As a PW Supervisor, I have a particular job to do that my students have not yet quite understood. And this misunderstanding is causing lots of frustration on both sides. My role is not to APprove projects, but rather to IMprove them. So while they send me proposal draft after draft, hoping that I will at some point say, "that's it! That's perfect!", that's not what's going to happen. I will always find ways to make the proposal better. The disparity is that the students see their projects as a destination whereas I see them as a continuum. There IS no end in sight. Honest.

Why it's so frustrating is because the students tend to do what they're told. I keep telling and they keep doing and it never seems to be good enough. Every proposal gets sent back to the old drawing board, the old ogre is never satisfied, damn him! But, hey, if PW was simply about following instructions from some crotchety codger who doesn't know what he wants, then PW really should be scrapped as yet another redundant exam subject.

But the PW process is more about learning to think up a project and then think through it from the perspective of the one who will eventually be presented the project. Most students are satisfied accomplishing the former, and don't push on to even attempt the latter. Then when they receive feedback on their proposals, they think there's something wrong with themselves, or something wrong with the ideas, when most of the time, what they have is quite good enough.

What's missing is their ability to adequately communicate their ideas to the third party, and to see what they have written through the eyes and ears of their audience. This is the leap in thinking ability they have to make in order to succeed at PW. They need to articulate their ideas clearly and coherently, anticipate queries and potential objections, and project an air of confidence that they have done their homework, and competence in the area of work they wish to undertake. Some professionalism in the way they they present their materials won't hurt either.

If they could just try to read what they themselves have written, distancing themselves from their own authorship, and critique their own proposals from a third-party perspective, ask themselves the hard questions and prepare to answer them, then they won't need me any longer, and they can start working for themselves at last. Perhaps then they will see that I'm less tough on them than they will be on themselves.

Until then, it's like I'm driving a school bus and the kids inside keep asking, "are we there yet?" All I'm doing is driving, I'm not going anywhere except down the road. Hopefully, at some point, the kids will quit watching the scenery and poking each other, but instead watch me as I turn the wheel, upshift, downshift, accelerate and brake. And when they finally get it, they'll get off at the next bus stop, climb into their own vehicles and trundle off -- on their own -- towards a destination of their own choice. These will be the successful kids.

So completely brain-dead that "Superhero Movie" was the perfect weekend therapy. Full of cheap sight gags, toilet humour and frothing over with sophomoric innuendo, SM proves that the line is indeed fine between heroism and hilarity.

SM takes the basic script of "Spider-Man", though the protagonist, Rick Riker, is more tragic than hero. Brought up believing that he is destined for saving-the-world, do-gooder stuff, the harder he tries to be a hero, the more misfortune he brings to others.

Unfortunately for Riker, his sources of inspiration are his Uncle and Aunt whom he lives with. Both spout inane advice, but his Aunt in particular speaks in such cliched platitudes that her flatulence carries more authority and impact in the movie.

The moral dilemma his nemesis, The Hourglass, faces is to use his life-absorbing power on one person a day, in order to gain sufficient energy to live one more day. So his decision is obviously clear: kill as many people as possible at one time to gain immortality. Duh!

I was in the mood to laugh my guts out, and so I did. But a crucial scene involving Riker's discovery of the true identity of The Hourglass was mysteriously censored (there was a notice at the box office to inform us to expect cuts) due to some offense against some religious issue. *shrugs. But the cut is so obvious that characters inexplicably jump locations and action, which probably offended my sense of continuity more than protected my religious sensibilities.

Oh, stay to watch the clips during the end credits if you must. They appear to be deleted scenes from the final edit. Just leave your brain at the door.

Results from our last bowling session are very encouraging. Officially, the Boyz have climbed up one spot in the rankings to 15th of 16, plus we've won two special awards. Anthony got 2nd placing for his high game with handicap totalling 232 (including handicap 21), while the Team got 3rd placing in the team scratch series totalling 1811 pinfalls excluding handicap (i.e., we're overall the 3rd highest scoring team without adding our respective handicaps). Not bad at all!

The dog and rabbit "freelance police" team wraps up its second season with an extra-large helping of bizarre adventure. The usual pattern of a Sam & Max point-and-click game is to solve an initial set of three puzzles, thereby unlocking a final set of three new puzzles before the resolution. In this fifth installment, just when we think we're done, the adventure continues. After all, with a title like, "What's New, Beelzebub?", we should guess that a date with the big guy downstairs isn't going to be so straightforward to come back from and still look forward to a Season Three.

While the puzzles are still the mundane trial-and-error approach of applying different inventory objects to hotspots on the screen to see what works, it's the snappy dialogue among all the characters that drives the comedy forward. Apart from Sam & Max themselves, I especially like the 10-foot tall killer robot who philosophizes about life using only snippets of song lyrics from the '80s. And Tiny Timmy, the rat, whose every other utterance is *bleeped* out because he suffers from Tourette's syndrome. One of the puzzles actually involves finding a way to un*bleep* his dialogue because a vital clue gets *bleeped* out along with the rest of his profanities. Hilarious.

Although Episode Five can stand on its own, it'll make more sense having played the four episodes before. Episode Five ties up all the loose ends in this Second Season, including all the odd time-travel paradoxes scattered around the previous four episodes, and resolves every cliffhanger as well -- such as where the molten lava disappeared to when the volcano erupted in Episode Two. Also, all the characters from both Seasons show up in one way or another, with some eyebrow-raising developments to some of the characters as well.

However, not everyone will be able to stomach the themes of Episode Five as it goes all out to make light of our beliefs about the afterlife and the torments that await us there. Best to slap a "Not Easily Offended" label on the game as fair warning to those who might be. Then again, if you were easily offended, you probably wouldn't be playing Sam & Max anyway.

The Boyz are back on the lanes again. A last minute substitution brought back Anthony to the fold, so it was him, Victor and me today. Considering we haven't bowled in quite a while, I think we did decently well. I calculate my average to be 160+ over four games. But Anthony had to be the show-off and probably scored both the lowest scoring game (98) and an impressive 211, which after adding his handicap, could well total up to be the highest game of the day.

Official results will most likely be released on Thursday. I seriously hope we've managed to claw our way out of last place after tonight.

This rare omen started the day for me on the opening night of Drama Night 2008.

In contrast, instead of another auspicious sign from above before yesterday's closing show, we began with a problem. M2's battery died just as Mel and I were leaving campus to go to SRT.

That wasn't good 'cos we were carrying my laptop containing the 'Admiral' soundtrack, and we still had to swing through Gardens to collect some... perishable props for the show.

But from the crisis, the small swarm of staff crowding around M2 to lend a hand, give advice or provide moral support was simply heartwarming. There was Ho, who connected Lena's jumper cables to his car's battery, though that failed to produce a large enough jolt to get M2 started. Richard rode home to bring back his set of jumper cables and the truck he would be driving later that night. Wayne lent me his AA card to call roadside assistance, Jane came over to see what was the matter and sympathize, as did EmL. Jon drove Mel to collect our deep-fried bananas and then to the theatre on time even though he'd already been there the previous night. Pau drove over his SX-4 and with his industrial-strength cable, we finally brought M2 back to life. Wayne helped me text Richard that all's well so he wouldn't return to find he'd missed all the excitement. And Gurmit stayed with me till the end of the ordeal to make sure I didn't get a heart-attack or worse.

X-departments coming together to help a fellow colleague out; our campus is truly a kampong, and I'm so glad for it. Thanks everyone!

Once M2 got started, I drove straight to the Shell station in Gardens. There they quickly replaced my dead battery with this fluorescent green one (no, I didn't choose it myself, honest). Now my engine compartment looks like it's got some attitude.

Anyway, Drama Night 08 has closed and we're a step closer to our college's professional theatrical credibility. Now that we've seen what our students can do in this venue, as Mel said, we can never go back to LT4.

Anyone wanna see the last of my Drama Night pix click here.

Opening night for NYeDC with four short plays for the price of one ticket.

There's nothing like the excitement of playing to a packed house, and the SRT auditorium was just buzzing with it.

'Admiral' went off admirably, all cast and crew fully backing each other up. Great to see XYan (not in pix) take the lead and work so hard at being such a professional on stage, setting the example for her juniors to follow.

Hats off too, to the rest of the cast who have been likewise working hard at line memory, movement and speech delivery; but most importantly in being so supportive of one another and of the 'Walls' team as well.

Not surprisingly, our audence had a hard time comprehending our abstract piece. I had lots of questions about it during the interval, and I found myself over-intellectualizing our interpretation as I tried to explain it to Lynette and Haze. Even I started getting confused with my explanation after a while, so I just ran with whatever impressions they got from it... which wasn't really that far off. What was gratifying was that they did respond to the little running sight gags we engineered into Kuo's script. Those they got.

As for 'Walls', the audience could better relate to the more realistic presentation. There was little to interpret as it was a straightforward in-your-face portrayal of young people in quite some serious pain.

The audience appreciated the stunningly real explosion of emotion onstage, and it even amazes me that rehearsal after rehearsal, the cast can sustain being the characters they play without degenerating their portrayals into mere 'acting'.

'Walls' is a wonderfuly therapeutic piece for people with psychological baggage.

Drama Night 2008 closes tonight. It's been a memorable run. We seldom say it outright, but we have some great kids on campus.

Forgive the obsession with Drama Night. It's taken over my life this week and I'm exhausted. For the first time, I wiped out at my desk during lunch break, completely zoned out in la-la land. Mel said that even the ruckus she and a bunch of others were making fooling around with a toy lightsabre in the staffroom didn't rouse me at all. I was that far gone.

Full-dress rehearsal went fabulously well for 'Admiral'. As I had hoped, the cast went home depressed last night but returned prepared to take on the new level of performance they'd been challenged with. Apart from a couple of wardrobe malfunctions and a few line gaffes, when they were on, they were spot on. Finally I got to see crisp, clean, coordinated movement, which shows they've been practicing. Very, very proud of everyone involved onstage and off. Only one more day to up the bar just a little higher. They're ready.

Btw, SRT's advertising our show in their eNewsletter. But we now have the enviable privilege of announcing that tomorrow we open to a full house! Both nights are sold out now, many thanks to the college and everyone else who bought a ticket for supporting us!

'Admiral' kids and 'Walls' kids have finally seen each others' plays. 'Admiral' kids are feeling inferior as 'Walls' is quite obviously more dramatic, more heartrending, more colourful, and more meticulously put together. This is undeniable. 'Walls' kids have been at it for much longer. They wrote their own script and based much of the drama on their own feelings and emotions. Their words are real to them, even if the situation is fictitious, and the script calls for full emoting of anger, angst and pain. In that sense, 'Walls' is realistic and direct.

Have to explain to 'Admiral' kids that their play is quite different in intent and form. Rather than emoting, they have to intellectualize their characters' experiences and abstract rather than feel their expression. While the pain is no less real, they have to interpret it through their text and movement rather than through the natural emotional outlets of shouting, screaming and crying. Therefore, their demands are quite different, requiring more control and precision timing to tell their story.

'Admiral' is after all a movement piece, the text seldom matching the action exactly word-for-word. This piece is really going to be tough going for the cast, and for the audience. Considering how far they've managed to come in the time they've had, I'm actually quite proud of them already. But now that they've seen 'Walls', we've raised the bar. Let's see that as a positive, a spur to take our performance up a notch. The time for a quantum leap is here!

Edit 01:


Drama Night 08 Rehearsal
Opening week for Drama Night. One last rehearsal on campus, then tomorrow we bump in at SRT. I notice that I haven't got any production pix of Admiral. I've been so busy directing, I've forgotten to make a photo record of the process. Hope Mel is up to holding a camera tonight. It's our last chance to capture our work-in-progress.

Only three more nights to curtain...

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.