my ajumma notes

This Chinese as Mother Tongue business is just sounding so strange now. The reason for 'downgrading' the weighting - so that kids can get a better shot at getting into top schools? How educationally sound is this kind of reasoning? I didn't know whether I was supposed to laugh when I read the article yesterday about the Sec 1 girl who apparently struggled with Chinese and 'only' got an A and who is now in a 'top girls' school' anyway. Or the letter in the forum complaining of how the grandchild could 'only' get a 240 PSLE score because he/she could not get an A* for Chinese (presumably, he/she got an 'A'). Ok, now, what is wrong with getting A for Chinese or getting 240 for the PSLE? What about the children who are struggling to pass the subject? What about the children who have problems with any or all of the other subjects? This obsession with A*s and top schools is at fault, not the fact that Mother Tongue has equal weighting wi...

Today, there was an article 'No sense of history in these buildings?' I must say that it is no surprise that many people care very little even for gazetted national monuments. If you take a straw poll among Singaporeans today, how many would name a historical landmark as a Singaporean 'icon'? My guess is many people would name places like Singapore Flyer, Changi Airport, or something along Orchard Road. The worst is still to come, of course. Very soon, the IRs will also join that list. Sad but true. As an old (ha!) IJ girl, I agree totally that the 'sense of history' is lost when the building houses shops, restaurants and nightspots that have nothing to do with its past. At least SJI got to become SAM. It would have been nice if our building had become a library or something to do with school, girls or history. And I do not mean just having those old-looking signs explaining the history of the place.

Chanced upon this article about The Nine Rooms of Happiness in Self (March 2010). Interesting idea. Imagine your life a house with nine rooms. Different aspects of your life go into each room (e.g. the living room is for stuff related to your friends and other social matters; the office - i.e. a room in the house called 'office', not your workplace - is for career-related stuff etc) , where you deal with whatever issues there are for that aspect of your life. I suppose that facilitates one's getting one's house in order, ha ha. So corny. That's how I understand it anyway. They have a blog for it: here Yet another modern-day self-help re-labelling of ideas. They did not have 'shed'; guess it's not really part of the house...

Warning: spoilers ahead! (P.S. I don't know why some of the text got underlined and I have no idea how to get rid of the underlining.) I am doing more enjoyable re-visiting, watching the 'encore' run of Dalja's Spring on KBS World. While Sam Soon remains the definitive K rom-com moment for me, Dalja's Spring , I think, improved on that genre somewhat, doing many things better than Sam Soon did. I love the different whimsical cartoons that go with each episode. Chae Rim is such a natural. She pulls this off so easily and nicely. At times, she is just priceless. Lee Min Ki pales in comparison. He is not a no-hoper but he had no chance of shining in the midst of the pretty strong cast. He played the sweet kid (27 years old, but, to me, a kid) he was supposed to and he and Chae Rim were a cute couple but he had limited facial expressions and voice inflections. I think he only had a/an (a) talking face (b) smiling face (c) intense face (which was basically his t...

Last weekend, life went on quite excitingly without Federer and Nadal (who is no longer No. 2 of course, but I don't know what his rank is now so I'll just refer to him as No. 2). Among other things: Spain 4 Switzerland 1 Good... And Nalbandian is back with Argentina's team. Good too...

I have just finished, and enjoyed, Mr Pip by Lloyd Jones. It was a book I just happened to chance upon. I'm not really into serious, modern fiction but this book-based-on-a-book had a nice cover (ha) and the blurb drew me to it because it's based on Great Expectations . There are times when you encounter a book, show, song, etc, and it somehow becomes magic that never leaves you. Great Expectations was one such book for me. I guess I could say that Mr Pip is an 'enchanting' story (at least for about half the book) but I know that when I read and studied GE I was spellbound , just like Matilda ( Mr Pip heroine) and her friends. Which is why it was painful to watch the Gwyneth Paltrow-Ethan Hawke version of it. Great literature can't be diluted, modernised and commercialised. I'm sure it will be a worthwhile experience reading GE again, as an adult. Hopefully I have will time for it ... Anyhow, it was great re-visiting Pip and company.

In its final days, this year's AO almost became a non-event for me. Of course I'm biased, having a picture of the losing finalist. Ha. It was quite telling that poor Andy Murray was not himself (again) playing against Federer in a slam final. When, Andy, when? Sigh... Many of this year's matches were nightmares. But I shall dwell on the better memories, which are: Nadal versus Murray: despite how the final score looked, some really outstanding tennis was played there (of course I'm biased). Zheng Jie and Li Na getting into the semis: L i Na is unrecognisable without her tennis attire and with her new hair. Best of all, Hit for Haiti! Serena and Federer: She was funny. And I suppose we have to thank him for coming up with the idea (notice the grudging tone?). Nadal and Djokovic: Funny and cute Andy Roddick and Kim: Cute Djokovic and Kim: Cute too It was so nice to see everyone, joking, laughing and smiling though I must confess that I thought Nadal seemed...

I suppose some people would be disappointed to know that no, the casino is not to open next week after all. It's also kind of amusing to see how the reports about the casino are fairly low key and carefully worded. Anyway, I did wonder why, if Universal Studios is opening next week, there was so little fanfare. And I'd like to know what percentage of the actual Universal Studios park we are getting at Sentosa. Will we suffer from small-scale-ness, like Hong Kong Disneyland? From the reports about the dunno-how-many-trillion-dollar plans for South Korea's park, ours sure sounds small... So, next to open is this 'Festive Walk', suspiciously sounding like Festival Walk ...

My next point is: why don't we learn from what other education systems are doing? It is not as though we are the only country in the world that has a 'bilingual' system (contrary to what some people seem to think). For example, we could look at how Malaysians learn English and/or Mandarin. I know many Malaysians who studied most of their subjects in Bahasa Melayu but are proficient in English and/or Mandarin (in some cases, more so than Singaporeans...). Or non-English-speaking European countries where people learn English. The Dutch priests in our church speak very good English (definitely much better than many Singaporeans) and, surely, English was not their first language. Perhaps someone can go ask them how they did it. We also have an Indonesian priest who speaks English like it is his first language. I know he studied overseas but I believe that was only in his uni days. How did he do it?

Clarissa Oon's article yesterday, 'English home, Chinese class', continued the all-important Mother Tongue discussion, surely another discussion which requires a great deal of common sense (among other things). Some of her main points: 1. '... from my experience, and that of a few friends, the fact that we spoke almost entirely English at home was no obstacle at all to liking Chinese in school and becoming reasonably proficient in it.' 2. '... one should not be overly swayed by statistics showing changing linguistic dynamics at home.' 3. 'Further tweaks to the system could inadvertently lower the bar in Chinese-language proficiency for the average Chinese Singaporean student...' Like Ms Oon, I learnt to write my Chinese name only when I went to Primary 1. Like her too, I spoke practically nothing but English at home. And also like her, while I did not exactly have an easy time with Mandarin, I came to enjoy and appreciate it in school. As I have s...

Some days there are no letters and some days there are no letters worth reading but today, there were two letters in TODAY that 'support' the so-called 'vandalism' of post boxes. Excerpts (nowadays you have to log in to read TODAY online, so, no link): Letter 1 1. '... what bothers me is not the issue of "vandalism" or the police's involvement (as it is clearly a miscommunication), but rather Singapore's lack of tolerance for anything radical.' 2. 'And now SingPost has had to apologise for a creative, "out-of-the-box" stunt that, frankly, did no harm.' Letter 2 1. 'I would like to give SingPost some credit for thinking differently.' 2. 'It is too extreme to think that it may inspire others to vandalism...' 3. 'However, SingPost, on its part, failed in carrying out the campaign properly.' I have to say that I did not follow the news reports much but did people actually say that graffiti on the postboxes...

Finally and (very) belatedly, I am reading Crossing the Threshold of Hope . Interesting, to say the least. At least from a Catholic point of view. I'm not sure how long I will take with it, though, since my brain processes serious books rather slowly... Wishing everyone a joyful Christmas.

So, no surprise that Spain won Davis Cup . Like the commentators, I too was happy to see Nadal retrieving, hitting into corners SO much more than in the last half year. Perhaps his bagel for Berdych will get him out of the longkang he has been in all these months. I'm sorry for Berdych that he had to be at the receiving end. Surely, he must have thought he had a bit of a chance during the 7-5 first set. Then from set 2, he must have been wondering, 'Why me?' Meanwhile, from Switzerland to Scotland to Serbia and Sweden, surely there must have been a collective groan, 'Oh man, is that beast back for good?' On Facebook, Nadal says: Please allow me to be very happy for this win. I know most of you are not Spanish but this is the win of my team and I am very happy for the win. Actually, I was even happier to see Handsome Mr Ferrer (whom almost no one really cares about) climb out of his 1-6, 2-6 hole to turn his match around . Sorry to Stepanek, of course. Hopefull...

I say, who would have thought - Del Potro versus Davydenko in the final , and I am missing all the action. But I'll be back on time for Davis Cup's Spain versus Czech Republic...

I am sure every victim-cum-beneficiary of the bilingual policy has something to say about learning Chinese. Here are some thoughts after reading the recent articles on the subject. 1. I didn't know that we were expected to master both languages 'equally well'. I thought Mandarin was supposed to be our 'second language' and treated it as such. Perhaps things changed when it was no longer called 'second language' but 'mother tongue'. 2. What is this about Chinese being too hard in the 70s? Sure, it was hard as anything but it is much worse now, I think. The kind of vocabulary the kids are expected to know is incredible. 3. Yes, there is something in the argument that listening and speaking should come first but ultimately, the kids still need to read and write and, tedious as it may be, you can't run away from practising writing. Like how you just have to memorise the times tables over and over again. 4. All credit going to my Chinese teach...

Oooh... Ana Ivanovic is in Singapore... Just making a random guess about where to spot her...

We were told in yesterday's ST that HDB resale prices are at a high. I guess there are some people who expect a resounding round of cheers whenever such news is reported. I wonder if they remember that there are many of us for whom such developments are of little comfort. Like when this 'high' means that your flat now costs $120, 000 less (as compared to $150,000 less) than the price you paid for it. I wonder if they realise that highlighting the current $3,000 - $12,000 range for the 'cash over valuation' is a joke when you paid, like, more than five times that amount. After so many years, I am still absolutely sore about having had to cough up what felt like a million dollars in cash. (not where I live; sorry, forgot where I got this picture from) I'm afraid I never quite believed that we paid for 'cheap', 'affordable' housing. Just cheaper, more affordable housing.

There was a girl There was a boy If they had met they might have found a world of joy... I was looking in my mum's kitchen cabinet and I found my Donny and Marie Aladdin flask! Ha, does anyone still have their Aladdin flasks from the 70s or 80s? I was so pleased my dad got this for me to bring home stuff from my Home Econs lessons. It is now sitting in my kitchen cabinet. Go back in time here... Donny and Marie singing a medley of their songs ... They sure look different and Donny is like twice his old size, I think. He looked like he could hardly move on stage. I found out that Morning Side of the Mountain was a 50s song by Tommy Edwards. Listen to him here and enjoy the corny pictures that go with the lyrics...

I have recovered from being temporarily at a loss for words. (Wonder who they were rooting for) So, who would have thought that it would be someone other than Federer winning the USO? Come to think of it, who would have thought: 1. it would be someone other than Federer winning the AO? 2. it would be someone other than Nadal winning the FO? 3. Andy Roddick would put up such a worthy challenge at the Wimbledon final? 4. Andy Murray would make it to none of this year's Slam finals? 5. Kuznetsova would win the FO? 6. Kim would come back? 7. Kim would win the USO? and so on... Well, although I wish that some of this year's results were not what they were, it's nice to have some unpredictability after years of highly predictable and boring results. Good to have healthy competition in the mix. Maybe there will be more surprises post-USO. After all, the year end stuff in the past did throw up unexpected matches like Nalbandian beating the top three, Gilles Simon beating Federer,...

Gasp... the big joke happened in the men's side, too. And, of course, there is no need for Federer to cry anymore.