The railway station was handed back to Singapore yesterday. It is a little sad to see it all boarded up today — the building looks rather bereft. There are plenty of memories associated with the railway station — morning prata and thosai, evening chapatis and indian rojak, late night mee siam and teh tarik, and late night world cup soccer matches. My family took a train up to JB last year too and that was quite an adventure. My dad has even more memories associated with the railway station. He tells me that he used to study for his `A' levels at the station while he was on "duty" for work. He tore up his textbooks into smaller sections, kept a section in his pocket, and sat in the breeze of the railway station to study. it must have been very nice.
Anyway, because of these memories, my dad went to the railway station to see the last train come in from JB and the last train going out. At the railway station, two Malay men suddenly called out "cik gu" very loudly. It turned out that they were two brothers my dad used to teach a long time back at Trafalgar Primary School. My dad taught at Trafalgar Primary School immediately after graduating — he was only 18 years old then — and he remembered the two naughty boys quite well. The brothers had come from KL — they took the train down to Singapore because of the imminent hand-over — one had 9 children and 5 grandchildren already! They gave him a curry puff and started reminiscing on the punishments my dad had meted out on them. There was once when the two brothers were caught fighting and so my dad gave them two boxing gloves — soft red ones — and told them to stay back after school to use the gloves to fight. My dad folded his hands and watched them as they fought, and when they got tired, my dad insisted that they kept on fighting, since they liked fighting so much. They "fought" until they were tired and the tears came, yet my dad made them fight some more, until they were absolutely too tired to, and then my dad told them that now they had enough, they should not fight any more from then on. I'm so impressed by my dad.
One of the things my dad found out from these two brothers was that his reputation had preceded him. Before he started teaching at Trafalgar Primary School, the kids had heard a rumour that a very short and very fierce new teacher called Mr Goh was coming to teach in the school. Hahaha. That cracks me up. He does have really fierce looking eyebrows, and I think he can be quite strict with the students. It's quite interesting because when I think of myself as a teacher, I am very short but not very strict. I do have pretty scary eyebrows though ;)
When the brothers left on the train back to KL, they gave my dad their facebook profiles and told him they he could stay with them if he were in KL. I think it is sweet the things that can be remembered and the relationships that keep. Talking about these two boys made my dad remember how an Indian guard saluted him once and called him "Sir!" very loudly. He too had been a student of his. What my dad remembered of him was that he had one of these pens that had a pretty lady on it, but when you turned it upside down, you got a pretty naked lady. The kids were giggling over this pen and so my dad confiscated it. The Indian boy (now a gruff and strong Indian guard) pleaded for the pen back, saying that it was his uncle's, but my dad refused to budge. It is rather amusing the things people remember.
So I haven't confiscated a pen with a naked woman on it, nor have I made students fight till they cried, but I hope that at the end of the day, there will be some sweet memories too.
I bought two work shirts in Batam. Early this morning, before even brushing my teeth, I brought my loot to show my mum. My mum started laughing quite hard when she saw my shirts and asked me whether she bought it for me or for her. Then she thought about it a little more and decided that she didn't want to wear either, 'cos one would make her look like a 70 year-old and the other like an 80 year-old. Here is the 70 year-old shirt:
And here is the 80 year-old shirt:
Heehee. Then my mum got really excited 'cos she said had a bag that she bought a long time ago at a jumble sale for $1 that "nobody wanted" that I would like. She rummaged in the kitchen and showed me a bag with little flower prints that, well, I really really like. Haha. So my mum is going to wash the bag for me to use.
It's strange how fashion comes around. Or maybe I just have the taste of a 70 or 80 year-old woman. ;)
It's amazing how quickly one gets used to certain things. In the past week, I've been kneeling to eat and kneeling to shower. The last shower, I didn't even notice that I was kneeling any more. And two nights ago, the ramen was so oishii that I didn't notice the pins and needles in my feet. :) oh gosh, that ramen was some awesome ramen. There's a certain liberty in being able to make as much noise as you want when eating noodles. At first I was a little shy about slurping, but soon I let it loose :) I'll post a picture of the ramen place when I get back to Singapore.
While marking the Application Question, I found myself with a bugbear of a problem. I realised that some of the kids lacked logic. I kept writing things like "Argument is simplistic", "Not convincing", "Missing link—having X doesn't mean Y", and "Evidence does not support point you are trying to make". And worse, "Misreading of author's ideas". I was painfully aware that my comments, especially comments such as "Explanations can be better" or "You need to be more precise", are good only to justify the mark that I give them and completely useless in giving them concrete ways to improve their work. I can tell their argument is simplistic and woolly, but they can't. If they could, they wouldn't have used it, would they? And teaching them to identify a simplistic argument now doesn't necessarily keep them from making another simplistic argument later.
So this means that I need to train them to think logically. But how? Logic seems so innate and instinctive that it seems impossible to teach. The first thing that came to mind was to get them to outline arguments from articles that they read in the hope that they will subconsciously learn how to make an argument. However, it is unfortunate that the ones who need to learn how to make an argument the most are often also the ones who find it the most difficult to pick out the relevant ideas from the text, which means they aren't learning anything from their own summaries.
The other thing I thought to do was to resurrect good 'ole Paul's wheel and to get each student to think through each of the parts in relation to "Born into Brothels", which is a slow-moving documentary that we are watching about children born to prostitutes in India. Using Paul's wheel this way is a bit like making a directed or guided mind map, and the kids may find it useful. I remember the first mind map I made in Sec Two—it was on the methane cycle (involving cows and poop, etc.). I still remember it to this day because it was so effective in getting me to understand and remember the content, or better still, to link disparate things into a whole.
I think that is the beginning of intelligence—the ability to link ideas into a whole. In fact, once a person intuitively understands the logic of something they are good at, they can use that to create bridges to other bodies of knowledge. (I read this on a thread on Ruihe's facebook) I think that is the reason why my science kids are sometimes better at GP. They are able to translate some of the analytical skills required in science to everyday issues and problems. My arts kids theoretically should have a body of knowledge unique to them as well, of history, political systems, etc. But they haven't mastered it, and frankly, I think it is a lot harder to master the logic of history than it is to master the logic of science.
But everything I have said so far hasn't shed any light on the process of teaching logic. So should I take it upon myself to train them up in their primary body of knowledge? I don't think so. Should I try to simplify the thinking skills, perhaps come up with simple questions they can ask themselves? But it is notoriously difficult to find a template to do this with, unless perhaps we fall back to Paul's Wheel.
Perhaps we can do the AQ using Paul's Wheel? Hmm.. I must work on this tomorrow to see if it is feasible...
As for now, I'm definitely going to use Paul's Wheel to go through "Born into Brothels". We'll see how it goes from here.
Something is niggling at my brain. I was going to post an entry about the choir concert I was at yesterday, and how wonderful it was, but that niggily something keeps niggling at my brain. And that is, I have misplaced my civil service card.
Today we spent more than an hour figuring out which phone to get for my dad, and I would have bought it already except that I didn't have my CSC card with me. So I was going to pop back home and maybe come back tomorrow with my card to purchase the phone. I thought it was in my drawer with all my other cards -- i'm usually so careful with my CSC card, but of course, it was not in my drawer with my other cards. So I ransacked my drawer, then I ransacked my bags, then I cleaned my shelves; still, no card.
Of course, all of this makes for extremely dull reading, in comparison to the post I would have written about the extraordinary choir performance last night, but I just can't focus long enough before that niggily something niggles at my brain again.
And while we are at it: I've also misplaced my iPhone cover.
More motivational quotes for you. As far as I can tell, this is something like "time and tide waits for no man", "the cherries are becoming red and the bananas green"?! Okay, I admit, I've no idea what it means—you can teach me when school reopens—but I'm hoping that you read it as: "WORK HARD! ONE AND A HALF WEEKS TO THE MID-YEAR EXAMS!" :)
All the best. Enjoy your mugging!
Ms Goh
[An addendum for my readers: this photo was taken in Kunming, China at a Secondary school. This school posts an inspirational quote every week at the school gate. I was most impressed by their beautiful penmanship and how learned and cultured the school environment was. In addition, to welcome our school, they also posted the following notice:
I try to read for fun when I can. The Financial Lives of the Poets is one of the best books I have read for fun in a long while. It is rare to get a novel that is laugh-out funny, yet at the same time, so heartfelt and profound, to the point of tears.
This novel is written in the first-person, and it helps to really really like the protagonist, Matthew Prior. In fact, on page 94, in the middle of Matthew's conversation with his father who has dementia, I fell in love with the protagonist. He is incredibly sweet, funny, irreverent, sincere, and really, quite a goofus.
I don't think it is suitable for young people. Apart from the coarse language, I just don't think a 16 year old would appreciate a humorous account of a person falling apart. Somehow, I think you need to be older, at a point of life where a lot of options are closed rather than at a point of life where the future looks bright and promising. Poets will like this novel—there are rollickingly funny poems masquerading as chapters of the novels, such as Chapter 13 "On the Spiritual Crisis of Financial Experts", which I thought was a great poem.
This one admits to being a lifetime
proponent of deregulation
but now, on NPR, he doesn't know what to think—
I however, think of Mother Teresa, who at the end of her life
stopped hearing God's voice
decades earlier, which had to be a bit of a relief, I'd think—
hard enough to live a perfect life without
being hectored about it
—give away everything, feed the poor, don't forget to love
the lepers!—but back to the disillusioned expert who says
you could go to any business school in the country and learn
the same lousy things he believed during those wasted years
—those Brook Brothers days of strippers and Town Cars—
which is that financial systems are equilibrium producing
engines and it takes random or external forces to derail them
that our entire economy is based on this simple principle—
that left alone markets will chug mostly in a straight line
that they will mostly do what is in their own best interest—
Balance risk with reward.
Throw out bad paper.
Make money.
But this crisis, the broken expert sadly explains
belies all of that, defies everything everyone ever
believed because it wasn't caused by famine or hurricane or
by war, by OPEC raising prices or by
some third-world country
bailing on billions of loans while its epaulet-happy despot
bags the humanitarian aid and raids the banks—no
the ultimate cause of this global crisis
in our financial system
is our financial system.
(and the poem goes on, getting more violent and vulgar..)
My favourite word from this novel: Mulligan. You'll have to read the novel to find out what a mulligan is, but at one point, when Matt imagines that perhaps his wife could be his mulligan one day, it is achingly sad, heart-meltingly sweet.
While I was doing my Practicum, my supervising tutor wanted me to teach double irony to my Sec 1 kids. Of course I nodded appreciatively and said, yes that's a great idea, but at the back of my mind, I was thinking, "You want me to teach double irony to 13 year olds? Can understand irony very good already!"
But I have to thank my supervising tutor for reminding me about double irony, because while waiting for breakfast this morning, I suddenly realised that the discomfort Christians have about "Good Friday" is precisely because of a double irony. How can Good Friday be good when it is the day our Saviour and Master died? That's irony. The double irony is that this terrible thing should nevertheless bring us forgiveness, redemption, happiness and life.
The first line of Charles Wesley's hymn—"And can it be, that I should gain, an interest in the Saviour's blood?"—captures this feeling of joy, yet pain; pain, yet joy.
It is difficult to remain in this emotional middle—sometimes it seems easier to be like the Catholics and focus solely on the agony and sufferings of Christ, or be like modern evangelicals and focus on the result of the work of Christ on the cross. The evangelical's focus seems self-centered—how can I think of myself when Christ is dying on the cross? Yet the Catholic's focus seems so this-worldly, so emotionally dramatic.
So how? What do I do with myself this Silent Saturday? Is it enough to hold my soul between grief and gratitude, and wait for Easter morning?
I'm very proud of myself. I made it to Boon Lay in 1hr and 13mins on my Flying Pigeon. I didn't cycle very fast or anything but I'm happy with the steady clip considering how terribly unfit I am right now.
You don't make it to Boon Lay on a Flying Pigeon without getting enlightened in some way. So here it is, as it fell into my head along the long stretch from Commonwealth Ave to Boon Lay Way:
Cycling to godforsaken Boon Lay doesn't make it any less godforsaken.
godforsaken boon lay is the equivalent of 鸟不生蛋的地方。(where birds don't lay their eggs)
I finally finished reading "Y the Last Man" today. It was put on hold for the longest time because I didn't have Volume 7 and I refused to read it out of order. Kinokuniya finally stocked the elusive volume 7 and I finished the series today.
It was kinda disappointing actually. I mean, it was sad and sentimental and all — I did cry reading volume 10 (the last one), but on the whole, it seemed to fizzle out in the second half of the series. What started as an intelligent and most intriguing idea — something killing all the males on the planet — kinda became an old and hackneyed idea by the end. The plot twists were the same — Yorick meets stunning girl, wrestles with his feelings of loyalty and lust, girl dies; or a variation: Yorick discovers true love, girl confesses her love and vulnerability, girl dies; or still another variation: Yorick reunites with old girlfriend, girlfriend breaks up with him, girlfriend hooks up with his sister. It's just a bit depressing, if you know what I mean. Do all comic books, I'm thinking Sandman here, have to end with their protagonist sad, depressed, crazy or dead?
I think they tried to make it all literary and all by including a number of cultural references — in fact, in the last volume, Yorick does end up holding a skull and talking to it, rather like how Shakespeare's Hamlet talks to Yorick's skull — but it's just not coherent enough for me. Even Yorick's ideas of love, to base a relationship on mutual hatred rather than mutual interest? I dunno man. Kinda odd. I don't quite get the geneticmorphic thing either...
But still, it's an enjoyable read. I do like Yorick, Alison Mann and Rose, and Agent 355. As the comic mischievously says in an indirect reference to itself, it is a bildungsroman, where the characters journey and grow together through adventure and mishaps. I'm glad I own it 'cos it's worth a re-read some time in my life.
"The Coffin is Too Big for the Hole" is the first play Kuo Pao Kun wrote in English. Before writing this play in 1984, he wrote his plays in Chinese.
This play is a short monologue by a grandson trying to bury his grandfather and the bureaucratic red tape he encounters when he finds that the coffin his grandfather chose was too big.
It's comic and satirical. It pokes fun at all how our nation's rules govern every part of Singaporean life, down to the size, shape and direction of the plots we are assigned after we are dead. Although the theme of non-conformity is similar to the theme of modern angst-ridden work, there is a fundamental difference: the motivation for non-conformity is not for individual identity or personal space, but filial piety, a belief in the sacred, and posterity. I think it is because this motivation is so foreign to modern sentiments that the satire seems almost quaint. Is it our own eroded "Asian values" that makes this play seem amusing and only mildly satirical? Perhaps.
If you were to compare it with Alfian Sa'at's excellent short story "Hole" which he wrote in opposition to the death penalty in Singapore — note the parallels of the "hole"! Sa'at's "hole" is the hole they punch in the IC to invalidate it — Sa'at's is so much angrier. Interestingly enough, in Kuo Pao Kun's play, it is the grandson mourning the grandfather, in Sa'at's, it is the father mourning the son. In Kuo Pao Kun's, the authorities do give in; in Sa'at's, there is only inconsolable loss. In Sa'at's, the state itself is implicated.
Wow. How exciting. I think I will teach "The Coffin is Too Big for the Hole" alongside Sa'at's "Hole". If I have enough time, it would nice to do a short excerpt from Stella Kon's "Emily of Emerald Hill", then the two "hole" pieces, then maybe "Boom" to show the change in Singapore society. That is, if I have time...
I went for my first facial this week and I almost keeled over from the pain. It was so so so painful that tears streaked down my face and into my ears. The lady who was doing all the squeezing and grabbing of my nose and scraping and digging with a sharp metal instrument cheekily commented about how 感动 (touched) I must be to be tearing so, as she dabbed my eyes with tissue. But all I could say was, "可以休息一下吗？” (please, can we rest for a while?) I was surprised that my face wasn't a bloody mess by the time she was done with me. By the time she was done —actually she took pity on me and stopped, saying "ok ok 不要做了," I refused to let her eyebrows tweezers near my face. I'd rather have bushy eyebrows, thank you very much.
I don't really know whether all that squeezing is good for me or my pores. In any case, I want to postpone (preferably indefinitely) another trip to the facial person (as concerned as she was about the state of my blackhead-ridden nose) and so I have started, for the first time in my life, a skin care regime, at the grand old age of 32.
First, I wash my face with Neutrogena facial cleanser. Then I dab some Neutrogena pore-refining toner on a piece of cotton swab and apply it to my face in "gentle upward strokes", wait for it to dry (actually I forgot to wait the two nights I've done this) and then apply some made-in-France moisturising milk, again with "gentle upward strokes". And in the mornings, I use Neutrogena SPF 70 dry-touch sunblock on my face.
It's amazing how motivating sheer pain can be.
Anyway, now I know what non-comedogenic means (won't clog pores) as well as the difference between toners and astringents (alcohol content). I'm pretty impressed that even though I shopped with zilch knowledge, I managed to get a toner that was non-alcoholic and non-comedogenic, but I think you're pretty safe about getting "right options" if you're willing to spend a little bit more money.
I wonder how long I can keep this up. I suppose I will for as long as I can remember the pain. ;)
Off Centre is the first and only Singaporean play so far to be chosen as an `O' level text. I had high expectations of it because I have a penchant for texts that deal with madness, but I was kinda disappointed. Compared to Susanna Kaysen's Girl, Interrupted, Sharma's play seemed to lack sensitivity and perceptivity — it seemed like it was a play that dealt with madness from a sociological point of view.
Even Vinod's madness is not convincing to me. Vinod is a former RJC student, a top debater and a top student, who goes "off centre" in the army from the stress of the rat race. He gets angry, needs to be needed, wants love from his parents and does not want to be like the majority rushing around and earning money. But isn't this completely sane? If this is madness, then most of the people I know are mad! Who doesn't get angry with the system? Who doesn't once in a while feel like throwing it all to the wind and doing something completely wild and hurtful to self and others?
I much prefer Susanna Kaysen's description of madness as slipping into a parallel universe and looking onto the "real world" as an outsider. Somehow that description resounds with me. Maybe it's because sometimes I find myself on that edge.
To give the play credit, I don't think the point of this play is as much about madness than about the sociological implications of mental disease. Yet, even in this aspect, it pales in comparison with the chilling satire in Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
From a pedagogical point of view, the unlikely friendship between Vinod and Saloma, one who completed his `A' levels at RJC, and one who completed her `N' levels, should be something that young people can relate to. This play is unique in that it speaks from a Singaporean point of view and describes the "uniquely Singaporean" pressures of life. Haresh Sharma is quite innovative and masterful in the way he involves the audience in the play and then implicates them for their involvement. Watching the play should be a moving experience.
It's a quiet day in school today. It's kinda nice. I'm enjoying this post-school period of the school year. I'm getting to know my colleagues better—some of them are fast becoming friends— and it feels like after a whole year of running about doing things, we can finally pause for a while and talk. It's nice.
I still have many things to wrap up before I can think about preparing for next year. I have files to close, things to put away, students to let go (just a few), oral presentations to assess, admin stuff to clear, and I'm not yet ready to tie things up. But this is teaching: to look forward with hope and anticipation at the beginning of the year, and to make closure at the end of the year with gratitude and thanksgiving. Of course I've made mistakes — there are things that I could have done a lot better — but even the mistakes get wrapped up and put away at the end of the year.
I can't look forward yet. I'm still savouring the "remains of the day". This feeling reminds me of the feeling of leaving MCS, of leaving the U.S., of leaving the country at 18, of leaving Secondary School, except this is tiny in comparison, which is a good thing.
Some of my colleagues are packing to go to the new school already and I can smell the musky smell of old files and books from where I sit, but I think I will pack... later.
I just finished reading the play Emily of Emerald Hill. I picked it up 'cos I was intrigued by Stella Kon when I heard her speak at the Breakfast Club at NLB this past weekend -- she seemed so layered and full of vigour, and I wanted to see what the play was all about.
Emily of Emerald Hill is the most well-known of Stella's works. She won the National Playwriting Compeition in 1979, 1982 and 1985 (after which they promptly discontinued the competition), but ironically the play was produced in Malaysia first, leading her to make this snarky and hilarious comment when Singapore finally comissioned it to be produced the following year (1986), possibly out of sheer embarrassment:
"I am delighted that Emily of Emerald Hill has now been brought to the stage. Until it was, I could fairly well claim to be Singapore's greatest never-produced playwright... Some years ago, I wrote The Bridge, a play with eighteen people in the cast -- it had been meant for production by a drug addicts' rehabilitation centre, and was tailored to what they could provide. And the producer said the cast was too big. Then I wrote The Trial with a cast of twelve, which was well within the limits set by the Ministry of Culture, but still the producers said, "Very interesting, but cast too big." So I went and wrote Emily with a cast of ONE." (Le Blond, 1986, 115).
Heh. So Emily is a monologue by a Peranakan Singaporean. It's her life story -- a story of power and loss. At first, I wasn't that impressed. It seemed like Emily was an anachronism that belonged squarely in the 80s. She sounded like a middle-class tai tai, someone alienated from me. Yet, as the story went on, something sad in Emily reached out to me. Maybe I'm just a sucker for capable and lonely old women, but I felt sorry for her, especially at the end of the play.
I wonder if younger people will relate to this play. It does capture a specific period in Singapore's history -- a period of modernisation and rapid change, and an extract may fit very well in our "Writer and Society" unit, but gosh, which extracts? I think I'll mull over this.
I miss them already. Tomorrow is the last day of school and I'm planning for it to end with a bang. I'm giving them fun awards, academic awards, a transcript of a convocation speech, but I'm afraid that even with all of this, I still won't be able to convey what I mean to tell them—that they are precious and loved, that they have their lives laid out in front of them, that they can be the best that they want to be.
I am very fond of them. They make me laugh. I can't imagine not ever stepping into their class again to talk about love or war or breakups or for that matter, a jarful of ears. Or being teased about the colour of my socks or looking like some anime chick. Or not having the opportunity to bring a guitar to class to sing "The Battle Hymn of the Republic", or a game of "Masterpieces by the Numbers" to watch them stab at dried-up paint, or the chance to laugh over their drawings of their ideal male and female. Or even to nag at them "hurry up!" and "quick! I have a lot to cover!" or "hand up your forms NOW!" Okay, maybe that one is pushing it.
In any case, I'm very grateful to know these kids and to have them in my class for a short time. It's been my joy and privilege.
