the weight of glory

Hey guys. No, this is not about how stressed out I am about my overwhelming all-the-rage-ness. (I wish it were). It's a book (more like a compilation of orations) by C.S. Lewis in the 1950s, titled "the weight of glory"(omg u can read so many chapters for free!)

I've never read any of his books other than the screwtape letters, probably because i'm too ill-equipped to take in more than the surface.

Because it's my first time reading his ideas, I find it very interesting how the society he described (pre-popular TV, pre-gossip girl, pre-internet) hasn't changed much since. Though I've always been having a suspicion that people retrofit their lifestyles to TV and literature. It's a chicken-and-egg question between TV drama and real life high-hormone emotional struggles.

But, I digress. I particularly related with the inner ring, which talked about what we call cliques today. It's kinda hard to imagine my dad sporting the then-latest curry-pok hairstyle or my mom with her hippest curls to try to fit in. But such exclusive groups and its pertinence date back to the Victorian era, at least.

I'll cut and paste you some lines from the chapter the weight of glory:
"There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilisations -- these are mortal..... And our charity (to each other) must be a real and costly love, with a deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner -- no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrement itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses."

Yep. Overall I think it's a good read. Especially since though he's a Christian writer, he's not cliched (people took his lines!) and it's mostly a no-holes-barred commentary and he addresses some issues (like your secret longing to belong and sniggering at people who didn't) which the subconscious you didn't even dare to bring it up to you!



AND

My arowana just died. Watching him swim sideways with occasional jerks is something I definitely don't ever want to see again. I wonder why I feel so sad about it. I never used to feed him and never got too close to him cause I didn't want to give him a shock. Though it was a cheap buy at $168 I think the greatest loss was watching him struggle and not knowing what we could have done to help him.

It was an oversight on our part cause just before dinner, we changed more than half the water at one go, unbalancing the pH level and temperature.

another campFREE publicity video!

the post for which i'm too drowsy to think of a title

interesting article about how it's possible to blame anyone for anything

i'm off to bed.. can't feel my body after popping that flu tablet

good week everyone!

the weekend is here!

YEA~ baby. Tomorrow's public holiday plus some days off gives me a 6-day weekend! Now.. how am I going to spend it??? Give me some ideas!

Yesterday I was surfing around and I found this novel (to me) way of teaching kids how to write essays. It's so amazingly simple I wonder I've never been taught this way in school!

Teachers have broken down in my class so many times (we weren't even the worst around), we got tired of acting sorry and quiet, and getting our class rep to run after the teacher. A recurrent jeremiad is the whopping stack of homework they have to assess. I'm guessing that this gives them more homework, depriving them of their life. When they erase the line between work and rest, the joys and pains of teaching becomes a blur and what might have once been sufficiently enjoyable becomes a daily torture after the first period with the nasty class.

SO. I'm suggesting, for the primary to pre-U level, that they farm out the work which don't really need the teacher to do personally to a programme, leaving them more time for work that don't evoke binary answers. If a computer does it, the teacher can see the mistakes and strengths of the class in a chart, and can have access to each individual students performance according to topics. Which is basically what teachers do when they assess the homework personally, right?

Assuming that kids don't stop receiving essay assignments and suddenly find that all their homework are MCQs, this might actually shear off the lethal tumour which was once the educators's time. And the workplace suddenly becomes a garden burgeoning with creativity and a deeper insight into the mind and the desire to learn, which for some of us was being murdered slowly and stealthily since the day we had to ace all our exams.

another random post

Hey guys! Sorry for slacking on this blog. You know how sometimes when you face a giamongus mountain it makes you just wanna slack at the foot of the mountain, instead of climbing it as you planned? Yup that's me now when it comes to SO many things.. For example, one mountain is improving my sight-reading! =(

While googling for how to run a happening youth camp (ahhh!!), I suddenly remembered a friend who was telling me that he feels people in church can get so fake sometimes, and he didn't see any value of being in a community who was so judgmental of him.

Let's assume that he's not hypersensitive. That led me to remember also the old notion of church being a collective of imperfect people (as popularized by switchfoot). While some of us are frowning upon another fellow Christian for not doing the right things, we are all equally in need of help to be a better person, to better the world in all its dichotomy.

I don't know if this short discussion can be called a discussion (my brain's busy in the alimetary department). But anyway I got to go now. I'll end off with a fun fact!

After years of study techniques workshops my schools made me attend, I knew that the number of hours you spend sleeping are as important as those you spend studying, but not why. But I was convinced only after finding out that getting a good night of sleep after a long day of learning helps consolidate memory formation of the prior day.

Tata!

amsterdam, singapore, and the world!

the montreal airport (do they have only 1?)


































where we were gonna spend 6 hours..















































6 hours later...


























try pinching your nose and saying "tank you"
















the amsterdam schiphol airport at 7:55am

















i took this while queueing to buy our 15-min train ticket to the city centre. which cost us 6.50euros!

















cute!














inside the train. it was really just cruising along the city. you gotta understand that we just came out of quebec, all positive and ready to unleash a smile. and we were quite surprised to see that the dutch people at this part of the city looked bored and stoned. i think it's because most of the people we met/saw are waiting for their trains to get to work.



















central station at amsterdam. it was about 15deg and pretty cloudy throughout the day.









































just outside the train station. it's quite a green city with more trams and bicycles than cars. and the damn tram nearly got my face off me.



































the whole city had a funky smell. i suspect it's because of:
1)the river
2)marijuana
3)rubbish trucks
4)shops selling fish












rush hour




































quite a nice city










































































































































































check out her waist size!















































chinatown!




perpendicular to chinatown is the famous DeWallen. i wonder if city planning did this discriminatingly.







































































this is back in Singapore on our way to customs.











Sorry about the lousy photo commenting i'm quite an idiot with blogspot (either that or blogspot's platform sucks)

Anyway it's my 6th day back in singapore and i'm still jetlagging. It's good that i don't really have to follow a tight schedule for these few weeks.

I remember asking myself on my first few days in quebec:

Where are the beggars??

It was such a beautiful city, everybody (locals and tourists) lived like they didn't need money. I don't know if I've said this before, but it could be either that that's the case, or they're just not showing their neediness. But anyway, watching CNN (cause almost all other channels in the hotel are french!) i learnt about even more gang fight casualties in montreal.

Just yesterday I was watching Jamie's Kitchen: Australia (it's not a cooking show, per se). If I were to be given the chance to learn cooking from a great chef (jamie's sidekick), and eventually get a chef's place in Jamie Oliver's restaurant, it'd be the first thing on my list. I'd push away anything just to attend his classes. It just seems like the logical thing to do, right? But I realize that I do not think the same way as 15 of these apprentices. They're all from the wrong side of the town, with family problems, drug addictions, learning disabilities. Some of them really want to learn and are giving all they've got. But more than half are missing classes, giving excuses like their knees hurt in the cold.

Plus hanging out with the guys from bands from all over the world, mostly the canadian peeps, i realize that people are different. I always tend to assume we're the same and smack my forehead and think "why don't you see as I do?". The upbringing, situations you've had to get out of, struggles you had to overcome, people you've had to deal with, all play a part in making you. Though we react and behave differently, but still all over the world every country has the same group of poor and uneducated people. We still share the common goal of surviving and making sense of life.

I have so much more to learn about why people are the way they are. and i think if one day when everyone understands that, and respects that, we'll be living in a much better world without discrimination. i know it's idealistic and this is blatant amateur writing. Do recommend some text if you want me to get out of this immature state of mind!

until the next time, peace out stay cool respect yourself and other people and remember to live!