Exit, stage left

Friday evening, we attended Tina's memorial (above) dressed in our old "z-Friends" costumes. Comprising a solid colour T-shirt underneath denim overalls, this was what we wore for our street gigs. Using (or rather, misusing) buckets and mops, we devised many ridiculous scenarios such as "astronauts"; "circus" and "Olympics" for the purpose of entertaining children and for other fringe activities. Of course, my set of overalls had gotten tight over the years. Sigh.

Anyway, a number of very eloquent people said a lot of very nice things about Tina which we all could nod to. Her straightness of back; her humility; her giving of herself to project, people and the community; her sense of quick-witted and spontaneous fun; her discipline; her genuineness; her respect for others regardless of age, background or experience... and so many other things we will miss now that she's gone.

So with red wine and white wine, masala tea and tetra-pak drinks, we toasted Tina even as we vowed to keep her memory alive while we kept theatre alive and thriving even though one of our biggest prime movers has exited, stage left for her curtain-call of great applause.

Not easily won

I once told x13 that we weren't scholar material. Every bit of success we got would not have been easily obtained, but rather the result of a very hard slog through blood, sweat and tears. Guess what? They girded up, put their noses to the grindstone and started grinding.

I've never taken a CT before that produced multiple distinction achievers at the 'A' Levels... until now. I shouldn't take pride in an achievement based on an effort not my own, but I can't help but be proud of x13 for their determination to do well and the grit to pull it off in the end. Very nicely done, kids!

To be fixed

This poor fellow is a recent arrival to the void deck of a neighbouring block. He's very friendly... which is how he ended up in our cage. We're helping our local cat welfare chapter neuter strays and this guy is a prime candidate for fixin'. He'll be be picked up in the morning by a fellow cat caretaker and taken to the vet; after which he'll be released to recuperate where we found him downstairs.

I feel sorry for him, though. Confined to a tiny cage all night and made to fast before his 'procedure', he hasn't stopped crying since we brought him home. I feel your pain, l'il buddy. But it's for your own good.

Edit 01: Oops, the boy was already fixed. Oh, well, just to make his overnight stay in our cage worthwhile, he got a health screen and his ear clipped.

Keep the memory

As the wife and I are getting over our loss of Q-tip, Elim so thoughtfully shared this handwritten poem with us. Though sometimes we want to forget the pain of separation, it's also good to keep the memory of our happier times together. That way, Q-tip will always be a part of us and have meant something special to us.

"until we meet above"!

Goodbye, Q-tip!

And just like that, Q-tip left us on Friday morning. After a couple of days of home care, when she seemed to be doing better than at the hospital, she suddenly took a turn for the worse. She was refusing food again and later on, her body started rejecting the food that was already inside her.

By morning, she was severely depleted and no longer responding to stimulus. At this point, it was clear that nothing more could be done. We mutually opted to have her euthanized at the vet. It was a decision we'd been hoping to avoid as long as possible, but time just wasn't on our side.

Goodbye, Q-tip! Rest well!

The invalid

Just so you know, home-care for invalid pets isn't easy. Woke up at 6 am today, didn't leave for work until 8. Either we wake up earlier, or find a more efficient routine. Let's see what the sequence was today:

Took Q-tip to the pee pan -- success
Made Maui's water-diluted special formula food and fed cats -- success
Wife made Q-tip's water-diluted special formula food (not the same as Maui's) -- success
Helped Wife feed Q-tip, alternating between laps of water and food -- success
Fed Q-tip heart meds -- took a number of attempts but she finally swallows half-pill (success)
Helped Wife remove Q-tip's dressings -- bandages stuck to skin and fur causing distress (fail)
Helped Wife re-dress Q-tip's bedsores -- looked like a neat job but dressing slips, exposing wound (fail)
Q-tip threw up entire breakfast -- probably put too much pressure on her stomach holding her still (FAIL)
Helped Wife remove failed dressing and redress wound -- success
Helped re-feed Q-tip breakfast -- due to previous trauma, she didn't eat much (limited success)
Washed Q-tip's feeding dish -- success
Cleared cats' sandbox -- success
Got ready for work -- success
Dosed self with personal meds -- success
Discovered Maui vomit (he's the only cat who eats formula, remember?) and cleaned up -- success
Staggered out of house to go to work -- success

Because of Q-tip's bedsores, Wife got her a soft foam neck-rest that allows us to immobilize her on her back or on either side. We just have to keep turning her over throughout the day to avoid making her wounds any worse. Good news is that Q-tip's eating and drinking on her own again. Bad news is that her bedsores look slightly bigger than they did yesterday, maybe due to poor dressing removal technique. Seriously considering taking her back to Kasey every other day for professional assistance instead of DIY.

Also so you know, although she looks insanely happy in the photo, she isn't really. That's just how her face is. Poor little dog.

Home-care for Q-tip

Q-tip is home from the hospital for a round of home care. That would involve syringe-feeding her small amounts of food over the course of the day and administering her meds and a sub-cutaneous drip twice a day. To work the drip, we have to poke a small needle into the scruff of her neck then suspend the bottle until the fluid reaches the next mark. Rinse, repeat with a new needle once more later in the day.

This complication is necessary as she won't eat or drink, yet she needs her nutrition or else her condition will deteriorate faster. Fortunately, when we got her home, she started drinking again -- big laps of water and even some milk from her water dish. At least if she's voluntarily hydrating herself, she won't require the drips and that saves us one painful step twice a day.

Oh, the other thing we have to do is turn her over every few hours to keep her from getting bedsores. Yup, her joints are stiff with arthritis and so she has a lot of trouble even maintaining a sitting position, let alone being mobile enough to shift position even if she was uncomfortable.

At this stage, the prognosis of recovery is narrowing with each passing day. The best we can do for her right now is to keep her as comfortable as possible over the next couple of days while we figure out a care-routine that will work for her. But as long as she still has a spark in her eyes, we're not giving up on her.

Don't cry for me, Sergeant Tina

One day, I ran off to join the circus and when I came back, part of the circus came back with me. Back then, I was young, energetic and didn't know what I wanted; but I knew what I didn't want: to live according to the usual cycle of drudgery that everyone else seemed destined to live.

What I had to offer was mime. Learning the discipline as a church activity, occasionally taking it out onto the streets (it helped me establish some common ground with my more hellfire-and-brimstone bent brethren), and later honing the craft in an undergrad elective course, it became a crucial aspect in getting my early life back on track again. Through mime, I learned that I didn't have to be good at everything -- I just had to be good in one thing, and then everything else will fall into place around that thing. That thing for me just happened to be mime.

So when I joined the circus, you could have called me a practiced hand already. I joined on a whim, because I knew someone who knew someone who was holding free after-hours classes. I needed the exercise and an excuse to maintain my muscle memory and because working the arts scene was... a different life, here in S'pore almost two decades ago.

Where there is a circus, there is a ringmaster. Tina held centre-ring for us in Mime Unlimited. Beyond the exercises and skills training which she led us in, she encouraged all of us to train each other with what we ourselves had learned from whatever our backgrounds were. We threw in a little yoga, Pilates, Alexander, and later on some of us learned ever more exotic techniques of movement theatre and passed them on to our pool of performers.

Our pool comprised many, like myself who had full-time jobs by day but found time to train, rehearse and perform whenever we could; while many others joined the local professional theatre scene in one capacity or another in time. You could say that Tina clearly had a personal hand in shaping theatre in S'pore with so many current professionals having either trained under her or worked with her at some point in their careers.

So although I joined her merry little band of itinerant mimes with some skillz, Tina opened my eyes to the production aspect of theatre. Working with her on a number of productions showed me that the magic of theatre rested on the hard work of every crew, every talent, every hand working together, coordinated, organized and tick-tock, and yet being prepared for the unexpected because every show is not like any other. Some of us would give 110% to the production, which was great, but Tina could also find a use for those who could only give 20% as long as they gave 100% of their 20%. That kind of welcome valued every contribution and made everyone involved proud to be in the production.

Apart from working on the 'now' of producing shows, she was also very interested in preparing for the future. She played a big part in Drama Education. In the early days, we took shows into the schools. Later we started training school-based drama CCAs and helping them produce their own productions... and that's about the time I left the circus and brought it with me to my current place of employment where I'm doing all I can to carry on what Tina started in building into a new generation a love for theatre, whether as audience members or as contributors in one way or another... or at the very least, to give kids who might never have an opportunity to have a taste of what magic theatre has to offer once, even if they never go back to it again.

And now with Tina's sudden passing, the whole of our country's theatre and arts industry is going to feel the enormity of the vacuum she's left behind. We'll go into a period of shock and sadness for a while. But if Tina's done her job like I know she has, she's already trained a fantastic group of people and influenced many others in such a positive way that we're going to pick up the torch she's been holding up for us all this time and continue running in her place because it's now really our torch to carry.

I'd say this little island owes much more the this crazy American lady (who became as S'porean as any of us) that many of its inhabitants will ever know. Director, teacher, mentor, friend... and in many ways the indirect influence behind many things that have gone right in my life whether she knows it or not, at least this little islander does.

Till we meet again, peace out, Tina!

Sick as a dog

It's sad that although you feel as sick as a dog, it turns out that the dog is actually sicker than you. While I'm down with the flu (I've been fighting it since before CNY, so no wisecracks about scoffing too much bak kwa), Q-tip's health has been deteriorating over the long weekend.

Although not the most active of dogs to begin with, she's losing strength in her hind legs and is no longer walking properly. She can barely even stand up. In the last couple of days, she's been rejecting food and has developed bedsores where her elbows would be if she were human.

Brought her in to see Kasey this evening. Blood test shows signs of infection and kidney dysfunction. Heart weak. We decided to temporarily hospitalize her hoping that with some professional assistance she will take in fluids and food again. Only then will we be able to see how we can medicate or otherwise care for her in the near future and, hopefully, beyond.

Old grandmaster story

The next winning kung fu movie formula from HK will have to be an Ip Man vs Wong Fei Hong epic. The Ip Man story has been told too many times already and it's time to let the imagination do what it will with the characters left behind by these two martial arts greats -- the latter having been forgotten for quite a while and could be begging for a resurrection anytime soon.

In The Grandmaster, Wong Kar Wai's retelling of the Ip Man story, the intention seems more to document than dramatize the major events in Master Ip's life. The lead character, played by Stony Leung, carries the same stoic, long-suffering face throughout the movie. Not sure what he has to suffer since his wife, Gong Er (Zhang Ziyi), does the major fighting for lost family honour and such while he goes about sampling the skills of the other fighting schools he is neighbours with.

I suppose any lesser man would be pissed that his wife left him to go fight another man to the death, but not Ip Man. His face says 'a woman's gotta do what a woman's gotta do' and on the odd occasions that he meets up with her again their interaction remains politely cordial, though I suppose the audience is probably meant to assume that the poor man is all torn up inside. Really.

The cinematography is just beautiful, with lots of slow-mo water splash; drip; ripple and reflect effects. The fight scenes are stunningly choreographed with lots of precision moves in both many-on-one and one-one-one battles, though often the killing blows happen so quickly we miss them completely and next thing you know, someone's dead or dying for no apparent reason.

Dialogue is poetic. Something like, 'That bread in your hand is the entire world to me' could mean 'You've already lost, but you don't know it yet'  Or, 'The night is dark, but the nightingale sings through till sunrise' could mean, 'I'm a'gonna rip your face off!' (not actual quoted dialogue, but just to illustrate the point). Sometimes, you wish they would talk like normal people.

There were Hollywood influences to a couple of scenes: the disciple banishment scene from Kung Fu Panda, and Spidey vs Sandman vs speeding train scene in Spider-Man 3... or maybe I was desperately looking for identifiable points of reference to keep from losing the coherence of the plotline, which was confusing with all the flashbacks and flash-forwards and long periods of nothing happening. That kind of story-telling needs a deft hand, and this one was no Cloud Atlas.

Perhaps I had my expectations too high for thinking a kung fu fest to be all action, but I was somewhat disappointed to get a philosophical commentary on the nature of mastery instead (which, I grant, IS an important learning point... but it just wasn't what I was looking for here). In my book, this movie rates four Zs.

Omakase and Coke

Oh, yes. Been looking forward to chomping down on an Omakase burger since I read the review on Yahoo! Was also intrigued by this other unique selling point: Coke imported from Mexico (above), supposedly made with natural cane sugar and comes in a nostalgic glass bottle. Dunno, maybe this old palate is losing it's sensitivity, but other than going down a bit smoother (less 'dry', as I was explaining to Elim) it didn't taste that much different from the local variety. It's good for bragging rights, as in "I drank stuff Mexicans are drinking -- Arriba!", and for the novelty, but not much else.

But this is what I'm here for: the deluxe burger, meaning everything including cheese, onions, and 'shrooms. Actually, I meant the Ultimate which would have included bacon as well, but I had a slip of tongue at the counter so a deluxe it was. Served medium, it had a fresh beefy taste -- nothing like filling your mouth with juicy chunks of cow -- soft and tender, grilled evenly with no crispy burnt bits around the edges. Mmm...oo! On the left is a cupful of accompanying truffle fries. Cooked with truffle oil, the crispy outside, fluffy inside fries had an subtle flavouring of mushroom (a rather crude description, but I don't have the vocabulary for a flavour like this) that was as delicious and it was addictive.

Altogether, the set cost a little over $25, which some people would say is expensive for the size of the burger. But quantity isn't everything. It's a reasonably filling meal already, but you're paying for a quality food that sings in your mouth. It won't be an everyday affair, obviously, but it's a great place to go with yo' homies when the occasion calls for it -- and when you can round enough of 'em up to make the trip worthwhile.

Thing of beauty

Just when we think we've seen everything El Cantina has to offer, Mak Cik surprises us with her latest creation: Nasi Pattaya. That's fried rice wrapped in a skin of thinly fried omelette and covered over with lashings of ketchup and mayo -- and what a thing of beauty it is.

Here's hoping this volley over the bows of the other stallholders is just the start of a total gastronomic revolution... or maybe we can just keep hoping.

In other news, it looks like fairy rings (or are they crop circles?) are starting to bloom on the Astroturf. Better go wake the groundskeeper again.

Oh my, lo and behold! It's back!

The sight of this venerable, iconic truck makes me happy. It contains so much promise of cold, chocolatey liquid refreshment, and it's not disappointed me yet. The rumours were going around that this old Milo van had been retired. Glad to know it's still serving icy beverages instead of dry, dusty mothballs.

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.