Ain’t gonna work, man.

Wed, 2 Feb 2011
3 min read
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Letter from the PAP Community Foundation (Bedok Branch).

(image via mrbrown; read the SDP website for more info if you don’t have graphics support.)

Well, if Freakonomics is to be believed, the scheme ain’t gonna work.

In fact, it could potentially backfire on the daycare centre in that the teachers end up doing extra work for no pay (I’m assuming the ‘fine’ goes to the centre and won’t get channelled to the teachers as ‘overtime’ pay).

And knowing how good some Singaporeans are at finding bargains, some parents could very well pick up their children 40 minutes after the official release time to effectively get 40 extra minutes of child minding for free!

That is, the letter illustrates the fine for each five-minute block from 12.05pm/5.05pm to 12.35/5.35pm, but doesn’t say anything about what happens if people come at, say, 12.40pm/5.40pm.

The letter needs an additional clause in the example after the last bullet point that says “and so on” or “etc” or something to that effect to prevent any grounds for quibbling.

But even then, the centre still hasn’t provided a terminal point, or a time limit in terms of how long it will wait for the parent to pick up her/his child.

So what’s a poor childcare centre to do?

It can’t boot the kids out when they’re done for the day (unethical) but the teachers are human beings and need time after work ends to eat/rest/go for courses, etc. too.

I’d suggest they could consider the following:

  1. Send their staff for English language re-training (which I can conduct – for a fee, of course),
  2. Rewrite the letter as part of their homework, this time phrasing it in this manner:
    • Parents to be given a 15 minutes grace period, following which
    • Parents to be fined $50* for every 15-minute block of time in which their child/ward remains at the centre.
    • If the parents have still not arrived after, say, 45 minutes from the time the child has been released, a certain procedure will be taken to place the child in another authority’s custody**.

* The number is arbitrary, but I think it’s sufficiently large enough to act as a deterrent, which is what the centre is looking for, anyway.
** Whatever procedure the centre has for dealing with cases of abandonment or neglect e.g. taking the kid to the nearest police post after the parent has been duly notified or if all attempts to contact the parent has gone unanswered.

What do you think?

Book of the (Rabbit) Year of the Day: Watership Down.

Wed, 2 Feb 2011
2 min read
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Rawr!

So there was a Lunar New Year performance in school today, and something that one of the emcees (Dilys) said made me recall a memory from a long time ago.

I can’t remember what her exact line was, but it had to do with rabbits – it being the Year of the Rabbit according to the Chinese Lunar calendar.

In any case, the thing that came to mind was… Watership Down!

Is that a duck or a rabbit?

Yes, ladies and gents: since this is a Rabbit year and this is one of my most favourite books of all time, you must read Watership Down.

I’m not too sure why it left such an impact on me, but from what I remember of my callous and misspent youth, I read the text when I was much younger and more impressionable.

This, along with the fact that I practically devoured almost all of Stephen King’s books before I entered Primary Six, is why I turned out the way I am today.

I kid. (But I’m serious about the reading Stephen King bit.)

Jokes aside, Watership Down is a really great book that is not for the faint-hearted, as you can see from the screenshot from the film which is right at the top of this post.

But besides violence and gore, there’s also romance, religion, ethics, etc. – in other words, there’s something for everyone (except the Goths).

So make sure you read the book, even if it’s the only book you read this year. Then, and only then, will you be able to say that you have led a fulfilling life.

Or, at least, until I say so,

Happy Lunar New Year!

"My heart has joined the Thousand" tattoo.

What’s so significant about having a place to stand?

Sun, 9 Jan 2011
2 min read
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This is a question from Formspring that deserves a blog post to itself, much like the one about the point of learning literature.

For context, I often use the line “All I need is a place to stand” in the About Me portions of my social networking pages.

The question of “What’s so significant about having a place to stand?” comes from a student who wants to know why I place so much importance on the above-mentioned phrase.

Before I explain, though, I’d like all of you to read the following pages before coming back here:

Now, Archimedes was a mathematician who is believed to have said, “Give me a place to stand and I will move the Earth”.

This is with reference to the law of the lever, where one can use a small effort to move a great load, so long as the distance between the effort and the fulcrum is sufficiently longer than that between the load and the fulcrum.

However, we can also interpret “move” as a metaphor to mean ‘affect in an inspirational manner’ – something which Archimedes’s findings have done for the world.

Therefore, I am leveraging on (pun intended) Archimedes’s metaphor to explain my own ambitions in life; ideally, I’d like to do what Archimedes has done and change the world with a small idea one day.

Before I can do that, however, I need to find a niche or an area in which I can make a difference. Once I find this niche/area, I know I’ll be good to go.

Hence, “[a]ll I need is a place to stand”.

TL;DR: Don’t be a lazy shit – just read the damn post.