Back at last!

After a long (about 8 days) trip to Yunnan, I am finally back, at least in one piece. The place is great, the people (not counting the sales people) are nice and the mountains are hard to climb. Okay, my English is going down, now that I haven’t been really using it for the past week. The computer too, I haven’t seen a computer at work for a week! There are TVs but the channels are very limited, due to the location.

I ended up shooting more than 300 photos (thanks to a 512 MB SD card I borrowed from my aunt), and also getting scammed by a group of sales people selling worthless stuff. Well, I would say everyone in the group got conned in a way or two. Yes, we were really stupid. The people there have the mindset that we are damn rich and can afford to be conned this way and so, they feel that it is not morally wrong since they are actually ‘robbing the rich, to help the poor’. I do not agree because more than 99% of the people in our group are students and they don’t really have much money. Most importantly, they really tarnish the image of the Republic.

I know it is hard, and that we have been living way to comfortably in Singapore. I really think that most of us still don’t know how is the world like. We went there, to help the people there, provide some kind of effort to move their economy, but we ended up getting scammed. We surely won’t think it is fair. Then again, someone says, ‘The world is never fair’. Okay, so let this be a lesson to punish our naivety. Some in our group said, “Let this be a practising spot for us to sharpen our life skills. We would have fell harder if this happened in London.” Agreed. But ultimately, I must say we have really been extremely stupid. Some people wouldn’t even believe they have been scammed, or at least in whichever way they are.

Oh yah, it is supposed to be a ‘public holiday’ for voting the president today. Too bad it doesn’t come, and there probably won’t be such a day any time soon in the future because there is still another 6 more years to wait. Of course, we can perhaps think about the General Elections, but it is probably too earlier now a time to think about. Moreover, the results doesn’t really means much to the people here.

One main thing I noticed in China is their advertising. I guess that industry is probably the most powerful, booming one currently. Posters and bill-boards cover the cities and buildings or walls. These banners or whatever design are professionally-done, and possess a high level of artistic value. Most importantly, they are well-thought and nicely-done. I later read a news article about the truth behind some of these advertisements (mainly about how some people got conned by the slogans and stuff), and realised how fake this whole world is. Of course, I don’t need all these bad experience and negative news to inform me about that. The problems is that I really observe the magnitude of it occurring – it is really scary.

Bad stuff aside, the food there is good and cheap. I think it is probably the only stuff people don’t con about and really value-for-money. A huge bowl of noodles in the stalls by the side of shophouses in the cities are sold at 3.5 Yuan and McChicken in the real McDonalds going at 5 Yuan. I mean that’s really good price for fast food. Well, that’s the prices I saw, I didn’t realy go and try them because we had something else provided.

Our camp isn’t really that exciting compared to Bok’s. His account can be found here.

Absurd

Having been going through Intertext classes for almost a term, I was bombarded by an avalanche of interpretation of Absurdist literature, and forced to link the whole idea with the idea of Existentialism. It appears, that to the young, especially the apathetic ones of this age, is extremely vulnerable to being converted to this form of atheist-ness. In any case, they ignore rather than strongly oppose the possible existence of any God or divine, supreme being. They speak of how the universe is essentially illogical and that everything has no purpose or meaning. They asserts that one must adjust oneself to get out of the social conventions and be indifferent to the rest of the world because it is simply too hard to fully subscribe to any existing structure of religion or belief.

The whole irony is that human beings are somehow endowed with this form of logical reasoning, a term given to this process of explanation given by us, and yet it does not fit into the rest of the picture. Fundamentally, it has not been able to answer many questions. The question that remains deep in the flaw of what known as logical reasoning is the real purpose of existence. And the answers themselves, usually branches out to several possibilities or motivates further questioning that brings about essentially no meaning to the initial question. Even Douglas Adam’s warned us of how absurd the universe is (even when he has gone so far to make the one in his story much weirder than that of ours). Because of such, there really exist no causal chain – what happens is all within our mind, our psyche and our ‘logical reasoning’ that brings about all these nonsense.

At the end of the day, the existentialist are questioning whether our lives is all about waiting. The answer they have come up with is a combination of their beliefs and derived from the original set structure that humans traditionally abide by. We are to invent a structure for ourselves, for we are the only being who can truly define ourselves. In fact, we are already bound by the earlier matrix that we have no way of changing – because we can’t find a way around it – our names. Names are simply tool of identification used by the others to aid their definition and recognition of you. As a joke puts it: What is yours but used by everyone else more than yourself – you name. Can we eventually get out of the system? Are we born to survive only in societies as Plato has somehow postulated.

Treat this as a practice for my essay writing on philosophy and basically existentialism. If it appears too chim, forget it. Take it that I am crapping.

Lag?

It appears that Mib just realised that the front page of erpz.net have been changed – a major makeover event that occurred more than one and a half month ago. Nah, that’s not important. What matters is that he agrees with me with regards to the working erpz.net

Maybe we shouldn’t just handover some space to anyone. I thought getting Bryan Tee in would be a good idea, except that he seems too novice a writer to me. But he does have the tongue of critics though he isn’t that serious about most issues we usually discuss.

The basic reason why we are seemingly neglecting erpz.net is that we are simply too busy with our school work. Then you might ask, why do we still blog? This is similar to the question some traditional teachers ask their blogging students who claims to have no time for school work. Well, I guess it is because we still have the passion to argue for what we really believe. Other than that, there is an element of self-publicity – not that it is very important. But the fundamental benefit for me is the writing part. I can vouch that if you bother to blog in the best language you can, you will improve in writing (only, if you don’t really speak) and verbal expression in no time. You can talk crap but ultimately, it is a fact that your mind is generating words – the text that you may have come across and wanted to comment on and so on.

Of course, it doesn’t matter if you add a touch of Singlish, or Chinese, or even dialects for they are beneficial to the readers in understanding the Singaporean’s point of view towards things. It is ‘Uniquely Singapore’ (To quote from STB’s slogan). And you can also be Uniquely [something else]. Say, Mib wants to be ‘Uniquely Mib’ and decides to scatter anti-japanese propaganda all over his blog, there should be no reason why you should scoff at his views. You can only decide to disagree with him and then scoot off to somewhere else.

Many Thanks

Thanks Bingyuan, Leonard and Wei Sheng. Everyone did a good job – it is just not good enough – but nevermind. I think we have put in everything we have. Recognition from oneselves is more important. Call it self-consolation if you like, but I thought we should learn to attach and dettach from society readily so that our emotions are not affected. Of course, if I want to go extreme, I can always go existentialist and say, “Grand Finals is just the society’s way of showing their recognition, and I wouldn’t accept it even if I was offered the opportunity”.

The term is nearing its end, and so is the year. While we may dangle from the leftovers of this year, I truly hope the next year would be a really new and great one.

We have come to the end of this project, and it shall end for now until we pick it up later, soon. Yah, that’s all, I am quite pissed actually. If you are free, and is looking for something to do, I suggest you go and vote for the president. This election is designed in the Singaporean-style, please do not be surprise by how strange the voting process is.

Slack Off

Haven’t been blogging. I know. I was trying to type a Chinese article. It is supposedly about how my perception of Chinese Language change as I grew. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get my laptop (which contains the file) to hook online. Too bad, that will just stay in my laptop for now. In any case, I soon won’t be blogging because of the coming overseas camp. But when I am back, I probably be spamming a hell load of photos coupled with maybe 4 days long of blog entry – that is supposed to be posted when I am there.

I am going to Yunnan, and there is definitely no access to a computer, not to mention going online. Well, it isn’t that bad, because I am writing all the stuff (I want to type) down on some book or whatsoever I can find in the room of the motel. This is a great time for slacking.

Speaking of returning from Yunnan – going back to work, I thought I would be able to see our Third ‘Elected’ President of Singapore on the day of return, which is supposed to be a public holiday if there really is an election. Well, it turns out that I have met him – he is the same as the “Second Elected” one. No point being frustrated, it is alright anyway. In fact it is quite good that there is no need to wait for results and all these sort of stuff.

National Day Eve

I haven’t been blogging politically-correct stuff. And on this eve of anniversary for our nation’s separation from Malaysia (Independance, in other words), I guess I should make some kind of exception. Or should I not? I think I should defend it at least a little. You know, Singapore is really a great place, I apologize for keeping up the top blogging habit – ranting. Singapore’s celebrating its 40th and it is a great time to slack off for a while before getting back to tests and exams (I’ve got an exam on this Friday).

Well, my desktop goes into its fourth year within this few days, and it is getting cranky by day. I just got it a new motherboard battery a few months back (I think it was March) and now its clock is not keeping up again. Then there is the dumb, faulty CD-rewriter drive that is giving me a whole lot of headache by dettaching it from the computer source as it please. To aid imagination of my problems, here’s the scenario: I wanna burn a disc, so I started Nero and such. I slipped in the CD, no problems so far. In fact, even after I clicked the ‘Burn’ button, and heard some zipping noises from the drive (which I usually do when it is burning a CD), there was no alert or whatsoever about a possible error that may occur. In any case, after the burn, an alert popped out, the whole computer hanged for a second or two, then zrrrr…. the drive goes dead – my disc still in it.

Meanwhile, the computer is still working fine, with the exception that you can no longer see the ‘CD Drive’ under the ‘My Computer’. That’s sad. And to get the drive back to its feet, I gotta restart the computer (which also means I have to reset my BIOS clock somehow, because of the weird-ness of my desktop). I have to get a new desktop, preferably one that comes with a SATA compatiable motherboard, and a 80GB ATA HDD, with at least Intel Pentium4 2.6GHz (my current one is a P4 1.8GHz one and it sux big time). But none of these until I finish mugging and backed up all my past years data. Over these years, I acculmulated at least 25 GB of nonsense and all these got to be squeezed into the ‘unburnable CDs’ I have bought. Now, how am I going to transfer all these file away…

Blog on

I am not writing any more stuff on Social Mobility. They are a little too morbid. Perhaps that’s too strong a term. I’ll say that these posts appear terrible on a blog that belong to a person like Vib. I have decided to write a research paper on it instead. And I need all you guy’s help. Mib can provide me with the information on USA’s meritocracy, Terry can give me an overview of how scholars are selected in Malaysia and also information on their form of selective meritocracy. Leonard can provide any insightful perspective of the ‘other’ side of GEP and Mainstream Education. When I mean the ‘other side’, I mean the non media intervention kind.

As a biased person, I will need some really neutral views. And Bok can help me with that. He can give me an idea of how the system really works, in his perception and how the ‘rich’ stands to gain (or not). Even Jin, if you are reading, might like to tell me all you know about meritocracy in Singapore and how the societal trends are changing your perception of education and its role. If you think this is too chim, or you need me to translate to Singlish, I can do that in the comments box, perhaps when you ask. I am proficient in Chinese or Mandarin too, no problem if you need it in Chinese.

See, so many people can help. Not forgetting Wilson, who is, to a large extent, a powerful critic with too much of caustic-ity in his comments or rather criticism. But that’s good, Singapore needs this kind of people – the only bad part is that he don’t say it out loud to the people involved in the ‘big thing’. And also Jeremy, you can give me tonnes of your chimly worded insights. But make sure you go read up on Social Mobility first. I wonder if I have enough ‘experts’ on this field, considering the fact that I am being biased by getting only my friends. There are still many people out there waiting to say something about this. I hope to interview other people, from the recently changed name school called Hwa Chong Institute or something, and also the famous Raffles Institution. All these very cool school students can give good comments.

Everyone, shall contribute, and I shall be writing it. I have set the starting time of the research to be the end of my ‘O’ Levels. And I hope I can present it as a component of my research on Society when I get into Sociology or some related studies. Of course, people say there’s still National Service and all the nonsense. It doesn’t matter. Our country do have some resistance to change. That’s good, because that’s what makes old research papers valid till today, even if it is from a ‘historical perspective’.

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.