Not an intelligent thing

Today, I hit my head on the side of the train.

Me: Oh. Owwwww.
Sanah: That... was not an intelligent thing to do...

Yes. I quite agree... since I clipped myself on the temple region, which meant it throbbed like nothing for a good half hour after that. So yes, in other news, I shall try my best to restrain from laughing at people who miss their train stops. Yup.

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Hurtling towards the end

Four years ago, I was presented with my own hardcover copy of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince as a birthday present. I'd been rudely spoilered about a major event in the book, which *glares at kappa* still grates slightly whenever I am brought to remember it. Other than that, my relationship with this lovely series is all mostly water under the bridge by now. A fond memory, is what I associate HP with nowadays.

But now that we're reaching the end, I am reminded again of what this book meant to me.

Book VI is my favourite, (not counting the VII, which everybody more or less liked) and the only one which I can safely say, makes it to competing ground with my other staunch favourite, II. As far as I was concerned, it topped I, which is all that mattered when you had then only read I, II and III. But, on to the point of this rambly post.

Harry Potter remains the only book series which I was fan (mad) enough to sit at an unprotected public bus stop with a friend for over two hours to discuss our theories regarding the books. So there. That sort of trounces any of those pointless rallying cheers that we were forced to do to get the class to bond together... I say Harry Potter! The Boy who Lived unites the world in not just the battle against evil, but in a singular tribute to the wonderful, wonderful world of the imagination. It's also the sort of thing that gets perfect strangers talking to each other - and what more spectacular thing is that?

Now... try to remain calm. I in fact believe, as I am typing this, that the bus stop thing didn't happen once... it happened twice... once for VI and one more time for VII... I think? Oh dear.

9 - Shane Acker

This is the original short film titled "9" by Shane Acker which is currently being adapted into a feature length by Tim Burton and Acker.
It is creepy, slightly depressing and rather endearing.

Anecdote for Educators

O dearest, dearest boy! my heart
For better lore would seldom yearn,
Could I but teach the hundredth part
Of what from thee I learn.

-- W. Wordsworth

Ah, Wordsworth. What were you thinking? Much as you love your son and children in general, I cannot say the same.

I was teaching my tuition class as per usual on Saturday when I encountered my first crying new student who refused to enter my den. As expected, my class wanted to know why I kept disappearing outside after they'd caught wind of a rumour that they would be having a new classmate and they all trooped outside to gawk as me and L attempted to persuade her to join the class.

Attempt #first and last went down like a lead balloon.
I had gotten the class to all give her a very warm welcome by simulataneously saying hello and waving as she walked in, but all she did was shrink back. (mouse! mouse!)
Shit! Shit! I mentally cursed and went back outside to try and placate her while being tailed by multiple monkeys.

L suggested that I go back and try and teach something because I did afterall, have 9 other kiddies to supervise and I agreed. Back in the classroom, no, den, I was faced with wretched hobbit-height terrors running amok. "Teacher, teacher!" some of them shouted. (And for pity's sake, I am not Miss Long) "Why is she crying?"

"Well, she's scared because this is the first time she's gone to tuition." I replied. Most of them scoffed at this. "I wasn't scared," they said. Sure. Loud and noisy beings like you would have happily reduced your first classroom to debris. "Well," I persisted, "didn't you feel scared on the first day of school?" "Noooooooooo!" was their delighted reply. "I even made friends on my first day," someone added proudly, and which was followed by a dozen more incoherent accounts of first days. Ok. "Okay, okay!" I cried above the excited horde. "But if you saw someone who was scared, would you help them?"

"Noooooooooo!" came the second delighted answer.
Oh gee.

The boys in particular, except for one who openly declared he liked them and got roundly teased and maybe two, dislike fairytales. Is that somehow connected to why their moral compass is as screwed up as it is? Or maybe it's their fey-like amorality that J.M. Barrie more rightly captured? But that, is a musing for another day.

Unpave my road please

"JOYCELN: As a child, I could never sleep the night before the first day of school. The night before my first day of teaching was no different. I didn’t know what to expect but I knew that I was going to help kids learn, be the best teacher, and make a difference.

At my first staff meeting, the principal screened an image familiar to all new schoolteachers - the Prism. Like a magical crystal ball, the Prism told many things. It could predict how well students entering secondary school with 4 subjects at PSLE would do for the ‘O’ levels. With the Prism, we could evaluate each student’s potential grade in literature based on his/her PSLE grades and then tell if our school had “added value” to the child’s education.

Looking into the Prism, the principal announced that while she was concerned about the various aspects of development - Intellectual, Aesthetic, Moral, and Physical - “This year, our school will focus on the Intellectual.” By this, she meant that as teachers, we should all ensure that we stretched the potential of the students so that they performed “better than expected” at the ‘O’ levels. I noticed in the subsequent years that we never decided to focus on any other aspect of development. There was never an Aesthetic, Moral or Physical year.

The conversations in the staff room educated me considerably about the concerns of teachers.

“Oh, I heard you bought the new condo in Bukit Batok, that’s a good investment…”

“So which piano school are you sending your child to now?”

“Do you want to go buy diamonds with us, we are going to buy diamonds this afternoon.”

In my naïveté, this came as a shock. Why weren’t teachers talking about helping students learn or improving instruction?

And when they WERE talking about improving instruction, it was invariably:

“So what questions do you think will come out for this year’s ‘O’ levels?”

“Yes! Yes! I spotted the right questions!”

“You have to make sure your students write 5 ‘compositions’ and do 5 ‘comprehensions’ this semester.”

And when questions were asked, the answer was inevitably “Can’t change. That’s what the principal wants to see.”

The culture in the staff room was a mix of different groups:
· the Tai-Tais, women who had married well-off husbands, and who admired, respected and competed with each other for their Ferragamo shoes and Louis Vuitton bags.

· the few unmarried men who were mothered by the Tai-Tais as they were regarded as “good” men (i.e. hardworking and honest) but ironically insufficiently compelling marriage material (for why on earth would a functioning, virile, desirable man become a teacher?).

· the married men who usually lived in HDB flats (unlike the Tai-Tais and their non-teacher husbands), who generally kept to themselves.

· the older single women who were diligent in ensuring that all forms are handed in on time and helping students who need extra help get the preferred grades. They were usually more conservatively (and cheaply) dressed, and did not generally interact socially with the Tai-Tais.

· the expatriate teachers who were generally avoided by the other teachers and not expected to do very much because they either could not be trusted to do the work, were too difficult to communicate with, or were too troublesome to work with. And when they got together, they made plain their disdain for Singapore and its school system of which they were a part. Stereotypical as it may sound, those I’d met had invariably come to Singapore either to heal from a broken marriage (in which case, getting involved with a local woman usually came with the package), or had fled an unsuccessful career so they could return home and say, “I spent a few years in the Orient.”

· And the young teachers, bright-eyed and bushytailed, who believed they could make a difference, and who usually started out immensely popular with the students. They organized extra activities which they were not required to do, sat with students for long hours when they had problems, and generally tried to innovate with teaching. The Tai-Tais usually tried to matchmake the young single female teachers with single men they knew, but never the single male teachers. Seasoned teachers generally sat back and placed bets on when the neophytes would eventually burn out.

I didn’t know a single lazy teacher - everyone was extremely hardworking, taking work home, often physically running around as they hurried to different parts of the school. The teachers hardly had time to rest and reflect. It was as if we had been trained to work hard, but not to think."

Excerpted from:
PAVED WITH GOOD INTENTIONS:
How living in New York has illuminated for us the difference between the Singaporean Dream and the Singaporean Plan
By Colin Goh & Joyceln Woo Yen Yen

Singaporeans Exposed: Navigating the Ins and Outs of Globalisation (published to commemorate the 10th Anniversary of the Singapore International Foundation, 2001, Landmark Books)

Heaven (while we are on the topic of how all good intentions lead to hell) help me, but I don't ever ever ever want my school to be like that.

Grandfather Story

This week, my mom once again brought up reminiscences about her dad, who is also my maternal grandfather, a man whom I never knew because he died a week before I was born. Among the things that he is remembered for is the following situation.

Now, my grandfather was a loner. He detested large company, and during chinese new year, had been known to flee as soon as he got wind that visitors were coming. As someone who kept to himself, there were some times, when out of the blue, he would disappear from home without anybody's knowledge of him leaving. It remains a mystery how he is capable of such stealth that no one, not even my grandmother noticed when he packed at the crack of dawn and left the house, not to be seen for the next few days.

The only time he left a note, it was to remind my mother to water his plants.

While my grandfather never disappeared for more than a week each time, my grandmother would fret each day until he returned, laden with the booty from neighbouring countries. Once, he even brought back what looked distinctly like Thai souvenirs, including a nude sculpture of a female dancer. This figurine soon had its modesty recovered when my grandfather made a Tarzanesque outfit out of some furry and spotted material that he found. The dancer was also simultaneously equipped with a mini dagger at the hip, perhaps against would be molesters and pervs.

And, my grandmother would greet him with a mixture of relief and anger, and demand, "Where did you go? Why didn't you tell anyone you were leaving, you had me so worried." To which, my grandfather would retort, "What's there to worry about? If anything happened to me, you'll hear from the matah (police)." And that would be the end of the matter.

And look what I found when I was perusing my anthology of Irish poetry:

Leaf-eater
Thomas Kinsella

On a shrub in the heart of the garden,
On an outer leaf, a grub twists
Half its body, a tendril,
This way and that in blind
Space: no leaf or twig
Anywhere in reach; then gropes
Back on itself and begins
To eat its own leaf.

from Contemporary Irish Poetry ed. Paul Muldoon

And for me, I would have been incapable of writing anything about it except as some kind of unutterable horror, which in some sense, is what this poem seems to be about. Though, given its political bent, it is not so much unspeakable as nameless, and not so much horror as anxiety and frustration for the Irish condition.

Poster Talk: Weird things and Tim Burton and Alice in Wonderland

There is something fishy in the air, only it ain't mermaids. Will the person who is cooking blaachan at a very inappropriate time please desist?

And, of weird things in the air, look what Johnny Depp and Tim Burton did for Alice in Wonderland. And you thought Willie Wonka was weird.

For this edition of Poster Talk, I will also be refraining from placing publicity material of the movie of discussion in the post. This is to ensure that no reader will get hurt, suffer any injuries, physical or mental on having to repeatedly look at Johnny Depp's rendition (apparition) of the Mad Hatter when it finishes loading and pops out at the top of my page.

Disney, in the vein of the Pirates series have released several posters each featuring a different character from the film. So far, spotted include Tweedle Dee & Tweedle Dum (sharing one poster), The White and Red Queens, the Mad Hatter and Alice herself. All of them feature circusy looking backgrounds that are colour coordinated with the indivdual characters. In Depp's case, the background is a lovely peridot green with a painted looking texture and the silhouettes of little black top hats radiating from the centre of the poster in an outward spiral.

If that doesn't sound psychedelic enough, look at Depp in Hatter mode. That shock of orange hair springing out from under the battered hat stuffed and pierced with bibs and bobs, that really ugly bow tie, that hideous make-up. He looks like a walking child molester for goodness sake. Or-or a walking mistake at the very least. Putting aside the purple eyebags that suggest that the Mad Hatter has been imbibing on caffeine for far too long, there is that taut, leering overstretched grin and a generous layer of white powder to rival Robert Pattinson's.

And yet, such a mess of a look which hardly looks like the effort of a rational person and more of a certain escapee from Arkham Asylum was in fact put together with a lot of careful in-depth thinking which makes my own academic experience of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass look like a walk in a park. With such effort on the part of Depp, I can only imagine that the mad hatter, which has played a secondary if memorable role in the novels, would have a more central one in the film.

No doubt, Burton's adaption of the text would be a looser one, something which may breathe fresh air and significance for a well-loved and familiar text if executed well - see Cuaron's adaptation of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. Disney for one, seems determined to put behind the apparently bad cartoon version that they released in 1951 and is gunning for Burton's rising clout and a audience raised on and innured to the temptations of vampires, gothic-chic, LOTR, Harry Potter, anime, fantasy, and horror. Weird is cool again. It's now or never people, if you want to don a bowler, loud checkered tweed and gloves while walking down Toa Payoh.

No doubt, even if Burton doesn't stray far from the original, and preliminary reports* seem to hint that he will be, the visual mishmash which looks like the twisted dregs left over from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory are a far cry from how Tenniel and the Golden Age Illustrators for Children's Books like Rackham envisioned Wonderland - less tame and a lot more dangerous for one - if the deep and intense hues of the poster are anything to go by.

*scroll down. down. somemore. look for the article called "Burton's "Wonderland" Revealed", which gives some insight into how the world of Wonderland works.