An insight?

Had this idea in mind for some days already, just couldn't find the time to write about it.

People sometimes ask themselves the question of why are they studying so hard for. Especially in Singapore, where meritocracy is the order of the day, and organizations (who are recruiting staff for their positions) are often looking for candidates with (in their own words):

"Excellent academic qualifications..."

"A good degree in any discipline..."

"A Second Upper Honors degree or GPA of 4.0..."

"A degree, magna cum laude, from a respectable university..."

Get enough of such emails and you will soon see the amount of emphasis society is placing on academic qualifications. And, sadly, I'm pressing the "Delete" button far too often.

Are qualifications that important, to the extent it precedes anything else? It seems to be, though nowadays organizations factor in other aspects, such as CCAs, communication skills, teamplay...

But academic qualifications remain top in their criteria.

Just to share, I came across an article on the factors that determine if one is going to be successful in life. A study shows very little correlation between a person's IQ (or academic qualifications, I forgot) and whether he is successful later in life (I suppose this is determined by some benchmarks, such as annual income or net worth).

In fact, the top few earners (the so-called successful people by Singapore's yardstick) were seriously lacking in the qualifications that we adamantly pursue.

The study attributed several other factors to determine if a person is successful: in general, a successful person is forward-looking, takes calculated risks, and optimistic (these are internal conditions). External conditions such as the environment, the people you meet, luck - are just some of the "uncontrollable" factors that play just as important a role as the internal conditions.

Now, there are people who are both smart and successful; ample examples abound.

Notwithstanding the robustness of the methodology or generalizability of the results, taking the results prima facie I speculate that some of my friends are studying so hard now is because they are trying to attain as much as possible the "internal conditions" vital to success. At least, these are partially controllable, unlike the external conditions.

At least now, I can partly understand why some of my schoolmates are going the extra mile to get that A.

Nevertheless, the traits of being optimistic and forward-looking are just as internal. These are more easily attainable in that one only needs to change his mindset and attitude. Easier said than done though, it's a major challenge since we are pretty much conditioned that having qualifications is equated to success.

The point of this entry?

Friends who currently have the qualifications: perhaps it is time to look into developing these traits, if you have not already done so. It's much easier since you have the grades already.

Friends who currently do not have the qualifications: just something to boost your confidence. It's easy to lose sight of your uniqueness in this messy sea of competition for grades, but I'm sure you can just develop those traits easily as well.

I fall into the latter category. As for those traits, I'm developing as many of them as possible. It probably won't make me extremely successful as I would like myself to be, but at least I know that having them makes my life and relationship with others more smooth-sailing.

week 3.

kinda bumped into my sister-pal today, did some major catching up.

updates on personal life aside... the topic shifted to buffeting. or buffet-ying. or buffeying.

i admit. i have no idea what buffeting / buffet-ying / buffeying is about until today. though when i was told the word under that situation, its meaning was clear.

see... i did bring my brain out from my home.

let's stick to using buffeying.

buffeying has nothing to do with eating a buffet except in the very abstract sense. what it means is not so easily conveyed, and i shall not bother to do so.

this word, although appropriate, was a tad far from my liking. personally, i like to call it diversification, hedging. are some very finance terms but i prefer the use of these words.

sometimes, life is like buying lottery. it's pretty straightforward - most decisions you make carries risk (ok, this is my FYP topic but let's skip it). so let's say for the upcoming 4D draw on wednesday you decide to place a bet.

why not place two bets instead?

although you have to fork out an extra buck, it somehow increases the chance that you will strike something. i do not have a PhD in statistics or probability theory (thank goodness!) but the notion is intuitive. the more numbers you buy, the more chances you have in getting a winning number. or numbers.

which is the rationale for the occurrence of buffeying.

i'm not going to go into statistical stuff, but if you're familiar with the concept of expected value - which you do. am not going to say much.

it is not unfair in the sense that insofar, there's still no commitment. and this is something not exclusive to the masculine class.

splitting is the unfair thing.

and speaking of buffets, i'm abstaining from it.

i foresee an endless line of feasting all the way up and including CNY. its gonna hurt my stomach for sure.

it's all very queer.

a queer dream to begin the day.

and a queer way to end it.

let's start with the queer dream.

it was around 8 plus in the morning, still rolling about in bed. drifted off into slumber, and with that, came the queer dream.

i was in an examination hall (hello, exams are like 3 months away... perhaps it has affected me too much), doing a paper on political science (WTH?) and it wasn't an exam at all because everyone was talking and chatting.

it was held in my primary school hall (heaven knows how many students that place can hold) - very weird, i don't think MOE introduced political science into the primary school syllabus (yet). was chatting with the candidates beside me, and oh my... happening scene.

then i saw her. i wasn't sure if it was her, or her. as in, these were in reality two very different people, but sometimes, i see her in her, and her in her.

very abstract it seemed. now that 10 plus hours have passed, my memory of it has faded. some things still are very clear, though:

i remembered i chased after her when she was leaving, and i spoke to her at - guess what - the door to my house.

who is who? no idea at all. sometimes when i see her on TV, i sort of see her. and when i see her in real life, i'm slightly reminded of her.

totally abstract. however, neither this dream nor this entry is meant to imply anything. it's just something really queer... and the fact that it's a "her" doesn't signify anything. or two "hers" if you like.

i'm prone to weird dreams.

went to teach my 9-year old kid today. what should i use to describe him?

hyperactive sounds like a good word. so does bubbly.

i'm sure if any of my friends see him, they're bound to go "awww..."

however i cannot get him to focus on the task ahead.

is it an unreasonable request? i do think so, on several occasions.

and i'm told by the parents to go really all out on him.

papa wants me to scold.

mama wants me to raise my voice.

i tried the latter, without much effect.

in that case, i'm likely to change my strategy soon. time to throw out the liberal university-style teaching and get conservative... the no-nonsense and authoritative kind of tutor that i used to get when i was young.

but i just can't bring myself to scold - yet. i'm still of the opinion that this is the one that will prepare me for my own kids in the future. in the shorter term, it's more of building up my patience.

something i admit i have really high levels of, but no harm in being even more patient.

pretty much of a dilemma again, but isn't that what life is, always...

better find one of my relatives or friends who are parents to counsel me on this subject.

don't think my parents are of much help since i was none of what my 9-year old kid is... except for the bubbly part. haha... buay hiao pai.

new challenge.

it wasn't particularly difficult, but challenging.

i'm talking about my new tuition kid.

a 9-year old who pretty much wasn't like what i used to be at all.

i remember when i was 9, i was having tuition with a friend of mine from the same class. the teacher was from a pretty distinguished school in TPY.

smoker aside (no comments). really an asshole.

to what extent? his demands were impossibly high.

homework-wise, i dare not forget to do. he had this tendency to pull my friend's long hair if he didn't do his work or failed to get his stuff right.

he tore my assessment book before and threw it out of the door.

he woke up my friend's brother, who was sick and thus sleeping, and punished him for forgetting to do his work. the punishment was what, i forgot, perhaps it was so horrible it wasn't worth remembering.

and 1.5 years under him.

i did not understand why my friend's mom continued to employ him, despite such violence. me neither.

but under him, my grades skyrocketed. band 1s were pretty common.

but i performed out of fear, not as i wanted to.

today is different.

today, i adopt a liberal, friend-like approach to tutoring my kids. it was horrendous to subject them what i personally went through (and it doesn't just stop at the tutors alone).

not that i had tutors who were all bad. there were some good ones.

though their teaching approach can be more refined and geared towards encouraging self-motivation.

this new kid is a challenge - active, and having rather a tad more of memory lapses. but this one, i'm keeping. for 3 reasons.

1st - it's v near my house.
2nd - it's not v hard (p3 only).
3rd - the most important reason. it exposes me how i should coach my own kid next time.

primary school is the time where kids are not especially geared into focusing on their very own. this one, i expect, shall require more patience and a little bit of coaxing to get things done. i cannot get him to think on his own yet, 9 years old is too young an age.

ppl, if you have the opportunity, give tuition.

good money, flexible. most important, however, you take home the most important bit.

how to coach your own kids next time, be it for school or for life.

that's something to think about, isn't it?

outlook for final semester.

one word - hectic.

busy does not even come close.

today i had the very rare privilege of taking 2 naps that lasted at least 1.5 hrs each. likely to be the very few that i would have this semester.

a brief look at my timetable for both school and personal activities showed that i'm only likely to have some break time after i submit my fyp report.

apart from school, i have the following:

1 - 3 tuition groups
2 - driving lessons (if i do book then this is another activity for me)
3 - exercise
4 - assorted

the most time-consuming is giving tuition. but given the time-money tradeoff... i'm in favor of the latter.

tml is my first lesson of my final semester. some familiar faces in the class.

but isn't that the case for marketing fac... see here see there no many changes anywhere...

how to live on 1 meal per day

contrary to what you may be thinking, living off 1 meal per day sure isn't as cheap as you think.

and it sure isn't easy, it's just as bad to suffer as though you are hungry all day.

i'm talking about a gorging session at Melts: The World Cafe today.

located at level 4, Oriental Singapore, this cafe isn't a cafe per se. it's a restaurant serving ala carte and buffet cuisine from several countries - namely Japan, North India, and Thailand.

went with my friends today to this place to eat our hearts out. the quest began at 12 and ended with our ultimate defeat at 1.30, with a simple reason - we gorged ourselves out.

plate after plate of food... and it was even suggested that we keep 50% of our stomach for desserts.

sounds fair enough, since we heard this place is known for its desserts. it does have enough variety to mimic that of a small cake shop.

and it doesn't help that each of us was encouraging one another to go for seconds. or should i say, thirds and fourths. fifths even.

in all, it was a satisfactory eat-out and a more-than-filling session. i overate... must have been due to the past few days which i spent nursing my cold and cough. post-sickness, it was always time to eat.

the bill worked out to be 200+... divided by four, that's 56 for each. the restaurant charges 48+++ per person.

i wasn't really feeling so well on the trip back. only myself to blame... hit the sack as soon as i could and woke up later for the dreaded FYP meeting. but FYP wasn't the focus.

today, FYP stands for Fill Your Plate! or Feed Your Palate!

anyway, the place was posh. so decided to snap some pics and share it online...

Left Shot

Right Shot

Center Shot
(looks like some lift to heaven)

with the amount of eating i had no appetite for anything at all. even on the trip home, TV Mobile just had to show some sitcom where the actor was cooking - of all things! the sight of bak chor mee was a total turn off. i couldn't bear to look at it at all, it was revolting for my stomach.

well, less buffets for me (due to health concerns) and less eat-outs (due to financial concerns).

i'm slightly hungry now, but no food for me. better sleep the hunger away...

oh, if anyone would like more info, they can refer to this page:

http://camemberu.blogspot.com/2007/06/melt-world-cafe-oriental-singapore.html

has clearer and more tantalizing pictures that i would ever bother to upload.

or, if you like, buzz me straight on msn and i shall try to recall the session... the good points, the good food, of course...

push!

a dilemma often faced by me while giving tuition is:

please push my kids more.

on one hand, i cannot reject what my employer says. that's the reason i was employed in the first place. to supplement the school's teaching.

on the other hand, i get the reason from my students that they have plenty of work assigned to them by school teachers already. tuition complements, it doesn't supercede.

the balancing scale is easily tipped. at the very worst, my students don't do their tuition homework. which, of course, they can do during tuition, but that defeats the purpose.

i'm not exactly in the position to comment or check if the schoolwork is really that much, or that difficult, as put forth by my students. comparing them to that from university just doesn't make any sense - the comparison isn't even logical to begin with (not apples with apples).

push - easier said than done. easier to agree than to implement.

for those who don't really know, my style to giving tuition has always been liberal. a very university-style kind of tutoring. discussion, interaction and initiative are my basic tenets.

as i've been tutored before by no less than 6 tutors since P3 all the way to J2, i understand what it's like to have a boring lesson. and there's something that can be done to involve students in learning.

you can say: you're just a tutor. why don't you wait for questions, answer them, get your pay. why bother.

it just isn't my style. frankly, if i wait for questions to come, life will be easier - but more boring.

i can't endure boredom!

plus, this method is more effective in that i don't spoonfeed. i encourage feedback and thinking, although for what i teach (maths and english) the most important thing is still practice.

come on, we're dealing with teens, not babies!

i do not mind saying that by this method i have 2 students who were previously on the line for certain subjects. after i taught them they scored no less than 1) topping the class in the subject, 2) if not the top, 2nd position and 3) many personal bests for themselves.

its simple logic. teach well, the kids will like you. they like you, they do well, the parents like you. the parents like you, they refer you.

and referrals are always better in that 1) trust is already a given and 2) negotiating is easier. so, the benefits often extend beyond just getting to keep the student.

and tuition has always been better paying than other part-time jobs. you cna even teach when you do part-time. or full-time, as it will for me 6 months down the road.

might just go into teaching as a career (after my masters, in polys). see how.

alright... that's it.

the start

everyday is an opportunity for a fresh start.

just that many choose to use the new year as a time where they set targets for themselves and make the change.

2008 came with the usual stuff: fireworks and prata.

and the good thing is, i bade 2007 with a just-about-to-recover cold and on 2008, the very first day, the cold's pretty much gone.

must have been the walking yesterday.

anyway, it's the first entry for 2008. should be more positive too!