Hey Blabbermouth, What About Regulating This?
What I meant when I said that the blabbermouth at the public financial regulatory office should have just kept his big mouth shut tight was this: Remember all those bucket shops that thrived and cheated on its clients BIG TIME by pretending to have traded their investments in some overseas financial markets? Well, they weren't exactly stopped, were they? So?

We Are All Gays, So Do Not Impose On Ourselves "False Sexual PietyAnd Abstinence"
If that was imposed on the straights, then it is just a dose of their own medicine. Let them feel how it feels for us to be living in their self-righteous and imposed world.

Now, Tim's place isn't exactly the TIDIEST and CLEANEST in the whole Toa Payoh-Bishan precinct. I mean there is cooking going on and there are scraps in the sink, in the trash bag near the rubbish chute and that attracts ants, cockroaches and lizards.

I must be dredging hair and dirt from all over the place into me room with my CROCS (TM) clogs. Now that my work clothes aren't wrinkle-free, I have to iron them and the ironing board and the iron aren't exactly in the best of state. Its wires exposed (a potential electrical hazard) and a flimsy board.

My Challenges During My Entrepreneurship Stint
First, everything goes onto the tender system. I am only a SOHO against the couple of hundred primary, secondary schools, junior colleges and tertiary institutions (not to mention all the government bodies)

I can be sitting the whole day and night at the PC, and with all the buggy hardware and software glitches and connection speeds, it is a hair-tearing experience. And our dear "educationists" want moi, on top of all that, to set up booths to collect cash for my programs.

Now the Edusave fund is a BIG ISSUE. But MOE HQ tells me that all it needs is a few clicks to extract a name list and deductions can be made. Not the name by name entry schools are trying to sob a story to me. Who am I to believe?

I am a marketeer, an administrator, a trainer and everything else rolled into one. I am not complaining but at the end of the day, I have just a few projects worth a measly contract value.

I am not a civil servant who sits on his behind and even if he/she does nothing (a fund manager who manages someone else's funds and not his own can also be similarly analogised) at the end of the day, gets a regular paycheck to see him through his meals, mortgage and car loan for the month.

Because this is my passion, my money and my calling, I will do it. But I am a private enterprise not some public enterprises who can afford the luxury of time to sit and wait while watching my everything crumble and dwindle. That usually means finances.

You have a calendar year of scheduled events that fall within certain months like exams, sports day, Founder's Day, etc and I am sure you can fix my programs somewhere year on year. It doesn't change that much, does it, year to year?

You can't be coming to me weeks ahead and schedule a training program, can you? Where goes your purported year-end "committee" meeting to discuss and schedule educational edifice for your charges for next year?

If educators feel they are saddled with CCA, CIP, academic or administrative duties, trash it out with the MOE policy dudes. Do not thrash it with me. I am there as an outsourcee. And I am a private enterprise. Please do not outsource to just within your family bloc (that means among the government bodies).

I think there should be CIP teachers, CCA (that include Arts and Sports) teachers, Outdoor Experential Learning teachers and different academic (Business, Maths, Science, English, etc) teachers and so on with all the necessary administrative back-up.

But like me if I think I can do a few, why not? I don't wanna stick with just one and I can handle it and I am paid for it.

If you think my enrichment programs duplicate yours and the teachers can do it, then do it. Why ain't I seeing you doing it? Why are the tuition centres shadowing what should be your job? Ain't I doing you a service by bringing the programs to your doorsteps to supplement (and not supplant) your teaching?

Schools Have Changed Beyond Recognition
When I flipped the yearbooks like the one of SJI back in those days, I noticed how staff was overwhelmingly male. Now the situation has reversed.

I am not sure which is a better thing. One thing I do know is that now probably the wimps (gays and bis) and the bimbs are hogging the educational service and perhaps that explains all the problems surfacing in schools.

The insecurity. The sado image to uphold. The inability to cope because of family tie-downs, etc. The GALL and WIMP thing to have everyone conform to one MOULD (run like a home). So can you juggle family and work? Can this mean it is a men's world, maybe even a single man's world?

How The Teaching Of Social Studies Can Go Wrong
I can see other ways of answering a source-based or structured essay question. But apparently our educators or curriculum planners can only see the few "model" answers.

That sums up how our system has gone wrong. A one-track mind and one-track route to answering questions and teaching and learning.

My Personal Teaching Wishlist
I wanna teach one academic subject like English or the Humanities or Business. I can do a lifeskill program like communication studies or project work or drama or art. I like to conduct outdoor activities like a gym session or a kayak session or landscape art painting or a nature trail or an expedition or learning journey for instance. That would be my passion for teaching - indoors and outdoors. I expect to be paid correspondingly.

I ain't going into any teaching academy for 4 years, not even 2 and waste my time when I know it isn't even platinum standards, let alone gold. All that airy-fairy theoretical one track methodology that is supposed to "handle" 40 diverse personalities. I am just gonna sit bored stiff, listening.

Mind you, there is a price to pay with a couple of years' bond and "subsidised" fees.

Outscource The Government Too
Since outsourcing is such a popular in-thing now, we can seriously consider this. How do we know we are getting the value for the kinda money we are paying out of our national coffers?

The Gauntlet
Let all enterprises and government know that if the company or country isn't doing well, the first to sacrifice his/her pay packet should be none other than the organisational leaders themselves.

Sell your house and car, downgrade, live in the public houses you built for the masses, have a feel and taste of how it is like, living in one, day in and day out and take the public transport which "spoilt" Singaporeans are whinging about.

I am not even sure the commentators are we. I mean they could be the permanent residents or even the naturalised citizens. So they had it good and of course they arent affected. They could even be the establishment players themselves.

A projected 5.5 million population in the future and an influx of foreigners (with the S pass relaxation and the Sentosa IR projects coming up) aren't gonna add on to the crush?

Try another time slot like 8.30pm in the night and judge if the crowd is the same as the 8.30am one. Try the early morning 6 or 6.30 am slot during school hours.

Administrators, come down from your lofty castle and live among us. Don't dream and live in cloud nine.

Where Do $1 million and $500 000 Get You These Days
You can afford a 4 maybe 5 -room flat that is fully paid for at today's resale prices and keep for savings, investment and retirement.

With half a million, you can only afford a 2 room and very little left over for anything else.

Dont Be A Fucking Bastard and CCB, MOE
By now you would have recognised the thread this is going. I have just added some and it MAY go on.