Future workforce

The kids have made it abundantly clear that the "future" I am supposed to be preparing them for is not the workforce of the future but to force them to work towards their Promotional Exams. Point taken.

The weak must go

It's been a while since I handled CT-ship solo. So when I fielded complaints over this kid or the other's poor aptitude for this or that other subject at my desk this afternoon, concluding in a request for me to discuss the dropping of subjects with the students in question, my response wasn't particularly wholehearted.

The subject I teach is compulsory for all students. I don't have the luxury of rejecting kids from my class if they display poor aptitude, or even attitude. Regardless of performance in class or their state of preparedness, when the time comes they will all sit for the final exam anyway. So pardon me for not enthusiastically assisting you in culling your flock to your satisfaction.

Separated at birth?

Is it just me, or does ex-Grey Warden, Anders, a generally nice guy healer turned mage-resistance terrorist abomination who commits a jaw-dropping atrocity at the end of Dragon Age 2 bear an eerie resemblance to...

Anders Breivik, self-styled terrorist who committed an equally mind-blowing atrocity in Norway over the weekend?

The foreign legion

Say what you want about the "foreign" legion that took down Malaysia 5-3 last night. While some of us lament our dependence on imported players, I'm looking at our home-grown variety of youngsters and wondering how many of their parents would let them pursue careers as professional athletes. It's great to have a world-class soccer team, locally born and bred, clawing our way up the World Cup rankings... as long as it doesn't involve my boy-boy. He has to stay out of the sun and study to be a lawyer.

Edit 01:
Wait! I stand corrected! Well done local kids (at least they look local in the photo) for winning Tchoukball World Youth gold! Did your parents know you went to Austria?

Going round and round

It's quite apt to describe people as moving around in social circles. Different people are like different cosmic bodies. Some people are like stars -- bright, energy powerhouses around whom other people cluster and orbit as planets and planetesimals. A few are like comets, periodically drawn towards a solar cluster, but containing so much kinetic energy they don't fall in lock-step within the planetary accretion. Instead, they chart their own eccentric paths between these gravitational wells and long, cold stretches of empty space.

Model essay: Hosting international events

Haven't written a 'model essay' for a while. It shows. The following essay responds to the question, 'Hosting large-scale international events always benefits the host country. Do you agree?' Click here.

Now for a little self critique:

Essay was planned in about 5 minutes, leaving 85 minutes to write and proofread. No Googling or other reference materials available, so writing took place under near-exam conditions. My medium was an offline laptop. The uploaded essay is without further editing than was allowed within the time limit.

Observations:
Overshot the word limit by 200+ words. I could have applied better word economy, but the words wouldn't come under exam pressure. Thus, some repetition of stock phrases. I was gunning for the time limit, not lexical eloquence, that's why.
The examples are limited 'cos they were dredged up from my Swiss cheese memory (no Googling). Some examples are clearly recycled from previous examples! And I'm sure some of my facts are patently wrong (terrorists struck at the Munich Olympics, not Montreal!). No specificity of dates either. I was recalling events by location, not by year which is the more usual thing to do. I took a chance on naming white elephant stadia -- I have no idea about their current status, but I had to substantiate my point somehow and hoped the reader would take my word for it.
Pacing is ploddy, and there are places where it is obvious that I couldn't think of the exact words to use, so I used whatever worked at the time.

Feel free to add to the list...

Derek + Brea

This is my programme for the morning:

0630 feed animals at M-i-L's
0700 feed animals at  home
0725 leave for office (overtime is a killer)
0735 remember it's Brea's wedding and I promised to give my folks a ride... make U-turn
0740 pit-stop at McD's for fillet o' fish and coffee
0810 arrive home and change into something more presentable
0900 arrive at folks' place and wait for them to change into something more presentable
0925 depart for wedding
1000 arrive at Fabrika and wait for bride to make an appearance

1030 Brea takes a walk down the aisle
1032 Service commences.
1045 Pastor irritates me with too many anecdotes based on over-personal impressions and observations of the happy couple -- individually and collectively. Remind me never to get married by a President who is also my best friend and bosom buddy. If it was a traditional Canadian roast, I might have enjoyed it better, but this was just ladling saccharine syrup over honey. *shudders

1120 It's official! After a suitable pause, with no one in the audience objecting to the union; appropriate vows having been taken, legal documents signed; and having smooched twice for good measure, the couple walk back up the aisle as Mr and Mrs.
1130 Stuff face with dainty finger food reception.

My day isn't over. Dinner is yet to follow. Collecting folks at 1800, cocktails commence at 1900.

EQ settings

Found the graphic equalizer (EQ) settings on the iPod. Great! Something new to play with!

This is me pre-EQ: -_-
With Vocal Boost: :p
With Bass Boost: XD

The council has unanimously voted to keep Bass Boost for perpetuity. This session is now adjourned.

Intermission

A snapshot of a rainbow over a construction site taken by the iPod Touch camera. It's something pretty to look at while awaiting my next post. What is it about this year that makes me feel so busy all the time? As I take a short break here, I can list with my fingers the things still in my Pending tray... Ah well, back to work!

Running out of pockets

Just when I was contemplating replacing my aging iPod Mini (it's still good, btw, but its 4gb capacity can't hold many more songs), I get an unexpected windfall. This is one instance of re-gifting I have no complaints about. June received a corporate gift package commemorating a significant anniversary milestone. She kept the shopping vouchers that she wanted, and gave me the iPod Touch she didn't. Hmm... I'm running out of pockets to carry around all my techie stuff. It's a happy problem. :D

Dainty delectables

Traditional high tea at the Fullerton courtyard. Everything on the three-tier tray (above) is refillable, free-flow of a large variety of Twinings tea by the pot (standard variations of coffee is also an option), and scones with strawberry jam and clotted cream on the side. Service here is warm and attentive. To maximize the afternoon, bring along a little light reading, or a chatty friend.

Chilli crab first-timers

Seems our fame for entertaining foreign dignitaries has spread. June spent the day camwhoring and shopping with her colleagues visiting from Indonesia. I provided the transport and the mopping up procedures at dinnertime. Yums!

Taste of a memory

Took a chance on a flyer I found stuck between M2's wiper and windscreen advertising a $7.90 set lunch at J's Bar and Grill.

Yes, I seriously needed a new place to eat at. Sadly, the place was dark and empty, with me as the only customer at lunchtime.

The set lunch offer was supposedly for any main course, but today it only applied to the beef gumbo (left). The set came with a starter onion soup which was a bit watery, but it was freshly made in the kitchen and not some canned cream of nonsense.

The gumbo was a nice surprise. The taste and texture reminded me of the vegetarian chilli I was fond of while I was a poor and starving student at Calumet College. It was the yardstick I measure all vegetable soups by -- not that it was exceptionally delectable, but that it was truly comfort food for a great price. It's a taste I've been looking for, but for many years haven't been able to find... until now.

Minus the beef bits floating around, this gumbo comes closest to a fading memory of some very good times.

Btw, Calumet calls it a chilli, but there're no hot peppers spicing it up. Instead, we help ourselves to the Tabasco sauce on the condiment shelf and drip to taste.

Pebbles, the yob

Turns out Pebbles is quite the soccer fan. The small, fast movements on screen during the long-shots held his attention much better than the close-ups; but other programmes on TV hold no fascination for him. If he is a soccer fan, though, he's more like a United yob, a.k.a. soccer hooligan. We hesitate to introduce him to other potential adopters because he's begun to show his true colours as a violent, attack-anything-that-moves psychopath. All claws and teeth, maybe he needs yet another name change -- how about "Sabertooth"? We're trying to train him out of his volatile tendencies: that is, make a loud noise (other than "ouch!") to startle him whenever he takes a chomp at our exposed extremities. Hope that will work, or else we'll spray him with a faceful of atomized water if things escalate. As a kitten, he's not causing us too much damage, but he needs to be better behaved before he gets any bigger. Bad boy!

Kitty walkies

Breakfast at Casa Verde, Botanic Gardens, with Q-tip, Mimi -- and Pebbles! Not often you get to see a cat on a leash, but since he's quite an outdoorsy type, it's best to make sure we know where he is at all times. The morning meal is prior to Mimi's ultrasound scan. The results are quite worrying. They show that she has a seriously unhealthy liver and gall bladder. Could be old age or something less benign. But given her age and existing heart condition, we're not prepared to risk a biopsy to find out. Our strategy for the moment is to keep her relatively pain-free while boosting her system with Casey's prescribed tonics until our options become more urgent.

Bonded

I have just signed my life away for the next six years. The Defence Science people have offered a scholarship to youngest cousin and I agreed to co-sign his surety. The bond is for a cool half-mil between us guarantors! A staggering sum, for sure!

I did it because family took a chance and co-signed for me when I went into Education, and now I'm passing on the goodwill to the next in line. He's not a little boy any longer, but a full-grown adult; though it's hard for me to see that as fact. Good luck, kid!

A question of balance

GP essays are terribly boring to grade. They are an instant remedy for insomnia, and since I don't suffer from insomnia, I've become narcoleptic while trying desperately to finish my grading quota for the term.

The silver lining is that I now know why GP essays are boring: the kids invariably emphasize balance over argument. Balance is important -- it distinguishes a reasonable argument from that of a deranged, paranoid lunatic. But when balance becomes the first priority in an essay the result is either a nil response or a stilted response to the question.

Let's illustrate the situation numerically:

For an argumentative point, we'll assign a value of 1. The counter-point will then have a value of -1.

In perfectly balanced essays, we get 1 + (-1) = 0 => nil response.

In slightly better essays, we get 1 + (-1) + 1 (the refutation of the counter-point) = 1 => distracted response in which the counter-point has done nothing to advance the argument, but rather has simply thrown it off-track before the refutation contrives to 'rescue' the argument from becoming a nil response.

Both responses are extremely boring. The first (type 0) argument avoids answering the question, thus wasting my time reading it for no payoff. The second (type 1) argument wastes my time reading a counter-point that has no bearing on the argument in the first place. In either case, the reader (me) gains nothing new, nothing fresh, nothing insightful. *goes into mental shutdown mode...

So, what kind of essays DO we like to read? Every essay question has a subject and at least one context. Let's assign a numeric value of 1 to each:

1(subject) + 1(context) = 2

2 is an interesting answer because it's a response that does not self-negate, and it does not end predictably exactly where it started. 2 is insightful and surprising because it's a combination of many potential variables that can be put together in many different ways. 2 is new information where 0 and 1 are not.

See kids (and teachers!)? Balance is over-rated!

A mystery and a revelation

Who left a pool of blood in M-i-L's balcony? None of the human residents in the house claimed responsibility for it, so it had to be one of the two non-human residents: Mimi or Pebbles. Because neither of them could protest their innocence, May and I took them to be professionally examined by Doc Casey.

On examining the mopped up blood which we also brought with us in a plastic baggie, Casey could confirm that it was indeed blood, and not some similar-looking agent. But he found neither gaping wound nor internal trauma on either of our two pets. That amount of blood loss would have rendered Pebbles dead if it were hers, or something unusual would have shown up on Mimi's x-ray. In any case, both were behaving quite normally with no sign of pain or even discomfort, anyway.

So the mystery of the pool of blood as yet remains unsolved. ???

But because of Pebble's visit with Casey, we learned something new about her: he's a boy! Boy cat #3. Oh, dear!

New resident

More and more, M-i-L is relinquishing responsibility for Pebbles (renamed from Grimm). Pebbles is getting familiar with Maui who seems quite tolerant of her presence now.

She's still working on getting the kinks out of her relationship to Kaiser, though.

No diva policy

Lady in the ST Forum page talks sense in her critique of our schools' current operating philosophy:

"This mindset of running schools as businesses, where results are the bottom-line objective, and the push for medals makes sportsmanship an unimportant secondary trait, has resulted in educators, schools, as well as parents stressing and promoting results at the expense of other areas of development that are just as important, if not more so, in building a gracious, progressive and resilient society."

I don't know about the "gracious, progressive and resilient society", but even in subjects that are designed for the students to learn from their own failures (yes, honey, there ARE such subjects in school) we won't allow them to fail because we are always there to supervise and guide them, even when the learning is meant to be done independently. Hence, apart from what we've indoctrinated them with, they haven't really learned much else by the time they graduate.

Of course, I'm talking about things I have no control over. But while I do have control over the NYeDC, even though we participate in the bi-annual SYF (Drama), our policy is to never take in students applying under the Direct School Admission (DSA) programme -- that is, students applying for school admission on the grounds of their talent in a particular niche the school seeks to compete in. Think "sports scholarship", in US terms.

The NYeDC is open to all comers, regardless of "talent" or experience. We emphasize ensemble theatre, which requires teamwork from all cast and crew throughout the pre- to post- production phases. As such, there is no need for any "star" performers with DSA credentials. Every member gets quality training and a fair chance to audition for roles in our productions. Fast learners or more experienced members contribute to the training of their fellow members and may opt to direct their own performances if they want to push themselves.

NYeDC's goals are bigger than just the award we compete for. We're training a group of young people with a passion for and knowledge of theatre; and whether as future performers or an audience, they will keep the art of the theatre alive and relevant in our society.