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.