yes, no one cares, but

interviews: sia yesterday and mcys today. the former is for a generalist post which i have no real intention of taking (the bottom of the barrel, she is being scraped), and involved five excruciating hours of tests, including a gp type essay that i thoroughly flubbed. the interview itself was not much better. what, the woman asks me, do i think the people who were retrenched from sia felt when they heard the bad news -- to which i give the extremely eloquent reply of 'er', just because, well, what possible bearing does the question have on my employability? i left feeling a thorough wreck, the only consolation being that i did not get lost finding my way out of the free trade zone onto the ecp, although i did have to pay $7 for parking. ouch.

mcys was somewhat better. i had been fortified before hand with a semi-decent lunch (leftovers, but good ones), and promised myself time at galilee if i did well; plus, the job is actually one that is sort of interesting to me. one of the interviewers reminded me of e-ching: sunny, imperturbable and rubicund, which gave me hope that not all who stay in the civil service for years at a go are grinches and grumpy-pants. it was a first round, group-chat thing, something i manage better than one-on-ones because i tend to feed, remora-like, off my own superiority complex and own the room that way. so much for humility, but if it works, i say run with it. knock on wood, i think it went well. oh, and i did go to galilee, and would advise future customers to stay away from the "NEW" teriyaki chicken because it is synthetic and highly overpriced.

Whenever I read about people having twenty-page papers due, I realise that while I don't miss having to write those things, I do miss the complaining.

today

many happy hours with styron, who thankfully does not write like saul bellow as i feared. movie with yen ida jianyi dom wendy and their psc friend ken at the new arts house. the show was torremolinos 73, viewed in a very cozy, teal-lit theater that reminded me of cat's cradle in chapel hill, then to a food court after that for them to get dinner. ida never seems to age; it is most unfair. abandoned them to other friends for prata and dou hua supper at rochor, and now, home, stuffed to the gills, and not really looking forward to waking up early tomorrow (4 duke interviews to give in the morning, starting at 9.) still, a good day, all things considered. bed.

the missing piece

by shel silverstein -- everyone has read it, yes? i was reminded today that it is most apropos, especially as it begins:

it was missing a piece
and it was not happy

the language thing (ii)

Credit where it's due: MM Lee's speech yesterday hit the nail on the head, and I guess I forgive him this particular trespass. You can read it on ST online if you're out of the country.

von

i realise that i didn't advertise his blog, so the few people who read only this one do mosey over to the link on the right some time and find out what's going on in his life. he is unrelentingly funny.

edited because I am still using bloody 's's and 'z's interchangeably. aargh.

on getting a phd

does everyone remember that mcdonald's ad that ran many many years ago, the one with the little boy who is sent up to the counter by his parents to make an order, and the waitress is all smiley and bimbotic and 'would you like fries with that, sir?', and the little boy goes back to his parents all doe-eyed and carrying his burger and says 'she called me sir' in a tone of reverential awe as if he's whispering paternosters in a basilica? that's half the reason why i want to get a phd -- so that people can call me doctor and cause me to go into quiet delighted giggles as soon as they've left the room. i'm so pathetic it's not even funny.

the language thing

The parliament debate on syllabus reform for Chinese is getting on my nerves. Action is certainly long overdue -- what irks me is that even in pursuing change, the powers-that-be are still clinging on to the old utilitarian philosophies, the ones that got us into all this trouble in the first place. Yes, we all know about the 21st century Chinese economy -- all of us except seven-year old kids who really, I would imagine, don't give a flying fig about their chances as entrepeneurs thirty years down the road. What the gahmen should be doing (if anything at all) is making kids excited. They should make learning Chinese seem cool. I mean, hell, it is cool.

And yet, over and over again, it's the same stupidity. The Straits Times today proudly carries an article entitled: "Can having too much fun learning Chinese be bad?" -- I personally can't think of any ways my experience learning Chinese could have been less fun without bringing leg shackles and an iron maiden into the picture. I know the adage is that if it ain't broke, don't fix it, but guys, it's broke.

Over dinner the other day (the Westlake one), we were talking about how Singaporeans don't really have a handle on any language. We can communicate -- but so can chimps and dolphins. And cockroaches. The grasp that most people have on either English or Chinese is insufficient for anything other than the expression of basic, literal meaning -- it's not that people are without the intelligence to come up with abstract ideas or novel thoughts (well, in some cases anyway), it's that they lack the vehicle with which they can share them.

It's sad. And it's all because education is firmly dictated by policy, and policy (correctly so) is geared towards the end, the prize. Language lessons (I feel) just can't work that way, because there is no end, and the milestones are not obvious until they're passed. The journey is everything, and the trick is getting people not to fall by the wayside, not to give up, no matter how slow their pace may be.

Anyhow, I guess that on the whole I'm glad they're trying to change things. Yes, they have the wrong motives and methods as always, and it's probably going to end up being a case of too-little-too-late. Still, as Justin always tells me, people like us always succumb to idealism in the end -- the triumph of hope over experience, as he likes to say. Here we go again.

Currenly reading:
Lie Down in Darkness - William Styron

book pairings

minz had an entry on this a while ago, and i'd like to contribute number9dream and ishiguro's when we were orphans as 2 books that seem to be natural bedfellows.

bow-wow dogs?

i think that's what they're called. has anyone seen them in the stores? they're like beanies. adorable and (i think) made locally, and there are about a million of them, all different breeds. the problem (isn't there always one?) is that i spent twenty minutes in a toy shop rummaging through piles and piles of them the other day and couldn't find any corgis, which is sad. corgis always get short shrift.

guilt-free

-- just thought I'd tell everyone that I had sirloin steak with a very passable red wine sauce and mashed potatoes and steamed veg, all home-cooked, the best meal I've had for days. And now I'm going to take a nap.

circle line

-- construction is sprouting up everywhere, and I just had to see exactly where it goes

more woe

you know, i really am rather tired -- it's not that good things aren't happening on the job front, it's that they're happening very very slowly. i fear putting the full details here will jinx me as appears to have happened the last time i did so (not to mention the fact that you'll be bored to tears). i think i will need to look for another temp job but have no idea what to do -- tuition is out of the question at this time of the year and everything else is either sales which i am hopeless at or burger-flipping. it is moderately amazing how fifteen years of top-class education prepares you for absolutely nothing in the real world.

Currenly reading:
number9dream - David Mitchell

spufford's

-- opening chapter is the most wonderful thing i've read in a long long time. and i have spelled his name correctly this time round.

ugh

all of the stores are playing very bad christmas music

philosophy

Have started watching Dead Like Me. Gotta love a show where the opening monologue in the pilot has the lines:

"I also don't have a lot of interest in being a good person or a bad person. From what I can tell, either way you're screwed. Bad people are punished by society's law, and good people...are punished by Murphy's Law. So you see my dilemma."

meanie

living fifty meters down the road from a mormon church is turning me into a very uncharitable person. when we first moved in to casa rosita, i used to allow them to stop me, say 'hi', and chat about their gospel, but years and years of that has worn my tolerance down to a nub, and i avoid them now like the plague. i do feel bad doing it, mostly because it's different missionaries every time, and i do like to let a person say his piece at least once. the problem is that it's always the same piece - they must have a script or something because whenever one of them stops me i know the exact words he's going to use before they're out of his mouth. and they're so persistent! - i've tried everything from staring fixedly at the ground as i go past to plugging myself into my ipod to changing the subject to duke basketball - but nothing ever stops them from giving the five-minute spiel.

to make matters worse, there's now a team of buddhist monks plying bukit timah road asking for donations, and i have been stopped by them thrice in as many days. i allowed myself to be accosted and detained yesterday and the day before, but today's experience was the limit - the guy just kept tailing me and hounding me even though i insisted quite firmly that i had given them quite enough of my time and money already. i was angry (and i got the impression that he was as well, somehow), and i even think i hated him a little because of how un-christian he made me feel. same deal with the mormons really - there's just no way to walk away from them quickly without being rude.

you see, getting rid of evangelists is not the same as getting rid of salesmen or those people who try to get you to do questionnaires. with the latter you can tell them: 'no thanks' firmly and walk away, but the opening salvo of the evangelists is always something like how are you (fine, how are you) do you live around here (yeah, down the road) have any of our brothers told you about the saving love of jesus christ - and then they're off to the races. their trick is that they start a conversation first, they make a connection, and to not respond to the first one or two questions is (to me) just plain rude. salesmen (in singapore, anyway - this is why they're more successful overseas) often don't have the skill to forge that link, and anyway, it's easy to stick in a 'i don't want to buy anything, thanks' before they even have the chance. i've tried the strategy of immediately inserting something like 'i know what you're going to say but i already am a catholic' after the 'how-are-you's, but like the telemarketers, they have a comeback for that too: which church do you go to? (st. ignatius) have you ever considered etc.

i mean, dammit. i can't wait till our house goes en bloc.

argh the grammar police have returned run for the hills

my ten dollar, bought-from-a-random-american-mall, digital watch is approaching the end of its life, and browsing for a new one yesterday was a sad experience, for all the usual reasons. all the really nice swatches and fossils are in the 150-200 range, and while that's not obscenely expensive it's not an amount of money i want to put towards something like that right now. grr. i hate wanting things. will go and distract self with fried food.

I may be the last one among us to have seen it, but if you haven't, do check out Before Sunset, one of the few honest movies I have been to this year, and well worth your seven dollars and fifty cents (on average).