iphoting's Sink

Today’s speaker for Chapel is quite a funny person, but there is one thing that he’d said that I found it very enlightening, not that his jokes or other points are dumbing.

He claims that according to scientific research, though citations were not given, people are usually unlikely to accept, respond or act upon negative feedback and tend to ignore them. This made perfect sense! It would be pointless sending any form of feedback that is negative as according to the speaker, they would be discarded as unconstructive criticism or simply spam (Shit Posing As Mail). This finally explains why talking to the wall is more productive as you get to hear yourself speak from the echo due to the wall than compared to sending feedback.

These days, whenever I walk past the piano which stands proudly and solemnly in the middle of the dining room, I never fail to turn my head and take a glance; the always beautiful instrument, now left in silence and peace, I long one day to play on it as I’d always done when time was in such abundance.

The next time I get such a chance, I’ll play FairyTale (童话).

Something is seriously wrong. We didn’t have any recess on Friday as we only have a 20 minute recess scheduled within the circular hours and there wasn’t enough time to eat then (9.00am). Our 2nd block of 20 minute recess was supposed to be at 12.20 pm but somebody professionally “didn’t care” and decided that lessons are more important than recess. This explains why on week A Fridays, we do not consider ourselves to have any recess for the whole day.

Another amazing thing is that people can suddenly start ranting about the establishment in the middle of lessons.

I say this again, Regulation without Relation or Understanding will lead to Rebellion. Send feedback they say; sent feedback we did. What’s changed? That’s for you to say.

With that, I shall reserve my words on utter ridiculous incidents that occurred within this week. The last two links have some forms of factual error. So, please be wise.

Looking at my results slip, I see grade boundaries nicely shifted in moderation and moderation of percentage sparingly applied. This is so that that international organisation wouldn’t think that we are doing badly?

At the rate this goes, it seems like it’s time to start sourcing for 10GB thumbdrives and hacks to work around Windows’ idiosyncrasies. Or simply, switch to a Mac.

Here’s a piece which has great contrast (for the lack of a better word) that I like.

Wonderful day isn’t it? A day with breather for thoughts, a day with skimpy lessons, a day with verbal sparring during PC ‘lesson’. Various topics were covered, including overly severe treatment of little children, akin to killing flies with cannons. The teacher also generalised that the richer a person is, the more stingy he will become; and Bill Gates is an exception. This unexpectedly lead to a rather heated argument, especially when Warren Buffet isn’t exactly poor and he donated 85% of his fortune (which is quite a huge amount).

The teacher soon deviated the discussion to people who wanted to become politicians in the future and how ‘weird’ GEP students think. Those topics, in my honest opinion, weren’t exactly the most politically correct ones to dwell on.

I find it extremely sad that there are teachers who, with their professionalism as they claim, criticise people who stutter when they speak. From the way the person got scolded, it seems as if stuttering can be controlled and activated as and when the speaker wants.

There are many occasions where we think that the current situation seems unfavourable and disastrous on a micro level, without taking account of the macro view and the purpose of the situation. ‘“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways,” says the LORD. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways, And My thoughts than your thoughts.”’ Isa 55:8-9.

Hence, the only way to go about the situations is to have faith. There’s a nice illustration in Luke 8:22-25.

^22-24One day he and his disciples got in a boat. “Let’s cross the lake,” he said. And off they went. It was smooth sailing, and he fell asleep. A terrific storm came up suddenly on the lake. Water poured in, and they were about to capsize. They woke Jesus: “Master, Master, we’re going to drown!”

Getting to his feet, he told the wind, “Silence!” and the waves, “Quiet down!” They did it. The lake became smooth as glass.

²⁵Then he said to his disciples, “Why can’t you trust me?”

They were in absolute awe, staggered and stammering, “Who is this, anyway? He calls out to the winds and sea, and they do what he tells them!”

A year long interview process sounds more fun than Donald Trump’s 14 week interview.

This day, or yesterday rather, I was on the train and I saw an amazing sight. There were 4 elderly ladies sitting on four seats consecutively and at City Hall station, the crowds reached a neck choking level. 2 older elderly ladies came in and stood around the seating area.

The most surprising and the most, for the lack of a better word, despicable thing happened. Rather than the hordes of seated able-bodied people giving up their seats, 2 seated elderly ladies stood up promptly to offer their seats to the other 2 who just came in.

Unfortunately, I was standing too far to be able to encourage people to give up seats to those who needed them more than they do.

Watched Pirates and found the Dog scene a waste. Overall, 3.75 upon 5.

There’s this letter that was shown to me:-

Letter writer used too many big words - 14th July, 2006

The letter, “Use of Singlish/Chinglish will impede communication with the world” (ST Online Forum, July 12), by Dudley Au contains no fewer than nine big words, and for good measure, a Latin phrase.

One such word, feracity, is not found in reputable dictionaries like The American Heritage, Collins Unabridged and the single-volume Oxford English Dictionary. The word abundance could have replaced this rare word.

Big words distract the reader when simpler ones will do. Uncommon words do have their usefulness; they draw attention or imply a subtlety. This forum could do with more common words.

Mark Lee Marn Fatt

I find this very entertaining. Pardon me for generalising, this is the trend that I see lately. Instead of appreciating the value of a contribution, though with flaws, one goes all out to attack inconsequential weaknesses. This might also account for the observation on “narrow-minded Singaporeans and how insidious it really might be”. Imagine unreasonable customers demanding to see your manager whenever your facial muscles needed some rest. Exceptions as always, exist.

At the very least, exhibiting stupidity is, pardon the pun, a very stupid thing to do.

I’m glad that after much deliberation and brain cycles, the 11th COMPSERV | CST committee has been finalised. The details are being released as I write and congratulations to all of you who have the honour of being in the 11th committee.

As such, my subconsciousness is freed to run other jobs in the long long queue.

Running multiple blogs with varying identities is quite entertaining after all.

Tomorrow would wake me up and fill me up with motivation to clear all final year exams in a way that is deemed desirable.

The chemistry of relationships haven’t been going well lately. Liability transfer seem to be the popular thing to do by many people and at times, I find myself for being guilty of speaking without thinking; thinking without thinking; writing without being able to think.

Sometimes, it makes me wonder what school is turning people into.