To discover not by seeking new landscapes but by seeing with new eyes. This idea is the basis of a new training programme I began this morning. From an exploration of our personal and professional motivations, inclinations and competencies, we will be learning to focus on our current goals in life and set new ones if necessary. The final stage will, of course, train us how to achieve those targets.

The overall premise is that if I'm going to take on any kind of leadership role, I have to learn to manage my Self better. Here, the concept of leadership is reduced to its most essential definition: to understand needs, set goals, construct a strategy, motivate the group (or Self) to follow and do their part, celebrate the achievement, evaluate the strategy and the goal achieved, reflect on the experience... and then the cycle begins again with a new awareness of new needs and new goals.

So I'm at the starting point where my first task is to look inward to understand my immediate context. Basically the 'who am I', 'what do I want', 'what am I doing here' type questions. This shouldn't be too difficult. I'm already so inward looking, the only way I can see out is through a chink in my navel.

No, wait. There is a small difficulty there after all. When I look inside myself I know I'm looking at an image that's as warped and distorted as a reflection in a circus funhouse mirror. A lot of what I perceive of the world and of my relationships with others is coloured with the hues of my personal neuroses and psychoses. I'm pretty sure reality is only half as dramatic and twice more mundane than I make it out to be.

In order to get started on this journey then, I have to start getting honest with myself. I need new eyes to see things and people as they really are. Clean out the palette, get a new, clean sheet of canvas.

From tabula rasa, let me begin again. Let me recognize that I have already arrived at my destination from my previous journey. I already am where I want to be. But I have new discoveries to make still. Right now, what they are is not clear, but it is time to start planning a new journey, even if all that really means is acquiring new eyes.

Most important 'takeaway' from today's session for me is the formula BE+DO=HAVE. It's trite, but there's some sense to it. We struggle to reach our goals by DOing so much and repeated DOing seems to get us nowhere except frustrated. Then maybe we give it up as a bad idea, when it may not have been at all. But DOing is only half of the equation. To BE is to put ourselves in a position or a condition to receive what we want. No point futilely DOing with a clenched fist if the hand isn't open enough to take when the opportunity comes. Also, DOing without BEing could potentially scare opportunity away.

Fine. I don't like motivational speakers or their programmes but I'll take a chance on these guys.

Synergy 08
An entertaining evening, with a slew of different music and dance performances, all vying for top spot in the debut of "Campus Got Talent". I must admit, we do have quite some talent among us -- rough, raw diamonds in the process of being cut and polished, and yet already able to raise such raucous and partisan support for themselves already. Impressive.

Among the musical items, beatboxing was a common theme. Made sense, since percussion is such a crucial accompaniment, yet such a rare skill, beatboxing makes a convenient substitute for a full drum set and a drummer.

The one anomaly in the programme was the magic show. His act was competent, but I'm even more impressed with the miracle he pulled off in not losing his cool with the multiple glitches the sound system was suffering through. His improvisational patter never let up and that show-face of his never lost its sparkle. In itself, his routine would have been interesting, but his choice of audience "volunteer", the P himself, turned the item into a laugh riot. The two were just going at it on stage trying to upstage each other, yet kept playing to the rules of the game. That made for some great comedic moments out of a potentially disastrous performance.

All in all, a night not too badly spent.

No, dammit! Where do such people get off running down the industry like this? The letter writer may have been well-meaning, pointing out the flaws in our system, but his whiny tone grates on my nerves as he casually devalues everything we do as teachers, especially when he suggests that we spend most of our time and energy "padding our portfolios" instead of teaching. And if he is one of our own, I recommend he check his attitude at the door.

He's right about the marking. Barely into the second term and the leading edge of a tsunami of assignments has just struck the beachhead. I foresee the red-ink blood of innocent ball-points being spilled over the panicked chicken scratched foolscap sheets turning the ocean crimson, but that's exactly how we devise our "individualized instruction". Every assignment gets our full attention; every sarcastic comment we scrawl in the margin a personalized chastisement for merely whiffling at rather than actually hitting perfection.

But that's just the marking. My colleagues are out there in the corridors after hours consulting individual and small groups of students. How dare you insinuate that they aren't genuine in their concern for their students' efforts to learn as much as they can before the impending exams? We could be making a little extra on the side giving private tuition, but we're expending our time to teach our kids for free. If our kids get great results, our kids stand a better chance at aiming for better opportunities in life, so at the end of it, who is the happier for the time spent? A happy kid is worth way more than a fat portfolio... and the beauty of it is, they're not necessarily mutually exclusive.

The appraisal routine may be a structural flaw in the system, but it does not get in the way of the job. Neither does it invalidate the work we do. Who asked anybody to attend courses that are irrelevant to them either professionally or personally? Who asked anybody to initiate ideas they don't believe in or put forward just for show? If we don't have an interest to learn new tricks or try new ideas then what the heck are we teaching our kids? That knowledge is finite and conformity is the way to go? If that's the case, when we shudder every time we encounter instances of "padding" while vetting their graduation certs, we can't blame them at all. They were just following our example.

And such efforts ring so hollow, anyway. Who's going to believe a portfolio so full of such glaring holes? No wonder there are such disgruntled people as the letter writer. If I directed most of my efforts building this empty vacuum of nothingness, I'd be grabbing the nearest assault rifle and going postal too.

No doubt the job is tough. Every other job is too. And I know I'm not the hardest worker on campus (I have an award to prove it -- thanks, Taily and Que!). So many of my colleagues are slogging at it every day, and I will not tolerate without a response anyone disrespecting their committment with such impunity.

If the job's too tough, make yourselves happy and go. If you're simply concerned about stuffing your own portfolio, you're a bad example to our kids, so go. Please.

The Boyz are back. The new Boyz, that is, bowling their guts out in our industry's annual bowling tournament. Due to personnel adjustments, the Boyz were missing in action for two years. I'm surprised we're still on the organizers' mailing lists.

The new Boyz comprise Ton_y, Victor and "Andy", who took to the lanes in our first game of the tourney. It's going to be a grueling year with games every fortnight from now till November. Fortunately, it's a trios league so one of us can rest while the other three bowl. I took the first break to accommodate Drama rehearsals.

Competition is tougher than ever this year. Our opposing teams are fielding serious bowlers with horrendously high averages. From the first game, we're already 16/16 in the standings, though I confess I haven't the faintest idea how the points scoring system works.

BTW, the old Boyz are welcome to swell the ranks of our current team if they can spare the time. More of us means longer rest breaks in between games, otherwise we'll be flat out by the end. But, regardless, our policy of bowling our guts out and laughing our heads off is still our raison d'etre.

I have nothing but the Admiral on my mind now. Curtain is little more than two weeks away, and rehearsals occupy most of my free hours. Two more weeks to hold out... and hopefully emerge from the experience with my sanity intact anyway.

Fact is, my cast has been truly amazing. They've been a joy to work with, considering that the majority of them, save one, claim they've never performed on stage before. From being too embarrassed to even twitch weeks earlier, they've since learned to improvise their own characters with the little bit of mime technique I been teaching them along the way.

I'm so proud of my JC1 cast members as well. Out of nowhere, they volunteered to do some choreography for me and today I have a snippet of a salsa dance number to throw into the mix as an added visual treat. That's kinda' representative of how we've taken the Admiral script with it's deeply emotional, occasionally self-absorbed monologues and given it our brand of bizarre weirdness. We like that. Yes.

The kids are having fun with the play, and that's awesome to see. Can we hold it all together when play becomes intense, backbreaking work over the coming fortnight? I really hope so. Admiral deserves to be the play everyone talks about when they remember Drama Night in the years to come. And I hope they'll remember it for the right reasons.

When the 'papers report that unlike our less well-off neighbours who respect their elderly folk, our aged clean toilets to fend for themselves; and that our young people are rich and can afford "lifestyle aspirations" according to their whims and fancies, what are we to conclude about our country?

While it's easy and tempting to assume that only the young have privilege at the expense of the elderly in S'pore, and that no one cares about people after their recommended shelf-life date expires, we should realise that the reports are about two extremes in our society.

We sympathise with the old folks struggling as best they can to make ends meet, but the focus of the Amex survey targetted only a handful of seriously wealthy professional tykes and their spending habits. Doubt Amex was interested in asking about their spending on philanthropical causes (if any) so we'll never know.

The rest of us are just normal, everyday schlubs, who do too worry about our rising costs. From food to the latest ERP charges, we're working our butts off just to get by. Like everyone else.

Ok, so maybe not like EVERYone else. We feel the pinch, we complain a lot, but we have enough going for us (for now, anyway) to opt for cheaper alternatives if we have to. What can the world's poor do when even staple food prices spike beyond reach?

A cheerful roundup of the weekend news... Goodnight, and sleep well!

That's Tim on the left. Tim's my nephew. Tim's showing off his newborn son, Thomas, to the clan. I have risen to the venerable rank of Grand Unclehood. OMG.

These are Myco and her parents, Tim's in-laws, who are also meeting the clan for the first time, hence the occasion for our clan gathering tonight.

Some of us who supervise Project Work (PW) labour under the misconception that a good project is necessarily exceptionally brilliant in terms of originality and innovation. They expect to see proposals the likes of which they have never seen before, that will solve a problem they've never heard of, in a way that they'll never understand. If the kids can't reach this standard of inventiveness in their Preliminary Ideas (PI) submission, it's back to the old drawing board until they can propose something more acceptable to the US Patent Office.

True, someone raised a concern that potentially a PW tutorial (comprising 5-6 small working groups) could submit 5-6 proposals, say, for a similar Amazing Race style event. But, so what? There might be the problem that the Supervising Tutor will get bored stiff very quickly, but the PW marking criteria does not say that we should be looking to reward particularly novel or entertaining ideas only.

Besides, those of us who demand rocket scientist level projects will find themselves running into even bigger problems down the road. Ultimately, the proposals have to be both feasible and manageable to carry out by the kids themselves (at least in theory) and unless the kids make some very solid plans to do so, the most faniciful of ideas will simply fizzle out as no one -- not even the Supervisor -- will likely have any idea how to make something concrete out of them.

So no, we don't need plans that will save the world. We don't expect every student to be a mini Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, Edison or Da Vinci, in order to get a good grade in PW. There's enough room there for such exceptional students to shine, but we do not penalize students if they don't make that grade. How many of us could?

What do we look out for then, if we are marking for "Generation of Ideas"? We look to see how the proposed event/activity/whatever is appropriate to and is representative of the person or event that inspired it. We see if the proposal is able to match its stated objectives. We see if the kid can properly define the scale of the project, and estimate, acquire and manage the resources necessary to excecute the plan and make it work.

We are looking for practical, manageable ideas. It's ok to be derivative, as long as the kid modifies the original to suit the purpose of the project. So 5-6 Amazing Races inspired by the Israelite Exodus, Gandhi's march to make salt, Mao's Long March, Lewis & Clark's trek across North America, and Oprah's rise to become the highest paid female in the entertainment industry, sure, why the heck not? I'd love to see how our kids can make an Amazing Race (even in microcosm) based on any one of these legendary personalities. That's already challenge enough to keep their generation of ideas flowing.

Rehearsals for the Admiral piece have recommenced after a 3-week break during which the cast took their first major exam of the year. Ran the whole thing through for the first time, and it's a relief that save for one remaining scene the Admiral's fully blocked out in rough. That means all the movements and patterns are almost in sync with the script and the fine tuning can begin soon.

Must work on their diction and projection. They're starting to move quite nicely, but it would also be good for the audienc to actually hear what they're saying. Also, must remind them to consistently keep their energy levels up and not look like they're just waiting around for their next line or movement.

I have a great cast. Though the majority of them are beginners, they're committed to the play and are learning their roles quite diligently. I can see they're quite tired already, but they stayed till 2100 tonight to rehearse, no complaints. We'll be rehearsing till later and later in the days to come and that's going to test everybody's resilience to the max.

Hope there's enough time left to create a show they can be proud to have played in.

When looking for dragons to slay, don't announce it too loudly. Dragons don't fight fair. About half-a-dozen small ones have ganged up, and are surrounding me for a grand butt kicking. 'nuff said.

Meantime, celebrated a birthday at Sunset, location picked for its variety of beer labels available. Also, our table picked up the courage to try level 3 buffalo wings. Mixed reactions. A couple of us want to try level 6 now. The rest just burned up on re-entry.

Love Sunset.

This year, June's annual company incentive trip took them on a week-long stay in Brisbane and Melbourne. There was some hassle over flight delays departing and arriving, but she's home safe now! :D

Earth Hour has come and gone. I did my part too. I switched off all my lights at home and fled with Q-tip to Sunset for a nice, juicy steak. Sunset was crowded and I didn't have a reservation... and I was keeping a dog's company, so I got a seat at the outdoor bar counter where Jerry himself was holding court with his regulars.

When Jerry got hauled back inside to work, I found myself in the company of an American couple who were probably seeing each other socially. They'd lived here for more than a decade and a half already and the guy was well-acquainted with the small towns in Malaysia that I'm not even familiar with. Both are seasoned travellers, so far from their places of origin, yet so at home here halfway around the world.

So while I was hoping for a brilliant view of the sunset, I wound up socializing instead. That was good too.

I came home about 20 minutes short of 2100. For 20 minutes, I just sat in the dark, no fan, no entertainment. Just me, a dog and two cats, sweaty and getting sweatier, bored out of my skull. Only Maui was happy, practicing his 'kowabunga' pouncing technique on Kaiser and Q-tip under the cover of darkness.

As soon as my digital clock hit 2100, everything went back on and online again. It's no use... we're already too addicted to the light and the 'net.

Friends we may be in real life, but when it comes to battling it out for House pride, we staff become unbelievably partisan. But there is no rivalry between the Houses as is between House Peggy and House Fifi. It's probably because outside our Houses we are a really close-knit group, that's why our passions spill over when we compete against each other.

Before the matches, there's the drawing up of division lines, the trash-talkin' and intimidation... and some behind-the-scenes skulduggery going on as we pick our battles, choosing events that will give our sides the best advantage to win.

As reviewed by the Phys Ed folks Mel and I met by coincidence at Island Creameries for after-game refreshments, the staff games are the most nail-biting to watch as we go at each other tooth and claw. For us who played Modified Frisbee (it was Peggy vs Griff), bumps, scrapes and possibly bruises that will probably show up tomorrow were par for the course, from the collisions and tumbles that occurred all too frequently during the game. Even the P himself, who represented Griff and was the game's top scorer, wasn't spared.

The kids' games are usually less violent, according to Phys Ed. I figure we still recall the way we used to play when we were schoolkids ourselves. We weren't as safety-conscious then as our kids are now. Blood, sweat and dirt we knew intimately, having had our faces rubbed in it all the time. Games were unsupervised, improvised, and apart from a few basic ground-rules to remind us which game we were playing at the time, pretty much anything went. And that was how we played today.

The more civilized of us, though no less competitive, went on a trekking race through the Botanic Gardens, our games venue. Nevertheless, the tensions between Peggy and Fifi remained high, no one being too friendly today.

Peggy came out tops in both staff events, but that's the odd thing about us. We win our battles, but eventually end up losing the war. The day went to Fifi, so hey, congrats!

We shall reconvene for lunch, Monday.

Young, mobile, more adventurous than I'd ever give her credit for. I'd underestimated how badly my lunch companion of today had been struck by wanderlust as she talked about her options for moving out and moving on.

And why ever not? The world is so accessible to us these days, as long as we can contribute to the community or at least not make a nuisance of ourselves, anyone is welcome to live anywhere they want. Just pick up a random pin, plunk it on any random coordinate on the world map, and chances are, we could find ourselves there in person within the week.

So what's with my own inertia? I seem to have lost the drive, the desire to have adventures of my own. Perhaps I'm too settled, too comfortable, have too many responsibilities to discharge and debts to pay off.

I do know I'm not too old, though. And I'm not yet accomplished enough. Every knight has a dragon to slay, and I'm pretty sure mine has yet to challenge me. If it has it was probably the size of a cicak which I killed by accidentally treading on it. When I take stock of everything that I have, I feel like I'm living a life I never really worked hard enough to deserve. Shouldn't I go have another look at the radar to see if my dragon's looming on the horizon?

I have a mad fantasy. At some time in the near future, my pals and I will take over the college and we will be the ones making the policies and running the programmes. Today's news of promotions for quite a few of them is entirely heartening as now we are all one step closer to fulfilling my dream.

The news was also timely as I was starting to waver over my own next step. There was a little self-doubt for a while, a little loss of confidence, but I feel a little more encouraged today.

Why do I call the fantasy mad? My pals are too young, too mobile, possibly too impatient as well. So many of them have already left for greener pastures or new experiences. A few more are already making plans, weighing their options. I don't begrudge them their freedom. Few people these days keep a single career for life so I won't expect them to either.

But for today, congrats on your success! Let's celebrate your achievements and continue to enjoy each other's company... while we still can!

Cyclists on the road are totally abhorrent. Especially the ones that cycle like the Highway Code everyone else abides by doesn't apply to them.

This moron -- not some uncle-guy but a young-looking rides-a-bike-for-exercise guy -- blithely cycling against the flow of traffic just cut across my path as I was turning out from a busy intersection. I didn't see him as I was concentrating on the direction the traffic was coming from, and if I had been in a little more of a hurry, he would have discovered from underneath M2's undercarriage that cycling isn't as good for his health as he thought.

Fortunately for him, just as I was accelerating out onto the main road I could still hit the brakes with inches to spare from the juicy target in front of me. He didn't even blink, kept riding on like he didn't even notice how close he was to being introduced in person to M2's front fender.

If I had hit him, it would definitely not have been my fault. But I don't need the extra nightmares, nor the investigations, nor the expenses incurred either.

If cyclists want to be respected on the road, like Mr B is pushing so hard for, then they'd better start respecting the Code. Else stay off the road, stay off the footpaths, just stay at home. Period.

The Xmac & June Travel Agency went into business again. It was a whirlwind half-day city tour for June's Thai colleagues here on a business visit. Today was their last day in S'pore and time for a little r&r.

We began with some sightseeing down by the Civic District, looking at the government buildings, posing for pix at the usual tourist places. These gals just love posing for shots, as you can see on the left.

And because we had legitimate tourists in our company, we had an excellent excuse to take a ride on the S'pore Flyer, 'cos otherwise we wouldn't have bothered.

There's only one real reason to ride the S'pore Flyer. It definitely isn't for the excitement as at the speed of one revolution per 30 minutes, there is hardly any sensation of movement at all. The view is nice, but since we're already used to high-rise living and working, and our landscape being what it is, it isn't exactly breathtaking either.

Nope. The only reason to go ride in a transparent cylinder with 25 other people at a time is to absolutely go wild and crazy with a camera and take lots of "we were here!" shots. Cameras exchange hands freely between fellow Flyers for great mutually-assisted group photos.

There's nothing wrong with the Flyer itself, per se. The staff are warm and helpful; the big wheel operates so smoothly and silently there's a strong sense of security riding it; and everything looks very high-tech and professional. It's just that Fun is a bring-it-yourself factor, so future Flyers, be prepared to be sociable and feel free to camera whore without embarrassment. Nobody's looking at you anyway. And don't forget to look out the window once in a while. The view's still part of the package too.

We introduced them to some cheap local food at their request. They'd already been feted with Chinese seafood, Japanese and Western over the last couple of days and they were craving for a little local flavour.

Pressed for time, we introduced them to the food court at the Convention Centre. Didn't really impress them much, but we did a good job of clearing the plates anyway. Then off for some hasty snapshots of the big fountain before returning them back to their hotel to collect their luggage.

One last stop before the Airport: Mustafa's for more economically priced souvenirs to take home with them.

Next time we're in BKK, we'll have some new friends to call on who'll take good care of us. Nice to do our part for Thai-S'pore diplomacy!


more pix here.

I think Horton is KI material, and I'll explain why. Only not here. My re-telling of this Dr Seuss classic tale makes for long, tedious and cumbersome reading, not for the likes of these pages. If you are brave enough, refer to the following link: The KI of Horton.

BTW, the entry refers to the movie version of the story, not the original Dr Seuss book, which can be read as a social commentary -- as in, say, a parable of the increasing recognition of minority rights in the USA -- though it doesn't go as far as the movie in fleshing the characters and situation out.

I've never had to teach so many kids in such a short time as I did today. I ran four repeating back-to-back sessions involving a multimedia presentation as well as a physical demonstration. My muscles will be aching tomorrow.

It was quite the object lesson working with this type of kids. However much planning had gone into the schedule, there's so much unpredictability with the audience that whatever I said and did had to be on the fly. It helped that I had prepared a general structure though getting there was literally half the fun. Frequent questions from the floor kept derailing train after train of thought, and dealing with the occasional reluctant 'volunteer' (why do they volunteer if they don't actually want to do anything?) forced frequent changes of plan on the spot.

But from the feedback I got, I think the kids did learn something new and they did have some fun as well, which as I observe, seems to be a rare commodity during curriculum time. Yay! Mission accomplished!

An important date came and went quietly, marked only by a simple dinner at Akashi, which has reasonably (I say 'reasonably' as I was prepared to pay more for a special occasion) priced sets though it looks kinda' ex from the outside. A tempura-soba combination for June, a bento for me.

An animated movie followed to remind us that we were still young at heart despite the years that we have accumulated since we last regarded cartoons as a media staple. Yes, we watched 'Horton'. Wonder what happened to the rest of the title?

When I first encountered Horton eons ago, I actually watched it as an animated short on TV. It was Dr Zeuss brought to full, anthropomorphic, technicolor 2D-life.

The movie is all that and more. Jim Carrey and Steve Carell reunite (remember 'Bruce Almighty'?) to flesh out the characters of Horton the elephant and the Mayor of Whoville respectively. The two are great foils for each other. Horton is quite anarchistic and lets his imagination run wild -- oh, the anime sequence... -- while the Mayor is all constrained responsibility, tradition and order. No matter the character type, they both face the same problem: they both have acquired a new knowledge that threatens their societies' security and even their existence, yet no one believes them and mostly everyone is anxious to put an end to the insanity that they both appear to have descended to.

There's a great many levels 'Horton' can be read at. I hadn't seen the complexity before, but the book can be a great introduction to several of the concepts we will encounter in KI. I think I'll make it a required reading for the JC1s. Or they should at least go watch the movie.