Singapore: Work in progress

Given that there's only 10 days left til the end of the year (coincidentally, Mayans ended/reset their long count calendar today), I thought I'd give my 2 cents on the state of my country.

This post was inspired by this picture. 

I think it's simpler to list down our current problems and see if we can draw any possible links. Also, it happens to be my first train of thought seeing as I am the cynic that I am.

Good education, over-taxed teachers. No "soft skills" taught. Little creativity encouraged. 

Good roads, high COE, too many cars on the road. Public transport failing these past 2 years. Esp MRT, bus and even taxis. 

This past year, I have been deeply disappointed by our transport system. It's the first time where it has failed and to such an extent. Firstly, MRTs break down and passengers were not given any real sense that things have changed. It genuinely feels like we are doing the same things hoping that they won't go wrong again. Now I get that it could be a case of old machinery breaking down. But the least the public can expect is an improvement. I tried to come up with an apt analogy but I couldn't, because of the crucial importance of the transport infrastructure and the role it plays. 

The bus system also messed up spectacularly recently. With the recent bus "strikes", 2 things can be seen. Firstly, that the past fare hikes apparently have not made a significant dent in the high operating costs of SBS and SMRT that they actually need to raise fares again just to compensate the bus drivers properly. I was led to believe that the past hikes were SPECIFICALLY meant to reduce such issues. Secondly, our system of handling strikes is retarded. No self-respecting citizen in a developed country right now can look at the way we dealt with the PRC drivers and be impressed. It's clear that they are being taken advantage of and it's shameful that we dare to call ourselves a first world country when a public transport company (and by extension, the government which backs it) blatantly disregards the concerns of the its employees. I honestly cannot believe that they are being deported. Seriously. Right now, nobody will deny that anyone who participated in that strike are on some sort of blacklist handed among the employers right now, deemed as the troublemakers that they are. (this is conjecture and should not be taken as fact)

It is precisely this behaviour that scared citizens into voting for the PAP for the last 40 years. Singaporeans have always been too scared of what the government is capable of.

Media censorship more prominent, with the rise of social media. More people displeased with govt and starting to speak up. Voter apathy still an issue with regards to "real" change.

Issue of immigration. Locals emigrating seems to be a universal goal among the young, as opposed to choosing to stay in this country. This speaks volume about not just the economic environment of Singapore but the social aspects as well. A point to consider might be the fact that even though travelling is now significantly easier, many people have not truly considered the implications of emigrating long term or even "mid" term (i.e 5-10 years).

In terms of foreigners entering Singapore, the trend is that we have become a lot closer to Malaysians as a result of the "perceived" "threat" of PRCs. Currently, foreigners (key note people who are "visibly" foreign, e.g. Bangladeshi, PRCs, Ang Mohs, occupying the low, mid, high income and social status respectively. of course this is an over-generalization.) are starting to make up a significant portion of our society. And to put this bluntly, they are no longer a small enough population that we can hide them in our construction sites, hawker centers and super atas bungalows and housing areas. It's easy to dismiss large groups especially when they are grouped because we can avoid them and pretend they don't exist in our larger picture of the local society. I think we passed that proportion of foreigners-to-locals roughly 5 years ago or even earlier where most people could sense their "territory" and "culture" being encroached upon. The white collar workers probably sensed it much earlier because that's been on the lips of most unemployed since forever.

Currently, it doesn't "feel" like there's an employment squeeze. But from what I hear everywhere, it appears to be so. Unfortunately, I don't know any job market to comment intelligently. The only thing I know is that we appear to be outpaced in industry, outmatched in sought-after skill sets and losing out in terms of wages. Everything we can do, foreigners seem to be able to do faster, better and cheaper. So the question comes up. Can we realistically compete in such a market, or are we doomed, to put it in simple words? Putting aside the question of wages because I feel that the cause is pretty simple (cost of living combined with high expectations), what are we missing in terms of quality? I think that if we are able to make ourselves distinguishably better (broader skill set for example), it would solve both problems because we would be creating an additional value for the employer which would (hopefully) outweigh the additional cost, particularly in knowledge-based economies where value is based not on the quantity but quality. Currently, I feel that, perhaps as a human folly, we have not been able to fully quantify the value of quality and hence, there is a leverage for "quality" employees.

Then again, I'm not young enough to know everything.

PS. I'm too lazy to elaborate on half of them, so I'm leaving them as it is.

Fact: There are finite resources in this world.

... but there are infinite wants: Economics

... and we have enough for what we need: Philosophy

... but can we discover more: Science

... so how do we makes the most out of each: Engineering

... so who decides who gets what?: Politics

... how do make the most money out of that?: Business

... how sad: Art

Everyone's worrying about their CAP score

You know what's the most dangerous thing they made about the CAP score? There is no passing grade. There is only a maximum grade and when people leave that grade by only a small percentage, it looks horrifying compared to a perfect 5.

Passion

It's been a long time.

Also if you're wondering why I haven't posted a birthday post this year, it's because I actually had a pretty great time.

Anyway, to the topic.

The main reason why I haven't been updating for the last 6+ weeks was "mainly" because I was busy doing Architecture work in uni. And I don't use the word busy lightly. A brief glimpse of the busiest week of my life: I slept 3 hours plus half hours plus 5 minutes on the last day before crit and by thursday, I couldn't remember what happened on monday. Also, I spent less time outside the studio than I did sleeping, and yes that meant I slept in the studio 90% of the time.

But aside from that, it's interesting to note why people do it. Why do people put themselves through such a rigorous workload to come out only marginally richer or more respected than the average graduate? One thing I've heard pretty often when people (year 1s) try to rationalize is that at least this is more interesting than reading history texts or doing math. And I totally get that. But is simply being interesting enough to get you to stay on the ride for the next 5 years?

Passion seems to be the big thing at play here, and I want to clarify that I have no concept of what passion means. I have never really truly "felt it". I don't know what drives olympic swimmers to go through the regime that they do, or why writers become so attached to their jobs. It doesn't mean I can't feel love for an activity or a thing, I mean I love pool, video games and magic tricks but it never seems right to say I'm passionate about these.

To me, my understanding of passion simply refers to this strange human attachment to something that's so intense it pushes you to do things most people wouldn't. So most intense work regimes fall under this category, olympians, writers et cetera.

But does what I do fall into this category? It's certainly "inhumane". It's not something everyone really fully comprehends until a week later when the weekend becomes 72 hours long and you spend every single one of it in the studio, thinking it's still saturday when you're 2 hours away from the first lecture on monday. It's not easy work. And I do it. Every so often I'd ask myself why I'm here, and I can never get a real answer. I'm just here for the ride I guess. I don't love architecture. I mean it's interesting, but I love to hang out, play some pool and chill on the couch more than I love architecture. Architecture is interesting, but it's no passion. I don't think I'll ever feel as much for anything else like history or writing or engineering. Meanwhile, I'll just keep on trucking.

"True-Blue" Singaporean

Even Singaporeans don't want to be Singaporeans.

I feel sad the Feng TW's name is the one we are dragging across the mud because of the problems that we have, ones that we made ourselves, whether we like to admit it or not.

Balcony Sessions: July 12th 2012 8pm

These are the balcony sessions:

The unhappy are often the greatest poets. Nobody ever picked up a pen and paper when they are satisfied with life.
So now you know a bit of context.
I don't think this mess of words with no real direction will ever be comprehended at a later time. I think it's best for all parties involved.

I wonder when was the last time I just sat and looked. The combination of Fahrenheit 451 by Ray (as explained by John Green) along with a status update of another of my friend finding an SO messes with your head a little. That, along with some travel fatigue.

Here I am, eating the shittiest pizza of my life along with some Fanta, writing on the back of a pizza menu, in Milan of all places.

Have I ever mentioned how beautiful horizons are. I guess technically it's all one long horizon. When I first started this trip, I was in the Van Gogh museum and many artists were lamenting the vanishing of nature everywhere as everyone moved towards city life. I remember walking along those aisles thinking, what could be so great about nature. Stop being such pussies.

Today I'm watching the sky from the balcony, the soft blend from pink to green to blue.

I'm not sure if I really want to go home. I guess I want to do both just as badly.
In retrospect, I should have kept the lid close. My shitty pizza is now cold as well.
I think I just want a friend to talk to. Recently, I found out that I lost her number. I actually lost my SIM card a few weeks back and the only reason I frantically checked my contacts was to make sure I didn't lose my only way to contact her. Yesterday, I found out that of all the contacts that I saved, hers was the only one that did not have a number attached to a name.

Fahrenheit 451 reminds us of the concept of mindless entertainment. That I could forget what I just watched on the telly not 5 minutes ago. I'm genuinely afraid I have become that. To be not dead but not really alive.
When was the last time you felt alive? Asked John. I couldn't answer. Has my memory really gotten that bad or is my life really that pathetic?
Neither sounds promising.

We all look for quick escapes. Drugs, food, drinks, sex. "The little death" Le petit I can't remember. That's how the French describe the orgasm. Is life so meaningless that we see escape, many willing to risk injury or death to do so?

I don't know.

A week ago I made the realization that I was only attracted to her because she remained the only female peer I have "semi-regular" contact with.
A smart person once told me that what I feel is not so much jealousy or envy of love, but more of an envy or jealousy of time lost among friends. By all accounts that makes sense, but it doesn't make me feel better. I still feel whatever it is that I feel inside and there's no one around to get it out. When I finally do see my friends, my jaws will probably shut tight and nothing will come out. It's strange how the truth is never kind. Yet, it is the one thing I seek in life.

I wrote once that this feels like losing a race nobody knew they were participating in. I don't know why.

I think I'm tired of hearing "I'll find you" or "I'll ask you" when nobody seems to do so. When you have some quiet to yourself, you do a lot of thinking. I'm having a lot of quiet these past few days. I'm not so sure I like it.
I feel like I can no longer use my mouth. Like words stop coming out the moment they carry any depth or emotion. I need a pen or a computer to put any thoughts into the physical realm. It feels really weak.

Now the sky has turned a lighter shade of purple.

I met a person who asked me why bother living if there is no heaven.

What if there wasn't?
I could never wrap my head around his logic.

Right now my thoughts are so segmented, they are just a string of phrases that jolt in and out of my head.
I can now smell the night coming in as the sky turns ever so dimmer.

Milan is supposedly renowned for its nightlife. I always gave people the excuse that it sucks to go clubbing by your lonesome self. I have a secret to admit. I've actually rejected invitations on 2 separate occasions to party, giving some lame excuse each time. I don't know why. Maybe I'm just not secure enough to drink alcohol.

I'm really tired now. My entire face feels like it's drooping. But if I know myself well enough, I'm probably going to stay up using my laptop later.
I envy the optimists. I sit here thinking I'm going to have these sessions 10 years from now in the exact same state and I wonder how they keep going each and every day.

I'm suddenly reminded of my friend's death. Sometimes I wonder if I qualify to call him a friend when I was never that close to him. The sky is now a pretty even shade of grey, with a bit of light still coming from the right.

Streetlights are starting to come on now.

Time to time, I still think about him. How I'd rather take his place instead, or use any of the thousands upon thousands less great than him.

We never became great poets because we were happy.

Thanks for listening to me talk about myself.


P.S. 24/7/12: For clarification, there are actually 2 "hers" in this wall of text, spread over 4 pages of A4 paper. I've done as little editing as I can, just commas and fullstops here and there, to retain the scattered "style" of writing. I think enough time has passed that I'm at least somewhat detached from those emotions that day. Well, writing it down certainly helped.

Singapore and the push for a "well-rounded" education

Post Script: This was not what i planned to write initially a few weeks ago when i said i had stuff i wanted to say. That one mostly pertained to the City Harvest Church scandal and the case where some guy lost his rifle to a worker with a screwdriver.


I just wrote this after watching a video on youtube and felt some words on my brain that I wanted to get out on paper.

My single greatest fear should the government succeed in pushing for an all-rounded education is that if raffles and all the other top schools start taking it seriously, our mentality will change from seeking exam-smart students to seeking to be the best at everything from sports to music to arts to academia. We have a messed up mentality, especially at the top, of wanting to be the best or the first at anything and everything. If the criteria switches (or more likely evolves slowly over time into such a state), we will eventually start looking for "perfect" people who are good at everything and that simply doesn't exist. Our blind enthusiasm towards "being the best" will lead to people not committing suicide because they scored a C or D in major exams, but because they couldn't run fast enough, even though they've been good at everything else. It's always a pity when kids kill themselves because they think they are failures at life for failing exams. I don't want that to spread to the rest of their pursuits. I want kids to fail. I want them to screw up at painting or running or guitar because that's where they learn some  goddamn humility, not shame for trying and failing.

Think about the way we treat CIP and voluntary work and you can see a little of what might possibly happen with pushing all fronts. The environment at the top currently, is that more or less everyone will do CIP but often for less than satisfactory reasons. Many of them hate doing it, but just suck thumb and do it. This may not be a overall majority opinion but we know it happens and we can assume it's not an extreme minority. I don't want to music or arts or sports to evolve into something kids hate doing just to pull up their resume or testimonials. I want there to be something worth doing just for the sake of doing it.

The entire idea of a well-rounded education is not to produce people who are good at everything. Singaporeans and people everywhere must always remember that. It is to protect people whose interests and talents lie outside the academic sphere. It should be more of a safety net to catch those who can't perform in exams. Because those people aren't useless. They certainly aren't useless for getting F at math. They may be amazing tailors or athletes or guitarists. Education is supposed to help everyone, including people like them.

Education is not linear.

to be written. at some point provided I don't lose interest

Yes, i also have some stuff I want to write here but I don't have time to write them here.

Europe: Here and Now

Hey, I don't want to double post this but here's a quick preview. I made a blog just to chronicle the entire europe trip and I hope you support it because there's ads and stuff. Anyway, here's the link: http://glennardvstheworld.tumblr.com/

Alternate Title: I’m in London for 12 hours and I’ve only almost died twice. You can trust me mom.

I think of all the countries I’m going to be in, this will probably resemble Singapore the most. Even then, there are a lot of stark differences between these 2 places. For one thing, there are a lot more stone and brick visible to the casual observer. Everything in the background looks as if they have a brown or grey filter over it. Side note: This is how I almost got into 2 separate traffic accidents because the pavement and road looked so similar in colour that there was no visible distinction.

But don’t let the first photo trick you. It is actually a lively city and you can see a lot of contrasts between the “lively” and its backdrop. everyone always seems to be trying to get somewhere but you never feel the rush or pressure to get anywhere. you could just stand there and stare at the ever-moving crowds and enjoy the view.

Beer seems to be the drink of choice here, with overcrowding at most bars that we passed by, so much so that they actually have standing areas right outside. 

It’s been raining over these past 2 days and I’ve been caught in both of them.  Hopefully, it’s sunny out later. 

Hello world

This post should act as some kind of disclaimer. I foresee a few new students stumbling onto my facebook page and seeing that I in fact do have a blog. (I actually realized it's much harder than I expected to find this page) No matter.

If you do choose to read beyond this post into my history, do take what I say with a pinch of salt. I am an incredibly vulgar person, (which at this point I'm still debating if I want to tell that to you guys in the first place), and the views represented in my history is one of a younger kid, one much like yourself or even younger, if you choose to go that far. Some of the views I present are pretty one-sided and in terms of language, horrible.

But I'm choosing not to take it down or hide it because I think anyone, and most importantly you guys, should be able to discern what to listen to.

That said, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

Cycling

Also, I did some cycling yesterday. I have literally one photo. The other one is just a generic photo of East Coast Park.

Creativity

At some point in time, I wondered to myself what drives artists to make art. I wasn't looking for some passionate answer about motivation or drive or some feel-good mumbo jumbo like that. There's a pretty obvious disconnect between those in the creative industries and those outside. And I wondered why that was. What separated those who do from those who don't.

It in interesting to note that when it comes to creativity, some people firmly believe in being "gifted" and some believe hard work overcomes all. Because creativity comes in various forms of expression, it became too overwhelming to think about how much of an effect training actually has. So I decided to use a parallel, and the only one I could come up with was humor. Being funny comes naturally to some people. And some people manage to turn that into their day job. So why then do schools for humor training still exist, like improv schools and acting schools for comedy?

My belief is that it is an innate ability, just like creativity, cultivated perhaps only when we still have permission (or perhaps freedom) to make mistakes. That time period is usually when we're still very young, still unaware of social pressures like guilt or fear. But more importantly, it comes in 2 parts, the ability to see the world differently, and the ability to translate that to a medium. Of course, such an ability is not a dichotomy between haves and have-nots but a sliding scale. That still doesn't answer the question of why formal training still exists.

Training acts as a funnel to direct part 1 to part 2. Many people go through life with the ability to see things differently, but never able to put it down onto paper or film or any other medium, which is one of the most frustrating thing in the world. You can never expect a good writer to paint well or a sketch artist to direct a film. Some people may have skills that translate well across mediums, but it's unreasonable to expect so from most people. What training does is that it simply refines your skill at putting it on a medium. That's why lessons are focused on particularly technical aspects, like shadows, or pacing or special effects. They have nothing to do with what you can envision in your mind, merely how to show it to other people more spectacularly.

And the reverse is also true. Some people have a marvellous ability to draw or paint or write, but not much of creativity per se. So they perform best imitating the work of other. A lot of them do incredible work, but they lack the originality that makes artists artists. Many times, these are the people that training cannot help.

Hole in the wall

The hole in the wall that used to be my toilet.

Now that construction work is ongoing, there is drilling every other hour and worse, I have no access to a reasonably clean toilet. There's also dust everywhere, and I do mean everywhere.

To put this into perspective, the drilling is done in a toilet, in the kitchen outside the dining hall. The dust managed to spread all the way to the doorway and even the stairs. 

The guts of my once functional bathroom.

Maslow and his stupid triangle

This is Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Nobody seems to understand that this is a hierarchy.

Just to give a bit of background. More and more students are being taught this in schools around the world, but because when this comes about, it's always touch-and-go because no one is teaching psychology at a secondary school level. They are simply using this as a tool to push whatever lesson they have, like English or Social Studies or Character Development or whatever.

This is a very simple example of giving kids tools but not teaching them how to use it. 

The way students misuse this in school is that they like to cite this as an academic theory to prove that people have certain specific needs that they are trying to prove. The needs that people have (according to them) can be anything from needing food to money or even to spiritual needs. This just happens to be the convenient blanket example or theory that proves them right, simply because it's listed here in the pyramid.

Now, adults, let me have a word with you here. With the education that we have, it is simple to see that this theory is meant to prove a hierarchy, that people HAVE to fulfil the bottom (food and sleep) before we go on to the top. We GET that, because we have been bombarded with enough stimuli that we know to expect such a pattern when people show a picture of a pyramid or the word hierarchy.

The thing is, kids don't get that.

To them, they see a convenient list that someone named Maslow wrote down for them that proves that we have all these needs. It doesn't. It simply shows that we have to fulfil basic needs before we concern ourselves with higher-order ones. This is why the poor don't concern themselves with respect by others or why North Koreans don't seem to worry about creativity. 

What we see and what they see is different and even now I find it difficult to get back into the mindset of learning for the first time. I'm not sure whose fault it is and I'm not even sure that matters. Identification of misconceptions like this is important and we need to get a hold of that as soon as possible.

It's very disappointing to see students using a power drill when they don't know how to.

Movie idea from my iPhone

[From 13 Dec 2011]

A rebellion starting up is US led by charismatic person. Turns out to be bankrolled by an enemy of the US like Russia or China even though a British accent sounds better. (Idea idea: conglomerate of nations working against US) Quote/Tagline: It's just good business.

Should the Russians/ bad guys win and the rebellion successful, it will set the US back several years while the other nations overtakes the economy. US citizens will live in a state of grand delusion that they are still the best and consume as they did in the past. The scenery in the country will look like 2010 but other countries will look futuristic.

Birthday idea

[Image not available]
Inspired by this.

Birthday Idea

Set up a table and hopefully signs at a book store and let the birthday person sit there and sign books. Friends and relatives would be forming a line as long as possible (depending on how many friends show up) and take as much time to sign as possible and once it's done, the "customer" takes a walk around the shop or the mall and lines up at the back of the line again to create the illusion of a very popular queue.

Pretty cool, can do as long as you like or until security escorts you out.

Nice idea for the birthday kid.

Legal Gray Areas: Facebook and Rape, Part D'eux

Rape is universally condemned. Actually, wait no scratch that, there are some people who still think men can have sex with women whenever they want, regardless of the women's choice in the matter.

But we're not here to discuss that.

We're here to discuss about LYING about raping, and before I begin, I would like to direct you to 2 links.


1) News story, followed by the video I heard it from (it only talks about that story from after 5:15 mark)

2) "I was raped" "No, we had sex"

While rape has always been clear in definition when it comes to "violent rape", or the first kind of rapey non-consensual sex we think about where a lady walks alone in a dark alley and a man forces himself on her. That, in and of itself, is very hard to misinterpret. The fuzzy definition comes with "sexual assault between non-consenting people." Assault means that there is an element of physical violence or at least the threat of physical violence ("if you struggle, I'll stab you"). That definition however, does not encompass cases like date rape where one is not consenting but there's no violence because she's unconscious from the drugs in her drinks. So some countries broaden the definition to simply non-consensual sex. Simple enough.

Before I get to that minefield, let's tackle the issue of blatant lying in rape accusations. Currently, our system is completely tilted in the woman's favor. It has been documented that men get up to 10 times more severe punishments than woman in cases of similar severity. And it's easy to see why. Think about a man who molested 10 kids. You get pretty disgusted with that scenario, but when a woman molests 10 kids, it does not come off as revolting. So our natural instincts already fail us in this regard. (Note: this is a completely biased/unscientific poll. This is a completely fallacious conclusion stemming from a fallacious train of thought)

Personally, I'm okay with men being treated worse. Call it payback, if you will. What really rustles my jimmies is the assumption of guilt on the father. The fact that when men become accused for raping women, it takes a ridiculous amount of convincing to prove his innocence. In fact, accusing men of rape is actually a threat used by women, particularly when there are no eyewitnesses or alibis (i.e when the 2 people are in the same room or house alone.) In the first case, it wasn't well investigated and police simply took the girl's word for it.

The fact that she would not be charged for this is... I don't even know what or how to feel about this. The official reason for this is not to scare away potential victims from reporting the crime, which by the way is a real problem, particularly in Japan where as many as a quarter (completely unverified statistic) do not report such incidences out of shame or fear. That "sort of" makes sense but then again, shouldn't there be less stigma for reporting cases. This entire issue is very fuzzy and while I don't think she should be free from charges, the fact that she was only 11 should be considered as well as the fact that there will be no restitution  (compensation) for the father.

The second case shows more clearly the idea of non-consensual. When women do that, it not only "makes it hard for real rape victims to be believed, but also insults women who have really experienced rape. If one changes their mind after sex, does that mean that the sex was non-consensual. Wouldn't that be the same as failing to get a degree after studying in college for a few years and then telling people you never attended it? At least that never hurt anyone's reputation. When the woman started to regret sex that night, she cannot call it rape anymore.

Rape is a very serious issue and it cannot be used as a weapon or an excuse. I'm so messed up by this whole issue that I can't even formulate my sentence english like.

Legal Gray Areas: Facebook and Rape

I want to talk about 2 separate issues, not that I'm equating facebook privacy laws are in any way, shape or form similar to rape issues.

Let's talk about facebook first. In the recent months (on the internet), there has been a rising trend of employers asking prospective hires (unemployed people looking for jobs) to hand over their facebook information. Not just the basic profile page url or anything like that, but the account information, including username and passwords. Many companies have reasoned that this is merely "shoulder-surfing", no altering of any details already on the profile. They have also defended this policy by saying it is no different from a standard background check, one that all companies do before hiring to look out for issues such as past criminal activity or drug use, etc. 

Without even researching, we'd know the consequences of this to most of us. This reflects a incredible breach of privacy for the employees, shifting much of the power to the employer.

But what about the employers doing the snooping?

I Hereby Resign by Reginald Braithwaite

This (fictional) resignation letter highlights the possible impacts for the companies, possible conflicts of interest that may arise due to this arrangement. That was an amazing read for me and I literally gasped when I read that the woman could sue the employer while being so casual about handing over her FB information.

Without going too deep into the legal or even moral aspects of this issue, I do have some questions regarding the "background check" aspect of (almost) every hiring.

It's interesting that most people think there is such an obvious reason for background checks. "Well, I definitely don't want to hire an ex-convict". Granted that they are actual valid reasons for denying such people, due to perhaps security reasons. There's no way we could justify hiring a person with a criminal record for issues pertaining to national security, such as in Defence ministries, or even as simple as guarding important people like the President of the United States.

But how far can we stretch such a reasoning? Isn't denying jobs to ex-convicts as discriminatory as denying them to a lesbian? Anti-discrimination laws were set up to provide equality for everyone, but when companies pick their hires, they still have some kind of bias regarding these issues. The fact that handing over facebook information simply streamlines the process for them. It's not as if they don't already check out your profile page on facebook before deciding. When they do that, it's not discrimination because there's no paper trail regarding them checking you out, but in their mind, they would have had the same decision processes with or without your password. It's just a matter of admitting outright whether they do look at your profile. I'll admit that forcing employees to give up passwords imply that their posts are scrutinized no matter what, instead of being able to decide who sees what. 

Facebook also presents a new element to the background checking process. The idea that your thoughts and opinions can be ascertained through your profile. Traditionally, it was very black-and-white type of information. Male/Female, Age, Criminal Activity, Past accomplishments, etc. Now, everything you ever decided to post on public is up for grabs, that includes your political ideology, your attitude, whether you're divorced or committed adultery. There really is no one person who is at fault for such a scenario. On one hand, you could blame the company for snooping around for such information, but on the other, you could blame the user for posting his thoughts on facebook, knowing very well that it can be accessed by everyone (or at least compromised to such a degree). The company is looking at information you chose to post for everyone to see, as opposed to stealing records or hiring private investigators to get that information. Who should be responsible for this? I don't know.

So with that, I leave you with more questions that you came here with. Good night.

Oh and I'll talk about the rape thing in another post because this is becoming too long.

How societies advance and yet remain conservative

Conservative and progressive attitudes seem to be at odds with one another and when they spill over to other topics, it's easy to relate one another.

I don't know if this is a fallacious statement but progressive attitudes in a society seems to be linked to advances in technology that eventually become modern societies. I don't know if which leads to which, but they do appear linked. I mean with a progressive attitude, you'd be more inclined to know more about the world, find out, and make discoveries, which is how technology comes about.

But my question is how conservative societies become "modern" (like Singapore and Japan) and yet remain conservative. I know there are a lot of loaded words to untangle and I don't really have time for that so I'm going to just post it like this.

And like I said, maybe the initial assumption is wrong in the first place. Who knows?

Conversation trees

Every so often in life, we will encounter moments when we realize something is amiss. It can be a big dramatic revelation that changes your life entirely, or a small little thing you picked up on.

Since becoming a teacher, people like to ask me either what has teaching been like, or how are the students. Most of the time I don't have a short answer because it's too big of an experience to squeeze into 2 lines. So, I sort of say the first thing that comes to mind.

When people ask me how my students are, I don't have much of a judgement on them because they are neither good kids nor bad. So I say the one thing that as a class, they seem to have moreso than other classes or even batches. Which is that they have overwhelmingly good handwriting.

And this is the part when you realize people aren't really listening. So far, at least 2 people have said "Oh, (start leading into another topic)" I mean talking about their handwriting is definitely something people don't expect to hear. Maybe that they are naughty or nice or muggers or whatever. People who are generally interested in what your are talking about will maybe extend the conversation like saying that's unexpected, or try to guess reasons for nice handwriting (are they mostly girls?) or maybe even change direction to something that they were kind of expecting (but what about their attitude, or but are they a clever bunch of kids).

When people ask you something and they don't seem to react to that news, you know they are not interested in you (or your students) but more of a polite acknowledgement before moving on to what they really want to talk about.

It's always funny to find out that people are really listening, because they think they are putting on a good show of pretending to be interested, but the speaker can totally see through it.

Micro vs Macro: What that means as a teacher

Before I had my own classes to teach, any time I thought about my "hypothetical class" and how I would "educate" them, it was usually the norm to think of big-scale events or long-term structures to put in place. Things like term-long debates, "ideology wars" or a completely revamped grading/reward system were all on the table. It was always very fun to think of how to make lessons like these interesting and it was fun for a very simple reason, there was freedom from expectations. Think about that for a second. If there was an expectation or lesson objective to meet, trying to come up with or even apply such interesting lessons is very difficult.

Something that a colleague told me before I even met my class was that the teacher must always learn to prioritize. At that time, it was easy to file that advice under useful words that I may think about in the future. How naive of me. 

It only took 4 weeks of lessons for me to understand the true value of those words. It's easy to forget about his words because from my perspective at that time, the amount of work and responsibilities that they have is easily 3 times as much as ours, so it felt like something a NIE beginning teacher would struggle with because when they come in, they will take on 2-3 classes, most likely 1 CCA and also perhaps 1 or 2 School Committees, which is an insane workload if you step back and really think about it.

By comparison, I currently (as a relief teacher) only have 1 class and a teacher-project type of thing. Already, I find it hard to think in the long-term when it comes to lesson planning. It's hard to break out of the mentality of "living day by day" every time I want to plan lessons. After every lesson, there is something that they found difficulty with, if you are lucky, it would be a mistake that they have never encountered before, because that would mean that they are learning and thinking about new things. Then, there are the things you have already missed, because it didn't seem appropriate to teach at the time, or that a particularly important learning point is currently being discussed and we don't want that learning point to drift away from their minds if we don't recap or reinforce that point soon. Sometimes, the project will come in the way and screw up whatever you may have already planned. So it's quite hard to break out of that "day by day" mentality.

Of course the moral of the story here is to avoid what I'm doing. Currently, on the last few days of week 1 in this new term, I'm trying to broaden my attitude towards lesson plans, go back to how it was before. Maybe then there'll be some fun. Or better yet, some actual learning. 

Perhaps this will act as a cautionary tale.

Idea: picture

2 picture ideas.

1) Person flips a table. Table is in mid-air. Debris falling around like test papers or just random things. OR MAHJONG TILES. The person can have any facial expression and it will still be funny.

2) Skydiving. A person whips out his phone and takes a self-shot with the sky as his background. He will be wearing his skydiving suit and gear. Obvious limitation, his friend must be holding on to a giant piece of glass. but we can take a photo of him too.

Idea: Live show

Using the lighting effects from this show, you can create "clone", "slow motion" and "teleport" effects on a live stage show.




Instead of a dance show, make a fight show similar to this:






And matrix style live shows can be done.

A story from reddit: How Chefs treat assholes

GuruPrimo 667 points 10 hours ago*  

Never, never, never did I screw with someone's food on purpose. 12 years as a Chef. Anyone who did shit like that was getting thrown the fuck out of my kitchen. Anyone who does shit like that is human garbage.

That being said I have done the opposite: We had a regular customer who would come in on every Saturday nights at the peak of business; while we were in the weeds. He called himself the Ronster. We hated him; I had built a menu that was delightful and had really great options but he could not be bothered to even try one of them. He was such a loyal regular customer that when one kitchen manager refused his order on a Saturday night the Ronster called the owner and forced the Kitchen manager to apologize to him on the dining room floor. His diva status was legendary, and for him it was a symbol of status to bring his friends out and show them that he could make an entire restaurant dance around him.

I played along fully, even though I never had mise en place for his orders because it varied so much each week. I finally went all out and cooked him a meal that he loved enough to order again and again. A very simple alfredo pasta with a truffled veal buerre rouge. Not the lightest meal. Alfredo is easy as pie, as is sauteed veal buerre rouge. So I was delighted he wasn't requesting anything complex anymore (he once demanded Beef Wellington in the middle of us having 20+ tickets in a 125 cover restaurant). He still came in every Saturday and still ignored our seasonal, local and genuinely delicious offerings.

I began pushing his meal to the extremes of flavor and fat content, making it more and more delicious, his pasta had a full stick of butter and 2 cups of heavy cream. The buerre rouge was more butter and the veal was sauteed in ghee. He couldn't get enough. I ate the meal once just out of curiosity and it was soooo heavy, afterward I could barely even keep my eyes open. Major calories

For years he would come and eat my meal, he loved it. Praised me and would bring in all his friends, essentially no one but him would order outside of the menu and the Ronster and I had an ongoing junkie/pusher relationship.

He doesn't come in for a few months. and when he does return the owner calls me out and the Ronster looks terrible; he had a triple bypass after a series of heart attacks. I could tell he wanted his veal, his thunderbomb of fat and salt. Ronster asked what I could make him with no fat at all, no red meat, as low calorie as possible. He dined on poached salmon and steamed spinach with unflavored wild rice. I never saw him smile again.

tl/dr: Customer was a major dick, I spent years addicting him to my fattiest meal and he eventually had severe heart attacks.

edit: just did a quick rough calculation and his calorie count was right around 4,000

- I felt sad for the victim. and a little heartburn.

Moral of the story: Don't piss off people who handle your food.

pool video cam

Going to bring a video cam for pool next time.

Picking up calls

Answering the phone and hearing "mr sim!" is still such a strange phenomenon

Unexplained Things

So strange things often can't explain. Here's a quick list I came across/ thought of.

A shadow always appearing either at the edge of your vision or at the exit which disappears every time you glance at it.

Sometimes you will think you hear someone calling your name, but nobody seems to be doing so when you turn around.

When you look for lost things, you will look in the strangest places, like opening the fridge to look for your car keys. What's even stranger is that sometimes you search in a certain place, can't find it, go somewhere else and come back to search at the exact same place, you will find it as if somebody pitied you and decided to put it there.

When you're doing something and suddenly think of doing something else not exactly related, like googling a certain thing. Sometimes, in less than 5 seconds, you will forget what it is. There's a funny theory online, that every time you forget something almost immediately after thinking, it's because you have somehow come in contact with aliens and the MIB have come in and wiped out your memory, which explains why you can't remember what you were doing.

Reserved for idiots

As someone who has done a lot of stupid things and enjoys doing stupid things for the sake of doing stupid things, I have to say, to the general public, don't do stupid things.

It's usually reserved for idiots like me or the Jackass crew.

I don't play well with others

I think at it's core, there's a huge contrast in personality that creates a lot of friction between me and a lot of other, shall we call them type X, personalities. I think the same would be true if I hung out with a lot of slackers as well, as evident in army. By that understanding, it can't be the fault of "other people". There's only so many times you can shift the blame to other people before realizing the problem is with yourself. I'm okay with that. It's a part of life that I have to accept, like luck.

The idea that "work = results", and by extension "more work = more results" is so universal and ingrained into our psyche that nobody takes any disputes to this seriously. Certainly, no education system would. Interestingly, anyone who has witnessed any results presentation (A or O levels results) would say that hard work is not enough. We've seen enough tears to know otherwise. "Smart work is the way to go" people will say. Well, of course smart work is the way to go, but we haven't quite nailed down what smart work means.

I often wonder how much of my grades are affected by anything other than what I already know or how much work is put in. It's interesting to think that if we put a sufficiently large sample size of monkeys or chimps and have them do MCQs, would we get a significant result. What about the teachers' mood when he is marking or your handwriting, especially when it comes to open-ended answers.

From the perspective of someone who never does homework on a regular basis, it makes it a bit hypocritical to suddenly place so much value on it. Most teachers have a belief that work should be given to students every time there's a break of more than 1 day between lessons and because my subject demands kids to know how to write, naturally they get them to write. Looking at this logically, it makes sense, like how a person who sucks at standing broad jump should simply do more standing broad jumps. Yet nobody gets to the gold standard doing only standing broad jumps, even if they do it for 1000 times a day. It helps you get out of a certain standard or band, but after which, it depends on a multitude of other factors, which can be trained by other exercises.

There is no one-size-fits-all answer for this. Learning is different for everyone and continuous writing does not always translate into results. What's smart for me may not be smart for you and vice versa.

I also happen to be of the opinion that JC students should be able to take learning into their own hands. I guess that's why I stopped making anything compulsory except for the very very weak. My personal style is that I prefer my better students to teach my weaker ones because that was how I learnt. Teaching or mentoring was in some sense a game-changer because as an above-average (for GP) student, it provides a sense of responsibility and shifts the focus from yourself to the weaker pupil. It also exposes a lot of gaps you never knew you had in education.

Ultimately, what students need is a level of self-awareness and self-critical(ness) that allows them to see what is working and what isn't.

Because of what I believe, it's quite obvious why I seem to have less work than my fellow co-workers. I do spend a ridiculous amount of time just staring at my lesson plan and waiting for an idea to pop up.

Haven't written something like this in a long time.

Excerpts from my iPhone: Education system

Having an education system instilled a sense of assuming subconsciously that everything you need to do and know is set aside for you and you just need to listen to instructions and do as you're told.

31/12/11

Excerpts from my iPhone: Worries

You know what I'm worried about? That my results in A levels will cause a repeat of what happened in Sec 2. That because I didn't work hard for my results and still got them anyway, I'm going to think I'm some punk ass genius and arrogant my way throughout Uni. Yes, I just made arrogant a verb.

22/01/12

Excerpts from my iPhone: Uncomfortable

I just realized how uncomfortable I am around smart people. I guess it's unfair to lump all smart people into one group and label them "uncomfortable to hang out with"

Replay

I am very tempted to replay all the old final fantasy games after listening to the music and watching some of the cutscenes. I just realized that I didn't finish most of the games because I lost interests trying to complete all the sidequests. The only one I am certain that I beat the final boss was FFX-2 because I tried to get new game plus to obtain some of the rarer items. That said, I actually spent 100+ hours on it if i remember correctly.

Anyway, I'm only interested in starting from 7 and ending with 10 or x-2 because they are the ones that don't look that ridiculous.

Anyone interested in doing this with me?

The Office

Another stupid professional mistake. WAH LAU EH.

Yo manners, why you gotta have so many rules man?

*depressed*

(I feel like a fifteen year old girl after writing this)

Tired

I sometimes wonder that how is it possible that at such a young age I can be so tired, and not tired in the physical sense, but just weary of the world and everything. It's a marvel how most people grow old and trudge through life as if it were mud at chest level.

A friend once asked me about dying. She said what would you have done if you knew your death was imminent, would you regret not having done enough or certain things. I would, but if it happens, it happens, I just feel as if I'm not looking forward to anything so nothing should really hold me back in that regards. Of course, I would regret things like leaving my family behind and my friends would have one less person to care about, but it's quite surreal to think about it.

To think about dying is to essentially think about leaving and not coming back. My mum and most of my relatives like to talk about dreams, particularly dreaming about my deceased grandmother. Like how she seems to be waiting for something, or holding someone's hands, or walking to or away from certain places and in certain peoples' dreams, crying. They like to speculate about how Mother was trying to send them messages, because the older generation in my family are having quite a situation with themselves over greed and such. It's not in my place to say, not that I know anything significant anyway.

In my work, I have encountered many instances where I am encouraged by people not to say anything when I don't know enough. Which is fair, because as GP teachers they apparently really listen to anything I'm trying to describe and i end up having so many holes in my descriptions that it sucks as a story.

Anyway, back to leaving, if I really hard about not doing certain things, I would have regretted not enjoying life more, like having sex or going for skydiving. But these seem trivial compared to the grief of those around me. That would really be my only concern, if any.

I just can't believe such a young mind can grow so weary despite experiencing so little.

Stuff people say 2012: army edition

Stuff people say is a (supposedly) annual feedback gathering session from peers that have been a major part of my year. This year, it will mostly be my friends from army, and not people i hang out with on the weekends, just so I can make the point about "major part of my year" clearly.

Its' supposed to be annual but skipped last year and that year before because I switched camps 3 times and they didn't know me very well as well as bmt respectively. This year will also be a bit different in the sense that some of my friends have expressed concern over issues of anonymity and because I forgot to disclose how this information will be used until someone asked about it yesterday. Instead of copy and pasting wholesale of any particular persons' words, I will be extracting one-liners that exemplify my point as much as possible. I hope that's enough anonymity for you. No, I really do.

In my time in army, I had a particular image of myself. It's not a very glorifying image of myself but not a very humble one at that. That image was so shattered today when I read the consolidated texts.

Perception is generally the key to the questions I ask about myself, because I felt that no matter my intentions, people's reactions will always a based on their perception of me and my intentions and so forth. It therefore became unnecessary and even unhelpful to argue about what I meant by this or why I did that in that order.

On to the actual reflection:

There are 2 very consistent points that people will always bring up across the board, save a few individuals.

Number 1 is that I am rude. Words used in this vein include: brash, arrogant, overbearing, impatient, My first impression to almost everyone is that I am not only rude (or impolite) to my peers (fellow 3rd sergeants) but even worse to my men.

This is what predominantly got me in trouble at 40SAR at the start. Most of my men hated me because I was the only one who really raised my voice, at least that's what they will remember me for. Also for those of you who didn't know, I eventually gave up trying to scold them down and ended up bitching to them about army stuff. I was rewarded by one of my men with the following quote, "Now you more like men than like sergeant leh." Granted, that was because I told them I wasn't going to pack my field pack after Wallaby.

The rude problem has been a thorn in my side for many years now. If I'm not mistaken, it stems from the fact that I started sounding like that in high school because I wanted to be different from everyone else in my triple science class. Then it became that I didn't want to change who I was or how I spoke just because you want me to. Whatever is the case, I think I need to eventually take after my father with the salesman style talking. Although it does feel like I'm intentionally leaving a part of my childhood behind.

Another sub point or offshoot to the impolite thing is that I do have a tendency to blurt out whatever without going through my brain first. There was once I came off an intense argument I didn't even know I got myself into about physical fitness. I just instinctively replied every sentence without sensing that it was such a "sensitive" issue.

One thing that unintentionally lifted my spirits was this:

if only through the way of speaking, it would be a bad reflection of me, not a reflection of actions

If it sounds like bad grammar, this was rephrased from the point form in my notebook.

Honestly, I think about this point and I don't really know how to remedy this. My problem is that I am trying to influence the people around (particularly students that I will be teaching) that we need to stop being tight lipped about issues and questions because our society cannot speak up for itself. And yet, if I were to take the obvious solution and intentionally slow myself from talking, it would feel as if I'm painting myself into a corner. On one hand, I don't want to blurt out things and hurt peoples' feelings but yet, I don't want to create an atmosphere where everyone is held back and thinks too much about what he wants to say.

The second is that I'm lazy. Remember when I said about that particular image of mine. I thought I was the kind of person who would help you when you needed help. Sure I knew I was lazy, but I thought I was lazy to an acceptable extent. Turns out wrong. The interesting thing about this is that out of so many times I thought I was being voluntarily helpful didn't stand out in their mind as much as they did in mine. It's interesting how psychology works in that way. That, I would remember more vividly the times I volunteered while others would remember more vividly the times I slept in bunk. Perhaps it was because I could somehow justify it in my mind that I was able to "forgive" myself much more readily.
Also, I'm fucking lazy.

Other things people have said about me:

Stubborn.
People like to say I am inflexible. Nicer people would say I have my own way of thinking and don't like to be told how things are done. It is a bad habit to break, I must admit, and sometimes, even voicing my opinions would make me sound stubborn. Granted, I won't say it in the nicest way. I really do wonder how does one go about being less stubborn, because if you had a plan and I had a plan, I would find faults in your plan and you would in mine, then we would see which one is better. If I don't voice the faults that I find, wouldn't it disadvantageous to the whole team? I truly am puzzled

Did a good job as DC6 even without 2IC
I feel like I have to explain why I actually didn't really do a good job as a Det Comd. 3 things are in order. 1, Det 6 men are really A grade men in terms of initiative and knowing what they are supposed to do and not do. They were very different from my old Det 1 men, who were dependent on direct instructions but very hardworking and precise. Det 6 men do cut corners like normal human beings, but they do know their limits so I didn't have much trouble in terms of command and control, discipline, etc.
2. Things that generally needed a 2IC at the start eventually became a group effort by the end, especially things that had a deadline. Things in the field that needed to be done by a 2IC ended up split up to the 3 of my men, HH doing comms and WL taking tarpaulin out and settling bombs. And in camp was the only time when not having a 2IC felt like there was a void to be filled. My job is not that hard without a 2IC in a sense that, things that needed a 2IC to be done ended up being done by Bryan and the rest of the 2ICs, such as moving the OVM to the crates for Wallaby and painting. Accounting didn't have a deadline so I just strolled in when I happened to need to do something else, like rev the vehicle.
3. HX is essentially the interim Det Comd. Most of the time something needed to be done and I was just too out of my mind, he ended doing it without me telling him to. I recommended him to become a 3SG in the event that I would not be available, ie reservist and whatnot. He has the initiative and moreso the 6th sense that something needed to be done and no one wanted to do it. Quick example: when the ptp guys were ording on the 10th, the camp passes still had not been collated yet. The only thing I did was to get Keqin to call the Int Spec. He gave instructions to just leave it. I, at the time was just in ORD mood I didn't want to act like a sergeant again and say ok all of you all hand in to me, I be camp pass IC. So I just walked around pretending it was none of my business. He was the only who did anything about it and collected from the rest of the guys, sure some of them had THOUGHT about collecting it, but nobody did anything.

And with HX and the other reasons I wrote, I felt as if I really didn't do anything much. Maybe I picked up a
bit or 2 about vehicle. Maybe about the level of competency my driver had at year 1.


Improve a lot.
Funny thing is that when you start at a very bad point, it is very easy to come across as the most improved one out of the lot. Also funny is that, the point where everyone seems to think I started improving is when I stopped really caring.

Loyal
I really don't know how to respond to this. On one hand, I could see how my actions would be perceived as one of loyalty. But yet on the other hand, I could remember myself trying to distance myself from these people for one reason or the other. I feel guilty when people call me loyal. My mind is sort of betraying my actions. But I think it's just another one of those times, like when you just feel so sick of your girlfriend that you would do anything to get away, even though you've always loved them and always will, its' just one of those phases, I guess.


Some quotes:

"What is asked from his superior usually will be accomplished
Can set aside personal grudges and complete his task"

I really like this quote in particular because it sets me aside as a really focused


"I dont think you treat people unfairly cuz you treat most ppl the same."

Which is also true, I treat everyone just as shittily, also refer to paragraph about rude.



The unique thing about this is that some people do manage to see through whatever facade I have left and they do in fact understand or at least know a part of my personality or my thinking. It doesn't happen very often and usually different people will see something different.

One person saw me through as a negative, pessimistic person who is also proud. Seems spot on.

One person described me as this: giving instructions is a breeze. That is my intention when I talk quickly, loudly and like an asshole, which turns out to be my normal way of talking.

One person described me as "like , will do when told, but will kpkb" : )

That's it for now. At 0102 am.






Some honorable mentions:

"Change your wardrobe"
"cannot run"
"if properly motivated, will get things done"
"it's a pity to not overcome first impressions"

Doing my part

Rick Santorum has a bunch of weird beliefs. Good thing I'm not living in USA where Santorum might actually be my president.

Some people

Some people find in easier to stomach the fact that god doesn't care as opposed to that of god doesn't exist because it seems mighty impossible for this world to come to be. It seems a more proper answer as to why and how.

Personally, it wouldn't make a difference.