Thoughts after attending the "Eminent Speaker Series"

Today, I attended the "Eminent Speaker Series" organised by Business China and Lianhe Zaobao. The 2 guest speakers were Mr Qian Gang and Mr Jin Wei-Tsun.

I don't have time to write a full article, but this quote about education from Mr Jin Wei-Tsun really struck me as being a good description of education. Mr Qian Gang gave a good summary of the development of the Chinese media and its relationship with the Chinese government. Mr Jin Wei-Tsun gave a global perspective on the role of traditional media and a commentary on how linking GDP growth to populace happiness is flawed.

幼儿养性 童蒙养正 少年养志 成人养德

When you are small, cultivate your character,

When you are a kid, strengthen your sense of right and wrong,

In your teenage years, fight for your dreams,

When you are an adult, accumulate good deeds.

tare zameen par

http://www.taarezameenpar.com/

This is a movie that provides quite a few critiques on the pressures imposed by the Asian education system. This is told through the story of an Indian boy who has dyslexia and his struggles through formal schooling until a teacher finally diagnoses his condition and builds his self-confidence through encouraging him to express his artistic talent.

Although it lasted for 2.5 hours, it is beautifully shot, so it's rather bearable. I don't deny it's a good movie, but I wished I had lower expectations of it. Some parts of the movie were a little predictable and the dialogue felt too scripted at times.

Watching the movie made something of a light bulb go off in my head though. The movie illustrates a few methods to teach kids about numbers and reading which I found very interesting.

Using a box of sand as the drawing medium instead of pen and paper

I guess this works as kids have lesser motor control, so usage of fingers are encouraged through this method.

Using a grid to teach handwriting, then slowly shrinking the grid

The boy in the movie was able to express himself quite adequately through drawing or painting, but had atrocious handwriting. The teacher drew a grid on a chalkboard and used it to teach tracing of numbers. I guess this is a common technique adapted from teaching illustration, where you reproduce shapes using a grid. The boy increasingly drew a finer and more well-defined number with more practice.

Usage of movement to teach

Another interesting method was getting the boy to do simple arithmetic by giving maths sums and getting the boy to jump the correct number of stairs.

Usage of audio tapes

Lord of the Flies - Kids can be so cruel to their peers. Parents, even more.

Quotes from the movie

"Caring.. is a hug, is letting him know that you will always be there."

"Glad to know that you think you care." - Aamir Khan has some of the best lines =)

"Oscar Wilde - The price of everything and the value of nothing.."

Thanks Jay for the great introduction and team Moolah for the movie invite! =)

"Goh Keng Swee - A Portrait" by Tan Siok Sun

So impressive, yet so humble. The best No. 2 to LKY. Intellectual and practical.

Finance, MINDEF, Education, EDB, GIC..

• Never re-invent the wheel.
• Seek the best expert advice always.
• Honesty in thought and action.
• Respect for intellectual rigor.
• Curiosity and creativity.
• Admit to your mistakes and learn from them.

One can only imagine the leadership of LKY to have gathered such a team.

What if.. you can't predict the future?

It seems as if it's getting more ridiculous to predict the future, in a world where countries can go bankrupt (How does that happen..?), where companies like Google did not even exist 10 years ago and where resource wars are getting more intense.

Perhaps, we should focus more on dealing with the future by increasing our adaptability, rather than focusing on planning too much for our individual careers and lives (It is my belief that many of the MNCs will leave Singapore sooner than later to China or India, probably within 5 - 10 years). The next question would be: What are the skills that we could adopt to increase our capacity to adapt? I think certain skills are fundamental. Communications, technical skills (pick 2 or 3, programming seems to be quite useful), presentation skills, a financial understanding of organisations and project management, how to actively learn on the job, some design skills, working with people that you may not like to get things done.. I'm sure everyone will come up with their own list.

Another way to think about it would be focus on issues that will never go away (realist!). For example, the problems of energy, education, poverty, healthcare.. and adapt your skillsets towards a particular area that you have passion for.

(However, countries do still need long term planning for infrastructure, as infrastructure does not happen overnight.)

Gmail - "Undo Send"

Gmail Labs -> Undo Send

I'm not sure if anyone noticed, but if you go to Gmail's Settings, you can actually increase the time for "Undo Send" to 20 secs.

"Undo Send" has saved my ass many times and is one of my favourite features in Gmail =)

Resizing Ubuntu (wubi)

Okie, I installed Wubi and surprise, surprise, I chose the default option which only gave me 5 GB of space, which meant that I only had 1 GB left after installing some stuff. Err.. Miscalculation.

Luckily, for newbies like me, there's an easy option to resize your Wubi installation. Use LVPM. Go to http://lubi.sourceforge.net/lvpm.html and install LVPM.

You can resize your Wubi installation in a few ways. I chose not to install another partition but just to increase the virtual disk allocated to Wubi. [Wubi installs itself as a virtual disk in your hard drive (I am noob, give me a break =) ). ]

(Keep an external hard drive handy.. )

So before everything, make sure you have enough disk space on your hard drive as LVPM copies the whole disk over. E.g. If you want to increase it to 10 GB, make sure you have 10 GB free.

Now,

Start LVPM (Applications -> System Tools -> )

Choose the "Resize" option.

Wait for the new file to be created and a dialog box will pop telling you to boot back to Windows.

After it's done, restart Windows.

Find your ubuntu installation folder. There are 2 files you need to look out for, "new.disk" and "root.disk".

Backup "root.disk", that's your current disk and remove it from the folder.

Rename "new.disk" to "root.disk".

Go back to Ubuntu and check that everything should be working fine.

Installing Compojure from a clean Ubuntu

This is a rough draft of my steps for the all the frustrated people who tried to get Compojure to work. Disclaimer: This is the first time I've ever used any version of Linux and ever tried to do anything in Linux.

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Got irritated while trying to configure Windows cause I wanted to use Compojure.. (Clojure's web development framework.)

Finally, I gave up and installed Ubuntu. (Bye Windows..)

1. Wubi - Start clean

I downloaded Wubi. Went through the default installation, and let the update manager update everything once.

2. EMACs - Text editor for Clojure, with the necessary modifications

Next, I followed the steps outlined (http://www.bestinclass.dk/index.php/2009/12/clojure-101-getting-clojure-slime-installed/)

EMACs

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/EmacsHowto

sudo apt-get install emacs-snapshot-gtk

Run EMACs by using Alt-F2, "emacs".

You have to configure emacs properly for Clojure.

In emacs, Type: M-x package-list-packages (You should have "EPLA").

Select the following options by clicking on them, typing "I" for each of the options, then type "x"

Installed in emacs

clojure-mode

clojure-testmode

slime-repl

paraedit

magit

swank-clojure

3. Git (for downloading code and libraries)

http://book.git-scm.com/2_installing_git.html

$sudo apt-get install git-core

4. Leiningen

http://alexott.net/en/clojure/ClojureLein.html

Follow the instructions to install Leiningen. (Thanks Alex Ott!))

(Some stuff that might be important for Terminal commands:

echo $PATH - find your path)

5. Your first "Hello World" Compojure project

http://kzar.co.uk/blog/view/installing-compojure

All the instructions on "http://weavejester.github.com/compojure/docs/getting-started.html" are essentially correct, except that you must add to the dependencies in project.clj the swank dependency

Open project.clj in emacs and add

:dev-dependencies [[leiningen/lein-swank "1.2.0-SNAPSHOT"]

Then in Terminal:

lein deps

Then run:

lein swank (to start a swank server)

You should see the swank server running.

Then switch to EMACs and type

M-x slime-connect

You should see emacs connecting.

Run: (run-jetty example {:port 8080})

6. Verification

Open up a browswer, and type http://localhost:8080. It should show "Hello World".

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P.S.

Sorry for the awkward formatting, going off to bed first. Hopefully, this will help everyone trying to use Compojure. I included all the pages I used, and much thanks to everyone who wrote those articles as guides.

Ryan

Love: some musings

Love is unconditional

If your other half asks you:"Why do you love me?", and you immediately give your reasons, what happens when those reasons disappear? Do you stop loving the person?

98 Bricks

This is a short adaptation of a story by Ajahm Brahm.

Many years ago, when building a monastery, Ajahm Brahm was a young monk trying to lay the bricks for a wall. It was surprisingly difficult to lay a brick straight. If you hit a brick on one end, the other end would pop up. If you tried balancing it by hitting the other end, the other end would pop up. It was more difficult than he thought. He decided to put in a lot of effort and took a lot of care to ensure that the wall he was building was a level wall. After laying 100 bricks, the wall was finished.

Alas, he noticed that in the midst of laying the bricks, there were 2 bricks in the middle of the wall that he had missed levelling. They stuck out like a sore thumb. He was horrified, but he could not do anything as the mortar had already set. He wanted to rebuild the wall, but when he told the abbot, the abbot told him that it was not necessary.

For many years, whenever he had visitors visiting the monastery, he would avoid showing them the wall with the 2 bad bricks as he was ashamed of it. One day, he was leading 2 visitors around when he forgot about it, and he led them past the bad wall. One of the visitors remarked:"That's a beautiful wall."

Ajahn Brahm was aghast. He immediately said:"How can that be? Dear sir, do you not see the 2 ugly bricks that are crooked?"

Visitor:"Yes, I do. But, I also see the other 98 good bricks that make this a beautiful wall."

Sometimes, we focus on the shortcomings of the people around us and even ourselves to the point that we forget about the existence of the rest of the things that make us like them in the first place.

Finding Love 寻找爱

最近看到一位作者对寻找爱人过程的见解。我们寻觅爱的时候其实在渴求五样条件 - 1. 符合美观欣赏标准、2. 生活频率的吻合、3. 沟通性、4. 信赖度、5. 彼此学习的地方
Recently, I came across an author's interpretation of the process of finding a lover. He proposed that we are looking for 5 things -

1. Physical attractiveness, 2. Overlapping lifestyle habits and rhythms, 3. The ability to communicate and understand each other, 4. Trust, 5. The chance to learn from each other.