If a murderer was crowned Ms World while serving time in jail, is she allowed to keep her crown as she explained that she would like to hold onto the title because she has come so far in her dream and she does not wish to, because of a past mistake, give up something that is meaningful to her?

Of course not right.

But what about giving her a second chance?

Of course I will give her a second change.

But You do the crime, you do the time.

After you have served the punishment then you are allowed to start afresh.

Now, I have no problem with MISS Singapore World Ris Low Yi Min not being able to speak well. I do no even mind when we are silly enough to choose a bimbo to represent all women in Singapore.

BUT this is Singapore. Hello Principle of Meritocracy where we are rewarded with hard work.

She did not believe in this principle. She took the easy way out.

She claimed that " she is not proud of what she did, and added that her crimes were committed in 'a moment of folly'. 'I don't know why I did it, it was not like I needed the money."

Hello?

In April and May last year, she spent more than $2,400 on at least four separate occasions, using at least three illegally obtained credit cards, at times impersonating the identity of their owners. She was sentenced to 24 months of supervised probation in May this year.

I cannot consider 4 separate occasions as a moment of folly.
60 charges were taken into consideration for the purposes of sentencing. This is not a moment of folly.

It is all pre-planned.

She said that 'I would like to hold onto the title, definitely, because I've come so far in my dream and I don't wish to, because of a past mistake, give up something that is so meaningful to me.'

She must be brave enough to stand up and face the time. Every action has a reaction. Every choice as a consequences.

Too many parents now a days are so afraid to punish their children when they have done something wrong for fear that they would scare the children for life.

As a mother of six, I believe that when we spare the 'rod' we will spoilt the child. If any of our children does something wrong, they will be punished. Non-negotiable.


As Mother Teresa said Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies.

Ms Low, it is still not to late to start with the small things.
Start by first giving up the crown gracefully.
Start by doing the time and accept that you have to pay for your life of crime

Start by finally being a great role model for all the lost Ah Lian who need someone like you to look up to for all the right reasons.

Show them that you are begining to be an adult, that you knwo right from wrong, that at this point in time, you did not have the heart and support of Singaporeans to represent them.

Be faithful Ms Low to you time that you have to pay for your crime. It is the only right thing to do.

My colleagues know that I do not support any NLP based programme. Each year, when we have to go to camp with the students, I will ensure that I do not go with the classes that use NLP trainers. Each time they asked me, I would explain the pitfall of NLP. Often, it would fall on deaf ear.( We have used the same NLP trainer for two years.)

Recently, these NLP has expended to teaching students study skills. When I was given the opportunity to examine their course content, I was shock to see this statement wriiten in their course book. " To do well in social studies, you have to remember the dates and events." This is totally against what I have tried to educate the students in social studies. While I cannot speak on other subjects, I know that what they are doing for social studies is wrong.

I thus stated very clearly that I will not be held responsible for the results of the students who will go through these NLP courses. If they do well, these NLP will most probably use their face for some advertisement. If they do bad, I guess they would wash their hand off.

I still stand by my view that NLP is not appropriate for our students. It does not promote thinking. It only seek to programme our students which is totally against the spirit of education.

Like I always teach my students: Short term gain , Long term pain. or Solve one problem, create five others.

The choice is clear

Let teachers motivate ...

But principal uses motivational speakers to boost school's results

05:55 AM Aug 31, 2009

Letter from Roland Ang

RECENTLY, I received an SMS from my daughter's school asking me to sign up for a paid workshop to help parents understand their children - to be conducted by some neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) practitioners.

My daughter told me that the school had also engaged the same people to counsel and motivate them as her school principal was not happy with the overall mid-year result.

The purpose of the NLP-trained motivational speaker, they were told, was to help them achieve better results.

Private organisations use NLP-trained motivational speakers to enhance sales targets and customer service, notably in the insurance and time-share industries. Their relationships are purely commercial. However, that cannot be said between schools and motivational speakers as the latter have no stake and vested interest in any school.

Schools should leave the teaching, inspiring and motivating of children to parents and school teachers rather than relying on external trainers to enhance their overall school results just to maintain their school ranking. Is education all about results and nothing else?

Miss Ho Peng, the director-general of Education at the Ministry of Education, said in a speech recently at the Teachers' Mass Lecture as well as the formation of Professional Learning Communities (PLCs), which are powerful platforms for teachers to learn from one another, that it gives her great fulfilment when teachers move on to greater responsibilities and, in turn, help to develop others.

I think this is a move in the right direction for teachers.

There are many advertisements in from NLP entrepreneurs. Their punchlines are about helping those who sign up for their courses to attain financial success, or to "get rich fast".

Legally, this is not wrong, but morally these people are capitalising on the weaknesses of people with a desire to get rich fast without the need to work hard.

Such courses may lead to an erosion of the work ethic in the gullible young, especially during this economic downturn when many are unemployed or desperate to recover losses from bad investments.

If parents want to send their children to accelerated learning programmes, they do so at their own prerogative. But I hope schools will avoid engaging NLP practitioners merely to enhance their students' results. Rather, they should keep faith and trust in their teachers to inspire and motivate their students.

Our children are human beings and not commodities.

This is a reply to the above letter

NLP has issues, problems

05:55 AM Sep 01, 2009

Letter from S Ganesamoorthy

I REFER to "Let teachers motivate ..." (Aug 31). Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) as a methodology has lots of hidden issues and problems.

As principals are increasingly inviting these speakers to talk to their students, there is a need to be circumspect and look at the issue of NLP from the broad perspective of its use in education.

NLP practitioners receive their so-called master's certification by attending a short course or via online master's certification.

NLP is also not accepted into the fold of psychiatry, psychology or even sociology or social work, and does not contain the academic rigour of being accepted as a field of discipline in its own right.

The originators of NLP are themselves not agreed on the objectives and targets that must bind the NLP process.

There is certainly an obligation on the part of the Ministry of Education to ensure that the methodologies adopted to instruct our students pass the acid test of evaluating NLP as a subject in its own right.

Besides, there is an urgent need for our educational/para educational, counselling, psychological and medical agencies to evaluate and validate the methodologies adopted by NLP practitioners and hold them accountable.

It is also worrying that these training providers, who are invited to train students at an enormous investment of time and money, also conduct courses and seminars on "short circuits" to becoming millionaires.

As we celebrate Teacher's Day, let us pay tribute to the many who have mastered their skills to make a difference in their students' lives and reassert their pre-eminence in the lives of all students today and in the future.

Let us empower our teachers so that they will empower our students.

As stated so succinctly by Haim Ginott, the teacher, child psychologist and psychotherapist who pioneered techniques for conversing with children that are still taught today:

"I've come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It's my personal approach that creates the climate. It's my daily mood that makes the weather.

"As a teacher, I possess tremendous power to make a student's life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or humour, hurt or heal. In all situations it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a student humanised or de-humanised".

When I was young and Christmas tree was tall.....


This old song from the Bee Gees popped out of my head recently.


Life is a matter of perspective.

When I was young, certain thing and issue were up most important to me like: Will I have a date on Saturday or will any one be interested in a tomboy like me etc.

Now it has changed. I worry when one of my sons has too many dates on a weekend while my other children do not seem to mind that they do not have any.

I worry if they would find a good spouse and be happily married.

And so I have began to pray for all my children's spouses that they do not mind have an ess for a mother in law.

I also wonder will I be accepted as a mother in law to them. Will I be a living hell for them like Jane Fonda, a monster in law?

Most likely, I will be travelling around the world drinking wine with Gino in Venice or coffee at the cafe in gay Paris so that I will avoid being a mother in law.

Life is a matter of perspective. To my students who are reading this blog, who are heart broken because their swine of a girl friend has walk out of them all I can say is : Time will heal.

Yes, I know how you feel for when I heard that phrase when I was 18 .

Time will heal. I retorted so what? I am hurting now.

Trust me. All I can say is Time will heal.

30 years later when you look back at issues that you hold dear at 17 or 18, you will realise that what an ess you have been.

You will smile and you will remember that once an ess has told you that Time will heal and it is true.

Today my son Angus is twenty years. In a twinkle of an eye, that bouncy, fair and chubby baby has grown into a man.

No longer a teenager not yet an adult. A young adult who is learning to make important decisions.

We, as parents no longer can dictate what he can or cannot do. We can only offer advice when asked for.

Of course we will be tempted to tell you what to do, who to befriend and what to wear.

This period will be a challenging period for all of us as we learn to accommodate each other.The next twenty years will be as enriching as the last twenty year.

The fruit of your labour

If you are a doctor, you will know the fruit of your labour right away. If you give the correct medicine your patient is cured. If you give the wrong one, he dies. So simple.

What about a teacher? I can never claimed that it is due to me as a teacher that my students turned out well later in life. There are just too many factors in their life for any teachers to claimed that they have make a positive impact. Yet like the doctor, if a teacher took the wrong step often she has the ability to kill her students joy for learning.

A few weeks ago, my ex VP invite me and a couple of teachers for his daughter's wedding. Throughout the dinner, we managed to connect again. We decided to keep in touch through Facebook.

It was a joy to connect with the teachers but through their profile, I managed to connect with this crazy bunch of old boys that I taught eleven years ago.

I remembered them clearly because they broke many teachers heart. To say that they have behaviour problems was an understatement. There were many underlying factors that were influencing their life beyond what a classroom teachers could influence or control.

I remembered the Principal, Discipline Master, teachers and I spend a lot of time cracking our head over how to help them.

Sad to say at the end of the year, we felt we have failed as we have nothing to show for our effort.

It was so heartening to see that so many of them have turned out so well after so many years. Some have settled down and married. Others are still in the university as they are late developers. One who created the most troubled even top his cohort and earned an oversea scholarship.

A teacher can only do so much in class. Like a gardener, she can only ensure that the soil is fertile for the seed to grow. Sometime weeds will grow along with the seedings. She have try her best to weeds out these weeds but the growing has to be done by the seeds themselves.

I am so gald that these bunch of students from 3E6 has grown into gentlemen and scholars of who is passionate about life.

Thank you fro giving this old ess hope to continue her journey as a gardener. If she is luckily to harvest some more fruit, she will remember that she is not the one responsible for it but it was the seeds themselves.

Are you in my age bracket ?

I think I going to be sad, I think it today.

If the following evoke memories then you would have grown up with me in the 70's.

1. The Carpenter who sang the above lyrics. Which song is it? She died.




2. Of course there is MJ before Thriller and Bad. He sang "Ben" and I"'ll be there " when he was just a boy.



3. Then there is "Puppy Love" and "I am a little bit country and I am a little rock and roll." Another famous family group like MJ.


4. FF who died on the same day as MJ married the man I wanted to marry. However it will coast me more then six million dollars. A major disappointment.

5. Another singer who died so he cannot "Follow Me." Looks like he has followed others and "Fly away."


"I found my Thrill on Strawberry Hills" The one and only who could make the toilet looks cool.






I love these two. Any guess where were they working?




Soon it will be my turn to say good bye to this world. It can be less then 24 hours or in 24 years or even 42 years. Dose not matter. Don't cry for me (another famous Broadway musical before Madonna took it to the movies)

When you come to my wake, please have a loud jamming session with drums and songs. Celebrate that I was and still am luckily to have meet people like you and those who are reading my blog.

Meanwhile, I will live life to the fullest, focus on relationship and prepare to meet my maker.

Is 18 too young to be a mum?

Extracted from an article first published in The Straits Times 22.6.2009

Ms Tan Siew Kim, the mother of the baby who drowned last year, told The Straits Times she found becoming a parent at 18 overwhelming.

She declined counselling after the baby arrived because she saw 'no point to it' - with or without counselling, she was still saddled with a baby to care for. She felt it was 'not right' to give her child up for adoption, but could not give up her partying lifestyle at the weekend either.

It was while she was sleeping off a night of clubbing and drinking in May last year that her untended child toddled his way to the pail of water.



When Anicius was born, our maid was on home leave in the Philippine. I have to go back to work after two months of no-pay leaves. My eldest three children was a boy of 16, two girls of 15 and 13.

I left the new born Anicius in the care of these three children as they were home-schooled. I wanted them to learn how to care for a new born, how to bath, wash and feed Anicius with breast milk.

Of course their grandmothers yell high dungeon.

Even now when Anicius is going to be four years old, he is being cared for by the children. Sometime I feel more like a grandmother to my youngest son.


A note of advise to all potential parents and any teenagers who wants to have sex outside marriage.

A child is best conceived within a circle of love in a marriage as a child is not a trophy or a tax break.

Be prepared to give up your selfish, self centered life style which include computer games, partying lifestyle and msn cheat and blogging.

Sad to say many of the children that were conceived during one night stand or outside of marriage were conceived by people who have demonstrated no sense of responsibility to begin with.

They are conceived by people who are more interested in satisfying themselves first before giving any consideration to anyone else.

Conceiving a child do not make a person responsible overnight as Ms Tan case showed.

A message to all teenagers who are reading this blog:

Face it. You have the power to create life each time you have sex even if you use protection like condom and the pill.

Abortion is not an option as you will feel guilty for the rest of your life despite of what others told you. They have numbed their guilt.

If you can demonstrated your self-control and take time to choose the father of your children, I assure you would will not regret it.

Since I began teaching in 1986, facing tight deadlines and insurmountable paperwork – I often feel like throwing in the towel.

I soldier on, however, thinking of the crazy nuns who taught me in secondary stchool.

Sister Cecily Parvi - the brilliant biologist who nevertheless devoted herself to teaching rebellious teenagers.

Sister Christina Yeo - able to illuminate love when explaining “Midsummer Night's Dream” over our preferred “Man in the net.”

They touched my life. One gave me free tuition in English even though I was already studying in a government junior college.

Their dedication to teaching is unparalleled. Always supporting us; never motivated by bonuses, rank or even promotion as their earning are given to the convent. Our development was their focus.

When I feel like giving up, I remember these selfless nuns. I still cannot measure up to them. Yet that is why I remain a teacher, in the process of becoming an educator.

A silent wife is a gift from God

On 11 June 1989, my husband made me an Ess.

It been twenty one years since I became one

Friends in my secondary school knew me as Ong Hock Lin.

When I became an Ess, I went to change my IC to officially be come Mrs France Ess.

I was not satisfy with the fashion at that time of combining two sur names together like Ong-Ess or Chai-Sim, Lum-Lan or even Lim-Chwee

I wanted to be to be known from then on as Mrs Ess.

Some has asked how did our marriage last for so long?

On my part, I find that the phrase " A silent wife is a gift from God" has helped throughout this journey.

Being silent does not mean being submissive, being bullied or being stepped upon.

Being silent is powerful as you demonstrate your discipline to know when to speak and when not to speak.

Being silent is graceful as you do not engaged in groundless gossip or distructive debate.

For example,on our wedding anniversary, I went and buy a bag Buah Keluak and cooked it with meat.

Any nonya worth her salt will claimed that Babi Buah Keluark
is a classic Peranakan dish.

So when my Eurasian Mil claimed that Buah Keluark is a Eurasian dish, I have two choices.

Keep my mouth shut and keep the peace or correct her and made her feel uneasy or even angry.

I judged that since it was just a matter of opinion and not a matter of fact, I decided to keep my mouth shut.


Aristotle the Greek philosopher commented that "Anyone can become angry. That is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose and in the right way - that is not easy."

I was glad that I did not take the easy way out.

It helps that in a marriage we do not take the easy way out.

When we face a rough patch, it is easier to seek other distractions-- computer games, another listening ear, an affair.

When tempted to walk out of the marriage, it is easier to sign the divorce paper. Harder to face to the truth.

In any fight or quarrel, it is much easier to point the finger at your spouse then to reflect on your own shortfall.

I like being an ess. Some who read this blog will again get angry at my traditional values just as this blog stir up so many negative emotions three years ago when I suggested that to love is to obey.

Tank Man

Remember 1989 when spring beld into summer in Bejian Tiananmen Square?
The gathering of people turned in to waves chanting for change.

June 5th 1989. I was about to give birth to my first born son.

This image was splashed across the world.

No one knew his name.

Not many of my students understood the significance of what this man did.

A single man, standing up for truth.

A brave man, standing alone.

Putting his life on the line.

Would that I have the courage to be like him.

But we are called daily .....

to put our life on the line.

For the values we belief in

To stand tall

And not be afraid.

To be countered.

To be loved

To be free.

Ready to be Tank Man?

For more information please read


http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article6390782.ece

See this video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMBTuFbLQH4&feature=related


There is still hope.