I'm not calling the fire department

Pebbles is making himself comfortable on the giant cat tree. This is the absolute first time I've seen any of the cats up there voluntarily.

And where there is one cat, there will be another. Except Momo is content to scratch the hemp and leave it at that.

Eat, sleep, work, plan

The big planning pow-wow for this year has yielded a new direction for the industry to take: make learning relevant to the lives of the students. Take their interests -- whether in music; astronomy; robotics; theatre; or whatever -- and use their interests to make their lessons come alive for them.

Sounds good in theory, but I can imagine my kids moaning in disbelief. 'You want us to pass ace our exams AND develop an interest in something TOO?' It seems the kids can barely keep up with their meals and exercise and sleep already, what with the different subject demands of preparation, revision, practice, rinse, repeat, ad infinitum. Ask them what their interests are and they stare blankly back, wondering what the politically correct answer should be. Then hesitantly... sleep? Eat? Sigh. Those aren't interests, they're bodily functions.

The end-of-year exam and the build-up to it is taking every shred of energy from the kids so they have none left to develop a sense of self beyond believing they are mere cogs in a machine that will continue grinding them down until they have reached the end of their usefulness... and we don't want to contemplate what happens to them after that. Their objective is to delay that eventuality for as long as possible. Every step up the academic ladder, every promotion they receive indicates that they are still useful, and that's what they live for. To feel that they have to deserve to exist can be quite demoralizing in the long run.

And we wonder why they seem so dense and naive; colourless and listless; and quite unwilling to think for themselves. Life isn't learned through rote, which is what is taking up so much of the kids' time and energy, life is learned by living it which, if we look at their daily schedules, many of them are not. There also seems to be a lot of guilt when they do admit to having one interest or another; almost apologetic as if confessing to grand theft tempus when they feel they should be keeping nose to grindstone instead.

Frankly, I don't blame the kids. What we have is a systemic problem perpetuated by ever-increasing academic success rates which keeps kids and their parents, and us in the industry as well focused on improving year after year. Our system encourages the study-now-develop-interests-later approach to academic qualification, so now the industry bosses have decided based on public feedback that it's time to reflect once again on what we are doing and why we are doing it.

Well, we aren't supposed to be preparing the kids for the end-of-year exam. We are supposed to be preparing them for what comes AFTER the end-of-year exam. We're not supposed to be manufacturing cogs in a machine but people who have a sense of self-worth and who see the value in working together so that the whole is more than the sum of the parts. We're not making kids study subjects to pass exams, we're teaching them to understand life's little mysteries by supporting that understanding with subject knowledge that guides them to figure out answers to their questions about life and how they perceive it.

The exams don't have to change, though. What does need to change is how we appreciate their functionality. Exam questions don't ask 'what do you know?' Why we spend so much time on endless meaningless content drills is because we automatically assume that regardless of the question, it's always about the 'what?' Exam questions really ask 'given your knowledge about such and such, what would you do with that knowledge given new condition and context?' So, exam questions are mostly about applying subject knowledge to life experience. And the kids sweat bullets to answer that question because they haven't got much life experience to go on.

The industry's new direction is hardly new. It is a reminder to compare our roadmap with the terrain again and check if our current course is taking us where we really want to go. For us in the JC system, there doesn't seem to be any specific directive for us to do anything right now, probably because it's too late for the next couple of cohorts. But if in the next few years we're expecting a breed of kids that have grown up in the new learning environment the bosses are envisioning, we'd better start moving in the same direction to align with everyone else at the right time.

The tuition hamster-wheel (or the tragedy of 'normal')

This tuition necessary-or-unnecessary debate ignores a key issue: we operate on a market economy. Whatever people want in large enough numbers, there is a provider -- for a price. The desire, in this case, is an academic qualification that appears to be getting increasingly difficult to obtain. The schools, apparently, aren't handing them out like they are supposed to. No, unlike Christmas candy, those coveted 'A' grades are only obtainable through hard work. After-school tuition has since arisen to reassure parents that their kids will get the A's that they need by making sure they don't have time to do anything else but work hard.

What a dilemma. Schools are incredibly stingy with their 'A' grades, but every kid wants them because every other kid -- it seems -- can get them. Parents don't understand when the schools tell them that tuition is not necessary. Likewise, schools don't understand when parents insist that it is. Why are schools so callous towards the plight of parents? Because the job of the school is to educate thousands of kids a year. Why are parents so intractable? Because they have to educate only one.

In the S'pore system, schools educate thousands of kids taking a national standardized exam every year. Given a number of students to qualify a year, they train, assess and apply Quality Control procedures for the benefit of their future employers. Statistics tell us that given a large enough sample, plotting particular data about it will yield a normal distribution curve. That is to say, there will be a small number of high results, followed by an ever widening number of mid-range results, tapering off with a relatively small number of low results. A variation in the shape of the distribution curve indicates an abnormality or irregularity in the data. If the data bunches low, there's a lot of soul searching to be done over procedures, methodology, and to some extent, input. But it becomes a bigger problem if the data bunches high. Standards too low? Test too easy? Cheating? Or more interestingly, are standards being surpassed on a large scale?

The increasing trend of after-school tuition may well be causing overall academic standards to rise. More kids, working hard, guided by competent tuition agencies, are likely to raise academic results at an increased level. For the tuition agencies, the target market is different. Tuition caters to parents who have that one kid to educate, promising an 'A' grade for that kid. Even if there is a group of kids that attends tuition classes, the agency works to bunch results at the high level. Anything less, and the agency can shut its doors forever.

Why can't schools do the same? Because schools provide mass education for the entire population. Schools must maintain a normal distribution result curve or they are no longer trusted as being able to provide the nation with quality education. To bunch low is clearly not meeting standards; but bunching high means that standards are too low to trust the school's ability to produce quality new employees.

So what happens when previous standards are being surpassed by more and more kids? Keep raising the standards until the distribution can become 'normal' again. So are our kids working too hard to meet current standards? Under normal circumstances, they don't have to. But to achieve the higher bands, they will have to. That too is normal. So the mass consumption of tuition services may be helping our kids become academically smarter cohort after cohort. But it is also raising the standards and expectations every succeeding cohort has to meet and exceed in order to be considered better-than-normal.

This is the tragedy of everybody doing their jobs well. We always have to do one better the next time. Nobody wants to be thought of as just 'normal'.

Not into tuition

I don't have fond memories of tuition. In secondary school, my grades were atrocious. The parents tried to remedy the situation by engaging tutors for me. Each hour spent with one tutor or another was such a drag.

In the classroom, I was only one of forty kids. We were all terrified of being called upon to answer the teacher's questions, but there was always a thirty-nine in forty chance that we wouldn't be called. At the tuition table (on Friday evenings, it became Dad's mahjong table) there was only me and the tutor, and I had to answer all the questions.

I wasn't terrified of any of the tutors. It wasn't that personal. What I dreaded was having my freedom of movement curtailed, having to sit still for that hour, hour-and-a-half chained to the table while life went on around me... elsewhere.

I didn't have as much tuition as today's kids. But having to sit through each interminable experience every week was traumatic every time. I realize now that I'm a better kinesthetic learner than a sit-down-and-mug learner, so maybe that had something to do with my sensation of claustrophobia while making my poor tutor earn every last 1-cent coin of his or her monthly paycheque.

Was it worth it in the end? Well, without tuition, I was failing. With tuition, I failed anyway. And I'm talking about the big exams. My best subjects were the ones that didn't require extra tuition in, so I didn't get the benefit of having tuition pull my Bs to As. Knowing me, I'd probably get them pulled down to Cs with tuition.

I can't speak either for or against the mania for after-school tuition as it stands today. All I can say is that if I didn't want to learn something, no amount of tuition would have helped. But maybe the tuition allowed my parents to think that they did their best for their kid who liked to read (garbage), yet didn't have the smarts for school.

But they also paid for my college tuition years later, and for that, I will always be grateful.

Circle-Line lunch quest: Breko Cafe

Not often we get to go out and have a proper lunch as colleagues. We're making the most of our current opportunity during this exam-marking period to enjoy something a little more leisurely than the usual grab-and-run, if at all.

The rules of today's game: see where the Circle-Line will take us to nice, reasonably-priced food.

We went as far as Holland Village and bounced between eateries looking at their menus before settling on Breko Cafe.

To accommodate seven of us, we occupied the upper deck. Dim lighting, comfy couches to slouch back upon, but the tables felt slightly higher than optimal, but you can't have everything. We were looking to relax, and we got what we wanted.

The menu here is quite varied: burgers, ribs, steak, pasta, breakfast items (up till 1200 hrs) and cheap beer, smoothies and desserts -- something for everyone. The ribeye I had (above) was satisfactorily pink inside, so none of my usual complaints about the conservatism of the chef. It was juicy and had just enough fat left on the rind to down smoothly. The portions were reasonable (looking at the other dishes the others ordered), though I could have done with more steak. That's me being greedy, and also finding something that's quite close to the perfection I have been looking for in a while.

Where will the Circle-Line take us to next? Stay tuned...!

You're so myType!

Ohboy! What's arrived in the mail? Could it be...?

It's my myType bluetooth keyboard! Made of silicone, it's light and squeezes into my jeans pocket easily. I'm actually typing this entry on my mobile device and it works very nicely. What has surprised me is that it arrived before I really expected it to. I'm used to seriously long delays ordering stuff through Kickstarter, but this one showed up as promised. Fantastic!

As you can see, the keys are small and misaligned between the left and right sides of the keyboard. It's not difficult to adapt to this oddity, but this is to allow it to fold flat in half, making it compact and pocket-friendly, It's soft and flexible too. But if you want to carry it in a purse or a bag, you can put it in its carrier just to be neat. The carrier also holds the charging cable. One charge lasts for weeks, apparently. Let's find out.

Typing on a 4.8" screen  Is hard òn the eyes, though. Maybe it's time to consider acquiring a full-sized tablet...? One defect I just noticed: the @ and " symbols are switched! Something else to get used to.

Riddick (son) Crusoe

Did anyone read "Robinson Crusoe" by Defoe? If not the movie just came out, starring Vin Diesel as the titular hero, Riddick. Oops, did I just give away the plot?

Privileged individual becomes a castaway on an island far from human civilization. He learns to survive inhospitable terrain, avoiding predators using his wits and uber mad-skillz. He saves the life of a native who would have, in reversed circumstances, eaten him. Said native becomes a loyal friend and hunting partner. Castaway's distress signal gets picked up by renegades who also want to kill him, but they inadvertently provide him a ticket outtahere.

While the plot was predictable, following its precedent quite closely, the narrative in Riddick was arresting enough to make me forget the Crusoe tale. I only saw the parallels hours after. In Defoe's version, Crusoe had technological superiority on his side: guns against the cannibals' primitive melee weapons. Riddick has no weapons and has to improvise with materials scrounged from the landscape to survive the native predators and is vastly outclassed by the bounty hunters' weapons and gear.

That's it. Change one rule and the game becomes almost unrecognizable. Skillz, resourcefulness, terrain knowledge and psychology are Riddick's best assets. This is one movie in which you sympathize with and fear for the bad guys who have no idea what they are hunting. Riddick's mind games torment, frustrate and drive his hunters to breaking point, and watching the combined force crumble from its position of strength is what's fun about this movie.

This doesn't mean Riddick is invulnerable. If he was, it wouldn't be half as exciting to watch. He is mindful of an impending deadline, but rushes nothing. However, although he very carefully orchestrates every attack, not everything goes according to plan. Some nice 'oh, shit' moments keep us grounded with the presence of real danger for Riddick and friend.

I went in with no expectations, wasn't disappointed. The old classic stories were in themselves quite well written. A few cosmetic changes and an old story becomes new again.

It's not science

Word. Because the way it's currently being done, it's not science, it's indoctrination. The same can be said for GP... although from the prelim exam essays I've been grading, a change may be in the air. Hope it sticks around for a while!

Walkies and foodsies!

It's not like we haven't been taking her out, but the weather's been dreadful these last few days and so long walks have been out of the question. But she's still looking out the window so wistfully. Since the sun made a appearance in the late afternoon... walkies!

Our walk took us back to Flamingg Mangos. It's not billed as a dog-friendly establishment, but there is a back area where people with dogs can sit and eat without disturbing the other customers. The food and service are good. The spaghetti and meatballs (above) is made fresh and probably according to an authentic traditional recipe -- no processed ingredients that I could taste.

Had dessert on the hoof from the Gelato place that just opened at SSC. No pix. Hands too busy holding dessert cup, spoon and dog.

Bumper cars, CTE style

I've always thought S'porean drivers were pretty ok. I've not had much trouble with them. They signal when they change lane; they give space when I indicate I want to change lane; they don't go too fast -- sometimes they go too slow, even, on the wrong lane. The occasional idiot does try to beat the traffic lights, but on the whole my driving experience has been fairly tolerable.

But perhaps my perception has been coloured somewhat by the fact that most times I'm on the road, it's off-peak either before morning rush hour or the going home evening crowd. This morning, I experienced rush hour like never before.

Accident One closed off lanes 1 and 2 on the CTE and I sat in the jam for about a half hour crawling from my egress point to the next exit. En route, two fresh fender-benders caused even further lane obstructions; one a straight rear-ender and the other a miscommunication over a lane change. Both low velocity, thank goodness.

By this time, I'd had it with being on the road, so I abandoned my excursion plans and took the next exit home. Accident Four occurred as I gave way to this huge-ass construction truck signalling to switch to my lane. He had all the space he wanted, but he had to go sideswipe the white Mitsubishi sedan right in front of me. I could see the truck push the sedan towards the left lane where cars were still oncoming. Fortunately, the truck course-corrected before anything more serous could happen.

When the two drivers managed to stop for their mandatory arm-waving conference, I snuck a peek at the damage: sedan's driver-side door severely dented and scraped back towards the passenger door. With that kind of damage, the driver was lucky to even be able to wave his arms. He looked pretty pissed, anyway.

Spent the rest of the morning in bed with the covers pulled over my head. If Jack wants to hit the road, he can go on his own. I'm not coming out again for a while...

The shape of the dog

Tasha gets a new do after a couple of weeks looking like a scruffy pudgebag. After taking the excess fluff off, she looks like her normal, poodle-slim self again. 

Still have to watch her weight, though -- her once V-shaped torso is starting to become more parallel.

Oh, Tasha, now you're just being goofy!

Small celebration at Sun Ray

Celebrated someone's belated birthday and someone else's be-earlied birthday at our favourite pet cafe.

The pet in question is always happy to be here.

Apart from socializing with handsome boy dogs, she also got a dish of boiled salmon, all to herself.

 Her owners went with a salmon fillet...

and a rare striploin that was still a tad more done than was appreciated.

No complaints about the chocolate lava cake, though! Served with a side of vanilla ice-cream in the little cup in the background. Yumz!

Lavaedge: decent food, pointless Groupon

Went for brunch at Lavaedge, which used to be the cantina at the top of the hill overlooking MacRitchie Reservoir. What was once an old, ramshackle structure is now this bright, cheerful afternoon tea spot in a garden retreat.

The deal is that it's a semi-buffet. Side salads, some breakfast items, dessert and hot and cold beverages are all free-flow. The selection isn't much but the presentation is quite pretty.

We ordered a salmon steak for one main course...

and this handsome ribeye for the other. Although I asked for rare, this one came on the conservative side of medium. It was no less tasty and the gravy kept it nice and juicy, but I still missed the tang of redness in the meat.

The meal was pricey for what was offered, though. We had a Groupon coupon, but to our surprise it functioned more like a prepaid voucher than a discount coupon. If the order did not exceed the voucher value, there was no refund for the difference. If the order exceeded the value of the voucher, we had to top up the difference. My math isn't that great, but we might as well not have bothered with Groupon for what we paid and got. It would have worked better if we had bought it as a gift for someone else, now I think about it.

Luckily the food and service were decent. Nice view of the reservoir too, in air-conditioned comfort.

GP do's and don'ts

A few maxims for success in GP:

Don't impress others, express yourself.
Don't impose on the question, expose from the question.
Don't implicate, explicate.
Don't implore, explore.
Don't complain, explain.
and finally...
Don't implode with a whimper, explode with directed energy.

That's all.

Misconceptions about meritocracy

People have a very wrong idea about 'meritocracy'. They view it as a singularity in space/time when it is actually a pyramid. It is true that there is room for one at the top, but there is more room for those in the middle, and there's lots more room for those at the bottom. Thus, it is like any other form of social stratification except for the opportunity for one to transcend one's strata and advance to a higher one.

Which is where the problem is. Everybody feels pressured to clamber up the pyramid to get the tippy-top space at the apex as quickly as possible. If it's too difficult they blame the system for being unfair when, in fact, it's just physics: no two physical bodies can occupy the same space at the same time. The people at the top can't reach down and pull you up without sacrificing one of their own, so don't expect that to happen any time soon.

The rational thing to do is to recognize where one is in space and maneuver oneself upwards over time. So how does one get up to the top? The other mistake that people make is to work harder because they somehow believe that there's a cosmic principle or something that rewards hard work. So people work, but eventually they get stressed out, disillusioned, and hate everything when they stagnate at a level below their expectations.

Notice that the people at the top are the ones who get other people to work for them? If you're working very hard, you're probably working for someone above you. You're not going to impress them by showing them how hard you are working. The harder you work, the more important it is for them to keep you where you are because you get work done for them. What will impress them is how well you get others to do your work for you. That will give you time to smarten up, and not look so harried while getting your job done. That will prove you are ready for the next higher tier up the pyramid.

We don't need a 'compassionate meritocracy' -- a contradiction in terms if you ask me. Remember: the dairy principle that 'cream rises to the top' trumps the cosmic principle that promises 'rewards for hard work' every time. To get ahead, you only have to beat yourself.

"Lettuce" get moving!

Look, it's snarky Gary, June's pet snail. For a week, he's been sulking out of sight, protesting against his rations. We though he might like chye sim for a change from his usual. No dice. He went into hibernation and I never saw movement from him again. Just to see if he had finally died, I put in some fresh butterhead lettuce. It was a miracle! Clearly, he loves the lettuce.

Discover Dogs 2013

Took Tasha to the Expo for the Discover Dogs 2013 event. She had a whale of a time socializing with so many other dogs in various states of dress and grooming. We tried her out on the agility circuit and she had no difficulty making the jumps. She'll have to conquer her fear of the high ramp, though... and, of course, learn to be more responsive to her owner's voice commands if she wants to compete in this arena. Meantime, we went shopping for dry food, treats, shampoo, ear cleaning fluid and picked up a bunch of free samples along the way too. We spent enough to claim a free ear cleaning for Tasha. My, doesn't the groomer look familiar, Tash?

Education: one-dimensional no longer, we hope

Schools really do have to de-emphasize academic achievement based on test and exam scores while giving non-academic activities a big boost.

Co-curricula activities (CCAs) hone talent in sport and aesthetics; and provide experience in service-oriented project tasks. Community involvement (if not done in a too-contrived manner) lets kids experience and participate in the real world away from their sheltered, blinkered lives on campus or at home.

If we're worried about the kids' employability think about this: academic certification only ascertains which league a person is eligible to play in, but it doesn't guarantee that he or she will be picked to play on a team. A company in the real world wants an employee who can cope in the real world. Those with talents in multiple fields have the most opportunities as they are those most sought after.

Kids gunning only for academic achievement, your certificate can only prove one and only one ability you have to offer: that you can take a whole year to reproduce a chunk of text from memory. Wow. I'm so impressed. Let me Google up who else can do the same thing in less time...

Them's fighting words

Thanks to a visit from yet another motivational speaker, I've been thinking about what I would want to say to my graduating class on the last day of the timetabled curriculum.

As usual, this speaker's message is no different from the previous: it's all about delayed gratification. Kill yourselves for eighty days and enjoy life after.

I prefer a more realistic message:

Kids, you're going to look back upon these last two years and remember them as a holiday camp. Where you're going, life is going to suck so totally, sometimes you'll wonder whether it's worth getting out of bed and slogging it through yet another day. You may already feel like that now, but it's only going to get worse, not better.

You're in school now because you're in training. It's safe in here. Failure in training has fewer consequences than in real life. As long as you learn, you will fail; but as long as you fail, you will learn. The outside world is not so forgiving.

As it is in the military, you're going to cry for mommy while you're training in boot camp. But the reason you're being trained now is so that we can send you into the battlefield later. You're sheltered and protected when you're in training; out there in the rain, muck, blood, fuel, flames and cordite, you screw up, you die or get limbs blown off or worse, get someone else killed. You're being trained to go to war, not Club Med, so don't expect too much when you leave this safe haven of Junior College.

Why then should you bother to train so hard now, when there is so little to look forward to, out there? Look at it this way: would you rather go out there without adequate training? Because one way or another, you'll end up there anyway. If you weren't attending Junior College, you could be out there right now.

Training hard and training well means you're building instincts that just may help you survive another day. Knowing how to survey the lay of the land; learning skills, tactics and strategies for survival and victory; and developing the stamina, resilience and resourcefulness to see your plans to fruition; these are your rewards for working hard now, so that when you eventually take to the field you're not just cannon fodder, but rather in a position of command (even if the only squad you have to command is yourself).

Like it or not, in whatever career or vocation we find ourselves in out there, we all have one singular objective. To achieve it, our personal survival is a prerequisite. The end of the world is coming. Every passing day brings it a little closer. Our job -- I mean everyone's job -- is to fight on and delay that inevitability for one day more. Together, we're going to hold out until we hear the declaration, "Today we are cancelling the Apocalypse!"

Only then will we even think about "enjoying life" as a personal entitlement.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but better to hear the truth now than experience it first-hand for yourselves and become bitter and disconsolate over it. Loss of morale at that point is the first stage to getting yourself killed. Fat lot of good you will be to the cause then.

Chuck the big expectations of happiness. Work hard; train hard; fail a lot; learn a lot; survive and every day, will yourselves to fight on for just one more day. Go into battle with this mindset and every small victory, every simple pleasure will be that much more meaningful and enjoyable. Forget "delayed gratification"! Where we find true happiness is daily, in the small things in life.

Suit up, check your gear, it's time. Move out!

Twinkies taste test

I never knew what I had till they were gone. In all the time I spent in TO, I never had the urge to pick up and taste this legendary American supermarket staple. That is, not until they disappeared off the shelves not too many months ago. Only then did I regret being too cheapskate to indulge my curiosity when they were in abundance around me.

Well, the good news is, they're back. Even better, May acquired a box (a whole box!) for me to taste test. So... golden sponge cake? Check. Cream filling? Check. But the individually wrapped confections were somewhat smaller than I had imagined. The sponge cake had a pleasant springiness to the bite, though it was dry in the mouth. Definitely needed a beverage -- a glass of cold milk, say -- to wash it down. The cream was smooth and had the type of consistency that was perfect for squishing between the tongue and the upper palate.

Taste? Sweet. As expected. It's more a soft candy bar than the 'snack food' it bills itself as. So it's unlikely to be the first thing I'd think of stuffing my face with in a zombie apocalypse; but as a sideline indulgence... sure. Bring milk.