Welcome.

Okay new idea. Something that I had already discussed a little with Sundheep and Ash (cause we met on the train!)

We could have a portal for our school where people applying to universities can get people's opinion on their essays. This might save our college counsellors some work. There are really a few ways to do it, but all have to consider how sensitive people are in opening up to others about their essays, and plagarism. Two ways I thought of:

1) Do it peer to peer, within the level

Advantages: People might know you better, evaluate your essay better. Times might have changed, so getting someone who is in the know now can help.

Disadvantages: Obvious conflict of interests, people can actually use the site to "source for ideas" to use in their own essays. But then again, we are not really competing within our school are we (after all we only have 200 odd students per cohort). We are competing more with the other JCs in Singapore. That is unless, universities like to compare people with similar credentials.

2) Do it as an alumni thing

Advantages: more experienced perhaps? Less conflict of interests

Disadavantages: Don't really know who you are, opinions are not as personalised.

I personally prefer it as an alumni thing. It would give us something meaningful to do as alumni. But in terms of effectiveness, I am really not so sure. The bigger worry is if our alumni wants to do this at all!

Of course, there are much more details and planning that needs to go into this in order to make it work. I was considering some sort of semi-anonymity system. Am I right to think that people don't really care about remaining anonymous if you are evaluating the essay, but they do care if their essays are the ones being evaluated?

I find that I'm starting to like penning down my thoughts more often. I don't do it for people to read (although they are most welcome to give comments and start more discussions), I do it more to make me thinking more thorough and complete. I have many ideas in my head that just slip away just because I did not bother to put them to paper, which is such a waste.

Anyway, I just had a conversation with my dad and his close friend from Myanmar, my uncle Than Win. Talking to uncle TW made me realise how much our schools really don't teach. Have we ever come across the task of cleaning used lubricating oil from cars in our comfortable world here? I finally see that these are the 'practical things' my father was lamenting that we did not know how to do.

And it's not like uncle TW is only all about practical things, he even discusses with me about the Higgs Boson particle, about spirituality, about chemistry, basically about all kinds of things. When I asked him how he managed to remember facts that he learnt in school from the 70s, he gave some pretty interesting solutions.

One was that he constantly reminded himself of the facts, and whenever he has a new question he immediately acts and seeks out new information. So in that sense, he continuously builds upon his mountain of knowledge. This definitely requires some level of perseverance, and you can imagine the level he is at when he can recall facts from an entire textbook.

The second is more interactive and less methodical. He takes every opportunity to teach someone about something new, to constantly remind himself of the knowledge that he has obtained. I could feel that he was doing just that when he was talking to me about the Higgs Boson Particle. When I reflect back to myself, I now feel as though I have missed many opportunities to cement my learning because I dissed people off when they ask me about something. Like my sister for example, when she was studying for her O levels. We both could have benefited more if I had just adopted this 'teaching yet learning' attitude.

As an engineer, uncle TW has been telling me that I must "get that knowledge, then apply it". It doesn't really matter how you get that knowledge, heck there is an even wider category of knowledge than we are used to. What we normally define as knowledge now is mainly theoretical, perhaps about how many electrons there are in potassium and their orbitals. But what he has shown me is that knowing what crank size for an engine of so and so power by observing his environment on board a ship is also knowledge; being able to tell the carbon content in steel just by the colour of its spark is also knowledge. More often than not, knowledge for practical purposes is gained through more empirical and observational methods.

And to think that we think that we have seen the world if we travelled all around the Western world. I would think that we would learn much more if we go to places like Myanmar, to learn about their can-do attitude because of their having to survive in a much harsher world. I am certainly excited at the prospect of going to Myanmar this January before I enlist, to learn more about the practical side of life.

To have an opinion or not to have one. There are really so many dilemmas in life, if you have an opinion, you risk conforming to some set perspective, to be permanently prejudiced. On the other hand, not having an opinion just shows how one is wishy-washy, and it is really much less interesting if you don't have an opinion. Not having an opinion allows one to remain a sponge, to absorb all the information that is available.

I realise that I am really like that, I really don't have many opinions. Thinking about it, when Mariel asked me about how I thought of my time in council and stuff related to that, I was sort of making up opinions on the go, though they were still based on the information that I had.

When people have strong opinions, I feel as though I am inclined to accept those, especially if they are close friends. In fact, I end up impressed by them more than anything. It could be that I hate to judge things, which could be a good thing in the eyes of some, but it really that seems like a bad thing. Judging things or events accurately could make all the difference between success and failure.

Maybe it is best to form your own opinions and to keep an open mind to new ideas or information. Say if for some reason you detest some guy, you gotta know the exact reason why. Then if the person does something nice or good, you must be able to overcome your prejudice to change your opinion of people. Some say that a leopard never changes his spot, but most of our opinions are formed based on our judgment, or even those of others. So what if our judgment is wrong in the first place?

We should also consider how our opinions are formed. One of my dad's favorite topic seems to be how Singaporeans sometimes look down on Malaysians, saying how it is not safe there, people are corrupted there etc, AND therefore we should not go there. How much do we really know about this to judge things, to come to that conclusion? I don't believe that we would know what kind of crimes are prevalent there, or where it is concentrated. We won't even know how corruption would affect us, the common tourist, directly.

It seems that sometimes we take the opinions of some people and consider them sacred, consciously or not, then we make those opinions ours. I think in that case, seeing things and making judgments on your own is more important than anything.