.

Driving is fun, but it creates its own set of stresses. Constantly moderating speed, judging distances, obtaining situational awareness, making decisions based thereupon raises the heart-rate quite palpably, yet it's the kind of adrenaline rush that gives a thrill rather than reduces one to a trembling wreck of nerves. It's a new state of mind I am learning to ease into and I hope to "become one with" without incident.

I'm now practicing as much as I can on the road. Drove out to SAFRA after classes with Anthony, Amy and Vince for a round of bowling. I had an excellent first game with a number of spares and a turkey (my first in who knows how long) then about the 9th frame I broke a nail [bimbo!] on my middle finger and I blew my last frame for a score of 168. Our second game was total crap. Vince left, and Anthony and I struggled to reach 100. Bad 2nd game! Only Amy was happy because she surpassed her own expectations by scoring 84.

Drove out to dinner for once! I picked up my parents and took them to Chomp Chomp for stingray. On a weekday the crowds aren't too severe. We found a table pretty easily, right in front of Lucy's, and the food arrived quite promptly. Prices of the dishes were ok, except for the sugar-cane juice. At the market, the same size mug costs only $1. Here, for 3 mugs I gave the guy $5, expecting change. He said I still owed him $1! Ouch.

Parents are happy. They haven't had a car for years and it's not so fun and not so personal to call a cab everytime they want to go out. Now at least they have a new option, as long as I can spare the time.

Does anyone know where there are dog-friendly eating places? We've promised Q-tip rides but for the moment we're still scouting around for places where she will be welcome.

There was an Alien/Aliens double bill on Star Movies last night which ended past 1am. Hence this late post.

Finally collected my M2 from the showroom! And for the first time, I'm a driver not a passenger! Long may it be so.

We went through a once-over look at the body to ensure it was free of scratches or dents. Chew showed me the operations of the electronics and how to open the trunk and hood. He showed me the different components that sat so neatly in the engine compartment, handed me the rest of my documentation including the Certificate of Insurance and the car's manual and servicing record, and we drove off to the nearest Esso station where I applied for a Smiles privilege card. Chew was nice enough to buy me my first full tank of petrol even. We dropped him off at the showroom and we set off on the car's maiden road-trip.

From Macpherson we headed east looking for Changi Village which we found with ease thanks to a general working sense of direction and then by following the roadsigns pointing us in the right direction. Ipoh Hor Fun for lunch, one of the specialties at the hawker centre there (it comes highly recommended by both Channels U and I) and it didn't disappoint. Lots of ingredients went into the dish: chicken shreds, mushrooms, green vegetables, a deep-fried wonton, all swimming in dark gravy. Here we aslo found a drink stall that sold pineapple juice with bits of pineapple in each glass. We thought this drink had gone extinct years ago! It tasted like it had too much ice in the glass, which was probably true, but it had a delightful pineapple aftertaste. The pineapple bits were sweet and fun to chew. Nice.

Drove home to rest then drove out again to mom's for dinner. They were surprised (pleasantly, I hope) at my new purchase. There were lots of questions, of course, and when my sister arrived, there were more. Brother-in-law, Irwin, gave me a contact for a car polishing service at the Orchid Country Club that he and his colleagues like to go to. I'll check it out tomorrow to give my car it's protective first layer of polish.

My driving report so far:
Parking -- sucks. More (much more) practice needed, both parallel and reverse.
Street driving -- not bad. Keep it easy and everything will be fine.
Highway driving -- generally ok, could be more confident in time.
Changing lanes -- be bloody well more careful!!! A couple of close calls with larger vehicles in 2 separate incidents. Accelerate when merging into faster lanes, clear rear vehicle completely before switching lanes. Practice!!!

Looking forward to driving to college tomorrow. As I told my sister, I can no longer afford cabbing it any longer. ;)