We are one tonight

Really? Is that for me? Really???

How the heck am I supposed to blow that out? I don't got no lips!

Oh, very well... say grace first.

Ooh... sensitive!

So much drama, being in the Drama Club. One misspoken word over the public address system during morning announcements by one nervous announcer, and the Tech Union is all up in arms against us claiming besmirched honour and the right to satisfaction.

Note to club members: do not EVER say anything that might be construed as dissin' the equipment while holding a 'live' mike. The techs will take it as a personal affront to their profession and will sue for libel or defamation and seek punitive damages for their bruised egos.

Game face on. Time to soothe some ruffled feathers. Perhaps bringing along a sacrificial scapegoat or two might help, though maybe with things this delicate only an offering of gold, frankincense and myrrh would suffice.

Not my job

Sometimes I have to ask my kids if they are working to learn or learning to work? Work is inevitable, but the approach to the work makes all the difference. There is also no doubt that the kids are all hard working individuals, but I wonder if they are only capable of working within very narrowly defined parameters, beyond which they will unionize and go on strike.

While they don't walk out of class with their feet, from their blank stares we can tell that any problem we set for them is assumed to be pre-solved and they'll hang back and wait for an answer to appear rather than try tackle it on their own. If an activity does not seem directly related to The Exam, it's beyond their job scope, no thanks, pass. "Can I write an essay instead?" ... followed by protests of their lack of creativity, can't do this, can't do that...

When we do focus on exam-related material, they work a lot more diligently; but they're tired, bored and go with the attitude of doing the job just to get it out of the in-tray and move to the next item on the daily checklist. To them, that's a good, honest day's work.

There doesn't seem to be any spark of learning excitement, no sense of adventure or exploration, no willingness to be creative. So here we are at a dilemma: the kids resent school because it's no fun for them, it's regimented and narrowly-focused, and enforces conformity; but try to offer a different kind of learning experience and they worry they won't pass (or ace) the exams -- their raison d'etre for being in school.

I don't think this situation is confined to any particular school system, however. I daresay this is the case regardless of where the school is located on the global map. It's clearly the case in Asia, developing nations are grateful for any kind of education they can get, and since the US is currently focused on getting its grades up, they're pretty much facing the same problem on their education frontlines.

Perhaps it's time to acknowledge that formal schooling has its limitations. We train kids to be cubicle workers, and maybe I should come to terms with that. It's not too bad, being in the rank-and-file. The job may be robotic and routine, but it puts food on the table. That's all anyone can really ask for in life. Anything more is just cherries and whipped cream, which some will undoubtedly get once they leave school and forge a life of their own. But that's not my job.

Forum facepalm

ST Forum editor is scraping the bottom of the slow-news barrel today:

On the issue of supermarket plastic bag waste reduction:

Amy (not my friend, Amy) takes issue with our policies "encouraging public instead of private transport", saying that it's not practical to carry groceries in anything other than supermarket plastic bags in buses and trains;
Henry asks how to "get rid of leftover food daily" without them;
Michael will miss them when he is "chucking... rubbish";
and Mr Wang is not concerned about the lack of biodegradability because we incinerate our garbage instead of bury it.

Which part of "waste management" do these people not understand?
Amy: encouraging public transport over private reduces our society's overall carbon footprint. No point conserving in one place only to make waste elsewhere.
Henry: cook less food daily and reduce your leftover problem. Eat everything, waste less.
Michael: reduce consumption, chuck less rubbish.
Mr Wang: it is SO much better to breathe in incinerated plastic toxins right now than wait for it to biodegrade over hundreds of years, isn't it?

About the incident of the cat being set on fire over it's own waste management practices:
Mr Lee wants to know why the cat's owner allowed it to poop at a place where it was tempting for the perp to flame the feline literally.

Um, I have no answer to the question as cat owners should keep a sandbox at home for the cat's use. But, Mr Lee, where's your sense of proportion? Just because cat poops on the guy's doorstep does not give him licence to turn fluffy into a flambe, as hilariously as that might be portrayed in a funny movie. Two wrongs do not make a right.

Finally, representing the dregs that have leaked out of the barrel and is currently staining the floor is Mr Yeo, who jumped at an early-bird discount on F1 tix and is now screaming blue murder because he found out that there were other avenues that offered an even better price on the same tix. He is not asking for redress -- he actually shrilled his way into cancelling his initial purchase in order to make a new purchase at the lower price. His complaint is that the organizers should have been "transparent" about which was the best offer in the first place.

Mr Yeo, it is the vendor's prerogative to offer a price and the buyer's responsibility to do the shopping. That's called "due diligence". The vendor gave in to you even though you had no legal claim, and for that Singapore GP gets a thumbs up from me. On the other hand, Mr Yeo has proven that early birds are indeed what they say they are. What do early birds say, Mr Yeo? ... Yes, that's what I thought.

Fluffy handful

On our way to lunch, Elim and I found this little fella casually lounging on a step just outside the college side-gate. As she and I both already have a menagerie at home, we had to be hard-hearted and say 'no' to a new addition to our respective families. Fortunately, this furball looked cute and knew how to flirt with passers-by. A bunch of our kids had gathered around and a few were discussing their adoption options out loud. Hope he (or she?) finds a good home with one of them.

Making 'Impressions': the countdown begins

The kids are now rehearsing in costume and the set has also arrived. It's between two to three weeks to curtain and though the show is still a little slow in coming together for my liking, the progress has been concrete. The props and costumes teams have done their work amazingly quickly, the publicity team has delivered the promo banner and tickets are ready for sale. In situ rehearsal went reasonably well today, backstage focused and on task, though they were taking a while to get oriented to the performance space.

It's good to know that at this point we only need concern ourselves with fine tuning. We are far from being ready, however -- the second play in our double-bill still has quite some work to go yet. We're still facing many more late nights, but I believe they're going to be productive instead of the usual hair-tearing experiences of previous years. And now... a few rehearsal stills:

I don't know why, but the name 'Spike' comes to mind

Sometimes, I worry about the boy

It's not a fix. It's a prescription.

*sings "With a hand on my chest, what have I here?"

Ooh... intense.

Cure for insomnia

Here's a first: falling asleep seated upright on my office chair at my study desk... overnight.

Welcome to Term 2, when the co-curricula work of producing theatre in the evening coincides with the regular curriculum in the morning. At this time of year, both staff and kids -- given any surface at the appropriate height -- would rest their heads, shut eyes, gape jaw, loll tongue and drip a puddle on the laminate.

Thank God I love my job. *slouches off to fetch mop.

Snail hunter

Spent an afternoon with friends wading through lichen-encrusted rocks in shin-deep water clearing invasive apple snails from what has become something like a river flowing through Bishan Park.

Instead of uprooting trees, as we usually do every year as part of our collaboration with NParks helping to maintain our natural reserves, this year it's snails. Too many, and non-native to our local environment, they've become a pest and we have to [I don't really want to know what their eventual fate is] but our job was to remove them from their unnatural habitat by collecting as many of them as our buckets would hold before dumping them into a black trash bag... and then who knows what after that?

I was initially reluctant to go snail-picking on the principle that I don't harm animals, but the apple snail website even tells us that they shouldn't have been released back into the wild in the first place. Inert and innocuous as they look, they are still clogging up the waterways and generally messing up the existing ecosystem as they have no natural predators to keep their numbers viable.

#asgoodanexcuseasitgets

Thoughts ascending

Overheard conversation this morning...
J and M are discussing how the kids seem to stratify into higher level critical thinkers, mid-level thinkers, and an unfortunate bottom few for whom higher-order thinking seems to fly far above their heads. Then out of the blue, the following improvised dialogue emerges:

J: Me hungry.
M: That's the lizard brain functioning.
J: Me want eat meat!
M: That's the brain starting to make rudimentary decisions.
J: Meat taste good!
M: Now the brain is making value judgments.
J: Me think me have headache!
M: Ah, now you're thinking about thinking. Your brain is becoming metacognitive.
J: That just blows my mind!
M: And now you're able to appreciate aesthetics and abstractions.

J and M dissolve into laughing fits at that point (yes, GP tutors have a very strange sense of humour), but I'd like to add the next line to the conversation, just to round things out:

J: Wow! Wait till I tell mommy!
M: And now you're finally living outside of yourself! Sharing information is probably the highest level thinking ability of all.

So, is it true that each of us maxes out at a particular intellectual potential, or are all of us capable of thinking more than a penny's worth of thoughts?

Just what the chef ordered

New fave eating place for Japanese: Senki. Have heard of places where the thing to do is sit at the bar, shut up and let the chef serve whatever he feels like serving, and finally got to experience what that kind of service is like.

First to arrive was a sashimi platter featuring the usual salmon, tuna, yellowtail, swordfish and sweet shrimp, and also a hunk of salmon belly, fresh as anything. Then the dishes kept coming in: baby tako; agadeshi tofu; deep fried mackerel and a salmon cheek (gotta love the fish oil flavours these give off); a plate of dragon maki (house specialty made with mango, avacado and crispy prawns); shrimp and sweet potato tempura; tuna belly sushi lightly fried in oil (awesome!); bean sprouts fried in garlic; mango salad on the side. Sake we turned down, opting for green tea which I was really grateful for as it was the perfect counter to all the richness of the food.

I believe that was it, but shared among only three -- we had lunch company -- it took quite some effort to finish everything placed in front of us. So. much. good. stuff. Lunch company was a bit formal, hence the lack of pictures which would have brightened up this entry gorgeously. You'll just have to take my word for it.

Cost? Since lunch company paid, I assume we went with the buffet... though he said the chef reserves the best stuff for regular customers like himself.

Oh, that special feeling

I wonder if Elgar Lee who wants his citizenship to "feel special" remembers what it really feels like to be at home?

Nobody "feels special" when they're at home. Parents yell at each other and at the kids. Elder siblings yell at younger siblings, then lock themselves up in their rooms to feel unloved and unwanted. Small children are always getting underfoot, grandparents always getting in the way. Home is where the chores are, where we wash our dishes and underwear alike, sometimes in the same sink. How glam is that? We pick up after ourselves if we want a clean, orderly environment to live in. At home we dress down, slouch, burp and f*rt in front of the TV (and each other). That's home: the one place in the world where we can be ourselves and NOT have to be special though the rest of the world demands it from us.

It's home because despite our differences, family is still family. We can fight each other all the time, but whomever else threatens one of us threatens all of us. It's home because without that piece of land or concrete or dirt to stand on, we have nothing else and we have nowhere else to go. In no way does the land need to be special, nor do we have to be special to stand on it. Like it or not, it just happens to be ours. Does Mr Lee have anywhere else to call home? No? Then home is here. How special does he feel now?

If Mr Lee takes issue with having to defend his home, then who else is going to defend it for him? It is sometimes said that because of National Service our boys feel like second-class citizens. O persons of impaired judgement! Only first-class citizens will defend their home because they have something to defend. Second-class citizens either have somewhere else to call "home", or defence doesn't matter to them one way or another because they have no home to begin with.

At home, traditionally, the only ones who should feel special are our visitors. Because they DON'T belong, we treat them with extra care to make them feel welcome. We pay special attention to their comfort, to see to their needs, and defer our needs to suit their convenience. We do what we can to make them leave with a good impression of us. That's basic hospitality, and it's especially important to be hospitable with friends, neighbours and even strangers, when we know we won't last long in a tough neighbourhood without their goodwill. And even if this wasn't the case, it's still how well-bred people treat one another.

But S'pore has come such a long way that we might just have forgotten the realities of home. We feel special now that we have a maid to boss around and do all the things we are supposed to be doing for ourselves at home. We feel special when we have someone at home calling us "Sir" or "Mam", and we can just put our feet on the coffee table and enjoy instant-home, where everything we need or want appears like magic (though we hardly give a toss about the human cost behind the magic). We feel special when our parents put us precious little darlings on a pedestal because they don't know how to keep us quiet otherwise love us so much.

We know we've had it too good for too long when we want to "feel special" in our own home.

The new buzz

After nearly six years of faithful service, my el cheapo no-name-brand PC 4.1 speaker set finally bit the dust. Lately, it developed an incessant buzzing noise that grew louder and louder with repeated use. I tried to live with it for the past couple of months. Sometimes, smacking the boom box helped quiet it somewhat; but now no amount of abuse will keep the peace any longer. The buzz has grown so loud I don't hear what I'm supposed to hear from the speakers any more. It's a goner.

Time to fork out a little disposable income. I settled for this Altec Lansing VS2721. 2.1 speakers means less cabling entanglement in the back. That little gadget in the middle puts volume control on a big handy knob right at my fingertips. Though I feel the sub-woofer doesn't give as solid a bass boost as a comparable Creative model, I'm learning to love hearing all the digital subtleties in my music and games that were swept under the carpet by the old speakers. Voices are clean, as are individual instruments -- and even their relative spatial locations can be imagined if I close my eyes. Battle noises in ME3 come out layered , as if things are happening around me beyond my immediate field of vision. Sweet!

Once again, I'm no audiophile and because of what I was used to listening to, I'm easily impressed by what I have now.

Old salt tale

Hear-tell some of our fellow deck-hands who jumped ship to work on the new luxury liner are jumping off again to parts unknown. Guess t'wasn't quite the Caribbean cruise they thought t'was going to be, eh? I'm not saying this to gloat, however. It's a tough life swabbing decks, no matter which bark ye be sailing. These days, it feels like we're swabbing twice as hard to get the deck only half as clean. T'is enough to make an old salt go, "Arrrgh!"

Cat got your tongue

Time for another interlude accompanied by random cat portraits:

Alert and slightly annoyed at the intrusion of the paparazzi interrupting naptime.

 A scandalously intimate moment caught on camera.

 What? I've done nothing to be ashamed of.

Best budget buffet in town

This looks like a promising start to a great all-you-can-eat dinner to celebrate a very special family occasion. And since it was a really special family event, we weren't sure what to expect when we took a chance on this rather dubiously named "Buffet Town".

Personal prejudice made us think it might have just served cheap food-for-the-mass-market, where quantity counted for more than quality. But the promotional bumph looked good as did the picture on the big poster in Raffles City, and the location was conveniently central; and since we were stuck for other novel places to eat at, we settled for this one.

Good thing we made our reservation a week early! The place was full up even before 1900 hrs. People were already being turned away at the door when our party arrived.

The variety of food choices is probably why so many hopefuls with no reservations were crowding the door waiting for no-shows. There's the fresh seafood section where the oysters in the pix are shucked on-the-spot and put on ice in front of the diner's eager tongs, along with an array of scallops, mussels, prawns, fleshy flower and slipper crabs. Japanese sashimi/sushi, also very fresh, is in the next section. Of course, both sections very popular among the dining crowd.

Today's roast was a gorgeous fatty cut of lamb. No gravy but amply accompanied by mint sauce and horseradish (help yourself, please), washed down with a rich, buttery wild mushroom soup. Because this week's special was salmon, salmon appeared nearly everywhere: as a whole baked salmon, salmon in cream sauce, salmon skewered on a grill, chopped salmon in an avocado cup, and possibly other salmon options that went beyond my notice.

Ignored the pasta, salad, and local street food sections -- and even the chilli crab(!) -- 'cos there's no point filling up on easily available food when there's so many more exotic things to stuff our faces with. There's even a challenge to name a dish that isn't on the menu and it will be prepared to your satisfaction. No that any of us tried. 'cos we sorely lacked imagination at that point.

For dessert the main draw was the pancakes and waffles that went with banana fritters and ice-cream (yay!), but there were also the usual dainties and fruit (nah!). The drinks selection was equally wide, offering both carbonated and non-carbonated pop, soy bean milk... and a kopi tiam for local variations on coffee and tea.

From my party, people are already planning to make a return trip to celebrate upcoming birthdays, and whatever. I'd say Buffet Town offers a selection of good food at decent prices. Above all, the parents are happy with the choice of venue which makes tonight's feasting and revelry a success. :)

A moment of calm at the Colbar

A calendar mix-up sent me scrambling to head office for a meeting. Actually, the calendar was marked correctly; the mix-up was in my own scrambled noggin.

The good thing about head office is its proximity to good lunch places. The Colbar always scores high for ambiance and rustic charm. And good, down-to-earth, Hainanese-English pub-grub.

Understand that food like this is cooked the way Gran would have done it at home, if she were still here with us. Apart for the obvious nostalgia, this food has the taste of simpler times and an easier pace of life. There was even some time left for a quick leisurely read before moving on to more work-a-day concerns.

Making my mark

There must be an award I should be eligible for, considering the marathon marking event I've been engaged in over the last week culminating in a grand marking fiesta on the weekend. Deadline was today. Challenge accepted and met! And already the new stack is sitting on my desk, giving me the eye...

NO. Tonight, I sleep.

Fighting fire with a flamethrower

S'pore's vigilante justice triumphs as a Chinese scholar takes a whole bunch of penalties for a careless, emotional outburst online. In an instance of fighting a matchstick with a flamethrower, there are even a couple of [those whom I shall respectfully address as] commentators who argue that the penalties are not harsh enough, blah, blah.

While it is true that the scholar's online rant was 'improper, insensitive and disrespectful to the community' and did, indeed, '[stir] up considerable unease, distrust and ill-will within and beyond the university community', the latter bit was due in no small part to the overly sensitive, easily-provoked, thin-skinned nature of an insecure yet belligerently vocal community that will not stand for the slightest criticism.

(This is also likely to be the same community that criticizes its government for being unable to take criticism. Hence the community is but a reflection of its government, but anyway...)

It's a double standard that our active netizenry will take any opportunity to post all kinds of unflattering criticism at anything and anyone, but when someone dares to say something against us, the pitchforks and torches all come out to celebrate a good lynch party.

For a slight, we will extract vengeance to the full extent of whichever law we can bring to bear on the case. Because of a misplaced word we will take the opportunity to burn an effigy in protest of our sad, miserable, deprived existence, and to decry all the misfortunes we have been cursed with living on this tiny dot of an island. Too bad if our straw man also happens to be a real human being, albeit with a foul mouth and a quick posting finger.

Who cares about the ISA looking over our shoulders ready to detain us for inciting violence or causing inter-ethnic or religious tensions? The local neighbourhood watch is an even bigger threat to our freedom of online speech.

Too punishing for apples

Recently, the kids were considering the question about the acceptability of implementing extremely harsh punishments (EHPs for short) to combat crime. One of the points I asked them to think about was about how EHPs affect how people function in society.

Read: Steve Wozniak: Apple couldn't emerge in Singapore

According to Woz, the intolerance of 'bad behaviour' (wrt the perception that harsh punishment is the expected result of such) prevents people from realizing their creative potential. As a result, great talents do not arise from among our people, let alone market drivers such as Apple.

The Woz has a point. If a people works to avoid punishment, they are a people that are afraid to take chances, to experiment with new ideas, to "think different" (as was Apple's motto in 2007). Instead, it is in our interest to keep the status quo, and to achieve success by replicating the success stories of our more illustrious predecessors rather than craft success stories of our own. Sadly our best examples of successful people are bureaucrats and property tycoons. Not an apple among the lot.

By the way, it isn't just about EHPs applied legally in a top-down manner, but because that is the system the people have become used to, they apply EHPs horizontally as well. People punish each other for slights, hurts and errors because punishment is the only means of redress that they perceive is open to them. EHPs also apply internally as people punish themselves hard too, for failing to meet their own expectations.

Fear of punishment makes us give up easily, usually at the first sign of failure. Neither Rome nor Apple was built in a day, yet that's what we expect of ourselves.

We have a very safe and secure society, and that has a lot to do with our laws which promise harsh punishment for wrongdoing. But we'll just have to be content that while we live in a sheltered orchard, we'll never grow our own apples.

Driven to austerity

Here I am looking at cars I can't afford. As it stands, what car can I afford? With the COE breaching $80k, the cost of my current ride has more than doubled what I paid for it around three years ago.

And that explains why I'm at the service centre. It's time for M2's mandatory Authority prescribed roadworthiness inspection, and I'm getting the necessary adjustments done beforehand.

So far that's already cost me pre-service inspection, car battery replacement, transport to inspection venue and inspection fees. o_0

And seeing how car prices have gone beyond the pale, I went ahead to extend my warranty for another two years. Better to pay a four-figure sum for replaceable parts now than a six-figure sum for a total replacement in a couple of years' time. Don't know if my math is sound, but I paid it anyway.

And that's not all: another four-figure sum is due on renewing auto insurance for this year, and that's even before they let me pay my road tax.

Looks like another austerity drive is on the cards...