aug - sep 2003

[010803] was reading a Nature article about a protein named Elmo, & started thinking of Sesame Street, Jim Henson's muppets, & my favourite TV show that I watched as a kid, Fraggle Rock. somehow most people seem to remember Sesame Street but not Fraggle Rock - click on e image below to learn more:



[180803] 'I remember everyone who leaves.' - Lilo in Lilo & Stitch

I like airports. departure halls. arrival halls. viewing galleries. transit lounges. glass panels through which people wave to someone as (s)he walks away, until they are left waving to their own reflections. giant overhead boards that display arrival & departure schedules that are constantly updated ever so frequently, banishing away all traces of previous arrivals & departures. baggage claim belts that trundle on endlessly long after the last bag has been picked up. a blurring of time zones, the imperceptible merging of night into day & back into night again. a sense of timelessness, seamlessness. arrivals & departures. comings & goings. meetings & partings. beginnings & endings. somehow airports are like a microcosm of life?

[300803] I lost this guy....so sad. & I didn't get a chance to take a photo of it before it was gone. wonder if people fear loss cos they fear that memory will fade with time, & that they will forget how something looked/felt/smelt/sounded like?



once upon a time I had no clue that this unidentifiable species had a name, or that it was Korean, or that it loves food & lives in a refrigerator munching on watermelon slices, doughnuts & other stuff. just knew that its eyes were e perfect reflection of how I appear during lectures. had a little stuffed toy version of this guy (hugging a pink & white bolster, hence e name 'sleepyhead')....until it disappeared on 270803. resulted in a trip to Heeren to search for a replacement, & that's how I came to discover so much more about it - only after I lost it. ironic. by e way this guy's called Foody.

[081003] discovered that sleepyhead aka. Foody had modeled in two photos of Guanghao's birthday gift - sitting on e tail of a model F-16 fighter jet - & here are e edited pics =)



[180903] for Rhan, laoda, css, LKY, Ling, mr doraemon, liangyeo, limkokfa, Samuel, littlesunshine, Indonesian penguin, lauweeli, kuan, limgekho, 'uh-oh!', Kelken, sootty, Huegesh, Gaurav, Hoi Nam & all other SPSians who have helped me (& many others) in one way or another with comp stuff:



[190903] my black friend used to weigh more than 10 times my weight & tower above me when we first got to know each other. almost 20 years later, this friend now weighs roughly four times my weight & I've finally emerged as e taller-but-still-not-so-tall one. we've grown up together & over e years, its teeth have yellowed & voice has changed. if this friend of mine sounds like a victim of some long-term weight loss program gone wrong, well its a Yamaha upright piano. till this day I still cannot make sense of dried tadpoles stranded across swimming pools lane markers (i.e. read music scores), but this has never stopped my friend & I from spending endless hours together lost in our own world. have spent bits of time with my friend's counterparts in e RGS school hall, VJC LT4 & backstage of e KE7 comm hall, but none of them can share e happy memories of e times when my feet could finally reach e pedals or fingers could stretch an octave or I could finally see my own reflection above e open keyboard lid =)

[ filed under: thewonderingstraycat + 9_lives_2003 + music1 ]

education + commencement

[160603] why is so much of e education here focused on learning about stuff that already exists, rather than learning how to learn about stuff that may come to exist only tomorrow? it was with an overwhelming sense of relief that I entered university back in July 1998, more than glad to be finally free from e education system. or so I thought. this mindset of learning for e sake of learning seems so deeply ingrained in just about everywhere I look in this graduate mass-production line, & beyond. glad that have ended up as a manufacturing defect, due to:

1. e idea of learning how to learn, planted in my head back in secondary school,
2. e absolute frustration with e system reaching a 12-year peak in JC,
3. e idea of knowing how to access information being far more important than knowing e information itself, pointed out to me by my JC librarian,
4. e (lack of) quality of teaching in most of my undergrad modules, which left independent learning as e most (& only) viable option, &
5. SPS, which provided e environment needed for #3, as well as e idea of taking charge of one's own education, instead of letting others ruin it for you.

perhaps #6 would be e 12 years of e education system itself, for it was that which provided e opportunities to learn several times over how to fail.

It has been said that the primary function of schools is to impart enough facts to make children stop asking questions. Some, with whom the schools do not succeed, become scientists.
- Knut Schmidt-Nielsen, The Camel's Nose: Memoirs of a curious scientist

[280603] do you have a dream? do you even dream? do you even dare dream in e first place? last September, was looking at e snaking queue of graduands in gowns & mortarboards lining up for e commencement ceremony, & wondered how many among them were actively chasing their own dreams, & how many were just going through e paces & acting out e standard script written jointly by our society & e guys to whom we pay our taxes. no, I did not mention e word 'government', did I? *wink*

[020703] was directed to e NUS Commencement 2002 website where e video of e live webcast interviews inflicted on us has been made available for download. remember e interviewers & cameramen closing in on e front of e queue on e 2nd level of e UCC to pick out victims based on e academic honours they'd won. since when did students matter so much to NUS? now understand what my mum & sis were talking about when they said they rolled with laughter in e UCC hall on watching a larger-than-life Chin Ann ('chim-ing' out his interviewer by talking about his Maths thesis) & me (showing a truly SBS or 'si beh sian' face) on e giant video screen during our interviews =P

[250703] approx 7.5 years since e 3 of us graduated together from secondary school....& e 2 who sat together in class & slept through 2 years worth of O level Bio lessons (& concussed through another 2 years of A level Bio lectures) are now a doctor & a biologist, while e one who conscientiously kept awake is now an electrical engineer =D



[110803] SPS @ Science Honours commencement 230703:


[ filed under: thewonderingstraycat + labrat + 9_lives_2003 ]