Monday ... Monday ...

Honours or honest degree?

I was amazed when I read this. There are students out there who could afford to fork out two grand for someone else to write their thesis? The mind boggles. My experience of student life (undergrad and postgrad) is one of skimping because even if you get a scholarship, it doesn't necessarily cover all your expenses (my uni is located in Kuala Lumpur).

Are we more morally bankrupt than the people before us? Are the changing landscape of professional development and personal growth pushing us to become more dishonest? Are we just lazier than before?

Who knows. It could be any and all or even none of the above. All I know is that being a teacher at tertiary level just got tougher. I mean, you can identify that the student was cheating, but proving it is something else altogether. So you may have to grit your teeth and just pass the kid anyway even though you know well that he/she couldn't use prepositions properly to even save her/his life. The kid whom you know worked hard, built his/her skill sets to write a darn good thesis got no more than the cheating one because you can't prove how the cheater cheated.

How depressing.

Science rocks!

From particle to people

Under cut because of a lot of cool stuff!

Midweek sh*ts & giggles ... early-ish.

Death wish

But not the way you think. Chumbawamba, a band that struck supernova-like stardom for 15 minutes in the 90's thanks to this song, actually released a song that reads the passenger manifest of people whom they would like to see die in a plane crash.



Since Ally McBeal made the cut, I daresay it's a pretty good list.

Saved by the little green men!

Help!

Midweek sh*ts and giggles - man edition

XY all the way, baby.

Never thought I'd see heels that high on a man after the 70's are over.

Dating fail #87972363983094.

The Jews. Clowns don't faze 'em.

Success do come after many failures, it seems.

Celebrating the pi day, his way.

Oh, yeah ... gimme some honey all right.

Learn to spell. It may save your life (or sanity).

Better living through chemistry, I say.

Now who's the badass?

Neil Patrick Harris. So good he could sell you that he's a straight horndog.

Gotta know what works for you.

Oh, Mr Depp ...

... how is it thou art an adorable undead?

The Drama of Childhood

The Mad Song 

by Mr Rogers

What do you do with the mad that you feel?
When you feel so mad you could bite?
When the whole wide world feel oh so wrong
And nothing you seems very right
What do you do?
Do you punch a bag?
Do you pound some clay or some dough?
Do you round up friends for a game of tag?
Or you see how fast you'd go?

It's great to be able to stomp
When you've planted the thing that's wrong
And be able to do something else instead
And think this song
I can stomp when I want to
Can stomp when I wished
Can stomp! stomp! stomp! anytime
And what a good feeling to feel like this
And know that the feeling was really mine
Know that there's something deep inside
That helps us become what we can
For a girl to be someday a lady
And a boy can be someday a man

I had moments of being a very angry child. Don't ask  me why; to this day I couldn't pinpoint the cause. The only thing good about it was I got it out of my system that by the time I was a teenager, I had no angst left. So I never bothered with any teenage rebellion.


I now realise that I lacked the vocabulary to express how I felt even though I read a lot. The books that I devoured was chockful of adventures and fun, but there was barely anything emotional. It would have been nice if I had a frame of reference for my feelings that I could actually understand, and it looked like children who had the opportunity to watch Mr Rogers in his neighbourhood, got this advantage.

Fortunately for me, my mother had an excellent collection of Reader's Digest with sections addressing good emotional and mental health and how to condition yourself to be a socially acceptable human being. Not to say that my family did not show me an excellent example for being a good person, it's just that I'm so thick that the lesson didn't penetrate well until in my 20's. And I'm still a work in progress.

So teach your kids to express themselves in a respectful and positive manner. It is a learned behaviour, just like courtesy.

Or spree killing at their high school.