Category Archives: Personal Life

It all started with a simple entry in the ‘Today’ Newspaper Forum, on the undue stress applied to students in the GEP. Somehow, it caused reactions that seem to have no direct connections with the main arguement that ‘GEPers are under undue stress’. Whoever first replied the first letter was a student who have ‘benefitted’ from the programme and was extremely interested in telling the world that GEP students do interact with main stream students – also as an attempt to rebut the first guy’s claim that the GEP students are somewhat isolated from the others.

So soon, the net, and webcomics, are talking about the GEP – so many years after its implementation. Dumb, I must say, but people are starting to realised that GEP isn’t that special at all. For once, the students in GEP are torn between 2 camps: the first supporting the argument that they are ‘gifted’ and different, thus special enough to obtain special ‘trainning’ or whatever, defying the laws of meritocracy our dear ministry have been trying so hard to promote about our education system; the second supporting the fact that GEP isn’t really that different except the students have took the challenge to undergo more intensive intellectual grilling, that will probably make them better persons – nothing beyond that.

If you are in the programme, which would you support?

In fact, I know of students who flunk in the programme but decide to stay around, or was forced to stay around for a couple of dumb reasons; these reasons got to do mainly with ‘face’, and reputation – not worth elaborating. I also know of students who excelled and aced, and trashed everyone, earning the nicknames he deserves – ‘mugger’, ‘nerd’, ‘study-type’, ‘GEPer’, ‘Study Saiyan’, etc. It is all about the path you want to take. I have understood the whole idea of ‘living with the system’. Yes, there is such thing as GEP in our education system, so accept it or not, it is your choice. In a way, those who are in the mainstream are simply gifted students who are rejected by the programme (or you can say you reject the programme).

Apparently, ‘GEPer’ is somehow similar to the term ‘workaholic’, they can be negative or positive, varying from person to person. The fact remains that such programme is some kind of eugenic marginalisation that should not be tolerated in the ideal society. Unfortunately, nothing ideal exist, and we must accept that.

It all started with a simple entry in the ‘Today’ Newspaper Forum, on the undue stress applied to students in the GEP. Somehow, it caused reactions that seem to have no direct connections with the main arguement that ‘GEPers are under undue stress’. Whoever first replied the first letter was a student who have ‘benefitted’ from the programme and was extremely interested in telling the world that GEP students do interact with main stream students – also as an attempt to rebut the first guy’s claim that the GEP students are somewhat isolated from the others.

So soon, the net, and webcomics, are talking about the GEP – so many years after its implementation. Dumb, I must say, but people are starting to realised that GEP isn’t that special at all. For once, the students in GEP are torn between 2 camps: the first supporting the argument that they are ‘gifted’ and different, thus special enough to obtain special ‘trainning’ or whatever, defying the laws of meritocracy our dear ministry have been trying so hard to promote about our education system; the second supporting the fact that GEP isn’t really that different except the students have took the challenge to undergo more intensive intellectual grilling, that will probably make them better persons – nothing beyond that.

If you are in the programme, which would you support?

In fact, I know of students who flunk in the programme but decide to stay around, or was forced to stay around for a couple of dumb reasons; these reasons got to do mainly with ‘face’, and reputation – not worth elaborating. I also know of students who excelled and aced, and trashed everyone, earning the nicknames he deserves – ‘mugger’, ‘nerd’, ‘study-type’, ‘GEPer’, ‘Study Saiyan’, etc. It is all about the path you want to take. I have understood the whole idea of ‘living with the system’. Yes, there is such thing as GEP in our education system, so accept it or not, it is your choice. In a way, those who are in the mainstream are simply gifted students who are rejected by the programme (or you can say you reject the programme).

Apparently, ‘GEPer’ is somehow similar to the term ‘workaholic’, they can be negative or positive, varying from person to person. The fact remains that such programme is some kind of eugenic marginalisation that should not be tolerated in the ideal society. Unfortunately, nothing ideal exist, and we must accept that.

I seem to have been gone the last few days because of the ‘holiday-start’ busyness that is caused by an influx of responsibility from adults. There are teachers who engage your help in their personal projects, then there are parents who suddenly thinks the colour of the walls of my room (that has been the same for the past 4 years), is getting too familiar, and tells you to re-paint your room. As if that’s not enough, the school made mistakes in my examination result slip, and wanted to call in my examination papers for inspection, thus making me go to school on 2 occassions where I simply step into the school office, and collect a piece of paper, or pass a piece of paper to the admin staff.

I am pretty much surprised that Mib didn’t make any comments on the news of Japan importing 80% of the world production of Tamiflu (perhaps he had no idea that occurred). It appears that they have learnt the art of ‘Kiasuism’ from Singaporeans (so much for Singapore taking after them at the population aspects). Apparently, there is a fair exchange of culture within the highly diversified Asia, unlike what some may think (either about Chinese ethocentrism, or about imposing Chinese culture, or maybe I got everything wrong).

Even better, Koizumi was ‘dao-ed’ by President Hu during the APEC conference in Busan (I thought it was ‘Pusan’, my history textbook said so). I guess President Roh would have done the same if not for the fact that Korea was the host to the conference.

Singapore Polytechnic is starting modules on public toilet maintenance to make sure we produce sufficient ‘talents’ in this aspect so that we get the best designs of toilets and manage toilets better, and as usual, they have a nice name, ‘Ecological Sanitation Course’. See news here. Looks like our public sector is expanding after all the laying off (I mean retrenchment), and they have decided that they shall have more of our ‘Local Talents’.

By the way, Mib hopes that people will support him to take on adminship on Wikipedia. I was intrigued by Mib’s braggy user page and decided to sign up on Wikipedia to act as a check against him (and also support him when the need arises).

I have always been appalled by the school’s plans to use the ‘free time’ saved from not preparing for a particular national exams. These ‘free time’ are distributed into nice slots at the end of terms, nicely named ‘Sabbaticals’. Of course, these are lame course that had nothing to do with vacation at all. This is an article I wrote in my blog on 21 February this year that describe the stress you are under when Sabbatical selection comes.

I believe no other would face such immense stress before going on a Sabbatical (defined as ‘vacation course’). Our school, as usual, is conducting these lame courses once again. Here is a description of what happens to a typical student.

As registration opens at 6pm, rush home immediately after school. If you have any EP3, extra lessons or remedial, don’t bother, just go home. When you reach home, exhausted, you realised that it is 3pm, quite early as compared to the usual time; but extremely late for such an important event – registering the sabbatical of your choice. You turn on the computer, seconds is ticking as your index finger touches, apply pressure, then release the boot button. You check your digital watch, it is 3:10:46pm.

The ‘Windows XP’ splash screen appears and you stare at the loading bar. ‘What the hell?’ you shouted at your computer, and went to the kitchen to make yourself a drink. You return, realising that the computer is at the login screen. You lament about the few seconds wasted for not logging in, while you are in the kitchen. Time is 3:16:39pm.

The Windows XP took another 5 minutes 43 seconds to load before you double-click on the ‘Dial-up connection’ icon. 5 beads of sweat trickled down your forehead, making a right turn and drips on to your glass frame. You click ‘Dial’ and hear the ‘to-to-to’ sound. The 5 beads of sweat combine to form a huge drop which dangles on the edge of your spectacle frame. You took a sip from the Orange juice you poured for yourself in the kitchen. You realised that there is nothing in the cup – you spilled all the juice on the floor while rushing back into the room. Time is 3:28:23pm, there is still time to pour another cup. You rushed to the kitchen.

The strange sound from the computer dies down and you are connected to the net. The Internet Explorer window appears lagging the whole computer with it. Now there is a huge white patch on the computer screen caused by the IE lagging. While rushing to return to your room, you slip over the orange juice you spill previously, spilling even more orange juice on the floor. Time is 3:32:43pm, you realised that even if there’s time to pour another cup, you probably slip and fall again, so you decided to clean up the mess. You return to the computer to type the URL on the address bar though IE haven’t even loaded the homepage. You become pissed off when the status bar shows ‘Done’ right after you click the ‘Go’ button. You scream the F-word and hit the table with your mouse. It is now 3:40:55pm.

You fetch the cloth and start wiping the mess on the ceramic tiled floor. You lament at the fact that your parents did not put a carpet at the passage leading from the kitchen to your room. The lamenting took about 64 seconds. A carpet would have helped to absorb all the orange juice, leaving not much trace and prevented you from falling the second time. By the time you finished cleaning up the mess and pouring yourself a cup of lime juice (there is no more orange juice), the time is 4:02:39pm. You managed to log into Online CHS after hitting your CPU for about 22 seconds. You forget that it is not the CPU’s fault; IE simply sux. It is exactly 4:12:40pm at the point of logging in.

Unfortunately, because you are still using Singnet’s Dial-up plan, it took more than 16 seconds for the ‘Sabbatical’ link to appear. You click it immediately after you see the link appear. Unfortunately, due to the way IE functions, the loading stopped and you have to refresh the page. It took away another 30 seconds. You learnt your lesson in the hard way – it is 4:18:30pm. The Sabbatical page took just 14 seconds to load; a breakthrough in Singnet’s Dial-up connection speed. You feel so happy that you forgot to select the Sabbatical you want before clicking ‘Register’. Nothing happened because there is still 1 hour 39 minutes and 28 seconds more before registration opens.

You scolded the computer after peering into the Dictionary of Profanities which set beside the printer. You then said, “Early 1 and half hour also dun lemme register. Steven Sux!” Frustrated, you gulp the whole cup of lime juice and went to the kitchen to pour more. “Damn it.” You realised that the lime juice has expired (no wonder you feel that it tasted especially sour). You spend another 5 minutes trying to vomit all that has just been consumed. Out of the 350ml you drank, you managed to puke 230.2145 ml of it. You smile at the toilet bowl, thinking that you have puked everything. You are gravely wrong…

Looking at the time – 4:26:54pm. There is still so much time left. You started playing Little Fighter 2. At exactly 5:34:20pm, you feel a pain in your abdomen. You realised that it must have been the lime juice. You perspired profusely as you struggle to tolerate the pain. You figured that you can hold your rectum to about 6:08:23pm so it is not a problem. You look at the Online CHS time, there is still 54 seconds. You have checked the Sabbatical you are interested in, looked at the requirements thoroughly and checked that the instructor is your favourite teacher. Now there’s 34 seconds more. At exactly 5:59:53pm, you farted. It caused the room to stink and it dawned on you that this pain in the stomach is caused by the mixture of the expired lime juice and the indian curry you ate at your neighbour’s place yesterday night.

7…6…5…4…3…You scroll down to the ‘Register’ button and count down, 3…2…1. You click the button. You are uncertain whether you are in the course because the page is loading too slowly. You farted again and your rectum is going to release all the waste matter on to your chair if you do not go to the toilet in time. You decided that the registration should be alright and happily went to the toilet. After causing the whole house to stink, and feeling much better with the relief, you went to the computer, shocked to find that it is at the ‘This page cannot be displayed’ page. You shouted at your computer again and the whole computer hanged. It is 6:12:45pm.

You rebooted the computer and went through the whole process of connecting again. It is 6:34:23pm when you reach the Online CHS Workspace. You clicked on the ‘Sabbatical’ link after everything is loaded. ‘Whew’ you are in the course of your choice. You sigh relief and discovered the house is getting smellier every second. You figured out that it is cause by the diffusion of smelly gas from the toilet to all around the house – you did not flush!

Okay, many think this ending is not very good. It is in fact, in my opinion, too abrupt. Those who are free enough may like to give some suggestions for an ending when you meet me on MSN.

Apparently, I am quite disgusted with what I have wrote, in retrospect. Well, that’s what happens when you are in certain school. By the way, the character ‘you’ in this post is absolutely ficticious.

Previously, Dr Croc said something about word limit. I have got to agree with him now that I have suffered the same issue he was discussing then. I scored a 40/45 for the main content of my research paper, including an interview with a researcher, 5 interviews with citizens of Singapore and thorough literature research into the topic of population. Yes, that’s pretty high.

Unfortunately, I wrote a total of 4000 words instead of the 3000 words that I was supposed to write since the limit set at my level is 3000 words. This simple act of being hardworking and more thorough with my research, which is supposed to show how serious I was with my work resulted in a deduction of 5 marks off my research paper, resulting in a pretty miserable 35/45.

Well, I admit I wasn’t abiding by the word limit set earlier and should have at least made it a point to cheat on my word limit (by not counting the headings, the sub-headings, and making more footnotes). But I thought it should be perfectly fine if the words carry out their final purpose of informing the reader of the important details of the research and give more information on the topic itself.

The whole problem is that the grading or score should reflect on the quality of the paper and so by deducting marks off the paper for infringement of word limit, the marks are not truly reflecting the quality of the paper. In my opinion, for record purposes and also to benefit the student, the school should show the raw score (not yet deducted), then the final score, and place a remark: “Deducted 5 marks for exceeding word limit”. That would at least show the other parties looking at the marks that the student has the capability to score well, except that the school system’s restrictions have caused him some inconvenience obtaining the score he deserves.

If this is not done, he will be placed in the same category as those who have not put in effort in their research paper, causing him further inconvenience by reducing his confidence in the subject he is good at. Worst, this reduction in score and ‘discrimination’ may end with the student facing ridicule and finally breaking down, or failing in the subject due to lack of the necessary courage to undermine the rules imposed in answering the questions (maybe he could have scored better if he raised some politically-incorrect opinions, but because of the fear or the ‘rules’, he fail to do so and end up producing sub-standard work). This is bad.

And if we analyse the problem further, we realise that this student would also be discouraged to advance further in this subject of interest and the act of deduction of score would end up causing the society to lose a talent in the particular field – when our nation already has a lack of talent, so much so that they have to be ‘imported’. Ah! That’s it! We now understand why some nations lack talents, it is probably because of such ridiculous structures imposed – ‘Word Limit for Research Paper; failing to abide by it will result in loss of marks’. Then we will have some nice students writing an apology at the end of the research paper:

We are sad to inform you (my dear mentor/reader) that this paper do not reflect the complete research we have done and the few pages that you have read did not present 5 important population charts, 10 pages of analysis on the trends that our nation will be experiencing in the next 5 years, 2 pages of analysis of the role of policies in fostering new ideals on population that may ultimately result in change of societal norms, etc. – due to the word limit imposed on us by the department head. We are also sorry for not being able to present the complete list of the important stuff we did, but missed out in this research paper – also because of the word limit. We apologise for any inconvenience caused by the apparent missing details. To find out more, please log on to: http://myresearchpaper.com/missingdetails/.

Then the research paper submitted ends up as a brochure for your ‘full’ research paper that is online. Best of all, this nicely done ‘brochure’ includes a preview to your paper and allows the teacher to have a ‘sneak peek’ into the research topic.

Of course, other students facing the same problem won’t do this; they will start sites to flame the department head – well, that was before the purges; you won’t see the sites nowadays. I think some department head should really go back and reflect – maybe dust his education masters thesis and see if he exceeded the word limit. Or even better, write a research paper on ‘Relationship between imposing word limit for research papers and the number of students flaming department heads’.

I thought I was different in my attitude towards blogging, advocating the writing of personal opinion and voicing of social issues, rather than talk about one’s own life and stuff. It is true that I have managed to attain that level, but it appears that sub-consciously, blogging is still a lame activity that dumb people engage in, to do what the teachers’ call ‘funny things’. And this is why when Sin Hwee told me he began blogging, I was taken aback. Of course, I have nothing against him. I was propagating the social stereotype by being surprise at the ‘news’. That’s bad.

Worst is the new rules that are introduced to the arena of blogging. Blogging threatens any, regime, individual with authority or a respected person, because like any other form of mass media, it has the ability to propagate ideas, spread inciting ideas, which will in turn cause some sort of resentment towards these authoriative figures. Of course, the blogs being online would mean the whole world can see it – increasing its threat against anyone being a target of the blogger. Ironically, the stereotypic idea about blogging is pretty lame – just a site to talk about one’s own life. By far, we have not seen anyone starting a revolution using internet or any online mediums. So we should not let our imagination go too far. There is, perhaps, too strong a paranoia around those with authority.

People in power having such problems are inconfident of presiding over a group of bloggers – they feel insecured that there may be a particular page online that will say something about their weakness or the injustice they did, since these bloggers are clearer with ‘the regime’. Well, it is no longer important whether these stuff are true, because when people do nothing bad, they shouldn’t be afraid that people’s claims (for this claims would not withstand the test of time – as learnt from ancient wisdom taught to us since we were young). Too bad, everyone makes mistakes – now I am probably making one.

Since I was free enough to slack around though I still have another few more exam coming up, I might as well brush up my PHP, or rather start picking up PHP, which I do have some idea about. The result of this thought is an experiment I did with numbers, examination scores, and PHP programme – Marks Calculation System. Okay, the name is obviously lame (or lamely obvious) and the function is terribly stupid but at least it helps some poor Math-blur kids from my school get out of their fix by calculating how much marks they need for examinations to allow them to obtain a final score of A1 or total all of their scores up.

All they have to do is fill up a pretty simple form and click a button. The programme generates a score they obtained, or have to obtain (depending on which calculator of the calculation system you are referring to), up to 2 decimal points. Well, that’s nothing to boast of, I was simply trying out what I just learnt. If you want a better calculation system, you probably go to Chen Shuang. But I believe this few files I have coded will suffice if you just need to total your score over the year. Students from my school probably like to try using it.

Oh yah, don’t worry about others knowing your marks. I haven’t learn how to store the data you key into the form into some sort of flat files or sql database – though soon I probably will.

I am probably making more of such calculation programmes for lame usage, working with more complex functions and such. Then, I will try building a ‘site-newscasting’ system for normal organisational usage.

I just realised that IE users are not able to view the nice header I made for the new blog layout because of some IE css file which I did not edit when modifying the theme to customise it for my blog. Now I solved the problem.

Interestingly, Dr Croc has decided to introduce himself as Christopher Yang for everyone to know him. Well, I might have to give some background then. As mentioned earlier, Dr Croc will be a co-author of ‘Propagator’, working on interesting insights of the society. If you consider Mib the Political type of person, you can say that Dr Croc is the Social type. Vib is a mix. Please do note that deviation from facts occurs all the time in my posts an names such as ‘Shuqun’ are entirely fictional and is not a personal attack at anyone (unless I explictly state it).

Exams’ off for a while and I probably be a little more active here.

Walk down Peninsular Plaza months ago and you did notice a shoe store with their signboard covered by a ‘Closing Down Sale’ Banner. If you hadn’t been there before (over the past decade), you shouldn’t be surprise. After all, the store look just like any other store, except that it probably is closing down.

More than five years ago, when I was walking down that path, I thought the same. I never got to know the real name of the shop since the signboard is always covered by the banner. Then a year or two past and the shop remained, never closing down. For once, I thought the name of the shoe shop was ‘Closing Down Sale’ but I abandon that idea after figuring out that there’s a few letters protruding from the real signboard behind the banner.

A few more years past, and the shop remained standing, with the same old banner, selling different shoes, but nonetheless, still shoes and the shop looked exactly the same as the first time when I saw it – orange walls, filament bulb lighting. It is interesting to note that they seem to have more customers nowadays. Last month, I went there and told my Dad about the store. He replied that he noticed that store too; over the years, it seem that the ‘Closing Down Sale’ banner has become a permanent feature and they are using it as a business tactic to attract more people. I thought so, since I realised that the store never did close down.

I set foot on the path again today, everything was the same, the Old Chang Kee, the 7-eleven store. Then I realised something was missing from the picture – the familiar orange-colored store, the ‘Closing Down Sale’ banner is gone. The shop really closed down. It simply feels odd. We all never thought it did close down. After all, it’s been years.

We take too many things for granted, things that seem to exist permanently will not, but we tend to think otherwise. There are things you really hate, like school, some people, and I really did hate that particular store that put up the ‘Closing Down Sale’ banner for years. But the moment you realised it is gone, you find it odd. It is not as if the banner or the store played a part in my life before its absence, it is not as though I really think the schools needs some forgiving on my part, but when these things are gone, you know you can’t hate them anymore. Our stand, our assertion are all too distinct, too comfortable for us, so much so that when the opposition force cease to exist, we feel emptiness. We hate, for the sake of hating, too often, we lose our rationality in our hatred.

For a moment, we should cease to hate and think about the reasons behind all our hatred.

Mib is becoming more ethocentric now that he begin his bombardment on Japanese Culture. Before reading further, please go to his blog and read this, so that you understand what I am rabbling about. Now, here’s my comment on his arguement that sushi is from China.

For a start, we can say everything from Japan originates from China. Strictly speaking, if we consider whatever Japan does after their clear breakage (when they start their own language) with China as their own, we must consider that Sushi originates from Japan.

Firstly, Chinese DO NOT mix vinegar with rice for consumption – those are usually animal feed or something like that. Sushi is discovered after vinegar is applied to the rice, supposedly for preservation purposes. More importantly, the great variety of sushi available has rendered its origins unimportant. The ones with raw fish (usually salmon or tuna) on them are definitely from Japan because the Chinese never ate salmon raw.

Next, from a more pragmatic point of view, Chinese (from the background and cultural – not racial perspective) wouldn’t be so ‘dumb’ as to squeeze their staple into balls one by one, eventually eating them all together. More importantly, the kind of rice used for sushi is unlike the Chinese staple type.

Finally, no one really gives a damn about where sushi comes from because you just pop food into your mouth without bothering about their origins. After all, you don’t munch on your pizza thinking about Italy, or chew on some cheese and fantasize French stuff.

And the reason why I am posting this comment here is that I fear he will delete my comments in an attempt to save his ‘face’ – when of course, he could have deleted this particular post as well; but he wouldn’t usually read my blog – so never mind.