The militants responsible for blowing up the pet market in Baghdad have finally made a statement about how far removed they are from the rest of normal human society. The weapon: bomb vests strapped on mentally disabled women (though I don't know how the militants mentally disabled the women... probably through endless repetition of boring militant rhetoric). The detonator: a cell phone. The target: pets -- kitties, doggies, monkeys (actually, these shouldn't be kept as pets), birds, and the kids who throng the market every week looking for an animal they can shower their budding affection on. And the regular joes, shmoes, and janes taking their families out on a weekend jaunt, the usual IED fodder.

Don't know what's up with them militants. It's fine if they blow themselves up 'cos there'll be less of them in the world, but they aren't even doing that now. They're detonating bombs by remote control showing that cynical as they are about life, they do feel that there is at least one life worth saving: their own.

If we look through their eyes, this is what we'll probably see: Women have attractive qualities so they make good bait to draw as many as possible into the kill zone. The mentally disabled are of no use to anyone and are probably carrying the curse of the Almighty anyway, so no loss there, and no backchat either. The cell phone to them is not a device for getting to know people but to communicate their miscreant tendencies instead. The poor shlubs who got blown up , well, the more the merrier, and the stronger the statement that nobody matters in this petty vendetta of theirs. And the animals? People seem to care more for the four-legged beasties that serve neither as labour nor food than for the militants themselves and their pitiful cause, so they deserve to get blown up too.

That's it, then. There's no one left that they would want to share this world with. So why don't we just offer them a nice asteroid for them to inhabit and leave the rest of us alone? A couple of hundred smelly bearded guys squatting on an arid rock floating through the cosmos. After all, if and when they achieve their desired objective, that's still going to be the net result.

It was kinda' fun to self-diagnose my own inner-demons, though the game initially was to source interesting reading material for KI from Psychology Today. I like the articles 'cos they are easy to read, without all the technical gobbledegook that professional shrinks use to euphemise "I haven't the foggiest idea what's wrong with you. Solve your own problems. That'll be $150 for this afternoon's session, thank you!"

The topics make for highly compelling reading: advice on confidence-building, an in-depth look at introversion as a personality trait, how to get over a break-up, taking apart "champions of lost causes" to see what makes them tick (tick, tick, tick, boom!). I could picture myself lounging on a comfy couch as the Doctor probed the deepest, darkest recesses of the cesspit I call my mind with the most impertinent of questions.

Fortunately, my indulgence in an afternoon's worth of pop psychology didn't cost me a cent. I grabbed the couple of issues lying around in the college's library stacks for a free consultation.

For a moment this afternoon, I really wanted to shut down my brain. It was textual overload after a whole day of processing text from a variety of sources: admin forms, news, lecture notes, play script, meeting notes, routine schedules, email.

It was the compulsion that was scary, like being addicted to the stuff: ploughing through one thing, then putting it away and instantly, instinctively, reaching for another. Even when I was trying to rest, I'd naturally gravitate to the library looking for something new to read, or trawl the 'net for news and trivia. My whole world today comprised nothing but text, and nothing but text could fill my world. Seems as if I was trying to occupy my mind though there was nothing there but noise, yet too afraid of the resulting silence if I stopped. Weird.

Let's not do that again. ok?

Teachers are great students, contrary to popular belief. The Civil Defence people came over to teach us staff how to save lives in an emergency, but I also got to see how fantastic lessons are conducted as well.

We ran three modules in one afternoon: fire fighting, CPR and first-aid. They could have been dreadfully dull as they involved us learning procedures for dealing with various types of emergencies, but we had a ball of a time instead.

Some things the trainers did right:
(1) Invoked self-interest -- we saved our lives and those of our friends too
(2) Liberally used self-deprecating humour -- they didn't take themselves or their content too seriously
(3) Delivered only core ideas -- just enough theory for background understanding but not to confuse or bore us
(4) Lots of stories -- we could vividly visualize the situations we had to respond to
(5a) A variety of media -- text and visual...
(5b) A variety of practical activities -- contextual and tactile
(6) Highly participatory, spontaneous presenter-audience interaction -- non-threatening environment giving free-rein to questions and responses from both parties

But most of the enjoyment from this afternoon's session was due to (6). We staff may have been bored and tired, but we were fully participating in the lessons anyway. We asked as many questions as the trainers asked us, we answered questions voluntarily even if we didn't know if our answers were right (we didn't take it personally if we were wrong, sorry B-lo), we threw observations, comments and questions as they occurred to us even if it meant interrupting the presentation. We took every opportunity to engage, sometimes even make the trainer eat his words (like making him confess that Chapter 1 in the Training Manual had some outdated information).

We had a great time, 'cos we wanted to learn, and more importantly, we wanted to play and have fun with the trainers and their programme. That, I think, is already half the battle in creating a lively, constructive learning environment -- the learners themselves having a good reason (whatever it is) for attending class.

Ha! Everything I learned about teaching, I learned from a firefighter.

Kids are left to roam the streets unsupervised during the afternoon hours and dogs have to live in pet hotels costing a monthly bomb of a bill. Sumiko continues acting wistful, pining away for a family with kids of her own to assuage her boring single life. When we connect the dots in today's ST, we're looking at a picture of a people who are lonely even in the midst of company. Is that what life in S'pore is like these days?

While I have little affinity for kids, it does perturb me that of the kids surveyed there were so many left to fend for themselves while the adults were out at work. That they were gormless enough to receive a stranger's advances suggests that they are quite lonely for an adult's attention, especially if the adult treats them as equals and not talk down to them. Kids like being helpful, particularly if it seems to them as if they posess some knowledge the adult does not, like how to get to the MRT station for example. And with all the questions the reporter asked, the kids are quite happy to spill the beans on their personal lives. Who else is there to talk to? Who else has shown them such interest in a while?

On the other end of the spectrum, some people are spending a lot of money making sure their dogs are well taken care of. They can't help it. Our society isn't open enough to tolerate the idea of peaceful mutual coexistence between the species. So by legislation or public censure, we separate companions from each other, and make them pay a hefty penalty if they wish to continue the relationship. I shudder to think what happens to those who can't afford to make such payment, and I'm reasonably sure there are lots more who fall into the latter category than the first.

Even the free-wheeling single, living an independent life, accountable to no one, unencumbered by family responsibilities goes all misty-eyed longing to exchange all that for domestic bliss and its attendant shackles and chains and the promise of a lifetime of hard labour that follows. At least she won't have so much time on her hands that she's "bored out of her mind" over the weekend.

Isn't that the problem? We only want a family on the weekend to keep us occupied and busy. Family isn't so important on weekdays because we already have our hands full with our occupations and businesses. It's fine to let the kids roam the playgrounds on weekdays, we'll make it up to them on the weekends when we pack them off to tuition and ballet class and check on their homework when they come home at night. Oh, by the way, remember to drop in on Fido at the pet hotel on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. We have to hug him and let him know we love him, or he'll have separation anxiety, you know?

Geez. Even I think there's something wrong there.

Am I a "creative"? Is that how people see me? An eccentric with the occasional wild, wacky idea that could potentially turn the world on its head, but fizzles out when I actually try to implement it? Is that why people handle me with kid gloves like as if I was a leaky crate of nitro that could explode at the slightest jolt?

Maybe it's the image I have been projecting for myself, so I'm not really doing myself any favours there. If I was a crate of nitro, I'd still much rather make a detonation that will help people build a railway or something useful rather than leak away neglected and forgotten in some secure bunker kept safe for some future contingency that will never happen.

If people want the best out of what I have to offer, they have to engage me, and not just assume that I know what I'm doing. Kellaway's FT article on managing creatives makes a lot of practical sense, assuming I am some kind of "creative". Sure, I get weird ideas sometimes. I may get idealistic, and do things my own way. I shake things up, buck trends... but only within my own limited sphere of influence, which realistically amounts to nothing at all.

While I'm grateful that people generally leave me to my own devices, I get precious little feedback and even less guidance as I trailblaze my path to parts unknown. So although my bumper sticker may read "Don't follow me, I don't know where I'm going!", it'd be great to have a co-pilot or even a backseat driver to help me evaluate what I did before, and discuss what it is I'm about to do next.

I don't need multiple leather sofas backstage like Streisand, though a little praise would be nice. But I also need a boot up the butt from time to time as motivation to improve or work harder on turning concepts into reality. And being able to see things from beyond my own warped perspective will be a major plus.

No one creates in vacuum.

Killerzyph interviewed me for an article in the next NYconnex, something about featuring various staff members to show we have lives beyond hectoring students all day. Trade secret: Actually, we just return to our closets in a hidden underground facility in the campus basement where we get deactivated, then brought out again to walk among the living when the sun rises the next morning. Heh, if only.

We talked about mime and busking, which I don't do anymore, and about my goals for drama now that I've moved back to the only place where I really know what I'm doing. Except this year I've been so out of touch, I am freaking out at the edges wondering how to bring a Eunuch Admiral back to life again by Drama Night.

I owe a lot to my training in mime, and not just for my appreciation in the aesthetics of the theatre. Being primarily a kinesthetic learner, I discovered through mime a movement-based language that I could use to understand abstract concepts better. The movement doesn't have to be physical, it can take place in my imagination, though occasionally my hands or fingers may twitch, echoing the thought I'm processing at the time.

It's hard to explain how a "movement-based language" works. However, I assure you that there there is no white-face painted street performer that's producing the movement in my imagination. The movement sort of exists on its own. There. Now I sound like a raving lunatic.

The point I was hoping to get at in killerzyph's interview was that all of us need to train in some form of discipline and get real good at it. I'm talking about non-academic disciplines that involve making things (like an art, craft or music) or doing things (like a sport or dance or theatre). The discipline has to be non-academic in nature because it is physical, tangible and direct, and therefore easier and clearer to obtain good results in. We get praise, applause and appreciation for our masterpiece, encouragement if the product is so-so, or by audience critique or defeat we know we sucked and therefore need to work harder at it.

Training in a non-academic discipline gives us the confidence to take on academic disciplines which, being more abstract, operate at a higher level. Academics are text-language based, so there is a step of having to learn the language first, even before apprehending the concepts themselves. People deficient in the language of instruction are screwed. Unlike non-academic disciplines, there is nothing in an academic discipline for monkey to see, and therefore monkey cannot do if the student and the instructor do not speak the same language. Gibberish text input results in gibberish text output. Garbage in, garbage out. And that's just the first level of difficulty.

If and when we do master the language of an academic discipline, we realize that the results of academic study are often judged arbitrarily, often subjectively. As academic concepts are text-based in construction, a lot depends on the interpretation of the text, and there are often too many variables to pin down. Academics themselves seldom agree with each other, in fact, they thrive in their fields by proving one another wrong. Success in the academic world is either a paper qualification (how satisfying), or a paper published challenging others to attack the ideas presented therein. That takes a pretty hardy, highly confident individual to live like that.

Success in the academic field is easier to strive for if we know we are already doing well in our non-academic pursuits. Well, at least this approach has worked for me so far. I am a degree-holding pedant by profession, but by trade, I am a mime. Most people find this combination to be the most irritating by far.

To be honest, it's getting harder to sustain a daily, even a regular flow of entries to quidestveritas. The nonsense I've been spewing these last few weeks only shows that I've lost a sense of purpose for this exercise. I'm losing touch with my audience, what with all these random posts about whatever I can force myself to commit to text. It makes for quite painful re-reading, actually.

Perhaps all I've been aiming for recently is to just reassure myself that life is more exciting than it really is? Or by commenting on policy that I'm smarter than I really am? Or to persuade myself that I have an audience because I'm writing, and not that I'm writing because I have an audience?

Quidestveritas needs a fresh purpose, perhaps even a new identity. One of its original purposes was to be an exercise for me to practice what I teach: writing. For the moment then, I'm going back to my roots. No more writing for any particular audience in mind, it's just going to be a jotter book of grammar and vocabulary practice, perhaps some composition or loosely structured argumentation, or whatever else strikes my fancy. In other words, I'm still going to be spewing nonsense, only that I want to stop feeling guilty about it. I reserve the right to slack off anytime I want, and not let my addiction for "addressing the world" get the better of me if I don't feel like it. So there.

When my new batch of GP kids arrive in a few weeks' time, maybe I can go back to writing for them again. But in the meantime, if anyone wants to stick with me through my dry spell, they're most welcome.

We're reaching the end of a major JC tradition. This year is the last time 'O' level kids will get to sample JC life for one term before they commit themselves to (or opt out of) the remaining year-and-a-half of hard labour. No longer will there be in subsequent years this opportunity to try before they buy; to focus primarily on making new friends and work on the side and with less dire consequences to bear for taking it easy.

From next year, as soon as they step through the front gate, they're our to keep, for better or for worse. In a way, that helps planning our programme easier. A single intake of students is less disruptive, so whatever systems we put in place the first time won't have to be redone three months later when our 'real' students report for duty a whole term later.

We will need to plan for only one Orientation week, undergo only one time-tabling allocation exercise, and start our co-curricula activities (CCA) immediately without an additional recruitment drive to replace members lost in the second posting period. That cuts down a lot of annual pain by half at least.

So how have we been treating our final batch of transients? In a move contrary to my personal preference, we're running "seminars" instead of the [relatively] small tutorials that we're used to. Seminars, as far as dNYel interprets it, means that we get a huge group of students per venue supervised by two or three tutors at once. We manage the numbers by setting them a group-based project which they collaborate on while us tutors provide the scaffolding as necessary.

Seminars are such an impersonal way to interact with the students. So many kids, how are we going to remember all their names before they graduate? How can we tell from the sea of faces who needs help with what? As tutors, we can only flit from group to group, bearing in mind that there are lots of other groups that could use a little of our attention as well.

Guess what? I'm enjoying this teaching format a lot -- more than I ever expected to. With less tutor time per student, we can't afford to hold anybody's hand (figuratively speaking, of course) for long. The kids have got to depend on their groupmates and on the general seminar discussions a lot more than before, and as they grab the microphone to share their solutions to the assigned problems, their difficulties and reflections on the tasks, they seem more like adults at a learning conference than just a bunch of difficult kids being spoon-fed stuff they don't like to eat. To me, that's progress.

Well, hope our JC1s will be happy with their 'O' level results when they collect them tomorrow. Hope they come back...

Mimi went to see Doc Kasey today. She has developed an allergy to some unknown substance and is scratching herself silly. The Wongs will have to slowly track down the allergen, but in the meantime, her medicated shampoo, a course of antibiotics and antihistamines will have to suffice.

Here (pix left) Mimi is getting a blow-dry after a nice shower with her new shampoo. And Q-tip got her annual booster too, while we were at the vet's.

The Wongs marked their annual ancestral commemorative lunch today. They loaded the dining table with a variety of deep-fried finger foods, and the specialty of the occasion: Shanghainese meat balls with cabbage in gravy. There is a bowl of rice and a glass of beer in front of each place around the table. The places are not for us, but for the departed Wong ancestors. The Wongs individually offer joss at the head of the table, kowtow thrice and pray for continued blessing and protection over the family.

June and I don't participate in the ritual, since our religion doesn't count so much on ancestral support. We're there because it's an event of family significance, so even if we don't pray to the same deity, our togetherness keeps the family bond as strong as ever.

What's good about ceremonies like this is the sense of history and continuity in the family line. It's nice, I guess, knowing that people will still remember us, call us by name and recall how we impacted the lives of those closest to us long after we've gone.

Not so many of us are in that position these days, though. So those of us who don't have much hope in having adoring descendants are going to have to make the most of life while we're still here. Rock on!

Our industry is still getting criticism for someone's poor choice of words in advising some kids about their academic options. Now it's about the tone adopted in conveying the message as being demoralizing, discouraging and disparaging, instead of being encouraging and uplifting. The kids should have been inspired to work harder to achieve their 'O's, they say, not crushed underfoot at the beginning of the year, fresh after their success at the 'N's.

It's a dilemma, really. In our profession, we know that the next level is a tremendous leap from the previous. To paint a rose-tinted picture of what lies ahead for our kids can be misleading, especially if the kids, in their post-challenge euphoric state, choose to hear only the good stuff. To point out frankly the risks, dangers and pitfalls of the road ahead can, as seems to be the case, make the way forward insurmountable. And to try to balance between the two sort of waters down the message, and an unskilled orator will just appear to be babbling contradictory nonsense of the kind I spout all the time.

But, honestly, when taking up a new challenge, we don't usually expect to breeze through it easily. Taking up a new challenge is an informed decision on our part, not simply a matter of process. It takes a struggle and a fight to overcome our latest challenge, and though it would be nice, our previous success seldom adequately prepares us for the task at hand. It's best to know what we're in for rather than just jumping in blindly thinking it'll be no problem. After all, being forewarned is being forearmed.

We learn on the job while we're doing it, not while we're resting on our laurels. And on the job, whatever the job, the reality is that people won't always say what we want to hear. So if we're going to become so easily "shattered" at the first obstacle, say a vocal Supervisor who may be more draconian than inspirational, that's not a very strong indication of our commitment to the cause, is it?

As for the kids affected, I'd say they showed some gumption -- enough to cause a ruckus amidst kopitiam talk about how the education system is going to the pits -- but I'd respect them more if they'd just had enough gumption to determine to prove their advice wrong. Instead of hitting the books, they hit the streets, making a Roman spectacle of their situation. I'm sure that'll help their 'O' level ambitions no end.

The key questions everyone's missing are these:
Are they still enrolled to take the 'O's? If they still are, then their wishes are being respected.
Have they been advised of their options and the consequences of their choice? Evidently. Pretty much the whole newspaper-reading population of S'pore also knows now.
Are they prepared to bear the consequences of their decision? Ah, that's up to them, isn't it?

Our industry has tried to open many more routes to "success" today than was available to me when I took my 'O' Levels. Our people, however, are still locked into the view that the traditional Cambridge route is the only acceptable one.

Our ITEs still have a horrible rep among our parents and concerned constituents. This despite the makeovers these vocational institutions have undergone in recent years. As I've observed before, their campuses have facilities comparable to our current JCs. Their curricula are just as rigorous, even if the content focus is more practically tuned. If ITE students don't study they flunk out, just as students in other institutions do. Trust me, I know about this first hand -- and that was before the makeovers.

The P who "advised" her Sec 5 cohort to apply directly to ITE instead may have been insensitive in her delivery, but the real damage to the kids' morale has been done by all the people who wrote in to the press to complain how wrong she was to give such advice. As unwilling as the P seemed to give her kids a chance at the 'O's, the public is just as unwilling to give the ITE path a chance to succeed as a viable alternative route to education. Thus, instead of having more doors opened to them, all the more the kids will feel that they've been hung out to dry in a society that gives no respect to ITE grads.

We have to wonder what exactly the people who have had their gripes published in the news really want. They tear down the scholars who did well in school for not understanding the plight of their less able compatriots, but they are also tearing down the systems that at least try to do something for the underachievers as well. Perhaps mediocrity really does crave company.

Check out the comments of people who have an axe to grind here. Don't know how long the link will last, so get it while it's hot!

Edit:
Looks like the argument has balanced itself a little since I last looked... a little.

My seniors are overwhelmingly interested in my next level of career development. I've been getting advice, encouragement, portfolio samplers and additional materials from them in the last few weeks, ever since I inquired about what's next.

Lazy slob that I am, I'm not really inclined to much thought beyond my next meal. But knowing that people believe in me and are supporting me in this, the prospect has become a lot more exciting. In gaming, we call this process "levelling up"; in reality, forward movement actually does mean something more than just a bunch of pixel enhancements on an LCD screen.

Let's get something clear. It isn't about mo' clout or mo' money, though they're nice too. What gets my juices flowing is that I can define on my own terms what area of specialization I want to develop in. By so doing, I could find myself right on the cutting edge of the industry where all the exciting things are happening, where few people understand precisely what is going on and what it all means.

Here's my problem: the above paragraph is probably gibberish to anyone living outside my brain. I know what I want, but I haven't yet found the words to describe it to anyone else. Well, that doesn't mean I won't try. Here goes:

This afternoon, I was sourcing materials for use in class. I was looking for video clips about future technology to inspire the kids in their small group research project. Many of the clips I looked at posed questions about the adequacy of our current education system in meeting the needs of the 21st century. Other clips showed off the capabilities of current developments in technology and projected their applications in the years ahead.

I realized that what the future promised was already what I was doing, only faster, more streamlined, seamless, portable and invisible. Gathering a wealth of information today is already quite easy. Search engines are fast and getting more reliable, streaming video is comparatively lo-res but already quite watchable. Information is still manipulated through mediated interface i/o systems (i.e., physical keyboard-mouse-monitor combinations), but we have solid platforms for social and collaborative networking.

The capabilities of intelligence wizardry we have already. A 'net search yields material we ask for, plus other possibly related material as well. A video clip contains expert opinions and projections from named interviewees. If we pause the video and search the names onscreen, we easily find information about them; their credentials; other works they have done; the organization they work for and its field of business/research... ad infinitum, almost. Depending on how curious we are, our minds can wander as far as our fingers are able to type and click.

The learning potential of our existing everyday technology is aready quite awesome, if we know how to use it properly. The future promises learning that will be a lot more intuitive, perhaps even unconscious, in the way that the individual mind and our collective human consciousness will be able to intertwine and interact with each other.

I think I know what I want now. My niche will not be for any particular subject. I want to teach people to use the technology of the day to teach themselves according to their own needs and interests. Perhaps I might have to phrase that in more academic terms if I want to be taken seriously.

Other than that, there's the mundane stuff of having to put together a portfolio spanning the last three years (current year inclusive) of stuff I've been doing as a JC tutor. Now, that will deserve an entry or more on its own.

Somewhere in here is the closest thing I'll ever get to a new year's resolution. Wish me fair winds and good fortune!

Just read about Oscar Peterson's passing (which happened in mid-December). He was Chancellor of York U when I graduated in 1991. At my convocation ceremony, I discovered to my horror that underneath my gown I was the most inappropriately dressed of my fellow grads. Everyone else was in a suit and tie, proper shoes; or in a dress gown if female. I was in a t-shirt and jeans, sneakers, and for the occasion, a light jacket. Apparently, I didn't get the memo.

As I stepped up on stage to receive my scroll, the Chancellor, seated on his throne or whatever they call that big chair reserved for the big kahuna, made eye-contact with me. His eyebrows shot up. Immediately, he rose and strode briskly over, intercepting me at the point where I had the scroll placed in my clammy, nervous hands. He gave me a firm handshake and with a broad smile on his face, returned to his seat like as if I had made his day. More likely, I won him a bet.

I think that incident had a lot to do with my educational philosophy as it stands today. Thanks, Oscar. We made contact for just a second or two, but I'll miss you.

The music in heaven has just got better! Yahoo! video clip here.

That we aren't neighbourly to our neighbours kinda' hits home in today's ST article. Our front door is locked tight, though it would seriously improve the air flow in our flat if it were kept open. When I come home, I try to make it a point not to share the lift with anyone, and all the more so when I go out. Neighbour makes for the lift, I make for the stairs; anything to avoid making contact with anyone I should at least be familiar with. (Note that I'm speaking for myself 'cos I don't think June is as pathologically paranoid as me).

"A man's home is his castle". It's where we feel safest, freest to indulge in our own excesses without having to keep up appearances for the sake of harmonious living with the rest of humanity. Outside the home, it's all propriety, sobriety, and hard work pretending that I know what's going on and what I'm doing at all times. The social fraud shows through the cracks sometimes, although generally, we're quite good at the cover up game. But at home, I can be the lazy slob that I am, watchin' too much TV, gaming, surfin' and attempting the other 6 deadly sins. Honestly, who's to say I can't?

Being neighbourly literally opens the door to much unwelcome intrusion. The social masks come on again and while I'm grinning and making small talk, my eyeballs are anchored in place, doing their darndnest not to roll, and the little voice in the back of my mind is going, "C'mon! Heroes is starting already!"

It's easier to be friendly with people outside. It's quite legitimate to get rid of them by saying I have to go home. What excuse is there to toss out the neighbour since we're both technically at "home" already? And usually, there isn't just one neighbour, their kids are part of the package too. I don't want to be a meanie, so I avoid situations that may potentially force my hand.

That's not to say I won't help out in the neighbourhood if there is a real need. If there's an emergency or something, then of course making contact is the necessary and humane thing to do. But other than that, I'll be in my room.

So if I died in my own house, would anyone know? Would anyone care? Perhaps not among the neighbours, but hopefully, my friends outside will call the cops before the smell gets too bad.

Human kindness is not kindness at all, especially concerning our dealings with the wild animals in our midst. Now that the fine for feeding the wild monkeys at Upper Seletar Reservoir has skyrocketed, the monkeys -- spoilt by years of living off human handouts -- have pretty much forgotten how to forage for themselves in the forest and are instead moving to the edge of human habitation in search of food.

We were at Casuarina Road today where we saw families of monkeys dangling on tree branches hanging over the public parking lot. There were monkeys on the street and clambering over the parked cars as well. They've never come this close to our space before, but hunger is making them stupid, making them lose their natural caution of us.

I can imagine what will happen next. People are going to complain to the authorities. Their homes will be invaded by desperate monkeys. Their cars will be scratched and shat upon by monkeys who know not the value of COE-enhanced automobile luxury in Singapore. Several will get killed by passing traffic, and when the authorities arrive, well, let's just say there'll be a significant reduction in the primate population in our protected rainforest.

What's happening to these monkeys is our fault. Our acts of kindness and charity sometimes do the greatest harm to others. But it's probably happened many times before as human civilizations encountered one another. Apart from bringing warfare and disease, we've also killed each other with a similar brand of misguided goodwill.

It's hard, but sometimes, the greater kindness is to say, "No. Go away!"

"Survival" is the name of the horror movie genre these days. There is no triumph, no hero. Only people who make smart and/or lucky choices and live to see another day. It is this way too with AvP2. A Predator ship carrying Alien facehuggers has a nasty Alien-induced accident and crashes on Earth. This is the Earth of today, a semi-large town, populated with ordinary people with ordinary concerns. We haven't a chance against the specialized hunting skills of the escaped Aliens and the one horrid "Predalien" that emerges from the wreckage.

A single Predator arrives to take care of the mess. Between June and me, we can't decide if the Predator is of the Hero class, or the Janitor class. Whichever, the lone Predator is quite capable of taking on the Alien infestation and taking out any human being careless enough to get in the line of fire.

And all the townfolk can do is to run, scream, cry and die senselessly and unpredictably. With everyone equal in misery, no one deserves their deaths, helpless in the disaster that befalls them. I'm pretty sure the Predalien crossed an unwritten line that horror movie monsters have not crossed before: don't mess with newborns and expectant mothers. The atrocity it commits in the maternity ward is the stuff of nightmares.

No one's a hero. There is no avoiding an Acheh tsunami, a Katrina hurricane, a Malibu wildfire. There are only survivors and casualties. In these days, we're beginning to recognize how helpless we are against nature's wrath. Yup, it's time to give nature back the respect she deserves.

When dealing with turkey leftovers from the recently passed festive season, M-i-L does it with style. Her solution: breaded turkey cutlets served with french fries and side salad.

I lie. The turkey in the pix is freshly thawed, not actual Christmas leftovers. Still, if anyone does have a problem with turkey leftovers, this is one way to make disposal more pleasant.

On my side of the family, the story's quite the opposite. We got Mom a nice, 4kg turkey to roast on new year's eve. June dropped out to entertain Madoka. Then their designated driver for the evening got sick, so I had to provide transport. 31 Jan 2007 was a Monday, not a Sunday, which is our usual day to drop in and have dinner with my folks; so my sis and her brood forgot to show up that evening. Same thing probably happened to my bro too. Poor Mom & Dad waited till 2000 hrs and no-one showed up for dinner. So, according to Dad, they switched off the lights and had a quiet, romantic candlelight dinner for two.

Yep. There's still a lot of turkey left in the fridge. Turkey porridge for the next few weeks... mmm...

I'm going to miss the journo/debate kids now that I've moved back to drama again. While I'm happy that NYconneX has continued to publish over the last two years I've been on board, I still feel that I haven't got it running at the level I was hoping it would be at by this time.

Truth be told, I had no idea what I was doing when I first took charge of it. Thankfully, Amy's initial guidance and advice helped me catch some direction, though what we are still producing today -- two years later -- still tends to be more self-indulgent ramblings than actual Journalism. I'm quite proud that it's got this far, that is, all the parts are working, but it hasn't taken on a life of its own yet. That's why it's hard to pass it on to new management. I feel I haven't done enough to let it go.

Debate, on the other hand, was an unqualified disaster. That's no reflection on the wonderful, enthusiastic, and courageous trio who stuck with me through the year. Let's just say I've been nursing the team through a stint in the ICU and have just managed to keep it breathing, but not much more. Hopefully, new management will find a way to revive the team. I'm sorry, guys, but when it comes to debating, I just don't have a green thumb for it.

CCA recruitment starts tomorrow, so good hunting, my ex-charges. Hope you get another crop of good people this year that'll bring some new life to the club!

Meantime, with drama, I'm taking on yet another role I've never done before -- not at this scale, at least. I may well have just signed up to direct a famous local play penned by a famous local playwright. As yet, I have no cast, no crew. I do have a couple of sketchy ideas, and a grand total of three months to put it all together into a performance... if we're lucky, on the SRT stage. No pressure.

Kindly keep an open reservation for my favourite padded cell. I may be visiting it wearing my favourite long-sleeved jacket real soon.