Monday 17 December 2012

Co-existing species

It must be a sign.

If not, what could explain why all these came together this holiday?

I have always enjoyed long holidays, from the time I was young to till now (and because of my vocation, I have been very lucky to continue to enjoy this privilege). Especially the late November-December break each year. Somehow this period has the ability to effect immense changes in one's mindset, attitude or perspective on various things. Perhaps it is simply the fact that this holiday period lies at the cusp of each year-end and the beginning of a new one, and hence more romantic and charming, unlike the late May-June holiday break which serves a more functional purpose in injecting some needed break in the midst of busyness. Each year-end break, I am always grateful to discover something new, or to have had the chance to look at something differently, and such epiphanies could arise from my travelling or just simply staying put. These epiphanies ran the gamut from discovering I could possibly be a closet racist (gasp!) to pulling together threads of family connections and understanding what makes my family, my family.


This holiday, there is the opportunity to venture into the world of animals in a way that I never was interested to do so. It all started with Channel 424 on Starhub Cable.  Animal Planets channel is not new to me (though I watched that usually when there wasn't anything more interesting on other channels) but there never has been that magical draw -- till this holiday.

I am hardly an animal person. I have always viewed them as another species which co-existed with mankind in this world and have always steered clear of them as I always view them with an amount of fear (of the unknown, the unfamiliar). Somehow this December, i find myself immensely fascinated by the many animal species I have never known existed in the world (eg. the transparent octopus), their evolutionary history and the whole predator-prey relationships on land and in water.

Most of all, the relationships between man and animals is like a territory I never thought much about but which now beckons to me. I grew fascinated with hosts Tristan Bayer and Vanessa Garnick (below) in their escapades with wild creatures in "Caught in the Moment" series.  "

It is exciting to see how they get excited about their carefully-crafted plan to catch a glimpse of the ring-tailed lemur leaping from trees to trees (it is an excitement almost of a pure kind, not one of those put up for TV, I'd like to think), and how they devise creative schemes in order to video creatures up, close and personal. Judging from their biodata from Google, I gather their fervent passion must have stemmed from their childhoods and growing up in households where parents are themselves well-versed and comfortable with wildlife. For me, it reinforces too how important one's formative childhood is -- it can be so impactful that what one do with one's young will reap results (or scars) in their subsequent adulthood.

Next came the movie Life of Pi.

I have never been a fan of fiction, and to an extent, even snobbishly view the genre as an inferior brother of non-fiction works, simply from a realism perspective: We already do not know enough of the world as it is and probably will never know enough in one's lifetime. Hence, whenever we can, shouldn't we channel our time and devote our energy to understanding the reality around us instead of conjuring up imaginary worlds? I can never reconcile to reading fiction hence (despite finding great comfort in reading classics during Literature years in my younger days).


There isn''t much of a need to guess what will be written next. That I totally enjoyed Life of Pi the movie and is now reading the book. That someone has the capacity and the ability to create this master story made me realise that I have too early in my life scoffed at what cannot be proven true. It awes, humbles and overwhelms me that one's imagination can be so immense.

Going back to the aim of this post, the movie also deepens my interest in the art and science of co-existing with animals. In the movie, Pi tells himself that he accepted that Richard Parker, the tiger, can never be tamed, ""But by God's will, it can be trained." Reading the book which explains more on how circus trainers train the animals, I thought it also sheds some light for me on my work as a teacher (!!). Afterall, we are all animals, and like what Pi's father likes to say, the most dangerous animals in the planet.












Sunday 2 December 2012

Lessons from Kungfu Panda




Animated movies seldom interests me. I suspect it is a childhood thing as I cannot remember being very fond of cartoons (though I did recall my elder sister and me going through a craze period over Carebears and Smurfs, but that was about all).

But somehow, I felt compelled to watch more of them these days due to a work necessity --  for someone in the teaching industry, it seems blasphemous that I do not know famous characters or songs from a famous animated movie, hence showing myself to seriously lack similar points of reference to these students??

I am glad I chose Kungfu Panda to ease me into this watching-animated-shows mode as it offers up several good learning points for me (hence fulfilling my need to always 'learn' something):

1. It is essential to know your student's learning needs.

Upon realising that Po is driven by food, Shi Fu is able to design his teaching based on what drives his disciple. That's a sound (but many a time forgotten) principle of good teaching.

2. Knowing your student's learning style is key.

Not all students learn the same way. When Shi Fu realises Po learns things the íncidental way, he sought to give lessons the way his student needs it. Remember the scene where Shi Fu was sparring with Po using chopsticks which proved to come in handy subsequently in Po's showdown with Tai Lung in which he used bamboo canes?

3. What matters at the end of the day, really, is to believe and to have faith.

This calls out to me as I would need tremendous faith as I embarked on a form-teacher role next year. Form-teachership  is daunting and overwhelming as I think about it still. The mother-hen role of taking charge of a class and going beyond academics to see to their social, emotional and behavioural aspects.


Though I know somehow I will survive, the thought that I will have sleepless nights worrying about many things that need to be worried about certainly is not pleasant. Hence I need to have faith that whatever may happen, I will have the sensibility to know what to do, even if I have never had experience with form-teachership. I need to believe that I have enough, erm, love to go around a class of 20 with different needs. I need to have faith that no matter how trying and difficult a class is, somehow I will come to a way to connect to them. I need to believe in the cosmos that no matter how exasperating and hopeless a situation is, signs will reveal themselves to me along the way, showing me what I need to do. Most of all, I need to know that no matter what happens, I know I did my best as I always do.


Hmm, so what animated show next?



Saturday 1 December 2012

Anything goes



Bylines have always intrigued me. Whenever an article in the papers interests me, the first tendency is to look to the top of the article to see who writes it. And on occasions, I felt compelled to write to the writer to let her know how touching his/her writing is. Perhaps simply, bylines reminded me of how journalism used to excite me -- the sense of adrenalin I felt after having got a story, the thrill of having coined a perfect opening in my mind on the way back to the office in a cab ride.

A byline which was sorely missed for a few years was that of Ching Cheong's as he was detained in a China prison for suspected treason between 2005 and 2008. Hence I jumped at the chance to meet him at a panel discussion held last month in the Singapore Press Holdings HQ at Toa Payoh, as part of his launch of his book (cover of the book as shown above).

Ching Cheong, in real life, is completely different from whom I would have imagined him to be. I was expecting him to cut a tall and imposing figure, with a melancholic quality but he was as tall as me and slightly hunched. Certainly, my background knowledge of him has influenced my sense of perception. But seeing him up close and personal certainly did not diminish the respect I have for this man - someone who dares to dream, a quality which has not diminished with unlawful incarceration is rare indeed. Listening to his intellectual sharing about China's political state, the lucidity state of his mind and his equanimity strucks me greatly. Subsequently reading his book which sheds light on his intense experiences and observations of what goes on around and within him, it strucks me that such meticulous awareness of one's emotions and close scrutiny of his suffering can either break a man or lead to experiences of epiphany. For him, it seems the latter. But what makes the difference between him and many intensely introspective individuals (such as writers and artists) who went through intense tormenting experiences and who sought self-destructive routes, I wonder?

I felt it was a sense of mission, a commitment to a cause larger than himself - that makes all the difference.

For some reason too, I think being in a place which I had once longed to be in, brought back memories and feelings. It dawned me that had I continued my journalism days and was accepted by SPH as a journalist in 2005 instead of stumbling upon a teaching career, life would have had taken on a very different turn. My interests would have been shaped quite quite differently, life's lessons would have been of a very different kind, and most importantly, I would have met a set of people whose influences would have rubbed off on me in unpredictable ways. It's truly amazing.

Reading Travellogues


                                             From "The Tao Of Travel", by Paul Theroux


It occurs to me that travel-writing probably involves a degree of narcissim (erm, is that why I like it??). But then again, aren't most works of art (be they literary, photographic) like that?

Anyway, I have been on a travellogue-reading craze the past few days - and what a wonderful way to start off my month-long holiday!

This particular quote called out to me:

"Most travel, and certainly the rewarding kind, involves depending on the kindness of strangers, putting yourself into the hands of people you don't know and trusting them with your life."

How true it is. And it is with this conviction that I decided the first travellogue I will read this holiday is this, a collection of contributions from writers who happen to like travelling:


What a great read it was - a collection of wacky, funny, thought-provoking stories, some of which are dramatic enough to be able to be a Hollywood-remake. It was interesting how some of the best writings I like came from women travellers. I like how one entry deals with some very real questions I always asked myself during travel (the sense of "obligation'' towards some people you meet along the way and the middle class guilt one feels) and a twist in the definition of 'kindness' in another entry, but no less 'kind''. So HQ, you must read the book!!

It also reminded me of the many acts of kindness and trustworthiness shown to my travelling partners and me all these while.  From LZ and I riding (and speeding) pillion with WW2 Vietnamese veterans-turned-Easyriders who bring tourists around for a living in Dalat (they could jolly have thrown us off the winding hills) to museum office workers offering HQ and me a ride far out to the city from the Salt mountains in the suburb part of Tainan (they certainly didn't have to). As much as these acts often lead me to wonder what I have done to deserve them, they also made me understand kindness knows no boundaries. And the only way around it is to pass it on, as the cliche goes.

The End of My Sabbatical

"The real voyage of discovery lies not in finding new landscapes but in having new eyes."



I just realised there is this post I wrote some time in June but did not publish due to my obsession with wanting to perfect it (usually over and over again before i hit the 'publish'button) and in the middle of it all, forgot all about it. So here's it:

One more week and I will take on a new status – I will go be going back to having a full-time job.

I am not entirely sure if I am ready for it. On careful observation of the underlying reasons, I realised it is not because I have not done most of what I set out to do (afterall, I did complete 80 percent of my to-do list - something I am very proud of!). The most important reason is that I felt I have not spent enough time with myself, narcissistic as it sounds. The time spent alone is something I cherish so much, as it seems to get harder and harder as one gets older, due to various social commitments. Most of all, I was disappointed that I had not managed to repeat the feat 10 years ago of not stepping out of my house for 2 whole weeks. I had wanted so much to do that (even if it was just for one week).

But it also occurred to me that even if I do take another 1 full year off, that will not satisfy me as I will never have enough of time spent with myself. Since that is the case, I will just have to tell myself to be grateful for whatever I had this far.

That said, it has been an extremely fruitful half year  of Sabbatical. I must say also it is not entirely a Sabbatical as I did freelance work starting from January. Not that I am complaining as my freelance work exposed me to worlds beyond which I would have not had if I did not do it.  I come to feel deeply privileged to be able to enter the lives of my students and their families, of whom I learnt a lot from. Most of all, my dabbling lands me with the full-time job that I am taking on now.
It has been an eventful 6 months. Like the quote above that I chanced upon when I was browsing in a shop at Clementi Mall, I realised I was so blessed to have encountered new landscape (with my travels and overseas volunteering stint) as well as having donned a new pair of eyes at home. I visited new places, revisit familiar people, reconnected with old friends, and am very lucky to be able to re-understand them  with a different pair of lenses. There were good experiences, as well as not-so-good experiences, all of which allowed me to understand myself and how I function better.

The half year Sabbatical also reinforces that there really is nothing absolute in life. What I resolutely thought I will do, I turned out not doing. What I resolutely thought I won’t do, I took it on eventually (though with lots of trepidations and apprehensions).
Life, really, is interesting.