Stiff-necked

For a pain in the neck that just wouldn't go away all week, June made an appointment for me at Body Contours where she has a package. She signed me up for a 2 hour rub-down, concentrating on the neck and shoulders. Despite my protestations all week that I was actually all-right, I really needed the kneading -- even being kneed in the back during the treatment felt good.

I didn't quite catch the name of my massuese, but she had skillful hands, finding the right spots to put just enough pressure on without the hurt. It wasn't just hands on tissue, though. At times she went full weight with practically bone on bone contact... the point of her elbow rattling my ribcage, then turning the bones of her forearms into levers that hauled my neck into attitudes I'd never dare reach on my own. That went quite a ways towards making my spine happy again.

For an extra $28, she let me try out a ginseng-jojoba-sunflower oil which was supposed to improve blood circulation, do good things for the skin and some other unintelligible stuff. Conversation wasn't exactly scintillating, but that's just me. After marinading me thoroughly with the mixture, she sent me off to the steam room to double-boil for 15-20 minutes, and behold: Korean ginseng chicken soup, best served during the cold winter season. It was all I could do to refrain from taking a bite out of my own wing to see if I tasted as good as I smelled.

Though my neck was feeling better after the treatment, it's starting to hurt again. The problem must be more deeply-rooted than I thought. Darn pain in the neck... ow*

Meet the parents

Met worried parents to discuss their kids' mid-year results. Good to hear that apart from me, my colleagues from the other subjects were giving the same diagnosis: kids are working hard, and studying hard, but they are not using their content knowledge in the most effective manner. Question analysis is damnedly important, but it's a step they ignore in favour of just spilling their guts at the sight of a familiar question topic.

Sometimes, as in the case of GP, the more they study the worse the result. That's not to say study is not required, but breadth is more what we're looking for -- a little knowledge about many things -- rather than depth, that's what the other subjects are for. Too much depth knowledge and kids try to impress us with everything they've got... and forget that there's a question to answer.

It's like being on a battlefield. The less the ammo, the more care taken to make every shot count (I think Arby came up with this one). The trick here isn't to cut down content knowledge because that is the ammo. Rather, the kids have to be convinced that what they know is never anywhere close to a lot. Then they'll be a bit more circumspect in choosing the appropriate round to hit the right target. I hear Socrates turning in his grave already.

I wonder if it's an Asian thing, this memorize your way into the civil service study strategy? But parents today still think this kind of education is what will bring their kids eventual success. It seemed like news to them when we recommended a more inquiring, evaluative study approach over wholesale absorbtion. They got it when we explained it to them, hope their kids did too.

Alone in the dark

After the lecture, it's the duty of the lecturer to ensure that all electrical devices are powered down. That means being the last one out of the lecture theatre, sometimes in near pitch dark and aiming for a little square of sunlight in the distance that marks the exit.

I realise I'm no longer afraid of bumping into... metaphysical things in the dark. What I'm more afraid of is bumping into unseen physical objects that could cause unnecessary barking of the shin, or worse. Fortunately today, I made it to the door unscathed.

All the places between school and your bedroom

A quick preview of the visual treat I have in store for the kids tomorrow: Home, by Yann Arthus-Bertrand. Talk about shifting the camera to an overhead view, global scope! Lots of GP essays we could generate from this "Home" movie!

Grow big and strong

Best news I've heard all day is that milk and dairy products are indeed good for health. I survived TO by drinking lots of milk daily. Morning I had it with cereal, and through the rest of the day I kept myself hydrated with milk instead of water. These days, I don't drink so much milk any more, but on the odd occasion (like last week) when my teeth hurt, I head straight for the supermarket for a carton of milk and treat them old chompers to a fresh, new coat of calcium. It's a time-tested remedy.

All this might sound counter-intuitive to all you cholesterol-sensitive, lactose intolerant folk... but really, Milk. It does a body good.



This space paid for by the National Dairy Board. Not.

Report on Somali piracy

It's that time of year when the Year 1 kids are struggling with their Project reports. I'm not involved this year, but there's a good chance I will be next year. In preparation for that eventuality, I'll place a link in today's entry to a superb article in Wired that could serve as an example of a project that looks fun to research and present.

"Cutthroat Capitalism" is a report on piracy on the high seas, off the Somali coast. That's as current an issue as anything today. It's sensational, it's exciting and as it turns out, somewhat blown out of proportion. That's something this article attempts to do: cut through the media hype and show what exactly is going on there, through impartial interviews with both victims and pirates alike.

The report is also intriguingly multidisciplinary in the way it ties in current affairs with economics and mathematics, presenting a critical thinking approach from these different perspectives. There's even a little sociological glimpse at the heierarchical and organizational structure of the pirates, proving a method to their apparent madness (I ask you, a couple of speedboats attacking a tanker: sounds sane to you?).

Obviously, this report is by a professional outfit with probably lots of resources at its disposal, but it's the approach and the presentation quality, the flow of information and the strong sense of purpose throughout that I'd like my next year's kids to learn from.

Anyway, even for its own sake the report is fun to read, and the new insights it offers about the pirate situation is quite an eye opener, through a perspective we don't usually get from the local newspapers.

Sign of confusion

Oh, dear. You can't even trust the cops, these days.
(TCM shop, Yishun)

The cat menace

With reference to "Trapping and dumping strays and pets unbecoming in gracious Singapore " by Jeanne Nicole Chan (Ms):

You poor, misguided woman,
You assume that Singapore is "gracious" but that will never be so, as long as the stray cat menace that terrorises our neighbourhoods has not yet been put down. Rest assured, however, that the Great Leader of the Most Sterile Anti-Feline Movement, Der Fuhrer Tony Tan Tuan Khoon, is slowly but surely gathering the faithful and soon we will eradicate this threat once and for all.

Our Leader's plans for the Final Solution to the cat infestation will bring forth a glorious cat Holocaust from which this scourge to our society will never recover. On that day, and only then, will our nation finally achieve its true epoch, and we will see graciousness in all its abundance bless this land.

We believe this is what you and all Singaporeans are hoping for. Why not, instead of sitting back and bemoaning our society's lack of graciousness, join us in the active trapping and culling of stray cats and do your part in bringing back the graciousness you are so lamenting for? Together we can look forward to that Great Day, though our victory will be all the more sweet if, likewise, we toil as comrades together.

As long as we can keep the CO generators running, our Day will surely come. Have no fear, woman, cats will one day be just a vague memory, spoken of only to frighten little children who will not otherwise behave themselves.

Yours sincerely
Xmac2006
Under-minion to Der Fuhrer, Der Fuhrer's Office
MSAFM

Essay mill: Piracy or sharing?

The Essay Mill is back in yet another installment! Today we tackle the question...

It’s not piracy, it’s sharing! Discuss the validity of this argument in the context of the Internet.

A common concern today, considering how agencies like the RIAA are going to ridiculous extents to set an insane legal precedent to outlaw music downloading once and for all. I think if they succeed they'll kill the Internet. I hope for all our sakes -- so that you can continue to download, read and share my lousy essays -- that the more rational minds of American Justice will prevail.

Post mortem: Essay is too apologetic and too optimistic about the sanity of human beings and their behaviour in the marketplace to be convincing.

It's only logical

Improvising in class again. Put the kids through an arduous session of analyzing essay questions by grammatical structure. As the classes progressed, I discovered that analyzing grammar can help render essay questions as mathematical expressions! It's all logic, after all, right?

If anyone's curious, download a sample here. Erm... my math isn't too good, so some of these equations don't look too elegant. Some may not even work! Would appreciate some help refining the formulae... or at least check the math, if anyone can be bothered.

Knives and guns

Met a new set of surrogate kids. They've been sent to me because they've plateaued out at a particular grade in GP and we're trying to get them up to the next level.

Impression we have of them is that they have writing ability, but their content knowledge is... idealistic, and they tend not to plan out their essays despite constant reminders to.

Made the following analogy for them: not planning the essay is like bringing a knife to a gunfight. Knife and blade fighting can be beautiful to watch -- kung fu movies and Hollywood swashbucklers have turned it into an art form -- but unless the duelist is capable of finding an opening and taking full advantage of it, he's dead before the fight begins. That's because the essay question isn't dancing around with a blade. The question encapsulates a complete argument in just one short sentence, hence, it's a sniper's bullet aimed straight between the eyes.

The essayist has no time to make an aesthetic out of the answer. The sniper has to be taken out cooly and efficiently. That requires a bit of planning. And there, if the kids are looking for it, is the beauty of the GP essay.

Long time no see

Has it really been seven years since we took in JH and his friends to stay with us, and played tour guide for them all over the island? June had the whole thing all planned out then, the Duck Tour, the Night Safari, the Long Bar, whatever we could package in three days or so to keep them entertained.

And today, we met him again, this time alone and here on business. Went traditional with S'porean dinner fare -- chilli crab at Jumbo@Dempsey. This Jumbo isn't like the other Jumbos. The setup is almost Western: see-through kitchen, very attentive English-speaking staff, square rather than round tables, and we got to eat Pacific razor clam with cutlery. Quite atas, though the dignified ambience was still no deterrent against getting physical with the truly jumbo-sized crab that wound up on our table. And despite the atmosphere, the bill for three of us was surprisingly reasonable for what we ordered.

Next stop, PS Cafe, at which we made the mistake of ordering a dessert each rather than just sharing a couple among ourselves. We were already full from Jumbo, so the desserts were far more than we could handle. That's kind'a sad, 'cos I don't like the idea of leftovers, especially if it's ice-cream based.

We walked on another world

CNN should have asked me. I would have said that "Man's greatest achievement" was our first moon landing. Apollo 11 proved we could accomplish the impossible. We set foot on another world and came back to brag about it. Not sure what happened after that, but no one has made any effort to top that accomplishment since.

Hard to believe that that was exactly 40 years ago, today. Harder to believe that in theory I could have watched Armstrong and Aldrin's moonwalk 'live' on TV. I'm pretty sure we had an old black-and-white, and I know I was already watching TV at that age (I have the glasses to prove it), but I don't know if we could get a 'live' feed back then.

What I do remember of the Apollo 11 mission was several years later when I watched an amazing theatrical performance at which the solo performer faithfully recreated each shot of the televised mission using the exact voice transmissions and, get this... his fingers! That's right, his digits were the only things moving on stage, and through them this historical event came to life again. I don't remember whose hands they were, and I haven't been able to discover even a mention of the performance online. A pity, 'cos I'd really love to watch it a second and even third time.

Essay mill's on hold 'cos life just got really busy. But hey, 40 years ago, we touched the moon. What can't we do now?

"Prince" only half-blooded

For all the hype, HBP felt like just another installment in a tale that's been too long in the telling. The movie itself isn't bad. I like that the focus is character-driven, but since there are so many characters central to the plot, there isn't sufficient air-time to do them justice. There's enough to get the idea about what's going on with them, their conflicts and confusion, but not quite enough to empathise.

The fact is, I wasn't blown away like I was expecting to be. This installment felt like a set up, providing exposition for what (I'm hoping) will be a big finish. It was "Star Wars: ESB" all over again when at the end the first thought was, "is that all?" Even the big revelation at the end of HBP didn't warrant the title. I don't remember much from reading the book, but I'm pretty sure there was more to it than just a simple admission of identity.

There, see? The elitist comment was bound to show up sooner or later: the book was way better than the movie.

Not too many more summer movie releases left to look forward to. So far this year, I have yet to be impressed.

Essay mill: World records

Oh, wow! Another world record has been trashed. Throw confetti! Wear party hat! Ha. When was the last time we did that? We don't really seem to care much for new world records, do we? In this next essay, I'll be taking a look at world records and what they might mean to us.

I'm beginning to see how this kind of question can become a problem for essay writers. I'm barely getting warmed up, and I have to end it abruptly bcause I've already breached the 800 word limit.

Do you agree that the breaking of a world record is a significant event?

Post mortem: Could use more examples, almost exclusive focus on athletic records (there are other kinds of world records, y'know), gross overgeneralization, dubious evidence -- may be factually incorrect, some circumlocution.

Essay mill project

Welcome to my new personal project! It's an essay mill from which I churn out essays to lousy essay questions, and I already have a few doozies lined up. Obviously, these essays are going to be of no help to anyone taking any exam this or any other year. They're purely going to be for my own entertainment and self-indulgence, mainly to see what kind of nonsense arises out of badly-thought out questions. So here's the first of, I hope, many more to come:

How far would you agree that foreigners regard Singapore as "unique"?

Post mortem: A bit hyperbolic in places, naive in others. Some reasoning is contrived, and it generally reads like NE propaganda.

The facade falls

Don't like my new style. Makes me sound too morose. Might as well be Twittering if I want to write two lines at a time. Anyway, I'm embarking on a new personal project that should ensure lengthier entries for at least the next few days. Stay tuned.

Anyway, I'm not sure why I've been masquerading as a teacher for so long. The facade has never really fooled anyone, except maybe myself. Fact is, I can't see the reality that the kids are just 18 years old while I'm expecting them to perform like undergrads already. It takes other people to remind me to stop overestimating their capabilities and try to pitch material more at their level. But even up till now, I am still uncertain what an 18 year old is capable of. Obviously I don't know my audience well enough at all.

So I've decided today to acknowledge myself for what I truly am. I'm not a teacher. I am just a guy who has a silly habit of reading... um, whatever, and has recently acquired another habit of scribbling stuff, perhaps hoping that one day it might get good enough for someone to actually read it.

Coincidentally, I've been told that this quirk of mine is a skill (a skill?) that our young people need to acquire, so I'll just be sharing my idiosyncracies with them if they are willing to give me some of their attention -- and many of them are. And so long as someone is happy to pay me for my services, I'll be more than happy to keep on sharing.

Sounds like win-win to me.

Faux pas of the day

Put foot in mouth in class. Described petanque to them as "people throwing steel balls at other people's balls". Hilarity ensued.

Wannabe

In American Idol, I've never envied any of the contestants -- not even the eventual winners. Here today, gone tomorrow, them. It's Ryan Seacrest who I want to be.

Looking ahead

The number of abortions is about 30% of the total number of live births in S'pore last year. This does not bode well for my retirement.