Of Using Thesaurus Could be Dangerous

Note: This is again a collage of my posts in ReCom, so it might appear incoherent. This post is dedicated to my fellow juniors who are facing the struggle I once faced and is still trying to overcome.

Writing in English is a common struggle faced by most students from Chinese education background. Being unacquainted with the language, many of us have difficulty finding the right expression for our thoughts, and some people end up doing literal translation from Chinese language, often resulting in embarrassment.

In improving our language, one of the tactics often employed is to read thesaurus and do what I would call "find-and-replace". What happens is, instead of using simple words like "beautiful", "ugly" in our writing; we look up the fancier version of the adjectives in thesaurus and replace them with "idyllic" and "grotesque" instead.

While this tactic could work if we do it with care and complement it with improvements in other aspects of the language, I would like to remind people to resist the temptation of doing simple "bombastic-vocab substitution" without considering the context. I have seen many people who learn vocabs through thesaurus and end up writing sentences like,

• Yeah I am trying to ameliorate my english
• He is a bona fide guy
• I reckon vehemently that you are of the right opinion;

when they actually mean

• Yeah I am trying to improve my english
• He is a genuine guy
• I strongly agree with you

After some find-and-replace process, we end up with either sentences that sound awkward or are totally wrong. And worse of all, we don't even realise it, as some of us think that thesaurus means "the book of synonyms".

Just some explanations.

Ameliorate is "improve", but it's usually used in the context of "ameliorate the condition". I am not sure whether it's correct to say "ameliorate english", but the fact is that it's seldom used in this context, so when you simply use it this way it sounds awkward. It would be much better if you just say "improve my english" or "brush up my English".

Bona fide means genuine, but it only refers to the genuine in the sense that it's not counterfeit. E.g. a bona fide Malaysian, a bona fide van Gogh painting, a bona fide offer etc. However, it doesn't have the meaning of "genuine" in "a genuine guy". By a genuine guy we don't mean this is not a pirated-version of a guy, but we are referring to his sincere, truthful personality. And "bona fide" is not often used in this context.

Reckon means think, vehemently means with passion / emotion / zeal. That last sentence was simply improper and awkward. "Of the right opinion" is technically correct but it's not what you would say in daily conversation. It's a cumbersome phrase.

I hope that it's obvious from the examples above that if we simply learn our vocabs off thesaurus, thinking that we can substitute improve with ameliorate or genuine with bona fide indiscriminately, we will probably end up doing more harm than good to our writing.

At the end of the day, using good vocab per se is not a bad thing. Obviously all seasonal writers have a good repertoire of vocabulary, and the vocabulary fluorishes their writing. However, when the other aspects of our language is not as good as the vocab we are using, the whole thing will just feel absolutely awkward. For someone who is not too well-versed in the language, he or she might be "impressed" by our mastery of vocabs without picking up the other glaring errors; but for a native speaker, seeing improperly used vocab interspersed with glaring grammatical errors and non-flowing sentences is a major eyesore.

Or to put it the other way: vocabulary is to a language as icing is to a cake. If you put the icing on a great tasting cake, it's gonna make it even better; but if you simply put icing on a burnt cake or on a bowl of noodle, it's just yucky.

Of Living in the Past is Not Necessarily Better

Recently there was an interesting casual discussion in ReCom where people talked about why they prefer living in the past or the present. It was intriguing that a lot of people prefer the past with the general sentiment being that it was more serene, peaceful and fresh. I beg to differ with this generalisation.

To begin with, I think we should make a good distinction between rural rustic life and the past. Many people equate the past with what it is like in rural area today; but this is a gross misrepresentation of the past. Yes the modern men may look at insulated villages for a glimpse of olden days; but that doesn't mean that life in the past is rustic, peaceful and wonderful. Not everyone in the past lived in small villages - towns and metropolitans have existed way before our grandparents were born, and people who lived in big towns definitely did not enjoy the serene life some of us conjured to be the typical life of the past. Our past was riddled with endless warfare in most corners of the world, and though we continue to face military conflict in many places today,  an unprecedented majority of the world population is currently enjoying the most peace at any point in history.

The proponents of living in the past also propose that relationships in the past was more lovey-dovey and close-knit in general. While there is some truth in it, it does not mean that inter-personal relationship today is inferior to the past in all regards.

Yes on average most people today don't spend the same amount of time at home or close to home compared to before. But guess what, last time if people were to leave their hometown they might not see their family for months, years or decades. But now we have the phone, Facebook, MSN, Skype and what not. And we have airplanes. We tend to forget that the very things that bring us apart easier, bring us together easier too.

Yes it might appear to us that most people today spend a lot of time on the phone, in the office, in the car, attend endless conferences and meetings and ignore their kids. But it would be simplistic to think that there were fewer busy people in the past - there were lots of people spending time farming, mining, brokering at Wall Street, travelling on steam train, and arguing with their bosses. Therefore, whilst working life were drastically different from today, and despite the irrefutable fact that urbanisation has made more people busier today; it doesn't mean that most people were free people who had all the time to spend with their kids and form great bonds with their neighbour's grandchildren.

There are certain things that are undeniable. It's undeniable that an urban dweller today is less likely to know their neighbours as well as a villager in the last century knew their neighbours. It's undeniable that there were less people who led a hectic city life in 19th century compared to today.

However, it's also undeniable that we form bonds in ways people would never have thought possible. People DO find their life partners online. I make friends in ReCom as electrons travel through servers, cobble wires and personal computeres. I get to see my parents regularly from 6000km away and Skype's voice quality is so clear it sounds like they are just talking in front of me. I know that there's no place on Earth which is too far to get to.

As with most things, there are gives and takes when we progress as a society. Some things we lose; some we gain. It's how we make use of the things we gain and salvage the things we lose that makes all the difference. In this post I haven't even mentioned the World Wars, the Great Depression, colonisation, Spanish flu, the Black death, typhoid fevers and many others. All considered, I propose it's not easy to make the case of the life in the past being better than the life today, as frivolous as all this talk may sound.

Note: This is a collage of a few posts of mine in the ReCom thread, so pardon me for the incoherence and lack of comprehensiveness.

Image Credit: L'Arte - Where Everyone's an Artist!

How to Fix Slow Scrolling in Firefox

Many Firefox users including myself have been complaining about slow, choppy scrolling when they visit certain websites. For example, with the recent redesign, ReCom has been scrolling pretty choppily for me. Another example is this forum and this university website.

Apparently, the slow scrolling is due to the presence of a fixed background image in the web page. In the case of ReCom, there is a fixed background blue gradient. For the second forum, it is the giant globe, and for the university website, it's the pretty orange intersecting lines.

Interestingly this problem doesn't affect all versions of Firefox and all machines in which Firefox is used. But if you happen to be one of the unfortunate users, fret not - a fix is just a click away! This is a bookmarklet you can drag to your bookmark folder or save as a bookmark (found here):

Zap Background!

Whenever you visit a problematic website, just click on this Zap Background bookmarklet and the problem will be solved instantaneously! How does that work? Basically it just tells Firefox to stop displaying the problematic background, so it could scroll smoothly again.

If you don't want to click on the bookmarklet every single time, there are more methods you could employ that solve the problem once and for all but involve some tweaking:

1. If the problematic website is one that you visits regularly, you could tell Adblock (if you have it installed) to block the problematic background image altogether. To find out the URL of the background image, just right click on the background and "view background image". Then go to your Adblock setting to add the background image to the blocked item list.

2. A more drastic action is to disable static background image altogether in all websites. Visit this page for more instruction.

Enjoy the smoothness! :)

*****

Small talk: I have not disappeared. Exams were over two weeks ago and I have even gotten my results back. I attended five graduations in the past week and it was both gratifying (the photography opportunities) and physically demanding (you would know why if you have seen me at work :P) Camouflaged by the vibrance and joy was a little tinge of sadness, knowing that this is the end of social partnership I enjoyed tremendously with many good friends here. I am having holidays in Melbourne at the moment, and you will see me sporadically update this blog as I find the inspiration and mood.

Mathematics in Malaysia (2) - Overemphasis of Practice

Note: This post is adapted from my comment in ReCom, and I think it is an apt continuation of an earlier post.

From my personal experience and brief scanning of math threads in ReCom, I observed that many teachers advocate "practice makes perfect" philosophy in the teaching of mathematics. And as someone who loves maths and wishes to see higher mathematical aptitude in Malaysia, the prevalence of such mentality in our schools disturbs me profoundly.

Maths is about understanding, logical reasoning, critical analysis and creativity. NOT rote memory and algorithmic drills. Among all our subjects in secondary and primary schools, maths is arguably the subject that requires the highest degree of comprehension. Ironically, among all subjects, it also tends to be the subject where the most number of teachers give their students a daily drill of "do more practise and you should do better in it", instead of "think and learn more about it to understand it better".

Now, I fully understand and empathize that not everyone is able to fully understand all mathematical concepts taught in school, as each and every one of us are born with unequal talents in different fields. You may be a fine artist but flunk your math tests on a regular basis; I may ace math tests but draw like crap. So in this regard, I understand that it's indeed necessary for teachers to make practice an essential component in mathematical education, as it is indeed the easier, if not the only way for many people to do well in maths exams.

However, I have a feeling that practice has been overemphasized in our schools, to the extent that it has now supplanted understanding which is the essence of mathematics. You often hear people giving advice like "do more, more and even more practice until you are sick of it, and that would be the highest level you could achieve in preparing for maths tests". But you don't often hear, "hey my friend, let's work together to understand what this formula actually mean, why it is true and how it actually works". From my personal experience, when faced with such approach of teaching, many people simply turn it down and say "hey skip the crap, just tell me how to do it from the first step to the last". It seems that understanding is now relegated to something that only Olympiad maths participants should be interested in, the rest of us should aim more at buying more practice books.

Practice is good for SPM exams, this fact nobody can deny. However, when understanding is being increasingly perceived as an unnecessary evil, and practice being supposed to be the most economical approach for good exam scores, I fear that we will do badly when it comes to "real world maths". When you go to university, you would realise that "step by step" and "practice" is no longer relevant - understanding is the key. With years of incessant practice and scarce attention to understanding, I fear that many people, even those who actually have the intellectual capacity in the first place, would have been blunted in their creativity and comprehensive faculty, and consequently face hindrance in their further studies.

I hope that this post doesn't come down as being elitist, but this is something I care deeply about so I would love to hear from others about this.

Free Tibet (?)

Free tibet... with purchase of $20 or above

Okay that was not meant to present any point.

Lots of controversies have arisen about the current unrest in Tibet, and while I have lots to learn and say about this issue, for now I would just link to a discussion thread in ReCom.

What says you?


Image credit: JSOnline

Of Chinese-Ed, English-Ed and the Many Kinds of Chinese

Note: Adapted from my comment in a ReCom thread.

That was a heck of a long title, but it summarises what I am going to write, i.e. Chinese-educated Chinese, English-Educated Chinese, and the mutual disparagement and aversion between them.

To begin with, let me define the terms in this article. Chinese-ed and English-ed are vague and ill-defined terms; but in the context of Malaysia, Chinese-eds are people who learned Chinese language up to the level of primary school / secondary school / Form 5 (depending on the context); while English-eds are simply any Chinese who are not Chinese-ed. Not terribly accurate terms, but this is how it goes.

If you have been living in Malaysia long enough, I am sure you would have noticed the commonplace prejudice towards people from different education backgrounds. Some Chinese-eds tend to paint a generalised, biased picture of the English-eds, that is, they are often perceived as being more self-centred, ardent admirers of everything from "the West", and most importantly, they "forget their roots". They are often referred to with the derogatory term "bananas" - yellow on the outside, but all white inside. On the other hand, English-eds tend to view the Chinese-eds as being deeply engrossed and obsessive of their language / culture / "root" to the extent of compromising other responsibilities such as the national unity (e.g. the resistance to Vision schools). There is also some counter-aversion by English-ed, stemming from their suffering from prejudice cast by the Chinese-ed.

The rabbit hole goes deeper. Even among the Chinese-eds, you have this stratification of "Chinese-eds who learned the language up to UPSR","Chinese-eds who learned up to PMR but 'betrayed the culture' by dropping SPM Chinese"; and "the TRUE Chinese who took Chinese paper up to SPM without fear for the A2". (See note for more information) The first two groups are deemed to be inferior and more disgraceful than the last group.

I am absolutely appalled by this phenomenon.

Chinese need to wake up to the fact that racial chauvinism is not the way to go in this world, or at the very least, outside China. Yes, written and spoken language are a huge part of a race's identity; but to disparage your fellow friends because of his inability to write, read or speak in Chinese language simply show arrogance and ignorance on your part. Some Chinese in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan etc look down on foreign Chinese who can't speak Mandarin, but to do so is pathetically ignorant of the stories of Chinese diaspora throughout the world.

For the case of "people who didn't take up SPM Chinese" = shameful... why, why, why? Some people might be native Chinese speakers, as they are brought up in a mandarin-speaking family who speak Mandarin and read Chinese papers on a daily basis. Naturally, they will be relatively more fluent and proficient in the language. Some others may have it the harder way, as their family may not be the most conducive environment for learning Chinese, but yet they managed to build a good command in the language through sheer hard work. They definitely deserve our respect. However, some people have never had conducive environment, and had struggled to do well in Chinese language despite continuous effort. In your opinion, are they obliged to take up SPM Chinese just to prove that "they are Chinese", or so that they do not appear to leave out their compatriots who are fighting the cruel grading of SPM Chinese?

I personally know a friend who is from the last category, and he had to go through the ordeal of SPM Chinese as my school makes the subject compulsory. Despite his blood, sweat, and tears, he "only" got an A2 in the end, to much detriment of his scholarship opportunity in spite of his overall excellence in every subject. He only managed to get the scholarship he truly deserved with the help of MCA.

And no, he didn't "become more Chinese", as some claimed SPM Chinese's benefit to be. In fact his aversion towards the language only grew stronger. The only thing we gained from forcing him to take up SPM Chinese, is the false sense of vindication among the overzealous Chinese, who think that "YES, another student has preserved his root and has stood up to the injustice of deviant SPM Chinese marking." But that is also where the benefit ends.

I am all for Chinese learning Chinese language, or for that matter, any foreigner learning Chinese language. It is a beautiful language, it has painted sublime poetry throughout history and adorned the Chinese civilisation. I have always given my wholehearted support for the effort to preserve the opportunity of learning the language in Malaysia and other countries. However, I think that people ought to do away with the systematic discrimination down the "levels of Chinese education", which in turn depends on a lot of factors like opportunity, logistics, interest, and to a huge extent, odds. We need to rethink our obsession of linking Chinese exam papers and Chinese-ness, Chinese identity, Chinese culture or what have you. If there's a single most detrimental effect of the ridiculously low A1 percentage in SPM (with respect to other subjects), in my opinion, it is to widen the divide within the Chinese community.

I must say that I have had enough of it. It ought to be rectified, or there will come a day when I am ashamed to identify myself as part of this racial group.

Note: For the uninitiated, SPM Chinese is one of the most dreaded subjects in the SPM exam, the reason being that only a very low percentage of candidates obtain A1 in it (around 1 - 2% since 2001) compared to most other subjects (around 10 - 20%). Many people dropped this subject in SPM because it lowered their chance of getting scholarships if they did not get an A1. Many people allege that the low percentage is an attempt by the government to deter Chinese from learning their own language, while some claim that this is to cut down the number of Chinese getting the much-coveted JPA scholarship. Read more about this issue in Education Malaysia blog and ReCom (Malaysian Student Forum).

Image Credit: Saratoga News

I Made a Fool of Myself

Read this post in Kennysia.com.

Basically Kenny Sia wrote about his experience in the red light district in Bangkok, and ended the post with a picture of him with a trans-sexual who agreed to pose her breast and let Kenny squeeze it at a price of 100 Baht (11 Ringgit). As you would expect it created a furore in the comments, some along the lines of "hey Kenny you rock!"; some say "naughty.... was it soft as the real thing?"; while some censured the photo.

When I first read the post, your truly's response was the latter.

I have always enjoyed reading your posts and is one of your loyal readers; but the last picture is really distasteful. Unless you have asked for her permission to put it in your widely read blog, you have no right to degrade him / her body by subjecting her to ridicule and lewd voyeurism here.

I understand that this post and your experience are all about entertainment and you may not mean to degrade them, but I think you ought to expand your moral boundary a bit wider than not sleeping with prostitute and not doing drugs.

While I expected nothing but more arguments in the comment section, a while later, when I revisited the page, I was surprised to see Kenny's reply to my comment:

Dear Chang Yang,

Thank you very much for your comment and concern. This is my point of view, and I hope that you try to understand and take it into account.

Chang Yang, the situation for transvestites in Bangkok is that they do indeed openly agree to pose for photos topless with tourists. Like it or not, that has been the tradition there and will remain the case for a long time.

One thing you must keep in mind is that she is a man. She is a pre-operation transvestite with implants for breasts. She is not born a female who has cultural boundaries when it comes to exposing the mammaries. And if you think of it that way, what difference is there between a transvestite baring her breasts and male swimmer baring his breasts?

Why is one more offensive than the other when in both cases the subjects are males?

No where in my blog entry have I ridiculed or degraded the transvestite. On the contrary, I find her fascinating and that is why I took a photo with her. After all, the livelihood of these ladyboys depend a lot more on photo opportunities with tourists than it is on anything else. And that is a fact.

I sincerely hope I have explained myself clearly why I believe I did not cross the line when it comes to publishing the said photo. However, even if I did not manage to convince you, I still do hope that we can agree to disagree. Obviously we as individuals have different opinions and boundaries when it comes to matters such as these. Some things that I think is okay, perhaps you may think is not. It's not who is right or who is wrong, but rather the differences of opinion.

I hope that you could respect my opinion just as I have respected yours. I genuinely do not believe that the transvestite will be ridiculed as a result of this blog entry. Unless I see symptoms of that, I would like to stand by my decision. And I hope that eventhough my decision does not make you happy, that you could at least respect my decision.

Thank you very much, Chang Yang and I hope that you have a wonderful day.


Regards,
Kenny Sia

At that moment, I was actually quite satisfied with his reply. Since he appeared to have no disrespect towards the person, and that he sounded rather sincere in that comment, I kind of accepted his rationale and respected his decision. I still do not fully endorse the action, nor would I do the same thing should I be in Kenny's shoe; but the thing is, I kinda "accepted" it.

Amidst the excitement of having a famous blogger actually replying to me within 15 minutes, I did something silly.

Thanks a lot for your reply, Kenny. I am surprised that you actually took your time to reply it.

Now that you put it in the context, I understand and respect your action. And yup, I always respect other's decisions and beliefs as well as agree to disagree. I believe that with this comment of yours, other readers would come to understand and empathize the culture in red light districts; instead of misconstruing your post as a disrespectful, vulgar and juvenile entertainment.

Keep your great posts coming! There are good reasons why your blog is among the widest read blog in the region.

Greeting from Melbourne. :)

That was meant to be the last comment I would post in that page, so I kind of added the last few lines as some sort of greeting and support to a blogger I (relatively) enjoy reading. I guess there's also an element of reciprocation to his courtesy of replying to my comment at good length.

But it proved to be a bad bad thing to write.

lol @ Chan Yang

starts off with some valid points which made a lot of sense but then broke down simpering with happiness when kenny addresses him/her.

lol chang yang.

like a dog receiving a bone from his master.

Hah I haven't been so badly humiliated since the ReCom arrogant-medical-student furore (day-dreamers should remember this I think).

While reading the comments, I got a bit annoyed by some invalid arguments and hasty generalizations. Some are giving the familiar arguments of "It's his blog, if you don't like then it's your problems la, why complain?"; while some said, "People should be more open minded."

After reading the comments, though, I kind of rationalized over the whole thing and arrived at a new stance. Nerdy as always, I actually spent my time writing a long-winded reply, while getting a good scold from Xuan Ni in the process.

When it comes to sexuality and nudity, I believe there are certain arbitrary boundaries in different scenarios, and among others, those boundaries are dependent on the culture and context in which the material is presented.

For culture, what seems okay for one culture might be a sin for another. Baring shoulder is the norm in Western culture, but in a conservative society the same outfit could be deemed indecent or even heretic. In Netherlands you could safely bare your breasts on a beach, but in a US street doing the same thing could still get you arrested.

Speaking of the context, pictures of various shapes of breasts are acceptable in a wikipedia article about breast; but the same thing wouldn't be suitable in, say, Power Ranger in Cartoon Network. A picture of a breast rummaged by breast cancer could, and should appear in a medical textbook; but if someone is to write a post taunting a girls' deformed breast using the same picture, I am sure that everyone would say that it's distasteful.

In my humble opinion, it would be ignorant to say, "Aiyarr, be open-minded lar, it's a breast picture nia marr, you little children cannot take it then close your eyes loh!" Such comments simplify opinions towards nudity into a false dichotomy of "open-minded vs. close-minded", and fail to consider the factor of culture and context. The world doesn't only consist of two mentalities where open-minded = all nudities are okay and close-minded = freak out at any signs of flesh.

When I wrote the first post, I was of the impression that Kenny has been poking fun at the sex-industry culture without respect whatsoever towards the dignity of the individuals who, by choice or by no choice, became a sexual / entertainment worker. To me, the post seemed to be bustling with testosterone excitement. Not that it's anything wrong to talk about exciting and sensual experience in a red-light district. But I must say that if there was already the slightest frown in me after reading the first 80% of the post, the final picture brought it home with its distastefulness.

Yes Kenny warned about the nudity in the very first line, but the picture still appeared quite distasteful. It seemed to be shed in the light of pure manly joy. As an analogy, I could very well write a dead-serious post about sexuality, begin with a warning that "hey there will be nudity in this post", then go on rambling about the issue, and then top it off with distasteful pornographic pictures done by two penniless girls who agreed to do it with reimbursement. Yes in Kenny's case it's not as bad as what I describe in this hypothetical example, but I am just illustrating what I mean by "still distasteful despite warning".

When Kenny replied to me, I was glad that he took his time to reply to my short comment personally. And after reading his context and views about the sexual industry, I felt that he's been sincere in that his defence that he has never meant any disparagement in his post. How the readers interpret the post are up to themselves, but as Kenny clearly stated his intention and gave a relatively acceptable context regarding the picture, I kind of accepted his reasoning and chose to respect his decision. Admittedly my flatteries might have been unnecessary.

Having said that, if I were him I wouldn't have put up the picture, and despite respecting his decisions, I do not endorse it.(I said " I understand and respect your action", not "I support you"). It would have been much better if he gave a good context in which he describes and places the picture. Or simply don't put the picture at all.

But oh well. Since it brings in tons of hits...

To which, I got a reply:

Chang Yang get a life.no one's gonna remember you 10mins after they close this page on their pc.they will,however,remember kenny sia.don't try act smart la.

I made a fool of myself. Probably I should stay in My Little Moments and don't try act smart. :P

ReCom - Fully Functional Again!

For some unknown reasons, ReCom has fully recovered from its undiagnosed server illness. It's been back to normal since yesterday, and hopefully it will remain so for a long time.

Rejoice, and do make full use of the biggest Malaysian student forum. I will see you there! :)

What is Wrong with ReCom?

As you guys might know, I am one of the so-called "moderators" of ReCom, the Worldwide Malaysian Student Network. Recently ReCom has been facing many troubles with the connections, and many people have been making many inquiries about the condition of ReCom.

Currently ReCom looks like this:

There seems to be a problem with the MySQL server, sorry for the inconvenience. We should be back shortly.

There has been a messy technical problem which can't be sorted out at the moment. We are facing a great deal of problem now, and after one week of intense troubleshooting by a few dedicated site-developers, everything is at a dead-end - they have already done their best, yet they can't find out what the hell is wrong with the site that caused the problem.

For a detailed explanation of the nature of ReCom's problem, please visit Jiin Joo's post here. If anyone is able to help out with the coding, please let us know. We need as much help as possible now.

How Do You Stop an Addiction?

I have an addiction.

I need to stop homing in computers wherever I go, library, my house, Xuan Ni's house, computer lab, tutorial rooms.

I need to stop frequenting websites which has nothing to do with my studies. I check my Google Reader (An RSS reader) wherever I go so that I can see whether there are updates from my friends blogs, Digg (an "interesting news" website), Lifehacker (tech-related tips and tricks), Good Maths Bad Maths (to keep me mathematically literate), Pharyngula (biological stuff) and so on.

I learn stuff like how the Church of Scientology creepily prey on BBC reporters and look stupid in front of cameras, how a mirror would look like when you scan it with a scanner (it's surprising), how Carlton (the place I live in) used to have a train station, and how some states in US are against the law that makes HPV vaccine mandatory for young girls. Oh well, the last one might be slightly related to me, but then it's not going to be in the exams.

At the same time, I am not doing that much of work on this week's topic, acute lymphoblastic leukemia, and also leukemia and lymphoma in general. Every night I tell myself "I'm going to start studying at 9", but I end up doing all sorts of stuff online and study for only half an hour before going to bed.

I visit ReCom to read and "patrol" the discussions because I am one of the moderators of the forum. When I got tired of the immature comments, I spend hours typing retorts and warning members when they go overboard. After three years of involvement there, to date my post count is 1836.

All that, and my exams are three weeks away. I should at least cut down Digg and ReCom in my daily addiction fix. They are killing my time, and probably my score too. Wish me good luck.


p/s: By the way, all the stuff I linked to above are strongly recommended websites and articles. If you think that the Internet is a boring place, have a look at those websites and you might have a second thought. :)

New World Record - SPM 19A1 scorer!

Yes, it's been revealed - this year there is a 19A1 scorer by a Malay girl from Johor! Read more about it here: Utusan Malaysia article.

WALAU.

This has become a hot discussion topic in ReCom (the student forum I frequent). I did offer my two cents as well:

She might be really smart, and I congratulate her sincerely for the brilliant result. Presumably she must have put a lot of effort in the preparation process, and regardless of any suspected ulterior motives or conspiracy theories, the result she's reaping is definitely a personal achievement that should be lauded.

The point we should raise from this news, is not whether she's really that smart or good at studies (two of them are not equivalent), because you can only tell if you know her in real life. She might be vain, or is simply ambitious, but that's not known to us so any accusation here would be judgmental, and potentially sour grapes. In this case, no conjecture would do her any justice.

Instead of discussing her ambition or motives, what we should reflect on are the issues raised by the insane amount of A1s in general:

• the disproportionate attention our society is giving to the number of A1s
  
• the loss of differentiating power in SPM results
  
• the exacerbation of mark-driven education
  
• the unhealthy rat race of SPM quantities instead of qualities
  
• the continuation of scholarship-related clamor (which is related to the loss of differentiating power)
  

Some people might also be suspicious about the racial factor of the top scorer in the past few years, but that will only remain as a subject of hypothesis. And that would be inconvenient for me to discuss as well.

By the way, ReCom has had many discussions about the amount of SPM subjects in the past. Read through those discussions if you are interested:
Proposal to limit the maximum of 12 subjects for SPM
Lots of A1, does it show anything?
I want more A1 in SPM! The Motivation
High achievers in studies turning into national celebrities?

Faith and Logic

Faith and logic - The two cornerstones of humanity. They both attempt to explain why and how, but they don't always agree with each other. They always come together in conversations, but sometimes they are bundled incorrectly. The following is an account based on my involvement in the WorldWide Malaysian Students Network, a.k.a. ReCom.

For as long as I could remember, I have been posting actively in some of the religious threads in ReCom ([1][2][3] etc) Those discussions and arguments spanned over 2 years, and as time goes by my enthusiasm has never faded at all. I have posted more than 100 religion-related replies in ReCom, and I even pasted one of my posts in this blog to share my thoughts with others.

It has been a long long time, but I must say it's a time worth spending. Some people ask me why did I bother joining the discussions at all when I know that people won't just change their mind after an online discussion. Some others ask me why I am so obstinate as to be so assertive in threads about religion, when people can have their way of living without encroaching into others' daily life.

The reason is, I can't stand people bashing others holier-than-thou-ly using logical fallacies. I can't stand people who say "Hey, if not because of my religion (fill in the blank), this world would be in a state of chaos because everyone would kill and rape each other". Or even, "Aren't you ashamed of having this [atheist/non-Abrahamic-god] thought?"

And most of all, a lot of people choose to present their points in a closed, invalid logic. "The [holy scripture] is right because the [holy scripture] says the [holy scripture] is right" is what a lot of people always use when they come to religious discourse. What makes this claim more valid than "He is handsome because he said he is handsome?"

I am not trying to attack any religion here, I have never ever attempted to. Challenge, question, doubt, yes I did all of them; but neither challenge vicious attack nor insult. In fact, it's religious insult that I am always countering here... It's posts like this that I am countering:

... maaf kerana agak kasar. Buddha tak belajar sains, dia tak tahu apa2 dari sains. ia hanya menafikan wujudnya tuhan kerana dia tidak dapat berfikir secara sains dan berpandukan fakta yang tepat.

terus-terang saya katakan buddha adalah atheis jika tidak percaya pada tuhan, sy boleh simpulkan Buddhist dan Atheis adalah sama. (tak percaya tuhan).
http://atheism.about.com/b/a/220594.htm

tahukah kamu hitler tidak percaya pada tuhan, dia buat jahat
kerana ia tahu jika ia mati pun tak apa.kerana tidak dibalas dengan neraka (sama seperti buddha yang mengatakan tiada tuhan).

See how some people try to invoke Godwin's Law by comparing Buddhist to Atheist to Hitler? That's why I always gatal want to rebut this kind of statement although it is detracting from the meagre time remaining for me with Xuan Ni, Kandel and lecture notes. This kind of vicious attack is unjustified, and by nature I just couldn't let it be and continue studying the neuron's structure.

Eerm, wait, I have strayed too far from what I actually want to write here... The actual reason I am writing here is, too many religious fighting and bashing occur because people just don't get the fundamental difference in thoughts among different population. People just don't get why other people don't get them.

In order to contribute my two cents, I have written my point of view regarding why religious fights always occur with no resolution. It's not a comprehensive description per se, but I tried to outline my basic points. Below is the thought I am sharing today... Hope it contributes a little bit to world peace.

Somehow, I feel that everything [a person's point of view] is up to the axiom of life for every individual. (By axiom I mean self-evident, fundamental "truth" which can't be validated, argued nor challenged without employing the axiom itself)

Many people (including me) have been brought up to believe that cause and effects, rule and regulations, hooks and crooks, right and wrong are all up to the interpretation and explanation using logic. Whenever we come to a dilemma, whenever we are unsure of whether something is right or wrong, we go back to step one in logic. By employing the premises of logic, we set off to deduce, to infer, to hypothesize and to validate our hypothesis; and if our hypothesis is proven wrong, we know that it's illogical and hence it's wrong.

In short, for us, logic is above everything, it's the basis of human reasoning and it underlies every reason and argument. Nothing can be valid without adhering to logical sequence; and to be illogical is to be wrong.

However, for many devout believers (e.g. Muslims, Christians etc), the axiom of life is not logic. Rather, the axiom of the universe is the word of God, as revealed in the Holy Scripture (al Quran for Muslim, the Bible for Christian, Torah for Jewish etc). Whenever faced with a problem, a devout believer will always heed to advice or statements or rules in the Holy Scripture, because he or she believes that God's words are the ultimate truths in this universe. For them, even logic is below God's word because without God, logic wouldn't exist at all.

For devout believers, God's words are above everything, even human common sense and logic. It's the basis of their reasoning and it underlies every reason and argument in daily life. Nothing can be valid without adhering to God's word and permission and restriction, and to disobey God's word is to sin. When God's word contradict other people's common sense, God is on the right side. There's no need to argue, "God is right" is something taken as granted, just as much as every literate take 1 + 1 = 2 as a fact in the realm of Mathematics.

So that's how we ended up having different mindsets, non abrahamic-god-believers on the street and devout believers. Let's not start arguing which set of axiom is true or false, because as soon as you start arguing, you are going to begin step one with your own axiom. The camp of logic is going to start by finding logical fallacies in the religious teaching; and the camp of religion is going to start by quoting the Holy Scripture. And we will never achieve a resolution, as long as we hold steadfast to our respective axioms. And as long as there are people who fail to appreciate the difference of axiom in each individual, they are going to be really pissed by each other in this thread.

Personally, I have no trouble with people having different axiom of life. As long as people do not kill each other just because of different axioms, I am perfectly alright.

The employment of logical fallacy is more frequent than what we think. Whenever faced with questioning, some people tend to resort to their Holy Book, use some "logical deductions" and think that everything is henceforth a fact. In the post above, I was countering a poster who said that "pig is an unclean animal" is a fact because the holy book says so, and also his holy book said God created pig as a filthy animal, so it must be filthy. This kind of argument exists everywhere, be it on the street or on ReCom. And the worst part is, those who use this kind of argument would seldom realize that their logic is fundamentally flawed.

I hope that by posting this, we can all refrain from insulting other's religions, what more insulting via illogical arguments. We will never have a conclusive proof of who's in the right, so for now,

p/s: In case anyone is wondering what my faith is, I would say I am a not-very-convinced agnostic Buddhist. Or a free-thinker if you want to put it that way.

The Hardest Thing is Learning to Let Go

Did I just say I don't like forwarded stories in the last post? :D

It had been raining for more than a week, so much rain it made everyday seemed so restless and gloomy. She called and said she was coming up. It was the third time she came up to see me that week. I carried her excuse of why she came all the way here and went to meet her at the nearby 7-11. She was standing there alone, carrying her red umbrella. Her friend had dropped her off. It was raining and she was shivering. She looked weak and fragile in the harsh rain, wearing not enough to keep her warm. I walked up to her and said, "You shouldn't come see me anymore," and stuff like how we shouldn't be together.

She said, "I miss you."

I told her coldly, "Lets go, I'll take you home."

She did not open up her umbrella, I knew she wanted to share mine.

I said, "Open up your umbrella, let's go."

Unwillingly, She opened up her umbrella and walked with me to the car. She said she hadn't eat lunch or dinner and asked if we could stop at some place to eat.

Right away I answered with a stoned heart, "No!"

Disappointed, she asked me to take her to the train station, she said she would take the train back home.

Maybe it was the rain, all the trains were full of people with umbrellas and suit cases who were eager to get home, not caring about who just passed by. We waited and waited, she looked at me innocently. Being together for so long, of course I knew what she meant. I understand how she must feel when she came all this way here in this kind of weather and I treat her like this. With her soft eyes staring at me, I felt guilt and wanted to let her stay for the night.

But reality struck again, I said to her coldly, "Let's go try the other train station."

We were living in the same apartment building, on the same floor. Back then there were four of us, and we got along well. We would always eat dinner together, watch movies, and sometimes go camping. We were more like a family, but I didn't know I would end up falling in love with the only girl of the four. Maybe it was during the last year of college, having living together for two years, we developed deep feelings for each other. After she graduated she went back home, and I stayed for one more year to finish school. During that year I was only able to take the train down to see her on holidays, but never for long. That was how we kept the treasured relationship.

We were walking along the side of the road. She was in front of me and I was right behind her. Her umbrella had a broken spoke. She looked liked a wounded soldier, carrying her rusted rifle walking weakly. Many times, she was too into thinking or whatever she was doing, drifting off the road, she almost got hit by the cars passing by. I wanted to just take her in my arms, but with the love I had for her and the constant pain in my stomach, I did nothing. On the way, we passed by the park where we use to always go.

She begged and said, "Lets go in the park just for a little while please, I promise I'll go home right after this."

With her begging, my cold heart softened, but I still put up an annoyed face and walked in the park. I was just sitting on the benches looking like I wanted to leave. She went to the big oak tree and she was looking for something. I knew she was looking for what we wrote on that tree with a silver ink pen half a year ago. If I remember it right, it said, "Chris and Susan was here, Chris had tea and Susan was drinking hot chocolate. Hope Chris and Susan would always remember this day, always loving each other, forever." She was looking around for quite a while, then she came back slowly with tears on her face.

She said, "Chris, I can't find it, it's not there anymore."

I felt so sour inside, there was a stream of pain, flowing into my heart, the kind of pain I've never felt before. But all I could do was pretend I didn't care, and said, "Can we go now?"

I opened up my big black umbrella, she was just standing there, didn't want to leave yet, hoping there was still a chance. She said, "You made up the story of you and that other girl didn't you? I know I frustrate you sometimes, but I'll change, can't we start over?"

I didn't say a word, just looked down and shook my head. After that we just kept on walking towards the train station, didn't say a word to each other.

Four years ago, the doctor said I had cancer, but it was found early, so it was still curable. Thinking that it was okay, I started living my normal life again, and even forgot about the cancer. I didn't think about the cancer again and did not go back to the doctor. Until a month ago, my stomach was hurting for two weeks straight, and the nightmare awakened me again. First I thought the pain would go away, but it grew stronger until to the point that I couldn't take it anymore. I went back to the doctor and took an X-ray.

The picture came out and there was a big black spot, which proved the truth that I did not want to believe. I was at the most glittering part of my life, but it was coming to an end. I wanted myself and the people around me to go through the least pain possible, so I decided to commit suicide. But I couldn't let people find out about my intentions, especially Susan, the person I love the most in this whole world, who still doesn't know about the truth. Susan was still young, she shouldn't have to go through this. So I made up some stories and lied to her. It was a cruel thing to do, and it broke her heart, but it was the fastest way to wipe out three years's feelings. I didn't have much time, because I would soon start to loose hair and she would find out eventually. But now I'm close to succeeding, this drama would soon be over. Thirty minutes more this would all come to an end, that was what I had in mind.

The train had stopped running so I called a taxi for her. We were just standing there, waiting, loosing our last moments in silence.

I saw the taxi from far away, I held my tears and said to her, "Take care of yourself, take good care of yourself."

She didn't talk, just nodded lightly, and then opened up her misshaped umbrella and stepped out on the street. Out in the rain, we became two single life forms, one red, one black, so far away from each other. I opened the door for her and she got in, then I close the door that would separate me from her forever. I stood by the car, staring in the dark window, at the first love in my life, also the last one, walking out of my life. The car started, driving into the street. Finally I couldn't hold my sorrow and the twist in my heart any longer, waving my arms rapidly chasing after the taxi, because I knew, this would be the last time I see her. I wanted to tell her I still love her, I wanted to tell her to stay, I wanted to tell her so much, but the taxi had already turned in the corner. Warm tears kept falling down my face, blended with the cold rain drops. I was cold, not because of the rain. I was cold inside.

She left, and I didn't get anymore of her phone calls even until today. I know she didn't see my tears, because they were washed away by the rain. I left without regrets. But I'm not Chris, I'm that girl Susan, using my memory, and his diary I found after one year since he left, writing down these last words

Adapted from ReCom - The Hardest Thing is Learning to Let Go

Common Science Misconceptions

This is one of my posts in ReCom which I wish to share with everyone who studies science:

I found this fabulous website which pointed out a lot of common misconceptions in our textbooks. I would strongly recommend everyone who studies science to have a look. There are quite many commonly mistaken scientific facts, some of which were often included in our secondary, or even tertiary textbooks. Just sharing a few of them here:

1. Astronauts float in the space station not because there is zero gravity, but because they are free falling. The gravity in space is not zero. (Reference)

2. If we hang two balloons on each side of a beam balance, one of which filled and one of which empty, the side with the filled balloon will sag downward. It shows that air has weight. Wrong. The reason it sags downward is not because air has weight, but because of the different pressure in the two balloons. (Reference)

3. If we let sunlight goes through one prism, a band of light with the whole range of spectrum will be seen. If we let the spectrum of light goes through another identical prism, we will see white light coming out from the other end. - No, it's not the actual case. We won't get a white light using only two identical prisms. (Reference)

4. Infrared is the "heat radiation" while the other part of sunlight only contributes to the visible light but not heat. Wrong - if we measure the different parts of spectrum of the sunlight, we will find that the visible light contributes to heat as well. In fact, every one of us is emitting infrared and microwave at this very moment; but we don't emit visible light because we are simply not hot enough. (Reference)

5. Electrons flow at the speed of light - wrong. Electron actually moves very slowly, at the order of centimetres per minute. The thing that flows so fast and cause your light to snap on the moment you turn it on, is not electrons but the energy carried within the electrons. Think of what happens when we fill a pre-filled water hose with one drop of water at one end - a drop of water comes out from another end. Does it mean that that particular drop of water has travelled the length of the hose and come out at the other end? No. This is analogous to what happens in our conductors. (Reference)

6. The white "smoke" coming out from our piping hot coffee, the mist in a shower room, fog and cloud are not water vapour - they are fine liquid droplets. (Reference)

The things I listed above are among the inaccuracies or errors I learnt from the website. It's so enlightening, and I really hope that they include the facts from that site in our textbooks.

[recom.org] Why I Choose Medicine

Babikia wrote:

Top students want to be doctors, not so top students also want to be docs, really bad students also want to be docs. The nightmare is that all of them, including the really idiotic ones can become docs someway or another. The nightmare worsens as the number of not-so-smart but $$ minded docs exceeds the nearly extinct smart with a heart of gold ones.

Tab wrote:

also, how can you justify the fact that someone is 'not so smart'? Can you point to a person and say, "hey, your SPM/ STPM result is crap... you're not cut out to be a doctor!"?
Can you point to a high achiever in exams and say that 'oh look, that student is bound to be a good doctor!"?
The fact is that we won't know who will make a good doctor UNTIL that person finally graduates from med school and becomes a real, bona fide doctor. It is then, and only then, that one is able to judge whether or not that individual is really competent and cut out to be a doctor.

I rest my case.

Babikia wrote:

That's how many msians are. Judging everyone by their academic results. You've just elaborated a typical msian with all the typical elements: exam results, medicine. Damn, you guys are fun. But I'm still gonna hack on all you future docs. One day, going to med school will be like going to high school. Anyone can get a medical education.

I agree with your point that Malaysian and most Asian country society has a biased emphasis on academic result and a neglection of other human qualities. And also, many parents indeed exerted pressure on their children towards becoming doctors so that they have something to boast of. Uncomfortable, but it is the truth.

But I don't get the point you keep on "hacking on all future doctors". Now I tell you:

I wanted to become a doctor because I derive great pleasure from being able to help others (ask those who know me personally in ReCom if you don't believe it). Just being able to see a doctor joining the tendons in a crushed finger and re-enabling the finger movement, gives me sheer thrill and excitement with a magnitude of more than the one you can derive from rambling around in an online forum. You feel happy when your patient recovers; you feel gratified when your patient looks at you with a grateful glance; even when your patient failed to recover or even died, you know that if there had been a chance for her, you were there to give her that chance. You know, talk about job satisfaction, cliche but it's true. Last but not least, the "taboo" - I want to earn money, a good amount of them to ensure a good life quality for my future family.

In my secondary school years, I obtained a fairly good result and I was involved in quite some array of extracurricular activities. Today, here I am, a first year medical student in Melbourne University, fresh and naive. It's only the tenth week of my course today, but I have already had some idea of life as a medical student. Stark picture? A bit grey, but not really stark. Studying medicine indeed involves a lot of memorisation and I totally agree with the saying that you don't need a rocket scientist brain to study medicine. You need to be astute, professional, disciplined, empathic, well-resourced, endowed with fairly good memory etc; but I can assure you, intelligence is not a prerequisite.

Let's go back to life as a medical student... Take an example, embryology, the subject I am studying now. Embryology is challenging and confusing, it takes ages for me to read, let alone understand and remember. But you know, it amazes me, it's something I want to know more about and have great interest in. It's something I like. How the zygote transformed from two layers to three layers, how 3 layers of cells fold into the shape of a fetus in the womb, they are all things that captivate my imagination whenever I read it and put myself in the embryo's shoes (weird expression huh?). I know it might be hard for me to do well or score in the exam, but the crux of the matter is, at the end of the day, I knew I enjoyed learning. That's it.

If everything turns out fine for me, I will be a GP in 5 years time. Yes, if you ask me, I can definitely foresee that the life as a doctor is going to be stressful and strenuous. Although I know the immense magnitude of the work pressure, the peril of the hospital environment and the sacrifice of the family and social life I have to make, but I am sure it's a trade-off I have chosen with a right frame of mind. I want to be an excellent doctor, someone who can make a difference in people's lives. I can come home dog-tired physically but I want my psyche to be contentful of what I have done everyday. With my good work, I want to be repaid with some handsome but well-deserved income because I know that my family deserve nothing but the best. Of course I know money is not everything in this world; but everything else being equal, money certainly helps you attain a better quality of life.

I hope that I can live my life to the fullest. Period.


And now, hack on me.

[recom.org] What Makes A Top Student

On the other day I was IM-ing with another recommer and his words enlightened my perspective on the definition of top students, and what top students should do. He is a top student for sure, but his humility of remaining anonymous and low-key in recom has impressed me even more.

Today, Malaysia has become such a society that whenever we come and think of the word "top student", our minds conjure up an image of the guy / girl with the longest string of 1A in their exam slips. Go ask the aunty at the groceries shop, our parents, our peers, our teachers, our principals, or even ourselves, most probably we would all hear the same answer.

The problem with this perception is, they are only the top-scorers, not necessarily the top students; and they are not the only role model of an excellent student. In the more-A1-means-better-student environment we have here, the only thing we are going to cultivate is one-dimensional and parochial outlook, kiasuim, "scheme-expert-ism", and the list goes on. Ask top-scorers to write an essay on an issue, and you will see. Many of the top scorers would give you a piece of writing with columnist standard, if it's covered in the tuition or in the school; any other issues, you will see them lamenting about the difficulty and their writing turn out superficial with immature points showing their inadequate exposure to the real world.

String of A1's is not the only thing a student can achieve, and is certainly not the only prerequisite of a generation which will become the pillar of Malaysia in 20 years time.

And the issue we have today, is that with those excessive attention on the quantity of A1 and total neglection on the other good qualities in students, our education system is going no where but towards becoming an A1-generating machine.


Edit: Do notice that I qualified all my points with the word "many", not "all". Of course there are top-scorers who are indeed top students in its real sense as well, but we still see a lot of students who know to study brilliantly but achieve excellence in barely any other qualities.

[recom.org] Rote Memorisation

In my opinion, repetition does work but it only applies for short-term memory. You can rote memorise a chapter for your monthly test, but by the time you have your final exam 90% of what you have memorised would probably have vanished into the thin air, and you will end up memorising everything again.

I agree with the posts above that we should employ strategies which suit us best. If you are better at "auditory memory" then go for chanting, singing or listening attentively at class; if you are visually orientated then draw your own flowchart and familiarise yourself with it. In all cases, especially for history, let yourself be a part of the story, imagine that you are one of the characters of the story. Think how he thinks, know why he did the things he had done, empathize what it was like when World War erupted... it does help a lot.

Talking about keywords... you can hate it, swear it, curse it or swallow it, but at the end of the day, they are the things that earn you marks. I personally hate rote memorisation of keywords too, but nevertheless, I still do memorise them.

One of the strategies that makes keyword easier to memorise is well-thought mnemonics. Mnemonics are words, rhymes, story, or sentences that make it easier for us to memorise keywords or story sequences. Now that I am taking medicine course, I realized that mnemonic is indeed one of the most important strategies of improving your studies. There is even a website dedicated to the mnemonics of medicine-related stuff.

To give you some ideas of how mnemonics work, here are some of my favourites: * sorry if my examples are mostly about reproductive system, it just happens that this is my current topic *
1.
Fact: The pathway of a sperm in male reproductive system is from Seminiferous Tubules to Epididymis to Vas deferens to Ejaculatory duct.
Mnemonic: My boyfriend's name is STEVE.

2.
Fact: Erection is controlled by Parasympathetic nervous system while ejaculation is controlled by sympathetic nervous system.
Mnemonic: Point and Shoot.

3.
Fact: The abundance of white blood cells in decreasing order is Neutrophil, Lymphocyte, Monocyte, Eosinophil and Basophil.
Mnemonic: Never Let Monkey Eat Banana.

4.
Fact: The colour code of resistors from 0 to 9 is Hitam, Perang, Merah, Oren, Kuning, Hijau, Biru, Ungu, Kelabu, Putih.
Mnemonic: Sorry, too vulgar to be typed on ReCom. My friend created this mnemonics in form 1, and I can recall it until today. Basically it's a vulgar sentence with a combination of Hokkien and Malay words.


Hope that helps. If everything else fails, remember one word: priority. Remember to prioritize on the importance of the facts, and make sure you remember the more important ones if you are running out of time. It works most of the time.

Feel Like Twisting Your Brain?

I have got two questions here to twist your brain, if you feel like life is nothing more than boring routines.

1. Safe sex

There are 2 guys and 2 girls. The 2 guys want to fuck the 2 girls (ie each guy screws both girls) but there is a problem ... There are only two condoms available. Use the condoms any way you want - reuse, flip it, etc - but you cannot wash it.

No body fluids can be exchanged (even girl-girl or guy-guy exchanges), else the sex would not be considered safe from STDs.

How can the task be done?

From A Singaporean Blogger

2. The Chance?

Suppose it is assumed that about 5% of the general population use drugs. You employ a test that is 95% accurate, which we’ll say means that if the individual is a user, the test will be positive 95% of the time, and if the individual is a nonuser, the test will be negative 95% of the time. A person is selected randomly and given the test. It is positive. What does such a result suggest? Would you conclude that the individual is highly likely to be a drug user?

4 PHD got the answer wrong when they wrote their answer to the newspaper, a similar question like this was directed to a group of experienced doctor and only 2 doctors (8%) got the correct answers.

From ReCom

Have fun!

[ReCom.org] Lots of A1s, does it show anything?

inevitable wrote:

so, now what do you want? you want them to choose the student based on what then? you want them to test every student in malaysia on their 'real-world' ability? is that what you want? better think about it more logically. there are thousands of students take spm every year, how do you think the scholarships going to manage that? there are a lot of competition. how do you think they want to choose the student? based on spm ofcourse. they cant afford to manage a test of ability on the 'real-world' on every student. even if they do, they would only choose the good results. how else do you want them to? even if the students who are not so good in spm are actually can do the 'real stuff' like you said, then the spm wont be a block for them, if they are good enough, they would survive and be great people. i know a lot of people who did not pass spm but are rich people now. spm is a reward, you work hard, you'll get the prize. but there's not just one prize in this world, there are a lot more. you dont get this one, you can try and get the other. even if you feel unsatisfied and try to prove something ridiculous as you just post here, that's the way it is, better think about it more deeply before you post something like this

youngyew wrote:

First of all, probably you are new in ReCom, but I don't think typing everything in a bold font is a good demeanor in a forum.

And I don't know why you would get so irated with our ongoing discussion. Nobody lobbied for the demolishment of the whole examination system, nobody said university has to pick their students with real-world talent. Please reread carefully and think about it more deeply before you post something like this.

The whole discussion has been orientated on the point that, instead of judging the student's aptitude by his results in the relevant subjects, the yardstick of academic aptitude (which directly affects scholarship chance) has been deformed to the number of subjects he takes up (and get A1 in).

Is it fair? Yes, everyone knows that it has become the rule of the game, you take up more subjects, you get more A1, you get a higher chance of getting scholarship. But is it fair at all? Please don't be complacent as to say that this is the rule of the game, so just accept it. Remember, this is not an opt-out game, every single student in Malaysia has to take it, and we have to improve the game as much as possible instead of just accepting the status quo.

My point is: Okay, assume that I am an excellent student who takes up "only" 10 subjects. I knew very well from the beginning of form 4 that I want to become a doctor in the future, so I only took those core subjects and science electives. Besides, I also didn't feel the need to take up subjects which I was not interested in and didn't find any thrill in the prospect of gaining fame from scoring 20 A1. SPM is over, and I scored extremely well in all of the subjects, and got 9A1 and 1A2 in chinese language (haha, ring a bell?). Now the moment of truth: there are this hundreds of people who took up astronomic amount of A1 and got astronomic amount of A1 (probably some partial supra-result, like those 11A1 and 2A2). Remember these astronomic scorers aren't necessarily better than him just because they scored more A1. I think it's an undeniable fact no matter which side of fence you are on.

You don't have to be a good guesser to know what happens. Those astronomic scorer got the coveted JPA offers, and I have to cry at home.

See, this is the effect of the game. This is not a fabricated story, but it happens to many friends around me. Yea yea, you can say that you should have known the rule of the game, but has any curricular statement of SPM ever stated that "students aptitude are ranked accordingly based on the number of A1"? I was game over, but I lost because I didn't follow the undocumented "rule of game". Now tell me, is that fair?

As I have said before, the problem doesn't lie on the students who take up N subjects themselves, because they are just trying to survive and thrive in the system. It's the system that goes unhealthy. Personally I congratulate Nur Amalina and other high scorers who have proved themselves, and I heartilly think that they should be proud of their paid hardwork and the achievement. But I sympathize even with more emotion for those who are sidelined by the unhealthy system. Even the government itself should feel bad about the unfairness, because it's our beloved country that suffers the loss of talents.

inevitable wrote:

so, now what do you want?

youngyew wrote:

As a remedy, I would like to say that a fixed amount of subjects (or at least set a ceiling limit) is the better way of creating healthily competitive environment. A-level is fairly good, although the decrease of standard has sort of created another problem of unability to separate the diamond from the pebbles.

p/s: For the record, I am currently a JPA sponsored student who was lucky enough to have scored 10A1 and lucky again to have been chosen by JPA. So all my previous posts were not "sour grape" posts. Although I survived the cruel test, I was greatly saddened to hear the stories of wasted talents because of the "rule of game".

[ReCom.org] Lots of A1s, does it show anything?

gal_flower wrote:

But can we say that there's something wrong with the students pursuing more and more A1s? It's a rat race now...and everyone needs to fight to be more outstanding than the other. Is it their fault for choosing to take on more subjects, or is it the society's fault? Think about that. Or maybe, just maybe, the student chooses to do more subjects to challenge herself ( I choose the female gender) or to explore her abilities? Think about that. Those who take on more subjects are in a way putting themselves in a risk that may be costly. I'm not saying that their efforts are entirely admirable that I can just ignore the rest who also scored straight A1s but less number of the A1s or those who did well but just didn't score straight A1s or those who just faltered at SPM but are indeed smart as anything else. But this is how our education system and our society works. We ALL know THAT. It IS luck sometimes.

youngyew wrote:

I never blamed those students whose reason to take up more subjects is to "beat the others". If this is the reason, then it's not their fault as they are the victims themselves.

What I am lobbying by my previous articles is to remedy the whole system, instead of criticising those who took the subjects. People react to the external environmental change (sorry but I am taking biochemistry at the moment.. ), so when stress is exerted by the external factor, they have to swim or sink. However, what we really need to react is to correct the system, not asking those students to stop taking more and more subjects to out-smart others. It concerns their own survival.