Can teaching creativity be possible? Isn't creativity an in-born trait we either have or don't have? Or can creativity be nurtured through a social environment that encourages its members to play, be silly and be free to ask the really stupid questions?

That was what this bunch of us signed up for today; the chance to shuck off the weight and wisdom of our years and be noisy, mischievous, shameless little kids once again.

This time, for being the monkey who disrupts class with his antics, instead of death-threats and letters to our parents we got rewarded with chocolate! And guess who amassed the largest haul of cocoa-based goodness? Ahem.

But this full-day workshop was about having purpose-oriented fun. We participants -- representing organizations involving different fields of education, transport and maintenance -- were there to experience how to solve our industrial problems, or explore potential opportunities using innovative thinking tools fueled by freedom, fun and play.

In between laughing, egging on and cheering our fellow participants to perform eyeball-rolling acts of ego suicide (like playing modified games of catching and pole dancing), we were gently being led to put together a business concept for some unlikely product or service that arose from our games.

A few competitive brainstorming sessions led us to ask 'what if...?' questions somewhat akin to Lewis Carroll's "why is a raven like a writing desk?" conundrum. But since we were thinking within the contexts of our particular industries, our questions came out something like "What if our office set-up was like the S'pore Flyer?" or "How can we use a bus to assist in ship repair?" or my group's "What if education was fast food?"

If we're stuck for ideas, the theory goes that by putting different things together in weird combinations and thinking through the random associations and connotations these combos embody, we can find a seed of a powerful new innovation that may solve an immediate headache, or become the next big thing to take the world by storm... who's to say?

While this method sounds suspiciously like the monkeys with typewriters theory, because there's some actual thought going on, the odds for success are marginally better. The oddities our various groups ended up pitching were things like creating a carnival atmosphere in the admin office; training office staff with a magician's showmanship to add entertainment value to the basic service provided; an ERP system to track and fine latecomers; a personal counselling service to help troubled workers be more confident and effective in their workplace; and a transforming bus that assists with ship repair (which we voted Idea of the Day). Obviously, Feasibility is another lesson for another time.

Today, we learned to not fear the stupid question, but rather how to ask the stupid question, no matter how stupid. A better tomorrow depends less on the clever answers people work out, and more on the stupid questions people ask. That's human history in a nutshell.

The car stays home today. I'm taking public transport into town; yep, cutting class to attend a course at the National Library. No way am I shelling out for ERP and whole day parking downtown. Gonna join the rest of humanity jostling our way through the bus and subway system enroute to and from work. Should be setting off in the next few minutes. It'll be like old times again.

For once, Drama Night has a proper performing venue. This despite having convinced ourselves that the only available venue was back in LT4. But because it became possible to share the stage with a concurrent production, this year we get to tread the boards of SRT. Yes!

Went with Mel and Steph to recce the site. We looked at the stage, backstage, changing rooms, and we're pretty sure the kids will give extra oomph to match the glam factor of performing in a professional theatre. No doubt we have to share the morning show's set and lights, but we're adaptable.

Now the thing is whether we can produce a show worthy of the space. Steph's piece should be well in hand, given her experience in directing, but I'm still kind'a antsy about mine. Today's rehearsal at least showed some of my ideas are feasible, and that I do have a core set of actors to build the show on. We're off to a slow start, but at least we're starting to move.

The South Koreans see that proficiency in English is essential for staying competitive in this world. We've known that all along, making English one of our official languages. South Korea wants to start teaching English classes in English -- a bit late in the game, since we have already implemented this revolutionary innovation since granddad's time. And yet so many of the essays and assignments I've received for marking only just approach the quality of perhaps the harder working students in ESL class. Grammar, syntax, paragraph construction, vocabulary, convey some basic sense of the subject in question, but because of frequent poor expression it all sounds like I'm being reached out to by some rudimentary intelligence rather than the erudite seekers of answers that the students are supposed to be.

Making English an "official language" may actually have the drawback of allowing our people to settle into complacency about it. It's an official language, therefore whatever vernacular we use must therefore be good enough, collect or not? When it comes to spoken English, we have the attitude that when in S'pore speak as the S'poreans do. As long as can unnerstan', can awreddy, w'at!

It's also a pride thing. S'poreans speak Singlish. It's our identity, our heritage and our proudest export to the rest of the Commonwealth. C'mon, lah! We not kentang or banana; wanna be so Ang Mor for what? Speak "proper" English in school and be labeled a Western wannabe, a freakshow, an object of ridicule and contempt. This probably happens in most neighbourhoods and families as well, so there's little encouragement to learn more than what passes for basic comprehension.

It's little surprise then that our students find difficulty expressing themselves in public. The brand of English they use is obviously inappropriate for formal discourse, and naturally, it's easy to develop an inferiority complex coming face-to-face with others who have a stronger command of the language. This lack of confidence is more pronounced in the colleges ranked below our mythical "top 5" JCs. They are "top 5" because their students use a higher level of English that allows them to access, digest and discuss higher level reading material. Those kids thrive on, and are stimulated by stuff that would put their lesser peers to sleep. They get to be the future brains, bureaucrats and insensitive policy-makers, while the majority of their cohort get by with their daily grind and complain how unfair life is.

I daresay the English teachers we have on campus are among the world's best. We have an oyster for every student who passes through our classes, but few of them actually reach out and take what is rightfully theirs. The rest rather slog away at more concrete subjects like the sciences and math, but they forget what language medium they receive such instruction in. That's like sweating it out making bricks, but without the cement of English to bind all the brick fragments together, they'll never be able to build a house. And they wonder why their lives are so hard.

"The private English education market is estimated to be worth about US$15.8 billion (S$22 billion) a year, fuelled by families who spend an average of 700,000 won a month on their children, according to the Samsung Economic Research Institute." That's a lot of moolah to be shared by those of us who can teach English. Perhaps we should put some thought into getting a piece of that action and be paid by people who can appreciate what we have to offer.

Women are such incredible motivators for men to do great things. Or if not, then to just get off their lazy butts and do constructive things with their lives. It's sort of biologically hardwired in us guys that women have to be impressed, and so we scramble to make ourselves more outstanding, to prove we can provide, to otherwise jump up and down, wave out arms and yell, "Pick me! Pick me!"

But over time, guys discovered the online world, and they have started overwriting their biological programming with Internet code. It's something of a revolution. They're tired of women pushing them around, making them jump through hoops, and saddling them with irrational domestic responsibilities at the prime of their lives. No longer are guys content to be willing victims, sacrificing themselves to the altar of the preying mantis / black widow sisterhood. Guys have finally found a way to turn their backs on hormonal tyranny and return to what nature intended them to be: slacking, unwashed neanderthals, as they "huddle together and have fun" for the rest of their parents' lives. The Internet: the saviour of MANkind, fancy that!

Boys. Heh, what do they know? All it takes is one woman to be firm enough, who will reach out, grab and drag the unwary guy home by the ear to reactivate the biological imperative again. For me, I believe that when June decided to take me home, reality split in two. In one reality, June never appeared in my life and I'm still the 'home boy' that I was more than a decade ago. But in this reality, I have a great wife, a home of my own, an interesting job, a decent income AND I still have the Internet to regress to when I feel like it.

Women are great motivators. Men are easy prey.

You'd think Maui was totally sedate, the way he curls up to sleep...

but he's also got real guts staring down Kaiser like this.

There's more testosterone flowing through my house than ever before.

Maui launches a surprise attack.

The boys play "King of the Hill"

Year of the rat notwithstanding, the new kitten rulez!

Maui takes a swipe , but the teddy bear's reflexes are just too fast.

Mom? You in there?

Cover me! I'm going in!

For the second year running, we had our clan reunion dinner at Ban Leong Wah Hoe, Casuarina. The food portions were as generous as always: from our three tables, we collected several containers worth of leftovers to take away.

The clan reconvened at Aunt L's to carry out our traditional Chinese familial duties. This year, the game was Bingo, with Aunt L particularly anxious to put her brand-new lottery ball tumbler to good use. Won a little, lost more; but it was for a good cause. The family that plays together, stays together...though not necessarily in the same house.

Happy year of the rat!

Our little newcomer is making Q-tip a little uneasy. June's officially calling him Maui, and while he's adjusting to his new environment, we're devoting a lot of time and attention to him to make him feel safe and welcome.

Q-tip's a little jealous of this new addition competing for our time, so she's temporarily abandoned her usual reserve and reticence to hang out longer with us in the living room. Or else she's frequently hovering within our peripheral vision just to make sure we remember that we still have a dog in the house.

It'll be a delicate balancing game of dealing with Q-tip's insecurities and Maui's demands for attention, but I believe June and I are pretty fair with our pets. One more shouldn't disrupt our routine too much. I know we'll adapt and manage.

"If you save someone's life, you become responsible for that life." I can't verify this quote anywhere, but I'll take it to be true anyway. Hence, I have a new member in my family: this four-week old kitten, as yet unnamed.

It happened when we took Mimi to the vet for her shot and a follow-up exam of her recent allergy attack. I found this little guy sitting atop the car in front of mine in the parking lot. No way he could have got up there by himself, and I can't bear to think what would have happened to him if later the car drove off with him still on top.

I couldn't put him back on the street either 'cos the cars were passing by so close to the slip of a sidewalk, the only place I could have put him on. So it looks like he's gonna be my third cat despite the resistance I've put up over the years not to have more than two.

He's tiny now, and so fragile, though Kasey gave him a clean bill of health. But his paws tell me he's got great growth potential. We got him some milk, a personal sandbox to suit his size, and recycled a sleeping basket for his comfort. He hates being left alone right now, so I let him fall asleep on my stomach before transferring him to his basket.

He's the smallest ball of fur we've ever picked up. He's just awakened again so now he's sharing my office chair as I'm typing. I can't help it. I want him to know that as long as I'm around, I'll protect him and keep him safe, come what may.

Hmm... hope he'll be ok when June and I go to work tomorrow.

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.