Akby in Wonderland

“NOOO NOT THAT ONE!” I yelled after the NTU Subway baker missed my initial instructions not to add lettuce to my sandwich. A few shreds of the flavourless grass still ended up on my toasted Cold Cut Trio. Sigh.

“More olives.”

“More olives.”

“More olives.”

“More olives.”

“More olives.”

I seriously lost count of the number of times I had to say that. Considering I only asked for pickles, onions and olives, I think I deserve more for clearing the vegetables that no one would usually have in their sandwich. In case you think I was bullying the elderly, hold your thoughts: she’s not hard on hearing because she could hear her colleagues well. She was just in the autopilot mode after an entire day of vegetable sorting. I mean, look at those olives. They are so delicious and they are right in front of you. It takes a lot to not be tempted by those olives. So in such a situation, people may easily lapse into the autopilot mode in order to avoid temptation. Domo Arigato Mr Roboto!

I do have a tinge of sympathy for us folks who lapse uncontrollably into autopilot mode. That’s how I felt after the day-long meeting today too. I spent the entire Saturday morning critiquing the supposedly academic article and had drawn a fantastic conclusion that actually doesn’t really take rocket science to see if you have had experience on the ground. But at least it would provide me with a theoretical framework to convince people who don’t know better. And I reckon we have always been working really hard and the dedication showed. That was comforting even as we were in the autopilot mode because there are some things that just can’t be challenged: the system. It consumes you. It’s as if I am in The Matrix.

Speaking of which one P-plate Matrix was almost smashed by another P-plate Hyundai car in NTU as the latter left the car park.

I am still wondering why when I spoke it sounded like I was speaking Jabberwocky. Perhaps I was already in Wonderland. The entire meeting felt like a Mad Tea Party. I probably might have lost some sense of credibility there, but I’ve always believed that action speaks louder.

Mar 9, 2010

Algebraic twist to Alice’s Wonderland

By Melanie Bayley, in The Straits Times

SINCE Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland was published in 1865, scholars have noted how its characters are based on real people in the life of its author, Charles Dodgson, who wrote under the name Lewis Carroll. Alice is Alice Pleasance Liddell, the daughter of an Oxford dean; the Lory and Eaglet are Alice’s sisters Lorina and Edith; Dodgson himself, a stutterer, is the Dodo (‘Do-Do-Dodgson’).

But Alice’s adventures with the Caterpillar, the Mad Hatter, the Cheshire Cat and so on, have often been assumed to be based purely on wild imagination. Just fantastical tales for children – and, as such, ideal material for the fanciful movie director Tim Burton, whose Alice In Wonderland opened last week.

Yet, Dodgson most likely had real models for the strange happenings in Wonderland, too. He was a tutor in mathematics at Christ Church, Oxford, and Alice’s search for a beautiful garden can be neatly interpreted as a mishmash of satire directed at the advances taking place in Dodgson’s field.

In the mid-19th century, mathematics was rapidly blossoming into what it is today: a finely honed language for describing the conceptual relations between things. Dodgson found the radical new maths illogical and lacking in intellectual rigour. In Alice, he attacked some of the new ideas as nonsense – using a technique familiar from Euclid’s proofs, reductio ad absurdum, where the validity of an idea is tested by taking its premises to their logical extreme.

Early in the story, for instance, Alice’s exchange with the Caterpillar parodies the first purely symbolic system of algebra, proposed in the mid-19th century by Augustus De Morgan, a London maths professor. De Morgan had proposed a more modern approach to algebra, which held that any procedure was valid as long as it followed an internal logic. This allowed for results like the square root of a negative number, which even De Morgan himself called ‘unintelligible’ and ‘absurd’ (because all numbers when squared give positive results).

The word ‘algebra’, De Morgan said in one of his footnotes, comes from an Arabic phrase he transliterated as al jebr e al mokabala, meaning restoration and reduction. He explained that even though algebra had been reduced to a seemingly absurd but logical set of operations, eventually, some sort of meaning would be restored.

Such loose mathematical reasoning would have riled a punctilious logician like Dodgson. And so, the Caterpillar is sitting on a mushroom and smoking a hookah – suggesting that something has mushroomed up from nowhere, and is dulling the thoughts of its followers – and Alice is subjected to a monstrous form of al jebr e al mokabala. She first tries to ‘restore’ herself to her original (larger) size, but ends up ‘reducing’ so rapidly that her chin hits her foot.

Alice has slid down from a world governed by the logic of universal arithmetic to one where her size can vary from 9 feet to 3 inches. She thinks this is the root of her problem: ‘Being so many different sizes in a day is very confusing’. No, it isn’t, replies the Caterpillar, who comes from the mad world of symbolic algebra. He advises Alice to ‘keep your temper’.

In Dodgson’s day, intellectuals still understood ‘temper’ to mean the proportions in which qualities were mixed – as in ‘tempered steel’ – so the Caterpillar is telling Alice not to avoid getting angry but to stay in proportion, even if she can’t ‘keep the same size for 10 minutes together!’ Proportion, rather than absolute length, was what mattered in Alice’s above-ground world of Euclidean geometry.

In an algebraic world, of course, this isn’t easy. Alice eats a bit of mushroom and her neck elongates like a serpent, annoying a nesting pigeon. Eventually, though, she finds a way to nibble herself down to 9 inches, and enters a little house where she finds the Duchess, her baby, the Cook and the Cheshire Cat.

Chapter 6, ‘Pig and Pepper’, parodies the principle of continuity, a bizarre concept from projective geometry, which was introduced in the mid-19th century from France. This principle (now an important aspect of modern topology) involves the idea that one shape can bend and stretch into another, provided it retains the same basic properties – a circle is the same as an ellipse or a parabola (the curve of the Cheshire cat’s grin).

Taking the notion to its extreme, what works for a circle should also work for a baby. So, when Alice takes the Duchess’ baby outside, it turns into a pig. The Cheshire Cat says, ‘I thought it would’.

The Cheshire Cat provides the voice of traditional geometric logic – say where you want to go if you want to find out how to get there, he tells Alice after she has let the pig run off into the wood. He points Alice towards the Mad Hatter and the March Hare. ‘Visit either you like,’ he says. ‘They’re both mad.’

The Mad Hatter and the March Hare champion the mathematics of William Rowan Hamilton, one of the great innovators in Victorian algebra. Hamilton decided that manipulations of numbers like adding and subtracting should be thought of as steps in what he called ‘pure time’. This was a Kantian notion that had more to do with sequence than with real time, and it seems to have captivated Dodgson. In the title of Chapter 7, ‘A Mad Tea-Party’, we should read tea-party as t-party, with ‘t’ being the mathematical symbol for time.

Dodgson has the Hatter, the Hare and the Dormouse stuck going round and round the tea table to reflect the way in which Hamilton used what he called quaternions – a number system based on four terms. In the 1860s, quaternions were hailed as the last great step in calculating motion. Even Dodgson may have considered them an ingenious tool for advanced mathematicians, though he would have thought them maddeningly confusing for the likes of Alice (and perhaps for many of his maths students).

At the mad tea party, time is the absent fourth presence at the table. The Hatter tells Alice that he quarrelled with Time last March and, now, ‘he won’t do a thing I ask’. So the Hatter, the Hare and the Dormouse (the third ‘term’) are forced to rotate forever in a plane around the tea table.

When Alice leaves the tea partiers, they are trying to stuff the Dormouse into the teapot so they can exist as an independent pair of numbers – complex, still mad, but at least free to leave the party.

Alice will go on to meet the Queen of Hearts, a ‘blind and aimless Fury’, who probably represents an irrational number. (Her keenness to execute everyone comes from a ghastly pun on axes – the plural of axis on a graph.)

How do we know for sure that the book was making fun of the new maths? The author never explained the symbolism in his story. But Dodgson rarely wrote amusing nonsense for children: His best humour was directed at adults. In addition to the Alice stories, he produced two hilarious pamphlets for colleagues, both in the style of mathematical papers, ridiculing life at Oxford.

Without maths, Alice might have been more like Dodgson’s later book, Sylvie And Bruno – a dull and sentimental fairy tale. Maths gave Alice a darker side, and made it the kind of puzzle that could entertain people of every age, for centuries.

Melanie Bayley is a doctoral candidate in English literature at Oxford. Tim Burton’s movie Alice In Wonderland is showing in cinemas.

THE NEW YORK TIMES SYNDICATE

Smashin’!

It’s not only been a smashin’ week, but a hilarious one too. Stupidity happens when I’m plain tired, and the following questions I made to the Chemistry Department over the past couple of days prove it:

“Excuse me, but what does ‘c_1′ mean on the timetable? Is it Chinese?”

“Hey, erm, are there any male staff in your department?”

Rather ridiculous, mildly amusing. Seems like something out of a dumb blonde joke.

Speaking of blonde, one just got hooked up with a Smashin’ Pumpkin–rather, hooked on chess.

Jessica Simpson’s Corgan chess challenge

Jessica Simpson and Billy Corgan – who has refused to confirm speculation they are dating – are reportedly obsessed with playing chess against one another

Jessica Simpson and Billy Corgan challenge each other to a weekly game of chess.

The singer-and-actress – who has refused to confirm reports she is dating the Smashing Pumpkins singer – has become addicted to the board game after he taught her how to play and now they like to take on each other on a regular basis.

A source said: ‘He taught her how to play and was surprised at how quickly she got the hang of it, but she is yet to beat him.’

As well as chess, Billy has also been teaching Jessica to play the guitar.

The source added to National Enquirer magazine: ‘Billy likes to share his hobbies with his friends.’

The 43-year-old rocker recently revealed he ‘loves’ the 29-year-old beauty but refused to be drawn on gossip they are dating.

He said: ‘If I go, ‘Oh, we’re just friends,’ then it’s like, ‘Did they go out, did he dump her or she dump him, what happened?’ It has nothing to do with any of that. Sometimes people just like being around each other, and good things come out of that.

‘My goal in life is to love whoever I think is worth loving, and I think if people knew her like I knew her, they would love her like I do. It’s really simple.’

***

If Activision is looking for ideas, may I suggest the next title after Band Hero: Guitar Chess Hero?

Blockbuster Thursday presents H3 GP: Happiness, Horror and the Hurt Locker–Resident Evil 5

Just had a nice, cold (root) beer. Time for some (serious) thinking.

I’d like to see this seminar–it’s more of a seminar than a lecture or a tutorial–as an artwork for the controversies about it. (I was very late for an important meeting because I was too engrossed in it and people question if it’s worth it.)

An artwork provokes the senses and the mind through the series of messages hidden or unravelled along the process. Yet it remains an unfinished product because so much more can be said about it. There are so many more questions that can be asked by all and there are so many more themes to be explored. This seminar is generative. If only time can be suspended (but that’s what happened: time was suspended and I lost sense of it). For what it’s worth, it was worth all the while.

If you know Heidegger, a work of art is never complete without the audience or the participants; the context where it occurs.

The work of art is not without its flaws, and as I review it later, they will be uncovered. I’m sure I said things I shouldn’t have said (what’s new!) But I always have the tendency to add a few more water colour strokes to the landscape I love to paint. Flaws make ‘live’ performaces, and ‘live’ performances can be intriguingly beautiful. It is an experience. This seminar is a messy beauty, or a Beautiful Mess.

I didn’t have much money left to attend Jason Mraz’s concert last year because I blew it all on Singfest the year before, so I bought his concert DVD. Believe you me, the feeling of ‘live’ is different. (Imagine, just imagine Barcelona’s Messi dazzling you at the Nou Camp and not on the tube–that’s so last century–HDMI.)

The screen was marvellous and the projection credible. We overcame the technical difficulties and made it quite a success. Considering the fact that I took the risk and reserved the Lecture Theatre with less than the required number of students, it paid off rather handsomely. Of course it was not just due to the aesthetics; there’s simply no room with the projector at a comfortable height or other suitable place available that could potentially hold more than 25 heads.

I never regretted spending the time conceptualising this artwork. I like the intricate weaves of themes: some more obvious than the others. It is not the end.

Gossip Page (GP)

Caught the Oscars previously and there’s one stunning dress that really was inspiring (some of you would have heard me talking about it):

That’s Rachel McAdams in an Elie Saab gown.

I guess her breakout role came in Mean Girls. The Real McCoys seem trickier, but I hope for a happy ending like in the film. We’ll see how it goes.

Gossips and politics among the youths in school seem pretty common, and dated. It is perhaps nature’s way of preparing people for the ‘real’ adult world–or perpetuating meanness. If everyone was really all kind and cookies and cream, then life would be a bed of roses and Hobbes would be nothing but a stuffed toy Tiger. But there will always be some who are, like Hobbes said, “naturally selfish hedonists”.

That’s where the law comes in (though not fool-proof).

(Here’s Hobbes’s best friend, Calvin. But here’s an interesting article that you just have to read: http://www.iuinfo.indiana.edu/homepages/0913/0913text/calvin.htm)

Nothing diplomatic about this immunity

It’s unfair, but the law giving envoys immunity won’t change soon

By Andy Ho, in The Straits Times (ST) Mar 4, 2010

A RESIDENT at a local condominium who claimed that he was assaulted by a top Saudi Arabian diplomat on Jan 9 over a parking dispute filed charges this week ‘because I expect to be protected by the law’.

But the law is clear. A diplomat is immune from prosecution for all criminal acts. Singapore is a party to the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. Under it, a diplomat and members of his household may not be arrested or detained.

This case comes on the heels of another in which a Romanian diplomat was allegedly the driver of a car involved in two hit-and-run incidents last Dec 15, leaving one man dead and two others grievously injured. The diplomat left Singapore for home two days after the incidents, and has since made scurrilous attacks on the Singapore Government while refusing to come back to attend a coroner’s inquiry into the death.

In 1983, the grandson of the ambassador of Brazil to the United States shot a bouncer outside a nightclub. He got away scot free.

On April 17, 1984, gunmen from inside the Libyan Embassy in London sprayed machine gunfire on demonstrators gathered outside protesting against the Gaddafi regime. A policewoman was killed and 10 others were injured. No Libyan diplomat was ever brought to justice.

In January 1998, Alexander Kashin was hurt by the American consulate-general in Vladivostok in a car collision that left him paralysed from the neck down. Driving while inebriated, the US diplomat had jumped three red lights before the collision. The diplomat is still serving overseas.

Such international scofflaws show why absolute diplomatic immunity is unfair and undesirable. Many ask how it can even be justified.

For much of the 18th century, it was said that a diplomat lived effectively in his own state’s territory even while overseas. Thus, he could not be prosecuted by the receiving state. Yet, if a diplomat committed a crime in his own country, he would be prosecuted. This legal fiction was rejected by the League of Nations in the run-up to what eventually became the Vienna Convention.

It was also argued that the diplomat personified the sending state’s sovereign. Given the common law idea that ‘the King can do no wrong’, his personification couldn’t either. Even if this were not a legal fiction, almost all states today have their sovereignty resting in their people as represented by their elected governments. No one believes in the infallibility of any government.

At any rate, if the sovereign people themselves are not immune to prosecution while in a foreign land, then why should their representatives be so? Indeed, the coming into force of the Rome treaty to establish the International Criminal Court (ICC) in 2002 shows that a global consensus now exists that the sovereign people and their governments alike can be held accountable for their crimes. If rulers, then why not their diplomats?

The rationale usually given nowadays is that diplomats cannot function properly without immunity. This notion of ‘functional necessity’, in fact, appears in the Preamble to the Convention.

Yet, if it were so, should it not cover official acts only? But then, who decides which acts are official?

Perhaps ‘functional necessity’ itself needs to be qualified. Technologies now enable national leaders to see and talk to one another personally, regardless of distance. This means that the diplomat – once the eyes and ears of his sovereign – is far less important now. If so, immunity should shrink accordingly.

The sending state could waive immunity but this almost never happens, so it does not deter diplomats from committing offences. Or the receiving state may expel the offending diplomat, which also has little deterrent value.

If there were a neutral international forum to prosecute errant diplomats and mete out punishment, the black sheep among them might be deterred. Experts have long proposed an international court to try errant diplomats but the costs of setting up and running such a specialised court are prohibitive.

But the ICC came into operation with jurisdiction over those crimes that national courts can’t, or don’t want to, investigate or prosecute; these include genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

In principle, this permanent tribunal could prosecute any crime deemed unsuitable for a domestic court. Before the ICC was established, international drug trafficking was considered for inclusion, but it was agreed that the court’s limited resources would not allow for it.

Terrorist activities were considered too, but the parties could not agree on how to define them.

But there ought to be no definitional confusion over crimes like drink driving, assault, rape or homicide committed by a diplomat.

The ICC provides for 18 judges elected by two-thirds of member states and they each sit for only one nine-year term. This arrangement ensures that the court is not captured by any one state or ideology.

Some experts have suggested that the Rome treaty be amended to include the prosecution of diplomats, and the Vienna Convention be changed to give the ICC power over diplomats. This would give rise overnight to a neutral, fair and permanent forum in which to try diplomats.

But amending two treaties in tandem would call for an unimaginable amount of international goodwill. As such, this repugnant state of affairs, in which diplomats can commit crimes with impunity, will likely persist for a long time to come.

It is the law.

*

Relationships are always tricky. Human bonds are as complex as ionic or covalent bonds, what more bonds across nations. We all wish it’s as easy as James has it.

Standing up for good governance (extract)

Table talk with Kofi Annan

By Cheong Suk-Wai, in ST Mar 4, 2010

Q: Which crisis did you find hardest to deal with and why?

A: The Iraq crisis in 2003 was definitely one of the worst because of the way the coalition decided to go to war without Security Council approval… As secretary-general, you have to try to push and work with the member states to ensure that the right thing is done.

At the same time, you also have the responsibility to try and hold the organisation together and not to do anything that will add to the divisions.

Q: Could you have been more forceful about how wrong the war was?

A: Well, I needed to act in a manner that was not only responsible but also to a great degree effective. I know that, sometimes, people will say: ‘Why didn’t you stand on the rooftop and shout?’

Well, that was not the effective way. Your action has to make clear where you or the organisation stand on legal and moral principles, but not create a situation that compounds the difficulties.

*

At this interview in Singapore, Kofi Annan also talked about Africa and how the social climate there is changing with more youths becoming educated. He also hoped that university youths across Asia and Africa could better harness the friendship, enabling greater synergy and greater ties in the future.

We can only hope that youths of today–adults of the future–can make such a difference, the way Optimus Prime sees it. (I can’t help it but the intent of the film is so in-your-face; I just caught Transformers on Channel 5. I have been resisting watching this Michael Bay film because I’m such a purist, but after watching it, I think this political-comedy-action film is rather credible.)

Speaking of which, I managed to hunt down this elusive pair of cats: the white tiger and the black jaguar, after about seven days. The jaguar has also been the subject of much cloning. The ‘clones’ cost as little as S$30, but the real McCoy costs much more. Both cats are not officially on sale in Singapore, very likely due to some legal issues involving technology.

Nice job by Toshiba and Takara Tomy.

White tigers are indeed rarer than black jaguars (in this case too, as there are still a couple of jaguars left). Some wish the human society to be a zoo where life is simpler, conserved. Wild life is more brutal, and it is survival of the fittest. The concrete jungle is a mixture of the rule of jungle and the rule of law, which causes more discomfort when we negotiate an identity. Are we moral beings? Are we legal beings? Or are we animals running on instinct?

Big debate over China’s Little People theme park

Critics call it a zoo, staff see it as a haven

In ST Mar 6, 2010

KUNMING: Mr Chen Mingjing’s entrepreneurial instincts vaulted him from a peasant upbringing to undreamed-of wealth, acquired in ventures ranging from the production of electric meters to investments in real estate.

But when he turned 44, the allure of making money for money’s sake began to wane. He wanted to run a business that accomplished some good.

So last September, Mr Chen did what any socially aware entrepreneur might do: He opened a theme park of dwarfs, charging tourists about US$9 (S$12.60) a head to watch dozens of dwarfs in pink tutus perform a slapstick version of Swan Lake, among other skits.

Mr Chen has big plans for his Kingdom of the Little People. Imagine a US$115 million universe in miniature, set amid 5.26ha of rolling hills and peaceful lakes in southern China’s Yunnan province, with tiny dogs, tiny fruit trees, a 70m-high performance hall resembling the stump of a prehistoric tree and standard-sized guest cabins.

‘It will be like a fairy tale,’ Mr Chen said. ‘Everything here I have designed myself.’

Critics say displaying dwarfs is at best misguided and at worst immoral, a throwback to times when freak shows pandered to people’s morbid curiosity.

‘Are they just going there to look at curious objects?’ asked Mr Yu Haibo, who leads a volunteer organisation for the disabled in Jilin province.

Said Mr Gary Arnold, the spokesman for Little People of America, a dwarfism support group: ‘What is the difference between it and a zoo?’

But there is another view, and Mr Chen and some of his short-statured workers present it forcefully. One hundred permanently employed dwarfs, they contend, is better than 100 dwarfs scrounging for odd jobs.

They insist that the audiences who see the dwarfs sing, dance and perform comic routines leave impressed by their skills and courage. Many performers say they enjoy being part of a community where everyone shares the same challenges.

‘Before, when we were at home, we didn’t know anyone our size. When we hang out with normal-sized people, we cannot really do the same things,’ said Mr Wu Zhihong, 20. ‘So I really felt lonely sometimes.’

Mr Chen asserts he has won support from no less than the United Nations World Peace Foundation. He displays a certificate designating his company, Yunnan Jiucai Yundie Biotech, as the ‘Charity Base Camp’ for Kunming, the nearest city.

Supporters and critics agree on one point: The fact that the park is awash in job applications shows the disturbing dearth of opportunities for the disabled in China.

Ms Cao Yu, who is Mr Chen’s assistant, said she receives three or four job inquiries a week: ‘Under the current situation in China, they really will not be able to find a better employment situation.’

Mr Chen said his employees had gained self-respect and self-sufficiency.

‘It doesn’t really matter to me what other people say,’ he said. ‘The question is whether meeting me has changed their lives.’

NEW YORK TIMES

*

Maybe the youths of today will be able to change that  too? I don’t know. Sometimes we invest so much abstract hope on the next generation of leaders of mankind that it seems like cartoon infantile omnipotence.

Savages have always been present in the civil world and, like what some religious philosophies have it, they magnify the humane side of society, if they have not already consumed the entire society.

‘Thugs have taken over’ in quake-hit Chile

Looters out in force as govt struggles to maintain order, coordinate relief efforts

In ST Mar 4, 2010

CONCEPCION (CHILE): Thousands more troops were deployed across quake-ravaged Chile yesterday as armed vigilantes patrolled neighbourhoods to ward off looters while soldiers distributed emergency aid to desperate survivors.

With the country’s reputation for stability at stake, the authorities were scrambling to defuse an explosive situation in cities and towns, where gangs of looters roamed the streets days after one of the strongest earthquakes ever measured.

‘The thugs have taken over the city. Now we are not afraid of the earthquakes, we’re afraid of the criminals,’ Mr Marcelo Rivera, the mayor of Hualpen, told a local radio station.

President Michelle Bachelet, forced into defending government efforts to maintain order and coordinate rescue and relief operations, doubled the number of troops patrolling the worst-hit areas to 14,000, while an 18-hour curfew was imposed in Concepcion, where armoured military vehicles guarded strategic points of Chile’s hard-hit second biggest city.

On the road out of Concepcion, small groups of survivors waved pieces of cardboard on flimsy sticks that said: ‘We need food, we need water.’

Many Chileans have complained of a slow aid and security response from the government. ‘We are being attacked by a horde of people from another area,’ said Concepcion resident Patricia who called in to a local radio on Monday. ‘It’s not fair they are doing this. Please police, soldiers, whoever can help, come and help us.’

Chile has for many years been a shining example of orderliness and economic probity in Latin America, a region prone to instability, unrest and institutional crises.

It is among Latin America’s wealthiest countries on a per capita basis, and can claim to have its most stable economy thanks to prudent policies.

Chile’s far more rigorous building standards undoubtedly saved lives, but the government acknowledges that its response has been slow due to mangled roads and power cuts. It has condemned the burgeoning criminality, pledging to prosecute looters with the full force of the law.

Ms Bachelet, who hands over power to President-elect Sebastian Pinera on March 11, has struggled to coordinate an effective government response to the quake. Chile’s Navy, using erroneous data, had lifted a tsunami warning even as giant waves crashed into vulnerable coastal towns.

Ms Bachelet also declined to ask for foreign aid immediately after the quake, misjudging the extent of the damage.

‘How can the government say it does not need international help when it cannot even do the minimum job?’ said Ms Sandra Gonzalez, a 35-year-old resident of the badly hit central city of Talca, where looting also broke out.

Yesterday, the Singapore Government announced it will contribute US$50,000 (S$70,295) to purchase relief supplies requested by the Chilean government to help the quake-affected.

The contribution will be channelled through the Singapore Red Cross to the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, REUTERS

*

Yes. US$50000 is a lot of money. Considering I will be able to buy one-seventh of an HDB resale flat with that kind of money, which I don’t, so it seems like a lot of money to me. I haven’t been lucky with my application for the BTOs (Built To Order flats) and I feel like I had wasted S$30 so far on zero-chances, given the knowledge that demand for such flats outstrips supply. I’d rather spend $30 on the lottery, which I have never been acquainted with, than on paying the administrators for processing my applications, a job they are paid for already. I’d rather my government spend more money to fund national projects than international goodwill in such trying times.

I almost forgot what “public goods” means.

Public transport should cover remote areas too

In ST Feb 27, 2010

ON THE way home from my holiday in Bali, I read a report about secondary schools organising their own transport so students would not be late for school (‘Punctual students get a reward’, Feb 18).

Apparently, the public buses were too often overcrowded, and too many students could not make it to class on time in the morning.

I thought to myself: ‘So we farmers at the Kranji countryside are not the only ones who have to take matters into our own hands.’

Farmers in Kranji like my husband and I now bear the entire cost of ferrying their employees to work, because transport operators do not deem a bus service to the Kranji countryside necessary because it is not viable.

So if one is blind, deaf, dumb or otherwise challenged, but could actually be employed by farmers, one would be unable to get to work.

Transport is key to moving an economy. Ms Saw Phaik Hwa, chief executive officer of SMRT, said it herself in The Business Times a few weeks ago (‘Joint effort by one and all’, Feb 8).

It therefore amazes me that Singapore’s public transport system, so often toted as ‘excellent’, can have such gaping holes.

Ivy Singh-Lim (Mrs)
President
Kranji Farmers Association

*

The flamboyant Singh-Lim was the President of Asian Federation of Netball Associations before she retired and became a farmer, specifically the President of the Kranji Farmers Association. I don’t think she’s going to lead a Farmers Rebellion though.

Speaking of buses and students, I don’t think they are going to shift the boarding point for services 179 and 199 to the snazzy and cool air-conditioned interchange in Boon Lay. So NTU students would still have to be isolated and they will continue to board the buses from the old compound like they are a peculiar lot until future enhancements to the small area in the new compound have been made, which seems unlikely. I might be wrong because I am not trained in engineering and architecture, and I am only speculating. But I suspect the designers of the new interchange had never seen the incredible mass before they laid a brick.

They may just hire more bus drivers and acquire more buses, which may likely increase the price of the rides and everything will be easily justified and then forgotten.

There’s still time to prevent history from repeating (I think): the interchange in Clementi is still being built and hopefully NUS students get to enjoy the fruits of NTU students’ misery (well, maybe it isn’t that miserable: the old compound isn’t that bad. Have you ever smelt sweaty bodies in an air-conditioned space?)

Space is a luxury in Singapore and even churches say they need more space. This is logically true as one expands, but “where”, “how much” “commercialisation” are some of the many questions (Suntec?) This was subsequently questioned by many and one letter was printed on Mar 11, 2010 in ST. Do they have to pay a tax on such business ventures? What I found to be more of a revelation was what one ST-forumer posted (do note that it is difficult to verify the truth of the claims unless you have had similar experiences too):

goofyxxx1 (March 11, 2010 Thursday, 07:50 AM) on http://comment.straitstimes.com/showthread.php?t=31077

Come on. Churches are just big commercial organisations. They have audits and they have Charity Commissioners going after them for compliance. They have big time people in there managing it like hawks if not wolves in sheep clothings.

What is preached in churches whether in CH or NCC or FBCC or etc, the organisation administrative staff do not do the same. The staff can be very legalistic and follow the rules strictly so that there is no hanky punky.

For the glory of Christ, Churches have evolved from family orientated clubs to big concerns which are measured by how much “LOVE OFFERINGS” they receive every month and by the size of the congregation. However sadly in Singapore, whether small or big, you get a lot of these prideful and greedy people serving in the church and they are not the pastors or deacons or those appointed into the churches, you get those who think they serve their time in the churches, think that they are “ATAS” above every one who does not church.

In certain churches, especially the megas, those who tithe aplenty, are giving front roles and they are NOT even annointed people but greedy and self serving people. I have seen many in NCC where they [the big tithers] insisted on 3rd and 4th rows in the auditorium and they shun others even ministers [religious] who are seated beside them or those who are given seats when some big tithers are absent.

Frankly the above goes to show that churches need all these big tithers to survive and to pay for tax consultants and business consultants [even though the ministry of JESUS is supposed to be simple and humble] and that is why special preference is given to them to have front row seats. Even foreign visitors of other churches to the local church are given seats far away and this is perhaps not peculiar to NCC but it’s a style surely JESUS would not approve of, giving PLACES to people who pay big and not giving to people whose heart is JESUS but CHURCHES look at how much you tithe to see how much you love JESUS no matter what the pastors said about JESUS Loving the congregation because the church looks at the TITHE which can be in 100Ks.

If the PRESS is to go incognito to NCC Sunday first service, you will see the public members are given only ROW “E” onwards whereas C and D are for rich people mainly and the central seats and corners are reserved for rich visitors. The message is that though the church preaches JESUS, the organisation of a church practises different in this form and thus they are more business like and rest assured that to survive these churches need to comply with the government requirements and the “owners” and the big time ” businessmen ” who run these churches dont want it to fail because the churches provide people who may be interested in insurance products or interested in buying and selling houses and businessmen interact.

So rest assured, Churches are very professional in their approach even though they are not performing according to the JESUS approach where all can come in to the physical house of GOD.

*

A good thing about the Internet is that you can easily check the credibility of the sources; unlike print media which is bound by space, the Internet is virtual space you can tap on. Therefore, it is not a surprise that an ST report on Mar 10, 2010 did not finish citing the Health Minister’s analogy about wildebeests. It gave the impression that he encouraged people to sacrifice themselves to look after the aged in their family, at the expense of their own survival. Well, the extension on the blog by the Ministry of Health clarified that (http://mohsingapore.blogspot.com/2010/03/wildebeests-wild-beasts-beastly.html), and he “prayed for them even more deeply”.

Okay, great. It’s really true we’re gonna be so busted. I mean, it’s not rocket science. But it’s okay. I know people will be praying for me. In this capitalistic concrete jungle, we are yet again seeking an identity that is not ‘out of bound’: moral, legal, or beastly?

We all need money to survive in such a world before you can even pray for anything, it seems.

iCTLT2010 notes (selected)

Here are some of my notes for the conference held at Suntec City on 4 and 5 Mar 2010. Lunch was fantastic by the way.

(For the first time I think, I managed to upload the notes the same year I attended the conference!)

International Conference on Teaching and Learning with Technology (iCTLT2010)

4 Mar 2010

S Iswaran:

– Globalisation and technology go hand in hand

– Technology as a “strategic enabler”

– Maintaining status and position as a business/economic hub

– 21^st C skills and disposition

– ICT Masterplans

– Making ICT a culture

– Leading to self-directed and collaborative learning

– Harnessing ICT, transforming learners

David Warlick (Keynote address: Our Students. Our Worlds—Cracking the Code for Innovative, Collaborative and Transformative Learning):

–          http://www.davidwarlick.com/handouts/  

–          About creativity expanded by ICT

–          Different breeds of human beings inter-connected to the rest of the world

–          “invisible tentacles tapping into the world wide web”

–          “information is raw material”

–          Thus, opportunities of empowerment

–          Thus, creativity

–          http://phunland.com

–          Literacy: arithmetic, what’s true, employing information, writing, compellingly express ideas

–          Prezi

Concurrent Session 2—Highlights

MR312: 4Di Interactive Solution—Engaging the N-Generation in Learning

Ballroom1: Immersive Learning Environment

–          By Figment and Ngee Ann Sec on Second Life

–          “Sub”-community/ cultural revitalisation: globalisation with regard to technology where a Virtual Singapore or any community can be formed in such interactive online platforms

Concurrent Session 3—Highlights (if any)

MR325: A Blended Learning Recipe for a Digital Generation

–          Sharing by Sylvia Guidara

–          The school she worked with, Firbank (14 years old), is not considered an ICT school but an outdated school—they use a Comp Lab system

–          They block Youtube and other sites

–          But learning can still be successful

–          Can timetable of teachers be made flexible?

–          If lessons can be done online, they don’t need to report to work

–          So teachers will be home, online, and ready for consultations in the chatroom

–          There’s thus no need to carry over the lesson for F2F contact in next class

–          For teachers who tried to adopt the new methods, time was offered when requested

–          Zoho Project (collaborative learning site), Voicethread, glogster, storybird, flipcams, futurelab, animoto, grupthink

–          “Digital learning”: web-based learning (social media), NOT software-based learning (at this point I compare these ideas from foreign delegates and compare them with what was presented by MDA earlier

5 Mar 2010

Jenny Lewis (Keynote Session 2—Leading, Learning, Loving IT: Leading Tomorrow’s Schools Today):

–          Collaboration would require mutual trust, respect and support—caring, informal, trust and tears

–          For school community members, there must be a challenge of reality (let go of old ways)

–          To be task oriented, yet innovative and creative

–          Flexible and responsive structure (“responsive” is not “reactionary”)

–          “If you’d describe your school as a song/animal, what would it be?”

–         Townsend (2007): The quality of leadership is a key determinant of all highly effective and improving organizations

Concurrent Session 4—Highlights (if any)

MR307: The Global Learning Exchange (GLE)

–          Sharing by Jurong West Pri

–          Incorporating use of ICT to bring across National Education too

–          Hopes to hone students’ social emotional competence

–          Moodle

MR307: The Social Networking Model—Pedagogical Affordances and an Exploration in Community-Building, Student-Centred Learning and constructive Peer Feedback

–          Sharing by Fuhua Sec

–         http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_luV1Q3Jso Iklan PETRONAS Hari Raya Aidilfitri 1999 – No Charge (Tiada Bayaran)

MR307: (I think it’s another MDA presentation)

–          More software approaches (eg: VARK, Moo-O)

It’s something unpredictable, but in the end it’s right

I hope you had the time of your life.

Good riddance, the deed was done. The excitement and disappointment and a whole bag of emotions has never been that high in a place that seems to be rid of sentiments most part of the year. It’s that time of the year, and I’m glad to be back from the iCTLT 2010 early to be involved in this moment that makes or breaks the soul, a moment that hardens or blisters the sole for the journey ahead.

There are surprises and there are heartaches. And I am moved by them; I haven’t been moved for quite a while to update this blog until now, hours after the results were released. Now, in Vivocity. (I’m just glad I finished most of the work of the term, but there’s so much more work that are not related to T & L–teaching and learning–coming up that I’m just embracing this respite as if it was the last.) I realised that there were some comments from these lovely students which I had no time to remove from the Spam List as I was caught up with PW during that period of time. I realised that I was too tired out by the trials of the frequent witch-hunt to do more than I had. But I’m glad I had done what I did.

And there are things beyond our hands and our imagination, good or bad. Some picked the ‘right’ questions to answer and survived while some others picked the ‘wrong’ questions to answer and barely survived. But survive they all did and I am happy for that. No one failed.

There wasn’t any real photo-opportunity, though Channel Newsasia was creeping up on some sobbing students. But memories are meant to be kept in the brain anyway.

I will remember how this humble and hardworking young man, who now works at NTUC Fairprice, worked hard and focused as a student. His results are the icing on the bread.

There are many other hardworking and humble proteges, and they will all do well in life.

One student I know but I didn’t mentor last year pleasantly surprised me with her performance. It is one to remember, as she almost didn’t get the chance. That marks the end of that chapter. In the end, it’s right.

In the end, it will all be right. The end isn’t now. The now is just a moment in time: it forms part of you–your emotions, your bearing, your perception, your attitude.

The end of the bond  (in both senses of the word) is near, but I gave my word to my two Heads that I will stay on till the end of the year. I have one last fight in me and that will be the end of the prodigal son.

PS: Thanks to all who left me cards and messages over the months! Your sincerity shows!