At last my campus-issued laptop purporting wireless compatibility shows signs of connectivity. I'm doing the road warrior thing right now, surfing with no strings attached at McD's, King Albert Park. I'm sitting here with the intention of getting a few essays marked (yeah, right), but I'm also pursuing a story for NY conneX. The things I gotta do to keep my promises...

I'm about to rendezvous with the staff accompanying the Outdoors club on their hike along a stretch of deserted railway around the Bukit Timah area. The staff will be stopping here to lunch on Big Macs, while the kids will stay out in the wilderness and eat leaves and berries and things (or so they tell me). It's educational.

Hopefully, I can get some quoteworthy impressions of today's programme from the staff, and some of the kids, if I can find them...

... My contact, SXL and hubby arrived early. Chatted with them while they lunched, then they brought me over to where the kids were -- along the KTM railway line, resting up before the next leg of their expedition. It was raining so we all got quite wet, me because I was unprepared for the weather, the kids because it was fun to splash around in mud and puddles. City kids.

Catch the full story in NY conneX next Thursday! *crosses fingers behind back

Someone June detests wheedled and begged for a benefit he didn't deserve and got it. When she found out about it, she was understandably furious. After all, her work ethic is so much stronger than the guy's and to June, a contract is a contract, so he shouldn't even have had the temerity to ask for more in the first place.

I don't think I helped her mood much when I responded to her story from a Sith-y frame of mind (yes, the Dark Side seems to be strong with this one lately).

I said that if he was dissatisfied and fought for more, despite his contractual binding, what he won was what he deserved, because he was willing to struggle for it. Whereas, in June's case, since she was content with her contract, she too deserved what she got -- and rightly so -- because she worked for it.

OK, so I wasn't sympathetic, but it's time to wake up and realize that the world isn't fair. Corporate management has no time to observe the steady, quiet worker. Management already has enough problems to deal with, so while they're grateful for the busy cogs running in the background, keeping the wheels of industry moving, they also tend to take them for granted. If they're already with the program, there's no need to give them special attention.

But it's the squeaky, wobbly cog that threatens the smooth running of the company's operations that needs to be dealt with. And with labour laws being the minefield they are, sometimes it's easier to just throw money at the problem than fire. So with a quick application of corporate lubricant, the cog is happily running again and management can quickly go back to taking care of business as usual.

Corporate is illogical, brutal and uncaring. Corporate will try squeeze more from you than you promised, and give you less than they promised you -- unless you can turn the tables somehow. So you are either contented with your exploitation, or you risk it all and stick it to the man!

Or you quit the whole thing and take up teaching instead.

The DSTA is offering a $1m prize for designing a robot urban warrior? That's kinda' pittance considering how much they'll make if they ever get such a thing mass marketable for the world's military markets...

Men, listen up! This one is your new platoon mate. He just posted in from the defense lab to assist in your FIBUA ops. His dossier say his name is 'Terminator', but you all can call him 'Ah Ter' for short, lah.

You all chow Hokkien peng now have some tough competition for Best Recruit. Ah Ter very smart -- his results is A*Star one -- and for physical fitness, he is the real Ironman, ok? So you all better give him the proper respect and don't let me catch you programming him to do your area cleaning for you, understand?

Anything you can do, he can do. You can topo in the jungle, he can topo around a building. You run the SOC, he also can overcome obstacles. But he can also do more than you! He is training to negotiate with terrorists, but so far he can only negotiate with the stairs. He can also take lifts -- not like you lazy buggers! If I catch any of you lazy buggers taking the lift, you will all knock it down twenty for me! How to pass your IPPT if you everytime take lift, huh?

And the best thing about our robot friend here is that unlike the remote-controlled bomb-disposal unit, Ah Ter is completely autonomous. A-U-T-O-N-O-M-O-U-S. That means Ah Ter got initiative, not like you useless people...

Eh, Recruit Ah Ter! Sit down! I never authorize canteen break yet! Ah Ter! Come back...!

Please advise women how to deal with MRT perverts
ST (online) Forum Letter

ON JAN 20 at about 7.55pm, my wife took a train from Bugis MRT station heading towards Jurong East MRT interchange.

A middle-aged man boarded the crowded train in one of the stations along the way and stood in front of her.

The zipper of the shorts he was wearing was down. He was moving his folded umbrella around his 'private parts' to attract the attention of passengers seated nearby.

He also stood in a way that enhanced the opening in his shorts.

My wife was embarrassed by the action of the man and did not know what to do. The train was also crowded and it was inconvenient for her to vacate her seat.

For the sake of women passengers, could the MRT authorities advise them on how to deal with such a situation?

Nelson Quah

Dear Nelson,

Your wife should commit to memory as many details about the pervert as she can: dress (or undress, as the case may be), accessories, facial features, identifying marks, etc.

She should alight at the next immediate MRT station and inform the MRT staff about her inconsiderate fellow passenger, give his description, and if possible, which car she last saw him in. MRT staff will board the train at the following station, apprehend whomever fits the description and confine him until your wife can make a proper identification.

If your wife positively identifies the suspect, the MRT staff will arrange for her to make a police report, following which the police will investigate the matter by interviewing both her and the suspect separately. Your wife may face more than 1 interview if the suspect claims trial.

At the trial a few weeks later, if your wife maintains an unwavering testimony and the judge finds the defendant's protestations lack credibility, the defendant may receive a fine, or get his butt thrown in jail, or both.

This is the end of the story as far as the Authorities are concerned. [True story, btw. The perv's MO looks exactly like that of the guy Mrs X threw in jail when she faced the exact same situation not too long ago. Maybe he hasn't yet learned his lesson?]

Or, your wife could just politely tell the guy that his fly is down, putting the onus back on him to zip up. Depends on how brave she is, and how much time she has to waste with the Authorities to assuage her embarrassment.

If for a moment I thought that I have been trying to gain attention with my antics on campus, I'm glad I've come nowhere near the nonsense these HK tutors are up to:

In a highly competitive HK tuition market, tuition agencies are now marketing themselves by showing off their most attractive staff in their advertising campaigns. We're talking 'attractive' as in long-legged catwalk-sizzling supermodel-types with the poise, coiffure and come-hither allure to match. Don't ask me what the men are marketed like, 'cos I've never met an attractive man before, and I don't particularly want to either [ed. careful, your biases are showing].

And this whole image thing isn't just for a one-off photo-shoot either. They maintain their appearance in class too, or I guess the fallout from a false-advertising claim would be quite devastating to the company. So they're all gorgeous and dressed to kill so that they can teach a bunch of horny 14 year-olds English.

While having a swarm of English-speaking Gisele Bundchen lookalikes in my staffroom would do wonders for my morale, I do wonder which demographic the ad campaigns are pitched at. Would the pre-adolescent student have enough decision-making ability in the family to insist on going to a school whose teachers have the most outstanding gazongas? Would a mother trust a teacher who looks better in person than she did in her wedding album? Or does dear, distracted, drooling Dad decide? I dunno enough about family dynamics in HK to say for sure, so marketing the sex-appeal of teachers doesn't make much sense to me.

But so far, all this looks like fun and games. Besides, it's great for the teacher's ego to admire his or her own glam poster put up at the MTR station, and the money's apparently great too -- the best tutors teach up to 4,000 kids, so they must be getting astronomical fees.

But what exactly are they teaching the kids? From the article, as far as I can tell, the one (and only) expert educational point they impart is in "predicting what questions will be asked in the exams." Now, that is absolute crap, teaching kids to memorize and regurgitate on cue. If that's all, I hope the kiddies will get their money's worth in jiggly eye-candy because they sure aren't getting an education.

Nothing like a bit of venting and ranting to sift the mind and the heart and see what it is that's been bothering me lately. Sorry for yesterday's self-indulgence, but I think I've got it figured out.

I remarked before that my current work culture has become a lot more intense than before. Even the newbies are already going flat out, punching in long hours with all manner of purpose-driven activity. And I've been trying to fit in, y'know, group solidarity, that kind of thing. Yes, I have been taking steps to grow up, as per NBS' admonishment.

But I might have overcompensated and seem to have taken greater strides than I have been ready for. I've been offering advice to people who don't need it, and perhaps even attempting to arm-twist others into supporting one or another of my new hare-brained causes of the year. So far, everyone's been polite and tolerant, but looking back I feel embarrassed about what I've been trying to do to make myself "useful around the house," as moms like to say.

To keep my sanity this year, I have to remember these few things:
1) Stop competing and comparing myself with others.
2) We each have our own pace and our own paths.
3) Be myself, and not try to be who I'm not.
4) 1 Cor 13:11 reads, "When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me," and not, "when I put childish ways behind me, I became a man."

Thanks, Taily, for the positive reinforcement.

Perhaps I have begun the year with more idealism than brains. I might have made more promises than I can realistically keep, and my most optimistic way out is if the people who haven't been taking me seriously last year continue to not take me seriously this year. That way I can narrow my focus to just those who do.

With me it's always the big dreams and the foolhardy desire to champion lost causes, but I don't have the ability to manage the organizational mechanisms necessary to make the difference. It's my fatal flaw.

So while I tend to make a spectacle of myself with my, "Hey, everybody, look what I can do," everyone else is like, "Very nice, dear, just don't fall down and break your neck, ok?" And then reality and life revert to status quo as soon as I run out of steam.

My main problem, I think, is that I've been alone for too much of my life. While everyone's charging off together in one direction, I've been off on my own path following the beat of my own drummer. It's an extreme defensive reaction against the herd instinct and it might have been an asset at some earlier time for me, but it certainly isn't helping now that cooperative endeavour is the name of my new game.

It's what happens when the lone wolf unexpectedly finds himself absorbed into a hunting pack. Alone, he's nimble enough to change direction at will, spin on a whim and halt on a dime. In a group, however, things move a lot more slowly and more carefully, with more consideration for others. But old survival tactics and coping strategies are hard to get rid of, while new concepts like social structure, hierarchy, protocol and team dynamics are not so easily learned, or even understood. So it's always going to be a struggle.

June's probably right. I should accept my limitations, just stay focussed on my core business and stop trying to be too clever. Why do I keep forgetting that 1) it doesn't always have to be about "me", and 2) more often than not, less is actually more?

Of late we've seen a movement calling for "S'poreans first" in our public institutions. Due to the perception that S'poreans are slowly being outnumbered by a 'foreign talent' pool that is growing so fast that it's doing our homegrown stock out of house and home, job and country; suddenly and unsurprisingly, S'poreans are pushing themselves to the front again with their "me first" mentality.

So far, the issue of healthcare subsidies has fallen to the will of the people, and in today's ST (online) there's a call for a similar policy for post-grad courses at our local unis.

This idea of "S'poreans first" is distasteful and somewhat meaningless. Though I stand to gain from it as a S'porean myself, I believe our desire to draw a boundary between "local" and "foreign" is going to bite us in the butt in the long-term.

It's hypocritical of us on the one hand to say that we S'poreans have the right to be first because we were here first, and on the other be so critical of Malaysia and it's Bumiputera privileges, which derives from the same basic reasoning. We slam Pauline Hanson's race politics, but we don't recognize that we're pushing for the same thing here on nationalistic grounds. And for the record, the Malays were here first. We non-Malays are practically 'foreign talent' ourselves, give or take a couple of generations.

Our desire to segregate will be our downfall because that will be the killer blow to the goose that lays our golden eggs. S'pore's success has little to do with our smarts, or our training, or our meticulous attention to detail, or in the long-sighted planning and forecasting by the pilots of RSS Singapura. All this activity can only diversify and even out our risk factors, nothing more.

Our success has everything to do with our diplomatic skills, our ability to make friends with pretty much everyone, or at least make friends with the right people on the global stage. We see where potential conflicts lie and we have so far been quite good at working out win-win scenarios for our working partners who have, as a result, been more than happy to pitch their lot in with us and help us grow (or else leave us alone, unmolested). Our open hand and firm handshake are ultimately our strongest assets, far above anything else we can offer.

Now that we're beginning to look at people with the view of distinguishing between "us" and "them", we're closing the valve of the main artery that keeps the heart of our country pumping. The free flow of people has been our lifeblood from our beginnings as a centre of entrepot trade. We grew because everyone from east to west met and mingled here. The currency of both money and ideas were easily exchanged without inhibition, and whether it flowed into or out of our country, we were enriched nonetheless by the exchanges themselves. No one else could top us then in creating a market for such free trade, and for the moment we still have few close rivals in this respect; but with this upsurge of "S'poreans first" our free market isn't looking so free anymore. We'll lose our only edge if we don't regain our senses quickly.

S'pore, being a migrant community (yes, it is, so stop pretending otherwise), is always going to be a competitive place to call home. So what do we have to do as individuals to survive? Like it or not, we play the game. And we always welcome our new teammates, even if they are just playing as subs. Fresh legs are good for our game, and they're on our side.

BTW, please go get your post-grad education in a different city from your undergrad. Tertiary education in a foreign country opens your eyes and broadens your mind to see a world much bigger than your fishbowl, won't you agree, Mr Leong?

CCAs are back to full swing again! Amongst the new crop of debaters who showed up for orientation today, there was an aspiring journo, a true-blue Honors English type, 2 versions of the Elmo TMX, a former (maybe still current, I'm so out of touch these days) television artiste, and the kid who lives down the corridor from my apartment O_o.

These guys are a laugh riot when put together. There's so much animated energy that they radiate, and some of them exhibit scant respect for their seniors. While this brash confidence is accepted as a prerequisite 'tude of a debater, I can see they're going to be a real handful when they start working together. The focus will be just everywhere. I forsee we'll make history this year by fielding a bunch of stand-up comedians instead of a debate team.

Sadly, no one showed up for NY conneX. That's a little worrying since I've got a lot riding on our little newspaper this year, and I need all the staff I can get. We'd better gain mucho cred this term so that by next CCA bazaar people will be clamoring to be wear our nifty press pass. *crosses fingers.

Anyway, we've just uploaded a fresh crop of articles, so do drop in and give us an eyeball, 'k? Thanx so much!

Often, the perception of good and evil depends on how much knowledge one has about an event or the person or persons involved in it. The more information one has, the fairer the judgement of who's right and who's wrong becomes.

In Frank L Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, all the information we get is from the perspective of a gormless farmgirl searching for a way home. Whoever can help her achieve her objective we think of as "good" while those who strew obstacles in her way have to be "bad". It's odd then that Dorothy's benefactor, the Wizard himself, would set the assasination of a rival as a precondition for his assistance, and we accept this morally reprehensible task without question. Means justifying the ends.

But the Oz in Gregory Maguire's revisionist novel, Wicked, is a far more politically complex world than the one Baum presents. The Wizard has usurped authority in the Emerald City from the ruling regent and has embarked on a campaign of eco-political expansion to take the whole of Oz under his control. There is little resistance at first as he seems to bring in wealth and prosperity to the people, but those he represses and exploits he keeps out of sight from the general population. He protects himself with a secret police called the Gale Force which enforces his interests with extreme prejudice on the periphery of polite society.

While there seems to be a growing resistance movement against the Wizard, the focus of Wicked falls on a lonely figure, an anomalous green-skinned girl whose cause is to end the oppression one way or another. But as one effort after another ends in failure, she retreats further and further away from society, and eventually becomes known as the Wicked Witch of the West more by reputation than by actual intent on her part.

When Dorothy arrives on the scene however, her bumbling around Oz destroys everything that Elphaba (aka WWW) holds dear, starting with Elphaba's sister who is crushed by Dorothy's far-flung farmhouse. Even so, Elphaba holds Dorothy no malice (well, perhaps only growing contempt, annoyance and frustration) but instead sees her as an opportunity to atone for past mistakes. But tragically, it is Dorothy's ignorant good intentions to help Elphaba that causes Elphaba's unglamorous death.

Wicked is a discussion on the nature of good and evil, examining the subject from the perspectives of religion, science, and magic. It looks at people's motivation for behaving the way they do, and questions the influence of choice, manipulation and ordination in people's actions.

Wicked puts an adult perspective on a simple children's tale. It fleshes out the relationships of the main players and pre-Dorothy histories in Baum's narrative. Given this additional knowledge, we realize that it can be all too easy to judge a book by its cover.

Been avoiding meeting my fund manager 'cos he gets long-winded and reminds me about things I don't really want to think about, i.e., my financial state now and in the years to come. Considering he's already taken most of what's left of my cash, I don't really have much of a "now". I can only hope that there will be a "to come" as promised.

His news today was mainly to update June and me about the performance of our investments to date, just a little more than 6 months since we let him handle our money. So far, a modest little profit; well, better than bank rate, anyway, so maybe we won't fire him just yet.

The one thing I got out of our discussions today is the realization that under normal circumstances, I realistically only have 13 more years of working life before I reach retirement age. 13 years to build up sufficient resources to see me comfortably into my dotage, assuming accident, disease, stupidity or the economy don't get me first.

Fund managers. They sure are well trained in scaring cash right out of a guy's pockets.

But as I said to TSL on Friday, I don't really have ideals about retirement. The idea of lolling around all day watching people go by doesn't appeal to me. No retirement for me, I told her, I doubt I'll be happy if I don't work till the end. If there's one thing I can't stand, it's being or becoming irrelevant. That's even scarier to me than having no money.

Took a chance on The Wicker Man, starring Nick Cage 'cos there wasn't anything else we wanted to watch at Sun Plaza this evening.

Cage plays Edward Maulis, a police officer who is given time off to recuperate from a traffic mishap, and goes off on a quest to find a missing child in a remote community far, far removed from urban development. Fully charged up with testosterone, the authority of a legal enforcer, and his own mission of righteousness, Maulis wastes no time making his presence felt amongst the rural folk of Summersisle.

The community has ancient roots, with animistic customs, traditions and rituals that are so alien to our modern sensibilities. Like the bee hives they keep to harvest honey, Summersisle is a matriarchal theocracy in which the knowledge jobs belong exclusively to the women, and the men just provide manual labour, or else sit around in the pub drooling into their mead. Though that description sounds like paradise on earth, it all looks like a society gone wrong, from Maulis' prejudiced perspective.

In his quest for the missing child, he charges around the village like a bull in a china shop. His methods become increasingly fascistic (typical male response when things don't go their way) as the villagers refuse to respect his authority and instead just watch him and his antics with amused detachment. They have little time for him anyway, as they are trying to recover from their worst harvest on record.

As Maulis slowly uncovers Summersisle's secrets, he also discovers the reasons for his summons to the community, and comes to realize that he is the best man for the job.

There's also a little cautionary tale there against pre-marital sex: you never know when the consequences of a long-ago tryst might one day come back to burn you.

The Wicker Man isn't a horror movie, but more like a Hitchcockian thriller. It is slow-paced, with very little action, but there's enough going on keep the audience guessing what the villagers are really up to.

Cool, but for my taste in movies, I'd rather watch this one on HBO.

Finally, a proponent of the use of video games as an educational tool! I've always wanted kids to play Civilization for background knowledge on history, geography and politics; and to practice resource management, among other useful little skills. I found KOTOR a stimulating exercise in moral and ethical decision-making. Wildly careening down the crowded streets of the various NFS incarnations has probably honed my driving sense -- that is, to recognize dangerous driving, curb my own reckless behaviour and avoid other mad drivers while in reality-mode (though I nearly got myself, NBS and HP killed the other day. It's not infallible). In real-life, there are no cheat codes.

While video games are no substitute for proper guidance, there is a lot of learning going on without the gamer being aware of it. Although I'm just thinking of knowledge learning, Prof Shaffer is advocating using video games to train students in juggling technology in a multi-tasking environment in preparation for working life in the 21st century.

Shaffer sees even the US education system as not having changed much since the curriculum was put together in the 19th century. Today's world belongs to the innovator, not the assembly-line worker, so he's urging education to move towards the ideas market instead of remaining entrenched in drill-and-practice, the tried-and-tested method of the distant past.

So, our l33t gaming prowess is going to advantage us when we frag our job-hunting mugger-toad competitors to bleedin' giblets in a couple of years' time. Serves 'em right too! Who'd have thunk it?

P.S. Even S'pore has already moved to introduce video games into our learning experience (could they be referring to the Neopets involvement in the NE programme 3 or 4 years ago, I wonder?). It says so in the article: here.

Josh introduced to us a new place to eat: Astons, serving Western food at mostly kopitiam prices. It's a little stall within the last kopitiam on the Maju Ave side of the row of shophouses along which the buses turn into in Gardens.

There's quite a wide selection of carnivore-pleasing items on the menu including steak, fish, ribs and burgers. The side dishes run out quickly, though, so go early.

I had the beefy jack, a tiny but thick burger topped with a square of melty cheese. The patty is made on-site with fresh ground beef and cooked to a juicy medium rare. The faint pink cross-section of the patty is a joy to behold. So few places get their burgers right like that.

I believe we got general approval of the food around the table, Amy and HP included. It looks like we've found a cheaper alternative to Friends and the Cartel in Gardens.

NY conneX Print edition #4 delivered today, coinciding with our recruitment drive for new journos. But before anyone says anything, let's do a self critique of this ish:

#4 is certainly flawed and definitely not our best work, considering what we've been capable of producing before. For an 8-page newsletter, only 2 articles can be legitimately classified as "news" (1 written and photographed by yours truly), the rest is mainly filler and quite possibly blatant propaganda as well.

The cover page is a mess, with the main pix looking static and murky, while the beautifully shot supplemental pix is tiny in comparison. And the main headline is obviously sensationalist but with no relevance whatsoever to the article it refers to. Quite misleading, even.

I think that strategically, we timed our release too early. Being fresh out of the hols, there really wasn't anything much happening on campus to report on. The reporters, themselves, were unprepared and just scrambled to meet their deadline with whatever because they had to submit something.

We should have trusted our past issues and our website to sell themselves and reserved our money sticking to our core business of reporting the news and maintaining the quality of our product, instead of trying to kill so many birds with our one tiny stone.

With all Amy's taught me, this is what I came up with. I feel I've let her down somewhat. Sigh.

Beginning the new year with lots of ideas and a new sense of idealism for the workload ahead. No longer under special dispensation for pioneering a new subject, I'm facing an expanded timetable, and adjusting to head 2 CCAs while being credited as heading only 1.

There's nothing unusual about this circumstance: it happens in the working world all the time. Multiple jobs being handled by several people can suddenly collapse into 1 person's portfolio, and while the 1 person can cuss and swear at his new job scope, he can also be thankful that he still has a job. For me, I can also appreciate the confidence the HR allocation seems to have in me, and I'll do what I must to make it work as I see fit.

The only thing that worries me is that there is a strong work-oriented culture around me at the moment. I sense the last vestiges of mindless, spontaneous fun has left with Vince, thus bringing to a close a cohort of colleagues that made life interesting on campus. But, no, they've not left campus because they've been too playful, but because they've taken up higher responsibilities and moved on. Yup, we all eventually grow up sometime.

As for my current colleagues, they're still a great bunch and I dearly enjoy their company very much. We still make it a point to meet for meals and bitch and jest daily. They're still my inspiration for getting up early in the morning. But perhaps what I'll miss is that spark of wild, unpredictable, crazy energy that once made work such fun.

Perhaps it's just as well. It's time for me to grow up too.

For many of us, there seems to be a serious disconnect between what we learn in school and how we live our lives once we leave school behind. We often tell ourselves that we'll never find a use for calculus or chemistry after our big exam so, subsequently, all our lessons are selectively shelved under the category of "Childhood Trauma" in the filing cabinet of our psyches, forever sealed shut with crime scene tape.

This grim, self-induced amnesia is hardly a surprising reaction, considering that the final exam is the furthest target we aim our learning towards. So we cram it all in as quickly as possible, spew it in the greatest possible quantity all over the exam paper, then mistake the emptiness we feel afterwards for freedom. No doubt our exam scores will be brilliant, but if we can't make the transition from learning to life, can we say we've learnt anything at all?

The Yanks have been thinking about this problem. The states of NH and RI are going to pioneer individualized assessments and adjust the weightage of graduation criteria so that students can demonstrate useable skills in their subject mastery, as opposed to just having memorized the right answers. Sound exciting? Details here.

Are kids and their parents paying attention to employment trends in S'pore these days? There are no "conventional" jobs any more. The reality of our situation is that regardless of our line of study, there is no reason to assume that our career will fall neatly in line with it.

According to this Star article, there is no lack of employment opportunities here, as long as job-seekers are flexible. Our education does not determine our career destiny. Whichever path our parents have set us on -- doctor, engineer, lawyer -- the world is too unpredictable to allow us to be as deterministic about our own futures.

So why study all the way up to the U then? Obviously, because the qualification is often nice to wave around. But if that's all you're after, you're a very sad person. If all you're gonna do is study, then that's all you're training to do. And the career prospects of grads specialized in sitting at a desk pretending to read difficult books are quite limited these days.

Whatever your faculty, studying at the U is a chance to mix around with the best and the brightest people on the planet, including one or two of your professors. You can discuss, argue and debate your theories and ideas with like-minded people and thereby shape an intelligent view of the world; and network with the people you are likely to be working with, or for, in the near future.

And it's not just in the classrooms or lecture halls, either. The pubs, the clubs and the socials present lots of opportunities to talk to people who will become decision-makers in time. So it's best to go make nice with them before they become unapproachable. You'll never know if the dweeb you picked up off the floor after the jocks have stampeded through might become the next Bill Gates, or if your scruffy buddy on the football pitch might become the next PotUS.

Just don't get locked into the "degree = good job" idea. The degree itself is only a piece of paper after all (at the most it'll grant you a job interview) but if that's all you're interested in, that's all you're gonna get. It's the experience and the process of how you obtained it that's more likely to determine what your next step is going to be. Enjoying a varied lifestyle on campus means more flexibility of career options for when Mom starts her "Get A Job" whine six months after your graduation.

First 3 days back at work and already as of right now I haven't slept in more than 24 hours. Partially that's my own fault, but running a newspaper means holding off deadlines until the most current and relevant articles are ready. I'm paying the price for that, I suppose, with last night's all-nighter. Hope it's not an indication of things yet to come.

Need sleep....

Funny that ST should be featuring a front-page article on various career people being unable to take leave because of work commitments. The article is clear that their companies are not forcing them to forfeit their leave, these busy executives just don't feel comfortable or secure enough to take their entitled time off.

It isn't just a local phenomenon, it occurs in other countries like Japan, UK and Oz as well, with staff who would rather trade their leave entitlement for cash or some other benefit, or in some cases are prepared to have it forfeited altogether.

I'm personally ambivalent about the whole thing. I'm just fresh out from my Christmas vacation and I've had a great time in HK, and it's wonderful to have time to just chill, no responsibilities and all. But there have also been empty times during which I thought wistfully about the hustle and excitement of campus life, and the good company I keep in the staffroom.

People who define themselves by the work they do are going to find those days of white leave space so much more dull and lonely than anything I've ever experienced. No wonder leave taking can be so daunting for them.

Also, I wonder if it could be due to a misplaced sense of self-importance. Many of the respondents cited reasons of being so needed at work that they can't take leave. Right. Given our last round of corporate retrenchments not so very long ago, we should have learned by now: no one is irreplaceable.