Thoughts on Charlie Rose's interview with Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg

Really insightful interview by Charlie Rose with Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg.

Some thoughts after watching the interview:

Facebook's strategy - cooperation vs competition
It seems like most of the bigwigs in the tech industry are engaging in multiple fronts of war with some other company. Apple is having this iPhone/iPad war with Google/Amazon/Microsoft, and another dimension of this is the iTunes vs Google Market/Amazon. Google/Amazon/Microsoft is also into cloud computing, putting it in direct competition with Oracle, Salesforce, Rackspace. The list goes on and on. TechCrunch has a great article on the challenges faced by Google. It does seem that other tech giants face similar issues as they expand the ranges of their products and services.

Meanwhile, Facebook has really just stuck to one product/service as they grow. What we see here is a laser-sharp focus on their core competency. And rather than spend the resources to fight off the other tech heavy-weights, Facebook is making the effort to ensure they have their finger in every pie out there. Additionally, by opening up it's platform architecture to other developers/companies, it allows a rich user experience where users can not only socialize, but also to enjoy games, music, videos and services that they couldn't have otherwise. By enhancing the experience, it makes users find Facebook so much more addictive.

But while Facebook has no intention of getting into a fight, Google is taking the fight to them in the form of Google+. While Google hasn't been particularly successful with their social networking projects in the past, no one can really write them off given the amount of resources and talent they possess.

Employing talented engineers
Every company in Silicon Valley wishes to hire more talented engineers than there are available. Zuckerberg and Sandberg are pointing to both the US education system failing to produce enough engineers and immigration policies that restrict the number of engineers they can employ. As they said in the video, it's first, second and third on their priority list.

This is an interesting problem because companies in Singapore also have problems with finding enough engineers, and fewer Singaporeans study engineering or stay in the industry. Former Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Finance and the Prime Minister's Office, Mr Ngiam Tong Dow is wary of Singapore becoming high-cost, low-tech. As he wisely notes, we cannot become a knowledge-based economy except through science and technology.

Young programmers win big

Young programmers win big

Straints Times, July 20, 2009

TALK about starting young: Celine Chan, four, took on competitors far older in a national computer programming contest held here recently.

Celine and her sister, Charlene, eight, proved more than a match for the older competitors, trumping most of them handily in the contest, organised by the Information Technology Standards Committee which is supported by the Infocomm Development Authority (IDA).

Called XtremeApps, the competition required those taking part to program computer applications from scratch.

Armed with just the basics in the Squeak programming language, as well as encouragement - but no help - from mum and dad, the Chan sisters came up with an application called Health Fairies.

Two things interest me about this story. First, it is the age of the girls. I think it's quite hard to even understand what computer programming is about at the age of eight, let alone four. I didn't know what programming was when I was eight. Hmm..I don't think I've even played with a computer when I was eight. Anyway, even though tools are greatly simplifying programming, basic programming stuff like looping, conditionals, function calling, differences between classes and objects,etc can still easily overwhelm a young kid's mind. Then you also need to consider things like how the users interact with the program and the animation. You need a certain degree of logic and training to do programming. So I'm truly impressed that they can not only complete the project, but also beat the older competitors.

Second, it's interesting that they used Squeak to implement their project. Squeak is an implementation of the Smalltalk programming language. Most programmers I've talked to have never heard of Smalltalk, but I did manage to use the VisualWorks implementation  for about 3 years for work. Generally, you hear about the SAP, J2EE, .Net stuff powering the enterprise systems, so it is mildly surprising that Smalltalk used to be powering one of the biggest pay systems here. All those policies, payment stuff, bonuses, income tax, CPF computation in beautiful Smalltalk code. Funny how things appear though rose-tinted glasses. Anyway, we have difficulty recruiting people because most people consider Smalltalk to be an antiquated language. There really isn't a market for Smalltalk so no one wants to learn it, at least in Singapore. I'm a bit language agnostic (Ok, actually I prefer Java) so I didn't really think it mattered that much.

Thoughts on starting the school day later

I was reading the Straits Times the other day about the positive benefits about starting the school day later.  Basically, students would perform better academically. However, as bus operators who ferry students to schools also ferry worker to offices/factories, they pick up the students on the same schedule as before, Schools that have pushed back their start times find some students still arriving at the same time and these students have to endure a longer wait. The articles suggests pushing back the starting time even further back (to say 9am) so that bus operators have enough time to ferry workers and students. Parents would also have some time for breakfast with their kids. Anyway, I saw this letter to the ST forums:

Teachers and other staff will also benefit from later start to school day

MANY parents like me are in full agreement with the article, 'Start school later and let children sleep longer' (Jan 9).

Finally, after so many years, we have an article that puts this matter in perspective. How is it that our children's well-being is determined by bus operators keen to make more money by operating two services instead of one? Since Singapore has no natural resources and depends on labour to sustain the economy, do the authorities not want to evaluate the ramifications of sleep deprivation on our children in their growing years?

 

Apart from that, will teachers and other school staff not also benefit from this positive change? I am certain that teachers and staff will welcome the change as this means aligning their working hours to those of their spouses and other family members. With positive changes like this, the Ministry of Education will see less attrition of good teachers too.

 

Furthermore, if school starts later at 8.30am or 9am, schoolchildren will also depend less on school buses as working parents can take them to school on the way to work. It is ridiculous to allow children's and school staff's well-being to be decided by bus operators. It is time the authorities looked into this and not continue this mindless trend.

 

With sufficient rest, children will not find school as tiring and tedious and will enjoy it more. Teachers will also be less sleep-deprived and able to deal with work stress better too.

 

Ginny Leow (Mdm)

Some thoughts.

First, can we fault the bus operators for wanting to make more money by operating two services instead of one? Of course not, these are private business entities and they provide a solution to the problem of getting kids to schools. How much of a rise in transportation fees are parents willing to bear so that bus operators can maintain their current profits by running one service instead of two? And since labour is indeed needed to sustain the economy, it is important as well to ferry workers to their workplaces as well and it should not be denigrated.

Second, what are the ramifications for other motorists, public commuters and transport operators? And not all students take school buses, quite a lot of them make use of public transport as well and starting school later would definitely add a significant amount of traffic during the morning rush hours. Feeder and intra-town bus services would be most severely affected as many primary and secondary schools are located near to student's homes. They would be jam-packed with students at a time when hordes of people are rushing to work. Train passengers would be affected as well but would not be as much since student traffic is usually localised (at least for primary and secondary students).

To add on, if parents drive and need to drop their kids off, traffic around the school might slow down as well. If they don't, they'll need to take the public transport to send their kids to school. Either way we're looking at a situation where almost everyone spends more time in their daily commute and a certain proportion of them needs to wake up earlier. And the reason for this is so that students can spend more time sleeping. How ironic is that?

If school is to start later.....make it a lot later

Starting school later is a good idea, but clashing with the peak hour traffic is not. 9.30 or 10am would be a better  time to start school as the crowd would have thinned out by then

Isn't that misled minister also ......

the one that sang for the NKF charity show? Given the questions raised regarding the minister's involvment in NKF, you would have thought he would be more prudent and get his assistants to do background checks on organisations that he would become associated with. Totally agree with DK on the point that even though the minister would like to distance himself from the degree mill, the degree mill got him to make the speech exactly because they would appear to be on close relations with gvernment agencies. Few would expect the government would cheat them or be cheated by the degree mill.

 

 

Links to articles:

Worthless degrees

 

Trust private schools here?

Thoughts on Singapore becoming high-cost, low-tech

Recently there's been a glut of articles in the Straits Times on the subject of engineering in Singapore.

Importance of technology

The first was when ST published a few articles based on an interview with Mr Ngiam Tong Dow on 22 May, 2008. It was pretty interesting to see what are the man's views on topics such as fighting inflation, the rapid promotion of scholars, and the tax structure. In particular, I was quite intrigued by the topic of Singapore becoming high-cost, low-tech. In his view, "Singapore must ensure its best and brightest continue to become engineers and not just bankers". It is the only way to become a knowledge-based economy, he says.

So why are more Singaporeans shying away from science, tech and engineering? By that I mean two things:

1. A higher proportion of Singaporean students are picking up other disciplines like business or arts rather than science and engineering.


2. More Singaporean grads leaving/less grads taking up tech-related jobs.

That's what anecdotal evidence seems to be telling me. I guess it boils down to money and job prospects. Even though a fresh grad would earn a pretty decent salary as an engineer (this also depends on the kind of industry), it'll still pale in comparison to those in finance, banking, law and medicine. And the influx of foreign workers/students and exodus of jobs really paint a bleak future for engineers.

Engineering is still prized as a academic qualification even though not viewed favourably by students. In another ST interview on 26 May, 2008, Ms Lee Bee Wah notes that even though the median engineer salary trails that of the top eight earners for six professions used to compute the civil service pay, a third of the top executives were engineers by training. She adds that engineers often move out of engineering jobs and many are headhunted by banks and MNCs. Students are also increasing drawn to business and medicine.

Supply Issue

On 31 May, 2008, ST published an article about engineering in Yale and Harvard, with a snippet of text that mentions Mr Lim Hng Kiang saying local institutions are meeting domestic demand with "a steady pipeline of 30,000 engineering & technical manpower each year".

Finally, on 1 Jun, 2008, ST has this article foreign students in local universities. It brought up the phenomena that more foreign students are enrolled in engineering and computing compared to other courses. These are the courses that are shunned by local students.

Implications

So now we have this interesting situation:

• The top brass agree that tech and engineering is important for Singapore's development.


• The skills and training of an engineer makes him suitable for other roles like working in a bank or MNC, and this is recognized by headhunters.


• Lesser locals are studying entering tech and engineering and entering the field , while more foreigners are.

It appears likely that we are going to face a future where both the developers of technology and the people who manage them are going to be foreigners.

Links:

His worry: Is Singapore becoming high cost, low tech?

A steady pipeline of 30,000 engineering & technical manpower each year

Engineers have "role in community building"

Foreign students in varsities

Thoughts on article "Open-source talent: Dearth or plenty?"

I was reading an article the other day on Digital Life. I thought the article brought up some interesting points.  Below is an excerpt of the article.

DIGITAL LIFE * APRIL 1, 2008 * THE STRAITS TIMES

Open‑source talent: Dearth or ‑plenty?
One firm moves to Windows while another stays its open‑source course, IRENE THAM reports

WHILE more users are going down the open‑source path, one Singapore firm will be ending its nine‑year journey on that route. Its grouse ‑ a lack of open‑source talent here.

The company is Virtual Map, which provides road maps through its streetdirectory.com website. It also develops and hosts Web‑based map applications for corporate clients.

Since its founding in 1999, the firm has been hosting its map applications on open‑source operating system, MandrakeSoft,  renamed Mandriva three years ago.

All was well until last year, when its IT administrator left. "We couldn't replace him," said Eugene Lim, director of business development at Virtual Map.

The firm ended up hiring someone well‑versed in another Linux operating system called Fedora Core.

Eugene said because skills are "not portable”  between the different open‑source flavours, his company had to move its map applications to the new operating system.

"We spent three weeks doing that all because of one guy."

The firm's frustrations did not end there. Recent , it found itself repeating the three‑week exercise, moving applications from Fedora Core to yet another Linux distribution,  as "the open-source community has decided to end support for Fedora”.

What this means is that the community will no longer develop security patches and feature improvements on the Fedora operating system.

In October last year, the firm turned to mainstream software vendor Microsoft for help.

"It would be great if we could have only one server operating system running all the time and one neck to choke if things don't work," said Eugene.

Although I'm not a system administrator, I've done some administrative tasks before on different Linux distros.  So I do find the following comment quite strange.

Eugene said because skills are "not portable”  between the different open‑source flavours, his company had to move its map applications to the new operating system.

I think stuff like quota management, user/file permissions,  network configuration, email/web server configuration, setting up cron jobs, etc are pretty portable skills.  Even though certain specifics might differ, it's very likely you can take your set of skills (and looking up some man pages) on one distro and work comfortably on another distro if you're working on the same tasks. Only potential problem is package management but it's nothing so major that Google can't handle.

Another comment that appears to be problematic is this.

... as "the open-source community has decided to end support for Fedora”.

Erm...I checked the wiki on Fedora Core and guess what the actual scenario is? Fedora Core 6 has reached its end of life, but 7, 8 are still supported.

 A reminder to users: Fedora Core 6 will reach its end of life for updates on
Friday, December 7, 2007.

Fedora 7 will remain supported until one month past the release of Fedora 9
(as things stand, this would be roughly through the end of May, 2008).

 

 - The Fedora Board

Lastly, do I see some management problems here? I mean, if you are having so much problem with the departure of a staff, to the point of having to change the OS multiple times, clearly there is some problem with the human resource management and ops and support planning. Is there any plan on the course of action to take to keep the system going in case the system admin is down? Is there no person who can cover for him? In response to the comment "We spent three weeks doing that all because of one guy," I'll say that the guy is not the system admin, but his manager.

Chantal Sebire's plight and the euthanasia debate

I was flipping through the papers today when I saw a very shocking image. It was a picture of a woman whose face was highly disfigured because of cancer. It's a very sad and unfortunate case, and it's one of the more extreme cases that I had read about. I sympathize with her plight and her lack of options to decide how she should live or die. We all aspire to have a good life, but if we are not allowed to have that then at least it should be bearable. Failing that, let us be granted a good death if we so choose.

French Housing Minister Christine Boutin said that if France legalizes "the right to kill, we're heading towards a barbarian society." Perhaps so if the person you want to kill is someone else, but surely not if the person is yourself. While we should not allow anyone to kill themselves over trivial reasons, it's evident that Sebire's was suffering immensely with no end or relief in sight. In such desperate situations surely it would be humane and human to allow her to end her life in a dignified way, surrounded by her loved ones?

Woman with disfiguring cancer dies, euthanasia debate lives

Euthanasia debate woman found dead

Death Sets French Euthanasia Debate

Get your resumes into a thumbdrive before going to Career Expo 2008

Just returned from JobsDB's Career Expo 2008. In short, it is better than a lot of job fairs I've been to. That being said, I've not been to those since 2006. There's actually more booths manned by companies genuinely looking to employ people, rather than by educational institutes trying to get more students. And the place's not overly-crowded, which means a more pleasurable experience. The JobsDB staff are generally helpful, and some are pretty sweet-looking too :)

It seems they are trying to implement some IT stuff to facilitate the job hunt so we can avoid pen and paper, which is a good move. Save the trees, yeah? It would help though, that people are aware that they do not to bring hard copies but soft copies of their resume instead.

Some thing you need to note when you go to the job fair

• You need to fill in a form to get some sort of a pass for searching for or applying to jobs.


• Do bring a softcopy of your resume so you can update your database record (Else you'll have to enter it manually). The booth for updating of resume is to the left hand side of the entrance. Once it's done you get a green sticker.


• Now you can go start your exploration of the Expo.

$20,000 requirement on CPF OA

(Reposted as WP somehow deleted it.....)

I’ve read the Sunday Times piece on 7th Oct 2007, “Taking a closer look at the growth of unit trusts”, with great interest, because I’m concerned with the impact the latest changes to CPF will have on my funds bought under the CPF Investment Scheme (CPFIS).

There will be a minimum requirement of $20,000 on the Ordinary Account (OA) before you can use money from the OA for investment, so if you have $25,000 in the OA, you can use only $5000 for investment. It seems that the changes will take effect in April 2008.

I’m a little dismayed by this development, because my financial advisor has helped me come up with a portfolio that’s beating 2.5% by a mile. Even with the additional 1% on OA interest that is part of the CPF changes, I’m still getting much better returns on my portfolio than from CPF. There is a lot of talk about the risk-free nature of CPF returns, how the government guarantees it and no one else can make such claims.

Risks besides loss of capital

Yes it is risk-free returns, but are there other risks besides potential loss of captial? I think so. To me, there is a potential loss of opportunities. I’ve randomly selected some bond funds from fundsupermart:

ABN AMRO Star Asia Bond
AIGIF Singapore Bond Fund
Franklin Templeton F-Global Bond Fund
Henderson Global Bond Fund - Class A Units
ING Singapore Dollar Bond Fd
Schroder Asian Premium Bond Fund
UOB United International Bond Fd
UOB Optimix Asian Bond

I looked at their performance for the last 10 years, and all of them beat 3.5% with the exception of Schroder Asian Premium Bond Fund which has been established for less than a year I think. This is just a quick-and-dirty look, let’s see what the Sunday Times report says:

How CPFIS funds have done

    THE Sunday Times commissioned fund data house Morningstar Asia to assess the performance of CPFIS-approved unit trusts over a 10-year period up to the end of June this year. Note that the table provided does not reflect when a fund joined CPFIS. Its track record might range from three to 10 years, but it may have joined the scheme two years ago, for example.

Of the 53 funds with a 10-year history, 43 grew over 5 per cent every year in the period studied. Of the 156 funds with a five-year history, 128 beat this growth. In the three years to June 30, 145 funds out of 185 have managed at least a 5 per cent annual return.

While underperforming funds tend to be excluded from the CPFIS, it seems clear that, in absolute numbers, more funds have beaten the annual 5 per cent returns in recent years.

My point is that it is risk-free returns, but there are other opportunities lost as well, especially when so many of them have beaten the annual 5% returns rate.

Different minimum requirement based on age

It’ll take me some time before I can invest again, once the new changes kick in. What I cannot understand is why can’t they have some sort of tiered system where you have different minimum OA requirements based on age. For example, let’s say you’re 20-29 years old, you need to have $10,000 in the OA, anything above that you can invest. If you’re 30-39, you need to have $20,000, or something like that.

The article, “Taking a closer look at the growth of unit trusts”, is reproduced on:

ChannelNewsAsia Forums

Alvin Soong

Thoughts on Joseph Chia’s letter on “If There’re Seasons…”

About 2 weeks ago, I read Chim Kang's piece on Zao Bao ( a Chinese daily, dated 28 Aug 2007 IIRC) about his conversation with a middle-aged female teacher. They had just finished watching the musical "If There're Seasons...", and the teacher remarked that it was such a good show that she wanted to bring her students to watch it. Chim Kang pointed out that there were some parts of the musical which touched on the subject of homosexuality. She dismissed such a view as ancient, noting that there are much more liberal views on the Net that the young were exposed to. "What are you going to do when parents complain about the musical having 'objectionable content'?" It was then that she realised the possible repercussions she might face.

As it happens in real life

And just a few days later, we see a concerned parent writing to the Straits Times forum about the subject. Letter reproduced below.

Sep 1, 2007

'Gay' musical should have come with rating

RECENTLY, my family and I attended the Chinese musical, If There're Seasons..., by The Theatre Practice at the Drama Centre. By and large, it was a good production featuring various familiar songs written by local composer Liang Wern Fook.

While it was a good production, I was very disturbed by part of the story. One of the characters, Ah Qiang played by Sebastian Tan, turned out to have been jilted by his boyfriend in a homosexual relationship. His boyfriend then came back to woo Ah Qiang with love songs pledging his unending love, and even gave up his heterosexual marriage and his relationship with his parents, in order to be with Ah Qiang again.

Given that Ah Qiang was not the main character, and that the homosexual relationship was not even the main story, I wonder if it was necessary for them to be included.

I was even more disturbed because there were many schoolchildren, perhaps on an excursion trip, and families with young children among the audience. The children may not have the maturity to understand the implications of such a controversial subject.

When I checked the musical's website, as well as ticket-seller Sistic's website, there was no rating or information to warn audiences of the musical's content. No wonder there were so many children and families in the audience.

Perhaps this is an area the Censorship Board needs to look into.



Joseph Chia Yoong Leong

First, we should keep in mind that the Joseph probably did not come up with the title to the letter. The branding of "If There're Seasons..." as a "gay musical" is quite likely to be the idea of the editors, just to grab the reader's attention. Moving on, take a look at what are some of the comments to Joseph's letter. Morality, human rights, religion, biology, theology are all mentioned, you know, the mind-numbing, heavy-duty subjects that you don't discuss over dinner. There's quite a lot of strong reactions being triggered here, so you can tell that Joseph's letter and the reader's comments actually touched a raw nerve in some people.

Portrayal of gays is common, so what's the issue?

While society is still divided on the issue of gay rights, we are not short of portrayals of gays in the mainstream media. I mean, we see depictions, caricatures or distortions of gays in a lot of TV programs or movies that we watch. Now I haven't watched the musical so I'm not sure what kind of homosexual scenes we are talking about, whether it's explicit or sensual or what not. But I'm going to assume that it is not something that is different from similar scenes shown during normal prime-time TV as one, the musical was not slapped with a PG or R rating, and two, I haven't heard a people emphasizing the gay scenes. What then is the problem?

Exploration of homosexual love and expectations of standardised ratings

I'm not sure, but I reckon it's due to 2 factors. First, the portrayal of homosexuals on TV are usually in comic roles or some secondary role. And these roles may delve into the conflict with the traditional concept of family but they do not explore the love and relationship between them. In this sense, the roles in "If There're Seasons..." are a significant departure from the usual ones we seen on TV. Can't remember any show shown on national TV with regards to this. In the case of movies, it'll usually be rated PG or NC-16 and above I think.

Second, assuming that a TV show or movie will be tagged as PG and above, then it is interesting to note that "If There're Seasons..." is not given a rating at all. Does this mean that this topic is not as taboo as it seems, and that the censors feel that it doesn't need a rating? But then, "Spider Lilies", which dealt with some aspects of lesbianism, was given a R21. Even "Evan Almighty" is PG. Is this a case of double standards?

MOM’s Report on Wages in Singapore, 2006

The annual report on wages in Singapore has been released recently by Ministry of Manpower. If you're wondering whether your recent pay increment makes your salary comparable to others in your industry, this is the best place to start. Take a look at the the reports here. There's a lot of data in the reports, and it can be used to find certain trends and info.

Top 100 jobs in Singapore

Salary.sg has put up a ranked list (two lists, in fact) of the top 100 jobs in Singapore in terms of pay. While I believe that pay should not be the sole criteria for evaluating a job, it remains a very important one. We do need to put bread on the dining table after all, and pay decides whether that piece of bread is slice of plain Gardenia or loaf from Delifrance.

As for the actual jobs in the list, I've taken a quick look and there's no surprises there. What is disappoint for me is that it appears that the pay for those in the public sector are not factored in, eg teachers, policemen and firemen. I can't find them in the list. It's worse considering that my job should be out of the top 100 if they had been included...lol

Wage differentials between the sexes

There's no doubt that men do earn more than women, something which we all recognize. What is interesting is that the difference is that the gender wage difference
ranged from 5.7% for professionals to 46% for plant & machine operators for those aged 35 – 39. Quoting the full report,

The differential mainly stems from the tendency for females to disrupt their workforce participation for family reasons which reduces the years of service and experience of working women. Other possible factors include differences in skills, qualifications, job nature/level and working experience as well as possibly higher incidence of males working overtime than females.

If this is the case, I see the huge gap as an indication of how some jobs can utilise IT to minimise the impact when women are at the workplace. I believe it's quite common for companies to have flexible arrangements to allow women to work from home.

Little difference between NUS Bachelor of Computing for honours and non-honours

This is somewhat surprising to me. From table 11, the mean monthly gross starting pay for a graduate with Bachelor of Computing is $2,544 while it is $2,600 for someone with honours. In terms of pay alone, the difference is not significant enough to me. The opportunity cost is one year of expenditure, lost income and experience. Perhaps there are other factors like the research experience gained during the extra year and that students with honours are more employable (87.4% vs 79.5% were employed). As a side-note, SMU students from the Information System Management had a mean monthly gross starting pay of $2,975. That's a pretty big difference considering Information Systems students probably learn the same topics in NUS.

Doing National Service increases your pay

It's true, from table 12, people who have served National Service have a higher mean monthly gross starting salary. But why? Does it imply that employers see that National Service makes a person better to handle work?

Granado Espada in Singapore's education system

Was surfing the web for Granado Espada related stuff, when I found out that the game is being integrated into Singapore's educational programmes. The piece of news can be found on Today and ChannelNewsAsia, though somewhat dated. Quoting the report:

SINGAPORE: So, you think your child is spending too much time on computer games at home. What if he tells you he'll be playing them at school too - with his teacher's permission?

Next month, at least two schools here are expected to pilot a unique initiative to introduce students, teachers and principals to the world of online gaming as part of the curriculum.

None of the schools have been identified yet as plans are still being fine-tuned and awaiting the authorities' endorsement.

Then again, perhaps it was only a matter of time before the drive to harness IT to the Singapore school experience turned to the powerful influence of role-playing games (RPG) among the young.

The initiative represents a "shift" in direction for the education system, said Assistant Professor Muhammad Faishal Ibrahim, who sits on the Government Parliamentary Committee for Education.

"I see gaming as a new and broadened platform for learning, and by making it interesting to students, it will help motivate them to learn new skills," Prof Muhammad Faishal, who was pleased to learn that teachers would be around to guide the youngsters, told TODAY.

Is that cool or what? I wouldn't mind playing Granado Espada as part of the school programme if I'm still a teenage gamer. What I'm really curious about is what kind of skills they hope the students can pick up or how it can enhance their learning experience.

Granado Espada - a suitable game for this experiment?

First, the game has an awkward number of mis-spellings when it was ported over to English from Korea, not sure if the English teachers are gonna sit up and complain.

Second off I'm not sure why Granado Espada was chosen over other games such as The Sims, Second Life, Command and Conquer or something. Yeah sure the game has great visuals and music, but I'm not sure it has much depth. From my point of view, the game involves a lot of grinding. If you are going to get students deeply involved in it, they will be spending vast amounts of time leveling up or completing quests. I have my doubts about the life-skills and decision-making insight they will reap from the game, despite what the report says:

Following focus group discussions with principals, teachers, students, academics and counsellors, the RPG Granado Espada was "carefully selected" to have its colourful fantasy characters introduced into the school curriculum.

Mr Thomas Chong, director of education initiatives at Infocomm Asia Holdings (IAH), which is spearheading the initiative, said it was "not your typical slash-and-kill" game, but one that can help players learn life-skills such as decision-making and problem-solving.

"This is not an educational game dressed up as an MMOG (massively-multi-player online game). Rather, we want to ask students whether, say, a war can be won without fighting, but instead by signing a treaty? We want them to see the merits of discussion, strategising, and coming up with alternative ideas," he said.

Singapore is believed to be the first country in the world planning to use Grenado Espada as a learning tool. And lest parents are worried it might open the school doors to other addictive RPGs, the online games operator gave the assurance that any future games introduced would undergo the same strict selection process.

Granado Espada in National Education - GENE

This is pretty interesting to me. Remember the videos Singapore in Clay Art and Singapore in Sand Art? Those were the videos shown by the PM during the last National Day Rally speech when he talked about making National Education less boring. Now, there is contest for producing a machinima (machine animation) for National Education using Granado Espada. The themes are "Singapore is our homeland; this is where we belong", "We must preserve racial and religious harmony", and such. I'm guessing we may get to see the winning entries during the National Day Rally this year. A sample is included here.

For the potential of using Granado Espada machinima in story-telling, take a look at the rather famous Lonely Hearts Club clip.

Part 1

[youtube]QgdXhZvJylc[/youtube]
Part 2

[youtube]NMpiENuQD3g[/youtube]

Thoughts on Li Hongyi's email and the "Chain of Command"

Was surfing the net just now when I came across this on tomorrow.sg.This 2LT Li Hongyi apparently emailed a letter of complaint to some some people who had no business knowing it, and the recipients included some big shots like the Defence Minister, Chief of Defence and Chief of Army. Then I realised that this was on the news yesterday. Well, jumping the chain of command is something we do hear of now and then during our time in NS, so it's nothing earth-shattering. We're frequently reminded not to do it, so it must take something extra to send the email to the people in the top echelon of SAF. Either you've got extra guts, or you're extra stupid, or you're extra equal. As it turns out, Li Hongyi is PM Lee Hsien Loong's second son. That complicates matters somewhat.

He did the right thing
The letter, with important names and details blanked out out, are reproduced on The States Times and Simply Jean , among other blogs. My first thought is, he did the right thing. He saw the injustice in his unit and he took action to correct it. Even if he did it because he was aggrieved, there is no doubt what LTA X did, or that his superiors trying to cover up for LTA X, were wrong. I think a lot of us have witnessed unjust acts during our NS stints, but were impeded by powerlessness or fear of retribution, so we did not report it.

While some have offered the view that Li Hongyi might have breached the Official Secrets Act (OSA), but I'm not sure about that. It is grossly inappropriate to email the Defence Minister or Chief of Defence Force, but they belong to the same branch in the hierarchy, hence it is not outside of their authority. Jumping the chain of command, but there's nothing else there. On the other hand, he did email to a whole lot of other people as well. Who they are, I can't tell, but with this kind of letter, you'll suppose he'll be wiser not to mass-mail loads of people about it. But the leaking of this email to the public definitely amounts to a breach of the OSA. I'm sure SAF is conducting an internal investigation about this leak right now.

Chain of command suppresses the reporting of problems
The whole idea of this chain of command thing reinforces the perception that you'll have to work your way up the chain to air your grievance, and if somewhere along the chain some superior judges that your case is frivolous or something, you'll meet with some undesirable consequences. Given that there is little information about what proper channels are available (especially for the those not in leadership positions), and that there is a lot of hearsay about the ineffectiveness of things like the SAF hotline and being blacklisted for reporting certain stuff, it's no surprise that a lot of servicemen face a lot of problems but don't voice out, due to ignorance and fear.

An important issue is the attitude of the commanders in leading their men. Can they command the trust of the men? How serious do they view the problems reported to them? From a typical , corporal-and-below point-of-view the whole channel of redressing grievances fail when one or two commanders in the chain belittle or mishandle your problem. If your commander fails you, are you confident that your problem will be given different treatment from another commander whom you always see him hanging around with in the officer mess or at the canteen?

Check your recipient list and think twice before hitting the SEND button
It's very easy to just add people to the recipient list and send the emails out to them, but it's very easy to come back and haunt you as well. Some of my camp-mates sent out emails complaining about some other people just before they ORD, and some of these emails were circulated like crazy. We do bitch a lot among ourselves about people who slack or don't do their area cleaning or some problem with our superiors, but it's a different matter to put it down in writing. And once it's written, digitally or otherwise, you'll want it to reach the hands of the right people, not people who treat it as something to talk about over canteen break.

Looking for the original TJC forums?

Have been getting a few visitors who are looking for the TJC forums. Well, the bad news is, it doesn't exist anymore. The school admin decided to pull the plug without informing us. The promise of an "upgraded" forum has not been realised. You're still seeing the message below, after the forum went offline for like 2 months?


However,  the good news, is that ashke has started a new forum for us, called the TJ Rebel Forums. Instills some revolutionary vibes, hmm. Anyway, if you are looking for the original TJC forums, you'll probably be better off starting here.

Poly route shut for average students

Recently, there was this letter to the Straits Times about average students being squeezed out of the poly courses of their choice by students who could have made it to JC.

Article can be found here.

Students also weighed in with their opinions in the Sunday Times. Polys are cranking out more attractive courses and it is increasingly easier for diploma holders to go on and obtain a degree (not necessarily from a local university), I guess that partly explains why more students are opting for the poly route.

Are there any implications when many highly qualified students take to the polys rather than the JCs? For one, will it raise the quality of the poly education? Can we assume that by and large that these students will take the top positions in poly? Granted that poly education is a completely different kettle of fish from both secondary school and JC, let me indulge in this little thought experiment a while. If this is true, that is, people who excelled in O levels will generally perform well in polys, then what does it imply for the 'mountain range of excellence' that PM Lee was referring to?

Taken from a MOE speech:

Let me start with many peaks of excellence. It’s something we have been talking about for quite some time. But it’s something which we continue to work on. To develop each child, his unique interests, his unique talents.  To help him to grow, and if he has something special, to enable him to express it, and to achieve that excellence, that fulfilment, that ability to become what he could be and make a contribution. Not all kids are the same. Not all kids can take the same approach. Some we can lecture, some we have to guide, some we have to encourage, others we work with them hands-on and inspire them by your presence. But whatever the kid’s interest, we must provide many paths for him to grow and to develop.  We need to build up this whole mountain range of excellence so that individually we are strong, but as a team, we are invincible.

Well, for one, having more peaks of excellence does not mean more people will reach the top. It could be the case that the people occupying the top positions are the same ones who would have done so anyway. They are just doing it in a different area. So the picture is that instead of 50 mountain climbers gathered on the peak, we have 10 peaks with 5 climbers on each. The status quo remains, but they have more oxygen to themselves. In the spirit of widening the definition of success, I'm not sure if that is all that different. Because, besides recognising success in different fields, another factor to consider is social mobility. How easy or hard is it for people who aren't traditionally considered excellent to grow and develop in the field of their choice?

Obviously, the concept of the "mountain range of excellence" is more important to those who aren't already strong academically, because of the qualifying criteria of certain schools and courses. But if these students are being displaced by better qualified students from their preferred schools or courses, I'll think that it will be harder for them to be strong individually. I'm assuming that students who get into the first one or second course of their choice will have greater passion than those who don't and this is a critical factor. This doesn't always hold of course, but in general I think it is the case.

Of course, this is just looking at the issue from a very narrow angle. Being the meritocracy that we are, it is logical to accept that better students should have more choice. After all, they've earned it. And quotas on course enrollment is always bound by the iron laws of supply and demand.

Why the “upgraded” TJ forums will be a flop

For about 5 years, I was frequenting the TJ forums. It was a forum board managed by the Temasek Junior College IT club, and was open to students, alumni, as well as members of the public. There's quite a lot of interesting discussions, debates and sharing on the forum, and I've sharpened my analytical and writing skills by defending my views and attacking other people's arguments. I've also benefited from others relating their experience on life and work. Overall it has been an enriching experience, though at times things can get quite heated or boring.

First sign of upgrading - forum unplugged

Over the last few days, I had problems connecting to the forums. I guessed it was some server or network problem, so imagine my surprise when I received an email about the school admin deciding to take the forum down. Soon after, this message appeared when I tried to access the site.



That sounds OK right? Well, I was referred to a temporary forum where I learned more of what was going on. Especially revealing was enemychaser's post somewhere here.

Hey people, sorry about not informing you guys on time. Actually I wasn't even informed of the shutdown until well, it actually went down. Didn't even get to post any messages.

Anyway, from what I heard from the tech guys (my teacher in charge didn't tell me anything at all), the forums are closed down to "protect" the reputation of TJC, whatever that means. Sounds like a pretty half assed answer to me, to be honest, not to mention that we didn't even get to protest, as makoto had said. So folks, please accept my apologies. =(

What's up with this reputation thing?

I can guess a few things. A few TJCians themselves going around the forums making silly and disrespectful comments like calling teachers their servants. But there are only a few of such people around, so I don't think it warrants measures spelled out here.

To start off, the TJC forums is not being shut down, just that a couple of changes will be implemented. To the best of my knowledge, a key reason why the forums will undergo these changes is accountability.

A key difference is that the TJ forums will be almost (I'll come to that later) exclusively TJCians
only. From what I understand, posters will have their names displayed on the forums, though the exact nature of that (appearing next to each post? or only in profiles, etc) is still unknown.

That does not mean that ex- and non- TJCians will be unable to participate in the forums, however. This group of people will be able to apply for an account, though approval will have to be granted (again, details are blurry) before these accounts may be used for posting.

MadMax, as always, hits the nail on the head.

Perhaps she has removed the forum out of fear of disapproval by the MOE, when students discuss such 'controversial' topics as religion, terrorism and politics. History has shown us that quelling discussion of controversial topics benefits noone. It is by suppression that we breed ignorance, and by ignorance that we breed racism, fear and intolerance. It is only by open discussion that we learn to understand and tolerate. And perhaps this is the time to say that the TJC forum will survive with or without her authority. The only difference is that there will be no moderation, there will be noone to prevent posts on the oppressive dynasty of LKY, or the illegal sharing of files via forum links. However, the TJC name will still stand above this forum. Whether it is "The alternative TJC forum", or "TJC forums revived", the school name will still be present and used as an identity. If it is the reputation of TJC that the principal is looking to protect, she has taken the wrong path. Abolishment leads to Dissent leads to Underground Movement.

In the war of reputations: Keep your friends close, keep your enemies closer, and keep your students where you can moderate them.

Why the "upgraded" TJ forums will be a flop

Whatever the reason for the changes, if the stated changes do go through, it can only lead to blandness and monotony.

First, anonymity encourages people to speak up more, on more varied subjects. It gives people a (false?) sense of security and freedom from the pressure to conform. Taking anonymity from them is going to make a lot of them freeze up and worry about the social consequences of what they post. Will they be gossiped about, will they be ostracized?

Second, there is an additional barrier for alumni and the public. I'll say that most of the prominent and active forum participants are the people from these groups. Subjecting these contributors to some sort of arbitrary screening process is going to breed some ill-will.They might not even register at all. Some might feel indignant, especially those who've spent some time and built up a fine reputation in the community. For new registrants, this just means another hurdle to cross. The additional screening process is not going to make it easier to join in. I'm just wondering what kind of criteria we're looking at and how many will drop at the first hurdle.

Third, the presence of better alternatives will make the "upgraded" TJ forums even less attractive. It's like you know how bad a product is, but if you place a clearly superior alternative beside it, the original product seems a lot worse. Same case here. If a new forum is really created, I can imagine the kind of embarrassment the "upgraded" forum will suffer from. I'll say, let them compete head to head. See which forum will have more users, more posts, more varied and interesting content at the end of one year. If someone suggests this to the new prinicpal, I wonder what he/she has to say.

The myth of the eight glasses - How much water do we really need?

I was reading the newspapers over the weekend, and I came across this piece of news about water intoxication. A radio station in California held a contest where contestants had to drink lots of water and hold in their pee to win a Nintendo Wii. One of the contestants, a mother of three by the name of Jennifer Strange, died hours after the competition from water intoxication. Besides being a freaky incident, this piece of news caught my attention as I've recently resolved to drink more water. While I don't think I'm in danger of electrolyte imbalance or anything, it just made me think, how much water do we need to drink? Assuming we are drinking water within safe limits, is more water good? How much is safe anyway?

Actually, it looks like drinking more water is a goal set by many. Just look at how many people extol the virtues of drinking more water. From better complexion, increased alertness and loss of weight, it seems that increased water intake can help you do it all. Or can it? According to this, we can probably do fine with about four glasses of water each day. The claim that the average person needs to drink eight glasses of water per day to avoid being chronically dehydrated, according to the website, is just an urban legend. But there are benefits to being well-hydrated.

So, do we really need to drink eight glasses of water a day? I guess we can do fine with less, but there's really no harm in that volume of water, unless you have some special condition. So I'm sticking to my resolution and see if the benefits really are that many :-)

Do you want a camera to be poking into your face every time your sneeze?

I was talking to the taxi-driver last Friday morn on the ECP, it seems that some people are taking taxis as motels or something. There was a lesbian couple who were doing it recently, and he had a few other couples who can't wait as well. Why can't these people can't keep their urges in check? Anyway, I've become a bit cautious about inspecting the cleanliness of where I seat after that conversation.

I've seen that some people engage in kissing and groping or other bad behaviour on the SBS buses and the MRT trains, but the videotaping of a sex act on the buses still comes as a surprise to me on two counts. One, that the couple actually did it on the bus. Two, someone actually captured it on video and posted it online. I'm not sure which is worse, but I'll take it that the former is unequivocally bad. Now, what about the latter?

Kway Teow Man's refutations of Andy Ho's reasoning
The Kway Teow Man has put up a piece on public shaming and citizen journalism. In it, he disputes certain points in Andy Ho's article on the same subject. His arguments are

1. In cyber-shaming, the person doesn't carry the picture or movie on his/her forehead and there is some sort of forgiveness over time and it's not permanent.


2. Gossip is unfounded and often cannot be verified. Here, we are talking about EVIDENCE of wrong-doing

I think these 2 points do not stand up to scrutiny.

The Web does not forget
First, when an incident first erupts in cyberspace, it creates a massive wave which eventually dies down. But does the matter end there, do people forget? No, because of two things. People who record the event and put it on their websites or blogs, and search engines and aggregators. As an example, why is Tammy NYP back in the Technorati Top Searches? Because of hyperlinks, blog aggregators, etc. Because people remember. You can be sure if some issue about racist scholars crops up or musicians defaulting NS reemerges, a certain Chua CZ and Melvin Tan will be mentioned in blogs again and will eventually be picked up by aggregators . Anyway, I'm still getting some searches on Wee Shu Min....lol. In this sense, the area effect is large.

And the thing with search engines is that the longer your content lives, the more likely someone will link to you, and the more likely your content will withstand the test of time. Meaning, old content is given more priority by search engines, and it is harder for an issue to be completely forgotten. I can google someone up and see, OK, this guy said some pretty embarrassing, stupid, etc thing some years back. And it's difficult to ignore such a fact when we know about it. In this sense, the area effect is small, but it is likely to be felt more as the person searching you should be someone who knows you or needs to interact with you.

Now that it is harder to forget something, people have to make an effort to forgive whereas there need not be such an issue in the first place when they don't have the knowledge in their minds.

Don't believe everything you see
Secondly, a picture is worth a thousand words but it may not be enough for the full story. There was a ST article recently this year about citizenship journalism, something related to taking pictures of people pretending to be asleep so they don't have to give up seats to people who need it more. Or people who park their bikes in places parking spaces meant for cars. How do you know that the person who took the photo or video captured the context? Maybe the guy sleeping was ill. Or he did give up his seat when he realized there was pregnant woman, but the person taking the photo had gotten off the train. The truth is, you don't know. Are pictures and videos really hard evidence then?

What are the limits to citizen journalism?
I think that there ought to be limits to citizen journalism. For example, in the case of the man sleeping on the train, does one need to publish his face to the whole Internet to make a point on people not giving seats to people who need it? How does capturing the image of his face in 5 mega-pixel clarity and publishing on your blog solve the problem of Singaporeans lacking in social graces (if such is the case)? Besides shaming the person and making others fear suffering the same fate, it doesn't do anything much, does it? Why can't you just blur out his face? It's almost like the case of the MRT suicides, where full disclosure need not always be a good thing. Do we want to be constantly alert and worry about how we appear in public? Do you want a camera to be poking into your face every time your sneeze or cough on the bus? Do you want to be snapped when you slip and fall on a wet pavement?

Where to draw the line
Does anyone remember the case of the students hugging on the MRT train? How far does one’s private sphere extend into the public sphere? Do you have any legal rights against people who take photos or videos of you in public without your permission?

KTM says,

At the end of the day, a public place is a public place. Anything that is done in a public place, except for (indecent) acts forbidden by the law, is for public consumption.

If people want to post stuff they capture on camera or video online, they should be free to do so. That is called the freedom of expression. :-)

Well that is true, but I'm guessing people will not be happy if they are captured on pictures or videos without their permission. I don't think we are ready to say that it is ok for anyone to do anything with our images that are captured in public.

Why “The Peak” pales in comparison to “Today”

There's a new drama on Channel 8 starring Christopher Lee, Qi Yuwu, Elvin Ng, Jeanette Aw, Dawn Yeoh and Ben Yeo. It's supposed to showcase Singapore's offshore, marine and maritime industry, and I also suspect it's for manpower purposes. The cast certainly has a magnetic hold on the audience (Jeanette looks conspicuously fair though she's supposed to work under the sun, but I think she looks better that way), but I'm not sure that people are going to be attracted to the industry because of the show.

One important factor that is going to make job-seekers consider taking up a job in the industry, of course, is pay. Well, here's an excerpt of an article from Today on Jan 6, 2007:

Keppel Offshore & Marine (O&M) is paying out a record 7.2-month bonus to all its 7,700 employees this year, topping the 6.2 months given out last year. The good news comes after record order completions and timely deliveries for all its projects in the past 12 months.
.
Keppel O&M, a subsidiary of Keppel Corporation Limited, completed and delivered 26 new builds and conversions totalling $2 billion, all on time and within budget.

According to a friend,even though the average EEE grad's pay in this industry is slightly below average, the 6-7 months of bonus more than makes up for it. And they have projects lined up to 2010!

Anyway, I was quite surprised by Qi Yuwu when he spoke English, quite decently too. :-)

When higher education harms

While we usually equate higher education with increased job opportunities, this is not the case when the economy is bearish. I can remember that ITE and poly graduates were more employable when I went for a career talk about two years ago, and the we were shown some figures about the employability of these grads during the downturn. in India and China. Recently, there's been news that 1.24 million Chinese college students will be jobless, and now we read that Indian college graduates suffer from higher jobless rates compared to high school graduates. China and India are not in the midst of an economic downturn, in fact the economy is booming in these two countries

When higher education harms
Source: Business Times, 18 Dec 2006

Graduates of lesser Indian universities cannot share the spoils of India's booming economy as they lack marketable skills

In the shadow of those marquee institutions, most of the 11 million students in the 18,000 Indian colleges and universities receive starkly inferior training, heavy on obeisance and light on marketable skills, students, educators and business leaders say. All but a tiny handful of graduates are considered employable by top global and local companies.
.........
A study that the group published last year concluded that just 10 per cent of Indian graduates with generalist degrees were considered employable by major companies, compared with 25 per cent of engineers.
.........
India is one of those rare countries where you become less able to find a job the more educated you get. College graduates suffer from higher jobless rates - 17 per cent in the 2001 census - than high school graduates. But even as graduates complain of the paucity of jobs, companies across India lament the lack of skilled talent at their disposal.

For years there's been reports of Indian grads not being able to find jobs and having to take up jobs as cabbies. And I remember that either TIMES or Newsweek reported that Chinese grads from vocational training institutes were more employable that college grads. Why is there this anomaly?

Why college grads are unemployable
Some of the reasons cited in the article include

• Lack of marketable skills


• Classroom culture that discourages analysis, debate, creativity

Skills like communication, presentation and writing are lacking in many grads, as half of all Indian college students are taught in languages other than English. 'Hinglish' (I guess it's something like Singlish?) is in widespread use. In addition, many do not have the experience of working in teams or leading them.

Also, a culture that discourages discussion, feedback and encourages rote-learning and subordination breeds a class of grads that are unable to provide creative solutions to problems.

Reflections on local universities

Students in local universities get lessons on business or technical writing, get to do presentations and form groups to do projects, so they do get to learn some soft skills I guess. As extra-curricula activities are mandatory up to secondary schools, most will have acquired some experience of working in groups. Also, for guys, NS does help a bit.

My own experience is that local students do not speak up, though most lecturers and tutors do encourage to do so, to the extent of awarding participation points in class. With the emergence of the seminar-style approach embraced by SMU, I guess more students will have learn to speak up.