May-hem

Since I was relatively unoccupied this afternoon, I decided to help check out my aunt’s phone, which she had called me about while I was having lunch; it was overheating, and probably on the verge of exploding if I hadn’t advised her to bring it to the phone shop and have the guy there dismantle it. Why I couldn’t do the dismantling boiled down to a very simple reason; it was a Sony Ericsson W850i. So it had these locks at the side where you slide them up in order to pop the back cover open, unlike the conventional method of sliding the battery cover directly off. I totally rolled my eyes when the guy at the shop did that and drew out the battery. Sony Ericsson designers should take NM2216 Introduction to Interactive Design.

Previously, I’ve helped do some marking for Secondary level examination papers from a relatively prestigious school, and going back to doing marking for another school totally set these two schools apart. For one, it was interesting to listen to my aunt lament the lackadaisical attitudes of the students in her current school, as compared to her previous school, which was of a higher standard than her present one. The students’ and schools’ attitudes towards learning were a chasm apart. One was disciplined and serious; the other had girls who checked themselves in pocket mirrors and people who took out their novels to read in the midst of an exam. One had students who made the effort to complete simple tasks like filing and sharing class-owned stationery; the other had to coerce students to do their filing when it’s time for the department to do checking. I can never fully empathize with what all teachers are going through, but I’ve been one myself and, frankly speaking, parents who are non-teachers will only see one side of the coin. Singaporean parents need to wake up their idea. Most, if not all, have absolutely no idea what their children are up to in school, be it skipping classes, feigning illness to get MCs, talking back to their teachers, copy each other’s homework before flag-raising, hiding in the toilets to escape their discipline teachers… If parents were shown CCTV footage of their kids in class, half of them will faint. I’m saying so simply because I’ve been a student myself, and I’m sick of having our junior generation deteriorating.