Author Archives: Kevin L

Break or not?

I must first thank Leonard for his valuable compliment. I am not sure, but his compliment seem to reflect that he agrees with my point of view though I can never confirm. In any case, it is important that he agrees with me. Leonard, being one of the students enjoying (or should I say sufferings?) the merits of the Gifted Education, and also one who have experience the mainstream education almost in its entirety, would be the best judge as to how the two programmes differ. When I say differ, I don’t mean content, I am referring to the opportunities they offer, the assumptions they make (Stuff like ‘all geppers must be from rich families’).

I probably be talking about the GEP issue some other time because I don’t have the information on this programme and personally, I have set out to write something about breaking bonds. It is inevitable to raise the issue of bond breaking when it comes to discussing scholarships. Previously, I also mentioned briefly about how rich people, may decide to break bonds anyway, after their studies. I would say, to have bond breaking becoming ‘common’ in a sense, is a breakthrough for Singaporeans. It is, I believe not a question or loyalty, but promise. Those bond breakers breach their contracts, fine with that, since their are willing to give the compensation. In the eyes of law, there is balance, because both parties agreed on the terms initially. Of course, it is never desired for any form of contract to be broken for most parties, since both sides are stakeholders in a way or two.

Why do I say that this is a breakthrough? It simply shows that our ‘local talents’ are now being valued. At times, if not usually, adhering to the bond would bring down their value. For bond breakers who alliance with MNCs to free themselves, they have gained some form of recognition that makes them worth the price stated for compensation. Their value increase with the breaking of the bond. Many employers prefer freshmen not because of their cost of hire, but the very fact that they do not have any pre-perceptions of the industry that will misled their decision or affect their view of certain actions of the company. Most importantly, they have the passion than a graduate who have undergone ‘training’ at a statutory board for, say, 3 – 5 years. It is important that these organisations tied to the scholarship holders through the bonds do not extinguish this passion, which they usually do.

But how? How do I know that their passion is gone? And is passion that important, you see, work is still work? Well, some may think so, they probably value the money, for ‘work is only a means to end and not the end’, to use a distorted clause from the existentialist. Jim Collins mentioned in Good to Great that if your company is only going to think about growth, money making, profitting from whatever you are working on, you can only become good, if not bad – you never become great. And ultimately, you don’t spin as much money as those great companies do. Passion, according to him, is essential and it is not a individual concept, it must involve almost all in the executive and management. This is why he devoted almost a chapter to explain why every organisation should look into where they can have fun before plunging into the market.

Passion is gone? Or is it not? I am not sure, having made the claim above. But how many scholarship holder manage to climb into MNCs and succeed in the global economy? Oh well, that’s unfair to debate on because most scholarship fund studies in law, medical, or perhaps sociology, less with economics. Even with economics, that guy out of ten probably decides not to enter the financial sector. So the arguement stops there, you got to probe further yourself.

I am not propagating the idea that we should break whatever bond, regardless or the nature, the compensation required. Let’s be pragmatic, these bond conditions and stuff are used to restrict the ‘poor’ scholars, with an additional quality – he would not be able to win over the big corporations to sponser any compensation for him. Then you think again, you such a person be getting the scholarship in the first place? Probably not. I think this sudden influx of scholarship ‘new criteria’: Charisma, Outstanding in presentation or style, and most importantly, I have raise this very disappointing point – they do look for looks, is the source of all these problems. We can never be objective about looks unless we conduct the interview with a cloth or something between the interviewers and interviewees. We have to clear up all these mess created by the lame criteria, because it appears that all these qualities they are looking for simply makes up celebrities. Then we’ll have celebrity doctors, celebrity economists, celebrity sociologists. Think about it, that’s not too bad – the telephone companies can hold a ‘Professional Idol’ to dig more money from naive teens, who are now enjoy the greatest perk of technology – the handphone.

And that’s the whole point of group interviews! They select relatively, never considering certain unique characteristic of anyone in the room that they might be able to tap on. Don’t be mistaken, this are all opinions, for I have never once stepped into a scholarship interview of any form, or even watched a video on group interviewing. I don’t know the techniques, the information involved, and the insiders stuff. What I know, is a combination of the obvious fact, and psychology. Think, how many times have you judged a person without considering his looks? That’s virtually a human impossibility. Face it, we are never objective. And being subjective is good, for that is what made me write all these.

Once again, I am unable to finish what I want to say, I probably continue some time later. In any case, readers might find this post bothersome to read because the thoughts are hardly crystalised and I seem to be spewing random points, jumping from here to there, without a read central theme.

Social Mobility

Surprisingly, I have been reading news. Yes, and I came across Soon Sze Meng’s article on our local school’s contribution towards social mobility. As a typical student myself, I shall leave readers to find out for themselves what exactly is social mobility. In any case, the article revolves around the discussion of meritocracy in Singapore and who exactly does our education system benefit.

For ages, we, belonging to the lower band of the society, lived with the idea that education is our key to penetrating the social ‘classes’, allowing us to attain ‘greater heights’. We believe, that wealth do not last more than 3 generations, with the second (in some cases) and third squandering away all the first generation have worked to build. We once thoughts, that as long as we slog and work, we will outshine the ‘rich’ students, who are characterised by their lazy, and apathetic traits. Unfortunately (or should I say fortunately), our society is not so ideal, and so is many others.

A nation founded upon the principles of meritocracy is successful because everyone starts off at the same point, the identical starting line. Whoever runs fast enough, have the perseverence to last till the end, emerges as the victor, and not forgetting those who have accompanied the victor all the way, whom themselves earn the rest of the honour. Others are left scattered around the track – some gave up halfway, some sink into some kind of crisis purely by chance, while others who may have tried the shortcuts got lost. For this point, I am also suggesting that people do win with shortcuts.

That was then. The second generation don’t differ much from the first except that they had a more stable life, and were able to enjoy what the previous generation know as luxury. They are able to enjoy in their late 50s or so. But as we step into the third generation, the disparity is getting wider. We see that everyone has a different starting point; you have a guy from a tycoon’s family, another is the son of an official (this kind of people are known as white horse in Singapore context), and who knows, you get a peer who has just migrated to Singapore from Australia and he’s an excellent speaker. You get different competitors, and so on the other hand, there are the sons and daughters of hawkers – the mini rich class; finally, there is the lower income group, supposedly characterised by the fact that they qualify for financial aid. I have to stress this point that there is no discrimination intended.

What I am trying to say here is that you now need to introduce ‘Selective Meritocracy’. This has been in practice and this is not something new at all. It involves the addition of filters to prevent ‘well-fed’ people who has the ability to fund their own studies from obtaining scholarships or monetary rewards for academic achievements, thereby robbing the deserving, and in a way, less fortunate of the opportunity to ‘move up’ (to quote from Sze Meng’s words). Paradoxically, this system of selective meritocracy is only used in scholarships or cash grants involving money that usually does not exceed SGD$1000. The scholarships that goes up to hundreds of thousands do not work with this system.

The vicious cycle is turning, in fact spining. The rich get the appropriate help, the right contacts, and the resources required to do whatever known as ‘projects’. The poor, with less exposure to the academics, and having a need for extra income, would rather address to the immediate problem by working part-time, than to work on his ‘project’. The system, acknowledges the efforts of the rich boy, praising his efforts to contact a renown professor to aid in his ‘project’ while dismissing the poor student as a rebellious, undisciplined and ‘good-for-nothing’. This is getting fearful. Well, the situation is not as extreme as the analogy I have drawn, but the actual is very close. Extremely close indeed.

There are, in fact, presence of students who have excel academically and present himself as being an outstanding and ‘high-class’ student despite his humble background and manages to obtain the scholarship that they are pursuing at the end of their ‘learning journey’. But they are rare. Let’s put this fact aside and imagine, for Einstein has mentioned how imagination is more important than knowledge: If the ‘rich’ guys who have obtained scholarships are erased from the big picture completely, how many ‘poor’ others would have been able to ‘move up’? And in turn, they would be able to aid how many others ‘move up’? This would eventually close up the income gap that we seem to have now.

Think about how the small gap between obtaining the scholarship and not for both the rich and the poor would alter from cases to cases. A ‘rich’ who grasped it feels happy, go on the study, come back to adhere to his bond (alternatively, he might decide to break the bond and even compensate with his own money if he is really rich enough), and then live on. The ‘poor’ who missed it would have spent his slogging on his studies seemingly useless. Well, he can continue with his academic career and alter his future a little, but will never be able to make the difference that he would have if he manages to obtain the chance to pursue what he initially wanted.

This is getting long and I probably would continue with this talk in the next few posts.

Friday Scraps

Fridays are no longer occupied by our Co-cirricular activities. So we get to go home early. And when there’s no test on Monday, we slack a little. I spend last night playing around with photoshop once again (that was quite a hobby during the holidays) and created the following.

Spectrum

Don’t ask me why I did it or what the messages on the picture means. They don’t tell anything. They are there for decorative purpose. And I probably be coming up with more of these nonsense the next few weeks. If you guys want them as wallpaper, you can make a request from MSN and I’ll send you the 1024 X 768 version to you. By the way, that’s the biggest size it goes.

This offer is only limited to those who already have my contact, so don’t bother to contact me if you don’t know me.

Angry

Looks like many people are getting pissed with the changes at school. Somebody especially. But I won’t say who. You readers probably know him. Anyway, somebody is getting damn pissed off by all the terrible changes. First there is this new programme going on, next there’s forcing of people to purchase tickets for some extremely educational drama. Then comes some form of escalated security measures that has undoubtly brought in loads of profit to vehicle label printers. Finally, there’s this ridiculous performance put up by some ‘Gila’ class, which caused an emotion uproar in somebody.

Some values ought to be kept, and protected. Not kept in the trunks.

Whoever said this may seem old-fashioned and inflexible to those who have a clear idea of what I am talking about, but I believe this ‘somebody’ is worthy of our utmost repect for being principled. I would say, that it is really hard for a person, having lived through a time of glory and is full of pride, to realise suddenly, that the world has transformed. And it has really transformed to a stage deemed as ‘Evil’ in the past. But as we know, moral values sometimes do change. Or rather, the societal interpretation of values changes constantly.

We can’t have ‘student idols’ in schools, and appreciation of music is probably more inclined towards classical, though rock may be rather cool – in our terms. I see things changing, I can more or less accept it; though I can’t feel for this ‘somebody’, I can understand that to him, it is as though a fact, that he knew since he existed, just destroyed itself in front of him. It is scary. It is just like the time when you realised that lies are everywhere, all around us – previously, you got to know from your mother that lying is wrong.

But that is more gradual. It is like discovering how adults are even more imperfect that some kids even though we were taught to respect and listen to the adults as though they were the ‘perfect, all-knowing specie’. The things that ‘somebody’ is experiencing is sudden, fearsome. If I suddenly tell you that Earth is flat and not round and that Newton, and a whole lot of the others are seriously wrong, you may be scared out of our wits (though that’s science and you probably need some proof). For a supposed ‘fact’ that is of moralistic nature, it is hard to tell; there are somethings which are obviously wrong but they are still committed like there’s nothing wrong. Sad.

Projects

I rarely talk about things that happens in school, unlike Bingyuan. And for those people curious about they way he ‘encodes’ someone’s name, here a clue: Spell it backwards and you will get a clearly picture. Good try encrypting it! Yes, I am going to release some information on the projects I am working on. Currently, and as usual, there are to categories when I talk about my project. The first being school projects, and the second being personal ones.

School project will involve my two Pday projects. As all who have been reading my blog would know, I have been working on a film since the year began, and now, it is almost at the completed stage. Sometimes I really wonder if I really need that much time. Well, I think the time for conceptualising should be well spent, or your project will be as screwed as mine. In any case, I believe it wouldn’t be possible for me to have completed 2 projects if not for the fact that I set out to achieve that since last year, and that much of the time, the 2 projects’ converge at the same point, namely the same venue. I must say I have been lucky this year.

The Service Learning Project is expected to outshine other projects if we are able to present the project well enough. This time, we have added advantage because of a ‘secret weapon’ and currently, almost all members are working very hard to get the job done well. We have set out to achieve that much, and we shall get that much. We previously wanted only to be selected for GF, but now I thought that we should achieve something further, given the fact that this will be the last year we are participating in this competition. Bingyuan, if you are reading this, you should get what I mean.

The stuff that I am working on personally is actually a series of templates that I should be using for future projects. I plan to create at least 10 of them, probably at least 1 when the September Holidays comes and the rest during the Year-End Holidays. I believe I will need all these stuff in 2006 and probably wouldn’t have enough time to settle them then.

Another project is a short film that captures the naivety of students even at our age, it is entitled, “Disposing”. I have in mind the cast and this is going to be a hilarious one, but it won’t be long, and most importantly, I am still not sure if I would have the time to shoot, given the fact that exams extend all the way into the holidays. This film got potential to be expanded to discuss social issues.

I am also thinking of doing a script, on a one-entertainer style talk, that will be criticising some of our school’s stuff. But that’s not confirmed yet. It will be in chinese and I probably need some input from Mib. Currently, there hasn’t been much things to talk about given our apathetic nature and the focus with academic achievements. Talking about academic stuff, I haven’t been achieving lately, getting zi bei. I got to get some tips from Mib on this, he is always feeling so.

Kids

Was out yesterday night, for a simple dinner with my family, and also to get printer cartridges for my Canon Printer. We were at the bus stop, waiting for the bus to come when we saw 4 kids: 2 boys and 2 girls, playing around the bus stop. They suddenly came together when one of the boys said, “Let’s go to the bus stop!”

They crowded the boy. He said again, “Let’s race to the bus stop. Whoever first will become the…” Before he could finish, the other 3 kids ran towards the bus stop. Seeing this, he shouted, “the Rich Man!” and start running himself. When they were close to the bus stop, one of the girls commented, “Hey, how about the second, become what?” That, in our teenage’s world, can only constitute a single comment, “Dotz”.

On closer inspection, the children may not be that naive after all. They have learnt, in many ways, that the strongest, the fittest will probably be the most successful and there is almost no room for failures in our society. But as Singaporeans, they want to have something to lay back on, which is why they asked about the second placement. They know that not everyone can be leaders, no more than one man can be the richest or the most successful, because there can only be a single best. They wouldn’t mind getting a second place, they are still above others, after all.

And that is reality, their simple game is a demonstration of the bigger society, everyone so involved in this ‘rat race’. It is, in some ways, nice to be the spectator, laughing at how foolish those people in the race are, sharing the joy and the sadness of those in there, like what typical philosophers do. They simply observe the world, around them.

National Library Opened!

And yes, I went there, yesterday (22 July). It was a totally crazy place. The Central ‘Lending Department’ is located in Basement 1 and it was crowded with a whole lot of people, at least thrice the number of shelves in the library. And yes, I guess just that section holds as much books as a typical community library do, much better than the previous National Library (Why, of course, they took so darn long to build it).

So you’ll probably be asking me, then what are the other floors for, especially when the library is a stand-alone building that is so tall? From my perspective, majority of the floors are redunant, probably built to prop up the Reference Section, which is the next place where books are present other than the Central Lending Section. And this section, is located on the 7th floor, exactly 7 storeys away from the previous section. Scary. In addition, this sections extends up to 13th floor, with book shelves standing side-by-side, in a less creative manner than NIE Library but definitely holding much more books. This section, dubbed ‘Lee Kong Chian Reference Library’, houses the largest collection of books in the social sciences aspects with regards to South East Asian Studies and would contribute very much to my personal research if it had opened earlier.

I took a photo from 4th storey, but I have no time to upload it now, so I probably be putting up sometime later. In any case, the photo isn’t very cool. Unfortunately, I was there at 8.40pm, exactly 20 minutes before they close, so I was unable to look through the huge building. And one warning, the elevators really sux big time. I waited darn long for the elevator to reach the storey I am on before realising that it was simply too packed to fit another being. To be fair, I got to mentioned that then was when everyone was going home, and hence, trying to go back to the first storey. Yah, I think that’s all.

又上报了

这已是第三次了。之前还以为昊旻有多威风，竟被报章记者访问，但这几次的经验后，我认为还是别出风头为妙。做个平凡，普通的人还是比较好的。别问我到底是上了哪个报，也别想知道我的样子 – 我想也没人会想知道，知道了也没什么，我样子无论如何，比秉元差就对了。连伟豪跟我比起来都好多了。

其实这次的活动，本想也把秉元拉进来，但是被校方“拒绝”了。总之，受访非好事也。大家可要记得！

Go Peanuts!

I know the NKF thing just got bigger after the ‘Peanuts’ Comment, which have been driving people nuts. Recently, you would notice that whenever you pass by an old coffeeshop, you’d hear people shouting, “Oei uncle! Roti-peanuts! Peanuts zhuay zhuay! Mai ka wa pang kaya hor!” (Non-Singaporean’s Translation: Uncle, give me bread with peanut butter. Make the layer of peanut butter as thick as possible. And don’t you dare give me Kaya!) Well, some people may not even know what is Kaya, I can’t help, there is no proper explanation for this ‘sauce’.

As I was saying, people are going crazy over peanuts, even the teachers are talking about it: “I think nowadays you go supermarket right, you will notice people picking peanuts one by one,” and another says, “Peanuts are cool, I’d like to earn peanuts too!” And best of all, the cynics are popping out everywhere. They are always beside you, but now, they emerge as the heros, the greatest and the noblest of all – a role they never had till now, and they’d say…

“See, I told you not to dump your money into that black hole. Where got every year collect money 3 times then can only last 3 years only? Come on man, why you so stupid?…”

“Exactly 2 weeks leh…2 weeks before the trial I email everyone and told them that dumb organ-isation was nonsense. You know the money go to who meh? Well, now you know, but no use crying…”

“You mean you give that caretaker of funds 150 bucks every year? What the? You dunno that a portion of the money get ‘donated’ to the telephone company meh? Oh god, you are damn lousy man!”

Who knows? These guys probably donated huge amounts of money for the past years and are saying all this to vent their frustration. Lucky for me, I maintain my stand: I only help the people in need directly, never in such means. Money is a good tool, but it is also a tempting one. Unfortunately, it is difficult to say you can survive without it, yet no one will ever say they have had enough of it. Oh yes, the situation now is a little different, people prefer gold taps and peanuts nowadays. Money is nothing.

Talking about peanuts, I used to like them a lot, but no longer. Don’t be mistaken, I didn’t withdraw from peanuts because of this incident – it was once when some of the crushed nuts stucked in my molar teeth, and really hurt my gums. Yea, that was stupid, I know that. But now that the craze is on, I think we should all go Peanuts! Or we probably will be deemed Nuts!

My Turn

Yes. It is my turn to say something about the NKF thing. I wanted to title this post, ‘Want more jobs? Go charity!’, but unfortunately, I don’t like to see my topics too long and hence the title. Not having such post on your blog apparently signifies how shallow you are as a Singaporean. So I must not lose out, even to Mib, who is currently somewhere else.

Well, now you know, guys, if you need jobs, go set up some charity fund or a ‘non-profit’ organisation. Yes. You not only benefit yourself by providing an income for your family, you help other people in need, and most importantly, you will be able to satisfy people who donate to you. You need to have a board, of directors, of course, preferably those who are friendly with you. So if I am the CEO, I probably get Mib to be one of the Directors, and also Bok. That’s it, you can now start solving unemployment problems.