纠结

   Sometimes it's hard.

                    Family or "family".


          When you are married and started establishing your own family,

and then your kids grow up old enough to almost take care of themselves... 

Do you prioritise the family you left for marriage or the family that you've built?

   手心是肉，
                    手掌也是肉。

          被拍的手心还是会疼。

纳闷。

This Season, Support Arsenal FC

How many times have we heard football fans lamenting about the ever-increasing fees of watching the English Premier League (EPL) or UEFA Champions League (CPL) over the past few years? Yet, we have continued to pay the fees faithfully to satiate our addiction for the beautiful game.

Football clubs pay exorbitant fees for player transfers. And as of today, about £278 million have been spent on buying 79 players (about £3.5 million per player) by the twenty clubs in the EPL and the transfer fees for at least 12 players were "undisclosed", according to British Daily Mail. To put these figures into perspective, it could take more than 80 years for a NUS Business graduate with honours to save up to buy one player!

As we blindly pay the increment for our cable channels to watch the games on saturday nights, we have indadvertedly given clubs the free rein to throw reckless money at the game. As a supporter of sports, I agree that sports athletes have a relatively short career but the money earned by some of the top players in the EPL is obscene! Wayne Rooney earns £13 million per year... surely one year of that money is more than enough compensation for a footballer's short-term career? Hello, I doubt they even have the brains to run a country! (think our Prime Minister's annual income or $4 million.)

If clubs pay less money to players and spend less on players, then we as the "end-users" of the football game will spend less too. You just have to look at Leeds United or West Ham United's recent history to appreciate that prudence is necessary. 

Therefore, Arsenal's model of paying what they can realistically afford and reluctance to break their wage cap is commendable. So it is unfathomable to me why the same supporters who were recently complaining about the increased fees for stadium entrance were the same ones who sang "Spend some f***king money" during Arsenal's last game. At a time like that, when Arsenal are the only top six club in the EPL who retained a bit of sanity, it is them who deserves more vociferous support than ever. Supporters of the club have to understand that the enjoyment of the beautiful game should not be balanced on how much we have in our pockets, and be proud that the club have chosen to stick to their values.

Arsene Wenger, this season I support your team. I hope you win!

Ballistic Techniques

In the last class on Principle of Games, we were discussing on ballistic movements and how the general sequence of movements for an overhead throw or a forward kick are similar, especially with regards to the way bigger muscles in the body are moved first before the smaller muscles move to efficiently shoot a projectile (i.e. Summation of efforts).

The video clip below was shared with us to have a glimpse of how primary schools in the States conduct target games for their students where ballistic techniques are required to perform the tasks.

Osaka and Radiation Myth

When I got back from Japan last June, the most often asked question was "Is Osaka safe? Is there radiation?" (referring to the leaking nuclear power plant caused by the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in March. Airlines were busy offering discounts to their Japan flights or reducing their flights in response to dwindling passenger numbers on routes into Japan.)

As a comic book fan who idolises Spiderman, the Incredible Hulk and certain members of the X-men, I wished I could explain enthusiastically how I have went through genetic mutation and obtained special powers after getting slapped by a wave of gamma rays while posing with the Glico neon poster along Shinsabashi.

However, on closer observation of the geographic distance between Osaka and Fukushima Daiichi Power Plant...

(Picture artefacts added by me. Picture courtesy of Google Maps, 10 July 2011.)

... which is about 500km, it seemed unlikely that radiation leaks from the plant will reach Osaka directly. The radiation rays would have to learn to defy physical laws and climb over mountains in order to do that.

Experts did warn that microscopic or macroscopic particles that are radioactive may still travel across long distances if the wind conditions are favourable. This prompted me to google for information about general wind directions and what I found was reassuring for me but perhaps pretty unsettling for people living in Los Angeles.

(Youtube video showing wind directions generally move from Fukushima out towards the sea and eventually reaching the western coast of USA)
In light of my research, I am glad to reassure my concerned family and friends that Osaka is 99.9% safe at the moment and people should take advantage of the 50% discount by Singapore International Airlines on Osaka flights when they have the chance to.

School Anthem

As I stood at attention in the hall ready to sing my new school anthem, it dawned on me that this was the first time that I will be singing one in English.

My primary and secondary school anthems were both written in Mandarin and I even had to sing in Malay during my junior college days! Add to that, Singapore's national anthem was also written in Malay, so after many years of singing school anthems in two of our nation's most spoken mother tongues, it felt most unusual to be mouthing English lyrics during flag raising ceremony at 7.45 a.m.

The only group of people I know who have a more bizarre experience are the grandparents in Singapore who have stayed in Singapore since the 1930s. I realised that they are the ones who would have learnt how to sing 3 different national anthems, when Singapore was once a British colony, part of Malaysia and later as a sovereign state.

The significance of this thought patiently warmed up in the back of my mind as I gradually learn to appreciate my unique identity as a Singaporean.

Teaching: Art or Science?

Effective teaching, to me, at this point in time seemed to be more Art than Science. While behavioural researches and diagnostic tests help to gather helpful information on students and their learning abilities, it is ultimately the artful application of teaching that determines a positive student learning environment for imparting of knowledge to take place.

All the time pupils in the classrooms are represented by figures and percentages in educational researches although we are intuitively aware that numbers and statistics cannot fully describe the children who are truly unique individuals. For example, collation of test results may show that most of the pupils of a class are inclined towards kinesthetic learning and recommends that teachers design their lessons with substantial kinesthetic elements. However, an effective teacher will likely switch around an array of explanatory or presentation methods while paying attention to the feeling tone of the pupils' learning experience and their moods, to draw out their true individual learning abilities.

Interestingly, I have to concede that the "array of explanatory or presentation methods" mentioned can only be derived from educational research. Educational research, along with research from several other fields, provides the basis for our understanding of educational methods. In order to engage pupils in meaningful learning, teachers then have to utilise knowledge gained from such research findings.

In the end, keeping the classroom organized and on task, while teaching the required skills and concepts, and the whole time fostering an atmosphere of respect, humility, care and responsibility, describes the artistic process by which teachers conduct their lessons. The product of this artistic process is a class of pupils who respect and care for one another, during the process of effectively learning their subject matter.

Reference:

1. The Art and Science of Teaching