For the anti-homosexual

of lessons taught, learnt and observed

I was giving tuition to my cousin this evening. It will be his English CA1 tomorrow, and I’m going to give him tuition for 3 consecutive days. He is a good looking little boy, all of 11 years old, with an impish grin and bright, mischievious eyes. He is usually quite a delight to teach since he’s naturally quite clever and has a sunny disposition. And he is all questions. From the universe to miracles, he has this desire to acquire knowledge, and a natural curiosity. All in all, a good boy.

I was a little angry with him today though. He refuses to trust my authority on the English Language for some strange reason. My English might not be perfect, but we’re talking primary 5 English here, I think I can handle it just fine thank you very much. But nevertheless, after proving to him time and again about a punctuation error, he merely states that he ‘may’ be wrong. *throws hands in the air* Hey, whatever works for you, little buddy.

The tuition session soon ended, and he looked tired out. His mom came to the table and so I was trying to explain to her which areas that he is weaker in. And then his mom started berating him so badly that I got a little shocked. Sure, his grades are not of the fantastic sort, more of the above average sort, but she was piling on the criticism in waves. And I could just see the fight go out of his eyes, those plaintive eyes, and my heart ached. I was sorry that this had to happen. He’s 11 years old, come on. She was just criticising him harshly about his laziness (though he always finishes his homework) and how he actually wants poor grades which is the reason why he doesn’t check his work. She was just putting him down throughout that painful 5 – 10 minutes. This can’t be good for his confidence level for the exams tomorrow. This is not the first time she has so harshly criticised him, previously, she used to say that he has ‘low intellect’ as a reason for the way that he’s been performing.

I don’t understand. I truly don’t. It’s obvious she loves her son to bits. She’ll buy him the toys he wants and I find it hard to believe a mother can not love her child. I just don’t understand the reasons behind the berating she does. What’s the objective? Reverse psychology? Honestly? At 11? I just don’t think it’s that healthy to be crushing his ego at primary 5. And I think the effects are showing. Today he wrote a composition about how his father hit him ‘as if he was going to kill him’ because of a lie that he told. And how his parents still have not forgiven him for the lie he told, and how he has not forgiven himself too for the same lie. Mind you, this was a lie about completing his homework when he actually hasn’t. It’s not exactly a matter of life and death. Previously, he drew a comic strip with his friends and him as the hero. When he was introducing the characters, all of them have an intelligence quotient and he made sure his was the highest.

I find this all very disturbing. Do the parents understand the likely damage that they’re inflicting on the poor kid? You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that this can’t be very healthy on the boy. He had already given up choir, the CCA he loved the most because his mom wanted him to concentrate on his school work. Surely, there has to be another better way to bring up a kid.

Is it the chinese thing? Are we still believing in the frigging chinese superstition that one should not praise one’s kids because they’ll get big headed and be full of themselves? Or that this will drive the children to succeed? And it doesn’t matter how the kids feel about the parents after they’ve succeed? So the parents are actually being noble? That’s a subversion of nobility if there’s ever been one. What is it about the chinese upbringing? Why do such damage? Why is there such an aversion to praise and why is there a  glorification of putting down your children in public? I find it twisted. And the only way one expresses love is through the mundane, by pushing more food to your plate and making sure that your daily needs are met. Is this the only way? Is this the chinese way? The East / West divide? Well, I guess if the parental affection gets communicated in a roundabout way, it’s better than nothing at all. One just has to pay more attention. As long as the kid gets it. As a kid, I don’t think he gets it. This roundabout way of seeing that your parents adore you. And he’s just hurt by how his parents, especially his mom, seems to think so little of him.

So yeah, for all those people intrigued by the government benefits of having more children, for goodness sake, stop damaging them. Don’t screw up their lives.

Half Nelson

Just caught Half Nelson which was especially recommended by Shiuan. I liked the movie. It’s one of those teacher flicks, where the inspirational teacher, by his unconventional teaching methods, reach out to his students. The setting is in one of those poorer suburbs. It’s quite different from Dangerous Minds, a similar movie where the inspirational teacher in the form of Michelle Pfeiffer reach out to the students of an inner city school. Ryan Gosling unlike Michelle Pfeiffer has a serious drug problem. He was caught by one of his students smoking dope in the washroom one day and the movie examines the relationship between these two people and how their friendship develops. I like the bits of history intertwined with the plot, it was informative and funny at times. The movie also gives a very sympathetic portrayal of Nelson’s cocaine problem:

Nelson: I’m on top of it you know. I know it’s funny to be saying this, but I’ve cleaned up. And it works for me. Other things have worked for other people but not me. They don’t work for me. Not for me.

Nelson is a history teacher and one can feel his political angst towards Bush’s supporters and how stupid they are. One gets the feeling at the end of the movie that if he didn’t feel all that much, he won’t be using drugs as an escape.

It is a more real story than Dangerous Minds. It’s much less moralistic and optimistic. The movie lacks a true ending, Nelson’s drug problem still hovers and the student is not in the best of situations. It just ends there. I think one of the themes that underlie the film is how multi-faceted Nelson is, and how he wants to effect change by doing the right thing. He’s not role model material and he has his problems and issues but he tries to listen to his conscience.

The lack of a proper ending disturbs me, so I interpreted the open ending as ‘Life goes on but if you have friends with you, it becomes bearable.’ It’s a nice movie. Go watch it. It’s only available at The Cathay though. One of those exclusive independent films. And it doesn’t hurt that Ryan Gosling is easy on the eyes. (“,)

Valentine’s Day

Someone once said that man is loneliest in a crowd. To adapt that phrase, a single is loneliest on Valentine’s Day. I’ve never seen more handheld bouquets in one single day. Or more teddy bears and pink adorned whatever. The florists must be laughing all the way to the bank, and good for them. V day is a day when the Bridget Jones’ Nightmare strikes particularly hard, i.e. that one is going to die old and alone in a flat with 9 cats. And no one’s going to find out about your death till the smell pervades the entire building. *shudder* So I am with you, Grace, on the general suckiness of V Day. In literature terms, I felt like The Other. But that might be romanticising singlehood too much, an ironic gesture.

But to all the smug attachees out there, and the not so smug ones, happy v-day to all you guys and gals. Heh, esp to Kitana and her beloved ‘Benji’ as he is affectionately termed. *grins* And to all singles, not to worry, we’re all in the first flush of youth and time stretches out before us like a yawning chasm…. Hmm, that was not too optimistic. But the main thing is, time is on our side, still. Not for long perhaps, but still, there’s yet time.

And CNY is another of those festivals that one gets queried about their present single status. Concerned aunts in particular, will try their hand at match-making or making one feel less than adequate. Ohh heck, I’ll just reply that I’m too busy tutoring their precious offspring to have much of a social life. That’ll probably end the conversation for good. And besides, there’s always pineapple tarts to look out for.

The Third Way

I can’t get the conviction of Tochi out of my head. The 19 year old Nigerian was given the death penalty for drug trafficking. He’s well and dead now. It didn’t feature in the Straits Times and the forum pages are not talking about it. But I was just thinking how wrong the conviction was. This blog post is a little delayed and I wanted to leave it as it is. A lot of people were convicted of drug trafficking. This is nothing new. So I tried to accept it. But I just can’t swallow it. He died at 19, not having seen much of the world. It was his first trip overseas and he was caught redhanded. It didn’t matter that there may be a reasonable doubt that he didn’t know he was carrying the drugs, he’s presumed to know. Need our laws be so … cold and draconian? There were no mitigating factors. It’s the mandatory death penalty we’re talking about.

There should be a moratorium on the death penalty. And I want to skip the discussions that surround the death penalty and get straight to the point. Perhaps most Singaporeans (working ones particularly) think that since it’s cheaper to kill them rather than imprison them for life, why should their taxes be used to feed and shelter such dodgy and suspicious characters for the rest of their lives? The taxes could be used for a worthier cause, for orphaned children, the elderly and more sheltered walkways. There are always ways to spend taxes. I think this is the main reason why Singapore is so slow in having a moratorium on the death penalty. We always compete with Hong Kong on corporate taxes and whatnot, no? Let’s compete with them on human rights– they have abolished the death penalty. Let’s do the same. It might not just be an issue of cost, but also an issue of space. We’re planning for a good 6.5 million people to stay in this sunny garden city. There’s no space to keep the prisoners.

I think that the best way to manage such costs and competing interests is to let the famous invisible hand do the job. Let’s privatise Singapore’s prisons. In the US, they have proven to be more cost effective than state agencies. You can save lives, lives that need not be sacrificed at the altar of efficiency and land scarcity. If this becomes a viable or even desirable option, maybe it’ll ease the way to abolishing the death penalty.

In a truly twisted vein, can you imagine if such corrective organisations become a source of economic growth? Perhaps then we won’t be so averse to the idea of doing away with capital punishment for good.

Careers Fair

It’s getting harder and harder to blog regularly nowadays. Hence the long absence in between entries. Anyways, I went to the Career Fair at NUS at Kent Ridge. Saw some long lost friends, acquaintances and the people I met on exchange in UBC! Rainie, Anne and others. Hahaha, that made me so happy somehow. I never see them at BTC, that isolated cocoon. There were quite a few companies there. The British American Tobacco stood out, with their large paper bags that assaulted bare calves with their sharp corners. I was hanging around some of the groupies, and they needed engineers or something. Reminds me of Thank You for Smoking. Why don’t they need lobbyists? I’ve always wanted to be a lobbyist! I can simply imagine myself saying “Studies have shown that there is no causal connection between smoking and lung cancer.” Yar, right. Maybe they need engineers because they don’t have the formula of cigarettes down pat yet. Anyhow, I did a search on Wikipedia and their international brands include Dunhill, Kent, State Express 555, Pall Mall, Rothmans, Peter Stuyvesant, Benson & Hedges, Winfield, John Player, Lucky Strike, Kool, and Viceroy.

Saw any of your favourite brands over there? Additional trivia on the company, courtesy of wikipedia: British American Tobacco (BAT) has been a stout defender of the principle that if a product is legally on sale in a market then it should also be legal to advertise that product’s brands. BAT is the second largest listed tobacco company in the world. It is based in London and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index with a market capitalisation of over £29 billion as of June 2005.

Woah. Scared.

Another interesting firm that stood out were the Golden Arches. Would you believe it, good old MacDonalds was there! I just laughed myself silly when I saw it. I thought it’s under one of the jobs that graduates would consciously strike off. Yes, yes, that symbol of globalisation are not made up of cashiers and such. But still, it makes me want to see what their name card would look like. But the other symbol of globalisation, Starbucks stayed out of the fair. Damn it, and I thought I would have free coffee.

SPH was there too. Singapore Press Holdings! Here’s something troubling. Their flyer included vacancies for webmasters, among others. But here’s the thing, the responsibilities of the webmaster was to monitor blogs and forums in various web properties. Hm, I was wondering which web properties are they talking abt, once again Wiki helped me out– SPH also owns an online lifestyle portal called AsiaOne. Oh, and there’s the ST Stomp too.

The verdict as to the company with the best goodie bag will be SMRT. They gave out a handphone accessory (in the shape and likeness of the much lauded mrt), a bottle of water and a pen! You gotta give it up for MCYS too, the Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports. Their paper bag endorsed the now defunct SDU and urges you to go visit www.lovebyte.org.sg. With the tagline: A world of possibilities. Just a click away!

How very naughty.