Friends@Maju has just changed its lunchtime set menu. Just as well; we were getting a bit tired of their previous one.

Today being Friday, we felt the need for more pampering so Amy, Dee, Josh and I went for the more expensive set lunch option. Josh's ox-tail stew came in a healthy-sized portion and looked like it melted in the mouth. Amy picked the bones of her baby back ribs clean, 'nuff said. Dee and I ordered the seafood jambalaya. For a portion of what actually amounts to seafood fried rice it actually made my mouth and stomach happy. The shrimp and fish pieces were tender and fresh and the mix of spices in the rice was novel and, um, sang! I really don't quite know how else to express the sensation. Fine. Maybe I'm gushing a little, but I haven't been disappointed by this place yet.

Speaking of friends, I really do appreciate the mealtime companionship I've enjoyed, especially from Amy and Vince, without whom dinner would have been quite dreary this week in particular. Not to say that Q-tip doesn't make good company, but her subjects of conversational interest are somewhat... limited. Thanks, guys! :)

Didn't know it, but I have family who had to be "evacuated from Lebanon," wot with all the bombs droppin' and all. Sort of brings the news in the far-flung middle-east a little closer to home, though this branch of mi familia I've hardly any contact with due to geographical distance.

The young lady in this news article is my cousin (mom's sis' daughter) and I haven't seen her since eh... a long time ago. Still, glad to know she's ok.

Catch a fish for a Singaporean and he will eat for a day. Teach a Singaporean to fish and he will expect a textbook, handouts, worksheets, quality instruction, regular testing, course reviews, safety guidelines, IT lessons... and wonder why fishing is so boring. And not want to learn anything else for the rest of his life.

Today's "Teach Less, Learn More" workshop has parallels with how organized religion picks up on Divine Commandment and turns tablet-engraved words of wisdom into dogma and ritual. It's the nature of being in an organization, I guess. The leadership is obliged to interpret the Word from On-High on behalf of the rank-and file by translating It into procedures that are easy to follow. In this way, we obey the Word, and thereby are we good.

This heretic observes that we are simply barking up the wrong tree with TLLM. TLLM is a value and an attitude, to be obeyed in spirit and not by the letter of the law, or SOP at our level. It doesn't neatly translate into "action plans" or even "learning activities," but it is an admonishment to us in the education service to stop overplanning the lives of our kids, force-feeding them with exam-based but otherwise irrelevant nonsense inapplicable to real-life, and conditioning to them to think it is us who hold the key to their "success in life."

TLLM makes sense, particularly in today's context in which Education has taken on such self-importance that without Teacher's proper supervision, young lives get ruined. And what a waste of our only natural resource that would be.

Homework for math, tutorials for physics, chapters of texts for lit, project research for GP, who knows what else for other subjects... daily exercise regimen for physical health... CCA responsibilities... adequate rest and nutrition... revision of the day's lessons... remedial this, remedial that... tuition... Students seem to live in a time warp that stretches longer than the usual 24 hours a day for the rest of us normal people. We do this to our students because we are good, dedicated teachers. We blame ourselves if individual students flunk a major exam, and think if only we worked them harder they wouldn't be in such dire straits.

Yup, it's all about us. We take things personally: they failed because we failed them. They messed up because we didn't take them in hand. And so, we do everything we can to ensure they don't fail. And we make sure they know it, too. We boil down complex ideas to easy-to-swallow but meaningless factoids. We drill from TYS, as if the only questions (and their corresponding answers) our subject poses come from the last 10 years' worth of exam papers. We pack the time table and schedule their holidays so that they can't waste time with frivolous activities outside of our supervision.

TLLM basically says, stop it. Stop hand-holding them all the way to adulthood. Stop giving the impression that they always have to get it right the first time. Stop pre-digesting things for them and making them eat vomit. Stop being the centre of their learning universe -- we aren't that important. Really.

Individual words make up a sentence, but it's the tone and inflexion that give the sentence it's meaning. Likewise, TLLM is about the manner in which we teach, not about what activity or content goes into the lesson. It's not so much a matter of doing less, or even doing things differently. It's a matter of being. Being more considerate. Being more humane. Being more realistic. Being more practical. Being more far-sighted.

It's also a matter of trust. Trust that kids will learn useful things from people other than ourselves. Trust that learning doesn't always have to be ordered, structured or even planned. Trust that kids will learn in time, so let them have time to learn. Trust that when a child falls down, he will pick himself up, dust himself off and continue the game because there's still fun to be had in playing.

Good luck planning a "TLLM lesson." Oxymoron of the day.

Edit 1:
Happy birthday, Josh!

I may be left to fend for myself for a time, but June didn't leave me unprovided for. As she is wont to do before an overseas trip that doesn't include me, she left behind a little something to keep me occupied until she returns. Under the sheets this time, I discovered a hidden cache of assorted snacks, all neatly arranged so that no suspicious lumps stood out. Good thing I'm not the kind of person who jumps on the bed when no-one's looking, eh?

Such a colourful arrangement it was, too. I wanted to take a picture, but I had given June the digi-cam for her HK holiday snapshots, so I'm camera-less for the moment. The best I can do now is to list what the individual snacks are before they get devoured:

• Chocolate sandwich biscuits x 1 roll
• Pocky-like biscuit stix topped with chocolate and almond bits x 1 box
• Kjeldsen's butter cookies x 1 soft pack
• Lay's potato chips, salt and vinegar flavour x 1 bag
• Caramel corn puffs x 1 bag
• Snickers x 1 5-pack

While I wait for my wife to come home, I can rest secure knowing that I'm not gonna starve.

And just like that, June's packed her suitcase and left for her mother's.

The family has a 0600hrs flight to catch, bound for Hong Kong. Yup, family vacation time; and I'm the man o' the house again for a week! Oh, the possibilities...

Caught "Dead Man's Chest," a sugar rush of wild, frenetic, high energy action from beginning to end. This second installment of the "Pirates of the Caribbean" franchise is a fusion of the old sea myths of the Flying Dutchman, the Kracken, and the maritime euphemism of "going to Davy Jones' locker."

DMC seems fixated with the idea of balancing honour and integrity against selfish betrayal of friends, family and loved ones. Turner and son are deadset on doing the best they can to watch each other's backs, while pretty much everyone else has his or her own agenda to run. And while Elizabeth Swann realizes her heart's desire lies between her white knight in shining armour and her bad-boy pirate captain in heavy eye make-up, the boys seem intent on chasing this movie's featured treasure for reasons other than to get the girl.

Resolution? What resolution? DMC is, after all, part 2 of a trilogy. Like "Empire Strikes Back," DMC ends in a cliffhanger and a promise of more swashbuckling high-jinks on the high seas to come.

Oh, and a tip from NBS: there is a final scene at the end of the credit roll. Did you see it?

Expedition XO's log, Earthdate 07212006:
Skeleton crew took possession of MPV class vessel, Estima, reg.: SDW-7607K, at 0900hrs.
Rendezvous with full crew complement at Checkpoint Bugis. Lost 1 junior crewmember to healthscreen failure, but expedition proceeded as planned.
Detoured back to Pilot's residence to collect personal ID inadvertently left behind.
Detoured to Local Liaison Officer's residence to collect holodisks for in-transit entertainment.
Holodisk transmitter system failure resulted in temporary morale setback, quickly rectified by re-engaging "personal conversation" mode lasting the duration of the trip.
Vessel developed "whistling noises" at high speeds along Malaysian North-South highway. Cursory inspections for leaks, etc., failed to detect any obvious problems with hull integrity, warp drive or life-support systems.

General expedition notes with image archive can be cross-referenced here.

Personnel Notes:
Resource Procurement Officer's acquistions from Orang Utan House: 7 T-shirts. From Giant Supermarket in Makota general supplies depot: a large quantity of personal mood-enhancing, nutritionally dubious, ingestible materials. Excellent!
Navigation Officer discovered several discrepancies in our starcharts, but Pilot managed to locate Objective Satay Celup via Serendipity. Counselling Officer was on standby to manage any stress fallout, but no action was necessary. :)

Further Notes:
On return leg, vessel encountered heavy warp traffic delaying our homebase ETA. While Immigration and Customs checkpoints were understandably bottlenecked, other causes were closures of traffic lanes on CTE main warp corridor, 1 due to regular maintainence and another due to wreckage from a brief but intense skirmish involving 5 vessels of differing classes.
EXO took over helm duties for crew disembarkation run. 7607K docked in EXO's residence docking bay at 0100hrs, earthdate 07222006.
EXO returned 7607K to dry dock by 0905hrs as per agreement.
Discovered "whistling noise" was due to hull damage to vessel's undercarriage shielding, possibly due to debris impact some indeterminate time enroute. Though not obvious at first, the breach grew progressively worse as the drive wheel kept in constant friction with the loosened hull plating. Replacement is inevitable.
Dry dock authorities will liaise with Pilot for follow up procedures, if necessary.

Expedition Evaluation:
Overall relaxed and relaxing trip, good food, even better company. Plans in motion for a return trip, longer in duration. Hotel Puri recce'd and designated Starbase for future ops.

End log.

A temporary respite from work, and time to smell the roses and chicken rice balls. College has declared today off in lieu of Polling Day. A little hasty planning during several breakfasts this past week resulted in Vince, Amy, Dee, Lucy, Jo and me renting a Toyota Estima and heading north to Malacca...

As I work on essay skills with my GP groups, I find that it isn't the lack of content that's bringing down grades, but rather the overflow of content that overwhelms students and shocks them into mental paralysis. The misconception is that the more content goes into an essay, the better it will be graded; but quantity of content means nothing if it isn't relevant to the question.

It's all well and good to maintain a storehouse of knowledge, but selecting the most appropriate material from it quickly while disregarding the rest without guilt or doubt, and organizing the selected material effectively pays off more handsomely in an argumentative essay. After all, the objective is to win the argument, not confuse the situation any more than it already is.

For any argumentative essay, one fundamental requirement is to be able to have a general discussion on the concept in question. The simplest way to explain "concept" is to think of it as a short phrase that describes what the essay is about without any opinions or other preconceived notions about it. For example,

Q: The only role of the mass media should be that of a watchdog. Do you agree?
Concept: The mass media as watchdog.

Q: Does the Internet have a positive or negative impact on your society?
Concept: Social changes resulting from the widespread use of the Internet.

Q: Should people have the right to decide when and how they will die?
Concept: Human rights and the differences between suicide and euthanasia (asks a bit much of a miserable 800 word essay, I say)!

Notice that the concept can double as an unbiased title for the essay. Identifying the right concept gives us a handy guideline to help us decide if the content we select is relevant to our essay or not. What determines our stand (thesis) will depend on what our selection then leads us to believe about the concept we are discussing.

Hmm... I seem to be obsessing over GP this week. Guess I'll have to get it all out of my system before I go back to my regular nonsense. Bear with me, there's more but it's already quite late!

The interview with ZB has been published, and 'deep and Que have their pix printed in colour. I'm not entirely sure what the article actually says, given my level of Chinese literacy, but you can access it online here.

I can only content myself with a very badly translated into English version here.

In "Philosopher's Stone," letters from Hogwart's to Harry Potter are addressed, "Mr. H. Potter, Cupboard under the Stairs, 4 Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey, England" to which we can add, "Western Europe, European Continent, Planet Earth, Sol System, Alpha Quadrant, Milky Way Galaxy, Known Universe."

How does a postal delivery officer know which mailbox to place one letter and not another? The information on any address is arranged from the smallest possible unit that needs to be located (the person) to the most reasonably large locus where said person is most likely to be found, in ever-widening concentric circles.

So any terrestrial post office can easily locate the intended receipient of a piece of mail by country, then by state or province, then district, then street, then housing unit, (then in Harry's case, by specific room in the house) till finally the mail reaches the right person. The additional information might be useful for perhaps an inter-galactic mail courier, but it follows a similar narrowing procedure.

Whichever layer of our address we physically occupy determines our view of the world in which we live. We wish for our GP students to at least live as citizens at the national (country) level and to write from that perspective. Better yet, if they could feel like they occupy a much larger space, on the regional or even the global level, the scope from which they write would be so much wider.

Unfortunately, most of our students still write as if they only live inside their "Cupboard under the Stairs," cooped up within the confines of 4 dim, dusty walls with no window to even look out of. And they wonder why despite so much work they undertake to do better in GP, they still find difficulty getting a satisfactory grade.

Open the door and step outside. The world is bigger than your comfy bedroom.

Whoa, stop the presses! Just got a comment from an author whose work I reviewed a couple of months ago. Now I'm truly awed by the power of the Internet in helping perfect strangers contact each other. The world is so much smaller now!

Wish I could write back to him, but the link to his email address doesn't work somehow. Hmm... perfect, the 'net isn't.

Just for reference, my review is here.

Dr McG's comment is here.

What makes a person a criminal? The simple answer is, the law determines for us who stays free, who pays a fine, who goes to jail and worse. But while it's easy for the law to see things in clear black and white, in the realm of human interaction, things get horrendously fudgy.

Laws change retroactively, in response to disastrous events the repeat of which we hope the new laws will protect us from. But what if by enacting new laws, a group of people who were once tolerated by society suddenly become lawbreakers simply because the new laws say they are? Or what if the beliefs of a group of people suddenly become outlawed overnight and they have to decide to abandon their beliefs or face legal consequences?

In the light of religious extremism and senseless terrorist attacks on secular society, society usually seeks the protection of the law to preserve a sense of security for daily existence. In the US, for example, new anti-terrorist measures have been enacted by their lawmakers; but such measures have also caused concern that the citizens' civil rights and liberties have been sacrificed as a result.

Marvel Comic's recent "Civil War" story arc is a modern day parable for the fear and tension against the unpredictability of life and death as we recognize that terror strikes anyone, anywhere, anytime. No one is safe, no one is innocent, everyone is a target.

It isn't an act of terrorism that sparks off the Civil War. It is an irresponsible act of nationally televised super-grandstanding by a group of inexperienced costumed heroes causing a horrific disaster in Stamford, a peaceful residential suburb. The death toll runs in the hundreds, the majority being children from a neighbourhood school, the calamity's ground-zero.

Thus, the move to press a Super-human Registration Act into existence. This Act by law eradicates any protection superhumans have of their secret identities. The law compels all superhumans to be properly trained and carry a Federally approved licence, their activities having to be officially sanctioned by the US government. In other words, they have to become civil servants if they wish to continue righting wrongs, doing justice and preserving the American way. By implication, it will also become the government's decision as to who registered superheroes go after.

The new law, such as it is, splits the superhero community asunder: those who feel that registration is the right and responsible approach (notably Iron Man and surprisingly, Spider-Man, and those who never had a secret identity in the first place, like the Fantastic Four), and those who feel that secret identities have to be protected (for fear of reprisal agaist their families and loved ones, or just at least having a chance to lead a normal life on the side) and that what they do should not be government-controlled or directed (biggest surprise for this faction is Captain America -- chief protector of American values or something like that).

In one early incident that causes the superhuman community to have a very serious think over this situation, the Fantastic Four's Human Torch gets hospitalized by a very angry, very human mob who recognizes him (he is a public figure, after all) and attacks him outside a nightclub while he is there on a date.

Because a new law is called into existence, many superheroes who refuse to abide by it become super-villains overnight, and are being hunted down by others who were once their friends and colleagues. Some previous super-villains who choose to abide by the new law suddenly become elevated to hero status as well, so the whole Marvel Universe is in massive turmoil as loyalties change, battle-lines are drawn, and casualties mount.

What makes a person a criminal? The Law. Whose side are you on?

Tasked with developing a possible essay outline for the question:
Does the Internet have a positive or negative impact on your society?

Warped my brain around the question enough already. Still not all that satisfied with my response because 1) I'm dealing with the Internet like it worked in its ideal form; 2) the examples are a bit naff; and 3) the conclusion looks a bit like a cop-out. Thankfully, I'm not demanding perfection from myself, so I'll upload it as is.

If interested, click.

For most subjects, they're about what you know.
For GP it's about what you think about what you know.
For KI it's about what you know about what you know, AND what you think about what you think.
What a headache.

June's off and running again, living the jet-set life and leaving me to tend the home fires till she gets back on the weekend. This will be the first of a scheduled series of "out-station" trips, though not all for work-related issues.

Gonna have to get used to the quiet around the house for a few days on end. At one time in my life I would have thought such days would have been days of luxury, days to dream of and die for; but these days I prefer my isolation in moderation. Never mind, I get enough chaos at work to keep my adrenaline levels pumped so I'm ready to enjoy a quiet evening at home with the animals after hours.

In a strange, but not altogether unexpected turn of events, I facilitated lunch with the newbies. We made a return to Gardens Market after a collective absence of, who knows how long? But because there were so many of us today, we had to split tables. Since I drove the newbies down, I felt it would be better form to sit with them and not ditch them at the first opportunity.

As in any social grouping of relative strangers, conversation was careful, tending to remain within the boundaries of our so-called areas of expertise, not exactly the bimbo talk I'm more used to. Wish I could have been a better host and got everybody to lighten up immediately, but my social skills aren't quite up to that standard yet. Still, the conversation didn't run dry and we had things to say till it was time to leave, so for stepping out of my comfort zone, I think I did pretty ok.

Had company of a different sort species at dinner. Took Q-tip to the Colbar where I wolfed down a sirloin steak with egg, chips and beans. Excellent stuff -- homestyle cooking, just the way grandma made it way back then. In the quiet of my table I pondered KI (of all things!) while Q-tip kept a wary eye on a roving chihuahua who was making eyes at her.

Yahoo! News reports that memory and sleep are closely tied together. I'm not surprised. Maybe I should try sleep more? Click.

Just a quick reminder: Happy birthday, Dee!

Also got our staff photos done for college annual. No department-level photo this time, but individual pix for everyone. Had a big goofy grin on my face at the director's behest. Hopefully I won't be the only one looking like that.

Restarted 'blading with JY, but only got 2 rounds in before the sky opened up and washed us out of the park. So we made our way back to Tomoko for lunch joined by Chewy and her mom as well. No set lunch on weekends, but they offer a bento that's bursting at the seams with a variety of good stuff. Apart from what usually comes in the set, we also get an additional couple of gyoza and a side of egg salad (huh?) too.

After lunch, we followed Vince's footsteps of last Friday and drove up to Upper Peirce Reservoir to feed watch the monkeys.

Getting some sleep... World Cup Final night...!

Superman Returns! Returns from what? It took me by surprise that this installment of the Supes movie saga sort of continues from where the old Chris Reeves version left off. I thought we'd have to sit through the entire re-telling of the modern myth we all know so well already.

Instead, Supes makes his return from a 5-year sabbatical and finds that though the world is still pretty much the same as he had left it, his personal life has a few new wrinkles he has to get used to. And that's just it, isn't it? It's not so much the duty of saving the world every 5 minutes that matters, but fighting the monsters of ostracism and loneliness that plague him throughout his whole existence.

This installment isn't about him saving the world yet again -- although there is some of that against his arch-rival, Luthor -- but about his friends and family saving him when he's in trouble, and continuing to assure him that he isn't alone in the universe.

Director, Singer, keeps reminding us how "iconic" a figure Supes is in depicting him in visuals that parallel Atlas bearing the world on his shoulders, Christ at his crucifixion and resurrection, and Superman himself as he appeared holding a car over his head in his very first comic book. Yet the man is always either on a solo mission to find the remains of his home, taking refuge in his Fortress of Solitude, or hiding behind a "secret identity," both making and not making an effort to blend in with the crowd. That is a guy in conflict with himself.

Sadly, Luthor, his nemesis has no such conflict. The Luthor in "Smallville" is a much more interesting character seeing how divided his loyalties are, but in the movies he's just another loony tune with big ambitions but severely lacking in follow-through.

The version of Supes on TV's "Justice League" is my favourite of the non-print portrayals of the man-of-steel, though. This guy's a slightly edgy fascist, violent when riled with a dangerous dark side to boot. He doesn't always smile and wave at the crowd, not the boy-scout he's usually seen as.

As Lois Lane writes, "... the world doesn't need Superman," as our world seems to get along peachy without him. It's Superman who needs the world more. The wackos give him a sense of purpose, his friends and family make it worthwhile.