blogging about school experiences

Shameless terms to get hit by search engines: JC students, junior college girls, frustrated spinster, ugly teacher, school closes down blogs.

Now, on to the blog proper...

I'm so very late in this. And this is a result of not tuning in regularly to the local propaganda machine media.

So schools are clamping down on students who blog negative things about school.

Well, let me see. I had lots of negative experiences in school with teachers. But bear in mind that this happened in the 70s and 80s, way before we had stuff like human rights and it was the time when if you told your parents that the teachers disciplined you in school, you'd getting a further beating from mum or dad at home. So we did the next best thing instead of blogging, which was to carve hate graffiti on the back of toilet doors.

Here goes:

Primary school

1. Smacked on my head with an exercise book for not completing homework.
(My fault)

2. Made to pull my ears and do squats in front of the class with 4 other boys for making too much noise during lesson.
(My fault)

3. Slapped by a teacher for using vulgarities while arguing with another student.
(The other student's fault!!)

Secondary school

1. Shouted at by my history teacher for not completing homework.
(Seems like a trend here)

2. Shouted at and labelled "childish" by my form teacher when she accidently wrote "PUBIC SPEAKING" instead of "PUBLIC" on the chalkboard and I exclaimed loudly, "eh 'cher, sex education ah?!", to which the whole class turned hysterical.
(So totally her fault. How do you expect a bunch of boys in an all-boys school to react to a goof-up like that?)

3. Whole class made to stand in the parade square for 1 hour after some joker at the back of the class threw an eraser at another joker sitting at the front, but in the process completely missing the latter and hitting the teacher instead. And why was the culprit not punished but the whole class? We got integrity ok? A code of omerta was adhered to strictly.
(Nobody's fault. We have no comments on that. It never happened.)

4. Scolded by form teacher (again!) for not controlling a rowdy class, as class monitor, during lessons with another teacher, who was absolutely boring.
(The boring teacher's fault)

5. Scolded on the spot by the principal and labelled a "numbskull" when he stopped me for screaming and shouting along the corridor.
(My fault)

That's all I can think of for now. I'm sure I got involved in more scraps than that. You know it would be funny to meet up with all the teachers who scolded me. I wonder how we'd relate to each other now...

somebody out there is sick...

Guess who did a search for "Human are Eating Babys body" on MSN search and reached a post on my blog about Faith's ultrasound scan (conveniently titled "Baby's photo")?

It's a good thing this guy isn't from Singapore. The Internal Security Act will come in handy for this. Sheeesh. As if racists and giggly college girl bloggers weren't enough.

And I thought terms like "porn video of my pet dog" & "naked photos of my ugly self" were popular.

Whoever you are, I just want you to know that you need help. Preferably some professional psychiatric treatment, or better still, go check yourself into a mental asylum where you can chew off the heads of Barbie dolls.

AND HOW THE HECK DID MY POST COME UP NO. 2 FOR THAT?!?!?!

"I'm the guy..." meme

I'm the baby who was born unwanted & out of wedlock, on a lonely Sunday in February.

I'm the infant whom you used as a pawn in family politics. I'm the infant whose worth was measured in terms of dollars and cents.

I'm the toddler who couldn't recognize you, my biological father, when you came by for a rare visit.

I'm the child whom you physically abused. I'm the child who bore the brunt of your discipline, which meant leaving hand-prints on my body.

I'm the kid who loved watching the world go by from the balcony of a 2-room rented flat and the same who cried when I saw you die in a road accident from the same vantage point.

I'm the pre-teen who became myopic because I spent too much time escaping into the fantasy world of books in the darkness of the night, in a frantic attempt to run away from a harsh adopted-family environment.

I'm the exam-smart pupil who topped my primary school PSLE to make it into Raffles Institution.

I'm the rugby player whom you insulted as lazy & cowardly. I'm the only person who valiantly jumped for every line-out ball and stoically put up with the dirty punching and kicking but never struck back because I wanted to play fair. I'm the despondent secondary two boy who cried quietly in the shower when we lost after playing so well, blaming myself for it.

I'm the class monitor who instigated trouble but the same who shielded you from the teachers during payback time. I'm the class monitor who taught you underhand tactics during the pushball competitions and the same who refused any credit for the victory.

I'm the smart-alec college punk who thought I knew everything about girls, only to be rejected very publicly. Twice.

I'm the disillusioned adopted-grandson who had to give up my teenage life and fun with friends, to look after you when most of your sons didn't seem to care, only to have you turn senile and not recognize me after all those years.

I'm the son who refused to join you when you migrated to Sydney. I'm the son who didn't understand why, after not having cared for me for so long, you thought you had the right to come into my life again to dictate what was good for me. I'm your son.

I'm the jaded 6-distinction 'A' level student who couldn't be bothered to respond to you when you offered me scholarships from so many agencies.

I'm the clueless medical student whom you threw out of class & clinic because of shoddy clerking. I'm the guy who prefered watching Malaysia Cup and hanging around Arts girls instead of mugging for the next test. I'm the disillusioned one who left the profession.

I'm the confused youth who walked out of a loveless but socially atas engagement and the same who endured recriminations and accusations all-round.

I'm the disaffected civil servant who saw you discriminate against non-white people, enough to drive me away from the good pay & job security that you offered.

I'm the determined researcher who gave up many career options, just so I may study forestry and nature in an urban jungle that is 1984-ville.

I'm the guy who married you after an intense 6-month courtship, the same guy who knows a beautiful lady when I see one.

I'm the father of Faith, Hope & Rainbow, all rolled into one big promise from You, You who plucked me out of the squalor and gave me dignity time and again.

Links:

mercermachine (the original)
mrbrown
nineaugust
mr miyagi
cowboy caleb
kenny sia

More here

of misery & failure...

Guess what (or rather, who) you get on top of the search list on Google with the phrase "miserable failure".

Try it!

Nasty labels aside, looks like he's not exactly winning the popularity war.

mortality...

Someone I know came down with heart attack but is fine now. Just heard the news. The joke that we're not getting any younger is no longer funny when people whom I know, once young but now either kick the bucket or get hit by illness associated with age.

My first brush with mortality came when I was 15 and running around in shorts. A teacher in school passed away suddenly from a road traffic accident. I remember the scene of my form teacher being comforted by her colleagues in the teachers' common room. Later she came for lesson with blood-shot eyes. Normally boistrous secondary three kids were never so silent in class.

The second time something similar happened was in 2nd-year junior college. This senior of mine in the athletics team met with an accident while on holiday in Kota Tinggi, awaiting his ROD and entry to university. He was someone whom I had a passing admiration, being a successful athlete in school and an officer in the army.

The one that really shook me was when a med school mate, a cross-country runner, collapsed and passed away while out walking. Some time later, another school mate, who played basketball regularly, went down with a raptured cardiac artery. He survived. Those weren't things that happen to fit and healthy youths in their early twenties, with careers in medicine waiting.

Now my joints ache more than usual if I resume exercise after a temporary hiatus. It used to be that I could take months off from rigourous activities, start on it again without having too much aches and pains. Now I have to re-start things gradually. It felt funny in the gym this morning, having to restrain myself from heavy stuff. Well, maybe the back sprain is a good reminder about moderation in all things.

back to physical stuff..

first interval running session yesterday + first session in the gym this morning, since the back sprain and i had never been so conscious of my posture...

Target IPPT date: 2nd November

Target result: $200 (2.4km @ 10:40 is too lofty)

Trying not to think about the marathon in December...

the price of "freedom"?

What price freedom?

What is freedom?

Link

Everywhere, it seems that the tide is turning against personal freedom and liberty. The collapse of freedom & democracy began for the liberal, western world on September 11, 2001.

blogging as a political threat?

Looks like insecure governments and organizations around the world are reacting predictably to blogging. Clamp downs are happening all over the world, in China (predictably) and even in the US.

Here are 2 links for the intrepid blogger, giving guide lines on the small steps that may be taken to fight against this rising tide of political intimidation:

1. Committee to Protect Bloggers
for the latest news and views on bloggers facing actions from governments and corporate bodies

2. Reporters sans frontieres
a good handbook about how to protect yourself and your blog, includes a good section on leaving as little electronic clues to your identity as possible while blogging, real Cold War style cloak-and-dagger stuff!

Well, so much for that. Honestly, I'm sick and tired all this things that insecure people do when they perceive a threat to their power base. What was the Chinese proverb again? To kill a chicken with a butcher's knife. Nuts.

back on the road again...

OK, so I'm going to ask for more trouble. Joining my friends for a run around the neighbourhood later. Hope my back doesn't give way after that. If so, it'll be the end of my marathon hopes for December...

Faith grows...

A three week outdated scan of Faith. Arrow on the right points to the crown of her head. Growing pretty fast and wifey's not feeling comfortable. Last estimated weight (yesterday) of 2kg at 30 weeks.

This is an exciting time...

foreign news source

Picked up a copy of today's IHT, which costs as much if not more than a school lunch, and caught up with some of the things that are happening around the world. It's refreshing to know that the world doesn't revolve around 1984-ville government's great & glorious policies.

It would just have been another day's news had it not been a small paragraph in one of the front page news. I mean, after all, in the grand scheme of things, the world is a far more interesting place for the IHT to report on compared to 1984-ville.

Anyway, here are extracts from the co-headlining article "Chinese banks attract world's financial giants". News of such an editorial slant will never see the light of day in 1984-ville...

"For almost a decade, China's state-owned banking system has been in bailout territory.
Since 1998, the government has spent almost $283 billion to shift a mountain of bad loans off the books of state-owned banks...Taken together, this rescue amounts to more than 30 percent of China's gross domestic product for 2004.
And while the Finance Ministry bails, a procession of senior managers at Chinese banks have been led away to serve long prison sentences for embezzlement, fraud and theft."

Further down in the article:

"Along with Temasek, the Singapore government's investment arm, some of the world's top financial institutions have spent $17 billion in China buying sizable chunks of some of the world's worst banks over the past three years." (Emphasis mine, read full article here)

Well, the article is not making a statement that's directed solely at 1984-ville but rather, that investing in China's banking sector is risky and much like 1990's tech bubble where everyone just wants to leap in without looking first.

I don't think the local media will report on that.

Ok, enough refreshing news for today. Back to the daily grind...

of efficacious healing

Interesting article in today's edition of the Straits Times, Mind Your Body section page 19. Article titled Does acupuncture work?

The apparent conclusion would be that the jury is still out on this. What caught my eye was the "No" part of it where a study was cited that found no difference in pain relief for patients treated with and without acupuncture. Rather, one set of patients were treated using the established and proper methods of acupuncture while the other set of patients were treated with random pokes of the needle. Both sets of patients showed similar results in terms of proportion of them who felt relieved of pain.

This is where the title of my blog comes in handy. Right up my alley as some would say. Let's dissect this with a bit of common sense that any moderately well-read person would have.

Let's define some terms...

Placebo effect (Pronounced as pla-see-boh): the phenomenon whereby a patient's symptoms are alleviated by an otherwise ineffective treatment, apparently because the patient expects that this treatment will work. (Definition from Wikipedia)
For example, in many studies, the patients might be told that they are given a pill to cure their illness. The actual pill given may just be starch or other edible material which does not have any medicinal effect. The patients who receive this treatment is the control group for the placebo effect. Hence, if the real drug works, it should show a higher cure rate compared to those who received the placebo.

In case you're wondering if I'm playing mind tricks on you. YES.

The placebo effect is very real and has been demonstrated in various studies. In the light of all this, the one conclusion that we can safely draw from the article is that the placebo effect works. That acupuncture, or at least the thought of receiving it, altered the psychology of patients and offered them pain relief.

Which brings me to this point:

How do we measure the efficacy of a treatment? If the mere thought that I am receiving something good and useful for my illness heals me of it, then is it still considered a treatment?

What makes a good treatment?

What makes a good doctor?

What makes a good HEALER?

back to grunt work

back to work on the thesis...

thanks for everyone who's shown concern over my health.

catch y'all later

recurring back pain

think i'm really getting old. tried to reach my usual mileage last week and spent the weekend mostly in bed trying to recover from a really sore back. maybe it's that cupboard that did it. whatever, it is, it doesn't feel nice to know that i'm not a teenager anymore and there will probably be no more 8-minute 2.4km runs for me. you know, it's funny how we trade physical prowess for wisdom as we age but wisdom is seldom celebrated in this society, where older workers are shunned even if they ask for lower wages.

went to the National Library @ Bras Basah with wifey over the weekend. re-read the writings of the celebrated Dr. Benjamin Spock. funny how i used to be mocked for reading his books during my paediatrics posting so many years ago. that they were "quasi-scientific" or that they didn't help in managing patients. which brings me to this point: medical education did NOT help much in making me a better care-giver to the community. they didn't teach what stuff to do in everyday situations, like what should a parent do when the kid has high fever (simplistic answer: go to the doctor). solution? i learnt it from somewhere else: 5 towels and a lullaby. recovering from a watery diarrhoea? Eat more fibre.

simple steps to health which no one bothers with anymore. western medical education's emphasis is on curing sickness, not on maintainence of normal health. it assumes that we don't have to do anything to our bodies until we fall sick. the real thing should be one of active attitudes in our everyday lives to maintain health. more often than not, we fall sick when we don't do anything. to put it another way: we do something only after we fall sick.

i've been re-looking at Chinese culture in general after taking a more-than-casual interest in traditional chinese medicine (TCM). you know, TCM got a real pounding and was labeled as a "witch-science" during my years in med school. but let's take a step back and look at the 5000 years of history that it has. i think the problem arose out of a mis-understanding of concepts and emphasis.

western medicine = intervention during illness
TCM = daily maintainence of normal health

one of the problem with me and i suspect with most folks is that i don't take note of my health until something happens. for example, i've been watching my diet and getting enough vitamins for the past 2 years. the consequence of that? only 2 bouts of illness, one influenza (which may have been caused by not washing hands), the other food poisoning (not my fault). whereas i got sick almost every quarterly for as long as i remember before i started watching what i eat.

well, perhaps this marks a return to my roots as a Han/Cantonese Chinese? visited the exhibition about Zheng He at the library. can't help feeling that i've been throwing away my heritage with all those years spent emulating Americans. why at this point in my life? nothing dramatic. it all started with a small book titled "1421: the year China discovered America", which alluded to the possibility that the history of the world as we know it may in fact have been wrong.

currently reading Chinese history in Chinese text (must have gone nuts, having never passed CL2 very well), started in fits and stops but managed to cover bits here and there from the Emperor of Qin (259-207BC) to General Yue Fei (AD1103-1142) of Sung. what i hope to do ultimately is to dig back even further to the era of Huang Ti (c. 2600BC) and perhaps learn of how Chinese civilization came about after the Flood. It will probably become more legend than history, but then, history is his-STORY so who can really separate fact from fiction?

'O' level certificate

Photo courtesy of Google image search

So I was down getting a replacement certificate for the one that I misplaced during the last spring cleaning. Pretty fast and efficient service, much like what the Prime Minister said he wanted during the recent rally speech.

Anyway the interesting part came when I was seated at the counter:

Service staff: Good afternoon, sir. How may I help you?

Me: Yes, good afternoon. I'd like to get a replacement for the 'O' level cert, which I lost.

Service staff: OK, could I have your IC please?

Hands over IC. Service staff does the Cold Storage scanning routine. *beep*

Service staff: It's the 'O' levels, right?

Me: Yes, 'O' levels

She proceeded to key a few more commands on the keyboard. *click clack*

Service staff: Please confirm your particulars on screen.

At this point, she swivels the LCD screen over for me to have a look.

Me: (mumbling)IC no. blah blah blah, name, blah blah, ok. OK! My particulars are correct!

Service staff: Sir, please check that your results are correct.

Me: You mean I can change it here?!

Service staff: Yes, I can amend it for you.

Me: ?!?!?!?!?

Looks like I should've just gotten F9 for everything, then change it over-the-counter to A1, or better still, A1*++

the elements

"And I looked, and, behold, a whirlwind came out of the north, a great cloud, and a fire infolding itself, and a brightness was about it, and out of the midst thereof as the colour of amber, out of the midst of the fire"
- The Bible

Photo from Google image search

Went for a 6-mile jaunt around the neighbourhood last night. Started out nice and windy but ended with a mad run through the lightning storm, with winds lashing raindrops horizontally into my face. Witnessed some spectacular light show from the heavens. Rain, lightning and thunder look nice on the TV or from the comfort of shelter but being up close is another matter. As an indication of how close it was, lightning and thunder was instantaneous instead of having a pause in between. I could feel each reverberation deep within my body. I was, at last, at the mercy of God.

Like all soul-changing experiences, it is NOT recommended that you go seek it actively.

some happy photos

Well, I'm officially stuck at home for a third day due to a bad back & churning stomach. Getting better so decided to edited some photos for fun & laughter. Hopefully things get better after these few days of enforced R&R. Wifey has been brilliantly managing things and finding time to conduct physiotherapy sessions for me.


Black-and-white never get outdated

CQ's style is more action-oriented while I'm into a formal approach, especially when it comes to weddings where a couple's photos may still look acceptable on their diamond anniversary. Maybe that's why I never progressed far beyond the level of pose-smile-shoot for my skills in portraiture. The furthest I'd venture into the contemporary is probably like the next composition. Notice both are approaching the traditional high-key kind of lighting.


The trite groom-in-background composition

Perhaps the most important truth I've learnt in portraiture, and maybe photography itself, is that one needs to get to know one's subjects intimately. In portrait photography this allows for greater client-photog interaction, helping a clammy subject loosen-up and really let his/her personality shine through the photos.


Personally I'd use the square format anytime.

Notice the photos of myself and CQ (taken vice-versa) show more life than those of the wedding couple. Simply due to the fact that CQ and I were more comfy with each other than I was with the couple. Maybe this is the only advice I'm qualified enough to give to anyone thinking of going into this line.


Good posture is important not just for photos but for health

Well, CQ's thinking about the next studio project, which is going to be BIG and PRODUCTIVE, if it materializes, heh...for now it's under wraps...

Anyway, do drop by CQ's website and take a look at his portfolio + services offered. OK, OK, so he's a friend and I'm plugging for him, but, hey, I know good service when I smell it.

the road to recovery...

...so I've managed to sprain my back AND get food poisoning within a space of 24 hours.

What was the Chinese proverb again? Oh yeah, 祸不单行, or should I say about this 2 events, 双喜临门...

I'm thinking, maybe I should write in to Ikea and ask them to put a warning notice on all heavy furniture packings. Something like "Warning: heavy object. May cause injury." Much like McDonald's with their hot drink warning on coffee cups.


The offending piece



Instead of just a small print about the weight.

Should've checked the packaging (31kg!) carefully before doing my imitation of Hercules. Anyway, I think the next pic will scandalize everyone, bearing in mind that Wifey's in her third trimester...
.
.
.
.
.
.



Wifey showing me how Herc himself would've done it

Bought a colourful playpen too...



Makes me wanna jump in myself.

Thanks to all friends who've shown concern. I'm much better after visiting the Chinese physician at 马光, who did some serious 推拿 (cheem word for massage). But to me, it became more like scream therapy...

Physician: 放松
Me: Owwww

Physician: 放松!
Me: Owwww!

Physician: 放松!!
Me: Owwww!!

the perils of self-service...

New flat + new Ikea furniture = sprained back