TV withdrawal

Been without a TV for more than two weeks already. Not that I've been trying to prevent further brain-rot, but that since the Hitachi conked out, we've been going through the process of shopping around for a new one at a price we are comfortable with.

The Hitachi we sold off for $20 to the friendly neighbourhood karang guni man (a.k.a., the itinerant scrap dealer) -- although he wouldn't have taken it at all if we hadn't also saved the stand it came with. Apparently, people in Indonesia who buy their consumer electronics second-hand don't mount their TVs to their walls. Go figure.

Anyway, that was two weeks ago. Finally, this arrived:

That was yesterday.

Today, the new TV is still in the box. While the delivery went without a hitch, it seems somebody (i.e., our dealer) neglected to arrange for the human resource to do the wall mounting for us. Next available date: Monday, late afternoon shift.

And so... we continue to wait.

Greater plans are afoot

While the Population White Paper announcing plans to cater to a 6.9 million population by 2030 has riled heartland sentiments, there is one other Masterplan that is slowly but surely being realized, but remains undisclosed for the moment. This unannounced Masterplan will kick in if the vast majority of S'poreans are so adamant against population growth that the proposed population projection becomes politically unpalatable.

What Masterplan? Haven't you noticed all the extensions to the MRT lines that are coincidentally going to continue all the way to 2030? All that tunneling going on under our feet is designed to undermine our bedrock foundations so much that at a push of a button, a small chain of explosions will detach the island from the Asian continent altogether. Prevailing winds and ocean currents will then shift us entirely into the Pacific Ocean where at a precise location that is equidistant from any major landfall, we will anchor and live our lives happily away from the rest of the world.

Our island is so small that no one would bother to visit us all the way out there. We have nothing to offer them, anyway, apart from maybe our heavenly chilli crabs -- if we could gather a decent enough harvest from the ocean bottom. Likewise, we could all subsist reasonably long and healthily, feasting on all the vegetables we can grow in our hydroponic rooftop farms.

No pressure of competition, we can all put up our feet and relax while watching the sun set over the horizon, once we're done tending to our veggie crops in the morning. The kids can play all day, though they might occasionally have to help out carrying seed bags and take turns running on the hamster-wheel powering the desalination plant that provides us with fresh drinking water every day.

Life couldn't be more idyllic. No one would miss us and while the rest of the world can rain nuclear apocalypse upon themselves, we'll be safe in the middle of the ocean. If we play our cards right, when all is said and done, we could be the only remaining survivors left on planet Earth. When that happens, we would have achieved World Conquest -- thus finally fulfilling our National Aspiration to be the only people on the planet that matter! *waves S'pore flag enthusiastically while National Anthem plays rousingly in the background*

Remember, patriotic S'poreans say 'NO!' to 6.9 million population.

Secret Masterplan proposed by Global Domination White Paper.

Sock it to 'em!

NYeDC takes a stab at basic puppetry. It's good to have Sirius back for another season taking the kids in hand -- and getting their hands in socks. Who knows? Maybe we can offer the CNY cultural showcase a skit involving slithery sock serpents in honour of the upcoming Year of the Snake. Then again, maybe not. They are still a tad rough.

There's a machine for that?

Can such things be? This here is an electric kueh buloh making machine. Judging by the design and gaudy paintjob, it's been in M-i-L's possession since the '70s. But I think June wants to follow the more traditional way of baking what I guess is the local equivalent of the humble madeline... though for the moment, she's shifted her attention to baking cupcakes.

A little perspective

Featuring news appearing on the very same day:

Govt has to speed up on bread-and-butter solutions (ST Forum Letters)

Do more to stop eating, drinking in buses (ST Forum Letters)

These links represent the voice of People Power in S'pore.

Egypt protester: "There is no bread, no freedom" (CBS Evening News)

representing the voice of People Power elsewhere.

Banishing happiness from the classroom

After a round of assignment grading, I've had an epiphany about why the kids sound so flat, dispirited and naive in their written work. The kind of answers they were giving me was equivalent to typical teenspeak: "How was your day?" "Fine." "How was school?" "Good." In an exercise that required the kids to explore problems, issues and concerns, the kids were killing off the discussion like they didn't really want to talk about it. It was like they were faking a veneer of happiness as if appearing unhappy was abnormal behaviour.

As education workers, we generally like happy children. They are easier to control in class as they tend to be more compliant with what we tell them. Anytime we notice a child is unhappy, alarm bells ring. We take it on ourselves to "get to the root of the problem" and punish, counsel or medicate their unhappiness away so that they can return to a state of compliance and be like everybody else again. Our assumption is that happy is normal, unhappy needs to be dealt with -- severely, in some cases.

I think we're forgetting something. The happy student has the least incentive to learn anything new. It's the unhappy student who stands to gain more from learning than the contented one. Happy students are resistant to learning because new ideas rock the boat they're already comfortable in. Unhappy students learn because of the opportunity learning offers to change their circumstances for the better.

These days, our efforts in school are geared towards making our students as happy as possible. At home, too, parents want their kids to be happy and will do everything they can to make it so. We simply give them too much: resources, equipment, information. The kids themselves have to be feeling that with so much going on around them to make them happy, they should be happy -- but they're not. And if they're not, something must be wrong with them. So they pretend... and then they turn in essays that we'd prefer to burn than grade.

New rule for my classes: My students have to be angry; upset; disappointed; frustrated; worried; scared; and bring all their negativity into the classroom. The happy student is complacent, useless and a non-contributor and has no place in my class.

I don't have to make them unhappy, I know they already are. My class wlll be noisy with kids sounding off their gripes, grouses and rants. I'm not going to pretend that I have a solution to their troubles. That's not my job. My subject being GP, I teach them to observe, organize, evaluate and recommend approaches to deal with their own problems so that they have something useful to learn.

However, last thing I want is to dictate what they should think. I don't want them to approach their questions by trying to recall how Mr X answered a similar question previously; what argument structure he applied; what his conclusions were... Their problems, their approaches, their solutions, not mine.

... and a little something more. An Ingredient X that I will be experimenting with in subsequent classes. I'll let you know how that turns out once I get some data to reflect upon. Stay tuned.

Visiting our neighbour in the North

This meal marks the accomplishment of something I swore I'd never do. I'll give you a hint: this is a shake tempura mayo bento from a restaurant called Kinsahi... located at the AEON Tebrau City. I drove up to JB.

And back. I'm still alive; my possessions and loved ones are still intact; and my car's GPS unit isn't being tracked by the authorities from two or more sovereign States. Let's call that a step beyond my comfort zone, shall we? Though by now it's quite clear that anywhere outside the confines of my cosy living-room bean bag is beyond my comfort zone.

It helped that we went north in a two-car convoy led by Tong, who is more experienced with the checkpoint procedures and road conditions of our neighbour in the North. We kept in touch on the road by walkie-talkie and no one got lost. In fact, the drive, once we got clear of the inevitable traffic congestion around the causeway area, was smooth and even pleasant. As a precaution, my GPS was active and though I was mostly following Tong, it did not steer me in the wrong direction.

On this trip, the closest thing I experienced to danger was when I'd returned to the causeway after a moderately successful shopping trip. There was a long line waiting to be processed by Malaysian Immigration and I was getting bored and sleepy. I closed my eyes for a second, and for a brief moment, I was transported out of the present into someplace that wasn't "here" and a time that wasn't "now". That's the danger of micro-sleep. I opened my eyes to June's screeching and frantic waving of arms as she sat in the shotgun seat. I'd taken my foot off the brake and was advancing towards the waiting vehicle in front of me. Jamming my foot down, I stopped just before contact. No harm done but, darn, what a scare!

Would I drive back up there again? Now that I've broken the taboo the first time, subsequent trips are conceivable. But there must be a real good reason. Though bigger, a shopping mall there is still just a shopping mall.

Kueh buloh: pre-baking prep

CNY is just around the corner and June's itching to try out a new recipe. These here are aluminium kueh buloh moulds for oven baking. We got them from a kitchen supply store on Joo Chiat Road, towards the Geylang Serai end.

The talkative auntie at the cash register advised us on how to prepare the moulds before baking in order to avoid the little cakelets getting stuck in them:

1) Do NOT wash the moulds first thing you get home. Instead, coat them all over with cooking oil.

2) Baked the oiled-up moulds for about a half-hour in a gas oven, or an hour in an electric oven.

3) Pour away the excess oil and set aside to cool to room temperature.

4) Lightly wash the moulds just before you're ready to fill them with the kueh buloh batter.

Alternatively,

4) If you're not ready to bake kueh buloh immediately, don't wash the moulds but rather wrap them in newspaper and store until you do want to use them.

Oh, you want the recipe? Sorry, no idea about that.

Edit 01:
pre-bake prep didn't actually work 100%. June's experiments eventually resulted in her temporarily giving up and baking cupcakes with the remaining batter instead. Still a few kinks left to figure out, but there's still time. No pressure.

After the final pitches in Punggol East

If I had to go to the polls this Saturday to vote a new representative into parliament, what would my options be?

First, I'd have to consider my position in life: I'm decently happy, possibly to the point of being complacently so. Married; have something of a family and a job that pays a fair wage for a fair day's work. My living conditions are comfortable, while the neighbourhood is still developing. It's not particularly upscale, but it's not exactly a slum either. It's a position I'd like to keep for a long time to come.

After tonight's final rallies, my take on the candidates is as follows:

The green guy who's aiming for a job that requires him to talk in parliament can barely make himself understood talking online. He has no discernible platform beyond wanting to be in parliament and on my behalf run interference on crucial matters that require a decision because that's what an Opposition does, thus proving that Opposition unity is possible. Mr Logical, himself.

The yellow guy alienates everyone the moment he opens his mouth. It's not his grating colonial accent but his air of superiority that tends to rub the wrong way. For a person who claims he can out-debate the PM should he ever have the opportunity, it's puzzling that he would deliver his last speech -- haltingly -- reading his script word-for-word, which he had prepared on his smartphone. Maybe he should not have forgotten to bring his reading glasses.

It's really down to the last two candidates who deserve more serious consideration.

The blue lady represents a party that has been building credibility of late. It's a party that's been increasing its vote share over two consecutive national election campaigns because it promises to do in parliament what many people would love to do personally, but would get arrested if they tried: slap the decision-makers for making stupid decisions, "stupid" being a relative term: if the decision was not for an option mooted by the blues, it's probably stupid and deserves a slap.

The new white guy isn't above hamming it up for the camera and making some incredibly dumb assumptions about private transport ownership during televised interviews. A touchy subject, considering he owns two and so many other people own one less than he thinks.

At this point, neither looks like a viable choice. Let's now examine the blue vs white campaign strategy to see if there's anything there that could sway my vote.

While blue lady raises important issues that many people are concerned and even angry about, as a (hypothetical) voter in a by-election I feel that she's addressing the wrong crowd. For all the rhetoric she raises on behalf of stay-at-home-parents and single parents, just how many of such people actually make up the electorate in Punggol East constituency? In a national election, perhaps such issues might make a difference, but as an average HDB dweller, I'd rather have assurances that my neighbourhood will be well taken care of. Blue lady assures us that as soon as she's elected, she'll take over the town council expediently... but that's it. She has more important issues to consider, issues of national importance, so I should just go home and suck it up. Gee, thanks.

The white guy, oddly enough, has the smart game plan for once. He knows his audience. He's talking about things I want to hear about: literally concrete issues like maintaining the upkeep and the upgrading of the neighbourhood where I live in and getting the mall fixed up. In a by-election with only one seat being contested for, I know voting in a non-majority candidate will make absolutely no difference to the party proportions in parliament. I'm not going to sacrifice the next 3-4 years of development of my constituency (and my property value) for a symbolic political principle. Plus, unlike the other guys and gal whose language sounds imperative and commanding -- vote me in 'cos I know what's good for you -- white guy is offering a hand in partnership and is saying let's work together.

Yeah, yeah, I know it's all campaign blather, but in the end we have to trust that what comes out of the mouth originates from the heart.

Edit 01:
The election results are in. It's an odd feeling to see that what I thought was the rational choice was not what the majority decided on. Emotion and feel-good won the day, and perhaps I shouldn't be too surprised. There's been too little of that going around our little island recently. And now that the people are seeing that a bluer Parliament will not usher in the end of the world, it's clear that this blue wave is just starting to pick up momentum. Let's prepare for a more balanced Parliament at the next GE, trusting that head and heart can work together for the benefit of the body. At least the people are still discerning enough to keep the lunatic fringe where it belongs: out there.

Shooting for aces in GP

As I understand my place on the General Paper (GP) team, my little division has been entrusted with helping the kids with higher potential to achieve their aces. That's not a bad thing. Since we have kids with the ability to reach higher, it's both my duty and my pleasure to get them on their way.

Working with higher ability kids, though, requires a different strategy from the average group. I'm not being elitist, but that's the way it is. For the average kid, GP is a test of knowledge. The strategy here is the common approach: pump them full of content; predigest for them template approaches so that they can hopefully identify and plug in the right argument structure and pass with a sigh of relief.

Although knowledge is a prerequisite to a pass, knowledge alone will not ace the GP H1. The presumption about the higher ability kids is that they're better read than their average peers; they have a stronger command of the English language; and they are perhaps more willing to take "riskier" options or approaches to engaging their questions. This bunch knows they have the ability to do better than what their test results are returning, and they are probably frustrated.

So what do we do to help them do better? My take is that we change the rules and objectives of the game for them. At higher levels, GP is no longer about how much knowledge the kid has, so providing them with more material to swallow and regurgitate will not help them increase their grade perceptibly. Instead, we view the GP H1 as a test of mental agility and train this lot of kids to handle questions as if they were completely unexpected situations. So rather than approach the questions from a position of knowledge, they approach the questions from a position of ignorance.

To the average person, to feel ignorant is to be disadvantaged. Embarrassment and panic set in; confidence collapses; and abject surrender becomes a very tempting proposition. However, the problem of a knowledgeable kid approaching a familiar question is the tendency to show off his smarts while disregarding the question. His pride is his fall.

A smart kid who approaches his question humbly is more likely to pay attention to the requirements of the question. With this focus, he can cut out all the noise in his head clamouring to be vocalized on paper and prioritize what knowledge he can bring to bear that is pertinent to what he is being asked -- regardless of 'topic'.

If the kids want their aces, they're going to move up from being mindless footsoldiers wielding blunt cudgels while making loud noises to intimidate the enemy and become quiet, disciplined snipers who can adapt to any environment and boast a hit ratio of one shot, one kill.

Sotto voce: Oh, man! What am I getting myself into?

Today's post was inspired by "Mental agility: how to react quickly to any situation".

How to have more kids

Nope. The Population Dept has got it wrong again. Throwing more money at the problem of a shrinking population, and now endorsing paternity leave as well won't lead to more babies... though it might lead to even less.

It has always been a resource problem. We've always thought of money as being the resource that we lack, but that's not it at all. The scarcity is not in the money but in the children themselves. In truth, there are a lot fewer children than there is money to spread around.

Couples today aim to stop at two, or one, or have none at all. In fact, what is happening is that we are artificially restricting the supply of children. Because children are scarce, they come at a premium. Suddenly the price of having children has skyrocketed. Now we can never save up enough to send our sole little precious to school and see him (or her) grow up with all the luxuries his or her little heart desires. And for some of us, we feel WE don't deserve even one child because we'll never be able to work hard enough to ensure that our child will grow up to live the life HE or SHE deserves.

As my kids in discussion shockingly observed: in the past, respect went to the eldest in the family and trickled down through the hierarchy. However, these days, mommy and daddy have become slaves to their kids. Is it any wonder that we have little desire to serve yet another Pharaoh in our household? We're already slaves to our jobs in the morning and when we do manage to escape home we need a break. Oh, wait, Junior's there. Damn. I'd rather stay at work. At least my boss looks like a boss. Please don't make me take paternity leave! I'm serious!

If we really want to encourage our people to have more kids, we need a mindset change for couples to start having kids indiscriminately. Every household norm should have seven or eight kids whom we can then view as disposable commodities. Multiple redundancy drops the value per kid to near zero. If one kid screws up or dies or something, there's always another to replace the faulty product.

Economies of scale would mean that they all share the same toy, clothes, food, and they don't even have to go to the best schools. That's because whether they study and be educated or not, it's their lives and not my problem. Out of the many, all I need is one good kid -- if I'm so lucky -- and the rest, well, good luck to them. If I work hard, the money goes to me. Conversely, if you don't work hard, don't come crying to me for a handout. The next population campaign should go: Kids aren't precious -- have as many as you like!

When we live in the First World, it's easy to overlook the simplest of solutions which our Third World neighbours are so much wiser to.

What a rush of sugar

All hail Vanellope Von Schweetz, the latest addition to Disney's pantheon of princesses... although her political status as 'princess' is complicated. Also, unlike her pulchritudinous colleagues, Vanellope is not pursuing a male figure to define herself by but rather seeking to come to terms with herself and her flaws that keep her outcast from both her immediate and wider society.

Everyone calls Vanellope a 'glitch', an appellation she accepts as what makes her different from everyone else. In a game world, graphic integrity is a premium so a sprite that occasionally de-rezzes cues the gamer that the game is malfunctioning and should be trashed in favour of a better one.

It's not clear whether Vanellope understands this rationale keeping her from participating in the game her character is designed as an avatar for. All she is told by her fellow racers is that her existence is a mistake and as such, she is not permitted a space on the roster of playable characters.

Secondly, her game world's economic model is such that racers have to ante-up a gold token before racing, and she being outcast has no opportunity to earn tokens and is therefore priced out of her own employment market. In an economy of plenty, she represents the 1% destitute.

What's admirable about Vanellope is that she never loses hope. Although very clear in her mind who she is -- "racing's in my code!" -- her difficulty is in proving it to the other racers. She may have been unscrupulous in acquiring her first gold token and impossibly optimistic in self-building a pedal-operated cart to compete against powered engines, but such optimism in the face of impossible odds makes it easy for the audience to root for the underdog in this race.

The race itself, of course, is only a plot device. While ambition motivates us to do more than we think we can, it's in developing our "softer skills" such as love, friendship, trust, and making up our own minds about what is right and wrong rather than just having our moral sensibilities dictated to us that rounds us out as people instead of being merely 2D sprites fixated on a singular goal: winning at all cost.

What I really like about 'Wreck-it-Ralph' is how tightly the story is guided by its own internal rules and logic:
1) Bad guys (function of external perception based on one's prior actions) are not necessarily bad guys (function of personal character)
2) Sprites automatically respawn in their own game worlds, but are unable to respawn if they 'die' in another game world.
3) 'Pulling the plug' in the real world results in the annihilation of the game world. However, sprites who evacuate the endangered world in time can continue to live in Game Central Station, the nexus connecting all the game worlds in the arcade, though as homeless refugees.
4) Glitches lack the ability to leave their game worlds.
5) Cy-bugs are attracted to and are annihilated by lighted beacon towers. This procedure is necessary to eliminate all Cy-bugs after a game run ends as they are not characters as such but behave as viruses if they ever leave their game world.
6) 'Going Turbo' means to permanently jump a game world, resulting in the glitching of both worlds, the consequence being 'pulling the plug' (3).

By keeping to these rules, the story avoids fluff and arbitrariness, doing away with the need for a deus ex machina to save the day. Every scene and interaction is essential, providing enough exposition to advance the plot, yet not give too much away. They also provide context for the sight gags that come thick and fast; and for credible character and relationship development.

Problem-solving is up to the characters' innovativeness using game mechanics that are already present in their specific game worlds. While Felix has his magic hammer, it's more fun to watch Vanellope and Ralph fix-it themselves with trial-and-error, lots of elbow grease, out-of-the-box thinking, and a sense that if I don't help myself, no one will.

For Vanellope and Ralph, it really is suck it up and "make [their] mommas proud time". And they do.

Stray wars

Dang! Two stray cats living in the multi-story car park were discovered dead this morning. Initially suspected of being poisoned, the case was reported to the police for further investigation. Latest update cites evidence of the killer/s most likely to be dogs, possibly also strays.

I wasn't close to these two cats, but they were familiar. One of the victims was part of a pair that always hung out together; the other a rather anti-social Maui lookalike who lived a short distance from the car park.

Now we are worried for the well-being of the two strays we are rather fond of and who live in the immediate vicinity. But here I'm running up against a moral dilemma. Saving the lives of our stray cats is most likely to mean the culling of a stray dog or two. But I can't see another way out of this situation. One way or another, somebody's day is going to be ruined. :'(

We have a winner!

A cat accurately tracks the ball in the shell game.

A cat picks stock market options more profitably than human experts.

Conclusion: trash your broker. Get a cat.

Application Question confusion

Just because there is a question mark behind a sentence doesn't necessarily make it the main question for the GP Application Question (AQ) component. Too often, our practices default to whether the student agrees with the author/s or not, but this kind of evaluation tends to miss the point of the question altogether.

Take this one from a recent practice session. Given a piece of text about the pros and cons of fashion, the AQ goes:

In this article, Jean Jacquard comments on the importance of fashion to society and how it can be useful, and at the same time, problematic to us.
How far do you agree with his observations on fashion and clothing? Illustrate your answer or own views by referring to the ways in which you and your society regard fashion.

First, the sentence that ends with the question mark is itself a problem. A person's observations are hardly open for dispute. What a guy sees is what he sees so agreement means that you agree that he saw what he saw, whereas disagreement means that you think he didn't see what he thought he saw. Now that's confusing enough without adding the further complication that he is not in a position to see what you see, and vice versa. So if the answer focuses on this question, there's going to be confusion all round, leading to frustration for both assessor and student alike.

If the question mark is an unreliable indicator of the main question, then which one is it? We need to look at the purpose behind the question holistically. If I asked you such a question, I wouldn't care whether you agreed or disagreed with the source, nor your justifications why. What I would want to know is how a new context in your estimation compares against the situation that the source has identified. So the focus is on the new context (in this case, "you and your society"), not on rehashing what the source has already provided.

Another concern is the limited time and space allotted for this question under exam conditions. We need to identify context and parameters really quickly in order to provide a sharply-focused, narrow-band answer rather than a random, broad-based one. The AQ's lead-in or introductory sentence provides the parameters, while the final instructions provide the context. That leaves the sentence that ends with the question mark as merely a stimulus to begin writing.

Below is a link to my treatment of this question, including my highlights of key ideas from the source; my remarks on sticky notes (open the .pdf in Adobe Reader or Acrobat to see them) and my sample answer. Oh, if anyone wants to know if my answer follows a template... yes it does! It's provided by the source. Figure that one out!

Click here.

Welcome and c'mon in!

Campus Open House! We've pulled out all the stops to make our college noisy, lively and -- to some extent -- spontaneous. It was an opportunity to show off our latest attraction: a high-elements confidence course strung across the garden courtyard for brave souls to test the limits of their acrophobia. There was free food and lots of simple booth games with prizes for our visitors; and the performances in the atrium showcasing our aesthetic co-curricula activities.

My initial job was to look after the emcees at the performing venue. My duties include script vetting and rehearsing. That was the easy part. I should have given more attention to rehearsing the unscripted dialogue that inevitably takes place in between items. While the emcees knew that the visitors need lots of information about what's going on, where to go and what to do when they get there, holding the mike and hearing your own voice amplified tends to be very disconcerting and you quickly run out of things to talk about. So cue next item -- at least the script tells us what to say about that.

I realize on hindsight that although the emcees' job appears to be that of introducing items and saying nice things about them (that's the scripted part), in this kind of Open House environment the entertainment is only an excuse for the emcees to pump information to the guests, keeping them constantly updated with what's what.

My secondary job, unfortunately, took some of my attention away from my primary. The atrium, being quite breezy, turned the huge vinyl backdrop into a sail. Though it had been taped down the afternoon before, today the tape kept ripping up and had to be constantly replaced... by yours truly. As I said, not my primary job, but it had to be done out of necessity. Still, I learned the gaffer's trade through experience. By the time the performances were over, with strategic overlapping applications of tape, the backdrop ceased to be a threat to the performing area.

All in all, I'd say we did a reasonable job, though leaving some room for improvement.

The take over

The year has inevitably kicked off. Met the new kids today: fresh faced, eager-eyed, and so quiet... as they suss out the New Teacher. I'm taking over this J2 batch from whomever was tutoring them in J1. It feels very much like I'm testing out my theory that GP doesn't really need two years to master. One should be quite sufficient.

Keep on running

Finally! New running shoes to replace my previous old faithful. This new pair fits well and is light on the feet. While I am happy with the purchase, I'm a little less happy with the sales rep. As he brought the shoes to the cashier, he called out, "Uncle heng (paying)!" Grr... you're not so young yourself, whippersnapper!

I suppose that kind of ageist identification is to be expected. I'd just come in from my grand-niece's first month celebration. The view is from the young family's apartment, 33 floors up. I've never been in a residence that high before. You can see the sea from here, yonder on the horizon.

Back t'work, ye scurvy dog!

When the two highlights of the day are visiting the clinic for flu meds and sending a friend off at the crematorium, it's no wonder I'm feeling lousy today. Can't tell if it's physical because of the illness or emotional because it's a crappy start to the year, or a combination of both. Or maybe lately, I've been having too much time to think. Even though I'm not looking forward to it, going back to work may just be the cure to the post-holiday blues. Oh, the irony.

Ways we've gone and ways to go

If the first day of the new year is any indication of how the rest of the year is going to turn out, it's going to be a bitter-sweet 2013 for me.

Spent the afternoon bowling with extended family. Now, that's something that occurs only once in a very long while 'cos as a group we prefer eating to physical activity. Seeing that the last time we did such a thing was conceivably a couple of decades ago, today we got a true sense of how far we've advanced in our years. Two games apiece and collectively we're creaking in the joints; muscles stretched and tender; stubbed toes and much wounded pride from the number of gutter balls thrown. Not that our scores were very much better twenty years ago, but still...

And like we did back then, we gathered to dine. But tonight's dinner conversation was more polite and focused. We didn't harass the staff like we managed to do before, and we actually got some talk going on a joint tribal vacation. That, we've never done before, but it's a lot more feasible now that we're all working adults with some kind of disposable income. The only question, then, is to coordinate the timing. Hold onto your hats, folks, it may yet happen!

The later part of the evening was more sombre. I've never been to a wake of a friend before, let alone a working colleague. Aggie (later known as Deb) battled cancer over the past couple of years. It finally ended just before the beginning of the new year.

With Aggie's passing, I've lost both my mentors from when I first started teaching. Mim went earlier via an untimely accident. Mim taught me the rules to obey while Aggie taught me to organize and colour-code everything, and something called a "CRAFT" book, which stands for "Can't Remember A F****** Thing" in which I was to write down everything I was supposed to remember but was likely to forget.

I appreciate the lessons these veterans imparted to me. They practiced what they preached. They were ready to teach; effective at their jobs; and their lessons stuck with their kids. They were loved; respected and unforgettable to their students. They were looked up to by their colleagues.

Yet every class has a black sheep (baa!), and this one knows the distance he still has to travel to get to where they left off.