Happenstances

I can only nub my last few blogs thus: You do not win anyone over by just words, coercion, looks and your body. You win them over through their minds and hearts. My teachers won me over in school by their kind, affirmative and supportive words. They should be harsher at times of course to instill some discipline for recalcitrants. Let us just be situational.

They followed this through with their deeds in presenting themselves professionally and ethically. Perhaps there could be more in the way of more personal interaction to know what is going on in their charges' lives but nevertheless that is how they win us over.

By the way, I have missed out on a good number of people in my salutary tribute to my teachers, most good, a few bad. I am so sorry I missed out on M/s Gladys Fernandez.

I will be dazzled by the brilliance of people's minds. When I read the whole works of renowned professorial academicians, journalists and scientists like Samuel Hungtington, Andrew Parker, Jared Diamond, Paul M Kennedy, Thomas Friedman and god-knows-who-else-I-have-missed-out, I am bowled over so much, I dream of their work when I go to bed. It is the way they write and present and defend their works so incisively, so coherently and so professionally.

Of course what ultimately counts is that their works are peer-reviewed and recognised. That of course says a lot about everything. Sir Issac Newton was a political heavyweight and that in many ways gave more credit and substance to his scientific work than say another equally if not more brilliant work somewhere which isn't.

I thought that the General Paper at 'AO' level is a critical thinking and all-subjects encompassing one. It would be a paper I would pen my thoughts with ferocity and oomph. I could be wrong judging by how many students fare so poorly, in general.

Teaching has nothing to do with being "lively" in class which M/s Wicked Stepmother thinks is the elemental composition of good "pedagogy" ( this word can be so tainted, take it as methodology if you will - sounds like pedantry, no?). It is about bringing words to live. It is about breathing life into chapters. If you can put a subject across as a story, so much the better. It is your careful, well-thought out, analytical, meaningful and well-constructed piece of work you expound on to your audience.

But look at the sad, sad , sad state of how things have turned out in some of our schools, commercial or otherwise?

I will be saddened if that very sad day comes when our charges cannot discern what is good education and what isn't.

I love the oft-repeated cliche: "Be firm but approachable" that even M/s Wicked Stepmother propounds fervently. I don't see her putting this as much into action though. How approachable is she if she turns her nose up and curls her lips if we question a bit more? As I said, she is a bodily existence, mouthing all the standard cliches without a trace of her real true self. She is a walking and talking zombie. Monism only minus the mind.

My first contact with foreign students was working with M/s Wicked Stepmother. It was kind of like home-coming to me (though on reflection it should be my mother's) seeing these Chinese students. My first thought was that these students would certainly miss home. But oh no! M/s Wicked Stepmother had to burst my bubble and go on to say that so and so does not miss his home but only misses the money his family remits for him to spend.

How true nobody can say for sure? But seeing the way she operates, I have my reservations about her. This Thai boy was also the same one she and the teachers (bimb and wimp) accuse of vulgarities and theft. I say if I don't know a vulgarity in a foreign language, we are none the wiser. But these bitches and wimp had to kick up a fuss. They want to burn St Joan of Arc at the stake.

The last I heard of this bunch of Wickedy Wickedness, they were hanging out at another educational establishment. M/s Wicked Stepmother is working with young children now. I wouldn't place my child a centimetre closer to her than I would my child with hyenas in a cage. That was the way she and wimp, Daryl Chan, cackle when they did some evil deeds. He is like so caring in front of his wards but behind their backs, he slimes everyone and enacts the washing off the hands ritual.

I am also sad that I should be the last-born in my family. If I had been the first-born, I would have ruled the family with a more uniting and firmer hand. As it is, I have to defer to all the "authorities" yet again, even when I feel that decisions made were not wise. As my brother puts it :"Don't teach your father how to suck eggs". I suppose experience can be a euphemism for mistakes as Oscar Wilde puts it.

I guess I am just a pretty insecure person deep down inside after going through so much taunts, put-downs, victimisation, scarring, traumas, taints and what-nots. I have to have someone whom I can trust completely because I am entrusting my entire life to him. I want to make sure he is really looking out for me, have my welfare, safety and concern at the uppermost of his mind, loves me for what I am, warts and all and above all share my concerns and thoughts.

He must have the good presence of mind and a good heart.

I am not a play tool, a money-making machine, a cash cow to milk, a nameless entity, a face in the crowd, a digit and an identity card number. I am not an economic tool, a marketing tool, a step-on, a pawn or whatever.

I am a human being of flesh and blood. I am born with that right and I must be treated fairly, equally and correctly. Whatever you do up there and elsewhere, affects my life down here, cutting deep into my very flesh and veins. You utter "No free lunches and nobody owes us a living" and it becomes a free-for-all down here. Incidentally my last blog will be on "Employment Issues" before I knock off for a break unless something interesting beckons.

I have been following the tread of some other blogs and it is true the simplistic and condensed reports (perhaps of an editorial and space restraint?) sometimes do not give justice to the full spectrum of the issue on hand. Like the purported $138000 cash value upon asset realisation ignores the other half of the equation which is the need to then buy another property to live in. As someone correctly points out, unless the liquidator camps out at the national parks.

And a sip of just plain good old water can't be a serious affront at public places? I mean it isn't sugary or carbonated or fizzy and all that stuff which sticks and stains? But if it spills, I guess it will be wetter and more slippery, that is all.

I guess we are all so numbed by everything else, we have desensitised, rationalised and economised so much so we all suffer severe headaches everytime we try to think more with our feelings. And you want to deny me milk powder? See how I have turned out. I can think a little better now, thanks to that extra ounce of milk I nourished on.

Last note. We have the Student Protection Scheme which covers a life insurance for the foreign students. But it does not cover as much as we do in the local scheme. It would be ironic if we only protect their fees and not their lives.

I mean when I am personally at the grassroots, in contact and looking at the students that come in with their shorts pulled up to their chest, we cannot treat them as foreigners any more. They are human beings just like you and me. They have families who would howl the day away should something untoward happens to their one and only one child.

That is what is human, It is not paper shuffling at the top, far removed from the realities you face at the ground. Do you get it Mr/Mrs/Miss/M/s or Dr Policymaker? The circumstances at the ground differ so much from what is on paper.

Further last note. Fire-safety requirements state that malls must have spaced out fire exits at appropriate places. At shopping malls, which I do not see any fire-drill and evacuation conducted anyway, the first instinctive reaction will be for "visiting people" to run out on the escalators and stairways, not look for these hidden, squirrelled away exits. How are you going to conduct these drills anyway if you have walk-in customers and not just your tenants?

And when I volunteer at the orphanage, I cannot deny the legitimacy of a child born out of wed-lock when I have met Louis and the rest. So single-parented means so much more than just a divorce or widowment, doesn't it?He is a living, breathing, walking and talking vibrant boy who needs state protection, a "copulation mishap" if you want to call it that which I won't for I believe all children are gifts from God (think people who can't have children and wants them), which is not his doing.

So there, how's all that for you to digest and think about today? I have seen enough and experienced enough. That is why I have to do things my way and avoid all these glaring mistakes. If not, a human being is condemned to death for a crime he did not commit. It is as the late Professor Stephen Jay Gould puts it, the crime of the institutions (read as people running an organisation) and not of the accused. They make him do it.