The best thing since sliced bread

I recently discovered the best thing since sliced bread, and I’ve already named it my ‘Best Find/Buy/Discovery of the Year’ (2008, it was the water-powered vacuum cleaner; 2009, it was my GPS). What is it? Audio tapes of books. Actually my good friend Isaac was the one who first mentioned it to me, and I didn’t give it much thought, often walking past the audio books shelf in Borders, thinking that the only books that have audio recordings are those on management, self-help and the like. But I was wrong. I went to the library in NTU and stumbled on a treasure trove of Audio Books, DVDs, CDs, CD-ROMS that I could borrow for a week! (another hidden perk of being a lecturer – undergrads get to take them out for only 4 hours)

So I make it a point to borrow one audio book every week. Have heard (or read?) Fish, Alan Alda’ s biography called ‘Never Stuff Your Dog and other things I have learned’, Peter Senge’s ‘The Fifth Discipline’ and a few Christian sermons which I haev at home. The wonderful thing about audio books of course is that you can listen to them while driving. This effectively means that my 40-min drive to NTU no longer need to be a routine of switching radio channels for nice songs. I can concentrate on a story or lesson, and learn something in the process. Thanks Isaac! =)

Hearing Alan Alda’s biography, especially the parts about his early theatre experiences made me miss my own theatre experience two years ago. The nervousness of opening night; the exhiliration of waiting in the wings to go on stage; the crazy times during rehearsals; the embarassing times when you forget your lines during your rehearsals and have to ask ‘line?’ while staying in character; the warm glow of the spotlight; the laughing audience…I’d love to feel all these again.

The way we see things

This week, I started my teaching at NTU again, and in my first lesson, we talked about the concept of ‘Perception’ when it comes to communication. I have always been fascinated by the idea of perception, and how it shapes the way we see things, the kinds of things that we ’see’, the way we organize the information in the little rooms or pigeonholes in our heads, and the way we interpret the myriad information, details, experiences that we gather as we go through our lives everyday. One of the areas we discussed was that of ‘Stereotypes’, and I asked my classes what they thought when they are asked about the areas which black people in America are well-known for. Almost unanimously they shouted “basketball”, “rapping”, “running”, “R & B”. It is interesting that none of them said engineers, lawyers or historians. But I told them that equally there could be a number of blacks who are experts in these other fields, yet why are they not the first things that come to our mind?  In fact, how about “President of the United States”? So stereotypes are dangerous because they make us see generalized ideas of the group, but often make us fail to see the individual behind that stereotype.

At times, our perceptions also get in the way of seeing things for what they truly are. I showed slides of a few classic optical illusions (do you see the two faces or the vase in between? can you see both a young lady and an old woman?) And then I showed them this picture:

And again they all shouted in chrous: “Same!” Which meant that the lengths of the two horizontal lines are of same length. But actually they are not. I have deliberately created these two arrows so that the horizontal line at the bottom is longer than the one above. But we assume straiughtaway that the two lines must be the same length because we are so used to seeing this illusion that we have an automatic response to it. Did we measure the lines? Did we take a closer look to see if they are the same length? No, but yet we seem confident that they are the “same”. We try to be clever and prevent our minds from being tricked by these illusions, but at times, we get tricked even further. So familiarity to something sometimes blinds us to the possibility of differences.

We had a fun and enriching lesson (albeit brief, for I could go on about other types of illusions, such as illusions of the mind, logical fallacies, but not possible in a one-hour class), and I hope my students learn to look a little deeper, a little beyond, a little harder at things around them. When we do, what then do we see?

Nomad. Chameleon. Pilgrim.

“To journey and not be changed is to be a nomad.

To change without journeying is to be chameleon.

To journey and be transformed is to be a pilgrim.”

~Mark Nepo

I don’t want to be just a nomad.

達爾文

人的一生 感情是旋轉門

轉到了最後只剩你我沒分

#278

2 of us, learning to see better

#389

Just a lil' note from me to you

Enter the Worlds

“There’re so many different worlds
So many different suns
And we have just one world
But we live in different ones.”

I love this song from Dire Straits. Just thinking of this song at the start of the new year and of what worlds I will enter and what worlds I will create. Ever since I started teaching General Paper intensively, I have been intrigued by the beauty of the English language, with all its technical details of pronouns, adverbs and split infinitives – a world which I have never entered with such force and excitement before. And starting last month, I took up the offer to tutor two boys in O-Level Maths; as I revised on my differentiation and integration, I entered, or rather re-entered, a world which I thought I had left behind and forgotten. But it is incredibly interesting to revisit an old, familiar landscape of knowledge from the past and use it again. And then when I pick up my history book on Tudor England at night, I get transported into yet another world…

And through this, I have come to realise that I enjoy the flirtations with many different worlds at the same time: history, part-time lecturing, GP, tutoring, Maths, running a business – I need to do many different things together. At the same time. Like a juggler with his eye on the many balls in his hands, up in the air, and all those in between.

Speaking of worlds, you would notice that the title of this blog entry is adapted from Avatar. I have watched the show, and although many reviews speak of the underlying ‘green’ theme in the movie, my historian’s mind actually picked up what I felt was a closer analogy: colonialism.  A technologically superior people intruding upon a group of natives who have to fight guns and bombs with spears and arrows to protect their homeland from exploitation of their precious resources in the gound. Sounds familiar? It seems to me more a leaf taken from the history books than a cautionary tale about the future. Perhaps lessons learnt from the past need to be remade into something else?

Brand-new classes starting in Jan 2010!

Dear friends,

The new year is dawning, and it’s back to a new school year! I’m happy to announce that I’ll be opening new tuition classes starting in Jan 2010. Here are the new classes:

SECONDARY LEVEL

English, Maths (Lower Sec), E Maths, A Maths, Physics, Chemistry

JC LEVEL

General Paper (GP), Economics, Physics, Chemistry, Maths, History

Please do help me pass this message along to your relatives and friends who could be looking for tuition classes as the new year begins. You can ask them to drop me a private message or call me at 6789-2426. More information can be found on my website at www.irwins-study.com. Thanks!

Blessed New Year everyone! =)

I’m officially privileged!

Went to Kinokuniya a few days back to buy two books for my sis, and when I was there, I was persuaded to sign up for their privilege members’ card. So now, I have privilege members’ cards for all the major bookshops: Borders, Popular and Kino! And I noticed something random, which is that all three cards are yellow. Here:

But it was what my mum said when she knew I went to Kinokuniya that really got me bursting out in laughter. She said, “Aiyoh! Everytime you go to a bookshop, I get worried!” The reason being that I would always buy a book or two when I enter a bookshop, as the piles of books on my study table, bedside table, floor, reading chair all testify. And yes, true to form, in addition to the two books that I bought for my sis that day, I also bought a book for myself! =) But don’t tell my mum that as I skilfully mingle the new book with the rest of the books that are lying on the floor surrounding my bed.

Stay Calm and Move On