Service with a smile

Times must be hard. These 'Friendly' people are busy distributing flyers advertising their services door-to-door around my block. Apart from approving loans, I'll bet Jason will kindly extend his services to home redecoration too.

Need a loan? Pick up the phone! :)

A 'see-you-soon' to Lucy

Time to kick back and focus on good eats with good folks. Here, we're bidding Lucy a great time in Vancouver where she'll be working on her Master's.

'Here' is Buono, Lichfield Road. It's Wednesday night and ladies eat for free (from the 'special' menu). Looking a our table, there seems to be lots of ladies.

Considering what we put away: 3 kinds of antipasti, a hefty serving of pasta for almost each of us and some desserts to share, we ended up paying about $30 a head, really, not bad at all!

National Day eve

Finally, all positive factors converge to give Q-tip the outing she's been waiting weeks for. We're at the Marina Barrage to take in the sights and sounds of the new happenin' place the URA's developing.

Kite flying's a big activity here. The breezes are strong enough to lift kites off easily, even big 'uns with long, trailing tails.

Have to say that despite the stated opening times on the official website, the Gallery Cafe actually opens at 1030 hrs. If you go at 0900, either have brekkie beforehand or bring your own sandwiches. As it turned out, we waited for the cafe to open. Breakfast menu wasn't very exciting, mostly heavier options and salads like for lunch.

Fortunately, there is also a selection of local foods on the board. Nasi lemak was ok, served with green rice, a wing, an egg over-easy and a sprinkling of ikan bilis and peanuts. Bit expensive at $5+ a serving.

Evening we met our old friend JH, back from his travels. Originally from S Korea, he's now got the opportunity to work here as a expat.

Dinner was at Por Kee. We always order the same thing: the tofu speciality, Thai-style steamed fish, champagne pork ribs and a veggie dish. Food was excellent as always.

The point was, we wanted to welcome him with some good local food, then we remembered we had brought him here before, the first time he came to visit us. Then he tells us Tiong Bahru is his usual lunchplace since his office is just around the corner.

We take him to dessert at Island Creameries -- and he gets his laundry done here since he lives in the neighbourhood. Guess he's no longer a stranger in our part of town.

Face the wall

Took Q-tip to the beach, given today's half-day. At some point, I chose a picnic table to sit at and watch the sea. As I sat there, I thought of MM's recent suggestion that we should do away with the retirement age. There I was, with time on my hands, doing something pleasurable, and if I were to retire when my time comes I could theoretically do this all day, every day for the rest of my life. Or do all the other things we wish we had time for but are unable to because of our work schedules.

I didn't find the prospect appealing, however. Maybe if I hated my job I'd feel different but I don't. Maybe if I had a job that I slaved away at for a pittance I'd feel different, by my job pays decently enough to live comfortably as long as I don't suddenly crave a luxurious, ostentatious lifestyle. Like MM, I also dread the time when I have to stop work after which "I'll just shrivel up, face the wall and just that".

Yes, MM's quite clearly presenting a false dilemma. But it's the social contact I will miss the most from the working environment. Work gives me a reason to be around people. Apart from work, I don't offer much reason for people to be around me.

Earned privilege

Interesting that in the general meeting with P, he mentioned how past college Principals ran their campuses with less emphasis on extrinsically enforced discipline so that the environment would be more akin to that of the university and away from the secondary school. These days we feel the need to lay down the law as the kids seem to be either lacking in direction or the ability to discipline themselves.

Times have changed. Comparing senior high students of the past with those of the present, the big difference was that "in my time (cough... cough... hack... hack...!)" my contemporaries were proud to be college students. When they wore their uniform, they wore it with dignity because so few others were privileged to wear the crest, those colours. They represented the best and brightest of their cohort, on the cusp of a very privileged level of education that would put them in a social strata above the general population. That meant living up to a higher calling, meeting standards of decorum and courtesy befitting of the upper-class they were destined for. Principals of the past didn't have to worry about behavioural micro-management because the intrinsic motivation to self-manage was already strong in their students.

What has changed since then is the loss of pride in being a college student. No longer a privilege to be studying in a JC, it's now a basic expectation for every secondary school student. The kids here feel that there is nothing special about being here. There is no sense of accomplishment or achievement but rather a perception that it's just a normal part of all the rights and privileges they feel are entitled to them. They're not really here because there is a burning desire in each one to be here; they're here because everyone else is here. A college education is nothing to aspire towards -- it's become common, average and taken for granted.

If junior colleges have discipline problems, the root cause is the loss of earned privilege. At the risk of sounding elitist, we've let the riff-raff invade our campuses and infect us with their common mediocrity. Be that as it may, since they're already here it's up to us to run our campuses not as survival boot camp which further reinforces the competitive dog-eat-dog slave mentality that our current kids have, but rather show them how to live up to the higher standards they are being called to. We teach them to raise their eyes, not drop their chins. We really don't want to become a secondary school. That would be a huge and probably irrevocable step backwards.

Cocktail party with parents

Back from a cocktail party with the kids' parents. The kind in which we're supposed to tell them that judging from their mid-year grades, their kids aren't doing well in this or that subject and with the finals in 90+ days we need to work together and help them do something about it.

But with the parents we're seeing tonight, this kind of kick-'em-in-the-a** advice applies only to a tiny minority of our young charges. These parents tell us that their kids are already working hard, they study, do their homework, revision, so why isn't it translating into better grades? Quite sad, and frustrating to be in that kind of situation for a student, isn't it? All that hard work not paying off?

For this bunch of kids we had to advise them on stress management. They need rest, exercise, and a good night's sleep. They need to learn how to handle their pressure and personal expectations. The parents we talked to were nice, agreeing with us that their kids were too anxious, lacking the confidence they need to handle their exams without panic. And at the same time, not slack off. It's a delicate balancing game: breathe, breathe...

Well, here's another hat we gotta learn to wear. This one's a little less straightforward than the old Drill Sergeant one. Guess we'll just have to keep the latter only for special occasions from now on.

Hair-raising tale

Over the past weekend, a number of us staff independently got haircuts. The two most severe crops belonged to Wayne and me. Upon questioning, Wayne -- in jest -- claimed his crop was to honour Hair for Hope; to which I replied in all seriousness that my cause was Hope for Hair. True story.

Singapore stresses education

...or does education stress Singapore?

This week Sing Poly asks if our education system is too stressful for our kids. They made a video poll featuring the views of their respondents and included a skit about how kids prepare for their tests. Yep, sure enough, the respondents agree that stress levels are too high for kids while the skit features a zombie ploughing through piles of textbooks that reinforce his zombie state in a vicious cycle.

I admit that the stresses are high here, but I doubt the system has as much to do with it as the methodology by which we attempt to survive the system as we perceive it. By way of analogy, the system is like an active volcano that we have chosen to settle beside because of its fabulously fertile soil conditions. But the stress comes because we attempt to appease our irrational, implacable, unpredictable Volcano God by throwing our young people into it. As far as I know young people, they do not appreciate being sacrificed, but what can they do, right? The volcano is more real than their sad, non-existent lives.

If we're to reduce the stress, it's a lot more realistic to fix how we cope with our neighbour, the Volcano, rather than fix the volcano itself. For one thing, it's never going away and for another, we haven't got the resources BP has to fit a cap over it.

We are still using the study methods that our more scholarly ancestors once used. Actually, only one method: sit down with our textbooks and 'mug', a process that transforms pigment-based information into synapse-activated information. Our parents believe in it because it worked for them, our teachers believe in it because it worked for them too. However, today there is so much mediated information available that is constantly morphing, updating, expiring, renewing that our old methods of acquiring information for personal storage can neither cope with the quantity of it all nor keep up with its rate of change. Even the activity of acquiring information for permanent storage may have become irrelevant anyway, since very little of it can be said to be permanent beyond certain basic fundamentals.

If our tried-and-tested study methodology cannot help us, then it has to go. It's premises were selfish and competitive anyway, accumulating information for oneself to be used only in a specific circumstance -- answering exam questions; useless for anything else. In order to deal with the kind of information flow that we have today, we need a study method that eschews competition in favour of collaboration. Information can no longer be a miserly hoarded commodity but managed like a living currency used for buying, selling, exchanging or otherwise transacting more information, always trading upwards.

Without the urge to hoard, we can rid ourselves of compartmentalization. Rather than being separated out of our normal daily experience as 'study' or 'prep' time, our curriculum can become a normal part of our daily conversation and interaction in which we use every opportunity to learn (and share!) something new.

How is this supposed to reduce exam stress? If curriculum can become currency, if content can become conversation, we will see exam questions as just another opportunity to start a discussion thread, a normal part of our daily existence (despite the difference in the medium of expression), and not some alien inevitability that exists to test our survival skills from time to time.

In other words, kids, parents, teachers, I appreciate the dedication you put into studies, but you're doing it wrong. Epic FAIL.

Raining on my parade

Poor Q-tip has the worst luck. We had plans to visit the Marina Barrage, someplace new and dog-friendly to go for walkies. But her stupid owner chose to go to work on Saturday when it was gloriously dry and sunny, and today it just raining cats and dogs.

*remains grouchy the rest of the day

Essay leverage

Currently training this batch of kids to be less topic conscious so that if they encounter a list of essay questions that ask about unfamiliar subject matter, they won't panic, talk nonsense and die. I believe that the question provides its own answer, so any question is equally do-able, given a reasonable amount of general (not topical) knowledge.

The strategy is to remove the pressure on the kid to cook up an arbitrary answer to the least scary-looking question, but instead simply work on expanding any question of choice to essay-length, thereby allowing the question to answer itself. I mean, since the question already provides its own energy, it's much more efficient to leverage an answer using that energy rather than having to generate a whole new energy from scratch to come up with an answer by ourselves. And, it's far better for the question to drive the content rather than have the content force itself upon the question -- the latter being the mindset that I'm actively battling since it's the usual way of approaching essays around here.

Have I had any success with this approach? I've had a cursory look at the latest set of essays my tutorial groups have turned in for grading. There doesn't seem to be any particular question that is a common favourite, which usually happens when the kids home in on one or two topically "safe" questions. Instead, I'm looking at a broad range of questions with different topic foci, different question types.

The randomness of distribution tells me the kids are more comfortable in choosing questions. Maybe they're taking greater risks than they have before, but the fact that they are now branching out and no longer bunching up is a sign -- they are taking their first steps towards intellectual freedom.

Mark to reward, not punish

I'm not sure if non-GP tutors can understand this, but I'm irritated that some of my colleagues are requesting sample essay outlines as aids to grading the kids' essays for this week's common test. For the info of non-GP tutors, such outlines contain a list of possible points that a student might raise in response to his or her chosen question. 12 questions on the test paper means 12 separate lists of open possibilities.

I hesitate to provide such a dubious thing because knowing us, we will use it to hunt down points that do not appear in the students' essays and penalize them for their omissions. The more missing points, the more their grade slides until we hit the basement. Another failure. Then we wonder why we have so many casualties and are aghast as we count up the number of kids we need to remedy.

Cambridge tells us that our grading philosophy should be to reward students for what they do offer, and not punish them for what they miss. That means every essay needs to be taken on its own merit without a comparison to an ideal. While we are grading, we are looking out for logical structures, supporting reasons, consistency of argument and, broadly, relevance to the question. When we do see evidence of such argumentative skill, we add to the score until we can add no more

This does not mean that the essay will automatically pass, but it does mean that we are prepared to listen to each student, inasmuch as we want them to listen to us. 'Marking schemes' prejudice us in that students who don't say what we want to hear must be wrong and therefore failed.

I think that on the whole, we really have a misconception of what failure is. We think of the essay as a soccer game. Scoring points is like scoring goals while losing the game means not scoring (assuming that the non-existent opponent has scored more goals and has therefore beaten the essay writer). To us, that translates as win = pass, lose = fail. But in truth, winning and losing are part of the same game. We win some, we lose some, but the important thing is that we continue to play because we can.

Failing a GP essay is possible, but not for the reason of 'losing' the game. Failure is equivalent to being disqualified in a match for infringing the rules. Why kids fail is because they don't know how to play the game. They don't know where the goalposts are. They don't know where the out-of-bounds lines are. They don't know what's a fair play and what isn't. So failure isn't a failure to raise the right points, it means the rules and objectives of the game are not clear to them.

Content may mean the difference between a kick-about between friends and an EPL match. Regardless, the scoreline doesn't really matter as long as everyone plays to the same rules, aims at the right goals, and stays within the agreed-to boundaries. If our kids can do that, they don't deserve to fail. So let's not prejudice ourselves by watching the scoreboard when we should be enjoying the game instead.

Can't see the forest for the trees

Went into the forest to meet our NParks rep for a hands-on session of ecological conservation, and our community service for the year.

Our job was to clear "foreign" plants that have taken root all over our previously pristine tropical rainforest and are now competing with the indigenous species for the same resources.

Wielding cangkuls we trudged through mud and soil to hack away at the ground, creating lots more mud and soil, this time of the airborne variety. Dig deep enough holes, break a few supporting roots, and the offending foreigners no longer have the will to stay in the ground.

Thus, we uprooted quite a few stubborn unwelcome invaders. But it was an intense afternoon workout doing so. Drenched in sweat, caked in mud, ant-bitten, and for all we did, we only cleared just a tiny, tiny section of our entire nature reserve.

Like it or not, it looks like the foreigners are here to stay. And no, that's not intended as a metaphor for any outstanding local issue commonly discussed in kopitiams and ST Forum pages. So don't anyhow quote me, ok?

Wavve hello!

Dinner at Wavve, a grill & chill place at the spanking new Orange Tee Building. I never even noticed it being built, yet there it was. The occasion was a birthday for whom the Guest of Honour arrived round about the time we were contemplating our dessert options. Traffic's dreadful when you're in a hurry.

Good opportunity to indulge the inner carnivore. My lamb rack went minimal on the greens (the leaf I accidentally dropped on my shirt counted as a significant loss) but the chunks of lamb on each of the three bones were decently substantial. It was all I could do to avoid gripping the bones in my clawed digits and rending flesh with my canines. But I was with polite company, so it was a civilized application of cutlery as usual. June gave me half her sirloin too, making a happy predator for the evening.

Our table went for almost the whole range of desserts to share. The creme brulee, profiteroles and tiramisu made their rounds... no, wait, the creme brulee was mine exclusively, ha ha! The desserts were light, not too sweet, the way we like.

Price wise it's ok for a finer-than-usual once-in-a-while meal. $70 paid for my share of birthday boy and his date's dinners as well as fully for June's and mine. Not bad.

Parenting according to Gru

Parenting, according to Gru, is a simple process. Take care of basic needs: "food, water, poo poo & pee pee". Take care of intellectual needs: basic education (dance class). Take care of higher needs: recreation and emotional bonding. Despite himself, he gets the childcare right -- a textbook Hierarchy of Needs met to Maslow's specifications.

Gru has no plans "for their good". On the contrary, his plans are entirely self-serving. His adopted orphans are simply a means to an end. Their safety and well-being are taken at the basic minimum standards, knowing that he can dispose of them when they have fulfilled his requirements of them. How heinous.

Why do we face a declining fertility rate in our country and in many other developed nations around the world? Because we want to be good parents. Gru is a monster in his regard for childcare principles, but he's got three kids while the rest of us have... significantly less.

As good parents, we place our kids first above all, ourselves included. We plan far ahead into their future, shape them according to what we have determined is best for them, and raise them like we're never going to let them go. We know about hygiene and health, about discipline do's and don't's, about child psychology and labels like ADHD and OCD which we identify in children and lament how we have failed them somewhere, somehow.

Our modern model of childcare looks really good. We've taken care of every aspect of child-rearing that practically guarantees healthy, happy kids that will grow into healthy, happy adults. Now, if only we had some kids to work our plans on.

Throwing punches

Sully has a new kind of training to add to my repertoire: boxing. Today I learned the basic movements to maintain a stable base from which to launch my deadly arsenal of jabs and crosses. I'd always thought I was a good scrapper, but when put to the test today my technique left much to be desired. Stance too easily sent off-balance; lax defending exposes my glass jaw to counter-attack; difficulty stringing jab-cross-duck combos together being too anxious to punch and not anxious enough to duck, or getting my limbs all tangled up due to a lack of coordination. What a pushover I'd be in a real fight, despite my illusions to the contrary. Lots more training to be done still.

RHD skit

The latest batch of Drama Club kids have taken the reins. Their first official performance was a short skit for Racial Harmony Day. They had only one week to script, rehearse and polish, but they were all gung-ho go-for-it. We seldom see this kind of enthusiasm, so we let them run with it.

First rehearsal, we had a basic outline. The characters were caricatures of our national ethnic stereotypes, the plot was thin, the resolution fuzzy at best. Definitely still needed a lot of work before it could be ready for show.

During rehearsal, my biggest worry was that the stereotypes would stand out stronger than the theme we had been commissioned to convey. True enough (as I hear from the grapevine), the kids played it for laughs, going over-the-top with their characters -- Chinese boy in particular -- resulting in a greatly mixed reaction from the audience. The kids in the audience seemed somewhat tickled, but the staff were aghast by the colour of the language used onstage, the resolution was still vague and inconclusive.

Great learning opportunity for our little aspiring artists: improv is fantastic for rehearsals because it always adds new dimensions to the development of a scene, character or plot; but there is no place for ad libbing during the performance of a commissioned piece.

Like it or not, the sponsor does not care for artistic licence or pointless, raucous comedy. The sponsor wants a specific message to get through to the audience, that's all. At least, don't do anything to embarrass the sponsor by association. Fail to deliver and face the curtailment of funding or even a lawsuit. We're lucky such consequences are not looking for us as a result of this performance.

Again, from what I hear, the audience did learn something from our performance: Chinese boy's ad libbed expletive-laden phraseology. Which wasn't exceptionally vulgar, but still, not the kind of language to use in polite company.

Sigh. They've only just started ,and already so much damage we need to get under control.

Wake of a stranger

Attended the wake of a stranger. We didn't know her personally, but she was a fellow volunteer at Gift of Love who passed away suddenly over the last couple of days. From what we've been hearing, Mdm W Wong was there twice to three times a week cooking for the residents, shuttling the sisters around on their errands and driving the ambulance as the need arose. The hole she has left behind is a big one to fill.

But as the Father who led this morning's service did not present a eulogy, neither will I. Instead, like him, I will present my own homily. The circumstances surrounding Mdm W's passing were as such: she'd been complaining of severe pains in her stomach for some time, though she put off seeking medical advice. When the pain finally became unbearable, it was too late. As I understand the story, appendicitis killed her. Her passing was all the more tragic as it might have been avoided with a simple medical procedure, had she sought attention early enough.

Mdm W really did give her all to follow the command of "love your neighbour...", and if more of us did likewise, that could help us solve  a lot of our human social problems. But we also need to remember the follow up to this Mosaic injunction, "... as yourself" (Lev 19:18). Yes, it's good to place other's needs before our own, but if we aren't feeling well, we should love ourselves too, and break off helping others at least long enough to find out what's wrong first, fix the problem, then go back and continue helping others.

We people need to be needed. Being able to lend a hand, or to be depended upon for one thing or another is an uplifting experience, one we wish to continue experiencing. Whether it's bringing food to old folks or consulting worried students after class, it feels good to be able to fill that need and contribute to another person's well-being. But as volunteers and teachers, let's also be mindful of our physical and psychological health, and step back for a while as and when we are tired or sick. There will always be someone else that can fill in for us, so the choice is ours: do we want our position filled temporarily, or permanently?

If we build it, they will come (eventually)

Quite a large group of soccer legends from past days of glory showed up on our campus field for a game. It was reminiscent of 'Field of Dreams', though it took more than three decades after we had built it for them to come. Some names like Abbas, Rafi and Tong Hai were familiar as were their faces, but others like Samad, Rajagopal and T Pathma had greyed beyond recognition, except to the more senior of us.

Greyed out or not, the old boys could still pull off an exciting match. Ok, not the "rah rah" kind but the they've-still-got-the-moves kind. Attacking football all the way, though admittedly it was this end that got attacked the most.

Abbas of the Shiny Pate put in more than his fair share of goals. Here he casually taps in #2 with more to follow. I can't believe he was found guilty of "match fixing" back in those days. The way he played, he was too hungry to let any goal opportunity pass him by. Can you say, "McCarthy witch hunt"?

Our campus team comprising staff and students got to play a half against the All-Stars' not-so-senior side. It'll be a day they will long remember with pride. Tales will pass on to the next generation how grandpa shared a game with the National team, some of whom won the M-League and M-Cup, iconic moments in our local sporting history.

Our campus team didn't fare too badly though the action was still camped mostly in our half. 

Wayne will never forget this moment when his crush crash with Rafi resulted in the two having a brief roll in the grass together. Wayne may never shower again.

And there goes the final whistle. The score... er, was anyone keeping track? Guess the biggest winner was our campus team for just having played the game.

Thanks for the game, All-Stars! Let's do it again sometime!

And one more item of note: though the duck appeared serenely gliding over the water, few would have seen the duck's feet furiously paddling like mad to keep it afloat. But that isn't really my story to tell...

Who can it be knocking at my door?

The TV was too loud to ignore the ringing of my doorbell. I'd just discovered a slew of new HD channels on cable and was fully enjoying the full benefits of digital media when the interruption occurred. Without a chance to pretend no one was home, I had to go see who was calling.

As usual, another salesman-type, this one purporting to represent the Community Chest collecting funds for wheelchairs for the disabled. It all looked quite legitimate, with serialized receipts and the name of the Community Chest in bold on some small print of a document he was showing me through my firmly barred front gate. Does the Community Chest really come around door-to-door soliciting donations? Do they afterwards make the donor write their particulars down on a form so that an "official" receipt can be sent later?

There were too many unanswerable questions and my closed mind was not prepared to accept long explanations from an itinerant supplicant outside my door -- "Family Guy" (in HD; but there isn't any real point to watch an animated series in HD, is there?) was on and I really wanted to get back to my sofa ASAP. Plus, being recently suspicious of charity appeals, having been bilked of my goodwill once too often, I politely declined and sent him on his way.

But what if his case was a genuine one? What if I had turned away an opportunity to help someone who really needed it? I find it so difficult to tell on a case-by-case basis any more and I am no longer as eager as I was to give the benefit of the doubt now. I blame society.

Don't try this at home

Have you heard Corrine May's new song in celebration of NDP 2010? It's called "Song for Singapore" and May renders it beautifully in the vid above.

But as an NDP song, I'm afraid tone-deaf people like me can't sing along. Though the lyrics are cliched familiar enough for a heartlander (and the avid Sesame Street viewer) to identify with, the rhythms and melody are difficult to follow unless you are as talented as she is.

National propaganda songs are best composed with tribally basic repetitive beats you can count with the fingers on one Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle hand. They are akin to nursery rhymes that stick in your head and irritate you until you sing them aloud to get them out of your system. They are so basic you can sing them out of tune and no one would even notice. Thus, they are memorable even against a rational citizen's wishes and are hence iconic.

May's new song, sadly, should come with a warning label: "This propaganda tool contains extreme euphony and should only be performed by a trained professional. Kids, don't try it at home."