High-tech annoyances

Everyday when I go to school, I’m haunted by large LCD TV screens on every level of the school building that loops a powepoint presentation on the number of job cuts each prominent employer is making, and all the networking sessions our career services office has kindly planned for us.

Should that even have a place in an institution of higher learning?

Why aren’t they showing the latest world news, research discoveries, and discussions on academic issues and current affairs instead?

If the shiny new LCD TVs are just going to be used to propagate such propaganda and noise, I suggest we sell them all in view of the latest budget cut, or at least turn them off to save Gaia.

Yes, I do want a job, very much so. But I’m not here to make the school’s statistics and KPIs.

There is no meaning in life

They’re showing another episode of a lecture on Confusian philosophy.

I hate philosophy. Mostly because they are always about standards, morals, definitions and theories about right and wrong, good and evil. But life and the way we live escapes theorizing attempts and rejects philosophies.

Standards differ across culture, across time and across situations. How do we live our lives by a single set of principles when we face infinite circumstances and have to make infinite decisions with varying consequences every day?

Besides, why are we studying life instead of just getting on with it? Away from life, morals, standards, and ”meaning in life” is academic.

We reflect on our decisions, consider our beliefs and maybe even theorize something out of a situation. But really, they’re all anecdotal.

Slumdog Millionaire

It’s not a bad movie. It’s worth watching. But it’s really overrated too.

What made the movie interesting is the original manner of stringing a not-very-original rag to riches story together using questions in Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. It was a great idea, but unfortunately, the movie did not deliver the full potential of the story.

The key problem perhaps, was that Slumdog is too ambitious. In a simplistic story with a few kids, it tried to pack in too many themes. It wanted to show how answers to what may be difficult questions can actually be picked up in everyday life, it wanted to illustrate the hardships faced by a kid growing up in the slums, it wanted to relate the kid’s story to the growth of the city of Mumbai and capture the charms of that exotic city, and it also wanted to be a humorous fairy tale romance.

What resulted was an overpromised, under-delivered film that spread itself far too thin. How Jamal (the protogonist) knew the answers to the game show questions is not convincing at all. So what if his brother shot someone with a gun? How would he know who invented the revolver from that? And how did the blind slumdog kid who told Jamal that the man on the 100 dollar bill is Benjamin Franklin knew this?

The growth of Mumbai was briefly mentioned by Jamal and his brother, reflecting on how modern buildings have grown out of their slums. The colorful depiction of Mumbai slums with Jamal and his brother as kids was interesting, but little more was said of it. The film also glanced pass some typical story of corrupt cops, the call centers, Indian gangsters, and even bollywood dances.

A lot was said, but all at the superficial level, and it is all it is, a fairy tale romance filmed in an exotic location with non-caucasian actors, some sporting a funny accent. That perhaps was what made the film so popular, it was about people and places unfamiliar to the first world.

The acting, except for the charming children, was generally linear and amateurish. Jamal had little more looks than his wide-eyed terrified look. The female lead, Latika, was mostly a pretty face.

Too many themes and mediocre actors made the film mostly an enjoyable, but souless movie not entirely deserving of the hype it created. But watch it, it’s not bad.

Different?

At the beginning, SMU was different.

We did away with large lectures in favor of seminar groups where students directly interacted with each other and the professors. We put less emphasis on exams and included group projects, presentations and class participation into the assessment requirements. We selected students who can fit into this culture, and who are able to add to the vibrancy of the school.

Because SMU was new, it was the dumping ground. Our first batch of students were admirable risk takers who bought into the idea that SMU is different, and that university education should be different. (Nevermind the contradiction of having risk takers dumped into the dumping ground.)

But now, all that has changed. After some initial success where SMU graduates were preferred to their peers from NUS and NTU, SMU is no longer the dumping ground, but the fresh upstart with the biggest potential.

Worst of all, we started attracting the wrong crowd. Now, we have academically oriented students who are competitive and care to work hard for grades. They came to SMU because they thought it would prepare them well for a job. This has completely undermined the SMU culture. We are no longer different.

Now, SMU is just another school full of muggers, just like the other 2 universities in Singapore. Imagine the horrors of seeing a university where students fill the library studying for exams, especially students who already could get A- but were aiming for A+. Can you resist not gagging at students who buy textbooks and read up before classes?

How terrible.

Such is the general idea of some of the laments of SMU students which someone has kindly collated in a brightsparks forum, a portal for students to choose universities and scholarships for their tertiary education.

This leads me to wonder, what expectations did the students who wrote these posts had of university education? Why did they even want to go to an university? What do they want the university to do for them?

Let me begin by stating my expectations of an university education. I decided to go to university because I wanted to further my studies, to learn and prepare myself for a particular area of work. I expect my university to facilitate my learning by providing lecturers I can learn from and the peers whom I can learn with. I expect that the university knows the type of training I require, and is able to objectively and accurately assess my abilities.

Besides that, I want an university that is able to encourage and accomodate my interests outside academics. I wish to build friendships and form bonds with the people I study and play with during these years in my university. Although the non-academic area is important, I will not choose to go to an university that has all that vibrant culture but is unable to provide me with the professional training and tertiary education I need from an university education.

My expectations are simple. I thought they were exactly what most people who chose to go to university expect too.

So imagine my shock, when I repeatedly read and hear what my peers lament about SMU, especially the studying (mugging) which seemed so problematic and repulsive to them.

Did they think that getting a degree, which is largely an academic business, was possible without any studying? Did they think that learning can be entirely done through class discussions in which students ask questions and form opinions when they have never read any materials before class?

Or better, did they expect that SMU was different, because they could get a good degree and learn everything they needed to know about their course of study, without needing to put in the hard work of studying? I would love to go to such a school too, but last I heard, this seemed only possible in the Matrix movie where knowledge can be downloaded.

If they find studying so repulsive, why did they choose to do a degree in an university? Sure, academic courses can be restructured to include projects and class debates, but to know the technical knowledge, you do need to put in the long hours poring over books to memorise and understand some theories. If you’ve never studied or understood anything, then there is nothing to think or discuss about. Maybe they should have chosen a course of study like art, music or dance, in which painting, playing and dancing will be their form of (perhaps less repulsive) mugging.

What bewilders me the most though, is the question of what could be their main purpose for coming to university when they place so much importance on non-academic activities? Did they choose to go to an university solely because they wanted to participate in extra-curricular activities? Then why didn’t they just skip university and join those activities outside of school instead?

Maybe they do want a degree after all. Maybe they do want to be prepared for a future career. And (oh the horrors!), maybe they do want a better job. But no, they don’t want the studying, they want a degree from plain class discussions and doing co-curricular activities in school.

As far as I understand, SMU has fulfilled most of what it promised to me to be different from the other universities. (Maybe my expectations were too low) I expect SMU to teach me the soft skills I need in addition to academics, and I have indeed been trained in the soft skills. We do have seminar-style studying where we closely interact with professors. We do have many many projects (perhaps too many even) where we learn to work with others on practical business cases and present our ideas to the class. Student life is not any less vibrant when taking into consideration the smaller student population compared to NUS and NTU.

What we should lament about, is perhaps the lack of intellectually curious students in SMU, not the influx of studious, hardworking students. Maybe in our quest for “good students”, we have failed to distinguish the intellectually curious ones from the merely exam-smart and hardworking ones.

We now have students who actually cared about studying and about grades. Now, we actually have competitive students who seriously want to do well academically, not just muddle through university and skipping classes for the too many commitments they put onto themselves. It is not perfect or idealistic, but what is so wrong about that?

In fact, I wish SMU could be much heavier and challenging academically. I wish there were more students and professors who cared about teaching academic knowledge so that we can have more meaningful class discussions. As much as the lack of training in communication skills is a disadvantage for the “old school” educated students of NUS and NTU, not being equipped with an adequate amount of technical knowledge is a disadvantage for all us eloquent graduates of the enlightened SMU regime.

SMU has the infrastructure (the seminar rooms and culture of presentations and class participation), and we are now getting good students who cared about studying the technical knowledge and doing well academically. That means we’re making progress and getting closer to becoming a university, not just a vocational school preparing us for work in the business world.

Maybe our marketing efforts have fooled even ourselves. It should never really be about being “different”, like what the slogan conveniently says (well, it’s a slogan). What we really should focus on, is being better.

Milk

I thought I should do some justice to a movie as good as Milk and write it a proper review. Although I wanted to watch it badly more because I just didn’t get to watch it, it’s a really well made movie worth every minute of its 127.

First though, some disclaimers. Milk is not a movie for those who enjoy only thrillers, slapstick comedies, intense dramas or tear-jerking (heterosexual, may I add) romance. And you are most likely not going to enjoy this movie if you cringe at the sight of men kissing or if you are a diehard conservative. Just in case your hopes for a good movie gets dashed and you walk out of the theater disappointed.

The protogonist of the movie Milk is Harvey Milk, the first openly gay person to hold public office in the US. The movie traces his political pursuit and fight for the civil rights of gays beginning when he moved from New York to Castro, San Francisco with his boyfriend and opened a camera shop in the 1970s. He believed that remaining closeted only increases the misunderstanding people had towards gays and that that was what hurt gays the most.

In a time when being gay was still considered a mental illness by psychiatrists and satanic by religious conservatives, Milk ran for office to fight for gay rights and made use of the publicity to give hope to other gays, wanting them to know that they are neither sick nor alone. He  rallied support in Castro, a gay neighborhood where social deviants fled to from their conservative hometowns. After several failures, Milk finally won a seat on the board of supervisors and successfully influenced the board to pass an ordinance of gay rights in San Francisco.

Milk was eventually assassinated by a conservative colleague jealous of his success less than a year after holding office. Fully aware of the personal danger he was in, Milk recorded a speech before he died where what he stood for could be summarized in his line, “If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door in the country.”

What amazes me the most about this movie was the fact that it looked like a documentary when everyone in the movie was actually only enacting a role. The superb acting of Sean Penn and all the supporting actors makes it practically impossible to imagine each of them as a different character. They were simply the person they played. Structured around scenes of Milk recording his final speech/will, the movie took the audience through the events plain and true, without a shard of the memories tainted by opinion or dramatization. Even the movie title was so simply named “Milk”, as a matter of fact.

Milk is about a tragedy, yet there were no tear-jerking scenes or heartbreaking lines desperate to move the audience. Milk is also an inspiring story, but there were no heroic scenes or predictable maxims in the dialogue to demonstrate ideals. Milk is about a funny and bubbly character who loved drama and Puccini’s operas, but cheap puns or silly theatrics were not employed to entertain the audience.

The story was conveyed in the way Harvey Milk’s face wrinkled up as he smiled, laughed or cried and in the changes in energy levels of his good friend and ally Cleave Jones when he first met Milk as an arrogant and hopeful youngster and when he came back to Milk dejected from the end of a relationship but inspired by the gay movement in Spain. All a good movie needs are actors who live their roles and subtle witticisms in the script.

The topping on the ice cream though, is the fashion (or lack of fashion) from that period, where everyone was in faded blue jeans, t-shirts and jean or leather jackets, complete with either a pony tail or uncombed mob of curly hair and accessorized themselves with a pair of large plastic glasses. They were in a time and place where hippies, junkies and people who genuinely believed in a cause were abundant. It was a time when no one cared about a smart Harvard graduate, “not even himself”.

The movie was alive with a counterculture characterized by people who believed in freedom and equality and were willing to stand by and act on their beliefs. If that, and the character of Milk wasn’t inspiring enough, there’re probably very few movies that can inspire you.

Milk craving

I wanted to watch the movie Milk.

Then I realized a couple of good friends wanted to watch it too, so I really wanted to watch Milk.

When Cathay stopped showing it and other theaters were showing it at limited timings and locations, the “they’re going to stop showing it soon!” scare made me desperate to watch Milk. So I frantically called up my interested friends.

But despite setting up several meetings, we didn’t get to watch it. By then, the craving for Milk was driving me nuts. So I thought I’ll just go watch it on my own some day after school. 

When even that plan didn’t materialize, watching Milk became my short term goal in life.

Anyway, I finally watched it today, although I knew it’s not an absolute must-watch movie or that I really wanted to see it so badly. If theaters made use of such scare tactics more often, I bet the box office will rake in millions even on the most unpopular movies.

But Milk was good. Great acting. Inspiring and funny in subtle ways. It’s refreshing to see a movie without exaggerated acting, corny lines and too much silly humor. =)

320gb for my life

Every time my laptop hiccups, my heart skips a beat.

That’s what happens when your life is not properly backed up, especially so if you’ve lost practically all your music, photos and work documents in a freak accident when your water bottle decides to leak in a superbly waterproof bag.

I finally decided that I do not want to suffer a heart attack should my failing laptop do, and made the decision to invest in another hard disk today.

But there’s actually not a lot of important information that I can’t live without. So it seems rather irrational that my heart should put so much importance on some bits and bytes.

Maybe it’s because they’re the only tangible evidence that I existed, did some work and went to some places, and because it’s tangible, nothing else could be as easily and completely preserved. There are too many things that I can’t keep from changing, decaying or disappearing by simply spending some money and a couple of hours copying the data.

So imagine how it feels like, when you have to hand over a defective hard disk with your whole life in it to some complete stranger in exchange for a new one (damn those warranty policies). That’s exactly what I had to do to the hard disk before the one I drowned. Well, no one is probably going to be interested in recovering some unimportant documents of my pathetic life, and I didn’t lose any data, but handing them all over without knowing the fate of that data is really pretty scary.

I hope manufacturers of hard disks and their factory workers are all extremely responsible people. At least I think Maxtor understands that, because I was pleasantly surprised by the words “save your life” on the sticker holding together a plastic wrap containing the wire. I’m glad they understood why I bought the disk in the first place.

In any case, I have 320gb now for my life, something like 20x more capacity than what I immediately need. I actually paid a bit more for the bigger one, believing I’ll have enough life to fill it.