my living history

erzascarlet.

2010-11-05T19:30:00.001+08:00

sometimes, things happen.

when they do, the best thing to do is to stop it from happening.

because my feelings do not count.

2009-03-05T12:05:00.002+08:00

I am in my 10th year of teaching and yet still not be able to create this amount of laughing collectively!

He joined NTU in 1991 but I graduated too early in 1988. Watch this impressive NTU Prof at his best.

He is now the head of Admission Department in NTU and still teaching the subject.

Sharing session

2009-02-12T12:33:00.002+08:00

I have a confession to make.

Yesterday, I gave a talk during a sharing session (on teaching, what else). The time given was supposed to be 10 mins. You must have guessed! Once I started, I couldn't stop. I talked SOOOOOOOOOO long that it left with no time for other speakers in my group (about 5-6 of us).

Still poor at time control, after all these years. However, I should be forgiven for most of the audience were easily 2 or 3 times more experienced.

Not concised enough too.
Carried away.
Too eager to share too many stuff within given time....

I shouldn't have taken up this task in the first place.

Treasury Discovery

2008-11-25T09:41:00.002+08:00

All these years, in my school.
Never realised that I have working right on a treasure pit!

It all started when I decided to work out the students' industrial project myself as the delivery date is closing. Inevitably, I need electronic components and headed down to the EEE store.

Anyone who has a minimum experience in project work would have predicted that one trip is never enough. Beginning is always the basic functional components to get things working first. Then gradually as ideas are firming and more esthetically/modular design is needed, I even planned of purchasing some of the things I needed.

To my surprise, my BIG BIG surprise!!!

The EEE store not only has ALL the things I need at no cost, and they even have tones of diversified connectors, switches, pins, ICs...... down to PVC of various sizes!!!

Just too good to be true. Our government is REAL serious about education, beyond my expectation.

What are our students waiting for, I wonder?

Back Again

2008-11-18T13:00:00.005+08:00

Left this place for a while.
Now I am back.

Between now and my previous blog, things have changed, especially the world.
- Financial market has tumbled since October and seeing no U-turn yet
- Obama, a name that has instilled a new sense of hope
- My daughters have cleared their EOY, learnt in many ways and most importantly, grown
- My school has merged with two others and became a new Cluster
- My eye sight and my hair colour has been deteriorating (mercylessly warning me of the time left before I hit 50)
- Unknowingly, my blog skin has changed again. It becomes a pleasant surprise for me every time I log in, esp if I have not been here for a while. Thanks to my elder daughter! (She loves to maintain the skin for me)(I wonder any special meaning for "broken"?)

Any way, ahead of me are more changes:
- Going to have a new boss in 1 Jan 2009 (who? No idea yet)
- Going to be a PSLE parent for the second time
- and, any other unknown and uncertainty

Triumph again

2008-08-09T17:31:00.004+08:00

So unbeatable is our defending team (staff)!

The team championed again in the annual Poly50 run, even with one female runner injured and dropped out during her very first lap! With strong feelings about the run and the school, a team flag with specially design logo and a medal are up on display at the runners' office. A sign has also been put up to ensure everyone passing by would spot these momentos of glory.

Garden Fest 2008

2008-08-02T17:26:00.009+08:00

Went to Garden Festival 2008 on 27 Jul 2008 with my elder daughter. We volunteered in the morning, went for lunch and spent the afternoon enjoying the beautiful flowers at level 4 and 6!

Cool Dan Kaminsky

2008-07-19T11:09:00.008+08:00

On Tuesday, 8 Jul 2008, all makers on connecting users to the internet collectively released patches for a flaw in Domain Name Servers (DNS). The bug was discovered by a security researcher, Dan Kaminsky, few months ago.

He rounded up all the BIG names to conference room immediately to race with all the potential attackers. He will only reveal the details on the coming Black Hat Sercuirt Conference in Las Vegas on 7 Aug 2008 to allow adminstartors around the world one month to patch their DNS.

Below is the post he put up at his web site, after the offcial realease of the patches.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"An Astonishing Collaboration

Wow. It’s out. It’s finally, finally out.

Sweet!

So there’s a bug in DNS, the name-to-address mapping system at the core of most Internet services. DNS goes bad, every website goes bad, and every email goes…somewhere. Not where it was supposed to. You may have heard about this — the Wall Street Journal, the BBC, and some particularly important people are reporting on what’s been going on. Specifically:

1) It’s a bug in many platforms

2) It’s the exact same bug in many platforms (design bugs, they are a pain)

3) After an enormous and secret effort, we’ve got fixes for all major platforms, all out on the same day.

4) This has not happened before. Everything is genuinely under control.

I’m pretty proud of what we accomplished here. We got Windows. We got Cisco IOS. We got Nominum. We got BIND 9, and when we couldn’t get BIND 8, we got Yahoo, the biggest BIND 8 deployment we knew of, to publicly commit to abandoning it entirely.

It was a good day.

CERT has details up, and there’s a full-on interview between myself and Rich Mogull up on Securosis. For the non-geeks in the audience, you might want to tune out here, but this is my personal blog and I do have some stuff to mention to the crew.

There’s something very important about what we accomplished here.

We. Because there’s absolutely no way I could have pulled this off by myself.

Paul Vixie is an institution. Having long maintained the Internet’s most popular DNS server, Paul simply knows everybody. Paul was absolutely instrumental in pulling together the engineers we needed to solve this problem. We needed Florian Weimer there, all the way from Europe. We needed David Dagon, and Jinmei Tatuya, and Wouter Wijngaards. We needed Microsoft, Cisco, Nominum, Neustar, and OpenDNS.

And we really needed CERT.

It was an interesting discussion, with lots of disagreement, but ever-growing consensus. After evaluating several options, one approach was clear — and, I must admit, somewhat embarassing to Paul.

DJB was right. All those years ago, Dan J. Bernstein was right: Source Port Randomization should be standard on every name server in production use.

There is a fantastic quote that guides a lot of the work I do: Luck is the residue of design. Dan Bernstein is a notably lucky programmer, and that’s no accident. The professor lives and breathes systems engineering in a way that my hackish code aspires to one day experience. DJB got “lucky” here — he ended up defending himself against an attack he almost certainly never encountered.

Such is the mark of excellent design. Excellent design protects you against things you don’t have any information about. And so we are deploying this excellent design to provide no information.

To translate the fix strategy into a more familiar domain, imagine large chunks of Windows RPC went from Anonymous to Authenticated User only, or even all the way to Admin Only. Or wait, just remember Windows XPSP2 This is a sledgehammer, by design. It cuts off attack surface, without necessarily saying why. Astonishingly subtle bugs can be easily hidden, or even rendered irrelevant, by a suitably blunt fix.

Of course, it remains obvious that something new is up, and that something will be found eventually. But there’s a lot of buggy systems out there, vulnerable not just to new bugs but bugs that have been known for years. If all this effort ever accomplished was sweeping old and crusty BIND8 off the Internet, if we could finally fully eliminate Joe Stewart’s (edit: Originally Vagner Sacramento’s, thanks Joe!) Birthday Attacks from 2002, if we started doing something about Amit Klein’s Transaction ID Randomness finds (even the deeply underrated client vulns) from last year, and yes, if the static port assignments DJB warned us about ages ago were finally shut down — then this would still be a huge win.

There are reasons why the new issue is particularly severe, but I think reasonable people can agree that anything that could scrub even the old bugs would be a boon to the security of the Internet. And so, I ask the open research community…assume I found nothing! Assume this is nothing but a stunt, to finally get people to take Joe and Amit and DJB seriously, and to give network scanners a crystal clear fingerprint of what a trustable recursive server looks like.

Joe and Amit and especially DJB have done some incredible work. I’d look terrible at the end of it, but their bugs would finally get fixed, and stay fixed. As for me, I dunno. Go back to graphics Mmmm…SIGGRAPH…

For those of you who won’t make that assumption, I have a request. It is very unusual, and maybe unreasonable. But I have to ask.

I want you to explore DNS. I want you to try to build off the same bugs I did to figure out what could possibly go wrong. Maybe I missed something — I want you to help me find out if I did, so we can deal with it now instead of later. I do want all this. But I also want my family to be able to use the Internet in peace. I’m not asking for forever. I am asking about thirty days. I’ve done everything in my power to get the patches available, no matter the platform. But the code doesn’t (always) install itself. While I’m out there, trying to get all these bugs scrubbed — old and new — please, keep the speculation off the @public forums and IRC channels. We’re a curious lot, and we want to know how things break. But the public needs at least a chance to deploy this fix, and from a blatantly selfish perspective, I’d kind of like my thunder not to be completely stolen in Vegas

Now, if you do figure it out, and tell me privately, you’re coming on stage with me at Defcon. So I can at least offer that.
" - adapted from Dan Kerminsky‘s web site

Mecury rising

2008-07-19T10:41:00.012+08:00

The heat is on again!

Yes, I am running for my school again this year. This is the 3rd time I have been participating since I joined 9 years ago. My team came in 3rd the first time. Last year, we were 5th.

Finally, I made the purchase - a new pair of Mizuno running shoes, two weeks ago for this event. My previous pair of Brooks was bought in 1988, only S$40. Nowadays, many say their sport shoes hardly last more than 2 years. My engineering mind worked out the calculation instinctively and swiftly concluded the worthiness of all the economical sport shoes I had owned.

Turned out: a pair of no brand sports shoes that I bought in China back in 1991 (before the economic boom) for merely S$16, which had survived me in climbing 3 mountains, came in top of my most worthiness chart!

Canker Sore

2008-07-16T07:49:00.009+08:00

It is right at the tip of my tongue. Refuses to go away.

The stubborn canker sore appeared 13 days ago. Of course, I had it before many times. They never last this long. I applied all the medicine (including salt) I could get and rinsed my mouth with salt water solution.

On the 11th day (two days ago), it still showed no sign of easing and I decided to go to the doc. I left the clinic with 5-day antibiotics, a different kind of oral cream, and loads of worry

When I arrived back at the office after the clinic visit, I surfed the web for medical resources. The result is consistent with my worry.

"One of the symptoms of tongue cancer - canker sore that does not heal in 3 weeks"

There is a long list of symptoms associating with tongue cancer. When everything is so uncertain, my natural response took over and started looking for symptoms that correlate to mine. Probably this is what the saying of "the more you know, the more scared you are".

Yesterday, the 12th day, after 4 takes of antibiotics, still no improvement. Worry intensified. I told myself, 3 weeks or 21 days is the deadline. I still have 9 days of hope.

I shared with my children on the possibilities. They are angels. Their responses, again, made me feel how blessed I am!

Suddenly, I realised what worries me most is not the sore, whatever terminating illness, but my children. To be exact, I discovered the greatest pain for a me would be not able to be there for them when my children are in need!

"The greatest plight of a mother is not able to help knowing her child is suffering."

And I shared this discovery with some of my students in the Program Design class.

Finally, today morning I woke up and overjoyed that the pain has greatly reduced though the canker sore still sitting there with the usual white crater.

I rushed to the kids' room and broke the good news to them. They were still dressing up for schools when we three hugged tightly together!

Who's who

2008-06-25T08:39:00.011+08:00

Attended a training on Solar Cells fabrication with some colleagues during the vacation in March. So many new processes to learn and abbreviations to remember. It is a skill which can only be acquired with repeated hands-on and over a long time.

Nevertheless, we all had great times laughing at each other when we were dressing up every time we entered the lab, not to mention the joy of exploring new luncheon places at the north of Singapore!

I felt a little blue when I bade farewell to them at the carpark outside the training venue on the last day of the training, in a bright day with blue sky and pleasant breeze. It is so unlikely that all of us will ever be in a same training again in future!

(highlight the line below to see the answer)
From left: Battul, me, Meenashi, Jiang Fan & Keng Hwa.

铿锵玫瑰 Tough Rose

2008-05-28T16:46:00.006+08:00

当她被从废墟中挖出来时，双腿断了，双手受伤了，从被挖出来到救助站，她都没有哭。在大家挪动她的时候，她坚强的咬了咬嘴唇，还一边微笑，一边对大家说：“要勇敢”。 (When she was pulled out from the debris, both her legs were broken and arms injured. Even till the moment she was transferred to the aids station, she never shed a single tear. When her body was being adjusted, her tough endurance shown through her bit lips. Carrying her sweetest smile, she just said to the people around her, "Be brave!" )

孩子，你的笑容，是今天新加坡报章新闻的灵魂！
新加坡妈妈们爱你！

Young mind

2008-05-26T12:26:00.010+08:00

Helped to type this piece of work for my younger daughter last Saturday. I have not been keeping up with her writing lately (in fact, for a few years already) and found it kind of interesting. Hope you would enjoy this work of a 11 year-old kid.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
I opened my eyes. My feelers twitched. I looked around. I sensed no danger.

The world was as dark as eyes closed. As my vision cleared, I took a loud yawn. In the distance, a rooster was crowing and I knew immediately that the Sun was rising. Still in the dark, I waited for the hawker to open the cupboard. I wandered around my home, tripping over dirty cloths and plates and utensils.

“Creak….” Just then, a beam of light shone on me and I scurried away to hide in the shadows. James, the hawker, opened the cupboard wide and I took this chance to scurry away. My feelers twitching, I ran to the front of the stall as the morning sun rose above the treetops.

A cacophony of voices filled the hawker centre. I craned my neck to get a better view. As it was the human’s public holiday, people from all walks of life streamed into the hawker centre for a taste of local delights. A scent of cooked chicken and rice wafted pass my nose. James was busy preparing chicken rice. My stomach grumbled. I had to eat!

By the time I left James’ stall, a long queue of people was outside his stall longing for the best selling dish. The man at the front of the queue took out a piece of purple paper with the word “2 dollars” and a picture of a man on it.

Money.

This world did not make sense to me and my fellow friends. These homosapiens use money to get food while we cockroaches get food with our lives. We have to scurry around with an empty stomach and in front of humans, looking for remaining scraps of food, not knowing when we would get killed by the humans but we treasure our lives and would live to the last second.

Many different types of shoes stomped around me. I had to make my way through the crowd of human feet to the dustbin at the other side of the hawker centre without being crushed. “Eww….” “A cockroach!” “Let’s crush it!” I looked up to see several humans avoiding me, creating a safe pathway for me. However, my pathway was blocked again by a new sea of shoes. My heart thumped wildly. Was I able to make it across?

Suddenly, a pain shot through one of my left legs. I was dismayed to see that a little human boy had stepped on my leg. I grimaced in pain as I watched the little boy walking off, oblivious to my plight. Despite the excruciating pain, I crawled on slowly. “Why must I suffer so? Why must humans treat me this way?” I thought. I could not understand. Human said that we cockroaches were filthy and ugly while we find them cruel and unkind. Why couldn’t we all get along well?

“Smack!”

Before I knew it, I was already in front of the dustbin and something fell on top of me. As my curiosity was piqued, I crawled out from under the object. I saw that it was a half-opened packet of flat-like things known as “chips”. Food! At last! Hungrily, I started eating the chips. Suddenly, I noticed some red powder on the chips. My mouth began to feel very hot.

I climbed out of the bag of chips and caught sight of a can lying not far away. I hurried myself towards it and managed to the last few sips of the liquid that was left in it.

Feeling satisfied, I crawled out of the can. I was full and felt really sleepy. I staggered about, unaware of my surroundings.

“Hey!” I turned around to see a group of ants waving to me while feeding on a slice of cake they had found near the dustbin. As I waved back, I saw a shoe approaching me. Before I could act, I found myself in the air. I felt my head hit the corner of the dustbin. As my vision blurred, I noticed that my two other legs were gone. Pain filled my body. I started to curl up. The group of ants started making their way towards me. I knew that I was going to be their food. I took my last breath.

Then, my world went black…

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Fizzling Illusion海市蜃楼乎？

2008-04-15T12:00:00.016+08:00

Yesterday was the first day of the new semester. I had an 8am class. Guess what? Full attendance. Today is the second day. This morning I had another 8am class. Full attendance + full attention! Bravo!

When another lecturer realised why I was so happy on my way to the foodcourt during lunch, he asked, "Are they first year students?" "Yaya," I replied. Then, he bubbled before he rushed off, "Illusions!"

Whether or not, I just want to enjoy this as long as it lasts!

(人生的种种奢求, 不也像荒芜沙漠里的海市蜃楼?)

It's everywhere, near you

2008-04-10T20:29:00.003+08:00

When I first heard of the word 'BLOG', I thought it is another new IT acronym, related to BLOB and eager to find out the difference between them. BLOB is used by database people to refer to any random large block of bits that needs to be stored in a database, such as a picture or sound file.

To much dissapointment, it later appeared to me that 'BLOG' seems to associate with people who talks about fun stuff rather than database.

Curiously, I took my first peek into this new world - reading an award-winning blog, never did it cross my mind that one day I will be 'Blog-ging'.

Connecting with students is an expressway to build rapport with them. Hear them. Laugh with them. 'Lifestyling' with them. It was in one of these lighter moments when I behaved as if I am a veteran of BLOG that a student suddenly lifted up his head with hope sparkling in his eyes, and asked, "Teacher, you - have a blog?"

It was an opportunity that I had been waiting for to get closer to this class.

So, my very first blog was born(but closed now).

Yesterday, I attended a training on student project management system which is replacing the current hardcopy way of tracking the student projects.

In there, it has a WebBlog tab.

Came into office this morning and received a training request for my approval - "How to incorporate BLOG into teaching"!

Like it or not, it is everywhere, near you!

Change your thoughts, change your world 心静自然凉

2008-04-04T19:18:00.005+08:00

Enjoy this video and tell me what you have inferred from it.

A broad shoulder - kɛˈvɔrkiːɛn 凛然

2008-03-28T07:52:00.028+08:00

* Disclaimer: No offense to Pro-life advocates. This is purely my own opinion of this man's bravery. *

Last year, a copy of this book on a shelf in Kinokunia at Ngee Ann City caught my eyes.

The moment I flipped over the first page, I knew instantly I would not stop. As the memoir of Dr Death, Dr Jack Kevorkian;s (kɛˈvɔrkiːɛn)renowned nickname, unfolded in the book, the respect I have for this man also intensified.

In the 1990s Dr Kevorkian became one of the most prominent and polarizing figures in the debate over euthanasia by assisting in some 130 suicides and for his outspoken advocacy of the "right to die." The list of trials that he had stood, before he was jailed in Michigan for 8 years, stretches over multiple pages in the book.

The rightfulness of his work aside, it is the act of his determining battle in standing by his belief and braving against the moral codes of society and cilvilisation that have impressed me so much. My greatest respect for him comes from this - before he carried out every single procedure, he requested all others, including the family of the patient to leave the room. When he had done, he informed the police without fail. He was then ready to shoulder everything and stand for trial in court personally, without the family of patient being charged!

This book was published when Dr Kevorkian was still in jail and his health was deteriorating. Part of the intention of the writers was, hoping through this project, to have Jack out of his cell as much as possible. The book details Dr Kevorkian life from his childhood (born on May 26, 1928), educations, Korean war, his own mother's prolonged suffering from cancer and to the journey he had chosen in legalising euthenasia.

I am happy even though I have missed these episodes:
* 1 Jun 2007 - Jack walks out of jail (pls wait after the commercial)

* 15 Jan 2008 - Public Speech at UF

Latest (if your interest has been piqued)

* 12 Mar 2008 - The 79-year old pathologist announced his plans to run for congress in Michigan's 9th Congressional District against long term congressman Joe Knollenberg. More>>

* Producer Steve Jones has been talking for years about a movie based on Kevorkian's life. The script is slated to be written by "Breach" writer Adam Mazer. More>>

Lazy and Hardworking, Hate and Love.

2008-03-24T15:26:00.031+08:00

It is not difficult to tell that I am lazy. Lazy in updating this blog. However, ironically, this is simply because I am hardworking!

The moment I was notified of teaching a new module, Circuit Analysis, next semester (April 2008), I started my work immediately - contacted the MC (module coordinator - thanked god he was not on leave) and requested for access to all the teaching materials posted online.

Step 1 done swiftly! I got all that I wanted - notes, labs, tutorials and past year papers.

Step 2, I browsed through the notes. Stunned! It is full of - MATHEMATICS! I knew I should not be but ...I was still, shaken! When was my last acquaintance with Sine and Cosine? And what is that cute little 'e' which always appears with funny 'crown'....? Tracking back in time, it was 1988! Imagine, 20 years ago!

We, professional (very 'gei-kiang'), must face up with whatever our work calls for!

Descended back to Step zero - Mastering Engineering Maths (year 1 and 2) - my utmost mission I set for myself!

Imagine this - a desperate soul scampering around the almost-vacant campus during the vacation, from door-to-door - just to collect mathematical notes.

One day - that was what I took to gather all the maths notes.

Next three weeks - that was all (if I am allowed to be so bold) I took (in between works, weekends,at office, outside tuition centre waiting for kids, at Kopitiam food courts, tennis courts...) to crunch through all (not exactly all, but on all the effective ones) the maths exercises and the first 3 of 8 topics of Circuit Analysis!

Not bad, I thought!

I was able to push myself through and emerged proudly(considering those inevitable moments when I felt like quiting). Now I can derive every single Laplace Transformation from scratch! Still charged with positive energy, I was happy studying the next topic on Circuit Analysis this morning when an email came in - I have been removed from teaching Circuit Analysis!

.... ?
....:(
.... :)
Mixed feelings.... kind of like coexistence of hate and love for something....?

Burj Al Arab

2008-01-07T16:16:00.002+08:00

Thank you, Dear！ You stay so basic for your own expenses and yet bought us this wonderful experience!

Lab Test

2007-11-12T16:20:00.002+08:00

This week is THE lab test week.

For the past few hours I have done nothing but to counteract possible misbehavours in the coming lab test. These, I concluded, stem from the brilliant idea of notebook teaching+learning. Everyone uses their own notebook computer during the class, and of course THE lab test! Everyone has access to wiressless network, which is undeniably essential when over-reliance on online materials including test questions has been highly stated. No more campus computers and so as farewelll to all the OS administrative skills I mugged from BackOffice books to gain FULL control of the LAN in my lab.

So I was euphoric for quite a while with the brilliant counteracting method I came up with. Same test question but divided into modular sections. Resequence the sections to produce different combinations of outcomes. Marking is easy, just check the correct sequence happening one after another. Copying is easy, everyone knows that. But modifying it to the RIGHT sequence requires skills and time. If one can thrive it within the limited time - of course deserve the marks even it is a copied+modified one.... sounded perfect.

It is still a good+working idea but creating the documents for the various versions, checking them, authorising them to correct names for all 40 students can truely suck the life right out of you.....

My eyes are burning.

My butts hurt because I've been sitting too long.

Note from a passer-by: (who has just conducted his own lab test)
(good thing not my module): much disappointment!

Note to self: you are doing the RIGHT thing. Passion. Conviction. Keep going....

Cool illusion

2007-11-10T21:42:00.000+08:00

This is definitely one of the coolest illusions I have ever seen.

Follow the instructions below:
1) Relax and concentrate on the 4 small dots in the middle of the picture for about 20 seconds
2) Then, take a look at a wall near you (any smooth, single-coloured surface wall)
3) You will see a circle of light developing
4) Blink your eyes a few times and you will see a figure appearing ...
5) What did you see? Who did you see?

Schizophrenia

2007-11-09T17:12:00.001+08:00

Ran a make-up lesson for: 40
Turned up number: 21
Voice volume equivalent: 100000000000!

They are just an interesting bunch! They have the strange capability of draining your energy by constantly talking in FULL volume, making you spending extra time+energy+voice to draw their attention at every single step of the lesson, pushing you till you almost quit, and then suddently fill you with joy by showing their learning and finally thanking you sweetly before making their way out of the room at the end of the lesson....

Many lecturers teaching them have this emotional 'roller-coaster' ride everytime. When asked how they feel about this class? "Surely they are chatty but they are okay, occasionally sweet, smart ......"

Have you ever had an experience: feeling grateful even after you have been tortured?

That is it. Exactly. No doubt about it.

Thank you, teacher.

2007-11-06T17:47:00.001+08:00

Same room, T12310. But a totally different experience.

There was this tall guy. The moment I walked into the classroom, he declared that he has not been attending class for 'quite some time' and does not know 'what to do'.

I thought to myself, "This is week#7. Schedules, among other information for the module, have been posted online for more than 2 months now."

"Check the BlackBoard(online) yourself," I replied instinctively.

He fiddled on his keyboard for a while and came again, "Where? Cannot find leh..."

Positive energy depleted a little. "Another typical no-know-where-what guy." I thought to myself.

I looked at the rest of the class. Some were moving in extraordinary slow motion. Turning towards the computer, opening their bags and visually scouting around for clues of what they should do....

After a moment of hesitation, I outlined possible strategies for the lesson - they have to decide on one. The test is just two weeks away. Someone made a brilliant suggestion -go through the lecture PPT again, even though this is supposed to be a practical - and it started the ball rolling. Miraculously, everyone suddenly picked up. We actually barely touched on the PPT. Most parts of the lesson were done with the white board. In the next 20mins, I saw many heads nodding in consent whenever a key concept was summarised. I heard responses almost immediately after a question was posted..... Many doubts were cleared. Many relevant questions were asked, and resolved!

What can I say about them?

After the short lecture, everyone went on with their own works. Then, the tall guy came up to me. With notes and diagrams neatly written and drawn on papers, he politely confirmed a few key concepts with me. He actually managed to catch up with stuff that were being taught (by another lecturer) over the many weeks that he had missed!

"I am so effective!" A feeling of triumph overwhelmed me.

And then, he gently drew out a green form.....

It was his LOA (leave of absent) form. He had missed many lessons for valid reasons.

Instantly, the feeling of triumph vanished completely! Instead, the sense of guilt multiples rapidly. I suddenly realised what he meant by not been attending class for 'quite some time' and does not know 'what to do'....

I have failed, after a successful lesson.

I have failed to understand my student before I judge!

Thank you, tall guy. More appropriately, thank you, teacher!

Chamber of Torture

2007-11-05T16:44:00.001+08:00

Deliberately arrived 8 mins after the scheduled time to meet the group of smarties again this morning after a week's break, only to realise that many were still 'on the way'.

Not really a surprising sight anymore, after immersing here for 8 years. Morning 8am lesson is no new problem. The morning rain escalated the toughness a little. But the element of these smarty students perfected it to a complete full-blown challenge!

A 2-hour play slowly unfolded. Directed and dictated, all by them, the smarty students.

For every tutorial question that I put forward for discussion, they effortlessly plowed me back to 'ground-zero', the beginning of the respective topic and watched me repeating every bit of the content that I had delivered, just a week ago.

Interestingly, their plot went in nested manner. The subsequent tutorial questions triggered more nested repeat broadcast of the previous questions....I couldn't help but to think that these smarty students must have had overdose from their programming courses - nested loops!

Loops of repeat broadcast. Every repetition called for further repetitions......

After the lesson, on way out of Room T12310 - I found myself renaming it - the Chamber of Torture!