I Am Finaly Well Rested

Architectural Icons Of The World - Can We Learn From Them?
Thumbing through the pages of a book on architecture, my eyes popped wide open when I caught sight of several truly architectural wonders of the world. There are many compiled in this book but I will name just a few. The last entry isn't but just my general comments on our up and coming Marina IR.

The Allianz Arena
Since Singapore is building its new National Stadium soon, I hope they can perhaps take its cue from this football stadium which can change colour because of light, situated in Munich, Germany (maybe it is already too late as the blueprint must have been finalised by now?). It is shaped like a spherical tyre with a crater as its centre-piece.

The Liaunig Museum
This must be the latest thinking in architectural concepts - topographical insertions. Sorta unobtrusive, rising out of the landscape but congruent with the surrounding kinda precept. This museum in Austria even has its architectural outline echoing the mountains in the distance in a kinda undulation.

The Musa, Spain
Several low-storey buildings linked with one another. What stands out is the multi-coloured window glazing effect and rows of exhibit spaces arranged in waves.

The Holocaust Museum
Built to blend in with the hillside, it is sprawled over Jerusalem, Israel. It has pyramidal interiors punctuated by skylights and floored glass burial grounds for exhibits of the Holocaust.

Flyotel
5-star hotel in Dubai, UAE which has a kinda tear-drop shape, strung out in the middle of the bay like our Marina IR is.

Marina IR
So far the double-helical bridge and the Singapore Art Park look really good. The rest can do with a rethink and re-design. If we are gonna pay XXX amount of dollars, we should at least get the value we deserve for the few architectural monuments serving as meccas for tourists.

Bush - Get the Hell Outta America And Stay Out
Just reading his speech on the Day of Mourning post 9/11 was infuriating enough . In just a few words, he professes to chart the course of mankind and that this destiny will affect millions. Bush, the only course you are steering mankind on is to WAR, DESTRUCTION and DEATH. You would probably go down in the annals of history as THE American president to lead not millions but billions, to their decimation with your World War III rhetoric.

What's more on the educational scene?
The more I think about it, the more it wasn't just the interrogation the job interview turned into. Dennis, like all the Pharisees were doing to Jesus in the Bible, was kinda luring moi into a trap with his questions. Testing, tempting and tamping down. The ridicule and the mock.

If I ever had my way, no commercial schools would be left today except for the handful. They would be the ones who can provide educational alternatives. But schools can always do this too, if there is a collective will, all the way from the top.

All my good research materials are gone
When I sold off my place, I have not only lost all my good electronic goods (those made in the USA and Japan stuff) but all my good research study materials. I had all those fantastically written Oxbridge language books and a very good reference book from the Ohio State University on "Linguistics".

I was fuming mad to say the least. In fact I wanted to kill somebody.

John Holt's "Instead Of Education" Thus Far
John Holt distinguishes between "schooling", "education" and "learning". The last of the three usually means doing instead of just learning. He laments how schools have turned into institutions that humiliate, label, rank and belittle students, especially those less academically inclined.

In Winston Churchill's words, "education isn't about finding out what students don't know and thus help in rectifying that but to then ostracise or mark him out from those who do know"

Think of our alpha-numeric grades (A-F and 0-100 ) and streaming . Is this necessary in the first place if we only seek to help students correct their mistakes and to help them know the things they don't? Aren't we labelling and ranking them?

John Holt suggested resources like libraries, trade journals, free-schools and sports amenities to help students to help themselves. We have lots of that here but they are all on a commercial-fee paying basis except for the public libraries. But public libraries can never beat private libraries (the book-stores) in sheer range, availability and quality of books.

He then listed the kinda qualities good teachers would have - as support, guide, feedbacker, orderer of tasks , sparkers of curiousity and thus further learning. He also suggested ways students can help themselves - learning and observing role models, mental picturing, experiencing and so on.

John Holt finally read books on Maths that illuminated his earlier learning. One of which was Euler's formula. I had the same insight too when I came across Pythogarus Theorem much recently. I had never grasped its mathematical significance until I stumbled upon its geographical/mapping importance.

A diagonal of a right-angled triangle (which would be subsumed within a square or rectangular-shaped figure) is always shorther than the sum of its two other sides. Therefore it makes sense to cut across a field diagonally than to traverse its whole length and breadth if you wanna make headway in time and distance.