I am upset with taily for being clairvoyant. Not a couple of months after suggesting I might smash my new Samsung cellphone, I have indeed accomplished the (then) unthinkable. There's now a thumb-shaped depression over a nasty crack on my poor phone's faceplate and the screen has gone blank apart from a few pretty coloured streaks of LDC material radiating from the epicenter of Ground Zero.

There are a couple of possibilities as to how the damage could have occurred. One: I'm a ham-fisted oaf who doesn't know his own strength, and pressed my thumb too hard on the faceplate as I was sliding the phone open (likely). Two: This damage is to be expected when a 40+ year-old crams his phone with his hard-plastic protected staff-pass in the pocket of his too-tight jeans, and the immense pressures that build up upon sitting his fat ass down proved too much for the delicate Korean-made product to withstand (I don't even want to consider this one).

Anyone know where I can take the casualty to get some A&E treatment?

Elite instiutions take pride in the high rate of candidates "washing out" of their courses such that only a small handful of deserving students can claim the honour and bragging rights of having survived a most gruelling, challenging experience. Those that graduate from the course know they are the best in their field, that they passed the highly stringent quality control measures, and their qualification actually means something to society.

Somewhere along the line, the Junior College has lost this prestige as an elite institution. A JC is, after all, not an institution of basic education, and being educated in a JC is therefore not an entitlement, as much as our students seem to think it is (and news of there being yet a 4th Uni could well increase the sense of entitilement our future students will have).

Under Article 26 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights, while "Elementary education shall be compulsory.... higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit" (emphasis mine). Kids, you either work to prove your worthiness to be educated at H1/H2 level, or the education you have already received already ensures that you won't starve if you decide that you are wasting your time with us.

These days, though, we are so afraid to allow our students to fail. We pride ourselves in the number of our students who pass, and we bend over backwards just to get even the least deserving to make the grade. Not that we do anything illegal or underhand to give our students a passing grade, but we take it personally, when the kids underperform, and feel that we haven't been doing our jobs properly.

But our job is also to maintain standards and quality as gatekeepers of qualified personnel who will seek responsible positions in society in the near future. We canot afford to let loose into society sub-standard, yet paper-qualified graduates, or that really would be a violation of our civil trust. Yet we feel guilty for letting down our students if they eventually fail.

Perhaps it's us that are perpetuating the fear of failure that's a symptom of our unwillingness to try new paths, take risks and experiment to make new discoveries. It's us that perpetuate the myth that there is only one way in life and that failure at this stage is the end of the world for our kids.

The kids don't realize how much in the minority they are out of their cohort that took the 'O's with them. Our kids are elite seeking elite education. We need to constantly remind them of the reaity that not all of them are going to make it. Only the brightest and the best will, while the rest, well, they can always go back to living ordinary lives with the rest of their compatriots.

This is a proving ground, not a playground. Sure, everyone who enters has the potential to make it given their prior qualification, but it takes further effort, further endurance, further determination to overcome setback after setback, and if that is too much for them, then I'm sorry, they don't have what it takes. As their instructors, we have a responsibility to help the deserving, but we also need the courage -- and these days, reassure ourselves that we have the authority -- to allow those who deserve to fail fail.

Welcome to the Junior College. Appreciate the privilege of being here. We hope you survive the experience.

US kids cite very simple things that make them happy, according to an AP-MTV survey on youth happiness. Having strong relationships with others: family, friends and significant others -- in that order -- give them the security they need to be happy. Other indicators of youth happiness have to do with having a sense of belonging with some form of religious organization, and close parental bonding. Surprisingly, kids are also happier attending school (I suppose than not). Concerns for material well-being seem to have more to do with concerns over income disparity across the ethnic divide rather than with personal concerns.

Could it be that our kids aren't the selfish, angst-ridden, ungrateful little brats that we take them to be after all? Could it be also that despite the world having changed so much in the last couple of generations in terms of personal access to wealth and technology, our fundamental happy-factors haven't changed at all? What makes these kids happy are pretty much what would have made our ancestors happy, according to the results of this survey.

If these survey results are to be believed, then I wonder if the developments the PM promised us in his Nat Day Rally speech are going to be enough to make S'poreans a happier lot in the long-run. We can look forward to a whole slew of initiatives that will take care of our material concerns, some necessarily pragmatic (like tweaking our CPF in consideration of our longer life-expectancies) to the extravagant (beach resort HDB dwelling, anyone?), but if we don't do something about building better relations with our fellow S'poreans and FTs, our beautiful house will still not yet be a home.

But that, of course, is only what the govt can realistically promise -- better infrastructure, better living conditions. There's nothing wrong with having a nicer house, I guess, but it depends on ourselves as residents to make life pleasant for everyone, family members, guests and even our neighbours as well. Whatever the govt is promising, being happy is ultimately a do-it-yourself endeavour. Shall we roll up our sleeves and start work on it?

Dinner at The Olive, Labrador Park. It was a special occasion, after all. Finished off another pile of marking; only another, oh, 997 more to go or so.

It was a cool evening up in the hills. Chilly, in fact. We were dining al fresco, and the restaurant didn't even have to switch on the overhead fans.

Stuffed ourselves silly yet again. We had a seafood platter to start and a 'shroom soup each. It came with a warm roll that tasted fresh out of the oven.

I had a seafood 'shroom linguini aglio olio, heavy on the garlic, just the way I like it -- you can see a bit of it in the pix. I had 5/8ths of the lovely thin crust pizza that June's holding, while she had the rest.

Too full for dessert. Came home looking forward to the tub of Chubby Hubby (how approporiate) in the freezer, but as of right now, there is still no room in our fat faces even for ice-cream.

Blogging from fireworks display at tg rhu!

Test pix via mobile post.

Testing: 1st attempt at mobile blogging. Will it work?

I seem to be on a roll with NE issues, probably due to the recent NDP, the big conference our bosses have had over it, and today's staff conference at which we spent much of the afternoon discussing possible implementation strategies at college-level.

I think a lot depends on us staff and how we ourselves buy into the ideas that we need to consider as members of our community. Simply put, if we adults roll our eyeballs at it, then we should expect our kids to do likewise. We set the tone, we set the example, and we're better teachers of the wrong things than we give ourselves credit for -- such is the perverseness of our charges.

We're also at fault for constantly presenting our kids with the scariest visions of the future which we promise they will inherit. We emphasize the threats to ourselves, the competition we constantly face, the endless work that will escalate as they grow older so that the hamster wheel of academic study will eventually be traded in for the Fitness Treadmill of Infinitely Increasing Speed when they enter the working world. And that's just for our individual, personal survival.

'Look at the next door kid -- he's scoring straight 'A's, not to mention your Pri. 6 cousin who's going to a top JC in the North; and you? In some crappy, neighbourhood JC nobody's ever heard of. How to compete like that, ha, boy? Ai... yoh...! No one owes you a living, you know?' As parents, we repeatedly flash this message that even our nearest and closest are our rivals and will snatch away all we hold dear if we give them half a chance.

If this is the life we promise our kids, then why should we be surprised when our kids turn a cynical eye towards their homes, their lives and their future? No one in their right minds would take pride in their society if that's how they view it.

The threats are real. Our constraints are all too plainly obvious. Our precariousness occupying this chunk of real estate in this 'hood is something our closest neighbours constantly remind us of. So, yes, our kids have got to be aware of these realities. But we've got to balance out the picture for them too, to show them that there's still something worthwhile to live here for.

What's worthwhile is for us adults to demonstrate in the way we live and work -- and I said 'adults', not just 'teachers'. While we work hard, there are other facets in our lives that we don't show our kids; whether out of shame, or because we don't wish to set the 'wrong' example, or sometimes because we ourselves have neglected those facets due to our own busy schedules. We play, we laugh, we joke and kid around among ourselves, we take time off to go wild and crazy and do silly stuff, we have a good diversity of friends we are close to whom -- rather than view as threats -- we mutually support and back up. Our kids need to see this aspect of adult life as well, though I suspect very few do.

Glad to see the bosses are thinking of how to make NE more relevant to our kids. Here are my suggestions:
NE needs to show that there's more to life than endless, repetitive work.
NE needs to show that the shared load is easier to bear, and that there are people available who are willing and able to share that load with us.
NE needs to create opportunities for the kids to simply have fun and socialize with each other, using any excuse that might bring people together: loud music, extreme sports, community theatre, whatever, keeping the teenage students' budget in mind, of course.
NE needs to provide a wide variety of experiences to kick them out of their dark, dank cupboards-under-the-stairs and out into a wider world where we hope someday they'll come to live in.
NE needs to allow the kids to organize some of this stuff for themselves so that they'll be assured that doing it their way is just as meaningful as they doing it our way (if not more so).
NE needs to stop focusing on the individual's patriotism, loyalty, citizenship and any other concept we can make the poor sod feel guilty about, but rather appreciate (NOT reward) service and/or contribution to the community as something from the heart, and not for personal gain.

Finally: "Too much 'me' in NE turns NE into an NE-me" (horrible pun I shall falsely attribute to P 'cos I'm sure he'll eventually discover it for himself, given enough time).

For those who think success in Economics is all about "regurgitative, vomit essays", RBong, who sits at brekkie with us, was venting this morning about how Eco students still have no appreciation for what their questions require but will just spew everything they have memorized as soon as they spot a familiar word or topic in the question. So take it from a senior Economics staff member: blind regurgitation is more likely to earn a smack than an "A".

On the broad scale, Eco isn't that much different from GP. Questions are unique problems that the student has to solve by constructing plausible solutions based on the knowledge fragments accumulated through classroom teaching and personal study. But every subject also incorporates a specialized language and vocabulary that are appropriate to use when discussing matters arising from the subject. Eco uses funny Latin phrases like ceteris paribus, and as Taily pointed out today, Bio defines certain concepts in particular ways (usually because such definitions are already quite efficient and elegant, and have probably been coined by their original discoverers, so we shouldn't mangle them with our own definitions, though that is entirely possible).

So, yes, memory work is still highly valued -- the way we need it to learn a new language -- but only so far as amassing knowledge fragments goes. Answering questions in any subject requires a careful analysis of what the question wants, then devising a solution accordingly, using the language appropriate to the discussion. We don't need graduates who are hard drives and encyclopaedia; we already have those at our fingertips so having more organic, walking ones would be quite redundant. We need people who can think, so kids, take it up a notch and start thinking for a change.

Happiness is sharing ice-cream with someone you love. In this case, it's a New York Super Fudge Chunk from Ben & Jerry's while catching CSI:Miami on AXN with June. Finally, a chance to sit and indulge after a loooong day shopping with the in-laws.

Yup, the Wongs went on a hunt for a whole new garden to plant in their new balcony, turning M2 into a greenhouse on wheels for today. We, with 2 nephews in tow, were off exploring the huge, new IKEA mega store in Tampines, and Giant supermarket. This complex of bulk retail stores have been around for quite a while already, but June and I have been so sua ku, we've not had an opportunity to visit this place until now.

It's like shopping for the Sims^TM. So many items to choose from to improve our material well-being -- from furniture to electronics to food and other household necessities. Crammed with passengers and their purchases, M2 has never felt so heavy to drive before. Last stop was back to our place where we collected our last passenger, Mimi, whose home is finally ready to take her back.

NDP was fun -- a great show and an awesome spectacle, but it isn't a patriotism-inducing event and it wasn't meant to be. All the excitement, the flag-waving, the sharing of common space with fellow citizens plus the state leadership all in smelling proximity to each other counts for nothing as far as nation-building goes. But as a birthday party, now there's reason for a rollicking good time if ever there was an excuse for one. There's no need to over-politicize the event, so when the Brown dude got all morose over it, it was such a wet blanket entry, I thought.

Since the nazis and the communists, we've become quite suspicious of large-scale nationalistic parades that we now view as brainwashing propaganda. We're now a lot more sophisticated, never again to be swayed like a brainless herd of sheep enforcing mob legitimacy for some bemedalled banana republic dictator. Never again, no, no, no!

C'mon, lighten up! Sure we have problems and other things to worry about. People don't have enough money to counter rising costs, transport sucks, there's no respect for the elderly (ahem), education is a high stress mess, our art and culture scene is a farce, a million and twenty-four things to fret over 364 days of the year. Is just one day a year to be thankful for what we do have too much to ask for?

Patriotism isn't about flag-waving, or banner hanging, or wearing the colours, or any of that outward nonsense. Patriotism is engendered by only 3 things in life: family, friends, and a roof over our heads. Family is the springboard, home base and supply depot from which we launch our adventures in life. Friends support the load, share the work, infect each other with motivation and drive, and fuel us with enough ha-has and :)s to keep us pushing forward when things get tough. And damned if I'm gonna give up any piece of that crappy roof over my head, especially when it's costing me 30 years of my working life to own it, friends notwithstanding.

So what does Nat Day ultimately remind us? That despite our troubles, our less-than perfect existance, and the overwhelming urge to point out that someone should do something about it, this rock is home to no one else but us, and the gaudy, cliched red-and-white bunting that waves above our heads is no one else's but ours. So there.

M-i-L scored tix to NDP@Marina Bay which June and I gratefully accepted. It was another spectacular performance of military hardware, dazzling pyrotechnics and mass talent. But dunno why this year, the crowd we sat among was listless and boring. There were quite a few uncles and aunties who weren't energetic and some better off Chinese families (judging by their awesome photographic equipment). I felt like an idiot clapping and going, "whoo!" At one point, I was the only one "Stand[ing] up for Singapore", but I didn't care. I'm used to being an idiot anyway, and I was there to have fun, stuffy, boring people be damned.

The only other exceptional crowd member got up to bhangra

A freefaller makes a perfect touchdown

A stately flypast accompanies the National Anthem

The madatory pageantry

The Pres gets obscured by a flurry of mad flag-waving

Sheares Bridge set alight

Nasty things. Glad they're on our side.

The party gets started in earnest

We have great seats! The firework display is smack in front of us.

Happy 42nd, S'pore!

The secret to academic success depends as much on our ability to forget as it does on our ability to remember. In our department, we do everything we can to help our kids remember: we provide lecture notes the kids can follow along while we lecture, like a monotone karaoke session; we insist they copy points we flash off our so-carefully prepared PowerPoint slides; we lace our lectures with facts galore because we worry that the kids don't know anything so it's up to us to fill their empty jars, ignite their unlighted candles or whatever turns us on. I wonder if all that effort we put in is actually counter-productive to what we want the kids to do at their exams?

The way we put so much importance on our lectures and the supporting materials therein presupposes that there is only one way to view an issue -- our way. So the kids get the impression that if they can recall what they have heard in lecture, or study their notes, essay outlines and compre answers we so conveniently upload for them online, that's all they'll need to get by in GP (or any other subject they take, actually).

Wrong. If that's their study strategy, all the kids are doing is taking in particular answers for particular questions, and heaven help them if during the exam the questions they prepared for don't appear; or worse, if they identify a question as similar to what they have prepared for but isn't actually asking for the same thing.

That's why the kids need to learn how to forget. Forgetting doesn't mean the information gets irretrievably lost. It's more of a coping mechanism to deal with information overload. It's a skill that allows us to distill the relevant through filtering out the irrelevant. It's an ability to take in what is taught, but break it all down to differently-shaped, differently-sized, multi-coloured Lego bricks. Of course, the more pieces, the more options, the more flexible their design structures can be, the more questions they can answer, hence the need to read beyond the lecture as well. So instead of memorizing a single monolithic structure per topic, they're amassing a pile of random playing pieces that they can put together in different combinations, forming different structures as necessitated by the different questions they have to solve.

For me, an ideal lecture would entail full engagement between lecturer and kids. No notes, nothing to copy, but everyone listening and asking questions as the need arises. Give the kids lecture notes, they don't have to listen to the lecturer since they already have the notes. Make them copy and they will neither be listening nor engaging 'cos they'll be too busy scribbling. We just need to expose the kids to information (structure is more important for the lecturer than for the audience), allow them to interact with or otherwise use the information to generate new knowledge, but as soon as the lecture is over, forget everything. That is, break up the impressive Lego structure that the lecture has constructed, rendering the information back into its component pieces, then throwing all the pieces onto the pile ready for use in the near future. Recalling that one has seen a Lego elephant someone else has built doesn't mean being able to build it for oneself as the need arises.

When it comes to the exam, the kids need to pull various pieces from the pile as appropriate to the question, and construct their answers accordingly. Doing it this way means the kid has to consider which Lego pieces go best together in what combination in order to present the best answer.That's exercising thinking and creativity, and taking personal responsibility for the choices they make as they construct an answer to their question -- and that's the point of the exam. And that's the kind of thinking individuals we want our kids to be when they graduate.

Ultimately, we want to hear the kids' own voices come through the answers they construct. We would like to see some passion for the topic and that they are writing about an issue they personally care about. Last thing we want is to hear our voices echoed (more often than not, badly) back at ourselves. So don't. Forget what we lecturers tell you because that's just one very limited perspective from just one angle of just one issue relevant to just one question. Lectures are only the packaging that we use to dress up the information we're giving to you.

Any kid can tell you, nobody plays with an unwrapped Christmas pressie. That's dumb 'cos what's inside is a whole lot more fun to play with. As beautiful as the wrap may be, the joy of Christmas is ripping into the package, discarding the tattered remains and extracting the toy inside for yourself. Congratulations! You are now the proud owner of yet another bunch of Lego fragments to add to your collection. Have fun at the exams!

There's a Psych paper on this idea of selective remembering and forgetting (which I've bastardized and oversimplified above). Just skip to the conclusions on page 7 if the reading gets too heavy! Or read Psychology Today's Camille Chatterjee for her comments on the same paper.

The Nat Day concert was a failure of coordination, highlighting the real but often overlooked need for a stage manager and at least one full rehearsal involving all performers and support crew. We had very basic technical glitches that kept the stage empty while confusion reigned backstage. The MCs eventually threw out their scripts and winged it while decisions and instructions flew in all directions as various personnel tried to sort out the mess.

Still, as Paul observed, the audience very patiently bore with the start-stop show, and offered their encouragement to each item regardless. But just because the audience is a tolerant one doesn't mean that we can get away with an onstage fiasco. Yes, everyone's busy; everyone has no time for a full coordinated rehearsal; but we have to look at the bigger picture beyond our own individual items or duties -- everyone pulling together for a great show. After all, isn't that the message behind every Nat Day celebration?

Anyway, I'm glad our mad piece of silliness got a warm reception. It wasn't entirely intelligible -- some of my directorial decisions could have been better -- but it was fun working with these guys: Mel, Wayne, Alvin, Lynette, Gilbert, JY and Loke. They run high on spontaneity, low on inhibition. Sigh. If only there was time, I'd like to see if we could pull some of these guys together to form an improv comedy club with some form of long-term sustainability. Hmmm...

It was nice to go back to lunch at Friends after so long. Since we discovered Aston's across the road went much easier on the wallet, the latter has become our Gardens refueling station of choice. Today, we had both time and money to spend, so Friends it was. Air-conditioned comfort, proper chef-prepared cuisine served in orderly courses affording time in between for polite and not-so-polite yak with Amy, Baggy, HP and Mel. Leisurely lunches are such a rare occurrence these days.

And our little houseguest, Mimi (L), has been staying with us over the weekend while M-i-L's been getting her new digs in order.

This latest sleepover, Mimi has been such a great influence on our usually antisocial Q-tip (R). Q-tip's habit is to spend every evening alone under our bed, popping out every now and then to see if we're doing anything exciting, like sneaking out of the house without her, or eating fruit or whatever.

But with Mimi providing competition for human affection, Q-tip spent this entire evening faithfully by my side in the living room while I watched TV, just like a normal dog for once. Guess we shouldn't underestimate Q-tip. She may look like a dumb blonde, but she can still learn new tricks.

Listening to: Corrine May's Beautiful Seed :)

I have a great job. There are mad seasons that spring up all of a sudden that drive me to exhaustion, but thankfully they are usually relatively short-lived. Then there are periods of... well, not quite rest, but a much reduced pace that I can use to catch myself up to speed and operate on cruise mode for a while.

This week, for instance, is Nat Day week. That means tomorrow's concert at which we'll debut our hastily choreographed piece of nonsense, then that's it for scheduled work until next Monday! That's a great opportunity to put a major dent in my mountain of marking, and squeeze in a life on the side. Breathe... breathe...

Still alternating between marking and moving, and squeezing a little personal downtime in between. The latter usually means taking a couple of hours past midnight to indulge in reading "Deathly Hallows".

Meantime, I'm quite proud of my marking speed: nearly completed 1 set of full assignments, only another 998 more to go... hur. And moving M-i-L's hoard of personal possessions has been an almost Sisyphian effort...

An unusually harrowing week ends on a pretty decent note. I've got a crew of sporting, slightly mad staff eager to make a spectacle of ourselves on stage at our nat day concert next week. For once, I have to yell at people and tell them to "Stoppit! No! Behave!" So much better to work with these guys who are willing to go over the top right from the beginning, than a bunch of drooling mouth-breathers who just wait around until someone tells them what to do. In any case, from zero idea, we've worked out a basic story-line, eschewing lyrical dance (which was Loke's original idea) for simple mime movement instead. We have yet to set it to music, but I think we've made impressive progress as of today.

And since it's Sha's birthday this weekend, we had dinner with her at Ichiban Boshi, AMK Hub. But because we were busy with different things at different times, different shifts of friends ate with her. It was an odd combination that I came with -- Mel, Wayne and Paul -- and we joined Sha so late she was about to have dessert while we were still looking at our menus. Conversation was loud and hilarious, innuendo flung around the table with wild abandon. Yeah, TGIF!

I've never seen so many piles of homework hit me like this before. I have assignments, tests, assessments, timed exercises, all pounding down around me like the prelude to a world-ending asteroid strike.

Then there are still a number of other little deadlines to tag (including tomorrow's Career Chat I'll be sharing with Amy at which all the sordid details of my time-obscured mime career will be put to public scrutiny, as will Amy's daily grind of ambulance-chasing as a tabloid journo).

There's also a little matter of a National Day item to rehearse for -- it goes public next week and our crew have no idea what we're doing yet!!! *hyperventilates into a brown paper bag that smells faintly of yesterday's ham sandwich

Oh, and the last 2 nights expending muscle and gasoline power helping the in-laws move into their new place add another layer of fatigue to this week's schedule. And as far as I can tell, the end is not yet in sight...

No peace for the wicked (Is 57:21).

Another week of deadlines to meet on top of everything else. We're like hamsters in a fish tank paddling like mad to keep our heads above water. Who asked us to be greedy for fish?

Got a fresh pile of essays to mark, and expecting another set in the coming week. Too busy and tired to make a proper entry tonight. NYconneXions has been updated, though, if you want something to read... zzz.