What is your purpose?

Just caught the rather strange musical ‘Avenue Q’. For those of you who don’t know, it is an NC16 musical with ‘adult themes’ and basically puppets not disimilar to the Muppets we all grew up with. With catchy songs like ’The Internet is for porn’, and the promise of puppets doing things children are not supposed to see, how could I miss it?

Well, it was not bad. Entertaining. The songs are not bad. The puppets were radical. The actors were not bad. The themes were a bit ‘young’ for me in that the narrative focused on characters in search of meaning in life after College. Been there, done that. Of course the protagonist in search of meaning had to be a BA English grad. Ha! Warning to all of you thinking of doing that. Not only is it a general degree that does nothing in terms of preparing you for anything specialised, it also gives you a sense of discontent with your lot.

But one question that was raised I thought was interesting. The question of “What is your purpose?” is something we all think about once in a while. Why are you here? A friend of mine used to insult her students with the exclamation “You are a waste of oxygen!” So why do we use up oxygen? In the musical, the answer offered was that we may not really know, but it doesn’t matter. We should look outside ourselves and try to help others. Good advice I thought.

So what is my purpose? Believe me, I have thought this question many times in my many many (sigh) many years. Each time, the answers I come up with are slightly different. There are many parts of my life. I try to be a good Christian, a good husband, a good son, a good brother, a good uncle, a good cousin, a good teacher, a good friend etc. The list goes on. I guess ultimately, my purpose is to affect people I come in contact with in my life positively. I don’t always succeed, but I am not going to stp trying. What is your purpose?

Go watch Avenue Q. Lots of ‘adult’ fun.

Graduation the sequel

A quick post before my many many appointments for the day start. A year has past so quickly. Once again, it is graduation for the senior students again. It has been such a hectic week I haven’t thought about it at all, except for cameo appearances at rehearsals and stuff.

How do I feel about the graduating students? Partly sentimental, partly happy, partly relieved, partly I don’t know. As I mentioned in a comment, I am feeling mainly blah about stuff at the moment because of all that is going on around me.

I have gotten to know some of these students better. Some are wonderful human beings who will definitely go out and make our world a better place to be in. Some are highly accomplished and talented and will definitely go and make a huge influence in whatever field they choose. Some are definitely ‘works in progress’ and have some way to discovering who they are and what they would like to do with themselves.

It would be trite to say that I care for them them all. How can I? It is such a pointless and untrue statement. I probably would not even recognize many if I were to see them outside school. You can’t claim to care for people you don’t even know by name.

Yet, even though I don’t know many of them personally, they have shared a common space with me. For a brief part of our lives, we were in the same place, at the same time. Things you did and said had a impact on me directly or indirectly. Things I said and did had an impact on you directly or indirectly. That is the commonality we shared. So you will always mean something to me, even if I never met you on a one to one level.

Those of you I got to know better, thank you for sharing your lives with me albeit at whatever level it was. You have made my time in the school all that bit more special. I haven’t been here long. I won’t be here long. But what I will take away are special memories of many of you and your many hopes and aspirations. We always take the good and the bad. I choose to forget the bad and remember the good. I hope you do too.

Just as I have continued to remain in touch with some of you who have left, I hope I can keep in touch with many of you who will leave.

I don’t do goodbyes. I will make whatever necessary appearances I need to and then move on. Know that when I look at you graduating, I will be looking on with hope and faith that you are someone special moving on to make our world that bit more special.

Congratulations to all.

When I grow up …

I miss childhood. I miss splashing around in puddles after the rain. I miss running to the shop to get the lovely chocolate wafers that used to be sold by weight that you could peel off each layer to savour each piece. I miss playing around the railway tracks with my neighbourhood pals till it was dinner time and we would run home before it gets dark. I miss playing badminton with my cousin in the early morning.

I miss a lot of things about childhood. But what I miss most is thinking (sometimes aloud), “When I grow up, …”. I wanted to be lots of things. I wanted to be a policeman (many boys want this). Then I wanted to be a fireman (again, another boy thing). Then I wanted to be a race car driver (I still do!). As I got older, I wanted to be a lawyer (too many courtroom drama movies!). At the point when I actually had to really decide what to do with the rest of my life, I had basically 2 options: naval officer or teacher. I did not want to rely on my parents for my Uni education as I knew they would struggle. So I needed a scholarship. These were my 2 offers.

The navy one was odd. It was a whim really. I always fancied the romantic notion of sailing the 7 seas. Cool ya? Different ports of call. Seeing the world and all that. My parents objected strongly. Didn’t help that my uncle was a sailor (not the navy, but commercial sailor) and he was the family pariah. You know, the one that all the rest try to forget about. He led a largely irresponsible life. My parents did not want that to happen to me. Of course I would be different. I would be with the armed forces! Good grief. I almost joined the navy just because they didn’t want me to. Ha! Youthful arrogance.

But I am glad I didn’t. I would have hated it. I took the teaching scholarship. Enjoyed the process. Still enjoy the job. But I get the sense that I need to “grow up”. Huh? Let me explain. I love teaching. It is almost more than a job to me. It is almost ‘play’ in a way. I love going to class and learning together with my students as we journey together down the path of knowledge creation.

But there is another side of me that hears the voices that say, what is wrong with you? Where is your ambition? Given your qualifications, you should be at least Principal. People who I knew from before all assume I must be Principal by now. Now I know I will hate being Principal. I love teaching. I tolerate my job now which is middle management because it still allows me to teach. But people tell me I need to move on, I need to fulfill my potential. ha! ha! Sound familiar?

Why I am saying all this? It is to highlight the importance of self actualisation in all of us. We all want to be happy. That is the goal. But what makes us happy? Doing happy things is one obvious way. But the other is our need to succeed in whatever field we are in. It may not always make us happy in the usual way, but we get a sense of achievement. So we need to think about these two sometimes contradictory forces in our lives. If they are not contradictory for you, then wonderful! But for many people, they may not always lead in the same direction.

Sometimes it is hard to think about such things when you are younger. Many of you are unclear. Don’t know. See how? Very common. You can go with the flow. But that makes you a victim of circumstance. I don’t like that. Especially when you lament the bad deals life throws at you. We have to decide what we want to do. We have to decide how to take control of our own lives.

So what do I want to do when I grow up? … Watch this space!

Happiness

“Enjoy yourself, for life is but a dream,

Enjoy yourself, for life is but a dream,

Enjoy yourself, for life is but a dream,

Enjoy yourself, enjoy yourself, for life is but a dream!”

 

You know there are things in your life you remember. You don’t know why, but remember them. So this is an incident that happened almost 30 years ago. 30 years and I still remember it. I don’t know why. I was in Primary school. We were having our class party at the end of the year. There was the usual food and drinks. My form teacher was a strange man. Don’t have much memory of hm except that he broke out into song at the beginning of the party. He sang that song ‘Enjoy yourself’. I don’t know it remains in my memory all these years.  I never heard that sog anywhere else until many years later in a movie titled ‘Everyone says I love you I think. It was only then that I realized my strange teacher didn’t make up the song.

Weird ya? Why would I remember that? I don’t even remember what that strange man taught me. I only remember what he looks like because of an old class photo. Yet I remembered the song all these years. Why?

I have a theory. It is a repetitive song with a catchy tune. But i expresses a sentiment that I think I have carried through my life all these years. I am not saying that I am a raving hedonist leading life only for pleasure. But I think this sentiment presents an important attitude not dissimilar to ‘carpe diem’. (think of the poem ‘To HIs Coy Mistress’ of more recently, the movie ‘Dead Poet’s Society’, both of which I love).

If you read the New Paper today, the headline story is about a young woman who died a month after bumping into barrier. Life can be really transcient. Some people drag on and on before dying. Yet others just drop dead like that. I may have mentioned before that in my teaching career, I have seen a young 17 year old girl drop dead during PE lesson. I have seen a colleague have a bad headache in the staff room, puts her head on the table to rest, and never wakes up.

It’s just too unpredictable. We don’t know when our time is up. So we have to live one day at a time. We have to seize the day. We have to enjoy ourselves. I am not advocating irresponsible living. Otherwise, we will live to regret it.

So what do we do? We do what we have to do. We study, we work, we do what we have to do. But we must remember to have some ‘me’ time. We must take time to do things we love. So even if I have loads of marking to do, even if I have loads of work, once it is all done, I will go watch a great movie. I will sit in my favourite coffee joint, order a long black and read a great book, I will do other stuff I won’t mention here as some of you reading this really know that much about me. I enjoy myself. It makes life a wonderful experience. We all have bad moments. But if we remember to enjoy ourselves regularly, things may not be so bad when things are bad.

We all search for happiness in all that we do, both in the long and short term. It may seem selfish, but it isn’t really. Sometimes helping others makes us happy. We all want to be happy. So enjoying yourself will make you happy.  

So to students present and past who have finished your exams, enjoy yourself. I know some of you worry about the outcome. Some of you have actually even got back papers. Some of you did really well. Great! I am happy for you. Some of you haven’t done as well as you could have. OK. Move on. Do better the next time. Put things in perspective. Things are never as bad as they may seem. Whatever it is, you can’t change the past, you can impact the further. So live life full of joy. Do what you have to do, life demands it. But enjoy yourself whenever you can.

“enjoy yourself, for life is but a dream”

Make your dream a wonderful one!

Words of Wisdom

Another entry from an email message that I got recently. Evidently, these are 11 rules Bill Gates shared on a visit to a High school. Words of wisdom from Mr Microsoft.

Rule 1: Life is not fair – get used to it!

Rule 2: The world won’t care about your self-esteem. The world will expect
you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.

Rule 3: You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won’t
be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.

Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.

Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had
a different word for burger flipping: they called it opportunity.

Rule 6: If you mess up, *it’s not your parents’ fault*, so don’t whine about
your mistakes, learn from them.

Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren’t as boring as they are
now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and
listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you
save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent’s generation, try
delousing the closet in your own room.

Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS
NOT. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they’ll give
you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn’t bear the
slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don’t get summers off and
very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do that on
your own time.

Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to
leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you’ll end up working for one.

Why did the chicken cross the road?

For all you stressed people out there, here is a bit of nonsense someone forwarded to me. It was taken from a website. So not original, but brilliant. Love it.

Why did the chicken cross the road?

Kindergarten teacher: To get to the other side.

Plato: For the greater good.

Aristotle: It is the nature of chickens to cross roads.

Karl Marx: It was a historical inevitability.

Captain James T. Kik: To boldly go where no chicken has gone before.

Martin Luther King: I envision a world where all chickens will be free to cross roads without their motives called into question.

Moses: And God came down from the Heavens, and he said unto the chickens, “Thou shalt cross the raod”. And the chicken crossed the road, and there was much rejoicing.

Fox Mulder: You saw it cross the road with your own eyes. How many chickens have to cross the road before you believe it?

Machiavelli: The point is that the chicken crossed the road. Who cares why? The end of crossing the road justifies whatevr motive there was.

Sigmund Freud: The fact that you are all concerned that the chicken crossed the road reveals your underlying sexual insecurity.

Charles Darwin: Chickens over a period of time, have been naturally selected in such a way that they are now genetically disposed to cross roads.

Albert Einstein: Whether the chicken crossed the road or the road moved beneath the chicken depends on your frame of reference.

Ernest Hemingway: To die. In the rain.

Colonel Sanders: What, you mean i missed one?

 

Don’t know why, I love it. Couldn’t stop laughing reading all this.

Formula 1

Yes, the F1 hype is well and truly hitting Singapore. The F1 circus is coming to town. And eveything is F1 in SIngapore. It is big bucks and everyone understandably is cashing in. Interesting though, a survey done in Singapore shows most Singaporeans while aware of this, are not really keen on this. Well, the race at the end of this month will be historic for Singapore and F1. Sure, it will the first F1 race in Singapore. It is a street circuit like Monaco and Valencia. But most significantly, it will be the first night race ever. Fantastic! Can’t wait.

I used to dream of driving in a F1 race circuit. The only one that could be done in the past without a specific trip to a race track was Monaco. It was fun driving a rental around the famous casino square, especially with all the Ferraris in that rich man’s playground. But now, I can actually do it in Singapore in my own beloved, albeit at legal speeds. But still, looking at the barriers erected and the night lights set up for the race, and imagining yourself driving an F1 car, great!

As you can tell, I am an F1 fan. In fact as I am writing this, I am watching the Belgian grand prix. I was caught up by the ‘red tide’ or the ‘tifosi’ for those of you similarly inclined. This refers to the armies of red car supporters in the different F1 races around the world, the iconic Ferrari cars. I put it down to a certain retired German driver, Michael Schumacher who was simply the perfect driver. He was the consumate driver. He was hugely competitive, a perfectionist and in spite of his rather ‘goofy’ appearance, a certain style about him.

That is it really. F1 is not just about driving. Some even find the driving boring. You know the whole going round the track many many times. In fact, on one of my annual trips up north to Sepang to watch the Malaysian F1 race, I brought my wife and she fell asleep during the race. She found the buzz of the cars going round and round oddly lulling. Ha! Ha! Actually, watching the race in person does not give yu that great a view. After all, you see the cars zip past and action at other parts of the track can’t be seeem except on the giant screens set up. Better to watch it in tv for the action.

But the experience of being there is fantastic. Besides seeing the cars in person, you definitely get to hear them. And boy are they loud! TV does not do justice. The scream of the engines are just deafening. And the gear changes are also excitingly audible. And the smell. And the crowds. Fantastic. Of course, there is also the whole F1 circus. You know, the parties, the merchandising etc. I love it all.

I used to drive up to Sepang with my F1 buddies over a number of years to catch the race. And it was a great weekend out. We would drive out in usually 2 or 3 cars and spend the race weekend either in Malacca or KL. So besides going for the race, there would be lots of shopping and eating. Great fun. Tickets weren’t cheap if we wanted good seats and could come up to a few hundred dollars each. So that is why we didn’t do the drive up north this year as we were going to buy tickets for the Singapore race.

Why the appeal of F1? Let’s see if I can break it down . I love cars and driving. So it is a natural connection. But it is more than this. After all, I don’t follow other races. I had mentioned tha F1 is not just about racing cars. I do find that exciting. But that is not all. It is an aspirational lifestyle. It is about excesses. If you think about it, it is a real waste of money. Millions of dollars are spent on it with no real gain. But that is what aspirational lifestyle is about. It is about enjoying life. It is like shopping for expensive watches or shoes or cars or whatever excess. It goes beyond what we need. It goes into what we want.

I can’t afford a Ferrari. Even if I could, realistically it would be too much of an extravangance to spend close to a million dollars on a car that isn’t even very practical to use on a daily basis. But I can put on my Ferrari tee shirt and go and support the red cars at the F1 race. Can’t wait!

Mama Mia!

Here I go again.

It is funny as I remember it being almost a year ago that I posted on a movie musical. It was ‘Hairspray’ and I loved it. I remember asking my stressed students to find some time to catch it. Some of them did and loved it too. So fast time flies. One year on …

Well it was a stressful day and I had a headache for a large part of it. I was tired and cranky. I had a nice Japanese dinner (I love Japanese food!) and decided to catch ‘Mama Mia’. For those of you not following popular culture, it is the latest big in Singapore. It is based on a very popular Broadway and West End musical based on the music of the seventies pop sensation Abba.

It was a huge hit on stage. I caught it when I was in London some 7-8 years ago. It was good fun. Not quite Les Miserables, but it was ok. I thought the plot was paper thin, but who cares?! It was fun. So with my satisfied stomach and still present headache, I went. So how was it?

First the bad. Pierce Brosnan, yes Mr previous James Bond was terrible. I am sure he was cast for his star appeal, but he was badly miscast. The whole musical was campy and “Mr Brosnan” (remember the old Visa ad?) does not do camp well. He was stiff and his singing was so bad, it was funny. Meryl Streep was the ther lead. That was weird too. This is Meryl Streep, actress with dramatic gravitas. In a fluffy musical? She too was rather stiff. But to be fair, I was pleasantly surprised about her singing. It is not bad. The plot of course was thin and there are many holes in it.

But who cares. It was fun. The setting in the Greek isles was fantastic. The music was great. It was funny, campy and at points, oddly poignant. I don’t know. Musicals have a way of lifting my spirits. It is pure escapism. For the duration of the movie, you almost get away with the cast and party in the Greek isles. The supporting cast was not too bad. It did not take itself seriously and that is exactly the spirit of the movie. It is not Shakespeare and does not pretend to be. Musicals are life affirming.

I enjoyed myself thoroughly and if you have some time and need to unwind, this is the movie to watch.

Future Life Partners

AFP – Thursday, September 4

PARIS (AFP) – - Men tend to wind up with life partners who look like their mother, while a woman is lured to a partner who looks like her father, scientists reported on Wednesday.

Heterosexuals are deeply attracted to individuals whose faces are similar to that of their opposite-sex parent, they said, suggesting that this characteristic is rooted in an evolutionary drive.

A team led by Tamas Bereczkei at the University of Pecs in Hungary created a model of facial ratios — width of jaw, distance between mouth and brow and so on — comprising 14 facial zones.

They measured 312 Hungarian adults from 52 different families using this method. Each family included a couple, along with two sets of parents.

The researchers found a significant correlation in facial similarities between a woman’s mate and her father, and also between a man’s partner and his mother.

The team tested the model on faces that were randomly selected from the general population and repeated the experiment with a panel of judges, who also picked out the same pairings from randomly selected groups of photos.

Interestingly, men and women focused on different parts of the face when they home in on a potential mate, they found.

A man’s lover and his mother tended to have similar fullness in the lips, width of mouth, as well as length and width of jaw.

But for women, the critical features were the distance between mouth and brow, the height of the face, distance between the eyes and the size of a man’s nose.

The choices are driven less by psychology and socialisation and more by evolutionary pressures, suggests Bereczkei.

Too much genetic overlap — as can happen with incest — is an evolutionary no-no.

But seeking similar genetic traits “may confer individuals with additional adaptive advantages,” he wrote.

It could increase the degree to which parents share genes with offspring, enhancing the genetic representation of future generations.

Finding similar partners might also help perpetuate genetic complexes that have evolved to adapt to a particular environment.

There may be an additional bonus, which probably has more to do with happiness than a genetic imperative.

“Human couples who are similar in physical and psychological characteristics are more likely to remain together than dissimilar partners, possibly leading to an increase in fertility,” the study concludes.

The research appears in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The Royal Society is Britain’s de-facto academy of sciences.

End of article

 

Read this article on the web and was really amused by it. It is an issue I had raised in a few classes before. Of course it horrified many students that psychologically, they may be atracted to people who look like their parents. So here is it. This is an issue that intrigues many till today. I think there is some truth.

Don’t think it worked out like this for myself personally looking at my wife and mother, but I have certainly seen it worked worked out in friends. I have some friends whose husbands/wives could have passed off as their siblings. There is a strong physical resemblance. Weird ya? In my younger days (a long long time ago) I have gone out with a young woman who I found really beautiful (actually she is) who when I looked closer, had certain facial features similar to my sister. Gross!!! I broke up with her soon after. Couldn’t look at her the same way again.

It is probably a little psychology and a little biology at work. But it happens.

So there you go. Look at your fathers/mothers carefully. Chances are, you are also looking at what your future spouse will look like.

Decisions, decisions

I don’t know if you remember when you were younger and wanted to decide things for yourself, but couldn’t. Your parents decided everything for you. It annoyed you and you wish for the day when you can decide things for yourself.

The day comes and it isn’t as much fun as you thought it would be. You now have to make your own decisions. The wrong decision and you have no one else to blame but yourself. So we have to take responsibility for yourself. If someone else decided for you, you can turn around and say “told you so” when things don’t turn out the way you want it to.

So now life is full of decisions to make. What course to do? What subjects to offer? What Uni course to aim for? What Uni to go to? All this is only related to school. If we add in personal life, the decisions we have to make increase to head spinning numbers!

So how do we decide? People do it by different ways. Some people I know make pros and cons lists and weigh the two. Some go round asking advice from almost everyone they know. Some more religious ask for divine inspiration. Some never decide and just ‘go with the flow’. Some even toss the proverbial coin. So no one really knows the best way to decide anything.

My wife generally thinks I am quite good at making decisions. I tend not to think about it too much. I am a take charge kind of a person. I decide on a course of action and go with it, sometimes without thinking through all the consequences. Worked well for me most of the times. Other times, I am glad I have people aorund me who care enough to caution me from being hasty. Appreciate that. Otherwise impulsive me would have gotten in trouble a lot more.

Of course there are things that we don’t need to worry too much over. Small matters don’t need much thought. Just decide and if it works it works, if not, oh well. But not everything is like that. Some things are serious. A wrong decision can have serious repercussions.

I read an interesting book ‘Blink’ a while back. Some of you may have read it. It postulates that some of the best decisions are made often in an instant. This is not to say the decisions are foolhardy. It is just that once we have prepared ourselves with sufficient knowledge on an issue, the instinctual response may be the best one. Very true. Sometimes…

I often get students wanting advice on what to do about various things. I am sure that they get infuriated when my response if often “It is up to you”. I can help them think through the implications of each course of action; I can help them clarify their own thoughts on the issue; I can even tell them what I would do in their circumstances. But only they can decide for themselves as they are the ones who will either reap the benefits or face the consequences. It is that simple really.

But having a decision to make is not necessarily a bad thing. It means you have a choice. There are possibilities to explore and consider. The alternative is not so good. It means you have no choice. Having choices means you have some degree of control over what happens to us.

By the way, life is full of decisions. Just as many of you are deciding what to do with the rest of your life, in some ways, so am I. Of course I can’t post the details of this in a public domain. But I am not sure what decision I will make. Whatever it is, I will ask around for advice (so if anyone has good advice, please look me up), I will ask for divine wisdom. I will decide. Then Que Sera Sera…