BBoyz

i've been working with this group of young breakdancers for a couple of months now. i got them their first gig in a while a couple of weeks ago. watching them perform in front of the GOH, taking photos with the GOH, having the GOH so impressed by them... it brought tears to my eyes (not quite la... but...)

it's like... i think i know how parents feel when they see their kids all grown up...

they performed again today... and this time, it was a paid gig. next up, next week. at the Jurong Lake Park. come and watch if you want... Saturday 1st April (it's not an April Fools' joke...) at about 6pm.

Sawadeekup

so it seems that the majority of Thais (i.e. the rural poor) support Thaksin, while the majority of Bangkok oppose him. and it's his detractors who are most able to protest publicly against him (cos they are nearest to him physically). and they are the ones who are the most able to bring things to a standstill and hence force him to step down. but what would that do to democracy?

now let's think about that happening in Singapore. a group of people, say 10000, not happy with govt. go protest outside parliament building, refuse to budge unless LHL steps down. that would, undoubtedly bring some problems to the everyday life, business, etc. given that Singapore can't withstand that much shocks, should LHL step down? what if he holds a national referendum and most people, say 60%, still thinks that he should be in power, but that group of protesters still refuse to budge, then what?

because that is exactly what's happening in Thailand. and as i've already said, we should, to begin with, prevent that stage from coming in the first place...

back to creating worksheet...

BZB

that's what i am... a busy bee...

i get in to work by 7 am and usually leave at 7pm. they don't pay me enough... but there are other perks la. like spending half an hour chit chatting to my students.

i've taken to going into one of my class speaking in this insanely fake American accent... and it seems to work... at least it catches their attention slightly...

then i had some to drink on Friday night... and had this brainwave of what else i could do with my students... whacky ideas, funny stories (of course with certain points), cutting insults. i think i should start my day with a pint... so that my ideas can just flow and i can just let loose.

oh... and just marked a test. 4 out of 40 students passed. lowest was 2 upon 30. sighz. much more work must be done.

as such, this blog will not be updated that regularly. for my regular readers, i apologise for the lack of content. will do my best to update more frequently.

:)

You take the high, I take the low...

the Thais are protesting against Thaksin. and there are Thais who are protesting in support of Thaksin. so how?

isn't the best way to settle this to allow an election to see whether there are more people supporting Thaksin or more people opposing him? and if it's the former, then Thaksin should rightly stay, if the latter, he should step down.

but the opposition isn't allowing the election to happen. aren't they therefore in the wrong? aren't they therefore being an obstacle in the course of democracy? aren't they therefore being the very devil that they are trying to denounce? do they not lose entirely their moral high ground?

Team Singapore

Team Singapore is springing into action at the Commonwealth Games Downunder. so Mediacorp keeps reminding us that we have to support our Singaporean atheletes by playing the Kit Chan song.

pthe ironic thing is that Mediacorp is not going to cover the Games. what kind of signal is that sending?

"oh, the Commonwealth Games is not important enough for us to cover, Singaporeans don't really need to watch our atheletes in action... besides, who cares about these atheletes anyways?"

Taking part

Aki has a post talking about how the government stifles political participation. and then i had a thought. what exactly do we mean by political participation? the freedom to air our grievances about the government? the ability to hold politicians accountable? the ability to have a significant say in the way our country is run (i.e. the policies that our government implements)?

of course, all of the above count. but i feel that there is more to political participation than that. it is also about serving the people. it is about getting down, getting our hands dirty and serving the people. and it is impossible to do that unless we are actually down on the ground, immersing ourselves in the situation, mingling with the people. are youths doing that? or are youths so insulated in their i-Pod MP3 world, so cut off in their LAN Maplestory universe, so lost in their own extended egocentric personal fables to care about anyone else but themselves?

An Update...

Ying told me that i've not been blogging for a while... it is true. i foresee myself blogging less frequently from now on... thanks very much to increase workload.

brought a group of students out to a debating competition. those in the team, until a month ago, has not even seen a proper debate. one of them was speaking for the first time. i had only started taking them and only had 2 occassions to 'train' them. they lost. but it was an honorable lost. i'm trying to set up something more formal in the school, not least because i enjoyed the whole debating experience myself when i was in school.

in other news... met up with the flab four... and realised that we have not been meeting up as regularly as we had used to. we think that that's a sign that we are aging... we are determined to age as slowly as possible...

oh... and the opposition is going to contest 57 seats... i don't think that that's possible. if anything, i think they'll manage the low 40's. some of those that are definitely going to happen would probably include Aljunied, Jurong (though i don't think the SDP will pose much of a challenge to the team which most prob will be led by Mr Tharman...).

When one gets lazy

toilet's left

left? where to?

toilet's right.

right? about what?

of course what one meant was that the toilet is to the left. or to the right. but when one gets lazy...

Single no more...

my constituency used to be a Single Member Constituency. it has just been merged into one of the GRCs... which means that i probably won't get to vote...

grr...

Claims

IRAS has just declared claims you file at work to be part of your taxable income.

how stupid is that! what in the flying hell is the rationale of that?! the claims made are to reimburse expenditure incurred for your work. how is it part of one's income at all?! say my salary is $2000 a month. i have to take a cab home one day of the month because i worked till freaking 4 am. i pay $20. i claim back $20. at the end of the month, my nett income is still $2000. why the hell should i be taxed on something that i never really had in the first place?

i wonder which genius in IRAS decided that claims should be part of one's taxable income...

in other news, watched Brokeback Mountain last night. it was quite a good movie. of course, when it got to the gay parts (e.g. when they first had sex... and the 'mozerella cheese' kiss... ) i squeamed...

apart from that... i kind of enjoyed the movie. it's one of those movies that leaves me... emotionally hanging and hollow because of the poignancy of it all... the worst thing is... it's not intense in any way... emotions ooze out gently and are made even more subtle by the panaromic scenes of mountains and close up shots of streams.

sigh...

Eureka!

i'm sure most of you would know the famous story of how Archimedes, when he worked out the principle of bouyancy, shouted "Eureka" and ran around the city naked (he was taking a bath when he worked it out...). i had my own 'Eureka-moments'. though i did not exactly run around the town naked (cos it would have been too tortorous for the people around... and my 'discoveries' weren't as impressive).

i was reminded about one of my 'Eureka-moments' by this entry in XH's blog. i remember i had the longest time understanding the mathematical shorthand for quantum Physics that Dirac won the Nobel prize with. basically, he used a symbol to represent a kind of vector which he called the 'ket'. the inverse of a ket is , Dirac called a bra. when you put the two together, you get a bra-ket (for rationale and a sense of Dirac's warped sense of humour, see XH's post).

of course, this took me a damn long time to understand what the flying hell was it all about, particularly the bra-vector... and how it all relates to quantum mechanics (don't ask me how it does now.. i can't remember...). and when i did, i had my 'Eureka moment'. at that precise moment, i happened to be talking to my ex-girlfriend over ICQ. and in my Eureka-induced madness, i excitedly typed: "yeah!!! i've finally gotten my head around the bra!"

the other time i had a 'Eureka moment' was in my UCL days when my X-ray diffractometer which i constructed finally worked (after a month and a half of frustration from trying to tweak it and getting it to work...). that time, i ran through the entire department telling all those who would care to know...

Venting and Kite Flying

while it is not exactly good to gossip and laugh about our students, it is, arguably, talking about the silly things that these kids do is one of the best ways to vent and destress.

i realise that a lot of the things that i say, do and blog nowadays revolve around my work. there are 2 ways to look at it.

1. sad. cos that means that i have no life anymore, that i'm being cut off from the rest of the world.
2. great. cos that means i'm dedicated to my job. and one should focus on what we do if we really want to do our best.

i prefer to think of it in the latter. though i've been driven almost to my breaking point today by one particular class that i took for relief, i still think that teaching is the job for me.

about this particular class. it's a great example of why disciplining students is like kite flying. pull tight first, then let go. but if you pull too tight, then the string breaks. and the string broke today. the class rebelled. so i've learnt a lesson.

interestingly enough, they managed to keep quiet for the last 20 minutes before school dismissal (after a more senior teacher came to my rescue). and in those 20 mintues, i managed to speak to some of the students almost on a one-to-one basis. and i find them to be very nice students. and that there are particularly 4 students in that class who are the heads. so if any teacher can win those 4 over, then the class will be kept well under control.

i hope i get a chance to talk to these 4 students more tomorrow, on an informal basis. find out how they tick, win them over. i have a cunning plan...

in other news, i was quoted in Mr Miyagi's article in Today. it was my response to Akikonomu's post about Rajaratnam's passing.

right... back to work... grr...