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Is the syllabus a document that draws up a schedule of what students should learn, what teachers must teach, or one that dictates what examiners can test?

It is all, my friend, Syd Suyadi, who hopes to be an educator says, quite very some time ago. This friend of mine was once a hopeful person, extremely optimistic about his future, the future of the future generations and that of mankind. His optimism counts on 2 particular factors: 1) He believes his involvement in education in future would allow him to effect change that eliminates flaws that are currently still with the system; 2) He believes that the products of education have served the society well and would continue to serve even better with his fine-tuning of the system. He soon became disappointed and no longer motivated, though not to the state of disillusionment. It was a sad sight to see young people getting depressed this way, though it was a noble and good kind of depression.

But why? Why did he become this way? It was because of 2 particular developments in his perception of the world and naive notion of change. Firstly, he started having doubts about his ability to effect change in future and in fact, he begin suspecting that the education system doesn’t even have the capacity to accept that sort of change he was expecting to effect. These doubts, again, arise because of 2 developments in the education scene in Singapore. Firstly, we had a change in education policy that involved a concoction of lots of different programmes that are in highly experimental status – all of which proved rather disappointing from the view of the students. Second, the education system was becoming extremely elitist from my friend’s view – one of a premier institution in the country. The two developments proved that my friend’s chance of survival in the system is not very large and also that changes in the system is sometimes, rather harmful.

Secondly, Syd’s ambitions are continually undermined by his own inability to meet his own expectations in his academic career. That is not to discount his ability in possibly benefiting the system but for him, people’s perception of his abilities is tied strongly to his academic and portfolio achievements. Worst, he came to hate the type of people he first seek to nurture. Elites, he calls them, crowds out opportunities. He criticizes the system’s poor measures of ability and frequent blunders in identifying talents (including their high myopia that resulted in not identifying Syd Suyadi himself).

Shame on the Great Equalizer – for you eventually destroy those who trust you the most!

Is it possible to create a filter that traps the small things while letting the big things pass through? Or a hole that is a size that allows big particles to pass through without the small ones doing the same?

What he has just asked, is not at all a Physics inquiry or stuff dealing with scientific possibility but one that questions logical premises. I explained that it is not possible unless you redefine big and small. For all I know, ‘small’ is a size that can be considered the sub-set of ‘big’ so unless the definition goes the other way round, whatever proposed can never be possible. We all know that if you have a hole big enough for something big to enter, anything smaller than this big thing will be able to pass through so it is valid to say that logically, the ‘small’ is within the premise of the ‘big’. While it is nice to think you can circumvent many humanly impossible task with science, it is never possible to undermine logic.

The same, therefore, applies to formulation of arguments. The definition in the line of arguments must all be consistent or you will get statements like “Nobody is Perfect. I am Nobody. Therefore, I am Perfect”. Or that, “Nothing is better than A1. F9 is better than Nothing. So F9 is better than A1.” In both cases, the ‘Nobody’ and ‘Nothing’ bears different definitions or meanings in the first and the second statements so they cannot be equated or used as the link for the concluding statements. Logic have to be obeyed and we should identify the premise to provide ourselves the context where we can draw upon the most appropriate answer.

Scientist studying climate change always looked at the past for patterns of our weather conditions and attempt to use them to predict the future. And all these relies on this fundamental assumption that whatever happens at present and in the future, is governed by exactly the same laws and affected by the same variables as in the past – something that has to be reconsidered given our magnitude of rapid changes. This infectious intuition that things goes in cycles arise not only in Geography (Climate, Volcanoes, Earthquakes, Weathering) but also other social sciences such as Economics (Trade Cycles), Sociology (Societies) and more importantly, Philosophy dealing with existence and sentience. In the aspect of philosophy, Absurdist ideas draws upon most of its conclusions of the meaningless-ness of life from illustration of how everything runs in cycles.

My concern here is that cycles that we speak of, are not full circles and we are never on the same path as the past. It is all a spiral that tends to somewhere. We may well be on a contracted spring, with cycles in that we are going round and round so we find things familiar but we are effectively progressing up the spring. That’s to say that all that we have been through is not wasted. Things proceeds with meaning, or at least a macro purpose such that everything that may seem meaningless would converge to something meaningful. Thus, all the climate changes, plunging into Ice Ages can well be processes that drives the entire climate system into maturity, into more stable weather systems. The same applies for Absurdism – every cycle brings us closer to the end. And to answer to Beckett, I think Vladimir and Estragon will meet Godot one day because the time dimension still exists, which is to say that the similar stuff that goes on signifies there’s some end.

Trade cycles as well. There are ups and downs but I guess we can safely assume that economists have been clever enough to identify that we are heading towards upward spiraling purchasing power and ability to satisfy our needs. In this intellectual discourse then, we would still say Economics have been heading in the right direction of analysis at least. All the other disciplines are simply too pessimistic.

We do go through cycles, but it’s a spiral to maturity.

The idea of using computer simulation for business is a great idea – we simulate economic models, theoretical physics model and environmental models and they are all helpful when they allow us to see things in the real world. The problem with any simulation, is then that they are far-fetched from anything that’s real – then it cease to be a simulation but simply an imagination. The whole idea of attempting to predict the real world is the fundamental basis for having simulations in the first place. A business simulation, is thus highly flawed in a few aspects: (1) Uncertainty, (2) Timing and (3) Strategic.

A business simulation is unable to bring in uncertainty into the game properly. It is 2-dimensional but no elements from the 3rd dimension are entering this plane. Typical things like ill rumours, reputation index, strategic moves and tactics involving the temporal dimension is not allowed, reducing uncertainty only to mere fluctuation in prices that can be predicted quite precisely based on understanding of all rival teams (and in our case, the understanding of their level of devotion and amount of temporal devotion available). Of course, I can easily explain where I failed at – time; I didn’t have time sitting by the computer, hecking my tutorials and lectures, pretending to go to the toilet (but end up in the computer lab adjusting parameters), or even attempting to plot a demand curve by adjusting prices and looking at the consumer index that is given by the system.

The second point, with regards to timing in business, the simulation is such that things get problematic when transactions peak. The sounds more like some speculative stock market than a business arena. Worst, the timing is serious distorted by time lags. The movements in the demand market lags behind the dynamics of the input market, making it unrealistic for any players who does anything at all between each hours. To make the explanation clearer, I shall describe the game: you face a dynamic price system with regards to inputs where raw material prices fluctuates based on the demand for them but your demand is not so quick-changing, you only know whether your products are sold at hourly intervals. The general strategy: Rush to the computer at the exact hour when your products are bought, stock up raw materials to maintain supply before others does (so that you enjoy the assumed lowest prices) and then adjust any parameters as desired, and then get back to your life. Very realistic huh?

Finally, with regards to strategies. The simulation reduced your strategy options drastically compared to the real world but that’s fine; problem is parameters such as advertising should not be allowed because it sends out the wrong information that the more money you put into advertising, the more you can differentiate your demand. Simple economics and perhaps some common sense would suffice to tell you that’s not true at all. The game is strategically flawed in the sense that there are fixed strategy that works, and although there’s a threshold for the number of players who are allowed to play the strategy before it collapses, the way the demand manifest is such that all players faces similar market conditions and thus strategies to be played out are expected to be similar – leading to faster collapse of workable strategy (assuming they are worked out quickly by players). The information asymmetry in the market is not well-simulated (all players are given the same market report, meaning that players do not attempt to gain more information if they are willing to buy it) as well, further reducing the strategical realism.

Well, let’s just forget about it anyway. It’s time to get a life, geeks out there still fiddling with your company parameters!

The entire idea of reference anxiety rest upon the notion that one’s happiness varies with the relative difference between the wealth of oneself and that of those whom he can perceive. Therefore, the manipulation of one’s perception of reality can make a whole lot of difference to the way he feels.

As the passages have pointed out, the ‘very increase in money – which creates the wealth so visible in today’s society’ triggers the very dissatisfaction we seek to eliminate in an attempt to make ourselves happier. Tackling this idea of reference anxiety on its own grounds, the acts altruism prescribed do have an immense impact on one’s happiness as it directly affects our perception of the world. To visit a nursing home, or help a friend’s child with homework and perhaps even listen to a friend venting frustration about his public sector job provides a huge opportunity for interaction with the relatively less privileged members of the society and in so doing, when one uses these people as reference, one’s perception of reality is radically altered. As we move towards serving communal goals of making our environment greener or conversing with elderly about their old-age ailments as a means of consoling them, we withdraw ourselves from the overt display of wealth elsewhere that has been making us unhappy. And that, makes us happier, or at least consoled of our status.

This is a real thing, a very real thing. and my thesis? “Reference anxiety causes an ‘upward spiral of discontent’ and superficial altruism is the remedy for this misery.” Everyone, sometimes we just gotta get real and admit we are at fault – sometimes we just need to acknowledge that the miserable life of our neighbours is giving us a good Saturday night joke to laugh about. We exist in the real world, there’s no need to be apologetic about it anyway – and more importantly, there’s nothing to be pessimistic about. If we cannot accept intolerance, or ignorance that arises from inability to recognize the limits to one’s abilities, it’s going to be tough.

Practice makes Perfect. Nobody is Perfect. So why Practice?

And I think it makes absolutely no sense; just because something that is meant to bring you to an aim that is impossible to attain doesn’t mean you give up on it. After all, there was the Babel Attempt, we don’t seek to truly reach the Heavens but to be nearer. Yes, no one can be perfect, not wholly, and not even in a single thing, but we can tend towards perfection. We have never fulfilled our moral responsibility to everything we have to, but at least we try as best as we can to do that – if we were to give up completely on this role, the world would sink into absolute chaos. It is thus, never pointless to do anything. Every single action can make a difference, no matter how insignificant it is – you can prove that mathematically for economic phenomena and the assumption cannot hold in a finite world.

In fact, let’s just treat every single goal as a function, I guess there’s a special name for this sort of function but I am not sure what it is, these functions that can never be expressed as quadratic, or cubic, or anything else – functions like ‘ln x’, ‘sin x’, ‘cos x’ or the exponential function. All these goals that we have are these functions, and I believe there’s infinite of these in the world, except we may not have discovered so many. All right, we have got goals, but because they cannot be expressed such that fitting the variable into it’s different power, they are ‘perfect goals’, never attainable. Still, we try to express them, with our best knowledge and best efforts, perhaps using the Maclaurin’s Expansion. Every single time when we differentiate the function, when we substitute x=0 into each of the differential equations, and attempting to form the Maclaurin approximation, we are going closer to the goal, tending towards it. We can get very close, but never perfectly hitting it – but that would be enough. That’s life.

In a world without absolutes, perfect stuff, or a ceiling for anything, we just have to accept that we slog our lives just to ‘tend towards’ certain goals. We can never truly attain them, and that’s why we never manage to define success, or an exact purpose in life. Some people hope for money, and others want fame – so naive people decide to question how much fame or money we need to ascertain that we have attained our goals in life, and fulfilled the purpose of life. Let’s propose a simpler way out, a solution that we have been using long ago but never truly acknowledge it’s presence – the notion of a tendency towards success, asymptotic approach to the goals. We live like that, and as we approach the end, the function may be a close fit, with only like 0.00000145242 units away from our goals but it’s great enough, that’s all and when we decide it’s time to let go, it will leave us, very much like an asymptotic graph tapering off, out of life to spare.

Isn’t that a wonderfully elegant model of life and its rat race/paper chase of our model world?

I looked through the chapters: 24-Hours, Hotels, Leisure, etc. The last chapter caught my eye: ‘Escapes’. I was wondering what kind of escapes in Singapore the guide would recommend – some resorts, or whatever exorbitant country clubs? I flipped the pages, looking through the photos of places I don’t seem to remember, Indoor Stadium, Botanic Gardens, and so on. These were the places I visited last time but it’s been a long time since I was there the last time and I am rather sure at this point of time, or any point of time, there’s some construction work at any single location/place that the guide recommends you to visit. In any case, I soon reached the chapter that previously caught my eye…

The first paragraph read (loosely presented from my poor memory): ‘Singapore’s great central location in South East Asia means that it’s convenient to move around to different places out of town…’ That didn’t seem a valid statement, as the part about ‘out of town’ deviates from the part about being central in South East Asia. I looked at the picture on the next page and found it unfamiliar. There’s this tinge of unfamiliarity about it, much like the feeling that you get when you watch foreign films, the yellowish or some other shades that sets it apart from the perfect-white-balance kind of photos of Singapore places. Well, some photos are artistic but it is this un-Singaporean feeling that makes it artistic in some sense. So my eyes reorientated slightly to read the captions beneath the photo on the page. It gave the name of some hotel, followed by a comma and then the words ‘Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia’. I checked the cover again and it was still the same book, the title in front was still ‘Singapore’ and I looked back at the page my fingers was gripping. My visual senses weren’t conveying the wrong messages to me a moment ago. This is a Singapore travel guide and they are telling you that the escapes out of town is some hotel in Malaysia? Goodness.

Singapore, it appears, has no urban escapades after all.

I haven’t been blogging in English for quite some time; and like any other post, this will be extremely long. I realised that I am starting to be very forgetful, or maybe it is just the power of time. I have nearly forgotten how to sing the school song if not for my old dusty planner, which I have dung out from some dirty cardboard box used to store my memories in secondary education.

Life no longer is the same as the past in this school. Everything has changed in this school since the time I came; all except the school song. The name has change, the uniform ‘amended’, the principal replaced, the schools merged, the teachers have moved from low postitions to high postitions (some do move in the opposite direction), others left the school, hopefully getting a better job; of course, there are the great stayers who have remain in the same position and school for more than 30 years, but they have changed their style, their ideas, they have been brainwashed.

Some students remain, some don’t, some left, some enter, others changed. I remained, Mib left, new PRC scholars enter and many friends changed. They become apathetic, restless, tired, lame, less jovial, indifferent to everything and abnormal. I could pin-point a exact reason or cause for such conditions faced by every single of our students; all I can say is that they are no longer the same due to a combination of factors, many in which, involves the school, our teachers, principal, and staff. I suddenly find myself singing the school song, at least I felt the urge to sing it. I felt like I want to sing it to the world and everyone whom I ever knew. But why? Why the school song?

The reason I can find is that I am sufferring from a condition that makes me feel like reverting back to the old days; we had fun, and were much livier. Yet when I sing the song, I start forgetting lines. Something rather odd because I manage to remember every line in the song whenever I sang in school, for all 4 years. I discovered that the song lost its meaning, it no longer applies, it doesn’t speak any word of truth that can ever be fitted into the current situation. I forgot the lines because I no longer believe in them and that they are no longer conveying any sensible message to me. Soon, the song in my memory will diminish. I can try learning it again, and this probably makes me feel even more true that the song no longer works.

I remembered the time when I first hear the councillors sang during my Secondary One Orientation. It was full of vigour, the type that makes us ‘[name censored due to sensitivity]’, the kind that brings out the sense of belonging in us, the class that draws the spirit out of us. I remember the time, my first day of school, which was a Wednesday, when I first sang it properly in school. Though I stumbled on a few words, the idea was generally inside me. But now…

I feel intense fear, and sorrow for such a demise of such a great organisation, with such great students, forefathers, and staffs. I don’t want, and do not know the causes of our being at such a state of existence, revealling them will only uncover more saddness. Yet I see an influx of fools into this great hole that lies right in front of us. I wonder if I should pity or hate them. It is like seeing a great army of humans rushing through the Gates of Hell into the state of extreme helplessness.

I saw the candidates of the general election. I thought they were absolutely nothing but fools, despite having been in this dreadful place for 4 years. They thought they could put out the fires of Hell; they are extremely wrong. Their efforts only fuel the fire, strengthening its power over all of us. They come from almost every single aspect, have a wide variety of talents, it was a display of great diversity of culture. Their speeches, all of different style, brings out their skills and also how naive they are. The most widely used techniques in their speeches were known as ‘crapping’, ‘false appeal’ and ‘manipulation’. Ironically, they are actually manipulated by the school, by a series of crapping of how democractic they are and falsely appealing to their greed for power. Good move, I say, Fat Brother, but it didn’t manage to escape my eyes.

Every single party deserve suppport but unfortunately, we must also see what they can actually do when they are voted. Hence, we can say that it is as good as not supporting them; for they do not have the authority of power to make any changes. Everyone comes out and insult the old system, saying they are ready to built a new one that will remove all the problems and create a utopia. How naive! The past years have also seen candidates doing this and using these tactics, but it appears that within the very short time when they are in power, they still have to struggle with their school work and the authority up there, Fat Brother; I can assure you that they have no time to do anything they sincerely intended to.

Look at the famous Master Rasputin. He convinced all of us to vote for him; but what now, he admits that he did almost nothing within his regime to improve the situation of lack of power in students. Worse of all, he is now still pushing for some Rights Movement. I say, “You have a movement, you gotta move it. Don’t just say move, you gotta really move, even if it is just a step.” Readers, you must think I am crapping, but it is extremely true that Rasputin have been decorating his ideas and speeches so much that they are so impractical to be carried out. Some say transparency, some say have informal feedback collecting. How about you go get out there and give Fat Brother a punch, see if you observe some adipose tissues oozing out or lipids spilling on your hands. Come on, get real, I know Rasputin can run fast, but he just can’t move.

Hey Jack, the beanstalk outside your hut is growing fast, go climb it and destroy Fat Brother before the he attempts to climb down from his high up position and hurt us all by throwing his weight around. You must protect us, help us, use your vision, your beliefs, to make our day a better one. I tell you, I don’t believe you can do it. He has a goose that lays golden eggs and these eggs from crashing down, killing almost everyone that is in the way. Oh, and that golden harp that plays devious music that will brainwash everyone and attempt to blind us from his evil deeds. How about getting an axe to chop down that beanstalk? We are ourselves and he is him; we go separate ways. Oh yah, growing taller helps you run faster when the beanstalk falls, don’t forget to remind one of your member.

And the NCC! You guys are a bunch of disciplinarians who thinks that this school is full of chickens clucking around, waiting for someone to get them to do some push-ups or what. Fat hope! Militants are not welcome in this state of authoritarian. While you might become good friends with Fat Brother due to ‘Ideological Similarities’, he will eventually become suspicious of you, then this suspicion will evolve in to paranoia and and finally the end of you guys. You think this is the “Chun Qiu Zhan Guo” or what? Go home and make kites to fly so that you can invade the enemy’s territory.

So much for Pupils Action. No need to say much, go look at Singapore, the beautiful island that lies in the south of the Malaysia Peninsular. Come on, with a leader who looks like a republican dumbass and members who do not look as though they are satisfied with the current system. Everything in the school is ready for you. The Parliment Model; all seats occupied by one party (our school call it the council), with 3 seats for Nominated people. For your information, nominations are by the school authority. So what can I say? Wear white?

And you think you really are ‘The Party’? I think you guys are the party. The ones that goes partying around. This is not the 1970s, nor the Matrix age. That movie was long outdated. You will end in the same as ‘THE CHS’ – gone for good. Go back home and brush up your programming and fighting skills before you come back. You might like to put some virus in the school network so that some Agent Smiths appear to fight with you all, making you guys ‘The Ones’. Remember, get Agent Smith to convert Fat Brother first, or else there will be lots of fatty data left in the harddisk. They will form the Bad Clusters which will cause your harddisk to stop functioning.

I think this is long enough, I shall stop here. Everyone who has read, sit down and reflect upon what has happened and past. Overcome the brainwashing of the golden harp, escape the golden eggs that are falling, flush the Gates of Hell into the earth by dropping a nuke or two, fill up the hole with these earth, go ahead and punch Fat Brother. Stand up. Remove the lipids, destroy the calories and smash the carbos.

This article covered lots of supposedly censored stuff. It was written on the 18 February this year when I was extremely mad at all the changes I see taking place around me. I probably won’t be able to write such long posts any time soon. But I probably be writting a ‘follow-up’ to report on the current status of my surroundings – pertaining to the same topic.

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.